Philip Kerr - Prussian Blue

“Why do you need a camera?” asked Bormann.

“With more than a dozen witnesses on the terrace when Dr. Flex was shot, it will help me if I can put some faces to the names.” I could feel the stuff surging through me now. Suddenly I really wanted to find and catch the Berghof killer, and maybe tear his head off. “And I’ll need plenty of cigarettes. I can’t work without them, I’m afraid. Cigarettes help me think. I appreciate that it’s forbidden to smoke anywhere that the Leader is likely to be, so I shall smoke outside, of course. What else? Yes, some winter boots. I’ve only come with shoes, I’m afraid, and I may need to do some walking in snow. Size forty-three, please. And a coat. I’m freezing.”

“Very well,” said Bormann, “but I shall want all of the prints and negatives to be handed over when you leave.”

“Of course.”

“Speak to Arthur Kannenberg at the Berghof,” Bormann told the man sitting next to him. “Tell him that Commissar Gunther is going to use one of the guest rooms as his office. Zander? Högl? Make sure that everything else he wants is made available to him. Kaspel? You show him the Berghof terrace.”

Bormann stood up, which was everyone’s cue to do the same. Except me. I stayed put in my armchair for a long moment, as if I were still lost in thought, but of course it was nothing more than dumb insolence, paying him back in kind for his bad manners. I already hated Martin Bormann as much as I’d hated any Nazi, including Heydrich and Goebbels. There is evil in the best of us, of course; but perhaps just a little bit more in the worst of us.

Once upon a time the Berghof — or the Haus Wachenfeld, as it was then called — had been a simple two-story farmhouse with a long, sloping roof, overhanging eaves, a wooden porch, and a picture-postcard view of Berchtesgaden and the Untersberg. These days it was a much-expanded and rather less cozy structure, with a vast panoramic window, garages, a terrace, and a recently built low wing to the east of the house that resembled a military barracks. I wasn’t sure who stayed in the east wing, but it probably wasn’t the military, because a large contingent of SS already occupied a former hotel, the Türken Inn, less than fifty meters farther to the east of the Berghof and immediately below Bormann’s own house in Obersalzberg, which seemed to command a better position than Hitler’s.

The Berghof’s front terrace was about the size of a tennis court, with a low wall; it backed onto a larger, secondary terrace, which in turn bordered a lawn to the west. Behind the secondary terrace were what looked like additional living quarters, styled in the local vernacular, which is to say they looked like a row of cuckoo clocks. On my instructions, several SS men were erecting a number of arc lights on the front terrace so that I might inspect the crime scene, although the only evidence of a crime was the chalk outline of a man’s fallen body just behind the low wall. On Bormann’s instructions, any blood from Flex’s corpse had been washed away. Playing the part of the dead man and muffled in his black SS greatcoat, Captain Kaspel took up a position on the terrace to help me understand where Flex had been standing when he’d been shot. The light snow and the wind did not encourage lingering and he stamped his boots to help keep warm, although he might just have been imagining he was stamping on my face. Not very tall, shaven-headed, hook-nosed, and with a wide mouth, Kaspel was a thinner, more sensitive, and better-looking version of Benito Mussolini.

“Flex was standing about here,” explained Kaspel. “According to the witness statements, he was in a group of three or four men, most of whom were looking at the Reiteralpe, to the west. Several of the witnesses are sure that the shooter must have fired from a group of trees on a mountain slope behind the house, over there to the west.”

In the arc light I glanced over one of the witness statements and nodded. “Except that no one seems to have heard a thing,” I said. “The first any of them really know about the shooting is when the victim is lying on this terrace with blood pouring from his head.”

Kaspel shrugged. “Don’t ask me, Gunther. You’re the great detective.”

I hadn’t yet been alone with Kaspel, which meant I hadn’t had a chance to give him Heydrich’s letter ordering him to put himself under my command, so he was still treating me with understandable disdain. It was clear he hadn’t forgotten or forgiven anything about 1932 and how I’d helped to get him fired from the Berlin police.

“What were the weather conditions like when Flex was shot?”

“Clear and sunny.” Kaspel blew on his hands. “Not like this.”

I might have felt the cold more myself except for the fact that the pills I’d taken seemed to be having an effect on my body temperature, too. I was as warm as if I’d still been in the car.

“Were any of these men wearing a uniform?”

“No, it seems they were all civilians.”

“Then I wonder how the shooter picked him out,” I said.

“Telescopic sight? Binoculars. A hunter, perhaps.”

“Perhaps.”

“Good eyesight? I don’t know. Go figure.”

“It seems to have been at least a minute or two before any of them worked out that Flex had been shot. At which point they finally retreated indoors.”

For a moment I lay down beside the chalk outline and stretched out on the cold paving stones.

“Did you know the dead man? Flex?”

“Only by sight.”

“Seems as if he was tall.” I got up again and dusted the snow off my coat. “I’m one hundred and eighty-eight centimeters but it looks to me as if Flex was possibly seven or eight centimeters taller.”

“Sounds about right,” said Kaspel.

“Have you ever used a rifle scope?”

“Can’t say that I have.”

“Even the best Ajack rifle scope will only put you four times nearer your target. So perhaps the victim’s height helped the shooter. Perhaps he knew that all he had to do was shoot the tallest man. But we’ll have a clearer view of what happened when it’s daybreak.” I glanced at my wristwatch, saw that it was two a.m., and realized I didn’t feel the least bit tired. “Which is in five or six hours from now.”

I took the tube of Pervitin out of my pocket and regarded it with some incredulity.

“My God, what is this stuff? I have to admit, it’s kind of wonderful. I could have used some Pervitin when I was still pounding the beat.”

“It’s methamphetamine hydrochloride. It packs quite a punch, doesn’t it? Frankly, I’ve learned to be a bit wary of the local magic potion. After a while there are side effects.”

“Such as?”

“You’ll find out soon enough.”

“Go ahead and scare me, Hermann. I can take it.”

“For one thing, it’s addictive. A lot of people on this mountain have come to rely on Pervitin. And after two or three days solid on that stuff there’s always the risk that you’ll have violent mood swings. Heart palpitations. Or even cardiac arrest.”

“Then I’ll just have to hope for the best. Now that Bormann’s got my ears stiff about this I really don’t see any other way of working around the clock, do you?”

“No.” Kaspel grinned. “Sounds like Heydrich’s really dropped you in the shit with this case. And I’m going to enjoy watching you fall on your ugly face, Gunther. Or worse. Just don’t expect me to give you the kiss of life. The only people Mrs. Kaspel likes me to kiss is Mrs. Kaspel.”

Farther up the mountain, or so it seemed, I heard what sounded like an explosion; and seeing my head turn, Kaspel said: “Construction workers on the other side of the Kehlstein. I think they’re digging another tunnel through the mountain.”