A Quiet Flame

by Philip Kerr

  “So who did it? Who murdered Paul Herzefelde? Does anyone know?” I paused. “Can anyone guess? After all, you’re supposed to be detectives.” More silence. “Doesn’t anyone care who killed Paul Herzefelde?” I walked over to the center of the room and, facing down Munich’s KRIPO, waited for someone to say something. I looked at my watch. “Hell, I’ve been here for less than half an hour and I could tell you who killed him. It was the Nazis killed him, that’s who. It was the bloody Nazis who shot him in the back. Maybe even the same Nazis who wrote ‘Jews Out’ on the wall beside his desk.”

  “Go home, you Prussian pig,” someone shouted.

  “Yes, clear off back to Berlin, you stupid Pifke.”

  They were right, of course. It was time to go home. After a short while among Munich’s Neanderthals, the men of Berlin were already looking like a real advance in human evolution. By all accounts, Munich was Hitler’s favorite town. It was easy to see why.

  I went out of the Police Praesidium by a different set of stairs, which led into the central courtyard, where several police cars and vans were parked. As I was making my way under the arches to the street, I encountered the burly desk sergeant, who was now coming off duty. I knew this because he wasn’t wearing his leather belt or his duty epaulettes. Also, he was carrying a Thermos. Moving to block my way out, he said, “Sure it’s always a shame when a cop goes down in the line of duty.” He chuckled. “Except when it’s a Jew, of course. The fellows who shot that yid bastard, Herzefelde. They deserve a medal, so they do.” He spat onto the ground ahead of me for good measure. “Have a nice trip back to Berlin, you Jew-loving prick.”

  “One more word from you, you worthless Nazi gorilla, and I’m going to pull the tongue out of your thick Bavarian head and scrape the shit off it with the heel of my shoe.”

  The sergeant put his Thermos on a windowsill and bent his ugly mug toward me. “Who the hell do you think you are, coming to my city and threatening me? You’re lucky I don’t run you in just for the fun of it. One more word out of you, sonny, and I’ll have your eggs hanging from our flagpole in the morning.”

  “If I threaten you, you’ll stay threatened and write me a thank-you letter on nice notepaper in your best writing.”

  “This is a man with a broken jaw who’s talking to me,” said the sergeant, before throwing a punch at my head.

  He was tall and strong, with shoulders like the yoke on a Frisian milkmaid and a fist as big as a fire bucket. But his first mistake was to miss. His tunic was still buttoned and this slowed him down, so I was already ducking the blow by the time it arrived. His second mistake was to miss again. And to lead with his chin. By now, I was ready to take a swing myself, as if I’d been taking a swing at the very man who had shot Paul Herzefelde. And I let him have it hard, very hard, right under the chin. This, as von Clausewitz would probably have agreed, is the best part of the chin with which to make decisive contact. I saw his legs go the minute I struck him. But I punched him again, this time in the belly, and when he doubled up, I hammered him in each kidney with a heavyweight contender’s high ambition and strength of will. He fell back against the wall of the archway. And I was still hitting him when three SCHUPO men pulled me off and pinned me against the wrought-iron gate.

  Slowly, the sergeant picked himself off the cobbles. It took him a while to straighten up, but eventually he managed it. I’ll say one thing for him: he could take a punch. He wiped his mouth and, panting hard, came toward me with a look in his eyes that told me he wasn’t about to invite me to stay for the Oktoberfest.

  “Hold him up,” he told the other cops, taking his time about it. And then he hit me. A short right hook that went up to his elbow in my stomach. Then another, and another until his knuckles were tickling my backbone. Except it wasn’t funny. And I wasn’t laughing. They let me go when I started throwing up. But they hadn’t finished. In fact, they’d only just started.

  They dragged me back into the building and down into the cells, where they went at me again—good, expert blows from cops who knew what they were doing and who clearly enjoyed their work. After an hour or so, I heard a voice from a long way off, reminding them that I was a cop, and that was when they left me alone. I had an idea it was Schramma who got them to lay off, but I never found out for sure. I stayed on the floor of that cell for a long time. No one was kicking me, and it felt like the most comfortable place in the world. All I wanted to do was stay there and sleep for twenty years. Then the floor slid to one side and I fell into a deep, dark place where a group of dwarfs were playing a game of ninepins. For a while, I joined the game, but then one of the dwarfs gave me a magic drink, and I slept the sleep of Jacob on Mount Moriah. Something Jewish, anyway.

  THE CELLS in the prison below the Munich Police Praesidium were once occupied by Augustine monks. They must have been tough men, those Augustine monks. My cell had a hard bunk and a straw pallet on top, which was about as thick as a blanket. The blanket was made of thin air. Job or Saint Jerome would have been very comfortable down there. There was an open toilet without a seat, and no window in the smooth, porcelain tile wall. The cell was hot and smelly, and so was I. “Love the sinner and hate the sin,” said Saint Augustine. That was easy for him to say. He never had to spend the night in a cell beneath the Munich Police Praesidium.

  They left the lights on all the time, and it wasn’t in case you were scared of the dark. I had no idea what time of the day or night it was. A few days of that, and you’re ready to do more or less whatever they tell you, just to see the sky again. That’s the theory, anyway. And after what seemed like a week but was probably only two or three days, a doctor came to look at me—a real Schweitzer type, with a mustache as big as an octopus and more white hair than Liszt’s grandmother. He examined the bruises on my ribs and asked me how I’d come by them. I told him I’d fallen off my bunk when I’d been asleep.

  “Do they hurt?”

  “Only when I laugh, which is not so much since I’ve been here, oddly enough.”

  “You may have a couple of broken ribs,” he said. “Really, you need an X-ray.”

  “Thanks, but what I really need is a cigarette.”

  He examined the bruises on my ribs, gave me a cigarette, and asked me for my clothes.

  “I don’t think they’ll fit you,” I said, but I took them off all the same. I just wanted to go home.

  “We’ll get these things cleaned,” he said, handing my clothes to the custody officer. “You, too, if you’re up to it. There’s a shower at the end of the corridor. Soap and a razor.”

  “Kind of late to be handing out hospitality, isn’t it?” But I had the shower and the shave all the same.

  When I was clean, the short man handed me a blanket and took me into an interview room to await the return of my clothes. We sat down at opposite ends of a table. He opened a leather cigarette case and put it in front of me. Then someone brought me a cup of hot, sweet coffee. It tasted like ambrosia.

  “I am Commissar Wowereit,” he said. “I’ve been instructed to inform you that no charges are to be made and that you are free to go.”

  “Well, that’s very generous of you,” I said, and took one of his cigarettes. He lit it for me with a match and then sat back on his chair. He had slim, delicate hands. They didn’t look like they’d ever thrown a tomato, let alone a punch. I couldn’t imagine how he fitted in with the rest of the Munich polenta with hands like his. “Very generous,” I repeated. “Considering I was the one who got roughhoused.”

  “A report of the incident that occurred has already been sent to your new police president and his deputy.”

  “What do you mean, my new police president and his deputy? What the hell are you talking about, Wowereit?”

  “Of course. I’m sorry. How could you know?”

  “Know what?”

  “Ever heard of Altona?”

  “Yeah. It’s a dump outside Hamburg that’s notionally part of Prussia.”

  “Much more important than
that, it’s a Communist town. The day you arrived in Munich, a group of uniformed Nazis staged a parade there. There was a brawl. Actually, it was more of a riot. And seventeen people were killed, and several hundred people wounded.”

  “Hamburg’s a long way from Berlin,” I said. “I don’t see how—”

  “The new chancellor, von Papen, with the support of General von Schleicher and Adolf Hitler, drafted a presidential decree, signed by von Hindenburg, to seize control of the Prussian government.”

  “A putsch.”

  “In effect, yes.”

  “I assume the army did nothing to stop any of this.”

  “You assume correctly. General Rundstedt has imposed martial law on Greater Berlin and the province of Brandenburg, and taken control of the city’s police force. Grzesinski has been removed. Weiss and Heimannsberg have been placed under arrest. Dr. Kurt Melcher is the new police president of Berlin.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “I believe he was formerly the police president of Essen.”

  “Where’s the new deputy come from? Toytown?”

  “I believe the new deputy is someone called Dr. Mosle.”

  “Mosle,” I exclaimed. “What does he know about policing? He’s the head of Berlin’s traffic police.”

  “Colonel Poten is the new head of the uniformed police in Berlin. I believe he was director of the police academy, in Eichen. All Prussian law enforcement officers are now directly subordinate to the army.” Wowereit allowed himself a thin hint of a smile. “I suppose that also includes you. For the moment.”

  “The Berlin police won’t stand for it,” I said. “Weiss wasn’t popular, it’s true. But Magnus Heimannsberg’s a different story. He’s hugely popular with the rank and file.”

  “What can they do? To believe that the army won’t use force to put down any resistance is wishful thinking.” He shrugged. “But none of this is of any immediate concern to us here in Munich. And has little relevance to the case at hand. Namely, yours. The report we sent to your superiors describes in detail what we believe happened here. Doubtless, you will present your own side of the story to your superiors when you get back to Berlin.”

  “You can bet on it.”

  “A storm in a water glass, wouldn’t you agree? Compared with what has happened. Politically speaking.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. You didn’t get beaten up and tossed in the hole for several days. And perhaps you’ve forgotten the reason for the fight. A murdered police officer was defamed by one of your colleagues. I wonder if that’ll be in your damn report.”

  “Germany is for the Germans now,” said Wowereit. “Not a bunch of immigrants who are only here for what they can get. And this stupid putsch in Berlin will solve nothing. It’s the last desperate act of a republic trying to forestall what is inevitable. The election of a National Socialist government on July 31. Von Papen hopes to prove he is strong enough to stop Germany from sinking into the mess the Jews and the Communists have made for us. But everyone knows there’s only one man who is equal to that historical task.”

  I said I hoped he was wrong. I said it quietly and I said it politely. Saint Augustine would probably have approved of that. There’s a lot to be said for turning the other cheek when you’ve been in receipt of a severe beating. You stay alive longer. You get to go back to Berlin. I just hoped that when I did get back there, I would still recognize the place.

  I FOUND THE THIRD ARMY all over Berlin. Armored cars outside the public buildings, and platoons of soldiers enjoying the July sunshine in all of the main parks. It was as if the clock had been turned back to 1920. But there seemed little chance of Berlin’s workers organizing a general strike to defeat this particular putsch, as had happened then. Only inside the Alex did there appear to be any appetite for resistance. Police major Walter Encke, who lived in the same apartment building as Commander Heimannsberg and was his close friend, was the focus for a counterputsch. The Alex was full of Nazi spies, however. And Encke’s plan to use uniformed SCHUPO riot brigades to arrest all of the Nazis in the Berlin police came to nothing when a rumor began to go around that he and Heimannsberg were lovers. Later on, the rumor proved to be entirely without foundation, but by then it was too late. Fearing for the loss of his reputation as a policeman and as a man, Encke quickly wrote and circulated a letter in which he condemned all talk of a counterputsch using riot brigades and assured the army of his loyalty “as a former officer of the imperial army.” Meanwhile, no less than sixteen KRIPO officials, among them four commissars, denounced Bernard Weiss for alleged improprieties in office. And I was summoned to the office of the new Berlin Police president, Dr. Kurt Melcher.

  Melcher was a close associate of Dr. Franz Bracht, the former mayor of Essen and now deputy Reichskommissar of the Prussian government. Melcher was originally a lawyer, from Dortmund, and was the author of a well-known but turgidly written history of the Prussian police, which only made what happened next all the more remarkable. Ernst Gennat was present at my meeting with the new police president. So was the new deputy police president, Johann Mosle. But it was the fifty-four-year-old Melcher who did most of the talking. An obviously irascible man, he lost little time in coming to the point with the assistance of an accusatory and nicotine-stained forefinger.

  “I will not have officers of the Berlin police force brawling with other policemen. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m sure you think you had a good reason but I don’t want to hear it. The political differences that have existed between various officers are now over. All disciplinary proceedings against officers with Nazi affiliations are to be dropped, and the ban on membership of the Nazi Party for officials in the service of the Prussian state is to be lifted. If you can’t live with these changes, then there’s no place for you in this force, Gunther.”

  I was about to say that I’d been living and working with men who were openly Nazi for a while. But then I caught sight of Gennat. He closed his eyes and, almost imperceptibly, shook his head, as if counseling silence.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “There’s a greater enemy than Nazism abroad in this country. And this city in particular. Bolshevism and immorality. We’re going to go after the Communists. And we’re going to crack down on vice of all kinds. The meat-market shows are going to close. And the whores are going to be kicked off our streets.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And that’s not all. KRIPO is going to operate more like a team. There will be no more star detectives giving press conferences and getting their names in the newspapers.”

  “What about police officers writing books, sir?” I asked. “Will that be permitted? I’ve always wanted to write a book.”

  Melcher smiled a toadlike smile and leaned forward as if taking a closer look at some kind of grubby schoolboy.

  “You know, it’s plain to see how you got those bruises on your face, Gunther. You’ve got a smart mouth. And I don’t like detectives who think they’re smart.”

  “Surely there would be no point in employing stupid detectives, sir.”

  “There’s smart and there’s smart, Gunther. And then there’s clever. The clever cop knows the difference. He knows when to shut his strudel hole and listen. He knows how to put his personal politics aside and get on with the job at hand. I’m not sure that you know how to do any of that, Gunther. I can’t see how else you ended up spending three days and nights in a Munich police cell. What the hell were you doing there, anyway?”

  “I went there at the invitation of a brother police officer. To look at the case notes on a murder I’ve been investigating. The Anita Schwarz case. There were some striking similarities between that case and a murder they’d been investigating. I had hoped to find a new lead. But when I arrived in Munich, I discovered that this police officer, Commissar Herzefelde, a Jew, had been murdered.”

  I used the word “brother” with emphasis, in an attempt to provoke Melcher into some sort of anti
-Semitic outburst. I hadn’t forgotten Izzy Weiss and the lies that were now being spread about my old boss and friend.

  “All right. What did you find out?”

  “Nothing. Commissar Herzefelde’s case notes were placed under an interdiction by those detectives now investigating his murder. As a result, I wasn’t able to do what I set out to do, sir.”

  “And so you took out your frustration at being forbidden to look at Herzefelde’s case notes on a fellow officer.”

  “It wasn’t like that at all, sir. The sergeant in question—” Melcher was shaking his head. “I told you I don’t want to hear your reasons, Gunther. There’s no excuse for hitting another officer.” He glanced Mosle’s way for a moment.

  “No excuse,” echoed the DPP.

  “So where are you with this case?”

  “Well, sir, I think our murderer might be from Munich. Something brought him to Berlin. Something medical, perhaps. I think he’s been having treatment for venereal disease. A new treatment that’s being pioneered here in the city. Anyway, when he got here, he met Anita Schwarz. Possibly he was a client of hers. It seems that she was an occasional prostitute.”

  “Nonsense,” said Melcher. “A man with a venereal disease does not usually go and have sex with a prostitute. It just doesn’t make sense.”

  “With all due respect, sir, that’s how venereal disease is spread.”

  “And this notion that Anita Schwarz was a whore. That’s nonsense, too. I tell you frankly, Gunther, it’s my belief, and the belief of several senior detectives around the Alex, that you’ve cooked up this whole line of inquiry just to embarrass the Schwarz family. For political reasons.”

  “That’s just not true, sir.”

  “Do you deny that you eluded the oversight of the political officer who was assigned to this case?”

  “Arthur Nebe? No, I don’t deny it. I just didn’t think it was necessary. I was satisfied in my own mind that I wasn’t remotely biased against the Schwarz family. All I’ve ever wanted to do was catch the lunatic who killed their daughter.”