‘The consequences? My daughter’s death.’
Dressler’s eyes had drooped as he’d listened to the speech, as if it both wearied and disgusted him. The steel splinter in his brain was angry tonight. The pain came in reddish waves, and the glaring light in this white hell of an apartment had joined forces with that sliver. The damned agony of it! He shook his head. What did he have here? The reasonable, yet unmerciful man? The ambitious man? The fanatic? But a deliberate, premeditating killer?
Sadly, Dressler, looking at the Nazi’s tense face, knew what he believed in his heart. This type had broken out like an epidemic. Too many, for bullets to be a vaccine.
Dietrich, watching the detective, was calculating feverishly. ‘If you kill me, you’ll be murdering an official who did his duty, who’d only a tenuous responsibility for your daughter’s death. Also, you’ll be signing your own death warrant.’ Drops of sweat from his face fell on his knees. As he uttered it, he realised the threat might be a mistake.
I’ve done that, anyway, the detective thought. This man was only slightly more brainwashed than the German masses. So many in the same boat. Possibly, he actually believed all the propaganda garbage. Felt himself a loyal German. Loved the Fuehrer. Should a man like himself who’d fought in the Great War, really given all that he had to give for the nation, bring himself down to the level of such a fool? Criminal, or not?
He said, soberly, ‘You’re a lucky man, for the moment. I don’t trust you, or believe you. The lie is there hidden away. But you just might be a big enough fool to believe it.’
He brought the pistol up slowly, and holstered it. Then he turned and walked heavily but silently from the apartment. As he came out to the night air the whistling began in his throat, his nose, deep down in his lungs.
Dietrich sat absolutely still. For a long time he did not, could not, move a muscle. In 1934 he’d run a marathon in Munich, and had been as helpless as a baby after it. He was that way now. Eventually, he got to his feet and went to the phone, on legs that could hardly be trusted.
Later, still drained, he stood at the window facing the other apartment blocks. In this light-blasted enclave night seemed to be perennially held at bay. Behind him the dirty dishes and glasses of the dinner party remained from the evening’s first act; the smell of menthol, of his own fear, from the second. A deeply unsatisfactory evening; not at all what he’d planned. Yet, there was something to be salvaged. And by God, he’d see that it was!
~ * ~
32
A
FTER MIDNIGHT DRESSLER arrived at his block of flats and climbed the three exhausting flights of brass-rodded stairs, with their threadbare carpet. Halfway up, he gasped, Dressler! ... last time ... up the killer stairs.’
He’d made it home. Turning on the light he felt pleased that he had, pleased to be back in his small bastion. A few matters remained to be attended to. But what an effort! Shoulders leaning against the door, he gasped in air, whistled it out. Murderous stairs. Each time he returned from duty at evening or dawn, he thought his lungs were finished — though he’d been thinking it for eighteen years.
The flat seemed as frigid as the street and he kept his overcoat on, but took his hat off. The tiny kitchen which he entered, like his car, and his cubbyhole at the police station, fitted him as tightly. He, a giant, lived his life in a midget’s environment; it’d never occurred to him.
He measured out and heated coffee on the gas burner, and watched it percolate. He carried a cup to his desk in the living room, smelt it, drank some, and felt warmth spread in his stomach. Two photographed faces in cheap frames watched him. He studied them for several minutes as though memorising every detail, then his giant fingers fumbled the pictures from the frames. Reverently, he placed them in the wastepaper basket, lit a match and set them alight. From a cold inner place, he watched them brown, curl, become ashes.
He opened a drawer, found his bank passbook and a withdrawal slip, took up his fountain pen, laboriously completed the slip for 4,000 marks — almost the balance — signed it, tucked it in the book and put it in his pocket. Hopefully, time for a trip upstairs. He looked at his watch: 12.32 am. From another drawer, he lifted a small official-looking box and tipped into the palm of his hand the Iron Cross First Class. In his hand, it looked like a miniature of the medal but was not. He rose from his chair, went to the window, opened it wide, phlegmatically accepting the icy blast, and threw the medal in a casual underhand throw across the rooftops. He heard it clank on tiles, listened to it slide until the sound ended. He closed the window. One day, some roof-climbing plumber would get a surprise.
He regarded the room: all that came back to him was the closed-up odour, a widower’s silence, and the atmosphere of a plain and frugal life. He said, ’Not much to attend to, Dressler. Not much needed to complete it. Though, it’s been a long journey.’
He’d wanted to hear the sound of his voice.
They’d not sent Lilli’s ashes. Through his overcoat he patted the passbook. Now was the time to go upstairs to his neighbour ...
A car crept into the street, lights off; its engine died, doors were shut quietly — but not quietly enough. He’d been listening for it, but so soon? A boot kicked a garbage can, and he nodded slowly. Gestapo. They were punctilious, if amateurish in their efforts; the police would’ve waited until dawn, at least, but what could be expected from a gang of convicted criminals and rejuvenated state political police? Previously, a warning phone call from a colleague might’ve come through, but not these days. Not for him.
He went back to his desk, took his pistol from its holster, worked the action, laid it down, resumed his seat, his casual listening. He fell to dreaming. The outcome was certain, only the details were unclear, and not important. Gradually from the dim and far distance a dull resonance built in his eardrums: the muted, yet thunderous approach of the barrage creeping across no-man’s-land, sending up great geysers of black earth. Soon, once more, hell would erupt all around him, but on a more human scale. Really, there was no comparison.
They took their time coming up the stairs, doubtless suffering that outlandish climb, and nervous of the general environment. He heard them labouring on the last flight. The pounding on the door came as a theatrical anti-climax. However, it would wake up the building.
Amateurs. He rose heavily and went to stand behind the door. Until this moment he’d not decided on a plan, but now, carelessly, he had one.
‘What is it?’ he said.
A silence. ’Open up! Geheime Staatspolizei!’
He waited. ‘One moment, I’ll get my dressing-gown.’
He did not move, but waited - as though he was back in the trenches awaiting the order to go over the top. The whistle blew in his head. He flung open the door, surged out. The two men in the midst of a whispered exchange received the pile-driving arms into their torsos, were launched into the air, became entangled in a flailing knot which landed halfway down that flight of the stairs with shuddering impact, somersaulted, kept going down.
A third man, on the landing, threw himself out of the way of the catastrophe hurtling down, brought up a pistol and fired twice. The second shot hit Dressler in the left shoulder. He flinched, and brought his own pistol out and up, aimed, and shot the man in the centre of the forehead. The dead agent fell back across his entangled colleagues, his eyes wide-open, his face exhibiting his final frantic miscalculation.
The gunshots were deafening and the stairwell reverberated from the concussions. Cautiously Dressler moved to the balustrade, and a fourth man fired several times at him from the hall, whining bullets off the walls, sending woodchips from the balustrade zinging. Where did they teach these men to shoot? With great concentration, the detective followed him with his gun barrel for a second or two. The man was now running back and forth in the hall like a panicked rat skittering across a barn. The senior detective squinted, squeezed off two shots, dropped this runner in his tracks, and watched him hammer out a frenetic tattoo with his hee
ls.
The two on the landing below had untangled themselves, thrown off their dead colleague, and were getting out their weapons. One had a broken arm, Dressler noted. He was wearying of this; he shot them both.
He stared broodingly down at the shambles for a moment: an untidy heap of black leather, glimpses of white flesh, and emerging patches of blood, then went back into his flat, leaving the door open. One of those last shot was still moving, but it didn’t interest him. Not a door had opened — even a crack. Quite understandable. The building seemed deserted but it wasn’t, and everyone would be wide awake.
He returned to the kitchen to reheat the coffee. Then he sat in his chair behind the desk inherited from his father, laying his pistol down. He reached in his left pocket, and from the ‘out’ tray spilled a handful of brass bullets on his blotter. The blotter where he wrote his rare letters, and the odd report not done in a café with a black coffee standing at his elbow. His shoulder was becoming numb, a little blood was oozing through the overcoat’s thick material. The next lot would come before too long, with a greater degree of preparation and forethought - if they could get their brains working. The pain glinted in his skull, not in his shoulder. He swallowed two pills. Coffee had become a main factor in his life, and he sipped this brew with dedication.
Five minutes of quiet, and meditation. Should’ve he killed Dietrich? The Nazi had been busy on the phone. No, he was quite comfortable with that decision. In the war, almost invariably, he’d seen cowards and malingerers, traitors and crooks, get their just deserts. In a world saturated with violence. A type of world that was coming back. In that respect, the wheel appeared to turn with certainty. All you had to be was patient. In his heavy, pragmatic way, he felt confident that the Nazi would get his. Herr Schmidt had come into his head: he stood in a street, his eye hanging out on his cheekbone. The detective wondered at the memory. Why hadn’t he made that connection before? He shook his head slowly. The mind, and the memory, were strange. He’d been locked into his fear for Lilli, other matters had been passing him by. And it’d been years ago ...
Herr Dorf, his upstairs’ neighbour, who was a conductor on the tramways and a veteran like himself, an ex-cavalryman, appeared in the doorway. Dressler had always respected the dexterity with which his neighbour, a largish man himself, moved on the building’s steep stairs, and, went that extra flight. Doubtless, it was due to his experience with edgy horses and swaying tramcars. He was swathed in a dressing-gown.
‘Is everything all right, Herr Dressler?’
Obviously, everything was not.
‘Thank you, Herr Dorf. How is the cavalry this evening? Or, I should say, morning?’
His neighbour sadly eyed the spreading red patch. ‘I don’t complain. How is the infantry feeling?’
‘Quite good, really. Certainly much better than those downstairs.’
He smiled, and Dorf reflected, with surprise, that it was the first time he’d ever seen the municipal detective do that. In the stairwell, the surviving Gestapo agent had begun to emit piteous groans.
‘Could I call a doctor — for you?’
‘No, thank you. But take this. I’ll have no further need of it.’
Dressler took the passbook from his pocket. ‘Go to the bank first thing in the morning. Withdraw the money, use it, with my best wishes. Your son’s education ...?’
Dressler, upright in his chair, offered his hand across the desk. ‘Now ... please return to your flat, and don’t come out again on my account, on any account.’
The conductor shook his head sadly. ‘These are bad times, Herr Dressler.’
‘Yes,’ Dressler agreed, ’bad times.’
~ * ~
33
H
AD WAGNER got through? ‘Has he?’ he asked Helga’s beloved Meissen coffee-pot. Each morning he used to talk to the coffee-pot for the amusement of Trudi. The attempt at levity did not alleviate the nervous tension that had settled in the pit of his stomach now. He wouldn’t know until midday when Wagner was due to ring — unless bad news came earlier.
Seven thirty am. It was still almost dark. Schmidt stared out the window. His head felt a little heavy, though he’d been as careful with his intake of champagne, and wine, as Dietrich had permitted.
But last night seemed like a movie. Compared to his concern about the status of Wagner’s mission, it was as past and petrified as the tulips on Dietrich’s frosted glass doors. He’d had two dreams. The remembered essence of them was interweaved with his recall of the interlude with the Nazi. In the dark early-morning hours Trudi had come, soft and light as a breeze, through the flat to his bedside, laid her tiny hand on his, whispered: ‘Papa.’ That was all. The other: a bombastic explosion -big doors thrown open on a glittering assembly of the Nazi élite, a trumpet sounding, and he, Chief Auditor Franz Schmidt, being announced with this fanfare. He sat for several moments contemplating each. Now his throat was aching with nerves.
Lights on and bereft of passengers, the early tram waited in Bamberg Platz. Conductor Dorf seemed relieved to see someone emerge from the mist. While the auditor was folding his newspaper the Viennese came along the aisle opening his leather bag.
‘Good morning, Herr Schmidt — another miserable day.’
Schmidt smiled a grim agreement, and handed over his money. The conductor punched a ticket and leaned above the auditor, a worried expression on his face. Depression of a communicable nature clung to him. Hanging on a strap, he dutifully scanned the platz for other approaching passengers, trying to penetrate the streamers of mist. He gave up, consulted his watch, and muttered, ‘No-one wants to come out this morning.’
He turned his big, earnest eyes down to Schmidt, who was poised over his paper, and said confidentially, ‘A terrible business last night at my flats. My neighbour was shot dead. And six others.’ Though no-one else was present, he leaned closer and whispered, ’Gestapo. I saw the bodies carried out.’
Schmidt stared at the conductor. ‘Dead?’
‘Absolutely. A big gunfight. He was a police detective, a decorated veteran of the war, and clearly a very fine shot. Six of the Gestapo dead as mutton. The reason for it — I don’t know. But Herr Dressler was a good man.’
Schmidt looked down at his paper: it was spinning rapidly like newspapers seen at the beginning of newsreels. He felt ill. He became aware that the conductor was still standing over him.
‘Excuse me —’ Schmidt said.
Dorf regarded him sympathetically. This kind of event was a trial to all.
Something else was worrying the Viennese. He’d brought out a bank passbook, and held it as though it was a fragile heirloom. His hands were shaking. ‘We were good neighbours. Herr Dressler wanted me to have this — for my son’s education. I don’t know how to get it.’
The newspaper had fallen from Schmidt’s hands; a sense of wonderment arose in him. What was happening to forge all these amazing connections in his life? He felt omnipresent — his mind was clearing, control returning. He took the passbook from the conductor, examined it and the enclosed slip. Dorf could have problems withdrawing the money from the savings bank. He would arrange it first thing, before the account was frozen; one more last small service to the doomed Dresslers.
He studied Dorf’s strained face. ‘Let me take it. I’ll get the money for you.’
The big conductor smiled with immense relief and gratitude. ‘I can’t thank you enough, Herr Schmidt.’
The driver was signalling impatiently from the front, so Dorf pulled the bell, and they shuddered and clanked into motion. ‘One minute late, my fault.’ He clucked his tongue.
It was the first time Schmidt could remember being the only passenger from the terminus. It seemed an omen for the future.
He couldn’t get Dressler out of his head. But after he’d attended to the post, Schmidt forced himself to examine his in-tray. The financial year-end was near and his work was falling behind. Whatever the exigencies in the wide world, despite personal crises,
the bank’s processes didn’t falter. A confidential file of draft closing entries awaited his scrutiny. The bank ran two ledgers, one more or less public, the other strictly private. He grimaced. Depending on the outcome of today’s events, someone else might have to deal with these intricacies.
The Eye of the Abyss - [Franz Schmidt 01] Page 23