Philip Kerr - If the Dead Rise Not

On the fourth floor, a group of people are waiting to take the elevator down. One of these is a man whose arms are supported by two more robots. He is manacled and half conscious, and there is blood streaming from his nose and onto his clothes. No one looks at all ashamed or embarrassed at my being there or seeing any of this. This would be to admit the possibility that what has been done is wrong. And since what has been done to him has been done in the name of the Leader, this simply cannot be the case. The man is dragged into the elevator, and the third robot, who remains standing on the fourth-floor landing, now leads me down a long, wide corridor. He stops in front of a door numbered 43, knocks, and then opens it without waiting. When I enter, he closes the door behind me.

The room is furnished but empty. The window is wide open, but there is a smell in the air that makes me think that perhaps this is the place where the man with the bloody nose has just been interrogated. And when I see a couple of spots of blood on the brown linoleum, I know I am right about this. I go over to the window and look out onto Ludwigstrasse. My hotel is just around the corner, and although it is foggy outside, I can see its roof from here. On the other side of the street from Würzburg’s Gestapo HQ is the office building of the local Nazi Party. Through an upper window I can see a man with his feet up on a desk, and I wonder what gets done in there, in the name of the Party, that doesn’t get done in here.

A bell starts to toll. The sound drifts across the red rooftops from the cathedral, I presume, only it sounds more like something out at sea, something to warn ships approaching rocks in the fog. And I think of Noreen, somewhere on the North Atlantic, standing in the stern of the SS Manhattan , staring back at me through the thick fog.

The door opens behind me, and a strong smell of soap is carried into the room. I turn as a smallish man closes the door and rolls down the sleeves of his shirt. I guess that he has just washed his hands. Perhaps there was some blood on them. He says nothing until he has fetched his black SS tunic from a hanger in the closet and puts it on as if the uniform will help to compensate for his lack of centimeters.

“You’re Gunther?” he said in a voice that sounded folksy and Franconian.

“That’s right. And you must be Captain Weinberger.”

He carried on buttoning his tunic without bothering to answer. Then he pointed at the chair in front of his desk. “Sit down, please.”

“No, thanks,” I said, sitting down on the windowsill. “I’m a bit like a cat. I’m very particular where I sit.”

“What ever do you mean?”

“There’s blood on the floor underneath that chair and, for all I know, there’s some on it as well. I don’t make enough money to risk spoiling a good suit.”

Weinberger colored a little. “Please yourself.”

He sat down behind the desk. His forehead was the only tall thing about him. On top of it was a shock of thick brown curly hair. His eyes were green and penetrating. His mouth was insolent. He looked like a defiant schoolboy. And it was hard to imagine him being rough with anything other than a collection of toy soldiers or a fairground coconut toss. “So, how can I help you, Herr Gunther?”

I didn’t like the look of him. But that hardly mattered. A display of good manners would have struck the wrong note. Clipping the tails of young pups in the Gestapo was, as Liebermann von Sonnenberg had said, almost a sport among senior police officers.

“An American called Max Reles. What do you know about him?”

“And you’re asking in what capacity?” Weinberger put his boots up onto the desk like the man in the office across the street and clasped his hands behind his head. “You’re not Gestapo, and you’re not KRIPO. And I think we can take it you’re not SS.”

“I’m conducting an undercover investigation for Berlin’s assistant police commissioner, Liebermann von Sonnenberg.”

“Yes, I got his letter. And his telephone call. It’s not often that Berlin pays much attention to a place like this. But you still haven’t answered my question.”

I lit a cigarette and flicked the match out of the window. “Don’t piss me around. Are you going to help me, or am I going back to my hotel to call the Alex?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of pissing you off, Herr Gunther.” He smiled, affably. “Since this doesn’t appear to be an official matter, I just want to know why I’m going to help you. That is right, isn’t it? I mean, if this was an official matter, the assistant commissioner’s request would have come down through my superiors, wouldn’t it?”

“We can do it that way if you’d prefer,” I said. “But then you’d be wasting my time. And yours. So why don’t you just count this as a favor to the head of Berlin KRIPO.”

“I’m glad you mentioned that. A favor. Because I’d like a favor in return. That’s fair, isn’t it?”

“So what do you want?”

Weinberger shook his head. “Not here, eh? Let’s go for a coffee. Your hotel is not far. Let’s go there.”

“All right. If that’s how you want this.”

“I think it might be best. Given what you’re asking about.” He stood up and grabbed his belts and his cap. “Besides, I’m already doing you a favor. The coffee here is terrible.”

He said nothing more until we were out of the building. But then I could hardly stop him.

“This isn’t a bad town. I should know, I went to university here. I studied law, and when I graduated, I joined the Gestapo. It’s a very Catholic town, of course, which meant that, in the beginning, it wasn’t particularly Nazi. I can see that surprises you, but it’s true-when I first joined the Party, this town had one of the smallest Party memberships in the whole of Germany. It just shows you what can be achieved in a short period of time, eh?

“Most of the cases we get in the Würzburg Gestapo office are denunciations. Germans having sexual relations with Jews, that kind of thing. But here’s the anomaly: the majority of denunciations come not from Party members, but from good Catholics. Of course, there is no actual law against Germans and Jews conducting their sordid love affairs. Not yet. But that doesn’t stop the denunciations, and we’re obliged to investigate them if only to prove that the Party disapproves of these obscene relationships. Occasionally we parade a couple accused of race defilement around the town square, but it seldom goes much further than that. Once or twice we have run a Jew out of town for profiteering, but that’s it. And it goes almost without saying that most of the denunciations are groundless and the product of stupidity and ignorance. Naturally. Most of the people who live here are not much more than peasants. This place is not Berlin. Would that it were.

“My own situation is a case in point, Herr Gunther. Weinberger is not necessaily a Jewish name. I am not a Jew. None of my grandparents is a Jew. And yet I myself have been denounced as a Jew, and on more than one occasion, I might add. Which is not exactly helping my career here in Würzburg.”

“I can imagine.” I allowed myself a smile, but that was all. I hadn’t yet got the information I needed, and until then, I hardly wanted to upset the young Gestapo man walking along the street beside me. We turned onto Adolf-Hitler-Strasse and walked north, toward my hotel.

“Well, yes, it’s funny. Of course it is. Even I can see that. But somehow I feel it wouldn’t be happening in a more sophisticated place, such as Berlin. After all, there are people there with Jewish-sounding names who are Nazis, aren’t there? Liebermann von Sonnenberg? I ask you. Well, I’m sure he would understand my predicament.”