Prussian Blue

by Philip Kerr

  “Not yet, boss. They’re also checking out the serial numbers on the carbine and the binoculars.”

  “What do you want to do about the Mannlicher carbine that Geiger says he gave to Major Högl?” asked Kaspel.

  “See if you can find out what happened to it. Maybe it’s the same gun we found in the chimney.”

  “And if he doesn’t know?”

  “Then that’s another question I’m not looking forward to posing. Just the suggestion that Högl might at one time have been in possession of the murder weapon is going to make him look bad in front of Martin Bormann. So I guess I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it.”

  I swept the blade of the razor up my throat and then wiped it on Flex’s Egyptian-cotton towel. Everything he’d owned or used seemed to have been of the best quality. Even his toilet paper was shiny. At home I just used the Völkischer Beobachter.

  “Of course, Geiger might have been mistaken about that carbine. Or he might have been lying. None of those three men we just met in the apiary struck me as particularly helpful. And after what Arthur Kannenberg told me about Brückner at the Berghof, it would seem that everyone on this mountain wants to make soup for someone else to fall in. Right now the only person I’m absolutely sure didn’t do it is Adolf Hitler. Which says a lot more about the state of modern Germany than it does about my forensic skills.”

  I wiped my face clean and then searched the bathroom cabinet for some cologne. Of course Flex had the latest American stuff with a sailing ship on the bottle and I put some of that on. It felt like I should have been drinking it.

  “Friedrich, I want you to stay here and see what you can find of interest. Don’t ask me what that is because I sure as hell couldn’t tell you. I’m assuming you won’t find a safe but there’s certainly no harm in having another look. But make sure that you leave all the lights on while you’re doing it, please. I want Dr. Brandt and anyone else with something to hide and who lives around here to think that we are going to persevere until we find out what that is. Maybe that will provoke something . . . something interesting, like someone trying to kill you, Friedrich. That would really help, I think. We need that kind of sacrifice if we’re ever going to crack this damn case.”

  “Thanks, sir, I’ll see what I can do.”

  “If you do find something interesting, telephone me at the Berghof. I need to try and shut my eyes. Hermann? I want you to go home for a couple of hours and do the same. Your eyes are starting to scare the hell out of me. It’s like looking at Marguerite Schön in Kriemhild’s Revenge. If my baby-blue oysters are anything like yours, I owe the ferryman a couple of marks.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  April 1939

  On the winding road back down the mountain to the Leader’s Territory I saw a number of people walking along the road to Antenberg and decided to follow them on the assumption that they knew something I didn’t. That wouldn’t have been difficult. Curiosity might have killed the cat—especially in that neck of the woods—but even in Nazi Germany it’s still a detective’s main stock in trade, although these days it sometimes results in a similarly terminal outcome. Still, I saw little or no harm in this curiosity here and now, especially when it transpired that everyone was going to the Theater Hall that had been built for the entertainment of the construction workers and people from the town of Berchtesgaden—the same hall that had occasioned the compulsory purchase of the ornithologist’s house, among others. And it was easy to see why those houses had been acquired by the Nazis. The location was enviable and, if you like that kind of thing, it had fine views in almost every direction; personally, I can take or leave a fine view unless it’s through a woman’s bathroom window, or a keyhole in a girls’ dormitory. I was never one for looking at beautiful scenery, and certainly not since 1933; it distracts from the more important and admittedly metropolitan business of keeping an eye out for the Gestapo, which, with my politics, is an ever-present dilemma.

  The theater was a very large wooden building about the size of an airship with a tall banner featuring a Nazi eagle, to ensure people didn’t miss the point. The hall was not well built, however, and already the high saddle roof seemed to be sagging a little under the weight of the snow piled on top of it, and leaking, too. Inside were several strategically placed buckets and almost a hundred people, including the three characters I’d met in the apiary. To my surprise, the people were all there to hear Martin Bormann’s adjutant, Wilhelm Zander, talk about Tom Sawyer again. At least that’s what I thought until I noticed that when he’d finished speaking, a movie—Angels with Dirty Faces—was to be screened. I’d seen it already and liked it a lot. I like any picture about gangsters because I hope that German people will see them and be reminded inexorably of the Nazis. In the end, the bad guy, Rocky Sullivan, goes to his own execution a coward, which is just how I always planned to do it myself—dying yellow with a lot of shouting and screaming makes it harder on the executioners’ nerves. I should know. I’ve seen several last performances at Plötzensee that took away my appetite for days.

  It was the first time I’d seen the locals en masse. Like any Berliner, I regarded Alpine-dwelling Bavarians with the same indifferent opinion I had for any kind of German wildlife. It didn’t surprise me that they smelled a bit and looked slow and ill-fashioned in their traditional Tracht as much as the fact that I was surprised to see them at all. I’d seen so few people since arriving in the area that I had almost started to believe it was a town where real people no longer existed. A few of the locals were armed with a variety of hunting rifles and I spent several minutes casting my eye over these and their owners. Some of them were wearing ammunition belts and looked more like members of a Bolshevik workers’ militia than conservative Bavarians. I certainly wouldn’t have bothered looking if Flex hadn’t been killed with a rifle. Not that I expected to find out anything very useful; in that part of the world, men carried rifles and skis the way they carried briefcases and rode bicycles back in Berlin. One man had even brought a brace of rabbits and I wondered what the nature-loving Hitler would have said if he’d seen these animals slung over his shoulder like a fur collar. Also present in the theater were Bruno Schenk and Dr. Brandt, who was offering a private surgery for anyone who wanted to see a doctor. He had a community clinic going in a room behind the stage and the line of people who were in need of medical attention extended into the auditorium. I’ve been sick myself in the past and it was my opinion that none of the people waiting to see Brandt looked particularly sick. They were chatting among themselves and by their complexions I’d have said most of them were a lot healthier than I was. Which wasn’t saying very much. Ever since my arrival in Obersalzberg I’d had the feeling that I was suffering from some sort of terminal illness. At any moment I felt my life might suddenly end. Martin Bormann had that effect on you. And so did Reinhard Heydrich. I walked over and joined the line.

  Bruno Schenk regarded my unannounced presence in the Theater Hall as uncomfortably as if Antenberg had been hosting a fiftieth-birthday party for Josef Stalin. He probably wished me dead. Brandt was even less pleased to see me in the line of people waiting for him. Again he wore a white coat over his black uniform, and his expression was as somber as a starless night sky. I’d been saving some questions for him and this was as good a time as any to ask them—for me, anyway. For him it was obviously inconvenient, which again, suited me very well. Making a nuisance of yourself is what being a policeman is all about and suspecting people who were completely above suspicion was about the only thing that made doing the job such fun in Nazi Germany.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked suspiciously.

  “Hoping to speak to you, Doctor.”

  “Are you sick?”

  “Ever since I arrived here I’ve thought I must be suffering from forensic amnesia. People keep treating me like I’ve forgotten how to be a policeman. But that’s not why I wanted to see you. Actually I wanted to ask yo
u about Renata Prodi.”

  “Who’s she?”

  I smiled apologetically and looked at the people who were waiting to see the SS doctor. They were all watching me as carefully as if I were a dog that might bite. It wasn’t a bad idea at that. “I could tell you out here, but why take the risk? All these nice people, they really don’t want to know about what’s inside my dirty mind.” I lit a cigarette and smiled nonchalantly. “That’s the worst thing about being a cop, Doc. I have to think and then say things that most people just find plain offensive.”

  “You’d better come into my office,” he said coldly.

  I followed him and the first thing I saw was another brace of rabbits hanging on a peg behind the door. These were still bleeding. A few spots of blood had collected on the wooden floor like the scene of a tiny execution.

  “Somehow I didn’t think you were a hunter, too,” I said.

  “I’m not. The people pay me any way they can. Rabbits, mostly. Pheasant. Some deer. I’ve even been given the carcass of a wild boar.”

  “You must invite me to dinner sometime, Doctor. Although it had better be when the Leader’s not around. I doubt he’d approve of all this meat. In fact, he wouldn’t.”

  Brandt smiled weakly, as if the idea of inviting me to his house was unimaginable. “I can assure you that all of the game I am given by these people was sourced outside the Leader’s Territory and the Landlerwald.”

  “I’m sure you’re right.” On the desk, beside a little cloth wallet of surgical instruments, was a packet of Pervitin. I picked it up, only to have him take it out of my hand, and while he was doing that I picked up an amber medicine bottle and glanced at the label. Brandt sighed as if he’d been dealing with an unruly child and snatched that away, too.

  “What’s this about?” he asked. “I have real patients to see, so get to the point, will you?”

  “That’s the point.” I nodded at the tablets in his hand and then at a well-stocked medicine cabinet containing more of the same. “Among other things. The Protargol. We both know it’s for treating venereal disease. And seeing it here on your desk, as if you were expecting to prescribe it this evening, well, it makes me wonder if any of the locals have got a dose, too. I mean, like Karl Flex.”

  “You wouldn’t really expect a doctor to comment on any of his patients,” Brandt said stiffly. “Especially something as sensitive as that.”

  “Oh, I respect patient confidentiality, Doc. But I don’t think it usually applies to someone who’s dead. Especially when that someone has been murdered. And when he’s the subject of a police autopsy. It’s common practice for a doctor to tell the police about every little thing he can see that’s wrong with a human body. And that means everything from a gaping hole in the head to a dose of jelly. Flex had the jelly, too, didn’t he? But for some reason you chose not to mention it.”

  “I suppose I just didn’t think it was relevant to the cause of death,” said Brandt. “Which was obvious. He had been shot in the head. Look, Commissar, Karl Flex was a friend of mine. He was a guest at my wedding. And in all honor I felt obliged to allow the man some privacy. It’s what any decent German would have done.”

  “Well, that’s very nice of you, Doc. What is your SS motto? ‘Blood and honor,’ isn’t it? That would seem to cover almost everything here, wouldn’t it? But you can take my word for it, nothing private is ever permitted to a man after someone has blown his skull apart with a rifle bullet. The pieces of skull and brain tend to land all over the place. And when that place is the Berghof terrace, it tends to make his privacy entirely irrelevant. It might surprise you to learn that I’m no stranger to things like honor myself. But I don’t rate Flex’s blood and honor that highly. Not when he was little better than a common pimp for the girls at P-Barracks. Not when he gave the jelly to one of them.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I should have thought it much more likely that it was one of those damned whores who gave it to Karl.”

  “Maybe. Either way, you’re the one with the cure on his desk. And you’re the one who’s been looking out for the health of those damned whores. Isn’t that right?”

  Brandt said nothing, which I suspect was his normal response to anything in Obersalzberg. When your masters are Hitler and Bormann, saying yes or very little is always the hallmark of true loyalty.

  “How about I ask you a straight question and you try to give me a straight answer, Doc? Are there many other people in this community infected with gonorrhea?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “That’s not a straight answer. At which point I might normally brush some dandruff off your shoulders. How about you have another shot at answering before I ask the question again, only this time maybe I’ll ask it so that everyone out there can hear me.”

  “Look, Commissar, this is an extremely sensitive matter. I don’t think you can have any idea how sensitive.”

  “I get that. Nobody wants the Leader to find out about the P-Barracks. He’d be furious, of course. Venereal disease is spread by Jews, not by decent Aryan folk. How many?”

  “Maybe fifteen or twenty,” said Brandt.

  Reminding myself that this was a man at whose wedding Hitler and Göring had been the guests of honor, I asked my next questions with my heart in my mouth.

  “Renata Prodi. She had it, too, right?”

  “Unlike Karl Flex, she’s alive, so I don’t have to answer that.”

  “Are you sure she’s still alive? Only, someone told me she wasn’t.”

  “To the best of my knowledge.”

  “That’s not saying much on this mountain.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I understand you also carried out a termination for her. An abortion. And that this was Karl Flex’s child.”

  “And this is based on what? The word of another whore? Against that of a German officer.”

  “So you’re denying it, then. Fair enough. I didn’t expect you to admit it.”

  “I fail to see what any of this has to do with the murder of Karl Flex, Commissar.”

  “Frankly, so do I. But it won’t always be that way, I can assure you. I will know everything soon. As a detective I am tenacious.”

  “I can believe that.”

  “I make no apology for this. It’s my job to make myself a nuisance. Do you know that it’s even been known for some people to wish me dead before I can solve a case.”

  “I can believe that, too.”

  “I’ve taken enough of your time, Doc. And theirs, too. We’ll talk again, when I have more information at my fingertips. In fact, you can bet on it. Assuming betting’s allowed on Hitler’s mountain. I mean, it’s bad enough that you can’t smoke.”

  “I don’t think the Leader has any objections to gambling.”

  “Good. So put a blue on me solving this case before the end of the week. That’s money in the bank.”

  I spoke to several of the locals on my way out. Most worked for the Obersalzberg Administration or the local brewery but, despite the Nazis having closed down access to the mountain, a few still managed to work their own private salt mines, which struck me as a better trade than digging gold since there was so much of the stuff to be found and, when it was, it fetched a high price among discerning cooks all over Europe.

  As I passed by they asked who I was and where I was from and when I told them they looked as surprised as if I’d been Anita Berber pissing on their shoes, and I realized that in spite of all the Nazis had done to change it, they still regarded Berlin as a sink of iniquity and a place where corruption reigned. I certainly missed the iniquity but maybe they were right about the corruption. Quite what they thought of Zander’s talk on Tom Sawyer I have no idea. I listened for a while, and then lit out ahead of the rest.

  THIRTY

  April
1939

  They’d cooled things down a bit at the Berghof when I arrived back there. Someone had thoughtfully left the big window in the Great Hall open and the place was chillier than the cold cabinet in Flex’s kitchen. You couldn’t sit in my room without keeping your coat on. I wondered if that was just the way Hitler liked it, if they were trying to save money on fuel, or if they figured that keeping the place freezing cold would have the useful effect of making people tremble in the Leader’s presence. Maybe that was part of his diplomatic secret. Hermann Kaspel had told me Hitler didn’t much like snow, or the sun, which was why he’d chosen a house on a north-facing slope. I guess the cold and damp air of the Berghof reminded him of the Viennese slum he’d lived in as a young man. Alone in my office opposite Hitler’s study, I closed the door and filled the stove with as much wood as it could take, and placed a chair right up next to it. I was planning to read some more witness statements, which, I hoped, would send me to sleep. I thought about asking Arthur Kannenberg for some sausages and a bottle but reflected that I could do without the criminal allegations concerning Wilhelm Brückner that were certain to be added onto my supper tray. I lit a Turkish 8 absently, and then cursed when I remembered whose house it was and immediately threw the cigarette in the stove. Being there, at the Berghof, was like being in some mad Swiss sanatorium where everyone was dying of tuberculosis and only the purest mountain air could be tolerated. I looked at the packet of Turkish 8, considered stepping onto the terrace to smoke one, and then grimaced; the thought of going outside in the freezing-cold night air of Obersalzberg to do something as harmless as smoking a cigarette seemed so absurd that I laughed out loud. What kind of crazy damn world was it when such ordinary human pleasures like cigarettes were so strictly controlled? And it struck me that perhaps, in Hitler’s disapproval of tobacco, I’d discovered the true essence of Nazism. I might have gone down to the Villa Bechstein, but for the certainty that Rudolf Hess would find and question me in detail about what had happened at the Berghof. I’d no wish to interpose myself in some Alpine clash of Nazi Titans.