A German Requiem

I frowned and rubbed my jaw thoughtfully. 'Not the couple who live in ' I snapped my fingers as if the street name were on the tip of my tongue ' where is it now?'

'Steglitz,' he said, prompting me. 'Handjery Strasse.'

I shook my head. 'No, I must be thinking of someone else. Sorry.'

'Hey, don't mention it.'

'I suppose the police must have asked you a lot of questions about Captain Linden's murder.'

'Nope. They asked us nothing, on account of the fact that they already got the guy who did it.'

'They've got someone? That is good news. Who is he?'

'Some Austrian.'

'But why did he do it? Did he say?'

'Nope. Crazy, I guess. How d'you meet the captain, anyway?'

'I met him at a nightclub. The Gay Island.'

'Yeah, I know it. Never go there myself. Me, I prefer those places down on the Ku-damm: Ronny's Bar, and the Club Royale. But Linden used to go to the Gay Island a lot. He had a lot of German friends, I guess, and that's where they liked to go.'

'Well, he spoke such good German.'

'That he did, sir. Like a native.'

'My wife and I used to wonder why he never had a regular girl. We even offered to introduce him to some. Nice girls, from good families.'

The soldier shrugged. 'Too busy, I guess.' He chuckled. 'He sure had plenty of others. Gee, that man liked to frat.'

After a moment I realized he meant fraternize, which was the euphemism in general military usage for what another American officer was doing to my wife. I squeezed my knee experimentally and stood up.

'Sure you're all right now?' said the soldier.

'Yes, thank you. You have been most kind.'

'Kind, nothing. Any friend of Captain Linden's '

Chapter 8

I inquired after the Drexlers at the Steglitz local post office on Sintenis Platz, a quiet, peaceful square, once covered in grass and now given over to the cultivation of things edible.

The postmistress, a woman with an enormous Ionic curl on either side of her head, informed me crisply that her office knew of the Drexlers and that like most people in the area they collected their mail from the office. Therefore, she explained, their precise address on Handjery Strasse was not known. But she did add that the Drexlers' usually considerable mail was now even larger in view of the fact that it was several days since they had bothered to collect it. She used the word 'bothered' with more than a little distaste, and I wondered if there was some reason she should have disliked the Drexlers. My offer to deliver their mail was swiftly rebuffed. That would not have been proper. But she told me that I could certainly remind them to come and take it away as it was becoming a nuisance.

Next I decided to try at the Sch/nberg Police Praesidium on nearby Grnnewald Strasse. Walking there, under the uneasy shadow of gorgonzola walls that leaned forwards as if permanently on tiptoe, past buildings otherwise unscathed but with just a corner balustrade missing, like an illicitly sampled wedding cake, took me right by the Gay Island nightclub, where Becker had reportedly met Captain Linden. It was a dreary, cheerless-looking place with a cheap neon sign, and I felt almost glad that it was closed.

The bull on the desk at the Police Praesidium had a face as long as a mandarin's thumbnail, but he was an obliging sort of fellow and while he consulted the local registration records he told me that the Drexlers were not unknown to the Sch/nberg police.

'They're a Jewish couple,' he explained. 'Lawyers. Quite well known around here.

You might even say that they were notorious.'

'Oh? Why's that?'

'It's not that they break any laws, you understand.' The sergeant's wurst-sized finger found their name in his ledger and traversed the page to the street and the number. 'Here we are. Handjery Strasse. Number seventeen.'

'Thank you, Sergeant. So what is it about them?'

'Are you a friend of theirs?' He sounded circumspect.

'No, I'm not.'

'Well sir, it's just that people don't like that kind of thing. They want to forget about what happened. I don't think there's any good in raking over the past like that.'

'Forgive me, Sergeant, but what is it that they do exactly?'

'They hunt so-called Nazi war-criminals, sir.'

I nodded. 'Yes, I can see how that might not make them very popular with the neighbours.'

'It was wrong what happened. But we have to rebuild, start again. And we can hardly do that if the war follows us around like a bad smell.'

I needed some more information from him, so I agreed. Then I asked about the Gay Island.

'It's not the sort of place I'd let my missus catch me in, sir. It's run by a sparkler called Kathy Fiege. The place is full of them. But there's never any trouble there, apart from the occasional drunken Yank. Not that you can call that trouble. And if the rumours are true we'll all be Yanks soon leastways all of us in the American sector, eh?'

I thanked him and walked to the station door. 'One more thing, sergeant,' I said, turning on my heels. 'The Drexlers? Do they ever find any war-criminals?'

The sergeant's long face took on an amused, sly aspect.

'Not if we can help it, sir.'

The Drexlers lived a short way south from the Police Praesidium, in a recently renovated building close to the S-Bahn line and opposite a small school. But there was no reply when I knocked at the door of their top-floor apartment.

I lit a cigarette to rid my nostrils of the strong smell of disinfectant that hung about the landing, and knocked again. Glancing down I saw two cigarette-ends lying, unaccountably uncollected, on the floor close to the door.

It didn't look as if anyone had been through the door in a while. Bending down to pick them up I found the smell even stronger. Dropping into a press-up position I pushed my nose up to the gap between floor and door and retched as the air inside the apartment caught my throat and lungs. I rolled quickly away and coughed half my insides on to the stairs below.

When I had recovered my breath I stood up and shook my head. It seemed hardly possible that anyone could live in such an atmosphere. I glanced down the stairwell. There was nobody about.

I stepped back from the door and kicked hard at the lock with my better leg, but it budged hardly at all. Once more I checked the stairwell to see if the noise had drawn anyone out of their apartment and, finding myself undetected, I kicked again.

The door sprang open and a terrible, pestilent smell flew forth, so strong that I reeled back for a moment and almost fell downstairs. Pulling my coat lapel across my nose and mouth I bounded into the darkened apartment, and, spying the faint outline of a curtain valance, I tore the heavy velvet drapes aside and threw open the window.

Cold air stripped the tears from my eyes as I leaned into the fresh air.

Children on their way home from school waved to me and weakly I waved back at them.

When I was sure that the draught between the door and the window had ventilated the room I ducked inside to find whatever I would find. I didn't think it was the kind of smell that was meant to take care of any pest smaller than a rogue elephant.

I went over to the front door and pushed it back and forwards on its hinges to fan some more clean air through while I surveyed the desk, the chairs, the bookcases, the filing cabinets and the piles of books and papers that filled the little room. Beyond was an open door, and the edge of a brass bedstead.

My foot kicked something on the floor as I moved towards the bedroom. A cheap tin tray of the kind you find in a bar or a сafé.

But for the congestion in the two faces that lay side by side on their pillows, you might have thought they were still sleeping. If your name is on someone's death-card, there are worse ways than asphyxia while asleep to collect it.