Philip Kerr - A Man Without Breath

‘You’re hurt, do you know that?’

‘It’s just a scratch. I threw myself on the ground when the shooting started and landed on a tree root.’

‘Take off your shirt and let me put some iodine on it.’

‘Yes, doctor. But I’d rather you saved the shirt, if you could. I didn’t bring that many with me, and the laundry here is a little slow.’

I took off my tie and then my shirt and let her clean the scratch with some lint.

‘I think this shirt has had it,’ she said.

‘Which makes it fortunate I own a needle and thread.’

‘I’m considering asking you to fetch it. Your wound is actually quite deep. But for now we’ll see how you manage with a field dressing.’

‘Yes, doctor.’

Ines tore open a bandage parcel and began to wind a roll around my chest. She worked quickly and expertly, like someone who’d done it many times before, but gently, too, like she wanted to spare me from pain.

‘You know, I really don’t think there’s much wrong with your bedside manner.’

‘Maybe that’s because you’re used to sitting on my bed.’

‘True.’

‘Help yourself to more brandy.’

I poured another cupful, but before I could drink it she took it out of my hands and drank it herself.

‘Why didn’t you come to dinner tonight?’

‘I told you, Gunther, I’m exhausted. After we picked up the commission from the airport, Professor Buhtz and I went back to grave number one and did another sixteen autopsies. The last thing I feel like doing is putting on a nice dress and having my hand kissed by so many gallant army officers. It still stinks of the rubber glove it’s been wearing.’

‘Tough day.’

‘Tough but interesting. As well as having been shot, some of the Poles were stabbed first with a bayonet. Probably because they resisted being dragged to the graveside.’ She paused and finished tying off the bandage. ‘Interestingly, many of the bodies we’ve found aren’t in a condition of decomposition at all. They’re in the initial phase of desiccation and of formation of adipocere. The internal organs have almost normal colour. And the brains are more or less … Well, it’s interesting to me, anyway.’ She smiled a sad little smile, stroked my cheek and added: ‘There. It’s done.’

‘There’s mud on your shoes.’

‘I went for a walk instead of coming to dinner.’

‘See anything suspicious?’

‘You mean like a man with a gun?’

‘Yes.’

‘The last time I looked there were several by the front gate.’

‘I meant hiding in the bushes.’

‘I should really give you a tetanus shot. God only knows what’s in the ground around here. Luckily for you I brought some from Breslau. Just in case I cut myself working down here. No, I didn’t see anyone like that. If I had I would have roused the sheriff.’

She fetched her doctor’s bag, found an unpleasant-looking syringe, and filled it from a little vial of tetanus vaccine.

‘Was that your uncle’s, too?’

‘As a matter of fact it was.’

‘It looks as if it’s going to hurt,’ I said.

‘Yes. It is. So it’s best I stick it in your behind. If I put this needle in your arm it’ll hurt for days, and then you might not be able to do a nice salute and you wouldn’t want that. This way only your dignity is affected. Not your Nazism.’

When the needle went in it felt like it was going all the way down my leg, but of course that was just the cold tetanus vaccine.

‘Is my dignity affected if I groan?’

‘Of course. Weren’t you ever a boy scout? They’re not supposed to cry out when they’re in pain.’

I groaned. ‘I think you’re confusing them with the Spartans.’

She rubbed on some alcohol and then let me alone. The hypodermic went into a little velvet-lined black leather case with a latch in the front.

‘But I wasn’t ever a boy scout,’ I said, buttoning my trousers. ‘And I was never a Nazi.’

‘Did you consider the possibility that maybe it’s why someone was trying to shoot you?’

I left off my shirt and put my tunic back on. ‘It’s not something I generally tell people. So, no.’

‘I think that’s where the problem started, don’t you? Too many people keeping quiet about what they really think?’ She collected her still unlit cigarette and put a match to it, but nervously, like it was about to go off in her mouth.

‘What do you think?’

‘Me?’ She tossed the match on the floor. ‘I’m a Nazi through and through, Gunther. SA brown on the outside and falangist black in the middle. I hate the stab-in-the-back politicians who betrayed Germany in 1918 and I hate the Weimar republican fools who bankrupted the country in 1923. I hate communists and I hate the people who live in Berlin West and I hate the Jews. I hate the bloody British and the god-damned Americans and the traitor Rudolf Hess and the tyrant Josef Stalin. I hate the French and I hate defeatists. I even hate Charlie Chaplin. Is all that clear enough for you? Now, if you don’t mind, let’s change the subject. We can talk politics all you like when we’re both banged up in a concentration camp.’

‘You’re all right,’ I said. ‘I like you a lot, you do know that, don’t you?’

Ines frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘What do you mean, what do I mean?’

‘Yes. I didn’t tell you anything about what I think.’

‘Maybe not then, but just now, when you frowned, your face told me plenty, doctor. Like you meant not a word of what you said.’

We both looked around as somewhere outside in the Krasny Bor forest we heard a police whistle blowing.

‘You’d best stay here,’ I said, reaching for the door handle.

‘I should have pushed that needle right down to your hip bone,’ she said, pushing past me. ‘Don’t you get it? I’m a doctor, not a delicate Meissen figurine.’

‘We’ve got plenty of doctors at Krasny Bor,’ I said, and went after her. ‘Most of them are ugly and old and quite expendable. But delicate Meissen figurines are in shorter supply.’

*

The police whistle had stopped blowing but the cops were easy to find – they usually are. There were two field police under-officers standing in the forest: the army-issue flashlights suspended from their greatcoat buttons looked like the eyes of an enormous wolf. At their feet was what looked like a discarded raincoat and a lost Homburg hat. In the air was a strong smell of cigarettes – as if someone had just put one out – and little Pez breath mints that nearly every man in the German army ate when he was going to see a girl or he had nothing better to do but suck on his own thoughts.

‘It’s Captain Gunther,’ said one.

‘We’ve found a body, sir,’ said the other, and shone his flashlight onto a man lying on the ground as other uniformed men arrived with more lights, and the scene soon resembled some arcane midsummer-night ritual with all of us standing in a circle, our heads bowed in what might have looked like prayer. But it was too late for the man lying on the ground: no amount of prayer was ever going to bring him back to life. He was about sixty years old; most of the blood had dyed his grey hair red; one of his eyes was closed but his mouth was open and his tongue was hanging out of his bearded mouth as if he was pushing it out to taste something – maybe he’d been sucking a mint, too. It appeared he’d been shot in the head. I didn’t recognize him.

‘That’s Professor Berruguete,’ said Ines. ‘From the International Commission.’

‘Jesus. Which country?’

‘From Spain. He was Professor of Forensic Medicine at the University of Madrid.’

I groaned loudly. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I’m quite sure.’