by Philip Kerr
‘I’m touched,’ I said. ‘And in the second place?’
‘Can I be frank?’
‘Why stop now?’
‘Very well. Herr Becker is one of the worst racketeers in Vienna. Despite his present predicament he is not entirely without influence in certain, shall we say, more nefarious quarters of this city.’ His face looked pained. ‘I should be reluctant to say any more at the risk of sounding like a common thug.’
‘That’s quite candid enough, Herr Doktor. Thank you.’
He came over to the window. ‘What are you looking at?’
‘I think I’m being followed. Do you see that man -?’
‘The man reading the newspaper?’
‘I’m sure I saw him at the railway station.’
Liebl removed his spectacles from his top pocket and bent them round his furry old ears. ‘He doesn’t look Austrian,’ he pronounced finally. ‘What paper is he reading?’
I squinted for a moment. ‘The Wiener Kurier.’
‘Hmm. Not a Communist, anyway, He’s probably an American, a field agent from the Special Investigation Section of their military police.’
‘Wearing plainclothes?’
‘I believe that they are no longer required to wear uniform. At least in Vienna.’ He removed his glasses and turned away. ‘I dare say it’ll be something routine. They’ll want to know all about any friend of Herr Becker. You should expect to be pulled in sometime, for questioning.’
‘Thanks for the warning.’ I started to move away from the window but found my hand lingered on the big shutter, with its solid-looking cross bar. ‘They certainly knew how to build these old places, didn’t they? This thing looks as if it was meant to keep out an army.’
‘Not an army, Herr Gunther. A mob. This was once the heart of the ghetto. In the fifteenth century, when the house was built; they had to be prepared for the occasional pogrom. Nothing changes so very much, does it?’
I sat down opposite him and smoked a Memphis from the packet I had brought from Poroshin’s supplies. I waved the packet at Liebl who took one and put it carefully into a cigarette-case. He and I hadn’t had the best of starts. It was time to repair a few bridges. ‘Keep the pack,’ I told him.
‘You’re very kind,’ he said, handing me an ashtray in return.
Watching him light one now, I wondered what genealogy of debauch had jaspered his once handsome face. His grey cheeks were heavily wrinked with almost glacial striations, and his nose was slightly puckered, as if someone had told a sick joke. His lips were very red and very thin and he smiled like a wily old snake, which only served to enhance the look of dissipation that the years, and, most probably, the war had etched on his features. He himself provided an explanation.
‘I was in a concentration camp for a while. Before the war I was a member of the Christian Social Party. You know, people prefer to forget, but there was a very great feeling for Hitler in Austria.’ He coughed a little as the first smoke filled his lungs. ‘It is very convenient for us that the Allies decided that Austria was a victim of Nazi aggression instead of a collaborator with it. But it is also absurd. We are perfect bureaucrats, Herr Gunther. It is remarkable the number of Austrians who came to occupy crucial roles in the organization of Hitler’s crimes. And many of these same men — and quite a few Germans — are living right here in Vienna. Even now the Security Directorate for Upper Austria is investigating the theft of a number of identity cards from the Vienna State Printing Office. So you can see that for those who wish to stay here, there is always a means of doing so. The truth is that these men, these Nazis, enjoy living in my country. They have five hundred years of Jew-hatred to make them feel at home.
‘I mention these things because as a pifke —’ he smiled apologetically ‘— as a Prussian, you may find that you encounter a certain amount of hostility in Vienna. These days Austrians tend to reject everything German. They work very hard at being Austrian. An accent like yours might serve to remind some Viennese that for seven years they were National Socialists. An unpalatable fact that most people now prefer to believe was little more than a bad dream.’
‘I’ll bear it in mind.’
When I finished my meeting with Liebl I went back to the pension in Skodagasse, where I found a message from Becker’s girlfriend to say that that she would drop by around six to make sure that I was comfortable. The Pension Caspian was a first-class little place. I had a bedroom with a small adjoining sittingroom and bathroom. There was even a tiny covered veranda where I might have sat in summer. The place was warm and there seemed to be a never-ending supply of hot water — an unaccustomed luxury. I had not long finished a bath, the duration of which even Marat might have baulked at, when there was a knock at my sitting-room door, and, glancing at my wristwatch, I saw that it was almost six. I slipped into my overcoat and opened the door.
She was small and bright-eyed, with a child’s rosy cheeks and dark hair that looked as if it rarely felt a comb. Her well-toothed smile straightened a little as she saw my bare feet.
‘Herr Gunther?’ she said, hesitantly.
‘Fräulein Traudl Braunsteiner.’
She nodded.
‘Come in. I’m afraid I spent rather longer in the bath than I should have, but the last time I had really hot water was when I came back from the Soviet labour camp. Have a seat while I throw on some clothes.’
When I came back into the sitting-room I saw that she had brought a bottle of vodka and was pouring two glasses out on a table by the French window. She handed me my drink and we sat down.
‘Welcome to Vienna,’ she said. ‘Emil said I should bring you a bottle.’ She kicked the bag by her leg. ‘Actually I brought two. They’ve been hanging out of the window of the hospital all day, so the vodka is nice and cold. I don’t like vodka any other way.’
We clinked glasses and drank, the bottom of her glass beating my own to the table-top.
‘You’re not unwell, I hope? You mentioned a hospital.’
‘I’m a nurse, at the General. You can see it if you walk to the top of the street. That’s partly why I booked you in here — because it’s so near. But also because I know the owner, Frau Blum-Weiss. She was a friend of my mother’s. Also I thought you’d prefer to stay close to the Ring, and to the place where the American captain was shot. That’s in Dettergasse, on the other side of Vienna’s outer ring, the Gürtel.’
‘This place suits me very nicely. To be honest it’s a lot more comfortable than what I’m used to at home, back in Berlin. Things are quite hard there.’ I poured us another drink. ‘Exactly how much do you know about what happened?’
‘I know everything that Dr Liebl has told you; and everything that Emil will tell you tomorrow morning.’
‘What about Emil’s business?’
Traudl Braunsteiner smiled coyly and uttered a little snigger. ‘There’s not much I don’t know about Emil’s business either.’ Noticing a button that was hanging by a thread from her crumpled raincoat, she tugged it off and pocketed it. She was like a fine lace handkerchief that was in need of laundering. ‘Being a nurse, I guess I’m a little relaxed about that sort of thing: black market. I’ve stolen a few drugs myself, I don’t mind admitting it. Actually, all the girls do it at some time or another. For some it’s a simple choice: sell penicillin or sell your body. I guess we are lucky enough to have something else to sell.’ She shrugged and swallowed her second vodka. ‘Seeing people suffering and dying doesn’t breed a very healthy respect for law and order.’ She laughed apologetically. ‘Money’s no good if you’re not fit to spend it. God, what are the Krupp family worth? Billions probably. But they’ve got one of them at an insane asylum here in Vienna.’
‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t asking you to justify it to me.’ But plainly she was trying to justify it to herself.
Traudl tucked her legs underneath her behind. She sat carelessly in the armchair, not seeming to mind any more than I did that I could see her stocking-tops and gar
ters, and the edge of her smooth, white thighs.
‘What can you do?’ she said, biting her fingernail. ‘Now and again everyone in Vienna has to buy something that’s a bit Ressel Park.’ She explained that this was the city’s main centre for the black market.
‘It’s the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin,’ I said. ‘And in front of the Reichstag.’
‘How funny,’ she chuckled mischievously. ‘There would be a scandal in Vienna if that sort of thing went on outside our parliament.’
‘That’s because you have a parliament. Here the Allies just supervise. But they actually govern in Germany.’ My view of her underwear disappeared now as she tugged at the hem of her skirt.
‘I didn’t know that. Not that it would matter. There would still be a scandal in Vienna, parliament or no parliament. Austrians are such hypocrites. You would think they would feel easier about these things. There’s been a black market here since the Habsburgs. It wasn’t cigarettes then of course, but favours, patronage. Personal contacts still count for a lot.’
‘Speaking of which, how did you meet Becker?’
‘He fixed some papers for a friend of mine, a nurse at the hospital. And we stole some penicillin for him. That was when there was still some about. This wasn’t long after my mother died.’ Her bright eyes widened as if she was struggling to comprehend something. ‘She threw herself under a tram.’ Forcing a smile and a bemused sort of laugh, she managed to contain her feelings. ‘My mother was a very Viennese type of Austrian, Bernie. We’re always committing suicide, you know. It’s a way of life for us.
‘Anyway, Emil was very kind and great fun. He took me away from my grief, really. I’ve no other family, you see. My father was killed in an air-raid. And my brother died in Yugoslavia, fighting the partisans. Without Emil I really don’t know what might have become of me. If something were to happen to him now —’ Traudl’s mouth stiffened as she pictured the fate that seemed most likely to befall her lover. ‘You will do your best for him, won’t you? Emil said you were the only person he could trust to find something that might give him half a chance.’
‘I’ll do everything I can for him, Traudl, you have my word on that.’ I lit us both a cigarette and handed one to her. ‘It may interest you to know that normally I’d convict my own mother if she were standing over a dead body with a gun in her hand. But for what it’s worth I believe Becker’s story, if only because it’s so plausibly bad. At least until I’ve heard it from him. That may not surprise you very much, but it sure as hell impresses me.
‘Only look at my fingertips. They’re a little short on saintly aura. And the hat on the sideboard there? It wasn’t meant for stalking deer. So if I’m to guide him out of that condemned cell your boyfriend is going to have to find me a ball of thread. Tomorrow morning, he’d better have something to say for himself or this show won’t be worth the price of the greasepaint.’
12
The Law’s most terrible punishment is always what happens in a man’s own imagination: the prospect of one’s own, judicially executed killing is food for thought of the most ingeniously masochistic kind. To put a man on trial for his life is to fill his mind with thoughts crueller than any punishment yet devised. And naturally enough the idea of what it must be like to drop metres through a trap-door, to be brought up short of the ground by a length of rope tied round the neck takes its toll on a man. He finds it hard to sleep, loses his appetite, and not uncommonly his heart starts to suffer under the strain of what his own mind has imposed. Even the most dull, unimaginative intellect need only roll his head around on his shoulders, and listen to the crunching gristle sound of his vertebrae in order to appreciate, in the pit of his stomach, the ghastly horror of hanging.
So I was not surprised to find Becker a thinner, etiolated sketch of his former self. We met in a small, barely furnished interview room at the prison on Rossauer Lände. When he came into the room he silently shook me by the hand before turning to address the warder who had stationed himself against the door.
‘Hey, Pepi,’ Becker said jovially, ‘do you mind?’ He reached inside his shirt pocket and retrieved a packet of cigarettes which he tossed across the room. The warder called Pepi caught them with the tips of his fingers and inspected the brand. ‘Have a smoke outside the door, OK?’
‘All right,’ said Pepi, and left.
Becker nodded appreciatively as the three of us seated ourselves round the table bolted to the yellow-tiled wall.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said to Dr Liebl. ‘All the warders are at it in here. Much better than the Stiftskaserne, I can tell you. None of those fucking Yanks could be greased. There’s nothing those bastards want that they can’t get for themselves.’
‘You’re telling me,’ I said, and found my own cigarettes. Liebl shook his head when I offered him one. ‘These come from your friend Poroshin,’ I explained as Becker slipped one out of the pack.
‘Quite a fellow, isn’t he?’
‘Your wife thinks he’s your boss.’
Becker lit us both and blew a cloud of smoke across my shoulder. ‘You spoke to Ella?’ he said, but he didn’t sound surprised.
‘Apart from the five thousand, she’s the only reason I’m here,’ I said. ‘With her on your case I decided you probably needed all the help you could get. As far as she’s concerned you’re already swinging.’
‘Hates me that bad, eh?’
‘Like a cold sore.’
‘Well she’s got the right, I guess.’ He sighed and shook his head. Then he took a long, nervous drag of his cigarette that barely left the paper on the tobacco. For a moment he stared at me, his bloodshot eyes blinking hard through the smoke. After several seconds he coughed and smiled all at once. ‘Go ahead and ask me.’
‘All right. Did you kill Captain Linden?’
‘As God is my witness, no.’ He laughed. ‘Can I go now, sir?’ He took another desperate suck at his smoke. ‘You do believe me, don’t you, Bernie?’
‘I believe you’d have a better story if you were lying. I credit you with that much sense. But as I was saying to your girlfriend —’
‘You’ve met Traudl? Good. She’s great, isn’t she?’
‘Yes, she is. Christ only knows what she sees in you.’
‘She enjoys my after-dinner conversation of course. That’s why she doesn’t like to see me locked up in here. She misses our little fireside chats about Wittgenstein.’ The smile disappeared as his hand reached across the table and clutched at my forearm. ‘Look, you’ve got to get me out of here, Bernie. The five thousand was just to get you in the game. You prove that I’m innocent and I’ll treble your fee.’
‘We both know that it isn’t going to be easy.’
Becker misunderstood.
‘Money’s not a problem: I’ve got plenty of money. There’s a car parked in a garage in Hernals with $30,000 in the boot. It’s yours if you get me off.’
Liebl winced as his client continued to demonstrate his apparent lack of business acumen. ‘Really, Herr Becker, as your lawyer I must protest. This is not the way to —’
‘Shut up,’ Becker said savagely. ‘When I want your advice I’ll ask for it.’
Liebl gave a diplomatic sort of shrug, and leaned back on his chair.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘let’s talk about a bonus when you’re out. The money’s fine. You’ve already paid me well. I wasn’t talking about the money. No, what I’d like now are a few ideas. So how about you start by telling me about Herr König: where you met him, what he looks like and whether you think he likes cream in his coffee. OK?’
Becker nodded and ground his cigarette out on the floor. He clasped and unclasped his hands and started to squeeze his knuckles uncomfortably. Probably he had been over the story too many times to feel happy about repeating it.
‘All right. Well then, let’s see. I met Helmut König in the Koralle. That’s a nightclub in the 9th Bezirk. Porzellangasse. He just came up and introduced himself. Said he’d heard of me, and wanted t
o buy me a drink. So I let him. We talked about the usual things. The war, me being in Russia, me being in Kripo before the SS, same as you really. Only you left, didn’t you, Bernie?’
‘Just keep to the point.’
‘He said he’d heard of me from friends. He didn’t say who. There was some business he’d like to put my way: a regular delivery across the Green Frontier. Cash money, no questions asked. It was easy. All I had to do was collect a small parcel from an office here in Vienna and take it to another office in Berlin. But only when I was going anyway, with a lorry load of cigarettes, that kind of thing. If I’d been picked up they probably wouldn’t even have noticed König’s parcel. At first I thought it was drugs. But then I opened one of the parcels. It was just a few files: Party files, army files, SS files. The old stuff. I couldn’t see what made it worth money to them.’
‘Was it always just files?’
He nodded.
‘Captain Linden worked for the US Documents Centre in Berlin,’ I explained. ‘He was a Nazi-hunter. These files — do you remember any names?’
‘Bernie, they were tadpoles, small fry. SS corporals and army pay-clerks. Any Nazi-hunter would just have thrown them back. Those fellows are after the big fish, people like Bormann and Eichmann. Not fucking little pay-clerks.’
‘Nevertheless, the files were important to Linden. Whoever it was that killed him also arranged to have a couple of amateur detectives he knew murdered. Two Jews who had survived the camps and were out to settle a few scores. I found them dead a few days ago. They’d been that way a while. Perhaps the files were for them. So it would help if you could try and remember some of the names.’
‘Sure, anything you say, Bernie. I’ll try to fit it into my busy schedule.’
‘You do that. Now tell me about König. What did he look like?’
‘Let’s see: he was about forty, I’d say. Well-built, dark, thick moustache, weighed about ninety kilos, one-ninety tall; wore a good tweed suit, smoked cigars and always had a dog with him -a little terrier. He was Austrian for sure. Sometimes he had a girl around. Her name was Lotte. I don’t know her surname, but she worked at the Casanova Club. Good-looking bitch, blonde. That’s all I remember.’