Philip Kerr - Field Grey

Elisabeth's shapeless landlady, Frau Bayer, was only a little surprised to see me at this early hour, as I had got into the habit of visiting the dressmaker whenever I came off duty. She knew I was a policeman, which was normally enough to silence her grumbling at being got out of bed. Most Berliners were always respectful of the law, except when they were communists or Nazis. And when it wasn't enough to silence her grumbling I slipped a few marks into her dressing-gown pocket by way of compensation.

The apartment was a warren of shabby rooms full of old cherrywood furniture, Chinese screens, and tasselled lampshades. As always I sat in the living room and waited for Frau Bayer to fetch her lodger; and as always when she saw me, Elisabeth smiled a sleepy but happy smile and took me by the hand to lead me to her room where a proper welcome awaited me; only this time I stayed put on the living room sofa.

'What's the matter?' she said. 'Is something wrong?'

'It's Erich,' I said. 'He's in trouble.'

'What kind of trouble?'

'Serious trouble. Two policemen were shot and killed last night.'

'And you think Erich might have something to do with it?'

'It looks that way.'

'Are you sure?'

'Yes. Look, Elisabeth, I don't have much time. His best chance is if I find him before anyone else does. I can tell him what to say and, more importantly, what not to say. Do you see?'

She nodded and tried to stifle a yawn.

'So what do you want from me?'

'An address.'

'You mean you want me to betray him, don't you?'

'That's one way of looking at it, yes. I can't deny that. But another way is this: that perhaps I can persuade him to make a clean breast of it. Which is the only thing that can save his life now.'

'They wouldn't behead him, would they?'

'For killing a policeman? Yes, I think they would. One of the cops who was killed was a widower with three daughters who are now orphaned. The Republic would have no choice but to make an example of him, or else risk courting a storm of criticism in the newspapers. The Nazis would just love that. But if I am the arresting officer I might be able to talk him into naming some names. If others in the KPD put him up to it, then he has to say so. He's young and impressionable and that will help his case.'

She pulled a face. 'Don't ask me to turn him in, Bernie. I've known that boy for half his life. I helped bring him up.'

'I am asking it. I give you my word I will do what I said and that I will speak up for him in court. All I'm asking for is an address, Elisabeth.'

She sat down in a chair and clasped her hands tightly and closed her eyes almost as if she was uttering a silent prayer. Perhaps she did.

'I knew something like this would happen,' she said. 'That's why I've never ever told him that you and I have been seeing each other. Because he would have been cross. And I'm beginning to understand why.'

'I won't tell him that it was you who gave me an address, if that's what you're worried about.'

'That's not what I'm worried about,' she whispered.

'What then?'

She stood up, abruptly. 'I'm worried about Erich of course,' she said, loudly. 'I'm worried about what's going to happen to him.'

I nodded. 'Look, forget it. We'll have to find him some other way. Sorry I bothered you.'

'He lives with his father, Emil,' she said dully. 'Stettiner Strasse, number twenty-five. The top flat.'

'Thanks.'

I waited for her to say something else and when she didn't I knelt down in front of her and tried to take her hand to give it a comforting squeeze, but she pulled it away. At the same time she avoided my eye as if it had been hanging out of its socket.

'Just go,' she said. 'Go and do your duty.'

It was almost dawn on the street outside Elisabeth's apartment building but I felt that something important had happened between us: that something had changed, perhaps for ever. I stepped into Heller's car and told him the address. From my expression I guess he knew better than to ask how I had come by it.

We sped north up Swinemunder Strasse onto Bellermann Strasse and then Christiana Strasse. Twenty-five Stettiner Strasse was a grey tenement building around a central courtyard that would probably have collapsed in on itself but for several large support timbers. Although it could just as easily have been moss or mould, a green rug was hanging out of an open window on one of the upper floors, and it was the only spot of colour in that ghastly sarcophagus of raw brick and loose cobblestones. Even though this was fast becoming a bright summer's morning, no sun ever reached the lower levels of the tenements on Stettiner Strasse: Nosferatu could have spent the whole day quite comfortably in the twilight world of a ground floor Stettiner Strasse apartment.

We pulled on a bell for several minutes before a grey-haired head appeared out of a dirty window.

'Yes?'

'Police,' said Heller. 'Open up.'

'What's the matter?'

'As if you don't know,' I said. 'Open up, or we'll kick the door in.'

'All right.'

The head disappeared. A minute or so later we heard the door open, and we ran upstairs as if we actually believed there was a chance we might still apprehend Erich Mielke. In truth, neither of us thought there was much hope of that happening. Not in Gesundbrunnen. It was the kind of area where children were taught how to stay one step ahead of the cops before they learned long division.

At the top of the stairs a man wearing trousers and a pyjama jacket admitted us to a little flat that was a shrine to the class struggle. Every wall was hung with KPD posters, notices of strikes and demonstrations, and cheap portraits of Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Marx and Lenin. Unlike any of them, the man standing in front of us at least looked like a worker. He was around fifty, stocky and short with a bull neck, a receding hairline and an advancing waist. He stared at us suspiciously with small, close-set eyes that were like diacritic marks inside a nought. Short of wearing a towel and a silk dressing- gown, he couldn't have looked any more rough and pugnacious.

'So what does the Berlin polenta want with me?'

'We're looking for a Herr Erich Mielke,' said Heller. His punctiliousness was typical. You didn't get to be a counsellor in the Berlin police without paying attention to detail, especially when you were also a Jew. That was probably the ex-lawyer in him. It was also the part of Heller I didn't care for, the punctilious lawyer. The stocky little man in the pyjama jacket didn't seem to like it either.

'He's not here,' he said, barely concealing a smirk of pleasure.

'And who are you?'

'His father.'

'When did you last see your son?'

'A few days ago. So what's he supposed to have done? Hit a policeman?'

'No,' said Heller. 'On this occasion it seems that he's shot and killed at least one.'

'That's too bad.' But the man's tone seemed to suggest he didn't think that it was too bad at all.

By now the resemblance between father and son was all too obvious to me, and I turned and walked into the kitchen just in case the temptation to hit him grew too strong.

'You won't find him in there, either.'

I put my hand on the gas ring. It was still warm. A pile of half-smoked cigarettes lay in an ashtray as if put there by someone who was feeling nervous about something. No one in Gesundbrunnen would have wasted tobacco like that. I pictured a man sitting in a chair by the window. A man who'd been trying to occupy his mind with a book, perhaps, while he waited for a car to come and take him and Ziemer to a KPD safe-house. I picked up the book that lay on the kitchen table. It was All Quiet on the Western Front.

'Do you know where your son might be now?' asked Heller.

'I haven't a clue. Frankly, he could be anywhere. Never tells me anything about where he's been or where he's going. Well, you know what young men are like.'