by Philip Kerr
‘Where’s the fucking girl?’ screamed Red. One of Haupthandler’s torturers jabbed a thumb across his shoulder.
‘Next door, with my brother.’
‘Hey, boss,’ said the other man. ‘This coat still won’t talk. Do you want us to work on him some more?’
‘Leave the poor bastard alone,’ he growled. ‘He knows nothing.’
It was almost dark in the adjoining boathouse, and it took several seconds for our eyes to become accustomed to the gloom.
‘Franz. Where the fuck are you?’ We heard a soft groan, and the slap of flesh against flesh. Then we saw them: an enormous figure of a man, his trousers round his ankles, bent over the silent and naked body of Hermann Six’s daughter, tied face down over an upturned boat.
‘Get away from her, you big ugly bastard,’ yelled Red.
The man, who was the size of a luggage locker, made no move to obey the order, not even when it was repeated at greater volume and at closer range. Eyes shut, his shoe-box of a head lying back on the parapet that was his shoulders, his enormous penis squeezing in and out of Grete Pfarr’s anus almost convulsively, his knees bent like a man whose horse had escaped from underneath him, Franz stood his ground.
Red punched him hard on the side of the head. He might as well have been hitting a locomotive. The very next second he pulled out a gun and almost casually blew his man’s brains out.
Franz dropped cross-legged to the ground, a collapsing chimney of a man, his head spurting a smoke-plume of burgundy, his still erect penis leaning to one side like the mainmast of a ship that has crashed onto the rocks.
Red pushed the body to one side with the toe of his shoe as I started to untie Grete. Several times he glanced awkwardly at the stripes that had been cut deep onto her buttocks and thighs with a short whip. Her skin was cold, and she smelt strongly of semen. There was no telling how many times she had been raped.
‘Fuck, look at the state of her,’ groaned Red, shaking his head. ‘How can I let Six see her like this?’
‘Let’s hope she’s alive,’ I said, taking off my coat, and spreading it on the ground.
We laid her down, and I pressed my ear to her naked breast. There was a heartbeat, but I guessed that she was in deep shock.
‘Is she going to be all right?’ Red sounded naive, like a schoolboy asking about his pet rabbit. I looked up at him and saw that he was still holding the gun in his hand.
Summoned by the shot, several German Strength men were standing awkwardly at the back of the boathouse. I heard one of them say, ‘He killed Franz’; and then another said, ‘There was no call to do it,’ and I knew we were going to have trouble. Red knew it too. He turned and faced them.
‘The girl is Six’s daughter. You all know Six. He’s a rich and powerful man. I told Franz to leave her alone but he wouldn’t listen. She couldn’t have taken any more. He’d have killed her. She’s only just alive now.’
‘You didn’t have to shoot Franz,’ said a voice.
‘Yeah,’ said another. ‘You could have slugged him.’
‘What?’ Red’s tone was incredulous. ‘His head was thicker than the oak on a nunnery door.’
‘Not now it isn’t.’
Red bent down beside me. With one eye on his men he murmured, ‘You got a lighter?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Look, we don’t stand a chance in here, nor does she. We’ve got to get to a boat.’
‘What about Six?’
I buttoned the coat over Grete’s naked body, and gathered her up in my arms. ‘He can take his chances.’
Helfferich shook his head. ‘No, I’ll go back for him. Wait for us on the jetty as long as you can. If they start shooting, then get the hell away. And in case I don’t, I know nothing about your girl, fleabite.’ We walked slowly towards the door, Red leading the way. His men stepped back sullenly to allow us through, and once outside we separated, and I walked back down the grassy slope to the jetty and to the boat.
I laid Six’s daughter on the slipper’s back seat. There was a rug in a locker and I took it out and put it over her still unconscious body. I wondered whether if she came round I might have another chance to ask her about Inge Lorenz. Would Haupthandler be any more cooperative? I was just thinking about going back to get him when from the direction of the inn I heard several pistol shots. I slipped the boat’s line, started the engine and took the gun out of my pocket. With my other hand I held onto the jetty to stop the boat drifting. Seconds later I heard another volley of shots and what sounded like a riveter working along the stern of the boat. I rammed the throttle forwards and spun the wheel away from the jetty. Wincing with pain I glanced down at my hand, imagining that I had been hit, but instead I found an enormous splinter of wood from the jetty sticking out of the palm of my hand. Breaking off the largest part of it I turned and fired off the rest of my clip in the direction of the figures now appearing on the retreating jetty. To my surprise they threw themselves on their bellies. But behind me something heavier than a pistol had opened up. It was only a warning burst, but the big machine-gun cut through the trees and the wood of the jetty like metallic rain drops, sending up splinters, chopping off branches and slicing through foliage. Looking to my front again, I had just enough time to pull the throttle into reverse and steer away from the police-launch. Then I cut the engine and instinctively raised my hands high above my head, dropping my gun onto the floor of the boat as I did so.
It was then that I noticed the neat red caste-mark in the centre of Grete’s forehead, from which a hair’s breadth trickle of blood was now bisecting her lifeless features.
18
Listening to the systematic destruction of another human spirit has a predictably lowering effect on one’s own fibre. I imagine that that was how it was intended to be. The Gestapo is nothing if not thoughtful. They let you eavesdrop on another’s agony to soften you up on the inside; and only then do they get to work on the outside. There is nothing worse than a state of suspense about what is going to happen, whether it’s waiting for the results of some tests at a hospital, or the headsman’s axe. You just want to get it over with. In my own small way it was a technique I had used myself at the Alex when I’d let men, suspects, sweat themselves into a state where they were ready to tell you everything. Waiting for something lets your imagination step in to create your own private hell.
But I wondered what it was that they wanted from me. Did they want to know about Six? Did they hope that I knew where the Von Greis papers were? And what if they tortured me and I didn’t know what they wanted me to tell them?
By the third or fourth day alone in my filthy cell, I was beginning to wonder if my own suffering was to be an end in itself. At other times I puzzled as to what had become of Six and Red Helfferich, who were arrested with me, and of Inge Lorenz.
Most of the time I just stared at the walls, which were a kind of palimpsest for those previous unfortunates who had been its occupants. Oddly enough there was little or no abuse for the Nazis. More common were recriminations between the Communists and the Social Democrats as to which of these two ‘fallen women’ was responsible for allowing Hitler to get elected in the first place: the Sozis blamed the Pukers, and the Pukers blamed the Sozis.
Sleep did not come easily. There was an evil-smelling pallet, which I avoided on my first night of incarceration, but as the days passed and the slop-bucket became more malodorous, I ceased to be so fastidious. It was only on the fifth day, when two S S guards came and hauled me out of my cell, that I realized just how badly I smelled: but it was nothing compared to their stink, which is of death.
They frog-marched me through a long urinous passage to a lift, and this took us up five floors to a quiet and well-carpeted corridor which, with its oak-panelled walls and gloomy portraits of the Führer, Himmler, Canaris, Hindenburg and Bismarck, had the air of an exclusive gentleman’s club. We went through a double wooden door the height of a tram and into a large bright office where several stenographers were working. The
y paid my filthy person no attention at all. A young S S Hauptsturmführer came round an ornate sort of desk to look disinterestedly at me.
‘Who’s this?’ With a click of his heels, one of the guards stood to attention and told the officer who I was.
‘Wait there,’ said the Hauptsturmführer and walked over to a polished mahogany door on the other side of the room, where he knocked and waited. Hearing a reply he poked his head round the door and said something. Then he turned and jerked his head at my guards who shoved me forwards.
It was a big, plush office with a high ceiling and some expensive leather furniture, and I saw that I wasn’t going to get the routine Gestapo chat over the kind of script that would have to involve the twin prompts of blackjack and brass knuckles. Not yet anyway. They wouldn’t risk spilling anything on the carpet. At the far end of the office was a French window, a set of bookshelves and a desk behind which, sitting in comfortable armchairs, were two S S officers. These were tall, sleek, well-groomed men with supercilious smiles, hair the colour of Tilsiter cheese and well-behaved Adam’s apples. The taller of the pair spoke first, to order the guards and their adjutant out of the room.
‘Herr Gunther. Please sit down.’ He pointed to a chair in front of the desk. I looked behind as the door shut, and then shuffled forwards, my hands in my pockets. Since they had taken away my shoelaces and braces at my arrest, it was the only way I had of keeping my trousers up.
I hadn’t met senior SS officers before and so I was not certain as to the rank of the two who faced me; but I guessed that one was probably a colonel, and the other, the one who continued speaking, was possibly a general. Neither one of them seemed to be any older than about thirty-five.
‘Smoke?’ said the general. He held out a box and then tossed me some matches. I lit my cigarette and smoked it gratefully. ‘Please help yourself if you want another.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Perhaps you would also like a drink?’
‘I wouldn’t say no to some champagne.’ They both smiled simultaneously. The second officer, the colonel, produced a bottle of schnapps and poured a glassful.
‘I’m afraid we don’t run to anything so grand round here,’ he said.
‘Whatever you’ve got, then.’ The colonel stood up and brought me the drink. I didn’t waste any time with it. I jerked it back, cleaned my teeth and swallowed with every muscle in my neck and throat. I felt the schnapps flush right the way down to my corns.
‘You’d better give him another,’ said the general. ‘He looks as though his nerves are a bit shaky.’ I held out my glass for the refill.
‘My nerves are just fine,’ I said, nursing my glass. ‘I just like to drink.’
‘Part of the image, eh?’
‘And what image would that be?’
‘Why, the private detective of course. The shoddy little man in the barely furnished office, who drinks like a suicide who’s lost his nerve, and who comes to the assistance of the beautiful but mysterious woman in black.’
‘Someone in the S S perhaps,’ I suggested.
He smiled. ‘You might not believe it,’ he said, ‘but I have a passion for detective stories. It must be interesting.’ His face was of an unusual construction. Its central feature was its protruding, hawk-like nose, which had the effect of making the chin seem weak; above the thin nose were glassy blue eyes set rather too close together, and slightly slanting, which lent him an apparently world-weary, cynical air.
‘I’m sure that fairy-stories are a lot more interesting.’
‘But not in your case, surely. In particular, the case you have been working on for the Germania Life Assurance Company.’
‘For which,’ the colonel chipped in, ‘we may now substitute the name of Hermann Six.’ The same type as his superior, he was better-looking if apparently less intelligent. The general glanced over a file that was open on the desk in front of him, if only to indicate that they knew everything there was to know about me and my business.
‘Precisely so,’ he murmured. After a short while he looked up at me and said: ‘Why ever did you leave Kripo?’
‘Coal,’ I said.
He stared blankly at me. ‘Coal?’
‘Yeah, you know, mouse, gravel . . . money. Speaking of which, I had 40,000 marks in my pockets when I checked into this hotel. I’d like to know what’s happened to it. And to a girl who was working with me. Name of Inge Lorenz. She’s disappeared.’
The general looked at his junior officer, who shook his head. ‘I’m afraid we know nothing about any girl, Herr Gunther,’ said the colonel. ‘People are always disappearing in Berlin. You of all people should know that. As to your money, however, that is quite safe with us for the moment.’
‘Thanks, and I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but I’d sooner leave it in a sock underneath my mattress.’
The general put his long, thin, violinist’s hands together, as if he was about to lead us in prayer, and pressed their fingertips against his lips meditatively. ‘Tell me, did you ever consider joining the Gestapo?’ he said.
I figured it was my turn to try a little smile.
‘You know, this wasn’t a bad suit before I was obliged to sleep in it for a week. I may smell a bit, but not that badly.’
He gave an amused sort of sniff. ‘The ability to talk as toughly as your fictional counterpart is one thing, Herr Gunther,’ he said. ‘Being it is quite another. Your remarks demonstrate either an astonishing lack of appreciation as to the gravity of your situation, or real courage.’ He raised his thin, gold-leaf eyebrows and started to toy with the German Horseman’s Badge on his left breast-pocket. ‘By nature I am a cynical man. I think that all policemen are, don’t you? So normally I would be inclined to favour the first assessment of your bravado. However, in this particular case it suits me to believe in the strength of your character. Please do not disappoint me by saying something really stupid.’ He paused for a moment. ‘I’m sending you to a KZ.’
My flesh turned as cold as a butcher’s shop-window. I finished what was left of my schnapps, and then heard myself say: ‘Listen, if it’s about that lousy milk bill . . .’
They both started grinning a lot, enjoying my obvious discomfort.
‘Dachau,’ said the colonel. I stubbed out my cigarette and lit another. They saw my hand shake as I held the match up.
‘Don’t worry,’ said the general. ‘You’ll be working for me.’ He came round the desk and sat on its edge in front of me.
‘And who are you?’
‘I am Obergruppenführer Heydrich.’ He waved his arm at the colonel and folded his arms. ‘And this is Standartenführer Sohst of Alarm Command.’
‘Pleased to meet you, I’m sure.’ I wasn’t. Alarm Command were the special Gestapo killers that Marlene Sahm had talked about.
‘I’ve had my eye on you for some time,’ he said. ‘And after that unfortunate little incident at the beach house in Wannsee I have had you under constant observation, in the hope that you might lead us to certain papers. I’m sure you know the ones I mean. Instead you gave us the next best thing - the man who planned their theft. Over the past few days, while you’ve been our guest, we’ve been checking your story. It was the autobahn worker, Bock, who told us where to look for this Kurt Mutschmann fellow - the safecracker who now has the papers.’
‘Bock?’ I shook my head. ‘I don’t believe it. He wasn’t the sort to turn informer about a friend.’
‘It’s quite true, I can assure you. Oh, I don’t mean he told us exactly where to find him, but he put us on the right track, before he died.’
‘You tortured him?’
‘Yes. He told us that Mutschmann had once told him that if he were ever really wanted so that he was desperate, then he should probably think of hiding in a prison, or a KZ. Well, of course, with a gang of criminals looking for him, not to mention ourselves, then desperate is exactly what he must have been.’
‘It’s an old trick,’ explained Sohst. ‘You avoid arrest
for one thing by having yourself arrested for another.’
‘We believe that Mustchmann was arrested and sent to Dachau three nights after the death of Paul Pfarr,’ said Heydrich. With a thin, smug smile he added: ‘Indeed, he was almost begging to be arrested. It seems that he was caught red-handed, painting KPD slogans on the wall of a Kripo Stelle in Neukölln.’
‘A KZ isn’t so bad if you’re a Kozi,’ chuckled Sohst. ‘In comparison with the Jews and the queers. He’ll probably be out in a couple of years.’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t understand,’ I told them. ‘Why don’t you simply have the commandant at Dachau question Mutschmann? What the hell do you need me for?’
Heydrich folded his arms and swung his jackbooted leg so that his toe was almost kicking my kneecap. ‘Involving the commandant at Dachau would also mean having to inform Himmler, which I don’t want to do. You see, the Reichsfuhrer is an idealist. He would undoubtedly see it as his duty to use these papers to punish those he perceived to be guilty of crimes against the Reich.’
I recalled Himmler’s letter to Paul Pfarr which Marlene Sahm had shown me at the Olympic Stadium and nodded.
‘I, on the other hand, am a pragmatist, and would prefer to use the papers in a rather more tactical way, as and where I require.’
‘In other words, you’re not above a bit of blackmail yourself. Am I right?’
Heydrich smiled thinly. ‘You see through me so easily, Herr Gunther. But you must understand that this is to be an undercover operation. Strictly a matter for Security. On no account should you mention this conversation to anyone.’
‘But there must be somebody among the S S at Dachau that you can trust?’
‘Of course there is,’ said Heydrich. ‘But what do you expect him to do, march up to Mustchmann and ask him where he has hidden the papers? Come now, Herr Gunther, be sensible.’
‘So you want me to find Mustchmann, and get to know him.’