Philip Kerr - Prussian Blue

“Now let’s go and find the doctor,” said Kaspel, and hurried inside the hospital.

Karl Brandt, who met us in a cold room in the hospital basement, was already dressed for surgery but under his immaculate white overalls he was wearing the black uniform of an SS major, which looked like some sort of contradiction. He was a tall, strikingly handsome, stern-looking man in his mid-thirties, with high cheekbones, light brown hair, and a very neat parting he touched nervously every so often with the side of his hand, as if there might be a wind in the hospital that would cause him to soon require the action of a comb. It was almost a leading man’s face — the kind of face that might have found him a starring role in one of Dr. Goebbels’s movies — except for the fact that there was something lacking in the man’s cold, dark eyes. It was hard to think that this was the face of a healer. Rather it seemed more like the face of a fanatic who might easily have prophesied the coming of a biblical flood and a new Cyrus from the north who would reform the church, or perhaps foretell the arrival of a new religion. A couple of years later, in Prague, I would come across his name again, in connection with the murder of General Heydrich, but at this particular moment, I’d never heard of him. He blinked at me with slow contempt as I stumbled my way through an apology, first for keeping him waiting and then for the lateness of the hour.

“We came as soon as we heard you were here, Doctor. I apologize if you’ve been waiting for very long. If it had been up to me, I’d have said this could certainly have waited until first thing in the morning, but the deputy chief of staff was most insistent that an autopsy should proceed with all possible speed. Of course, the sooner we find out exactly what happened to Dr. Flex, the sooner I hope to apprehend the culprit, and the sooner we can restore everyone’s peace of mind and the Leader can return to his beautiful home. Sir, I don’t know if you were acquainted with the victim, but if you were I would like to offer you my condolences and to thank you for agreeing to perform what might well be a distressing task. If you weren’t acquainted with him I should like to thank you, anyway. I do appreciate that forensic medicine is not your usual field, however—”

“I assume you must have attended a postmortem before in your capacity as a Murder Commission detective,” he said, interrupting me with an impatient wave of his hand. “In Berlin, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, sir. More often than I care to remember.”

“It’s been more than ten years since I was a medical student and did any real anatomy, so we may have need of that forensic memory. I might also require your assistance from time to time, to help shift the body. Can you do that, Commissar?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Since you mention it, I did know the victim. But this will in no way affect my ability to carry out the autopsy procedure. And I am as eager to find a satisfactory conclusion to this tragic affair as anyone. For the sake of my friend, it goes without saying. And for the Leader’s peace of mind, as you say. Well, let’s get on with it. I haven’t got all night. The body is this way. We don’t have a pathology suite in this hospital. Sudden deaths are rare in Berchtesgaden and usually dealt with in Salzburg. The body is laid out in what passes for an operating theater here, which is as good a place as any to carry out a postmortem.”

Brandt turned on the heel of a highly polished jackboot and led the way into a brightly lit room, where the corpse of a very tall, thin man with a small beard, still dressed in his winter tweeds, was lying on a table. The apparent cause of death was immediately obvious: a large piece of skull, several centimeters square and still attached to his scalp, was hanging off the side of his blood-encrusted head like an open trapdoor and half of the man’s scrambled brains seemed to have spilled onto the table and the floor tiles like fragments of minced meat in a butcher’s shop. Karl Flex himself was staring up at the ceiling with openmouthed astonishment, his wide blue eyes unflinching against the bright light, almost as if he had seen the marvelous sight of the Lord’s angel of death come to fetch him from one world into the next. It was a shocking sight, even for a Murder Commission veteran like me. Sometimes the human body strikes me as more fragile than could reasonably be expected.

“Holy shit,” muttered Kaspel, and momentarily put his hand to his mouth. “That’s what I call a fucking head wound.”

“Best get all of the cursing done now, gentlemen,” Brandt said coldly, stretching some rubber gloves onto his hands.

“Sorry, sir, but — holy shit.”

“Smoke if it helps to keep your mouth busy, Captain. It certainly won’t bother me. I much prefer the sweet smell of tobacco to that of antiseptic. Or the sound of your cursing. Just as long as you don’t pass out.”

Kaspel needed no second invitation and immediately lit up, but I shook my head at his open cigarette case when it came my way. I certainly didn’t want anything interfering with my understanding of how Karl Flex had met his death. Besides, I needed both hands for the camera, and was already taking pictures of the dead man with my expensive new toy.

“Is that strictly necessary?” complained Brandt.

“Absolutely,” I answered, focusing on the ruined skull, which looked very like the empty shell of the boiled egg I had eaten for breakfast that morning. “Every picture tells a story.”

“I assume that all of the victim’s personal effects have been removed from his pockets?” Brandt asked Kaspel.

“Yes, sir,” he answered. “They’re in a bag on a table in the dispensary next door, awaiting the commissar’s inspection.”

“Good,” said Brandt. “Then we needn’t worry too much about how we remove the victim’s clothes.” He handed me a pair of very sharp scissors. Then he fetched another pair, started to cut up the leg of the dead man’s trousers, and invited me to do the same on the other side. “All the same, it does seem a shame. I mean, look at this.” He opened Flex’s jacket to reveal a label. “Hermann Scherrer of Munich. If this suit wasn’t already covered in blood then one might have tried to save it.”

I put down the Leica and took hold of a trouser leg and was about to start using the scissors when a rather sleepy bee crawled out of the turnup.

“What about saving this chap, instead?”

“It’s just a bee, isn’t it?” said Brandt.

“I need a bag,” I said, allowing the bee to crawl on my hand for a moment. “Or an empty pill bottle.”

“You’ll find some in the dispensary,” said Brandt.

With the bee still attached to the back of my hand I went into the dispensary and found a small bottle. While I waited patiently for the bee to crawl inside, I glanced around, noting with some surprise that the dispensary seemed to be well stocked with Losantin and natron.

“Why don’t you take its photograph?” Brandt said through the open door.

“Maybe I will if I can get it to smile.”

Once the bee was bottled I went back into the operating theater and set about catching up with Brandt, whose sharp scissors had already progressed as far as the dead man’s waist. Meanwhile, Brandt had invited Kaspel to remove the dead man’s shoes, his thick socks, and his necktie.

“With a Raxon tie, you’re always well-dressed,” said Kaspel, repeating the company’s famous advertising slogan. “Unless it’s like this one and covered with blood.”

“By the way,” said Brandt, slicing open the man’s shirt like an impatient tailor, and then the vest that lay underneath. “Beyond the obvious fact that he was shot in the head, what are we looking for? I’m not exactly sure. I mean, I could open his sternum and look for traces of poison if you want. But—”