Murder's Art

by Christopher Nicole

  ‘Well, perhaps half past.’

  ‘It is half past two. You have been tied up for six hours.’

  ‘Good Lord!’ Brolic commented.

  ‘You must need to go to the toilet.’ Wassermann looked at the rest of the family.

  ‘Yes,’ Mrs Brolic said. ‘Yes. With your permission, Herr Major.’

  ‘You have my permission. Not you,’ he told Brolic. ‘Hold out your arms.’ Brolic obeyed, frowning. Wassermann pushed back his sleeves. ‘There is no mark. You were tied up for six hours, and you made no effort to get free?’

  ‘Well, there did not seem any point.’

  Wassermann went to the bathroom door, and threw it open to a chorus of alarm and embarrassment. ‘Come here.’ Mrs Brolic came into the room, hastily adjusting her clothing. ‘And you,’ Wassermann added to the children behind her. They followed their mother, exchanging anxious glances with Brolic. ‘Hold out your arms.’

  They obeyed, obviously frightened. Brolic licked his lips.

  Wassermann examined each wrist in turn. ‘None of these are chafed. I do not believe you have been tied up for six hours.’

  ‘I told them it was no use trying to escape,’ Brolic said.

  ‘I think you are lying. You will come to headquarters.’

  ‘But …’ Brolic looked at his wife and children.

  ‘Oh, they had better come too. Sergeant!’ The sergeant clicked his heels.

  The Brolics looked at each other, and Mrs Brolic opened her mouth, but was silenced by a quick shake of the head from her husband. The exchange was noted by Wassermann, but he made no comment, especially as at this moment Ulrich came hurrying up the stairs. ‘There is a door from the cellar into the sewers, Herr Major.’

  Wassermann nodded. ‘Have all exits from the sewers blocked, and then take a squad and flush them out.’

  Ulrich gulped; he was a fastidious man. ‘From the sewers?’

  ‘Yes, Captain. From the sewers.’ Ulrich hurried back down the stairs.

  ‘Do you still wish us to come to headquarters, Herr Major?’ Brolic asked optimistically.

  ‘Indeed, Herr Brolic. I wish you to tell me how these assassins knew that your cellar leads into the sewage system.’

  The ambulance pulled into the hospital forecourt. A surgeon sat beside Magda von Blintoft, whose face was covered by an oxygen mask, which inflated and deflated regularly. But he had not been able to stop the bleeding. The general sat on the other side of his wife, holding her hand. The surgeon wished he wasn’t there. His presence was inhibiting, and his repeated question – ‘Will she live?’ – unanswerable. There was absolutely no chance of Frau von Blintoft surviving; she had clearly been shot through the lung. Even more off-putting was the presence of the daughter, seated at the back of the ambulance, incongruously still holding her mother’s hat. Unlike her father, her face was calm, but it was also closed, and she did not take her eyes off her mother for a moment. Dr Scholl wondered what thoughts were going through her mind; he was not sure he wanted to find out. He did not doubt he was going to have to treat her for shock soon enough.

  The ambulance stopped, the doors opened, the stretcher bearers were waiting. The girl stepped out of the vehicle and stood to one side, ignored by her father as Magda’s body was lifted out and carried into the building. Angela trailed behind the group, past anxious nurses and orderlies standing to attention. Dr Scholl muttered something to one of the sisters, who waited while the stretcher party went past her, then went to stand next to the girl. ‘Fräulein?’ Angela’s head jerked. ‘A cup of coffee?’ the sister asked.

  Angela shook her head.

  ‘Well, a brandy?’

  ‘Will my mother be all right?’

  The sister turned her head away from the overhead light, so that her huge starched hat cast a shadow across her face. ‘We must trust in God.’

  ‘God!’ Angela said. ‘Will they catch the people who did this?’

  ‘I should say they will,’ the sister said.

  ‘What will happen to them?’

  ‘Well, it is not really something a nice young lady like you should think about.’

  ‘I want to see them hang,’ Angela said in a low voice.

  Two

  Involvement

  The sound of the exploding grenades seemed to make the sewers shake, and sent the rats scurrying for safety, now totally ignoring the humans. But the humans were hurrying as well, splashing through the water. ‘Will he escape?’ Sandrine panted. She kept slipping, to be dragged back to her feet by Tony.

  ‘If anyone can escape, it will be Maric,’ he reassured her. ‘It is the others that worry me.’ They spoke French, as was their custom with each other.

  ‘All for nothing,’ Sandrine said. ‘Because that bastard—’

  ‘Number five,’ Svetovar said from in front of them. ‘I am going up.’

  Sandrine and Tony reached the foot of the ladder, watched his feet disappearing into the darkness. Sandrine put her foot on the bottom rung, and Tony held her arm. ‘Just let’s wait a moment,’ he whispered.

  She leaned against him, and they listened to the sound of Svetovar’s feet on the ladder. Then there came a bang, and another. They heard a scraping sound. ‘Thank God for that,’ Svetovar said. ‘I was beginning to think—’

  ‘Get him out,’ said a voice in German.

  Sandrine seemed to freeze against Tony. He listened to a gasp from Svetovar, then grasped Sandrine round the waist and stepped off the ledge, at the same time putting his other hand over her mouth, as he knew her weakness for shrieks. They went down into the rushing water, and were carried several feet beyond the ladder while he fought to regain his balance. The noise above them was confused, but he could hear voices, loud enough to suggest that the Germans were peering through the manhole. ‘Sssh,’ he whispered as Sandrine endeavoured to speak. He was now neck-deep in the torrent, still being forced forwards, holding Sandrine up and against him – he knew she couldn’t swim. ‘Hold your breath,’ he whispered into her ear, and went below the surface, just before there was a loud explosion, and then another.

  They surfaced again, Sandrine gasping and spitting; Tony could only hope she hadn’t swallowed any of the evil-smelling liquid. Now they were some thirty feet from the ladder, beyond the range of the flashlight beams which were scouring the darkness. ‘My God,’ Sandrine said. ‘My God.’

  ‘Sssh.’ He held her mouth again, for the Germans were coming down the ladder. By their flashlights he could see that quite a lot of the ceiling masonry had been dislodged by the explosions, and now lay in great chunks in the water which bubbled about them. Three men stood on the ledge, sending their beams to and fro, while the rats squealed louder than ever. The Germans were shouting; Tony spoke the language fluently, but it was difficult to make out what they were saying against the flow of the water. After a few minutes they climbed back up, and the manhole clanged shut.

  ‘Were we betrayed?’ Sandrine asked.

  ‘Looks like it. But they either don’t know how many of us there were, or they reckon we’re dead.’

  ‘Aren’t we dead, Tony?’

  ‘Not while we’re breathing. Let’s get back on to the ledge, and keep going. This will eventually take us to the river.’

  ‘Eventually.’ She shuddered, but allowed him to push her up on to the ledge, then gave him a hand up. ‘Will we ever be clean again?’

  She had a fetish about bathing and keeping clean, which had not always been easy to do while surviving in the mountains. But he did not suppose either of them had ever been as filthy as this before. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘When we get to the river.’

  ‘I meant, really. Have you ever heard of a man called Marat?’

  ‘I think so. Jean-Paul, wasn’t it? He was a bigwig in your revolution. Got himself murdered by Charlotte Corday while sitting in his bath.’

  ‘Why do you suppose he was sitting in his bath?’

  ‘To receive a charmer like Charlotte? Imagination boggles. Wasn’t it
something to do with a skin disease?’

  ‘That’s right. Years before, when escaping from the police, he had to flee through the sewers. He had to spend some time down there, up to his neck in it. Just like us. So he contracted a ghastly skin disease, and had to spend the rest of his life sitting in a bath of water to stop the itching from driving him mad. If that were to happen to me …’

  ‘We’d find you a nice bath,’ Tony said. ‘But maybe the Paris sewers are dirtier than these here in Belgrade.’ She blew a raspberry.

  They waded for a long time, past several ladders leading up, without being tempted to try one. ‘Will Svetovar betray us?’ Sandrine asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The bastard.’

  ‘So would you,’ Tony reminded her. ‘If the Gestapo ever got to you.’

  ‘Where is she?’ Wassermann asked the sister.

  ‘In there, Herr Major.’ She nodded at the waiting room.

  ‘And Frau von Blintoft?’

  ‘She is still on the table, but I do not think there is any hope.’

  Wassermann blew through his teeth, and opened the waiting-room door. Angela’s head came up with a start. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s only me.’

  ‘Mother … ?’

  ‘Is still in the operating room. So there is still hope,’ he lied. He laid his cap on the table and sat beside her. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I am alive. Have you got the people who did this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You have?’ Her face filled with passion. ‘What will you do to them?’

  ‘That depends on your father. What would you like us to do to them?’

  ‘Oh …’ Several expressions flitted across that so pretty face. ‘I hate them. I want them to suffer for what they did. But …’ She bit her lip.

  ‘As I said on the train, war is a nasty business. You did not agree with me.’

  ‘I agree with you now,’ she said fiercely. ‘May I see these people?’

  Wassermann frowned. ‘I do not think your father would approve of that.’

  ‘Why not? Is it possible for them to harm me? Are you going to let them go?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘We are not going to let them go. But they are under interrogation. People under interrogation are not very pretty.’

  ‘I don’t want them to be pretty. I want to see them suffer.’ Her voice was quiet, but filled with suppressed emotion. She was clearly on the edge of a breakdown.

  Wassermann hesitated, wondering how transient this spasm of pure hatred was, and, if he dared to do as she wanted, just what her reaction would be – whether she would be shocked or titillated, whether it would bring them closer together or drive them apart. He so wanted to get close to this girl.

  The waiting-room door opened. The sister stood there. ‘Your father wishes to see you, Fräulein.’

  Angela got up out of the chair and glanced at Wassermann, who had also risen. ‘I will wait here,’ he said, and took the broad-brimmed hat from her hands.

  Angela did not attempt to prevent him; she looked at the hat, as if surprised that she should still be carrying it, then followed the sister along a corridor and up a flight of steps. Nurses gazed at her, anxiously, but she was not really aware of them. She was not really aware of anything, even of herself. Reality had fled the moment her mother had collapsed at her feet. She had not even heard the shot, had been unable for some moments to understand what had happened, only slowly had realized that the rock on which she had built her life had somehow disintegrated.

  Angela had been born in 1923 into a Germany that was in chaos, a once proud Reich that had been humbled in war and brought to its knees, reduced to begging for economic survival. But even then, before she had been aware of it, Grandpa’s money, so carefully invested before the Great War, had sheltered them from hardship. And by the time she was old enough to observe and understand what was going on about her, Hitler was already in power, and the dark years had become history – at least for those who were prepared to worship the new god. Papa and Mama had always been prepared to do that. Just too young to fight in the Great War, Papa had always been determined to fight in the next – the war everyone knew was coming, the war of revenge – and Mama had been equally determined to take her part and share in the new Reich. They had made sure that their only daughter was properly educated, read only the right books, made friends with only the right people. Angela had never questioned any of their decisions; it had not been her place to do so.

  Besides, life had been so excitingly full. Quite apart from school, where she had been taught only of the greatness of Germany’s past, there had been the nature holidays, when she and her friends had frolicked through the woods like nymphs, encouraged to go naked by their schoolmistresses to free their bodies as they freed their minds; the athletic meetings and the dances; the long bicycle rides; and above all, the rallies, when they had listened to the Führer and cheered themselves hoarse. As the daughter of an up-and-coming member of both the party and the Wehrmacht, she had even been presented to the great man, and received a squeeze of the hand and a kiss on the cheek, even if he had seemed disturbed by her name. Mama had explained it; Hitler’s niece had also been named Angela, and had committed suicide, some said after receiving unwanted attentions from her uncle. ‘Silly child,’ Mama had said, firmly excluding the Führer from any blame.

  Not even the coming of war, which had begun shortly after her fifteenth birthday, had interrupted Angela’s life; Hitler did not consider that women had any prominent part to play in the conflict, and as the Blintofts’ home had been in the country she had never even been subjected to an Allied bombing raid. There had been a mutually shared spasm of apprehension when Papa had marched off, but in fact he, and the Wehrmacht, had made it all seem so totally easy. As with Caesar of old, the Germans came, they saw, and they conquered, whether faced with the French, British, Belgians, Yugoslavs, Greeks, or now Russians. Meanwhile Papa, always enthusiastically efficient, had moved steadily up the professional ranks, from captain to major to colonel to general, and, since his wound, to governor-general. That wound, not in itself serious, had merely put the lid on his career. Mama had even been pleased, because, as she had said, he would now be out of harm’s way. Oh, Mama!

  The only downside to Angela’s carefree existence had been the increasing implications that women – especially young women – did have a part to play in the success and perpetuation of the Reich, not by taking part in the war itself, but by producing lots of healthy babies, preferably male. As Angela had completed her schooling, there had been suggestions from both her teachers and the local party officials that it was time she followed the example of her friends and got married. But this was something she had absolutely no desire to do. For one thing, she had no wish to leave her home and the constantly reassuring presence of Mama, always so gay and so elegant, so comforting and so encouraging. Equally, she had no desire to ‘belong’ – an utterly distasteful word when used in this context – to any man, much less the arrogantly brash youths who surrounded her whenever possible. The thought of having sex with any of them was repulsive.

  Mama, dear Mama, had recognised her feelings, and thus had insisted that she accompany them to Belgrade – just for a month or two, she had said – to get used to being no longer a schoolgirl, and to think about things. Which she did, constantly. The man she wanted to marry needed to be much older, experienced, away from the first flush of youthful exuberance, someone who would always think as much of her as of himself. Someone like Major Wassermann? The very thought made her blush, because he was very obviously taken with her. But he was indeed much older than her – just about twice as old – and she knew absolutely nothing about him, apart from Papa’s opinion that he had not had a very successful career. Getting to know him, and perhaps even allowing him to flirt with her, had promised to be quite exciting. But now …

  The sister knocked, and opened the door. Angela stepped through, and gazed at her father, who sat by the be
d. Then she looked past him, at the bed where Mama lay. The sheet was pulled to Magda’s neck, and she looked quite peaceful. Only the absence of colour in that normally ruddy complexion jarred. Angela moved forward to stand beside Blintoft, and the general put his arm round her thighs to hug her against him. ‘She never regained consciousness,’ he said.

  Angela continued to stare at the dead features. She felt she should be having screaming hysterics, or at least cry a little. But she felt only anger. ‘Major Wassermann has the men who killed her,’ she said.

  ‘Good,’ Blintoft said. ‘That is good.’ He stood up. ‘I must attend to it.’ He turned. ‘Sister …’

  ‘We will handle it, Herr General.’

  ‘Thank you. I would like …’ He hesitated.

  ‘Of course, sir. You will see her whenever you are ready.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Another hesitation, then he stooped and kissed Magda on the forehead. He straightened, and looked at Angela, waiting for her to do the same. But she did not move forward. ‘I will arrange a car to take you … to the palace.’

  ‘I do not wish to go there, Papa.’

  ‘You must. That is where we are going to live. Believe me, you will be perfectly safe. I will see to that.’

  ‘I am not afraid of being attacked. I just do not wish to go there without you. What are you going to do now?’

  ‘I am going to find Wassermann, and interview these people he has arrested, to find out if they really are the guilty ones.’

  ‘Major Wassermann is waiting for you downstairs.’

  ‘Oh, right. Well …’

  ‘I would like to come with you, Papa.’

  ‘I don’t think that would be proper. I don’t think you would enjoy it.’

  ‘These people killed Mama, Papa. They are our enemies. They are my enemies. I wish to look upon their faces.’

  The general looked uncertain. He did not know his daughter very well; military duties had kept him away from home for much of the time throughout the last eight years, and he had been content to leave Angela’s upbringing to his wife. He knew his offspring only as a somewhat serious young woman, but certainly a devoted member of the family. Which had now been torn apart. Angela might well need psychiatric counselling to cope with such a traumatic event. He hated the thought of that, because he hated the very idea of psychiatry; a man, or a woman, did their duty and that was that. But the only duty ever required of Angela, up to this moment, had been to love and obey her mother. Thus if she wanted to develop a personal hatred for the guerillas – at least those who had committed so terrible a crime – he did not wish to stand in her way. He was beginning to feel that way himself.