Philip Kerr - Berlin Noir

‘You were seeking information on the cellmate of a prisoner,’ he recalled, nodding towards an armchair. ‘Something to do with a bank robbery.’

‘You’ve a good memory, Herr Doktor,’ I said.

‘I confess that my recall is not entirely fortuitous,’ he said.

‘The same man is now a prisoner within these walls, on another charge.’ Spiedel was a tall, broad-shouldered man of about fifty. He wore a Schiller tie and an olive-green Bavarian jacket; and in his buttonhole, the black-and-white silk bow and crossed swords that denoted a war veteran.

‘Oddly enough, I’m here on the same sort of mission,’ I explained. ‘I believe that until recently you had a prisoner here by the name of Kurt Mutschmann. I was hoping that you could tell me something about him.’

‘Mutschmann, yes, I remember him. What can I tell you except that he kept out of trouble while he was here, and seemed quite a reasonable fellow?’ Spiedel stood up and went over to his filing cabinet, and rummaged through several sections. ‘Yes, here we are. Mutschmann, Kurt Hermann, aged thirty-six. Convicted of car theft April 1934, sentenced to two years’ imprisonment. Address given as Cicerostrasse, Number 29, Halensee.’

‘Is that where he went on discharge?’

‘I’m afraid your guess is as good as mine. Mutschmann had a wife, but during his imprisonment it would seem from his record that she visited him only the one time. It doesn’t look like he had much to look forward to on the outside.’

‘Did he have any other visitors?’

Spiedel consulted the file. ‘Just the one, from the Union of Ex-Convicts, a welfare organization we are led to believe, although I have my doubts as to the authenticity of that organization. A man by the name of Kasper Tillessen. He visited Mutschmann on two occasions.’

‘Did Mutschmann have a cellmate?’

‘Yes, he shared with 7888319, Bock, HJ.’ He retrieved another file from the drawer. ‘Hans Jürgen Bock, aged thirty-eight. Convicted of assaulting and maiming a man in the old Steel Workers Union in March 1930, sentenced to six years’ imprisonment.’

‘Do you mean that he was a strike-breaker?’

‘Yes, he was.’

‘You wouldn’t happen to have the particulars of that case, would you?’

Spiedel shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not. The case file has been sent back to Criminal Records at the Alex.’ He paused.

‘Hmm. This might help you, though. On discharge Bock gave the address where he was intending to stay as “Care of Pension Tillessen, Chamissoplatz, Number 17, Kreuzberg’. Not only that but this same Kasper Tillessen paid Bock a visit on behalf of the Union of Ex-Convicts.‘ He looked at me vaguely. ’That’s about it, I’m afraid.‘

‘I think I’ve got enough,’ I said brightly. ‘It was kind of you to give me some of your time.’

Spiedel adopted an expression of great sincerity, and with some solemnity he said: ‘Sir, it was my pleasure to help the man who brought Gormann to justice.’

I reckon that in ten years from now, I’ll still be trading off that Gormann business.

When a man’s wife visits him only once in two years’ cement, then she doesn’t bake him a sponge-cake to celebrate his freedom. But it was possible that Mutschmann had seen her after his release, if only to knock the shit out of her, so I decided to check her out anyway. You always eliminate the obvious. That’s fundamental to detection.

Neither Mutschmann nor his wife lived at the address in Cicerostrasse any more. The woman I spoke to there told me that Frau Mutschmann had re-married, and was living in Ohmstrasse on the Siemens housing-estate. I asked her if anyone else had been around looking for her, but she told me that there hadn’t.

It was 7.30 by the time I got to the Siemens housing-estate. There are as many as a thousand houses on it, each of them built of the same whitewashed brick, and providing accommodation for the families of the employees of the Siemens Electrical Company. I couldn’t imagine anything less congenial than living in a house that had all the character of a sugar lump; but I knew that in the Third Reich there were many worse things being done in the name of progress than the homogenizing of workers’ dwellings.

Standing outside the front door, my nose caught the smell of cooking meat, pork I thought, and suddenly I realized how hungry I was; and how tired. I wanted to be at home, or seeing some easy, brainless show with Inge. I wanted to be anywhere other than confronting the flint-faced brunette who opened the door to me. She wiped her mottled pink hands on her grubby apron and eyed me suspiciously.

‘Frau Buverts?’ I said, using her new married name, and almost hoping she wasn’t.

‘Yes,’ she said crisply. ‘And who might you be? Not that I need to ask. You’ve got bull stapled to each dumb ear. So I’ll tell you once, and then you can clear off. I haven’t seen him in more than eighteen months. And if you should find him, then tell him not to come after me. He’s as welcome here as a Jew’s prick up Goering’s arse. And that goes for you, too.’

It’s the small manifestations of ordinary good humour and common courtesy that make the job so worthwhile.

Later that night, between 11 and 11.30, there was a loud knock at my front door. I hadn’t had a drink, but the sleep I’d been having was deep enough to make me feel as if I had. I walked unsteadily into the hall, where the faint chalky outline of Walther Kolb’s body on the floor brought me out of my sleepy stupor and prompted me to go back and get my spare gun. There was another knock, louder this time, followed by a man’s voice.

‘Hey, Gunther, it’s me, Rienacker. Come on, open up, I want to talk to you.’

‘I’m still aching from our last little chat.’

‘Aw, you’re not still sore about that, are you?’

‘I’m fine about it. But as far as my neck is concerned, you’re strictly persona non grata . Especially at this time of night.’

‘Hey, no hard feelings, Gunther,’ said Rienacker. ‘Look, this is important. There’s money in it.’ There was a long pause, and when Rienacker spoke again, there was an edge of irritation in his bass voice. ‘Come on, Gunther, open up, will you? What the fuck are you so scared of? If I was arresting you, I’d have busted the door down by now.’ There was some truth in that, I thought, so I opened the door, revealing his massive figure. He glanced coolly at the gun in my hand, and nodded as if admitting that for the moment I still had an advantage.

‘You weren’t expecting me, then,’ he said drily.

‘Oh, I knew it was you all right, Rienacker. I heard your knuckles dragging on the stairs.’

He snorted a laugh that was mainly tobacco smoke. Then he said: ‘Get dressed, we’re going for a ride. And better leave the hammer.’

I hesitated. ‘What’s the matter?’

He grinned at my discomfiture. ‘Don’t you trust me?’

‘Now why do you say that? The nice man from the Gestapo knocks on my door at midnight, and asks me if I’d like to take a spin in his big shiny-black motor-car. Naturally I just go weak at the knees because I know that you’ve booked us the best table at Horcher’s.’

‘Someone important wants to see you,’ he yawned. ‘Someone very important.’

‘They’ve named me for the Olympic shit-throwing team, right?’ Rienacker’s face changed colour and his nostrils flared and contracted quickly, like two emptying hot-water bottles. He was starting to get impatient.

‘All right, all right,’ I said. ‘I suppose I’m going whether I like it or not. I’ll get dressed.’ I went towards the bedroom. ‘And no peeking.’

It was a big black Mercedes, and I climbed in without a word. There were two gargoyles in the front seat, and lying on the floor in the back, his hands cuffed behind him, was the semi-conscious body of a man. It was dark, but from his moans I could tell that he’d taken quite a beating. Rienacker got in behind me. With the movement of the car, the man on the floor stirred and made a half attempt to get up. It earned him the toe of Rienacker’s boot against his ear.