Philip Kerr - The Lady from Zagreb

“Don’t stop,” she whispered as my mouth and fingers took their cue from her very visible pleasure.

I had no intention of stopping, not even when, long behind her, I had finished and was little more than a pelvis pushing spasmodically at the space between her thighs like the last pumps of a dying heart as it attempted to delay the inevitability of our separation.

We lay awhile without moving at all. And finally she said, “Your face looks like a stoplight. What happened to your nose?”

“A wasp stung me.”

Dalia did her best to suppress a giggle. “Does it hurt?”

“Now you’re here, I don’t feel any pain at all.”

“Good. I thought maybe someone had hit you.”

“Who would want to do a thing like that?”

“I can think of someone.”

“Your husband, I suppose. I was afraid he was going to stop you from coming.”

“You were right to worry. I nearly didn’t get here at all. Stefan took my car. His Rolls-Royce is in the shop. Or so he says.”

“How did you get here?”

“I have a motorboat moored to the jetty right outside.”

“I never thought of that.”

“Everyone in and around Zurich has a boat somewhere. That’s the main point of living here. I love boats. As a matter of fact, I’m rather glad that I had to take the boat today. There is roadwork on Seestrasse and the boat was certainly quicker than the car. Less than half an hour. Besides, the lake is lovely at this time of year. The water is a lot smoother than the road right now.”

She kissed me fondly on the head, pushed me firmly back on the bed, and then kissed me on the chest and the belly before taking me in her mouth to “clean me up,” as she put it. I’ve never enjoyed feeling I needed cleaning quite so much.

“I missed you,” she said when she’d finished.

“I missed you, too, angel.”

“I would have come last night, too, but I couldn’t get away. Someone from the polytechnic came to dinner. To talk about my mathematics course. It seems that I can start in September, just as long as I pass the entrance exam. Although to see if I was equal to that he did ask me if I could add together all of the numbers between one and one hundred in my head. It’s actually quite simple. All you have to do is add the numbers in pairs — the first and the last, the second and the second to last, and so on, and what you quickly realize is that you just get fifty lots of one hundred and one, which is five thousand and fifty.”

“There’s no need to explain. I mean about you staying here in Switzerland. Not the maths. I get a headache just listening to all that. It’s as much as I can do to add two plus two and make five.”

“I hate to tell you, but two plus two makes four.”

“Not in Germany. Two plus two makes five is simple Nazi arithmetic as described by your friend Josef. Which reminds me. No one gets handed brains and beauty these days. He certainly didn’t. So which line were you in when you were born?”

“Two plus two equals five isn’t a sum. It’s a prayer for a miracle. Dear Lord, grant that this be so. It’s a little like you and me, don’t you think?” She smiled, without artifice, and kissed my shoulder. “So. What did you do last night? Without me.”

“I met up with the local police inspector. A fellow named Leuenberger. And the man who owns Wolfsberg Castle — the fellow I told you about.”

“The detective writer.”

“Yes. Paul Meyer-Schwertenbach. He’s a friend of the inspector’s.”

“Good gracious, has there been a crime in Rapperswil? You astound me.”

“Not exactly. No, we had dinner at the Schwanen Hotel, next door.”

“I think I prefer this place. In fact, I never want to leave this room. We’ll stay here forever, shall we? And you can make love to me every day.”

“I’d like that, too.”

“What did you talk about? You and your two friends?”

“I think Meyer wants me to help him write a book about an old murder case. The Lady in the Lake , he calls it. A couple of years ago, some woman was found murdered in a boat that was deliberately sunk in the Obersee not very far from here. As a matter of fact, he was a real bore about it.”

“Deliberately? How could they tell something like that? I mean, boats sink, don’t they? I should know, I’ve sunk a few myself.”

“From the fact that the planks in the hull looked like Swiss cheese. The murderer even left his drill in there.”

“I do remember that case,” she said. “It was in all the Swiss newspapers, wasn’t it?”

I nodded. “Anyway, the police are thinking of reopening it.”

“Has there been some new evidence?”

“No.” I sighed.

“Why the long face?”

“Because I behaved badly, last night — the way I taunted that policeman. I don’t think he’s the complete idiot I tried to make him feel he was. I don’t know, maybe I drank too much. These days, back in Berlin, I don’t often get the chance. To drink, I mean. Anyway, it’s all a waste of time, if you ask me. They still don’t even know who she was. Although she was wearing a big diamond, which is obviously the key to everything. They may not know who she was but I’m damned sure they could identify that Schmuck on her finger.”

Dalia nodded. “I love you,” she said. “I suppose you do know that.”

“And I love you, angel.”

“Can you please stay here in Switzerland? Forever?”

“I would but I don’t think the Swiss would like it. In fact, I’m sure of it. And there’s another thing. If I don’t go back, the Nazis will probably make things very difficult for my wife. That’s the only reason anyone ever goes back to Germany these days. If someone else is likely to suffer for it if they don’t.”

“Oh, yes. I’d forgotten about her. The wife you say you had to marry to keep her out of the clutches of the Gestapo. Kirsten, wasn’t it? I’m very jealous of her.”

“There’s no need to be. I’m not in love with her. You might almost say it was a marriage of convenience.”

“That’s not what I’m jealous about, dear love. I’m jealous that you couldn’t do something as noble as that for me. Nobody has ever done something as noble as that for me. Someone should knight you for it. Or give you a medal. An Iron Cross on a nice ribbon. Or whatever it is they give you for acts as selfless as that.”

“I don’t know that it was quite as selfless as you seem to think,” I admitted. “If I hadn’t married her, Goebbels would never have let me come to Switzerland to see you.”

“Yes, I see what you mean.” She hit me on the arm. “You’ve spoiled it now.”

“How?”

“By telling me that. I much prefer to think of you as doing something noble.”

“I’m not much good at being noble,” I said. “Frankly, there’s not a lot of call for it these days. Not in Germany.”

“There is as far as I’m concerned. And I really think you’re selling yourself short. I think you’re every bit as noble as one of those crusading Teutonic knights of medieval history. What was their motto again? ‘Help, Defend, Heal.’ That’s you in a nutshell, Gunther. You’ll have your work cut out doing all that when I come back to Berlin again.”

“I thought you were staying here to learn how to be Carl Friedrich Gauss.”

“Oh, I expect you’ll think me terribly capricious but I have a strong sense that if I stay here, Stefan is going to get even more difficult than he is already. Lately he’s become much more possessive. Not to say unconscionably jealous. Which wasn’t our arrangement at all. I’m sure there’s absolutely nothing wrong with his damn car. I think he was just looking for an excuse to take mine so I couldn’t go anywhere today. The fact is, I’m beginning to think that Goebbels might be easier to handle. After all, he’s a lot smaller. And at least he’s got other things on his plate. Like winning an unwinnable war. Besides, there’s bound to be another actress before very long. One he likes better than me. With any luck I can even procure one for him. In fact, I think I know just the girl.”