Every Man Dies Alone (54 page)

Kuno merely looked at her. “You’re telling me it’s time to push off,” he said. “The two of youse want to be alone together. All right then! But I’m not going to bed yet, Eva, I’m not a baby, you know. I’m going to have a look around the village first.”

“But don’t let it get too late, Kuno! And don’t smoke in the hayloft, either!”

“Bah! I’d never do that! I’d be the first to go. Okay then. Have fun, you young people, as the old man said… And he proceeded to put the old lady in the family way.”

And exit Kuno-Dieter.

Eva Kluge smiled a little worriedly. “I don’t know if I’ve done the right thing in inviting that scamp into our little family, Kienschaper! He’s a bit of a caution!”

Kienschaper laughed. “But Evi,” he said, “surely you can see he’s only trying to show off! He’s trying to make an impression, and he doesn’t really care if it’s a good or a bad one! And because he’s sensed you’re a little prudish…”

“I’m not prudish!” she cried. “But if a fourteen-year-old boy tells me he’s already bedded a couple of women…”

“… well, then as I say, you’re just a bit prudish. And as far as him bedding those women, he certainly did nothing of the sort—at the very worst, they will have bedded him! That’s nothing. I’ll spare you tales of what the children in this simple, devout village get up to—compared to them, your Kuno-Dieter’s a saint!”

“But the children don’t go and talk about it!”

“That’s because they feel guilty. He doesn’t; to him, it’s all perfectly natural, because it’s all he’s ever known. He’ll settle down. There’s a core of good in the boy; in six months’ time, I imagine he’ll blush when he remembers the stuff he said in his first few days here. He’ll drop it, just like he’ll drop his Berlin argot. Did you notice he’s actually capable of speaking perfectly good German when he wants to? Only he doesn’t want to.”

“I feel bad, especially toward you, Kienschaper.”

“You mustn’t, Evi. I get a kick out of the boy, and there’s one thing I can promise you: whatever he turns out like, he’ll never be a common-or-garden Nazi. He might be an eccentric, but never a Nazi.”

“Oh, pray to God!” said Eva. “That’s all I want.”

And she had a faint sense that by rescuing Kuno-Dieter, she was in some way beginning to atone for the atrocities committed by Karlemann.

Chapter 44

THE FALL OF INSPECTOR ZOTT

The letter from the precinct supervisor was correctly addressed to Inspector Zott at Gestapo Headquarters, Berlin. But that didn’t result in the letter landing in Zott’s in-tray. Instead, it was his superior, SS-Obergrüppenfuhrer Prall, who was clutching it as he walked into Zott’s office.

“What’s this all about, Inspector?” asked Prall. “Here’s another one of your Hobgoblin’s cards, and this note pinned to it: ‘Prisoners released in accordance with phoned instructions from the Gestapo,’ Inspector Zott. What prisoners might those be? Why has none of this reached my ears?”

The inspector looked up over the rims of his spectacles at his superior. “Oh, yes! I remember. It was yesterday, or maybe the day before. I’ve got it, it was on Sunday. Sunday evening. Sometime between six and seven, I would say, Obergrüppenfuhrer.”

And he looked up at the Obergrüppenfuhrer, proud of his excellent memory.

“And what precisely happened on Sunday between six and seven o’clock? What prisoners are you talking about? And why were they let go? And why has none of it been reported to me? It’s profoundly comforting to hear that you know what it’s about, but I’d like to know too, Zott!”

That
“Zott”
spat out without any form of title, sounded like the opening salvo in a barrage.

“But it’s a perfectly trivial matter!” The inspector made calming motions with his parchment yellow hands. “There was some nonsense at the station. The police, bless them, pulled in a married couple as possible writers or distributors of the postcards, complete nonsense of course—we know the man lives by himself! Ah yes, and there was another thing, too: the man was a carpenter, when we know the Hobgoblin has something to do with the streetcars!”

“Are you trying to tell me, sir,” said the barely restrained Obergrüppenfuhrer (that “sir” was the second, and far more dangerous, shot in this battle), “are you trying to tell me that you authorized the release of these people without even having
seen
them, without even having
questioned
them, just because there were two of them rather than one, and because the man had a carpenter’s ID on him? Sir!”

“Obergruppenführer,” replied Inspector Zott as he got to his feet, “in our investigations, we detectives follow a specific plan and don’t deviate from it. I am looking for a man who lives alone and works in public transport, not a married man who is a carpenter. I’m simply not interested in the latter. I wouldn’t go a step out of my way for him.”

“As if a carpenter couldn’t work for public transport—for instance, repairing carriages!” Prall screamed back at him. “How stupid can you get!”

At first, Zott thought he should be offended, but his superior’s apt remark gave him pause. “You’re right,” he said glumly, “that didn’t occur to me.” He collected himself. “But I am still looking for a man living on his own,” he said again. “And this man has a wife.”

“Have you any idea what vile bitches women can be!” growled Prall. But he had something else in his armory: “And did it not occur to you,
Inspector
Zott,” (this was the third and most lethal shot), “that this card was dropped on a Sunday afternoon, near Nollendorfplatz! Did that minor or meaningless circumstance escape your schooled detective’s attention?”

This time Inspector Zott was really stunned, his little goatee bobbed up and down, and it was as though a veil had been drawn over his dark, sharp eyes.

“I’m embarrassed, Obergruppenführer! How could something like this have happened to me? I got ahead of myself. I was thinking about streetcar stations; I was so proud of my discovery. Too proud…”

The Obergruppenführer looked angrily at the little man, who was confessing his shortcomings, not cringingly but with evident disappointment.

“It was a mistake on my part,” the inspector proceeded, “to have taken over this inquiry in the first place. I am good for desk work, not a criminal investigation. Escherich is ten times better than I am. And now I’ve also had the misfortune that one of the men I asked to check out a house in the area, a certain Klebs, has been arrested. He is alleged to have been involved in theft, the robbing of a dipsomaniac. He has been badly beaten up. A very unpleasant story altogether. The man will not keep quiet in court, he will say that we sent him…”

Obergruppenführer Prall trembled with rage, but Inspector Zott’s dignity and utter lack of regard for his own fate held him in check.

“Do you have any views on how we should proceed in this matter, sir?” he asked coldly.

“I beg you, Obergruppenführer,” Zott beseeched him with raised hands, “release me! Release me from this investigation, which is completely over my head! Get Escherich back out of the basement, he will do better than me…”

“I do hope,” Prall said, and it was as though he hadn’t listened to a word of what Zott had just said, “I do hope you’ve at least kept a record of the name and address of the two detainees?”

“I didn’t! I didn’t! I behaved with culpable negligence. I was blinded by my theory. But I will call the station, they will find the addresses, and we will see…”

“All right, call them!”

The conversation was very short. The inspector told the Obergruppenführer, “No note was kept of the names and addresses.” And, in response to a furious gesture from his superior: “I am to blame, only I! After calling me, they had no option but to view the incident as closed. I am completely to blame for there being nothing in writing!”

“So we have no lead?”

“No lead!”

“And what do you think about your conduct?”

“I ask that Inspector Escherich be brought up from the basement, and that I be confined in his place!”

Obergruppenführer Prall looked at the little man in silence. Then, shaking with rage, he said, “Do you know I’ll have you put away in a concentration camp? You dare make such a suggestion to me, to my face, without wailing and shaking with fear? It’s Communists and Bolsheviks that are made of the sort of stuff you’re made
of! You confess your shortcomings, but you still appear to be proud of them!”

“I’m not proud of my shortcomings. But I am ready to take the consequences for them. I hope I will do it without wailing and trembling!”

Obergruppenführer Prall sneered contemptuously at those words. He had seen too many illusions of dignity collapse under the punches and kicks of SS men. But he had also seen something in the eye of some victims, a look of cool, almost mocking superiority even as they were being tortured. And his memory of that look caused him not to scream and lash out, but merely to say, “I want you to stay here at my disposal. I must first make a report.”

Inspector Zott inclined his head in agreement, and Obergruppenführer Prall walked out.

Chapter 45

INSPECTOR ESCHERICH IS FREE AGAIN

Inspector Escherich is back. The man who was written off as dead or good as dead has returned to life from the basements of the Gestapo. A little rumpled, a little in need of repair, but still, he is back at his desk, and his colleagues hasten to give him their sympathy. They had always gone on believing in him. They had been willing to do everything they could for him. “Only, you know, when the top brass drops someone in it, there’s nothing the likes of us can do about it. You just get your fingers burned. Well, you know all that anyway, Escherich, you understand.”

Escherich assures them he understands everything. He twists his mouth into a grin, but the grin looks a little sad, presumably because Escherich has not yet got the hang of grinning with a few teeth missing.

There were only two people who impressed him when he returned to work. One was Inspector Zott.

“Colleague Escherich,” he had said, “I am not being sent down to the basement in your place, even though I deserve it ten times more than you ever did. Not just because of the mistakes I made, but because I behaved like a bastard to you. My only excuse is that I did really believe you’d done bad work…”

“Don’t mention it,” Escherich had replied with his gap-toothed smile. “None of us have come out of the Hobgoblin case with reputations
enhanced, not you, not me, none of us. It’s funny, but I’m quite excited to meet this man who has created such a lot of misfortune for his fellow men with these postcards. He must be a really odd bird…” He looked thoughtfully at the inspector.

Zott extended his parchment-colored hand. “Please don’t think too badly of me, Colleague Escherich,” he said quietly. “And one other thing: I’ve got the idea that the culprit is something to do with the streetcar service. You’ll find it written up in the files. Please don’t lose sight of that in the course of your own investigations. It would make me very happy if at least in that one point my ideas proved to be correct! Just bear it in mind!”

And with those words Inspector Zott disappeared up to his own cubbyhole, there to devote himself entirely to his own theories.

The second, of course, was Obergruppenführer Prall. “Escherich,” he said with raised voice, “Inspector Escherich! How are you feeling?”

“Perfectly well!” replied the inspector. He was standing behind his desk, his thumbs pressed against his trouser seams, a drill he had picked up down in the cells. However much he tried not to, the inspector was trembling. He looked alertly at his superior, toward whom he felt nothing but fear, insensate fear that Prall might at any moment send him down to the basement again.

“If you feel perfectly well, Escherich,” Prall went on, perfectly aware of the effect his words were having, “then you’ll surely be able to work. Or not?”

“I am able to work, Obergruppenführer, sir!”

“And if you can work, Escherich, then you can catch the Hobgoblin? You can do that, can’t you?”

“Yes, sir, I can!”

“In double-quick time, Escherich!”

“In double-quick time, Obergruppenführer, sir!”