Philip Kerr - Berlin Noir

‘To be honest, I am not entirely sure, Herr Pichler. I believe you recently created a fine piece for a friend of mine, Dr Max Abs. He was so delighted with it that I wondered if I might have something similar.’

‘Yes, I think I remember the Herr Doktor.’ Pichler took off his little chocolate cake of a hat and scratched the top of his grey head. ‘But the particular design escapes me for the moment. Do you remember what kind of piece it was he had?’

‘Only that he was delighted with it, I’m afraid.’

‘No matter. Perhaps the honourable gentleman would care to return tomorrow, by which time I should have been able to find the Herr Doktor’s specifications. Permit me to explain.’ He showed me the sketch in his hand, one for a deceased whose inscription described him as an ‘Engineer of Urban Conduits and Conservancy’.

‘Take this customer,’ he said, warming to the theme of his own business. ‘I have a design with his name and order number here. When this piece is completed the drawing will be filed away according to the nature of the piece. From then on I must consult my sales book to find the name of the customer. But right now I’m in something of a hurry to complete this piece and really -’ he patted his stomach ‘- I’m dead today.’ He shrugged apologetically. ‘Last night, you understand. I’m short of staff, too.’

I thanked him and left him to his Engineer of Urban Conduits and Conservancy. That was presumably what you called yourself if you were one of the city’s plumbers. What sort of title, I wondered, did the private investigators give themselves? Balanced on the outside of the tram car back to town, I kept my mind off my precarious position by constructing a number of elegant titles for my rather vulgar profession: Practitioner of Solitary Masculine Lifestyle; Non-metaphysical Inquiry Agent; Interrogative Intermediary to the Perplexed and Anxious; Confidential Solicitor for the Displaced and the Misplaced; Bespoke Grail-Finder; Seeker after Truth. I liked the last one best of all. But, at least as far as my client in the particular case before me was concerned, there was nothing which seemed properly to reflect the sense of working for a lost cause that might have deterred even the most dogmatic Flat Earther.

According to all the guidebooks, the Viennese love dancing almost as passionately as they love music. But then the books were all written before the war, and I didn’t think that their authors could ever have spent a whole evening at the Casanova Club in Dorotheergasse. There the band was led in a way that put you in mind of the most ignominious retreat, and the shit-kicking that passed for something approximately terpsichorean looked as if it might have been performed more in imitation of a polar bear kept in a very small cage. For passion you had to look to the sight of the ice yielding noisily to the spirit in your glass.

After an hour in the Casanova I was feeling as sour as a eunuch in a bathful of virgins. Counselling myself to be patient, I leaned back into my red velvet-and-satin booth and stared unhappily at the tent-like drapes on the ceiling: the last thing to do, unless I wanted to end up like Becker’s two friends (whatever he said, I hadn’t much doubt that they were dead), was to bounce around the place asking the regulars if they knew Helmut König, or maybe his girlfriend Lotte.

On its ridiculously plush surface, the Casanova didn’t look like the kind of place which a fearful angel might have preferred to avoid. There were no extra-large tuxedoes at the door, nor anyone about who looked as if he could be carrying anything more lethal than a silver toothpick, and the waiters were all commendably obsequious. If König no longer frequented the Casanova it wasn’t because he was afraid of having his pocket fingered.

‘Has it started turning yet?’

She was a tall, striking girl with the sort of exaggeratedly made body that might have adorned a sixteenth-century Italian fresco: all breasts, belly and backside.

‘The ceiling,’ she explained, jerking her cigarette-holder vertically.

‘Not yet, anyway.’

‘Then you can buy me a drink,’ she said, and sat down beside me.

‘I was starting to worry you wouldn’t show up.’

‘I know, I’m the kind of girl you’ve been dreaming about. Well, here I am now.’

I waved to the waiter and let her order herself a whisky and soda.

‘I’m not one for dreaming much,’ I told her.

‘Well, that’s a pity, isn’t it?’

She shrugged.

‘What do you dream about?’

‘Listen,’ she said, shaking her head of long, shiny brown hair, ‘this is Vienna. It doesn’t do to describe your dreams to anyone here. You never know, you might just be told what they really mean, and then where would you be?’

‘That sounds almost as if you have something to hide.’

‘I don’t see you wearing sandwich boards. Most people have something to hide. Especially these days. What’s in their heads most of all.’

‘Well, a name ought to be easy enough. Mine’s Bernie.’

‘Short for Bernhard? Like the dog that rescues mountaineers?’

‘More or less. Whether or not I do any rescuing depends on how much brandy I’m carrying. I’m not as loyal when I’m loaded.’

‘I never met a man who was.’ She jerked her head down at my cigarette. ‘Can you spare me one of those?’

I handed her a pack and watched as she screwed one into her holder. ‘You didn’t tell me your name,’ I said, thumb-nailing a match alight for her.

‘Veronika, Veronika Zartl. Pleased to meet you, I’m sure. I don’t think I’ve ever seen your face in here. Where are you from? You sound like a pifke .’

‘Berlin.’

‘I thought so.’

‘Anything wrong with that?’

‘Not if you like pifkes . Most Austrians don’t, as it happens.’ She spoke in the slow, almost yokelish drawl that seemed typical of the modern Viennese. ‘But I don’t mind them. I get mistaken for a pifke myself sometimes. That’s because I won’t speak like the rest of them.’ She chuckled. ‘It’s so funny when you hear some lawyer or dentist speaking like he was a tram-driver or a miner just so as he doesn’t get mistaken for a German. Mostly they only do it in shops, to make sure that they get the good service that all Austrians think that they are entitled to. You want to try it yourself, Bernie, and see the difference it makes to the way you’re treated. Viennese is quite easy, you know. Just speak like you’re chewing something and add ’ish‘ onto the end of everything you say. Cleverish, eh?’

The waiter returned with her drink which she regarded with some disapproval. ‘No ice,’ she muttered as I tossed a banknote on to the silver tray and left the change under Veronika’s questioning eyebrow.

‘With a tip like that you must be planning on coming back here.’

‘You don’t miss much, do you?’

‘Are you? Planning on coming back here, I mean.’

‘It could be that I am. But is it always like this? The trade here’s about as busy as an empty fireplace.’

‘Just wait until it gets crowded, and then you’ll wish it was like this again.’ She sipped her drink and leaned back on the red-velvet-and-gilt chair, stroking the buttonback satin upholstery that covered the wall of our booth with the palm of her outstretched hand.

‘You should be grateful for the quiet,’ she told me. ‘It gives us a chance to get to know each other. Just like those two.’ She waved her holder meaningfully at a couple of girls who were dancing with each other. With their gaudy outfits, tight buns and flashing paste necklaces they looked like a pair of circus horses. Catching Veronika’s eye they smiled and then whinnied a little confidence to each other at a coiffure’s distance.