Mistress Murder

by Bernard Knight

  Conrad began a rather overdone pantomime intended to express the utter bewilderment of an Englishman in a foreign land. He called out in a loud voice to a passing porter.

  ‘Hello, porter! Porter! Oh, for God’s sake, doesn’t anybody speak English here!’

  Several heads, including the porter’s, were turned towards him, all quite willing to show their knowledge of that language. Conrad ignored them and stepped across to intercept Golding.

  ‘Sorry to pounce on you, but could you help me?’

  Paul Jacobs stopped dead. He had been daydreaming a little, the familiar sounds and sights of his native country having aroused many memories. He stared at the large man standing squarely in his path. A warning bell began ringing faintly in his mind.

  ‘Er, yes … sure, if I can.’

  Where the hell had he seen this chap before? He knew his face but he couldn’t place him.

  Conrad dropped his case onto the concrete and dragged a small German guidebook from his pocket.

  ‘I knew you were English – heard you talking in the dining car last night, that’s why I had the nerve to stop you … look, I can’t speak a bloody word of this lingo and I’ve got to find somewhere to stay … can you help me?’.

  Paul, cautious and wary now, beat his brains to try to remember where he had seen the man before. Was it at some Customs desk or Immigration office? Was he a narcotics man, or a policeman of some sort? He didn’t look it. And that voice …

  ‘A hotel, you mean – you want me to recommend one?’ he stalled, still desperately trying to size Draper up. It was transparently obvious that this encounter was a fake. The whole scene was pure ham. The man was surely too bad a performer to be a detective.

  Draper eagerly answered. ‘Yes, yes, if you would; I’ve got to meet a friend on Tuesday – he speaks German – but until he shows up, I’m scuppered!’

  ‘What sort of place did you want?’ asked Paul.

  Draper eyed the other man warily. Unless he was careful, he would get an address thrust at him and he would lose Golding after all.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Where do you stay? That should be about my mark,’ he ended illogically.

  Paul had an answer ready. ‘I stay with friends, I’m afraid. But I can recommend a few places, depends on what you want to pay.’

  Draper cursed under his breath. For the first time his self-assurance began to wilt. If Golding got away from him now, he might as well get on the train and go home again. He became desperate and his voice shed some of its painfully acquired West End veneer and slid back to Whitechapel.

  ‘Look, chum, couldn’t you do me a favour … come with me in a taxi and drop me off at some hotel? I couldn’t even ask for a room in this flaming language.’

  There was a sudden clash of cymbals in Paul Jacobs’ head. This was the voice on the tape!

  Without understanding how the owner came to be standing alongside him, seven hundred miles from London, he accepted the fact and his defence mechanism snapped into action. He must find out more about the man’s motives in following him and in this ridiculous farce of pretending not to know him.

  ‘Right, come along this way, we’ll get a cab.’ He beckoned Conrad and strode in front of him, his mind working furiously. He led the bookie off the platform and out into the wide area in front of the station, where he called a car.

  A sleek Mercedes drew up and the driver peered questioningly from the window. Jacobs spoke to him in faultless German. Normally he used language with a painfully acquired foreign accent in keeping with his supposed identity, but in the pressure of events his tongue slipped back into his native speech.

  ‘Take us to Schwabing, go along Leopoldstrasse,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you exactly where when we get there.’

  The cab crawled out into the permanent traffic jam that clogged the Bavarian capital. The two men lounged in the back and exchanged entirely fictitious names and addresses, the bookie professing to be Albert Smith of Croydon, on his way to meet a friend for a winter sporting holiday. Apart from the fact that the snows had not yet come to the Garmisch area, the bookie’s racetrack suit, his one small case and lack of skis, cameras, boots, or any of the paraphernalia of winter sports made a complete nonsense of his story.

  Just to keep things even, Paul trotted out his Reginald Foster routine about the University. He enquired about Conrad’s idea of a hotel.

  ‘Will a pension suit you – you know, a boarding house? I know a place that’s very reasonable – clean and cheap.’

  Conrad nodded eagerly. He would quite cheerfully have slept in a doss house if it meant keeping Golding in sight.

  Paul stared out of the taxi windows at the attractive city. His mind was working at top speed. What the devil was this big moron doing here? Was this more than an attempt at blackmail? Why keep up this stupid pretence of not revealing who he was? Even Jacobs’ astute mind failed to guess the real reason for the ex-wrestler’s clumsy efforts to follow him halfway across Europe.

  Whatever the bookie’s motives, they made no difference to the plan that was rapidly forming in Paul’s head. This was a heaven-sent opportunity to get rid of Draper well away from the attentions of the British police and must not be passed up.

  The self-appointed king of Brewer Street began clumsy efforts to keep tabs on Golding after the taxi ride ended.

  ‘I wonder if we could meet for a drink later on – or I could stand you a meal if you tell me a decent place. Until I find my own way around, I’ll be marooned in this damned place.’

  Paul agreed readily. He had not the slightest intention of losing sight of Conrad Draper now.

  ‘Sure, I’ll call around for you about eight o’clock. I’ll show you some of the Munich night life.’

  He gave Draper a roguish wink and nudged him with his elbow. This served the double purpose of suggesting a randy night out and also confirmed the suspicion he had about the bulge in Draper’s jacket pocket.

  The Mercedes had crawled through the city centre and was passing the bombed and fire-torn relics of the Hitler regime, which still stood as a neglected monument near the Odeonsplatz.

  Jacobs, almost amused by the patent relief on Draper’s face, enlarged on the sights as they passed.

  ‘This is the sort of Montmartre of Munich – the student area – umpteen thousand art students beat the place up every now and then.’

  He carried on with a potted guide to the city and Draper nodded dumbly. Apart from trips to the Riviera casinos and the racetracks, like Longchamps, he knew nothing about the continent. Paul gave the driver more instructions and the taxi turned into a side street, the Franz-Josef Strasse. They pulled up at a tall apartment building with the name ‘Pension Walther’ above the entrance.

  Paul jumped out, telling Conrad to wait.

  ‘I’ll have to chat up the proprietor a bit, I expect. Rooms are difficult to come by without booking.’

  He went inside and found the owner’s private room at the back of the ground floor. He knocked and put his head around the door.

  The proprietor, a fat crop-headed Rhinelander named Wormser, jumped up in surprise.

  ‘Schrempp! Where the devil did you come from?’

  Paul put a finger to his lips. ‘Sssh … none of that Schrempp stuff, he died in forty-four. Look, I want a room for someone. He’s outside in a taxi.’

  Wormser’s piggy eyes stared suspiciously from his fleshy face.

  ‘I’m full up – not a bed in the place.’

  ‘He won’t want a bed, Franz … just a room for the evening. Don’t sign him in the register – just give him somewhere to put his case. He won’t be back for it, so you’re welcome to whatever’s in it.’

  Wormser’s face relaxed and his mouth made an understanding leer. This was something to relieve the tedium of the retirement from violence forced on him by the interest of the War Crimes Commission in Frankfurt.

  Draper was soon settled in a room belonging to a patron who was away for a few days. Wormser temporaril
y removed his belongings and Conrad unsuspectingly arranged his few expensive shirts and socks in the drawers.

  Paul Jacobs took the taxi back to his own pension, a few streets away in the Konradstrasse. This was another modest hotel carefully chosen to be in keeping with his supposed identity of a postgraduate student.

  He managed to distort his German enough to deceive the manager, then went to his room to think out the timetable for the coming evening. He was still puzzled as to Draper’s motive in following him to Germany. It made clear all the byplay in the back office of the Nineties Club the week before, but the basic reason was still obscure.

  Paul considered again the possibility that Conrad might want to kill him, but eventually shrugged it off. He had no idea of the warped fixation in the other man’s mind. The gun was difficult to explain, but he assumed that a man with Draper’s gangster kink might carry one just for kicks.

  He sat staring into space for a long time while pieces of his plan for the disposal of Conrad Draper fell into place.

  ‘If I can’t get rid of him with one hand behind my back, I’m losing my grip,’ he murmured finally, getting up and stretching himself. ‘It should be like stealing a blind man’s penny.’

  He went out for a meal in the Leopoldstrasse and returned for a quick nap until the afternoon had waned. Around dusk, he made a trip by tram to the warehouse district off Landsberger Strasse, in another part of the city. As in the Brussels episode, he slid into a lonely alleyway and entered an unobtrusive door. A few minutes later he came out with a large brown paper parcel and made his way back to the pension.

  About seven o’clock, he went out for a lager and a look at Munich in the early evening. He wandered in the dark down the Leopoldstrasse, crowded with students and the first Sunday evening revellers.

  Though it was early December, it had turned suddenly mild. The art students were out in strength, as on a summer evening, sitting on walls with their guitars, shouting and singing to the despair of the Polizei patrolmen. Paintings and sketches were strung on cords between the trees, partly for sale and partly for exhibition. Groups of students crouched around guttering candles stuck in wine bottles, drinking beer and arguing.

  Suppressed national pride surged back into Paul’s soul as he walked along. This was his Germany, he thought. After all these years posing as a British subject, he still felt this bittersweet feeling when he came back.

  Sometimes he regretted the move that had exiled him from Germany for good. Paul had been afraid to return after the first upheavals of peace had subsided. By changing identities with a dead soldier a month before the Luneburg Heath capitulation, he vanished into the chaos of Hamburg and got out on one of the first vessels to use the shattered port. He masqueraded as a seaman and after several more rapid changes of identity, spent a year on a Canadian ship, perfected his already excellent English, then settled in London in forty-seven.

  Now as he walked along the candlelit pavements of Munich, this strange man felt a double pride: the pride of still being one of the master race, yet still oddly proud of being a successful British businessman.

  The mood passed as he sauntered back to Konradstrasse and by twenty minutes to eight he was ready for the affairs of the night. He took two articles from his case which helped him to merge completely into the Munich scene … a heavy, black raincoat, tightly belted, and a furry velour trilby. With these on, he looked as if he had been no nearer Piccadilly than Cologne.

  He walked round to Franz-Joseph Strasse, appearing every inch a suburban Munchener, and walked in unannounced on Franz Wormser.

  ‘Everything in order?’

  ‘Yes, he’s been wandering around – I taught him enough German to go out and ask for a beer this afternoon.’ The cropped proprietor paused. ‘He’s carrying a gun, you know.’ He patted his pocket expressively.

  Paul Jacobs nodded. ‘I felt it in the taxi – that’s what I’ve called to see you about.’

  Wormser looked wary. ‘I haven’t got one to give you, if that’s what you’re after. I’m not sticking my neck out that far.’

  Paul shook his head.

  ‘I don’t want a gun, but I want something to sap him with – something nice and small.’

  Wormser grinned. This was more to his liking. He took a bunch of keys from his pocket and went over to a steel cupboard against the wall of the shabby room, which was office and bedroom combined. He opened the bottom half and took out a wooden box.

  ‘Help yourself,’ he offered, putting the box on a table.

  Paul looked inside and saw a collection of knives, blackjacks, and even a pair of brass knuckledusters.

  Paul weighed a couple of coshes in his hands and settled on a short sap made of hard black rubber.

  ‘I’ll take this – I don’t want to kill him. Just send him to sleep.’

  Wormser looked disappointed. ‘No killing?’

  Paul looked coolly at him. ‘Later! Just like the old days, eh, Sergeant … remember Krefeld?’

  He walked out without another word, leaving a suddenly pale Wormser behind him, a Wormser who had taken note of the fact that his freedom, if not his life, depended on Schrempp’s mouth staying closed.

  Paul climbed the stairs to Draper’s room, the blackjack deep in his raincoat pocket.

  ‘Ready?’

  ‘Yeah – let’s go.’

  Draper’s speech was an incongruous mixture of Mayfair, Bowery, and Whitechapel. When he let his grip slide on the first, it was the one from beyond Aldgate pump that popped up – the one that Paul Jacobs had pinned down from his recollections of the voice on the tape.

  They took another taxi back to the centre of the city. Each sat chatting with false sincerity, each with a weapon in his pocket and murder in his heart. The car dropped them at the Karsplatz, the focal point of Munich, a confused tangle of traffic lights, tramlines and signalling policemen.

  True to his word, Conrad stood Jacobs an excellent meal at a nearby restaurant. They wined and dined in a huge first-floor sunroom, looking down on the kaleidoscope of moving lights below. As with Rita, Paul felt no twinge of conscience as he made small talk across the table. Again, like the Rita affair, he did his best to get the bookie to drink as heavily as possible, without taking too much himself. Getting Conrad to swallow alcohol was easy, but the big man had a head like a rhinoceros.

  ‘What now, then?’ asked Conrad, wiping his mouth with a napkin after five courses and three rounds of spirits.

  ‘Let’s see something of the back streets,’ suggested Jacobs. He slipped his hand into his pocket as he put his raincoat on and felt the smooth rubber cosh lying ready for action. Innocent to the touch, it could be a deadly weapon in the right hands.

  They walked out into the late evening crowds and dodged among the tramcars to enter the warren of small streets in the old town. They wandered for a time, in and out of bars, Paul still forcing the other to drink as fast as he was able. As they went further from the main shopping streets, dozens of bars and night clubs spilled light and music onto the pavements. Drunks and kissing couples shrank into doorways as they passed, taking them for patrolling Polizei in the gloom.

  Draper seemed fascinated by the place – the counterpart of his own Soho. He almost forgot his purpose in being there. He certainly failed to wonder how Golding knew his way about so well. They went from bar to bar in quick succession, Paul drinking about a third of the bookie’s intake of spirits and pilsener.

  Around eleven o’clock, they dived into a striptease joint on the Platzl, opposite the centuries-old brewery, the Hofbrauhaus. Again Draper seemed absorbed in the show, which they saw from the bar at the rear of the hall. Draper drank everything that was put in front of him and the dope runner began to get impatient.

  ‘Come on, you must see the Hofbrauhaus – it’s just over there.’

  He dragged the reluctant Conrad across the narrow road and they plunged into the most famous of the Munich beer gardens. It was now more of a tourist attraction than a genuine
drinking house, but at that time of the year there were few visitors and most of the customers were hard-drinking locals. The central courtyard was deserted. In the summer, a band played here amid tables in the open air. In the bare tap-rooms there was plenty of life.

  Again Draper sat enthralled. An oom-pah-pah band thumped away in the comer and a buxom maid brought them a pair of litre mugs of draught beer. The flagged floor was swimming with slopped drink and the whole place smelt of hundreds of years of carousing.

  Conrad’s murderous plans vaporised for the moment while he absorbed the atmosphere. He had devoted little time to plotting in any case. So far he had thought of nothing but a sudden show of brute strength in some dark lane on the way home. With his wrestler’s experience, he reckoned he could snap Golding’s neck in two seconds flat Then he would drop him in an alley, go home, and catch the first train back to Calais in the morning.

  Like Jacobs, he thought the fact that they were so far from the Metropolitan Police was an opportunity not to be missed. The gun was a second line attack in case anything went wrong with the first plan. For the moment he was content to drink pilsener from the huge earthenware stein and chew radishes, which seemed to be the traditional fare of the Hofbrauhaus.

  After a few minutes, Jacobs rose abruptly.

  ‘What about a Jimmy Riddle?’ he demanded. ‘You’ve been drinking all night – it’s about time for one.’

  Conrad rose amiably and followed him out into the cobbled courtyard. The metal tables and chairs stood dismal and deserted as they made their way across to a battered door blatantly labelled Pissoir.

  Paul pushed it open and let Conrad go in first. In the grim and odorous dungeon that served as the gentlemen’s toilet, there were two men about to leave.

  The open doors of the cubicles showed that no one else was there, so Jacobs seized his chance the second the door closed behind the two men.

  Draper was at the wall fumbling with his clothes when Paul stepped back slightly, slid the cosh smoothly from his pocket and brought it down viciously on the back of the man’s neck. He had lost none of his wartime expertise and, as the black rubber struck the junction of head and neck, Draper began to fall, already unconscious.