Philip Kerr - A Man Without Breath

I pulled up next to Colonel von Gersdorff, who was leaning on the bonnet of his Mercedes and smoking a cigarette.

He nodded at me as we stepped out of the Tatra and then, rather more warily, at Ines. ‘How are you, Ines?’ he asked.

‘Well, Rudolf.’

‘Good God, haven’t you arrested this woman yet, Gunther?’ he added. ‘Didn’t Siegfried’s wounds flow fresh with blood when the guilty Hagen stood beside the corpse, so to speak?’ He grinned. ‘I thought she was well in the frame for the doctor’s murder when last we talked about things. Motive, opportunity, the whole Dorothy L. Sayers. And don’t forget, the beautiful Bolsheviks are the most dangerous, you know.’

He laughed again, and of course what he said was meant to be a joke, but Ines Kramsta didn’t quite see it that way. And in view of what happened next, nor did I.

For a moment she stared at me without a word, but when her jaw dropped it was plain to see she felt that I had betrayed her.

‘Oh, I see,’ she said quietly. ‘That explains why-’

Ines blinked with obvious astonishment and started to turn away, but I took a step after her and grabbed her arm.

‘Please, Ines,’ I said. ‘It’s not like that. He didn’t mean it. Did you, Von Gersdorff? Tell her you were just joking. I never had any intention of arresting you.’

Von Gersdorff chucked away his cigarette and straightened. ‘Er, yes. I was just joking, of course. My dear Ines, none of us thought for a minute that you actually shot the doctor. Well, I certainly didn’t. Not for a moment.’

This admission was no less club-footed than his joke, and it was plain from her face that the damage was well and truly done. I felt as if someone had just kicked away the stool I had been standing on and I was now hanging by the neck on a very thin length of cord.

‘It seems obvious now,’ she said, wresting her arm out of my grip. ‘All those interested questions about Spain and my brother. You were trying to find out if I shot Dr Berruguete, weren’t you?’ Her nostrils flared a little and her eyes filled with tears, again. ‘It actually crossed your mind that – to think that you thought I could have carried out an autopsy on a man I had murdered.’

‘Ines, please believe me,’ I said. ‘I never had any intention of arresting you.’

‘But you still considered the possibility that I might have killed him, didn’t you?’

She was right of course, and I felt a certain shame about that, which – of course – she was able to read in my eyes and on my face.

‘Oh, Bernie,’ she said.

‘Perhaps for just a minute,’ I said, fumbling for some words that might satisfy her. I felt my feet desperately reaching to touch the stool I had been standing on but already it was too late. ‘But not any more.’ I shook my head. ‘Not any more, do you hear?’

Her disappointment in me – her dismay that I could ever have suspected her of murder – were already turning to anger. Her face flushed and the muscles in her jaws stiffened as, biting her lip, she regarded me with new contempt.

‘I really thought that there was something special between us,’ she said. ‘I can see now I was terribly mistaken about that.’

‘Honestly, Ines,’ said Von Gersdorff, putting his polished jackboot in it again. ‘You’re making a mountain out of a molehill with this. You really are. The poor fellow was only doing his job. He is a policeman, after all. It’s his job to suspect people like you and me of things we didn’t do. And you must admit, for a while there you made a pretty reasonable suspect.’

‘Shut up, Rudi,’ she said. ‘Just for once know when you should say nothing.’

‘Ines, we do have something special,’ I told her. ‘We do. I feel that, too.’

But Ines was shaking her head. ‘Perhaps we did. At least for a moment or two.’

Her voice was husky with emotion. It made me acutely aware of just how much I wanted to comfort her and look after her, and but for the fact that it was me who had caused her hurt, I might have done so, too.

‘Yes, we were a good pair, Gunther. From the first time I was with you it really felt that we were more than just one man and one woman. But none of that matters a damn when one of the two decides to play cop on the other, as you just did with me.’

‘Really, Ines,’ muttered Von Gersdorff.

But she was already walking away, toward Buhtz and the international commission, not looking back, and out of my life, for ever.

‘I’m sorry, Gunther. I didn’t mean that to happen. You know I really should have remembered. Like a lot of lefties, Ines has never had much of a sense of humour.’ He smiled. ‘But look, I expect she’ll get over it. I’ll speak to her. Put things right. Obtain a reprieve for you. You’ll see.’

I shook my head because I knew no reprieve would ever arrive.

‘I don’t think that’s going to be possible, colonel,’ I said. ‘In fact, I’m certain of it.’

‘I should like to try,’ he said. ‘Honestly, I feel terrible.’ He shook his head. ‘I had no idea that you and she … had become quite so close. It was – it was careless of me.’

There was very little I could say to that. Von Gersdorff was right about it being careless of him, although I might have added that it was typically careless of him and all Prussian aristocrats. They were just careless people, careless because they didn’t really care about anyone other than themselves. It was their carelessness that had allowed Hitler to take possession of the country in 1933; and through their carelessness, they had failed to remove him now, some ten years later. They were careless and then other people had to sort it out, or deal with the mess they had made.

Or not.

I walked away. I smoked a couple of cigarettes on my own and stared up at the blue sky through newly minted leaves in the tops of the tall, shifting silver birch trees and realized how, in that part of the world especially, all human life is grotesquely fragile. And feeling glimpses of raw Russian sunlight on my face – which after all was much more than the poor ghosts of four thousand Poles could ever have done – I eventually managed to recover a few blackened, ash-covered fragments of my earlier composure.

A little later on I found a nervous-looking Lieutenant Voss on the edge of the crowd. Several field policemen were doing their best to distinguish those who had a reason to be there from those who did not, which wasn’t easy, as many off-duty German soldiers and locals had come to see what all the fuss was about.

‘What a fucking circus.’ Voss slapped his neck irritably. ‘Christ only knows what will happen if Russian partisans choose today for an attack.’

‘I think malaria or old age is more likely to take down some of these fellows than a Russian hand grenade,’ I said, and slapped my own cheek, hard. ‘I almost wish it was cold again so we might be free of the plague of these fucking insects.’

Voss grunted his agreement.

‘By the way, how’s that Russian bastard you clouted with the truncheon last night? Dyakov? Good job by the way, sir. If anyone needed a thump on the head it’s the field marshal’s pet Ivan.’

‘Alive, thank God. And on his way back to Krasny Bor and his master.’

‘Yes, I heard Clever Hans tore a strip off your face this morning. Makes you wonder what Dyakov has got on the field marshal to make him behave like that.’

‘Yes, it does, doesn’t it?’

I led Voss a short distance away to ask if the late Dr Berruguete’s sudden absence had caused any alarm among our distinguished guests.

‘Not at all,’ said Voss. ‘On the contrary, several of them seemed quite relieved to hear he’d had to return to Spain. That’s what Sloventzik has told them, anyway. A family tragedy that required his immediate return during the night.’