Philip Kerr - Berlin Noir

‘Oh, yes indeed. A diamond necklace.’

‘Well, you have come to the right place. There are several diamond necklaces I can show you.’

‘My client knows precisely what he requires,’ I said. ‘It must be a diamond collet necklace, made by Cartier.’ Neumaier laid his cigar in the ashtray, and breathed out a mixture of smoke, nerves and amusement.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘That certainly narrows the field.’

‘That’s the thing about the rich, Herr Neumaier,’ I said. ‘They always seem to know exactly what they want, don’t you think?’

‘Oh, indeed they do, Herr Gunther.’ He leaned forwards in his chair and, collecting his cigar, he said: ‘A necklace such as you describe is not the sort of piece that comes along every day. And of course it would cost a great deal of money.’ It was time to stick the nettle down his trousers.

‘Naturally, my client is prepared to pay a great deal of money. Twenty-five per cent of the insured value, no questions asked.’

He frowned. ‘I’m not sure I understand what you’re talking about,’ he said.

‘Come off it, Neumaier. We both know that there’s a lot more to your operation than the heart-warming little scene you’re putting on out front there.’

He blew some smoke and looked at the end of his cigar. ‘Are you suggesting that I buy stolen merchandise, Herr Gunther, because if you are -’

‘Keep your ears stiff, Neumaier, I haven’t finished yet. My client’s flea is solid. Cash money.’ I tossed the photograph of Six’s diamonds at him. ‘If some mouse walks in here trying to sell it, you give me a call. The number’s on the back.’

Neumaier regarded it and me distastefully and then stood up. ‘You are a joke, Herr Gunther. With a few cups short in your cupboard. Now get out of here before I call the police.’

‘You know, that’s not a bad idea,’ I said. ‘I’m sure they’ll be very impressed with your public spirit when you offer to open up your safe and invite them to inspect the contents. That’s the confidence of honesty, I suppose.’

‘Get out of here.’

I stood up and walked out of his office. I hadn’t intended to handle it that way, but I hadn’t liked what I’d seen of Neumaier’s operation. In the shop Coathanger was half-way through offering an old woman a price for her jewel-box that was less than she might have got for it at the Salvation Army hostel. Several of the Jews waiting behind her looked at me with an expression that was a mixture of hope and hopelessness. It made me feel about as comfortable as a trout on a marble slab, and for no reason that I could think of, I felt something like shame.

Gert Jeschonnek was a different proposition. His premises were on the eighth floor of Columbus Haus, a nine-storeyed building on Potsdamer Platz which has a strong emphasis on the horizontal line. It looked like something a long-term prisoner might have made, given an endless supply of matches, and at the same time it put me in mind of the nearly eponymous building near Tempelhof Airport that is Columbia Haus – the Gestapo prison in Berlin. This country shows its admiration for the discoverer of America in the strangest ways.

The eighth floor was home to a whole country-club of doctors, lawyers and publishers, who were only just getting by on 30,000 a year.

The double entrance doors to Jeschonnek’s office were made of polished mahogany, on which appeared in gold lettering, ‘GERT JESCHONNEK. PRECIOUS STONE MERCHANT’. Beyond these was an L-shaped office with walls that were a pleasant shade of pink, on which were hung several framed photographs of diamonds, rubies and various gaudy little baubles that might have stimulated the greed of a Solomon or two. I took a chair and waited for an anaemic young man sitting behind a typewriter to finish on the telephone. After a minute he said:

‘I’ll call you back, Rudi.’ He replaced the receiver and looked at me with an expression that was just a few centimetres short of surly.

‘Yes?’ he said. Call me old-fashioned, but I have never liked male secretaries. A man’s vanity gets in the way of serving the needs of another male, and this particular specimen wasn’t about to win me over.

‘When you’ve finished filing your nails, perhaps you’d tell your boss that I’d like to see him. The name’s Gunther.’

‘Do you have an appointment?’ he said archly.

‘Since when does a man who’s looking for some diamonds need to make an appointment? Tell me that, would you?’ I could see that he found me less amusing than a boxful of smoke.

‘Save your breath to cool your soup,’ he said, and came round the desk to go through the only other door. ‘I’ll find out if he can see you.’ While he was out of the room I picked up a recent issue of Der Stürmer from the magazine rack. The front page had a drawing of a man in angel’s robes holding an angel’s mask in front of his face. Behind him was his devil’s tail, sticking out from underneath his surplice, and his ‘angel’s’ shadow, except that this now revealed the profile behind the mask to be unmistakably Jewish. Those Der Stürmer cartoonists love to draw a big nose, and this one was a real pelican’s beak. A strange thing to find in a respectable businessman’s office, I thought. The anaemic young man emerging from the other office provided the simple explanation.

‘He won’t keep you very long,’ he said, adding, ‘He buys that to impress the kikes.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t follow.’

‘We get a lot of Jewish custom in here,’ he explained. ‘Of course, they only want to sell, never to buy. Herr Jeschonnek thinks that if they see that he subscribes to Der Stürmer , it will help him to drive a harder bargain.’

‘Very shrewd of him,’ I said. ‘Does it work?’

‘I guess so. You’d better ask him.’

‘Maybe I will at that.’

There wasn’t much to see in the boss’s office. Across a couple of acres of carpet was a grey steel safe that had once been a small battleship, and a Panzer-sized desk with a dark leather top. The desk had very little on it except a square of felt, on which lay a ruby that was big enough to decorate a Maharajah’s favourite elephant, and Jeschonnek’s feet, wearing immaculate white spats, and these swung under the table as I came through the door.

Gert Jeschonnek was a burly hog of a man, with small piggy eyes and a brown beard cropped close to his sunburned face. He wore a light-grey double-breasted suit that was ten years too young for him, and in the lapel was a Scary Badge. He had March Violet plastered all over him like insect repellent.

‘Herr Gunther,’ he said brightly, and for a moment he was almost standing at attention. Then he crossed the floor to greet me. A purplish butcher’s hand pumped mine own, which showed patches of white when I let it go. He must have had blood like treacle. He smiled a sweet smile and then looked across my shoulder to his anaemic secretary who was about to close the door on us. Jeschonnek said:

‘Helmut. A pot of your best strong coffee please. Two cups, and no delays.’ He spoke quickly and precisely, beating time with his hand like a teacher of elocution. He led me over to the desk, and the ruby, which I figured was there to impress me, in the same way as the copies of Der Stürmer were there to impress his Jewih custom. I pretended to ignore it, but Jeschonnek was not to be denied his little performance. He held the ruby up to the light in his fat fingers, and grinned obscenely.

‘An extremely fine cabochon ruby,’ he said. ‘Like it?’

‘Red isn’t my colour,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t go with my hair.’ He laughed and replaced the ruby on the velvet, which he folded up and returned to his safe. I sat down on a big armchair in front of his desk.