March Violets

16

Glockenspiel and big bass drum. What was that tune again? Little Anna of Tharau is the One I Love? No, not so much a tune as a number 5 1 tram to the Schonhauser Allee Depot. The bell clanged and the car shook as we raced through Schillerstrasse, Pankow, Breite Strasse. The giant Olympic bell in the great clock-tower tolling to the opening and closing of the Games. Herr Starter Miller’s pistol, and the crowd yelling as Joe Louis sprinted up towards me and then put me on the deck for the second time in the round. A four-engined Junkers monoplane roaring through the night skies to Croydon taking my scrambled brains away with it. I heard myself say:

‘Just drop me off at Lake Ploetzen.’

My head throbbed like a hot Dobermann. I tried raising it from the floor of the car, and found that my hands were handcuffed behind me; but the sudden, violent pain in my head made me oblivious to anything else but not moving my head again . . .

. . . a hundred thousand jackboots goose-stepping their way up Unter den Linden, with a man pointing a microphone down at them to pick up the awe-inspiring sound of an army crunching like an enormous great horse. An air-raid alarm. A barrage being laid down on the enemy trenches to cover the advance. Just as we were going over the top a big one exploded right above our heads, and blew us all off our feet. Cowering in a shell-hole full of incinerated frogs, with my head inside a grand piano, my ears ringing as the hammers hit the strings, I waited for the sound of battle to end . . .

Groggy, I felt myself being pulled out of the car, and then half carried, half dragged into a building. The handcuffs were removed, and I was sat down on a chair and held there so as to stop me falling off it. A man smelling of carbolic and wearing a uniform went through my pockets. As he pulled their linings inside out, I felt the collar of my jacket sticky against my neck, and when I touched it I found that it was blood from where I had been sapped. After that someone took a quick look at my head and said that I was fit enough to answer a few questions, although he might just as well have said I was ready to putt the shot. They got me a coffee and a cigarette.

‘Do you know where you are?’ I had to stop myself from shaking my head before mumbling that I didn’t.

‘You’re at the Königs Weg Kripo Stelle, in the Grunewald.’ I sipped some of my coffee and nodded slowly.

‘I am Kriminalinspektor Hingsen,’ said the man. ‘And this is Wachmeister Wentz.’ He jerked his head at the uniformed man standing beside him, the one who smelt of carbolic. ‘Perhaps you’d care to tell us what happened.’

‘If your lot hadn’t hit me so hard I might find it easier to remember,’ I heard myself croak.

The Inspektor glanced at the sergeant, who shrugged blankly. ‘We didn’t hit you,’ he said.

‘What’s that?’

‘I said, we didn’t hit you.’

Gingerly, I touched the back of my head, and then inspected the dried blood on my fingers’ ends. ‘I suppose I did this when I was brushing my hair, is that it?’

‘You tell us,’ said the Inspektor. I heard myself sigh.

‘What is going on here? I don’t understand. You’ve seen my I D, haven’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said the Inspektor. ‘Look, why don’t you start at the beginning? Assume we know absolutely nothing.’

I resisted the rather obvious temptation, and started to explain as best as I was able. ‘I’m working on a case,’ I said. ‘Haupthändler and the girl are wanted for murder—’

‘Now wait a minute,’ he said. ‘Who’s Haupthandler?’

I felt myself frown and tried harder to concentrate. ‘No, I remember now. They’re calling themselves the Teichmüllers now. Haupthändler and Eva had two new passports, which Jeschonnek organized.’

The Inspektor rocked on his heels at that. ‘Now we’re getting somewhere. Gert Jeschonnek. The body we found, right?’ He turned to his sergeant who produced my Walther PPK at the end of a piece of string from out of a paper bag.

‘Is this your gun, Herr Gunther?’ said the sergeant.

‘Yes, yes,’ I said tiredly. ‘It’s all right, I killed him. It was self-defence. He was going for his gun. He was there to make a deal with Haupthandler. Or Teichmüller, as he’s now calling himself.’ Once again I saw the Inspektor and the sergeant exchange that look. I was starting to get worried.

‘Tell us about this Herr Teichmüller,’ said the sergeant.

‘Haupthändler,’ I said correcting him angrily. ‘You have got him, haven’t you?’ The Inspektor pursed his lips and shook his head. ‘The girl, Eva, what about her?’ He folded his arms and looked at me squarely.

‘Now look, Gunther. Don’t give us the cold cabbage. A neighbour reported hearing a shot. We found you unconscious, a dead body, and two pistols, each of them fired, and a lot of foreign currency. No Teichmüllers, no Haupthandler, no Eva.’

‘No diamonds?’ He shook his head.

The Inspektor, a fat, greasy, weary-looking man with tobacco-stained teeth, sat down opposite me and offered me another cigarette. He took one himself and lit us both in silence. When he spoke again his voice sounded almost friendly.

‘You used to be a bull, didn’t you?’ I nodded, painfully. ‘I thought I recognized the name. You were quite a good one too, as I recall.’

‘Thanks,’ I said.

‘So I don’t have to tell you of all people how this looks from my side of the charge-sheet.’

‘Bad, eh?’

‘Worse than bad.’ The Inspektor rolled his cigarette between his lips for a moment, and winced as the smoke stung his eyeballs. ‘Want me to call you a lawyer?’

‘Thanks, no. But as long as you’re in the mood to do an ex-bull a favour, there is one thing you could do. I’ve got an assistant, Inge Lorenz. Perhaps you would telephone her and let her know I’m being held.’ He gave me a pencil and paper and I wrote down three phone numbers. The Inspektor seemed a decent sort of fellow, and I wanted to tell him that Inge had gone missing after driving my car to Wannsee. But that would have meant them searching my car and finding Marlene Sahm’s diary, which would undoubtedly have incriminated her. Maybe Inge had been taken ill, and had caught a cab somewhere, knowing that I’d be along to pick up the car. Maybe.

‘What about friends on the force? Somebody up at the Alex perhaps.’

‘Bruno Stahlecker,’ I said. ‘He can vouch that I’m kind to children and stray dogs, but that’s about it.’

‘Too bad.’ I thought for a moment. About the only thing that I could do was call the two Gestapo thugs who had ransacked my office, and throw them what I’d learned. It was a fair bet they’d be very unhappy with me, and I guessed that calling them would as likely win me an all-expenses trip to a KZ, as letting the local Inspektor charge me with Gert Jeschonnek’s murder.

I’m not a gambling man, but they were the only cards I had.

Kriminalkommissar Jost drew thoughtfully on his pipe.

‘It’s an interesting theory,’ he said. Dietz stopped playing with his moustache for long enough to snort contemptuously. Jost looked at his Inspektor for a moment, and then at me. ‘But as you can see, my colleague finds it somewhat improbable.’

‘That’s putting it lightly, mulemouth,’ muttered Dietz. Since scaring my secretary and smashing my last good bottle he seemed to have got uglier.

Jost was a tall, ascetic-looking man, with a face that wore a stag’s permanently startled expression, and a scrawny neck that stuck out of his shirt collar like a tortoise in a rented shell. He allowed himself a little razor-blade of a smile. He was about to put his subordinate very firmly in his place.

‘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.