A Man Without Breath (Bernie Gunther Mystery 9)

by Philip Kerr

  ‘I take it this isn’t your first autopsy,’ she said.

  ‘No.’

  I might fairly have added that it was however my first autopsy at which the chief suspect was performing the procedure, but I was interested to see if Ines Kramsta would say anything that might reveal guilt. It wasn’t much of a plan and the whole thing made me uneasy, because it wasn’t anything other than a low trick designed to exact some sort of emotional response from a woman I admired. After all, if Berruguete was half the bastard Canaris had said he was and Ines was guilty of murdering him, then she was to be commended, not deceived into yielding a tacit admission of her own culpability. But there was little emotion to be seen on her face, and not much in her hands or in her tone.

  ‘I was in Barcelona, for a while in thirty-seven,’ she said, finally answering my earlier question. Her voice was even and uninflected and quite without expression, as if most of her concentration was directed through the knife that was scoring a pink–grey line along the centre of the dead man’s torso. ‘I spent ten months working in a clinic for the Popular Front. During which time I saw some things that will stay with me for the rest of my life. And atrocities that were committed on both sides. That cured me of politics for ever. You might tell Rudolf that the next time you’re gossiping about me.’

  ‘Why don’t you tell him yourself?’

  ‘Oh no.’ She sounded momentarily wary. ‘Too much water has flowed down the mountain since then for that to happen. We were lovers briefly. Did he tell you that?’

  ‘No. No he didn’t. Only that your brother met an unfortunate end. In Spain.’

  ‘That’s one way of describing it.’ She allowed herself a quiet smile. ‘I wouldn’t be so quick to rule him out for this if I were you. Rudi’s much more ruthless than he seems.’

  ‘Oh I know. He can be explosive. And who said I was ruling him out?’

  ‘Only that you seemed touchy about this when I mentioned it last night. Dr Berruguete was at Rudolf’s wedding you know. In 1934. Berruguete was finishing his studies in Germany and I believe he knew Renata’s family. The Kracker von Schwartzenfeldts.’

  ‘According to him, you were also at his wedding.’

  ‘True, but I didn’t invite Berruguete.’ She smiled again. ‘Small world, isn’t it?’

  ‘It would seem so.’ I paused. ‘At least that’s how it must look from up there. I imagine it’s pretty crowded on that high mountain top that you and the vons and zus are pleased to share with each other.’

  ‘It bothers you, doesn’t it? The idea of a German aristocracy.’

  ‘I imagine it must have bothered you, too. Or else why the youthful Bolshevism?’

  ‘It did. But there seems to be so much more to be bothered about now than a simple matter of inherited wealth and privilege. Wouldn’t you agree?’

  ‘Can’t argue with that. What happened to her anyway? His wife.’

  ‘Renata? God, she was a lovely woman. The loveliest woman I ever knew. She died last year, didn’t she? She was just twenty-nine, I think. I forget what it was, exactly. Complications after childbirth, perhaps, I don’t remember.’

  She worked quickly and without hesitation, revealing first of all that Berruguete had been shot twice – through the head and the heart – before digging a bullet out of his chest and, in the absence of a Petrie dish, laying it in an ashtray, but only after throwing away the ash and the spent matches. Her hands were quite steady – steady enough to have fired a broom-handle Mauser and hit what she was aiming at.

  ‘Well, that was a surprise,’ she murmured.

  ‘What was?’

  ‘I had supposed he was only shot in the head.’

  ‘Maybe not a surprise to me. I heard three shots last night. Only one of those bullets came my way.’

  ‘There’s the second gunshot wound and the fact that he even had a heart.’

  ‘You sound like you knew him. From the wedding, perhaps.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I never spoke to him. I told you. But I knew of him, of course. His reputation went before him. As I said before, he held some rather extreme views on racial hygiene. On everything probably.’ She took a closer look at the chest bullet now in her forceps. ‘Ballistics is not my thing, I’m afraid. Can’t tell if that’s from a broom-handle Mauser or not. You should give the slug to Professor Buhtz. See what he makes of it. He’s the expert on ballistics.’

  ‘So I believe.’

  ‘Probably tell you what batch of ammunition it came out of, knowing him.’

  ‘Yes. I expect so.’

  ‘One through the heart, one plumb between the eyes; whoever shot this man must have been a marksman. That Mauser they found was at least seventy-five metres from the body. Assuming he dropped it at the spot where he fired from, that’s good shooting in failing light, isn’t it?’

  ‘With the stock on? I don’t know.’

  ‘I don’t think I could have made a shot like that. Besides, the stock wasn’t on the gun when they found it.’

  ‘It wasn’t in the car either,’ I said. ‘I expect he disassembled the rig, meaning to fit the gun back inside the stock, and then panicked, dropped the gun and simply threw the stock away.’

  ‘The shooter doesn’t sound to me like the kind of person to panic. He steals the gun from Von Gersdorff’s car, and then calmly shoots Berruguete inside a secure area that is patrolled by Wehrmacht soldiers. You need a cool head to do something like that. He even manages to get off a third shot in your direction before making his escape.’

  ‘Only that one wasn’t accurate.’

  ‘That all depends, doesn’t it?’ she said. ‘On whether he was trying to hit you or not.’

  ‘Yes, good point. I didn’t think of that.’

  ‘Sure you did. It’s been scratching your ear ever since it happened.’

  Ines lifted Berruguete’s head by the hair. The plum-sized exit wound at the back of the skull was clear enough. ‘I don’t suppose there’s much point in carrying out a brain obduction,’ she said. ‘The bullet that hit him in the head is obviously gone. We’re not going to find out anything other than the fact that he was shot.’

  ‘No, I suppose not.’

  She dropped his head back onto the table with a thud as if she didn’t much care what happened to it. He was dead, of course, and it couldn’t have mattered less to Berruguete, but all the same I was used to seeing pathologists treat their cadavers with just a little more respect.

  ‘Makes a change, I suppose,’ she said.

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Everybody in Katyn Wood was shot in the back of the head, with a commensurate exit wound in the forehead. This is the other way around.’

  ‘I guess you find a novelty where you can.’

  ‘Sure,’ she said, grimly. ‘You could call it that, if you want. You know, either one of these bullets would have been enough to have killed him.’

  ‘Impossible to say which was first, I suppose. The head shot or the chest shot.’

  She shook her head. ‘Impossible. Anyway, it would seem the shooter wanted to make sure of his victim.’

  She rinsed off her rubber gloves with the length of rubber tube and peeled them off, although Berruguete’s chest cavity was still open. It looked like a small volcano had erupted out of his insides.

  ‘Isn’t it customary to put some of the liver and bacon back in and sew him up again?’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, coldly lighting a cigarette. ‘But what would be the point of that here? It’s not like his family are going to see him. There’s no way they’re ever going to send him all the way back to Spain from Smolensk. No, I should have thought they’ll box him up and bury him, don’t you? In which case, sewing him up is just a waste of my time.’

  I shrugged. ‘I suppose you’re right.’

  ‘Of course I’m right.’

  ‘All the same, it seems just a shade disrespectful. To him.’

  ‘Maybe I didn’t make it quite clear to you, Gunther, but this w
as not a good man. In fact, I’d go so far as to say this man was a monster.’

  ‘I can’t disagree with that description. Forced sterilization is about as bad as it gets.’

  ‘You could be forgiven for thinking so,’ she said. ‘But if I said that this man had republican people shot so that he could carry out autopsies to see if there was anything peculiar about their brains – what would you say to that? Would you still want me to sew him back up neatly out of respect for his cadaver?’

  ‘I think maybe I would. I’m the old-fashioned type, I suppose. I like to do things by the book if I can. You know? The proper way. The way things were done before 1933. Sometimes I think I’m the only truly honest man I know.’

  ‘I’d no idea you were quite so particular, Gunther.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true; more and more so, I think, while everyone else it seems becomes rather less so. These days I don’t even cheat at solitaire if I can help it. Last week I reported myself to the adjutant for having a second helping at dinner.’

  Ines sighed. ‘Oh, very well.’

  She tossed her cigarette onto the floor and searched her forensic wallet before producing a large curving needle that looked like it could have stitched a sail on the Kruzenstern. She threaded some suture through the eye of the needle with expert speed and held it aloft for my inspection.

  ‘Will this do?’

  I nodded my approval.

  She gathered herself over the table for a moment and then went to work, stitching Berruguete up again until he looked like an elongated football. It wasn’t the neatest work I’d seen, but at least they wouldn’t be using him for a display in the local butcher’s shop window.

  ‘You won’t ever work for a tailor,’ I said. ‘Not with stitching like that.’

  She tutted loudly. ‘I never was very good at putting in sutures. Anyway, that’s the best I can do for him I’m afraid. It’s more than he did for his victims, I can tell you.’

  ‘So I heard.’ I lit a cigarette and watched as she rinsed her gloves again and then her instruments. ‘How did you get into this business anyway?’

  ‘Forensic medicine? I told you before, didn’t I? I haven’t got the patience for all the aches and pains and imaginary ills of the living patient. I much prefer working with the dead.’

  ‘That sounds suitably cynical,’ I said. ‘I mean, for this day and age. But really, what was it? I’d like to know.’

  ‘Would you now?’

  She took the cigarette from my mouth, puffed it thoughtfully for a second and then patted my cheek.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For asking me. Because I’d almost forgotten the real reason why I started to work with the dead. And you’re right: it wasn’t for the reason I told you just now. That’s just a silly story I made up so that I could avoid telling people the truth. The thing is, I’ve repeated that lie so often I’ve almost started to believe it myself. Like a real Nazi you might say. Almost as if I was someone else entirely. And you may think what I’m going to tell you is pompous, even a little pretentious, but I mean it, every word.

  ‘The sole aim in forensic medicine is the pursuit of truth, and in case you hadn’t noticed, there’s precious little of that around in Germany these days. But especially in the medical profession, where what is true and what is right matter for very little besides what is German. Theory and opinion have no place beside the dissecting table however; no more do politics and crackpot ideas about biology and race. Forensic medicine requires only the quiet assembly of genuine scientific evidence and the construction of reasonable inferences based on honest observation, which means that it’s about the one facet of the practice of medicine that hasn’t been hijacked by the Nazis and by fascists like him.’ She flicked her ash at Berruguete’s corpse before returning the cigarette to my lips. ‘Does that answer your question?’

  I nodded. ‘Did Dr Berruguete have something to do with your brother’s death, perhaps?’

  ‘What makes you say so?’

  ‘Nothing at all other than the fact you just used him as your ashtray.’

  ‘Maybe. I can’t be sure. Ulrich and about fifty Russian members of the international brigades were captured and imprisoned in the concentration camp at San Pedro de Cardeña, a former monastery near the city of Burgos. I don’t think anyone who was not in Spain can have any real idea of the level of barbarism to which that country descended during the war. Of the cruelties that were inflicted by both sides, but more particularly by the fascists. My brother and his comrades were being used as slave labour when Berruguete – whose model incidentally was the Holy Inquisition, and who once wrote a paper arguing in favour of the castration of criminals – received permission from General Franco to pathologize left-wing ideas. Of course the military was delighted that science was being used to justify their opinion that all of the republicans were animals. So Berruguete was given a senior military rank and the prisoners, including my poor brother, were transferred to a clinic in Ciempozuelos, which was headed by another criminal called Antonio Vallejo Nágera. None of them were ever seen again, but it’s certain that’s where my brother died. And if Berruguete didn’t kill him, Vallejo did. By all accounts he was just as bad.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  She snatched the cigarette from my mouth again and this time she kept it.

  ‘So while I regret that the work of the international commission has been jeopardized, I’m not in the least bit sorry that Berruguete’s dead. There are plenty of good men and women in Spain who will cheer and give thanks to God when they hear that justice caught up with him at last. If anyone deserved a bullet in the head around here it was him.’

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Fair enough.’

  I put my hand on her soft cheek and she leaned in to my palm and then kissed it, fondly. She began to cry a little and I put my other arm around her shoulders and drew her close to me. She didn’t say another word but she didn’t need to; my earlier suspicion was now gone. I’m a little slow making up my mind about these things, and full of a cop’s caution, which stops me from behaving like any normal man, but I was certain now that Ines Kramsta had not shot Berruguete. After ten years at the Alex, you get to recognize when someone is a killer and when they’re not. I had looked into her eyes and seen the truth, and the truth was that this was a woman with principles who believed in things, and those things did not include subterfuge and cold-blooded murder, even if it was someone who deserved to be murdered.

  I had seen another truth, too, which was just as important, and this was that I thought I loved her.

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’

  At the front door of the hospital nurse Tanya caught up with me.

  ‘Herr Gunther,’ she said. ‘Are you going to Krasny Bor?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Could you please return these things to Alok Dyakov?’ She explained, handing me a large brown envelope: ‘He left about ten minutes ago – caught a ride back to Krasny Bor with some grenadiers who were also discharged – before I had time to return his personal possessions: his wristwatch, his glasses, his ring, some money. It’s standard hospital policy to remove the contents of a patient’s pockets when they’re brought in, to keep them safe.’ She shrugged. ‘There’s a lot of theft in here, you understand.’

  ‘Certainly.’ I looked at Ines. ‘Is that where you want to go? Back to Krasny Bor?’

  She glanced at her watch and shook her head. ‘Professor Buhtz will probably be at Grushtshenki by now, with the commission,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you could take me there?’

  I nodded. ‘Of course. Anywhere you like.’

  ‘You can give him the bullet we dug out of Berruguete’s heart then, if you like,’ she added helpfully. ‘And see what he makes of it. Not that I think there’s going to be much doubt that it came from that red nine you found.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ I said. ‘I’m going to take another look at
the crime scene first. See if there’s anything I’ve missed. And maybe find that missing shoulder-stock.’

  So I drove her to the headquarters of the local field police at Grushtshenki, where all of the Katyn documents recovered from grave number one were now exhibited in an especially glassed-in veranda of the wooden house.

  When we arrived it was plain that the international commission was already on the scene and that both Buhtz and Sloventzik – easily distinguishable in their field-grey uniforms – were surrounded by the experts. Most of these men were in their sixties, many of them bearded, carrying briefcases and making notes while Sloventzik patiently translated Professor Buhtz’s remarks. Official photographers were taking pictures and there was a buzz in the air that wasn’t just pertinent questions – the air was full of mosquitoes. It looked more like Zadneprovsky Market on Bazarnaya Square than an international commission of forensic inquiry.

  I pulled up next to Colonel von Gersdorff, who was leaning on the bonnet of his Mercedes and smoking a cigarette.

  He nodded at me as we stepped out of the Tatra and then, rather more warily, at Ines. ‘How are you, Ines?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, Rudolf.’

  ‘Good God, haven’t you arrested this woman yet, Gunther?’ he added. ‘Didn’t Siegfried’s wounds flow fresh with blood when the guilty Hagen stood beside the corpse, so to speak?’ He grinned. ‘I thought she was well in the frame for the doctor’s murder when last we talked about things. Motive, opportunity, the whole Dorothy L. Sayers. And don’t forget, the beautiful Bolsheviks are the most dangerous, you know.’

  He laughed again, and of course what he said was meant to be a joke, but Ines Kramsta didn’t quite see it that way. And in view of what happened next, nor did I.

  For a moment she stared at me without a word, but when her jaw dropped it was plain to see she felt that I had betrayed her.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ she said quietly. ‘That explains why—’

  Ines blinked with obvious astonishment and started to turn away, but I took a step after her and grabbed her arm.

  ‘Please, Ines,’ I said. ‘It’s not like that. He didn’t mean it. Did you, Von Gersdorff? Tell her you were just joking. I never had any intention of arresting you.’