City of Shadows (54 page)

Christ,
they’re efficient, Schmidt thought. Take no chances, take no prisoners. “Time we went,” he said gently. But Bolle shook his head.

There was no comfort to be given; Schmidt rested his hand on Bolle’s shoulder for a moment and left him sitting alone in the corner of a huge and empty canteen.

A storm trooper standing at the bottom of the stairs stopped him.

“I’m going up to my office to fetch my hat and coat,” Schmidt said.

“Wait.” The man got out his list to consult it.

“Oh, fuck off.” Schmidt pushed past him and went up the stairs. He’d had enough of lists.

Nobody shot him.

It was getting dark, and he had to switch on his office light.

He picked up the phone, surprised it was still connected, and phoned Esther’s number, hearing it ring and ring. She wasn’t in.

Outside, in the parking lot, an armored car, known accurately but without affection at the Alex as “The Kettle,” was grinding past the bar
rier, on its way to break up some demonstration or another.

God, he thought, let there be demonstrations somewhere, riots, protest. Let somebody fight back—they’re snatching the law. The Law. They’ve stolen it, like a goddamn necklace. Who
is
protesting? The minister of justice? The Reichstag? Where are they? Criminals are tak
ing over the country. It’s a fucking putsch, and they’re getting away with it; they’re stealing Germany. Cassandra must have felt like this, seeing that the Greeks were coming and not a single fucker listening to her. Well, they’re in now. The Alex is their Trojan horse.

And what are
you
doing about it?

He felt under his desk for the metal wastepaper can, took it out, then went over to the filing cabinet and the drawer that contained his per
sonal files, records of old arrests, old contacts, informants. He scooped them out and carried them over to the can, stuffing them into it.

Thieves, queers, prostitutes, con men—not the new chancellor’s favorite people, but, compared to him, clean and upright men and women. Schmidt would be damned if he left their addresses for the SS. He took out one of the sheets at random and saw that it was the record of Rudi the Flasher, Rudi who’d been stalking the streets around Charlottenburg on the night Natalya Tchichagova had been killed, Rudi now an impo
tent old man.

He got out his lighter, lit a cigarette, and then applied the flame to poor old Rudi and dropped him, burning, into the can.

Frau Pritt was in the doorway. “Stop it. What are you doing? Stop it.”

He began shaking paper out of the other folders and stuffing them into the fire in the can.

“Stop it,” Pritt screamed. “You are destroying government property. It is against orders. Stop it.” She lunged at the can, trying to lift it off the desk, but an eruption of flame drove her back.

He heard her running down the corridor shouting.

Not much of a protest, this. Not much to weigh down his end of the unbalanced scales, but, Christ, he had to do something to put a spoke in their wheel and prove he was a man and not a dog they’d kicked out of its home.

It was quiet on this floor. Virtually all the officers and men who hadn’t been sacked were being briefed in the lecture hall on their du
ties for the forthcoming victory parade.

Victory parade.

He kept grabbing more folders, amazed at the number of people he’d persuaded, bribed, or blackmailed into giving him information over the years: small-time crooks, mainly,
Winkelbankiers,
illegal backstreet cur
rency dealers, pickpockets, Gypsies, smugglers, counterfeiters, unli
censed hawkers—Jews, mainly—racketeers, bigamists.

Innocents, all of them, their combined sins a mere peccadillo com
pared to the political crime about to overwhelm them.

The smell was making him cough, so he raised the window just a fraction to cause a draft. Smoke from the can poured toward the wintry outside air as if along a chimney. Pinched faces were transferred out of his memory and onto paper, where the heat curled and flared them into ash; he might have been burning them alive.

“Stop that, please,” Busse said. He was in the doorway, wearing an SS uniform. Light glinted off his spectacles, and he had a Luger pistol in his hand.

Entering the flat,
and finding that Schmidt wasn’t in it, Esther went straight for the phone to call him at the Alex. All the way back in the car, she’d been desperate to tell him: I’ve seen him. I know his name.

I’ve got his picture.

The same idiot on the switchboard, obviously a trainee, insisted that Inspector Schmidt did not work for the police, so for now she slammed the receiver down and set about the other thing she’d been dying to do. She went into her darkroom with her camera. Then she popped her head around the door. “Anna, I’m developing. Do not, repeat
not,
come in.” It was a prohibition Anna had twice broken, to the ruin of some spectacular film.

The shock to Anna of seeing the man who’d pursued her for most of her life had been very great, and when they’d got to the lobby in the Kaiserhof, she’d had to sit down. But once she’d seen that he was not coming after her, she’d rallied surprisingly well, as if her fear had been automatic. Perhaps she’d realized there was no danger, that he and she would keep each other’s secret. “I am under the Führer’s protection now, am I not?” she’d said.

At home she’d kicked off her shoes and collapsed expansively onto the sofa, humming to herself, smiling a grand-duchess smile.

Esther shut the door, turned on the safelight, and got to work. Even while the film was still in the developer, she could see that the work was
good.
The shot of Anna, Hitler, and the killer would need some toning, but, by God, she’d caught it—Hitler off balance because the other two had switched attention from him, the rigidity of Anna’s neck, and the eyes of the killer alive, appalled, in that lumpen face.

Genius. And genius to have inquired of the butler as they were be
ing shown out.
“The officer, ma’am? That’s Major Günsche. SA Intelli
gence. He liaises between the Führer and Colonel Röhm when the Führer’s in Berlin. Yes, I believe his first name is Reinhardt.”

It was one hell of a photograph in its own right, shrieking with tension.

As a document to damn with, it was clear as clear. Got him. Got him. I’ve got him, Natalya. Nick, Marlene, I’ve got him.

The darkroom had seemed loud with exultation; now it died away, and in the quiet came the first squeak of fear. She was doing what those three had done; she had gone out and met a killer. Literally, she was ex
posing him.

She washed the negatives, not rushing, but wanting to. Hung them up to dry. Stepped out into the empty living room. It was quiet there, too.

“Anna!”

Anna’s voice came from her room. “Why you shouting?”

“It’s all right. I didn’t know where you were.”

She walked to the phone, lifted the receiver, and dialed. This time she didn’t confuse the idiot by asking for Schmidt by name. “Multiple Murder Department, please.” And sagged with relief as she heard the call being put through.

Schmidt raised his
arm. “Heil . . .” Then he batted his forehead. “Don’t tell me
.. . .
On the tip of my tongue. I’ll get it in a minute.”

Busse didn’t waver; neither did the pistol. “You are destroying Reich property.”

Schmidt grabbed more files.

Busse walked up to the desk, putting the Luger against Schmidt’s back. “Stop or I will put you under arrest.”

Schmidt doubled up the last of the files, stuffed them in, and watched them take. He moved away from the Luger, went around the desk, and sat in his chair, opening a drawer; there was a notebook in here that might be useful to them. He took it and dropped it into the can. Finally he looked up. “Yes? What do you want?”

The uniform suited Busse. Clean black lines, lightning flashes on the collar tabs, the death’s-head on the cap band. It gave him dash, author
ity, menace, as if the accountant in spectacles had merely been a chrysalis that had burst into something more beautiful and more terri
ble. Still with spectacles.

“I hope the Anastasia file isn’t among those ashes,” he said, “No. Of course it isn’t. Where is it? We didn’t find it in the Jewess’s flat.”

The gloves were off—if, Schmidt thought, they’d ever been on. “You’ve got it,” he said.

“We have one copy, you have another. And we would like it, please.”

“Why? Adolf going to take up the White Russian cause, is he? Kiss the sleeping grand duchess and wake her up? Put her on the back of his horse and charge off to Moscow?”

“Please don’t try to rile me, Schmidt. The Führer is waiting on our findings, but we have not yet finished our investigation.”

“I see,” Schmidt said. “You haven’t shown him the file yet.”

“Evidence as to the lady’s authenticity is still inconclusive.” Busse al
lowed himself a quirk of the lips. “As you have found out, we have been rather busy.”

“I’ll give you that,” Schmidt said. Even pretty uniforms designed down to the bloody buttons and waiting in their closets.

He noticed an instruction lying on top of papers in his In tray:
“From today all staff will use the Heil Hitler greeting and farewell. By order of Hermann Göring, Prussian Minister of the Interior.”
The good Frau Pritt, no doubt, preparing for his successor. He crumpled it and tossed it in the still-smoldering can. “Well, Busse, arrest or no arrest, I’m hang
ing on to that file for a bit. You never know. Adolf might get voted out next time, and the police will start catching killers again.”

“Tell me where it is, Schmidt, and then you can go home.” Busse was being quite reasonable about it. They’d been neighbors, old friends. A reasonable old neighborhood Nazi—with a gun.

“No.”

Busse glanced at his watch—the Luger didn’t move. His wrists were knobbly and very white, hairless. “I am due to take part in the victory parade,” he said, “but I think there is just time to bring your Jewess here. I am certain she knows where the file is and can be persuaded to tell me and one of my storm troopers downstairs—under pressure.”

The last trail of smoke from the can drifted back into the room with some snowflakes—a breeze had sprung up, swinging a slice of cold air into the fug like an ax, ruffling the
M
poster and distorting Lorre’s face.

He’s a family man, Schmidt thought; there’s a nice Frau Busse and a lot of little Busses. Nazis get married, they have children; they’ve sat by a sick child’s bed, seen a parent die. They know the budding and the
falling like the rest of us. What withers them? This thing in front of me is a stalk.

The phone rang, and without thinking he picked it up; this was his office. “Inspector Schmidt.”

Esther’s voice came over the line, high and clear with excitement. “I’ve got him, Schmidt. We went to the Kaiserhof, Anna and me. Hitler sent for her. He’s thrilled with her. We were just leaving, and, Schmidt, oh,
Schmidt,
he came in. It was him. It was R.G. And I’ve got him. I took a photograph of him and Hitler and Anna. He’s Major Reinhardt Günsche. SA Intelligence. Schmidt, Schmidt, we’ve got him.”

Everything narrowed down. Busse evaporated into irrelevance. The constriction against Schmidt’s throat became a different fear. He saw Hannelore’s killer climbing the stairs with her shopping and waiting for her at the top.

“Schmidt. Are you there, darling? I’ve got him.”

Gently, he said, “Esther . . .”

“Yes?”

“Get out of the flat. Take Anna and get out. Don’t stop to pick any
thing up. Do you hear me?”

“Yes. But the film.”

“Do it.”
He was shouting and didn’t hear the rap on the door of 29c, but he heard Esther call, “No, Anna, don’t open it. Anna!” and a distant scream and then a long, slow knocking as from a telephone receiver swinging against a table leg where it had been let fall.

“Esther!”

Over the line he heard the far-off clatter of boots and shoes going down the stairs.

24

“Where’s he taking
them?” Schmidt asked conversationally,

walking around the desk.

“What?” Busse was staring at the phone.

Schmidt gave him a push in the chest. “R.G. of Munich. He’s just raided my flat. His name’s Günsche. He’s SA. He’s going to kill my girl. Where’s he going to do it?” He gave Busse another push.

“I don’t know. The SA are a law to themselves. Why should I know?”

“Because you do. There’s a killing ground. They’ve got a place where they torture people and kill them. He took Marlene there before he dumped her at Schwanenwerder. Where is it?” He pushed Busse again.

“Marlene?” Busse wasn’t keeping up.

“This man,” Schmidt said, still speaking pleasantly, “has taken Solomonova and Anderson out of their flat. I just heard him do it. They’d been to the Kaiserhof to meet your Führer. They bumped into R.G. of Munich. Recognized him. He’s got to kill them.” All the time he was pushing Busse in the chest, and Busse was letting
him. “Don’t tell me you haven’t been keeping an eye on the SA. Tell me where they’ve gone.”