by Philip Kerr
'He's one of my regulars. Always pays cash.'
'You can't get many lieutenants in here. Did he win the German lottery? Must have been the South German and the Sachsen with a first-class ticket at these prices, Otto.'
Horcher looked around and leaned toward me.
'This place gets a lot of joy-girls, Bernie. High-end. Courtesans they call them here in Paris, but they're whores just the same. Your pardon, Miss Matter. It's not a subject to discuss in front of a lady.'
'Don't apologise, Herr Horcher,' she said. 'I came to Paris for an education. So, please, speak frankly.'
'Thank you, miss. This fellow Willms seems to know an awful lot of these girls, Bernie. So I ask some questions. I mean, I like to know the customers. That's just good business. Anyway, it seems this Willms has the power to close down any maison de plaisir in Paris. Apparently he used to be a vice cop in Berlin and can bounce the ball off all the cushions. The word I heard was that the ones that pay he leaves open and the ones that don't he closes down. A good old-fashioned shakedown.'
'That's a nice little gold mine,' I said.
'There's more,' said Horcher. 'You see there's a diamond mine, too. Have you heard of the One-Two-Two and the Maison Chabanais?'
'Sure. They're high-class houses that only the Germans can go to. I guess they paid up.'
Horcher nodded. 'Like it was the Winter Relief. But Willms was clever. There's a third high-class house where you need a codeword to get through the door and which is by invitation only.'
'And Willms is printing the stationery?'
Horcher nodded. 'Guess who got an invitation when he was on a flying trip to Paris?'
'The Mahatma Propagandi?'
'That's right.' Horcher sounded surprised that I had guessed. 'You should have been a detective, do you know that?'
'Surely Willms can't be doing this on his own?'
'I don't know if he is or not. But I do know who he often has dinner with. They're both German officers. One of them is General Schaumberg. The other is a Sipo captain like yourself. Name of Paul Kestner.'
'That's interesting.' I let that one sink in a long way before my next question. 'Otto, you wouldn't happen to have an address for this puff-house would you?'
'Twenty-two Rue de Provence, opposite the Hotel Drouot, in the ninth arrondissement.'
'Thanks, Otto. I owe you one.'
After dinner there was still an hour before the midnight curfew and I told Renata to take the Metro back to her tiny apartment in the Rue Jacob.
'Be careful,' she said.
'It's all right,' I said. 'I shan't go in. I'll just-'
'I didn't say be good. I said be careful. Willms has already tried to kill you once. I don't think he'd hesitate to try again. Especially now that you're on to his racket.'
'Don't worry. I know what I'm doing.'
It would have been nice if this had been true. But I didn't know what I was doing for the simple reason I still didn't have a clue why Willms had tried to kill me.
I decided to walk to the Rue de Provence in the hope that the exercise and the summer air might help me to figure things out. For a while I was racking my brains for something I might have said to Willms on the train from Berlin - something that might have made him think I was a threat to his nefarious little organisation. And gradually I formed the conclusion that it was nothing I had said; it was what I was that might have alarmed him. At the Alex it was generally supposed that I was Heydrich's spy, and Willms, who worked there for a while, would have known that; even if he didn't, Paul Kestner would certainly have said as much. For his part, Kestner had hardly believed that I'd come all the way from Berlin to arrest just one man. If the two of them were partners, then getting rid of me might have looked like a wise precaution, and Willms was just the type to have taken the matter in hand. Of greater concern, perhaps, was how General Schaumberg was involved, and before my theory was complete I was going to need to know something more about him. This seemed more urgent when, arriving outside twenty-two Rue de Provence, I discovered even more staff cars than had been parked in front of Maxim's.
For several minutes I stood at a distance, in a doorway on the opposite side of the street, watching the comings and goings at what, on the face of it, was a smart address, with a liveried doorman. Twice I saw a German officer arrive, utter a single word to the doorman and be admitted inside. It seemed obvious that unless I uttered the codeword I had no chance of getting into the maison, and I was just about to give up and return to my hotel when a staff car turned the corner and I caught a glimpse of the officer in the back seat. He was unremarkable in every way save the red and gold patches on his collar and the Blue Max he wore around his neck. The Pour La Merite - popularly known as the Blue Max - isn't a common decoration and led me to think that this could be none other than the commandant of Paris, General Alfred von Vollard-Bockel- burg, himself. And seeing him headed to the maison gave me an idea. What you have to remember is that many of the general staff in Paris in 1940 were tremendous Francophiles; that relations with the French were good; and that German officers all went out of their way to avoid giving offence to the French or treading on their administrative toes.
By now, the general, who couldn't have been more than five feet tall, even in his boots, had got out of the car and was repeating the codeword to the doorman.
I took off my hat and sprinted toward this diminutive hero as the puff-house door opened. Seeing me near the general, an aide-de-camp blocked my path. This man was a colonel with a monocle.
'General,' I said. 'General von Vollard-Bockelberg.'
I put on my cap and saluted smartly.
'Yes,' said the general, and returned my salute. His head was almost hairless. He looked like a baby with a moustache.
'Thank God, sir.'
'Willms, is it?'
This was better than I had hoped for. I glanced nervously at the doorman, wondering if he spoke much German, and risked clicking my heels, which, to a German officer at least, always meant 'yes'.
'I'm so glad I caught you, Herr General. Apparently there's a detachment of French gendarmes on their way here to raid this place.'
'What? General Schaumberg assured me that this establishment was beyond reproach.'
'Oh, I'm sure the general is right, sir. But the Prefecture of Paris has been given orders by the German Morality Commission that maisons de plaisir employing coloureds or Jews are to be closed down, the women arrested and any German officers found on the premises checked for venereal disease.'
'I signed that order myself,' said the general. 'That order was for the protection of the ordinary rank and file. Not for senior German officers. Not for maisons like this.'
'I know, sir. But the French, sir. It would appear that they didn't appreciate that, sir. Or at least have chosen not to appreciate it, if you receive my meaning.' I glanced urgently at my watch.
'What time is this raid to take place?' asked the general.
'Well that all depends, sir. Not everyone in Paris has bothered to set all clocks to German time, as per your orders, sir. And that includes the French police. If the raid takes place according to Paris time then it might happen at any minute. But if it's Berlin time then there might yet be time to get everyone else in the maison out before an embarrassing incident occurs.'
'He's right, sir,' said the aide. 'There are still a great many French paying no attention to official German time.'
The little general nodded. 'Willy,' he said to the aide. 'Go in there and discreetly inform all General Staff officers you can find that the story is out on this place. I'll wait for you in the car.'
'Would you like me to help, Herr Colonel?'
'Yes, thank you, Captain Willms. And thank you for your presence of mind.'
I clicked my heels again and followed the colonel through the door while the little general explained things to the doorman in what sounded like excellent French.
I went up a curving, cast-iron staircase and found myself in a tall, elegant room
with a chandelier as big as the underside of an iceberg, and several rococo murals that might have been painted by Fragonard if ever he'd been asked to illustrate the memoirs of Casanova with extreme obscenity. The vaulted gilt ceiling looked like the inside of a Faberge egg. There were plenty of chairs and sofas that had been upholstered with the aid of an air-compressor; they had long legs and narrow ankles with ball and claw feet. The girls seated on the chairs and sofas had long legs and narrow ankles, and for all I knew, ball and claw feet as well, only I wasn't paying that much attention to their feet because there were other details of their appearance that commanded my attention first. All of them were naked. The angle of this gold-plated puff-house was that every man with a red stripe on his trouser leg might sit in leisurely judgement of these Olympian beauties like Paris with his especially inscribed apple. There was even a bowl of fruit on the table.
These were attractive thoughts but I was in a hurry and before the 'temps perdu' patronne could give me her couple- mother spiel I had grabbed a natural blonde and herded her towards a bedroom with a couple of well-placed slaps on her well-placed derriere. It wasn't that I was interested in having her but I was in urgent need of a door to lock and wait behind while the general's aide set about raising the alarm. Already I could hear him warning other officers that the police were on their way to raid the place. And it wasn't very long before the sound of many boots was heard on the stairs as the maison's exclusive clientele left the building hurriedly. Meanwhile, I tried to reassure my beautiful naked companion that there was nothing at all to worry about and asked her questions about Willms, Kestner and Schaumberg. Her name was Yvette and she spoke excellent German, as did nearly all of the girls at number twenty-two. Probably that was why they'd been selected to work there in the first place.
'General Schaumberg is the deputy commander of Berlin,' she explained. 'He seems to spend most of his time touring Parisian brothels. Him and his adjutant, who's a German count. The Graf Waldersee. And there's a prince in tow as well: the Prince von Ratibor. The prince and his dog are here at least twice a week. All brothel certificates are issued by Schaumberg's office, and together with Kestner and Willms they've already made it into a nice little racket. The Germans win both ways. They get paid off for a certificate. They get laid by the best whores. But the brains of the outfit is Willms. He used to be a flic so he knows how a maison works. A bastard, too. Takes a slice of everything. Most evenings he's in his office here up on the top floor, cooking the books to show Schaumberg.'
'Is he here now?'
'He was. I expect he's already on the phone to Schaumberg's office trying to find out what the Hell's going on. What is going on?'
I thought it best not to tell her any more than she needed to know.
After about half an hour I went upstairs. There was no one to be seen but I could hear someone on the floor above shouting in French. I quickened my steps and arrived on a landing outside an open office door. Willms was on the telephone behind a desk. He was sitting next to an open safe as if he thought it might keep him warm. Perhaps it would have done, too, there was enough money in it.
Seeing me there, he put down the phone and nodded.
'I suppose it was you,' he said. 'The person who gave out that the gendarmerie was coming to raid this place.'
'That's right. I didn't want to embarrass any of those red stripes when I put you under arrest, Willms.'
'Me? Under arrest?' He chuckled. 'It's you who's going to be in trouble, Gunther. Not me. Half of the General Staff in Paris are sharing in this particular bottle, my friend. Some very important heads are going to feel sore about what you've done here tonight.'
'They'll get over it. In a few days those Wehrmacht counts and princes will forget a rat like you ever even existed, Willms.'
'The amount of coal they're raking back from this place? I don't think so. See, you're trying to flood a very nice little money pit, here. The only question is, why? Or maybe you've got something against your brother officers having a thump now and again.'
'I'm not arresting you for being a pimp, Willms. Though that's what you are. Personally I've got nothing at all against pimps. A man can't help what he is. No, I'm arresting you for attempted murder.'
'Oh? And whose murder is it that I'm supposed to have attempted?'
'Mine.'
'You can prove that, can you?'
'I'm a detective, remember? I've got a little thing called evidence. Not to mention a witness. And if I'm right, a motive, too. Not that I'll need any of these things when Himmler finds out what you've been up to here in Paris, Willms. He's rather less understanding than me when it comes to the conduct of men wearing the uniform of his beloved SS. Somehow I get the feeling that his opinion of your conduct is going to matter a lot more than General Schaumberg's.'
'You're serious, aren't you?'
'I always take it seriously when someone tries to gas me with the contents of a chemical fire extinguisher. And by the way, I checked back with the Alex. It seems that before you joined the police, you worked for the fire brigade.'
'I don't see that proves a thing.'
'It proves you know something about fire extinguishers. And it would account for how it was that the missing plug from the extinguisher that almost killed me was found in your hotel room.'
'Says who?'
'The witness.'
'You think that a court martial will accept the word of a Frenchman against the word of a German officer?'
'No. But they might accept it against the word of a greasy little pimp.'
'You might be right,' said Willms. 'We'll have to see, won't we?'
Uttering a weary sort of sigh he sat back in his chair and, in the same movement, pulled open the drawer of his desk. Even before I saw the gun I knew it was there, and after that it was simply a question of who could shoot first, him or me. On my SS soft-shell holster there was just a brass stud to keep the flap down, but even so I was no Gene Autry and the Luger was in his hand before the Walther P38 was in mine. It was the Walther's double-action trigger that probably saved my life. Like most policemen I was in the habit of carrying it with one in the chamber and the hammer down. All I had to do was squeeze the trigger. Willms ought to have known that. The toggle-lock action on his Luger was much more cumbersome, which was why cops didn't carry them, and by the time his pistol was ready to fire I was already shouting a warning. I might have finished the warning, too, if he hadn't started to straighten his arm and aim the gun at me, at which point I fired at the side of his head.
For a moment I thought I'd missed.
Willms sat down, only he didn't sit on the chair, but on the floor, like a boy scout dropping onto his backside beside a camp fire. Then I saw the blood boiling out of his skull like hot mud. He collapsed onto his side and lay still except for his legs, which straightened slowly, like someone trying to get comfortable enough to die; and all the time his head painted the beige carpet a very dark shade of red, as if an indifferent claret had been poured onto the floor by a truculent guest in an unsatisfactory restaurant.
With shaking hands I made my Walther safe and then holstered it, asking myself if I couldn't have aimed at something other than his head. At the same time I told myself that one of the easiest ways to end up dead is to leave your wounded adversary with an opportunity to shoot you.
I bent down and made sure the Luger was safe, too, and it was then I started to see how much of a jam I was in, what with all the generals and counts and princes who were in league with Willms. Thinking it might be better if Willms's death at least looked a bit less like a murder, I swapped the Luger for my own Walther. Then, seeing Willms's tunic and belt hanging on coat-stand, I took his own standard-issue
Walther and put it in my holster before replacing the cold Luger in the desk drawer. Things only looked like a mess. Suicide was actually a nice tidy solution for the French police, for Sipo, and for the red stripes over at the Majestic Hotel. I wondered if they'd even bother to look for a powder burn o
n Willms's head. Because cops all over the world love suicides; they're nearly always the easiest homicides to solve. You just lift the rug and brush them underneath.
I picked up the telephone and asked the operator for the Prefecture of Police, in the Rue de Lutece.
* * *
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: GERMANY, 1954
I sat up and blinked hard in the near-darkness of cell number seven, wondering how long I'd been asleep. The shade of Hitler was gone, at least for now, and I was glad about that. I didn't much like his questions, or the mocking assumption that, deep down, I was as big a criminal as him. It was true that I might have shot Nikolaus Willms somewhere less lethal than his head, and that even when I'd been trying to put him under arrest, secretly I had probably wanted to kill him. Perhaps if Paul Kestner had pulled a gun on me I'd have shot him, too. But as it was I never saw Kestner again, and the last I heard of him he'd been part of a police battalion in Smolensk, murdering Jews and communists.
I opened my window and put my face in the cool breeze of the Landsberg dawn. I couldn't see the cows but I could smell them in the fields across the river to the south-west and I could hear them, too. One, anyway; it sounded like a lost soul in a place far, far away. Like my own soul perhaps. I almost felt like blowing my own breath in a solitary hot blast by way of an answer.
The Paris of 1940 seemed equally far away. What a summer that had been, thanks to Renata. The Prefecture in the person of Chief Inspector Oltramare had accepted without demur my story of finding Willms dead after going to the maison with the intention of arresting him, although it was as plain as the Eiffel Tower that he believed not a word of it. Sipo proved only a little more troublesome, and I was summoned to the Hotel Majestic, in the Avenue des Portugais, to explain myself to General Best, the head of the RSHA in Paris.
A dark-eyed, severe-looking man from Darmstadt, Best was in his late thirties and bore a strong resemblance to the Nazi Party's deputy leader, Rudolf Hess. There was some bad blood between him and Heydrich, and because of that I half-expected Best to give me a rougher ride. Instead he confined himself to delivering a light reprimand for my declared intent to arrest Willms without consulting him. Which was fair enough and my apology seemed to put an end to the matter; as things turned out, he was much more interested in picking my brains for a book he was writing about the German police. On several occasions we met at his favourite restaurant, a brasserie on the Boulevard de Montparnasse called La Coupole, and I told him all about life at the Alex and some of the cases I investigated. Best's book was published the following year and sold very well.