Philip Kerr - Prague Fatale

‘I’ll always love you,’ I said, for effect.

‘And I love you, too.’

I nodded. ‘All right. Let’s go and find some dinner.’

I couldn’t sleep that night, but Arianne had very little to do with that, although she didn’t sleep well either. Sometime before dawn I must have slept a little because I dreamed I had returned to an almost preternatural time and place that was before the Nazis. But this was a recurring dream for me.

We made a desultory attempt at intimacy but our spirits were not in it, hers even less than mine. We washed and dressed and ate some breakfast in the mosaic cafe downstairs. She seemed depressed and spoke very little, almost as if she was already on the train back to Berlin; but then again, I wasn’t exactly gabby myself.

‘You seem very quiet this morning,’ she said.

‘I was thinking the same of you.’

‘Me? I’m fine.’ She sounded defensive. ‘I didn’t sleep very well.’

‘You can sleep on the train.’

‘Yes. Perhaps I will.’

Pushing aside the salt and pepper cellars, I tried to take her hand but she pulled it away.

‘Don’t pretend, Bernie. You look like you can’t wait to get rid of me.’

‘Let’s not go over this again, Arianne.’

‘As you like.’

We walked toward the elevator. The boy opened the double doors to admit us to his little vertical world, but just as I was about to follow Arianne inside the hotel clerk appeared in front of us and handed me a sealed envelope. As the car groaned its way up the shaft I read the note that it contained.

‘What is it?’ asked Arianne.

‘I just lost my ride to the Jungfern-Breschan.’

She frowned.

‘Oh? Why?’

‘Heydrich reminding me who’s boss, probably.’

‘You mean you’ve got no car?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Well, how will you get there? It’s fourteen kilometres.’

‘Apparently I will have to walk over to Hradschin Castle and beg a lift there.’

The elevator car arrived on the top floor, where we got out.

‘That’s quite a walk from here,’ she said. ‘To the castle. I did it yesterday. At least forty minutes. Maybe more. You should telephone them and make them send a car.’ She smiled uncertainly. ‘Then you could spend some more time with me.’

I shook my head. ‘Believe me, I’m in no hurry to get there. Besides, it’s a nice day. And the walk will do me good. It will give me some time to think. Now I can see you off at the station.’

‘Yes. That would be lovely.’

On our way along the floor she went into the bathroom; and I went back to the room. I lit a cigarette and lay down on the bed and waited for her.

Arianne was quite a while, although this wasn’t unusual. She was always well dressed and well groomed, which was one of the reasons I liked her. There’s something very sexy about disassembling something that has taken so long to put together: belt, dress, shoes, suspenders, corselette, brassiere, stockings, panties. But when she returned after at least fifteen minutes, she seemed even stiffer than before, as if the paint she had applied to her lovely face was meant not just to enhance her beauty but also to cover her true feelings.

‘Actually,’ she said, a little breathlessly, as she came through the door, ‘I’d rather you didn’t come to the station if you don’t mind. I’ve just done my make-up and I know I’ll cry if you’re standing on the platform waving goodbye. So, if you don’t mind, darling, let me go on my own. It’s only five minutes’ walk. My bag isn’t heavy. And I can manage perfectly well on my own.’

I didn’t protest. Clearly her mind was made up.

And that was it. When I walked out of the hotel and turned right and west to walk to the Charles Bridge and the Castle that lay beyond it, I never expected to see Arianne Tauber again, and it was as if a great load had been lifted off my shoulders. I felt if not carefree then certainly a profound sense of liberation. Strange how wrong we can be about so much. Being a detective, even a bad one, I should have been used to that: being wrong is an important part of being right, and only time can tell which it turns out to be.

In the Old Town Square, I took a moment to remind myself of that. A few tourists, mostly off-duty German soldiers, had assembled in front of the town hall’s astronomical clock to witness the hourly medieval morality lesson involving Vanity, Delight, Greed and Death which took place in two little windows above the elaborate astrolabe. The off-duty soldiers took lots of photographs of the clockwork figures and checked their wristwatches, but none of them looked like they were learning much. That’s the thing about morality lessons. Nobody ever learns anything. We were face to face with the past, but none of us seemed to understand that we were also face to face with an allegory of our future.

I got back to the Lower Castle at around ten o’clock and found Kurt Kahlo waiting patiently for me in the Morning Room.

‘Captain Kluckholn was just here,’ he said.

‘What did he want?’

He handed me a sheet of paper.

‘It’s a list of Kuttner’s personal effects,’ he said. ‘Apparently these are available for our inspection in Major Ploetz’s office.’

I glanced over the list.

Kahlo handed me a brown envelope and, smiling, shook his head.

‘He’s also given us two tickets each for the circus next Wednesday evening.’

‘The circus? What the hell for?’

Kahlo nodded. ‘Prague’s Crown Circus. I hear it’s very good. Everyone’s invited. Even me. It’s an outing for the SD and the SS and the Gestapo. Isn’t that nice? Mr and Mrs Heydrich are going. And so are Mr and Mrs Frank. Apparently your lady friend, Fraulein Tauber, is also invited. Whoever she is. I didn’t even know you had a lady friend here in Prague.’

‘I don’t. Not any more. Right now she’s on a train back to Berlin.’

‘God, I wish I was.’

‘Me too.’

‘Now I understand why you wanted to get away last night. At the time I thought you were headed for the Pension Matzky.’

‘You know about that, do you?’

‘More than you might think. A mate of mine in the local vice squad had to interview the girls. Heydrich set the place up even before he became Reichsprotector.’

‘He never struck me as the type to pimp for his fellow officers.’

‘Oh, he’s not. The place is a honey trap. It’s equipped with listening devices so that he can eavesdrop on important Czechos or the top brass when they come down from Berlin. My mate reckons he’s blackmailing half of the General Staff. Apparently he’s got a similar place planned in Berlin. In Geisebrechtstrasse. If I were you, sir, I’d keep away from both.’

‘Thanks for the tip. I think I will.’

‘Don’t mention it.’

‘Anything else?’

There was a second envelope in Kahlo’s hand. He handed it over. In the envelope was a letter from Geert Vranken’s father in the Netherlands, thanking me for contacting his daughter-in-law — she was too upset to write herself — and for informing them of his son’s ‘accident’; he also asked me to keep him informed of exactly when and where his son’s remains were eventually interred.

‘News from home?’

‘Not exactly.’ I put the letter and the circus tickets in my pocket. ‘Who’s our next witness?’

‘Brigadier Bernard Voss.’

‘Remind me who he is.’

‘In charge of the SS Officer School at Beneschau. And everything you’d expect from the commandant of an officer training school: a real stiff prick. Very probably you could use some uglier words than that. Especially if you’re a Czech. In November 1939 some students from the local university organized a demonstration during which Frank’s driver was injured. He shouldn’t have been there at all, but that’s another story. Anyway, twelve hundred students were arrested and Voss commanded the firing squads that shot several of them. As an example to the rest.’