Prague Fatale (6 page)

‘And I thought it was just the Germans who were a godless race.’

I walked away.

‘Hey,’ said Dickson. ‘I saw that movie,
Frankenstein
. And I
remember that scene, now. Doesn’t the monster throw the little girl in the water?’

‘Yes. Sad isn’t it?’

I strolled south, down to Bülowstrasse, where I turned west. I might have walked all the way home but I noticed there was a hole in my shoe and at Nolli I decided to get on the S-Bahn. Normally I would have taken the tram, but the thirty-three was no longer running; and since it was after nine o’clock the only taxis around were those that were called by the police for the service of the sick, the lame, the old, or travellers from railway stations with heavy bags. And senior Nazi Party members, of course. They never had a problem getting a cab home after nine.

Nolli was almost deserted, which was not uncommon in the blackout. All you could see were occasional cigarette ends moving through the darkness like fireflies, or sometimes the phosphorescent lapel badge of someone keen to avoid a collision with another pedestrian; all you could hear were the trains as they moved invisibly in and out of the art nouveau glass dome of the station overhead, or disembodied voices, snatches of passing conversations as if Berlin was one big open-air séance – a ghostly effect that was enhanced by infrequent flashes of electric light from the rail track. It was as if some modern-day Moses – and who could have blamed him? – had stretched out his strong hand toward the sky to spread a palpable darkness over the land of Germany. Surely it was time to let the Israelites leave, or at least to release them from their bondage.

I was almost on the stairs when, from under the arches, I heard the sound of a struggle. I stopped for a moment, looked around and as a cloud shifted lazily off the moon I got a
son
et lumière
view of a man attacking a woman. She was lying on the ground trying to fight him off as, with one hand over her mouth, he fumbled under her skirt. I heard a curse, a muffled scream and then my own footsteps as they clattered down the stairs.

‘Hey, leave her alone,’ I yelled.

The man appeared to punch the woman and as he stood up to face me I heard a click and caught a glimpse of the blade that was now in his hand. If I’d been on duty I might have been carrying a firearm but I wasn’t and as the man came toward me I shrugged the bread bag containing the food cans off my shoulder and swung it hard like a medieval ball and chain as he came within range. The bag hit him on his extended arm, knocking the blade out of his hand, and he turned and fled, with me in half-hearted pursuit. The moonlight dimmed momentarily and I lost sight of him altogether. A few moments later I heard a squeal of tyres from the corner of Motz Strasse and, arriving in front of the American Church, I found a taxi with its door open and the driver staring at his front fender.

‘He just ran out in front of me,’ said the driver.

‘You hit him?’

‘I didn’t have a chance.’

‘Well he’s not here now.’

‘He ran off I think.’

‘Where did he go?’

‘Toward the cinema theatre.’

‘Stay where you are; I’m a police officer,’ I told the driver and crossed the street, but I might as well have looked inside a magician’s top hat. There was no sign of him. So I went back to the taxi.

‘Find him?’

‘No. How hard did you hit him?’

‘I wasn’t going fast, if that’s what you mean. Ten or fifteen kilometres an hour, like you’re supposed to do, see? But still, I think I gave him a good old clunk. He went right over the hood and landed on his head, like he was off some nag at the Hoppegarten.’

‘Pull into the side of the road and stay there,’ I told the driver.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘How do I know you’re a cop? Where’s your warrant disc?’

‘It’s in my office at Alex. We can go straight there if you like and you can spend the next hour or two making out a report. Or you can do what I say. The fellow you knocked down attacked a woman back there. That’s why he was running away. Because I chased him. I was thinking you might take the lady home.’

‘Yeah, all right.’

I went back to the station on Nollendorfplatz.

The girl who’d been attacked was sitting up and rubbing her chin between adjusting her clothes and looking for her handbag.

‘Are you all right?’

‘I think so. My bag. He threw it on the ground somewhere.’

I glanced around. ‘He got away. But if it’s any consolation a taxi knocked him down.’

I kept on looking for her bag but I didn’t find it. Instead I found the switchblade.

‘Here it is,’ she said. ‘I’ve found it.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘I feel a bit sick,’ she said, holding her jaw uncomfortably.

I wasn’t feeling very comfortable myself. I didn’t have my beer-token and I had a bag full of canned food that,
within the limited purview of a uniformed bull, would have marked me out as a black-marketeer, for which the penalties were very severe. It was not uncommon for
Schmarotzers
to receive death sentences, especially if these also happened to be people who needed to be made an example of, like policemen. So I was anxious to be away from there; no more did I want to accompany her to the local police station and report the matter. Not while I was still carrying the bread bag.

‘Look, I kept the taxi waiting. Where do you live? I’ll take you home.’

‘Just off the Kurfürstendamm. Next to the Theatre Centre.’

‘Good. That’s near me.’

I helped her along to the taxi, which was where I’d left it, on the corner of Motz Strasse, and told the driver where to go. Then we drove west along Kleist Strasse with the driver telling me in exhaustive detail just what had happened and how it wasn’t his fault and that he couldn’t believe the fellow he’d collided with hadn’t been more seriously injured.

‘How do you know he wasn’t?’

‘He ran off, didn’t he? Can’t run with a broken leg. Believe me, I know. I was in the last war and I tried.’

When we got to Kurfürstendamm I helped the girl out of the car and she was promptly sick in the gutter.

‘Must be my lucky night,’ said the taxi driver.

‘You’ve got a funny idea of luck, friend.’

‘That’s the only kind that’s going these days.’ The driver leaned out of the window and slammed the door shut behind us. ‘What I mean is, she could have been sick in the cab. And that Fritz I hit. I could have killed him, see?’

‘How much?’ I asked.

‘That all depends on whether you’re going to report this.’

‘I don’t know what the lady will want to do,’ I said. ‘But if I were you I’d get going before she makes up her mind.’

‘See?’ The driver put the taxi cab in gear. ‘I was right. It is my lucky night.’

Inside the building I helped the girl upstairs, which is when I got a better look at her.

She was wearing a navy-blue linen suit with a lace-cotton blouse underneath. The blouse was torn and a stocking was hanging down over one of her shoes. These were plumcoloured like her handbag and the mark under one of her eyes from when she’d been punched. There was a strong smell of perfume on her clothes and I recognized Guerlain Shalimar. By the time we reached her door I had concluded she was about thirty years old. She had shoulder-length blond hair, a wide forehead, a broad nose, high cheekbones, and a sulky mouth. Then again, she had a lot to feel sulky about. She was about 175 centimetres tall, and against my arm felt strong and muscular: strong enough to put up a fight when she was attacked but not strong enough to walk away without help. I was glad about that. She was good-looking in a catlike way with narrow eyes and a tail that seemed to have a whole life of its own and made me want to have her on my lap for a while so that I could stroke it.

She found a door key and fumbled for the lock until I caught her hand and steered the key into the Abus and turned it for her.

‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I’ll be all right from here, I think.’

And but for the fact that she started to sit down on the floor I might have left her there. Instead I gathered her up in my arms and swung her through the door like an exhausted bride.

Advancing into the barely furnished hall I encountered the house guard dog: a barely dressed woman of about fifty with short, bottle-blond hair and more make-up than seemed strictly necessary outside of a circus tent. Almost at once and with a voice like Baron Ochs she started to reproach the half-conscious girl I was carrying for bringing disrespect upon her house, but from the going-over the landlady’s eyebrows were giving me much of that seemed to be directed my way. I didn’t mind that. For a while it made me feel quite nostalgic for my Army days when some ugly sergeant would chew my ear off for nothing but the hell of it.

‘What kind of house do you think I’m running here, Fräulein Tauber? You should be ashamed to even think of coming back here in such a state as this, with a strange man. I’m a respectable woman. I’ve told you about this before, Fräulein Tauber. I have my rules. I have my standards. This is not to be tolerated.’

All of this told me two things. One was that the woman in my arms was Fräulein Tauber. And the other was that I was hardly through protecting her from attack.

‘Someone tried to rape her,’ I said. ‘So you can either help or you can go and put on some more make-up. The end of your nose looks like it could use some red paint.’

‘Well, really,’ the landlady gasped. ‘There’s no need to be rude. Raped, you say. Yes, of course I’ll help. Her room is along here.’

She led the way down the hall, found a key from the bunch in the pocket of her sagging dressing gown, opened a door, and, switching on the ceiling light, illuminated a neat, well-furnished room that was cosier than a cashmere-lined leather glove, and about the same size.

I laid Fräulein Tauber down on a sofa of the kind that was
only comfortable if you were wearing a whalebone corset, and kneeling at her feet I started to slap some life into her hands and face.

‘When she started working at the Golden Horseshoe I told her something like this might happen,’ said the old woman.

This was one of the few remaining nightclubs in Berlin and probably the least offensive, so the chain of causation that was being suggested was hardly obvious to me; but, containing any argument because I’d already been too rough on the woman, I asked her, politely, if she could fetch a cold compress and a cup of strong tea or coffee. The tea or coffee was a long-shot, but in an emergency there’s no telling what Berlin women can come up with.

Fräulein Tauber started to come around again and I helped her to sit up. Seeing me she smiled a half-smile.

‘Are you still here?’

The smile must have been painful because she flexed her jaw and then winced.

‘Just take it easy. That was quite a left hook he handed you. I’ll say one thing for you, Fräulein Tauber, you can take a punch.’

‘Yeah? Maybe you should manage my fights. I could use a big purse. How’d you know my name, anyway, Parsifal?’

‘Your landlady. She’s fetching a cold compress and a hot drink for that eye of yours. It’s just possible that we can stop it from going blue.’

Fräulein Tauber glanced over at the door and shook her head. ‘If she’s fetching me a hot drink you must have told her I was dying.’

The landlady returned with the cold compress and handed it to me. I laid it carefully on Fräulein Tauber’s eye, took her hand and laid it on top.

‘Keep some pressure on it,’ I told her.

‘There’s tea on the way,’ said the landlady. ‘I had just enough left for a small pot.’ She shrugged and gathered her dressing gown closer to a chest that was bigger than the cushions on the sofa.

I stood up, stretched a smile onto my face and offered the landlady one of my American cigarettes.

‘Smoke?’

The old woman’s eyes lit up like she was looking at the Koh-i-noor diamond.

‘Please.’ She took one tentatively, almost as if she thought that I might snatch it away again.

‘It’s a fair exchange for a cup of tea,’ I said, lighting her cigarette. I didn’t smoke one myself. I hardly wanted either of them thinking I was Gustav Krupp.

The old woman took an ecstatic puff of her cigarette, smiled and went back into the kitchen.

‘And here was me thinking you were just Parsifal. Looks like you’ve got the touch. Healing lepers is easier than raising a smile on her face.’

‘But I get the feeling she disapproves of you, Fräulein Tauber.’

‘You make that sound almost benign. Like my old schoolmistress.’ Fräulein Tauber laughed bitterly. ‘Frau Lippert – that’s her name – she hates me. If I was Jewish she couldn’t hate me more.’

‘And what’s your name? I can’t keep calling you Fräulein Tauber.’

‘Why not? Everyone else does.’

‘The man who attacked you. Did you get a good look at him?’