City of Shadows (44 page)

“Or a nonexistent God in the first place.”

She waggled her hands, as he’d seen Minna Wolff do a hundred times. “Maybe. But even if you don’t believe in Him, if you’re a Dar
winist, it’s the same thing. Think of the millions of years of your species struggling to give you this amazing accident of life, and how sinful, how bloody ungrateful, it is to throw it away. It’s our duty to the dead not to waste the million-year gift they can’t have by being guilty because they can’t have it. We have to forgive ourselves for being alive.”

He applied more tissue, and she took it out of his hands and scrubbed her face with it.

“Or perhaps in my case God just overdid it. He took everything that had mattered and everything that didn’t. It was too massive to take in. I was reborn at sixteen, naked, raped, with a face somebody’d slashed open. Rosa didn’t know who I was—for a long time I didn’t either. Didn’t matter to her. I was hurt and needed mending. Rosa doesn’t fit into Dar-win’s theory, Schmidt. It didn’t help her survival or her children’s to waste time and food and care on me. For part of that awful journey, I slowed her down.”

“So Rosa is God.”

“A facet of Him,” she said. “Or Her. God’s what stops you from slit
ting your wrists.”

He helped her up, and they walked on.

He wanted to tell her about Ikey Wolff, but it wasn’t the time. One day, though, he’d talk about Ikey, another aberration of Darwin’s the
ory, and how Ikey had got him through the war, not by heroism but be
cause the man had been proof that decency was still a human attribute.

The forest was thinning now, and they could see the Zorawskis’ house in the distance.

She stopped for a moment. “And there’s you,” she said.

20

In the train
out of Pinsk, he gave her the two photographs. She saw the killer’s face immediately;
now
she remembered it. It was coming up the staircase of the Green Hat toward her.

She forced herself to study it for a long time, knowing it was ridiculous to feel that those flat, dull, vaguely Slavic eyes were watching her. “It’s the same face,” she said. “He didn’t change at all; he just got older. Stolid, secret. You wonder what sort of childhood produced that look.”

“Lousy, I expect. They generally are. And I don’t bloody care.” He handed her another filched photograph. “These are the ones he butchered—see that young woman there, with the baby in her arms, the one smiling?”

She handed the pictures back.

At Warsaw Station the only German paper he could get was
Berliner Morgenpost.
When he settled back with it in the compartment, another face he knew stared back at him from an inside page. “Good God Almighty.”

Under a picture of Anna, the caption read
“Mystery woman

claims a share of the Romanov inheritance.”
Below was a brief story. He read it to her.

“
‘Anna Anderson, the woman claiming to be the Grand Duchess Anas
tasia’
blah, blah, blah . . .
‘has hired lawyers to begin a fight in the Ger
man courts for recognition of her title as heiress to the murdered czar of Russia. ...Mrs. Anderson is at present in the United States.’
Shit. That means she’ll be coming back at some point. Did you know about this?”

“No.” Esther rubbed her forehead.

“Well,” he said, “Ryszard must know by now that she’s not going to give him away. Tell the world who he is and she tells the world who
she
is. She should, but she won’t. She’s been secure for nine years by pro
claiming she’s Anastasia. The killer knows that while she’s Anastasia she can’t be Franziska and a witness against him. He’s safe from her. She’s safe from him.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. It’s in our man’s interest. If she’s Anastasia and alive, nobody’s going to inquire into the whereabouts of Ryszard Galczynski from Bagna Duze.”

“You blame her, don’t you?” Esther said. “For not pointing the finger at him. She can’t. I’ve told you, she believes she is Anastasia.”

Whoever she is, she’s a pain in the ass, Schmidt thought. The woman was a complication he didn’t want to deal with. “What’s she been doing in the States anyway?”

“Some American millionairess called Jennings was planning to fi
nance an army to invade Russia and put her back on the throne.”

“Are you kidding?”

“No.” She shook her head at him. “Schmidt, you don’t realize how ...she gets taken up by really extraordinary people. Rachmani-noff—I mean
Rachmaninoff
—was fighting her cause at one point.”

“And they drop her again,” Schmidt said.

“Well, she’s difficult,” Esther said. “She can’t help it. God, I wish she wasn’t coming back. I’d hoped the States would suit her, but now I come to think about it, she was beginning to complain at the publicity the American papers were giving her, she didn’t like her hosts, she thought she was being exploited, she’d stepped on her parrot—”

“Stepped on a parrot?”

“Some sort of accident when she was having hysterics. I should have known she wasn’t happy from the fact that she phoned at all. It’s only in between patrons that she turns to me.”

“You’ll take her in, I suppose? If she comes back?”

“If she wants me to. She’s my responsibility.”

“She’s not.”

“Yes she
is.
” Her eyes got bluer when she was stern.

Anna Anderson, Schmidt thought. Female. Known to be trailing gunpowder. Four dead so far. Many wounded, including one parrot.

Their train slowed
entering Berlin. Esther watched a setting sun slant across the posters lining the railway tracks. Election time again. So far 1932 had consisted of little else. The wrangling of parties with
out a majority in the Reichstag was reflected by fighting in the streets.

Sooty terraced windows displayed Communist posters; an enclave of houses with nice gardens was placarded with swastikas. Nearly every party was portraying the German people as a half-naked giant. The Nazi giant towering above a bank, destroying it with a swastika-decorated compressor. The People’s Party giant was in a loincloth sweeping aside soberly dressed politicians. A Social Democrat giant threw tiny Nazis and Communists out of the Reichstag. More swastikas, hammers and sickles, raised fists.

She thought how violent and masculine it all was. They’ve forgotten women. The Nazis even made a virtue of their refusal to put forward women candidates: “Politics is too unclean for women to participate.”

Hoardings again. Pictures of President Hindenburg, Chancellor von Papen, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler.

“What exactly does von Papen stand for?” she asked.

“Von Papen,” he drawled deliberately, screwing a metaphorical mon
ocle in his eye, “stands for the Good Old Days. Army, Authority, Aris
tocracy. No nasty democracy. You remember the Good Old Days? When anybody who applied for social benefits wasn’t allowed to vote?”

“He doesn’t want Hitler in, though, does he?”

“No, but rather Hitler than the Reds. And the Nazis are now the second-largest party.”

“I don’t understand politics,” she said. “We didn’t have any in Old Russia.”

“Better learn,” he said.

The train was hissing quietly to itself, having stopped before enter
ing the station. Opposite the window was another Nazi poster on which an anemic-looking angel, depicting the Social Democrats, was walking hand in hand with the usual caricatured Jew—squat, fur-coated, cigar-smoking, hook-nosed. Somebody with a paint pot had enforced the message:
kill the jews
!

Their cab had to take a circuitous route to get to Bismarck Allee; the police had set up a barrier to block Potsdamer Platz and surrounding roads.

“Kozis and Nazis been fighting down there all day,” the driver said. “Bloody Reds.”

“Why not bloody Nazis?” Schmidt asked.

“That’s different. Wasn’t for them, we’d have bloody Bolshies in power.”

It was dark by the time they got home. Marlene had left a note with the day’s date in slashing green ink on the kitchen table:
“Tell the in
spector that little Marlene of Scotland Yard solved his case yesterday! All shall be revealed! What DID you get up to in Poland?”

At three o’clock in the morning, the phone rang. She handed it to him. “For you.”

It was Willi. “You left this telephone number, boss.”

“What is it?”

“Just thought you might be interested, knowing you and Prince Nick and Munich. Probably nothing to do with it but . . .”

“What?”

“One of his old clubs, boss, the one for queers. There’s a riot. Call’s just come in from one of my lads.”

Jesus. “The Pink Parasol?”

“That’s the one.”

“Send a car. I’m at 29 Bismarck Allee.”

She was sitting up in bed. “What is it? The Pink Parasol. Is it Mar
lene?”

“No, just a disturbance. Homo club, there’s always some sort of trou
ble.” He dragged on his trousers.

“Oh, God,” she said. “It’s Marlene.”

When he got there, the Parasol’s bouncer was being put into an am
bulance. He’d slammed the street door on the truckload of storm troop
ers that had pulled up outside and given fight when they broke it down. As the stretcher was carried past him, Schmidt glimpsed a cauliflower ear sticking out from what was otherwise a bloody mess.

Willi had turned up in a traffic car. Tudjmann of Vice, under whose aegis this was, stood on the pavement among a ring of uniformed police, watching his men collect wooden clubs and truncheons from storm-troopers as they came down the stairs and hurried off into the night.

“Aren’t you going to take their goddamn names?” Schmidt demanded of him.

Tudjmann shrugged. “What for?”

“Well, I am.” He made for the stair, yelling, “Police!” with Willi behind him herding descending Nazis back up. One or two pushed past him, but the rest retired in front of him to the first landing where a door read
jus
tus marcks. theatrical agent.
The Pink Parasol was another floor up.

The storm troopers gathered on the landing were uniformly young and sated. They stared at Schmidt with curiosity, almost affront. He demanded, “Who ordered this?”

“What do you care?” one of them asked, and another said, “We’re do
ing your job for you. Cleaning Germany of vermin.”

“Take their names, Willi,” Schmidt said. “Check every identity card.”

He went up the next flight of stairs.

The Pink Parasol was like hundreds of clubs in Berlin described as “intimate,” meaning small—a room with discreet lighting that kept its clientele in near darkness and focused pink spotlights on the small stage at the far end, where some storm troopers were still doggedly smashing up the band’s instruments and music stands. Splintered chairs and ta
bles littered the floor among broken glass.

Some men in business suits were gathered together in one corner of the room, fearful but, as far as Schmidt could see, unharmed. The assault had been on the staff and entertainers. A black man lay facedown
on the floor with blood coming out of his head, a dented saxophone thrown on top of him. A young man hung by his tied hands from a light fixture. His glittering leotard had been ripped down to his ankles, and his back was scored like a slashed painting. Two more were unconscious on the floor, others were staggering on their feet, one was retching and trying to catch his teeth as the effort sent them out of his mouth.

Schmidt gestured to the businessmen in the corner and then to the hanging figure. “Get him down.” He walked up to the stage where the storm troopers were still too busy to notice him. “Police,” he said, clearly, without shouting.

One by one they lowered weapons and turned to face him. A couple were smirking. Not one of them was older than twenty.

“Who put you up to this?” Schmidt asked conversationally.

The smirk on one face grew wider. “Decency.”

Schmidt looked at the wooden club in the boy’s hands and knew he could take it from him and smash his face with it and knew, too, that if he did, he wouldn’t stop.

He heard Willi’s voice behind him giving orders. “Send these men to the Alex. And get the medics up here.”

He looked around. The Parasol boys were either too shocked or too injured to be coherent. He went up to their customers. “Was the one they call Marlene here tonight?” he asked.

A short, fat man stepped forward, settling his jacket. He sported a mustache and a wing collar; he looked like everybody’s bank manager. “I should make it clear, Inspector, that my friend and I had no idea what sort of club this was. We merely stopped in for a drink.”

Schmidt smiled, took him by his lapels, and raised him to tiptoe. “And I should make it clear”—he rocked the man back and forth— “that I do not care a fuck about you and your friend. I want to know if Marlene was here.”

A younger man stepped forward. “They took her. Him, I mean.”

“Where? Who did?”

“Two of them. They took her through there.” He pointed to a curtain by the side of the stage. “She was just starting her act.”

“Thank you,” Schmidt said. “Willi, here.”

They barged through the curtain into a small corridor, yelling, “Police!”

Some bolts were drawn back and a door opened, a man peeped out.

“Who are you?” Willi demanded.

“Have they gone? I heard the rumpus.”

“Where’s Marlene?” Schmidt shouted at him.

“I don’t know. I heard the rumpus and—”

Schmidt pushed past him, opening doors. A dressing room, smelling of cheap scent with bulbs around a huge mirror. A less fragrant lavatory. A broom closet. And, at the end, a door leading onto a fire escape that descended into a yard made dark by the loom of surrounding buildings. “Get a flashlight, Willi.”

Light showed an open gate and overflowing trash cans. One was overturned, and there was blood dripped on its scattered contents. “She was struggling.”

A tiny, rubbish-filled alley raised Schmidt’s hopes. They’d leave her here. Above the rattle of the nearby S-Bahn, he yelled, “You go that way, I’ll go up here!”

He stumbled to the end of the alley.

He met Willi coming back. “They took her out the other end, boss. A waiter having a smoke saw a big woman being forced into a Mercedes, a Silver Arrow, he said it was.”

“Get a description out, Willi.”

“Who
is
this Marlene?” Willi asked. “Important, is she?”

“Yes. I want that car stopped.”