Philip Kerr - A Man Without Breath

‘Colonel Ahrens apologizes for disturbing you and requests that you join him as soon as possible. His car is outside in front of the castle.’

‘Outside? Why? What’s happened?’

‘It would be best if the colonel explained things to you, sir,’ said Hodt.

‘Yes. Yes, of course. What time is it?’

‘Two a.m., sir.’

‘Shit.’

I got dressed and went outside. An army Kubelwagen was waiting in the snow with the engine running. I climbed in alongside Colonel Ahrens and behind another officer I hadn’t seen before. Around the second officer’s neck was a metal gorget that identified him as a member of the uniformed field police, which was the easily recognized equivalent of the Kripo beer token I’d once carried in my coat pocket when I’d been a plainclothes detective. It was already obvious to me that we weren’t going to the local library. As soon as I was seated, the NCO driving the bucket punched it loudly into gear and we set off swiftly down the drive.

‘Captain Gunther, this is Lieutenant Voss of the field police.’

‘If it wasn’t so late I might be pleased to meet you, lieutenant.’

‘Captain Gunther works for the War Crimes Bureau in Berlin,’ explained Ahrens. ‘But before that he was a Kripo police commissar at the Alex.’

‘What’s this all about, colonel?’ I asked Ahrens.

‘Two of my men have been murdered, captain.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that. Was it partisans?’

‘That’s what we’re hoping you can help us to find out.’

‘I guess there’s no harm in hoping,’ I said sourly.

We drove east along the road to Smolensk. A sign on the road said: PARTISAN DANGER AHEAD. SINGLE VEHICLES STOP! HOLD WEAPONS READY.

‘It looks like you’ve already made up your minds,’ I observed.

‘You’re the expert,’ said Voss. ‘Perhaps, when you’ve taken a look at the scene, you’ll tell us what you think.’

‘Why not?’ I said. ‘As long as everyone remembers that I’m boarding a plane back to Berlin in ten hours.’

‘Just take a look,’ said Ahrens. ‘Please. Then, if you wish, you can take your flight home.’

The ‘if you wish’ part I didn’t like at all, but I kept my mouth shut. Lately I’d got a lot better at doing that. Besides, I could see the colonel was upset, and telling him I really didn’t give a damn about who had killed his men wasn’t exactly going to smooth my already delayed departure from Smolensk. I wanted to stay on in that city like I wanted to take an ice-cold bath.

A few blocks west of the railway station the road split and we took the southern route down Schlachthofstrasse before turning right onto Dnieperstrasse, where the driver skidded to a halt. We got out and walked past an Opel Blitz that was full of field policemen and down a snow-covered slope to the edge of the Dnieper River, where another bucket wagon was parked with its spotlight trained on two bodies lying side by side at the water’s half-frozen edge. Two of the lieutenant’s men were standing beside the bodies and stamping their feet against the cold and the damp. The river looked as black as the Styx and almost as still in the moonlit silence.

Voss handed me a flashlight, and although I was keen not to be involved, I made a nice show of casting a professional eye over the lieutenant’s crime scene. It was easy enough to call: two men in uniform, their bare heads bashed in and their throats neatly cut from ear to ear like a clown’s big smile, with blood all over the snow that, in the moonlight, hardly looked like blood at all.

‘Lieutenant? See if you can’t find their cunt covers, will you?’

‘Their what?’

‘Their hats, their fucking hats. Find them.’

Voss looked at one of his men and passed on the order. The man scrambled back up the bank.

‘And see if you can’t find a murder weapon, while you’re at it,’ I shouted after him. ‘Some kind of a knife or bayonet.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘So what’s the story so far?’ I asked no one in particular and without much interest in an answer.

‘Sergeant Ribe and Corporal Greiss,’ said the colonel. ‘Two of my best men. They were on switchboard and coding duty until about four o’clock this afternoon, after the leader left.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Manning the telephone exchange. The radio. Decoding teletype messages with the Enigma machine.’

‘So when they went off duty they left the castle, how? In a bucket wagon?’

‘No, on foot,’ said Ahrens. ‘You can walk it in half an hour.’

‘Only if it’s worth your while, I’d have thought. What’s the attraction around here? Don’t tell me it’s that church near the railway station or I’ll start to worry I’ve been missing out on something important.’

‘The Peter and Paul? No.’

‘There’s a swimming bath that’s used by the army on Dnieperstrasse,’ said Voss. ‘It seems they went there to swim and use the steam room, after which they both went next door.’

‘And next door is?’

‘A brothel,’ said Voss. ‘In the Hotel Glinka. Or what used to be the Hotel Glinka.’

‘Ah yes, Glinka, I remember him. He’s the father of Russian classical music, isn’t he?’ I yawned loudly. ‘I’m looking forward to acquainting myself with some of his music. It’ll make a pleasant change from a cold Russian wind. Christ, my ears feel like something bit them.’

‘The whores in the brothel claim the two men were there until midnight and then left,’ said Voss. ‘No trouble. No fights. Nothing suspicious.’

‘Whores? Why wasn’t I told? I just spent the evening alone with a good book.’

‘It wasn’t a place for German officers,’ said Voss. ‘It was a place for enlisted men. A cyria.’

‘What’s a cyria?’ I asked.

‘A round-up brothel.’

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘So strictly speaking they weren’t whores at all. Just innocent girls from out of town who’d been pressed into some horizontal service for the fatherland. Now I’m glad I stayed in with my book. Who found them?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘The bodies? Who found them? A whore? Another Fritz? The Volga boatman? Who?’

‘An SS sergeant came out of the Glinka for a breath of fresh air,’ explained Voss. ‘He’d had a lot to drink and was feeling ill, he says. He saw a figure bent over these two men down here and thought he was witnessing a robbery. He challenged the man, who ran off in the direction of the west bridge.’ Lieutenant Voss pointed along the riverbank. ‘That way.’

‘Which is ruined, right? So we can assume he wasn’t looking to make it across the river tonight. Not unless he was a hell of a swimmer.’

‘Correct. The sergeant pursued the figure for a while but lost him in the darkness. A moment later he heard an engine start up and a vehicle driving away. He claims it sounded like a motorcycle, although I must say I don’t know how he could tell that without seeing it.’

‘Hmm. Which way did the bike go? Did he say?’

‘West,’ said Voss. ‘It never came back.’

I lit a cigarette to stop me from yawning again. ‘Did he give you a description of the man he saw? Not that it matters if he was drunk.’

‘Says it was too dark.’

I glanced up at the moon. There were a few clouds, and from time to time one of these drew a dark curtain over the moon, but nothing in the way of weather that looked at all likely to delay a flight back to Berlin.

‘That’s possible, I suppose.’

Then I looked back at the two dead men. There’s something particularly awful about a man who’s had his throat cut; I suppose it’s the way it reminds you of an animal sacrifice, not to mention the sheer quantity of blood that’s involved. But there was an extra dimension of horror to the way these two men had been butchered – that was indeed the word – for such was the force used to cut their throats that each man’s head had almost been severed, so that the spine was clearly visible. If I’d looked closely I could probably have seen what each had had for dinner. Instead I lifted their hands to check for defensive cuts, but there were none.