by Ben Pastor
“The transcript of Glantz’s interrogation, Colonel.”
“Ah. Is he alive?”
“He’s alive. Has a shattered jaw.”
Not exactly the injury you’d get falling while you tried to hang yourself. Bora had seen his share of dislocated and cracked jaws on prisoners in Poland and Russia, and wondered if Glantz’s cell was on the third floor of the Gestapo-run Alex.
“He’s confessed to the murder,” Grimm added, prompting Bora to flip quickly through the sheets. “A signed confession is a signed confession. You may see for yourself what motive and details he gave.”
Bora glanced up from the paper.
“Did he confess before or after breaking his jaw?”
“As far as I know, he was injured when he struck the floor of the cell. He signed his confession half an hour earlier. The fact is that the Gestapo has him now. The chief is trying to have him released back to us. He’s confessed, and he’s ours.”
It could make only so much difference, Bora thought. The document, typewritten by a clerk and signed by the prisoner’s own hand, covered four numbered pages. Bora placed it on the table and read. It detailed the reasons behind Glantz’s plan to murder Niemeyer: personal bitterness, economic loss, damage to his professional image, profound stress; it tried to justify his act by insisting that Niemeyer was actually Jewish and for years had swindled the German public on that account. The publisher gave direct evidence of the fact: during an outing in the country in 1942, after a stop in a beer hall, both he and Niemeyer had heeded a physical urge; in the bushes, “without malice of any sort”, Glantz’s eye had fallen on the part of Niemeyer’s anatomy that “showed evidence of circumcision”. Niemeyer’s response had been to turn away immediately, but, as Glantz declared, “I saw what I saw.”
Three of the four pages contained a venomous list of the Prophet’s offences against him. From the last paragraph of the third page onwards, there followed a concise but credible reconstruction of the actual murder. Bora caught details: the back door unlocked – the disassembled rifle previously concealed in the shrubs – wiping off fingerprints from barrels and stock … Glantz showed familiarity with the villa and with Niemeyer’s habits, but showed no repentance.
While Bora read, the flight lieutenant returned to the hall; with a muttered apology to no one in particular he retrieved his sunglasses from the table and left again. Grimm crabbily looked after him as he left.
“It boggles the mind that Niemeyer got himself snipped after being shamed by real Yids,” he commented. “Have you heard about Kupinsky, Colonel?”
Bora took the briefcase from the chair on the other side of the table and placed Glantz’s papers inside it.
“No.” He spoke with the cigarette in his mouth. “Is there any news?”
“He’s missing again. On Friday, when the local policeman went to check on him as a matter of routine, his clothes and personal items had gone. At dawn a pair of shoes, one worn in a peculiar way along the sole, turned up at the foot of the Warsaw Bridge. They might belong to the queer.”
So that was why the Gestapo had come asking about Kupinsky. Preceding Grimm out of the hall, Bora kept dragging on the cigarette to keep the nausea down. He said, “The drowned eventually surface on the bank by the Treptow observatory, don’t they?”
He sounded callous, but in fact he doubted that Kupinsky had killed himself. He was hiding somewhere, and as far as Bora was concerned, it was a good thing.
“Let’s go to Glantz’s place, Inspector.”
STENDALER STRASSE, MOABIT
A hurricane seemed to have gone through the house. Even Grimm looked mystified as he ran his eyes around: not one piece of furniture, not one object still stood in its place. It was an upper-middle-class interior, once quite luxurious. Many furnishings were clearly missing: no doubt scavengers had rushed in to loot the place after the couple’s arrest. The disappearance of hunting trophies from the walls (only the brackets remained) made little sense: what could Berliners do with stuffed animals these days? Only sell them – if they found a buyer, who in turn could do nothing with them. More understandable was the removal of the bed sheets and table linen, whose handwritten labels remained on the depleted shelves.
Echoes of the devastation in Grandfather Franz-August’s flat, and Reinhardt-Thoma’s clinic. Bora had seen enough. Head down, he moved aside this or that fragment on the floor with the tip of his boot.
“Husband and wife ended up on the third floor because of the Drilling rifle,” Grimm said, as if expecting the question from Bora. “But he owned up to the murder before the transfer.”
“What else did he say about the Drilling, other than that it belonged to his brother-in-law?”
“He said, as he’d told us, that he killed Niemeyer with it.”
Yes, maybe. Or rather, yes, of course. Unless owning up to a crime he had not committed was his desperate way to avoid more violence. Or a transfer to the Gestapo, for a political crime. Bora told himself he had to ask Nebe, if he ever found the head of the Kripo at his desk. No guarantee he’d receive an answer, however.
“Case closed, then.”
“Looks that way, Colonel. But we need Glantz back in our custody.” With his heavy footsteps, Grimm walked in and out of rooms, trailing the odour of the iodine used to medicate his scalp. “Are we looking for something in particular?”
Bora swept up a photo of a mild-looking, hefty woman from the floor; she was the physical counterpart of her husband. “What about Glantz’s wife?” In the fur coat of the portrait, she resembled a she-bear emerging from a winter sleep.
“They would have hauled her to the third floor even if he hadn’t admitted the murder. They’ve moved her to the women’s prison on Barnimstrasse awaiting trial. After all, the rifle belonged to her brother, and she let her husband keep it at home.” At the foot of a built-in cupboard lay scattered brochures announcing the upcoming publication of the Encyclopaedia of Myth “by the eminent Dr Prof. Magnus Magnusson”. Bora retrieved one and read its grandiloquent text. Had Niemeyer maliciously taken advantage of his publisher, getting money for a job he never meant to carry out, or had he simply promised what he could not deliver? Compiling an encyclopaedia all by himself! How could Glantz have fallen for it? Max Kolowrat spoke of members of the magician’s audience being subjugated to the extent of making themselves ridiculous. But it’s one thing to mesmerize someone during a show, and another to swindle a professional publisher over many months, if not years. Glantz could have killed him. And no, they were looking for nothing in particular.
“I’m curious to hear what you think about all this, Inspector.”
“It depends on whether we get him back and on the judge assigned to his trial,” Grimm commented meaningfully. “In the case of murder, a death sentence is a foregone conclusion. Otherwise, if they find extenuating circumstances, though I don’t see how, it’s labour camp for life. Which is always better than having his head lopped off.”
Was it? According to some reports, there were labour camps where a prisoner survived an average of only two months. The war, however badly things were going, would last longer than two months. Bora wouldn’t give a penny for the lives of the Glantzes.
“You asked what I think. The book-man could have killed Niemeyer, that’s what I think.” Grimm brooded, straddling the wreckage. “By his own admission, he carried the Drilling piecemeal to the victim’s property, and we saw by the way he packaged it that he knew how to disassemble a rifle. Says he found the back door open. It is possible; we found no evidence of a lock being forced. At the beginning, he said he learned through the grapevine that there was shooting involved, a detail we never made public. Perhaps he knew, simply because he is the murderer. Didn’t he try to hang himself when we came on the scene?”
“A culprit would have destroyed the rifle instead of shipping it to himself poste restante.”
“Not necessarily. Believe you me, Colonel, murderers have a thousand reasons not to make a clean br
east of it until they get pummelled, hardened criminals and cowards who pulled the trigger on an impulse alike. Here we have someone who talked before they roughed him up on the third floor, which is what they’re doing with the watchmaker. Oh, yes … It did Eppner no good running his mouth off about being a lieutenant in the Foot Guards. He violated several laws by hiding a pistol in his toilet and keeping a Russian servant at home.”
Bora stared at Grimm’s tie, a maelstrom of violet, purple and lilac, with spots of bright orange and magenta.
“How long has Eppner been in?”
“Since Tuesday last, the eleventh.”
“Why didn’t you inform me?”
“His violations have nothing to do with this case. Besides, if Eppner invents a plausible excuse for the pistol and the Russian, and finds a good lawyer, he might get away with a few years in a labour camp.”
“Let me guess. He is not by any chance being transferred to a camp …”
“He wasn’t until yesterday.”
In the car, as they headed south, Bora tried to make sense of the latest developments. Tedious Gestapo interference could be the reason why Nebe had saddled an outsider with the case; Niemeyer’s political connections, especially in the past, warranted that sort of attention. If so, a professional investigator would find himself in a bind. A soldier in that role might defuse the conflict between the two institutions. Or not. Why do I go on searching for other leads and suspects, Kugler included, when there’s already someone in jail who has confessed to the murder?
Out loud, he only said, “A convenient arrangement is not what General Nebe expects.”
“Meaning what, Colonel?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Bora rolled down the window. The morning light rained from a sky so clear and sparkling, enemy bombers would be foolish not to take advantage of it. The electric lines and telephone and telegraph exchanges that were still functioning were merely waiting for the next raid. The moment he allowed his concentration to stray from the criminal case, a foreboding of what this day may bring was like a hand around his throat. It might be only his impression, but there seemed to be less evidence of police at street corners; if true, it was something that he didn’t know how to read. Or didn’t want to.
“That former colleague of yours, Inspector, the dead investigator – what can you tell me about him?”
In this once Red quarter of workers’ housing, they were driving down a short street renamed after Herbert Norkus, the young Party saint whose martyrdom had taken place nearly twelve years earlier. The question was appropriate to the neighbourhood.
Grimm glanced at him. “Kugler? Not much. We weren’t serving in the same department when he was injured and retired. You know how it is with pals you knew when you were young. In recent days, we’ve had no reason to look each other up.”
“But you associated with each other during the Republic.”
“You’re damn right, Colonel. Those were the days. He was a tough one, Gustl. See the bruises I got on my head in the air raid? That’s nothing! He and I got our skulls bashed in every other week, and you can be sure we reciprocated, with interest. I had some five stone less on me then.”
“Well, it was a logical next step, then, for both of you to enter the police, keeping order …”
“Yes, but I wasn’t cut out for the Sittenpolizei, the vice squad,” Grimm said, unbuttoning his coat and removing his badge, as he always did when he didn’t need to display it. When he’d put it away in the glove compartment, he reached for his Trommler cigarettes. There were none left, so he crushed the pack in his hand and grunted a “thank you” when Bora handed him his Chesterfields.
“American stuff?”
“American stuff.”
Grimm pinched the artificial silk of his tie. “I favour some American stuff, too, from the old days.”
In the small park coming up on their left, called Norkusplatz these days, girls were watering a rich crop of vegetables, presumably blessed – like a working-class version of the Gardens of Adonis – by the boy’s blood.
“The vice squad, that’s where Kugler served for some five years.” Grimm blew cigarette smoke as he spoke. “He had the stomach to deal with whores and pimps every day, and all of it without being on the take. Say, Colonel, are you really curious about all this? You must have been a whippersnapper then.”
Bora chose not to take the comment as a reminder that he hadn’t helped build the new Reich.
“Definitely. A whippersnapper in Leipzig.” His eyes lingered on the gardening girls, and the liquid, silvery tongues that rained from the watering cans. “Back in Saxony, it was not unusual in those days for police officers to moonlight, the pay being low.”
“The pay is still low. But it depends on what you mean by ‘moonlighting’. Gustav Kugler took no money to look the other way, and neither did I.”
“No offence meant, Inspector.”
“None taken. Just so that you know.”
It matched what Bora had heard from Kolowrat thus far. They were crossing the Old Moabit boulevard now, heading for the Spree’s curvy bank. It’s easy for me to pass judgement, not having lived through those troubled times.
“The worst thing,” Grimm continued, “is that he leaves a widow and three children. If she’s the same girl he was dating then, she’s no brain either.”
Bora sympathized. The question of moonlighting, however one understood the term, remained unanswered, but he did not insist.
“Where can I buy some aspirin?” he asked instead, a request his visible injury justified.
Grimm indicated a pharmacy at the next street corner, where they stopped. Returning to the car minutes later, Bora noticed across the street a small tavern of the type Norkus had known, identified by number rather than name, and suggested they go and have a drink there.
Soon they were sitting in a sun-baked court at the back, under a canvas awning camouflaged with hand-painted blotches of grey and brown.
Over water and beer, respectively, Bora extracted more nostalgia about the revolution from the policeman, although Kugler’s name was not mentioned again.
“After the Great War, my stepfather headed a Freikorps in Saxony,” he contributed to the conversation. “Nothing like the Berlin street fights, but still …”
Grimm agreed, but remained tight-lipped about the details. Bora was restless. This oaf was a thorough Party minion; he wouldn’t get anything out of him that he meant to keep to himself. It seemed ages already since he’d vainly sought Salomon at the hospital, ages since he’d heard from Stauffenberg what he’d rather not have heard.
He returned to the safer subject of Glantz’s and Eppner’s detention. One relevant titbit he ferreted out was that a minor wrangle over Frau Glantz’s captivity had occurred between the Gestapo and the Criminal Police, the latter being resentful of political interference in a case of murder.
“See, Colonel, the Niemeyer case is within our purview.”
Bora, who was toying with the rectangular tin of aspirin on the oilskin tablecloth, readily agreed. “They asked me about Berthold Kupinsky at breakfast.”
“So that’s what it was about.”
“Yes. I couldn’t have added anything about Kupinsky if I’d wanted to.” Bora deftly balanced the grey tin on its narrow end. “Why ask me about him?”
“The Niemeyer case is within out purview.”
“Precisely. I see no reason why the secret police should develop an interest in it.” There were moments when Bora pretended awkwardness, and others when he let it be known how adroit he really was, his injury notwithstanding. With his thumbnail, and without upsetting the balance of the tin, he tore the paper band with which it was sealed. “As a matter of institutional correctness, I will report this morning’s conversation to the Chief.”
Grimm watched Bora tap the tin flat on its back, flip it open, fish out two tablets and swallow them with a sip of water. “It’s the right thing to do, Colonel.”
When a ra
re breath of wind entered the courtyard, the canvas awning overhead heaved like a sail. Bora looked up. “Especially considering that I should be with my regiment right now, instead of doing my own brand of moonlighting in Berlin.”
The large mug Grimm had in front of him was empty but for a frothy residue. It’d take five more at least before he loosened up, so if he now hung his beefy head, it was for a different reason. The gauze on his scalp, brown with iodine, sat among scars Bora had never noticed before. Some had been stitched up, others left to heal as best they could.
Grimm slowly said, staring up at him with his small, slanting eyes, “I don’t know how it was for you in Russia, Colonel —”
“For me it was Stalingrad,” Bora drily interjected.
“For us, it came down to sweeping the place clean of Reds and Jews, in front or behind your swanky divisions.”
Even a “yes” would be saying too much. Bora refrained from any sign of acknowledgement.
Grimm squinted. “Am I proud of it? No. Am I ashamed of it? Even less. It had to be done. We killed hundreds at a time, of all ages and sizes. Hundreds? Thousands. Stark naked all, sweaty or shivering or pissing themselves.” With his chin, he pointed at Bora’s gloved prosthesis. “Let me ask you: what did you feel when your hand was blown off?”
“I don’t remember. I usually say I felt nothing.”
“See? And I felt nothing. After the first week, that’s how it was. Kill, move on. Routine. What the fuck, it makes you wonder.” He tutted. “At times I’d go rummaging through the heaps of their flea-ridden rags to see if I could feel something. Nothing. Nothing. It’s odd, isn’t it? Useful but odd.”
A tilt of the head, and he disposed of the last beer suds. “Why did you ask about Kugler? His moonlighting days were long behind him.”
Afterwards, Grimm didn’t ask where they should go, and Bora didn’t tell him. They drove silently until the next checkpoint, where a tram accident required a detour. So they went back to Old Moabit, past St John’s cemetery, and they had to wait there too. Grimm kept out of the sun behind the wheel, while Bora stepped out. He needed to move, to give himself, by walking around, the illusion that he was drawing close to a solution. Things – murder included – might be simpler than he was making them. His Abwehr training might be getting in the way of accepting the confession of a man who had both motive and opportunity to kill Niemeyer.