Philip Kerr - Prague Fatale

I pushed Kuttner onto his back again and stood up.

‘Show me where you found that shell case.’

Kahlo led the way out of Kuttner’s bedroom and in the corridor outside he pointed to a box of matches on the floor that he’d used to mark the spot where he’d discovered the shell casing.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘You cut along to the Morning Room and make it look as much like an interview room as possible. On second thought, no. Leave it as it is. But we’ll need pencils and paper, a jug of water, some liquor, some glasses, a fresh pot of coffee every hour, a telephone, some cigarettes, and a typewriter.’

‘Yes, boss.’

‘And tell Doctor Honek that the ambulance men can remove the body to the hospital. And have him arrange an autopsy, will you? Today, if possible.’

‘Yes, boss.’

I glanced back to Kuttner’s door, about twenty metres away, and once Kahlo had gone, dropped onto my hands and knees and made my way slowly along the corridor. After a few minutes a door opened and out of a bedroom stepped the only officer in the Lower Castle who wasn’t a member of the SS or the SD. He was wearing the uniform of a major in the German Army.

‘You look how I feel,’ he observed.

‘Hmmm?’

‘Last night. I drank far too much. But on top of all that there was the champagne, which never agrees with me at the best of times. Still, under the circumstances I didn’t want to turn it down. We were celebrating after all, weren’t we? All the same I do regret it now. Woke up with a bit of a head this morning. I felt like I wanted to curl up and die.’

‘You have to be alive to feel like that, I suppose.’

‘What’s that? Oh, yes. I heard one of the adjutants got Stalin’s greatcoat. A terrible business.’

Stalin’s greatcoat was a coffin.

‘Which one was he? All of these adjutant fellows sort of look the same to me.’

I found what I was looking for: the second shell casing. I stood up and found myself facing a man of about the same age as me.

‘Captain Kuttner.’

He shook his head as if he couldn’t remember him. ‘And you’re the detective fellow, from Berlin, aren’t you? Gunther, isn’t it?’

‘That’s correct, sir.’

‘I suppose that accounts for why you’re crawling around the place on your hands and knees.’

‘I do quite a lot of that anyway, sir. Even when I’m not hunting for evidence. I like to drink, you see, sir. That is, when I can get it.’

‘There’s no shortage of it here, Gunther. If this keeps up I shall need a new liver. Major Paul Thummel, at your service. If there’s anything I can do to help, just let me know. Major Ploetz says that you want to interview everyone who was staying here last night. Fine by me. Just say when. Always glad to help the police.’

I pocketed the little shell casing. ‘Thank you, sir. Perhaps we could speak later on. I’ll have Captain Pomme contact you to arrange a time.’

‘Sooner the better, old man. Ploetz says that none of us can leave the house until we’ve given a statement. Frankly it all sounds a bit excessive. After all, it’s not like any of us is going to run away, is it?’

‘I think it has rather more to do with remembering details that might seem unimportant anywhere else. In my experience, it’s always better if you can interview witnesses as close to the crime scene as possible.’

‘Well, you know your job, I suppose. Just don’t interview people in alphabetical order that’s all. You’ll find that puts me last, I think.’

‘I’ll certainly bear that in mind, sir.’

Investigating the murder of one young SD officer who had almost certainly participated in the murders of hundreds, perhaps thousands of Latvian Jews, Gypsies and ‘other undesirables’ struck me as absurd, of course. A mass murderer who’d been murdered. What was wrong with that? But how many had I killed myself? There were the forty or fifty Russian POWs I knew about for sure — nearly all of them members of an NKVD death squad. I’d commanded the firing squad and delivered the coup de grace to at least ten of them as they lay groaning on the ground. Their blood and brains had been spattered all over my boots. During the Great War there had been a Canadian boy I’d put the bayonet into when it was him or me, only he’d died hard, with his head on my shoulder. God knows how many others I’d killed when, another time, I’d taken over a Maxim gun and squeezed the trigger as I pointed it at some brown figures advancing slowly over No Man’s Land.

But it seemed that Albert Kuttner’s death mattered because he’d been a German officer and a close colleague of General Heydrich’s. That was supposed to make a difference, only it didn’t. At least not to me. Investigating a murder in the autumn of 1941 was like arresting a man for vagrancy during the Great Depression. But I did what I was told and started to go through the motions the way a proper policeman would have done. What choice did I have? Besides, it kept my mind off what I knew was happening out there, in the East. Most of all it kept my mind off the growing sense that I’d been to the worst place on the planet only to realize that the worst place of all was inside me.

‘I’ve prepared a list of everyone who stayed at the Lower Castle last night and therefore who you will want to interview,’ said Major Ploetz.

He handed me a sheet of neatly typed, headed notepaper.

‘Thank you, Major.’

We were in the Morning Room. With its greenish silk Chinoise wallpaper, the room felt like an extension of the garden and a little more natural than the rest of the house. There were a couple of big sofas facing each other like very fat chess-players across a polished wooden coffee-table. In the window was a grand piano and in the fireplace there was a fire that cheered the room. Either side of the marble fireplace was a mosaic of picture frames featuring Heydrich and his family. Kahlo was inspecting these, one at a time, as if looking to judge a winner. Now wearing my civilian clothes, I was seated on one of the sofas, smoking a cigarette.

‘Here is your mail, Commissar, forwarded from the Alex in Berlin. And here is a copy of Albert Kuttner’s SD personnel file. The General thought it might help you to get a better sense of the man and what he was like and — you never know — perhaps why he was killed. The personnel files of everyone staying here this weekend are being sent over from Hradschin Castle this morning.’

‘That’s very efficient of you, Major.’

It was easy to see why Ploetz was Heydrich’s Chief Adjutant. There was no doubting his efficiency. With his lists and memoranda and facts and figures Achim Ploetz was a real electric Nazi. Before the war I’d been to a town called Achim. It was near Bremen in a nice part of the country that, in its natural state, is mostly moorland. But there was nothing natural about Achim Ploetz, and in that respect at least, Doctor Jury was right: all of Heydrich’s adjutants were a bit like the golem of Prague.

Outside the Morning Room window a Mercedes drew up and Heydrich’s driver got out and opened the passenger door expectantly.

Ploetz saw him out of the corner of his eye.

‘Well, I’d better go and tell the General that our car is here,’ he said. ‘If there is anything you want, just ask Pomme.’

‘Yes. I will.’

Then he was gone and Kahlo and I were standing at the window peering around the heavy drapes like two comedians getting ready to take a curtain call. The convertible’s top was down and the engine was purring smoothly like some green metal dragon. Ploetz climbed aboard first and sat in the rear. Heydrich sat up front with the driver as if that might help him to control the car despite the fact someone else was at the wheel. He was just like that, I guess. As we watched them drive away there was no sign of an armed escort.