by Philip Kerr
‘But then theory is not his strong point,’ he said. ‘He’s a man of action, aren’t you, Dietz?’ Dietz glowered back, and the Kommissar’s smile widened a fraction. Then he removed his glasses and began to clean them in such a way as might serve to remind anyone else in the interrogation-room that he regarded his own intellectualism as something superior to a vitality that was merely physical. Replacing his glasses he removed his pipe and gave way to a yawn that bordered on the effete.
‘That’s not to say that men of action do not have a place in Sipo. But after all is said and done, it is the men of thought who must make the decisions. Why do you suppose that the Germania Life Assurance Company did not see fit to inform us of the existence of this necklace?’ The way he moved imperceptibly on to his question almost took me unawares.
‘Perhaps nobody asked them,’ I said hopefully. There was a long silence.
‘But the place was gutted,’ said Dietz in an anxious sort of way. ‘Normally the insurance company would have informed us.’
‘Why should they?’ I said. ‘There hadn’t been a claim. But just to be neat they retained me, in case there should be.’
‘Are you telling us that they knew that there was a valuable necklace in that safe,’ said Jost, ‘and yet were prepared not to pay out on it; that they were prepared to withhold valuable evidence?’
‘But did you think to ask them?’ I repeated again. ‘Come now, gentlemen, these are businessmen we’re talking about, not the Winter Relief. Why should they be in such a hurry to get rid of their money that they press someone to make a claim and take several hundred thousand Reichsmarks off their hands? And who should they pay out to?’
‘The next of kin, surely,’ said Jost.
‘Without knowing who had title, and to what? Hardly,’ I said. ‘After all, there were other items of value in that safe which had nothing to do with the Six family, is that not so?’ Jost looked blank. ‘No, Kommissar, I think your men were too busy worrying about the papers belonging to Herr Von Greis to bother with finding out what else might have been in Herr Pfarr’s safe.’
Dietz didn’t like that one bit. ‘Don’t get smart with us, mulemouth,’ he said. ‘You’re in no position to charge us with incompetence. We’ve got enough to kick you all the way to the nearest KZ.’
Jost pointed the stem of his pipe at me. ‘In that at least he is right, Gunther,’ he said. ‘Whatever our shortcomings were, you are the man with his neck on the block.’ He sucked on his pipe, but it was empty. He started to fill it again.
‘We’ll check your story,’ he said, and ordered Dietz to telephone the Lufthansa desk at Tempelhof to see if there was a reservation for the evening flight to London in the name of Teichmüller. When Dietz said there was, Jost lit his pipe; between puffs he said: ‘Well then, Gunther, you’re free to leave.’
Dietz was beside himself, although that was only to be expected; but even the Grunewald station Inspektor seemed rather puzzled at the Kommissar’s decision. For my part, I was as taken aback as either of them at this unexpected turn of events. Unsteadily I got to my feet, waiting for Jost to give Dietz the nod that would have him knock me down again. But he just sat there, puffing his pipe and ignoring me. I crossed the room to the door and turned the handle. As I went out I saw that Dietz had to look away, for fear that he might lose control and disgrace himself in front of his superior. Of the few pleasures that were left to me that evening, the prospect of Dietz’s rage was sweet indeed.
As I was leaving the station, the desk-sergeant told me that there had been no reply from any of the telephone numbers that I’d given him.
Outside in the street, my relief at being released quickly gave way to anxiety for Inge. I was tired, and I thought I probably needed a few stitches in my head, but when I hailed a cab I found myself telling the driver to take me to where Inge had parked my car in Wannsee.
There was nothing in the car that gave any clue as to her whereabouts, and the police car parked in front of Haunt-händler’s beach house cancelled any hope I might have entertained of searching the place for some trace of her, always supposing that she had gone inside. All I could do was drive around Wannsee awhile on the chance that I might see her.
My apartment seemed especially empty, even with the radio and all the lights turned on. I telephoned Inge’s apartment in Charlottenburg, but there was no reply. I called the office, I even called Müller, on the Morgenpost; but he knew as little about Inge Lorenz, who her friends were, if she had any family and where they lived, as it seemed I did myself.
I poured myself a massive brandy and drank it in one gulp, hoping to anaesthetize myself against a new kind of discomfort I was feeling - the kind that was deep in my gut: worry. I boiled up some water for a bath. By the time it was ready I’d had another large one, and was getting ready for my third. The tub was hot enough to parboil an iguana but, preoccupied with Inge and what might have happened, I hardly noticed.
Preoccupation submitted to puzzlement as I tried to fathom why it was that Jost had let me go on the strength of an interrogation lasting hardly as much as one hour. Nobody could have persuaded me that he believed everything that I had told him, despite his pretence to being something of a criminologist. I knew his reputation, and it wasn’t that of a latter-day Sherlock Holmes. From what I had heard of him Jost had the imagination of a gelded carthorse. It went against everything he believed in to release me on such a desultory piece of cross-checking as a phone call to the Lufthansa desk at Tempelhof.
I dried myself and went to bed. For a while I lay awake, rummaging through the ill-fitting drawers in the dilapidated cabinet of my head, hoping that I might find something that would make things appear clearer to me. I didn’t find it, and I didn’t think I was going to. But if Inge had been lying next to me, I might have told her that my guess was that I was free because Jost had superiors who wanted Von Greis’s papers at any cost, even if that meant using a suspected double-murderer to do it.
I would also have told her that I was in love with her.
17
I awoke feeling hollower than a dug-out canoe, and disappointed that I didn’t have a bad hangover to occupy my day.
‘How do you like that?’ I muttered to myself as I stood by my bed, and squeezed my skull in search of a headache. ‘I suck the stuff up like a hole in the ground and I can’t even get a decent tomcat.’
In the kitchen I made myself a pot of coffee that you could have eaten with a knife and fork, and then I had a wash. I made a bad job of shaving; slapping on some cologne, I nearly passed out.
There was still no reply from Inge’s apartment. Cursing myself and my so-called speciality in finding missing persons, I called Bruno at the Alex and asked him to find out if the Gestapo might have arrested her. It seemed the most logical explanation. When a lamb is missing from the flock, there’s no need to go hunting tiger if you live on the same mountain as a wolf pack. Bruno promised to ask around, but I knew that it might take several days to find out something. Nevertheless, I hung about my apartment for the rest of the morning in the hope that Bruno, or Inge herself, might call. I did a lot of staring at the walls and the ceiling, and I even got to thinking about the Pfarr case again. By lunchtime I was in the mood to start asking more questions. It didn’t take a brick wall to fall on me to realize that there was one man who could provide a lot of the answers.
This time the huge wrought-iron gates to Six’s property were locked. A length of chain had been wrapped and padlocked around the centre bars; and the small ‘Keep Out’ sign had been replaced with one that read: ‘Keep Out. No Trespassers’. It was as if Six had suddenly grown more nervous about his own security.
I parked close to the wall and, having put the gun from my bedside-drawer in my pocket, I got out of the car and climbed onto the roof. The top of the wall was easily reached, and I pulled myself up to sit astride the parapet. An elm tree provided an easy climb down to ground level.
There was little or no growl that I could recall, and I hardly h
eard the sound of the dogs’ paws as they galloped across the fallen leaves. At the last second I heard a heavy, panting breath which made the hair on the back of my neck stand up on end. The dog was already leaping at my throat as I fired. The shot sounded small beneath the trees, almost too small to kill something as fierce as the Dobermann. Even as it fell dead at my feet the wind was already bearing the noise away, and in the opposite direction from the house. I let out the breath that unconsciously I had held while firing, and with my heart beating like a fork in a bowlful of egg-white, I turned instinctively, remembering that there had been not one, but two dogs. For a second or two, the leaves rustling in the trees overhead camouflaged the other’s low growl. The dog came forward uncertainly, appearing in the clearing between the trees and keeping its distance from me. I stepped back as slowly it approached its dead brother, and when it dipped its head to sniff at the other’s open wound, I raised my gun once more. In a sudden gust of wind, I fired. The dog yelped as the bullet kicked it off its feet. For a moment or two it continued breathing, and then it lay still.
Pocketing the gun, I moved into the trees and walked down the long slope in the direction of the house. Somewhere the peacock was calling, and I had half a mind to shoot that too if it were unlucky enough to be stumbled upon. Killing was very much on my mind. It is quite common in a homicide for the murderer to get warmed up for the main event by disposing of a few innocent victims, such as the family pets, along the way.
Detection is all about chain-making, manufacturing links: with Paul Pfarr, Von Greis, Bock, Mutschmann, Red Dieter Helfferich and Hermann Six, I had a length of something strong enough to put my weight on. Paul Pfarr, Eva, Haupthändler and Jeschonnek was shorter, and altogether different.
It wasn’t that I intended killing Six. It was just that if I was unsuccessful in obtaining a few straight answers then I hadn’t ruled it out as a possibility. So it was with some embarrassment then that, with these thoughts passing through my mind, I came across the millionaire himself, standing under a great fir tree, smoking a cigar and humming quietly.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said, quite unperturbed to see me turn up on his property with a gun in my hand. ‘I thought it was the groundsman. You’ll want some money, I suppose.’
For a brief moment I didn’t know what to say to him. Then I said: ‘I shot the dogs.’ I put the gun back into my pocket.
‘Did you? Yes, I thought I heard a couple of shots.’ If he felt any fear or irritation at this piece of information, he did not show it.
‘You’d better come up to the house,’ he said, and began to walk slowly towards the house, with me following a short way behind.
When we got within sight of the house I saw Ilse Rudel’s blue BMW parked outside, and I wondered if I would see her. But it was the presence on the lawn of a large marquee that prompted me to break the silence between us.
‘Planning a party?’
‘Er, yes, a party. It’s my wife’s birthday. Just a few friends, you know.’
‘So soon after the funeral?’ My tone was bitter, and I saw that Six had noticed it too. As he walked along he searched first the sky and then the ground for an explanation.
‘Well, I’m not — ’ he began. And then: ‘One can’t — one cannot mourn one’s loss indefinitely. Life must go on.’ Recovering some of his composure he added: ‘I thought that it would be unfair to my wife to cancel her plans. And of course, we both have a position in society.’
‘We mustn’t forget that, must we?’ I said. Leading us up to the front door, he said nothing, and I wondered if he was going to call for help. He pushed it open, and we stepped into the hall.
‘No butler today?’ I observed.
‘It’s his day off,’ said Six, hardly daring to catch my eye. ‘But there is a maid if you would like some refreshment. You must be quite warm after your little excitement.’
‘Which one?’ I said. ‘Thanks to you I’ve had several “little excitements”.’
He smiled thinly. ‘The dogs, I mean.’
‘Oh yes, the dogs. Yes, I am quite warm as it happens. They were big dogs. But I’m quite a shot, even though I say so myself.’ We went in to the library.
‘I enjoy shooting myself. But only for sport. I don’t suppose I’ve ever shot anything bigger than a pheasant.’
‘Yesterday, I shot a man,’ I said. ‘That’s my second one in as many weeks. Since I started to work for you, Herr Six, it’s become a bit of a habit with me, you know.’ He stood awkwardly in front of me, his hands clasped behind his neck. He cleared his throat and threw the cigar butt into the cold fireplace. When eventually he spoke, he sounded embarrassed, as though he were about to dismiss an old and faithful servant who had been caught stealing.
‘You know, I’m glad you came,’ he said. ‘As it happens I was going to speak to Schemm, my lawyer, this afternoon, and arrange for you to be paid. But since you are here I can write you a cheque.’ And so saying he went over to his desk with such alacrity that I thought he might have a gun in the drawer.
‘I’d prefer cash, if you don’t mind.’ He glanced up at my face, and then down at my hand holding the butt of the automatic in my jacket pocket.
‘Yes, of course you would.’ The drawer stayed shut. He sat down in his chair and rolled back a corner of the rug to reveal a small safe sunk in the floor.
‘Now that’s a handy little nut. You can’t be too careful these days,’ I said, relishing my own lack of tact. ‘You can’t even trust the banks, can you?’ I peered innocently across the desk. ‘Fireproof, is it?’ Six’s eyes narrowed.
‘You’ll forgive me, but I seem to have lost my sense of humour.’ He opened the safe, and withdrew several packets of banknotes. ‘I believe we said five per cent. Would 40,000 close our account?’
‘You could try it,’ I said, as he placed eight of the packets on the desk. Then he closed the safe, rolled back the carpet, and pushed the money towards me.
‘They’re all hundreds, I’m afraid.’
I picked up one of the bundles and tore the paper wrapping off. ‘Just as long as they’ve got Herr Liebig’s picture on them,’ I said.
Smiling thinly, Six stood up. ‘I don’t think we need ever meet again, Herr Gunther.’
‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’
He began to look impatient. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said testily.
‘Oh, but I’m sure you are.’ I put a cigarette in my mouth and struck a match. Bending my head towards the flame I took a couple of quick puffs and then dropped the match into the ashtray. ‘The necklace.’ Six remained silent. ‘But then, you already have it back, don’t you?’ I said. ‘Or at least you know where it is, and who has got it.’
His nose wrinkled with distaste, as if it detected a bad smell. ‘You’re not going to be tiresome about this are you, Herr Gunther? I do hope not.’
‘And what about those papers? The evidence of your involvement with organized crime that Von Greis gave to your son-in-law. Or do you imagine that Red Dieter and his associates are going to persuade the Teichmüllers to tell them where they are? Is that it?’
‘I’ve never heard of a Red Dieter, or — ’
‘Sure you have, Six. He’s a crook, just like you. During the steel strikes he was the gangster you paid to intimidate your workers.’
Six laughed and lit his cigar. ‘A gangster,’ he said. ‘Really, Herr Gunther, your imagination is running away with you. Now, if you don’t mind, you’ve been very handsomely paid, so if you will please leave I would be most grateful. I’m a very busy man, and I have a lot of things to do.’
‘I guess things are difficult without a secretary to help. What if I were to tell you that the man calling himself Teichmüller, the one that Red’s thugs are probably beating the shit out of right now, is really your private secretary, Hjalmar Haupthandler?’
‘That is ridiculous,’ he said. ‘Hjalmar is visiting some friends in Frankfurt.’
I shrugged. ‘It’s a simple matter to g
et Red’s boys to ask Teichmüller what his real name is. Perhaps he’s already told them; but then, Teichmüller is the name on his new passport, so they could be forgiven for not believing him. He purchased it from the same man he was planning to sell the diamonds to. One for him and one for the girl.’
Six sneered at me. ‘And does this girl have a real name too?’ he said.
‘Oh yes. Her name is Hannah Roedl, although your son-in-law preferred to call her Eva. They were lovers, at least they were until she murdered him.’
‘That’s a lie. Paul never had a mistress. He was devoted to my Grete.’
‘Come off it, Six. What did you do to them that made him turn his back on her? That made him hate you bad enough to want to put you behind bars?’
‘I repeat, they were devoted to each other.’
‘I admit it’s possible that they might have become reconciled to each other not long before they were killed, with the discovery that your daughter was pregnant.’ Six laughed. ‘And so Paul’s mistress decided to get her own back.’
‘Now you really are being ridiculous,’ he said. ‘You call yourself a detective and you don’t know that my daughter was physically incapable of having children.’
I felt my jaw. ‘Are you sure about that?’
‘Good God, man, do you think it’s something that I might have forgotten? Of course I’m sure.’
I walked round Six’s desk and looked at the photographs that were arranged there. I picked one of them up, and stared grimly at the woman in the picture. I recognized her immediately. It was the woman from the beach house at Wannsee; the woman I had socked; the woman who I had thought was Eva, and was now calling herself Frau Teichmüller; the woman who in all probability had killed her husband and his mistress: it was Six’s only daughter, Grete. As a detective, you have to expect to make mistakes; but it is nothing short of humiliating to come face to face with evidence of your own stupidity; and it is all the more galling when you discover that the evidence has been staring you in the face all along.
