March Violets (19 page)

‘Is it?' I said.

She tutted and sighed and shook her head all at once. ‘Well, of course it is. The simple fact of the matter is that Germany is preparing for war, and so conventional economic policy is of little or no relevance.'

I nodded intelligently. ‘Yes, I see what you mean.' She sat down on the arm of her chair, and folded her arms.

‘I was speaking to someone who still works on the DAZ,' she said, ‘and he says that there's a rumour that in a couple of months, Goering will assume control over the second four-year economic plan. Given his declared interest in the setting up of state-owned raw material plants to guarantee the supply of strategic resources, such as iron ore, one can imagine that Six is less than happy about that possibility. You see, the steel industry suffered from considerable over-capacity during the depression. Six is reluctant to sanction the investment that is required for Germany to become self-sufficient in iron ore because he knows that as soon as the rearmament boom finishes, he'll find himself massively over-capitalized, producing expensive iron and steel, itself the result of the high cost of producing and using domestic iron ore. He'll be unable to sell German steel abroad because of the high price. Of course, it goes without saying that Six wants business to keep the initiative in the German economy. And my guess is that he'll be doing his best to persuade the other leading businessmen to join him in opposing Goering. If they fail to back him, there's no telling what he's capable of. He's not above fighting dirty. It's my suspicion, and it's only a suspicion, mind, that he has contacts in the underworld.'

The stuff on German economic policy was of marginal consequence, I thought; but Six and the underworld, well that really got me interested.

‘What makes you say that?'

‘Well, first there was the strike-breaking that occurred during the steel strikes,' she said. ‘Some of the men who beat up workers had gangland connections. Many of them were ex-convicts, members of a ring, you know, one of those criminal rehabilitation societies.'

‘Can you remember the name of this ring?' She shook her head.

‘It wasn't German Strength, was it?'

‘I don't remember.' She thought some more. ‘I could probably dig up the names of the people involved, if that would help.'

‘If you can,' I said, ‘and anything else you can produce on that strike-breaking episode, if you wouldn't mind.'

There was a lot more, but I already had my seventy-five-marks worth. Knowing more about my private, secretive client, I felt that I was properly in the driving seat. And now that I'd heard her out, it occurred to me that I could make use of her.

‘How would you like to come and work for me? I need someone to be my assistant, someone to do the digging around in public records and to be here now and then. I think it would suit you. I could pay you, say, sixty marks a week. Cash, so we wouldn't have to inform the labour people. Maybe more if things work out. What do you say?'

‘Well if you're sure . . .' She shrugged. ‘I could certainly use the money.'

‘That's settled then.' I thought for a minute. ‘Presumably, you still have a few contacts on papers, in government departments?' She nodded. ‘Do you happen to know anyone in the DAF, the German Labour Service?'

She thought for a minute, and fiddled with the buttons on her jacket. ‘There was someone,' she said, ruminatively. ‘An ex-boyfriend, an SA man. Why do you ask?'

‘Give him a call, and ask him to take you out this evening.'

‘But I haven't seen or spoken to him in months,' she said. ‘And it was bad enough getting him to leave me alone the last time. He's a real leech.' Her blue eyes glanced anxiously at me.

‘I want you to find out anything you can about what Six's son-in-law, Paul Pfarr, was so interested in that he was there several times a week. He had a mistress, too, so anything you can find out about her as well. And I mean anything.'

‘I'd better wear an extra pair of knickers, then,' she said. ‘The man has hands like he thinks he should have been a midwife.' For the briefest of moments I allowed myself a small pang of jealousy, as I imagined him making a pass at her. Perhaps in time I might do the same.

‘I'll ask him to take me to see a show,' she said, summoning me from my erotic reverie. ‘Maybe even get him a little drunk.'

‘That's the idea,' I said. ‘And if that fails, offer the bastard money.'

Tegal Prison lies to the north-west of Berlin and borders a small lake and the Borsig Locomotive Company housing-estate. As I drove onto Seidelstrasse, its red-brick walls heaved into sight like the muddy flanks of some horny-skinned dinosaur; and when the heavy wooden door banged shut behind me, and the blue sky vanished as though it had been switched off like an electric light, I began to feel a certain amount of sympathy for the inmates of what is one of Germany's toughest prisons.

A menagerie of warders lounged around the main entrance hall, and one of these, a pug-faced man smelling strongly of carbolic soap and carrying a bunch of keys that was about the size of the average car tyre, led me through a Cretan labyrinth of yellowing, toilet-bricked corridors and into a small cobbled courtyard in the centre of which stood the guillotine. It's a fearsome-looking object, and always sends a chill down my spine when I see it again. Since the Party had come to power, it had seen quite a bit of action, and even now it was being tested, no doubt in preparation for the several executions that were posted on the gate as scheduled for dawn the next morning.

The warder led me through an oak door and up a carpeted stairway, to a corridor. At the end of the corridor, the warder stood outside a polished mahogany door and knocked. He paused for a second or two and then ushered me inside. The prison governor, Dr Konrad Spiedel, rose from behind his desk to greet me. It was several years since I had first made his acquaintance, when he'd been governor of Brauweiler Prison, near Köln, but he had not forgotten the occasion:

‘You were seeking information on the cellmate of a prisoner,' he recalled, nodding towards an armchair. ‘Something to do with. a bank robbery.'

‘You've a good memory, Herr Doktor,' I said.

‘I confess that my recall is not entirely fortuitous,' he said. ‘The same man is now a prisoner within these walls, on another charge.' Spiedel was a tall, broad-shouldered man of about fifty. He wore a Schiller tie and an olive-green Bavarian jacket; and in his buttonhole, the black-and-white silk bow and crossed swords that denoted a war veteran.

‘Oddly enough, I'm here on the same sort of mission,' I explained. ‘I believe that until recently you had a prisoner here by the name of Kurt Mutschmann. I was hoping that you could tell me something about him.'

‘Mutschmann, yes, I remember him. What can I tell you except that he kept out of trouble while he was here, and seemed quite a reasonable fellow?' Spiedel stood up and went over to his filing cabinet, and rummaged through several sections. ‘Yes, here we are. Mutschmann, Kurt Hermann, aged thirty-six. Convicted of car theft April 1934, sentenced to two years' imprisonment. Address given as Cicerostrasse, Number 29, Halensee.'

‘Is that where he went on discharge?'

‘I'm afraid your guess is as good as mine. Mutschmann had a wife, but during his imprisonment it would seem from his record that she visited him only the one time. It doesn't look like he had much to look forward to on the outside.'

‘Did he have any other visitors?'

Spiedel consulted the file. ‘Just the one, from the Union of Ex-Convicts, a welfare organization we are led to believe, although I have my doubts as to the authenticity of that organization. A man by the name of Kasper Tillessen. He visited Mutschmann on two occasions.'

‘Did Mutschmann have a cellmate?'

‘Yes, he shared with 7888319, Bock, H.J.' He retrieved another file from the drawer. ‘Hans Jürgen Bock, aged thirty-eight. Convicted of assaulting and maiming a man in the old Steel Workers Union in March 1930, sentenced to six years' imprisonment.'

‘Do you mean that he was a strike-breaker?'

‘Yes, he was.'

‘You wouldn't happen to have the particulars of that case, would you?'

Spiedel shook his head. ‘I'm afraid not. The case file has been sent back to Criminal Records at the Alex.' He paused. ‘Hmm. This might help you, though. On discharge Bock gave the address where he was intending to stay as “Care of Pension Tillessen, Chamissoplatz, Number 17, Kreuzberg'. Not only that but this same Kasper Tillessen paid Bock a visit on behalf of the Union of Ex-Convicts.' He looked at me vaguely. ‘That's about it, I'm afraid.'

‘I think I've got enough,' I said brightly. ‘It was kind of you to give me some of your time.'

Spiedel adopted an expression of great sincerity, and with some solemnity he said: ‘Sir, it was my pleasure to help the man who brought Gormann to justice.'

I reckon that in ten years from now, I'll still be trading off that Gormann business.

 

When a man's wife visits him only once in two years' cement, then she doesn't bake him a sponge-cake to celebrate his freedom. But it was possible that Mutschmann had seen her after his release, if only to knock the shit out of her, so I decided to check her out anyway. You always eliminate the obvious. That's fundamental to detection.

Neither Mutschmann nor his wife lived at the address in Cicerostrasse any more. The woman I spoke to there told me that Frau Mutschmann had re-married, and was living in Ohm-strasse on the Siemens housing-estate. I asked her if anyone else had been around looking for her, but she told me that there hadn't.

It was 7.30 by the time I got to the Siemens housing-estate. There are as many as a thousand houses on it, each of them built of the same whitewashed brick, and providing accommodation for the families of the employees of the Siemens Electrical Company. I couldn't imagine anything less congenial than living in a house that had all the character of a sugar lump; but I knew that in the Third Reich there were many worse things being done in the name of progress than the homogenizing of workers' dwellings.

Standing outside the front door, my nose caught the smell of cooking meat, pork I thought, and suddenly I realized how hungry I was; and how tired. I wanted to be at home, or seeing some easy, brainless show with Inge. I wanted to be anywhere other than confronting the flint-faced brunette who opened the door to me. She wiped her mottled pink hands on her grubby apron and eyed me suspiciously.

‘Frau Buverts?' I said, using her new married name, and almost hoping she wasn't.

‘Yes,' she said crisply. ‘And who might you be? Not that I need to ask. You've got bull stapled to each dumb ear. So I'll tell you once, and then you can clear off. I haven't seen him in more than eighteen months. And if you should find him, then tell him not to come after me. He's as welcome here as a Jew's prick up Goering's arse. And that goes for you, too.'

It's the small manifestations of ordinary good humour and common courtesy that make the job so worthwhile.

 

Later that night, between 11 and 1 1.30, there was a loud knock at my front door. I hadn't had a drink, but the sleep I'd been having was deep enough to make me feel as if I had. I walked unsteadily into the hall, where the faint chalky outline of Walther Kolb's body on the floor brought me out of my sleepy stupor and prompted me to go back and get my spare gun. There was another knock, louder this time, followed by a man's voice.

‘Hey, Gunther, it's me, Rienacker. Come on, open up, I want to talk to you.'

‘I'm still aching from our last little chat.'

‘Aw, you're not still sore about that, are you?'

‘I'm fine about it. But as far as my neck is concerned, you're strictly
persona non grata.
Especially at this time of night.'

‘Hey, no hard feelings, Gunther,' said Rienacker. ‘Look, this is important. There's money in it.' There was a long pause, and when Rienacker spoke again, there was an edge of irritation in his bass voice. ‘Come on, Gunther, open up, will you? What the fuck are you so scared of? If I was arresting you, I'd have busted the door down by now.' There was some truth in that, I thought, so I opened the door, revealing his massive figure. He glanced coolly at the gun in my hand, and nodded as if admitting that for the moment I still had an advantage.

‘You weren't expecting me, then,' he said drily.

‘Oh, I knew it was you all right, Rienacker. I heard your knuckles dragging on the stairs.'

He snorted a laugh that was mainly tobacco smoke. Then he said: ‘Get dressed, we're going for a ride. And better leave the hammer.'

I hesitated. ‘What's the matter?'

He grinned at my discomfiture. ‘Don't you trust me?'

‘Now why do you say that? The nice man from the Gestapo knocks on my door at midnight, and asks me if I'd like to take a spin in his big shiny-black motor-car. Naturally I just go weak at the knees because I know that you've booked us the best table at Horcher's.'

‘Someone important wants to see you,' he yawned. ‘Someone very important.'

‘They've named me for the Olympic shit-throwing team, right?' Rienacker's face changed colour and his nostrils flared and contracted quickly, like two emptying hot-water bottles. He was starting to get impatient.

‘All right, all right,' I said. ‘I suppose I'm going whether I like it or not. I'll get dressed.' I went towards the bedroom. ‘And no peeking.'

It was a big black Mercedes, and I climbed in without a word. There were two gargoyles in the front seat, and lying on the floor in the back, his hands cuffed behind him, was the semi-conscious body of a man. It was dark, but from his moans I could tell that he'd taken quite a beating. Rienacker got in behind me. With the movement of the car, the man on the floor stirred and made a half attempt to get up. It earned him the toe of Rienacker's boot against his ear.