Philip Kerr - Berlin Noir

I went over to the front door and pushed it back and forwards on its hinges to fan some more clean air through while I surveyed the desk, the chairs, the bookcases, the filing cabinets and the piles of books and papers that filled the little room. Beyond was an open door, and the edge of a brass bedstead.

My foot kicked something on the floor as I moved towards the bedroom. A cheap tin tray of the kind you find in a bar or a café.

But for the congestion in the two faces that lay side by side on their pillows, you might have thought they were still sleeping. If your name is on someone’s death-card, there are worse ways than asphyxia while asleep to collect it.

I pulled back the quilt and undid Herr Drexler’s pyjama top, revealing a well-swollen stomach marbled with veins and blebs like a piece of blue cheese. I pressed it with my forefinger: it felt tight. Sure enough, a harder pressure with my hand produced a fart from the corpse, indicating a gaseous disruption of the internal organs. It appeared as if the pair of them had been dead for at least a week.

I drew the quilt over them again and returned to the front room. For a while I stared hopelessly at the books and papers which lay on the desk, even making a desultory attempt to find some clue or other, but since I had as yet only the vaguest appreciation of the puzzle, I soon abandoned this as a waste of time.

Outside, under a mother-of-pearl-coloured sky, I was just starting up the street towards the S-Bahn when something caught my eye. There was so much discarded military equipment still lying about Berlin that, but for the manner of the Drexlers’ death, I should have paid the thing no regard. Lying on a heap of rubble that had collected in the gutter was a gasmask. An empty tin can rolled to my feet as I tugged at the rubber strap. Rapidly colouring in the outline scenario of the murder, I abandoned the mask and squatted down on to the backs of my legs to read the label on the rusting metallic curve.

‘Zyklon-B. Poisonous gas! Danger! Keep cool and dry! Protect from the sun and from naked flame. Open and use with extreme caution. Kaliwerke A. G. Kolin.“

In my mind’s eye I pictured a man standing outside the Drexlers’ door. It was late at night. Nervously he half-smoked a couple of cigarettes before pulling on the gas-mask, checking the straps to make sure he had a tight fit. Then he opened the can of crystallized prussic acid, tipped the pellets – already liquefying on contact with the air – on to the tray he had brought with him, and quickly slid it under the door, into the Drexlers’ apartment. The sleeping couple breathed deeply, lapsing into unconsciousness as the Zyklon-B gas, first used on human beings in the concentration camps, started to block the uptake of oxygen in their blood. Small chance that the Drexlers would have left a window open in this weather. But perhaps the murderer laid something – a coat or a blanket – across the bottom of the door to prevent a draught of fresh air into the apartment, or to prevent anyone else in the building from being killed. One part in two thousand of the gas was lethal. Finally, after fifteen or twenty minutes, when the pellets were fully dissolved, and the murderer was satisfied that the gas had done its silent, deadly work – that two more Jews had, for whatever reason, joined the six million – he would have collected up his coat, his mask and his empty can (perhaps he hadn’t meant to leave the tray: not that it mattered, he would surely have worn gloves to handle the Zyklon-B), and walked into the night. You could almost admire its simplicity.

Somewhere, further up the street, a jeep grumbled off into the snow-charged blackness. I wiped the condensation off the window with my sleeve, and saw the reflection of a face that I recognized.

‘Herr Gunther,’ he said, as I turned in my seat, ‘I thought it was you.’ A thin layer of snow covered the man’s head. With its squared-off skull and prominent, perfectly round ears, it reminded me of an ice-bucket.

‘Neumann,’ I said, ‘I thought you were dead for sure.’

He wiped his head and took off his coat. ‘Mind if I join you? My girl hasn’t turned up yet.’

‘When did you ever have a girl, Neumann? At least, one you hadn’t already paid for.’

He twitched nervously. ‘Look, if you’re going to be -’

‘Relax,’ I said. ‘Sit down.’ I waved to the waiter. ‘What will you have?’

‘Just a beer, thanks.’ He sat down and with narrowed eyes regarded me critically. ‘You haven’t changed much, Herr Gunther. Older-looking, a bit greyer, and rather thinner than you used to be, but still the same.’

‘I hate to think what I’d be like if you thought I looked any different,’ I said pointedly. ‘But what you say sounds like a fairly accurate description of eight years.’

‘Is that how long it’s been? Since we last met?’

‘Give or take a world war. You still listening at keyholes?’

‘Herr Gunther, you don’t know the half of it,’ he snorted. ‘I’m a prison warder at Tegel.’

‘I don’t believe it. You? You’re as bent as a stolen rocking-chair.’

‘Honest, Herr Gunther, it’s true. The Yanks have got me guarding Nazi war-criminals.’

‘And you’re the hard-labour, right?’

Neumann twitched again.

‘Here comes your beer.’

The waiter laid the glass in front of him. I started to speak but the Americans at the next table burst into loud laughter. Then one of them, a sergeant, said something else and this time even Neumann laughed.

‘He said that he doesn’t believe in fraternization,’ Neumann explained. ‘He said he doesn’t want to treat any fräulein the way he’d treat his brother.’

I smiled and looked over at the Americans. ‘Did you learn to speak English working in Tegel?’

‘Sure. I learn a lot of things.’

‘You were always a good informer.’

‘For instance,’ he lowered his voice, ‘I heard that the Soviets stopped a British military train at the border to take off two cars containing German passengers. The word is that it’s in retaliation for the establishment of Bizonia.’ He meant the merging of the British and American zones of Germany. Neumann drank some of his beer and shrugged. ‘Maybe there will be another war.’

‘I don’t see how,’ I said. ‘Nobody’s got much stomach for another dose of it.’

‘I dunno. Maybe.’

He set his glass down and produced a box of snuff which he offered to me. I shook my head and grimaced as I watched him take a pinch and slide it under his lip.

‘Did you see any action during the war?’

‘Come on, Neumann, you should know better. Nobody asks a question like that these days. Do you hear me asking how you got a denazification certificate?’

‘I’ll have you know that I got that quite legitimately.’ He fished out his wallet and unfolded a piece of paper. ‘I was never involved in anything. Free from Nazi infection this says, and that’s what I am, and proud of it. I didn’t even join the army.’

‘Only because they wouldn’t have you.’

‘Free from Nazi infection,’ he repeated angrily.

‘Must be about the only infection you never had.’

‘What are you doing here anyway?’ he sneered back.

‘I love coming to the Gay Island.’

‘I’ve never seen you here before, and I’ve been coming here a while.’

‘Yes, it looks like the kind of place you’d feel comfortable in. But how do you afford it, on a warder’s pay?’

Neumann shrugged evasively.

‘You must do a lot of errands for people,’ I suggested.

‘Well, you have to, don’t you.’ He smiled thinly. ‘I’ll bet you’re here on a case, aren’t you?’

‘Maybe.’