Philip Kerr - Prussian Blue

Friedrich Korsch didn’t much resemble Thor, the thunder god; for one, his face was too crafty and the pimp mustache on his upper lip much too metropolitan, but the hammer he was carrying over his shoulder did make him look as if he meant to crush a mountain or two. He brandished the tool eagerly as if looking forward to the designated demolition work. I expect he’d have done what he was told if I’d ordered him to batter out the fireplace but, in the circumstances, I thought it best to do it myself; if anyone was going to incur the wrath of Rudolf Hess it seemed better that it should be me. So I took the hammer and climbed back up the stairs. Kaspel and Korsch followed, keen to witness the destruction I was about to inflict on Hitler’s precious guest house. I took off my jacket, rolled up my shirtsleeves, spat on my hands, grasped the shaft of the hammer firmly, and prepared to do battle.

“Are you sure about this, boss?” said Korsch.

“No,” I said, “I’m not sure of anything very much since I started taking the local magic potion.”

And while Kaspel explained to Korsch about Pervitin, I laid into the fireplace with the sledgehammer. That first blow felt as satisfying as if I’d struck Hess on his absurdly high forehead.

“But I am willing to bet five marks that the rifle is behind this wall.”

I hammered it again, smashing the tile surround and some of the bricks behind it. Korsch pulled a face and looked up at the ceiling as if he expected the deputy leader to reach down through his own floorboards and grab me by the throat.

“I’ll take that bet,” said Kaspel, and lit a cigarette. “I think it’s just as likely the shooter chucked it into the woods from where he could retrieve it later on. In fact, I can’t understand why you didn’t let me organize a search of the grounds before you decided to turn this room into a rock pile.”

“Because the roofing contractor, Rolf Müller, doesn’t smoke,” I said. “And because right next to the chimney there was a cigarette end and some footprints. And because it’s too late for Santa Claus. And because there are too many trees out there; if he’d tossed the rifle it might have hit one and bounced back onto the path and risked alerting that gardener. Dropping it down the chimney was the safer thing to do. Because it’s what I’d have done myself if I’d had the guts to take a potshot at someone on the Berghof terrace. And because there’s something sitting right on top of the flap in this chimney that’s stopping it from being used.”

I swung the sledgehammer a third time, and this time made a fist-sized hole in the wall around the fireplace. But suddenly Korsch and Kaspel stiffened as if the devil had put in an appearance.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Commissar Gunther?”

I turned around to find Martin Bormann occupying the doorway, with Zander, Högl, and Winkelhof standing immediately behind him. I glanced back at the fireplace. I decided that another blow of the sledgehammer would probably do it and that it was one of those uniquely German situations in which actions speak louder than words. So I swung again, and this time I altered the position of the fireplace itself. It now looked possible to pull the thing out by hand. And I might have done just that but for the Walther police pistol that had now appeared in Bormann’s chubby fist.

“If you wield that hammer again I will shoot you,” he said, and worked the slide just to show that he meant business, before pointing the PPK at my head.

I threw down the hammer, and taking the cigarette from Kaspel’s hand, started to smoke it myself with one eye on Bormann’s face and the other on the gun. For the moment, however, I said nothing. Nothing is always an easier answer to give when there’s a cigarette in your hand.

“Explain yourself,” insisted Bormann, and lowered the weapon — although as far as I could see, the gun was still cocked and ready for action. I had a good idea that if I’d picked up the sledgehammer again he wouldn’t have hesitated to shoot me. “What the hell do you mean by smashing the room up like this?”

“I mean to find the man who murdered Karl Flex,” I said. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s what you told me to do. But to do that I need to find the murder weapon.”

“Are you suggesting he shot him from in here? From the Villa Bechstein?”

“Not from in here,” I said calmly. “From the roof.”

“No! From the Villa Bechstein? Tell it to your grandmother. I don’t fucking believe it. You mean he wasn’t in the woods above the Berghof after all?”

“There’s spent brass all over the roof,” I said. “And I already measured the angles of trajectory from the terrace. The shooter was down here all right. It’s my theory that having shot Flex, he dumped the rifle down the chimney before making his escape. This chimney. I noticed the flap on the fireplace wouldn’t open earlier. And so I decided to check it out. Look, sir, when we spoke last night I gained the impression that a degree of urgency was going to be necessary with this inquiry. Not to mention a certain amount of discretion. I’m afraid I took you at your word, otherwise I’d have summoned a local chimney sweep and risked the whole town finding out what happened up here yesterday morning.”

“Well, is it there? The rifle?”

“I don’t honestly know, sir. Really, I was just playing a hunch I had. I might pull that fireplace out right now and find out for sure but for the funny idea I have that you might put a hole in me with that police pistol in your hand.”

Bormann made the Walther safe and then slipped it back into his coat pocket. With the automatic he was a bigger thug than even I had supposed. “There,” he said. “You’re quite safe for the moment.”

Meanwhile Rudolf Hess had appeared behind his shoulder and regarded me with the kind of staring blue eyes that must sometimes have made even Hitler a bit nervous. The dark wave of hair on top of his square head was standing so high it looked as if it were concealing a pair of horns; either that or he’d been standing a little too close to the lightning conductor in Frankenstein’s castle laboratory.

“What the hell is going on here?” he asked Bormann.

“It would seem that Criminal Commissar Gunther is about to search the chimney for a murder weapon,” said Bormann. “Well, go on, then,” he told me. “Get on with it. But you’d better be right, Gunther, or you’ll be on the next train back to Berlin.”

“Murder weapon?” said Hess. “Who’s been murdered? What’s this all about, Commissar?”

Bormann ignored him and it certainly wasn’t up to me to say who was dead or why. Instead, I knelt down in front of the fireplace and, almost hoping that I could be on the first train back to Berlin, I tugged hard at the fireplace and dislodged an object that came tumbling onto the floor in a cloud of soot and gravel. Only it wasn’t a rifle but a leather binoculars case, covered with soot. I laid the case on the bedspread, which did little to endear me to Winkelhof.

“That doesn’t look like a rifle,” said Bormann.

“No, sir, but a pair of field glasses might help you to find your target. Assuming you actually cared who you were shooting at.”

With five shots fired at the Berghof terrace I still wasn’t a hundred percent sure that the shooter had only intended to hit Karl Flex. I knelt down again and pushed my arm up the chimney. A few moments later I was holding a rifle up for the inspection of everyone in the room. It was a Mannlicher M95, a short-barreled carbine manufactured for the Austrian army with a telescopic sight mounted slightly to the left so the rifle could be fed by an en-bloc stripper clip.

“It would seem you know your business after all, Commissar,” said Bormann.