Prague Fatale Read online

  ‘He just ran out in front of me,’ said the driver.

  ‘You hit him?’

  ‘I didn’t have a chance.’

  ‘Well he’s not here now.’

  ‘He ran off I think.’

  ‘Where did he go?’

  ‘Toward the cinema theatre.’

  ‘Stay where you are; I’m a police officer,’ I told the driver and crossed the street, but I might as well have looked inside a magician’s top hat. There was no sign of him. So I went back to the taxi.

  ‘Find him?’

  ‘No. How hard did you hit him?’

  ‘I wasn’t going fast, if that’s what you mean. Ten or fifteen kilometres an hour, like you’re supposed to do, see? But still, I think I gave him a good old clunk. He went right over the hood and landed on his head, like he was off some nag at the Hoppegarten.’

  ‘Pull into the side of the road and stay there,’ I told the driver.

  ‘Here,’ he said. ‘How do I know you’re a cop? Where’s your warrant disc?’

  ‘It’s in my office at Alex. We can go straight there if you like and you can spend the next hour or two making out a report. Or you can do what I say. The fellow you knocked down attacked a woman back there. That’s why he was running away. Because I chased him. I was thinking you might take the lady home.’

  ‘Yeah, all right.’

  I went back to the station on Nollendorfplatz.

  The girl who’d been attacked was sitting up and rubbing her chin between adjusting her clothes and looking for her handbag.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I think so. My bag. He threw it on the ground somewhere.’

  I glanced around. ‘He got away. But if it’s any consolation a taxi knocked him down.’

  I kept on looking for her bag but I didn’t find it. Instead I found the switchblade.

  ‘Here it is,’ she said. ‘I’ve found it.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I feel a bit sick,’ she said, holding her jaw uncomfortably.

  I wasn’t feeling very comfortable myself. I didn’t have my beer-token and I had a bag full of canned food that, within the limited purview of a uniformed bull, would have marked me out as a black-marketeer, for which the penalties were very severe. It was not uncommon for Schmarotzers to receive death sentences, especially if these also happened to be people who needed to be made an example of, like policemen. So I was anxious to be away from there; no more did I want to accompany her to the local police station and report the matter. Not while I was still carrying the bread bag.

  ‘Look, I kept the taxi waiting. Where do you live? I’ll take you home.’

  ‘Just off the Kurfürstendamm. Next to the Theatre Centre.’

  ‘Good. That’s near me.’

  I helped her along to the taxi, which was where I’d left it, on the corner of Motz Strasse, and told the driver where to go. Then we drove west along Kleist Strasse with the driver telling me in exhaustive detail just what had happened and how it wasn’t his fault and that he couldn’t believe the fellow he’d collided with hadn’t been more seriously injured.

  ‘How do you know he wasn’t?’

  ‘He ran off, didn’t he? Can’t run with a broken leg. Believe me, I know. I was in the last war and I tried.’

  When we got to Kurfürstendamm I helped the girl out of the car and she was promptly sick in the gutter.

  ‘Must be my lucky night,’ said the taxi driver.

  ‘You’ve got a funny idea of luck, friend.’

  ‘That’s the only kind that’s going these days.’ The driver leaned out of the window and slammed the door shut behind us. ‘What I mean is, she could have been sick in the cab. And that Fritz I hit. I could have killed him, see?’

  ‘How much?’ I asked.

  ‘That all depends on whether you’re going to report this.’

  ‘I don’t know what the lady will want to do,’ I said. ‘But if I were you I’d get going before she makes up her mind.’

  ‘See?’ The driver put the taxi cab in gear. ‘I was right. It is my lucky night.’

  Inside the building I helped the girl upstairs, which is when I got a better look at her.

  She was wearing a navy-blue linen suit with a lace-cotton blouse underneath. The blouse was torn and a stocking was hanging down over one of her shoes. These were plumcoloured like her handbag and the mark under one of her eyes from when she’d been punched. There was a strong smell of perfume on her clothes and I recognized Guerlain Shalimar. By the time we reached her door I had concluded she was about thirty years old. She had shoulder-length blond hair, a wide forehead, a broad nose, high cheekbones, and a sulky mouth. Then again, she had a lot to feel sulky about. She was about 175 centimetres tall, and against my arm felt strong and muscular: strong enough to put up a fight when she was attacked but not strong enough to walk away without help. I was glad about that. She was good-looking in a catlike way with narrow eyes and a tail that seemed to have a whole life of its own and made me want to have her on my lap for a while so that I could stroke it.

  She found a door key and fumbled for the lock until I caught her hand and steered the key into the Abus and turned it for her.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I’ll be all right from here, I think.’

  And but for the fact that she started to sit down on the floor I might have left her there. Instead I gathered her up in my arms and swung her through the door like an exhausted bride.

  Advancing into the barely furnished hall I encountered the house guard dog: a barely dressed woman of about fifty with short, bottle-blond hair and more make-up than seemed strictly necessary outside of a circus tent. Almost at once and with a voice like Baron Ochs she started to reproach the half-conscious girl I was carrying for bringing disrespect upon her house, but from the going-over the landlady’s eyebrows were giving me much of that seemed to be directed my way. I didn’t mind that. For a while it made me feel quite nostalgic for my Army days when some ugly sergeant would chew my ear off for nothing but the hell of it.

  ‘What kind of house do you think I’m running here, Fräulein Tauber? You should be ashamed to even think of coming back here in such a state as this, with a strange man. I’m a respectable woman. I’ve told you about this before, Fräulein Tauber. I have my rules. I have my standards. This is not to be tolerated.’

  All of this told me two things. One was that the woman in my arms was Fräulein Tauber. And the other was that I was hardly through protecting her from attack.

  ‘Someone tried to rape her,’ I said. ‘So you can either help or you can go and put on some more make-up. The end of your nose looks like it could use some red paint.’

  ‘Well, really,’ the landlady gasped. ‘There’s no need to be rude. Raped, you say. Yes, of course I’ll help. Her room is along here.’

  She led the way down the hall, found a key from the bunch in the pocket of her sagging dressing gown, opened a door, and, switching on the ceiling light, illuminated a neat, well-furnished room that was cosier than a cashmere-lined leather glove, and about the same size.

  I laid Fräulein Tauber down on a sofa of the kind that was only comfortable if you were wearing a whalebone corset, and kneeling at her feet I started to slap some life into her hands and face.

  ‘When she started working at the Golden Horseshoe I told her something like this might happen,’ said the old woman.

  This was one of the few remaining nightclubs in Berlin and probably the least offensive, so the chain of causation that was being suggested was hardly obvious to me; but, containing any argument because I’d already been too rough on the woman, I asked her, politely, if she could fetch a cold compress and a cup of strong tea or coffee. The tea or coffee was a long-shot, but in an emergency there’s no telling what Berlin women can come up with.

  Fräulein Tauber started to come around again and I helped her to sit up. Seeing me she smiled a half-smile.

  ‘Are you still here?’

  The sm
ile must have been painful because she flexed her jaw and then winced.

  ‘Just take it easy. That was quite a left hook he handed you. I’ll say one thing for you, Fräulein Tauber, you can take a punch.’

  ‘Yeah? Maybe you should manage my fights. I could use a big purse. How’d you know my name, anyway, Parsifal?’

  ‘Your landlady. She’s fetching a cold compress and a hot drink for that eye of yours. It’s just possible that we can stop it from going blue.’

  Fräulein Tauber glanced over at the door and shook her head. ‘If she’s fetching me a hot drink you must have told her I was dying.’

  The landlady returned with the cold compress and handed it to me. I laid it carefully on Fräulein Tauber’s eye, took her hand and laid it on top.

  ‘Keep some pressure on it,’ I told her.

  ‘There’s tea on the way,’ said the landlady. ‘I had just enough left for a small pot.’ She shrugged and gathered her dressing gown closer to a chest that was bigger than the cushions on the sofa.

  I stood up, stretched a smile onto my face and offered the landlady one of my American cigarettes.

  ‘Smoke?’

  The old woman’s eyes lit up like she was looking at the Koh-i-noor diamond.

  ‘Please.’ She took one tentatively, almost as if she thought that I might snatch it away again.

  ‘It’s a fair exchange for a cup of tea,’ I said, lighting her cigarette. I didn’t smoke one myself. I hardly wanted either of them thinking I was Gustav Krupp.

  The old woman took an ecstatic puff of her cigarette, smiled and went back into the kitchen.

  ‘And here was me thinking you were just Parsifal. Looks like you’ve got the touch. Healing lepers is easier than raising a smile on her face.’

  ‘But I get the feeling she disapproves of you, Fräulein Tauber.’

  ‘You make that sound almost benign. Like my old schoolmistress.’ Fräulein Tauber laughed bitterly. ‘Frau Lippert – that’s her name – she hates me. If I was Jewish she couldn’t hate me more.’

  ‘And what’s your name? I can’t keep calling you Fräulein Tauber.’

  ‘Why not? Everyone else does.’

  ‘The man who attacked you. Did you get a good look at him?’

  ‘He was about your height. Dark clothes, dark eyes, dark hair, dark complexion. In fact everything about him was dark on account of the fact that it was dark, see? If I drew you a picture he’d look exactly like your shadow.’

  ‘Is that all you can remember about him?’

  ‘Come to think of it he had nice fruity breath. Like he’d been eating Haribos.’

  ‘It’s not much to go on.’

  ‘That all depends on where you were thinking of going.’

  ‘The man was trying to rape you.’

  ‘Was he? I guess he was.’

  I shrugged. ‘Maybe you should report it. I don’t know.’

  ‘To the police?’

  ‘I certainly didn’t mean the newspapers.’

  ‘Women in this city get attacked all the time, Parsifal. Why do you think the police would be interested in one more?’

  ‘He had a knife, that’s why. He might have used it on you.’

  ‘Listen, mister, thanks for helping me. Don’t think I’m not grateful because I am. But I don’t much like the police.’

  I shrugged. ‘They’re just people.’

  ‘Where did you get that idea? All right, Parsifal, I’ll spell it out for you. I work at the Golden Horseshoe. And sometimes the New World, when they’re not closed for lack of beer. I make an honest living but that won’t stop the cops from thinking otherwise. I can hear their patter now. Like it was a movie. You left the Horseshoe with a man, didn’t you? He’d paid you to have sex with him. Only you took his money and tried to dodge him in the dark. Isn’t that what really happened, Fräulein Tauber? Get out of here. You’re lucky we don’t throw you in Ravensbrück for being on the sledge.’

  I had to admit she had a point. Berlin cops had stopped being people when they married into the Reich Main Security Office – the RSHA – and joined a Gothic-looking family that included the Gestapo, the SS and the SD.

  ‘Anyway,’ she added, ‘you don’t want the police buzzing in your ears any more than me. Not with your American cigarettes and all those cans in that bag of yours. No, I should think they might ask you some very awkward questions, which you don’t look able to answer.’

  ‘I guess you do have a point there, at that.’

  ‘Especially not wearing a suit like that.’

  Her visible eye was giving me the up and down.

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s a nice suit. And that’s the point. It doesn’t look like you’ve been wearing it very much lately. Which is unusual in Berlin for a man with your accent. Which makes me think you must have been wearing something else. Most likely a uniform. That would explain the cigarettes and your quaint opinions about the police. And the tin cans, for all I know. I’ll bet you you’re in the Army. And you’ve been in Paris, if that tie is what I think it is: silk. It matches your pre-war manners, Parsifal. Manners are something else you can’t get in Berlin any more. But every German officer gets to behave like a real gentleman when he’s stationed in Paris. That’s what I’ve heard, anyway. So, you’re not a professional blackie. Just an amateur blackie, making a little money on the side while you’re home on leave. This is the only reason you’re naïvely talking about the police and reporting what happened to me this evening.’

  ‘You should have been a cop yourself.’ I grinned.

  ‘No. Not me. I like to sleep at night. But the way things are going, before very long we’re all going to be cops whether we like it or not, spying on each other, informing.’ She nodded meaningfully at the door. ‘If you know what I mean.’

  I didn’t say anything as Frau Lippert came back carrying a tray with two cups of tea.

  ‘That’s what I mean,’ added Fräulein Tauber in case I was too dumb to understand her the first time.

  ‘Drink your tea,’ I said. ‘It’ll help keep that eye down.’

  ‘I don’t see how.’

  ‘This is good tea,’ I told Frau Lippert.

  ‘Thank you, Herr—?’

  ‘That is, I don’t see how it can help a blue eye.’

  I nodded, appreciating the interruption: it was Fräulein Tauber’s turn to help me. It wasn’t a good idea to tell Frau Lippert my name. I could see that now. The old woman wasn’t just the house guard dog; she was also the building’s Gestapo bloodhound.

  ‘Caffeine,’ I said. ‘It causes the blood vessels to constrict. You want to reduce the amount of blood that can reach your eye. The more blood that seeps out of the damaged capillaries on that lovely face of yours, the bluer your eye will get. Here. Let me have a look.’

  I took away the cold compress for a moment and then nodded.

  ‘It’s not so blue,’ I said.

  ‘Not when I look at you, it’s not.’

  ‘Mmm-hmm.’

  ‘You know, you sound just like a doctor, Parsifal.’

  ‘You can tell that from mm-hmm?’

  ‘Sure. Doctors say it all the time. To me, anyway.’

  Frau Lippert had been out of this conversation since it started and must have felt that it lacked her own imprimatur. ‘She’s right,’ said the old woman. ‘They do.’

  I kept on looking at the girl with the cold compress in her hand. ‘You’re mistaken, Fräulein. It’s not mm-hmm your doctor is saying. It’s shorter, simpler, more direct than that. It’s just Mmm.’

  I drained my tea cup and placed it back on the tray. ‘Mmm, thank you.’

  ‘I’m glad you liked it,’ said Frau Lippert.

  ‘Very much.’

  I grinned at her and picked my bag of canned food off the floor. It was nice to see her smile back.

  ‘Well, I’d better be going. I’ll look in again sometime just to see you’re all right.’

  ‘There’s no n
eed, Parsifal. I’m all right now.’

  ‘I like to know how all my patients are doing, Fräulein. Especially the ones wearing Guerlain Shalimar.’