Philip Kerr - Berlin Noir

‘From a man with a fifty-mark gown? Let’s say a round hundred.’

‘A hundred? For that cheap little garter-handler? Go and take another look at him, Tesmer. He doesn’t have a Charlie Chaplin moustache and a stiff right arm.’

Tesmer stood up. ‘You talk too much, Gunther. Let’s hope your mouth begins to fray at the edges before it gets you into serious trouble.’ He looked at Stahlecker and then back at me. ‘I’m going for a piss. Your old pitman here has got until I come back into the room to persuade you, otherwise…’ He pursed his lips and shook his head. As he walked out, I called after him:

‘Make sure you lift the seat.’ I grinned at Stahlecker.

‘How are you doing, Bruno?’

‘What is it, Bernie? Have you been drinking? You blue or something? Come on, you know how difficult Tesmer could make things for you. First you plum the man with all that smart talk, and now you want to play the black horse. Pay the bastard.’

‘Look, if I don’t black horse him a little and drag my heels about paying him that kind of mouse, then he’ll figure I’m worth a lot more. Bruno, as soon as I saw that son of a bitch I knew that the evening was going to cost me something. Before I left Kripo he and Wecke had me marked. I haven’t forgotten and neither has he. I still owe him some agony.’

‘Well, you certainly made it expensive for yourself when you mentioned the price of that gown.’

‘Not really,’ I said. ‘It cost nearer a hundred.’

‘Christ,’ breathed Stahlecker. ‘Tesmer is right. You are making too much money.’ He thrust his hands deep into his pockets and looked squarely at me. ‘Want to tell me what really happened here?’

‘Another time, Bruno. It was mostly true.’

‘Excepting one or two small details.’

‘Right. Listen, I need a favour. Can we meet tomorrow? The matinee at the Kammerlichtespiele in the Haus Vaterland. Back row, at four o’clock.’

Bruno sighed, and then nodded. ‘I’ll try.’

‘Before then see if you can’t find out something about the Paul Pfarr case.’ He frowned and was about to speak when Tesmer returned from the lavatory.

‘I hope you wiped the floor.’

Tesmer pointed a face at me in which belligerence was moulded like cornice-work on a Gothic folly. The set of his jaw and the spread of his nose gave him about as much profile as a piece of lead piping. The general effect was early-Paleolithic.

‘I hope you decided to get wise,’ he growled. There would have been more chance of reasoning with a water buffalo.

‘Seems like I don’t have much choice,’ I said. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance of a receipt?’

Just off Clayallee, on the edge of Dahlem, was the huge wrought-iron gate to Six’s estate. I sat in the car for a while and watched the road. Several times I closed my eyes and found my head nodding. It had been a late night. After a short nap I got out and opened the gate. Then I ambled back to the car and turned onto the private road, down a long, gentle slope and into the cool shade cast by the dark pine trees lining its gravelled length.

In daylight Six’s house was even more impressive, although I could see now that it was not one but two houses, standing close together: beautiful, solidly built Wilhelmine farmhouses.

I pulled up at the front door, where Lise Rudel had parked her BMW the night I had first seen her, and got out, leaving the door open just in case the two Dobermanns put in an appearance. Dogs are not at all keen on private investigators, and it’s an antipathy that is entirely mutual.

I knocked on the door. I heard it echo in the hall and, seeing the closed shutters, I wondered if I’d had a wasted journey. I lit a cigarette and stood there, just leaning on the door, smoking and listening. The place was about as quiet as the sap in a gift-wrapped rubber tree. Then I heard some footsteps, and I straightened up as the door opened to reveal the Levantine head and round shoulders of the butler, Farraj.

‘Good morning,’ I said brightly. ‘I was hoping that I’d find Herr Haupthändler in.’ Farraj looked at me with the clinical distaste of a chiropodist regarding a septic toenail.

‘Do you have an appointment?’ he asked.

‘Not really,’ I said, handing him my card. ‘I was hoping he might give me five minutes, though. I was here the other night, to see Herr Six.’ Farraj nodded silently, and returned my card.

‘My apologies for not recognizing you, sir.’ Still holding the door, he retreated into the hall, inviting me to enter. Having closed it behind him, he looked at my hat with something short of amusement.

‘No doubt you will wish to keep your hat again, sir.’

‘I think I had better, don’t you?’ Standing closer to him, I could detect the very definite smell of alcohol, and not the sort they serve in exclusive gentlemen’s clubs.

‘Very good, sir. If you’ll just wait here for a moment, I’ll find Herr Haupthändler and ask him if he can see you.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Do you have an ashtray?’ I held my cigarette ash aloft like a hypodermic syringe.

‘Yes, sir.’ He produced one made of dark onyx that was the size of a church Bible, and which he held in both hands while I did the stubbing out. When my cigarette was extinguished he turned away and, still carrying the ashtray, he disappeared down the corridor, leaving me to wonder what I was going to say to Haupthändler if he would see me. There was nothing in particular I had in mind, and not for one minute did I imagine that he would be prepared to discuss Lise Rudel’s story about him and Grete Pfarr. I was just poking around. You ask ten people ten dumb questions, and sometimes you hit a raw nerve somewhere. Sometimes, if you weren’t too bored to notice, you managed to recognize that you were on to something. It was a bit like panning for gold. Every day you went down to the river and went through pan after pan of mud. And just occasionally, provided you kept your eyes peeled, you found a dirty little stone that was actually a nugget.

I went to the bottom of the stairs and looked up the stairwell. A large circular skylight illuminated the paintings on the scarlet-coloured walls. I was looking at a still life of a lobster and a pewter pot when I heard footsteps on the marble floor behind me.

‘It’s by Karl Schuch you know,’ said Haupthändler. ‘Worth a great deal of money.’ He paused, and added: ‘But very, very dull. Please, come this way.’ He led the way into Six’s library.

‘I’m afraid I can’t give you very long. You see, I still have a great many things to do for the funeral tomorrow. I’m sure you understand.’ I sat down on one of the sofas and lit a cigarette. Haupthändler folded his arms, the leather of his nutmeg-brown sports jacket creaking across his sizeable shoulders, and leaned against his master’s desk.

‘Now what was it that you wished to see me about?’

‘Actually, it’s about the funeral,’ I said, improvising on what he had given me. ‘I wondered where it was to be held.’

‘I must apologize, Herr Gunther,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid it hadn’t occurred to me that Herr Six would wish you to attend. He’s left all the arrangements to me while he’s in the Ruhr, but he didn’t think to leave any instructions regarding a list of mourners.’

I tried to look awkward. ‘Oh, well,’ I said, standing up. ‘Naturally, with a client such as Herr Six I should like to have been able to pay my respects to his daughter. It is customary. But I’m sure he will understand.’

‘Herr Gunther,’ said Haupthändler, after a short silence. ‘Would you think it terrible of me if I were to give you an invitation now, by hand?’