Philip Kerr - Prussian Blue

I wiped my face clean and then searched the bathroom cabinet for some cologne. Of course Flex had the latest American stuff with a sailing ship on the bottle and I put some of that on. It felt like I should have been drinking it.

“Friedrich, I want you to stay here and see what you can find of interest. Don’t ask me what that is because I sure as hell couldn’t tell you. I’m assuming you won’t find a safe but there’s certainly no harm in having another look. But make sure that you leave all the lights on while you’re doing it, please. I want Dr. Brandt and anyone else with something to hide and who lives around here to think that we are going to persevere until we find out what that is. Maybe that will provoke something... something interesting, like someone trying to kill you, Friedrich. That would really help, I think. We need that kind of sacrifice if we’re ever going to crack this damn case.”

“Thanks, sir, I’ll see what I can do.”

“If you do find something interesting, telephone me at the Berghof. I need to try and shut my eyes. Hermann? I want you to go home for a couple of hours and do the same. Your eyes are starting to scare the hell out of me. It’s like looking at Marguerite Schön in Kriemhild’s Revenge. If my baby-blue oysters are anything like yours, I owe the ferryman a couple of marks.”

On the winding road back down the mountain to the Leader’s Territory I saw a number of people walking along the road to Antenberg and decided to follow them on the assumption that they knew something I didn’t. That wouldn’t have been difficult. Curiosity might have killed the cat — especially in that neck of the woods — but even in Nazi Germany it’s still a detective’s main stock in trade, although these days it sometimes results in a similarly terminal outcome. Still, I saw little or no harm in this curiosity here and now, especially when it transpired that everyone was going to the Theater Hall that had been built for the entertainment of the construction workers and people from the town of Berchtesgaden — the same hall that had occasioned the compulsory purchase of the ornithologist’s house, among others. And it was easy to see why those houses had been acquired by the Nazis. The location was enviable and, if you like that kind of thing, it had fine views in almost every direction; personally, I can take or leave a fine view unless it’s through a woman’s bathroom window, or a keyhole in a girls’ dormitory. I was never one for looking at beautiful scenery, and certainly not since 1933; it distracts from the more important and admittedly metropolitan business of keeping an eye out for the Gestapo, which, with my politics, is an ever-present dilemma.

The theater was a very large wooden building about the size of an airship with a tall banner featuring a Nazi eagle, to ensure people didn’t miss the point. The hall was not well built, however, and already the high saddle roof seemed to be sagging a little under the weight of the snow piled on top of it, and leaking, too. Inside were several strategically placed buckets and almost a hundred people, including the three characters I’d met in the apiary. To my surprise, the people were all there to hear Martin Bormann’s adjutant, Wilhelm Zander, talk about Tom Sawyer again. At least that’s what I thought until I noticed that when he’d finished speaking, a movie — Angels with Dirty Faces — was to be screened. I’d seen it already and liked it a lot. I like any picture about gangsters because I hope that German people will see them and be reminded inexorably of the Nazis. In the end, the bad guy, Rocky Sullivan, goes to his own execution a coward, which is just how I always planned to do it myself — dying yellow with a lot of shouting and screaming makes it harder on the executioners’ nerves. I should know. I’ve seen several last performances at Plötzensee that took away my appetite for days.

It was the first time I’d seen the locals en masse. Like any Berliner, I regarded Alpine-dwelling Bavarians with the same indifferent opinion I had for any kind of German wildlife. It didn’t surprise me that they smelled a bit and looked slow and ill-fashioned in their traditional Tracht as much as the fact that I was surprised to see them at all. I’d seen so few people since arriving in the area that I had almost started to believe it was a town where real people no longer existed. A few of the locals were armed with a variety of hunting rifles and I spent several minutes casting my eye over these and their owners. Some of them were wearing ammunition belts and looked more like members of a Bolshevik workers’ militia than conservative Bavarians. I certainly wouldn’t have bothered looking if Flex hadn’t been killed with a rifle. Not that I expected to find out anything very useful; in that part of the world, men carried rifles and skis the way they carried briefcases and rode bicycles back in Berlin. One man had even brought a brace of rabbits and I wondered what the nature-loving Hitler would have said if he’d seen these animals slung over his shoulder like a fur collar. Also present in the theater were Bruno Schenk and Dr. Brandt, who was offering a private surgery for anyone who wanted to see a doctor. He had a community clinic going in a room behind the stage and the line of people who were in need of medical attention extended into the auditorium. I’ve been sick myself in the past and it was my opinion that none of the people waiting to see Brandt looked particularly sick. They were chatting among themselves and by their complexions I’d have said most of them were a lot healthier than I was. Which wasn’t saying very much. Ever since my arrival in Obersalzberg I’d had the feeling that I was suffering from some sort of terminal illness. At any moment I felt my life might suddenly end. Martin Bormann had that effect on you. And so did Reinhard Heydrich. I walked over and joined the line.

Bruno Schenk regarded my unannounced presence in the Theater Hall as uncomfortably as if Antenberg had been hosting a fiftieth-birthday party for Josef Stalin. He probably wished me dead. Brandt was even less pleased to see me in the line of people waiting for him. Again he wore a white coat over his black uniform, and his expression was as somber as a starless night sky. I’d been saving some questions for him and this was as good a time as any to ask them — for me, anyway. For him it was obviously inconvenient, which again, suited me very well. Making a nuisance of yourself is what being a policeman is all about and suspecting people who were completely above suspicion was about the only thing that made doing the job such fun in Nazi Germany.

“What are you doing here?” he asked suspiciously.

“Hoping to speak to you, Doctor.”

“Are you sick?”

“Ever since I arrived here I’ve thought I must be suffering from forensic amnesia. People keep treating me like I’ve forgotten how to be a policeman. But that’s not why I wanted to see you. Actually I wanted to ask you about Renata Prodi.”

“Who’s she?”

I smiled apologetically and looked at the people who were waiting to see the SS doctor. They were all watching me as carefully as if I were a dog that might bite. It wasn’t a bad idea at that. “I could tell you out here, but why take the risk? All these nice people, they really don’t want to know about what’s inside my dirty mind.” I lit a cigarette and smiled nonchalantly. “That’s the worst thing about being a cop, Doc. I have to think and then say things that most people just find plain offensive.”

“You’d better come into my office,” he said coldly.

I followed him and the first thing I saw was another brace of rabbits hanging on a peg behind the door. These were still bleeding. A few spots of blood had collected on the wooden floor like the scene of a tiny execution.