Philip Kerr - A Man Without Breath

Von Gersdorff took a last puff on his cigarette before extinguishing it. ‘Jesus,’ he said.

‘No relation, I suppose?’ I said cruelly. ‘Von Verschuer and Professor von Dohna-Schlodien?’

Von Gersdorff frowned. ‘I believe I met a Von Dohna-Schlodien who commanded a Freikorps in the Silesian uprisings. He was a navy man not a doctor. Perhaps it’s his son to whom Canaris was referring. But I strongly object to the implied suggestion that my family in any way condones the sterilization of mentally disabled people.’

‘Take it easy, Bismarck. I’m not suggesting anything that would get you drummed out of the club.’

‘Really, Gunther, I wonder how it is that you can have stayed alive for so long. Especially under the current government.’

‘I like the way you say that,’ I told him. ‘Like you think there’s another government just around the corner.’

‘It’s very simple. When we get rid of Hitler, we’ll have a government that’s worthy of the name.’

‘You mean a government of the barons. Or even the restoration of the monarchy.’

‘Would that be so bad? Tell me. I’m interested in your opinion.’

‘No you’re not. You just think you are. And I’m more interested in your opinion about what’s going on in Germany right now, and not what might happen in the future. You’re in the Abwehr. You’re supposed to know more than most about what is going on. Do you suppose it’s possible there are German doctors conducting similar experiments?’

‘Frankly? I think the Nazis are capable of just about anything. After Borisov …’

‘Borisov?’

‘It’s a city in the Minsk Oblast. In early 1942 we learned that six death camps were in operation around Borisov where more than thirty thousand Jews have been systematically killed. Since then we have learned of the existence of many larger camps: Sobibor, Chelmno, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka. I don’t doubt for a minute that there are things going on in these places that would horrify any decent German. It’s equally certain that the mentally weak are already being murdered in special clinics throughout the Reich.’

‘I thought as much.’

Both of us were silent for a moment before Von Gersdorff brandished the plain text in his hand. ‘Well, there’s your motive,’ he said. ‘Quite clearly this Dr Berruguete was a bastard. And deserved to be murdered.’

‘With an attitude like that I don’t think you have much of a future as a policeman, colonel.’

‘No, perhaps not.’

‘Didn’t you say that Dr Kramsta had a brother, Ulrich, who was murdered in a Spanish concentration camp?’

‘Yes. I did. Only I don’t know if Berruguete had anything to do with it.’

‘But she might.’

‘She might at that.’

‘Dr Kramsta was very quiet on the bus from the airport after it was revealed that Dr Cortes had been replaced by Dr Berruguete. She seemed to have recognized his name right away. There’s that and the fact that she knew where your Mauser was. By her own admission, she knew how to use it. I wouldn’t be surprised if she could put a bullet through a buttonhole at a hundred metres.’

‘Anything else before you telephone the field police?’

‘There was a cigarette near the Mauser. A Caruso. Dr Kramsta smokes Carusos. And there was mud on her shoes when I went to see her earlier on this evening.’

Von Gersdorff glanced down at his own hand-made boots. ‘There’s mud on my boots, too, Gunther, but I haven’t murdered anyone.’ He shook his head. ‘Still, it just might help explain why the shooter missed when they shot at you. Although frankly I’m beginning to think that was a mistake. I hate to think how you treat your enemies if this is how you treat your friends.’

I stubbed out my own cigarette and grinned patiently.

‘I didn’t say I was going to send her over,’ I said. ‘I just want to know who did it, that’s all. In case there are any more experts from the international commission she decides to murder. Look here, we might get away with one – although the jury is out on that until breakfast – but I can’t see them all staying on at Krasny Bor and calmly carrying out their investigations while some modern Medea conducts a personal vendetta against the European forensic profession.’

‘No, perhaps not,’ admitted Von Gersdorff. ‘Although it seems unlikely Dr Kramsta would have a motive to kill any of them.’

‘I don’t know. That Frenchman, Dr Costedoat, looks pretty tempting to me.’

Von Gersdorff laughed. ‘Yes, a German never needs much encouragement to shoot a Frenchman. So what are you going to do? Have it out with her? Pistol-whip a confession from her before the day is through? You are welcome to borrow my spotlight.’

‘I’m not sure.’ I shrugged. ‘It’s still a hell of a shot with a broom-handle – to shoot at me and aim to miss. That bullet missed me by only a few centimetres.’

‘Yes, I do see what you mean,’ he said. ‘I think.’

‘What I mean is, it could so very easily have hit me after all. That’s the bit I find hardest to understand – if it was her who shot Berruguete.’

‘She likes you too much to risk killing you, is that it?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Maybe she’s an even better shot than you think.’

‘I thought you were on her side.’

‘I am on her side. I just enjoy watching you entertain the notion that someone you clearly like a lot was perhaps prepared to kill you in pursuit of her revenge.’

‘Yes, it sounds very amusing when you put it like that. I wonder that you don’t have the score to read while you’re enjoying the show. Just so you can keep a couple of bars ahead of what’s happening.’

‘That’s what a good intelligence officer would do.’

‘Mmm hmm. You know I read scores, too, colonel. They’re not leather-bound and printed by Bernhard Schott, and I don’t think you’d find them very amusing, but they do keep me entertained. The one on my lap right now is an opera with not just one murder but several. It’s even possible they’re all connected by the same leitmotif, only my ear isn’t sufficiently skilled to pick out what that is yet. I’m tone-deaf, you see.’

‘Remind me. About the other murders.’

‘The two signallers, Ribe and Greiss; Dr Batov and his daughter; and now Dr Berruguete.’

‘Let’s not forget the murder of poor Martin Quidde. We do at least know who killed him.’

‘Yes, we do. And you know, I’m getting kind of tired hearing you mention it, since I had the stupid idea I killed him to keep your chestnuts out of the horse’s nosebag. Yours and half the general staff in Smolensk.’

‘Don’t think I’m not grateful. I am. So is General von Tresckow. Or weren’t you listening?’

‘Maybe I don’t hear so good after I’ve been shot at.’

‘But those others. You can’t possibly think Dr Kramsta killed them, too?’

‘No, of course I don’t. On account of the fact that she wasn’t even here when those other murders took place. I’m just reminding myself that I’m not much of a detective, since no one has yet been apprehended for any of them. Which may actually be the best reason I can think of to persuade me that Dr Kramsta is innocent after all.’

‘Yes, you’re right. So far you make a much more effective murderer than anything else you’ve been tasked with.’

‘I wish I could pay you the same compliment, colonel.’

*

I rose early and made my way to the mess. Breakfast was always the best meal of the day at Krasny Bor. There was coffee – real coffee, Von Kluge wouldn’t have tolerated anything less – cheese, rye-wheat and whole-grain breads, salted butter, cinnamon rolls, coffee cake, and naturally plenty of wurst. Life was very different for enlisted men, of course, and nobody at group HQ asked too many questions about what they had for breakfast; nobody asked too many questions about the wurst either, and it was generally held that it was horsemeat, but there were also tins of real Lowensenf from Dusseldorf on the table to make your sausage taste more like the kind of real pork sausage you ate at home. The schnapps decanter was always left conspicuously on the table for those who liked to start the day with nothing more than an extra brick in the wall. Generally speaking, I went for everything – including the schnapps – as I had little time for lunch and even less time for the coffee and apple cake that would magically appear in the mess at around four o’clock. Some German officers actually managed to put on weight while they were in Smolensk; unlike the people of Smolensk, of course – not to mention our POWs: there was no chance of any of them putting on weight.