“I’ve worked a few suicides in my time, and I never heard of one that got out of bed to do himself in. And he would never have gone out to that music.” Reinhardt left it at that, letting Neuffer draw what conclusion he would.
“But, if there was nothing, no music, how would they have masked the gunshot?”
“Gunshots are not exactly a rarity at this time,” Reinhardt said, dryly. Neuffer flushed. “Witnesses?”
“No one saw anyone. I mean . . . no one saw anyone . . .”
“Untoward?” Reinhardt finished. Neuffer looked miserable, like a wet cat with his slicked-back hair. “What does that tell you, Neuffer? It just tells you the killer was probably one of us.”
“This was murder. Oh, God,” Neuffer said, his eyes wrinkling themselves shut tight. “It’s all going to hell, again.”
“What do you mean, ‘again’?”
Neuffer stared at the ceiling. “Nothing. It’s nothing.” His voice rasped, as if he feared being overheard. Reinhardt was again struck by the resemblance to the Kaiser. The way he had always seemed so unsure around his fighting men, the ones who had labored and fought and died for him in the trenches in the first war.
“It’s something,” said Reinhardt, making his voice softer despite the edge he wanted to put in it. “Tell me.”
“You’re a policeman. A proper one. I’m just a . . . stuffed shirt, compared to you. This,” Neuffer said, pointing at Dreyer, “it’s just like the other one.”
“What other one?”
“Colonel Wedel.”
Reinhardt kept his face blank as his mind raced over Neuffer’s words. “The officer in charge of the stolen defense plans,” he remembered, thinking back to the briefing, on the first day here.
“Yes.” The Feldgendarme nodded. “Colonel Wedel. He killed himself, too.”
“Tell me, Neuffer,” said Reinhardt.
“We found Wedel dead in his quarters. He had shot himself in the head. There was a note as well. This was a couple of days after we had questioned everyone who had anything to do with the plans. We found nothing. No one and nothing out of place. It was like the thieves had just appeared and disappeared. No traces. Nothing. After all that, I thought then . . . I thought then that Wedel was the one. You know. When you have eliminated everything . . . whatever remains must be the truth.”
Reinhardt nodded, reappraising his view of this man he had dismissed as a nobody, a flunky. “You said nothing?”
“I . . . tried. I suppose. But there was no proof and no one really cared. I mean, the theft of those plans turned everything upside down. And why? Why would he have done it? I talked to him, you see. The day he killed himself. I asked him if he had had anything to do with it. With the theft. I felt I could, you see. We knew each other, after a fashion. I asked him if there was anything wrong. Anything he wanted to tell me.”
“And?”
“Nothing. Wedel just seemed to fade away as I spoke. Then, when he killed himself, I thought . . . I feared . . . I thought maybe I was the one who pushed him to kill himself. That if I had left him alone . . .”
“You blame yourself. You shouldn’t. Maybe Wedel didn’t do it,” Reinhardt said, pointing at Dreyer. “He didn’t. I’m sure of it. And if Wedel did do it, maybe . . . maybe he thought it was the only way out for him.”
“What do you mean?” Neuffer whispered.
“Tell me something first,” said Reinhardt, planting himself squarely in front of Neuffer. “What role does Erdmann play in getting men sent to the penal battalion?”
“A soldier must commit a breach of discipline to be court-martialed. These days, that can be over in a matter of minutes, and the sentence can be transfer to a penal battalion. The courts-martial have a presiding judge, assisted by two officers. The sentences are then supposedly reviewed by a senior officer who confirms or rejects them, and is sometimes advised by another judge.”
“Erdmann is that judge?”
“And Herzog is usually that officer. They both have reputations . . . Discipline. Sacrifice. Washing one’s sins away in the service of the Fatherland,” Neuffer said, holding Reinhardt’s eyes, with an acid spin to the words.
“They’re believers?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Them and God only knows who else, still. They all believe. They’ve always believed. And they’ll never stop. Please. What did you mean? About Wedel.”
“Maybe he was the one who took his own plans. But maybe someone forced him to and he couldn’t live with it. Or he became a liability to whoever coerced him. Because I’ll tell you what I think happened here, Neuffer. There were at least two men, possibly three. They just walked in here. Two of them held Dreyer down, in that chair, while the third put a gun to my friend’s head and killed him. They didn’t take anything. They didn’t ask anything. They just killed him. Then they walked out. That means they were German.”
They just killed him.
Reinhardt turned the words over and over in his mind on the short drive back to the barracks. The firing had started up again to the north, just beyond the humped line of the hills. The firing was still light enough, staccato bursts, but it was sustained, a rolling crackle across the lightening sky.
They just killed him.
He had needed to say them to believe it, he realized, as he followed Scheller and Lainer through the halls of the barracks. Neither of them had said anything on the drive back, nor during the walk through the barracks halls. Reinhardt’s mind lurched back and forth, slopping around the thought of his friend sprawled dead in a chair, washing up against thoughts of , the boy, conjuring up images of the Greeks dead against a pitted wall, Valter sitting hunched over a table in a dusty attic, an Ustaša vanishing back into the darkness, the darkness flowing over him, the lines and curves of the man’s face vanishing last.
He had to shake out of this, he knew, as they walked into the Feldjaeger operations room. So early in the morning it was still quiet, but there was a rhythm there, a hum to the place, and heads lifted here and there to watch them go past, Scheller thumping his door open with the heel of his hand. He waited until Reinhardt and Lainer walked in, then shoved it closed. He looked at Reinhardt, who took a long, low breath, steeling himself for what was about to come.
“So? Where do you stand with your investigation?” Scheller asked, finally.
“I don’t have anyone in custody, if that’s what you are asking, sir.”
“That’s what he’s asking,” grated Lainer.
“I don’t know who killed your men, Lainer. I do know killing them was part of something much bigger, and it’s got something to do with the activities of that penal battalion and its commander, a Major Jansky.”
“The one you’ve just been ordered to leave the hell alone?” Lainer muttered.
“Go on,” said Scheller, his eyes flat.
“It’s complicated . . .” he began.
“Then make it simple,” interrupted Lainer.
“I can’t,” Reinhardt shot back.
“Well, maybe if you spent less time with tarts, and more time trying to find who killed my men . . .”
“. . . and it won’t help if you take that attitude,” Reinhardt slashed back, squaring up to the big Feldjaeger, his face burning again. Lainer’s head went down and his eyes slitted, but he nodded after a moment, an appraising light in his eyes as if he had found something he had been looking for.
“Let’s start at the beginning,” said Reinhardt.
“Let’s sit,” said Scheller, pointing at the chairs. “Keep going, Reinhardt.”
“The Feldjaeger were killed investigating a disturbance in the early morning at a construction site, which was being run by elements from a penal battalion constructing an anti-aircraft emplacement,” said Reinhardt, looking at Lainer, then letting his eyes bring Scheller in. “The disturbance was probably the killers disposing of five bodi
es, all of which are unidentifiable. Although I suspect they might have been soldiers, I still don’t have proof of it. Remember, we have no witnesses to what happened, only conjecture. Remember as well, the day before that, I came across a massacre in the forest, and I found what I took to be the three burned bodies of German soldiers, because of some uniform remnants at the scene. At the time, I thought I had found the bodies of deserters, because I found evidence that soldiers from different units were there, infrantrymen and artillerymen.
“I questioned Major Jansky about the construction site. His answers, and those of his men, were fairly consistent, and he was cooperative enough. But on leaving, one of the soldiers serving in the unit sought me out and swore he had information about foul play afoot in the battalion. I was unsure how to treat him, partly because the man was clearly unstable, and because he admitted he was a Feldgendarmerie informant within the ranks.
“Because I was thinking of the Ustaše as primarily responsible, I sought out the survivors of that massacre in the forest to see if I could get anything more from them. The Ustaše had come for them, first, and they had vanished. My inquiries at the Pale House . . .”
“You were at the Pale House?” Scheller queried, his brows furled.
“I was, sir. I went where the investigation took me,” he said, willing the colonel to remember those same words he had said the first time they had met, in Vienna. “With Captain Langenkamp’s assistance, I questioned the Ustaše and was told no one of the refugees’ description had been brought in. I had the description as well of the Ustaša who arrested them, and was told he was missing.”
He took a deep breath. The waters were deep and treacherous from here on—, , Alexiou, even Dreyer—and he could not afford a slip. “Later that night, the Ustaše brought me to another murder scene—this is the third, after the forest, and the construction site—and showed me the mutilated bodies of four of their men, and claimed the Partisans had done it.”
“Had they?”
“I very much doubt it. Too much was wrong with the scene. It was staged. And one of the bodies was the Ustaša I wanted to interview over the disappearance of the refugees.”
“You think they killed one of their own men to stop him from talking to you?” Lainer asked, incredulously.
“I think they may have killed him because he was a liability,” said Reinhardt.
“I’m still not seeing this conspiracy with the penal battalion or Jansky in all this.”
“The construction site was being worked by the penal battalion. The forest site was a logging camp, sir. It was run by the penal battalion. That’s why there was evidence of more than one type of soldier there, because men from all units get thrown into a penal battalion. And then a serving soldier in the battalion came forward to offer me information, but he was found dead yesterday morning.”
“Bloody hell, Reinhardt!” exclaimed Lainer. “Remind me not to spend too much time with you.”
“Lainer, be a good fellow, and give me some time alone with Reinhardt.”
Scheller’s face stayed impassive as Lainer’s twisted, but he nodded and walked out of the office, shutting the door behind him. Then, to Reinhardt’s surprise, Scheller leaned into a cabinet and clattered a bottle of slivo onto the table, two glasses bunched by the rims between his thick fingers.
“Reinhardt, is there any way of keeping this simple?”
“No, sir,” said Reinhardt, watching the slivo flow into the glasses. “That’s because I don’t know what’s going on. I suspect a lot, but have proof of little. I don’t know who killed our men. But in investigating their deaths, I have uncovered something else. I am almost certain Major Jansky is involved in quite significant corruption, to do with selling a form of asylum to foreigners. In return for payment, he accepts them as foreign volunteers—as hiwis—into his battalion. He gives them menial tasks, and he keeps them out of harm’s way.”
“You suspect this?”
“I am sure of this,” Reinhardt answered. “I spoke with one of these hiwis—a Greek, who I am sure served in their security battalions—and he confirmed he had paid his way into the unit as a way of escaping his country and throwing off any judicial pursuit after the war.”
“This would be one of the Greeks you said you knew nothing about but that General Herzog had shot tonight?”
Reinhardt nodded. “I’m guessing they tried to make good their escape. With whatever they could carry. The Greek confirmed to me that Jansky had been paid in gold they had stolen, and there was still some of it left.”
Scheller sighed, shook his head. “As if we don’t have enough on our plates without something like this. I don’t even know if we could start to investigate something like that . . .” He chewed his lower lip, softly. “What about the judge?”
“Judge Marcus Dreyer has—had—an interest in this Major Jansky, as the two of them had quite some history together. Judge Dreyer was convinced of Jansky’s corruption and, before the three Feldjaeger were killed, he had asked for my help in investigating him. I had said no. But as the penal battalion and Jansky were appearing too often for coincidence, I offered him my help, which he accepted.”
“And your help was such he decided to kill himself.”
Reinhardt went pale. He felt the blood drain away, a hollow pit form where his stomach was. “That’s . . .” was all he managed.
“Harsh?” Scheller had the good grace to look embarrassed.
“He was my friend, sir,” Reinhardt whispered. Scheller made to speak, but Reinhardt shook his head slightly. “I’ve asked myself the same question, sir, don’t worry. Dreyer was killed because of his connection to this . . . investigation. His theories about Jansky and my inquiries into our dead men overlapped. And because of that, he was killed. He didn’t commit suicide.”
“That’s a stretch, Reinhardt.”
“No, sir, it’s not. He had done nothing different to deserve this. The only thing different was me. Somehow, me and him joining together meant we were a threat.”
“What about you? You’re a threat, and no one’s taken a shot at you.”
“That I know of,” said Reinhardt, grimly, thinking of those two Albanians, and what might have happened if he had arrived just a few minutes earlier.
Scheller looked long and hard at Reinhardt, then sighed. “And that’s where you are?”
“That’s where I am. Except to add that I suspect some in the Ustaše are taking advantage of Jansky’s ‘offer.’ Do you remember Langenkamp briefing us on some of the senior Ustaše disappearing? Well, I wouldn’t be surprised to find they have joined up as hiwis. And I met Jansky at the Pale House, on his way to meet a senior Ustaša.”
“He sounds like a piece of work, this Jansky.”
“He is. And this . . . this is where I start to wonder at all this. I ask myself, could he do what he’s done, what he’s doing, without help? Without help from someone higher up, more senior.”
“What, like the two characters we just met this evening?” Reinhardt nodded. “Christ. What the hell am I supposed to do with this, Reinhardt?” Reinhardt shook his head, not knowing what to say. Having recounted the whole thing, he was suddenly appalled at both the complexity of it and its vacuous nature, and that was without imparting what he had held back, like what Neven had said about the German involvement in the killings in the forest. There was a lot there, but not much to go on. Like the contradiction of his nature and his duty as a Feldjaeger. “Everything’s coming apart in the city, and I need everyone here and now. I don’t know if I can have you on this anymore.” Scheller paused. “What? You’ve nothing to say? That’s hardly like you.”
Reinhardt found a smile for the colonel’s dry attempt at humor. “First time for everything” he said, quietly. “I suppose I expected it. But I’m surprised, to say the least, that you accept what I said after what happened tonight.”
“Don�
�t get me wrong, Reinhardt,” said Scheller, swirling his drink. “You put me in a bind. You should have kept me informed of what you were doing. But I have to say,” he said, eyeing Reinhardt as he took a sip of his slivo, “Herzog is a complete arse.” Reinhardt swallowed hard, choked, and coughed. “And when a complete arse like that says one thing, I tend to think another. Take a moment, get your breath back,” he said, deadpan.
“Yes, sir,” Reinhardt wheezed.
“Well, it’s not that I want to do it, but . . . things being the way they are”—Scheller sighed—“it looks like we’ll have to chalk Lainer’s men up to bad luck. But when we’re out of here, I want you to come and see me about this Major Jansky. Let’s have a look at what you’ve got, and we’ll see what we can do when things are quieter. Sound fair?”
“It’s fair, sir,” said Reinhardt, and was surprised to feel himself relieved. As if, in recounting what he had, what he knew, what he suspected, he had come to a realization that there was too much for one man, for this time and place. “Perhaps, sir, you’ll allow me to wrap up a few loose ends.”
“Like?”
“I have a few pieces of hard evidence, some names to follow up on, and a doctor who promised an autopsy on those five bodies. I would like to finish up what I can on those.” And find some way to contact the Partisans and tell them where to find their Ustaše.
“I can’t let you do that, Reinhardt.”
“Just today, sir. That’s it. A few hours.”
Scheller worked his lips one against the other, keeping Reinhardt still with his eyes. “Why?”
The Pale House Page 28
