Philip Kerr - Prussian Blue

Gradually I grasped that he was talking about the RSD men who’d borrowed his ladders and I offered him an apology for the inconvenience he’d suffered, not to mention a little of the money I’d had from Heydrich and a cigarette from my own case.

“I had no idea that the ladder they’d borrow would be yours. So there’s five reichsmarks for you. And my regret for what happened this morning, Herr Müller.”

“Thank you, sir, I’m sure, but I’d rather not have the money and not have the extra work, nor the worry, any morning. Don’t smoke. I know they’re only ladders to a man like you, sir. But without them ladders I’m stranded, see? And suppose I’d been up there when they took them? Now where would I be?”

“Still on the roof?”

“Exactly. Freezing up there.” He pulled a face at the very thought of the cold. “And out of business. Permanently. It’s the cold that gets you on this job. My knees are almost shot to pieces now. But for them, I could probably work for P&Z and make three times the money I make repairing roofs.”

Eager to shut him up, I showed him my brass warrant disc, which in retrospect was a mistake as he formed the immediate impression that the missing ladders were being treated as theft by a police commissar, even though it was now obvious to us both that nothing at all had been stolen.

“No need for any law here,” he mumbled. “The ladders are back. I wouldn’t want to get anyone in trouble. Especially with yourself, sir. I’m sure they didn’t mean nothing by it.”

“I understand that. But I need to get up onto the roof and look for something.”

Rolf Müller eyed the rifle slung over my shoulder uncertainly.

“Don’t worry. I’m not planning to shoot anyone. Not today.”

“If you were, that’d be the rifle to do it with. The most successful bolt-action rifle ever made, the old G98. Saved my life on more than one occasion, that rifle.”

“And mine. The ladders?”

“Certainly. Always happy to help an officer of the law. I’m a good German, I am. You know, I almost became a policeman myself. But that was in Rosenheim many years ago. And I’m glad I didn’t because of Mayor Gmelch. I never liked him much. Now, Hermann Göring, he’s a different page in another book. He’s from Rosenheim. We were in the same infantry regiment, you know. Me and him. Of course I was just a ranker, but—”

“The ladders,” I said. “Could you finish tying them onto the tower so we can climb there and take a look?”

“I haven’t repaired the roof yet. Nor the chimney pot. It was that fearful wind the other night that brought the old one down.”

“Just tie the ladders on, please,” insisted Kaspel. “We’re in a hurry.”

Ten minutes later we were up on the Villa Bechstein’s rooftop, crawling carefully along a horizontal ladder that led up to the side of the dormer window on the eastern side of the house, where it had been secured earlier. A piece of old carpet was laid across several rungs near the end of the ladder and it was plain from the number of cigarette ends on the snow that the gunman had been lying there for a good while. I bagged a few just to impress Kaspel. And then I spotted another empty brass 8 mm cartridge. I bagged that, too.

Even without binoculars I could clearly make out the Berghof terrace. I brought the rifle up to my shoulder and put my eye behind the sights, and the crosshairs on the head of the SS man I’d used as a head model. I was never a great shot with a rifle, but with a sniper’s scope on a G98 and five bullets in the stripper clip this was a shot even I could have made. It always gives me a strange feeling to get a bead on a man through a rifle scope. Couldn’t pull the trigger on a fellow like that, myself. Even a Tommy. Too much like murder. I wasn’t the only person who felt that way: snipers and flamethrower operators — in the trenches, they were always singled out for special treatment when they were captured.

“Did you warn everyone what’s about to happen?” I asked Kaspel.

“Yes,” he said.

“Right, then.”

I opened the breech on the Mauser, thumbed the clip down the way I’d done a thousand times before, and pushed a live round up the spout. Then I pointed the rifle straight up at the Bavarian blue sky and pulled the trigger five times. The Mauser Gewehr 98 was a nice smooth weapon and an accurate one, too, but quiet it wasn’t, especially with a whole mountain range to bounce the sound off. You might just as well have tried to ignore the crack of doom.

“Hard not to hear that,” said Kaspel.

“Exactly.”

We came back down the ladders with the optimistic aim of questioning Rolf Müller again and found him still talking, as if our previous conversation hadn’t actually ended.

“Johann. Johann Lochner. That was his name. Been trying to remember it. He was shot through the lungs. This mate of mine in the trenches. With a Gewehr rifle. They say there’s another war on the way but I reckon people would be a lot less keen on one if they saw what a rifle bullet that’s moving at the speed of sound can do to a man. The mess it can make. They should have to see a man drowning in his own blood, the politicians, before they start another.”

It was hard to argue with that, so I nodded sadly and let him go on in this vein for another minute before I drew him back to the events of the day before.

“Why didn’t you come yesterday?” I asked.

“I told Herr Winkelhof about that. In advance. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know. He did. You ask him.”

“Just answer the question, please,” said Kaspel.

“I had a doctor’s appointment. I’ve got this back, you see. And these knees. That’s a lifetime of building work for you. Anyway, I wanted the doctor to give me some painkillers. For the pain.”

“And who else did you tell that you weren’t coming yesterday?”

“Herr Winkelhof. He knew I wasn’t coming. I did tell him.”

“Yes,” I said, patiently. “But who else? Your wife, perhaps?”

“Not married, sir. Never met the right woman. Or the wrong one, neither, depending on how you look at it.”

“Then you were in the beer house,” I said.

“Yes, sir. How did you know?”

“It was just a guess,” I said, eyeing his considerable belly. “Which beer house was that, Herr Müller?”

“The Hofbräuhaus, sir. On Bräuhausstrasse. Nice place. Very friendly. You should try it while you’re visiting down here. From wherever it is you’re from.”

“Were there many people in there that night?”

“Oh yes, sir. Berchtesgadener beer is the best in Bavaria, sir. You ask anyone.”

“So someone could easily have overheard you saying that you weren’t going to work the next day.”

“Easily, sir. And they wouldn’t have to try too hard to hear me, neither. I’m not what you’d call a closemouthed man. Especially with a pot of beer in my hand. I like to talk.”

“I noticed that.”

I thought carefully about asking the next question, and then asked it anyway. Lesson one of Liebermann von Sonnenberg’s famous book on how to be a detective is that you have to learn patience; at the very least you needed to be very patient to finish that book without throwing it at him. Certainly the Nazis thought so, which is why he was now serving, obscurely, in the Gestapo.

“Are any of those people handy with a rifle?”

“Everyone around here likes to hunt now and then. Ibex, chamois, red deer, roe deer, marmot, capercaillie, a few wild pigs — there’s lots to shoot for the pot around here. Not that we’re allowed much, these days. Best shooting’s up here.”

“And when it’s not for the pot? Have any of them expressed an interest in shooting at men?”