Philip Kerr - A Quiet Flame

“During the last years of her life, my mother was in a wheelchair,” he said, as if building an elevator was a solution available to everyone with an elderly parent.

It was just the two of us and the dog in the elevator car. I was close enough to smell the cologne on von Bader’s face and the oil in his gray hair, and yet he avoided my eye. Each time he spoke to me, he was looking somewhere else. I told myself he was preoccupied with his daughter’s possible fate. But all the same, I’d handled enough cases involving missing persons to know when I wasn’t getting the whole story.

“Montalban says that back in Berlin, before the war, you were a top detective. With KRIPO and in private practice.”

He made being a private detective sound like being a top dentist. Maybe it was kind of similar to being a dentist, at that. Sometimes getting a client to tell you everything relevant was like pulling teeth.

“I’ve had my Archimedes moments,” I said. “With KRIPO and on my own.”

“Archimedes?”

“Eureka. I’ve found it.” I shrugged. “These days I’m more the traveling-salesman type.”

“Selling what, in particular?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all. Not even now. I’ll do my best to find your daughter, sir, but I never was one for working miracles. Generally I do a lot better when people believe in me enough to give me all the facts.”

Von Bader colored a little. Maybe that was because he was trying to wrestle the elevator car door open. Or maybe it wasn’t. But he still wasn’t looking at me. “What makes you think you haven’t had them?”

“Call it a hunch.”

He nodded as if considering some kind of offer, which was odd, given that I hadn’t actually made him one.

We stepped out of the car and into the thickly carpeted corridor. At the end of it he pushed a door open and ushered me into the bedroom of a neat and tidy girl. The wallpaper was red roses. The bed had little flowers painted on the enameled iron frame. Above the bed were several Chinese fans in a picture frame. On a tall table was a large and empty Oriental birdcage. On a shorter table was a chessboard set out in a game that seemed to be still in progress. I gave the pieces the once-over. Black or white, she was a clever little girl. There were some books and some teddy bears and a chest of drawers. I tugged one open.

“Do you mind?” I asked.

“Go right ahead,” he said. “I suppose you’re just doing your job.”

“Well, I’m certainly not looking for her underwear.” I was hoping to goad something from him. After all, he hadn’t exactly denied that he was keeping something back. I turned over some socks and looked underneath.

“What exactly are you looking for?”

“A diary. A commonplace book. Some letters. Some money you didn’t know about. A photograph of someone you don’t recognize. I’m not sure, exactly. But I’ll know it when I see it.” I closed the drawer. “Or maybe there’s something you want to tell me now, while Colonel Montalban isn’t here?”

He picked up one of the teddy bears and lifted it to his nose, like a hound trying to raise a scent. “It’s curious,” he said. “The way you can smell them on their toys. It’s so evocative of them. Kind of like Proust, really.”

I nodded. I’d heard a lot about Proust. One day I was going to have to find an excuse not to read him.

“I know what Montalban thinks,” he said. “He thinks Fabienne is already dead.” Von Bader shook his head. “I just don’t believe that.”

“What makes you think not, Baron?”

“You would call it a hunch, I suppose. Easier to spell than intuition. But that’s how it is. If she was dead, I’m quite sure we would have heard something by now. Someone would have found her. I’m certain of it.” He shook his head. “Since you were once a famous detective with the homicide police in Berlin, I imagine Montalban’s asking you to work on the assumption that she’s dead. Well, I’m asking you to assume the opposite. To assume that perhaps someone-someone German, yes, I think that must be true-is hiding her. Or keeping her against her will.”

I opened another drawer. “Why would someone want to do that? Do you have enemies, Herr Baron?”

“I’m a banker, Herr Hausner. And as it happens, a damned important one. It might surprise you but bankers do make enemies, yes. Money or the getting of money always brings enemies. There’s that. And then there’s what I did during the war to consider. During the war, I worked for the Abwehr. German military intelligence. Myself and a group of other German-Argentine bankers helped to bankroll the war effort on this side of the Atlantic. We funded a number of German agents in the United States. Without success, I’m sorry to say. Several of our most prominent agents were caught by the FBI and executed. They were betrayed, but I’m not sure by whom.”

“Could someone blame you for that?”

“I don’t see how. I had no operational involvement. I was just a money man.”

Von Bader was making eye contact with me now. Plenty of it.

“I’m not sure how relevant any of this is to my daughter’s disappearance, Herr Hausner. But there were five of us. Bankers funding the Nazis in Argentina. Ludwig Freude, Richard Staudt, Heinrich Dorge, Richard von Leute, and me. And I only mention this because late last year Dr. Dorge was found dead on a street here in Buenos Aires. He’d been murdered. Heinrich was formerly an aide to Dr. Hjalmar Schacht. I take it you’ve heard of him.”

“I’ve heard of him,” I said. Schacht had been the minister of economics and then president of the Reichsbank. In 1946, he had been tried for war crimes at Nuremberg and acquitted.

“I’m telling you all this so you’ll know two things in particular. One is that it’s perfectly possible my previous life has caught up with me in some-some unfathomable way. I’ve received no threats. Nothing. The other thing is that I’m a very rich man, Herr Hausner. And I want you to take me seriously when I say that if you find my daughter, alive, and bring about her safe return, I’ll give you a reward of two million pesos, payable in whatever currency and whatever country you choose. That’s about fifty thousand dollars, Herr Hausner.”

“That’s a lot of money, Herr Baron.”

“My daughter’s life is worth at least that much to me. More. Much more. But that’s my business. Your business is to try to collect that two million pesos.”

I nodded thoughtfully. I guess it must have looked like I was weighing things up. That’s the trouble with me. I’m coin-operated. I start thinking when people offer me money. I start thinking a lot more when it’s a lot of money.

“Do you have any children, Herr Hausner?”

“No, sir.”

“If you did you would know that money’s not that important next to the life of someone you love.”

“I’m obliged to take your word for that, sir.”

“You’re not obliged to take my word for it at all. I’ll have my lawyers draw up a letter of agreement regarding the reward.”

It wasn’t what I’d meant, but I didn’t contradict him. Instead I took a last look around the room.

“What happened to the bird in the cage?”

“The bird?”

“In the cage.” I pointed at the pagoda-sized cage on the tall table.

Von Bader looked at the cage almost as if he had never looked at it before. “Oh, that. It died.”

“Was she upset about it?”

“Yes, of course she was. But I don’t see how her disappearance could have anything to do with a bird.”

I shrugged.

“I have a fourteen-year-old daughter, Herr Hausner. You don’t. As a result, and with all due respect, I think I can honestly say I know more about fourteen-year-old girls than you do.”