by Philip Kerr
‘I don’t know. That Frenchman, Dr Costedoat, looks pretty tempting to me.’
Von Gersdorff laughed. ‘Yes, a German never needs much encouragement to shoot a Frenchman. So what are you going to do? Have it out with her? Pistol-whip a confession from her before the day is through? You are welcome to borrow my spotlight.’
‘I’m not sure.’ I shrugged. ‘It’s still a hell of a shot with a broom-handle – to shoot at me and aim to miss. That bullet missed me by only a few centimetres.’
‘Yes, I do see what you mean,’ he said. ‘I think.’
‘What I mean is, it could so very easily have hit me after all. That’s the bit I find hardest to understand – if it was her who shot Berruguete.’
‘She likes you too much to risk killing you, is that it?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Maybe she’s an even better shot than you think.’
‘I thought you were on her side.’
‘I am on her side. I just enjoy watching you entertain the notion that someone you clearly like a lot was perhaps prepared to kill you in pursuit of her revenge.’
‘Yes, it sounds very amusing when you put it like that. I wonder that you don’t have the score to read while you’re enjoying the show. Just so you can keep a couple of bars ahead of what’s happening.’
‘That’s what a good intelligence officer would do.’
‘Mmm hmm. You know I read scores, too, colonel. They’re not leather-bound and printed by Bernhard Schott, and I don’t think you’d find them very amusing, but they do keep me entertained. The one on my lap right now is an opera with not just one murder but several. It’s even possible they’re all connected by the same leitmotif, only my ear isn’t sufficiently skilled to pick out what that is yet. I’m tone-deaf, you see.’
‘Remind me. About the other murders.’
‘The two signallers, Ribe and Greiss; Dr Batov and his daughter; and now Dr Berruguete.’
‘Let’s not forget the murder of poor Martin Quidde. We do at least know who killed him.’
‘Yes, we do. And you know, I’m getting kind of tired hearing you mention it, since I had the stupid idea I killed him to keep your chestnuts out of the horse’s nosebag. Yours and half the general staff in Smolensk.’
‘Don’t think I’m not grateful. I am. So is General von Tresckow. Or weren’t you listening?’
‘Maybe I don’t hear so good after I’ve been shot at.’
‘But those others. You can’t possibly think Dr Kramsta killed them, too?’
‘No, of course I don’t. On account of the fact that she wasn’t even here when those other murders took place. I’m just reminding myself that I’m not much of a detective, since no one has yet been apprehended for any of them. Which may actually be the best reason I can think of to persuade me that Dr Kramsta is innocent after all.’
‘Yes, you’re right. So far you make a much more effective murderer than anything else you’ve been tasked with.’
‘I wish I could pay you the same compliment, colonel.’
*
I rose early and made my way to the mess. Breakfast was always the best meal of the day at Krasny Bor. There was coffee – real coffee, Von Kluge wouldn’t have tolerated anything less – cheese, rye-wheat and whole-grain breads, salted butter, cinnamon rolls, coffee cake, and naturally plenty of wurst. Life was very different for enlisted men, of course, and nobody at group HQ asked too many questions about what they had for breakfast; nobody asked too many questions about the wurst either, and it was generally held that it was horsemeat, but there were also tins of real Löwensenf from Düsseldorf on the table to make your sausage taste more like the kind of real pork sausage you ate at home. The schnapps decanter was always left conspicuously on the table for those who liked to start the day with nothing more than an extra brick in the wall. Generally speaking, I went for everything – including the schnapps – as I had little time for lunch and even less time for the coffee and apple cake that would magically appear in the mess at around four o’clock. Some German officers actually managed to put on weight while they were in Smolensk; unlike the people of Smolensk, of course – not to mention our POWs: there was no chance of any of them putting on weight.
In spite of my late night I was up before any of the international commission had arrived in the mess. So was the field marshal, and as soon as he saw me, Von Kluge came to my table, kicked a chair out impatiently, and sat down. His granite-grey face was a study of snarling fury, like a gargoyle on an old German church.
‘I understand from Colonel Ahrens that it was you who thought fit to batter my man Dyakov over the head with a truncheon last night,’ he said through clenched yellow teeth. It was clear he would have bitten me if he had not been an officer and a gentleman.
‘Sir, with respect, he was drunk and he was shooting at people,’ I said.
‘Rubbish. I might have understood your actions, Gunther, if he’d been on a tram, or in a crowded building. But no – he was in the middle of a fucking forest. At night. I should have thought everyone with a brain in his head would have realized he was well out of harm’s way. It seems to me that the only people he was in danger of shooting were a few thousand of your beloved dead Polacks.’
Suddenly they were my dead Polacks.
‘That’s not how it seemed at the time, sir. General von Tresckow asked me to assist his adjutant and—’
‘Was anyone injured? No, of course they weren’t. But like some stupid, heavy-handed Berlin goon, you had to crack his skull. Probably enjoyed it, too. That’s the reputation of the Berlin police, isn’t it? Crack skulls, ask questions later? You should have left him alone to sleep it off. You should have waited until the morning. By now he’d have been quite manageable instead of fucking insensible.’
‘Yes sir.’
‘I just had a call from the hospital. He’s still unconscious. And there’s a lump on his head that’s the size of your fucking brain.’
Von Kluge leaned forward and extended a long thin forefinger toward the centre of my face. There was a slight smell of alcohol on his breath and I wondered if he’d already had a nip from the schnapps decanter. I knew that as soon as he was gone I was going to have one myself – there are better starts to a man’s day than being chewed out by an irate field marshal.
‘I tell you this, my blue-eyed Nazi friend. You had better fucking pray that my man recovers. If Alok Dyakov dies, I’ll court-martial you and then I’ll tie a rope under your ear myself. D’you hear? I’ll hang you for murder. Just like I hanged those two bastards from the Third Panzer Grenadiers. And don’t think I can’t. You’re a long way from the protection of the RSHA and the so-called Ministry of Enlightenment now. I run the show down here in Smolensk, not Goebbels or anyone else. I’m in command here.’
‘Yes sir.’
‘Arse.’
He stood up abruptly, knocking over the chair he had been sitting on, turned, kicked it out of his way and stomped out of the mess leaving me in need of some clean underwear. I’d suffered a verbal barrage before, only none quite as public or perhaps as threatening, and Von Kluge was right about one thing: I was a long way from the relative safety of Berlin. A German field marshal – especially one whose loyalty had been expensively bought by Hitler – could do more or less what he liked with a whole army at his back.
Not that the ministry looked like it would be of much help to me anyway, as soon after the field marshal had left, an orderly presented me with a teletype message from State Secretary Otto Dietrich at the ministry informing me that if the international commission left Smolensk before completing its work, then neither Sloventzik nor myself should even bother coming home. It was – the message informed me – our joint responsibility to make sure the death of Dr Berruguete remained a secret, at all costs. I tossed a second glass of schnapps at the back of my head, since it seemed unlikely that I could feel any worse than I did right then.
‘It’s a little early for that, isn’t it?’
Ines Kramsta was standing behind me with a cup of coffee, a cinnamon roll and a cigarette. She was wearing the same combination of trousers, blouse and jacket she’d been wearing the previous night, but she still looked better than most women.
‘That all depends on whether I went to bed or not.’
‘Did you?’
‘Yes, eventually; but I couldn’t sleep. I had too much to think about.’ I took the cigarette from her mouth and puffed at it for a second while ushering her to a spare table. We sat down.
‘I’m quite sure schnapps won’t help you think any better than you can manage normally.’
‘Well, that’s the whole point of it. Too much thinking is bad for me. I get ideas when I’m thinking. Crazy ideas like I know what I’m doing down here.’
‘Would some of those crazy ideas include me?’
‘After last night? They just might. Then again that’s hardly a surprise. It seems you’re a woman of many parts.’
‘I had formed the impression that there was only one part that really interested you. Are you sulking because I didn’t let you sleep with me last night?’
‘No. It’s just that even as I think I might be getting to know you I find I don’t know you at all.’
‘Do you think it’s because I’m smarter than you?’
‘It’s that or everything I’ve discovered about you, doctor.’
She didn’t flinch. I had to hand it to her, if she had killed Dr Berruguete she was a cool one.
‘Oh? Like what, for instance?’
‘For one thing I found out that you and Colonel Rudolf Freiherr von Gersdorff are related.’
Ines frowned. ‘I could have told you that.’
‘Yes, and I wonder why you didn’t when you suggested I should arrest him for Dr Berruguete’s murder. That was very cute of you.’ I stubbed out the cigarette in an ashtray before quietly pocketing the stub.
She smiled a sly smile and then stopped it up with the cinnamon roll. It certainly didn’t stop her from being cute – not in my eyes.
‘We’re not exactly close, Rudolf and me. Not any more.’
‘He told me that himself.’
‘What else did he tell you?’
‘That you used to be a communist.’
‘That kind of thing is called history, Gunther. It’s a favourite subject for Germans. Especially rather backward Prussians like Rudolf.’
I sighed. ‘Family feud, huh?’
‘Not really. Tolstoy says that every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. But it’s simply not true. With any family it’s always the same reasons that cause trouble for everyone: politics, money, sex. That’s how it was for us. I think that’s how it is for everyone.’
I sighed. ‘I don’t think any of those cover the kind of trouble I’m in right now.’
‘Your trouble is that you persist in seeing yourself as an individual in a systematized collectivist world. Trouble is what defines you, Gunther. Without trouble you have no meaning. You might think about that sometime.’
‘It will be a real comfort to me when I’m hanged to know that I really didn’t have any choice but to do what I did.’
‘You really are in trouble, aren’t you?’ She touched my arm solicitously. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘The field marshal tells me he’s going to hang me if his Russian Putzer dies.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘He means it.’
‘But what’s that got to do with you?’
‘After you went to bed I tried to knock some sense into the fellow. He was drunk and threatening to shoot people. German people.’
‘And you knocked a little too hard, is that it?’
‘You understand everything, doctor.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘In the state hospital. Unconscious. Maybe worse than that. I’m not so sure there’s anyone there who knows the difference anymore.’
‘Is that where they took Berruguete’s body last night?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then why don’t we look in on him before I carry out the autopsy?’
‘Professor Buhtz can spare you?’
‘Autopsies are a bit like making love, Gunther. Sometimes there’s no need to make a meal of it.’
I smiled at her candour. ‘Well then, bon appétit, doctor.’
‘I’ll get my bag.’
*
At the SSMA we found Alok Dyakov in a busy ward full of Russians in which the beds were only a few centimetres apart; unlike German wards in the hospital this one was noisy and understaffed. Wearing a threadbare white gown which had the effect of making him seem abnormally clean, and with a bandage on his head, Dyakov was sitting up in bed, largely recovered and full of penitence for his behaviour of the previous night. The ward nurse turned out to be Tanya. She met my eyes warily a couple of times while she had a brief conversation with Ines and then left the three of us alone. I didn’t say anything to either of them about what I knew of Tanya’s past – now that I’d seen the conditions she was working in I was almost sorry that I’d helped Lieutenant Voss to put an end to her other source of income.
‘Sir,’ said Dyakov, grasping my hand – he would have kissed it I think if I hadn’t pulled it away, ‘I am very sorry for what happened last night. I am a stupid pyanitsa.’
‘Don’t apologize,’ I said. ‘It was me who hit you.’
‘Was it? I don’t remember. I don’t remember nothing. Ya se bye protiven.’ Instinctively he touched the side of his skull carefully and winced. ‘You hit me pretty good, sir. Bashka bolit. I don’t know which gives me the biggest headache now. The vodka or whatever you hit me with. But I deserved it. And thank you, sir. Thank you very much.’
‘For what?’
‘For not shooting me, of course.’ He pulled a face. ‘Red Army, NKVD, they would have shot drunken man with gun for sure, sir. No hesitation. I make sure it won’t happen again. I apologize for making so much trouble. I will tell this to Colonel Ahrens, too.’
‘Marusya,’ I said. ‘The kitchen maid at the castle. She was worried about you, Dyakov. And so was the field marshal.’
‘Yes? The field marshal, too? Pizdato. He will give me my job back? As his Putzer? There’s hope for me?’
‘I’d say there’s a very good chance, yes.’
Dyakov breathed a loud sigh of relief that made me glad I wasn’t about to light a cigarette. Then he laughed, loudly. ‘Then I am very lucky fellow.’
‘This is Dr Kramsta,’ I told him. ‘She’s going to take a look at you and see that you’re all right.’
‘Really, he should have a radiograph,’ she murmured. ‘The machine is working all right, but according to the nurse there are no plates to make an image on.’
‘Head as hard as that?’ I grinned. ‘I doubt a radiograph would get through the bone.’
Dyakov thought that was funny. ‘Dyakov – he’s not so easy to kill, eh?’
Ines sat down on the edge of Dyakov’s bed and inspected his skull and then his eyes, ears and nose before testing his reflexes and then pronouncing him to be in no immediate danger.
‘Does that mean I can leave this place?’ asked Dyakov.
‘If it was anyone and anywhere else I’d advise them to stay in bed and rest for a few days. But here.’ She smiled thinly and glanced around as a man down the ward started to shout very loudly. ‘Yes, you can leave. I think things would be a lot more congenial for you at Krasny Bor.’
Dyakov kissed her hand, and when we left him he was still thanking us.
‘You sure he’s all right?’ I asked.
‘Are you asking as someone who’s worried about him or yourself?’
‘Myself, of course.’
‘I think your neck is safe enough for the moment,’ she told me.
‘Well, that’s a relief.’
We went down to the basement, to the hospital morgue where Dr Berruguete’s body, still fully clothed and occupying the same grimy, blood-stained stretcher that had b
een used to carry him out of the wood at Krasny Bor, was lying upon the floor. There were other bodies, too, and these were stacked on some cheap wooden shelves like so many cans of beans. When we arrived in the room, she held us quiet for a moment with a hand near my mouth.
‘Oh, my God,’ she murmured slowly.
There was a porcelain dissecting table, heavily stained and looking as if it had been recently occupied, with a length of rubber hose attached to a tap, and a drain. The room was congealed with artificial light that turned green on the cracked wall tiles and glinted on Ines Kramsta’s surgical instruments as, shaking her head, she laid them out methodically like so many cards in a lethal game of patience. The place stank like an abattoir – with each breath you felt you were inhaling something hazardous, an effect that was enhanced by the buzz of the occasional airborne insect and the humidity that you could feel underfoot.
‘They haven’t even washed the body,’ she said, dismissively. ‘What kind of a damn hospital is this, anyway?’
‘The Russian kind,’ I said. ‘The doing-its-best-in-a-war kind. The no-one-really-gives-a-damn kind. Take your pick.’
‘I thought I saw some dreadful hospitals in Spain, during the civil war,’ she said. ‘That ward upstairs was a zoo. But this – this really is the reptile house.’
‘You were in Spain?’ I asked, innocently. ‘During the civil war?’
‘It would seem that I’m going to need your help. At least to get him on the table.’ Ignoring my question, Ines put on her gown and gloves and then dabbed at her beautiful nostrils with perfume. ‘Want some?’
‘Please.’
She dabbed it on me, crossing the stuff on my forehead for the comedy of it, and then we lifted the stiff body onto the table, where in just a few seconds she cut the clothes away with a razor-sharp knife. Her sleeves were rolled up and the area between the edge of the gown and her glove revealed a muscular arm that rippled powerfully as she wielded the knife. For a moment I thought I loved her, but before I was sure, I knew I would first have to answer the question that remained at the back of my mind like an awkward collar stud. Had she killed Berruguete?