by Philip Kerr
‘Are you all right with your drink?’
‘Yes,’ I said, and sipped some. It was good whisky, smooth and peaty, with no backburner in it. Then I asked her how well she had known Paul and Grete Pfarr. I don’t think the question surprised her. Instead, she sat close to me, so that we were actually touching, and smiled in a strange way.
‘Oh, yes,’ she said whimsically. ‘I forgot. You’re the man who’s investigating the fire for Hermann, aren’t you?’ She did some more grinning, and added: ‘I suppose the case has the police baffled.’ There was a note of sarcasm in her voice. ‘And then you come along, the Great Detective, and find the clue that solves the whole mystery.’
‘There’s no mystery, Fraulein Rudel,’ I said provocatively. It threw her only slightly.
‘Why, surely the mystery is, who did it?’ she said.
‘A mystery is something that is beyond human knowledge and comprehension, which means that I should be wasting my time in even trying to investigate it. No, this case is nothing more than a puzzle, and I happen to like puzzles.’
‘Oh, so do I,’ she said, almost mocking me, I thought. ‘And please, you must call me Ilse while you’re here. And I shall call you by your Christian name. What is it?’
‘Bernhard.’
‘Bernhard,’ she said, trying it for size, and then shortening it, ‘Bernie.’ She gulped a large mouthful of the champagne and sauterne mixture she was drinking, picked out a strawberry from the top of her glass and ate it. ‘Well, Bernie, you must be a very good private investigator to be working for Hermann on something as important as this. I thought you were all seedy little men who followed husbands and looked through keyholes at what they got up to, and then told their wives.’
‘Divorce cases are just about the one kind of business that I don’t handle.’
‘Is that a fact?’ she said, smiling quietly to herself. It irritated me quite a bit, that smile; in part because I felt she was patronizing me, but also because I wanted desperately to stop it with a kiss. Failing that, the back of my hand. ‘Tell me something. Do you make much money doing what you do?’ Tapping me on the thigh to indicate that she hadn’t finished her question, she added: ‘I don’t mean to sound rude. But what I want to know is, are you comfortable?’
I took note of my opulent surroundings before answering. ‘Me, comfortable? Like a Bauhaus chair, I am.’ She laughed at that. ‘You didn’t answer my question about the Pfarrs,’ I said.
‘Didn’t I?’
‘You know damn well you didn’t.’
She shrugged. ‘I knew them.’
‘Well enough to know what Paul had against your husband?’
‘Is that really what you’re interested in?’ she said.
‘It’ll do for a start.’
She gave an impatient little sigh. ‘Very well. We’ll play your game, but only until I get bored of it.’ She raised her eyebrows questioningly at me, and although I had no idea what she was talking about, I shrugged and said:
‘That’s fine by me.’
‘It’s true, they didn’t get on, but I haven’t the haziest why. When Paul and Grete first met, Hermann was against their getting married. He thought Paul wanted a nice platinum tooth - you know, a rich wife. He tried to persuade Grete to drop him. But Grete wouldn’t hear of it. After that, by all accounts they got on fine. At least until Hermann’s first wife died. By then I’d been seeing him for some time. It was when we got married that things really started to cool off between the two of them. Grete started drinking. And their marriage seemed little more than a fig-leaf, for decency’s sake - Paul being at the Ministry and all that.’
‘What did he do there, do you know?’
‘No idea.’
‘Did he nudge around?’
‘With other women?’ She laughed. ‘Paul was good-looking, but a bit lame. He was dedicated to his work, not another woman. If he did, he kept it very quiet.’
‘What about her?’
Rudel shook her golden head, and took a large gulp of her drink. ‘Not her style.’ But she paused for a moment and looked more thoughtful. ‘Although . . .’ She shrugged. ‘It probably isn’t anything.’
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Unpack it.’
‘Well, there was one time in Dahlem, when I was left with just the tiniest suspicion that Grete might have had something going with Haupthändler.’ I raised an eyebrow. ‘Hermann’s private secretary. This would have been about the time when the Italians had entered Addis Ababa. I remember that only because I went to a party at the Italian Embassy.’
‘That would have been early in May.’
‘Yes. Anyway, Hermann was away on business, so I went by myself. I was filming at U F A the next morning and had to be up early. I decided to spend the night at Dahlem, so I would have a bit more time in the morning. It’s a lot easier getting to Babelsberg from there. Anyway, when I got home I poked my head around the drawing-room door in search of a book I had left there, and who should I find sitting in the dark but Hjalmar Haupthändler and Grete?’
‘What were they doing?’
‘Nothing. Nothing at all. That’s what made it so damned suspicious. It was two o’clock in the morning and there they were, sitting at opposite ends of the same sofa like a couple of school children on their first date. I could tell they were embarrassed to see me. They gave me some cabbage about just chatting and was that really the time. But I didn’t buy it.’
‘Did you mention it to your husband?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Actually, I forgot about it. And even if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have told him. Hermann is not the sort of person who could have just left it alone to sort itself out. Most rich men are like that, I think. Distrustful, and suspicious.’
‘I’d say he must trust you a great deal to let you keep your own apartment.’
She laughed scornfully. ‘God, what a joke. If you knew what I have to put up with. But then you probably know all about us, you being a private investigator.’ She didn’t let me answer. ‘I’ve had to sack several of my maids because they were being bribed by him to spy on me. He’s really a very jealous man.’
‘Under similar circumstances I’d probably act the same way,’ I told her. ‘Most men would be jealous of a woman like you.’ She looked me in the eye, and then at the rest of me. It was the sort of provocative look that only whores and phenomenally rich and beautiful film stars can get away with. It was meant to get me to climb aboard her bones like a creeper on to a trellis. A look that made me want to gore a hole in the rug. ‘Frankly, you probably like to make a man jealous. You strike me as the kind of woman who holds out her hand to signal a left and then makes a right, just to keep him guessing. Are you ready to tell me why you asked me here tonight?’
‘I’ve sent the maid home,’ she said, ‘so stop thrashing words and kiss me, you big idiot.’ Normally I’m not too good at taking orders, but on this occasion I didn’t quarrel. It’s not every day that a film star tells you to kiss her. She gave me the soft, luscious inside of her lips, and I let myself equal their competence, just to be polite. After a minute I felt her body stir, and when she pulled her mouth away from my lamprey-like kiss her voice was hot and breathless.
‘My, that was a real slow-burner.’
‘I practise on my forearm.’ She smiled and raised her mouth up to mine, kissing me like she intended to lose control of herself and so that I would stop holding something back from her. She was breathing through her nose, as if she needed more oxygen, gradually getting serious about it, and me keeping pace with her, until she said:
‘I want you to fuck me, Bernie.’ I heard each word in my fly. We stood up in silence, and taking me by the hand she led me to the bedroom.
‘I’ve got to go to the bathroom first,’ I said. She was pulling the pyjama-jacket over her head, her breasts wobbling: these were real film star’s chicks and for a moment I couldn’t take my eyes off them. Each brown nipple was like a British Tommy’s helmet.
‘Don’t be t
oo long, Bernie,’ she said, dropping first her sash, and then the trousers, so that she stood there in just her knickers.
But in the bathroom I took a long, honest look in the mirror, which was one whole wall, and asked myself why a living goddess like the one turning down the white satin sheets needed me of all people to help justify an expensive laundry account. It wasn’t my choirboy’s face, or my sunny disposition. With my broken nose and my car-bumper of a jaw, I was handsome only by the standards of a fairground boxing-booth. I didn’t imagine for a minute that my blond hair and blue eyes made me fashionable. She wanted something else besides a brush, and I had a shrewd idea what it was. The trouble was I had an erection that, temporarily at least, was very firmly in command.
Back in the bedroom, she was still standing there, waiting for me to come and help myself. Impatient of her, I snatched her knickers down, pulling her onto the bed, where I prised her sleek, tanned thighs apart like an excited scholar opening a priceless book. For quite a while I pored over the text, turning the pages with my fingers and feasting my eyes on what I had never dreamed of possessing.
We kept the light on, so that finally I had a perfect view of myself as I plugged into the crisp fluff between her legs. And afterwards she lay on top of me, breathing like a sleepy but contented dog, stroking my chest almost as if she was in awe of me.
‘My, but you’re a well-built man.’
‘Mother was a blacksmith,’ I said. ‘She used to hammer a nail into a horse’s shoe with the flat of her hand. I get my build from her.’ She giggled.
‘You don’t say much, but when you do you like to joke, don’t you?’
‘There are an awful lot of dead people in Germany looking very serious.’
‘And so very cynical. Why is that?’
‘I used to be a priest.’
She fingered the small scar on my forehead where a piece of shrapnel had creased me. ‘How did you get this?’
‘After church on Sundays I’d box with the choirboys in the sacristy. You like boxing?’ I remembered the photograph of Schmelling on the piano.
‘I adore boxing,’ she said. ‘I love violent, physical men. I love going to the Busch Circus and watching them train before a big fight, just to see if they defend or attack, how they jab, if they’ve got guts.’
‘Just like one of those noblewomen in ancient Rome,’ I said, ‘checking up on her gladiators to see if they’re going to win before she puts a bet on.’
‘But of course. I like winners. Now you . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘I’d say you could take a good punch. Maybe take quite a few. You strike me as the durable, patient sort. Methodical. Prepared to soak up more than a little punishment. That makes you dangerous.’
‘And you?’ She bounced excitedly on my chest, her breasts wobbling engagingly, although, for the moment at least, I had no more appetite for her body.
‘Oh, yes, yes,’ she cried excitedly. ‘What sort of fighter am I?’
I looked at her from the corner of one eye. ‘I think you would dance around a man and let him expend quite a bit of energy before coming back at him with one good punch to win on a knock-out. A win on points would be no sort of contest for you. You always like to put them down on the canvas. There’s just one thing that puzzles me about this bout.’
‘What’s that?’
‘What makes you think I’d take a dive?’
She sat up in bed. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Sure you do.’ Now that I’d had her it was easy enough to say. ‘You think your husband hired me to spy on you, isn’t that right? You don’t believe I’m investigating the fire at all. That’s why you’ve been planning this little tryst all evening, and now I imagine I’m supposed to play the poodle, so that when you ask me to lay off I’ll do just what you say, otherwise I might not get any more treats. Well, you’ve been wasting your time. Like I said, I don’t do divorce work.’
She sighed and covered her breasts with her arms. ‘You certainly can pick your moments, Herr Sniffer Dog,’ she said.
‘It’s true, isn’t it?’
She sprang out of bed and I knew that I was watching the whole of her body, as naked as a pin without a hat, for the last time; from here on in I would have to go to the cinema to catch those tantalizing glimpses of it, like all the other fellows. She went over to the cupboard and snatched a gown from a hanger. From the pocket she produced a packet of cigarettes. She lit one and smoked it angrily, with one arm folded across her chest.
‘I could have offered you money,’ she said. ‘But instead I gave you myself.’ She took another nervous puff, hardly inhaling it at all. ‘How much do you want?’
Exasperated, I slapped my naked thigh, and said: ‘Shit, you’re not listening, spoon-ears. I told you. I wasn’t hired to go peeking through your keyhole and find out the name of your lover.’
She shrugged with disbelief. ‘How did you know I had a lover?’ she said.
I got out of bed, and started to dress. ‘I didn’t need a magnifying glass and a pair of tweezers to pick that one up. It stands to reason that if you didn’t already have a lover, then you wouldn’t be so damned nervous of me.’ She gave me a smile that was as thin and dubious as the rubber on a secondhand condom.
‘No? I bet you’re the sort who could find lice on a bald head. Anyway, who said I was nervous of you? I just don’t happen to care for the interruption of my privacy. Look, I think you had better push off.’ She turned her back to me as she spoke.
‘I’m on my way.’ I buttoned up my braces and slipped my jacket on. At the bedroom door, I made one last try to get through to her.
‘For the last time, I wasn’t hired to check up on you.’
‘You’ve made a fool of me.’
I shook my head. ‘There’s not enough sense in anything you’ve said to fill a hollow tooth. With all your milkmaid’s calculations, you didn’t need my help to make a fool of yourself. Thanks for a memorable evening.’ As I left her room she started to curse me with the sort of eloquence you expect only from a man who has just hammered his thumb.
I drove home feeling like a ventriloquist’s mouth ulcer. I was sore at the way things had turned out. It’s not every day that one of Germany’s great film stars takes you to bed and then throws you out on your ear. I’d like to have had more time to grow familiar with her famous body. I was a man who had won the big prize at the fair, only to be told there had been a mistake. All the same, I said to myself, I ought to have expected something like that. Nothing resembles a street snapper so much as a rich woman.
Once inside my apartment I poured myself a drink and then boiled some water for a bath. After that, I put on the dressing-gown I’d bought in Wertheim’s and started to feel good again. The place was stuffy, so I opened a few windows. Then I tried reading for a while. I must have fallen asleep, because a couple of hours had passed by the time I heard the knock at the door.
‘Who is it?’ I said, going into the hall.
‘Open up. Police,’ said a voice.
‘What do you want?’
‘To ask you some questions about Ilse Rudel,’ he said. ‘She was found dead at her apartment an hour ago. Murdered.’ I snatched the door open and found the barrel of a Parabellum poking me in the stomach.
‘Back inside,’ said the man with the pistol. I retreated, raising my hands instinctively.
He wore a Bavarian-cut sports coat of light-blue linen, and a canary-yellow tie. There was a scar on his pale young face, but it was neat and clean-looking, and probably self-inflicted with a razor in the hope that it might be mistaken for a student’s duelling scar. Accompanied by a strong smell of beer, he advanced into my hallway, closing the door behind him.
‘Anything you say, sonny,’ I said, relieved to see that he looked less than comfortable with the Parabellum. ‘You had me fooled there with that story about Fraulein Rudel. I shouldn’t have fallen for it.’
‘You bastard,’ he snarled.
‘Mind if I
put my hands down? Only my circulation isn’t what it used to be.’ I dropped my hands to my sides. ‘What’s this all about?’
‘Don’t deny it.’
‘Deny what?’
‘That you raped her.’ He adjusted his grip on the gun, and swallowed nervously, his Adam’s apple tossing around like a honeymoon couple under a thin pink sheet. ‘She told me what you did to her. So you needn’t try and deny it.’
I shrugged. ‘What would be the point? In your shoes I know who I would believe. But listen, are you sure you know what you’re doing? Your breath was waving a red flag when you tiptoed in here. The Nazis may seem a bit liberal in some things, but they haven’t done away with capital punishment, you know. Even if you’re hardly old enough to be expected to hold your drink.’
‘I’m going to kill you,’ he said, licking his dry lips.
‘Well, that’s all right, but do you mind not shooting me in the belly?’ I pointed at his pistol. ‘It’s by no means certain that you’d kill me, and I’d hate to spend the rest of my life drinking milk. No, if I were you I’d go for a head shot. Between the eyes if you can manage it. A difficult shot, but it would kill me for sure. Frankly, the way I feel right now, you’d be doing me a favour. It must be something I’ve eaten, but my insides feel like the wave machine at Luna Park.’ I farted a great, meaty trombone of a fart in confirmation.
‘Oh, Jesus,’ I said, waving my hand in front of my face. ‘See what I mean?’
‘Shut up, you animal,’ said the young man. But I saw him raise the barrel and level it at my head. I remembered the Parabellum from my army days, when it had been the standard service pistol. The Pistol .08 relies on the recoil to fire the striker, but with the first shot the firing mechanism is always comparatively stiff. My head made a smaller target than my stomach, and I hoped that I’d have enough time to duck.
