Prussian Blue

TWENTY-FOUR

I climbed back up onto the roof of the Villa Bechstein to take another look around. It was an operatic skyline. I might have been facing the impregnable walls of Asgard; even the clouds were like Odin’s beard. It was a sky for a man with an idea of his own destiny. Or perhaps a misleading vision of one. Rolf Müller came over and asked if he could help. But now it was my turn to be annoyingly cryptic.

“The chimney,” I said, pointing out the stack with the curious bell tower.

“What about it?”

“Plenty of room for Santa Claus and a whole sackful of presents, don’t you think?”

“Santa Claus?”

“Don’t tell me you don’t believe in Santa Claus, Herr Müller.”

“It’s April,” he said weakly. “Too late for Santa Claus.”

“Better late than never, wouldn’t you say?”

I smiled but actually I wasn’t so very sure that I hadn’t just seen Santa Claus zooming across the skies above Obersalzberg, with a full squadron of flying Valkyries drawing his sleigh. That was the methamphetamine. It was still like I’d been wired up to the main electricity supply, which felt good even though hallucinations are supposed to interfere with your powers of observation—at least they are according to the rules for being a good detective, as described by Bernhard Weiss. It’s bad enough that you miss things you should have seen before; it’s wholly inexcusable when you start seeing things that you know aren’t there at all. Not that this ever stopped anyone at the Alex from stowing a lunch bottle in his desk drawer, and a couple of drinks certainly never slowed me down very much, but the arrival at the Villa Bechstein of a cortege of black limousines sporting stiff little Nazi flags persuaded me that I was now going to have to try a lot harder to pull myself together and behave like a real Nazi.

I came back down the ladder, fixed a stupid smile to my face, and saluted smartly, although not nearly as smartly as Hermann Kaspel; his was good enough for the both of us, at least I hoped it was. The deputy party leader had arrived with his Dalmatian dogs, and as soon as the heavy car doors opened, the two mutts went galloping off into the thickly timbered woods behind the house. Then Hess climbed out of the car, stretched a little, glanced up at the roof, and returned the salute absently with a motion of his swagger stick. He was an unprepossessing fellow. Most people I knew thought that Hitler kept him around to make himself seem a bit more normal; with his monobrow, Phantom of the Opera eyes, and Frankenstein skull, Rudolf Hess would have made Lon Chaney seem normal. I waited until he and his fawning entourage of brownshirts had gone inside and then went quietly up to the first bedroom shown to me by Winkelhof, the butler. I knelt down on the floor and tried to lift the chimney flap but it was still stuck—not with soot and rubble; it felt like something heavy was resting on top of the flap. I had a shrewd idea what it was, and as soon as Winkelhof had finished showing Hess to his apartments and had come to see if he could assist me in some way, I asked him to fetch me a sledgehammer.

“May I inquire what you plan to do with a sledgehammer, sir?” he asked with polite disapproval.

“Yes, I plan to remove this faulty fireplace as quickly as possible.”

“Are you feeling all right, sir?”

“Yes, I’m fine, thank you.”

He took off his glasses and began to polish them furiously, almost as if he were trying to erase me from his sight. “Then may I remind you, sir, that the fireplace in your own room is working perfectly.”

“Yes, I know. But something is jammed on top of the flap in this fireplace, and I do believe that something is a rifle.”

Winkelhof looked pained. “A rifle? Are you sure?”

“More or less. I think someone dropped it down the chimney before making his escape.”

“And if it’s less? What I mean is, I don’t think the deputy leader will like you hammering on the wall with a sledgehammer immediately below his apartments, sir. He’s had a long and tiring journey and has just informed me that he intends to get some rest. That’s rest as in peace and quiet, and he’s not to be disturbed under any circumstances until dinnertime. Perhaps a chimney sweep might be summoned tomorrow—”

I tried not to smile at the prospect of ruining the deputy leader’s beauty sleep but this proved to be impossible. That was the meth, too, I suppose. I was ready to face him down if necessary, at some risk to myself and all in the name of an investigation into the death of a man whom no one had liked. “It can’t be helped, I’m afraid. I need to clear this matter up as soon as possible. So I have my orders, Winkelhof. Bormann’s orders.”

“And I have mine.”

“Look, I understand your quandary. You’re trying to run this house, like a good butler should. But I’m trying to run a murder investigation. So I’ll find some tools myself. And take full responsibility if the deputy leader tries to make my ears stiff because of it.” But I wondered about that; in a cocks-out size contest between Martin Bormann and Rudolf Hess, I had no idea which would reveal himself to be in possession of the largest bratwürst. I was, perhaps, about to find out.

Kaspel and Friedrich Korsch were waiting for me in the drawing room.

Korsch had my prints of the autopsy and the crime scene. “You were right about that other photographer,” he told Kaspel. “There was a local man called Johann Brandner. Only, he used to have his business premises up here, in Obersalzberg, not in Berchtesgaden. Guess where he is now. Dachau. Seems as if he kept writing to Hitler to ask if his little shop might be spared from compulsory purchase. Bormann got fed up with him and had him carted off for a barbed-wire holiday. I had the devil of a job getting anyone to admit they’d even heard of the poor bastard.”

“Put a call in to the Munich SD,” I told Hermann Kaspel. “See if he’s still there. And Friedrich. I’m going to need a sledgehammer. You might like to try some of those workers from P&Z we saw on the road. Maybe they’ll lend you one.”

Then I went to my own room, lay down on the rock-hard mattress, closed my eyes, and breathed deeply through my nose in the hope that the voices I could hear would quickly disappear. Mostly they were telling me that I should borrow a car, drive across Austria and into Italy as soon as possible—Sesto was only two hundred kilometers away—find a nice girl, and forget about being a cop before the Nazis decided to throw me in a concentration camp, this time forever. It was probably good advice, only a little too loud and clear for my liking and hearing it made my skin crawl like I was in the way of an army of voracious soldier ants. Staying awake for a day and a half was, I now realized, as sure a way of receiving a personal message from the gods as anything described in the Holy Bible. Half an hour passed. I didn’t sleep for a minute. My eyes shifted under their lids like excited puppies. The voices persisted: if I didn’t leave Obersalzberg soon I was going to be tied up inside a sack with a gang of oversexed workers from P&Z and hurled off the top terrace of Hitler’s tea house. I got up and went downstairs before I started talking back.

Friedrich Korsch didn’t much resemble Thor, the thunder god; for one, his face was too crafty and the pimp mustache on his upper lip much too metropolitan, but the hammer he was carrying over his shoulder did make him look as if he meant to crush a mountain or two. He brandished the tool eagerly as if looking forward to the designated demolition work. I expect he’d have done what he was told if I’d ordered him to batter out the fireplace but, in the circumstances, I thought it best to do it myself; if anyone was going to incur the wrath of Rudolf Hess it seemed better that it should be me. So I took the hammer and climbed back up the stairs. Kaspel and Korsch followed, keen to witness the destruction I was about to inflict on Hitler’s precious guest house. I took off my jacket, rolled up my shirtsleeves, spat on my hands, grasped the shaft of the hammer firmly, and prepared to do battle.

“Are you sure about this, boss?” said Korsch.

“No,” I said, “I’m not sure of anything very much since I started taking the local magic potion.”

And while Kaspel explained to Korsch about Pervitin, I laid into the fireplace with the sledgehammer. That first blow felt as satisfying as if I’d struck Hess on his absurdly high forehead.

“But I am willing to bet five marks that the rifle is behind this wall.”

I hammered it again, smashing the tile surround and some of the bricks behind it. Korsch pulled a face and looked up at the ceiling as if he expected the deputy leader to reach down through his own floorboards and grab me by the throat.

“I’ll take that bet,” said Kaspel, and lit a cigarette. “I think it’s just as likely the shooter chucked it into the woods from where he could retrieve it later on. In fact, I can’t understand why you didn’t let me organize a search of the grounds before you decided to turn this room into a rock pile.”

“Because the roofing contractor, Rolf Müller, doesn’t smoke,” I said. “And because right next to the chimney there was a cigarette end and some footprints. And because it’s too late for Santa Claus. And because there are too many trees out there; if he’d tossed the rifle it might have hit one and bounced back onto the path and risked alerting that gardener. Dropping it down the chimney was the safer thing to do. Because it’s what I’d have done myself if I’d had the guts to take a potshot at someone on the Berghof terrace. And because there’s something sitting right on top of the flap in this chimney that’s stopping it from being used.”

I swung the sledgehammer a third time, and this time made a fist-sized hole in the wall around the fireplace. But suddenly Korsch and Kaspel stiffened as if the devil had put in an appearance.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Commissar Gunther?”

I turned around to find Martin Bormann occupying the doorway, with Zander, Högl, and Winkelhof standing immediately behind him. I glanced back at the fireplace. I decided that another blow of the sledgehammer would probably do it and that it was one of those uniquely German situations in which actions speak louder than words. So I swung again, and this time I altered the position of the fireplace itself. It now looked possible to pull the thing out by hand. And I might have done just that but for the Walther police pistol that had now appeared in Bormann’s chubby fist.

“If you wield that hammer again I will shoot you,” he said, and worked the slide just to show that he meant business, before pointing the PPK at my head.

I threw down the hammer, and taking the cigarette from Kaspel’s hand, started to smoke it myself with one eye on Bormann’s face and the other on the gun. For the moment, however, I said nothing. Nothing is always an easier answer to give when there’s a cigarette in your hand.

“Explain yourself,” insisted Bormann, and lowered the weapon—although as far as I could see, the gun was still cocked and ready for action. I had a good idea that if I’d picked up the sledgehammer again he wouldn’t have hesitated to shoot me. “What the hell do you mean by smashing the room up like this?”

“I mean to find the man who murdered Karl Flex,” I said. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s what you told me to do. But to do that I need to find the murder weapon.”

“Are you suggesting he shot him from in here? From the Villa Bechstein?”

“Not from in here,” I said calmly. “From the roof.”

“No! From the Villa Bechstein? Tell it to your grandmother. I don’t fucking believe it. You mean he wasn’t in the woods above the Berghof after all?”

“There’s spent brass all over the roof,” I said. “And I already measured the angles of trajectory from the terrace. The shooter was down here all right. It’s my theory that having shot Flex, he dumped the rifle down the chimney before making his escape. This chimney. I noticed the flap on the fireplace wouldn’t open earlier. And so I decided to check it out. Look, sir, when we spoke last night I gained the impression that a degree of urgency was going to be necessary with this inquiry. Not to mention a certain amount of discretion. I’m afraid I took you at your word, otherwise I’d have summoned a local chimney sweep and risked the whole town finding out what happened up here yesterday morning.”

“Well, is it there? The rifle?”

“I don’t honestly know, sir. Really, I was just playing a hunch I had. I might pull that fireplace out right now and find out for sure but for the funny idea I have that you might put a hole in me with that police pistol in your hand.”

Bormann made the Walther safe and then slipped it back into his coat pocket. With the automatic he was a bigger thug than even I had supposed. “There,” he said. “You’re quite safe for the moment.”

Meanwhile Rudolf Hess had appeared behind his shoulder and regarded me with the kind of staring blue eyes that must sometimes have made even Hitler a bit nervous. The dark wave of hair on top of his square head was standing so high it looked as if it were concealing a pair of horns; either that or he’d been standing a little too close to the lightning conductor in Frankenstein’s castle laboratory.

“What the hell is going on here?” he asked Bormann.

“It would seem that Criminal Commissar Gunther is about to search the chimney for a murder weapon,” said Bormann. “Well, go on, then,” he told me. “Get on with it. But you’d better be right, Gunther, or you’ll be on the next train back to Berlin.”

“Murder weapon?” said Hess. “Who’s been murdered? What’s this all about, Commissar?”

Bormann ignored him and it certainly wasn’t up to me to say who was dead or why. Instead, I knelt down in front of the fireplace and, almost hoping that I could be on the first train back to Berlin, I tugged hard at the fireplace and dislodged an object that came tumbling onto the floor in a cloud of soot and gravel. Only it wasn’t a rifle but a leather binoculars case, covered with soot. I laid the case on the bedspread, which did little to endear me to Winkelhof.

“That doesn’t look like a rifle,” said Bormann.

“No, sir, but a pair of field glasses might help you to find your target. Assuming you actually cared who you were shooting at.”

With five shots fired at the Berghof terrace I still wasn’t a hundred percent sure that the shooter had only intended to hit Karl Flex. I knelt down again and pushed my arm up the chimney. A few moments later I was holding a rifle up for the inspection of everyone in the room. It was a Mannlicher M95, a short-barreled carbine manufactured for the Austrian army with a telescopic sight mounted slightly to the left so the rifle could be fed by an en-bloc stripper clip.

“It would seem you know your business after all, Commissar,” said Bormann.

I worked the bolt and a spent brass cartridge popped out of the carbine’s breech. I picked it up; it was the same as the others I’d found already.

“I apologize,” he added. “But what the hell’s that on the end of the barrel?” Bormann took a closer look. “It would appear to be a Mahle oil filter.”

“It’s a little trick I’ve seen here before,” explained Kaspel. “The local poachers fit them to their rifles. You need to make a thread on the end of the barrel but it’s something almost anyone with access to a workshop can do. An oil filter makes a very effective sound suppressor. Like the mute on a trumpet. Just the thing when you’re stalking deer inside the Leader’s Territory and you don’t want to get caught by the RSD.”

Bormann frowned. “What poachers? I thought that was all sorted when we erected the fucking fence.”

“There’s no point in getting into that now,” I said. “It would certainly explain why no one heard the shots.” Seeing Bormann’s eyebrows sliding up his forehead, I added, “That’s right, sir. There was more than one shot fired. We found four bullets in the woodwork of the first-level balcony above the Berghof terrace.”

“Four?” said Bormann. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. Of course, we still haven’t found the fifth one—the one that killed Karl Flex. My guess is that it was lost forever when the Berghof terrace was cleaned up by your men, sir.”

“I demand that someone tell me what’s going on,” said Hess. Clasping his hands in front of his belt buckle and then folding his arms again, as if nervous, he looked as if he was about to make his usual shrill, high priest’s speech at the Berlin Sportpalast. “Now, please.” He stamped his jackboots one after the other impatiently and for a moment I actually thought he was going to scream or even throw his Party tiepin on the floor.

Bormann turned to Hess and explained, reluctantly, what had happened to Karl Flex.

“But this is terrible,” said Hess. “Does Hitler know?”

“No,” said Bormann. “I don’t think that would be a good idea. Not yet. Not until the culprit is in custody.”

“Why?”

Bormann grimaced; clearly he was not accustomed to being questioned like this, even by the man who was nominally his boss. I took another look at the carbine while they argued and tried to pretend that none of this was happening. But it seemed as if I was about to discover who was going to win the bratwürst contest.

“Because I think it would almost certainly interfere with his future enjoyment of the Berghof,” said Bormann. “That’s why.”

“I insist that he be told as soon as possible,” argued Hess. “I’m certain he’d want to know. The Leader takes all such matters very seriously.”

“And you think I don’t?” With a face as red as a pig’s head in a pork-butcher’s window, Bormann pointed at me. “According to General Heydrich, this man Gunther is the top criminal commissar in the Berlin Murder Commission. I’ve no reason to doubt that. He’s been sent here to clear up this matter as soon as possible. All that can be done right now is being done. Please take a minute to think about this, my dear Hess. Quite apart from the fact that it might spoil his birthday if you told him about Flex’s death, Hitler might never come to Obersalzberg again. To this—his favorite place in the world. Surely you, as a Bavarian, could not wish such a thing ever to happen. Besides, it’s not as if we’ve uncovered an attempt to kill Hitler himself. I’m quite sure that this was a matter entirely unrelated to the Leader. Wouldn’t you agree, Commissar?”

“Yes, sir, I would. From what I’ve learned so far I’m confident that this has nothing to do with Hitler.”

I laid the carbine on the bedspread, next to the binoculars. It was also covered in soot and I thought it was unlikely that the firearm would yield any fingerprints. I was more interested in the serial number. And in the Mahle oil filter. Given what Kaspel had said, we were clearly looking for someone who owned or had access to a lathe. Quietly I asked Korsch to fetch my camera from my room, so that I might add some pictures of the carbine to my portfolio.

Hess’s narrow mouth turned petulant, like a schoolboy who had been punished unjustly. “With all due respect to the commissar, this is not a matter for Kripo, but for the Gestapo. It may be that there is some conspiracy here. After all, it’s only a few months since that Swiss, Maurice Bavaud, came here with the express purpose of killing the Leader. It may be that this is connected with that earlier incident in some way. It could even be that the murderer mistakenly believed he was shooting at Hitler, in which case he may try again, when Hitler is actually here. At the very least the Leader’s Territory should now be extended to the foot of Salzbergerstrasse, where it crosses the River Ache.”

“Nonsense,” said Bormann. “I assure you, dear Hess, that nothing of the kind has happened here. Besides, we’ll certainly have caught the culprit before the Leader’s birthday. Isn’t that so, Gunther?”

I hardly wanted to disagree with Bormann, especially as Hess was beginning to sound like a complete spinner. Already Bormann looked like the safer choice of top Nazi with whom to ally myself. “Yes, sir,” I said.

But Hess wasn’t about to let this matter go. His eagle-eyed devotion to Adolf Hitler was absolute and it seemed that he could not countenance the very idea of keeping the Leader in the dark about anything at all, and Bormann was obliged to accompany him to his apartments upstairs, where they continued their discussion, in private. But everyone in the Villa Bechstein could hear them talking.

That was just the way I liked it: two very important Nazis arguing loudly about their positions in the government’s odious pecking order. It wasn’t about to get any better than that on Hitler’s mountain.