Black Roses

by Jane Thynne

  The elevator at the British Embassy was a splendid fin de siècle affair, with an interior of panelled walnut and a set of elaborately twisted wrought-iron double doors. As Leo reached the third floor the ancient lift keeper rose from his seat and drew back the creaking gate with a nod, his watery eyes following Leo’s progress down the corridor to the room where Hitchcock was waiting for him behind a typewriter, smirking slightly.

  ‘I was wondering, Quinn,’ he looked up briefly, ‘if you might know anything about a Helmut Kappel, aged thirty-six, believed to work for the political police? Found under a heap of leaves in, where was it now . . .’ he leaned forward and consulted a note, ‘Brucknerstrasse, Steglitz.’

  ‘Should I?’

  ‘Someone shot him through the heart. On the evening of Hilter’s birthday.’

  ‘Perhaps someone was celebrating.’

  ‘Pretty violent kind of celebration, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘I’d say it’s a pretty violent kind of city.’

  Hitchcock gave him a suspicious glance, then flicked a cigarette out of the box on the table and tossed it across to Leo.

  ‘I hope none of our people are engaging in freelance operations. That kind of business can cause us problems, you know.’

  Leo kept his eyes trained on the photograph on the desk. She was a lovely-looking thing, with her shining eyes and glossy black hair, squinting up at the camera. Hitchcock was obviously very attached to his Labrador. Following Leo’s gaze, Hitchcock turned the picture away from him, reclined in his chair and planted one foot on the desk.

  ‘Anyway. About your love affair.’ For a second he paused deliberately, then said, ‘Mrs Goebbels, I mean.’ He hesitated, revelling momentarily in the possession of information that Leo had been denied.

  ‘I just thought you ought to know that Head Office decided on balance that it was better if Goebbels did have wind of it.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘The Minister received an anonymous note telling him about Arlosoroff Very nicely done by all accounts. Fountain pen. Flowery script. Posted in Wilmersdorf and signed “A Friend and Patriot”.’

  Leo sat back in the chair as if Hitchcock had just delivered one of those brutal punches to the solar plexus that had apparently won him a Cambridge boxing blue. As the acid rose in his gullet, everything became suddenly clear. So that was why the man had been hovering in Brucknerstrasse with a pistol! He was there to kill Arlosoroff. All that time Leo had been fearing for Clara, and it was Arlosoroff who was the target. Goebbels, in full knowledge of his wife’s deception, had sent a Gestapo agent to shoot her lover. He must have guessed, or worked out somehow, that Clara would be used as a go-between, so he calculated that he would have her followed until she led him to the quarry. Once she did, there were orders to eliminate him.

  Leo cursed himself silently. Why had he not realized the explanation that was staring him in the face? The answer was just as obvious. Love had blinkered him. Clara and her safety had commanded his full attention. He had been so intent on ensuring that she came to no harm, that he’d failed to assess the situation with the judgement required. Clara’s protection, he had foolishly imagined, was in his gift. As if he could ever protect her, once forces like these had been unleashed.

  ‘What a bloody reckless, irresponsible idea.’ Looking at Hitchcock’s complacent face made him doubly furious, but he kept his voice hushed and steady. ‘I thought we’d discussed all this with Sir Horace. We have a duty to protect our source, instead of which we exposed her quite unnecessarily to terrible danger. She could very easily have been shot.’

  Hitchcock spread his hands. ‘It was Dyson’s idea.’

  ‘Damn Dyson.’

  ‘Just delivering the message,’ Hitchcock said mildly, taking refuge in his paperwork. ‘Take it up with him if you have an objection.’

  ‘Objection?’

  The way Leo was looking was beginning to intimidate Hitchcock. He hoped he would leave soon.

  ‘Surely you realize my objection means nothing now? Don’t you see what you’ve done? As a result of this meddling, Goebbels will continue to follow Clara until she leads him to Arlosoroff. He’s not going to let her out of his sight. She’ll have the Gestapo on her heels for weeks. They’ll haunt her like a ghost. Goebbels won’t stop until he’s hunted down Arlosoroff and disposed of him. And then most likely he’ll turn on Clara. The only decent thing we can do now is let her know the full picture as soon as possible.’

  Leo strode out of the room without a word. He could have strangled Dyson for his double-dealing, until he reminded himself that being two-faced was part of the job description.

  Chapter Fifty-five

  ‘I’m trying to work out your secret,’ said Karin Hardt as she passed Clara in the shadows of the studio’s great hall. They were shooting the farewell scene where Alicia, the character they played, took leave of her lover beside the Grand Canal. It was to be filmed in German first, then English and both actresses were wearing identical, tight, burgundy satin evening dresses, with three strands of pearls around their throats.

  ‘What secret?’ asked Clara, standing aside in the wings to let Karin pass.

  ‘Why you’re so popular. It’s either your natural acting ability or something else you’re not telling us.’

  ‘Who says I’m popular?’

  Karin ducked past the camera, straightened her costume and stepped out into the limelight.

  ‘Go to your dressing room and you’ll find out,’ she called.

  Clara made her way down the corridor as fast as her constricting dress would allow, taking off the wig and freeing her curls with her fingers as she went. As soon as she pushed open the door, she saw what Karin meant.

  The dressing room was filled with roses. Roses stuffed in a vase among the pots of make-up and cold cream on the dressing table, roses massed by the lighted mirror, roses thrust in a jar on the wash basin, and another on the table top. Roses relaxing their furled petals into glorious bloom. Dozens of vermilion roses, sharply scented, eloquently expensive, their colour blazing against the silvery dazzle of the dressing table lights.

  ‘Lovely, aren’t they?’ said Klaus Müller from behind her, shutting the door and looking around with satisfaction. ‘Roses are my weakness.’

  Unusually for a working day, he was in full uniform, black tie, buttoned shirt and the leather of his brown belt and knee boots gleaming.

  ‘You’re my weakness too, of course.’ He bent towards her and gave her a kiss so rough it hurt her mouth. ‘A serious weakness.’

  To hide her astonishment she ran a hand over her mouth, where he had smudged the lipstick.

  ‘They’re beautiful, Klaus! You must have emptied a flower shop!’

  He tipped one crimson bloom towards him critically, as if inspecting it for defects.

  ‘Almost. I waited till you went on set and had the florist come in with them.’

  She turned away. ‘You should have told me you were coming.’

  ‘And spoil the surprise? But, wait . . .’ He stopped for a moment and took a step back, affecting a look of puzzlement. He spread his hands. ‘Perhaps you made a mistake? Perhaps you thought these flowers were from your other boyfriend?’

  There was a deathly pause. With her back towards him for a moment, fright turned Clara’s mind blank. From the menacing tone of his voice it was clear he wasn’t joking. What did he mean by her “other boyfriend”? Was it possible that Klaus Müller could have discovered Leo when they had both been so careful? Had the Gestapo observed them together – photographed them or noted down the details of their meetings? How much did Müller know?

  With an enormous effort, she shook her head lightly, turned to him and laughed. ‘Klaus. I don’t—’

  A stinging slap landed on her cheek.

  ‘Forget it! You’re not on a film set now.’ His face had darkened with rage and his voice was thick with disgust. ‘Don’t try and string me along with that innocent act. It makes me sick.’ He grasped
her shoulders and dug his fingers painfully into her flesh. ‘In fact it makes me want to take your clothes off right here and give you a beating. I’ve half a mind to. It’s less than treacherous girls like you deserve. I mean, my dear, your boyfriend in Steglitz.’

  Gazing up at Müller’s furious face, feeling the grip of his fingers, a single thought clamoured in the tumult of Clara’s mind. Talking about Steglitz meant Müller didn’t know about Leo. He knew nothing of Leo. Müller knew about her visit to Brucknerstrasse, but Leo was safe. Which meant, perhaps, she was safe too, if she could just keep her wits. She managed an appropriately indignant frown and shook herself out of his grasp.

  ‘Stop this, Klaus! What are you doing? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘I’m talking about a man found face down in the bushes in Steglitz. Murdered. What have you got to say about that?’

  ‘A dead man?’ Astonished, she shook her head. ‘What the hell would a dead man have to do with me? I promise you, I know nothing about it.’

  ‘As it happens, I don’t believe you. And the Doktor doesn’t believe it either. He ordered me in early this morning because a Gestapo agent was shot dead on the evening of the Führer’s birthday and Goebbels thinks you may have been involved. He must have some reason to suspect you. He said I was to get an answer out of you, even if I had to beat it out of you. Otherwise he was going to haul you into Prinz Albrecht Strasse to find out what the hell’s going on. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so angry. He had some idea you were sympathetic to his problems with his wife. That you were going to be some help to him. Instead of which—’.

  ‘Klaus, you have to believe me! I don’t know anything about any police agent!’

  He pulled over a chair, lit a cigarette and crossed his legs. ‘You’re going to need to try harder than that.’

  She was calculating frantically in her head. She knew Goebbels had had her followed to Steglitz but she had lost the tail, hadn’t she? So how had the man ended up dead? In the claustrophobic confines of the dressing room, Müller was able to scrutinise her every move. To buy herself time she turned away to the mirror and reapplied her lipstick where he had smudged it.

  ‘I’ll be honest with you.’ She capped the lipstick and pursed her lips at him in the mirror. ‘I did go to Steglitz that evening. It was a social visit. I can’t tell you what I was doing there, but the person I went to see was certainly not a boyfriend.’ She faced him, hands on hips. ‘And if you really think I’m the kind of girl who goes around shooting people in my spare time, then you certainly don’t know much about me.’

  ‘It seems I don’t know much about your social life.’

  ‘I was doing a girlfriend a favour. The person I went to see was her ex-boyfriend. She wants to keep it that way. And it’s no good talking about beating anything out of me. That doesn’t scare me. You can tell the Herr Doktor that’s all I’m going to say.’

  It was a gamble, Clara knew, this show of defiance. But it was one she had to take. Though Müller’s face was a mask of icy fury, and her face stung where he had hit her, something about his extravagance with the roses suggested that his loyalties were divided. She was determined to stay silent, not for Magda’s sake, but to protect Victor Arlosoroff himself The brief time she had spent with him, hearing his plans for a Jewish homeland and his ideas to help Jews escape Germany, had inspired a deep respect in Clara. He was a brave and resourceful man, even if he was a foolish one too. The Magda Friedlander he knew was a changed woman now. She had grown cold and severe, and her passion for politics had hardened into fanaticism. If Arlosoroff thought the Reich’s First Lady would throw up the dinners and cocktail parties and the status she had now for an impoverished and dangerous existence with him, he was deluded. Yet all too soon he would be standing at the Anhalter Bahnhof with a pair of tickets, hoping to start a new life with Magda. And she would not be there to meet him.

  Müller ground out his cigarette and chucked the stub in the basin. ‘These girlfriends of yours seem to lead complicated lives. Let’s hope this one doesn’t end up throwing herself out of the window.’

  At this remark Clara felt her composure shatter. How dare Müller talk of Helga so casually and with such contempt?

  ‘Helga didn’t throw herself out of the window, as you know. She was murdered. Ask yourself why no one’s investigating that!’

  Müller rose and came close to her, forcing her to step backwards.

  ‘Stop acting like a child, Clara. You don’t seem to understand the trouble you could be in. Goebbels was all for having you arrested right away. He was muttering that you were untrustworthy, that you had betrayed him. He wanted to know what I had to say about it.’

  ‘So what did you say?’ Clara glared at him but braced herself against the back of a chair to stop herself shaking.

  Müller gave her a searching look. ‘I told the Doktor there was no way you could have been in Steglitz that night and you had nothing to do with his dead policeman. Because all that evening you were celebrating the Führer’s birthday with me. In bed.’

  He sank back against the table, pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his face. Running a hand through his immaculate hair, he looked around at the rose-strewn dressing room and sighed.

  ‘I suppose you know I’m being redeployed to Nuremberg.’

  ‘I heard.’

  ‘I leave tomorrow. It’s an honour, really. Quite a professional challenge to oversee the filming of the Party rally with Fräulein Riefenstahl. I should be happy. But to tell the truth, I’m not pleased to be leaving Berlin. A while ago I wouldn’t have minded, but now that I’ve just found the new house, and you . . .’

  He drew her towards him so that their faces were level and ran a hand down the length of her satin dress, letting it rest on her bottom.

  ‘The right thing to do would be to hand you over to Goebbels’ policemen and let them do what they like with you. You’re probably not telling the truth, and I don’t like women who mess me about. Apart from anything else, it reflects badly on me. But then nor do I want those careless policemen spoiling this body, or this charming, deceitful face.’ He tilted her chin as if to inspect her more closely. ‘I found you, after all.’

  Inches away from him, Clara held his gaze.

  ‘Don’t think you’re escaping me, Clara. Or that because I’m going away that I won’t be able to keep an eye on you. I will be keeping the closest of eyes on you. As will the Herr Doktor, I fear. So think of it this way. You need me now.’

  He kissed her, pushed her away, and strode off down the corridor.

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Leo went straight to Xantener Strasse, let himself in and proceeded through the unlit hallway and up the stone steps. He noted that one of the pigeonholes that held the post for each resident of the block had been emptied. Evidently, the owner of the flat downstairs, the proprietor of the Munich ceramics factory, was in town. With a resident in the flat below they would need to be careful.

  Closing the door behind him, he took a look around the flat as if seeing it for the first time. This place was meant to be anonymous. Everything about it from its matted carpet to its chipped bathroom and tired furniture covered with dingy chintz had been chosen for precisely that effect. The kitchen, clumsily partitioned from the living room, with its single-ring cooker and nicotine-stained walls. The dreary view of rooftops and a brick wall advertizing Lufthansa, featuring an aeroplane escaping through grimy clouds to sunnier climes. The wallpaper, with its pattern of flowers imprisoned between bars of stripes, which no one with an ounce of taste could ever have chosen. It was a transitional place, where people met and passed like ghosts, and yet now this space of nothingness was filled with her. For him, the flat was resonant with images of Clara. She stood at the basin and leant against the pillows of the bed. The sheets bore her imprint. Her face laughed at him in the mirror.

  He threw himself down in the armchair, lit a cigarette and waited. It would be the last time they could use Xantene
r Strasse. If Clara was being followed it was compromised now. But for one afternoon, for just a few hours, Leo wanted to indulge himself. To pretend that they were ordinary lovers, meeting for the reasons that ordinary lovers do.

  Precisely at three the bell rang and he went downstairs. Opening the door, he put his finger to his lips, and brought her inside. It was raining outside and minute beads of fine rain powdered her coat. The damp air had caused her hair to curl and framed a few crystalline drops in the tendrils around her face. Her skin, bearing the remnants of studio make-up, had an absurdly healthy glow. Once in the apartment Leo caught her in his arms for a deep, lingering kiss.

  She pushed him to arm’s length and scrutinized him.

  ‘This is a bit reckless, isn’t it? I thought we were supposed to be following procedure?’

  His hands were running through her hair, stroking down over her hips and thighs. He began to slip her clothes off, first the coat, then the blue dress he liked with the polka dots.

  ‘I’d only just got back from the studio. Frau Lehmann thought it rather odd that I should be needed urgently for a poetry reading at three o’clock in the afternoon.’

  ‘She’s right.’ He was kissing her neck. ‘The poetry reading is postponed.’

  ‘So why did you need to see me?’

  ‘Do you need to ask?’

  He flicked apart the clip of her bra and tugged her slip so that it rode up to her waist. She felt his fingers, probing and caressing, and the excitement of being with him beginning to overpower her. She pressed herself closer and inhaled the warm musk of his skin as he dipped his face to her neck, then her breasts, then lifted her up, with her legs around his waist and carried her through to the bed.

  After they had made love, he lay and studied her with the close, meticulous attention that was part of everything he did. His lust for her extended to every physical detail. He wanted to capture and swallow everything about her, from the delicate shoulder blades, to the flicker of the pulse in her throat, right down to the violet network of veins on the arch of her foot. Every curve and hollow of her body. He would have liked to study her close-up, as you would in a film, without making her self-conscious or embarrassed. Seeing her naked made it easier for him to imagine that they were somewhere else entirely, somewhere uncomplicated and dull, where people laughed and argued and loved without subterfuge. But as he looked at her he noticed a faint purple line of bruises along the top of each arm.