Deubel bared his yellow teeth even further. His grin looked like the keyboard of an old and badly out of tune piano. Hitching up his shiny flannel trousers he squared his shoulders and pointed his belly in my direction. It was all I could do to resist slamming my fist right into it, but starting a fight like that would probably have suited him very well.
‘You want to open your eyes, Gunther. Take a walk down to the cells and the interrogation rooms and see what’s happening in this place. Choosy about who you work with? You poor swine. There are people being beaten to death here, in this building. Probably as we speak. Do you think anyone really gives a damn about what happens to some cheap little pervert? The morgue is full of them.’
I heard myself reply, with what sounded even to me like almost hopeless naivete, ‘Somebody has to give a damn, otherwise we’re no better than criminals ourselves. I can’t stop other people from wearing dirty shoes, but I can polish my own. Right from the start you knew that was the way I wanted it. But you had to do it your own way, the Gestapo way, that says a woman’s a witch if she floats and innocent if she sinks. Now get out of my sight before I’m tempted to see if my clout with Heydrich goes as far as kicking your arse out of Kripo.’
Deubel sniggered. ‘You’re a renthole,’ he said, and having stared Korsch out until his boozy breath obliged him to turn away, Deubel lurched away.
Korsch shook his head. ‘I never liked that bastard,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t think he was–’ He shook his head again.
I sat down wearily and reached for the desk drawer and the bottle I kept there.
‘Unfortunately he’s right,’ I said, filling a couple of glasses. I met Korsch’s quizzical stare and smiled bitterly. ‘Charging a Berlin bull with murder ...’ I laughed. ‘Shit, you might just as well try and arrest drunks at the Munich beer festival.’
13
Sunday, 25 September
‘Is Herr Hirsch at home?’
The old man answering the door straightened and then nodded. ‘I am Herr Hirsch,’ he said.
‘You are Sarah Hirsch’s father?’
‘Yes. Who are you?’
He must have been at least seventy, bald, with white hair growing long over the back of his collar, and not very tall, stooped even. It was hard to imagine this man having fathered a fifteen-year-old daughter. I showed him my badge.
‘Police,’ I said. ‘Please don’t be alarmed. I’m not here to make any trouble for you. I merely wish to question your daughter. She may be able to describe a man, a criminal.’
Recovering a little of his colour after the sight of my credentials, Herr Hirsch stood to one side and silently ushered me into a hall that was full of Chinese vases, bronzes, blue-patterned plates and intricate balsa-wood carvings in glass cases. These I admired while he closed and locked the front door, and he mentioned that in his youth he had been in the German navy and had travelled widely in the Far East. Aware now of the delicious smell that filled the house, I apologized and said that I hoped I wasn’t disturbing the family meal.
‘It will be a while yet before we sit down and eat,’ said the old man. ‘My wife and daughter are still working in the kitchen.’ He smiled nervously, no doubt unaccustomed to the politeness of public officials, and led me into a reception room.
‘Now then,’ he said, ‘you said that you wished to speak to my daughter Sarah. That she may be able to identify a criminal.’
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘One of the girls from your daughter’s school has disappeared. It’s quite possible she was abducted. One of the men, questioning some of the girls in your daughter’s class, discovered that several weeks ago Sarah was herself approached by a strange man. I should like to see if she can remember anything about him. With your permission.’
‘But of course. I’ll go and fetch her,’ he said, and went out.
Evidently this was a musical family. Beside a shiny black Bechstein grand were several instrument cases, and a number of music-stands. Close to the window which looked out on to a large garden was a harp, and in most of the family photographs on the sideboard, a young girl was playing a violin. Even the oil painting above the fireplace depicted something musical–a piano recital I supposed. I was standing looking at it and trying to guess the tune when Herr Hirsch returned with his wife and daughter.
Frau Hirsch was much taller and younger than her husband, perhaps no more than fifty – a slim, elegant woman with a set of pearls to match. She wiped her hands on her pinafore and then grasped her daughter by her shoulders, as if wishing to emphasize her parental rights in the face of possible interference from a state which was avowedly hostile to her race.
‘My husband says that a girl is missing from Sarah’s class at school,’ she said calmly. ‘Which girl is it?’
‘Emmeline Steininger,’ I said.
Frau Hirsch turned her daughter towards her a little.
‘Sarah,’ she scolded, ‘why didn’t you tell us that one of your friends had gone missing?’
Sarah, an overweight but healthy, attractive adolescent, who could not have conformed less to Streicher’s racist stereotype of the Jew, being blue-eyed and fair-haired, gave an impatient toss of her head, like a stubborn little pony.
‘She’s run away, that’s all. She was always talking about it. Not that I care much what’s happened to her. Emmeline Steininger’s no friend of mine. She’s always saying bad things about Jews. I hate her, and I don’t care if her father is dead.’
‘That’s enough of that,’ her father said firmly, probably not caring to hear much about fathers who were dead. ‘It doesn’t matter what she said. If you know something that will help the Kommissar to find her, then you must tell him. Is that clear?’
Sarah pulled a face. ‘Yes, Daddy,’ she yawned, and threw herself down into an armchair.
‘Sarah, really,’ said her mother. She smiled nervously at me. ‘She’s not normally like this, Kommissar. I must apologize.’
‘That’s all right,’ I smiled, sitting down on the footstool in front of Sarah’s chair.
‘On Friday, when one of my men spoke to you, Sarah, you told him you remembered seeing a man hanging around near your school, perhaps a couple of months ago. Is that right?’ She nodded. ‘Then I’d like you to try and tell me everything that you can remember about him.’
She chewed her fingernail for a moment, and inspected it thoughtfully. ‘Well, it was quite a while ago,’ she said.
‘Anything you might recall could help me. For instance, what time of day was it?’ I took out my notebook and laid it on my thigh.
‘It was going-home time. As usual I was going home by myself.’ She turned her nose up at the memory of it. ‘Anyway, there was this car near the school.’
‘What kind of car?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know makes of cars, or anything like that. But it was a big, black one, with a driver in the front.’
‘Was he the one who spoke to you?’
‘No, there was another man in the back seat. I thought they were policemen. The one sitting in the back had the window down and he called to me as I came through the gate. I was by myself. Most of the other girls had gone already. He asked me to come over, and when I did he told me that I was–’ She blushed a little and stopped.
‘Go on,’ I said.
‘–that I was very beautiful, and that he was sure my father and mother were very proud to have a daughter like me.’ She glanced awkwardly at her parents. ‘I’m not making it up,’ she said with something approaching amusement. ‘Honestly, that’s what he said.’
‘I believe you, Sarah,’ I said. ‘What else did he say?’
‘He spoke to his driver and said, wasn’t I a fine example of German maidenhood, or something stupid like that.’ She laughed. ‘It was really funny.’ She caught a look from her father that I didn’t see, and settled down again. ‘Anyway, it was something like that. I can’t remember exactly.’