Werewolf (Commander Shaw Book 16)

by Philip McCutchan

  After that call, I went along to police HQ and interviewed Ublick junior — junior by a couple of hours he told me, and, oddly enough, he had been a feldwebel like his brother. He wasn’t being actually held — no charges, just questioning to establish a few facts — he hadn’t committed any crime so far as was known. He was a nice old boy and I dare say his brother had been too, always excepting the fanatical devotion to Hitler, though even that is a relative matter. If we had lost the war, I imagine devotees of Churchill would have been execrated in victorious Germany. Ublick junior was not a fanatic, or so he insisted. He had been much harassed in his military duties during the war by the Gestapo, whom he had detested.

  “They were bad men,” he said, speaking German. “Very, very bad men and the curse of the fighting soldiers. Even my brother did not like the pigs of the Gestapo.”

  “And Hitler himself?” I was intrigued by his personal resemblance, like his brother’s, to the Fuehrer. “What did you think of him?”

  Ublick said, “He was a great leader in a sense.”

  “You don’t mind looking like him?”

  He shrugged. “No, I do not. It is because of my brother, because we were twins. To change myself would have seemed to both of us wrong. Anyway, I repeat, the Fuehrer was a great leader, but not in the right direction. He inspired much faith, and men followed blindly.”

  “And if the brain comes back?”

  “Then I fear for my country,” Ublick said. He said it quietly but with conviction. He didn’t hate Hitler but he didn’t want those days back again, especially under the Werewolf faction. I believed he’d had no idea till now that his brother had been connected with that brain or even that he had been Hitler’s constant companion in the few years between the end of the war and the Fuehrer’s death in Chile. He probably wouldn’t even have known the truth of Hitler’s death. Certainly while the Fuehrer had lived, the brothel in Chile would have kept very quiet about him. Ublick junior, I thought, was the good sort, the genuine German soldier, the kind that had fought the First World War with a degree of chivalry, at least until the real filthy slaughter by tens of thousands had started as the men of both sides were marched straight into the machine-guns firing point-blank across the dinging mud.

  I didn’t see how, currently, but Ublick might be a help. I asked him about Klaus Kunze; he didn’t know him. Although Ublick had made money after the war by establishing a men’s-wear business in West Berlin, he and members of the Bundestag moved in different circles. I asked him about the girlie-bar proprietor.

  He looked contemptuous. “Hans Hagen is one of the bad men. I know this, though I have met him only yesterday. He is not to be trusted.”

  “You know nothing more about him, Herr Ublick?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Did you have much conversation with him?”

  “Yes. He is a man who talks much, and looks shifty while he is doing it.”

  I nodded, and looked hard at Ublick across the interview-room table. “Can you remember anything of his conversation? Things can sometimes be pieced together, items of talk that seem unimportant, perhaps. And we’re badly in need of help.”

  “To keep the brain from Germany?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hans Hagen said nothing about the brain. Nothing at all. I cannot help, and I am sorry.”

  I sighed inwardly; but it had only been a chance shot. Then I remembered that football pool coupon and I asked, not very hopefully, “Did he say anything about his movements, Herr Ublick?”

  “His movements … yes, he did. He said he was intending to go to England soon.”

  “He did?” I leaned forward, feeling eager. “When?”

  “I do not know. He may have said, but I do not remember. I think all he said was soon.”

  “Did he say where?”

  Ublick shook his head. I could see he was growing tired, and he’d been through a lot of strain what with seeing his brother’s body tipped out of its coffin and then exhibited cruelly in a girlie bar. He said, “No, to the best of my memory he did not say where.”

  *

  That night, in the hotel bar, I was approached by a girl who could have come out of Hans Hagen’s establishment. I assumed her purpose was the same as that of Hagen’s girls but she was much better looking. On reflection, she wouldn’t have fitted the Hagen scene; she was more professional and of a better class, and no doubt that much more expensive. When I declined her services, not without a passing twinge of regret, she replied simply, “I am very sorry — Herr Shaw,” and gave me a direct look. I revised my opinion that she was here only for the same purpose as Hagen’s young ladies. She went on, “It is not always a pleasure, but with you … ” She didn’t finish that; instead she became crisp, business-like. “The money is welcome. Always the money is welcome. I have a message for you.”

  I started a little at that. Then she continued smoothly, “But the money, without which no message. And the money must not be seen to pass. There are so many eyes. Do you understand, Herr Shaw?”

  A chance had to be taken. She needed the cover. We went upstairs separately after I’d given her the number of my suite. I let myself in, and a few minutes later opened the door to her gentle knock. She came in and I shut the door and let her scent waft past me. I was sorely tempted again but this was to be business. I asked, “How much?”

  “For the message, one thousand deutschemarks.”

  6D2 never keep their field men short and I had the cash but for the firm’s sake as it were I tried to bargain. She wouldn’t have that. Her price was fixed and her eyes were cool. She said, “Into the sum will be thrown the bed, you understand?”

  Unwillingly I said there wouldn’t be any bed. I still wasn’t taking the risk. I produced the cash and handed it over and in return she handed me a slip of paper. Then she gave me a quick, feather-light kiss and left me. “Talk about frustration. But the message was worth every pfennig of the cash and every torment of the frustration.

  It read: 15 Bulderstrasse at two a. m. You will find me there. Bring police. The writing was a little shaky, but it was Felicity Mandrake’s, and the signature was genuine.

  It had to be genuine; no duress, no trickery. I was in no doubt about that. The adjuration to bring the police was my guarantee. After I’d read the message I went to the door and started down the corridor, but that seductive messenger had gone. It could be a mistake to be seen chasing after her; I went back into my room, wondering who she was. Her scent lingered, tantalisingly. I looked at my watch: just after eleven p.m. The police: I wouldn’t risk the telephone. I went down and got the Mercedes out of the underground car park and drove for police headquarters, where I was known already thanks to the fracas in Der Kaiserhof. I reported to the top brass on duty and a call was put through to the top brass not on duty: this whole affair was too big to permit of less than full consultation at a high level. Result: we were given a go.

  I asked if they knew anything about number 15, Bulderstrasse. They said yes, they did. It was a block of flats. It was also something else: it was where Klaus Kunze had his Berlin pad. He had another in Bonn, his basic home being in Uelzen. It sounded much as though we were getting warmer, but the police confirmed that, after my representations about Kunze, they had checked all his addresses and found nothing. 15 Bulderstrasse was clear.

  I said, “Things can change and it may not be clear now. On the other hand, there’s all the rest of the block. How many flats?”

  “Twenty-eight,” the copper said. “Fourteen storeys, two flats on each.”

  “And Kunze?”

  “Right at the top.” The officer studied the message again, frowning. “A pity this does not give the flat number. It is vague, I think.”

  “Not all that vague in the circumstances. I suggest we start with Klaus Kunze. He won’t be there himself. At least, I’ll be very surprised if he is.”

  The officer was still fingering a photocopy of the message and frowning. He didn’t seem to like it. As soo
n as I’d handed it over, the original had been sent to the fingerprint section and the computers had gone into swift action. Result, nil so far. The brass would have much liked to know the identity of the girl messenger; so would I, but you can’t have everything and I didn’t doubt the genuineness of the message for reasons aforesaid. Nor, really, did the police; they simply had a reservation or two. I think the general feeling was that the girl had been Kunze’s mistress and there had been a bust-up. Or possibly she had come to hear about what Kunze was doing and didn’t like it and had opted out, giving Miss Mandrake a helping hand on the way. The police made their dispositions: 15 Bulderstrasse was to be quietly surrounded by a police cordon, the plainclothes men going in close in unmarked cars and the uniformed men in the flashy mobiles remaining handy on the perimeter a decent way off, ready to come in fast the moment they were told to on their radios. I would go in openly with three senior police officers, plain-clothes variety, and make straight for the lift and Kunze’s flat. As a last-minute thought came to me, I asked if a helicopter could be handy.

  They asked why.

  I said, “To watch the roof. Seeing as Kunze’s is one of the top flats … you never know. There could be some sort of jiggery-pokery on the roof, which, I take it, is flat?”

  “It is flat, yes. Very well, a helicopter.” The police officer took up a telephone on his desk.

  *

  It was all conducted with Germanic efficiency and thoroughness. After the units detailed for the cordon had moved off, discreetly, one by one, no fuss or ostentation, I got into my Mercedes along with the three senior policemen in the plain clothes which, as it happened, told the world instantly who they were: dark lounge suits, sober shirts and ties, dark hats pulled over their eyes. If they weren’t cops, then they were Yank mobsters from pre-war. But police don’t differ the world over and it was too late to tart them up sartorially now; in any case, they were not of an age to be with it dresswise, which no doubt their juniors were, all jeans, beads and beards when duty called for such. Bump into any hippie in Piccadilly underground and you strike a detective inspector.

  I drove through the night-bound West Berlin streets to police directions. There wasn’t in fact much night until we were away from the centre; there were too many whirling neons, a blaze of light constantly changing its pattern and making the eyeballs ache. Plain advertising, everything under the sun, some of it plainer, in meaning anyway, than the rest: huge bloated women in glorious technicolour outline, one nipple switching off while the other came on, stars twinkling where they shouldn’t have twinkled and in my experience never did. The streets were thronged; as we were slowed by the traffic I saw that the porn stalls were doing a brisk trade, so was a sex shop that really didn’t need the huge phallic symbol in its window to attract custom. The grim comrades across the Berlin Wall were really missing out on things; I doubted if all this display would go down at all well, officially, on that side. The two Berlins were chalk and cheese but at least the other side didn’t have Klaus Kunze.

  We arrived in the Bulderstrasse: my guide indicated the numbers of the blocks as I drove on slowly, and I stopped at number 15 and we all got out. I felt the pressure of my bolstered revolver; it was a happy pressure. My companions, of course, were armed as well. In the distance I heard the sound of the police helicopter moving in. I couldn’t see it, but it was nice to know it was around. We had no idea of what we were moving into, but none of us doubted there was going to be bloodshed.

  We entered the block’s foyer, which was quiet, opulent and empty. There stood the lifts, two of them, both currently at ground floor level. One of them was out of action; we all got into the other, grim-faced, like a funeral party to any observer. I pressed the button for the fourteenth floor and felt my stomach drop; that lift was fast. In a few seconds we had stopped, while my stomach travelled on up. The doors slid open with a faint hiss and a tiny click. Emerging, we moved in file towards Kunze’s door. His card was in a slot; I pressed the bell and we waited in a tense silence. Nothing happened. I pressed again. Behind me the three police officers shifted about restlessly.

  Still nothing.

  I was pushed a little aside and a corpulent body bent in half, and then went down on all fours, to peer through the letter-box. Nothing to be seen; grunting and wheezing, the police officer came up perpendicular again. Then he banged hard on the door, raised his voice, and bellowed out the German equivalent of “Open in the name of the Law.”

  Still nothing.

  I lifted an eyebrow at the senior of the three. He took my meaning and gave a vigorous nod. His patience was at an end. As the rest of us moved back a few paces, he brought out his heavy police revolver and laid the barrel against the door lock. Bedlam came to the Bulderstrasse, din and gunsmoke and flame. That happened four times, all round the lock, then the policeman bashed the lock clear of the shattered woodwork.

  We went in, guns all ready, to find utter anti-climax: no-one at home and no Miss Mandrake. The search didn’t take long; it was a small flat. Cupboards, wardrobes … nothing. No sign of anything that could be linked with Felicity. Hoax? Hardly. More likely word rushing fast through the grapevine that I’d been seen in contact with that girl messenger, who in retrospect hadn’t been very clever, and then a speedy withdrawal before I and the police turned up.

  I put that to the police.

  “Yes,” one of them said. That was all; it was all in the day’s work and they had no personal involvement as I had. They trooped out of the flat and one of the coppers used his pocket radio to talk to his mobiles. He wanted someone sent to repair Kunze’s lock. Thoughtful bastard, I said to myself, but, of course, honest — or anyway undetected — citizens couldn’t be left with their front doors wide for any thief to enter. Especially when they were members of the Bundestag … angrily I suggested they might try the other flats, though it would take all night. They demurred at that and there was a lot of head-shaking: proper authorisation would be needed. Klaus Kunze’s flat was different; he was very possibly involved and there had been a clear need for speed. I felt sick at the use of the phrase ‘very possibly involved’ but there was nothing I could do to move the West Germans. Frustrated, scared once again for Felicity, I followed the dark suits to the one lift that was working. We got in. I was vaguely aware of something odd; then in a flash it came to me: the door had been standing open as we approached. However, as we entered, it shut, as it should have done. But seconds after that the lights went out and I heard a nasty bumping noise from overhead, presumably from where the lifthouse was situated. I reacted fast and shoved the doors open and as I did so there was a crackle from the police radio and a disembodied voice from the helicopter reported roof activity.

  I grabbed the handiest copper and shoved him through the door. “Out!” I yelled, and got out myself. So did the second policeman. The third was horribly unlucky: he didn’t quite make it. As the lift went down by gravity, freed at a guess from its cable by chicanery aloft, the policeman’s legs shot up into the air and a desperate scream came out from the shaft. The upper half of the policeman’s body was still in the lift, and the lift had jammed solid somewhere around a pulped lumbar region. The scream died into a horrible gurgling, and then there was silence. Into the silence came the sound of the helicopter, close overhead, then the sound of gunfire. As for me, something had flashed into my mind and I shouted to the remaining coppers to get down fast to the basement via the staircase. We went down as fast as we could go and I headed for the lift-well once we had made the basement. My hunch had proved spot on: we found Felicity, bound, gagged and unconscious, her body tied Firmly across two projections, like hydraulic buffers in a railway terminus, sticking up from the base concrete to help take the impact of a lift dropping out of control from fourteen storeys up. None of us would have survived that drop.

  *

  “Neat,” I said later on the agency phone to Bonn, where Waldstein had been got out of bed. “A nice, easy way of getting rid of me at the same time as
Miss Mandrake, only it didn’t work out for them.” I added that the caretaker and his wife had been looked for — Kunze could never have set the thing up without their connivance, so it was a fair bet they were part of the mob — but they’d vanished, wisely enough. Felicity, I was delighted to report, was basically none the worse but there was a degree of shock, as was only to be expected, and I proposed despatching her back to England with a 6D2 strong-arm escort. This, Waldstein would fix. I told him Felicity hadn’t been able to help at all; she remembered writing out a message to dictation and signing it, and that, a very recent happening, was about the lot. She had been held in isolation all alone, had been told nothing, had overheard nothing. She hadn’t even seen any of her captors right through all the days, apart from Jason Clutch. She was certain she had been brought in from the U.K. by sea and thence travelled by car and that was all she did know. For much of the time she had been drugged and she had a vague recollection of being shut up in something like a large trunk but she couldn’t be sure. Into the phone I said, “I don’t like the implications, Herr Waldstein.”

  “In what way?”

  “The attempt to dispose of Miss Mandrake. They must have had a use for her … if they had, then that use has passed. That means — ”