Philip Kerr - If the Dead Rise Not

“That’s not what the Nazis said, sir.”

“I can’t help that. But I can try to arrest the decline.”

“I get the feeling my gratitude is about to be sorely tested.”

“I have one or two detectives here who might, in time, amount to something.”

“You mean apart from Otto.”

Von Sonnenberg chuckled again. “Otto. Yes. Well, Otto is Otto, isn’t he?”

“Always.”

“But these cops are lacking in experience. Your kind of experience. One of them is Richard Bömer.”

“I don’t know him, either, sir.”

“No, well, you wouldn’t. He’s my sister’s son-in-law. I was thinking he might benefit from a little avuncular advice.”

“I really don’t think I’d make much of an uncle, sir. I haven’t got a brother, but if I had, he’d probably have died of criticism by now. The only reason they took me out of uniform and put me in plainclothes was because I was so short with the traffic on Potsdamer Platz. Advice from me sounds like a ruler across the knuckles. I even avoid my own shaving mirror in case I tell myself to go and get a proper job.”

“A proper job. For you? Like what, for instance?”

“I’ve been thinking I might try to set myself up as a private investigator.”

“To do that you’ll need a license from a magistrate. In which case, you would need to show police consent. It might be useful to have a senior policeman on your side for something like that.”

He had a point, and there seemed to be no use in wriggling. He had me just where he wanted, as if I were a moth pinned in the glass case on his office wall.

“All right. But don’t expect white gloves and silver service. If this fellow Richard doesn’t like boiled sausage from the Wurst Max, I’ll be wasting his time and mine.”

“Naturally. All the same, it might be a good idea if you were to meet him somewhere outside the Alex. And that better include the bars around here. I’d like to avoid anyone pulling his chain about the low company he’s keeping.”

“Suits me. But I’d rather not have your sister’s son-in-law in the Adlon. No disrespect to you or her, but they generally prefer it if I’m not teaching a class when I’m there.”

“Sure. We’ll think of a spot. Somewhere halfway. How about the Lustgarten?”

I nodded.

“I’ll get Richard to bring you the files on a couple of cases he’s looking at. Cold ones. Who knows? Maybe you can warm them up for him. A floater from the canal. And that poor dumb cop who got himself murdered. Maybe you read about him in the Beobachter ? August Krichbaum.”

ONCE A HUGE, LANDSCAPED GARDEN, the Lustgarten was enclosed by the old royal palace-to which it had formerly belonged-and the Old Museum and the Cathedral, but in recent years it had been used not as a garden at all but for military parades and political rallies. I’d been part of a rally there myself, in February 1933, when two hundred thousand people had filled the Lustgarten to demonstrate against Hitler. Perhaps that was why, when they came to power, the Nazis ordered the gardens to be paved over and the famous equestrian statue of Frederick William III removed-so that they could stage even larger military parades and rallies in support of the Leader.

Arriving in that great empty space, I realized I had forgotten about the statue and was obliged to guess where it had been so that I might stand there myself and give Kriminalinspector Richard Bömer half a chance to find me in accordance with Liebermann von Sonnenberg’s arrangements.

Before he saw me, I saw him-a tallish man in his late twenties, fair-haired, carrying a briefcase under his arm, and wearing a gray suit and a pair of shiny black boots that might have been made to measure for him at the police school in Havel. Deep laugh lines bracketed a wide, full mouth that seemed on the edge of a smile. His nose was bent slightly out of shape, and a thick scar ran through one eyebrow like a little bridge over a golden stream. Except for his ears, which were unscarred, he looked like a promising, young light middleweight who had forgotten to remove his gum shield. Seeing me, he approached unhurriedly.

“Hey.”

“Are you Gunther?”

He pointed southeast, in the direction of the palace. “I think he used to face this way. Frederick William the Third, I mean.”

“Sure about that?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I like a man who holds on to his opinions.”

He turned and pointed to the west. “They moved him over there. Behind those trees. Which is where I’ve been waiting for the last ten minutes. I decided to come over here when it occurred to me that you might not know that he’d moved.”

“Who expects a granite horseman to go anywhere?”

“They’ve got to march somewhere, I guess.”

“That’s a matter of opinion. Come on. Let’s sit. A cop never stands when he can sit.”

We walked up to the Old Museum and sat on the steps in front of a long façade of Ionic columns.

“I like coming here,” he said. “It makes you think of what we used to be. And what we will be again.”

I looked at him blankly.

“You know, German history,” he said.

“German history is nothing more than a series of ridiculous mustaches,” I said.

Bömer smiled a crooked, bashful smile, like a schoolboy. “My uncle would love that one,” he said.

“I take it you don’t mean Liebermann von Sonnenberg.”

“He’s my wife’s uncle.”

“As if having the head of KRIPO holding a sponge in your corner wasn’t enough. So your uncle. Who’s he? Hermann Goering?”

He looked sheepish. “I just want to work homicides. To be a good policeman.”

“One thing I learned about being a good policeman. It doesn’t pay nearly as well as being a bad one. So who’s your uncle?”

“Does it matter?”

“It’s only that Liebermann wanted me to be your uncle, so to speak. And I’m the jealous type. If you’ve got another uncle as important as me, I want to know about it. Besides, I’m nosy, too. That’s why I became a detective.”

“He’s someone at the Ministry of Propaganda.”

“You don’t look like Joey the Crip, so you must be talking about someone else.”

“Bömer. Dr. Karl Bömer.”

“These days it seems everyone needs a doctorate to lie to people.”

He grinned again. “You’re just doing this, aren’t you? Because you know I’m a Party member.”

“Isn’t everyone?”

“You’re not.”

“Somehow I never got around to it. There was always a big line of people outside Party headquarters when I went to apply.”

“It should have told you something. That there’s safety in numbers.”

“No, there isn’t. I was in the trenches, my young friend. A battalion can be killed just as easily as a single man. And it was the generals, not the Jews, who made sure of that. They’re the ones who stabbed us in the back.”

“The chief said I should try to avoid talking politics with you, Gunther.”

“That’s not politics. That’s history. You want to know the real truth of German history? It’s that there’s no truth in German history. Like me at the Alex. None of what you’ve heard about me is true.”

“The chief said you were a good detective. One of the best.”

“Apart from that.”

“He said it was you who caught Gormann, the strangler.”

“If that had been difficult, the chief would have put me in his book. Did you read it?”

He nodded.

“What did you think?”

“It wasn’t written for other cops.”

“You’re in the wrong job, Richard. You should be working in the diplomatic corps. It was a lousy book. It tells you nothing about being a detective. Not that I can tell you much. Except this, perhaps. It’s easy for a cop to recognize when a man is lying. What’s harder is to know when he’s telling the truth. Or maybe this: A policeman is just a man who’s a little less dumb than a criminal.”