Prussian Blue Read online

  “That’s what it feels like, for sure. I’d like to speak to your girls, if I could.”

  “What? You think one of them might have shot him? That’s inspired.”

  “No, but they might have screwed the man who did. That’s fair, isn’t it?”

  “I promise you, you’d be wasting your time. For one thing, they’re not like me. Kids, mostly. And too afraid to say anything. Besides, there are only two girls who speak good German.”

  “What? No German girls here at all?”

  “No. Not one. There’s a Sudeten Czech and an Austrian girl. Maria. Hitler would go mad if he even knew about this place, that’s what I heard. But he’d be even angrier if any German women were ever found working here. It seems as if they’re something holy.”

  “Haven’t you heard? Our women are supposed to be breeding a master race, not falling in love again, like Lola, or headlining the local cabaret in a top hat with stockings and garters.”

  “So you did see the movie.”

  “It’s a favorite of mine.”

  Lola nodded. “Not that we haven’t had some local girls turning up here looking to make a little pocket money. But I had to send them packing. Flex might not have noticed a few extra girls. But Dr. Brandt would have. He’s the one who examines all the girls for jelly. Once a week, regular as a Swiss watch.”

  This was a name I hadn’t expected to hear in the local brothel.

  “Brandt? I thought it was some pill Jesus from Salzburg who looked after you all.”

  “It was. But he decided this wasn’t his cup of tea and stopped coming. So Brandt took over. Dr. Infernal we call him. One time he came over and he was wearing the uniform under his white coat. Some of the girls found it quite sexy, I think.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Well, pin your ears back, Commissar, because he does a lot more than examine girls for a dose of jelly.”

  “He likes a dish on the side, too?”

  “No, not him. They’d probably kick him out of the SS for something human like that. No, what I mean is that he’s carried out at least three midnight abortions since I’ve known him. For money, of course. None of these men do anything for nothing. Knows what he’s about, though, I’ll say that much for him. The rumor is that before he came down here he used to perform scrapes on women who were mentally handicapped, or because they were Jewesses who’d got themselves in trouble with a nice German boy. They say he’s Hitler’s own doctor. But I wonder what Hitler would say if he knew about all this kind of thing.”

  “I wonder.” I sighed, not wondering very much. “These abortions carried out by Dr. Brandt. Can you remember who had one?”

  “Yes, but I don’t think I should tell you.”

  “Was one of them Renata Prodi?”

  “Now I come to think about it, yes, it was.”

  “So it’s quite possible that Karl Flex was the father.”

  “It’s possible, yes.”

  I sighed, liking the case less and less. It’s common enough for a detective to hate an investigation he’s been tasked with, but it’s less often the case—at least for me—that I dislike myself so thoroughly for investigating it. It made me want to do something good.

  “Where are you from, Lola?”

  “Milan. Do you know Milan?”

  “No, I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “It’s beautiful. Especially the cathedral. I miss that most of all.” She took out a handkerchief and wiped her eyes. “I’d love to go back but I think I’m stuck in this misbegotten place, for the moment, anyway. All the money I’ve earned I sent home already. It’ll be at least a month before I can save enough to make the trip. I should have gone back at Christmas, when I had the chance, but La Befana didn’t come last year. She’s the Italian version of Santa Claus. Still, that’s hardly surprising in a place like this. We don’t even have a proper chimney. At least, not one that Befana could come down.”

  I thought about this for a moment, and we were both silent while my thoughts buzzed around my head and then flew out to the rooftop. I was glad to see them go. I hadn’t been wasting my time as much as I’d feared. “What will happen to the other girls if you leave?”

  “They’ll be all right. Aneta can take over. She’s Czech, but speaks excellent German and is very capable. At the beginning of the summer they’ll bring some new girls to replace the girls now working here. Besides, I’d like to leave before someone like Dr. Infernal finds out the truth about me.”

  “Don’t tell me, Lola. Truth is not something to share with anyone in Germany these days. You wouldn’t know it now, I used to like talking. But lately I’ve been struck dumb, like the angel Gabriel told me I was about to father a son called John. Life’s safer that way.”

  “I told you before. You have kind eyes. And don’t let those pictures of the saints fool them. They’re just for show. The fact is, I’m Jewish.”

  “Then you should certainly leave while you can. How much would it take to get you home?”

  “A hundred reichsmarks would probably cover it. Don’t worry about me. I’ll make it. I just hope I can do it before the war starts.”

  “Pity” and all of its many soft synonyms was not a word in Reinhard Heydrich’s devilish dictionary. I already knew he thought I was a sentimental fool. Maybe I was. But there and then I decided to live up to the general’s low opinion of me and donate some of the money I’d persuaded him to let me have for information and bribes to Lola. And of course I was well aware that giving money to a Jewish whore was the absolute opposite of the way he would have preferred it spent. Which made what I was doing less an act of generosity and more a token act of resistance. Even as I handed her a hundred marks I was paying less attention to the real pleasure and relief that now crossed her clownish face and more to the look of outrage that I imagined would have been on Heydrich’s horse-like features had he witnessed this scene.

  “Here,” I said. “With the compliments of the SD. And if anyone ever asks, I’m doing this because I loathe and despise Jews and want all of them safely out of the country as soon as possible.”

  Lola smiled and put the money in a little pocket next to the automatic she was carrying.

  “I knew I was right about you, Humbert. I’m only sorry I couldn’t be more helpful.”

  “On the contrary. You’ve been very helpful.”

  “I don’t see how.”

  “No, but I think I do. Sometimes, seeing what’s been right in front of my nose all along is what this job is all about.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  April 1939

  I climbed back up onto the roof of the Villa Bechstein to take another look around. It was an operatic skyline. I might have been facing the impregnable walls of Asgard; even the clouds were like Odin’s beard. It was a sky for a man with an idea of his own destiny. Or perhaps a misleading vision of one. Rolf Müller came over and asked if he could help. But now it was my turn to be annoyingly cryptic.

  “The chimney,” I said, pointing out the stack with the curious bell tower.

  “What about it?”

  “Plenty of room for Santa Claus and a whole sackful of presents, don’t you think?”

  “Santa Claus?”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t believe in Santa Claus, Herr Müller.”

  “It’s April,” he said weakly. “Too late for Santa Claus.”

  “Better late than never, wouldn’t you say?”

  I smiled but actually I wasn’t so very sure that I hadn’t just seen Santa Claus zooming across the skies above Obersalzberg, with a full squadron of flying Valkyries drawing his sleigh. That was the methamphetamine. It was still like I’d been wired up to the main electricity supply, which felt good even though hallucinations are supposed to interfere with your powers of observation—at least they are according to the rules for being a good detective, as described
by Bernhard Weiss. It’s bad enough that you miss things you should have seen before; it’s wholly inexcusable when you start seeing things that you know aren’t there at all. Not that this ever stopped anyone at the Alex from stowing a lunch bottle in his desk drawer, and a couple of drinks certainly never slowed me down very much, but the arrival at the Villa Bechstein of a cortege of black limousines sporting stiff little Nazi flags persuaded me that I was now going to have to try a lot harder to pull myself together and behave like a real Nazi.

  I came back down the ladder, fixed a stupid smile to my face, and saluted smartly, although not nearly as smartly as Hermann Kaspel; his was good enough for the both of us, at least I hoped it was. The deputy party leader had arrived with his Dalmatian dogs, and as soon as the heavy car doors opened, the two mutts went galloping off into the thickly timbered woods behind the house. Then Hess climbed out of the car, stretched a little, glanced up at the roof, and returned the salute absently with a motion of his swagger stick. He was an unprepossessing fellow. Most people I knew thought that Hitler kept him around to make himself seem a bit more normal; with his monobrow, Phantom of the Opera eyes, and Frankenstein skull, Rudolf Hess would have made Lon Chaney seem normal. I waited until he and his fawning entourage of brownshirts had gone inside and then went quietly up to the first bedroom shown to me by Winkelhof, the butler. I knelt down on the floor and tried to lift the chimney flap but it was still stuck—not with soot and rubble; it felt like something heavy was resting on top of the flap. I had a shrewd idea what it was, and as soon as Winkelhof had finished showing Hess to his apartments and had come to see if he could assist me in some way, I asked him to fetch me a sledgehammer.

  “May I inquire what you plan to do with a sledgehammer, sir?” he asked with polite disapproval.

  “Yes, I plan to remove this faulty fireplace as quickly as possible.”

  “Are you feeling all right, sir?”

  “Yes, I’m fine, thank you.”

  He took off his glasses and began to polish them furiously, almost as if he were trying to erase me from his sight. “Then may I remind you, sir, that the fireplace in your own room is working perfectly.”

  “Yes, I know. But something is jammed on top of the flap in this fireplace, and I do believe that something is a rifle.”

  Winkelhof looked pained. “A rifle? Are you sure?”

  “More or less. I think someone dropped it down the chimney before making his escape.”

  “And if it’s less? What I mean is, I don’t think the deputy leader will like you hammering on the wall with a sledgehammer immediately below his apartments, sir. He’s had a long and tiring journey and has just informed me that he intends to get some rest. That’s rest as in peace and quiet, and he’s not to be disturbed under any circumstances until dinnertime. Perhaps a chimney sweep might be summoned tomorrow—”

  I tried not to smile at the prospect of ruining the deputy leader’s beauty sleep but this proved to be impossible. That was the meth, too, I suppose. I was ready to face him down if necessary, at some risk to myself and all in the name of an investigation into the death of a man whom no one had liked. “It can’t be helped, I’m afraid. I need to clear this matter up as soon as possible. So I have my orders, Winkelhof. Bormann’s orders.”

  “And I have mine.”

  “Look, I understand your quandary. You’re trying to run this house, like a good butler should. But I’m trying to run a murder investigation. So I’ll find some tools myself. And take full responsibility if the deputy leader tries to make my ears stiff because of it.” But I wondered about that; in a cocks-out size contest between Martin Bormann and Rudolf Hess, I had no idea which would reveal himself to be in possession of the largest bratwürst. I was, perhaps, about to find out.

  Kaspel and Friedrich Korsch were waiting for me in the drawing room.

  Korsch had my prints of the autopsy and the crime scene. “You were right about that other photographer,” he told Kaspel. “There was a local man called Johann Brandner. Only, he used to have his business premises up here, in Obersalzberg, not in Berchtesgaden. Guess where he is now. Dachau. Seems as if he kept writing to Hitler to ask if his little shop might be spared from compulsory purchase. Bormann got fed up with him and had him carted off for a barbed-wire holiday. I had the devil of a job getting anyone to admit they’d even heard of the poor bastard.”

  “Put a call in to the Munich SD,” I told Hermann Kaspel. “See if he’s still there. And Friedrich. I’m going to need a sledgehammer. You might like to try some of those workers from P&Z we saw on the road. Maybe they’ll lend you one.”

  Then I went to my own room, lay down on the rock-hard mattress, closed my eyes, and breathed deeply through my nose in the hope that the voices I could hear would quickly disappear. Mostly they were telling me that I should borrow a car, drive across Austria and into Italy as soon as possible—Sesto was only two hundred kilometers away—find a nice girl, and forget about being a cop before the Nazis decided to throw me in a concentration camp, this time forever. It was probably good advice, only a little too loud and clear for my liking and hearing it made my skin crawl like I was in the way of an army of voracious soldier ants. Staying awake for a day and a half was, I now realized, as sure a way of receiving a personal message from the gods as anything described in the Holy Bible. Half an hour passed. I didn’t sleep for a minute. My eyes shifted under their lids like excited puppies. The voices persisted: if I didn’t leave Obersalzberg soon I was going to be tied up inside a sack with a gang of oversexed workers from P&Z and hurled off the top terrace of Hitler’s tea house. I got up and went downstairs before I started talking back.

  Friedrich Korsch didn’t much resemble Thor, the thunder god; for one, his face was too crafty and the pimp mustache on his upper lip much too metropolitan, but the hammer he was carrying over his shoulder did make him look as if he meant to crush a mountain or two. He brandished the tool eagerly as if looking forward to the designated demolition work. I expect he’d have done what he was told if I’d ordered him to batter out the fireplace but, in the circumstances, I thought it best to do it myself; if anyone was going to incur the wrath of Rudolf Hess it seemed better that it should be me. So I took the hammer and climbed back up the stairs. Kaspel and Korsch followed, keen to witness the destruction I was about to inflict on Hitler’s precious guest house. I took off my jacket, rolled up my shirtsleeves, spat on my hands, grasped the shaft of the hammer firmly, and prepared to do battle.

  “Are you sure about this, boss?” said Korsch.

  “No,” I said, “I’m not sure of anything very much since I started taking the local magic potion.”

  And while Kaspel explained to Korsch about Pervitin, I laid into the fireplace with the sledgehammer. That first blow felt as satisfying as if I’d struck Hess on his absurdly high forehead.

  “But I am willing to bet five marks that the rifle is behind this wall.”

  I hammered it again, smashing the tile surround and some of the bricks behind it. Korsch pulled a face and looked up at the ceiling as if he expected the deputy leader to reach down through his own floorboards and grab me by the throat.

  “I’ll take that bet,” said Kaspel, and lit a cigarette. “I think it’s just as likely the shooter chucked it into the woods from where he could retrieve it later on. In fact, I can’t understand why you didn’t let me organize a search of the grounds before you decided to turn this room into a rock pile.”

  “Because the roofing contractor, Rolf Müller, doesn’t smoke,” I said. “And because right next to the chimney there was a cigarette end and some footprints. And because it’s too late for Santa Claus. And because there are too many trees out there; if he’d tossed the rifle it might have hit one and bounced back onto the path and risked alerting that gardener. Dropping it down the chimney was the safer thing to do. Because it’s what I’d have done myself if I’d had the guts to take a potshot
at someone on the Berghof terrace. And because there’s something sitting right on top of the flap in this chimney that’s stopping it from being used.”

  I swung the sledgehammer a third time, and this time made a fist-sized hole in the wall around the fireplace. But suddenly Korsch and Kaspel stiffened as if the devil had put in an appearance.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Commissar Gunther?”

  I turned around to find Martin Bormann occupying the doorway, with Zander, Högl, and Winkelhof standing immediately behind him. I glanced back at the fireplace. I decided that another blow of the sledgehammer would probably do it and that it was one of those uniquely German situations in which actions speak louder than words. So I swung again, and this time I altered the position of the fireplace itself. It now looked possible to pull the thing out by hand. And I might have done just that but for the Walther police pistol that had now appeared in Bormann’s chubby fist.

  “If you wield that hammer again I will shoot you,” he said, and worked the slide just to show that he meant business, before pointing the PPK at my head.

  I threw down the hammer, and taking the cigarette from Kaspel’s hand, started to smoke it myself with one eye on Bormann’s face and the other on the gun. For the moment, however, I said nothing. Nothing is always an easier answer to give when there’s a cigarette in your hand.

  “Explain yourself,” insisted Bormann, and lowered the weapon—although as far as I could see, the gun was still cocked and ready for action. I had a good idea that if I’d picked up the sledgehammer again he wouldn’t have hesitated to shoot me. “What the hell do you mean by smashing the room up like this?”

  “I mean to find the man who murdered Karl Flex,” I said. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s what you told me to do. But to do that I need to find the murder weapon.”

  “Are you suggesting he shot him from in here? From the Villa Bechstein?”