Prussian Blue

FIFTY-FIVE

“There’s no way to say this that sounds kind or polite, Frau Diesbach, so I’m just going to say it and then, if you’re sensible and you tell me where he’s gone, I’ll try to help you. Your husband, I can’t help. But there’s no need for you to go the same way. I will catch him and when I do it would look better for you if I could tell my superiors that you cooperated. Even if you didn’t. If you start throwing things at me now and affecting pious outrage, then I tell you frankly I won’t like that at all. Or you. I’m telling you straight that if you don’t cooperate, you’re going to jail. Tonight. The way I see it is that your husband, Johann Diesbach, who was probably full of methamphetamine at the time, shot and killed Karl Flex because Flex gave you a venereal disease.” I placed the Protargol and the Pervitin on the table next to the salt. “Exhibits one and two. Flex had decided he wasn’t satisfied with your husband paying him money to pretend that your son Benno was working for the Obersalzberg Administration in order that he be kept out of the army. He liked you, too, and decided he wanted something other than money. He decided he wanted you in his bed. In return for giving you what you wanted. Unfortunately he also gave you a venereal disease.”

I paused as the tall, handsome woman who’d been about to have a bath sat down heavily and fumbled in her sleeve for a handkerchief. “Good, I’m glad you’re not arguing with this. Because my jaw hurts, as you can probably see, and I really don’t have the energy to argue back. Karl Flex wanted you in his bed and you agreed, because you love your son and getting him into a reserved occupation for a hundred marks a year seemed like the best means of keeping him out of harm’s way. I only met him briefly and he seemed like a good boy. Loyal and, yes, brave, but maybe a little wet behind the ears, and you were right to try to get him deferred from the army because in wartime it’s those young men with the sweetest faces who are usually the first to buy it because they’re always trying to prove that they’re not so wet after all. You agreed to sleep with Flex and he gave you a dose of jelly. And when you complained he referred you to Dr. Brandt, who agreed to help find you a cure, because he’s in on the same mountaintop racket as Flex. But by then you’d given the dose of jelly to your husband, and so he decided to put an end to it all. The whole rotten business. This is why Johann shot him. And good for him. That’s what I say. Karl Flex had it coming with a nice telegram from the Kaiser. If I was married to you, I’d have probably shot him myself. Maybe I wouldn’t have used my friend Udo’s rifle to do it, mind. That was unkind because it left Udo in the frame for Flex’s murder. Although not as unkind as what happened when Udo guessed he’d been measured up for it by his old friend. What did he do? Threaten to tell the police? He must have done, otherwise Johann wouldn’t have gone to poor Udo’s house and shot him, too. You didn’t know about that? It doesn’t matter. Take it from me, suicide it certainly was not. My jaw may be broken, but there’s nothing wrong with my brain. There’s a box of the same ammunition used to blow Udo’s head off in a closet upstairs, as well as a sample of the same hand that wrote the so-called suicide note. As a case of murder it’s a more open-and-shut case than my office door at the Murder Commission in Berlin. You see, I’ve done this kind of thing before, Frau Diesbach. People—not just you, people who should know better because they run the government—they will persist in believing that I don’t know when I’m being lied to. But I do. I’m pretty good at it, too. Lately I’ve had a lot of practice.

“Then, when Criminal Assistant Korsch and I came here tonight, who should we meet on the road but young Benno himself. I recognized him from the photograph on your piano. It was dumb to leave that out for us to see. But you probably didn’t have time to hide it, what with your husband having to say his good-byes in five minutes flat. It was Benno who misdirected us in order to give him enough time to cycle back here and warn his father that the police were on the way, wasn’t it? I figure Johann’s got a good ninety minutes’ start on us now. The question is, which way did he go? Farther into Austria? Or to Germany? Or Italy, perhaps? I want some answers and you’d better make them good ones or it won’t just be you who goes to jail, Frau Diesbach. I figure that when we catch up with him it will be Benno, too. Wasting police time in Germany was always a serious offense, but now we’re obliged to take it personally.”

Frau Diesbach wiped her eyes and then lit another cigarette. I lit one, too, and so did Korsch because we both knew of old that any story sounds better when it’s accompanied with a good smoke. Of course, a lot of the stories that cops hear are all smoke but this one was true; I could tell that straightaway because I could feel a strong twinge in my jaw when she talked. Besides, she was crying in a way that usually accompanies the truth and that you can’t fake unless you’re Zarah Leander and even she prefers not to do the type of crying that involves a lot of heavy nose-blowing; for a woman it’s just not flattering, especially on camera.

“Benno is a good boy but he’s not the army type. Unlike my husband. Who is. Johann’s much tougher than Benno will ever be. And he’s our only son now. You see, Commissar, Benno’s older brother, Dietrich, was in the German navy, and was killed in Spain, during the civil war. Killed in 1937, at the Battle of Malaga, when the Deutschland was attacked by Republican planes. At least, that’s what we were told. I can’t lose another son. Do I have your word that Benno won’t get into trouble?”

“You do. So far it’s only me and my assistant here who know he tried to sell us something from the toy catalog. We can easily forget he even exists.”

She nodded and inhaled fiercely, as if she’d been trying to kill something inside her and when she pulled the cigarette from her lip the dry piece of skin on her lower lip came partly away with it and hung there off her mouth like a tiny cheroot. From time to time she wiped her cheeks clean of tears but after a while there were what looked like two dry riverbeds on her pale face.

“Take a moment,” I said kindly. “Pull yourself together and try to tell us everything.”

Korsch fetched a schooner of something sticky from a bottle on the sideboard and handed it to her. She sucked it down like a hungry cormorant and then handed him the glass, as if soliciting a refill. I nodded at him. Alcohol can be a cop’s best friend in more ways than one; it consoles even when it doesn’t loosen tongues.

“You’re almost right, Commissar Gunther. Karl Flex did sleep with me. Several times. But it wasn’t at all like you said. Karl had taken money from me, not Johann, to keep Benno out of the army. That much is true. Benno is a very sensitive boy and frankly the army would kill him. I make no apology for that. Johann and I disagreed about it, of course. He was furious when he found out about it. He thought the army would make Benno a man. I thought it would make him—dead. After all, everyone suspects a war is coming. With Poland. And if it’s with Poland, it will be with the Russians, too. And then where will we be? But Karl didn’t force me to sleep with him, and it certainly wasn’t conditional on him keeping Benno out of the army. You see, I found a letter from my husband’s mistress, Pony, in his coat pocket. Yes, that’s her name. Don’t ask me how you get a name like Pony. Anyway, Johann was riding her on his business trips to Munich. So I slept with Karl out of revenge, I suppose. One weekend, when Johann was in Munich with Pony, we went to the Hotel Bad Horn on Lake Constance in Karl’s lovely Italian sports car. But what I didn’t know is that it wasn’t just a sweet love letter that Pony had given to Johann, but also a venereal disease. Subsequently he gave it to me. And before I knew it, I’d given it to Karl. We had a big argument about it and in spite of his own indiscretions, Johann got very jealous and swore he would kill Karl. Only I never thought he would actually do it. But you are right about the methamphetamine. Like half of the men on the mountain, Johann is addicted to the stuff. It makes them kind of insane, I think. But the men who work for OA need it just to keep up with Martin Bormann’s insatiable timetable. Only recently the supply of Pervitin ground to a halt. They’re keeping the Pervitin for the army apparently. But then Karl and Brandt started selling it to anyone who had the cash. Which is just the way things work around here these days. I don’t say that Bormann knows about it. But he ought to know about it.”

Korsch handed her another glass. His eyes asked me if I wanted one myself but I shook my head. I needed to keep a clear head if I was going to speak to Albert Bormann and then, perhaps, his brother, Martin. Johann Brandner’s life probably depended on a careful use of German grammar and some thoughtful advocacy on my part.

“Of course as soon as I heard that Karl had been murdered I knew it was Johann who’d done it. Our salt mine is in Rennweg. The entrance is between the River Ache and Obersalzberg. That part is well known to me. But where it goes inside the mountain is anyone’s guess. Well, anyone except my husband. There are old tunnels that go hundreds of meters straight under Obersalzberg. I confronted him about it, and he admitted it, more or less. Apparently there’s an old salt mine tunnel that comes out of the mountain in the forest very close to the Villa Bechstein. You could walk straight past it and not even know it was there. Udo must have guessed that, too. Anyway, he and my husband were always borrowing rifles and things from each other. They were in the army together. The Second Bavarian Corps. Johann was a Jäger marksman and, like lots of local men, the best shot in his battalion. Udo was the same. Some of these men grow up with a rifle in their hands. The day before Karl was shot, I saw Johann putting a rifle with a scope in the trunk of his car and while I’m not an expert, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a gun I’d seen before. And there was something stuck on the end of it. Like a can of something. Odd really. I even asked Udo about it the last time I saw him, and he didn’t say anything. Which worried me as well.”

“Does your husband have a workshop?” I asked. “With a working lathe?”

“Yes. He often has to bring pipes back from the mine for repair. How did you know?”

“It’s not important. You were saying. About Udo Ambros?”

“I didn’t know Johann had shot Udo, too. It’s unthinkable, really. Udo would never have turned Johann in. Not without giving him plenty of good warning first.” She shrugged. “So maybe that’s what happened. Johann must have shot him when Udo said he was going to have to tell the police that Johann had borrowed his rifle. And used it to shoot Karl.”

Frau Diesbach sipped the second glass of spirits, winced as if she really didn’t like the stuff, and let out a deep sigh.

“It’s all my fault, really. If I hadn’t paid Karl to get Benno on that list of OA workers none of this would have happened.”

“All right,” I said. “No point in tiptoeing around that saucer of milk. Where’s he gone?”

“I honestly don’t know,” she said. “He didn’t say. I asked him, of course. And he said it was probably better I didn’t know. That way I couldn’t tell anyone.”

“Have a guess,” said Korsch. “You knew him better than anyone. Pony included.”

She shrugged. “In many ways Johann was a secretive man. A lot of the time I didn’t know where he was. And he was on the road a great deal. Selling our salt. He has friends in Salzburg, Munich, and as far afield as Frankfurt and Berlin. He could have gone almost anywhere. He has lots of friends in the local area, of course.”

“What about his car?” I asked.

“The car is a new one. A 1939 black four-door Auto Union Wanderer. I don’t know the license plate off the top of my head. But I could find out, I suppose.”

“Does he have much money on him? Passport?”

“There was plenty of money in his wallet when I saw it earlier today. He gave me twenty reichsmarks for housekeeping. But there must have been two hundred more in there. And he has a German passport. That more or less lived in the car, for obvious reasons.”

“Come on, missus,” said Korsch. ‘We’re going to need more than that if we’re going to help you and your son. Where is Benno, by the way?”

“He went to stay with some friends. Until the coast was clear, so to speak. I’m not sure who they are. But he was on his bicycle so he can’t have gone very far. You won’t arrest him, will you? You promised me my son.”

“It’s your husband we’re interested in, not your son,” said Korsch. “But whatever Johann’s excuses for doing it were, he’s a murderer. So don’t even think of protecting him. It’s not just his neck, see? It’s ours, too, if we don’t catch him soon.”

“He’s right,” I said. “It’s the Leader’s birthday on the twentieth. And Martin Bormann wants the murderer of Karl Flex safely in custody before Hitler turns up at the Berghof to unwrap his presents. If only your husband had thought to shoot him somewhere else, Frau Diesbach, this whole thing might have been brushed under the rug. But as it is we’re under a great deal of pressure to close this case before the candles on the cake can be lit. The party’s canceled unless we find the culprit.”

“I think it was probably quite deliberate that he shot him where he did,” said Frau Diesbach. “On the terrace at the Berghof, I mean. I hope I won’t get into any more trouble for saying this, Commissar, but Martin Bormann is hated on this mountain. With him gone, a lot of people think a lot of things would be better around here. Johann blamed Martin Bormann for employing people like Karl Flex, Brandt, Zander, the whole rotten bunch of them. He wanted to embarrass Bormann. Leave him looking like a fool in Hitler’s eyes. Enough maybe for Hitler to get rid of him. Lots of people who know Johann would be inclined to help him escape, for that reason alone.”

“Where’s he gone, missus?” said Korsch. “I’m running out of patience here.”

“I can’t tell you what I don’t know, can I?”

“I suppose you think we’re stupid, missus.”

“I don’t suppose that,” she said in a way that made me think she was about to make another smart remark.

“Don’t get clever with us, missus,” said Korsch. “We don’t like people who get clever with us. It reminds us that we’re due a lot of overtime and expenses we won’t ever get. And what kind of man doesn’t tell his wife where he’s headed when he’s going on the run from the police?”

“The clever kind, obviously.”

“I’d tell my wife if it was me.”

“Yes, but would she care?”

That was when Friedrich Korsch slapped her face, twice. Hard. Hard enough to knock her off the chair she was sitting on. A good forehand and then a backhand, like his name was Gottfried von Cramm. Each slap sounded like a firecracker going off and he couldn’t have slapped her better if he’d been auditioning for a job with the Gestapo.

“You need to tell us where he’s gone,” shouted Korsch.

I’m not one for hitting people, normally. Most suspects who agree to tell the police everything figure that we won’t notice when they try to hold just one thing back. And it always shocks them when they realize that isn’t going to work. Me, I’d probably have questioned her for a while longer, but we were short of time, Korsch was right about that. Brandner’s only chance of avoiding a short haircut was us catching Karl Flex’s killer and soon. I picked her up off the floor and sat her down, which was a good way of making sure I was in the way of Korsch hitting her again. She looked shocked, as well she might. And while I disapproved of what Korsch had done I thought it was too late to complain about it.

“Sorry about that.” I took out my handkerchief, knelt down at the woman’s feet, and wiped her mouth. “Only, my friend here is the crusading type. You see, there’s an innocent man in a prison cell in Obersalzberg who could go to his death for Flex’s murder and that makes Korsch a bit physical. I don’t think he’ll do it again, but if you have any idea of where your husband’s gone, you’d best tell us now. Before he starts to feel a sense of real injustice.”

“French Lorraine,” she said dully, holding her cheeks like she was a young grisette who’d been abandoned with a small child and an unfortunate complexion. “He was stationed there during the war. With the Second Bavarian Corps. He always liked it there, in Lorraine. Was always talking about it. He speaks good French, you see. Loves the French. Loves the food. And the women, knowing Johann. That’s where he said he’d go. I’m not sure precisely where. I’ve never been there myself. But once he’s across the French border, he’ll be somewhere in Lorraine.”

What she was saying seemed to fit with the framed maps I’d already seen on the walls, and the pictures of Diesbach in army uniform. It’s odd how one feels about a place that saw so much death; I myself had always wanted to go back to northeastern France and the towns near the Meuse where, in 1916, the Battle of Verdun had been fought. But Korsch wasn’t having any of that.

“You might as well have said Bermuda, missus,” he complained. “It’s seven hundred kilometers from here to the French border. And he won’t have long enough to get that far. When we ask where’s he gone, we mean where is he now, and not where would he like to go on vacation if he won the state lottery.”

He was going to slap her again but this time I stayed his hand because I knew exactly how Frau Diesbach was feeling. Both of us had been slapped enough for one day.