by Philip Kerr
I pulled into a car park in front of the brewery, which was itself as large as a decent-sized castle, much bigger and more modern than the one back in Berchtesgaden, and turned around to face my surly backseat passenger.
“You’re not nearly as dull a traveling companion as I thought you’d be.”
He smiled a sarcastic, weary smile. “I’ll wait in the car,” he said, and sank farther down into the collar of his greatcoat, like a grumpy Napoleon.
I opened the car door to a strong smell of roasting hops that made me wish I had a beer in my hand; then again, I already needed a beer after half an hour in the car with Zander.
I wasn’t gone for very long. The director of the brewery, Richard Weber, was a big man in his seventies, with a pinstripe suit and a bow tie, an expensive-looking belly, puffy red eyes, a little gray beard, and a receding hairline. Like many affluent German men of a certain age, he reminded me a little of Emil Jannings, but mostly he reminded me of my own father. He even smelled like him: tobacco and mothballs. From the high point that was his office window I could see the town on the plain below and the hexagonal tower of the local church. It wasn’t much of a view but it was probably the best one in Homburg.
Paula Berge, Richard Weber told me, had worked for his father, Christian Weber, who was almost a hundred years old now and retired. He provided me with her address from a detailed filing system that would have been the envy of Hans Geschke. She still lived in Homburg, in an apartment in Eisenbahnstrasse, on the corner of Markt Platz. Herr Weber assured me it was only a two-minute walk from his office. I rather doubted that; besides, it was still raining heavily and much as I would have preferred to leave Zander behind while I walked to the address, I hurried back outside and started the car again.
“Did you speak to her?” asked Zander, stirring inside his coat.
“No, but Herr Weber, the son of her old boss, gave me an address where we can find her. Diesbach, too, I hope.”
“Excellent.”
“Let’s just hope she doesn’t have a telephone.”
“Why would that matter?”
“In case Weber thought to call her up and warn her that the Gestapo are coming.”
“But you’re not from the Gestapo.”
“There’s not much difference when a man with a warrant disc knocks on your door. It’s never good news.”
“But why would he? Call her, I mean.”
“Because he knew exactly who she was, and because he didn’t have to look very hard to find her address. And because he only ever used her Christian name, like they were well acquainted. But mostly because the brewery switchboard is beside the reception desk and as I was on my way out of the door I heard one of the telephonists connecting Weber with a number he’d just asked her to get.”
“You should be a detective.”
“No, but calling her is what I would have done.”
“Calling Frau Berge to warn her of our arrival would hardly be the action of a good German.”
“Perhaps. But it might have been the action of a good friend.”
“Well, who knows who it was he called—it could have been anyone,” said Zander.
“We’ll find out, won’t we?”
The address on Markt Platz was a four-story corner building next to a bookshop. On the opposite side of the square was a redbrick church—the same church I’d seen from Weber’s office window. It looked like a maximum-security prison but then every building in Germany looks like a prison these days. The clock on the hexagonal tower said it was ten o’clock. It might as well have been another century. I parked the car and waited until the rain had stopped and then opened the door.
“You staying in the car again? Only, if she’s in there, your uniform might help. No one likes to see a Nazi uniform like that first thing in the morning. Makes them feel guilty.”
“Why not? I could use some fresh air, or what passes for fresh air in this place. I swear, the backseat of this wretched car is covered in something sticky. I’m going to have to have this coat cleaned.”
“Probably blood. You’ll usually find that the only clean seats in a police car are the ones in front, Wilhelm.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
I frowned. “I should care about a man who thinks I’m poor company.”
We got out of the car and approached Paula Berge’s building. Ahead of us was a tall, blond woman carrying an umbrella. She was wearing black-and-white leather oxfords with two-inch heels and a gray tweed suit, and she walked directly into the bookshop. For several heart-stopping moments I thought I recognized her. Someone from my past. This was, I knew, unlikely to happen in a dump like Homburg. But before I had realized I had the wrong woman I’d ended up following her into the bookshop, where she quickly selected a copy of Gone with the Wind and took it to the desk. The clerk recorded the sale and then handed her a pay slip.
Six long months had passed since Hilde, the last woman to walk into my life, had walked just as smartly out of it. I didn’t blame her for walking out, just the manner of her doing it. I don’t know why, but a small part of me still hoped that one day she would see the error of her ways, just as a microscopic part of me hoped she would be happy with her SS major. Not that happiness meant anything anymore; it was just an idea for children, like God and birthday parties and Santa Claus. Life felt much too serious to be diverted by bagatelles like happiness. Meaning was what mattered, not that there was much of that around, either. Most of the time my life had less meaning than yesterday’s crossword.
With eyes only for the woman in the bookshop—she was uncannily like the one I’d mistaken her for—I watched her hand over the pay slip at the cash till, pay for the book, and then leave, not far behind the shop’s only other customer, a tallish man in a green loden coat who had somehow managed to forget his valise.
“Is that woman someone you know?” whispered Zander.
“No.”
“Good-looking, I suppose.”
“I thought so.”
“For Homburg.”
“For anywhere.”
Meanwhile, I’d picked up the valise and was about to call after the man when I noticed a neat little label on the leather side: it featured a pickax and a mallet, and the words Berchtesgaden Salt Mines and Good Luck. I’d seen that design before: on an enamel badge in Udo Ambros’s buttonhole. Suddenly I realized who the man was and, still holding the valise, I ran out of the bookshop to see where he’d gone; but Markt Platz was deserted and Johann Diesbach—I was certain it had been him—had disappeared.
“Damn,” I said loudly.
Zander followed me out of the shop and lit a cigarette. “She wasn’t that special,” he said. “Oh, I’ll grant you, unusually good for these parts. But hardly worth losing your head over.”
“No, you idiot, the man who left this valise—it was Diesbach.”
“What?” Zander looked one way and then the other, but of Diesbach there remained no sign. “You’re kidding.” He frowned. “That man at the brewery. He must have tipped the sister off, just as you supposed. You should go back and arrest him.”
“There’s no time for that. Besides, I only told him I was looking for Paula Berge, not her brother. So he really doesn’t deserve to be arrested.”
“But why did Diesbach leave his case?”
“Nerves got the better of him, I suppose. Here’s what I want you to do, Wilhelm.” I handed him Diesbach’s valise. “Go and stand in front of Paula Berge’s building door. And don’t let anyone leave.”
Zander looked alarmed. “Suppose he’s in there. The man’s a murderer. He’s got a gun, hasn’t he? Suppose he comes out shooting?”
“Then shoot back. You’ve got a gun.”
Zander pulled a face.
“Have you ever fired it before?” I asked.
“No. But how difficult can it be?”
“Not difficult at all. Just pull the trigger and the Walther will do the rest. That’s why it’s called an automatic.”
SIXTY
April 1939
Not for one moment did I think Johann Diesbach had walked out of the bookshop and then simply ducked into his estranged sister’s doorway—that would have been a hell of a gamble—but I couldn’t risk the possibility he hadn’t done exactly that. What seemed more probable was that my earlier suspicion had been correct, and that Diesbach’s sister had been warned we were coming, and that Johann had been on his way out the door when he’d seen Zander and me walking across Markt Platz and had decided to hide in the bookshop; he couldn’t ever have thought we’d step in there before going up to Paula Berge’s apartment. For him to return to the very same address we had been heading for would have been foolhardy. Still I had high hopes of finding him abroad on Homburg’s empty streets and I ran one way and then the other, like a windup Schuco toy—a short way down Klosterstrasse, then along Karlsbergstrasse, and finally north, up Eisenbahnstrasse, toward the railway station. I’d already seen the blonde climb into a green Opel Admiral driven by a man wearing the smart uniform of a naval captain lieutenant, but of Johann Diesbach there was no trace. He’d disappeared.
Nor did I find any sign of a local policeman on patrol. Of course Homburg would never be the kind of place where there were cops hanging around the street corners. It wasn’t just life that happened somewhere else than Homburg; crime did as well. It had started to rain again, hard Saarland rain that was full of coal dust and the exhausting truth of ordinary German life. Any sensible Orpo man would have been wrapped up in his waterproof police cape and standing in a quiet doorway with his hands cupped around a quiet smoke, or holed up in the nearest café waiting for the rain to stop. It’s certainly what I would have done. A cigarette in a doorway is usually as near to luxury as any half-frozen, uniformed cop on duty is ever likely to come.
Two-thirds of the way up Eisenbahnstrasse I found the local police station and, flashing my beer token, explained that I was on the trail of a dangerous police killer by the name of Johann Diesbach, and added a reasonable description of the man I’d seen in the bookshop at Markt Platz.
“This is a matter of the highest priority,” I added self-importantly. “I’m acting on the direct orders of the government leader’s office. The man is armed and dangerous.”
“Right you are, sir.” The sergeant had muttonchop whiskers down to his shoulders and a mustache that was as big as the wingspan of the Prussian imperial eagle. “What do you want me to do?”
“Send a couple of your best men to the railway station to keep an eye out for him. And the local bus station, if you have one. I’ll be back here in half an hour to take charge of the search.”
Then, ignoring the rain, or at least trying to, I walked back to where I’d left Wilhelm Zander. My shoes were already soaked and my feet were cold; my hat looked more like a lump of clay on a potter’s wheel. Very sensibly, Zander was standing deep in the doorway of the building with one hand inside his greatcoat pocket and I guessed he was holding a gun. The valise was safely between his heels. He threw away the cigarette he’d been smoking and almost came to attention.
“No one has been in or out of this building since I’ve been standing here,” he said.
“I’ve sent a couple of coppers to keep an eye on the local railway station. So, hopefully, he won’t get far. And anyone lurking in a doorway like you are is bound to stand out in this place.”
I squeezed into the doorway beside him, opened the case, and searched quickly through Diesbach’s belongings: I found some clean clothes, a bit of French money, a French Baedeker, a pair of shoes, a Saarland newspaper with a number and an initial penciled on the front page, a picture of a naked woman I didn’t recognize, a traveling chess set, a tin of Wybert throat lozenges, a razor, a leather strop and some soap, a toothbrush and a tube of Nivea toothpaste, a box of Camelia, some pistol ammunition, and a spiked object that looked as if it had come from a medieval armory.
“What the hell is that?” asked Zander.
“It’s a trench mace. We used that sort of thing when we were raiding enemy trenches at night. It was a very effective way of killing Tommies quietly. And the old ways are the best.”
Zander blinked uncomfortably. “Who’s the woman in the photograph? His wife, I suppose.”
I smiled. “No. I think that’s probably his girlfriend, Pony. Lives in Munich.”
“And the Camelia—the sanitary towels? Is she with him?”
“No.”
“His sister’s?”
“I expect he borrowed them from her.”
“Why on earth—?”
“When you’re on the run, your shoes get wet. I know mine are.” I showed him the spare pair of shoes in the valise and how Diesbach had tucked a towel inside each like an insole, to help dry it. “It’s an old soldier’s trick. Helps keep your feet dry. Which is especially useful on a day like this. A Camelia is much more absorbent than newspaper.” I closed the valise, turned in the doorway, and rang the doorbell but if Paula Berge was at home she was sensibly not answering.
“Kick it down,” said Zander.
“I don’t think so. Besides, what would be the point? We already know he was here. The street and apartment number are penciled on the front of this newspaper. But she’s going to deny he was ever with her, of course. And in the time we waste persuading Paula Berge to talk I think we could usefully return to the local police station and detail some more police to start searching the rest of this town. That’s what I’ve told the duty sergeant.”
We climbed into the car—Zander joined me in the front seat this time—and I drove to the police station on Eisenbahnstrasse, where I now ordered the desk sergeant to deploy his entire force; but this turned out to be just three more men because—including the two at the railway station—there were only five men on duty in the whole of Homburg, and they moved at an unhurried sort of pace that only the police in small towns can achieve. What was almost as bad, they seemed to regard the very idea of a police search as some kind of jolly game and were full of chatter and jokes and eager to arrest a cop killer. I told them to pay particular attention to buses traveling west, toward Saarbrücken and the border with French Lorraine, but it was like setting a donkey to catch a hare and a poor start to a Homburg manhunt.
“I don’t give much for their chances of finding so much as a broken umbrella,” I said as I returned to the car with Zander. “Those are the doziest cops I’ve seen outside a Mack Sennett movie.”
“They didn’t impress me, either,” admitted Zander. “I think we’d better keep looking for him, don’t you?”
We drove northeast to the railway station to check that our man was not yet arrested—he wasn’t—and then motored around Homburg in the driving rain for a while, searching the deserted streets for Johann Diesbach. Homburg made Saarbrücken look like Paris. We saw only one other pedestrian who looked like it might be him; it turned out to be a woman.
“How can a man disappear like that?” complained Zander. “The bars aren’t even open yet.”
“Happens all the time in Germany,” I said. “You might even say it’s common. Only police like me don’t normally go looking for them. The ones who disappear. Not least because everyone knows where they really are.”
“And where’s that?”
“A KZ. Or worse.”
“Oh. I see. Then perhaps he knows someone else here in Homburg. A friend of his sister, perhaps. That man you saw at the Karlsberg Brewery. Perhaps he’s hiding him. And there are plenty of places you can hide in a brewery.”
“Yes, that’s possible, I suppose.”
I pulled up in front of a coffeehouse.
“Stay here,” I said.
I ran in, checked the lavatories, and came out again.
“Not in there,
either.”
I turned the car around and once again started to drive in the direction of the brewery.
“Where are we going now?”
“The brewery.”
Zander nodded. “I was thinking. When we were in Bormann’s car, you said this man was a Jäger, trained in Hutier tactics. What are Hutier tactics?”
“Hutier tactics? You might almost call it common sense. Instead of ordering the kind of attack in which thousands of soldiers would walk across no-man’s-land, Hutier trained up special storm battalions of light infantrymen, small groups of men who were specialists in carrying out surprise infiltration attacks. It might have worked, too, if someone had thought to do this a bit earlier than March 1918.”
“So he knows what he’s doing.”
“When it comes to looking after himself? I should say so. Or maybe you’ve forgotten that trench mace in his valise.”
“Yes. I do see what you mean.”
“Look, what else can you remember about this awful place?” I asked. “Besides what happened here in 1793.”
“Most of the furniture that was saved from the old château went to Berchtesgaden Castle.”
“Something that might help,” I said acidly.
“It’s so long ago.”
“What brought you here, anyway? From Saarbrücken.”
“My brother, Hartmut, and I had a very religious childhood. He’s now in Berlin, working for the Gestapo. Most people around these parts are Roman Catholics but my parents were strict Lutherans and on Sunday Hartmut and I went to Sunday school. Most of the time that was as bad as it sounds. But once a year the church used to organize a summer picnic and it was nearly always here in Homburg, in the old gardens of Karlsberg Castle. Which for a small boy was quite exciting, as you can imagine. There were lots of games and sports. But—” He shrugged. “I was never very good at those. Mostly Hartmut and I used to go off with a couple of friends and explore the castle ruins.”