A Man Without Breath (Bernie Gunther Mystery 9) (47 page)

‘All right,’ I said. ‘Fair enough.’

I put my hand on her soft cheek and she leaned in to my palm and then kissed it, fondly. She began to cry a little and I put my other arm around her shoulders and drew her close to me. She didn’t say another word but she didn’t need to; my earlier suspicion was now gone. I’m a little slow making up my mind about these things, and full of a cop’s caution, which stops me from behaving like any normal man, but I was certain now that Ines Kramsta had not shot Berruguete. After ten years at the Alex, you get to recognize when someone is a killer and when they’re not. I had looked into her eyes and seen the truth, and the truth was that this was a woman with principles who believed in things, and those things did not include subterfuge and cold-blooded murder, even if it was someone who deserved to be murdered.

I had seen another truth, too, which was just as important, and this was that I thought I loved her.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’

At the front door of the hospital nurse Tanya caught up with me.

‘Herr Gunther,’ she said. ‘Are you going to Krasny Bor?’

‘Yes.’

‘Could you please return these things to Alok Dyakov?’ She explained, handing me a large brown envelope: ‘He left about ten minutes ago – caught a ride back to Krasny Bor with some grenadiers who were also discharged – before I had time to return his personal possessions: his wristwatch, his glasses, his ring, some money. It’s standard hospital policy to remove the contents of a patient’s pockets when they’re brought in, to keep them safe.’ She shrugged. ‘There’s a lot of theft in here, you understand.’

‘Certainly.’ I looked at Ines. ‘Is that where you want to go? Back to Krasny Bor?’

She glanced at her watch and shook her head. ‘Professor Buhtz will probably be at Grushtshenki by now, with the commission,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you could take me there?’

I nodded. ‘Of course. Anywhere you like.’

‘You can give him the bullet we dug out of Berruguete’s heart then, if you like,’ she added helpfully. ‘And see what he makes of it. Not that I think there’s going to be much doubt that it came from that red nine you found.’

‘That’s all right,’ I said. ‘I’m going to take another look at the crime scene first. See if there’s anything I’ve missed. And maybe find that missing shoulder-stock.’

So I drove her to the headquarters of the local field police at Grushtshenki, where all of the Katyn documents recovered
from grave number one were now exhibited in an especially glassed-in veranda of the wooden house.

When we arrived it was plain that the international commission was already on the scene and that both Buhtz and Sloventzik – easily distinguishable in their field-grey uniforms – were surrounded by the experts. Most of these men were in their sixties, many of them bearded, carrying briefcases and making notes while Sloventzik patiently translated Professor Buhtz’s remarks. Official photographers were taking pictures and there was a buzz in the air that wasn’t just pertinent questions – the air was full of mosquitoes. It looked more like Zadneprovsky Market on Bazarnaya Square than an international commission of forensic inquiry.

I pulled up next to Colonel von Gersdorff, who was leaning on the bonnet of his Mercedes and smoking a cigarette.

He nodded at me as we stepped out of the Tatra and then, rather more warily, at Ines. ‘How are you, Ines?’ he asked.

‘Well, Rudolf.’

‘Good God, haven’t you arrested this woman yet, Gunther?’ he added. ‘Didn’t Siegfried’s wounds flow fresh with blood when the guilty Hagen stood beside the corpse, so to speak?’ He grinned. ‘I thought she was well in the frame for the doctor’s murder when last we talked about things. Motive, opportunity, the whole Dorothy L. Sayers. And don’t forget, the beautiful Bolsheviks are the most dangerous, you know.’

He laughed again, and of course what he said was meant to be a joke, but Ines Kramsta didn’t quite see it that way. And in view of what happened next, nor did I.

For a moment she stared at me without a word, but when her jaw dropped it was plain to see she felt that I had betrayed her.

‘Oh, I see,’ she said quietly. ‘That explains why—’

Ines blinked with obvious astonishment and started to turn away, but I took a step after her and grabbed her arm.

‘Please, Ines,’ I said. ‘It’s not like that. He didn’t mean it. Did you, Von Gersdorff? Tell her you were just joking. I never had any intention of arresting you.’

Von Gersdorff chucked away his cigarette and straightened. ‘Er, yes. I was just joking, of course. My dear Ines, none of us thought for a minute that you actually shot the doctor. Well, I certainly didn’t. Not for a moment.’

This admission was no less club-footed than his joke, and it was plain from her face that the damage was well and truly done. I felt as if someone had just kicked away the stool I had been standing on and I was now hanging by the neck on a very thin length of cord.

‘It seems obvious now,’ she said, wresting her arm out of my grip. ‘All those interested questions about Spain and my brother. You were trying to find out if I shot Dr Berruguete, weren’t you?’ Her nostrils flared a little and her eyes filled with tears, again. ‘It actually crossed your mind that – to think that you thought I could have carried out an autopsy on a man I had murdered.’

‘Ines, please believe me,’ I said. ‘I never had any intention of arresting you.’

‘But you still considered the possibility that I might have killed him, didn’t you?’

She was right of course, and I felt a certain shame about that, which – of course – she was able to read in my eyes and on my face.

‘Oh, Bernie,’ she said.

‘Perhaps for just a minute,’ I said, fumbling for some words that might satisfy her. I felt my feet desperately reaching to touch the stool I had been standing on but already it was too
late. ‘But not any more.’ I shook my head. ‘Not any more, do you hear?’

Her disappointment in me – her dismay that I could ever have suspected her of murder – were already turning to anger. Her face flushed and the muscles in her jaws stiffened as, biting her lip, she regarded me with new contempt.

‘I really thought that there was something special between us,’ she said. ‘I can see now I was terribly mistaken about that.’

‘Honestly, Ines,’ said Von Gersdorff, putting his polished jackboot in it again. ‘You’re making a mountain out of a molehill with this. You really are. The poor fellow was only doing his job. He is a policeman, after all. It’s his job to suspect people like you and me of things we didn’t do. And you must admit, for a while there you made a pretty reasonable suspect.’

‘Shut up, Rudi,’ she said. ‘Just for once know when you should say nothing.’

‘Ines, we do have something special,’ I told her. ‘We do. I feel that, too.’

But Ines was shaking her head. ‘Perhaps we did. At least for a moment or two.’

Her voice was husky with emotion. It made me acutely aware of just how much I wanted to comfort her and look after her, and but for the fact that it was me who had caused her hurt, I might have done so, too.

‘Yes, we were a good pair, Gunther. From the first time I was with you it really felt that we were more than just one man and one woman. But none of that matters a damn when one of the two decides to play cop on the other, as you just did with me.’

‘Really, Ines,’ muttered Von Gersdorff.

But she was already walking away, toward Buhtz and the international commission, not looking back, and out of my life, for ever.

‘I’m sorry, Gunther. I didn’t mean that to happen. You know I really should have remembered. Like a lot of lefties, Ines has never had much of a sense of humour.’ He smiled. ‘But look, I expect she’ll get over it. I’ll speak to her. Put things right. Obtain a reprieve for you. You’ll see.’

I shook my head because I knew no reprieve would ever arrive.

‘I don’t think that’s going to be possible, colonel,’ I said. ‘In fact, I’m certain of it.’

‘I should like to try,’ he said. ‘Honestly, I feel terrible.’ He shook his head. ‘I had no idea that you and she … had become quite so close. It was – it was careless of me.’

There was very little I could say to that. Von Gersdorff was right about it being careless of him, although I might have added that it was typically careless of him and all Prussian aristocrats. They were just careless people, careless because they didn’t really care about anyone other than themselves. It was their carelessness that had allowed Hitler to take possession of the country in 1933; and through their carelessness, they had failed to remove him now, some ten years later. They were careless and then other people had to sort it out, or deal with the mess they had made.

Or not.

I walked away. I smoked a couple of cigarettes on my own and stared up at the blue sky through newly minted leaves in the tops of the tall, shifting silver birch trees and realized how, in that part of the world especially, all human life is grotesquely fragile. And feeling glimpses of raw Russian sunlight on my face – which after all was much more than the
poor ghosts of four thousand Poles could ever have done – I eventually managed to recover a few blackened, ash-covered fragments of my earlier composure.

A little later on I found a nervous-looking Lieutenant Voss on the edge of the crowd. Several field policemen were doing their best to distinguish those who had a reason to be there from those who did not, which wasn’t easy, as many off-duty German soldiers and locals had come to see what all the fuss was about.

‘What a fucking circus.’ Voss slapped his neck irritably. ‘Christ only knows what will happen if Russian partisans choose today for an attack.’

‘I think malaria or old age is more likely to take down some of these fellows than a Russian hand grenade,’ I said, and slapped my own cheek, hard. ‘I almost wish it was cold again so we might be free of the plague of these fucking insects.’

Voss grunted his agreement.

‘By the way, how’s that Russian bastard you clouted with the truncheon last night? Dyakov? Good job by the way, sir. If anyone needed a thump on the head it’s the field marshal’s pet Ivan.’

‘Alive, thank God. And on his way back to Krasny Bor and his master.’

‘Yes, I heard Clever Hans tore a strip off your face this morning. Makes you wonder what Dyakov has got on the field marshal to make him behave like that.’

‘Yes, it does, doesn’t it?’

I led Voss a short distance away to ask if the late Dr Berruguete’s sudden absence had caused any alarm among our distinguished guests.

‘Not at all,’ said Voss. ‘On the contrary, several of them seemed quite relieved to hear he’d had to return to Spain.
That’s what Sloventzik has told them, anyway. A family tragedy that required his immediate return during the night.’

‘After what I learned about him today, I’m hardly surprised they’re glad to see the back of that man. Nor am I surprised that someone put a bullet in him. Two actually. According to the autopsy I just attended, he was shot once in the head and once in the chest.’

‘Could one of them have done it?’ asked Voss, glancing over at the commission.

I pulled a face. ‘I don’t think so, do you? Look at them. There’s none of them that looks like he could hit a vein with a needle, let alone fire a broom-handle Mauser and actually hit anything.’

‘But if not one of them, who?’

‘I don’t know. Find that shoulder-stock yet?’

‘No. To be honest I can’t spare the men to look for it. We have our hands full keeping people away from this place and Katyn Wood.’

‘That’s all right. I’m just on my way back to Krasny Bor now. I’ll take a look for the stock myself.’

*

Back in the woods at Krasny Bor all of the wild flowers were in bloom and it was hard to believe there was a war on. Von Kluge’s huge staff car was parked in front of his villa but almost everywhere else there was no clue that the place was anything other than the health resort it had once been. Behind the neat curtains of the wooden huts where Russians had previously stayed to take the sulphurous spring waters to move their bowels, nothing moved. There were just the trees whispering to each other in the breeze and some birds punctuating the silence with their bright exclamations that spring had truly arrived at last.

I drove through the gates and, leaving my car, walked to the place where the field police had found the murder weapon, which was marked with a little field police flag. I began to search the long grass and the bushes. I did this in ever-increasing circles, walking around the spot like the hands on a clock until, after about an hour, I found the paddle-shaped polished-oak Mauser stock resting against a tree. It was obvious at once that this was the spot from which the gunman had shot Berruguete, for tied to the branch of the tree at about head height was a length of rope through which anyone seeking to steady his aim might have pushed the Mauser’s 10-centimetre barrel and then secured it tightly with a couple of quick turns. The place where Dr Berruguete’s body had been found was almost a hundred metres away and unimpeded by any trees or bushes. Less obvious however was how the gunman could have used the same length of rope to shoot at me in the opposite direction; he would need to have turned more than a hundred and fifty degrees to his right, which would have left the barrel of the Mauser knocking against another branch of the same tree. In other words, to have shot at me from this same spot using the tie was impossible. This left me puzzled, and wondering if there might have been a second gunman.

I pocketed the length of rope and spent the next thirty minutes carefully searching the grass until I’d found two brass bullet casings. I didn’t bother to look for a third as it was immediately apparent that these could not have been fired from the same gun: one was a 9-millimetre Mauser casing, the other was something bigger – most likely a rifle bullet.

In Krasny Bor the spring silence endured, but inside my head there was now a riot of noise. Finally one clear voice asserted
itself against the clamour. Had there been one gunman or two? Or perhaps one gunman with two different weapons – a pistol and a rifle? Certainly it made sense to shoot at me with a rifle – I had been the more distant target. But why not shoot Berruguete with the rifle, too – unless the reason had been to use the borrowed Mauser to point the finger of blame elsewhere?