March Violets (25 page)

‘Yes, he's here tonight.' Anticipating my next question, he nodded over his shoulder in the direction of the bar. ‘He's sitting in the booth furthest from the band.' He started to collect some empties from the table and, lowering his voice, added, ‘It doesn't do to ask too many questions about Red Dieter. And that's for free.'

‘Just one more question,' I said. ‘What's his usual neck-oil?' The waiter, who had the lemon-sucking look of a warm boy, looked at me pityingly, as if such a question hardly needed to be asked.

‘Red drinks nothing but champagne.'

‘The lower the life the fancier the taste, eh? Send a bottle over to his table, with my compliments.' I handed him my card and a note. ‘And keep the change if there is any.' He gave Inge the once-over as she came back from the ladies' room. I didn't blame him, and he wasn't the only one; there was a man sitting at the bar who also seemed to find her worthy of attention.

We danced again and I watched the waiter deliver the bottle of champagne to Red Dieter's table. I couldn't see him in his seat, but I saw my card being handed over, and the waiter nodding in my direction.

‘Look,' I said, ‘there's something that I have to do. I won't be long, but I'll have to leave you for a short while. If there's anything you want just ask the waiter.' She looked at me anxiously as I accompanied her back to the table.

‘But where are you going?'

‘I have to see someone, someone here. I'll only be a few minutes.'

She smiled at me, and said: ‘Please be careful.'

I bent forward and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Like I was walking on a tightrope.'

There was a touch of the Fatty Arbuckle about the solitary occupant of the end booth. His fat neck rested on a couple of doughnut-sized rolls pressed tight against the collar of his evening shirt. The face was as red as a boiled ham, and I wondered if this was the explanation behind the nickname. Red Dieter Helfferich's mouth was set at a tough angle like it ought to have been chewing on a big cigar. When he spoke it was a medium-sized brown bear of a voice, growling from the inside of a short cave, and always on the edge of outrage. When he grinned, the mouth was a cross between early-Mayan and High Gothic.

‘A private investigator, huh? I never met one.'

‘That just goes to show there aren't enough of us around. Mind if I join you?'

He glanced at the label on the bottle. ‘This is good champagne. The least I can do is hear you out. Sit down — ' He lifted his hand and looked at my card again for effect ‘ — Herr Gunther.' He poured us both a glass, and raised his own in a toast. Cowled under brows the size and shape of horizontal Eiffel Towers were eyes that were too wide for my comfort, each revealing a broken pencil of an iris.

‘To absent friends,' he said.

I nodded and drank my champagne. ‘Like Kurt Mutschmann perhaps.'

‘Absent, but not forgotten.' He uttered a brash, gloating laugh and sipped at his drink. ‘It would seem that we'd both like to know where he is. Just to put our minds at rest, of course. To stop us worrying about him, eh?'

‘Should we be worried?' I asked.

‘These are dangerous times for a man in Kurt's line of work. Well, I'm sure I don't have to tell you that. You know all about that, don't you, fleabite, you being an ex-bull.' He nodded appreciatively. ‘I've got to hand it to your client, fleabite, it showed real intelligence involving you rather than your former colleagues. All he wants is his bells back, no questions asked. You can get closer. You can negotiate. Perhaps he'll even pay a small reward, eh?'

‘You're very well informed.'

‘I am if that's all your client wants; and to that extent I'll even help you, if I can.' His face darkened. ‘But Mutschmann — he's mine. If your fellow has got any misplaced ideas of revenge, tell him to lay off. That's my beat. It's simply a matter of good business practice.'

‘Is that all you want? Just to tidy up the store? You're forgetting the small matter of Von Greis's papers, aren't you? You remember — the ones your boys were so anxious to talk to him about. Like where he'd hidden them or who he'd given them. to. What were you planning to do with the papers when you got them? Try a little first-class blackmail? People like my client maybe? Or did you want to put a few politicians in your pocket for a rainy day?'

‘You're quite well informed yourself, fleabite. Like I said, your client is a clever man. It's lucky for me he took you into his confidence instead of the police. Lucky for me, lucky for you; because if you were a bull sitting there telling me what you just told me, you'd be on your way to being dead.'

I leaned out of the booth to check that Inge was all right. I could see her shiny black head easily. She was freezing off a uniformed reveller who was wasting his best lines.

‘Thanks for the champagne, fleabite. You took a fair-sized chance talking to me. And you haven't had much of a payout on your bet. But at least you're walking away with your stake-money.' He grinned.

‘Well this time, the thrill of playing was all I wanted.'

The gangster seemed to find that funny. ‘There won't be another. You can depend on it.'

I moved to go, but found him holding my arm. I expected him to threaten me, but instead he said:

‘Listen, I'd hate you to think that I'd cheated you. Don't ask me why, but I'm going to do you a favour. Maybe because I like your nerve. Don't turn round, but sitting at the bar is a big, heavy fellow, brown suit, sea-urchin haircut. Take a good look at him when you go back to your table. He's a professional killer. He followed you and the girl in here. You must have stepped on someone's corns. It looks as though you must be this week's rent money. I doubt he'll try anything in here, out of respect for me, you understand. But outside . . . fact is, I don't much like cheap gunmen coming in here. Creates a bad impression.'

‘Thanks for the tip. I appreciate it.' I lit a cigarette. ‘Is there a back way out of here? I wouldn't want my girl to get hurt.'

He nodded. ‘Through the kitchens and down the emergency stairs. At the bottom there's a door that leads onto an alley. It's quiet there. Just a few parked cars. One of them, the light-grey sports, belongs to me.' He pushed a set of keys towards me. ‘There's a lighter in the glove-box if you need it. Just leave the keys in the exhaust pipe afterwards, and make sure you don't mark the paintwork.'

I pocketed the keys and stood up. ‘It's been nice talking to you, Red. Funny things, fleabites; you don't notice one when you're first bitten, but after a while there's nothing more irritating.'

Red Dieter frowned. ‘Get out of here, Gunther, before I change my mind about you.'

On the way back to Inge I glanced over at the bar. The man in the brown suit was easy enough to spot, and I recognized him as the man who had been looking at Inge earlier on. At our table Inge was finding it easy, if not particularly pleasant, to resist the negligible charm of a good-looking but rather short S S officer. I hurried Inge to her feet and started to draw her away. The officer held my arm. I looked at his hand and then in his face.

‘Slow down, shorty,' I said, looming over his diminutive figure like a frigate coming alongside of a fishing boat. ‘Or I'll decorate your lip and it won't be with a Knight's Cross and oak leaves.' I pulled a crumpled five-mark note from out of a pocket and dropped it onto the tabletop.

‘I didn't think you were the jealous type,' she said, as I moved her towards the door.

‘Get into the lift and go straight down,' I told her. ‘When you get outside, go to the car and wait for me. There's a gun under the seat. Better keep it handy, just in case.' I glanced over at the bar where the man was paying for his drink. ‘Look, I haven't got time to explain now, but it's got nothing to do with our dashing little friend back there.'

‘And where will you be?' she said. I handed her my car keys.

‘I'm going out the other way. There's a big man in a brown suit who's trying to kill me. If you see him coming towards the car, go home and phone Kriminalinspektor Bruno Stahlecker at the Alex. Got that?' She nodded.

For a moment I pretended to follow her, and then turned abruptly away, walking quickly through the kitchens and out of the fire door.

Three flights down I heard footsteps behind me in the almost pitch dark of the stairwell. As I scampered blindly down I wondered if I could take him; but then I wasn't armed and he was. What was more, he was a professional. I tripped and fell, scrambling up again even as I hit the landing, reaching out for the banister and wrenching myself down another flight, ignoring the pain in my elbows and forearms, with which I had broken my fall. At the top of the last flight I saw a light underneath a door and jumped. It was further than I thought but I landed well, on all fours. I hit the bar on the door and crashed out into the alley.

There were several cars, all of them parked in a neat row, but it wasn't difficult to spot Red Dieter's grey Bugatti Royale. I unlocked the door and opened the glove-box. Inside there were several small paper twists of white powder and a big revolver with a long barrel, the sort that puts a window in an eight-centimetre-thick mahogany door. I didn't have time to check whether it was loaded, but I didn't think that Red was the sort who kept a gun because he liked playing Cowboys and Indians.

I dropped to the ground and rolled under the running-board of the car parked next to the Bugatti, a big Mercedes convertible. At that moment my pursuer came through the fire door, hugging the well-shadowed wall for cover. I lay completely still, waiting for him to step into the moonlit centre of the alley. Minutes passed, with no sound or movement in the shadows, and after a while I guessed that he had edged along the wall in the cover of the shadow, until he was far enough away from the cars to cross the alley in safety before doubling back. A heel scraped on a cobblestone behind me, and I held my breath. There was only my thumb which moved, slowly and steadily pulling back the revolver's hammer with a scarcely audible click, and then releasing the safety. Slowly I turned and looked down the length of my body. I saw a pair of shoes standing squarely behind where I was lying, framed neatly by the two rear wheels of the car. The man's feet took him away to my right, behind the Bugatti, and, realizing that he was on to its half-open door, I slid in the opposite direction, to my left, and out from underneath the Mercedes. Staying low, beneath the level of the car's windows, I went to the rear and peered around its enormous trunk. A brown-suited figure crouched beside the rear tyre of the Bugatti in almost exactly the same position as me, but facing in the opposite direction. He was no more than a couple of metres away. I stepped quietly forward, bringing the big revolver up to level it at arm's length at the back of his hat.

‘Drop it,' I said. ‘Or I'll put a tunnel through your goddamned head, so help me God.' The man froze, but the gun stayed put in his hand.

‘No problem, friend,' he said, releasing the handle of his automatic, a Mauser, so that it dangled from his forefinger by the trigger guard. Mind if I put the catch on it? This little baby's got a hair-trigger.' The voice was slow and cool.

‘First pull the brim of your hat down over your face,' I said. ‘Then put the catch on like you had your hand in a bag of sand. Remember, at this range I can hardly miss. And it would be too bad to mess up Red's nice paintwork with your brains.' He tugged at his hat until it was well down over his eyes, and after he had seen to the Mauser's safety catch he let the gun drop to the ground where it clattered harmlessly on the cobbles.

‘Did Red tell you I was following you?'

‘Shut up and turn around,' I told him. ‘And keep your hands in the air.' The brown suit turned and then dropped his head back onto his shoulders in an effort to see beyond the brim of his hat.

‘You going to kill me?' he said.

‘That depends.'

‘On what?'

‘On whether or not you tell me who's signing your expenses.'

‘Maybe we can make a deal.'

‘I don't see that you've got much to trade,' I said. ‘Either you talk or I fit you with an extra pair of nostrils. It's that simple.'

He grinned. ‘You wouldn't shoot me in cold blood,' he said.

‘Oh, wouldn't I?' I poked the gun hard against his chin, and then dragged the barrel up across the flesh of his face to screw it under his cheekbone. ‘Don't be so sure. You've got me in the mood to use this thing, so you'd better find your tongue now or you'll never find it again.'

‘But if I sing, then what? Will you let me go?'

‘And have you track me down again? You must think I'm stupid.'

‘What can I do to convince you that I wouldn't?'

I stepped away from him, and thought for a moment. ‘Swear on your mother's life.'

‘I swear on my mother's life,' he said readily enough.

‘Fine. So who's your client?'

‘You'll let me go if I tell you?'

‘Yes.'

‘Swear on your mother's life.'

‘I swear on my mother's life.'

‘All right then,' he said. ‘It was a fellow called Haupthandler.'

‘How much is he paying you?'

‘Three hundred now and — ' He didn't finish the sentence. Stepping forward I knocked him cold with one blow of the revolver's butt. It was a cruel blow, delivered with sufficient power to render him insensible for a long time.

‘My mother is dead,' I said. Then I picked up his weapon and pocketing both guns I ran back to the car. Inge's eyes widened when she saw the dirt and oil covering my suit. My best suit.