Philip Kerr - Prussian Blue

We went into my first-floor-bedroom office and closed the door so that if either man came to look for us, we might pretend to have heard nothing. I fed some wood into the green-tiled stove and warmed my hands. I was feeling the chill after listening to Brückner and Kannenberg at each other’s throats.

“No love lost there,” observed Kaspel.

“None. But I have the feeling it’s that kind of house.”

I went back to the table and picked up one of two envelopes I’d found addressed to me, removing the sheet of paper inside and reading what was handwritten there.

“With five shots fired,” said Kaspel, “and four that missed, maybe the killer was aiming for Wilhelm Brückner. I’m sure the oil filter on the end of the barrel can hardly have helped with the shooter’s accuracy.”

“And if not Brückner then perhaps someone else, someone other than Flex. Why not, indeed? I certainly don’t think that Bruno Schenk is about to win any popularity contests. For that matter, I doubt any of his colleagues are. You know, maybe it really didn’t matter who he shot as long as he shot someone on that terrace. Have you thought about that? This is the list of names I asked Schenk to compile at breakfast. People that Bormann’s cack-handed lackeys have managed to seriously upset since the great Leader made Obersalzberg his Alpine home away from home. There are over thirty names written here, along with the various reasons they might bear a grudge.” My eyes alighted on one particular name. “Including Rolf Müller, our witless roofing contractor at the Villa Bechstein.”

“You’re joking.”

I handed Kaspel the sheet of paper.

“I wish I was. It seems he had a small cottage behind what is now Göring’s adjutants’ house, and was none too happy when it was forcibly acquired for less than its market value. Even uttered a few half threats. Frankly, I’m a little surprised that Schenk could make sense of anything that man said.”

“Müller must have had plenty of opportunity,” said Kaspel. “But somehow I don’t see him as a killer.”

“Sometimes opportunity is all it takes to make a man into an assassin. Being in the right place at the right time, with a gun. Which is probably why Bormann forbids guns at the Berghof, at least when Hitler’s here.”

The telephone rang and while Kaspel answered it I started to search the chintzy room. Behind the chintzy curtains, underneath the chintzy cushions and the chintzy chairs, even up on the wrought-iron chandelier with its chintzy lampshades. Everything about that room resembled the parlor of an old lady suffering from green color blindness; it was like being inside a bottle of Chartreuse. It took only a minute or two to find but, having been warned by Heydrich and then Kaspel that the house was wired for sound, I knew what I was looking for. Behind a small drawing of Hitler on the chintzy wall was a dull metallic microphone. It was about the size of the mouthpiece in a telephone. I left the microphone in place, but it was easily disconnected from the power supply and rendered harmless. I looked for some more but found only the one and concluded that one per room was probably enough for any surveillance team to manage. Especially a team of eavesdroppers already deafened and blinded by all that chintz.

When after several minutes Kaspel finished his call, he said, “I wish you hadn’t done that. If a man knows always to check what he says, then he can’t go wrong. But if we think we can speak freely in here, we might just do the same somewhere else, and then where will we be? I’ll tell you where. In jail.”

“Sorry, but I can’t do this any other way, Hermann. When our job is to look for the truth, it strikes me as odd that we daren’t speak it in the very place where we’re working. Who was on the phone?”

“The Munich Gestapo. The local photographer, Johann Brandner, the one who used to have a business up here on the mountain? The poor bastard who was sent to Dachau when he complained about the compulsory purchase of his premises? He was released a month ago and is now living in Salzburg. Coincidence, or what?”

“His name is also here.” I showed him Schenk’s list.

Kaspel glanced over the contents and nodded. “It seems he didn’t always have an eye just for shooting a good picture. According to the Gestapo, before he was a photographer he was a Jäger with a Shützen battalion in the Bavarian Third Corps. A sharpshooter, no less.”

“I hate to say it, but we’d better have the Salzburg Gestapo check if he’s still at his last known address. I think we just found our number one suspect, Hermann. I don’t believe in coincidence very much.”

“Yes, boss.” He pointed at the first name on the list. “Hey, wait a minute. Schuster-Winkelhof,” he said. “Isn’t that the name of the butler at the Villa Bechstein — Herr Winkelhof?”

“Yes, it is,” I said unhappily. “Frankly, I’m a little surprised that your own name isn’t on that list.”

“It does seem fairly comprehensive. I think thirty names is almost half of all the people in Obersalzberg who were dispossessed of their homes. Conducting interviews, checking out alibis — this is going to take us forever.”

“That’s why we got the Pervitin. So it won’t take as long as that. Or if it does, then perhaps we won’t notice.” I shrugged. “Maybe we’ll get a break. With the serial number on that Mannlicher. Or those field glasses. Did you take a look at them? They’re good ones. Ten by fifty. He probably used them to spot his target first. A good sniper always uses field glasses.”

“Any prints?”

“I already checked. There’s nothing. He wore gloves. I’m sure of it. Wouldn’t you? It’s cold on the villa’s rooftop.”

Kaspel opened the webbing case and took out the binoculars. “Serial number 121519. Made by Friedrich Busch, of Rathenow.”

“It’s a small town west of Berlin that’s famous for its optical instruments. Anyway, Korsch is checking these and the carbine.”

“Can you trust him? In general. I mean, do you think he’s a spy?”

“I trust him. As far as something like that goes. Friedrich is a good man. But tell me about the oil filter sound suppressor. You said you’d seen one before.”

“It was actually a fellow called Johannes Geiger who told me about it. Said he’d seen a rifle adapted like that once. In the forest underneath the Kehlstein. Abandoned next to the carcass of a dead deer. Must have been a poacher. But we never managed to find out who actually owned it.”

“Johannes Geiger,” I said.

“Yes, he’s actually called the chief hunter, but everyone calls him the gamekeeper. Mostly he shoots the local cats. At least the ones that stray into the Leader’s Territory. Hitler hates cats, on account of the fact that they hunt the local birds. Which he loves, of course.”

“Thus the ornithologist.”

“Yes.”

“Hmm.”

“Don’t tell me Geiger’s name is on that list, too.”

“No. But the initials JG are marked on the inside of the lid of that binoculars case.”

“So they are.”

“Didn’t Arthur Kannenberg just accuse Brückner of trying to screw the gamekeeper’s wife?”

“Yes, he did.” Kaspel shook his head and tried to stifle a yawn. “I feel exhausted just thinking about all this. It’s at times like these I realize I was never much of a detective. Not like you, Gunther. I didn’t have the patience for it. I think I’m going to need some more magic potion.”

I tossed him my tube of Pervitin. He took two tablets, broke them into a fine white powder with the butt of his gun, and sucked it up with a rolled banknote into one nostril and then the other. As before he spent the next minute or two stalking noisily around the room, rubbing his nose and punching the air and blinking furiously.