A German Requiem

'Want me to wash it before you go?'

'Not this time, Frankenstein. What I would like you to do is give me the keys for these.' I showed him my still-manacled wrists.

'Keys for what?'

'Keys for handcuffs.'

He shrugged, and kept on grinning. 'I got no keys for no handcuffs. Don't believe me, you search me, you find out.'

Hearing him speak, I almost winced. Latvian and soft in the head he may have been, but Rainis had no idea of German grammar. He probably thought a conjunction was a gypsy dealing three cards on a street-corner.

'Sure you've got keys, Rainis. It was you who cuffed me, remember? I saw you put them in your vest pocket.'

He stayed silent. I was beginning to want to kill him badly.

'Look, you stupid Latvian asshole. If I say jump again you'd better not look down for a skipping-rope. This is a gun, not a fucking hairbrush.' I stepped forward a pace and snarled through clenched teeth. 'Now find them or I'll fit your ugly face with the kind of hole that doesn't need a key.'

Rainis made a little show of patting his pockets and then produced a small silver key from his waistcoat. He held it up like a minnow.

'Drop it on the driver's seat and step away from the car.'

Now that he was closer to me, Rainis could see by the expression on my face that I had a lot of hate in my mind. This time he didn't hesitate to obey, and tossed the little key on to the seat. But if I had thought him stupid, or suddenly obedient, I made a mistake. It was fatigue, probably.

He nodded down at one of the wheels. 'You'd better let me fix that slack tyre,' he said.

I glanced downwards and then quickly up again as the Latvian sprint-started towards me, his big hands reaching for my neck like a savage tiger. A half second later I pulled the trigger. The Walther fed and cycled another round into the firing chamber in less time than it took for me to blink. I fired again. The shots echoed across the garden and up the sky as if the twin sounds had been bearing the Latvian's soul to final judgement. I didn't doubt that it would be heading earthwards and below ground fairly quickly again. His big body crashed face first on to the gravel and lay still.

I ran to the car and jumped into the seat, ignoring the handcuff key underneath my backside. There was no time to do anything but start the car. I turned the key in the ignition and the big car, new by the smell of it, roared into life.

Behind me, I heard shouts. Collecting the gun off my lap, I leaned out and fired a couple of rounds back at the house. Then I threw it on the passenger seat beside me, rammed the gear stick forward, hauled the door shut and stamped on the accelerator. The rear tyres gouged at the driveway as the BMW skidded forward. For the moment it didn't matter that my hands were still manacled: the road ahead lay straight and down a hill.

But the car veered dangerously from side to side as I released the steering for a brief second, and wrestled the gear into second. My hands back on the wheel I swerved to avoid a parked car and almost put the BMW into the side of a fence.

If I could only get to Stifstkaserne and Roy Shields I would tell him all about Veronika's murder. If the Amis were quick they could at least get them for that.

Explanations about Mnller and the Org could come later. When the MPs had Mnller in the cage, there would be no limit to the embarrassment I was going to cause Belinsky, Crowcass, CIC the whole rotten bunch of them.

I looked in the wing mirror and saw the headlights of a car. I wasn't sure if it was chasing me or not but I pushed the already screaming engine even further and almost immediately braked, pushing the wheel up hard to the right. The car hit the kerb and bounced back on to the road. My foot touched the floor again, the engine complaining loudly against the lower gear. But I couldn't risk changing into third now that there were more bends in the road to negotiate.

At the junction of Billrothstrasse and the Gnrtel I almost had to lean over in order to steer the car sharp right, past a van hosing down the street. I didn't see the roadblock until it was too late, and but for the truck parked behind the makeshift barrier that had been erected I don't suppose I would have bothered to try and swerve or stop. As it was, I turned hard left and lost the back wheels on the water on the road.

For a moment I had a camera obscura's eye view as the BMW spun out of controclass="underline" the barrier, the US military policemen waving their arms or chasing after me, the road I had just driven down, the car that had been following me, a row of shops, a plate glass window. The car danced sideways on two wheels like a mechanical Charlie Chaplin and then there was a cataract of glass as I crashed into one of the shops. I rolled helplessly across the passenger seat and hit the door as something solid came through the other side. I felt something sharp underneath my elbow, then my head hit the frame and I must have blacked out.

It could only have been for a few seconds. One moment there was noise, movement, pain and chaos; and the next there was just quiet, with only the sound of a wheel spinning slowly to tell me that I was still alive. Mercifully the car had stalled so my first worry, which was of the car catching fire, was allayed.

Hearing footsteps on shards of glass and American voices announcing that they were coming to get me I shouted my encouragement, but to my surprise it came out as little more than a whisper. And when I tried to raise my arm to reach for the door handle I lost consciousness again.

Chapter 37

'Well, how are we feeling today?' Roy Shields leaned forward on the chair beside my bed and tapped the plaster cast on my arm. A wire and pulley kept it high in the air. 'That must be pretty handy,' he said. 'A permanent Nazi salute? Shit, you Germans can even make a broken arm look patriotic.'

I took a short look around. It appeared to be a fairly normal hospital ward but for the bars on the windows and the tattoos on the nurses' forearms.

'What kind of hospital is this?'

'You're in the military hospital at the Stiftskaserne,' he said. 'For your protection.'

'How long have I been here?'

'Almost three weeks. You had quite a bump on your square head. Fractured your skull. Busted collarbone, broken arm, broken ribs. You've been delirious since you came in.'

'Yes? Well, blame it on the f/hn, I guess.'

Shields chuckled and then his face grew more sombre. 'Better hold on to that sense of humour,' he said. 'I've got some bad news for you.'

I riffled through the card index inside my head. Most of the cards had been thrown on the floor, but the ones I picked up first seemed somehow especially relevant. Something I had been working on. A name.

'Emil Becker,' I said, recalling a manic face.

'He was hanged, the day before yesterday,' Shields shrugged apologetically. 'I'm sorry. Really I am.'

'Well you certainly didn't waste any time,' I remarked. 'Is that good old American efficiency? Or has one of your people cornered the market in rope?'

'I wouldn't lose any sleep about it, Gunther. Whether he murdered Linden or not, Becker earned that collar.'

'That doesn't sound like a very good advert for American justice.'

'Come on, you know it was an Austrian court that dropped his cue-ball.'

'You handed them the stick and the chalk, didn't you?'

Shields looked away for a moment and then rubbed his face with irritation. 'Aw, what the hell. You're a cop. You know how it is. These things happen with any system. Just because your shoes pick up a bit of shit doesn't mean you have to buy a new pair.'

'Sure, but you learn to stay on the path instead of taking short-cuts across the field.'