Philip Kerr - Berlin Noir

I shrugged. ‘What would be the point? In your shoes I know who I would believe. But listen, are you sure you know what you’re doing? Your breath was waving a red flag when you tiptoed in here. The Nazis may seem a bit liberal in some things, but they haven’t done away with capital punishment, you know. Even if you’re hardly old enough to be expected to hold your drink.’

‘I’m going to kill you,’ he said, licking his dry lips.

‘Well, that’s all right, but do you mind not shooting me in the belly?’ I pointed at his pistol. ‘It’s by no means certain that you’d kill me, and I’d hate to spend the rest of my life drinking milk. No, if I were you I’d go for a head shot. Between the eyes if you can manage it. A difficult shot, but it would kill me for sure. Frankly, the way I feel right now, you’d be doing me a favour. It must be something I’ve eaten, but my insides feel like the wave machine at Luna Park.’ I farted a great, meaty trombone of a fart in confirmation.

‘Oh, Jesus,’ I said, waving my hand in front of my face. ‘See what I mean?’

‘Shut up, you animal,’ said the young man. But I saw him raise the barrel and level it at my head. I remembered the Parabellum from my army days, when it had been the standard service pistol. The Pistol.08 relies on the recoil to fire the striker, but with the first shot the firing mechanism is always comparatively stiff. My head made a smaller target than my stomach, and I hoped that I’d have enough time to duck.

I threw myself at his waist, and as I did so I saw the flash and felt the air of the 9 mm bullet as it zipped over my head and smashed something behind me. My weight carried us both crashing into the front door. But if I had expected him to be less than capable of putting up a stiff resistance, I was mistaken. I took hold of the wrist with the gun and found the arm twisting towards me with a lot more strength than I had credited it with. I felt him grab the collar of my dressing-gown and twist it. Then I heard it rip.

‘Shit,’ I said. ‘That does it.’ I pushed the gun towards him, and succeeded in pressing the barrel against his sternum. Putting my whole weight onto it I hoped to break a rib, but instead there was a muffled, fleshy report as it fired again, and I found myself covered in his steaming blood. I held his limp body for several seconds before I let it roll away from me.

I stood up and took a look at him. There was no doubt that he was dead, although blood continued to bubble up from the hole in his chest. Then I went through his pockets. You always want to know who’s been trying to kill you. There was a wallet containing an ID card in the name of Walther Kolb, and 200 marks. It didn’t make sense to leave the money for the boys from Kripo, so I took 150 to cover the cost of my dressing-gown. Also, there were two photographs; one of these was an obscene postcard in which a man was doing things to a girl’s bottom with a length of rubber tube; and the other was a publicity still of Lise Rudel, signed, ‘with much love’. I burned the photograph of my former bedmate, poured myself a stiff one and, marvelling at the picture of the erotic enema, I called the police.

A couple of bulls came down from the Alex. The senior officer, Oberinspektor Tesmer, was a Gestapo man; the other, Inspektor Stahlecker, was a friend, one of my few remaining friends in Kripo, but with Tesmer around there wasn’t a chance of an easy ride.

‘That’s my story,’ I said, having told it for the third time. We were all seated round my dining table on which lay the Parabellum and the contents of the dead man’s pockets. Tesmer shook his head slowly, as if I had offered to sell him something he wouldn’t have a chance of shifting himself.

‘You could always part exchange it for something else. Come on, try again. Maybe this time you’ll make me laugh.’ With its thin, almost non-existent lips, Tesmer’s mouth was like a slash in a length of cheap curtain. And all you saw through the hole were the points of his rodent’s teeth, and the occasional glimpse of the ragged, grey-white oyster that was his tongue.

‘Look, Tesmer,’ I said. ‘I know it looks a bit beat up, but take my word for it, it’s really very reliable. Not everything that shines is any good.’

‘Try shifting some of the fucking dust off it then. What do you know about the canned meat?’

I shrugged. ‘Only what was in his pockets. And that he and I weren’t going to get along.’

‘That wins him quite a few extra points on my card,’ said Tesmer.

er sat uncomfortably beside his boss, and tugged nervously at his eyepatch. He had lost an eye when he was with the Prussian infantry, and at the same time had won the coveted ‘pour le mérite’ for his bravery. Me, I’d have hung onto the eye, although the patch did look rather dashing. Combined with his dark colouring and bushy black moustache, it served to give him a piratical air, although his manner was altogether more stolid: slow even. But he was a good bull, and a loyal friend. All the same, he wasn’t about to risk burning his fingers while Tesmer was doing his best to see if I’d catch fire. His honesty had previously led him to express one or two ill-advised opinions about the NSDAP during the ‘33 elections. Since then he’d had the sense to keep his mouth shut, but he and I both knew that the Kripo Executive was just looking for an excuse to hang him out to dry. It was only his outstanding war record that had kept him in the force this long.

‘And I suppose he tried to kill you because he didn’t like your cologne,’ said Tesmer.

‘You noticed it too, huh?’ I saw Stahlecker smile a bit at that, but so did Tesmer, and he didn’t like it.

‘Gunther, you’ve got more lip than a nigger with a trumpet. Your friend here may think you’re funny, but I just think you’re a cunt, so don’t fuck me around. I’m not the sort with a sense of humour.’

‘I’ve told you the truth, Tesmer. I opened the door and there was Herr Kolb with the lighter pointing at my dinner.’

‘A Parabellum on you, and yet you still managed to take him. I don’t see any fucking holes in you, Gunther.’

‘I’m taking a correspondence course in hypnotism. Like I said, I was lucky, he missed. You saw the broken light.’

‘Listen, I don’t mesmerize easy. This fellow was a professional. Not the sort to let you have his lighter for a bag of sherbet.’

‘A professional what – haberdasher? Don’t talk out of your navel, Tesmer. He was just a kid.’

‘Well, that makes it worse for you, because he isn’t going to do any more growing up.’

‘Young he may have been,’ I said, ‘but he was no weakling. I didn’t bite my lip because I find you so damned attractive. This is real blood, you know. And my dressing-gown. It’s torn, or hadn’t you noticed?’

Tesmer laughed scornfully. ‘I thought you were just a sloppy dresser.’

‘Hey, this is a fifty-mark gown. You don’t think I’d tear it just for your benefit, do you?’

‘You could afford to buy it, then you could also afford to lose it. I always thought your kind made too much money.’ I leaned back in my chair. I remembered Tesmer as one of Police Major Walther Wecke’s hatchet-men, charged with rooting out conservatives and Bolsheviks from the force. A mean bastard if ever there was one. I wondered how Stahlecker managed to survive.

‘What is it you earn, Gunther? Three? Four hundred marks a week? Probably make as much as me and Stahlecker put together, eh, Stahlecker?’ My friend shrugged non-committally.

‘I dunno.’

‘See?’ said Tesmer. ‘Even Stahlecker doesn’t have any idea how many thousands a year you make.’

‘You’re in the wrong job, Tesmer. The way you exaggerate, you should work for the Ministry of Propaganda.’ He said nothing. ‘All right, all right, I get it. How much is it going to cost me?’ Tesmer shrugged, trying to control the grin that threatened to break out on his face.