March Violets (32 page)

‘But meanwhile he set out to destroy you, his own father-in-law.'

‘That's right,' said Six. ‘While all the time he sat there in the comfortable home that my money had provided for them. If Grete did kill him as you say, then he certainly had it coming. If she hadn't done it I might have been tempted to have arranged it myself.'

‘How was he going to finish you?' I asked. ‘What evidence was there that was so compromising to you?'

The slipper reached the junction of Langer See and Seddin-see. Six throttled back and steered the boat south in the direction of the hilly peninsula that was Schmöckwitz.

‘Clearly your curiosity knows no bounds, Herr Gunther. But I'm sorry to disappoint you. I welcome your assistance, but I see no reason why I should answer all your questions.'

I shrugged. ‘I don't suppose it matters much now,' I said.

The Grosse Zug was an inn on one of the two islands between the marshes of Köpenick and Schmöckwitz. Less than a couple of hundred metres in length, and no more than fifty wide, the island was tightly packed with tall pine trees. Close to the water's edge there were more signs saying ‘Private' and ‘Keep Out' than on a fan-dancer's dressing-room door.

‘What is this place?'

‘This is the summer headquarters of the German Strength ring. They use it for their more secret meetings. You can see why, of course. It's so out of the way.' He started to drive the boat round the island, looking for somewhere to moor. On the opposite side we found a small jetty, to which were tied several boats. Up a short grassy slope was a cluster of neatly painted boathouses, and beyond it the Grosse Zug Inn itself. I collected up a length of rope and jumped off the slipper on to the jetty. Six cut the engine.

‘We'd best be careful how we approach the place,' he said, joining me on the jetty, and tying up the front of the boat. ‘Some of these fellows are inclined to shoot first and ask questions later.'

‘I know just how they feel,' I said.

We walked off the jetty and up the slope towards the boathouses. Excepting the other boats, there was nothing to indicate that there was anyone else on the islet. But closer to the boathouses, two armed men emerged from behind an upturned boat. Their faces wore expressions that were cool enough to cope with me telling them that I was carrying bubonic plague. It's the sort of confidence that only a sawn-off can give you.

‘That's far enough,' said the taller of the two. ‘This is private property. Who are you and what are doing here?' He didn't lift the gun from his forearm where it was cradled like a sleeping baby, but then he did not have to lift it very far to get off a shot. Six made the explanations.

‘It's desperately important that I see Red.' He thumped his fist into the palm of his hand as he spoke. It made him seem rather melodramatic, I thought. ‘My name is Hermann Six. I can assure you gentlemen he'll want to see me. But please hurry.'

They stood there shuffling uncertainly. ‘The boss always tells us if he's expecting anyone. And he didn't say anything about you two.'

‘Despite that, you can depend on it that there'll be hell to pay if he finds out you turned us away.'

Shotgun looked at his partner, who nodded and walked away towards the inn. He said: ‘We'll wait here while we check it out.'

Wringing his hands nervously, Six called out after him: ‘Please hurry. It's a matter of life or death.'

Shotgun grinned at that. I guessed he was used to matters of life and death where his boss was concerned. Six produced a cigarette and fed it nervously into his mouth. He snatched it out again without lighting it.

‘Please,' he said to Shotgun. ‘Are you holding a couple on the island, a man and a woman? The - the — '

‘The Teichmüllers,' I said.

Shotgun's grin disappeared under a whole pantomine of dumb. ‘I don't know nothing,' he said dully.

We kept looking anxiously at the inn. It was a two-storey affair, white-painted with neat, black shutters, a windowbox full of geraniums and a high mansard roof. As we watched, smoke started to come out of the chimney, and when the door finally opened I half expected an old woman to come out carrying a tray of gingerbread. Shotgun's pitman beckoned us forward.

We moved Indian-file through the door, with Shotgun bringing up the rear. The two stumpy barrels gave me an itch in the back of my neck: if you have ever seen someone shot with a sawn-off at close range, you would know why. There was a small hallway with a couple of hatstands, only nobody had bothered to check his hat. Beyond that was a small room, where somebody was playing the piano like he had a couple of fingers missing. At the far end there was a round bar and some stools. Behind it were lots of sports trophies and I wondered who had won them and why. The Most Murders in One Year perhaps, or The Cleanest Knockout With an India Rubber - I had a nominee for that award myself if I could find him. But probably they had just bought them to make the place look more like what it was supposed to be - the headquarters of an ex-convicts' welfare association.

Shotgun's partner grunted. ‘This way,' he said, and led us towards a door beside the bar.

Through the door the room was like an office. A brass lamp hung from one of the beams on the ceiling. There was a long walnut chaise-longue in the corner by the window, and next to it, a big bronze of a naked girl, the sort that looks as though the model must have had a bad accident with a circular saw. There was more art on the panelled walls, but of the sort that normally you only find in the pages of midwives' textbooks.

Red Dieter, his black shirt-sleeves rolled up, and his collar off, stood up from the green-leather sofa and flicked his cigarette into the fire. Glancing first at Six and then at me, he looked uncertain as to whether he ought to look welcoming or worried. He didn't get time to make a choice. Six stepped forwards, and caught him by the throat.

‘For God's sake what have you done with her?' From a corner of the room another man came to my assistance, and each of us taking one of the old man's arms, we pulled him off.

‘Hold up, hold up,' yelled Red. He straightened his jacket and tried to control his natural indignation. Then he glanced around his person, as if to check that his dignity was still intact.

Six continued to shout. ‘My daughter, what have you done with my daughter?'

The gangster frowned and looked quizzically at me. ‘What's he fucking talking about?'

‘The two people your boys snatched from the beach house yesterday,' I said urgently. ‘What have you done with them? Look, there's no time for an explanation now, but the girl is his daughter.'

He looked incredulous. ‘You mean, she's not dead after all?' he said.

‘Come on, man,' I said.

Red swore, his face darkened like dying gaslight, his lips quivering like he had just chewed on broken glass. A thin, blue vein stood off his square forehead like a piece of ivy on a brick wall. He pointed at Six.

‘Keep him here,' he growled. Red shouldered his way through the men outside like an angry wrestler. ‘If this is one of your tricks, Gunther, I'll personally fillet your fucking nose.'

‘I'm not that stupid. But as it happens, there is one thing that's puzzling me.'

At the front door Red stopped and glared at me. His face was the colour of blood, almost purple with rage. ‘And what's that?'

‘I had a girl working with me. Name of Inge Lorenz. She disappeared from the area of the beach house in Wannsee not long before your boys tapped me on the head.'

‘So why ask me?'

‘You've already kidnapped two people, so a third along the way might not be too much for your conscience to bear.'

Red almost spat in my face. ‘What's a fucking conscience, then?' he said, and carried on through the door.

Outside the inn I hurried after him in the direction of one of the boathouses. A man came out, buttoning up his flies. Misinterpreting his boss's purposeful stride, he grinned.

‘You come to give her one as well, boss?'

Red drew level with the man, looked blankly at him for a second, and then punched him hard in the stomach. ‘Shut your stupid mouth,' he roared, and kicked his way through the boathouse door. I stepped over the man's gasping body and followed him inside.

I saw a long rack on which were laid several eight-oar boats, and tied to it was a man stripped to the waist. His head hung down, and there were numerous burns on his neck and shoulders. I guessed that it was Haupthändler, although as I came closer I could see that his face was so badly contused as to be unrecognizable. Two men stood idly by, paying no attention to their captive. They were both smoking cigarettes, and one of them wore a set of brass knuckles.

‘Where's the fucking girl?' screamed Red. One of Haupthandler's torturers jabbed a thumb across his shoulder.

‘Next door, with my brother.'

‘Hey, boss,' said the other man. ‘This coat still won't talk. Do you want us to work on him some more?'

‘Leave the poor bastard alone,' he growled. ‘He knows nothing.'

It was almost dark in the adjoining boathouse, and it took several seconds for our eyes to become accustomed to the gloom.

‘Franz. Where the fuck are you?' We heard a soft groan, and the slap of flesh against flesh. Then we saw them: an enormous figure of a man, his trousers round his ankles, bent over the silent and naked body of Hermann Six's daughter, tied face down over an upturned boat.

‘Get away from her, you big ugly bastard,' yelled Red.

The man, who was the size of a luggage locker, made no move to obey the order, not even when it was repeated at greater volume and at closer range. Eyes shut, his shoe-box of a head lying back on the parapet that was his shoulders, his enormous penis squeezing in and out of Grete Pfarr's anus almost convulsively, his knees bent like a man whose horse had escaped from underneath him, Franz stood his ground.

Red punched him hard on the side of the head. He might as well have been hitting a locomotive. The very next second he pulled out a gun and almost casually blew his man's brains out.

Franz dropped cross-legged to the ground, a collapsing chimney of a man, his head spurting a smoke-plume of burgundy, his still erect penis leaning to one side like the mainmast of a ship that has crashed onto the rocks.

Red pushed the body to one side with the toe of his shoe as I started to untie Grete. Several times he glanced awkwardly at the stripes that had been cut deep onto her buttocks and thighs with a short whip. Her skin was cold, and she smelt strongly of semen. There was no telling how many times she had been raped.

‘Fuck, look at the state of her,' groaned Red, shaking his head. ‘How can I let Six see her like this?'

‘Let's hope she's alive,' I said, taking off my coat, and spreading it on the ground.

We laid her down, and I pressed my ear to her naked breast. There was a heartbeat, but I guessed that she was in deep shock.

‘Is she going to be all right?' Red sounded naive, like a schoolboy asking about his pet rabbit. I looked up at him and saw that he was still holding the gun in his hand.

Summoned by the shot, several German Strength men were standing awkwardly at the back of the boathouse. I heard one of them say, ‘He killed Franz'; and then another said, ‘There was no call to do it,' and I knew we were going to have trouble. Red knew it too. He turned and faced them.

‘The girl is Six's daughter. You all know Six. He's a rich and powerful man. I told Franz to leave her alone but he wouldn't listen. She couldn't have taken any more. He'd have killed her. She's only just alive now.'

‘You didn't have to shoot Franz,' said a voice.

‘Yeah,' said another. ‘You could have slugged him.'

‘What?' Red's tone was incredulous. ‘His head was thicker than the oak on a nunnery door.'

‘Not now it isn't.'

Red bent down beside me. With one eye on his men he murmured, ‘You got a lighter?'

‘Yes,' I said. ‘Look, we don't stand a chance in here, nor does she. We've got to get to a boat.'

‘What about Six?'

I buttoned the coat over Grete's naked body, and gathered her up in my arms. ‘He can take his chances.'

Helfferich shook his head. ‘No, I'll go back for him. Wait for us on the jetty as long as you can. If they start shooting, then get the hell away. And in case I don't, I know nothing about your girl, fleabite.' We walked slowly towards the door, Red leading the way. His men stepped back sullenly to allow us through, and once outside we separated, and I walked back down the grassy slope to the jetty and to the boat.

I laid Six's daughter on the slipper's back seat. There was a rug in a locker and I took it out and put it over her still unconscious body. I wondered whether if she came round I might have another chance to ask her about Inge Lorenz. Would Haupthandler be any more cooperative? I was just thinking about going back to get him when from the direction of the inn I heard several pistol shots. I slipped the boat's line, started the engine and took the gun out of my pocket. With my other hand I held onto the jetty to stop the boat drifting. Seconds later I heard another volley of shots and what sounded like a riveter working along the stern of the boat. I rammed the throttle forwards and spun the wheel away from the jetty. Wincing with pain I glanced down at my hand, imagining that I had been hit, but instead I found an enormous splinter of wood from the jetty sticking out of the palm of my hand. Breaking off the largest part of it I turned and fired off the rest of my clip in the direction of the figures now appearing on the retreating jetty. To my surprise they threw themselves on their bellies. But behind me something heavier than a pistol had opened up. It was only a warning burst, but the big machine-gun cut through the trees and the wood of the jetty like metallic rain drops, sending up splinters, chopping off branches and slicing through foliage. Looking to my front again, I had just enough time to pull the throttle into reverse and steer away from the police-launch. Then I cut the engine and instinctively raised my hands high above my head, dropping my gun onto the floor of the boat as I did so.