Philip Kerr - Berlin Noir

‘Shot, was he?’ He smiled.

‘Executed, more like,’ I said. ‘It looks like someone put one between his eyes while he was out cold.’

‘I’m choked.’ Deubel shook his head slowly.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘You’re just pissing on the wall, Gunther, and hoping that some of it will splash my fucking trousers. Sure, I didn’t like that little Czech, just like I hate every pervert that touches kids and hurts women. But that doesn’t mean that I had anything to do with his murder.’

‘There’s an easy way of convincing me of that.’

‘Oh? And what’s that?’

‘Show me that garter-gun you keep on you. The Little Tom.’

Deubel raised his hands innocently.

‘What garter gun? I haven’t got a gun like that. The only lighter I’m carrying is there on the table.’

‘Everyone who’s worked with you knows about that gun. You’ve bragged about it often enough. Show me the gun and you’re in the clear. But if you’re not carrying it, then I’ll figure it’s because you had to get rid of it.’

‘What are you talking about? Like I said, I don’t have -’

Korsch stood up. He said: ‘Come on, Eb. You showed that gun to me only a couple of days ago. You even said that you were never without it.’

‘You piece of shit. Take his side against one of your own, would you? Can’t you see? He’s not one of us. He’s one of Heydrich’s fucking spies. He doesn’t give two farts about Kripo.’

‘That’s not the way I see it,’ Korsch said quietly. ‘So how about it? Do we get to see the gun or not?’

Deubel shook his head, smiled and wagged a finger at me.

‘You can’t prove anything. Not a thing. You know that, don’t you?’

I pushed my chair away with the backs of my legs. I needed to be on my feet to say what I was going to say.

‘Maybe so. All the same, you’re off this case. I don’t particularly give a damn what happens to you, Deubel, but as far as I’m concerned you can slither back to whichever excremental corner of this place you came from. I’m choosy about who I have to work with. I don’t like killers.’

Deubel bared his yellow teeth even further. His grin looked like the keyboard of an old and badly out of tune piano. Hitching up his shiny flannel trousers he squared his shoulders and pointed his belly in my direction. It was all I could do to resist slamming my fist right into it, but starting a fight like that would probably have suited him very well.

‘You want to open your eyes, Gunther. Take a walk down to the cells and the interrogation rooms and see what’s happening in this place. Choosy about who you work with? You poor swine. There are people being beaten to death here, in this building. Probably as we speak. Do you think anyone really gives a damn about what happens to some cheap little pervert? The morgue is full of them.’

I heard myself reply, with what sounded even to me like almost hopeless naiveté, ‘Somebody has to give a damn, otherwise we’re no better than criminals ourselves. I can’t stop other people from wearing dirty shoes, but I can polish my own. Right from the start you knew that was the way I wanted it. But you had to do it your own way, the Gestapo way, that says a woman’s a witch if she floats and innocent if she sinks. Now get out of my sight before I’m tempted to see if my clout with Heydrich goes as far as kicking your arse out of Kripo.’

Deubel sniggered. ‘You’re a renthole,’ he said, and having stared Korsch out until his boozy breath obliged him to turn away, Deubel lurched away.

Korsch shook his head. ‘I never liked that bastard,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t think he was -’ He shook his head again.

I sat down wearily and reached for the desk drawer and the bottle I kept there.

‘Unfortunately he’s right,’ I said, filling a couple of glasses. I met Korsch’s quizzical stare and smiled bitterly. ‘Charging a Berlin bull with murder…’ I laughed. ‘Shit, you might just as well try and arrest drunks at the Munich beer festival.’

Sunday, 25 September

‘Is Herr Hirsch at home?’

The old man answering the door straightened and then nodded. ‘I am Herr Hirsch,’ he said.

‘You are Sarah Hirsch’s father?’

‘Yes. Who are you?’

He must have been at least seventy, bald, with white hair growing long over the back of his collar, and not very tall, stooped even. It was hard to imagine this man having fathered a fifteen-year-old daughter. I showed him my badge.

‘Police,’ I said. ‘Please don’t be alarmed. I’m not here to make any trouble for you. I merely wish to question your daughter. She may be able to describe a man, a criminal.’

Recovering a little of his colour after the sight of my credentials, Herr Hirsch stood to one side and silently ushered me into a hall that was full of Chinese vases, bronzes, blue-patterned plates and intricate balsa-wood carvings in glass cases. These I admired while he closed and locked the front door, and he mentioned that in his youth he had been in the German navy and had travelled widely in the Far East. Aware now of the delicious smell that filled the house, I apologized and said that I hoped I wasn’t disturbing the family meal.

‘It will be a while yet before we sit down and eat,’ said the old man. ‘My wife and daughter are still working in the kitchen.’ He smiled nervously, no doubt unaccustomed to the politeness of public officials, and led me into a reception room.

‘Now then,’ he said, ‘you said that you wished to speak to my daughter Sarah. That she may be able to identify a criminal.’

‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘One of the girls from your daughter’s school has disappeared. It’s quite possible she was abducted. One of the men, questioning some of the girls in your daughter’s class, discovered that several weeks ago Sarah was herself approached by a strange man. I should like to see if she can remember anything about him. With your permission.’

‘But of course. I’ll go and fetch her,’ he said, and went out.

Evidently this was a musical family. Beside a shiny black Bechstein grand were several instrument cases, and a number of music-stands. Close to the window which looked out on to a large garden was a harp, and in most of the family photographs on the sideboard, a young girl was playing a violin. Even the oil painting above the fireplace depicted something musical – a piano recital I supposed. I was standing looking at it and trying to guess the tune when Herr Hirsch returned with his wife and daughter.

Frau Hirsch was much taller and younger than her husband, perhaps no more than fifty – a slim, elegant woman with a set of pearls to match. She wiped her hands on her pinafore and then grasped her daughter by her shoulders, as if wishing to emphasize her parental rights in the face of possible interference from a state which was avowedly hostile to her race.

‘My husband says that a girl is missing from Sarah’s class at school,’ she said calmly. ‘Which girl is it?’

‘Emmeline Steininger,’ I said.

Frau Hirsch turned her daughter towards her a little.

‘Sarah,’ she scolded, ‘why didn’t you tell us that one of your friends had gone missing?’

Sarah, an overweight but healthy, attractive adolescent, who could not have conformed less to Stretcher’s racist stereotype of the Jew, being blue-eyed and fair-haired, gave an impatient toss of her head, like a stubborn little pony.

‘She’s run away, that’s all. She was always talking about it. Not that I care much what’s happened to her. Emmeline Steininger’s no friend of mine. She’s always saying bad things about Jews. I hate her, and I don’t care if her father is dead.’