Philip Kerr - Berlin Noir

‘This should interest the boys at the Alex,’ I said. Short of killing him in cold blood, I could think of no more certain way of ensuring that he wouldn’t finish the job he’d started.

Deals were for people that met you with nothing more deadly in their right hand than a shot of schnapps.

The next morning it was drizzling, a warm fine rain like the spray from a garden-sprinkler. I got up feeling sharp and rested, and stood looking out of the windows. I felt as full of life as a pack of sled-dogs.

We got up and breakfasted on a pot of Mexican mixture and a couple of cigarettes. I think I was even whistling as I shaved. She came into the bathroom and stood looking at me. We seemed to be doing a lot of that.

‘Considering that someone tried to kill you last night,’ she said, ‘you’re in a remarkably good frame of mind this morning.’

‘I always say that there’s nothing like a brush with the grim reaper to renew the taste for life.’ I smiled at her, and added, ‘That, and a good woman,’

‘You still haven’t told me why he did it.’

‘Because he was paid to,’ I said.

‘By whom? The man in the club?’ I wiped my face and looked for missed stubble. There wasn’t any, so I put down my razor.

‘Do you remember yesterday morning that I telephoned Six’s house and asked the butler to give both his master and Haupthändler a message?’

Inge nodded. ‘Yes. You said to tell them that you were getting close.’

‘I was hoping it would spook Haupthändler into playing his hand. Well, it did. Only rather more quickly than I had expected.’

‘So you think he paid that man to kill you?’

‘I know he did.’ Inge followed me into the bedroom where I put on a shirt, and watched me as I fumbled with the cuff-link on the arm that I had grazed, and that she had bandaged. ‘You know,’ I said, ‘last night posed just as many questions as it answered. There’s no logic to anything, none at all. It’s like trying to make up a jigsaw, with not one but two sets of pieces. There were two things stolen from the Pfarrs’ safe; some jewels and some papers. But they don’t seem to fit together at all. And then there are the pieces which have a picture of a murder on them, which can’t be made to fit with those belonging to the theft.’

Inge blinked slowly like a clever cat, and looked at me with the sort of expression that makes a man feel meschugge for not having thought of it first. Irritating to watch, but when she spoke I realized just how stupid I really was.

‘Perhaps there never was just one jigsaw,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you’ve been trying to put one together when there were two all along.’ It took a moment or two to let that one sink all the way in, helped at the end with the flat of my hand smacking against my forehead.

‘Shit, of course.’ Her remark had the force of revelation. It wasn’t one crime I was staring in the face, trying to understand. It was two.

We parked on Nollendorfplatz in the shadow of the S-Bahn. Overhead, a train thundered across the bridge with a noise that possessed the whole square. It was loud; but it wasn’t enough to disturb the soot from the great factory chimneys of Tempelhof and Neukölln that caked the.walls of the buildings which ringed the square, buildings which had seen many better days. Walking westwards into lower-middle-class Schoneberg, we found the five-storey block of apartments on Nollendorfstrasse where Marlene Sahm lived, and climbed up to the fourth floor.

The young man who opened the door to us was in uniform -some special company of S A that I failed to recognize. I asked him if Fräulein Sahm lived there and he replied that she did and that he was her brother.

‘And who are you?’ I handed him my card and asked if I might speak to his sister. He looked more than a little put out at the intrusion and I wondered if he had been lying when he said that she was his sister. He ran his hand through a large head of straw-coloured hair, and glanced back over his shoulder before standing aside.

‘My sister is having a lie-down right now,’ he explained. ‘But I will ask her if she wishes to speak with you, Herr Gunther.’ He closed the door behind us, and tried to fix a more welcoming expression to his face. Broad and thick-lipped, the mouth was almost negroid. It smiled broadly now, but quite independently of the two cold blue eyes that flicked between Inge and myself as if they had been following a table-tennis ball.

‘Please wait here a moment.’

When he left us alone in the hall, Inge pointed above the sideboard where there hung not one, but three pictures of the Führer. She smiled.

‘Doesn’t look like they’re taking any chances as far as their loyalty is concerned.’

‘Didn’t you know?’ I said. ‘They’re on special offer at Woolworth’s. Buy two dictators, and you get one free.’

Sahm returned, accompanied by his sister Marlene, a big, handsome blonde with a drooping, melancholic nose and an underhung jaw that lent her features a certain modesty. But her neck was so muscular and well-defined as to appear almost inflexible; and her bronzed forearm was that of an archer or a keen tennis player. As she strode into the hallway I caught a glimpse of a well-muscled calf that was the shape of an electric lightbulb. She was built like a rococo fireplace.

They showed us into the modest little sitting room, and, with the exception of the brother, who stood leaning against the doorway and looking generally suspicious of myself and Inge, we all sat down on a cheap brown-leather suite. Behind the glass doors of a tall walnut cabinet were enough trophies for a couple of school prize-givings.

‘That’s quite an impressive collection you have there,’ I said awkwardly, to no one in particular. Sometimes I think my small-talk falls a couple of centimetres short.

‘Yes, it is,’ said Marlene, with a disingenuous look that might have passed for modesty. Her brother had no such reserve, if that’s what it was.

‘My sister is an athlete. But for an unfortunate injury she would be running for Germany in the Olympiad.’ Inge and I made sympathetic noises. Then Marlene held up my card and read it again.

‘How can I help you, Herr Gunther?’ she said.

I sat back on the sofa and crossed my legs before launching into my patter. ‘I’ve been retained by the Germania Life Assurance Company to make some investigations concerning the death of Paul Pfarr and his wife. Anyone who knew them might help us to find out just what did happen and enable my client to make a speedy settlement.’

‘Yes,’ said Marlene with a long sigh. ‘Yes, of course.’

I waited for her to say something before eventually I prompted her. ‘I believe you were Herr Pfarr’s secretary at the Ministry of the Interior.’

‘Yes, that’s right I was.’ She was giving no more away than a card-player’s eyeshade.

‘Do you still work there?’

‘Yes,’ she said with an indifferent sort of shrug.

I risked a glance at Inge, who merely raised a perfectly pencilled eyebrow at me by way of response. ‘Does Herr Pfarr’s department investigating corruption in the Reich and the D A F still exist?’

She examined the toes of her shoes for a second, and then looked squarely at me for the first time since I had seen her. ‘Who told you about that?’ she said. Her tone was even, but I could tell that she was taken aback.

I ignored her question, trying to wrong-foot her. ‘Do you think that’s why he was killed – because somebody didn’t like him snooping and blowing the whistle on people?’

‘I – I have no idea why he was killed. Look, here, Herr Gunther, I think -’

‘Have you ever heard of a man by the name of Gerhard Von Greis? He’s a friend of the Prime Minister, as well as being a blackmailer. You know, whatever it was that he passed on to your boss cost him his life.’