Philip Kerr - Berlin Noir

His grip tightened. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I won’t tell anyone. Anyway, it’s not like you were a bull, is it?’

‘You said you were casing the place. What particular line of criminality were you in?’

‘I was a nutcracker.’

‘I can’t say as I recall the hotel safe ever being robbed,’ I said. ‘At least, not as long as I was working there.’

‘That’s because I didn’t take anything,’ he said proudly. ‘Oh, I opened it all right. But there was nothing worth taking. Seriously.’

‘I’ve only got your word for that,’ I said. ‘There were always rich people at the hotel, and they always had valuables. It was very rare that there wasn’t something in that safe.’

‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘Just my bad luck. There really was nothing that I could take that I could ever have got rid of. That’s the point, you see. There’s no point in taking something you can’t shift.’

‘All right, I believe you,’ I said.

‘I’m not boasting,’ he said. ‘I was the best. There wasn’t anything I couldn’t crack. Here, I bet you’d expect me to be rich, wouldn’t you?’

I shrugged. ‘Perhaps. I’d also expect you to be in prison, which you are.’

‘It’s because I am rich that I’m hiding here,’ he said. ‘I told you that, didn’t I?’

‘You mentioned something about that, yes.’ I took my time before I added: ‘And what have you got that makes you so rich and wanted? Money? Jewels?“

He croaked another short laugh. ‘Better than that,’ he said. ‘Power.’

‘In what shape or form?“

‘Papers,’ he said. ‘Take my word for it, there’s an awful lot of people who’d pay big money to get their hands on what I’ve got.’

‘What’s in these papers?’

His breathing was shallower than a Der Junggeselle cover-girl.

‘I don’t know exactly,’ he said. ‘Names, addresses, information. But you’re a clever sort of fellow, you could work it.’

‘You haven’t got them here, have you?’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ he wheezed. ‘They’re safe, on the outside.’ I took the dead cigarette from his mouth and threw it onto the floor. Then I gave him the rest of mine.

‘It’d be a shame… for it never to be used,’ he said breathlessly. ‘You’ve been good… to me. So I’m going to do you a favour… Make ’em sweat, won’t you? This’ll be worth… a lorry load… of gravel… to you… on the outside.‘ I bent forwards to hear him speak. ’Pick ‘em up… by the nose.’ His eyelids flickered. I took him by the shoulders and tried to shake him back to consciousness.

Back to life.

I knelt there by him for some time. In the small corner of me that still felt things, there was a terrible and terrifying sense of abandonment. Mutschmann had been younger than I was, and strong, too. It wasn’t too difficult to imagine myself succumbing to illness. I had lost a lot of weight, I had bad ringworms and my teeth felt loose in their gums. Heydrich’s man, S S Oberschutze Burger, was in charge of the carpenter’s shop, and I wondered what would happen to me if I went ahead and gave him the code-word that would get me out of Dachau. What would Heydrich do to me when he discovered that I didn’t know where Von Greis’s papers were? Send me back? Have me executed? and If I didn’t blow the whistle, would it even occur to him to assume that I had been unsuccessful and that he should get me out? From my short meeting with Heydrich, and what little I had heard of him, it seemed unlikely. To have got so near and failed at the last was almost more than I could bear.

After a while I reached forwards and drew the blanket over Mutschmann’s yellow face. A short stub of a pencil fell onto the floor, and I looked at it for several seconds before a thought crossed my mind and a glint of hope once more shone in my heart. I drew the blanket back from Mutschmann’s body. The hands were tightly bunched into fists. One after the other I prised them open. In Mutschmann’s left hand was a piece of brown paper of the sort that the prisoners in the cobbler’s shop used to wrap shoe repairs for the S S guards in. I was too afraid of there being nothing to open the paper immediately. As it was, the writing was almost illegible, and it took me almost an hour to decipher the note’s contents. It said, ‘Lost property office, Berlin Traffic Dept. Saarlandstr. You lost briefcase sometime July on Leipzigerstr. Made of plain brown hide, with brass lock, ink-stain on handle. Gold initials K.M. Contains postcard from America. Western novel, Old Surehand , Karl May and business papers. Thanks. K.M.’

It was perhaps the strangest ticket home that anyone ever had.

It seemed that there were uniforms everywhere. Even the newspaper-sellers were wearing S A caps and greatcoats. There was no parade, and certainly there was nothing Jewish on Unter den Linden that could be boycotted. Perhaps it was only now, after Dachau, that I fully realized the true strength of the grip that National Socialism had on Germany.

I was heading towards my office. Situated incongruously between the Greek Embassy and Schultze’s Art Shop, and guarded by two storm-troopers, I passed the Ministry of the Interior from which Himmler had issued his memo to Paul Pfarr regarding corruption. A car drew up outside the front door, and from it emerged two officers and a uniformed girl whom I recognized as Marlene Sahm. I stopped and started to say hallo and then thought better of it. She passed me by without a glance. If she recognized me she did a good job disguising it. I turned and watched her as she followed the two men inside the building. I don’t suppose I was standing there for more than a couple of minutes, but it was long enough for me to be challenged by a fat man with a low brimmed hat.

‘Papers,’ he said abruptly, not even bothering to show a Sipo pass or warrant disc.

‘Says who?’

The man pushed his porky, poorly shaven face at me and hissed: ‘Says me.’

‘Listen,’ I said, ‘you’re sadly mistaken if you think you are possessed of what is cutely known as a commanding personality. So cut the shit and let’s see some ID.’ A Sipo pass flashed in front of my nose.

‘You boys are getting lazy,’ I said, producing my papers. He snatched them away for examination.

‘What are you doing hanging around here?’

‘Hanging? Who’s hanging?’ I said. ‘I stopped to admire the architecture.’

‘Why were you looking at those officers who got out of the car?’

‘I wasn’t looking at the officers,’ I said. ‘I was looking at the girl. I love women in uniforms.’

‘On your way,’ he said, tossing my papers back at me.

The average German seems to be able to tolerate the most offensive behaviour from anyone wearing a uniform or carrying some sort of official insignia. In everything except that I consider myself to be a fairly typical German, because I have to admit that I am naturally disposed to be obstructive to authority. I suppose you would say that it’s an odd attitude for an ex-policeman.

On Königstrasse the collectors for the Winter Relief were out in force, shaking their little red collecting-boxes under everyone’s noses, although November was only a few days old. In the early days the Relief had been intended to help overcome the effects of unemployment and the depression, but now, and almost universally, it was regarded as nothing more than financial and psychological blackmail by the Party: the Relief raised funds but, just as importantly, it created an emotional climate in which people were trained to do without for the sake of the Fatherland. Each week the collection was the charge of a different organization, and this week it was the Railwaymen.