Philip Kerr - A Quiet Flame

“Did she bury it in the garden?”

“I really don’t know.”

“Perhaps your wife does.”

“I’d really rather you didn’t ask her about it. She’s upset enough about things as it is. My wife holds herself responsible for the death of the bird. And she’s already looking around for reasons to blame herself for our daughter’s disappearance. Any implied suggestion that these two events might be connected would only add to the sense of guilt she’s feeling about Fabienne. I’m sure you understand.”

That might just have been true. And maybe it wasn’t. But out of respect for his two million pesos I was prepared to let the bird go. Sometimes, to take hold of the money, you have to let go of the bird. That’s what they call politics.

We returned to the sitting room, where the baroness had started crying again. I’ve made a close study of women crying. In my line of work it comes with the truncheon and the handcuffs. On the eastern front, in 1941, I saw women who could have won Olympic gold medals for crying. Sherlock Holmes used to study cigar ash and wrote a monograph on the subject. I knew about crying. I knew that when a woman is crying it doesn’t pay to let her get too close to your shoulder. It can cost you a clean shirt. Tears are, however, sacred, and you violate their sanctity at your peril. We left her to get on with it.

AFTER WE LEFT the von Bader house, I insisted the colonel and I go to Recoleta Cemetery. We were, after all, very close. I wanted to see the place Fabienne had been visiting when she disappeared.

Like the Viennese, rich portenos take death very seriously. Enough to spend large sums of money on expensive tombs and mausolea. But Recoleta was the only cemetery I’d ever been where there weren’t any graves. We went through a Greek-style entrance into what was a little city of marble. Many of the mausolea were classically designed and looked almost habitable. Walking around the neat and parallel stone streets was like touring some ancient Roman town swept clean of its human inhabitants by a cataclysmic natural disaster. Looking up at the bright blue sky, I half expected to see the smoking crater of a volcano. It was hard to imagine a fourteen-year-old girl coming to such a place. The few living people we saw were old and gray. I expect they had the same thought about me and the colonel.

We got back in the car and headed for the Casa Rosada. It was a while since I’d driven a car. Not that anyone would have noticed. I had seen worse drivers than portenos, but only in Ben-Hur. Ramon Novarro and Francis X. Bushman would have felt quite at home on the streets of Buenos Aires.

“Nice and handy for the president to have his secret police headquartered in the Casa Rosada,” I said, catching sight of the distinctive pink building again.

“It has some advantages. Incidentally, you’ve already seen the boss. The youngish man in the pinstripe suit who was with us when you met Peron? That’s him. Rodolfo Freude. He’s never very far away from the president.”

“Freude. Von Bader mentioned a banker called Ludwig Freude. Any relation?”

“Rodolfo’s father.”

“Is that how he got the job?”

“It’s a long story, but yes, in effect.”

“Was he in the Abwehr, too?”

“Who? Rodolfo? No. But Rodolfo’s deputy was. Werner Koennecke. Werner is married to Rodolfo’s sister, Lily.”

“It all sounds very cozy.”

“That’s Buenos Aires for you. It’s just like the cemetery at Recoleta. You have to know someone to get in.”

“Who do you know, Colonel?”

“Rodolfo knows some important people, it’s true. But I know people who are really important. I know an Italian woman who is the best whore in the city. I know a chef who makes the best pasta in South America. And I know a man who can kill someone and make it look like a suicide, with no questions asked. These are the important things to know in our strange profession, Herr Hausner. Don’t you agree?”

“I don’t often awake and feel the need to have someone murdered, Colonel. If I did I’d probably do it myself. But I guess I’m just a little bit strange that way. Besides, I’m too old to be impressed by anything very much. Except perhaps an Italian woman. I always did like Italian women.”

DEPARTMENT IV, the ordinary criminal police, was supposed to stand apart from Department Ia, the political police. DIa was charged with the investigation of all political crime, but it did not operate secretly. The political police was supposed to work discreetly to forestall political violence of whatever hue. Given the situation in Germany, it was easy to understand why the Weimar government had thought it necessary to bring such a police force into being. In practice, however, neither the regular police force nor the German public liked the politicals; and DIa had proved to be spectacularly unsuccessful at preventing political violence. What was more, the point of having two separate police departments became all but meaningless as the majority of the murders we investigated turned out to be political: a storm trooper murdering a Communist, or vice versa. As a result, DIa struggled to establish its proper jurisdiction and to justify its continued existence. True republicans considered its functions undemocratic and potentially ripe for exploitation by any unscrupulous government that might wish to establish a police state. It was for this reason that Professor Hans Illmann, the pathologist handling the Schwarz case, preferred to meet away from the Alex, in his laboratory and office at the Institute for Police Science in Charlottenburg. Department IV and Department Ia might have existed on different floors of the Alex, but that was still too close for the politically sensitive nostrils of KRIPO’s leading forensic scientist.

I found Illmann staring out of a deep bay window at a garden that had nothing to do with the police or pathology. It and the villa it surrounded came from a gentler time when scientists had more hair on their cheeks than a mandrill baboon. It was easy to see why he preferred being here instead of at the Alex. Even with a couple of bodies in the basement, the place felt more like an expensive retirement home than a forensic science institute. He was as lean as a scalpel, with rimless glasses and a little Dutch chin-beard that made him everyone’s idea of what an artist ought to look like. Toulouse-Lautrec in his much taller period.

As we shook hands, I jutted my chin at a copy of Der Angriff lying on his desk. “What, are you turning Nazi on me? Reading shit like that.”

“If more people read this garbage then perhaps they wouldn’t vote for these intellectual pygmies. Or at least they would know what Germany can expect if they ever come to power. No, no, Bernie. Everyone should read this. You especially should read it. Your card has been well and truly stamped, my young republican friend. And in public, too. Welcome to the club.”

He picked up the newspaper and started to read aloud:

“ ‘The symbol of the Iron Front, which was designed by a Russian Jew, is three arrows pointing southeast inside a circle. The meaning of the arrows has been interpreted differently. Some say that the three arrows stand for the opponents of the Iron Front: Communism, monarchism, and National Socialism. Others say that these arrows stand for the three columns of the German workers’ movement: party, trade union, and Reichsbanner. But we say it stands for one thing only: the Iron Front is a political alliance that is full of pricks.

“ ‘Chief among the Iron Front pricks that pollute the Berlin police force are Police President Grzesinski, his yid deputy Bernard Weiss, and their KRIPO lackey Bernhard Gunther. These are the policemen who are supposed to be investigating the murder of Anita Schwarz. You would think that they would be sparing no effort to catch this monster. Far from it! Commissar Gunther astonished those attending yesterday’s press conference when he informed this stunned reporter that he hopes the murderer will be spared the death penalty.