Prague Fatale (34 page)

I shook my head. ‘Let me get this straight. Everyone in this house is suspected of being a spy for the Czechos.’

Kahlo nodded. ‘I don’t think you are. And I know I’m not. And I’m damned sure Heydrich isn’t. Or his three adjutants. Everyone else, well there’s a question mark against everyone else, yes.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, sir. I really thought you knew about all this.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘Well that’s hardly my fault is it? I just do what I’m fucking told. It’s up to Heydrich what he tells you, not me. I’m just a Criminal Assistant.’ He kissed his cigarette and continued: ‘Maybe it slipped his mind. Maybe he assumed that I would tell you. Which I have.’

‘When we were discussing a possible motive for someone murdering Captain Kuttner—’

‘No sir,’ he said firmly. ‘You never discussed that with me. You discussed that with General Henlein.’

‘Well, don’t you think you might have mentioned it before now? In passing? I mean, if someone suspects you of being a spy, then that would be a pretty powerful fucking motive for murder, don’t you think? Maybe Kuttner was onto someone in this house. Maybe that’s why he was killed. But why should I have to know about that? I’m just the investigating detective. Jesus, I feel like a parrot with a cloth over my cage.’

‘Try to look at it from my point of view, Commissar. Kuttner turns up at Prague Kripo on Monday. Several of us are picked out to join Heydrich’s Traitor X Group. But Kuttner tells us that on no account are we to talk about this to anyone. It’s all top-secret, he says. Anyone opens his pie hole about this group to anyone, the reward is a ticket on the partisan express. Then he gets killed and you’re in charge of the investigation. Heydrich’s clever dick. That’s what Ploetz says. Christ, that’s what everyone says. And the way you speak to the General. Like you had a special licence. How am I to know that you’re not fully in the picture, sir? I’m used to being told this but not that, see? I’m just a foot-soldier, sir. All this fucking cauliflower, I’m not familiar with it. And I’m certainly not used to hearing them getting roughed up by a mere captain like you.’

‘Everyone in the house?’ I repeated dumbly.

‘More or less. Like I said, it’s everyone except me and you and the adjutants. And Heydrich, of course. There’s a list, see. Of suspects. I haven’t got a copy myself, but I can remember who was on it. And Henlein’s name was certainly one of them.’

I poured myself a cup of coffee and sipped it thoughtfully.

‘Hildebrandt?’

Kahlo nodded.

‘But he’s an old friend of Heydrich’s,’ I said. ‘To say nothing of the fact that he’s an old friend of Hitler. Von Eberstein? What about him? Is he suspected, too?’

Kahlo nodded again.

‘But how? How can they be under suspicion? That little gold Party badge is supposed to mean something.’

‘I only know what I’ve been told. And that’s not everything. Hildebrandt is a suspect because for two years, from 1928 until 1930, he was in America. While he was there he went bankrupt as a farmer but someone paid off all his debts and then helped to set him up as a bookseller in New York. The suspicion in the SD is that it was the British Secret Service. And that it was them who persuaded him to return to Germany and join the SS in 1931 to spy for the British.

‘Von Eberstein was a banker after the war and a bit of a weekend Nazi, if you know what I mean. He actually quit the Party after the putsch, which automatically makes him suspect. For three years he had no Party affiliation at all. And during this time he goes from being a banker with the Commerce and Private Bank to running his wife’s factory in Gotha; but when that goes belly up his debts are paid off anonymously and he starts a travel agency. That business takes him to London for much of 1927 and 1928. But by 1929
he’s back in the Party again. So did the Tommies set him up with the travel agency and train him to operate a radio while he was in London? That’s the sort of thing Heydrich wants to know.’

Kahlo grinned and wagged his finger.

‘You see how easy it is to fall under suspicion? And it doesn’t matter who you are, or how high up in the Party you have flown. Doctor Jury is a suspect because before he joined the Austrian Nazi Party in 1932 he attended several medical conferences in Paris and London. While he was in Paris he had an affair with a woman who also had an affair with a French colonel in their intelligence service. Also his friendship with Martin Bormann automatically makes him a suspect in Himmler’s eyes, since it seems Himmler would love to discredit any friend of Bormann’s in the eyes of Hitler.

‘General Frank is a suspect because of something his exwife Anna has told her new husband, Doctor Kollner. He succeeded Frank as the deputy governor of the Sudetenland and he has made certain allegations based on what Anna Kollner told him about his loyalty to the Leader. And also because his new wife, Karola Blaschek, is suspected of having contact with several Czech resistance figures. She comes from the local town of Brux and there’s a suspicion that some of her friends and relations in that town may have been part of UVOD. The Home Resistance.’

‘What about von Neurath? Not him, surely. He was the Foreign Minister for Christ’s sake.’

‘Konstantin von Neurath is suspected of being recruited as a British spy as early as 1903, when he served as a diplomat at the German Embassy in London; or possibly when he was at the German Embassy in Denmark in 1919. While he was German Ambassador to London in 1930 he came under the
suspicion of the Abwehr but he was cleared after an investigation; but in 1937 the Abwehr was burgled by a special SS team and certain papers were removed that showed the whole investigation to have been a sham. Subsequent to this, von Neurath joined the Nazi Party for the first time, as a sign of his loyalty. As if he suddenly needed to underline his loyalty. Instead of which it seems to have put him under suspicion.’

Kahlo stubbed out his cigarette and helped himself to coffee. But he wasn’t yet finished.

‘And that’s possibly the reason Major Thummel is suspected of being the traitor X. He was in charge of the Abwehr section that was supposed to have investigated von Neurath. He may be a friend of Heinrich Himmler and he may wear a gold Party badge, but he’s also a close friend of the Abwehr’s boss, Admiral Canaris, who is Himmler’s most bitter rival. Heydrich’s too.

‘Let’s see now. Who else was on that list? Brigadier Voss? He commands the SS Officer School at Beneschau. Until 1938, he was in charge of the officers’ training school at Bad Tolz where there’s a powerful radio transmitter. When officers from that school were mobilized for the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938, someone tipped off the Czech Intelligence Service about it. Voss was one of only a handful of people who knew the invasion was about to happen. He’s also a keen amateur radio enthusiast. Who better to broadcast secrets to the Czechos? He even speaks the language.

‘Walter Jacobi was dismissed from the SD in 1937 by his then boss, General Werner Lorenz. I’m afraid I don’t know why. In the spring of 1938, he took a holiday in Marienbad, in the Sudetenland. Coincidentally perhaps, or perhaps not, one of the other guests taking the cure at the Spa was a retired British naval commander who is currently believed
to be the head of an operational Czech section within the British SIS. After his holiday, Jacobi rejoined the SD.’

‘Guilt by association.’

‘Possibly.’

Kahlo nodded.

‘Henlein – well, you heard what I said to him. And Fleischer’s been under suspicion for a while now because of his failure to arrest the third of the Three Kings. You probably know as much about that as I do. It’s common knowledge that the Czechos were making a fool of him for a while. The rest of the cauliflower, I really don’t remember or I don’t know. Your guess is as good as mine.’

‘I doubt that very much,’ I said. ‘And by the way, what happened to “I’m keen to learn” and “You have my full cooperation” and “It’s a puzzle, sir”?’

‘You don’t think it’s a puzzle?’

‘Of course it is. I just don’t much like the fact you’ve had one of the pieces in your trouser pocket all along.’

‘And I don’t suppose you’ve ever kept your mouth shut about something?’ Kahlo shook his head. ‘Come on, sir. We both know that saying one thing and thinking another is what this job is all about. Tell me it’s not like that for you. Go on.’

I found myself silent.

‘Tell me that you’ve told
me
everything. That there’s something you’re not keeping from me.’

Still I didn’t answer. How could I when Arianne was back at the hotel? If I’d told him less than half of what I knew about Arianne Tauber there was no telling what might happen to her.

Kahlo grinned. ‘No, I thought not. You see, when it comes right down to it, Commissar, I reckon your piss is just as yellow as mine.’

I sighed and fetched myself a brandy from the decanter. Suddenly I felt very tired and I knew the brandy wasn’t going to help.

‘Maybe you’re right.’

‘Look, sir. You want to know what I think? I think we should go through the motions of trying to find Kuttner’s killer, just like you were told to do. We ask the right questions, we do our duty, right? Like regular cops. That’s all we can do and it’s pointless thinking we can do any more than that. But when it comes right down to it, what does it fucking matter, eh? You tell me. Who cares who killed the bastard? Not me, not you. From what I heard, he did his own fair share of murder out east. And the chances are he had it coming. Probably we all do. But what’s one more murder, eh? One tiny drop in a very tall glass of beer, that’s what it is. Take my advice, sir. Don’t sweat it. Enjoy the free forage and the booze and the cigarettes. For as long as we can, eh?’

‘Maybe.’

‘That’s the spirit, sir. And who knows? Maybe we’ll get lucky. Even a blind chicken finds the corn now and again.’

I needed a walk and some fresh air after all that information, although it might have been the brandy and the Mish-Mash. I went around the house to the little Winter Garden that Kuttner’s room looked out on. Inside the glass house was a fountain shaped like a shrine with a water nymph’s head spouting water and above him a bronze statue of a centaur with a winged cherub on his back. On either side of the fountain was a veritable jungle of sago palms and geraniums. It seemed an odd place to find a centaur, or a cherub, but I wasn’t surprised at anything any more. The water nymph could have told me my fortune lay in farming guinea pigs and I wouldn’t have batted an eyelid. Anything
looked like a better bet than being a detective in Jungfern-Breschan.

A ladder lay on the ground, and assuming that this was probably the one Kritzinger had ordered Fendler, the footman, to fetch around to Captain Kuttner’s window, I spent the next ten minutes propping it up against the wall of the house. Then I climbed up to take a look at the window ledge. But that told me only that the glass roof needed cleaning, that the sun was still strong for the first week in October, and that I was not at all certain to kill myself cleanly if I threw myself from the top. I descended the ladder and found one of the footmen waiting at the bottom.

‘Fendler, sir,’ he said, unprompted. ‘Herr Kritzinger saw you were out here and sent me to see if I could be of any assistance, sir.’

He was not far off being two metres tall. He wore a white mess jacket with SS collar patches, a white shirt, a black tie, black trousers, a white apron, and grey over-sleeves, as if he might have been cleaning something before receiving his order from the butler to wait on me. He was lumpish in appearance, with an expression that suggested he was none too bright, but I’d gladly have changed places with him. Polishing silver or removing the ash from a fireplace looked like more rewarding work than the domestic task I had been set.

‘You’re the one who Kritzinger told to fetch the ladder to look in Captain Kuttner’s window, are you not?’

‘That’s right, sir.’

‘And what did you see, when eventually you got up there? By the way, what time was that, do you think?’

‘About a quarter past seven, sir.’

I tugged my shirt off the sweat on my chest.

‘I was about to ask you why it took so long to fetch a ladder and prop it up against the window, but I think I know the answer to that already. It’s heavy.’

‘Yes sir. But it wasn’t in the Winter Garden like it is now, sir.’

‘That’s right. It was locked up, wasn’t it?’

‘Bruno, the gardener – Bruno Kopkow – he helped me carry it around here and prop it up.’

‘How did you know which window to choose?’

‘Kritzinger told me it was the room overlooking the Winter Garden, sir. And to be careful I didn’t drop it on the glass roof, sir.’

‘So, you prop the ladder up against the window. Then what? Tell me everything you saw and did.’

Fendler shrugged. ‘We – Kopkow and I – we heard a loud bang, sir, and then just as I was stepping on the lowest rung, sir, General Heydrich looks out of the window, and seeing me and Bruno tells us that there’s no need to bother coming up now as they had just broken down the Captain’s bedroom door.’

‘And what did you say? If anything?’

‘I asked him if everything was all right and he said that it wasn’t, because it looked as if Captain Kuttner had probably killed himself with an overdose.’