Philip Kerr - The Lady from Zagreb

“Oh, it’s you,” he said, as if we’d seen each other only the day before. In fact it had been all of six years.

“You look well, Herr Minoux.”

Minoux snorted. “I’m afraid that even a witch with good eyes would think this particular Hansel was much too thin to eat. But it’s kind of you to say so. However, I shouldn’t complain. There are some here—” He paused and seemed momentarily choked with emotion. “They’re executing Siegfried Gohl this morning. A Christadelphian conscientious objector.” He shook his head. “We live with that kind of thing every day.”

Minoux took a deep breath and then a cigarette from the case I’d pushed across the table. He lit one and inhaled it gratefully. I didn’t like to tell him that the cigarette he was smoking had been stolen from his own silver cigarette box at Villa Minoux.

“I brought you breakfast,” I said, handing him a paper bag that had already been searched by the guard. “Since I was coming here to see you I thought I’d save Herr Gantner a trip.”

“Thanks. I’ll save this for later, when I can take the time to enjoy it. You’ve no idea how long I can make breakfast last. Sometimes until supper.”

“But the main reason I came to see you today was to tell you that Dr. Heckholz is dead. Someone went to his office last night and bashed his head in.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that.”

“It was me who found him, actually. I was hoping you might shed some more light on exactly what he was up to. I mean, I have a rough idea, but I assumed you could tell me more than I already know, which isn’t much, really. In the circumstances I’d rather not contact your wife. The police don’t know of her involvement and I think it’s best we keep it that way. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Friedrich Minoux shrugged. “Why ask me?”

“Have I missed something here? I’d somehow formed the impression that their efforts were directed to getting you out of this place. In which case anything you can tell me—”

“I don’t know what you expect from me. I certainly never hired Heckholz. How could I? I have no money. Everything I had has been swallowed up in fines and legal bills and compensating Berlin Gas.”

“Really? He told me that you did hire him.”

“Then I’m also sorry to say that he lied.”

“And is your wife a liar, too?”

“I’m afraid that’s for you to decide. Whatever my wife might have hired him for was done entirely without my knowledge. But that shouldn’t be a surprise to you, of all people, given our history together. Lilly and I were never very close, as I’m sure you will remember. She’s her own woman, with her own money and her own selfish agenda. It’s fine for her to stir these things up while she lives in luxury in Garmisch. But she gave absolutely no thought to how her actions might impact upon me while I remain in prison. None whatsoever. Nor did I in any way sanction bringing you into this matter. That was as unwise as it was precipitate. Look here, I’m sorry you’ve had a wasted journey from Berlin but let me make something quite clear to you, Herr Gunther. I have absolutely no interest in contesting the verdict of the court. Or for that matter in disputing the terms of sale of the Villa Minoux at Wannsee to the Nordhav Foundation. I was properly convicted of defrauding the Berlin Gas Company and the sentence could have been a lot heavier. And I received a very fair price for the Villa Minoux. Now, is all that absolutely clear to you?”

He was trying to sound tough but his hands were shaking and the cigarette he had been smoking was now lying neglected in the little tinfoil ashtray. No one ever leaves a cigarette unfinished when they’re in the cement.

“Crystal clear, Herr Minoux.”

He stood up and knocked on the door to summon the guard.

“And please. Without meaning to sound rude, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t come here again. Not ever. You being here, stirring things up that don’t need to be stirred up, might count against my chance of parole. The governor is obliged to keep a record of all my visitors, even the ones I didn’t invite.”

I collected my cigarette case off the table, dropped it into my pocket, and nodded my dumb assent. And then without another word he was gone into the echoing gray void that was Brandenburg-Görden. I couldn’t find it within me to feel angry with him. He was scared, I could see that. In a place like that, I’d have been scared myself.

The deputy prison governor was an ex-cop from the Alex named Ernst Kracauer. He’d been a lawyer and then a Schupo commissar for twenty years, and although he was a die-hard Nazi, he had the reputation of being hard but fair, if such a thing is possible in a place like that. I went to see him in his office and waited alone for him to return from one of his many duties. A rolltop was up against the yellow wall and a partners desk by the window; on this was an oak and brass inkwell set that looked more like a Habsburg coffin, and hanging on the wall, a Tiergarten scene of a Wilhelmine family by a bandstand; in my mind’s eye they were probably listening to “The Song of Krumme Lanke.” The dusty office window was as big as a church triptych but the room still needed the piano desk lamp to see through the gloom. Outside, some prisoners were tending a large vegetable patch, which boasted a scarecrow but that might have been another prisoner.

When Kracauer returned I greeted him affably, but he said nothing; instead he removed his pince-nez, fetched a bottle from a cupboard in the rolltop, poured two glasses of brandy and handed me one, silently. The jacket of his gray suit looked more like the curtain in front of a crime scene than anything a tailor might have made. He was overweight and clearly under pressure but not as much as the mahogany chair behind the partners desk that creaked ominously when he sat down.

“I need this,” he said, and tossed the brandy down his throat like it was a fruit cordial.

“I can tell.”

“Part of my duties here are to attend executions. Right now that’s one every day. Sometimes more. You’d think I’d be used to it by now. But I don’t think one can ever get used to it.”

“Siegfried Gohl.”

“My nerves are as tight as the strings on a zither. What the hell is a Christadelphian, anyway?”

“Brothers in Christ, I imagine. I think they don’t believe in the immortality of the soul.” I sipped the brandy. It tasted better than my breakfast.

“Then in that respect they’re just like the Nazis.” He shook his head. “I mean if the Nazis believed in the immortality of a soul — in a heaven and in a hell — then—” He shrugged.

“They couldn’t do what they do,” I offered.

“Yes.” He poured another for himself as if the idea of meeting his maker was troubling him.

We talked old times for several minutes and he even managed a smile when he told me that for obvious reasons the prisoners called him “the Pole,” but I wasn’t fooled; clearly the man had learned to hate his job.

“You see that telephone,” he said, pointing to one of two telephones that stood on his desk. “It’s connected to Franz Schlegelberger’s office.”

Schlegelberger was the latest Reich Minister of Justice.

“He’s going to retire soon, I believe. Otto Thierack is to be the new minister. Not that Schlegelberger’s been in the job for very long. Anyway, that telephone is supposed to ring if a death sentence is ever commuted to life imprisonment. But in all the years I’ve been here it’s rung just once, and that was someone who thought this was the Schwarzer Adler Hotel.” He laughed. “Christ, I wish it was.”

“You’re not alone in that wish, I shouldn’t wonder.”