‘Yes, that’s the sort of thing, only a bit more — Prussian, I suppose. You know, the waxed moustache, the cavalry boots. Oh yes, I nearly forgot, he had spurs on.’
‘Spurs?’
‘Yes, like to ride a horse.’
‘Anything else you remember?’
‘He had a wineskin, on a string which he slung over his shoulder, so that it looked like a bugle at his hip. Only he said that it was full of schnapps.’
I nodded, satisfied, and leant back on the sofa, wondering what it would have been like to have had her after all. For the first time I noticed the yellowish discoloration of her hands which wasn’t nicotine, jaundice or her temperament, but a clue that she’d been working in a munitions factory. In the same way I’d once identified a body pulled out of the Landwehr. Another thing I had learned from Hans Illmann.
‘Hey, listen,’ said Helene, ‘if you get this bastard, make sure that he gets all the usual Gestapo hospitality, won’t you? Thumbscrews and rubber truncheons?’
‘Lady,’ I said, standing up, ‘you can depend on it. And thanks for helping.’
Helene stood up, her arms folded, and shrugged. ‘Yes, well, I was a schoolgirl myself once, you know what I mean?’
I glanced at Evona and smiled. ‘I know what you mean.’ I jerked my head at the bedrooms along the corridor. ‘When Don Juan’s concluded his investigations, tell him that I went to question the head-waiter at Peltzers. Then maybe I thought I’d talk to the manager at the Winter Garden and see what I could get out of him. After that I might just head back to the Alex and clean my gun. Who knows, I may even find time to do a little police work along the way.’
9
Friday, 16 September
‘Where are you from, Gottfried?’
The man smiled proudly. ‘Eger, in the Sudetenland. Another few weeks and you can call it Germany.’
‘Foolhardy is what I call it,’ I said. ‘Another few weeks and your Sudetendeutsche Partei will have us all at war. Martial law has already been declared in most SDP districts.’
‘Men must die for what they believe in.’ He leant back on his chair and dragged a spur along the floor of the interrogation room. I stood up, loosening my shirt collar, and moved out of the shaft of sunlight that shone through the window. It was a hot day. Too hot to be wearing a jacket, let alone the uniform of an old Prussian cavalry officer. Gottfried Bautz, arrested early that same morning, didn’t seem to notice the heat, although his waxed moustache was beginning to show signs of a willingness to stand easy.
‘What about women?’ I asked. ‘Do they have to die as well?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘I think that you had better tell me why I have been brought here, don’t you, Herr Kommissar?’
‘Have you ever been to a massage parlour on Richard Wagner Strasse?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘You’re a difficult man to forget, Gottfried. I doubt that you could have made yourself look any easier to remember than if you had rode up the stairs on a white stallion. Incidentally, why do you wear the uniform?’
‘I served Germany, and I’m proud of it. Why shouldn’t I wear a uniform?’
I started to say something about the war being over, but there didn’t seem like much point, what with another one on the way, and Gottfried being such a spinner.
‘So,’ I said. ‘Were you at the massage parlour on Richard Wagner Strasse, or not?’
‘Maybe. One doesn’t always remember the exact locations of places like that. I don’t make a habit of — ’
‘Spare me the character reference. One of the girls there says that you tried to kill her.’
‘That’s preposterous.’
‘She’s quite adamant, I’m afraid.’
‘Has this girl made a complaint against me?’
‘Yes, she has.’
Gottfried Bautz chuckled smugly. ‘Come now, Herr Kommissar. We both know that’s not true. In the first place there hasn’t been an identification parade. And in the second, even if there was, there’s not a snapper in the whole of Germany who would report so much as a lost poodle. No complaint, no witness, and I fail to see why we’re having this conversation at all.’
‘She says that you tied her up like a hog, nudged her mouth and then tried to strangle her.’
‘She says, she says. Look, what is this shit? It’s my word against hers.’
‘You’re forgetting the witness, aren’t you, Gottfried? The girl who came in while you were squeezing the shit out of the other one? Like I said, you’re not an easy man to forget.’
‘I’m prepared to let a court decide who is telling the truth here,’ he said. ‘Me, a man who fought for his country, or a couple of stupid little honeybees. Are they prepared to do the same?’ He was shouting now, sweat starting off his forehead like pastry-glaze. ‘You’re just pecking at vomit, and you know it.’
I sat down again and aimed my forefinger at the centre of his face.
‘Don’t get smart, Gottfried. Not in here. The Alex breaks more skin that way than Max Schmelling, and you don’t always get to go back to your dressing-room at the end of the fight.’ I folded my hands behind my head, leant back and looked nonchalantly up at the ceiling. ‘Take my word for it, Gottfried. This little bee isn’t so dumb that she won’t do exactly what I tell her to do. If I tell her to french the magistrate in open court she’ll do it. Understand?’
‘You can go fuck yourself, then,’ he snarled. ‘I mean, if you’re going to custom-build me a cage then I don’t see that you need me to cut you a key. Why the hell should I answer any of your questions?’
‘Please yourself. I’m not in any hurry. Me, I’ll go back home, take a nice hot bath, get a good night’s sleep. Then I’ll come back here and see what kind of an evening you’ve had. Well, what can I say? They don’t call this place Grey Misery for nothing.’
‘All right, all right,’ he groaned. ‘Go ahead and ask your lousy questions.’
‘We searched your room.’
‘Like it?’
‘Not as much as the bugs you share with. We found some rope. My inspector thinks it’s the special strangling kind you buy at Ka-De-We. On the other hand it could be the kind you use to tie someone up.’
‘Or it could be the sort of rope I use in my job. I work for Rochling’s Furniture Removals.’
‘Yes, I checked. But why take a length of rope home with you? Why not just leave it in the van?’
‘I was going to hang myself.’
‘What changed your mind?’
‘I thought about it awhile, and then things didn’t seem quite so bad. That was before I met you.’
‘What about the bloodstained cloth we found in a bag underneath your bed?’
‘That? Menstrual blood. An acquaintance of mine, she had a small accident. I meant to burn it, but I forgot.’
‘Can you prove that? Will this acquaintance corroborate your story?’
‘Unfortunately I can’t tell you very much about her, Kommissar. A casual thing, you understand.’ He paused. ‘But surely there are scientific tests which will substantiate what I say?’
‘Tests will determine whether or not it is human blood. But I don’t think there’s anything as precise as you are suggesting. I can’t say for sure, I’m not a pathologist.’
I stood up again and went over to the window. I found my cigarettes and lit one.
‘Smoke?’ He nodded and I threw the packet on to the table. I let him get his first breath of it before I tossed him the grenade. ‘I’m investigating the murders of four, possibly five young girls,’ I said quietly. ‘That’s why you’re here now. Assisting us with our inquiries, as they say.’
Gottfried stood up quickly, his tongue tamping down his lower lip, the cigarette rolling on the table where he had thrown it. He started to shake his head and didn’t stop.