Hitler's Angel (5 page)

‘What are you saying?’

The Chief Inspector leaned back. ‘I am speculating. Hitler has become an important man. A death occurred in his home. Such an event could be used to discredit him.’

‘By whom?’ Fritz asked, feeling cold.

‘By anyone with motive.’ The Chief Inspector’s odd joy seemed to have grown.

‘What do you want me to find?’ Fritz asked.

‘The truth,’ the Chief Inspector said.

‘There is no body,’ Fritz said.

‘The body is in Vienna,’ the Chief Inspector said.

‘But the Minister of Justice has already ruled. The girl died by her own hand.’

‘Do you believe that?’ the Chief Inspector asked.

‘What I believe does not matter.’

‘Nor does what you do when you are not working for the Kripo.’

Fritz’s chill grew. ‘Are you relieving me, sir?’

‘Only for a short time. It seems to me that you need a vacation. I have heard that Austria is lovely in September.’

‘Are you ordering me to do this, sir?’

‘I believe you would be the best man for the task,’ the Chief Inspector said.

‘Will I have the backing of the Kripo?’

‘You will have my backing,’ the Chief Inspector said.

Fritz rubbed his hands along his knees. ‘And if I see the girl in Austria, sir, and I believe the Minister of Justice is wrong? I will have to speak to Herr Hitler. I will have to talk with his sister, his associates. His housekeeper.’

‘Hitler is used to police pressure. I am sure one Detective Inspector will not bother him over much.’

‘He will tell the Minister of Justice. I will be breaking the law.’

‘Then I will speak to the Minister of Justice.’

‘And say what? That I am a wild man, that I do not belong in the department?’

The Chief Inspector smiled. ‘I will merely tell him that you have a moral imperative higher than the law.’

‘A moral imperative will not change the Minister’s ruling.’

‘No, but the truth might.’

‘A man who can be bought cannot be swayed by the truth.’

The Chief Inspector pressed his fingers together. ‘Ah, but there you are wrong, my friend. Such a man can be swayed by the truth when it threatens everything he has worked for.’

‘So we are trying to protect Herr Hitler, then?’

‘We are protecting no one,’ the Chief Inspector said, ‘except Bavaria herself.’

‘Did you give him the letter?’ the girl asks.

He feels a tension in his shoulders that he hasn’t felt in forty years. The memory of that conversation terrifies him, although he was not afraid at the time.

In those days, he had known Hitler as a common, brutish politician: a small, loud Austrian who had managed to convince thugs and a few people in power to follow him.

Fritz had no idea what Hitler would become, what he was transforming into, even as the case unfolded. If he had known then what he learned later, he would not have pursued the case at all, despite the pressures put on him.

He would have politely declined, and faced the consequences.

‘What?’ Fritz asks the girl.

‘The Chief Inspector. Did you give him the letter?’ She is caught in the story now. She has stopped writing as he speaks, her notebook upside down and forgotten on the ground. She looks at her recorder only when it clicks and stops. He is relieved about that. He has chosen the right person after all.

Fritz holds up one finger, then pushes himself out of the chair.
He no longer cares if she sees the ripped back, the mottled brown stuffing, the ruined spring. She is seeing inside his life now. He can hide nothing from her if she is to understand.

As he walks into the bedroom, he hears a faint click. She has finally remembered to pause her recorder. He smiles.

The bedroom is dark. He still makes his bed military fashion, the corners precise, the blanket smooth and untouched. The room shows an obsessive neatness not reflected in the front room. His clothes hang in his closet, shirts arranged by sleeve length, suitcoats by age. The colours are all the same: blacks and whites. Only his First World War uniform tucked in the very back adds colour to the wardrobe. His police uniform and his undercover clothes are in the footlocker behind the shoes. He avoids it and instead pulls out a box of mildewing cardboard. He has not opened it in years, and he resists the urge to sit on his haunches and look through the memories.

Instead, he reaches inside and removes a cigar box sealed with brittle, yellow tape. He tucks the box under his arm and returns to the living room.

She is picking the edges off a pastry, avoiding the frosting and eating only the cake. She is studying her hands, but he caught the nervous glance she shot at the bedroom just before he came back. He returns to his chair, sets the box on his lap and slits the tape with his thumbnail. The lid flops open, flimsy with age. A pile of letters, still in their envelopes, line one side. He reaches to the bottom of the pile, to the only letter not in an envelope. The paper is still crinkled. The ink has faded, but Gürtner’s signature is clear. He puts the box on the floor and hands the letter to her.

‘My God.’ Her hands shake as she takes the letter from him. ‘My God.’

She stares at it for a moment, rereading it, realising (probably) that he can quote it from memory. This has been only a story to her until this moment. Now, though, she knows. She knows he tells her the truth. He can see it in her eyes, in her shaking hands. She looks at him over the paper’s edge.

‘May I take this with me?’ she asks.

‘No,’ he says, unwilling, even forty years later to part with evidence. ‘But you may photograph it here.’

She nods and, after a moment, hands the paper back to him. He folds it carefully and returns it to the bottom of the cigar box. She scribbles in her notebook, then adds a series of exclamation points. It irritates him that she writes her notes in English. If she wrote in German, he could read it upside down.

‘Is there more in the box?’ she asks.

He resists the urge to pick it up and clutch it to his chest. He had thought that speaking of this would be easy, like singing during an all-night drinking session. He did not expect this protectiveness, this odd, almost unclean feeling as he reveals his secrets. He cannot breach the past all at once. He must let it unfold, as much for himself as for her.

‘There is more,’ he says.

She waits. He stares at her. She has small lines around her eyes, a bit of facial hair beneath her chin. Finally she glances down at the box, and then at him.

‘You do not have your recorder on,’ he says.

She flushes and presses the play button. He grips the arms of his chair as he sinks back into his memories.

F
or a moment, Fritz hesitated outside the Chief Inspector’s office. The Chief Inspector wanted him to go immediately to Austria, but that presented Fritz with a dilemma. If the Kripo did not conduct an official investigation, then no one would interview the witnesses. By the time Fritz returned from Austria, the witnesses would have time to change their stories, to disappear, or to refuse him.

He had to speak to them now. They had already spoken to each other, he was already sure of that, but he wanted one quick impression, some idea of what he was really up against, before he followed a corpse to Vienna.

The witnesses were waiting at separate desks, far enough apart that they could not speak to each other, but they could still see each other. The older woman’s face was lined with tears. The matron sat ramrod straight in her chair, watching each movement in the precinct. And there was much to watch. Detectives flowed from desk to desk, carrying papers, discussing cases. The room was large and draughty. Fritz hated working here, often taking folders to a nearby café to study. As many as twenty detectives could
be working in the room at the same time. The conversations alone were deafening.

Henrich was seated behind one of the metal desks, studying an empty folder. He stood at attention when Fritz entered the room, a secret joke between them which dated back to the previous case. Fritz hated to be an authority, hated any signs of authority, so Henrich chose each moment he could to play on that hatred.

Fritz signalled Henrich to come closer, and backed into the hallway for some privacy. ‘It is a suicide,’ Fritz said. ‘The case is closed.’

‘But we haven’t even seen the body yet,’ Henrich said. ‘How can there be no investigation?’

‘I didn’t say that,’ Fritz said. ‘Occasionally, I will need your help. Off-duty. And no one else’s.’

Then he paused and ran a hand through his short-cropped hair. What he was going to ask next was not proper, but Henrich’s answer would be critical to the case.

‘Forgive me,’ Fritz said, ‘but if you belong to NSDAP, I need to know now.’

Henrich blinked as if the question shocked him. ‘I have no party affiliations,’ he said. ‘You know that. We’ve discussed –’

‘I know nothing. And someone leaves the NSDAP propaganda in this office, just like someone else leaves the Communist literature. I am merely making certain that it is not you. It matters only in that if you do have any affiliations at all, you will not need to spend your spare time with me.’

‘And miss the warmth of your friendship?’ Henrich smiled. ‘I have no party cards. You may check my wallet, my
apartment, or my leisure activities. You will find that I live in beer halls only because I cannot cook.’

Fritz nodded, more relieved than he cared to mention. Even so, he would have another detective double-check Henrich’s statements. The secretive nature of this case had already infected Fritz’s blood.

‘I need to speak with the witnesses,’ Fritz said. ‘Alone. Bring me the older woman first, and then the housekeeper. I will be rather quick, as I have other business this afternoon. So watch. When I signal for the next, be ready. And, when they leave, do let them know that I will be needing to speak to them again.’

He did not wait for Henrich to answer. Instead he went down the hall to one of the interrogation rooms. The older offices had been remodelled into the rooms. They were little larger than walk-in closets, with none of the charm. A single unprotected light bulb hung above a sturdy metal table. The chairs were made of painted wood, and the windows had been boarded over long before. He took the first available room, pleased that it had been cleaned since the last time he used it. The single bulb illuminated the table but left shadows in the corners, shadows he paced away. He leaned against the boarded window while he waited for his first witness.

After a moment, Henrich opened the door. The stout woman entered. She walked with a slouch, her back already pushing up into a dowager’s hump. Despite the warmth of the day she wore a homemade sweater over a cotton dress, and high button shoes that dated from before the war. Tears had left deep shadows under her eyes.

Fritz stepped forward and extended a chair for her. Henrich closed the door and disappeared down the hall.

‘I am Detective Inspector Stecher,’ Fritz said.

‘Marlena Reichert,’ the woman said, as she slipped into the chair. She did not meet his gaze.

‘I have a few questions for you, Frau Reichert,’ Fritz said. ‘I understand that it has been a trying day.’

The woman nodded. Her dark hair was curled, and threaded with grey. She clutched a large bag to her chest.

‘Do you work for Herr Hitler?’

‘I help in the kitchen,’ she said. ‘And with other chores. Frau Winter is the housekeeper.’

‘Where do you live, ma’am?’

‘In the apartment,’ she said softly. ‘I share a room with my mother.’

‘And is your mother here?’

‘No,’ Frau Reichert said. ‘She is still in her room. She does not want to come out. It is a house of death, she says, and she says she will not leave the room until I find her somewhere else to stay.’

‘A house of death?’ Fritz asked.

‘My mother,’ Frau Reichert said softly, ‘she is old.’

He pulled out the other chair, and sat on its flat seat. He did not need to intimidate this witness. She was upset enough as it is. ‘Tell me what happened this morning.’

She clutched her bag tighter. ‘My mother and I overslept. When I got up, Geli was not out of bed. I got worried, and I tried the door to her room. It was locked. She did not answer my knocks, so I finally called Herr
Schwarz. He came with Herr Amman, and together they broke down the door.’

Zehrt had mentioned Schwarz. Fritz made a mental note of both names and watched her as she spoke. Her hands twisted the handle of her bag, over and over, bending and scarring the leather.

‘Then what happened?’ he prompted.

‘She was – at the foot of her sofa, in her blue nightdress, still holding the gun. The wound was tiny in the front, but the blood –’ Tears filled the woman’s eyes.

‘You were close to Geli?’ Fritz asked, watching the tears, remembering the woman’s deep grief in the apartment.

‘No,’ the woman said. ‘No.’

Her response surprised him. He had thought she was in mourning. He would come back to this. ‘What position was she in?’