Prussian Blue

FIFTY-EIGHT

The Police Praesidium in Saarbrücken was on St. Johannerstrasse, a stone’s throw north of the River Saar and conveniently close to the main railway station at which we had just arrived. Zander and I checked into the Rheinischer Hof on Adolf-Hitlerstrasse, consumed a very quick lunch at the Ratskeller, and then went straight to see Major Hans Geschke, the recently appointed Gestapo chief in the Saarland capital who was now coordinating the search for Johann Diesbach.

Made of concrete the color of old dog shit, the Praesidium was a five-story building of recent construction, with regular square windows, a cumbersome door that was clearly meant to remind people of how small they were in comparison with the state, and nothing to commend it architecturally. I could almost hear Gerdy Troost dismissing it as a typical Speer design, with no redeeming features and zero character, and that was exactly how I would have described Geschke, a baby-faced doctor of law from Frankfurt and probably not much more than thirty years of age. He was one of those smooth, clever types of Nazi for whom a career in the police was only a means to an end, that being executive power and its twin shadows, money and prestige. Pale-skinned, smiling, keen, bright-eyed: he reminded me of a sinister Pierrot who’d abandoned unworldly naïveté and the pursuit of Columbine for a leading role in The Threepenny Opera. But while Geschke had been studying in Berlin, he’d read about one of my old cases, which he told me almost immediately I entered his office, and for several minutes I allowed myself to be flattered in the interests of congeniality and cooperation.[2] But I was glad it was him I was dealing with and not his predecessor, Anton Dunckern, now promoted to greater responsibility in Brunswick and known to many Berlin cops as a member of a notorious SS murder squad that had been very active in and around the city in the bloody summer of 1934. I had good reason to believe that Dunckern had murdered a good friend of mine, Erich Heinz, a prominent member of the SPD, whose body had been found near the town of Oranienburg, in July of that year. He’d been hacked to death with an ax.

“The border police have been alerted,” Geschke told us. “And the transport police, of course. The local Gestapo are watching all of the local railway stations and I’ve been in touch with the French police, who, in spite of recent diplomatic tensions, are always extremely cooperative. If Germany ever rules France again you can be sure we’ll have no problem with their police. Commissaire Schuman, who you might say is my opposite number, in Metz, has a German father and speaks the language fluently. Frankly, I think he has more in common with us than he does with that fool Édouard Daladier. It was Schuman who boarded the Berlin train to Paris last October and arrested the Swiss assassin Maurice Bavaud. By the way, is there any news of when Bavaud is to be tried?”

“I have no idea.” I thought it hardly worth mentioning that Bavaud hadn’t actually killed anyone, but we both knew that the verdict in the man’s trial was already a foregone conclusion.

Geschke nodded. “Anyway,” he continued, “the Lorraine border is now as tight as the paint on a piece of Dresden china. But please, I’d welcome any suggestions as to what else we can do to assist the office of the deputy chief of staff, not to mention the Kripo detective who famously caught Gormann the strangler. We may be a small city by comparison with Berlin but we are keen to be useful. And we are very loyal. In the plebiscite of 1935, ninety percent of Saarlanders voted to become a part of Germany. I’m glad to say that most of the opponents of National Socialism who took refuge here after 1933 are in prison or have fled to France.”

Wilhelm Zander, sitting in a chair by the windowsill, smiled thinly, as if he remembered what Bormann had said about the place. Roughly the same age, he and Geschke looked as if they’d come out of the same rat’s nest and the only noticeable difference between the two was that unlike a great many of the people who’d risen to positions of power under the Nazis, Zander wasn’t a lawyer, or, as far as I could see, a doctor of anything. Even after a longish train journey with Wilhelm Zander I knew very little about the man, but I had already come to the conclusion that I wasn’t remotely interested in finding out more. For his part, he seemed totally uninterested in the fate of my mission and had spent most of the train journey reading a book about Italy where, he told me, he still had a number of business interests. I could hardly blame him; for anyone who came from Saarbrücken, Italy must have looked like Shangri-la. A house built on the slopes of Vesuvius would have seemed more attractive than the finest dwelling in Saarbrücken.

I didn’t mind his disinterest in my job; in fact I welcomed it. The last thing I wanted was Martin Bormann’s spy looking over my shoulder while I went through the motions of being a detective. And my only concern was that the Walther P38 he’d insisted on bringing from Obersalzberg would prove more lethal to him or me than to Johann Diesbach.

“Do you know how to use that thing?” I’d asked when first I’d seen the pistol in his luggage, on the train.

“I’m not an expert. But I know how to use a gun.”

“I hope so.”

“Look here, Commissar, I didn’t want this job. And surely you don’t expect me to help you look for a wanted fugitive without a weapon. Frankly, I’d have thought you’d be glad to have some backup firepower, given that your police colleague elected to remain in Berchtesgaden.”

“No, I told him to stay.”

“May I ask why?”

“Police business.”

“Such as?”

“I’m hoping he might obtain some more information out of Frau Diesbach. A last few crumbs, perhaps, concerning the exact whereabouts of her husband.”

“And exactly how will he do that? Thumbscrews? A dog whip?”

“Sure. And if all of that fails, then Korsch will light a fire under her feet. That always works. And one thing they’re not short of in Berchtesgaden is a supply of slow-burning wood.”

I was joking about this but before I’d left I’d still felt obliged to tell Korsch very firmly that I didn’t want Eva Diesbach slapped around. It was enough, I thought, that he’d already hit her; the possibility that he might do so again—not to mention the charges that might yet be leveled against her son Benno—was probably enough, eventually, to persuade her to yield up more information.

“We don’t use methods like that in Kripo,” I told Zander. “I leave that kind of thing to people like Major Högl.”

“I had no idea you were so particular, Commissar.”

“You start beating people up during an interrogation, it becomes a bad habit. In the long term the only person who comes out damaged is the cop who’s prone to using his fists. And I don’t mean the damage to the skin on his knuckles.”

After meeting Hans Geschke, we went back to our hotel and then to dinner at the Saar Terrace by the Luisen Bridge. Like the food, the weather was foul: wet and cold, and after the blue sky and snow of Berchtesgaden, Saarbrücken felt very dismal. Geschke had told us that if he heard any news he would fetch us immediately, but when we got back to the Rheinischer Hof, I found a message from Friedrich Korsch asking me to telephone him urgently on a Berchtesgaden number, which turned out to be the Schorn Ziegler, the guest house in St. Leonhard where Captain Neumann had been staying.

“I had to move out of the Villa Bechstein,” he explained. “To make way for some Party bigwigs and their entourages who’ve turned up for the Leader’s birthday. Apparently he’s expected any minute now. Anyway, Captain Neumann said I could use his room here, in St. Leonhard, because he’s not using it, on account of how he was going back to Berlin.”

“Yes, he’s very thoughtful, is our Captain Neumann.”

I hadn’t told Korsch about the murder of Aneta Husák; I wasn’t sure there was much point in telling anyone about her. Murder—real murder, when someone innocent is killed by someone else—was becoming almost unimportant in Hitler’s Germany. Unless it was designed to discredit someone in the eyes of the Leader.

“The latest we’ve heard from the Orpo is that Diesbach’s Wanderer was found in front of the Frauentor, near the railway station in Nuremberg.”

“Nuremberg? I wonder why he went there.”

“Since 1935 Nuremberg’s had the best rail connections in Germany. Because of all the Nazi Party rallies, of course. A man in the ticket office remembers a man answering Diesbach’s description who bought three tickets: one to Berlin, one to Frankfurt, and one to Stuttgart. Trying to throw us off the scent, no doubt. Of course, Frankfurt and Stuttgart are a lot nearer French Lorraine. Assuming that’s where he’s gone.”

“How are you getting on with the Amazon lady?”

“I’m starting to quite like her, boss. She’s got some dinner on her, hasn’t she? Two lovely courses. I get hungry just looking at them.”

“Just keep your mind on the job and your mittens off her exhibits. She’s a witness, always supposing that this Fritz ever goes to trial. More importantly, did you get anything else out of her?”

“Nothing. But young Benno showed up eventually and I could see why his mama wanted him kept out of uniform. He’s much too warm for the army.”

“He’s queer?”

“Like a talking gardenia. Anyway, after I crushed his silk scarf a bit—just a bit, mind, nothing serious, he can still wear it—he told me something interesting. He used to have an aunt in the Saarland. Apparently Papa Johann has or had an older sister in Homburg. Name of Berge, Paula Berge. I looked the place up on the map. Turns out Homburg is a small town about twenty kilometers east of Saarbrücken and just the sort of place you might hole up for a while before deciding it’s safe to tiptoe across the French border. The Kaiser could be living there and no one would know. According to Benno, his dad and his aunt haven’t spoken in a long while but Benno Diesbach reckons Frau Berge used to work as a secretary for the managing director at the local Karlsberg Brewery. For all he knows she might still be there. In Homburg. In which case—”

“Brother Johann and sister Paula might have patched things up.”

“Precisely.”

“What did Mama have to say to that?”

“Not much. But she certainly looked like she wanted to give Benno a good slap.”

“I can think of worse places to hide than a brewery, can’t you?”