A German Requiem

'I know everything that Dr Liebl has told you; and everything that Emil will tell you tomorrow morning.'

'What about Emil's business?'

Traudl Braunsteiner smiled coyly and uttered a little snigger. 'There's not much I don't know about Emil's business either.' Noticing a button that was hanging by a thread from her crumpled raincoat, she tugged it off and pocketed it. She was like a fine lace handkerchief that was in need of laundering. 'Being a nurse, I guess I'm a little relaxed about that sort of thing: black market. I've stolen a few drugs myself, I don't mind admitting it. Actually, all the girls do it at some time or another. For some it's a simple choice: sell penicillin or sell your body. I guess we are lucky enough to have something else to sell.' She shrugged and swallowed her second vodka. 'Seeing people suffering and dying doesn't breed a very healthy respect for law and order.' She laughed apologetically. 'Money's no good if you're not fit to spend it. God, what are the Krupp family worth? Billions probably. But they've got one of them at an insane asylum here in Vienna.'

'It's all right,' I said. 'I wasn't asking you to justify it to me.' But plainly she was trying to justify it to herself.

Traudl tucked her legs underneath her behind. She sat carelessly in the armchair, not seeming to mind any more than I did that I could see her stocking-tops and garters, and the edge of her smooth, white thighs.

'What can you do?' she said, biting her fingernail. 'Now and again everyone in Vienna has to buy something that's a bit Ressel Park.' She explained that this was the city's main centre for the black market.

'It's the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin,' I said. 'And in front of the Reichstag.'

'How funny,' she chuckled mischievously. 'There would be a scandal in Vienna if that sort of thing went on outside our parliament.'

'That's because you have a parliament. Here the Allies just supervise. But they actually govern in Germany.' My view of her underwear disappeared now as she tugged at the hem of her skirt.

'I didn't know that. Not that it would matter. There would still be a scandal in Vienna, parliament or no parliament. Austrians are such hypocrites. You would think they would feel easier about these things. There's been a black market here since the Habsburgs. It wasn't cigarettes then of course, but favours, patronage. Personal contacts still count for a lot.'

'Speaking of which, how did you meet Becker?'

'He fixed some papers for a friend of mine, a nurse at the hospital. And we stole some penicillin for him. That was when there was still some about. This wasn't long after my mother died.' Her bright eyes widened as if she was struggling to comprehend something. 'She threw herself under a tram.' Forcing a smile and a bemused sort of laugh, she managed to contain her feelings. 'My mother was a very Viennese type of Austrian, Bernie. We're always committing suicide, you know. It's a way of life for us.

'Anyway, Emil was very kind and great fun. He took me away from my grief, really. I've no other family, you see. My father was killed in an air-raid. And my brother died in Yugoslavia, fighting the partisans. Without Emil I really don't know what might have become of me. If something were to happen to him now ' Traudl's mouth stiffened as she pictured the fate that seemed most likely to befall her lover. 'You will do your best for him, won't you? Emil said you were the only person he could trust to find something that might give him half a chance.'

'I'll do everything I can for him, Traudl, you have my word on that.' I lit us both a cigarette and handed one to her. 'It may interest you to know that normally I'd convict my own mother if she were standing over a dead body with a gun in her hand. But for what it's worth I believe Becker's story, if only because it's so plausibly bad. At least until I've heard it from him. That may not surprise you very much, but it sure as hell impresses me.

'Only look at my fingertips. They're a little short on saintly aura. And the hat on the sideboard there? It wasn't meant for stalking deer. So if I'm to guide him out of that condemned cell your boyfriend is going to have to find me a ball of thread. Tomorrow morning, he'd better have something to say for himself or this show won't be worth the price of the greasepaint.'

Chapter 12

The Law's most terrible punishment is always what happens in a man's own imagination: the prospect of one's own, judicially executed killing is food for thought of the most ingeniously masochistic kind. To put a man on trial for his life is to oil his mind with thoughts crueller than any punishment yet devised.

And naturally enough the idea of what it must be like to drop metres through a trap-door, to be brought up short of the ground by a length of rope tied round the neck takes its toll on a man. He finds it hard to sleep, loses his appetite, and not uncommonly his heart starts to suffer under the strain of what his own mind has imposed. Even the most dull, unimaginative intellect need only roll his head around on his shoulders, and listen to the crunching gristle sound of his vertebrae in order to appreciate, in the pit of his stomach, the ghastly horror of hanging.

So I was not surprised to find Becker a thinner, etiolated sketch of his former self. We met in a small, barely furnished interview room at the prison on Rossauer Lande. When he came into the room he silently shook me by the hand before turning to address the warder who had stationed himself against the door.

'Hey, Pepi,' Becker said jovially, 'do you mind?' He reached inside his shirt pocket and retrieved a packet of cigarettes which he tossed across the room. The warder called Pepi caught them with the tips of his fingers and inspected the brand. 'Have a smoke outside the door, OK?'

'All right,' said Pepi, and left.

Becker nodded appreciatively as the three of us seated ourselves round the table bolted to the yellow-tiled wall.

'Don't worry,' he said to Dr Liebl. 'All the warders are at it in here. Much better than the Stiftskaserne, I can tell you. None of those fucking Yanks could be greased. There's nothing those bastards want that they can't get for themselves.'

'You're telling me,' I said, and found my own cigarettes. Liebl shook his head when I offered him one. 'These come from your friend Poroshin,' I explained as Becker slipped one out of the pack.

'Quite a fellow, isn't he?'

'Your wife thinks he's your boss.'

Becker lit us both and blew a cloud of smoke across my shoulder. 'You spoke to Ella?' he said, but he didn't sound surprised.

'Apart from the five thousand, she's the only reason I'm here,' I said. 'With her on your case I decided you probably needed all the help you could get. As far as she's concerned you're already swinging.'

'Hates me that bad, eh?'

'Like a cold sore.'

'Well she's got the right, I guess.' He sighed and shook his head. Then he took a long, nervous drag of his cigarette that barely left the paper on the tobacco.

For a moment he stared at me, his bloodshot eyes blinking hard through the smoke. After several seconds he coughed and smiled all at once. 'Go ahead and ask me.'

'All right. Did you kill Captain Linden?'

'As God is my witness, no.' He laughed. 'Can I go now, sir?' He took another desperate suck at his smoke. 'You do believe me, don't you, Bernie?'

'I believe you'd have a better story if you were lying. I credit you with that much sense. But as I was saying to your girlfriend '

'You've met Traudl? Good. She's great, isn't she?'

'Yes, she is. Christ only knows what she sees in you.'

'She enjoys my after-dinner conversation of course. That's why she doesn't like to see me locked up in here. She misses our little fireside chats about Wittgenstein.' The smile disappeared as his hand reached across the table and clutched at my forearm. 'Look, you've got to get me out of here, Bernie. The five thousand was just to get you in the game. You prove that I'm innocent and I'll treble your fee.'