Philip Kerr - A Quiet Flame

“What’s this?” said Nebe. “Has someone else been shooting at you?” He put his fingers in some old bullet holes in the walls of the stairwell. We both knew they’d been there since 1919, when the Freikorps had taken the Alex back by force from the left-wing Spartakists. It was a very German occasion. “If you’re not careful, you’re going to spend the rest of your life dead.” He smiled. “So, what’s the story?”

“No story. Not in this town, anyway. A Nazi thug took a potshot at me, that’s all.”

“Any idea why?”

“I figured it was because I’m not a Nazi,” I said. “But maybe you can tell me.”

“Erich Hoppner. Yes. I checked him out. It doesn’t look particularly political, since you mention it.”

“How can you tell?”

“You’re not KPD. He wasn’t SA.”

“But he was a Nazi Party member.”

“Lots of people are party members, Bernie. In case you hadn’t noticed. At the last count, there were eleven and a half million people who voted for the party. No, I’d say this has more to do with what happened to Ricci Kamm. The Roast is in the heart of Always True territory. You were asking for trouble going in there.”

“At the time I had the quaint idea I might be preventing it. Trouble, I mean. That’s what we cops call it when a real person gets murdered. Not some thug with an ideology.”

“For the record,” said Nebe, “and between you and me, I don’t like the Nazis. It’s just that I like the Communists a little less. The way I see it, it’s going to come down to a choice between them and the Reds.”

“Whatever you say, Arthur. All I know is that it’s not the Reds who have been threatening me. Telling me to lay off the Schwarz case so we can spare the feelings of Josef Goebbels’s crummy foot. It’s the Nazis.”

“Oh? Who, in particular?”

“Rudolf Diels.”

“He’s Fat Hermann’s man, not Joey’s.”

“They’re all the same bastard to me, Arthur.”

“Anything else you want to tell me? About the Schwarz case, I mean. How’s that coming along?”

I smiled bitterly. “A murder investigation works like this, Arthur. Sometimes the worst has to happen first, before you can hope for the best.”

“Like another murder, you mean?”

I nodded.

Nebe was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I can understand that. Anyone can. Even you.”

“Me? What do you mean, Arthur?”

“Sometimes the worst has to happen before you can hope for the best? That’s the only reason anyone is going to vote for the Nazis.”

LOOKING UP from his typewriter, Heinrich Grund could hardly conceal his disgust. “There’s some Jew looking for you,” he said, as I returned to my desk.

“Really? Did this Jew have a name?”

“Commissar Paul Herzefelde. From Munich.” He uttered the name with sneering lip and wrinkled nose, as if describing something on the sole of his shoe.

“And where is the commissar now?”

Grund pointed into the air above our heads. “The Excelsior,” he said.

The Alex had once been a barracks for the Prussian police, and the Excelsior was what cops called that part of the building that still existed to accommodate policemen who were working late or who were visiting Berlin from outside the city.

“They won’t like it,” said Grund.

“Who won’t like what?”

“The other lads. In the Excelsior. They won’t like having to share their quarters with a Jew.”

I shook my head wearily. “Doesn’t your mouth hurt sometimes? On account of the nasty things that come out of it. The man’s a brother police officer, for Christ’s sake.”

“For Christ’s sake?” Grund looked skeptical. “For Christ’s sake, his kind did nothing. That’s the point, isn’t it? The Jews wouldn’t be in the spot they’re in now if they’d recognized our Lord for what he was.”

“Heinrich? You’re the kind of rotten cop that gives rotten cops a bad name.” I thought of something Nebe had said, and borrowed it. “And it’s not that I love Jews. It’s that I love anti-Semites just that little bit less.”

I went upstairs to find Herzefelde. After Heinrich Grund’s bigotry, I didn’t know what sort of man I expected to meet. It wasn’t that I was expecting to see a cop with a phylactery strapped to his forehead and a prayer shawl wrapped around his shoulders. Just that Paul Herzefelde wasn’t what I was expecting. I suppose I thought he might look a bit more like Izzy Weiss. Instead he looked more like a film star. Well over six feet tall, he was a handsome man with gray, wiry hair and thick, dark eyebrows. His hard, shiny, suntanned face looked as if it had been made by a diamond-cutter. Paul Herzefelde had as much in common with the swarthy fat Jew wearing a top hat and coattails beloved of Nazi caricaturists as Hitler had in common with Paul von Hindenburg.

“Are you Commissar Herzefelde?”

The man nodded. “And you are…?”

“Commissar Gunther. Welcome to Berlin.”

“Not so as I noticed.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“Skip it. To be honest with you, Munich is a hell of a lot worse.”

“Then I’m glad I don’t live in Munich.”

“It has its moments. Especially if you like a beer.”

“The beer’s pretty good in Berlin, too, you know.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Then how about we go have one and you can find out?”

“I thought you’d never ask, copper.”

We went to the Zum Pralaten, in the arches of the S-Bahn station. It was a good place to drink beer, and popular with cops from the Alex. About every ten minutes a train passed overhead, and since there was no point in saying anything while this was happening, you could give your mouth a rest and concentrate on the beer.

“So what brings you to Berlin?”

“Bernard Weiss. We kike cops have to stick together. We were thinking of starting our own yid union. Trouble is, with so many Jewish cops, it’s knowing where to begin.”

“I can imagine. Actually, Berlin’s not so bad. The Reds do better here than the Nazis. Thalmann got twenty-nine percent in the last election compared to Hitler’s twenty-three.”

Herzefelde shook his head. “Unfortunately, Berlin is not Germany. I don’t know how things are for Jews in this town, but in the south they can be pretty rough. Back home in Munich, there’s hardly a day passes when I don’t get some kind of death threat.” He swallowed some beer and nodded his appreciation. “As a matter of fact, that’s why I was speaking to Weiss. I’ve been thinking of moving here, with my family.”

“You mean, be a cop? Here in Berlin?”

Herzefelde smiled. “Weiss was similarly appalled. It looks like I’m going to have to consider my plan B. Something that’s got nothing to do with government.”

“I’ve been sort of looking around myself.”

“You? But you’re not a Jew, are you?”

“No. I’m SDP. Iron Front. A Weimar diehard who dislikes the Nazis.”

Herzefelde raised his glass and toasted me. “Then here’s to you, comrade.”

“So, do you have a plan B yet?”

“Thought I might go private.”

“Here in Berlin?”

“Sure. Why not? If the Nazis get in, I’ve a feeling there’s going to be a lot of missing-persons work.”

“Me, I’ve been offered a job at the Adlon Hotel. House detective.”

“Sounds nice.” He lit a cigarette. “Going to take it?”

“I thought I’d wait and see what happens in the election.”

“You want my advice?”

“Sure.”

“If you can, stay in the force. Jews, liberals, Communists are going to have need of friendly policemen like you.”

“I’ll bear it in mind.”

“You’ll be doing everyone a favor. God only knows what the police will be like if everyone in it is a lousy Nazi.”