Prague Fatale (14 page)

‘How can we find out for sure?’

‘Got a car?’

‘Of course.’

‘Good. You can drive me out to the Charité. Let’s hope that they haven’t incinerated the body.’

Sachse pulled up at the corner of the Charité opposite the Lessing Theatre where Ida Wust was playing in a show called
The Main Point is Happiness
. I couldn’t disagree with that.

‘How about it, Werner? Shall I go in and get us a pair of tickets while we’re here?’

Sachse smiled thinly and shook his head.

‘Not an Ida Wust fan, huh? You surprise me.’

‘That old trout? You must be joking. She reminds me of my mother-in-law. But the other one’s all right. Jane Tilden.’

‘She’s a bit too wholesome for my taste.’ I opened the car door but Sachse stayed put. ‘Aren’t you coming in?’

‘You don’t need me in there, do you?’

Sachse was already looking a little green, and after hearing me relate my favourite but strictly after-dinner anecdotes from the gay world of forensic science, I couldn’t blame him for not wanting to come in to the Pathological Institute. This, of course, was the intention behind these gruesome stories. I hardly wanted the mortuary attendant asking me any awkward questions in front of Werner Sachse about why I was back there with the same knife to check the same wounds in the same body.

‘Strictly speaking,’ I said, ‘there should always be two officers present when a body is examined; however, on this
occasion, perhaps that won’t be necessary. Nothing ever quite prepares you for the sight of a body that’s been chewed up by a railway locomotive.’

Sachse nodded. ‘Thanks, Gunther. You’re all right.’

Chuckling sadistically – the idea of a squeamish Gestapo man just struck me as funny – I went into the hospital and along to the morgue, where I found the same attendant and, having established that Vranken’s dismembered body was still safely stored there, informed him that the investigation was now a Gestapo matter and that in no circumstances was the body to be released for burial or incineration without first clearing it with me.

As always, mention of the Gestapo worked an almost magical effect, akin to uttering ‘Open sesame’, and the attendant signalled his total compliance with a nervous bow. Of course there was no need to see or examine Vranken’s body again. I already knew what I was going to tell Werner Sachse: that Franz Koci had murdered Geert Vranken. And feeling pleased that I had managed to reopen what was now a proper murder case, I made my way back to the car.

A good humour never lasts long in Berlin. The smell of the war wounded in that hospital was asphyxiating. Dying men lay in dusty wards like so much left luggage, while to walk through a hallway or public corridor was to negotiate an obstacle course of rickety old wheelchairs and dirty plaster casts. And if all of that wasn’t bad enough, I came out of the hospital and encountered a little squad of Hitler Youth marching down Luisenstrasse – most likely from a trip to see the National Warrior’s Monument in the Invaliden Park – their throats full of some stupid warlike song and quite oblivious of the German warrior’s true fate that was to be found in the not-so-glorious charnel house nearby. For a moment I
stood and watched these boys with a kind of horror. It was all too easy to think of them as carrying the infection of Nazism – the brown-shirted bacilli of death and destruction and the typhus of tomorrow.

Feeling more sombre than before, I tapped on the window of the Horch-built Audi. It’s a useful courtesy to observe with a man sleeping in his own car when he happens to be carrying a loaded automatic.

Sachse sat up straight, lifted the tip of his black felt hat, and opened the passenger door.

‘Any luck?’

‘Yes. If you can call it that. The Dutchman was stabbed by the Czech all right. Franz Koci’s knife fitted those stab wounds like they’d been cut for it by a good tailor.’

‘Well, you’re the expert.’

‘The question is, why? Why would a Czech spy stab and kill a Dutch railway worker?’

After this ‘breakthrough’ – that’s what Sachse called it, anyway – the investigation stalled again, the way investigations usually do. I wasn’t too worried about that. Detective work is almost always a long game, unless the newspapers get involved, and then it’s still a long game only you have to pretend that it’s not. This job isn’t only a matter of paying attention to detail, it’s also about knowing what to ignore and who, as well. It’s about reading the newspapers and staring into space and learning to be patient and to put your trust in your experience, which tells you that something nearly always turns up. Yes sir, the investigation is going very well. No sir, there’s nothing we could be doing that we haven’t done already. Good morning, anything new on the Franz Koci case? No new leads as yet. Good night. Collect your pay, go home, and do your best to forget all about it, if you can. A lot of police work is police idle, police baffled, police at breakfast, police at lunch, police drinking coffee – if there is any coffee – and always police staring out of the window, assuming there is one. And it all adds up to the same thing: that mostly, being a detective is about coping with boredom and the huge frustration of knowing that it isn’t ever like it is in books and movies. Other things have to take place before something else can happen. Sometimes these are other crimes. Sometimes
they’re things other than crimes. And sometimes it’s hard to know the difference – for instance, when a new law is passed, or when a top policeman is promoted. That’s jurisprudence for you, Nazi style.

The new law was the yellow star, which made a big difference when it finally came into practice on 19 September. The day before, there were just people on the streets of Berlin. Ordinary people. You might say they were my fellow Berliners. The next day, there were all these people wearing yellow stars, which made me realize just how many Jews were living in Berlin and, at the same time, what a terrible thing it was to treat our fellow citizens in this way. Now and again there were even small demonstrations against the wearing of the yellow star. Not by Jews but by gentile Germans in favour of the Jews. People talked about ‘the yellow badge of honour’, and the stoic way the Jews endured their fate did not fail to impress even the most fanatical of Nazis. Except of course the fanatical Nazi who had signed this new police law into being; and he was in my mind a great deal after Saturday 27 September when he was promoted Reichsprotector of Bohemia and Moravia. There was no way that the man who was my boss, Reinhard Heydrich, would ever have been impressed with the way Jewish-Germans conducted themselves.

When I heard that Heydrich was on his way to Prague, I was glad – although not, of course, for him. I was glad he was to be gone from Berlin where there always existed the possibility that he might hand me some special task, as had happened at least twice before. And, for a day or two, I even managed to relax. I took Arianne to the Lido at Muggelsee and then to a show at the Schlosspark Theatre, in Steglitz. Somewhere in the day I even managed to ask her about Geert Vranken.

‘Never heard of him.’

‘He was a foreign worker from Dordrecht, in the Netherlands.’

‘Dordreck? No wonder he came to Berlin.’

‘Not Dordreck. Dordrecht.’

‘Why ask me?’

‘Because I think he may have been murdered by your friend, Paul.’

‘Who?’

‘Franz Koci. The Czecho that Gustav asked you to meet on Nolli Platz.’

Arianne rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, him. I’d only just managed to forget all about that business.’ She uttered a profound sigh and smacked the wicker beach chair we were sharing with her fist. ‘What happened to him? This Dutchy.’

I told her how Geert Vranken had died; and I told her about Franz Koci’s switchblade.

‘That’s really awful. And you mean to tell me that the poor man is still lying in the mortuary at the Charité like last week’s one-pot dinner?’

I nodded.

‘What about his family?’

‘I wrote to his wife, telling her what had happened.’

‘That was big of you.’

‘I didn’t have to do it. In fact I was almost ordered not to do it. But I thought someone should. Like you, I felt sorry for her. Besides, I was hoping that his wife might write back, with some more information. Something that would help me to find her husband’s murderer.’

‘You didn’t tell her—’

‘No, no. I just said there’d been an accident. And that because of wartime regulations, it was impossible for his
body to be sent back. But that I’d see to it, personally, that he got a decent burial.’

‘And will you? I mean, that sounds expensive.’

‘As a matter of fact I’m hoping to persuade the Gestapo to pay for it.’

‘How are you going to do that?’

‘By lying. I shall tell them that the mortuary needs the space, which is true; and also that it’s best Vranken’s remains are not cremated, in case we need to examine the body again, which is not. Something like that. I’m really quite a good liar when the occasion demands it.’

‘I don’t doubt it, Gunther. And the widow? Have you heard back from her?’

‘Not yet. And I probably won’t. Would you write to some Nazi bastard who was occupying your country?’

We were both silent for a while the way you are on a beach. On the blue water there were lots of little white boats that looked as if they were made of paper. We watched the boats and we watched children building sandcastles and some girls playing volleyball. The beach was crowded with people who, like us, figured it was maybe the last day of summer and who were worried we might be in for another hard winter, like the last one when the temperature fell as low as minus twenty-two degrees centigrade. This, of course, was just one of many things we Berliners had to worry about following the overthrow of Kiev. The German High Command had issued a victory communiqué announcing that the Army was now in charge of 665,000 Soviet prisoners. This seemed like a fantastic figure, and there were some who thought it meant that the war in the East was all but won; but there were many others, like myself, who thought that there were probably a lot more Soviet soldiers where those 665,000 men came from.

Eventually, Arianne said:

‘I’ve been thinking of going back to Dresden. To visit my mother.’

‘Good idea.’

‘You could come with me if you like. It’s only two hours on the train. I’ll probably stay there for a couple of weeks but you might like to stay for the weekend.’ She shrugged. ‘You’d enjoy Dresden. It’s not like Berlin where there’s no room. My mother has a huge apartment in Johann Georgen Allee, overlooking the park. And of course it’s much safer than Berlin. I don’t think there’s ever been an air raid.’

She was wearing a blue Lastex swimsuit that was like a dress and showed off her legs, which looked lovely to me. I was trying to keep my eyes on her face as she talked, but it was difficult when all I wanted to do was lay my muzzle on her lap and have her play with my ears and pull my tail.

‘I am supposed to be investigating a murder,’ I said, eventually. ‘Two murders, if you count Geert Vranken. However, neither one of them is paying out right now; and I am owed some leave. So, maybe, yes, I could use a holiday. Only I’m going to have to clear it with the Commissioner. He worries when I’m not around. I’m the last real cop in Berlin. When I go, it’s just the two sentries out front of the Alex and the cleaning lady. So I’ll let you know, angel. Tomorrow, probably.’

‘I’m afraid that’s quite impossible, Bernie.’

I shifted uncomfortably in Lüdtke’s office. I felt about ten years old, a schoolboy again, in trouble with his headmaster.

‘Would you mind telling me why, sir?’

‘I was about to. I’ve just had a telephone call from an SS major called Doctor Achim Ploetz.’

‘Never heard of him.’

‘In Prague.’ Lüdtke grinned. ‘Yes, I thought that would shut you up. Major Ploetz is the Chief Adjutant to General Heydrich. It seems that your presence is required in Bohemia and Moravia. Or perhaps it’s just Bohemia. I’m not sure.’ He shrugged. ‘Whichever one Prague is in is where you are requested to go.’

I felt a sudden chill on the back of my neck as if I’d run my finger along the edge of the blade of the falling axe at Plotzensee. Heydrich had that effect on people, which was probably why he was nicknamed ‘the Hangman’.

‘Did Major Ploetz explain why I’m needed in Prague, sir?’

‘It seems that the General is planning some sort of weekend with friends, at his country house outside Prague. To celebrate his appointment as the new Reichsprotector of Bohemia. I had no idea that you and General Heydrich were on such cordial terms, Bernie.’

‘No sir. Nor had I.’

‘Oh, come now. You might not wear a scary badge on your lapel but everyone at the Alex knows you’ve got vitamin B. Even the footballs handle you with care.’

Many Gestapo officers were fond of wearing leather coats and hats; and since many of them were also better fed than the rest of us and hence fatter, too, they were known as ‘footballs’. But sadly, kicking one was not an option.