A Man Without Breath (42 page)

‘That all depends, doesn’t it?’ she asked.

‘On what?’

‘On how far away the shooter was when he fired the cannon.’

I nodded. ‘He smells of garlic. You’re right.’

‘But it’s not the reason Berruguete wasn’t exactly popular with his medical colleagues.’

‘And what is the reason?’

‘He held some rather extreme views,’ she said.

‘That doesn’t exactly put him outside of polite society. Not these days. Some of our leading citizens hold views that would embarrass Doctor Mabuse.’

Ines shook her head. ‘From what I heard, Berruguete’s views were rather worse than his.’

‘So maybe one of them shot him,’ I said. ‘Professional jealousy. Settling an old score. Why not?’

‘They’re all of them highly respected doctors, that’s why not.’

‘But this Spanish fellow wasn’t highly respected. At least not by you, Dr Kramsta.’

‘No. He was – he was—’ She shook her head and smiled. ‘It
doesn’t really matter what I think about him now, does it? Not now he’s dead.’

‘No, I guess not.’

She stood up and looked around. ‘If I were you I’d stick to my first instinct: which was to try to cover this up, not investigate it. There’s a bigger picture here, right? Those men from the international commission have enough awkward questions of their own without you asking some more.’

‘All right,’ I said and stood up next to her. ‘There’s that way. And then there’s my way – the Gunther way.’

‘Which is?’

‘Maybe I can find out who did it without asking anyone any awkward questions. During the course of the past decade I’ve grown to be quite good at that.’

‘I’ll bet you have.’

‘Sir,’ said one of the field policemen. ‘Over here sir. We’ve found a gun.’

Ines and I walked toward him. The cop was about seventy or eighty metres away. His flashlight was trained on the ground – it was pointed right at a broom-handle Mauser, very like the one Ines had found in the door pocket in Von Gersdorff’s car. I might even have said it was the same one, because of the red number nine that was burned and painted onto the grip panel to warn the pistol’s users not to load it with 7.63 ammunition by mistake but to use only the nine-mill Parabellum cartridge for which the gun had been re-chambered.

‘That looks kind of familiar,’ said Ines. ‘Doesn’t your friend with the 260 own a Mauser exactly like this?’

‘Yes, he does.’

‘Hadn’t you better see if he’s still got it?’

‘I don’t see what that will prove.’

‘I don’t know, but it could prove that he did it,’ she said.

‘Yes, I suppose it could.’

‘You know I don’t see what there is to be so cagey about, Gunther, I was only making a suggestion.’

‘Do you remember back in your hut just now, I was telling you I might need a tetanus shot, and you were telling me you didn’t think it was necessary?’

She frowned. ‘I didn’t say anything of the kind. And nor did you.’

‘Exactly. You do your job, doctor and I’ll do mine. Okay?’

She stood up abruptly, momentarily angry. Her hands were shaking and it took a moment for her to calm down.

‘Is it your job?’ she said, evenly. ‘To play detective here? I don’t know. I thought you were working with the ministry of propaganda in Katyn.’

‘Actually it’s the Ministry of Enlightenment and Propaganda; and being a detective, enlightenment – which is to say the full comprehension of a situation – is what I’m good at. So maybe I’ll just stick to that.’

‘You manage to make being a detective sound almost religious.’

‘If praying helped solve crimes there would be more Christians than there are lions to eat them.’

‘Spiritual, then.’

I borrowed the field cop’s flashlight and flicked it over the ground while she talked. Something small caught my eye, but for a moment I left it alone.

‘Maybe. The ultimate goal of the science of criminal detection is a state of complete understanding, and of course the liberation of oneself from various states of imprisonment.’ I shrugged. ‘Although these days there’s only one state of imprisonment that means a damn to anyone.’

‘Self-preservation, huh?’

‘It’s generally preferable to ending up like your friend Dr Berruguete.’

‘He was no friend of mine,’ she said. ‘I didn’t even know him.’

‘That’s good. Maybe that makes you the right person to perform an autopsy.’

‘Maybe,’ she said stiffly. ‘In the morning, perhaps. But right now I’m going to bed. So, if you want me, I’ll be in my hut.’

I watched her walk away into the darkness. I wanted her all right. I wanted to feel her smooth thighs wrapped around me the way I had the previous night. I wanted to feel my hands squashed under her behind as I nudged deep into her. But it bothered me a bit that she had tried – oh so subtly – to scare me off from behaving like a detective. It bothered me also that she had mentioned the word cannon before we’d found the broom-handle Mauser. Of course she might have been in the habit of describing guns as cannons – some people were. Then again, she’d used the name ‘box cannon’ when she’d been handling the gun in Von Gersdorff’s Mercedes, and that was what some people called a Mauser C96. And I knew she could handle a gun. I’d seen her handling the Mauser as comfortably as her Dunhill lighter.

It also bothered me that she’d been so quick to finger him for the murder and that she’d had mud on her shoes when I’d gone to see her in the hut – shoes she had not long changed into after removing her medical whites and boots.

I bent down and retrieved the object I’d seen on the ground: a cigarette end. There was more than enough left on it for a Berlin street vendor to have put it on his tray of half-smoked cigarettes, which was how most people – the poor anyway – went about supplementing their daily ration of three johnnies.
Had she been smoking at the scene of the crime? I couldn’t remember.

Then there was the Spanish connection. I had a strong feeling there was a lot more about her time in Spain that Ines wasn’t telling me.

*

Von Gersdorff had a little glass in his fingers; the gramophone was playing something improving, only I wasn’t improved enough to recognize it. But he wasn’t alone: he was with General von Tresckow. They had a carafe of vodka, some caviar, pickles, slices of toast on an engraved silver salver, and some hand-rolled cigarettes. It wasn’t the German Club but it still looked pretty exclusive.

‘Henning, this is the fellow I was telling you about. This is Bernhard Gunther.’

To my surprise Von Tresckow stood up and bowed his bald head politely, which had my eyebrows up on my scalp: I wasn’t used to being treated with courtesy by the local flamingos.

‘I am delighted to meet you,’ he said. ‘We are in your debt, sir. Rudi told me what you did for our cause.’

I nodded back at him politely, but all the same it irritated me the way he’d talked about ‘our cause’ as if you needed a red stripe down your trouser leg or a gold signet ring with your family crest engraved on the face to want to be rid of Adolf Hitler. Von Tresckow and his piss-elegant, aristocratic friends had some airs – that was understandable – but this struck as me the worst air of all.

‘You make that sound like a kind of plutarchy, sir,’ I said. ‘I had the impression that half the world would like to see the back of that man. With a couple of holes in it.’

‘Quite right. Quite right.’ He puffed his cigarette and grinned. ‘According to Rudi here you’re a bit of a tough guy.’

I shrugged. ‘I was tough last year. And perhaps the year before. But not any more. Not since I got to Smolensk. I found out how easy it is to wind up dead, in an unmarked grave with a bullet in the back of your head just because there’s a “ski” at the end of your name. A tough guy is someone who’s hard to kill, that’s all. I guess that makes Hitler the toughest guy in Germany right now.’

Von Tresckow took that one on the chin.

‘You’re a Berliner, yes?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘Good.’ He made a fist that he held up in front of his face and mine; it was clear he’d been drinking. ‘
Good
. The ideal of freedom can never be disassociated from real Prussians like us, Gunther. Between rigour and compassion, pride in oneself and consideration for our fellow man, there must exist a balance. Wouldn’t you say so?’

I’d never really thought of myself as a Prussian, but there’s a first time for everything, so I nodded, patiently: like most German generals, von Tresckow was a little too fond of the sound of his own natural leadership.

‘Oh surely,’ I said. ‘I’m all in favour of a little balance. Where and when you can find it.’

‘Will you have some vodka, Gunther?’ said Von Gersdorff. ‘A little caviar, perhaps?’

‘No sir. Not for me. I’m here on business.’

That sounded provincial and dull – as if I was out of my depth – but I couldn’t have cared less what they thought. That’s the Berliner in me, not the Prussian.

‘Trouble?’

‘I’m afraid so. Only before I get to that I want to tell you – what we talked about earlier this evening, me rocking the boat with my own plans – you can forget what I said. It was
a very bad idea. One way or another I get a lot of those. And I realized that I’m not as independently minded as I thought I was.’

‘Might I ask what those plans were?’ asked the general.

Henning von Tresckow was not much more than forty and was one of the youngest generals in the Wehrmacht. That might have had something to do with his wife’s uncle, Field Marshal Fodor von Bock, but his many decorations told a more inspiring story. The fact is, he was as bright as a polished cavalry sabre and cultured, and everyone seemed to love him – Von Kluge was forever asking Von Tresckow to recite the poet Rilke in the officer’s mess. But there was something ruthless about the man that made me wary. I had the strong feeling he, as with all of his class, disliked Hitler a lot more than he had ever loved the republic and democracy.

‘Let’s just say that I went for a walk, like Rilke. And I was grasped by what we cannot grasp and which changed me into something else.’

Von Tresckow smiled. ‘You were in the mess, the other night.’

‘Yes sir. And I heard your rendition. I thought it was good, too. You make quite a performer. But it so happens I always did like Rilke. He might just be my favourite poet.’

‘And why is that d’you think?’

‘Trying to say what can’t be said seems a very German dilemma. Especially in these anxious, disquieting times. And I’ve changed my mind about that drink. On account of how things just became a little more disquieting than they were before.’

‘Oh?’ Von Gersdorff poured me one from the carafe. ‘How so?’

He handed me the drink and I put it away quickly, just to
keep things tidy in his small but well-appointed quarters: Von Gersdorff’s bed had an eiderdown as thick as a cumulus cloud and his furniture looked as if it had all come from home – or at least one of his homes. He poured me another. After the brandy, it was probably a mistake, but since the war I never mind mixing my drinks. My policy on drinking is simply the result of the shortages and what the Austrian school of economics call praxeology: I accept whatever is offered – mostly – whenever it’s offered.

‘Someone has murdered the Spanish expert from the international commission. Professor Berruguete. Shot him right between the eyes. It doesn’t get much more disquieting than that.’

‘Here at Krasny Bor?’

I nodded.

‘Who did it?’ asked Von Tresckow.

‘That’s a good question sir. I’m afraid I don’t know.’

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘That is disquieting.’

I nodded. ‘What’s even more disquieting is that they used your gun to do it, colonel.’

‘My gun?’ He glanced at the cross-belts and holster hanging off the end of his bedstead.

‘Not that one. I mean the broom-handle Mauser in the door pocket of your car. I hope you don’t mind but I already checked. I’m afraid it’s not there.’

‘Lord, does that make me a suspect?’ asked Von Gersdorff, smiling wryly.

‘How many people knew it was there?’ I asked.

‘In the door pocket? Any number of people. And I didn’t ever lock the car. As doubtless you have just found out. After all, this is supposed to be a secure area here at Krasny Bor.’

‘Ever use it down here in Smolensk?’ I asked.

‘In anger? No. It was a back-up firearm. Just in case. There’s also a machine-pistol in the trunk. Well, you can’t be too careful on these Russian country roads. You know what they say: keep one gun for show and another to blow someone’s head off. The Walther is all right at close range, but the Mauser is as accurate as a carbine when the shoulder-stock is attached and it packs a hell of a punch.’

‘The shoulder-stock is missing, too,’ I said, ‘but so far it hasn’t been found.’

‘Damn.’ Von Gersdorff frowned. ‘That’s a pity. I was fond of that rig. It belonged to my father. He used it when he was in the guards.’

He reached under the bed and took out the empty carry-case, which was complete with gun oil and several stripper clips, each holding nine bullets.

Von Tresckow ran his hand along the polished wooden surface of the case, admiringly. ‘Very nice,’ he said, and then lit a cigarette. ‘You see a beautiful German gun like this and you wonder how it is we can be losing the fucking war.’

‘Pity about that stock,’ complained Von Gersdorff.

‘I dare say it will turn up in the morning,’ I said.

‘You must tell me where the gun was found and I’ll go and look for it myself,’ said Von Gersdorff.

‘Can we forget about your gun for a moment, colonel?’

I felt myself becoming slightly exasperated with them both: Von Gersdorff seemed to care more about the loss of his rifle stock than the death of Dr Berruguete. Von Tresckow was already looking at his friend’s collection of classical records.

‘A man is dead. An important man. This could prove to be very awkward for us – for Germany. If the rest of these experts get wind of what’s happened they might all clear off and leave us needing some new laundry.’

‘It seems you need some new laundry yourself, Gunther,’ observed the general. ‘Where’s your shirt, for God’s sake?’

‘I lost it on a horse. Just forget about that. Look, gentlemen, it’s very simple, I need to put the brake on this, and quick. In the middle of a war it might sound ridiculous, but ordinarily I’d make a shot at catching the fellow who killed this Spaniard, only right now I figure it’s more important not to scare the suspects. By which of course I mean the assembled experts of the international commission.’