Philip Kerr - Berlin Noir

‘- then the game would be well and truly up.’

‘So what’s the plan, sir?’

‘Himmler, Heydrich, Nebe – they’ve all gone to this S S Court of Honour at Wewelsburg.’

‘Where the hell is Wewelsburg?’ Becker said.

‘It’s quite near Paderborn,’ said Korsch.

‘I propose to go after them. See if I can’t expose Weisthor and the whole dirty business right in front of Himmler. I’ll take Lange along for the ride, just for evidentiary purposes.’

Korsch stood up and went to the door. ‘Right, sir. I’ll get the car.’

‘I’m afraid not. I want you two to stay here.’

Becker groaned loudly. ‘But that’s ridiculous, it really is, sir. It’s asking for trouble.’

‘It may not quite go the way I’m planning. Don’t forget that this Weisthor character is Himmler’s friend. I doubt that the ReichsFührer will take too kindly to my revelations. Worse still, he may dismiss them altogether, in which case it would be better if there was only me to take the heat. After all, he can hardly kick me off the force, since I’m only on it for as long as this case lasts and then I’m back to my own business.

‘But you two have careers ahead of you. Not very promising careers, it’s true.’ I grinned. ‘All the same, it would be a shame for you both to earn Himmler’s displeasure when I can just as easily do that on my own.’

Korsch exchanged a short look with Becker, and then replied: ‘Come on, sir, don’t give us that cold cabbage. It’s dangerous, what you’re planning. We know it, and you know it too.’

‘Not only that,’ Becker said, ‘but how will you get there with a prisoner? Who’ll drive the car?’

‘That’s right, sir. It’s over three hundred kilometres to Wewelsburg.’

‘I’ll take a staff car.’

‘Suppose Lange tries something on the way?’

‘He’ll be handcuffed, so I doubt I’ll have any trouble from him.’ I shook my head and collected my hat and coat from the rack. ‘I’m sorry, boys, but that’s the way it’s got to be.’ I walked to the door.

‘Sir?’ said Korsch. He held out his hand. I shook it. Then I shook Becker’s. Then I went to collect my prisoner.

Kindermann’s clinic looked just as neat and well-behaved as it had the first time I’d been there, in late August. If anything, it seemed quieter, with no rooks in the trees and no boat on the lake to disturb them. There was just the sound of the wind and the dead leaves it blew across the path like so many flying locusts.

I placed my hand in the small of Lange’s back and pushed him firmly towards the front door.

‘This is most embarrassing,’ he said. ‘Coming here in handcuffs, like a common criminal. I’m well known here, you know.’

‘A common criminal is what you are, Lange. Want me to put a towel over your ugly head?’ I pushed him again. ‘Listen, it’s only my good nature that stops me from marching you in there with your prick hanging out of your trousers.’

‘What about my civil rights?’

‘Shit, where have you been for the last five years? This is Nazi Germany, not ancient Athens. Now shut your fucking mouth.’

A nurse met us in the hallway. She started to say hallo to Lange and then saw the handcuffs. I flapped my ID in front of her startled features.

‘Police,’ I said. ‘I have a warrant to search Dr Kindermann’s office.’ This was true: I’d signed it myself. Only the nurse had been in the same holiday camp as Lange.

‘I don’t think you can just walk in there,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to-’

‘Lady, a few weeks ago that little swastika you see on my identity card there was considered sufficient authority for German troops to march into the Sudetenland. So you can bet it will let me march into the good doctor’s underpants if I want it to.’ I shoved Lange forward again. ‘Come on, Reinhard, show me the way.’

Kindermann’s office was at the back of the clinic. As an apartment in town it would have been considered to be on the small side, but as a doctor’s private room it was just fine. There was a long, low couch, a nice walnut desk, a couple of big modern paintings of the kind that look like the inside of a monkey’s mind, and enough expensively bound books to explain the country’s shoe-leather shortage.

‘Take a seat where I can keep an eye on you, Reinhard,’ I told him. ‘And don’t make any sudden moves. I scare easily and then get violent to cover my embarrassment. What’s the word the rattle-doctors use for that?’ There was a large filing cabinet by the window. I opened it and started to leaf through Kindermann’s files. ‘Compensatory behaviour,’ I said. ‘That’s two words, but I guess that’s what it is all right.

‘You know, you wouldn’t believe some of the names that your friend Kindermann has treated. This filing cabinet reads like the guest list at a Reich Chancellery gala night. Wait a minute, this looks like your file.’ I picked it out and tossed it on to his lap. ‘Why don’t you see what he wrote about you, Reinhard? Perhaps it will explain how you got yourself in with these bastards in the first place.’

He stared at the unopened file.

‘It really is very simple,’ he said quietly. ‘As I explained to you earlier on, I became interested in the psychic sciences as a result of my friendship with Dr Kindermann.’ He raised his face to me challengingly.

‘I’ll tell you why you got yourself involved,’ I said, grinning back at him. ‘You were bored. With all your money you don’t know what to be at next. That’s the trouble with your kind, the kind that’s born into money. You never learn its value. They knew that, Reinhard, and they played you for Johann Simple.’

‘It won’t work, Gunther. You’re talking rubbish.’

‘Am I? You’ve read the file then. You’ll know that for sure.’

‘A patient ought never to see his doctor’s case notes. It would be unethical of me to even open this.’

‘It occurs to me that you’ve seen a lot more than just your doctor’s case notes, Reinhard. And Kindermann learnt his ethics with the Holy Inquisition.’

I turned back to the filing cabinet and fell silent as I came across another name I recognized. The name of a girl I had once wasted a couple of months trying to find. A girl who had once been important to me. I’ll admit that I was even in love with her. The job is like that sometimes. A person vanishes without trace, the world moves on, and you find a piece of information that at the right time would have cracked the case wide open. Aside of the obvious irritation you feel at remembering how wide of the mark you’d really been, mostly you learn to live with it. My business doesn’t exactly suit those who are disposed to be neat. Being a private investigator leaves you holding more loose ends than a blind carpet-weaver. All the same, I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t admit to finding some satisfaction in tying them off. Yet this name, the name of the girl that Arthur Nebe had mentioned to me all those weeks ago when we met late one night in the ruins of the Reichstag, meant so much more than just satisfaction in finding a belated solution to an enigma. There are times when discovery has the force of revelation.

‘The bastard,’ said Lange, turning the pages of his own case notes.

‘I was thinking the same thing myself.’

‘“A neurotic effeminate”,’ he quoted. ‘Me. How could he think such a thing about me?’

I moved down to the next drawer, only half listening to what he was saying.

‘You tell me, he’s your friend.’

‘How could he say these things? I don’t believe it.’

‘Come on, Reinhard. You know how it is when you swim with the sharks. You’ve got to expect to get your balls bitten once in a while.’