Philip Kerr - Berlin Noir

Westphalia

To S S-BrigadeFührer Weisthor

Caspar-Theyss Strasse 33,

Berlin Grunewald

3 October 1938

STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL: COURT OF HONOUR PROCEEDINGS, 6-8 NOVEMBER 1938

Herr BrigadeFührer,

This is to confirm that the next Court of Honour will take place here in Wewelsburg on the above dates. As usual security will be tight and during the proceedings, beyond the usual methods of identification, a password will be required to gain admittance to the school house. At your own suggestion this is to be GOSLAR.

Attendance is deemed by the ReichsFührer to be mandatory for all those officers and men listed below:

ReichsFührer-SS Himmler

SS-ObergruppenFührer Heydrich

SS-ObergruppenFührer Heissmeyer

SS-ObergruppenFührer Nebe

SS-ObergruppenFührer Daluege

SS-ObergruppenFührer Darre

SS-GruppenFührer Pohl

SS-BrigadeFührer Taubert

SS-BrigadeFührer Berger

SS-BrigadeFührer Eicke

SS-BrigadeFührer Weisthor

SS-OberFührer Wolff

SS-SturmbannFührer Anders

SS-SturmbannFührer von Oeynhausen

SS-HauptSturmFührer Kindermann

SS-OberSturmbannFührer Diebitsch

SS-OberSturmbannFührer von Knobelsdorff

SS-OberSturmbannFührer Klein

SS-OberSturmbannFührer Lasch

SS-Unterscharführer Rahn

Landbaumeister Bartels

Professor Wilhelm Todt

Heil Hitler,

Taubert

There were many other letters, but I had already risked too much by staying as long as I had. More than that, I realized that, for perhaps the first time since coming out of the trenches in 1918, I was afraid.

Friday, 4 November

Driving from Weisthor’s house to the Alex, I tried to make some sense out of what I had discovered.

Vogelmann’s part was explained, and to some extent that of Reinhard Lange. And perhaps Kindermann’s clinic was where they had killed the girls. What better place to kill someone than a hospital, where people were always coming and going feet first. Certainly his letter to Weisthor seemed to indicate as much.

There was a frightening ingenuity in Weisthor’s solution. After murdering the girls, all of whom had been selected for their Aryan looks, their bodies were hidden so carefully as to be virtually impossible to find: the more so when one took into account the lack of police manpower available to investigate something as routine as a missing person. By the time the police realized that there was a mass-murderer stalking the streets of Berlin, they were more concerned with keeping things quiet so that their failure to catch the killer did not look incompetent – for at least as long as it took to find a convenient scapegoat, such as Josef Kahn.

But what of Heydrich and Nebe, I wondered. Was their attendance at this S S Court of Honour deemed mandatory merely by virtue of their senior rank? After all, the S S had its factions just like any other organization. Daluege, for instance, the head of Orpo, like his opposite number Arthur Nebe, felt as ill-disposed to Himmler and Heydrich as they felt towards him. And quite clearly of course, Weisthor and his faction were antagonistic towards ‘the Jew Heydrich’. Heydrich, a Jew. It was one of those neat pieces of counter-propaganda that relies on a massive contradiction to sound convincing. I’d heard this rumour before, as had most of the bulls around the Alex, and like them I knew where it originated: Admiral Canaris, head of the Abwehr, German Military Intelligence, was Heydrich’s most bitter opponent, and certainly the most powerful one.

Or was there some other reason why Heydrich was going to Wewelsburg in a few days? Nothing to do with him was ever quite what it seemed to be, although I didn’t doubt for a minute that he would enjoy the prospect of Himmler’s embarrassment. For him it would be nice thick icing on the cake that had as its main ingredient the arrest of Weisthor and the other anti-Heydrich conspirators within the S S.

To prove it, however, I was going to need something else besides Weisthor’s papers. Something more eloquent and unequivocal, that would convince the ReichsFührer himself.

It was then that I thought of Reinhard Lange. The softest excrescence on the maculate body of Weisthor’s plot, it certainly wasn’t going to require a clean and sharp curette to cut him away. I had just the dirty, ragged thumbnail that would do the job. I still had two of his letters to Lanz Kindermann.

Back at the Alex I went straight to the duty sergeant’s desk and found Korsch and Becker waiting for me, with Professor Illmann and Sergeant Gollner.

‘Another call?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Gollner.

‘Right. Let’s get going.’

From the outside the Schultheiss Brewery in Kreuzberg, with its uniform red brick, numerous towers and turrets, as well as the fair-sized garden, made it seem more like a school than a brewery. But for the smell, which even at two a.m. was strong enough to pinch the nostrils, you might have expected to find rooms full of desks instead of beer-barrels. We stopped next to the tent-shaped gatehouse.

‘Police,’ Becker yelled at the nightwatchman, who seemed to like a beer himself. His stomach was so big I doubt he could have reached the pockets of his overalls, even if he had wanted to. ‘Where do you keep the old beer-barrels?’

‘What, you mean the empties?’

‘Not exactly. I mean the ones that probably need a bit of mending.’

The man touched his forehead in a sort of salute.

‘Right you are, sir. I know exactly what you mean. This way, if you please.’

We got out of the cars and followed him back up the road we had driven along. After only a short way we ducked through a green door in the wall of the brewery and went down a long and narrow passageway.

‘Don’t you keep that door locked?’ I said.

‘No need,’ said the nightwatchman. ‘Nothing worth stealing here. The beer’s kept behind the gate.’

There was an old cellar with a couple of centuries of filth on the ceiling and the floor. A bare bulb on the wall added a touch of yellow to the gloom.

‘Here you are then,’ said the man. ‘I guess this must be what you’re looking for. This is where they puts the barrels as needs repairing. Only a lot of them never get repaired. Some of these haven’t been moved in ten years.’

‘Shit,’ said Korsch. ‘There must be nearly a hundred of them.’

‘At least,’ laughed our guide.

‘Well, we’d better get started then, hadn’t we?’ I said.

‘What exactly are you looking for?’

‘A bottle-opener,’ said Becker. ‘Now be a good fellow and run along, will you?’ The man sneered, said something under his breath and then waddled off, much to Becker’s amusement.

It was Illmann who found her. He didn’t even take the lid off.

‘Here. This one. It’s been moved. Recently. And the lid’s a different colour from the rest.’ He lifted the lid, took a deep breath and then shone his torch inside. ‘It’s her all right.’

I came over to where he was standing and took a look for myself, and one for Hildegard. I’d seen enough photographs of Emmeline around the apartment to recognize her immediately.

‘Get her out of there as soon as you can, Professor.’

Illmann looked at me strangely and then nodded. Perhaps he heard something in my tone that made him think my interest was more than just professional. He waved in the police photographer.

‘Becker,’ I said.

‘Yes, sir?’

‘I need you to come with me.’

On the way to Reinhard Lange’s address we called in at my office to collect his letters. I poured us both a large glass of schnapps and explained something of what had transpired that evening.

‘Lange’s the weak link. I heard them say so. What’s more, he’s a lemon-sucker.’ I drained the glass and poured another, inhaling deeply of it to increase the effect, my lips tingling as I held it on my palate for a while before swallowing. I shuddered a little as I let it slip down my backbone and said: ‘I want you to work a Vice-squad line on him.’