March Violets

by Philip Kerr

  ‘Considering that someone tried to kill you last night,’ she said, ‘you’re in a remarkably good frame of mind this morning.’

  ‘I always say that there’s nothing like a brush with the grim reaper to renew the taste for life.’ I smiled at her, and added, ‘That, and a good woman.’

  ‘You still haven’t told me why he did it.’

  ‘Because he was paid to,’ I said.

  ‘By whom? The man in the club?’ I wiped my face and looked for missed stubble. There wasn’t any, so I put down my razor.

  ‘Do you remember yesterday morning that I telephoned Six’s house and asked the butler to give both his master and Haupthandler a message?’

  Inge nodded. ‘Yes. You said to tell them that you were getting close.’

  ‘I was hoping it would spook Haupthandler into playing his hand. Well, it did. Only rather more quickly than I had expected.’

  ‘So you think he paid that man to kill you?’

  ‘I know he did.’ Inge followed me into the bedroom where I put on a shirt, and watched me as I fumbled with the cuff-link on the arm that I had grazed, and that she had bandaged. ‘You know,’ I said, ‘last night posed just as many questions as it answered. There’s no logic to anything, none at all. It’s like trying to make up a jigsaw, with not one but two sets of pieces. There were two things stolen from the Pfarrs’ safe; some jewels and some papers. But they don’t seem to fit together at all. And then there are the pieces which have a picture of a murder on them, which can’t be made to fit with those belonging to the theft.’

  Inge blinked slowly like a clever cat, and looked at me with the sort of expression that makes a man feel meschugge for not having thought of it first. Irritating to watch, but when she spoke I realized just how stupid I really was.

  ‘Perhaps there never was just one jigsaw,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you’ve been trying to put one together when there were two all along.’ It took a moment or two to let that one sink all the way in, helped at the end with the flat of my hand smacking against my forehead.

  ‘Shit, of course.’ Her remark had the force of revelation. It wasn’t one crime I was staring in the face, trying to understand. It was two.

  We parked on Nollendorfplatz in the shadow of the S-Bahn. Overhead, a train thundered across the bridge with a noise that possessed the whole square. It was loud; but it wasn’t enough to disturb the soot from the great factory chimneys of Tempelhof and Neukölln that caked the walls of the buildings which ringed the square, buildings which had seen many better days. Walking westwards into lower-middle-class Schöneberg, we found the five-storey block of apartments on Nollendorfstrasse where Marlene Sahm lived, and climbed up to the fourth floor.

  The young man who opened the door to us was in uniform - some special company of SA that I failed to recognize. I asked him if Fraulein Sahm lived there and he replied that she did and that he was her brother.

  ‘And who are you?’ I handed him my card and asked if I might speak to his sister. He looked more than a little put out at the intrusion and I wondered if he had been lying when he said that she was his sister. He ran his hand through a large head of straw-coloured hair, and glanced back over his shoulder before standing aside.

  ‘My sister is having a lie-down right now,’ he explained. ‘But I will ask her if she wishes to speak with you, Herr Gunther.’ He closed the door behind us, and tried to fix a more welcoming expression to his face. Broad and thick-lipped, the mouth was almost negroid. It smiled broadly now, but quite independently of the two cold blue eyes that flicked between Inge and myself as if they had been following a table-tennis ball.

  ‘Please wait here a moment.’

  When he left us alone in the hall, Inge pointed above the sideboard where there hung not one, but three pictures of the Führer. She smiled.

  ‘Doesn’t look like they’re taking any chances as far as their loyalty is concerned.’

  ‘Didn’t you know?’ I said. ‘They’re on special offer at Woolworth’s. Buy two dictators, and you get one free.’

  Sahm returned, accompanied by his sister Marlene, a big, handsome blonde with a drooping, melancholic nose and an underhung jaw that lent her features a certain modesty. But her neck was so muscular and well-defined as to appear almost inflexible; and her bronzed forearm was that of an archer or a keen tennis player. As she strode into the hallway I caught a glimpse of a well-muscled calf that was the shape of an electric lightbulb. She was built like a rococo fireplace.

  They showed us into the modest little sitting room, and, with the exception of the brother, who stood leaning against the doorway and looking generally suspicious of myself and Inge, we all sat down on a cheap brown-leather suite. Behind the glass doors of a tall walnut cabinet were enough trophies for a couple of school prize-givings.

  ‘That’s quite an impressive collection you have there,’ I said awkwardly, to no one in particular. Sometimes I think my small-talk falls a couple of centimetres short.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ said Marlene, with a disingenuous look that might have passed for modesty. Her brother had no such reserve, if that’s what it was.

  ‘My sister is an athlete. But for an unfortunate injury she would be running for Germany in the Olympiad.’ Inge and I made sympathetic noises. Then Marlene held up my card and read it again.

  ‘How can I help you, Herr Gunther?’ she said.

  I sat back on the sofa and crossed my legs before launching into my patter. ‘I’ve been retained by the Germania Life Assurance Company to make some investigations concerning the death of Paul Pfarr and his wife. Anyone who knew them might help us to find out just what did happen and enable my client to make a speedy settlement.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Marlene with a long sigh. ‘Yes, of course.’

  I waited for her to say something before eventually I prompted her. ‘I believe you were Herr Pfarr’s secretary at the Ministry of the Interior.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right I was.’ She was giving no more away than a card-player’s eyeshade.

  ‘Do you still work there?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said with an indifferent sort of shrug.

  I risked a glance at Inge, who merely raised a perfectly pencilled eyebrow at me by way of response. ‘Does Herr Pfarr’s department investigating corruption in the Reich and the D A F still exist?’

  She examined the toes of her shoes for a second, and then looked squarely at me for the first time since I had seen her. ‘Who told you about that?’ she said. Her tone was even, but I could tell that she was taken aback.

  I ignored her question, trying to wrong-foot her. ‘Do you think that’s why he was killed - because somebody didn’t like him snooping and blowing the whistle on people?’

  ‘I — I have no idea why he was killed. Look, here, Herr Gunther, I think — ’

  ‘Have you ever heard of a man by the name of Gerhard Von Greis? He’s a friend of the Prime Minister, as well as being a blackmailer. You know, whatever it was that he passed on to your boss cost him his life.’

  ‘I don’t believe that -’ she said, and then checked herself. ‘I can’t answer any of your questions.’

  But I kept on going. ‘What about Paul’s mistress, Eva or Vera, or whatever her name is? Any idea why she might be hiding? Who knows, maybe she’s dead too.’

  Her eyes quivered like a cup and saucer in an express dining-car. She gasped at me and stood up, her hands clenched tightly at her sides. ‘Please,’ she said, her eyes starting to well up with tears. The brother shouldered himself away from the doorway, and moved in front of me, much in the manner of a referee stopping a boxing-match.

  ‘That’s quite enough, Herr Gunther,’ he said. ‘I see no reason why I should allow you to interrogate my sister in this fashion.’

  ‘Why not?’ I asked, standing up. ‘I bet she sees it all the time in the Gestapo. And a lot worse besides that.’

  ‘All the same,’ he said, ‘it seems quite clear to me that she does not wish to answer your questions.’
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br />   ‘Strange,’ I said. ‘I had come to much the same conclusion.’ I took Inge by the arm and moved towards the door. But as we were leaving I turned and added, ‘I’m not on anyone’s side, and the only thing I’m trying to get is the truth. If you change your mind, please don’t hesitate to contact me. I didn’t get into this business to throw anyone to the wolves.’

  ‘I never had you down as the chivalrous type,’ Inge said when we were outside again.

  ‘Me?’ I said. ‘Now wait a minute. I went to the Don Quixote School of Detection. I got a B-plus in Noble Sentiment.’

  ‘Too bad you didn’t get one for Interrogation,’ she said. ‘You know, she got really rattled when you suggested that Pfarr’s mistress might be dead.’

  ‘Well, what would you have me do - pistol-whip it out of her?’

  ‘I just meant that it was too bad she wouldn’t talk, that’s all. Maybe she will change her mind.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bet on it,’ I said. ‘If she does work for the Gestapo then it stands to reason that she’s not the sort who underlines verses in her Bible. And did you see those muscles? I bet she’s their best man with a whip or a rubber truncheon.’

  We picked up the car and drove east on Bülowstrasse. I pulled up outside Viktoria Park.

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s walk awhile. I could do with some fresh air.’

  Inge sniffed the air suspiciously. It was heavy with the stink of the nearby Schultheis brewery. ‘Remind me never to let you buy me any perfume,’ she said.

  We walked up the hill to the picture market where what passed for Berlin’s young artists offered their irreproachably Arcadian work for sale. Inge was predictably contemptuous.

  ‘Have you ever seen such absolute shit?’ she snorted. ‘From all these pictures of the muscle-bound peasants binding corn and ploughing fields you would think we were living in a story by the Brothers Grimm.’

  I nodded slowly. I liked it when she became animated on a subject, even if her voice was too loud and her opinions of the sort that could have landed both of us in a KZ.

  Who knows, with a bit more time and patience she might have obliged me to re-examine my own rather matter-of-fact opinion of the value of art. But as it was, I had something else on my mind. I took her by the arm and steered her to a collection of paintings depicting steel-jawed storm-troopers that was arranged in front of an artist who looked anything but the Aryan stereotype. I spoke quietly.

  ‘Ever since leaving the Sahms’ apartment, I’ve had the idea that we were being followed,’ I said. She looked around carefully. There were a few people milling around, but none that seemed especially interested in the two of us.

  ‘I doubt you’ll spot him,’ I said. ‘Not if he’s good.’

  ‘Do you think it’s the Gestapo?’ she asked.

  ‘They’re not the only pack of dogs in this town,’ I said, ‘but I guess that’s where the smart money is. They’re aware of my interest in this case and I wouldn’t put it past them to let me do some of their legwork.’

  ‘Well, what are we going to do?’ Her face looked anxious, but I grinned back at her.

  ‘You know, I always think that there’s nothing that’s quite as much fun as trying to shake off a tail. Especially if it might turn out to be the Gestapo.’

  15

  There were only two items in the morning mail, and both had been delivered by hand. Away from Gruber’s inquisitive, hungry-cat stare, I opened them, and found that the smaller of the two envelopes contained a solitary square of cardboard that was a ticket for the day’s Olympic track-and-field events. I turned it over, and on the back were written the initials ’M.S.’ and ‘2 o’clock.’ The larger envelope bore the seal of the Air Ministry and contained a transcript of calls that Haupthandler and Jeschonnek had made and received on their respective telephones during Saturday, which, apart from the one I had made myself from Haupthandler’s apartment, was none. I threw the envelope and its contents into the waste-paper basket and sat down, wondering if Jeschonnek had already bought the necklace, and just what I would do if I was obliged to follow Haupthandler to Tempelhof Airport that same evening. On the other hand, if Haupthandler had already disposed of the necklace I couldn’t imagine that he would have been waiting for the Monday evening flight to London just for the hell of it. It seemed more likely that the deal involved foreign currency, and that Jeschonnek had needed the time to raise the money. I made myself a coffee and waited for Inge to arrive.

  I glanced out of the window and, seeing that the weather was dull, I smiled as I imagined her glee at the prospect of another shower of rain falling upon the Fuhrer’s Olympiad. Except that now I was going to get wet too.

  What had she called it? ‘The most outrageous confidence-trick in the history of modern times.’ I was searching in the cupboard for my old rubberized raincoat when she came through the door.

  ‘God, I need a cigarette,’ she said, tossing her handbag onto a chair and helping herself from the box on my desk. With some amusement she looked at my old coat and added, ‘Are you planning to wear that thing?’

  ‘Yes. Fräulein Muscles came through after all. There was a ticket for today’s games in the mail. She wants me to meet her in the stadium at two.’

  Inge looked out of the window. ‘You’re right,’ she laughed, ‘you’ll need the coat. It’s going to come down by the bucket.’ She sat down and put her feet up on my desk. ‘Well, I’ll just stay here on my own, and mind the shop.’

  ‘I’ll be back by four o’clock at the latest,’ I said. ‘Then we have to go to the airport.’

  She frowned. ‘Oh yes, I was forgetting. Haupthändler is planning to fly to London tonight. Forgive me if I sound naive, but exactly what are you going to do when you get there? Just walk up to him and whoever it is he’s taking with him and ask them how much they got for the necklace? Maybe they’ll just open their suitcases and let you take a look at all their cash, right there in the middle of Tempelhof.’

  ‘Nothing in real life is ever all that tidy. There never are neat little clues that enable you to apprehend the crook with minutes to spare.’

  ‘You sound almost sad about it,’ she said.

  ‘I had one ace in the hole which I thought would make things a bit easier.’

  ‘And the hole fell in, is that it?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  The sound of footsteps in the outer office made me stop. There was a knock at the door, and a motorcyclist, a corporal in the National Socialist Flying Corps, came in bearing a large buff-coloured envelope of the same sort as the one I had consigned earlier to the waste-paper basket. The corporal clicked his heels and asked me if I was Herr Bernhard Gunther. I said that I was, took the envelope from the corporal’s gauntleted hands and signed his receipt slip, after which he gave the Hitler Salute and walked smartly out again.

  I opened the Air Ministry envelope. It contained several typewritten pages that made up the transcript of calls Jeschonnek and Haupthandler had made the previous day. Of the two, Jeschonnek, the diamond dealer, had been the busier, speaking to various people regarding the illegal purchase of a large quantity of American dollars and British sterling.

  ‘Bulls-eye,’ I said, reading the transcript of the last of Jeschonnek’s calls. This had been to Haupthandler, and of course it also showed up in the transcript of the other man’s calls. It was the piece of evidence I had been hoping for: the evidence that turned theory into fact, establishing a definite link between Six’s private secretary and the diamond dealer. Better than that, they discussed the time and place for a meeting.

  ‘Well?’ said Inge, unable to restrain her curiosity a moment longer.

  I grinned at her. ‘My ace in the hole. Someone just dug it out. There’s a meet arranged between Haupthandler and Jeschonnek at an address in Grünewald tonight at five. Jeschonnek’s going to be carrying a whole bagful of foreign currency.’

  ‘That’s a hell of an informant you have there,’ she said, frowning. ‘Who is it? Ha
nussen the Clairvoyant?’

  ‘My man is more of an impresario,’ I said. ‘He books the turns, and this time, anyway, I get to watch the show.’

  ‘And he just happens to have a few friendly storm-troopers on the staff to show you to the right seat, is that it?’

  ‘You won’t like it.’

  ‘If I start to scowl it will be heartburn, all right?’

  I lit a cigarette. Mentally I tossed a coin and lost. I would tell it to her straight. ‘You remember the dead man in the service-lift?’

  ‘Like I just found out I had leprosy,’ she said, shuddering visibly.

  ‘Hermann Goering hired me to try and find him.’ I paused, waiting for her comment, and then shrugged under her bemused stare. ‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘He agreed to put a tap on a couple of telephones - Jeschonnek’s and Haupthändler’s.’ I picked up the transcript and waved it in front of her face. ‘And this is the result. Amongst other things it means that I can now afford to tell his people where to find Von Greis.’

  Inge said nothing. I took a long angry drag at my cigarette and then stubbed it out like I was hammering a lectern. ‘Let me tell you something: you don’t turn him down, not if you want to finish your cigarette with both lips.’

  ‘No, I suppose not.’

  ‘Believe me, he’s not a client that I would have chosen. His idea of a retainer is a thug with a machine-pistol.’

  ‘But why didn’t you tell me about it, Bernie?’

  ‘When Goering takes someone like me into his confidence, the table stakes are high. I thought it was safer for you that you didn’t know. But now, well, I can’t very well avoid it, can I?’ Once again I brandished the transcript at her. Inge shook her head.

  ‘Of course you couldn’t refuse him. I didn’t mean to appear awkward, it’s just that I was, well, a bit surprised. And thank you for wanting to protect me, Bernie. I’m just glad that you can tell someone about that poor man.’