Philip Kerr - Prague Fatale

‘Excellent. You’re almost there.’

Heydrich lit a cigarette and looked very amused, as if I was telling him a very funny story. It made me suspect that he had a better punch-line than the one I had written myself. But I was in too far now to stop.

‘Everything you do has a reason, doesn’t it, General? Whether it’s murdering Jews or murdering your own adjutant.’

Heydrich shook his head. ‘Don’t get sidetracked,’ he said. ‘Keep to the point.’

‘But why have me investigate the murder? At first I assumed it was because you thought I wasn’t up to the job; that you wanted me to screw up; but that was too obvious. You could have picked anyone for the job. Willy Abendschoen from the local Kripo is a good man, I hear. Clever. Efficient. Or you could have picked someone more pliable than either of us. Unless of course that was exactly what you wanted. Someone who doesn’t care about his future in the SD. Someone who is just pig-headed enough to ask the difficult questions that the cauliflowers might not care to answer. Someone for whom advancement and promotion is not an issue. Me. Yes, that must be it. You picked me to handle the investigation of Kuttner’s murder because you really wanted me to search for your spy. You used the murder of Kuttner as a pretext for a secret spy hunt.’

‘Now you’re on to it,’ said Heydrich.

‘You couldn’t risk some flat-footed idiot questioning all of your spy suspects about being the traitor X, or A54, or whatever he’s called; not without putting them on their guard. But if I questioned them all about something else, something serious that necessitated their being detained here, then all of them might relax, more or less, since each knew he was innocent of murder. And of course my conversations with them were being recorded, transcribed, picked over by your own SD analysts for something small, an inconsistency, perhaps. A clue. Real evidence. You didn’t know exactly what it was, but you thought you would recognize it when you saw it. And you’re right. That’s all a clue really is. I have to hand it you, sir; it’s clever. Utterly ruthless, but clever.’

Heydrich clapped his hands three times. To me it sounded almost ironic, but there was it seemed some genuine appreciation in his congratulations.

‘Well done. I underestimated you, Gunther. I’ve always assumed that as a policeman you were the more muscular type. Tough, resourceful, and irritatingly dogged, but hardly intellectual. It seems I was wrong about that. You have a much better brain than I gave you credit for. I had hoped you might uncover the spy, it’s true. But I did not expect you would also solve the murder. That has been a real bonus. But now I really am intrigued. I want to know. I must have made a mistake. Exactly how did you conclude that it was me who shot Captain Kuttner?’

‘Sorry to disappoint you. It wasn’t anything clever, at all.’

‘Oh, come on. You’re being unnecessarily modest.’

‘Actually you told me yourself. Just a few minutes ago. Only I and the doctor who carried out the autopsy knew that Kuttner had been shot twice. Even Jury didn’t notice that. And I kept it secret in the hope that eventually the real killer would mention two shots when everyone else believes that it was just the one shot that killed him.’

Heydrich frowned. ‘Is that all?’

To my delight he sounded disappointed.

‘What else is there? I’m not one for crossword puzzles, General. Or detective novels. Actually I really can’t stand them. Me, I’m just a plain, old-fashioned cop. And you described me rather well a moment ago when you said I was irritatingly dogged. I don’t have the better brain you gave me credit for. These days I wouldn’t know what to do with it. You see, sir, most murders aren’t complicated. People just think they are. The same goes for the detection process. There are no great scenes of revelation. There’s just the small stuff. And that’s where I come in. Really, if detective work was as difficult as it seems in the books, then they wouldn’t let cops do it.’

‘Yes, I take your point.’ Heydrich sighed. ‘But now I have another question. And perhaps you should answer this one more carefully.’

I nodded.

‘What do you think you’re going to do about it?’

I didn’t answer. I didn’t know. What could I do against a man of Heydrich’s standing and authority?

‘What I mean is: are you intending to try to arrest me, perhaps? To make a scene.’

‘You murdered someone, General.’

‘You’re right, of course. And I did regret having rescued Kuttner’s career. I could have lived with his behaviour in and after Latvia. What happened to him there is by no means unusual — which is of course why Reichsmarshal Goring has charged me with finding a better solution to this problem. I could even have lived with his behaviour to Colonel Jacobi. The two of them have some history, it seems; however, Jacobi is a prick and frankly anyone who gets the better of that man is to be admired rather than condemned.

‘But I was shocked when Berlin’s Gestapo informed me that my own adjutant was probably homosexual. Not that he was very obvious about it; indeed I was so sceptical that I sent him along to Pension Matzky, where I’m afraid to say he disgraced himself with a girl called Grete. When he failed to perform with her, unfortunately she mocked his inadequacy and earned herself a beating. He was very apologetic about it afterwards; he even sent her some flowers by way of compensation; most bizarrely he then seems to have adopted an entirely opposite opinion of the poor girl and decided that he felt some romantic attachment for her. I’m sure there are medical explanations for his mental state. But if there are, I have no time for them. That was when I decided to get rid of him. I dislike men who are violent to women almost as much as I dislike men who are unreliable.

‘Anyway, if I had sent him back to Berlin in disgrace it wouldn’t have been long before he disgraced himself again and, more importantly, disgraced his family in Halle. I couldn’t have that. I am very fond of those people. Fond enough to want to spare them any further pain. So I thought it was better for him to be quietly murdered by me in a way that can be easily hushed up rather than allow his family to endure the public disgrace that would follow his being sentenced to some SS punishment battalion. Indeed, it already seems to me much more probable that at some stage in the hopefully not too distant future Captain Kuttner will become an unfortunate victim of Vaclav Moravek, and heroically shot by him while trying to assist in the Czech terrorist’s arrest. We may even have to award him a posthumous decoration. That’s a story that should play well at home, don’t you think?’

‘Why not? He is as good a Nazi hero as any others I can think of.’

Heydrich smirked. ‘Yes, I thought you might approve. You were wrong about one thing, however. I couldn’t ever have risked wasting so much time searching for my spent brass on the floor of Kuttner’s room. So, I had the gun inside a sock, so that it could be fired without any of the spent brass being ejected onto the floor or the bed. It all stayed safely inside the sock. Until as you say, I threw it into the corridor. Anyway, having decided to kill him — it was as you say The Murder of Roger Ackroyd that gave me the idea of how to do it — I then wondered if I might put his death to some useful purpose. If I could rely on you to be your usual awkward self and pose a lot of awkward questions to people like Henlein, Frank, von Eberstein, Hildebrandt, Thummel and von Neurath, whom we’ve had our doubts about for some time. And you came up trumps. Nothing you’ve said can spoil what I’m feeling now. And you’ll no doubt be pleased to discover that you will have advanced my reputation even further. The apprehension of the traitor X will put me in very good odour with the Leader. Ever since the invasion of Poland, the traitor has been a thorn in our side. No more. And my triumph will be complete just as soon as the third of the Three Kings is in my hands. You see, now that I have Thummel, it can’t be very long before everything is neatly wrapped up.’