Prague Fatale

by Philip Kerr

  ‘That’s nice. What was the tune?’

  ‘“Don’t say Goodbye, only say Adieu”.’

  ‘Zarah Leander. I like that one.’

  ‘He even hummed it for me to make sure I knew it. I had to ask the man for a light and then his name and if he said it was Paul I was to give him the envelope and walk away. Well, I could tell there was something peculiar about all this, so I asked him what was in the envelope and he said it was best I didn’t know, which didn’t make me feel any better about doing it. But then he put five pictures of Albrecht Dürer on the table and assured me that it would be the easiest hundred marks I’d ever earned. Especially in the blackout. Anyway I agreed. A hundred marks is a hundred marks.’

  ‘Mmm-hmm.’

  ‘So I rode the S-Bahn one stop east to Nolli and waited under the station just like Gustav had told me to do. I was early. And I was scared, but the five Alberts felt good inside my stocking top. I had time to think. Too much time, perhaps, because I got greedy. That’s a bad habit of mine.’

  ‘You and the Austrian corporal.’

  ‘I kept on thinking that if I had been given a hundred from Gustav for showing up with an envelope then I might make at least another ten or twenty from Paul for handing it over. And when eventually he turned up that’s what I suggested. But Paul didn’t like that and started to get rough with me. He searched my coat pockets for the envelope. And my bag. He even searched my underwear. Took my hundred marks. And that’s when you showed up, Parsifal. You see he wasn’t trying to rape me. He was only trying to find his damned envelope.’

  ‘Where was it? The envelope?’

  ‘I didn’t have it on me when I tried to brolly him. Well, that would have been foolish. I’d already hidden it in some bushes near the taxi rank.’

  ‘That was clever.’

  ‘I thought so, too. Right up until the moment he punched me.’

  ‘Where is it now?’

  ‘The envelope? When I went back the next day to look for it, the envelope was gone.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  She shrugged. ‘Now I really don’t know what to do. I’m scared to go to the cops and tell them. Naturally I’m worried about what was in that envelope. I’m worried that I’ve landed myself in the middle of something dangerous.’ She closed her eyes. ‘It seemed so easy when we were in the Romanisches Café. Just hand it over in the blackout and walk away. If only I’d done that.’

  ‘This Gustav. Have you seen him in here since?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Does anyone else know him?’

  ‘No. It turns out that Magda thought his name was Josef, and that’s all she remembers. Am I in trouble, Parsifal?’

  ‘You might be. If you went to the police and told them about this, yes, I think you would be.’

  ‘So you don’t think I should tell them.’

  ‘With a story like yours, Arianne, the police – the real police – are the least of your worries. There’s the Gestapo to consider.’

  She sighed. ‘I thought as much.’

  ‘Have you told your story to anyone else?’

  ‘God, no.’

  ‘Then don’t. It simply never happened. You never met anyone called Gustav or Josef in this place. And no one ever asked you to be a cut-out for them at the S-Bahn on Nollendorf Platz.’

  ‘A cut-out?’

  ‘That’s what you call it when someone wants to give something to someone else without actually meeting them. But that’s all right, too, because there was no something. No envelope. You don’t even have a hundred marks to show for it, right?’

  She nodded.

  I sipped the beer and wondered how it and the cigarette could taste so good and how much truth there was in what Arianne Tauber had told me. It was just about possible that Franz Koci had taken a hundred marks out of her underwear, although he’d been carrying only half as much when the cops had found him in Kleist Park. Of course, they could easily have helped themselves to half his cash. And it was just about possible that some Foreign Office type who had an envelope for a Three Kings agent might have been spooked off a meeting and subcontracted the job to a money-hungry girl from the Jockey Bar. Stranger things had happened.

  ‘But I have a question for you, angel. Why are you telling me all this?’

  ‘In case you didn’t know, Parsifal’s not exactly a common name around here.’ She bit her thumbnail. ‘Look, in spite of what I told you, about getting all that perfume, I’m not the most popular girl around town. There are a lot of people who don’t like me very much.’

  ‘Sounds like we have a lot in common, angel.’

  She let that one go. She was too busy talking about herself. That was good, too. To me she looked like a more interesting subject than I was.

  ‘Oh, sure, I’m attractive to look at. I know that. And there are a lot of men who want me to give them what men usually want women to give them but, beyond a cigarette and a drink and a tip, and maybe the odd present or two, I don’t want anything from anyone. You should know that about me. Maybe you’ve worked that out already. You seem bright enough. But what I’m trying to say is that I don’t have many friends and certainly none that are possessed of what you might call wisdom and maturity. Otto – Otto Schulze – the Fritz who runs this place, I couldn’t tell him. I can’t tell him anything. He’d tell the Gestapo, for sure. Otto likes to keep in with the Gestapo. I’m almost certain he pays them off with information: Magda, too, I think. And you’ve met Frau Lippert. So there’s no one else, see? My mother is old and lives in Dresden. My brother is on active service. But frankly he wouldn’t know what to say or do. He’s my younger brother and he looks to me for advice. But you, Parsifal. You strike me as the type who always knows what to say or do. So, if you’re interested, there’s a part-time job going as my special counsel. It doesn’t pay very much but maybe you can think of me as someone who is in your debt.’

  ‘Suddenly I feel every one of my forty-three years,’ I said.

  ‘That’s not so old. Not these days. Just look around, Parsifal. Where are the young men? There aren’t any. Not in Berlin. I can’t remember the last time I spoke to someone less than thirty. Anyone my age is on active service or in a concentration camp. Youth is no longer wasted on the young because it’s wasted on the war instead.’ She winced. ‘Forget I said that. I shouldn’t have said that. They’re fighting for their country, aren’t they?’

  ‘They’re fighting for someone else’s country,’ I said. ‘That’s the problem.’

  Arianne looked sly for a moment, as if she’d outsmarted me in a game of cards. ‘It’s not healthy putting your head under a falling axe, Parsifal. You could get into trouble.’

  ‘I don’t mind a little trouble, when it looks like you, angel.’

  ‘That’s what you say now. But you haven’t seen me throwing crockery.’

  ‘Volatile, huh?’

  ‘Like my boiling point was on the moon.’

  ‘Smart, too. I’m not sure I’m qualified to be your special counsel, Fräulein Tauber. I don’t know the boiling point on the moon from my own shoe-size.’

  She glanced down at my feet. ‘I’ll bet you’re a forty-six, right?’

  ‘Mmm-hmm.’

  ‘Then, for a lot of liquids with higher vapour pressures, the boiling point and your shoe-size are probably the same.’

  ‘If that’s true then I’m impressed.’

  ‘Before the war I was a chemistry student.’

  ‘Why did you stop?’

  ‘Lack of money. Lack of opportunity. The Nazis like educated women almost as little as they like educated Jews. They prefer us to stay home polishing the hearth and stirring the pot.’

  ‘Not me.’

  She tugged my wrist toward her and checked the time on my watch. ‘I have to go back to the cloakroom in a minute.’

  ‘I could wait but I might need to telephone the Reichs-bank to arrange a loan.’

  ‘It might be worth it, Parsifal. I finish at two. You could walk me
home if you like. Better still you could drive me, if you have a car.’

  ‘I have a car. I just don’t have any petrol. And I’ll gladly walk you home. But I don’t think Frau Lippert would approve, do you?’

  ‘I said you could walk me home, not up the stairs. But if ever you did walk me up the stairs it’s actually none of her business. And she knows that, too. The other night, she was just mouthing off. If I hadn’t had that sock on the jaw I might have told her to shut up and mind her own business and she would have done. Up to a point. There’s nothing in our agreement that says I can’t have gentlemen friends in my room for a little quiet conversation. It’s hard to hear everything you say in a place like this. You need to speak up. I’m a little deaf.’

  ‘Now you tell me.’

  ‘That’s because last year I was near Kottbusser Strasse when a tame Tommy went off.’

  A tame Tommy was what Berliners called an unexploded bomb.

  ‘It blew me through the air. Fortunately I landed in some bushes that broke my fall. But, for a few glorious moments, I thought I was dead.’

  ‘Why glorious?’

  ‘Haven’t you ever wanted to be dead? I have. Sometimes life is just so much trouble. Don’t you think so?’

  I nodded. ‘Yes. I’ve wanted that, too. Quite recently as a matter of fact. I go to bed wanting to blow my brains out and wake up wondering why I didn’t do it. I guess that’s why I’m here. You make a very diverting alternative to the idea of self-slaughter.’

  ‘I’m glad about that, Parsifal. Hey, I don’t even know your name. And I should know something about you if I’m going to let you walk me home, don’t you think?’

  ‘My name is Bernhard Gunther.’

  She nodded and closed her eyes as if she was trying to visualize my name in her mind’s eye. ‘Bernhard Gunther. Hmm. Yes.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Sssh. I’m trying to connect with it. I’m a little bit psychic, you see.’

  ‘While you’re there see if you can’t get a fix on where I’ve left my Postal Savings Bank Book. There’s five hundred marks in there I’d like to get my hands on.’

  She opened her eyes. ‘That’s a solid name, Bernhard Gunther. Dependable. Honest. And wealthy with it, too. I can do a lot with five hundred marks. This is looking good. Tell me, what kind of work does Bernie Gunther do?’ She pressed her hands together in supplication. ‘No, wait. Let me guess.’

  ‘It’s better that I tell you.’

  ‘You don’t think I can’t guess? I’m certain you were in the Army. But now, I’m not sure. If you were on leave then it’s been quite a long one, hasn’t it? So maybe you were wounded. Although you don’t look like a man who was wounded. Then again maybe you got injured in the head. And that might be why you say you’re suicidal. A lot of boys are these days. I mean a lot. Only they don’t put that kind of thing in the newspapers because it’s bad for morale. Frau Lippert had another lodger who was a corporal in a police battalion and he hanged himself off a canal bridge in Moabit. He was a nice boy. You know, I might say you were a civil servant but you’re a little too muscular for that. And the suit – well, no civil servant would ever wear a suit like that.’

  ‘Arianne. Listen to me.’

  ‘You’re no fun at all, Gunther.’

  ‘I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about why I’m here.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means I’m a cop. From the Police Praesidium at Alexanderplatz.’

  The smile dried on her face like I’d poured poison in her ears. She sat there for a moment, stunned, immobile, as if a doctor had told her she had six months to live.

  I was used to her reaction and I didn’t blame her for it. There wasn’t anyone in Berlin who wasn’t deeply afraid of the police, including the police, because when you said ‘police’ everyone thought about the Gestapo and when you started to think about the Gestapo it was soon hard to think of anything else.

  ‘You could have mentioned that earlier,’ she said, stiffly. ‘Or is that how it works? You let someone talk themselves into trouble. Give them enough rope so that they can hang themselves, like my friend.’

  ‘It’s not like that at all. I’m a detective. Not Gestapo.’

  ‘What’s the difference?’

  ‘The difference is that I hate the Nazis. The difference is that I don’t care if you say Hitler is the son of Beelzebub. The difference is that if I was Gestapo you would already be in a police van and on your way to number eight.’

  ‘Number eight? What’s that?’

  ‘You’re not from Berlin, are you? Not originally.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Number eight Prinz Albrechtstrasse. Gestapo headquarters.’

  I wasn’t exaggerating. Not in the least. If Sachse and Wandel had heard even half of her story, Arianne Tauber would have been sitting in a chair with her skirt up and a hot cigarette in her panties. I knew how those bastards questioned people and I wasn’t about to condemn her to that. Not without being damned sure she was guilty. As it happened, I believed at least half of her story, and that was enough to prevent me from handing her over to the Gestapo. I thought she was probably a prostitute. An occasional one. To make ends meet a lot of single women were. You could hardly blame them for that. Any kind of a living was hard to come by in Berlin. But I didn’t think she was a spy for the Czechs. No spy would have volunteered so much to a man in a club she hardly knew well.

  ‘So, what happens now? Are you going to arrest me?’

  ‘Didn’t I already tell you to forget all about what happened? Didn’t I tell you that? There never was an envelope. And there was no Gustav.’

  She nodded silently, but still I could see she was unable to grasp what I was telling her.

  ‘Listen to me, Arianne, provided you take my advice, you’re in the clear. Well, almost. There are only three people who could possibly connect you with what happened. One of them is this fellow Gustav. And one of them is Paul. The man who attacked you. Only he’s dead.’

  ‘What? You didn’t tell me that. How?’

  ‘His body turned up in Kleist Park a day or so after that taxi hit him on Nolli. He must have crawled there in the blackout and died. The third person who knows about this is me. And I’m not about to tell anyone.’

  ‘Oh, I get it. I suppose you want to sleep with me. Before you hand me over to your pals in the Gestapo you want to have me yourself. Is that it?’

  ‘No. It’s not like that at all.’

  ‘Then what is it like? And don’t tell me it’s because you think I’m special, Parsifal. Because I won’t believe you.’

  ‘I’m going to tell you why, angel. But not here. Not now. Until then you think about everything I’ve said and then ask yourself why I said it. I’ll be waiting outside at two. I can still walk you home if you want. Or you can walk home by yourself and I give you my word you won’t be woken up at five a.m. by men in leather coats. You won’t ever see me again. All right?’

  CHAPTER 6

  I went back to the Alex for a while and sat at my desk and wondered if there might be a way of finding Gustav without involving Arianne Tauber. She and only she could have identified him and, for that reason alone, it seemed unlikely that he would ever go back to the Jockey and risk seeing her again. Especially if he was what it seemed he was – almost certainly a spy. More than likely he’d lost his nerve about meeting his Czech contact on Nolli. Possibly, he thought he was already being shadowed by the Gestapo, but if they had been tailing him, then surely they’d have picked her up when she met Gustav at the Romanisches Café. If he was under surveillance then the Gestapo would never have risked allowing him to pass information to her. It seemed more likely that Gustav had lost his nerve. In which case, who better than a joy-lady to deliver something to his Czech contact? Most of the prostitutes I’d ever known were resourceful, courageous, and, above all, greedy. For a hundred marks there wasn’t a silk in Berlin who wouldn’t have agreed to what Gus
tav had asked. Handing over an envelope in the dark was a lot easier and quicker and, on the face of it, safer than sucking someone’s pipe.