March Violets (29 page)

The voices were coming from a room at the front of the house and were clear enough for me to identify them as belonging to Haupthandler and Jeschonnek. After a couple of minutes there was a woman's voice too, and for a moment I thought it was Inge's, until I heard this woman laugh. Now that I was more impatient to know what had become of Inge than I was to recover Six's stolen diamonds and collect the reward, I decided that it was time I confronted the three of them. I'd heard enough to indicate that they weren't expecting any trouble, but as I came through the door, I fired a shot over their heads in case they were in the mood to try something.

‘Stay exactly where you are,' I said, feeling that I'd given them plenty of warning, and thinking that only a fool would pull a gun now. Gert Jeschonnek was just such a fool. It's difficult at the best of times to hit a moving target, especially one that's shooting back. My first concern was to stop him, and I wasn't particular how I did it. As it turned out, I stopped him dead. I could have wished not to have hit him in the head, only I wasn't given the opportunity. Having succeeded in killing one man, I now had the other to worry about, because by this time Haupthändler was on me, and wrestling for my gun. As we fell to the floor, he yelled to the girl who was standing lamely by the fireplace to get the gun. He meant the one which had fallen from Jeschonnek's hand when I blew his brains out, but for a moment the girl wasn't sure which gun it was that she was supposed to go for, mine or the one on the floor. She hesitated long enough for her lover to repeat himself, and in the same instant I broke free of his grasp and whipped the Walther across his face. It was a powerful backhand that had the follow-through of a match-winning tennis stroke, and it sent him sprawling, unconscious, against the wall. I turned to see the girl picking up Jeschonnek's gun. It was no time for chivalry, but then I didn't want to shoot her either. Instead I stepped smartly forward, and socked her on the jaw.

With Jeschonnek's gun safely in my coat pocket, I bent down to take a look at him. You didn't have to be an undertaker to see that he was dead. There are neater ways of cleaning a man's ears than a 9 mm bullet. I fumbled a cigarette into my dry mouth and sat down at the table to wait for Haupthandler and the girl to come round. I pulled the smoke through clenched teeth, kippering my lungs, and hardly exhaling at all, except in small nervous puffs. I felt like someone was playing the guitar with my insides.

The room was barely furnished, with only a threadbare sofa, a table and a couple of chairs. On the table, lying on a square of felt, was Six's necklace. I threw the cigarette away, and tugged the diamonds towards me. The stones, clacking together like a handful of marbles, felt cold and heavy in my hand. It was hard to imagine a woman wearing them: they looked about as comfortable as a canteen of cutlery. Next to the table was a briefcase. I picked it up and looked inside. It was full of money - dollars and sterling as I had expected - and two fake passports in the names of a Herr and Frau Rolf Teichmüller, the names that I had seen on the air-tickets in Haupthändler's apartment. They were good fakes, but not hard to obtain provided you knew someone at the passport office and were prepared to pay some big expenses. I hadn't thought of it before, but now it seemed that with all the Jews who had been coming to Jeschonnek to finance their escapes from Germany, a fake-passport service would have been a logical and highly profitable sideline.

The girl moaned and sat up. Cradling her jaw and sobbing quietly, she went to help Haupthandler as he himself twisted over on to his side. She held him by the shoulders as he wiped his bloody nose and mouth. I flicked her new passport open. I don't know that you could have described her, as Marlene Sahm had done, as a beauty, but certainly she was good-looking, in a well-bred, intelligent sort of way - not at all the cheap party-girl I'd had in mind when I'd been told that she was a croupier.

‘I'm sorry I had to sock you, Frau Teichmüller,' I said. ‘Or Hannah, or Eva, or whatever it is you or somebody else is calling you at the moment.'

She glared at me with more than enough loathing to dry her eyes, and mine besides. ‘You're not so smart,' she said. ‘I can't see why these two idiots thought it was necessary to have you put out of the way.'

‘Right now I should have thought it was obvious.'

Haupthändler spat on the floor, and said, ‘So what happens now?'

I shrugged. ‘That depends. Maybe we can figure out a story: crime of passion, or something like that. I've got friends down at the Alex. Perhaps I can get you a deal, but first you've got to help me. There was a woman working with me - tall, brown hair, well-built, and wearing a black coat. Now there's some blood on the kitchen floor that's got me worried about her, especially as she seems to be missing. I don't suppose you would know anything about that, would you?'

Eva snorted with laughter. ‘Go to hell,' said Haupthandler.

‘On the other hand,' I said, deciding to scare them a little. ‘Premeditated murder, well, that's a capital crime. Almost certain when there's a lot of money involved. I saw a man beheaded once - at Lake Ploetzen Prison. Goelpl, the state executioner, even wears white gloves and a tail-coat to do the job. That's rather a nice touch, don't you think?'

‘Drop the gun, if you don't mind, Herr Gunther.' The voice in the doorway was patient, but patronizing, as if addressing a naughty child. But I did as I was told. I knew better than to argue with a machine pistol, and a brief glance at his boxing-glove of a face told me that he wouldn't hesitate to kill me if I so much as told a bad joke. As he came into the room, two other men, both carrying lighters, followed.

‘Come on,' said the man with the machine pistol. ‘On your feet, you two.' Eva helped Haupthandler to stand. ‘And face the wall. You too, Gunther.'

The wallpaper was cheap flock. A bit too dark and sombre for my taste. I stared hard at it for several minutes while I waited to be searched.

‘If you know who I am, then you know I'm a private investigator. These two are wanted for murder.'

I didn't see the India Rubber so much as hear it sweep through the air towards my head. In the split second before I hit the floor and lost consciousness I told myself that I was getting tired of being knocked out.

Glockenspiel and big bass drum. What was that tune again?
Little Anna of Tharau is the One I Love?
No, not so much a tune as a number 5 1 tram to the Schonhauser Allee Depot. The bell clanged and the car shook as we raced through Schillerstrasse, Pankow, Breite Strasse. The giant Olympic bell in the great clock-tower tolling to the opening and closing of the Games. Herr Starter Miller's pistol, and the crowd yelling as Joe Louis sprinted up towards me and then put me on the deck for the second time in the round. A four-engined Junkers monoplane roaring through the night skies to Croydon taking my scrambled brains away with it. I heard myself say:

‘Just drop me off at Lake Ploetzen.'

My head throbbed like a hot Dobermann. I tried raising it from the floor of the car, and found that my hands were handcuffed behind me; but the sudden, violent pain in my head made me oblivious to anything else but not moving my head again . . .

. . . a hundred thousand jackboots goose-stepping their way up Unter den Linden, with a man pointing a microphone down at them to pick up the awe-inspiring sound of an army crunching like an enormous great horse. An air-raid alarm. A barrage being laid down on the enemy trenches to cover the advance. Just as we were going over the top a big one exploded right above our heads, and blew us all off our feet. Cowering in a shell-hole full of incinerated frogs, with my head inside a grand piano, my ears ringing as the hammers hit the strings, I waited for the sound of battle to end . . .

Groggy, I felt myself being pulled out of the car, and then half carried, half dragged into a building. The handcuffs were removed, and I was sat down on a chair and held there so as to stop me falling off it. A man smelling of carbolic and wearing a uniform went through my pockets. As he pulled their linings inside out, I felt the collar of my jacket sticky against my neck, and when I touched it I found that it was blood from where I had been sapped. After that someone took a quick look at my head and said that I was fit enough to answer a few questions, although he might just as well have said I was ready to putt the shot. They got me a coffee and a cigarette.

‘Do you know where you are?' I had to stop myself from shaking my head before mumbling that I didn't.

‘You're at the Königs Weg Kripo Stelle, in the Grunewald.' I sipped some of my coffee and nodded slowly.

‘I am Kriminalinspektor Hingsen,' said the man. ‘And this is Wachmeister Wentz.' He jerked his head at the uniformed man standing beside him, the one who smelt of carbolic. ‘Perhaps you'd care to tell us what happened.'

‘If your lot hadn't hit me so hard I might find it easier to remember,' I heard myself croak.

The Inspektor glanced at the sergeant, who shrugged blankly. ‘We didn't hit you,' he said.

‘What's that?'

‘I said, we didn't hit you.'

Gingerly, I touched the back of my head, and then inspected the dried blood on my fingers' ends. ‘I suppose I did this when I was brushing my hair, is that it?'

‘You tell us,' said the Inspektor. I heard myself sigh.

‘What is going on here? I don't understand. You've seen my I D, haven't you?'

‘Yes,' said the Inspektor. ‘Look, why don't you start at the beginning? Assume we know absolutely nothing.'

I resisted the rather obvious temptation, and started to explain as best as I was able. ‘I'm working on a case,' I said. ‘Haupthändler and the girl are wanted for murder — '

‘Now wait a minute,' he said. ‘Who's Haupthandler?'

I felt myself frown and tried harder to concentrate. ‘No, I remember now. They're calling themselves the Teichmüllers now. Haupthändler and Eva had two new passports, which Jeschonnek organized.'

The Inspektor rocked on his heels at that. ‘Now we're getting somewhere. Gert Jeschonnek. The body we found, right?' He turned to his sergeant who produced my Walther PPK at the end of a piece of string from out of a paper bag.

‘Is this your gun, Herr Gunther?' said the sergeant.

‘Yes, yes,' I said tiredly. ‘It's all right, I killed him. It was self-defence. He was going for his gun. He was there to make a deal with Haupthandler. Or Teichmüller, as he's now calling himself.' Once again I saw the Inspektor and the sergeant exchange that look. I was starting to get worried.

‘Tell us about this Herr Teichmüller,' said the sergeant.

‘Haupthändler,' I said correcting him angrily. ‘You have got him, haven't you?' The Inspektor pursed his lips and shook his head. ‘The girl, Eva, what about her?' He folded his arms and looked at me squarely.

‘Now look, Gunther. Don't give us the cold cabbage. A neighbour reported hearing a shot. We found you unconscious, a dead body, and two pistols, each of them fired, and a lot of foreign currency. No Teichmüllers, no Haupthandler, no Eva.'

‘No diamonds?' He shook his head.

The Inspektor, a fat, greasy, weary-looking man with tobacco-stained teeth, sat down opposite me and offered me another cigarette. He took one himself and lit us both in silence. When he spoke again his voice sounded almost friendly.

‘You used to be a bull, didn't you?' I nodded, painfully. ‘I thought I recognized the name. You were quite a good one too, as I recall.'

‘Thanks,' I said.

‘So I don't have to tell you of all people how this looks from my side of the charge-sheet.'

‘Bad, eh?'

‘Worse than bad.' The Inspektor rolled his cigarette between his lips for a moment, and winced as the smoke stung his eyeballs. ‘Want me to call you a lawyer?'

‘Thanks, no. But as long as you're in the mood to do an ex-bull a favour, there is one thing you could do. I've got an assistant, Inge Lorenz. Perhaps you would telephone her and let her know I'm being held.' He gave me a pencil and paper and I wrote down three phone numbers. The Inspektor seemed a decent sort of fellow, and I wanted to tell him that Inge had gone missing after driving my car to Wannsee. But that would have meant them searching my car and finding Marlene Sahm's diary, which would undoubtedly have incriminated her. Maybe Inge had been taken ill, and had caught a cab somewhere, knowing that I'd be along to pick up the car. Maybe.

‘What about friends on the force? Somebody up at the Alex perhaps.'

‘Bruno Stahlecker,' I said. ‘He can vouch that I'm kind to children and stray dogs, but that's about it.'

‘Too bad.' I thought for a moment. About the only thing that I could do was call the two Gestapo thugs who had ransacked my office, and throw them what I'd learned. It was a fair bet they'd be very unhappy with me, and I guessed that calling them would as likely win me an all-expenses trip to a KZ, as letting the local Inspektor charge me with Gert Jeschonnek's murder.

I'm not a gambling man, but they were the only cards I had.

 

Kriminalkommissar Jost drew thoughtfully on his pipe.

‘It's an interesting theory,' he said. Dietz stopped playing with his moustache for long enough to snort contemptuously. Jost looked at his Inspektor for a moment, and then at me. ‘But as you can see, my colleague finds it somewhat improbable.'

‘That's putting it lightly, mulemouth,' muttered Dietz. Since scaring my secretary and smashing my last good bottle he seemed to have got uglier.

Jost was a tall, ascetic-looking man, with a face that wore a stag's permanently startled expression, and a scrawny neck that stuck out of his shirt collar like a tortoise in a rented shell. He allowed himself a little razor-blade of a smile. He was about to put his subordinate very firmly in his place.