Philip Kerr - Berlin Noir

Back in the bedroom, she was still standing there, waiting for me to come and help myself. Impatient of her, I snatched her knickers down, pulling her onto the bed, where I prised her sleek, tanned thighs apart like an excited scholar opening a priceless book. For quite a while I pored over the text, turning the pages with my fingers and feasting my eyes on what I had never dreamed of possessing.

We kept the light on, so that finally I had a perfect view of myself as I plugged into the crisp fluff between her legs. And afterwards she lay on top of me, breathing like a sleepy but contented dog, stroking my chest almost as if she was in awe of me.

‘My, but you’re a well-built man.’

‘Mother was a blacksmith,’ I said. ‘She used to hammer a nail into a horse’s shoe with the flat of her hand. I get my build from her.’ She giggled.

‘You don’t say much, but when you do you like to joke, don’t you?’

‘There are an awful lot of dead people in Germany looking very serious.’

‘And so very cynical. Why is that?’

‘I used to be a priest.’

She fingered the small scar on my forehead where a piece of shrapnel had creased me. ‘How did you get this?’

‘After church on Sundays I’d box with the choirboys in the sacristy. You like boxing?’ I remembered the photograph of Schmelling on the piano.

‘I adore boxing,’ she said. ‘I love violent, physical men. I love going to the Busch Circus and watching them train before a big fight, just to see if they defend or attack, how they jab, if they’ve got guts.’

‘Just like one of those noblewomen in ancient Rome,’ I said, ‘checking up on her gladiators to see if they’re going to win before she puts a bet on.’

‘But of course. I like winners. Now you…’

‘Yes?’

‘I’d say you could take a good punch. Maybe take quite a few. You strike me as the durable, patient sort. Methodical. Prepared to soak up more than a little punishment. That makes you dangerous.’

‘And you?’ She bounced excitedly on my chest, her breasts wobbling engagingly, although, for the moment at least, I had no more appetite for her body.

‘Oh, yes, yes,’ she cried excitedly. ‘What sort of fighter am I?’

I looked at her from the corner of one eye. ‘I think you would dance around a man and let him expend quite a bit of energy before coming back at him with one good punch to win on a knock-out. A win on points would be no sort of contest for you. You always like to put them down on the canvas. There’s just one thing that puzzles me about this bout.’

‘What’s that?’

‘What makes you think I’d take a dive?’

She sat up in bed. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Sure you do.’ Now that I’d had her it was easy enough to say. ‘You think your husband hired me to spy on you, isn’t that right? You don’t believe I’m investigating the fire at all. That’s why you’ve been planning this little tryst all evening, and now I imagine I’m supposed to play the poodle, so that when you ask me to lay off I’ll do just what you say, otherwise I might not get any more treats. Well, you’ve been wasting your time. Like I said, I don’t do divorce work.’

She sighed and covered her breasts with her arms. ‘You certainly can pick your moments, Herr Sniffer Dog,’ she said.

‘It’s true, isn’t it?’

She sprang out of bed and I knew that I was watching the whole of her body, as naked as a pin without a hat, for the last time; from here on in I would have to go to the cinema to catch those tantalizing glimpses of it, like all the other fellows. She went over to the cupboard and snatched a gown from a hanger. From the pocket she produced a packet of cigarettes. She lit one and smoked it angrily, with one arm folded across her chest.

‘I could have offered you money,’ she said. ‘But instead I gave you myself.’ She took another nervous puff, hardly inhaling it at all. ‘How much do you want?’

Exasperated, I slapped my naked thigh, and said: ‘Shit, you’re not listening, spoon-ears. I told you. I wasn’t hired to go peeking through your keyhole and find out the name of your lover.’

She shrugged with disbelief. ‘How did you know I had a lover?’ she said.

I got out of bed, and started to dress. ‘I didn’t need a magnifying glass and a pair of tweezers to pick that one up. It stands to reason that if you didn’t already have a lover, then you wouldn’t be so damned nervous of me.’ She gave me a smile that was as thin and dubious as the rubber on a secondhand condom.

‘No? I bet you’re the sort who could find lice on a bald head. Anyway, who said I was nervous of you? I just don’t happen to care for the interruption of my privacy. Look, I think you had better push off.’ She turned her back to me as she spoke.

‘I’m on my way.’ I buttoned up my braces and slipped my jacket on. At the bedroom door, I made one last try to get through to her.

‘For the last time, I wasn’t hired to check up on you.’

‘You’ve made a fool of me.’

I shook my head. ‘There’s not enough sense in anything you’ve said to fill a hollow tooth. With all your milkmaid’s calculations, you didn’t need my help to make a fool of yourself. Thanks for a memorable evening.’ As I left her room she started to curse me with the sort of eloquence you expect only from a man who has just hammered his thumb.

I drove home feeling like a ventriloquist’s mouth ulcer. I was sore at the way things had turned out. It’s not every day that one of Germany’s great film stars takes you to bed and then throws you out on your ear. I’d like to have had more time to grow familiar with her famous body. I was a man who had won the big prize at the fair, only to be told there had been a mistake. All the same, I said to myself, I ought to have expected something like that. Nothing resembles a street snapper so much as a rich woman.

Once inside my apartment I poured myself a drink and then boiled some water for a bath. After that, I put on the dressing-gown I’d bought in Wertheim’s and started to feel good again. The place was stuffy, so I opened a few windows. Then I tried reading for a while. I must have fallen asleep, because a couple of hours had passed by the time I heard the knock at the door.

‘Who is it?’ I said, going into the hall.

‘Open up. Police,’ said a voice.

‘What do you want?’

‘To ask you some questions about Lise Rudel,’ he said. ‘She was found dead at her apartment an hour ago. Murdered.’ I snatched the door open and found the barrel of a Parabellum poking me in the stomach.

‘Back inside,’ said the man with the pistol. I retreated, raising my hands instinctively.

He wore a Bavarian-cut sports coat of light-blue linen, and a canary-yellow tie. There was a scar on his pale young face, but it was neat and clean-looking, and probably self-inflicted with a razor in the hope that it might be mistaken for a student’s duelling scar. Accompanied by a strong smell of beer, he advanced into my hallway, closing the door behind him.

‘Anything you say, sonny,’ I said, relieved to see that he looked less than comfortable with the Parabellum. ‘You had me fooled there with that story about Fräulein Rudel. I shouldn’t have fallen for it.’

‘You bastard,’ he snarled.

‘Mind if I put my hands down? Only my circulation isn’t what it used to be.’ I dropped my hands to my sides. ‘What’s this all about?’

‘Don’t deny it.’

‘Deny what?’

‘That you raped her.’ He adjusted his grip on the gun, and swallowed nervously, his Adam’s apple tossing around like a honeymoon couple under a thin pink sheet. ‘She told me what you did to her. So you needn’t try and deny it.’