Philip Kerr - Berlin Noir

‘I’ll drop them round myself,’ I said. ‘Thank goodness he has the rest of them back safely.’

‘Yes, isn’t it?’ she said.

So there it was. He did have them.

I began to move towards the door. ‘Well, I’d better be getting along, Frau Lange.’ I waved the two cheques in the air and then slipped them into my wallet. ‘Thanks for your generosity.’

‘Not at all.’

I frowned as if something had occurred to me.

‘There is one thing that puzzles me,’ I said. ‘Something I meant to ask you about. What interest does your company have in the Rolf Vogelmann Detective Agency?’

‘Rolf Vogelmann?’ she repeated uncomfortably.

‘Yes. You see I learnt quite by accident that the Lange Publishing Company has been funding an advertising campaign for Rolf Vogelmann since July of this year. I was merely wondering why you should have hired me when you might with more reason have hired him?’

Frau Lange blinked deliberately and shook her head.

‘I’m afraid that I have absolutely no idea.’

I shrugged and allowed myself a little smile. ‘Well, as I say, it just puzzled me, that’s all. Nothing important. Do you sign all the company cheques, Frau Lange? I mean, I just wondered if this might be something your son could have done on his own without informing you. Like buying that magazine you told me about. Now what was its name? Urania .’

Clearly embarrassed, Frau Lange’s face was beginning to redden. She swallowed hard before answering.

‘Reinhard has signing power over a limited bank account which is supposed to cover his expenses as a company director. However, I’m at a loss to explain what this might relate to, Herr Gunther.’

‘Well, maybe he got tired of astrology. Maybe he decided to become a private investigator himself. To tell the truth, Frau Lange, there are times when a horoscope is as good a way of finding something out as any other.’

‘I shall make a point of asking Reinhard about this when I next see him. I’m indebted to you for the information. Would you mind telling me where you got it from?’

‘The information? Sorry, I make it a strict rule never to breach confidentiality. I’m sure you understand.’

She nodded curtly, and bade me good evening.

Back in the hall the black cauldron was still simmering over her floor.

‘You know what I’d recommend?’ I said.

‘What’s that?’ she said sullenly.

‘I think you should give Frau Lange’s son a call at his magazine. Maybe he can work up a magic spell to shift those marks.’

Friday, 21 October

When I first suggested the idea to Hildegard Steininger, she had been less than enthusiastic.

‘Let me get this straight. You want to pose as my husband?’

‘That’s right.’

‘In the first place, my husband is dead. And in the second you don’t look anything like him, Herr Kommissar.’

‘In the first place I’m counting on this man not knowing that the real Herr Steininger is dead; and in the second, I don’t suppose that he would have any more idea of what your husband might have looked like than I do.’

‘Exactly who is this Rolf Vogelmann, anyway?’

‘An investigation like this one is nothing more than a search for a pattern, for a common factor. Here the common factor is that we’ve discovered Vogelmann was retained by the parents of two other girls.’

‘Two other victims, you mean,’ she said. ‘I know that other girls have disappeared and then been found murdered, you know. There may be nothing about it in the papers, but one hears things all the time.’

‘Two other victims, then,’ I admitted.

‘But surely that’s just a coincidence. Listen, I can tell you that I’ve thought of doing it myself, you know, paying someone to look for my daughter. After all, you still haven’t found a trace of her, have you?’

‘That’s true. But it may be more than just a coincidence. That’s what I’d like to find out.’

‘Supposing that he is involved. What could he hope to gain from it?’

‘We’re not necessarily talking about a rational person here. So I don’t know that gain will come into the equation.’

‘Well, it all sounds very dubious to me,’ she said. ‘I mean, how did he get in touch with these two families?’

‘He didn’t. They got in touch with him after seeing his newspaper advertisement.’

‘Doesn’t that show that if he is a common factor, then it’s not been through his own making?’

‘Perhaps he just wants it to look that way. I don’t know. All the same I’d like to find out more, even if it’s just to rule him out.’

She crossed her long legs and lit a cigarette.

‘Will you do it?’

‘Just answer this question first, Kommissar. And I want an honest answer. I’m tired of all the evasions. Do you think that Emmeline can still be alive?’

I sighed and then shook my head. ‘I think she’s dead.’

‘Thank you.’ There was silence for a moment. ‘Is it dangerous, what you’re asking me to do?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘Then I agree.’

Now, as we sat in Vogelmann’s waiting-room in his offices on Nürnburgerstrasse, under the eye of his matronly secretary, Hildegard Steininger played the part of the worried wife to perfection, holding my hand, and occasionally smiling at me smiles of the kind that are normally reserved for a loved one. She was even wearing her wedding-ring. So was I. It felt strange, and tight, on my finger after so many years. I’d needed soap to slide it on.

Through the wall could be heard the sound of a piano being played.

‘There’s a music school next door,’ explained Vogelmann’s secretary. She smiled kindly and added: ‘He won’t keep you waiting for very long.’ Five minutes later we were ushered into his office.

In my experience the private investigator is prone to several common ailments: flat feet, varicose veins, a bad back, alcoholism and, God forbid, venereal disease; but none of them, with the possible exception of the clap, is likely to influence adversely the impression he makes on a potential client. However, there is one disability, albeit a minor one, which if found in a sniffer must give the client pause for thought, and that is short-sightedness. If you are going to pay a man fifty marks a day to trace your missing grandmother, at the very least you want to feel confident that the man you are engaging to do the job is sufficiently eagle-eyed to find his own cuff-links. Spectacles of bottle-glass thickness such as those worn by Rolf Vogelmann must therefore be considered bad for business.

Ugliness, on the other hand, where it stops short of some particular and gross physical deformity, need be no professional disadvantage, and so Vogelmann, whose unpleasant aspect was something more general, was probably able to peck at some sort of a living. I say peck, and I choose my words carefully, because with his unruly comb of curly red hair, his broad beak of a nose and his great breast-plate of a chest, Vogelmann resembled a breed of prehistoric cockerel, and one that had positively begged for extinction.

Hitching his trousers on to his chest, Vogelmann strode round the desk on big policeman’s feet to shake our hands. He walked as if he had just dismounted a bicycle.

‘Rolf Vogelmann, pleased to meet you both,’ he said in a high, strangulated sort of voice, and with a thick Berlin accent.

‘Steininger,’ I said. ‘And this is my wife Hildegard.’

Vogelmann pointed at two armchairs that were ranged in front of a large desk-table, and I heard his shoes squeak as he followed us back across the rug. There wasn’t much in the way of furniture. A hat stand, a drinks trolley, a long and battered-looking sofa and, behind it, a table against the wall with a couple of lamps and several piles of books.