Филип Керр - Metropolis

I covered the evidence with the blanket, closed the Brennabor’s big boot, locked it carefully, and trudged back upstairs, wondering what to do next. I should have liked to have spoken to Reichenbach himself before doing anything, but after what I’d found in the boot, the sensible thing would have been to telephone the Alex and summon the murder wagon. I may not have had a suspect in custody but I already had more than enough evidence to justify a search of Reichenbach’s apartment and to get a warrant for his arrest.

‘How long has it been since you last saw him?’ I asked when I reached the top floor.

‘Yesterday morning, before we both went to work. I’m a nurse at the Charité, and sometimes, because we both keep such irregular hours, we don’t see each other for days. But we managed to have breakfast together. Which hadn’t happened for a while.’

‘How did he seem?’

‘In good spirits. He said he was about to make an arrest. Which always put him in a good mood.’

‘Did he say who?’

I thought of Hugo, the man who’d murdered Willi Beckmann in front of Aschinger, and concluded that it might have been him that Reichenbach had planned to arrest following my own tip. But it was impossible to imagine that Reichenbach would have tried to arrest a man like that by himself; he was much too experienced a policeman, especially given Hugo’s willingness to use a Bergmann machine gun. It was clear that in the morning I was going to have to speak to someone else on Reichenbach’s team back at the Alex. But I was almost hoping that something might happen to Reichenbach while I was making this arrest if only because it looked like being a less ignominious end for him.

‘No. He didn’t.’

‘Oh well, I expect there’s a perfectly innocent explanation,’ I said, trying to think of one. Perfect innocence was already something far beyond my own understanding. I was beginning to wonder if such a thing could even exist in Berlin. ‘There was a meeting tonight of a new police union: the Betnarek-Verband. It’s always possible he went to that. I was going to go myself and then thought better of it. Don’t worry. I expect he’ll come through the door at any moment. And when he does, tell him Bernie Gunther was here.’

‘Bernie Gunther. All right. I’ll do that.’

She opened the apartment door so that I could leave.

‘There is one thing,’ she added. ‘And I don’t know if it’s worth mentioning. It’s probably nothing, but when I went to work yesterday morning I noticed there was a brand-new Mercedes parked near Kurt’s car. I had half an idea that the two men inside were keeping an eye on it. As if they were waiting there for Kurt.’

‘Oh? Did you get a good look at them?’

‘Smartly dressed. I might have thought they were policemen but for the car. I was paying more attention to it, really. An expensive item. A cream-coloured roadster.’

I felt my heart miss a beat. The Mercedes roadster was not a common car. I knew of only two people who owned a cream Mercedes roadster: one was Thea von Harbou; the other was Erich Angerstein, and the thought of him knowing half of what I did about Kurt Reichenbach filled me with alarm.

‘You’re sure it was a Mercedes?’

‘Oh, yes. I’m sure about it because that was Kurt’s favourite type of car. They’ve got one in the Mercedes showroom on the Kurfürstendamm. We would stop and admire it when we were out for a walk. I used to say that one day I was going to win the Prussian State Lottery and buy the car for him.’

‘I see. Well, thanks. Like I say, I expect he’ll turn up safe and well before long.’

But hearing this latest information I had a strong sense of foreboding that this was never going to happen, that Kurt Reichenbach was probably dead, or worse.

I ought to have despised myself. At the very least I’d been very stupid. I’d trusted Erich Angerstein to keep his word when all my better instincts had told me he wouldn’t. It was now obvious what must have happened in that awful apartment in Wedding. No wonder the bastard had asked me to leave the room before he’d started to beat the man, and like a fool I’d done it. A few minutes before Prussian Emil told me that the man he’d seen near the scene of Eva Angerstein’s murder had been an anonymous policeman from Kripo, he had informed her father that this same cop was called Kurt Reichenbach. With me sitting safely out of the way in the bedroom, all Angerstein had to do was order Emil to withhold Reichenbach’s name from me. That would give him ample time to find Reichenbach and then take him to a ring hideout to exact his own personal revenge. The earlier telephone call I’d taken at my office desk from Angerstein had doubtless been designed to help bolster some sort of deniability when, eventually, I discovered Reichenbach was missing.

I’d made it so easy for him. But all that was over now. Angerstein wasn’t the only one who could turn up armed and unannounced. I had a gun. I had the gangster’s business card. I had an address in Lichterfelde.

The Angerstein house was a white stucco building near the former cadet school at the southwest end of the Teltow Canal. A three-story Wilhelmine, with a short Corinthian portico, topped with a balcony about the size of a laundry basket; it looked like the most expensive house in the road. I’d have been disappointed if Erich Angerstein had been staying anywhere else. The carriage light that hung in the portico was lit, and the cream-coloured Mercedes roadster was parked out front. I laid my hand on the bonnet and felt the still-warm engine underneath. Angerstein hadn’t been home long.

There was a small garden with a cherry tree in front of the house, and a larger one at the back, which was where I began my search, having climbed over a low picket fence. The ground-floor windows were dark and fitted with louvred shutters that prevented my peering in, but all the lights were on in the upper floors and, having tried, unsuccessfully, to gain entry through a kitchen door and then a set of French windows, I returned to the front door and prepared to ring the bell, which is to say I took Mendel’s Browning out of my pocket, worked the slide, put one in the barrel and kept it close to my armpit, ready to point at whoever answered.

I was angry enough now to go all the way. I’d been suckered by Angerstein, but that was over now. I felt sure of it. All the same, I wouldn’t have minded a drink to put a little iron in my soul. I told myself I wasn’t prepared to kill him, but I was ready to shoot him; with a little .25 there were all sorts of places I could shoot Erich Angerstein without killing him.

Behind me the Teltow district steamer let out a mocking toot as it headed down the canal to Potsdam. The purpling night was clear and warm, with just a hint of honeysuckle in the air, or perhaps it was jasmine; something sweeter than the way I was feeling, anyway. I pulled on the butcher’s-weight brass doorbell and waited while the big bell in the entrance hall did its job, sounding as if it were summoning the local people to mass. I heard a couple of bolts slide away and then the door opened to reveal Erich Angerstein.

‘Where is he?’

‘Who?’

I pushed him back into the double-height entrance hall and kicked the door shut behind me.

‘Don’t waste my time. You know perfectly well who I’m talking about.’

In his silk dressing gown he looked as if he’d been about to go to bed, but I frisked him for a gun anyway and while I did, he smiled like a schoolteacher who has been obliged to humour an unruly pupil, which did very little for my own humour.

‘I haven’t the least idea what you’re talking about, Gunther. I thought you were here to tell me something interesting. In which case, come in, take a load off, sit down and have a drink.’