Bright Dart

by Suninfo

  He waved Ottaway through, scarcely bothering to give his papers a second glance. Cowper, his legs shaking beneath him as he walked to the far end of the platform, thought it was bloody unfair.

  His sense of grievance was increased when Ottaway said, ‘Well, I guess that wasn’t too bad.’

  ‘How would you know? You weren’t taking the brunt of it.’

  ‘What were you worried about? Our papers were in order.’

  Ottaway took out a cheap cigar and lit it. ‘You want to learn to relax,’ he said.

  ‘Go to hell,’ Cowper whispered furiously, ‘I don’t need your advice.’

  It was not the sort of reaction he’d come to expect from a man like Cowper whose record suggested that he would remain calm under stress. If any one of them had a reason to be nervous it was Quilter, who was carrying an HF transmitter concealed inside the false bottom of his suitcase, yet watching him as he chatted happily with Ashby outside the waiting room, Ottaway was amazed by his air of confidence. He began to think that he had underestimated him.

  The train appeared as a black dot in the distance and for some 137

  time it seemed to the impatient eye to draw no nearer, and then, as if the whole process of motion had been speeded up, it rumbled into the station. As it squealed to a halt, the waiting passengers surged forward and Ottaway was separated from Cowper. He managed to find himself a seat next to a stout woman on the outside edge of the hard wooden bench but Cowper was forced to stand in the gangway. A porter walked the length of the platform slamming the doors, a whistle shrilled and the train lumbered slowly out of the station.

  Thirty years experience with the criminal police had taught Detective Emil Maurice that the investigation of any murder was nine tenths routine to one tenth inspiration, and that was true of this particular case which seemed straightforward enough. According to the doctor who’d made the preliminary medical examination, the woman had been dead for almost thirty-six hours before her body was discovered by the old man who lived in the flat below. The deceased was Hildegarde Dollmann, a known prostitute with an impressive list of convictions for soliciting, causing a disturbance and drunkenness, but apart from making a formal identification, the old man had not been very helpful; discharged after a week in hospital with broncho-pneumonia, he had returned home to find a damp patch on the ceiling of his living room and had immediately called on Dollmann to complain. Getting no reply, he had tried the door to her flat and finding it unlocked, had walked in and discovered her dead in the bath.

  Tracing men who had consorted with a prostitute was never an easy business and sometimes it called for a great deal of tact.

  Maurice usually made a point of starting with the protector but, in this instance, it was known that she did not have a man pimping for her. She was a ten-mark, short-time whore who on a good night had been reputed to make as much as two hundred.

  Unless the killer had gone through her purse, and there was no evidence to suggest that he had, Monday had been a bad day for business. As far as he could tell, she’d taken thirty marks in fives and tens, which suggested that Dollmann had picked up a total of three men or one big spender. The list of convictions for soliciting indicated that she worked the Innsbrucker Platz, but since he’d been informed by the uniformed branch that she frequently picked up men in Werner’s bar, Maurice decided that it was as good a place as any to start asking questions.

  Even at eleven o’clock in the morning, the air inside the cellar smelled strongly of yesterday’s tobacco smoke blended with stale beer, and the short tubby barman was badly in need of a wash 138

  and shave. The wary expression in his brown eyes also suggested that in or out of uniform, he knew a policeman when he saw one.

  Maurice perched himself on a stool. ‘Are you open?’ he said.

  The man rinsed a glass under the tap and dried it on a grubby towel. ‘We are,’ he grunted. ‘What’ll you have?’

  ‘Do you serve coffee?’

  ‘Only substitute.’

  Maurice pulled a face. ‘I’ll have a beer then.’

  ‘Draught or bottled?’

  ‘Anything—they all taste much alike these days.’ Maurice took a photograph out of his pocket and placed it on the bar. ‘Do you know this woman?’

  The barman knocked the cap off the bottle and deftly poured the beer into a glass. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Oh, come on, don’t be coy, we already know that she frequents this bar.’

  ‘Are you a policeman?’

  ‘No,’ he said sarcastically, ‘I work for the Winter Relief Fund.’

  ‘Tough.’

  ‘It’ll be tough on you all right if you continue like this.’

  ‘You’re all alike, you love to push people around.’ The barman studied the photograph. ‘Hildegarde Dollmann, right?’

  ‘Yes. Have you seen her lately?’

  ‘Is she in trouble?’

  ‘You could say that—someone strangled her.’

  The barman whistled softly. ‘Poor kid,’ he said.

  ‘She was forty if she was a day and she’d been on the game long enough to know the risks she was taking. She picked a bad one and her luck was right out, and that’s all there is to it, so spare me the tears.’

  ‘It’s a damn shame and I only wish I could help you.’

  Maurice drained his glass and banged it down on the counter.

  ‘I’ll ask you just once more,’ he said nastily, ‘and then if you’re still unco-operative we’ll take a walk round to the police station and I’ll let them soften you up a bit. Now, when was the last time you saw Hildegarde Dollmann?’

  ‘She was in here the night before last.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She picked up a man.’

  ‘Good, we’re getting somewhere at last. Would it be asking too much for you to describe him?’

  ‘He was a big man in his late thirties, a real blond strength-through-joy type with a mean and arrogant streak. He wasn’t a Berliner.’

  ‘A foreigner?’

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  ‘How many arrogant men have you met among the foreign workers in this city? No, he was German all right; seemed quite well off too. You might say that he was slumming it.’

  ‘Did you see Hildegarde again that night?’

  ‘No, leastways she didn’t come back here, but she could have been walking the streets.’

  ‘And the man?’

  ‘Haven’t laid eyes on him since.’

  ‘Do you live on the premises, Herr——?’

  ‘Fischer. No, I rent a room on the Wielandweg facing the S

  Bahn.’

  Maurice rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘Have you seen anything unusual on your way to and from work over the past couple of days?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Anything that didn’t seem to fit in with the neighbourhood.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘You’re absolutely sure?’

  Fischer said, ‘Well—there was a Volkswagen parked outside the bakery on Wielandweg late on Monday night that was still there yesterday morning when I came to work.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you thought to take its number?’

  ‘I didn’t reckon it was any of my business.’

  Time could have been saved and unnecessary work avoided if Fischer had been a little more inquisitive, but at least he had something tangible which the local police could follow up. Maurice slid off the bar stool. ‘I must be on my way,’ he said, ‘what do I owe for the beer?’

  ‘It’s on the house.’

  Maurice nodded curtly and strolled towards the exit. ‘You can expect to see me again,’ he said.

  Fischer waited until the detective was out of earshot before he made any comment. ‘Not if I see you first you won’t,’ he said.

  Doctor Julius Lammers was quite unlike any other Gauleiter whom Kastner had met. His background had been entirely intellectual until 1934 when he had suddenly left the University of Münster to
become an active member of the Party because, in National Socialism, he had seen the means of curing Germany’s economic ills. He was a large shambling man of untidy appearance whose shock of unruly brown hair belied his fifty-three years.

  His office in the Party Administrative Building overlooked the Dom Platz and was within easy walking distance of the Prince Bishop’s Palace which the mysterious Georg Thomas had been using as a forwarding address.

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  Kastner said, ‘It’s very good of you to see me at such short notice but, as you’ll appreciate, my arrival in Münster was unavoidably delayed and naturally I want to catch up on lost time.’

  Lammers removed his horn-rimmed glasses and polished the lenses with his handkerchief. He had been warned that the Oberführer was a very difficult man and he was anxious to create a good impression.

  ‘Please,’ he said, ‘there’s no need for you to apologise—my time is yours. As a matter of fact, I hope you’ll find that Sturmbannführer Wollweber and I have made all the necessary arrangements.’

  Wollweber nodded vigorously. ‘We’ve been all over the council chambers,’ he said smugly, ‘and I can assure you that security there will be as tight as a drum.’

  ‘Then you won’t mind if I check it out, will you?’ Kastner said coldly.

  ‘Of course not, Herr Oberführer.’

  That each man disliked the other was very apparent, but of even greater interest to Lammers was the knowledge that Kastner had scant regard for Wollweber’s abilities. Later, these weaknesses would prove useful, but this was not the moment to exploit them and, for the time being at least, he wished to appear neutral.

  ‘We’d certainly feel much easier in our own minds if you did examine our tentative arrangements,’ he said smoothly, ‘just in case there is some vital point which we may have overlooked. Is this your first visit to Münster, Herr Oberführer?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I think you will find that it is a beautiful and yet fascinating city. That oil painting on the wall to your left shows the interior of the council chamber as it used to be in 1939. The Treaty of Westphalia which ended the Thirty Years War was signed in that very room in 1648, since when it has been known as the Hall of Peace.’

  ‘And that is where Party Secretary Bormann will address the Gauleiters on Saturday?’

  ‘Yes. Of course, it looks much barer now that we’ve removed all the paintings and precious wood carvings. We couldn’t risk having them destroyed in an air raid.’

  ‘Quite. Perhaps we could take a look at the building and also the route out to the airfield at Loddenheide?’

  ‘Certainly. When would be convenient?’

  ‘Now,’ said Kastner. ‘We can use Wollweber’s car.’

  Lammers sensed a note of hostility which made him feel 141

  uneasy. He wondered how much this man suspected and whether his appearance on the scene indicated a change of heart by Kaltenbrunner, for if this was so, they were in serious trouble.

  He saw that Kastner was watching him closely and with an effort he forced a reassuring smile on to his face.

  ‘I’ll just put my coat on,’ he said, ‘and then we can go.’

  There was a great deal more to the city than the Hall of Peace and by the time Lammers had finished his conducted tour, Kastner knew all about the Anabaptist riots and had even seen the cages on the tower of St Lamberti Church where the bodies of the ringleaders were exhibited after they had been executed on the scaffold. He had also been told that nearly a quarter of Münster had been destroyed in the Seven Years War and that the city had suffered further damage in the French occupation of 1806. This cultural monologue, which had seemed to go on interminably, was not the only distraction. No matter how hard Kastner tried to close his mind on the subject, the nagging fear persisted that somehow, someone in Berlin would find a way to link him with the dead prostitute.

  The sheer complexity of the council chambers, with the armoury, cellar restaurant, banqueting room and the Hall of Peace, posed any number of security problems which required his undivided attention. The connecting passages with the adjoining Stadtweinhaus needed to be sealed off, the public right of access to the cellar restaurant would have to be restricted and he made a note to ensure that both buildings were searched from attic to basement an hour or so before the conference assembled and that the civil servants and the technicians who would record Bormann’s speech should be vetted and issued with special passes.

  In normal circumstances, Kastner would have experienced little difficulty in dealing with these and a score of other points, but now, with other pressures building up on him, he was strangely hesitant and indecisive. If he had been capable of rational thought, Kastner would certainly not have overlooked the fact that, when the special guard company from the Waffen SS Training School at Brunswick detrained in Münster on Friday, they would be required to implement a plan of operation which, apart from a few minor changes, owed much of its concept to the combined efforts of Wollweber and Lammers.

  Nearly twenty-four hours had passed since they had crossed the frontier at Schaffhausen and of the four men, Scholl was now the least apprehensive. He had developed an almost childlike faith in the efficiency of the German Resistance from the moment 142

  they had made contact with the cell in Tuttlingen, and without a second thought, he had accepted that they were able to transform him into a Gefreiter of the 421st Jager Infantry Regiment. It simply did not occur to him to question how many people had been involved in supplying the necessary uniforms and papers, otherwise, like Frick, he might have been worried.

  With his experience as a communist agitator in the Hamburg shipyards to draw upon, Frick knew that, to escape detection, an underground organisation had to have a foolproof cut-out system, but all the indications showed that the Tuttlingen group was in direct contact with other cells. He did not believe that a unit whose security was that bad could possibly remain intact for long, and despite what Gerhardt had said, he was sure that it must have been penetrated by the Gestapo and that it continued to survive because someone in authority was tolerant of its aims.

  He took little comfort from the fact that he was carrying orders to report to the Reserve Army Replacement Centre at Handorf because, although the papers would pass inspection, he feared that at any time the Gestapo might grow weary of the charade and decide to end it. Even in the darkness of this cinema in the suburbs of Stuttgart where Gerhardt had taken them to pass the time while they waited for the next train to Münster, he did not feel safe.

  Sandwiched between a plain, shabbily dressed young woman and Gerhardt, Stack also felt uncomfortable, but for very different reasons. He had nothing against officers, even German officers, but he liked to keep them at a distance. The film was no distraction either and he was growing tired of watching the simpering blonde heroine evade a host of admirers all of whom were intent on seducing her; for the life of him, he couldn’t see why they were so eager because she was nothing to look at. The plot was heavily laced with lavatory humour which, although it lacked subtlety, appealed to the audience, and for the sake of appearances he was obliged to laugh in the right places. It was, he supposed, an antidote to the newsreel which had surprised him. He had always believed that the Germans were presented with a totally false picture of the war, but in this instance the camera had shown the truth, and no one seeing the devastated cities of the Ruhr could have any illusions about the outcome. Yet strangely enough, when the lights came on in the interval most of the audience seemed a long way from being depressed and without any prompting, they sang the Horst Wessel with defiant enthusiasm.

  It was the first time he’d been to the cinema since leaving Kirkcudbright to join Force 272 and he suddenly found himself thinking about Janet and wondering if she’d ever really cared 143

  about him. Whoever said that absence made the heart grow fonder was barking up the wrong tree; absence just made it easier for someone like Janet to forget. For no reason which came to mind, her l
etters had gradually tailed off and then ceased altogether just before they moved to Abercorn House. Looking back now, he supposed that he should have listened to the other sergeants in the Mess at Kirkcudbright. Perhaps they had been right all along, perhaps the only thing she had ever wanted from him was a good time. He tried telling himself that he was better off without her but still he remained unconvinced.

  At the end of the day, Detective Emil Maurice had sufficient evidence to justify an arrest if he felt so inclined. He had witnesses who not only recalled seeing the Volkswagen parked in Wielandweg on the Monday night but who could also testify that it was still there the following morning until it was collected by a man answering to the description that Fischer had given him. Indeed, one of the witnesses had been so incensed by this apparent misuse of transport that he had made a note of the registration number.

  By now, Maurice also knew that the car belonged to the Prinz Albrechtstrasse Headquarters and so, instead of taking further action himself, he simply prepared a report and submitted it to the Berlin Police President for consideration. In his considered opinion, there were times when it was politic to be discreet, and this was definitely one of them.

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  17

  KALTENBRUNNER REPLACED THE phone and leaning back in his chair, clasped his hands behind his head. As a result of his conversation with the Police President he now had a perfect excuse to so worry and harass Kastner that his mind would be anywhere but on the job he had to do in Münster. A more direct man would have seized the chance, but Kaltenbrunner was devious and he wished to sit on the fence for as long as possible in case the assassination ended in failure. He had no intention of being implicated in the plot, and if he allowed the police to interrogate Kastner at this delicate moment, someone might infer later that he had tried to sabotage the security arrangements for the conference.

  Lammers and his fellow conspirators were hopeless amateurs.

  The idea of killing Bormann as a necessary prelude to negotiating a separate armistice with the Western Allies behind the Führer’s back was sound enough in principle but, from the very outset, these people had shown a remarkable talent for bungling even the simplest of plans. The arrangements for smuggling Gerhardt out of Germany had been particularly inept, with the result that Osler had immediately become a prime suspect. It was almost as if they had deliberately set out to draw attention to themselves and perhaps, in a curious way, this lack of secrecy had worked to their advantage.