Philip Kerr - Berlin Noir

‘I don’t believe that -’ she said, and then checked herself. ‘I can’t answer any of your questions.’

But I kept on going. ‘What about Paul’s mistress, Eva or Vera, or whatever her name is? Any idea why she might be hiding? Who knows, maybe she’s dead too.’

Her eyes quivered like a cup and saucer in an express dining-car. She gasped at me and stood up, her hands clenched tightly at her sides. ‘Please,’ she said, her eyes starting to well up with tears. The brother shouldered himself away from the doorway, and moved in front of me, much in the manner of a referee stopping a boxing-match.

‘That’s quite enough, Herr Gunther,’ he said. ‘I see no reason why I should allow you to interrogate my sister in this fashion.’

‘Why not?’ I asked, standing up. ‘I bet she sees it all the time in the Gestapo. And a lot worse besides that.’

‘All the same,’ he said, ‘it seems quite clear to me that she does not wish to answer your questions.’

‘Strange,’ I said. ‘I had come to much the same conclusion.’ I took Inge by the arm and moved towards the door. But as we were leaving I turned and added, ‘I’m not on anyone’s side, and the only thing I’m trying to get is the truth. If you change your mind, please don’t hesitate to contact me. I didn’t get into this business to throw anyone to the wolves.’

‘I never had you down as the chivalrous type,’ Inge said when we were outside again.

‘Me?’ I said. ‘Now wait a minule. I went to the Don Quixote School of Detection. I got a B-plus in Noble Sentiment.’

‘Too bad you didn’t get one for Interrogation,’ she said. ‘You know, she got really rattled when you suggested that Pfarr’s mistress might be dead.’

‘Well, what would you have me do – pistol-whip it out of her?’

‘I just meant that it was too bad she wouldn’t talk, that’s all. Maybe she will change her mind.’

‘I wouldn’t bet on it,’ I said. ‘If she does work for the Gestapo then it stands to reason that she’s not the sort who underlines verses in her Bible. And did you see those muscles? I bet she’s their best man with a whip or a rubber truncheon.’

We picked up the car and drove east on Bülowstrasse. I pulled up outside Viktoria Park.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s walk awhile. I could do with some fresh air.’

Inge sniffed the air suspiciously. It was heavy with the stink of the nearby Schultheis brewery. ‘Remind me never to let you buy me any perfume,’ she said.

We walked up the hill to the picture market where what passed for Berlin’s young artists offered their irreproachably Arcadian work for sale. Inge was predictably contemptuous.

‘Have you ever seen such absolute shit?’ she snorted. ‘From all these pictures of the muscle-bound peasants binding corn and ploughing fields you would think we were living in a story by the Brothers Grimm.’

I nodded slowly. I liked it when she became animated on a subject, even if her voice was too loud and her opinions of the sort that could have landed both of us in a K Z.

Who knows, with a bit more time and patience she might have obliged me to re-examine my own rather matter-of-fact opinion of the value of art. But as it was, I had something else on my mind. I took her by the arm and steered her to a collection of paintings depicting steel-jawed storm-troopers that was arranged in front of an artist who looked anything but the Aryan stereotype. I spoke quietly.

‘Ever since leaving the Sahms’ apartment, I’ve had the idea that we were being followed,’ I said. She looked around carefully. There were a few people milling around, but none that seemed especially interested in the two of us.

‘I doubt you’ll spot him,’ I said. ‘Not if he’s good.’

‘Do you think it’s the Gestapo?’ she asked.

‘They’re not the only pack of dogs in this town,’ I said, ‘but I guess that’s where the smart money is. They’re aware of my interest in this case and I wouldn’t put it past them to let me do some of their legwork.’

‘Well, what are we going to do?’ Her face looked anxious, but I grinned back at her.

‘You know, I always think that there’s nothing that’s quite as much fun as trying to shake off a tail. Especially if it might turn out to be the Gestapo.’

There were only two items in the morning mail, and both had been delivered by hand. Away from Gruber’s inquisitive, hungry-cat stare, I opened them, and found that the smaller of the two envelopes contained a solitary square of cardboard that was a ticket for the day’s Olympic track-and-field events. I turned it over, and on the back were written the initials ‘M.S.’ and ‘2 o’clock.’ The larger envelope bore the seal of the Air Ministry and contained a transcript of calls that Haupthändler and Jeschonnek had made and received on their respective telephones during Saturday, which, apart from the one I had made myself from Haupthändler’s apartment, was none. I threw the envelope and its contents into the waste-paper basket and sat down, wondering if Jeschonnek had already bought the necklace, and just what I would do if I was obliged to follow Haupthändler to Tempelhof Airport that same evening. On the other hand, if Haupthändler had already disposed of the necklace I couldn’t imagine that he would have been waiting for the Monday evening flight to London just for the hell of it. It seemed more likely that the deal involved foreign currency, and that Jeschonnek had needed the time to raise the money. I made myself a coffee and waited for Inge to arrive.

I glanced out of the window and, seeing that the weather was dull, I smiled as I imagined her glee at the prospect of another shower of rain falling upon the Führer’s Olympiad. Except that now I was going to get wet too.

What had she called it? ‘The most outrageous confidence-trick in the history of modern times.’ I was searching in the cupboard for my old rubberized raincoat when she came through the door.

‘God, I need a cigarette,’ she said, tossing her handbag onto a chair and helping herself from the box on my desk. With some amusement she looked at my old coat and added, ‘Are you planning to wear that thing?’

‘Yes. Fräulein Muscles came through after all. There was a ticket for today’s games in the mail. She wants me to meet her in the stadium at two.’

Inge looked out of the window. ‘You’re right,’ she laughed, ‘you’ll need the coat. It’s going to come down by the bucket.’ She sat down and put her feet up on my desk. ‘Well, I’ll just stay here on my own, and mind the shop.’

‘I’ll be back by four o’clock at the latest,’ I said. ‘Then we have to go to the airport.’

She frowned. ‘Oh yes, I was forgetting. Haupthändler is planning to fly to London tonight. Forgive me if I sound naive, but exactly what are you going to do when you get there? Just walk up to him and whoever it is he’s taking with him and ask them how much they got for the necklace? Maybe they’ll just open their suitcases and let you take a look at all their cash, right there in the middle of Tempelhof.’

‘Nothing in real life is ever all that tidy. There never are neat little clues that enable you to apprehend the crook with minutes to spare.’

‘You sound almost sad about it,’ she said.

‘I had one ace in the hole which I thought would make things a bit easier.’

‘And the hole fell in, is that it?’

‘Something like that.’

The sound of footsteps in the outer office made me stop. There was a knock at the door, and a motorcyclist, a corporal in the National Socialist Flying Corps, came in bearing a large buff-coloured envelope of the same sort as the one I had consigned earlier to the waste-paper basket. The corporal clicked his heels and asked me if I was Herr Bernhard Gunther. I said that I was, took the envelope from the corporal’s gauntleted hands and signed his receipt slip, after which he gave the Hitler Salute and walked smartly out again.