Prussian Blue

by Philip Kerr

  “Then perhaps she and I met once.” Neumann smiled kindly. “It’s a small world, isn’t it, Aneta?”

  From the P-Barracks we drove southwest, to a quiet address in north Berchtesgaden where we parked outside a neat three-story, Alpine-style villa. Some SS men were waiting on the front lawn and saluted smartly as Neumann walked up the snow-covered path, followed by me and then Aneta. On the elaborate wooden porch Neumann produced a set of shiny, new-looking keys and let himself in through the front door. As well as a large portrait of Adolf Hitler, the whitewashed walls in the hallway were home to several sets of dueling sabers and photographs of a Burschenschaft—a student society dedicated to the strange business of scarring the faces of young German men. As someone who’d spent most of the war avoiding injury, dueling was something I had never really understood; the only scar I had on my face was a small patch where a mosquito had bitten me. Inside the house, everything was of the best quality, expensive and heavy, as you might have expected in that part of the world and in a house that size. Evidently it was owned by someone important, which is to say, a Nazi. Nazis like to buy furniture by the ton.

  In the split-level drawing room I picked up a framed photograph of a very tall, scar-faced senior SS officer—one of several placed on the grand piano—which explained the dueling sabers. I didn’t recognize him but I did recognize the two uniformed men he was standing behind; one was Heinrich Himmler, the other was Kurt Daluege, the chief of the HA-Orpo—the security police. In another photograph, the same scar-faced officer was pictured with the Reich governor of Bavaria, Franz Ritter von Epp. And in another, he was shaking hands with Adolf Hitler. The man with the scars on his face was obviously very well connected.

  “Whose house is this, anyway?” I asked Neumann.

  “I thought you were supposed to be a detective, Gunther.”

  “That used to be true. Now I’m just a spanner like you. Someone for your master to use to twist a few stubborn nuts and bolts.”

  “It’s Ernst Kaltenbrunner’s country house,” said Neumann.

  “I take it he doesn’t know we’re here.”

  “He’ll find out soon enough.”

  “Which makes me wonder how you obtained the keys to the front door.”

  “There’s not much that Heydrich can’t get hold of when he puts his mind to it. We had someone borrow them a while ago so that we could make copies.” Neumann looked at Aneta. “Why don’t you go upstairs and make yourself comfortable, my dear. In fact, why don’t you take a nice hot shower?”

  “A shower?”

  “Yes, you must be feeling a little grimy after—after, you know. I’m sorry, my dear, I don’t mean to embarrass you. Merely to make you feel as comfortable as possible. You’re going to be here for a while, Aneta. Meanwhile, I will find some of those lovely clothes I was talking about. There are dresses here by Schiaparelli. I think they’ll be your size. You’re a thirty-eight, aren’t you? I take it you do know about Elsa Schiaparelli.”

  “Every woman in Europe knows Schiaparelli,” said Aneta. “And yes, I’m a thirty-eight.” She smiled happily at the prospect of wearing these expensive clothes.

  “Splendid. You’ll find clean towels, soap, and lots of perfume in the bathroom. I’ll bring the dresses up to you in a minute and you can pick one that you like. As well as a change of underclothes, stockings.”

  “Five hundred reichsmarks, you say?”

  “Five hundred.” Neumann took out his wallet and showed her a good centimeter of banknotes.

  Aneta went upstairs meekly, as asked, leaving me alone with Captain Neumann.

  “I think I’m beginning to see what you’re up to,” I said. “A few pictures of the girl here, in Kaltenbrunner’s country house, holding his framed photograph fondly. A signed statement that she was having an affair with him, perhaps. After which Heydrich has him on a tight leash. Behave and keep in line or Hitler will see the evidence of your egregious adultery. It’s what you people are good at, isn’t it? Blackmail.”

  “Something like that,” said Neumann. “Didn’t you know? I thought we told you in Berlin. Ernst Kaltenbrunner is a happily married man. It’s true, his wife, Elisabeth, knows everything about his affairs. That’s probably why he’s happily married. He has several mistresses. One of them is the Baroness von Westarp. Those dresses I was talking about belong to her. They’re in a closet upstairs. But it will be a surprise to both wife and mistress to learn of his fondness for the local whores. Not just that but the lowest kind of whores who work in a brothel frequented by construction workers. And it will be a surprise to Hitler, of course. The fact that Kaltenbrunner was having sex with a Slav prostitute will be especially offensive to the Leader. And the fact that she came from a local brothel run by Martin Bormann should make things even more interesting.”

  Neumann lit a cigarette and then sniffed at a decanter on the sideboard. His hand was shaking a little, which surprised me. Perhaps his skills as a blackmailer weren’t quite as innate as I had imagined. “Would you care for a brandy? I’m going to have one. Kaltenbrunner likes very good brandy, I hear. Which this is. And which probably explains why he drinks so much of the stuff.”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  He poured us each a large one and then drained his glass in one, which persuaded me he must have needed it. Forgetting he had a cigarette burning in the ashtray, Neumann lit another. I tried to catch his eye in an attempt to fathom what was bothering him but he turned his back on me so I decided to leave him to it, whatever it was. I didn’t need to be present when the photographs were taken.

  “If you don’t mind,” I said, “I’ve got work to do. I’ll leave you to your work.”

  Neumann pulled a face. “I have my orders. Just like you, Gunther. So don’t go all holy on me. Perhaps you forget that Kaltenbrunner planned to have you murdered. Whatever we have in the back of the shop for him I can assure you that bastard has got it coming. You can call it blackmail, if you like. I’d prefer to call it politics.”

  “Politics?” I grinned.

  “The use of power by one person to affect the behavior of another? I don’t know what else to call it. Anyway, none of this is your concern. Wait here a moment and then I’ll give you a lift back to the Villa Bechstein.”

  I sipped my brandy—it was indeed excellent—and waited patiently while Neumann went upstairs. I had seldom met a more contradictory human being; in some ways he seemed courteous and kind while in others he was wholly without principle. Undoubtedly clever, he had hitched his wagon to Heydrich and was determined to serve him in every way he could, even if it meant running someone over and of course thereby gaining his own advancement. Sometimes that was all it took to be a real Nazi; the absolute and unscrupulous desire for preferment and promotion. Which was why I was never going to thrive in the new Germany. I just didn’t care enough about success to do it by standing on someone else’s face. I didn’t care about anything very much anymore. Except maybe the quaint idea that somehow doing my job and being a good cop—solving the occasional murder—might inspire others to have respect for the rule of law.

  I was jolted from this naïve reverie by the sound of two gunshots on the floor above. I put down my glass and ran into the hall just as the captain was coming down the stairs. In his hand was a smoking Walther P38. His long face was tight with nerves, and there was blood on his cheek but otherwise he looked almost nonchalant, which, given the stopping power of the Walther was hardly a surprise; it’s a brave man who will argue with a still-cocked P38. A 9 mm bullet will put a good-size hole in your beer barrel. I barged past him as I ran upstairs and into the lavishly appointed bathroom. But I already knew what I was going to find. Aneta Husák lay naked in a pool of her own blood on the marble floor. She’d been shot in the head; her blood was still rolling down the white shower curtain as her leg twitched spasmodically, and suddenly everything was clear to me in a way it hadn’t been before.
Blackmail was so much more serious when a dead girl was involved, especially one who was naked. This way—just as soon as those SS photographers had done their job, and perhaps the local police were called in—Heydrich could keep Kaltenbrunner under his cold, thin thumb forever. And I had helped him to do it. But for me informing Hans-Hendrik Neumann of the existence of the P-Barracks, poor Aneta Husák might still have been alive. But what shocked me almost as much was how kind and solicitous Neumann had seemed when he’d been talking to the girl. Putting the poor creature at her ease, no doubt. It was the Nazi way to catch people unawares—to lie to them and gain their trust and then to betray them, ruthlessly. And after all, she was just a Czech, a Slav, which counted for nothing in Hitler’s Germany. Certainly not since Munich.

  I went back downstairs and found Neumann with the two SS men. He was pointing his pistol at me. I took out Aneta’s visitor’s pass and held it up like an exhibit in a courtroom. Not that there was any chance that this murder would ever get near a courtroom.

  “She was just a kid,” I said. “Twenty-three years old. And you murdered her.”

  “She was a whore,” said Neumann. “A common grasshopper for whom violent death is always an occupational hazard. You of all people should know that. Men have been murdering prostitutes in Berlin since time immemorial.”

  “Blood and honor,” I said. “Now I know what that SS belt buckle means. I guess it’s supposed to be ironic, after all.” I threw the girl’s visitor’s pass at him. “Here. You’ll need this for the local police when they pretend to investigate her murder.”

  “Please,” said Neumann. “No recriminations, Gunther. I’m not in the mood for your breathtaking hypocrisy. As you said a few minutes ago, we’re both like tools. Only I’m more of a hammer than a spanner.”

  I went for him but before I got halfway to his throat someone hit me from behind, a third SS man I hadn’t seen before who must have been standing behind the drawing room door. The blow connected with the side of my head and knocked me across the room. I ended up near the sideboard where I’d left my brandy. And when at last I’d picked myself off the floor, my ear was singing like a kettle and my jaw felt like a bag of builder’s rubble; I collected the brandy and knocked it back in one, which helped to take my mind off the pain in my cheek.

  “I think you’d best leave, Commissar,” said Neumann. “Before you get seriously hurt. There’s four of us.”

  “But that’s still not enough guts to make one real man.”

  I walked out the door before I was tempted to draw my own gun and shoot someone.

  FORTY-SIX

  April 1939

  I walked into Berchtesgaden and back up the road to Obersalzberg. Halfway up the mountain I stopped and looked back at the little Alpine town in the dying light of the late afternoon and reflected that it was hard to believe such an idyllic-looking place could have been the scene of two brutal murders in less than twenty-four hours. Then again, perhaps it wasn’t that hard to believe, given the Nazi flags that were flying over the railway station and the local Reichs Chancellery. I carried on walking. It was a long climb made even longer by the feeling that my efforts were not just pointless but also a kind of subtle punishment; that nothing I did was ever going to make a difference to the way things were, and it was sheer hubris on my part to think they would.

  By the time I reached the Villa Bechstein, I had calmed down a little. But that didn’t last long. As soon as I arrived, Friedrich Korsch told me that the Gestapo had arrested someone for the murder of Karl Flex.

  “Who is it?” I asked as I warmed myself by the fire and lit a cigarette to catch my breath.

  “Johann Brandner. The photographer.”

  “Where did they find him?”

  “At a hospital in Nuremberg. Apparently he’d been a patient there for several days.”

  “Pretty good alibi.”

  “The local boys picked him up yesterday morning and brought him straight here.”

  “Where is Brandner now?”

  “Rattenhuber and Högl are interrogating him in the cells underneath the Türken.”

  “Jesus. That’s all I need. How did you find out about it?”

  “The RSD duty officer. SS-Untersturmführer Dietrich told me when I asked him to organize that firing squad. Boss? Is Neumann serious about that? They’re really going to shoot those two thugs from Linz?”

  “The SS are always serious about shooting people. That’s why they have a little death’s head on their hats. To remind people that they’re not playing games. Look, we’d better get along to the Türken before they shoot Brandner as well.”

  “Sure, boss, sure. By the way. What happened to your face?”

  I shifted my jaw painfully. It felt like a couple of spare panels from the Pergamon Altar. “Someone hit me.”

  “Captain Neumann?”

  “I wish. Then I could have killed him. But no, it was someone else.”

  “Here,” he said. “Take a bite of this.”

  Korsch handed me his own hip flask and I took a sip of the Gold Water he was so fond of drinking. The stuff contained tiny flakes of gold that went straight through your body unchanged and, according to Korsch, turned your piss to gold. Which, given the sheer weight of lead, is the best kind of alchemy there is.

  “You should get that jaw seen to. Who’s that SS doctor I’ve seen around Obersalzberg? The one with the hop pole up his arse.”

  “Brandt? Knowing him, he’d probably poison me. Get away with it, too, knowing him.”

  “All the same, boss, it looks to me as if your jaw might be broken.”

  “That can only help,” I said through my teeth.

  “How?”

  “To keep my big mouth shut.”

  I walked along to the Türken Inn where, in the officers’ mess, I found Rattenhuber and Högl drinking champagne and looking very pleased with themselves. SS-Untersturmführer Dietrich—the young duty officer I’d met before—was there, as was a muscular RSD sergeant.

  “Congratulations, Gunther,” said Rattenhuber, pouring me a glass. “Have some champagne. We’re celebrating. He’s been arrested. Your very own number one suspect. Johann Brandner. We’ve got him in a cell downstairs.”

  He handed me the glass but I didn’t drink it.

  “So I hear. Only he’s no longer my number one suspect. I hate to spoil your party, Colonel, but I’m more or less sure it was someone else who killed Karl Flex.”

  “Nonsense,” said Högl. “He’s already admitted it. We have his signed confession to everything.”

  “Everything? Then it’s a pity he’s not Polish, too, and we’d have a good reason to invade Poland.”

  Rattenhuber thought that was funny. “Very good,” he said.

  But Högl’s face remained as straight as the seams on his black tunic pockets.

  “All right,” I said, “tell me everything he’s admitted to and then I’ll tell you if he’s just talking to save his skin.”

  “He did it all right,” insisted Högl. “He even told us why.”

  “Surprise me.” I sipped the champagne through gritted teeth and then put the glass down again. I wasn’t in the mood to drink for any reason other than the anesthetic effect it might have on my jaw.

  “The same reason he was sent to Dachau. He blamed Dr. Flex for the compulsory purchase order. For the loss of his photographic business here in Obersalzberg.”

  “Maybe he did. But that’s not exactly front-page news. Not up here. And to be quite frank with you, I doubt he killed anyone.”

  “Look, Gunther,” said Rattenhuber. “I can see why you might be sore with us. This was your case after all. And perhaps we should have waited for you before we interrogated him. But, as I’m sure I don’t need to remind you, time is of the essence here. As of now, the Leader can come to the Berghof and enjoy his fiftieth birthday in total s
afety. Bormann will be delighted when he hears a man has signed a confession. That the status quo has been returned. And surely that’s all that matters.”

  “You can call me old-fashioned, sir, but I prefer to believe that what matters most is finding the real culprit. Especially in this case where the Leader’s security is concerned. And it’s not me who’s sore. I don’t imagine Brandner told you any of this voluntarily. My guess is that you had this orangutan smack him around a bit. Which is a poor way to solve any crime, in my experience.”

  The sergeant bristled a bit at hearing this description but that was all right. I was sort of hoping he might take a swing at me so I could hit someone. After what had happened to Aneta Husák, I was desperate to hit someone, even an orangutan.

  “Be careful, Gunther,” said Högl, grinning unpleasantly. “It looks as though someone already hit you today.”

  “I slipped. On the ice. There’s a lot of it about up here. But if I do want someone to hit me, then I figure I’m in the right place for it. Which makes me think his confession is about as reliable as an Italian army. Nuremberg is three hundred kilometers away. It’s just about possible Johann Brandner murdered Karl Flex but I don’t think there’s any way he could have murdered Captain Kaspel and got back there in time to be arrested yesterday. Or, for that matter, that he could have killed Udo Ambros, either.”

  “Ambros—he’s the assistant hunter, isn’t he?” said Rattenhuber. “At the Landlerwald.”

  “He was,” I said, “until someone removed his head with a shotgun. I discovered his body earlier today when I went to speak to him at his house in Berchtesgaden. I suspect Ambros had a shrewd idea of who really murdered Karl Flex. Not least because he owned the Mannlicher rifle that was used to shoot him. So someone else tried to make it look like a suicide. But it was murder. Suicides don’t normally write neat legible letters that answer all of your questions except perhaps the meaning of life.”

  “Maybe it was suicide,” said Högl. “Maybe you’re wrong. Like any Murder Commission detective, it seems to me that you’ve got murder on the brain.”