A Quiet Flame

by Philip Kerr

  “I suppose some of that might be right,” he said. “More or less.”

  “Which part do you agree with less?” I asked.

  Grund didn’t answer. He put Sabine Färber’s card back in her bag and stared down at the dead girl.

  “What is it that Hitler says?” I asked. “Strength lies not in defense but in attack?” I lit a cigarette. “I always wondered what that meant.” I let the smoke char my lungs for a moment and then said, “Is this the kind of attack that he means, do you think? Your great leader?”

  “Of course not,” muttered Grund. “You know it isn’t.”

  “What, then? You tell me. I’d like to know.”

  “Give it a rest, why don’t you?”

  “Me?” I laughed. “It’s not me who needs to give it a rest, Heinrich. It’s the people who did this. They’re your friends. The National Socialists.”

  “You don’t know any of that for a fact.”

  “No, you’re right. I don’t. For real vision you need a man like Adolf Hitler. Perhaps he should be the detective here. Not a bad idea—I’m sure I prefer the idea of him as a cop to the idea of him becoming the next chancellor of Germany.” I smiled. “And it’s an even bet he’d have a superior cleanup rate to me. Who better to solve a city’s crimes than the man who instigates most of them?”

  “Christ, I wish I didn’t have to listen to you, Gunther.”

  Grund spoke through gritted teeth. There was color in his face that ought to have warned me to be careful. He was a boxer, after all.

  “You don’t,” I told him. “I’m going back to the Alex to tell the political boys that this is one for them. You stay here and see if you can’t get some better witnesses than those sausage-makers. I dunno. Perhaps you’ll get lucky. Perhaps they’re Nazis themselves. They’re certainly ugly enough. Who knows? Perhaps they’ll even give you descriptions of three orthodox Jews.”

  I suppose it was the sarcastic grin that did it for him. I hardly saw the punch. I hardly even felt it. One second I was standing there, grinning like Torquemada, and the next I was lying on the cobbled ground, felled like a heifer and feeling as if I’d been struck by a bolt of electricity. In the half-light available to my eyes, Grund was standing over me with fists clenched, like Firpo staring down at Dempsey, and shouting something at me. His words were quite silent to my ears. All I could hear was a loud, high-pitched noise. Finally, Grund was hustled away by a couple of uniformed bulls while their sergeant bent down and helped me to my feet.

  My head cleared and I shifted my jaw against my hand.

  “The bastard hit me,” I said.

  “He did that,” said the cop, searching my eyes like a referee wondering if he should allow the fight to proceed or not. “We all saw it, sir.”

  From his tone I assumed he meant that he took it for granted I was going to press disciplinary charges against Grund. Hitting a superior officer was a serious offense in KRIPO. Almost as bad as hitting a suspect.

  I shook my head. “No, you didn’t,” I said.

  The cop was older than me. Nearing retirement, probably. His short hair was the color of polished steel. He had a scar in the center of his forehead: it looked as if a bullet had struck him there.

  “What’s that you say, sir?”

  “You didn’t see anything, Sergeant. Any of you. Got that?”

  The sergeant thought about this for a moment and then nodded. “If you say so, sir.”

  There was blood in my mouth but I was uncut.

  “No harm done,” I said, and spat onto the ground.

  “What was it all about?” he asked.

  “Politics,” I said. “That’s what everything’s always about in Germany these days. Politics.”

  I DIDN’T GO straight back to the Alex. Instead I drove to Kassner’s apartment on Dönhoff-Platz, which wasn’t exactly on the way, being at the eastern end of Leipziger Strasse. I stopped on the north side of some ornamental gardens. The bronze statues of two Prussian statesmen stared at me across a low privet hedge. A small boy out for a walk with his mother was looking at the statues and probably wondering who they were. I was thinking about how Dr. Kassner’s home address had come to be on a list of names I had got from Jewface Klein. I knew Kassner would still be at the hospital, so I really haven’t a clue what I was expecting to find out. But I am an optimist like that. When you’re a detective, you have to be. And sometimes you just have to do what your instincts tell you to do.

  I walked up to the shiny black front door and took a closer look. There were three bells. One of them was clearly labeled KASSNER. Beside the door were two cast-iron planters filled with geraniums. The whole area oozed respectability. I pulled the bell and waited. After a while I heard the key being turned and the door opened to reveal a man in his early twenties. I lifted my hat innocently.

  “Dr. Kassner?”

  “No,” said the man. “He’s not here.”

  “My name is Hoffmann,” I said, raising my hat once again. “From Isar Life Insurance.”

  The young man nodded politely but said nothing.

  I glanced quickly at the other two names by the bell pulls. “Herr Körtig?”

  “No.”

  “Herr Peters, is it?”

  “No. I’m a friend of Dr. Kassner’s. And as I said, he’s not here right now.”

  “When will the doctor be back do you think, Herr—?”

  “You can probably find him at the state hospital. At the urological clinic.” The man grinned as if somehow he hoped that this piece of information might embarrass me. There was a large gap between his front teeth. “I’m sorry, but I really do have to go. I’m late for an appointment. Would you excuse me?”

  “Certainly.”

  I stepped aside and watched him descend the front steps onto the square. He was of medium height, good-looking and dark in a Gypsy kind of way, but neat with it. He was wearing a light-colored summer-weight suit, a white shirt, but no tie. At the bottom of the steps he climbed over the door of a little open-topped Opel. It was white with a blue stripe. I hadn’t paid any attention to it before—maybe I was still a little bit punchy—but as he started the engine and drove off, I suddenly realized I needed to take down the license plate. All I got was the characters 11A before the car disappeared around the corner of Jerusalemstrasse. At least I knew that the slippery young man was from Munich.

  An hour later, I was back at my desk. I saw Heinrich Grund on the other side of the detectives’ room and was just about to go over and tell him there were no hard feelings on my part when the Full Ernst arrived beside me like a bus reaching its depot. He was wearing a three-piece blue pin-striped suit in a size huge and had a Senior going full-blast in the corner of his mouth. He removed the cigar and I heard what sounded like the bellows on a church organ. An invisible choir of smoke and sweet coffee and something stronger perhaps descended on me as from Mount Sinai, and a lung ailment of a voice commanded my attention.

  “Anything in that murder over at the cattle yard?” he asked.

  “It looks like an aggravated political killing,” I said.

  “Aggravated?”

  “They raped her as well.”

  Gennat grimaced.

  “The DPP wants to see us.” Gennat never called Weiss Izzy. He didn’t even call him Bernard. He called him Weiss or the DPP. “Now.”

  “What’s it about?” I asked, wondering if Grund had been stupid enough to report himself for striking a senior officer.

  “The Schwarz case,” he said.

  “What about it?”

  But Gennat had already waddled off, expecting me to follow. As I went after him I reflected that Gennat had the flattest feet of any cop I’d ever seen, which was hardly surprising, given the bulk they had to carry. He must have weighed almost three hundred pounds. He walked with his arms behind him, which was hardly surprising, either, given how much of him was in front.

  We went upstairs and along a quieter corridor lined with the pictures of previous Prussian po
lice presidents and their deputies. Gennat knocked on Izzy’s door and opened it without waiting. We went inside. Bright sunshine was streaming through grimy, double-height windows. As usual, Izzy was writing. On the window seat, like a warm-looking cat and smelling lightly of cologne, sat Arthur Nebe.

  “What’s he doing here?” I growled, sitting down on one of the hard wooden chairs. Gennat sat on the chair next to it and hoped for the best.

  “Now, now, Bernie,” said Izzy. “Arthur’s just here to help.”

  “I just came back from the cattle market. There’s a dead girl in one of the pens. Murdered by Nazis, most probably, given that she was a card-carrying Red. He could apply his formidable skills to that case, if he wants. But there’s nothing political about the murder of Anita Schwarz.”

  Izzy put down his pen and leaned back. “I thought I made it clear that there is,” he said.

  “Whoever killed Anita Schwarz was a nutcase, not a Nazi,” I said. “Although I will concede that it’s not at all uncommon for these two particulars to be coterminous.”

  “I believe Commissar Gunther makes the point for me,” said Nebe. “Quite eloquently, as usual.”

  “And what point might that be, Commissar Nebe?”

  “Look here, Bernie,” said Izzy. “There are certain officials in the General—”

  “I’m not in the General,” I said. “I’m in the Official.”

  “—have queried your ability to remain impartial,” he continued. “They think your open hostility to the National Socialist Party and its adherents might actually get in the way of solving this murder.”

  “Who said I was hostile to Nazism?”

  “Oh come on, Bernie,” said Nebe. “After that press conference? Everyone knows you’re Iron Front.”

  “Let’s not talk about that press conference,” said Gennat. “It was a disaster.”

  “All right,” I said. “Let’s not. After all, what’s any of it got to do with me finding the killer?”

  “The dead girl’s parents, Herr and Frau Schwarz, have alleged that you have behaved aggressively and unsympathetically toward them because of their politics,” said Izzy. “Since then, they’ve alleged that you have been acting on some malicious gossip concerning her moral character.”

  “Who told you that? Heinrich Grund, I suppose.”

  “Actually, they spoke to me,” said Nebe.

  “She was a prostitute,” I told Izzy. “An amateur, it’s true, but a prostitute nevertheless. Call me old-fashioned, but I thought that it might just have a bearing on why she was murdered. As well as how. After all, it’s not like prostitutes haven’t been murdered before in this city. And genital mutilation is something we’ve come across in cases of lust murder. Even Arthur would admit that much, surely.” I lit a cigarette. I didn’t ask permission to do it. I wasn’t in that kind of mood. “But if we are talking politics, may I remind everyone—especially you, Arthur—that it’s not against police regulations to be part of the Iron Front. It is against police regulations to be a member of the Nazi Party or the KPD.”

  “I’m not a member of the Nazi Party,” said Nebe. “If Bernie’s referring to my belonging to the National Socialist Fellowship of Civil Servants, then that’s something different. You don’t have to be a member of one to be a member of the other.”

  “I feel we’re getting off the subject here, a little,” said Izzy. “What I really wanted to talk about was Herr Schwarz’s position as a member of Kurt Daluege’s family. Daluege has been mentioned as a possible future police president. For that reason we’re keen to avoid any possible embarrassment to him.”

  “I thought an election had to happen before that was even a possibility, sir,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I was counting on it. I believe lots of people are. You included, if I’m not wrong. But maybe that’s just me being old-fashioned again. I was under the strong impression that our job was to protect the republic, not the reputations of thugs like Daluege and Schwarz.”

  “Not old-fashioned, Bernie,” said Gennat. “But perhaps a little naive. Regardless of what happens in the July election, this country will have to reach some sort of accommodation with the National Socialists. I don’t see how else anarchy and chaos are to be avoided in Germany.”

  “We just want what’s best for the Berlin police,” added Izzy. “I think we all do. And it’s in the best interests of the Berlin police that this matter is dealt with more sensitively.” Izzy shook his head. “But you. You are not sensitive, Bernie. You are not diplomatic. You tread heavily.”

  “You want me off the case, is that it?” I asked him.

  “No one wants you off the case, Bernie,” said Gennat. “You’re one of the best detectives we’ve got. I should know. I trained you myself.”

  “But we think it might be useful to have Arthur on board,” said Izzy. “To take care of the finer points of community relations.”

  “You mean when it comes to speaking to bastards like Otto Schwarz and his wife,” I said.

  “Precisely,” said Izzy. “I couldn’t have put it better myself.”

  “Well, I’d certainly be grateful for any help in that department,” I said, and smiled at Nebe. “I suppose I’ll just have to try my best to conceal my prejudices when I’m speaking to you, Arthur.”

  Nebe smiled his crafty smile. He seemed impossible to provoke. “Since we’re all of us on the same side . . .”

  “Yes, indeed,” I murmured.

  “Perhaps you would care to share with us what you have discovered so far.”

  I didn’t tell them everything. But I told them a lot. I told them about the autopsy and the protonsil pill and the five hundred marks and how Anita Schwarz had been on the sledge and that I had started to suspect that her probable killer was most likely a fritz who’d caught a dose of jelly and wanted to get even with a snapper and that he had probably picked Anita Schwarz because her disability made her an easy victim, and that as soon as I spoke to Dr. Kassner at the state hospital’s urological clinic, I could have a list of possible suspects. I didn’t mention I already had one. And I certainly didn’t mention what I’d discovered about Joey the Crip.

  “You won’t get anything out of a doctor,” said Gennat. “Not even with a court order. He’ll sit on his big fat doctor-patient privilege and tell you to go and screw yourself.”

  This sounded good, coming from a man whose own fat bottom would have been the envy of a pocket battleship.

  “And he’ll be entitled to do so. As I’m sure you know.”

  I stood up and bowed. “Ordinarily, I’d agree with you, sir. But I think you’re forgetting something.”

  “Oh? What’s that?”

  “I think you’re forgetting that Arthur’s not the only cop in the Alex who can play Prince bloody Charming. I can do that, too. At least I can when the cause seems even vaguely worthwhile.”

  I RANG the urological clinic to find out what time it closed, and was told five p.m. At four-thirty I filled a Thermos and drove back to Kassner’s house on Dönhoff-Platz. Once there, I switched off the engine, poured myself some coffee, and started on the papers I’d bought in Reichskanzlerplatz. They were a day old but that didn’t seem to matter very much. In Berlin the news was always the same. German chancellors made. German chancellors overthrown. And all the while the number of the unemployed kept on rising. Meanwhile, Hitler raced around the country in his Mercedes-Benz, telling people that he was the solution to everyone’s problems. I didn’t blame those who believed him. Not really. Most Germans just wanted to have something to hope for in the future. A job. A bank that stayed solvent. A government that could govern. Good schools. Streets that were safe to walk on. Good hospitals. A few honest cops.

  At about six-thirty, Dr. Kassner showed up in a new black Horch. I got out and followed him up the steps to his front door. Recognizing my face, he started to smile, but the smile quickly faded when he saw my cheap suit and the KRIPO disc in my hand.

  “Commissar Gunther,” I said. “From the
Alex.”

  “So, you’re not Dr. Duisberg from the Dyestuff Syndicate.”

  “No, sir. I’m a homicide detective. I’m investigating the murder of Anita Schwarz.”

  “I thought you looked rather young to be on the board of a company of that size and importance. Well, you’d better come in, I suppose.”

  We went up to his apartment. The place was modern. A lot of bleached burr walnut and cream leather and bronzes of naked ladies standing on tiptoe. He opened a cocktail cabinet the size of a sarcophagus and helped himself to a drink. He didn’t offer me one. We both knew that I didn’t deserve to have a drink. He sat down and put his drink on a scallop-edged wooden coaster that was on a scallop-edged coffee table. He crossed his legs and silently invited me to sit down.

  “Nice place,” I lied. “Live here alone?”

  “Yes. Now what’s this all about, Commissar?”

  “There was a girl found dead in Friedrichshain Park several nights ago. She’d been murdered.”

  “Yes, I read about it in Tempo. Terrible. But I don’t see—”

  “I found one of your protonsil pills near the body.”

  “Ah. I see. And you think one of my patients might be the culprit.”

  “It’s a possibility I’d like to explore, sir.”

  “Of course, it might just be a coincidence. One of my patients walking home from the clinic could have dropped his pills several hours before the body was found.”

  “I don’t buy that. The pill hadn’t been there that long. There was a shower of rain that afternoon. The pill we found was in pristine condition. Then there’s the girl herself. She was a juvenile prostitute.”

  “Lord, how very shocking.”

  “One theory I’m exploring is that the killer may have contracted venereal disease from a prostitute.”

  “Thus giving him a motive to kill one. Is that it?”

  “It’s a possibility I’d like to explore.”