Michael Russell - The City of Shadows

The tour guide chuckled. Rothe was frowning. He regretted the slap.

‘You know the Senatsprasident?’ he asked.

‘We were on the plane from Berlin. He dropped me at the hotel.’

It wasn’t exactly an answer but it was the detail that mattered. The tour guide looked at the Kriminaloberassistent. He expected him to know more about the movements of senior Party officials than he did. As long as he didn’t step on anyone’s toes he couldn’t care less. He definitely didn’t want to tread on Greiser’s. The nod from Rothe was barely perceptible. Yes, he did know Greiser had been in Berlin. The silence was uneasy now. The tour guide lit a cigarette. It was all over as far as he was concerned. Klaus Rothe had decided it was over too, but he still had some face to save.

‘How much longer do you intend to stay in Danzig, Herr Gillespie?’

‘I might try the casino after all. A little bit of culture goes a long way.’

‘You think Frau Harvey, Fraulein Rosen, has left the city then?’

‘If her old man got the scent she wouldn’t want to cross him. Too much dough. Well, he’s a Jew. Still, if you can’t screw them one way, you can screw them another.’

The tour guide liked the joke. Rothe didn’t. Sexual intercourse with a Jewess was the abomination of abominations. He couldn’t approve of what Stefan was doing, but at least he was doing it with the proper degree of contempt. If he’d been a local he would have taught him a lesson about racial purity he wouldn’t forget in a hurry. But this was a waste of time. He had better things to do. He looked at his watch. The rally would have started. Josef Goebbels, the Reich Propaganda Minister, had just flown in from Berlin to wind up the faithful for the election. He didn’t want to miss it.

As the two Gestapo men walked to the front desk with Stefan, a door from an office opened ahead of them. He recognised Hugo Keller again. He was in the suit he’d been wearing in Merrion Square, but it hung on him like something from a second-hand clothes stall. He was thinner, greyer. His skin was pale. He wasn’t the same man now that Stefan was close to him. He laughed as he stepped into the corridor, calling back into the room, ‘I’m counting up those fucking drinks you owe me. Make sure you can afford it!’

The moment he saw the Kriminaloberassistent his face was more serious.

‘Were you coming to see me, Hugo?’ asked the Gestapo officer.

‘I just needed some money, Herr Rothe.’ His voice was deferential.

‘Whatever you need, you ask me. I thought that was clear.’

‘You were busy, Kriminaloberassistent.’

‘Then you should have waited till I wasn’t. You only talk to me.’ There was irritation in his voice and behind that there was contempt.

Hugo Keller may have been about to say more, but he wasn’t looking at the Gestapo man now, he was looking straight at Stefan Gillespie. The surprise on Keller’s face was entirely genuine. And he didn’t know what to do about it. Stefan could read the thought process in the abortionist’s eyes. He needed time. He needed to know what this was about. The two men looked at each other warily. Then, quite unexpectedly, Rothe laughed.

‘Perhaps you know our friend here, Hugo. He’s an Irishman.’

Keller was recovering his composure. He smiled at Stefan.

‘I don’t think so, Kriminaloberassistent.’

Stefan’s eyes widened.

‘There were a few people I didn’t get round to meeting,’ continued Keller, his gaze fixed firmly on Stefan. The two Gestapo men were unaware of the intensity of that gaze, but Stefan understood what it was telling him: ‘Shut up!’ He couldn’t make any sense of it, yet he had no choice but to be grateful for the lifeline he had been thrown. Hugo Keller could have driven a coach and horses through the story he had just given to Klaus Rothe.

‘I lived in Dublin for several years, Mr — ’ Keller spoke in English.

‘Gillespie. I’m in Dublin myself.’

‘Have we met then? I didn’t think — ’

‘No.’ It seemed to be what Keller wanted him to say.

‘Where are you staying?’

‘The Danziger Hof.’

‘He speaks good German, Hugo. Don’t give us all that English crap.’

‘We must have a drink, Mr Gillespie.’ Keller still spoke in English.

‘A word, Hugo, now please!’ The Kriminaloberassistent turned back along the corridor, walking slowly; the Austrian followed him obediently.

The tour guide walked on with Stefan to the front desk. Moments later he was in Weidengasse, walking back to the river and the old town, wondering why Hugo Keller had saved him from the beating the Gestapo officers only needed an excuse to deliver. It was all the more odd because despite the fear that had risen in his throat when he saw the Austrian in the police station, he had sensed that Keller’s fear went deeper than his own. Yet even though he was obviously working for the Gestapo, he had lied to them.

As Stefan turned into Langgarten, towards the Mottlau and the stone tower that Danzigers called the Milk Can, he heard his name being shouted.

‘Mr Gillespie!’ He stopped and waited as Keller hurried towards him.

‘Let’s have that drink.’

‘Why?’

‘One reason would be that Kriminaloberassistent Rothe told me to.’

‘So that we could talk about old times in Dublin?’

‘So that I could tell him whether I think you’re lying about anything.’

‘But we’re both lying, aren’t we?’

Stefan smiled. There was no answering smile.

‘You’ve got no idea what you’re sticking your nose into, Sergeant. But if you end up back in a Gestapo cell again, you just might not come out.’

The bar was dark and full of smoke. There was the smell of tobacco and beer and somewhere the sourness of the cured sausages that hung behind the counter. Steps led down to the cellar from Mattenbuden, the street that ran along the edge of the New Mottlau, looking across at the warehouses and granaries of the Speicherinsel and beyond that to the city. Barges were moored at the water’s edge and the cellar bar belonged to the city’s old docks. As Stefan Gillespie and Hugo Keller entered, the languages of the Baltic were there along with German and Polish. Stefan didn’t need to recognise the snatches of Latvian, Lithuanian, Swedish and Estonian to know that this was a lot further from the police station in Weidengasse than the distance they had walked. It wasn’t German Danzig and most of the customers weren’t Danzigers. Keller had ordered in German, but oddly it was the fact that they were speaking in a language other than German that made them invisible. The waiter seemed to know the Austrian and as they talked he brought regular refills for the schnapps Keller was drinking with his beer. The abortionist hadn’t struck Stefan as a drinker in Dublin but that had changed. He was conscious again how drained the man was, how much older he looked. It was a very long way from the Shelbourne Hotel.

Stefan was unsure what he could say and what he couldn’t. There were things he knew about Hannah now that he wouldn’t dream of telling Keller, yet it was pointless repeating the lies he had told in Weidengasse. He had to offer some reason for being in Danzig. It felt like anything they both knew already had to be safe, though this didn’t seem like the time to accuse the abortionist of telling Jimmy Lynch to kill Susan Field. He had to use as much of the truth as he could. Half truths worked better than lies.

‘Hannah’s father got wind she was coming to Danzig to find the priest, Father Byrne. She’s still got it in her head somebody has to pay for Susan Field’s death. Let’s not pretend you don’t know who Susan Field was, Hugo.’

Keller shrugged. It didn’t really matter what Stefan knew about that, not here.