Philip Kerr - Prussian Blue

“Here,” I said. “With the compliments of the SD. And if anyone ever asks, I’m doing this because I loathe and despise Jews and want all of them safely out of the country as soon as possible.”

Lola smiled and put the money in a little pocket next to the automatic she was carrying.

“I knew I was right about you, Humbert. I’m only sorry I couldn’t be more helpful.”

“On the contrary. You’ve been very helpful.”

“I don’t see how.”

“No, but I think I do. Sometimes, seeing what’s been right in front of my nose all along is what this job is all about.”

I climbed back up onto the roof of the Villa Bechstein to take another look around. It was an operatic skyline. I might have been facing the impregnable walls of Asgard; even the clouds were like Odin’s beard. It was a sky for a man with an idea of his own destiny. Or perhaps a misleading vision of one. Rolf Müller came over and asked if he could help. But now it was my turn to be annoyingly cryptic.

“The chimney,” I said, pointing out the stack with the curious bell tower.

“What about it?”

“Plenty of room for Santa Claus and a whole sackful of presents, don’t you think?”

“Santa Claus?”

“Don’t tell me you don’t believe in Santa Claus, Herr Müller.”

“It’s April,” he said weakly. “Too late for Santa Claus.”

“Better late than never, wouldn’t you say?”

I smiled but actually I wasn’t so very sure that I hadn’t just seen Santa Claus zooming across the skies above Obersalzberg, with a full squadron of flying Valkyries drawing his sleigh. That was the methamphetamine. It was still like I’d been wired up to the main electricity supply, which felt good even though hallucinations are supposed to interfere with your powers of observation — at least they are according to the rules for being a good detective, as described by Bernhard Weiss. It’s bad enough that you miss things you should have seen before; it’s wholly inexcusable when you start seeing things that you know aren’t there at all. Not that this ever stopped anyone at the Alex from stowing a lunch bottle in his desk drawer, and a couple of drinks certainly never slowed me down very much, but the arrival at the Villa Bechstein of a cortege of black limousines sporting stiff little Nazi flags persuaded me that I was now going to have to try a lot harder to pull myself together and behave like a real Nazi.

I came back down the ladder, fixed a stupid smile to my face, and saluted smartly, although not nearly as smartly as Hermann Kaspel; his was good enough for the both of us, at least I hoped it was. The deputy party leader had arrived with his Dalmatian dogs, and as soon as the heavy car doors opened, the two mutts went galloping off into the thickly timbered woods behind the house. Then Hess climbed out of the car, stretched a little, glanced up at the roof, and returned the salute absently with a motion of his swagger stick. He was an unprepossessing fellow. Most people I knew thought that Hitler kept him around to make himself seem a bit more normal; with his monobrow, Phantom of the Opera eyes, and Frankenstein skull, Rudolf Hess would have made Lon Chaney seem normal. I waited until he and his fawning entourage of brownshirts had gone inside and then went quietly up to the first bedroom shown to me by Winkelhof, the butler. I knelt down on the floor and tried to lift the chimney flap but it was still stuck — not with soot and rubble; it felt like something heavy was resting on top of the flap. I had a shrewd idea what it was, and as soon as Winkelhof had finished showing Hess to his apartments and had come to see if he could assist me in some way, I asked him to fetch me a sledgehammer.

“May I inquire what you plan to do with a sledgehammer, sir?” he asked with polite disapproval.

“Yes, I plan to remove this faulty fireplace as quickly as possible.”

“Are you feeling all right, sir?”

“Yes, I’m fine, thank you.”

He took off his glasses and began to polish them furiously, almost as if he were trying to erase me from his sight. “Then may I remind you, sir, that the fireplace in your own room is working perfectly.”

“Yes, I know. But something is jammed on top of the flap in this fireplace, and I do believe that something is a rifle.”

Winkelhof looked pained. “A rifle? Are you sure?”

“More or less. I think someone dropped it down the chimney before making his escape.”

“And if it’s less? What I mean is, I don’t think the deputy leader will like you hammering on the wall with a sledgehammer immediately below his apartments, sir. He’s had a long and tiring journey and has just informed me that he intends to get some rest. That’s rest as in peace and quiet, and he’s not to be disturbed under any circumstances until dinnertime. Perhaps a chimney sweep might be summoned tomorrow—”

I tried not to smile at the prospect of ruining the deputy leader’s beauty sleep but this proved to be impossible. That was the meth, too, I suppose. I was ready to face him down if necessary, at some risk to myself and all in the name of an investigation into the death of a man whom no one had liked. “It can’t be helped, I’m afraid. I need to clear this matter up as soon as possible. So I have my orders, Winkelhof. Bormann’s orders.”

“And I have mine.”

“Look, I understand your quandary. You’re trying to run this house, like a good butler should. But I’m trying to run a murder investigation. So I’ll find some tools myself. And take full responsibility if the deputy leader tries to make my ears stiff because of it.” But I wondered about that; in a cocks-out size contest between Martin Bormann and Rudolf Hess, I had no idea which would reveal himself to be in possession of the largest bratwürst. I was, perhaps, about to find out.

Kaspel and Friedrich Korsch were waiting for me in the drawing room.

Korsch had my prints of the autopsy and the crime scene. “You were right about that other photographer,” he told Kaspel. “There was a local man called Johann Brandner. Only, he used to have his business premises up here, in Obersalzberg, not in Berchtesgaden. Guess where he is now. Dachau. Seems as if he kept writing to Hitler to ask if his little shop might be spared from compulsory purchase. Bormann got fed up with him and had him carted off for a barbed-wire holiday. I had the devil of a job getting anyone to admit they’d even heard of the poor bastard.”

“Put a call in to the Munich SD,” I told Hermann Kaspel. “See if he’s still there. And Friedrich. I’m going to need a sledgehammer. You might like to try some of those workers from P&Z we saw on the road. Maybe they’ll lend you one.”

Then I went to my own room, lay down on the rock-hard mattress, closed my eyes, and breathed deeply through my nose in the hope that the voices I could hear would quickly disappear. Mostly they were telling me that I should borrow a car, drive across Austria and into Italy as soon as possible — Sesto was only two hundred kilometers away — find a nice girl, and forget about being a cop before the Nazis decided to throw me in a concentration camp, this time forever. It was probably good advice, only a little too loud and clear for my liking and hearing it made my skin crawl like I was in the way of an army of voracious soldier ants. Staying awake for a day and a half was, I now realized, as sure a way of receiving a personal message from the gods as anything described in the Holy Bible. Half an hour passed. I didn’t sleep for a minute. My eyes shifted under their lids like excited puppies. The voices persisted: if I didn’t leave Obersalzberg soon I was going to be tied up inside a sack with a gang of oversexed workers from P&Z and hurled off the top terrace of Hitler’s tea house. I got up and went downstairs before I started talking back.