Philip Kerr - Berlin Noir

‘More like, doesn’t have any clothes at all,’ I said. ‘Rather a strange kind of woman, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Bernie, just you come home with me. I’ll show you a woman without any clothes.’

For a brief second I entertained myself with the idea. But I went on, ‘No, I’m convinced that Haupthändler’s mystery girlfriend is starting out on this trip with a completely new wardrobe, from top to toe. Like a woman with no past.’

‘Or,’ said Inge, ‘a woman who is starting afresh.’ The theory was taking shape in her mind even as she was speaking. With greater conviction, she added, ‘A woman who has had to sever contact with her previous existence. A woman who couldn’t go home and pick up her things, because there wasn’t time. No, that can’t be right. She has until Monday night after all. So perhaps she’s afraid to go home, in case there’s someone waiting for her there.’ I nodded approvingly, and was about to develop this line of reasoning, but found that she was there ahead of me. ‘Perhaps,’ she said; ‘this woman was Pfarr’s mistress, the one the police are looking for. Vera, or Eva, I forget which.’

‘Haupthändler in this with her? Yes,’ I said thoughtfully, ‘that could fit. Maybe Pfarr gives his mistress the brush-off when he finds out that his wife is pregnant. The prospect of fatherhood has been known to bring some men to their senses. But it also happens to spoil things for Haupthändler, who might himself have had ambitions as far as Frau Pfarr was concerned. Maybe Haupthändler and this woman Eva got together and decided to play the part of the wronged lover – in tandem, so to speak – and also make a little money into the bargain. It’s not unlikely that Pfarr might have told Eva about his wife’s jewellery.’ I stood up, finishing my drink.

‘Then maybe Haupthändler is hiding Eva somewhere.’

‘That makes three maybes. More than I’m used to having over lunch. Any more and I’ll get sick.’ I glanced at my watch. ‘Come on, we can think about it some more on the way.’

‘On the way where?’

‘Kreuzberg.’

She levelled a well-manicured finger at me. ‘And this time, I’m not being left somewhere safe while you get all the fun. Understood?’

I grinned at her, and shrugged. ‘Understood.’

The Kreuzberg, the Hill of the Cross, lies to the south of the city, in Viktoria Park, near Tempelhof Airport. It’s where Berlin’s artists gather to sell their pictures. Just a block away from the park, Chamissoplatz is a square surrounded by high, grey, fortress-like tenements. Pension Tillessen occupied the corner of Number 17, but with its closed shutters pasted over with Party posters and K P D graffiti, it didn’t look as though it had been taking guests since Bismarck grew his first moustache. I went to the front door and found it locked. Bending down, I peered through the letter-box, but there was no sign of anyone.

Next door, at the office of Heinrich Billinger, ‘German’ Accountant, the coalman was delivering some brown-coal briquets on what looked like a bakery tray. I asked him if he could recollect when the pension had closed. He wiped his smutty brow, and then spat as he tried to remember.

‘It never was what you might call a regular pension,’ he declared finally. He looked uncertainly at Inge, and choosing his words carefully, added: ‘More what you might call a house of ill-repute. Not a regular out-and-out bawdy house, you understand. Just the sort of place where you used to see a snapper take her sledge. I remember as I saw some men coming out of there only a couple of weeks ago. The boss never bought coal regular like. Just the odd tray here and there. But as to when it closed, I couldn’t tell you. If it is closed, mind. Don’t judge it by the way it looks. Seems to me as how it’s always been in that state.’

I led Inge round the back, to a small cobbled alleyway that was lined with garages and lock-ups. Stray cats sat mangily self-contained on top of brick walls; a mattress lay abandoned in a doorway, its iron guts spilling on to the ground; someone had tried to burn it, and I was reminded of the blackened bed-frames in the forensic photographs Illmann had shown me. We stopped beside what I took to be the garage belonging to the pension and looked through the filthy window, but it was impossible to see anything.

‘I’ll come back for you in a minute,’ I said, and clambered up the drainpipe at the side of the garage and onto the corrugated iron roof.

‘See that you do,’ she called.

I walked carefully across the badly rusted roof on all fours, not daring to stand up straight and concentrate all my weight on one point. At the back of the roof I looked down into a small courtyard which led on to the pension. Most of the windows in the rooms were shrouded with dirty net curtains, and there was no sign of life at any of them. I searched for a way down, but there was no drainpipe, and the wall to the adjoining property, the German accountant’s, was too low to be of any use. It was fortunate that the rear of the pension obscured the view to the garage of anyone who might have chanced to look up from poring over a dull set of accounts. There was no choice but to jump, although it was a height of over four metres. I made it, but it left the soles of my feet stinging for minutes afterwards, as if they had been beaten with a length of rubber hosing. The back door to the garage was not locked and, but for a pile of old car tyres, it was empty. I unbolted the double doors and admitted Inge. Then I bolted them again. For a moment we stood in silence, looking at each other in the half darkness, and I nearly let myself kiss her. But there are better places to kiss a pretty girl than a disused garage in Kreuzberg.

We crossed the yard, and when we came to the back door of the pension, I tried the handle. The door stayed shut.

‘Now what?’ said Inge. ‘A lock-pick? A skeleton key?’

‘Something like that,’ I said, and kicked the door in.

‘Very subtle,’ she said, watching the door swing open on its hinges. ‘I assume you’ve decided that there’s nobody here.’

I grinned at her. ‘When I looked through the letter-box I saw a pile of unopened mail on the mat.’ I went in. She hesitated long enough for me to look back at her. ‘It’s all right. There’s nobody here. Hasn’t been for some time, I’d bet.’

‘So what are we doing here?’

‘We’re having a look around, that’s all.’

‘You make it sound as if we were in Grunfeld’s department store,’ she said, following me down the gloomy stone corridor. The only sound was our own footsteps, mine strong and purposeful, and hers nervous and half on tiptoe.

At the end of the corridor I stopped and glanced into a large and extremely smelly kitchen. Piles of dirty dishes lay in untidy stacks. Cheese and meat lay flyblown on the kitchen table. A bloated insect buzzed past my ear. One step in, the stink was overpowering. Behind me I heard Inge cough so that it was almost a retch. I hurried to the window and pushed it open. For a moment we stood there, enjoying the clean air. Then, looking down at the floor, I saw some papers in front of the stove. One of the doors to the incinerator was open, and I bent forward to take a look. Inside, the stove was full of burnt paper, most of it nothing more than ash; but here and there were the edges or corners of something that had not quite been consumed by the flames.

‘See if you can salvage some of this,’ I said. ‘It looks like someone was in a hurry to cover his tracks.’

‘Anything in particular?’

‘Anything legible, I suppose.’ I walked over to the kitchen doorway.

‘Where will you be?’

‘I’m going to take a look upstairs.’ I pointed to the dumbwaiter. ‘If you need me, just shout up the shaft there.’ She nodded silently, and rolled up her sleeves.