March Violets

6

That evening it seemed as though almost all of Berlin was on its way to Neukölln to witness Goebbels conduct the orchestra of soft, persuasive violins and brittle, sarcastic trumpets that was his voice. But for those unlucky enough not to have sight of the Popular Enlightener, there were a number of facilities provided throughout Berlin to ensure that they could at least have the sound. As well as the radios required by law in restaurants and cafés, on most streets there were loudspeakers mounted on advertising pillars and lamp-posts; and a force of radio wardens was empowered to knock on doors and enforce the mandatory civic duty to listen to a Party broadcast.

Driving west on Leipzigerstrasse, I met the torchlight parade of Brownshirt legions as it marched south down Wilhelmstrasse, and I was obliged to get out of my car and salute the passing standard. Not to have done so would have been to risk a beating. I guess there were others like me in that crowd, our right arms extended like so many traffic policemen, doing it just to avoid trouble and feeling a bit ridiculous. Who knows? But come to think of it, political parties were always big on salutes in Germany: the Social Democrats had their clenched fist raised high above the head; the Bolshies in the KPD had their clenched fist raised at shoulder level; the Centrists had their two-fingered, pistol-shaped hand signal, with the thumb cocked; and the Nazis had fingernail inspection. I can remember when we used to think it was all rather ridiculous and melodramatic, and maybe that’s why none of us took it seriously. And here we all were now, saluting with the best of them. Crazy.

Badenschestrasse, running off Berliner Strasse, is just a block short of Trautenau Strasse, where I have my own apartment. Proximity is their only common factor. Badenschestrasse, Number 7 is one of the most modern apartment blocks in the city, and about as exclusive as a reunion dinner for the Ptolemies.

I parked my small and dirty car between a huge Deusenberg and a gleaming Bugatti and went into a lobby that looked like it had left a couple of cathedrals short of marble. A fat doorman and a storm-trooper saw me, and, deserting their desk and their radio which was playing Wagner prior to the Party broadcast, they formed a human barrier to my progress, anxious that I might want to insult some of the residents with my crumpled suit and self-inflicted manicure.

‘Like it says on the sign outside,’ growled Fatso, ‘this is a private building.’ I wasn’t impressed with their combined effort to get tough with me. I’m used to being made to feel unwelcome, and I don’t bounce easily.

‘I didn’t see any sign,’ I said truthfully.

‘We don’t want any trouble, Mister,’ said the storm-trooper. He had a delicate-looking jaw that would have snapped like a dead twig with only the briefest of introductions to my fist.

‘I’m not selling any,’ I told him. Fatso took over.

‘Well, whatever it is you’re selling, they don’t want any here.’

I smiled thinly at him. ‘Listen, Fatso, the only thing that’s stopping me from pushing you out of my way is your bad breath. It’ll be tricky for you, I know, but see if you can work the telephone, and ring up Fraulein Rudel. You’ll find she’s expecting me.’ Fatso pulled the huge brown-and-black moustache that clung to his curling lip like a bat on a crypt wall. His breath was a lot worse than I could have imagined.

‘For your sake, swanktail, you’d better be right,’ he said. ‘It’d be a pleasure to throw you out.’ Swearing under his breath he wobbled back to his desk and dialled furiously.

‘Is Fraulein Rudel expecting someone?’ he said, moderating his tone. ‘Only, she never told me.’ His face fell as my story checked out. He put the phone down and swung his head at the lift door.

‘Third floor,’ he hissed.

There were only two doors, at opposite ends of the third. There was a velodrome of parquet-floor between them and, as if I was expected, one of the doors was ajar. The maid ushered me into the drawing room.

‘You’d better take a seat,’ she said grumpily. ‘She’s still dressing and there’s no telling how long she’ll be. Fix yourself a drink if you want.’ Then she disappeared and I examined my surroundings.

The apartment was no larger than a private airfield and looked about as cheap a set as something out of Cecil B. de Mille, of whom there was a photograph jostling for pride of place with all the others on the grand piano. Compared with the person who had decorated and furnished the place, the Archduke Ferdinand had been blessed with the taste of a troupe of Turkish circus dwarves. I looked at some of the other photographs. Mostly they were stills of Ilse Rudel taken from her various films. In a lot of them she wasn’t wearing very much—swimming nude or peering coyly from behind a tree which hid the more interesting parts. Rudel was famous for her scantily clad roles. In another photograph she was sitting at a table in a smart restaurant with the good Dr Goebbels; and in another, she was sparring with Max Schmelling. Then there was one in which she was being carried in a workman’s arms, only the ‘workman’ just happened to be Emil Jannings, the famous actor. I recognized it as a still from The Builder’s Hut. I like the book a lot better than I had liked the film.

At the hint of 4711 turned around, and found myself shaking the beautiful film star by the hand.

‘I see you’ve been looking at my little gallery,’ she said, rearranging the photographs I had picked up and examined. ‘You must think it terribly vain of me to have so many pictures of myself on display, but I simply can’t abide albums.’

‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘It’s very interesting.’ She flashed me the smile that made thousands of German men, myself included, go weak at the chin.

‘I’m so glad you approve.’ She was wearing a pair of green-velvet lounging pyjamas with a long, gold, fringed sash, and high-heeled green morocco slippers. Her blonde hair was done up in a braided knot at the back of her head, as was fashionable; but unlike most German women, she was also wearing make-up and smoking a cigarette. That sort of thing is frowned on by the BdM, the Women’s League, as being inconsistent with the Nazi ideal of German Womanhood; however, I’m a city boy: plain, scrubbed, rosy faces may be just fine down on the farm, but like nearly all German men I prefer my women powdered and painted. Of course, Ilse Rudel lived in a different world to other women. She probably thought the Nazi Women’s League was a hockey association.

‘I’m sorry about those two fellows on the door,’ she said, ‘but you see, Josef and Magda Goebbels have an apartment upstairs, so security has to be extra tight, as you can imagine. Which reminds me, I promised Josef that I’d try and listen to his speech, or at least a bit of it. Do you mind?’

It was not the sort of question that you ever asked; unless you happened to be on first-name terms with the Minister of Propaganda and Popular Enlightenment, and his lady wife. I shrugged.

‘That’s fine by me.’

‘We’ll only listen for a few minutes,’ she said, switching on the Philco that stood on top of a walnut drinks cabinet. ‘Now then. What can I get you to drink?’ I asked for a whisky and she poured me one that was big enough for a set of false teeth. She poured herself a glass of Bowle, Berlin’s favourite summer drink, from a tall, blue-glass pitcher, and joined me on a sofa that was the colour and contours of an underripe pineapple. We clinked glasses and, as the tubes of the radio set warmed up, the smooth tones of the man from upstairs slipped slowly into the room.

First of all, Goebbels singled out foreign journalists for criticism, and rebuked their ‘biased’ reporting of life in the new Germany. Some of his remarks were clever enough to draw laughter and then applause from his sycophantic audience. Rudel smiled uncertainly, but remained silent, and I wondered if she understood what her club-footed neighbour from upstairs was talking about. Then he raised his voice and proceeded to declaim against the traitors—whoever they were, I didn’t know—who were trying to sabotage the national revolution. Here she stifled a yawn. Finally, when Joey got going on his favourite subject, the glorification of the Führer, she jumped up and switched the radio off.

‘Goodness me, I think we’ve heard enough from him for one evening.’ She went over to the gramophone and picked up a disc.

‘Do you like jazz?’ she said, changing the subject. ‘Oh, it’s all right, it’s not negro jazz. I love it, don’t you?’ Only non-negro jazz is permitted in Germany now, but I often wonder how they can tell the difference.

‘I like any kind of jazz,’ I said. She wound up the gramophone and put the needle into the groove. It was a nice relaxed sort of piece with a strong clarinet and a saxophonist who could have led a company of Italians across no man’s land in a barrage.

I said: ‘Do you mind me asking why you keep this place?’

She danced back to the sofa and sat down. ‘Well, Herr Private Investigator, Hermann finds my friends a little trying. He does a lot of work from our house in Dahlem, and at all hours: I do most of my entertaining here, so as not to disturb him.’

‘Sounds sensible enough,’ I said. She blew a column of smoke at me from each exquisite nostril, and I took a deep breath of it; not because I enjoyed the smell of American cigarettes, which I do, but because it had come from inside her chest, and anything to do with that chest was all right by me. From the movement underneath her jacket I had already concluded that her breasts were large and unsupported.

‘So,’ I said, ‘what was it that you wanted to see me about?’ To my surprise, she touched me lightly on the knee.

‘Relax,’ she smiled. ‘You’re not in a hurry, are you?’ I shook my head and watched her stub out her cigarette. There were already several butts in the ashtray, all heavily marked with lipstick, but none of them had been smoked for more than a few puffs, and it occurred to me that she was the one who needed to relax, and that maybe she was nervous about something. Me perhaps. As if confirming my theory she jumped up off the sofa, poured herself another glass of Bowle and changed the record.

‘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 too 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.

I threw myself at his waist, and as I did so I saw the flash and felt the air of the 9 mm bullet as it zipped over my head and smashed something behind me. My weight carried us both crashing into the front door. But if I had expected him to be less than capable of putting up a stiff resistance, I was mistaken. I took hold of the wrist with the gun and found the arm twisting towards me with a lot more strength than I had credited it with. I felt him grab the collar of my dressing-gown and twist it. Then I heard it rip.

‘Shit,’ I said. ‘That does it.’ I pushed the gun towards him, and succeeded in pressing the barrel against his sternum. Putting my whole weight onto it I hoped to break a rib, but instead there was a muffled, fleshy report as it fired again, and I found myself covered in his steaming blood. I held his limp body for several seconds before I let it roll away from me.

I stood up and took a look at him. There was no doubt that he was dead, although blood continued to bubble up from the hole in his chest. Then I went through his pockets. You always want to know who’s been trying to kill you. There was a wallet containing an ID card in the name of Walther Kolb, and 200 marks. It didn’t make sense to leave the money for the boys from Kripo, so I took 150 to cover the cost of my dressing-gown. Also, there were two photographs; one of these was an obscene postcard in which a man was doing things to a girl’s bottom with a length of rubber tube; and the other was a publicity still of Ilse Rudel, signed, ‘with much love’. I burned the photograph of my former bedmate, poured myself a stiff one and, marvelling at the picture of the erotic enema, I called the police.

A couple of bulls came down from the Alex. The senior officer, Oberinspektor Tesmer, was a Gestapo man; the other, Inspektor Stahlecker, was a friend, one of my few remaining friends in Kripo, but with Tesmer around there wasn’t a chance of an easy ride.

‘That’s my story,’ I said, having told it for the third time. We were all seated round my dining table on which lay the Parabellum and the contents of the dead man’s pockets. Tesmer shook his head slowly, as if I had offered to sell him something he wouldn’t have a chance of shifting himself.

‘You could always part exchange it for something else. Come on, try again. Maybe this time you’ll make me laugh.’ With its thin, almost non-existent lips, Tesmer’s mouth was like a slash in a length of cheap curtain. And all you saw through the hole were the points of his rodent’s teeth, and the occasional glimpse of the ragged, grey-white oyster that was his tongue.

‘Look, Tesmer,’ I said. ‘I know it looks a bit beat up, but take my word for it, it’s really very reliable. Not everything that shines is any good.’

‘Try shifting some of the fucking dust off it then. What do you know about the canned meat?’

I shrugged. ‘Only what was in his pockets. And that he and I weren’t going to get along.’

‘That wins him quite a few extra points on my card,’ said Tesmer.

Stahlecker sat uncomfortably beside his boss, and tugged nervously at his eyepatch. He had lost an eye when he was with the Prussian infantry, and at the same time had won the coveted ‘pour le mérite’ for his bravery. Me, I’d have hung onto the eye, although the patch did look rather dashing. Combined with his dark colouring and bushy black moustache, it served to give him a piratical air, although his manner was altogether more stolid: slow even. But he was a good bull, and a loyal friend. All the same, he wasn’t about to risk burning his fingers while Tesmer was doing his best to see if I’d catch fire. His honesty had previously led him to express one or two ill-advised opinions about the NSDAP during the ’33 elections. Since then he’d had the sense to keep his mouth shut, but he and I both knew that the Kripo Executive was just looking for an excuse to hang him out to dry. It was only his outstanding war record that had kept him in the force this long.

‘And I suppose he tried to kill you because he didn’t like your cologne,’ said Tesmer.

‘You noticed it too, huh?’ I saw Stahlecker smile a bit at that, but so did Tesmer, and he didn’t like it.

‘Gunther, you’ve got more lip than a nigger with a trumpet. Your friend here may think you’re funny, but I just think you’re a cunt, so don’t fuck me around. I’m not the sort with a sense of humour.’

‘I’ve told you the truth, Tesmer. I opened the door and there was Herr Kolb with the lighter pointing at my dinner.’

‘A Parabellum on you, and yet you still managed to take him. I don’t see any fucking holes in you, Gunther.’

‘I’m taking a correspondence course in hypnotism. Like I said, I was lucky, he missed. You saw the broken light.’

‘Listen, I don’t mesmerize easy. This fellow was a professional. Not the sort to let you have his lighter for a bag of sherbet.’

‘A professional what—haberdasher? Don’t talk out of your navel, Tesmer. He was just a kid.’

‘Well, that makes it worse for you, because he isn’t going to do any more growing up.’

‘Young he may have been,’ I said, ‘but he was no weakling. I didn’t bite my lip because I find you so damned attractive. This is real blood, you know. And my dressing-gown. It’s torn, or hadn’t you noticed?’

Tesmer laughed scornfully. ‘I thought you were just a sloppy dresser.’

‘Hey, this is a fifty-mark gown. You don’t think I’d tear it just for your benefit, do you?’

‘You could afford to buy it, then you could also afford to lose it. I always thought your kind made too much money.’ I leaned back in my chair. I remembered Tesmer as one of Police Major Walther Wecke’s hatchet-men, charged with rooting out conservatives and Bolsheviks from the force. A mean bastard if ever there was one. I wondered how Stahlecker managed to survive.

‘What is it you earn, Gunther? Three? Four hundred marks a week? Probably make as much as me and Stahlecker put together, eh, Stahlecker?’ My friend shrugged non-committally.

‘I dunno.’

‘See?’ said Tesmer. ‘Even Stahlecker doesn’t have any idea how many thousands a year you make.’

‘You’re in the wrong job, Tesmer. The way you exaggerate, you should work for the Ministry of Propaganda.’ He said nothing. ‘All right, all right, I get it. How much is it going to cost me?’ Tesmer shrugged, trying to control the grin that threatened to break out on his face.

‘From a man with a fifty-mark gown? Let’s say a round hundred.’

‘A hundred? For that cheap little garter-handler? Go and take another look at him, Tesmer. He doesn’t have a Charlie Chaplin moustache and a stiff right arm.’

Tesmer stood up. ‘You talk too much, Gunther. Let’s hope your mouth begins to fray at the edges before it gets you into serious trouble.’ He looked at Stahlecker and then back at me. ‘I’m going for a piss. Your old pitman here has got until I come back into the room to persuade you, otherwise . . .’ He pursed his lips and shook his head. As he walked out, I called after him:

‘Make sure you lift the seat.’ I grinned at Stahlecker.

‘How are you doing, Bruno?’

‘What is it, Bernie? Have you been drinking? You blue or something? Come on, you know how difficult Tesmer could make things for you. First you plum the man with all that smart talk, and now you want to play the black horse. Pay the bastard.’

‘Look, if I don’t black horse him a little and drag my heels about paying him that kind of mouse, then he’ll figure I’m worth a lot more. Bruno, as soon as I saw that son of a bitch I knew that the evening was going to cost me something. Before I left Kripo he and Wecke had me marked. I haven’t forgotten and neither has he. I still owe him some agony.’

‘Well, you certainly made it expensive for yourself when you mentioned the price of that gown.’

‘Not really,’ I said. ‘It cost nearer a hundred.’

‘Christ,’ breathed Stahlecker. ‘Tesmer is right. You are making too much money.’ He thrust his hands deep into his pockets and looked squarely at me. ‘Want to tell me what really happened here?’

‘Another time, Bruno. It was mostly true.’

‘Excepting one or two small details.’

‘Right. Listen, I need a favour. Can we meet tomorrow? The matinee at the Kammerlichtespiele in the Haus Vaterland. Back row, at four o’clock.’

Bruno sighed, and then nodded. ‘I’ll try.’

‘Before then see if you can’t find out something about the Paul Pfarr case.’ He frowned and was about to speak when Tesmer returned from the lavatory.

‘I hope you wiped the floor.’

Tesmer pointed a face at me in which belligerence was moulded like cornice-work on a Gothic folly. The set of his jaw and the spread of his nose gave him about as much profile as a piece of lead piping. The general effect was early-Paleolithic.

‘I hope you decided to get wise,’ he growled. There would have been more chance of reasoning with a water buffalo.

‘Seems like I don’t have much choice,’ I said. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance of a receipt?’