March Violets (24 page)

‘Relax, all of you,' yelled Welser. ‘This fellow isn't a fucking bull, he's a private investigator. He's not come to arrest Hans. He just wants to ask him a few questions, that's all. He's looking for a missing person.' He pointed at one of the men in the skat game. ‘Here you, give me a hand with him.' Then he looked at me. ‘You all right?' he said. I nodded vaguely. Welser and the other man bent down and lifted Bock from where he lay in the doorway. I could see it wasn't easy; the man looked heavy. They sat him in a chair and waited for him to shake his head clear. Meanwhile the foreman told the rest of the men in the hut to go outside for ten minutes. The men in the bunks didn't put up any resistance and I could see that Welser was a man who was used to being obeyed, and quickly.

When Bock came round, Welser told him what he had told the rest of the hut. I could have wished that he had done it at the beginning.

‘I'll be outside if you need me,' said Welser, and pushing the last man from the hut, he left the two of us alone.

‘If you're not a polyp then you must be one of Red's boys.' Bock spoke sideways out of his mouth, and I saw that his tongue was several sizes too big for his mouth. Its tip remained buried in his cheek somewhere, so that all I saw was the large pink-coloured chew that was his tongue's thickest part.

‘Look, I'm not a complete idiot,' he said more vehemently. ‘I'm not so stupid that I'd get killed to protect Kurt. I really have no idea where he is.' I took out my cigarette case and offered him one. I lit us both in silence.

‘Listen, first off, I'm not one of Red's boys. I really am a private investigator, like the man said. But I've got a sore jaw and unless you answer all my questions your name will be the one the boys up at the Alex draw out of the hat to make the trip to the blade for canning the meat at Pension Tillessen.' Bock stiffened in his chair. ‘And if you move from that chair, so help me I'll break your damned neck.' I drew up a chair and put one foot on its seat so that I could lean on my knee while looking at him.

‘You can't prove I was near the place,' he said.

I grinned at him. ‘Oh, can't I?' I took a long pull at my smoke, and blew it in his face. I said: ‘On your last little visit to Tillessen's joint you kindly left your pay-slip behind. I found it in the incinerator, next to the murder weapon. That's how I managed to track you down here. Of course it's not there now, but I could easily put it back. The police haven't yet found the body, but that's only because I haven't had time to tell them. That pay-slip puts you in an awkward situation. Next to the murder weapon, it's more than enough to send you to the block.'

‘What do you want?'

I sat down opposite him. ‘Answers,' I said. ‘Look, friend, if I ask you to name the capital of Mongolia you'd better give me an answer or I'll have your fucking head for it. Do you understand?' He shrugged. ‘But we'll start with Kurt Mutschmann, and what the two of you did when you came out of Tegel.'

Bock sighed heavily and then nodded. ‘I got out first. I decided to try and go straight. This isn't much of a job, but it's a job. I didn't want to go back in the cement. I used to go back to Berlin for the odd weekend, see? Stay at Tillessen's bang. He's a pimp, or was. Sometimes he fixed me up with a bit of plum.' He tucked the cigarette into the corner of his mouth and rubbed the top of his head. ‘Anyway, a couple of months after I got out, Kurt finished his cement and went to stay with Tillessen. I went to see him, and he told me that the ring were going to fix him up with his first bit of thieving.

‘Well, the same night I saw him, Red Dieter and a couple of his boys turn up. He more or less runs the ring, you understand. They've got this older fellow with them, and start working him over in the dining room. I stayed out of the way in my room. After a while Red comes in and tells Kurt that he wants him to do a safe, and that he wants me to drive. Well, neither of us was too happy about it. Me, because I'd had enough of all that sort of thing. And Kurt because he's a professional. He doesn't like violence, mess, you know. He likes to take his time, too. Not just go straight ahead and do a job without any real planning.'

‘This safe: did Red Dieter find out about it from the man in the dining room, the man being beaten up?' Bock nodded. ‘What happened then?'

‘I decided that I wanted nothing to do with it. So I went out through the window, spent the night at the doss-house on Frobe-strasse, and came back here. That fellow, the one they had beaten up, he was still alive when I left. They were keeping him alive until they found out if he had told them the truth.' He took the cigarette stub out of his mouth and dropped it on the wooden floor, grinding it under his heel. I gave him another.

‘Well, the next thing I hear is that the job went wrong. Tillessen did the driving, apparently. Afterwards, Red's boys killed him. They would have killed Kurt too, only he got away.'

‘Did they double-cross Red?'

‘Nobody's that stupid.'

‘You're singing, aren't you?'

‘When I was in the cement, in Tegel, I saw lots of men die on that guillotine,' he said quietly. ‘I'd rather take my chances with Red. When I go I want to go in one piece.'

‘Tell me more about the job.'

‘ “Just crack a nut,” ' said Red. ‘Easy to a man like Kurt, he's a real professional. Could open Hitler's heart. The job was middle of the night. Puzzle the safe and take some papers. That's all.'

‘No diamonds?'

‘Diamonds? He never said nothing about no bells.'

‘Are you sure of that?'

‘Course I'm sure. He was just to claw the papers. Nothing else.'

‘What were these papers, do you know?'

Bock shook his head. ‘Just papers.'

‘What about the killings?'

‘Nobody mentioned killings. Kurt wouldn't have agreed to do the job if he thought he was going to have to can anyone. He wasn't that kind of fellow.'

‘What about Tillessen? Was he the type to shoot people in their beds?'

‘Not a chance. That wasn't his style at all. Tillessen was just a fucking garter-handler. Beating up snappers was all he was good for. Show him a lighter and he'd have been off like a rabbit.'

‘Maybe they got greedy, and helped themselves to more than they were supposed to.'

‘You tell me. You're the fucking detective.'

‘And you haven't seen or heard from Kurt since?'

‘He's too smart to contact me. If he's got any sense, he'll have done a U-Boat by now.'

‘Does he have any friends?'

‘A few. But I don't know who. His wife left him, so you can forget her. She spent every pfennig he had earned, and when she'd finished she took off with another man. He'd die before he'd ask that bitch for help.'

‘Perhaps he's dead already,' I suggested.

‘Not Kurt,' said Bock, his face set against the thought. ‘He's a clever one. Resourceful. He'll find a way out of it.'

‘Maybe,' I said, and then: ‘One thing I can't figure is you going straight, especially when you end up working here. How much do you make a week?'

Bock shrugged. ‘About forty marks.' He caught the quiet surprise in my face. It was even less than I had supposed. ‘Not much, is it?'

‘So what's the deal? Why aren't you breaking heads for Red Dieter?'

‘Who says I ever did?'

‘You went inside for beating up steel pickets, didn't you?'

‘That was a mistake. I needed the money.'

‘Who was paying it?'

‘Red.'

‘And what was in it for him?'

‘Money, same as me. Just more of it. His sort never gets caught. I worked that one out in the cement. The worst of it is that now that I've decided to go straight it seems like the rest of the country has decided to go bent. I go to prison and when I come out I find that the stupid bastards have elected a bunch of gangsters. How do you like that?'

‘Well, don't blame me, friend, I voted for the Social Democrats. Did you ever find out who was paying Red to break the steel strikes? Hear any names maybe?'

He shrugged. ‘The bosses, I suppose. Doesn't take a detective to work that one out. But I never heard any names.'

‘But it was definitely organized.'

‘Oh yes, it was organized all right. What's more it worked. They went back, didn't they?'

‘And you went to prison.'

‘I got caught. Never have been very lucky. You turning up here is proof of that.'

I took out my wallet and thumbed a fifty at him. He opened his mouth to thank me.

‘Skip it.' I got to my feet and made for the hut door. Turning round, I said, ‘Was your Kurt the type of puzzler to leave a nut he'd cracked open?'

Bock folded the fifty and shook his head. ‘Nobody was ever tidier round a job than Kurt Mutschmann.'

I nodded. ‘That's what I thought.'

 

‘You're going to have quite an eye in the morning,' said Inge. She took hold of my chin and turned my head to get a better look at the bruise on my cheekbone. ‘You'd better let me put something on that.' She went into the bathroom. We had stopped off at my apartment on our way back from Brandenburg. I heard her run the tap for a while, and when she returned she pressed a cold flannel to my face. As she stood there I felt her breath caress my ear, and I inhaled deeply of the haze of perfume in which she moved.

‘This might help to stop the swelling,' she said.

‘Thanks. A jaw-whistler looks bad for business. On the other hand, maybe they'll just think that I'm the determined type - you know, the kind who never lets up on a case.'

‘Hold still,' she said impatiently. Her belly brushed against me, and I realized with some surprise that I had an erection. She blinked quickly and I supposed that she had noticed it too; but she did not step back. Instead, almost involuntarily, she brushed against me once more, only with a greater pressure than before. I lifted my hand and cradled her ample breast on my open palm. After a minute or so of that I took her nipple in between my finger and thumb. It wasn't difficult to find. It was as hard as the lid on a teapot, and just as big. Then she turned away.

‘Perhaps we should stop now,' she said.

‘If you're intending to stop the swelling, you're too late,' I told her. Her eyes passed lightly over me as I said it. Colouring a little, she folded her arms across her breasts and flexed her long neck against her backbone.

Enjoying the very deliberateness of my own actions, I stepped close to her and looked slowly down from her face, across her breasts and her belly, over her thighs to the hem of the green cotton dress. Reaching down I caught hold of it. Our fingers brushed as she took the hem from me and held it at her waist where I had placed it. Then I knelt before her, my eyes lingering on her underthings for long seconds before I reached up and slipped her knickers round her ankles. She steadied herself with one hand on my shoulder and stepped out of them, her long smooth thighs trembling slightly as she moved. I looked up at the sight I had coveted, and then beyond, to a face that smiled and then vanished as the dress rose up over her head, revealing her breasts, her neck and then her head again, which shook its cascade of shiny black hair like a bird fluttering the feathers on its wings. She dropped the dress to the floor and stood before me, naked but for her garter-belt, her stockings and her shoes. I sat back on my haunches and with an excitement that ached to be liberated I watched her slowly turn herself in front of me, showing me the profile of her pubic hair and her erect nipples, the long chute of her back and the two perfectly matched halves of her bottom, and then once more the swell of her belly, the dark pennant that seemed to prick the air with its own excitement, and the smooth, quivering shanks.

I picked her up and took her into the bedroom where we spent the rest of the afternoon, caressing, exploring and blissfully enjoying a feast of each other's flesh.

 

The afternoon drifted lazily into evening, with light sleep and tender words; and when we rose from my bed having satisfied our lust, we found our appetites the more ravenous.

I took her to dinner at the Peltzer Grill, and then dancing at the Germania Roof, in nearby Hardenbergstrasse. The Roof was crowded with Berlin's smartest set, many of them in uniform. Inge looked around at the blue glass walls, the ceiling illuminated with small blue stars and supported with columns of burnished copper, and the ornamental pools with their water-lilies, and smiled excitedly.

‘Isn't this simply wonderful?'

‘I didn't think that this was your sort of place,' I said lamely. But she didn't hear me. She was taking me by the hand and pulling me on to the less crowded of the two circular dance-floors.

It was a good band, and I held her tight and breathed through her hair. I was congratulating myself on bringing her here instead of one of the clubs with which I was better acquainted, such as Johnny's or the Golden Horseshoe. Then I remembered that Neumann had said that the Germania Roof was one of Red Dieter's chosen haunts. So when Inge went to the ladies' room I called the waiter over to our table and handed him a five.

‘This gets me a couple of answers to a couple of simple questions, right?' He shrugged, and pocketed the cash. ‘Is Dieter Helfferrich in the joint tonight?'

‘Red Dieter?'

‘What other colours are there?' He didn't get that, so I left it. He looked thoughtful for a moment, as if wondering whether or not the ringleader of German Strength would mind his being identified in this way. He made the right decision.