Jeffery Deaver - Garden Of Beasts

Kohl had heard Krauss was a methodical investigator though they had never worked together; Kohl had always refused to handle political crimes, and now the Kripo was forbidden to.

Krauss said, “Willi, good afternoon.”

“Hail. What brings you here, Peter?”

Janssen nodded and the Gestapo investigator did the same. He said to Kohl, “I received a phone call from our boss.”

Did he mean Heinrich Himmler himself? Kohl wondered. It was possible. One month ago, the SS leader had consolidated every police force in Germany under his own control and had created the Sipo, the plain-clothed division, which included the Gestapo, the Kripo, and the notorious SD, which was the SS’s intelligence division. Himmler had just been named state chief of police, a rather modest description, Kohl had thought at the time of the announcement, for the most powerful law enforcer on earth.

Krauss continued. “He’s been instructed by the Leader to keep our city blemish-free during the Olympics. We’re to look into all serious crimes near the stadium, Olympic Village and city center and make sure the perpetrators are swiftly caught. And here, a murder within shouting distance of the Tiergarten.” Krauss clicked his tongue in dismay.

Kohl glanced obviously at his watch, desperate to get to the Summer Garden. “I’m afraid I have to leave, Peter.”

Examining the body closely, crouching down, the Gestapo man said, “Unfortunately with all the foreign reporters in town… So difficult to control them, to monitor them.”

“Yes, yes, but-”

“We need to make sure this is solved before they learn of the death.” Krauss rose and walked in a slow circle around the dead man. “Who is he, do we know?”

“Not yet. His ID is missing. Tell me, Peter, this wouldn’t have anything to do with an SS or SA matter, would it?”

“Not that I know of,” Krauss replied, frowning. “Why?”

“On the way here, Janssen and I noticed many more patrols. Random stops to check papers. Yet we’ve heard no word about an operation.”

“Ach, that’s nothing,” the Gestapo inspector said, waving his hand dismissively. “A minor security matter. Nothing the Kripo need worry about.”

Kohl looked again at his pocket watch. “Well, I really must go, Peter.”

The Gestapo officer rose to his feet. “Was he robbed?”

“Everything’s missing from his pockets,” Kohl said impatiently.

Krauss stared at the body for a long moment and all Kohl could think of was the suspect sitting at the Summer Garden, halfway through a meal of schnitzel or wurst. “I must be getting back,” Kohl said.

“One moment.” Krauss continued to study the body. Finally, without looking up, he said, “It would make sense if the killer was a foreigner.”

“A foreigner? Well-” Janssen spoke quickly, eyebrows rising in his youthful face. But Kohl shot him a sharp look and he fell silent.

“What’s that?” Krauss asked him.

The inspector candidate made a fast recovery. “I’m curious why you think it would make sense.”

“The deserted alley, missing identification, a cold-blooded shooting… When you’ve been in this business for a time, you get a feel for the perpetrators in murders such as this, Inspector Candidate.”

“A murder such as what?” Kohl could not resist asking. A man shot to death in a Berlin alley was hardly sui generis these days.

But Krauss didn’t respond. “A Roma or Pole very likely. Violent people, to be sure. And with motives galore to murder innocent Germans. Or the killer might be Czech, from the east, of course, not the Sudetenland. They’re known for shooting people from behind.”

Kohl nearly added: as are the Stormtroopers. But he merely said, “Then we can hope that the perpetrator turns out to be a Slav.”

Krauss gave no reaction to the reference to his own ethnic origins. Another look at the corpse. “I will make inquiries about this, Willi. I will have my people make contact with the A-men in the area.”

Kohl said, “I am encouraged by the thought of using National Socialist informants. They’re very good at it. And there are so many of them.”

“Indeed.”

Bless him, Janssen too looked impatiently at his watch, grimaced and said, “We’re very late for that meeting, sir.”

“Yes, yes, we are.” Kohl started back up the alley. But he paused and called to Krauss, “One question?”

“Yes, Willi?”

“What kind of hat does Air Minister Göring wear?”

“You are asking…?” Krauss frowned.

“Göring. What kind of hat?”

“Oh, I have no idea,” he replied, looking momentarily stricken, as if this were knowledge that every good Gestapo officer should be versed in. “Why?”

“No matter.”

“Hail Hitler.”

“Hail.”

As they hurried back to the DKW, Kohl said breathlessly, “Give the film to one of the Schupo officers and have him rush it to headquarters. I want the pictures immediately.”

“Yes, sir.” The young man diverted his course and handed the film to an officer, gave him the instructions, then caught up with Kohl, who called to a Schupo, “When the coroner’s men get here, tell them that I want the autopsy report as soon as possible. I want to know about diseases our friend here might have had. The clap and consumption in particular. And how advanced. And the contents of his stomach. Tattoos, broken bones, surgical scars, as well.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Remember to tell them it’s urgent.”

So busy was the coroner these days that it might take eight or ten hours for the body even to be picked up; the autopsy could take several days.

Kohl winced in pain as he hurried to the DKW; the lamb’s wool in his shoes had shifted. “What’s the fastest route to the Summer Garden? Never mind, we’ll figure it out.” He looked around. “There!” he shouted, pointing to a newsstand. “Go buy every newspaper they have.”

“Yes, sir, but why?”

Willi Kohl dropped into the driver’s seat and pushed the ignition button. His voice was breathless but still managed to convey his impatience. “Because we need a picture of Göring in a hat. Why else?”

Standing on the street corner, holding a limp Berlin Journal, Paul studied the Summer Garden café: women who drank their coffees with gloved hands, men who would down their beers in large gulps and tap their mustaches with pressed linen napkins to lift away the foam. People enjoying the afternoon sun, smoking.

Paul Schumann remained perfectly still, looking, looking, looking.

Out of kilter…

Just like setting type, plucking the metal letters from a California job case and assembling words and sentences. “Mind your p ’s and q ’s,” his father would call constantly – those particular letters easy to confuse because the piece of type was the exact reverse of the printed letter.

He was now looking over the Summer Garden just as carefully. He’d missed the Stormtrooper watching him from the phone booth outside Dresden Alley – an inexcusable mistake for a button man. He wasn’t going to let that happen again.

After a few minutes, he sensed no immediate danger but, he reflected, how could he tell? Maybe the people he was watching were nothing more than they seemed: normal joes eating meals and going about their errands on a hot, lazy Saturday afternoon, with no interest in anyone else on the street.

But maybe they were as suspicious and murderously loyal to the Nazis as the man on the Manhattan, Heinsler.

I love the Führer…

He tossed the paper into a bin then crossed the street and entered the restaurant.

“Please,” he said to the captain, “a table for three.”