Philip Kerr - Field Grey

Of the three policemen in the doorway, two were dead. The third, Sergeant Willig, 'the Hussar', was seriously wounded. He'd been shot in the stomach and in the arm and his blue- grey tunic was purple with blood, not all of it his own.

'We were set up,' he gasped as we sat with him and waited for the ambulance. 'They weren't on the rooftops, the ones who got us. The bastards were hiding in a doorway and shot us from behind as we walked past.'

The officer in charge, Detective Police Counsellor Reinhold Heller, told Willig to save his breath, but the sergeant was the kind who couldn't do anything until he'd made his report.

'There were two of them. Handguns. Automatics. Shot my pistol at them. A full clip. Couldn't say if I hit either of them or not. Young they were. Tearaways. Twenty or so. Laughed when they saw the two captains hit the ground. Then they went into the theatre.' He tried a smile. 'Must have been Garbo fans. Never much liked her myself.'

The ambulance men arrived with a stretcher and carried him away, leaving us with the two bodies.

'Gunther?' said Heller. 'Go and speak to the theatre manager. Find out if anyone saw something more than just the movie.'

Heller was a Jew but I didn't have a problem with that. Not like some. He was Bernard Weiss, the head of Kripo's, golden boy, which would have been fine but for the fact that Weiss was also a Jew. I thought Heller was good police and that was all that mattered as far as I was concerned. Of course, the Nazis thought differently.

The movie was Mata Hari, with Garbo in the title role and Ramon Novarro as the young Russian officer who falls in love with her. I hadn't seen it myself but the movie was doing well in Berlin. Garbo gets shot by the treacherous French, and with a plot like that, it could hardly fail with Germans. The theatre manager was waiting in the lobby. He was swarthy and worried- looking with a moustache like a midget's eyebrow and, to that extent at least, rather resembled Ramon Novarro. But it was probably just as well the blonde from the box office didn't look like Garbo, at least not like the Garbo on the lobby-card; her hair was frightful-looking, like Struwwelpeter.

Everything around us was red. Red carpet, red walls, red ceiling, red chairs, and red curtains on the auditorium doors. Given the politics of the area it all seemed appropriate. The blonde was tearful, the manager merely nervous. He kept adjusting his cufflinks as he explained, loudly, as if he was a character in a play, what he'd seen and heard:

'Mata Hari had just finished seducing the Russian general, Shubin,' he said, 'when we heard the first shots. That would have been at about ten past eight.'

'How many shots?'

'A volley,' he said. 'Six or seven. Small arms. Pistols. I was in the war, see? I know the difference between a pistol shot and a rifle shot. I stuck my head through the box office door and saw Fraulein Wiegand here on the floor. At first I thought there had been a robbery. That she'd been held up. But then there was a second volley and several of the bullets hit the cash window. Two men ran through the lobby and into the auditorium without paying. And since they were both holding pistols I wasn't about to insist that they buy tickets. I can't say that I got a very good look at them because I was scared. Then there were more shots, outside. Rifle shots I think, and people started running in here to take cover. By now the projectionist had stopped the movie and switched on the lights. And the people in the auditorium were going through the exit door, onto Hirtenstrasse. It was plain from the noise and the crowd that the movie couldn't continue, and before one of your colleagues came in here to tell me to stay inside, almost everyone had left the auditorium through the back door. Including the two men with guns.' He left his cufflinks alone for a moment and rubbed his brow furiously. 'They're dead, aren't they? Those two police officers.'

I nodded. 'Mmm hmm.'

'That's bad. That's too bad.'

'How about you, Fraulein?' I said. 'The two with guns. Did you get a good look at them?'

She shook her head and pressed a sodden handkerchief to her red nose.

'It's been a great shock to Fraulein Wiegand,' said the manager.

'It's been a great shock to us all, sir.'

I went into the auditorium, walked down the centre aisle toward the exit, and pushed open the door. Now I was on a small red staircase. I tap-danced my way down to another door and then out onto Hirtenstrasse just as an underground train passed beneath my feet, shaking the whole area as if it hadn't been shaken up enough already. It was dark and there wasn't much to see in the yellow gaslight: a few discarded red flags, a couple of protest placards, and maybe a murder weapon if I looked hard enough. With so many cops around it didn't seem likely that the killers would have risked holding on to their guns for very long.

Back in the movie theatre doorway they were establishing a crime scene gestalt, which is to say they were hoping that the whole could be bigger than the sum of its parts.

Captain Anlauf had been shot twice in the neck and clearly had bled to death. He was about forty, heavy-set with a full face that had helped earn the Seventh Precinct commander his Pig Cheeks nickname. His weapon was still in his holster.

'It's too bad,' said one of the other detectives. 'His wife died three weeks ago.'

'What did she die of?' I heard myself ask.

'A kidney ailment,' said Heller. 'This leaves three daughters orphaned.'

'Someone's going to have to tell them,' said someone.

'I'll do that.' The man who spoke was in uniform and everyone straightened up when we realised it was the commander of the Berlin Schupo, Magnus Heimannsberg. 'You can leave that to me.'

'Thank you, sir,' said Heller.

'Who's the other man? I don't recognise him.'

'Captain Lenck, sir.'

Heimannsberg leaned down to take a closer look.

'Franz Lenck? What the Hell was he doing here? This kind of police work wasn't his sort of thing at all.'

'Every available man in uniform was summoned here,' Heller said. 'Anyone know if he was married?'

'Yes,' said Heimannsberg. 'No children, though. That's something, I suppose. Look, Reinhard, I'll tell her, too. The widow.'

Lenck was also about forty. His face was leaner than Anlauf s, with deep smile lines that were no longer being used. A pince-nez was still on his face, just about, and the shako remained on his head, with the strap tight under his chin. He had been shot in the back and, like Anlauf, his weapon was holstered, a fact that Heimannsberg now remarked upon.

'They didn't even have a chance to get their weapons out,' he said, bitterly. Nodding at a Luger by his boot, he added, 'I assume this is Sergeant Willig's gun.'

'He got off a whole clip, sir,' said Heller. 'Before they ran in here.'

'Hit anything?'

Heller looked at me.

'I don't think so, sir,' I said. 'Mind you it's a little hard to tell in there. Everything's red. Carpet, walls, curtains, you name it. Hard to see any bloodstains. They ran out the rear exit on Hirtenstrasse. Sir, I'd like a couple of men with torches to help me search the length of the street. People have chucked away red flags and placards, it's possible they might have thrown the guns, too.'

Heller nodded.

'Don't worry, lads,' said Heimannsberg who, having started his career as an ordinary patrolman, was enormously popular with everyone in the police. 'We'll catch the bastards who did this.'

A few minutes later I was walking along Hirtenstrasse with a couple of uniformed men. As we went further west towards Mulack Strasse and the territory of the Always True, a notorious Berlin gang, they started to get nervous. We stopped next to Fritz Hempel, the tobacconists. It was closed, of course. I pointed my torch one way and then the other. The two Schupomen came towards me, relaxing a little as, in the distance, a police armoured car pulled up on the corner.