Philip Kerr - Prague Fatale

Dickson couldn’t argue with that.

‘How can I get in contact with you, Captain?’

‘You can’t. I’ll speak to Willy and leave a message with him if I decide I’m ready to puke another fur ball.’

‘If it’s a question of money-’

‘It’s not.’

Instinctively we both glanced up as another 109 came rifling in from the north-west and I saw the moon illuminate the anxiety on Dickson’s smooth face. When the sound was just a footnote on the horizon I heard him let out a breath.

‘I can’t get used to that,’ he confessed. ‘The way these fighters fly so low. I keep expecting to see something blow up on the ground in front of me.’

‘Sometimes I wish it would. But take my word for it: a fighter tends to buzz a little louder when it decides to sting.’

‘Talking of things blowing up,’ he said. ‘The Three Kings. You hear anything? Only, the doctors of deceit have been giving us the runaround. Back in May they said they had picked up two of the leaders and that it was only a matter of time before they got their hands on the third. Since when we’ve heard nothing. We keep asking, but no one says anything, so we figure that number three must still be at liberty. Any truth in that, you think?’

‘I really can’t say.’

‘Can’t or just won’t?’ A cloud drifted across the moon like something dark over my soul.

‘C’mon, Captain. You must know something.’

‘I’m just back from the Ukraine so I’m a little behind with what’s been happening here in Berlin. But if they’d caught Melchior, I think you’d have heard all about that, don’t you? Through a megaphone.’

‘Melchior?’

‘And I thought it was just the Germans who were a godless race.’

I walked away.

‘Hey,’ said Dickson. ‘I saw that movie, Frankenstein. And I remember that scene, now. Doesn’t the monster throw the little girl in the water?’

‘Yes. Sad isn’t it?’

I strolled south, down to Bulowstrasse, where I turned west. I might have walked all the way home but I noticed there was a hole in my shoe and at Nolli I decided to get on the S-Bahn. Normally I would have taken the tram, but the thirty-three was no longer running; and since it was after nine o’clock the only taxis around were those that were called by the police for the service of the sick, the lame, the old, or travellers from railway stations with heavy bags. And senior Nazi Party members, of course. They never had a problem getting a cab home after nine.

Nolli was almost deserted, which was not uncommon in the blackout. All you could see were occasional cigarette ends moving through the darkness like fireflies, or sometimes the phosphorescent lapel badge of someone keen to avoid a collision with another pedestrian; all you could hear were the trains as they moved invisibly in and out of the art nouveau glass dome of the station overhead, or disembodied voices, snatches of passing conversations as if Berlin was one big open-air seance — a ghostly effect that was enhanced by infrequent flashes of electric light from the rail track. It was as if some modern-day Moses — and who could have blamed him? — had stretched out his strong hand toward the sky to spread a palpable darkness over the land of Germany. Surely it was time to let the Israelites leave, or at least to release them from their bondage.

I was almost on the stairs when, from under the arches, I heard the sound of a struggle. I stopped for a moment, looked around and as a cloud shifted lazily off the moon I got a son et lumiere view of a man attacking a woman. She was lying on the ground trying to fight him off as, with one hand over her mouth, he fumbled under her skirt. I heard a curse, a muffled scream and then my own footsteps as they clattered down the stairs.

‘Hey, leave her alone,’ I yelled.

The man appeared to punch the woman and as he stood up to face me I heard a click and caught a glimpse of the blade that was now in his hand. If I’d been on duty I might have been carrying a firearm but I wasn’t and as the man came toward me I shrugged the bread bag containing the food cans off my shoulder and swung it hard like a medieval ball and chain as he came within range. The bag hit him on his extended arm, knocking the blade out of his hand, and he turned and fled, with me in half-hearted pursuit. The moonlight dimmed momentarily and I lost sight of him altogether. A few moments later I heard a squeal of tyres from the corner of Motz Strasse and, arriving in front of the American Church, I found a taxi with its door open and the driver staring at his front fender.

‘He just ran out in front of me,’ said the driver.

‘You hit him?’

‘I didn’t have a chance.’

‘Well he’s not here now.’

‘He ran off I think.’

‘Where did he go?’

‘Toward the cinema theatre.’

‘Stay where you are; I’m a police officer,’ I told the driver and crossed the street, but I might as well have looked inside a magician’s top hat. There was no sign of him. So I went back to the taxi.

‘Find him?’

‘No. How hard did you hit him?’

‘I wasn’t going fast, if that’s what you mean. Ten or fifteen kilometres an hour, like you’re supposed to do, see? But still, I think I gave him a good old clunk. He went right over the hood and landed on his head, like he was off some nag at the Hoppegarten.’

‘Pull into the side of the road and stay there,’ I told the driver.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘How do I know you’re a cop? Where’s your warrant disc?’

‘It’s in my office at Alex. We can go straight there if you like and you can spend the next hour or two making out a report. Or you can do what I say. The fellow you knocked down attacked a woman back there. That’s why he was running away. Because I chased him. I was thinking you might take the lady home.’

‘Yeah, all right.’

I went back to the station on Nollendorfplatz.

The girl who’d been attacked was sitting up and rubbing her chin between adjusting her clothes and looking for her handbag.

‘Are you all right?’

‘I think so. My bag. He threw it on the ground somewhere.’

I glanced around. ‘He got away. But if it’s any consolation a taxi knocked him down.’

I kept on looking for her bag but I didn’t find it. Instead I found the switchblade.

‘Here it is,’ she said. ‘I’ve found it.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘I feel a bit sick,’ she said, holding her jaw uncomfortably.

I wasn’t feeling very comfortable myself. I didn’t have my beer-token and I had a bag full of canned food that, within the limited purview of a uniformed bull, would have marked me out as a black-marketeer, for which the penalties were very severe. It was not uncommon for Schmarotzers to receive death sentences, especially if these also happened to be people who needed to be made an example of, like policemen. So I was anxious to be away from there; no more did I want to accompany her to the local police station and report the matter. Not while I was still carrying the bread bag.

‘Look, I kept the taxi waiting. Where do you live? I’ll take you home.’

‘Just off the Kurfurstendamm. Next to the Theatre Centre.’

‘Good. That’s near me.’

I helped her along to the taxi, which was where I’d left it, on the corner of Motz Strasse, and told the driver where to go. Then we drove west along Kleist Strasse with the driver telling me in exhaustive detail just what had happened and how it wasn’t his fault and that he couldn’t believe the fellow he’d collided with hadn’t been more seriously injured.

‘How do you know he wasn’t?’

‘He ran off, didn’t he? Can’t run with a broken leg. Believe me, I know. I was in the last war and I tried.’