Philip Kerr - Berlin Noir

‘What did he do? Leave his fly button undone?’

‘He’s a fucking Kozi,’ said Rienacker, outraged, as if he had arrested an habitual child molester. ‘A midnight fucking postman. We caught him red-handed, pushing Bolshie leaflets for the K P D through letter-boxes in this area.’

I shook my head. ‘I see the job is just as hazardous as it always was.’

He ignored me, and shouted to the driver: ‘We’ll drop this bastard off, and then go straight onto Leipzigerstrasse. Mustn’t keep his majesty waiting.’

‘Drop him off where? Schoneberger Bridge?’

Rienacker laughed. ‘Maybe.’ He produced a hip flask from his coat pocket and took a long pull from it. I’d had just such a leaflet put through my own letter-box the previous evening. It had been devoted largely to ridiculing no less a person than the Prussian Prime Minister. I knew that in the weeks leading up to the Olympiad, the Gestapo were making strenuous efforts to smash the communist underground in Berlin. Thousands of Kozis had been arrested and sent to K Z camps like Oranienburg, Columbia Haus, Dachau and Buchenwald. Putting two and two together, it suddenly came to me with a shock just who it was I was being taken to see.

At Grolmanstrasse Police Station, the car stopped, and one of the gargoyles dragged the prisoner out from under our feet. I didn’t think much for his chances. If ever I saw a man destined for a late-night swimming lesson in the Landwehr, it was him. Then we drove east on Berlinerstrasse and Charlottenburghaussee, Berlin’s east-west axis, which was decorated with a lot of black, white and red bunting in celebration of the forthcoming Olympiad. Rienacker eyed it grimly.

‘Fucking Olympic Games,’ he sneered. ‘Waste of fucking money.’

‘I’m forced to agree with you,’ I said.

‘What’s it all for, that’s what I’d like to know. We are what we are, so why pretend we’re not? All this pretence really pisses me off. You know, they’re even drafting in snappers from Munich and Hamburg because Berlin trade in female flesh has been so hard hit by the Emergency Powers. And nigger jazz is legal again. What do you make of that, Gunther?’

‘Say one thing, do another. That’s this Government all over.’

He looked at me narrowly. ‘I wouldn’t go around saying that sort of thing, if I were you,’ he said.

I shook my head. ‘It doesn’t matter what I say, Rienacker, you know that. Just as long as I can be of service to your boss. He wouldn’t care if I were Karl Marx and Moses in one, if he thought I could be of use to him.’

‘Then you’d better make the most of it. You’ll never get another client as important as this one.’

‘That’s what they all say.’

Just short of the Brandenburger Tor, the car turned south onto Hermann Goering Strasse. At the British Embassy all the lights were burning and there were several dozen limousines drawn up out front. As the car slowed and turned into the driveway of the big building next door, the driver wound down the window to let the storm-trooper on guard identify us, and we heard the sound of a big party drifting across the lawn.

We waited, Rienacker and I, in a room the size of a tennis court. After a short while a tall thin man wearing the uniform of an officer in the Luftwaffe told us that Goering was changing, and that he would see us in ten minutes.

It was a gloomy palace: overbearing, grandiose and affecting a bucolic air that belied its urban location. Rienacker sat down in a medieval-looking chair, saying nothing as I took a look around, but watching me closely.

‘Cosy,’ I said, and stood in front of a Gobelin tapestry depicting several hunting scenes that could just as easily have accommodated a scene featuring a full-scale version of the Hindenburg. The room’s only light came from a lamp on the huge Renaissance-style desk which was composed of two silver candelabra with parchment shades; it illuminated a small shrine of photographs: there was one of Hitler wearing the brown shirt and leather cross belt of an S A man, and looking more than a little like a boy scout; and there were photographs of two women, whom I guessed were Goering’s dead wife Karin, and his living wife Emmy. Next to the photographs was a large leather-bound book, on the front of which was a coat of arms, which, I presumed, was Goering’s own. This was a mailed fist grasping a bludgeon, and it struck me how much more appropriate than the swastika it would have been for the National Socialists.

I sat down beside Rienacker, who produced some cigarettes. We waited for an hour, perhaps longer, before we heard voices outside the door, and hearing it open, we both stood up. Two men in Luftwaffe uniform followed Goering into the room. To my astonishment, I saw that he was carrying a lion cub in his arms. He kissed it on the head, pulled its ears and then dropped it on to the silk rug.

‘Off you go and play, Mucki, there’s a good little fellow.’ The cub growled happily, and gambolled over to the window, where he started to play with the tassel on one of the heavy curtains.

Goering was shorter than I had imagined, which made him seem that much bulkier. He wore a sleeveless green-leather hunting jacket, a white flannel shirt, white drill trousers and white tennis shoes.

‘Hallo,’ he said, shaking my hand and smiling broadly. There was something slightly animal about him, and his eyes were a hard, intelligent blue. The hand wore several rings, one of them a big ruby. ‘Thank you for coming. I’m so sorry you’ve been kept waiting. Affairs of state, you understand.’ I said that it was quite all right, although in truth I hardly knew what to say. Close up, I was struck by the smooth, almost babyish quality of his skin, and I wondered if it was powdered. We sat down. For several minutes he continued to appear delighted at my being there, almost childishly so, and after a while he felt obliged to explain himself.

‘I’ve always wanted to meet a real private detective,’ he said. ‘Tell me, have you ever read any of Dashiell Hammett’s detective stories? He’s an American, but I think he’s wonderful.’

‘I can’t say I have, sir.’

‘Oh, but you should. I shall lend you a German edition of Red Harvest . You’ll enjoy it. And do you carry a gun, Herr Gunther?’

‘Sometimes, sir, when I think I might need it.’

Goering beamed like an excited schoolboy. ‘Are you carrying it now?’

I shook my head. ‘Rienacker here thought it might scare the cat.’

‘A pity,’ said Goering. ‘I should like to have seen the gun of a real shamus.’ He leaned back in his chair, which looked as though it might once have belonged to a bumper-sized Medici pope, and waved his hand.

‘Well then, to business,’ he said. One of the aides brought forward a file and laid it before his master. Goering opened it and studied the contents for several seconds. I figured that it was about me. There were so many files on me around these days that I was beginning to feel like a medical case-history.

‘It says here that you used to be a policeman,’ he said. ‘Quite an impressive record, too. You’d have been a kommissar by now. Why did you leave?’ He removed a small lacquered pill-box from his jacket and shook a couple of pink pills onto his fat palm as he waited for me to reply. He took them with a glass of water.

‘I didn’t much care for the police canteen, sir.’ He laughed loudly. ‘But with respect, Herr Prime Minister, I’m sure you are well aware of why I left, since at that time you were yourself in command of the police. I don’t recall making a secret of my opposition to the purging of so-called unreliable police officers. Many of those men were my friends. Many of them lost their pensions. A couple even lost their heads.’