Prague Fatale (36 page)

By now Albert Kuttner was hardly recognizable as a human being. His intestines – most of them – were resting on the upturned palm of his own hand as if, like the perfect aide-de-camp he had possibly hoped to become, he might assist even in the process of his own dissection.

Hamperl placed the chest-plate on a nearby table where it remained like the remains of a Christmas goose.

I cleared my nose, noisily.

‘Commissar? Are you all right?’

‘I’m just trying to see the lighter side of things that you were talking about earlier, sir.’

‘Good.’

But the Professor sounded almost disappointed that I was not yet lying on the floor.

‘Cutting the pulmonary artery,’ he said to Honek. ‘Checking for blood clots. Which we have. Probably a post-mortem blood-clot.’ He slashed some more of the lungs and then squeezed the heart. ‘Feels like something hard in here. A bullet probably. See if you can find it, will you, Doctor Honek?’

He handed the heart to the other man and got to work with the scalpel again, slashing at the flesh holding what looked like a shiny red football.

‘The liver, is it?’ I asked.

‘Very good, Commissar Gunther. The liver it is.’ Hamperl laid the liver in another dish before removing the spleen as well.

‘Looks like this got hit, too,’ he said. ‘It’s almost in pieces.’

I went over to the table where Honek was still palpating
the heart to isolate the bullet, and glanced briefly at the spleen.

‘It’s a mess all right.’

‘That certainly covers all of what’s in the medical dictionary,’ observed Hamperl.

Honek had isolated the bullet. He cut it out and laid it in a separate metal tray like a gold-prospector putting aside a precious nugget. This was easier on the eye than watching Hamperl clamp Kuttner’s small intestine so that he could haul it out in one block. I’d seen one too many of my comrades in the freezing cold of the trenches with their steaming guts hanging out of their tunics to view that particular sight with any equanimity.

So far we had been there for less than thirty minutes and already the kidneys were being removed.

The second bullet was lodged deep in the spine and took several minutes to gouge out.

When that was done Hamperl asked, ‘Do you wish me to remove the brain?’

‘No. I don’t think it will be necessary.’

‘Then that would appear to be that, for now.’ He shrugged. ‘Of course, it will take a while to analyse the organs, the haematology, and the contents of the stomach. Naturally I will test the quantities of Veronal present then.’

‘At this moment in time I must ask you both not to make any verbal reference to a second bullet,’ I said. ‘As far as anyone else is concerned, just the one shot was fired.’

‘Am I to understand that you plan on using this subterfuge as the basis for some incriminating piece of cross-examination?’ said the Professor.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I am. You can mention your real findings in your written report, of course.’

‘Very well,’ said the Professor. ‘It’ll be our little secret until you say otherwise, Commissar.’

When both bullets were lying in a tray I took a closer look. I’d seen enough spent lead in my time to recognize metal from a thirty-eight when I saw it.

‘Right now, I’d be grateful if you were to indulge me with your first thoughts, sir.’

‘All right.’

Professor Hamperl sighed and then thought for a moment.

‘Both shots seem to have been fired at fairly close range,’ he said. ‘Of course I should have to check the shirt for powder burns to give you an accurate distance, but the size of the entry wounds persuades me, strongly, that the shooter could not have been more than half a metre away when these shots were fired. The angle of the entries would seem to indicate that the person who fired the shots was immediately in front of him. The grouping of the shots was tight, as if the two shots were fired in very quick succession before the victim moved very much.’

‘If the shooter fired at only half a metre’s distance, why didn’t the slugs go straight through him?’

‘One clipped the rib and lost most of its velocity before it penetrated the heart, I shouldn’t wonder,’ Hamperl said thoughtfully. ‘And the other lodged deep in the spine, as you saw. That’s why.

‘As I say, we’ll have to see how much barbiturate was absorbed by his organs but on the basis of the organ damage and the amount of blood that was in the diaphragm, I’d say it was the shots that killed him, not the Veronal.’

‘What do you know about that stuff?’

‘Barbital? It’s been around for a good while. Almost forty years. It was first synthesized by two German chemists. Bayer
sells the stuff as a soluble salt or in tablet form. Ten to fifteen grammes would be a safe dose; but fifty or sixty could be lethal.’

‘That’s not much of a margin for error,’ I said.

‘Of course for someone using it regularly, they would soon develop a tolerance of the drug and possibly require a higher dose, which they might easily accommodate without any mishap. But if they left off taking it for a while, it’d be a mistake to start again with a high dose. Possibly a lethal one.’

‘So it has to be handled with care.’

‘Oh yes. It’s powerful stuff. My own sleep would have to be very disturbed to want to take it myself. All the same it’s a lot better than its predecessor: bromides. There’s no unpleasant taste with Veronal. In fact, there’s not much taste at all.’

‘Any side effects?’

‘It would certainly affect the heart rate, the pulse, and the blood pressure. And of course that would substantially affect the bleeding. Perhaps there would have been more blood exiting from the wounds if this man hadn’t sedated himself. As it is, most of the blood from the wounds was in the diaphragm.’

‘Anything else?’

‘You wouldn’t want to mix the stuff with alcohol. It reacts badly in the stomach. I’ve seen cases of people who mixed it and were choked to death when they vomited in their sleep.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Will there be anything else?’

‘I believe there’s a way that you can find out if he was homosexual.’

Hamperl didn’t bat an eyelid.

‘Ah, yes, I see. The shaven pubic area. Yes, it is unusual for
a man to shave himself down there. It might indicate an effeminate inclination, yes. I see what you mean. Intriguing, isn’t it?’

‘There were other things that make me think he might be homosexual,’ I added. ‘Things I can’t tell you about. But I would like to know for sure.’

‘Sometimes,’ agreed Hamperl, ‘in a habitual sodomite the anus becomes dilated. It loses its natural puckered orifice and develops a thicker, keratinized skin. Or even becomes like an open shutter on a camera. I assume you’re referring to that. Would you like me to take a look?’

‘Yes.’

Doctor Honek, would you help me to turn the cadaver over, please?’

The two men wrestled the gutted body onto what there was of its front and spread the dead man’s buttocks.

After a moment or two Hamperl started to shake his head.

‘The anus looks all right to me. Of course, the fact that there has been no apparent interference doesn’t indicate that he wasn’t homosexual. But I could always swab the anus for semen when I do some of the other tests. And swab his penis for traces of faecal matter.’

‘Please do that.’

Hamperl was trying to conceal a gleeful, triumphant smile. ‘An SS officer who was homosexual. Perhaps that’s why he was murdered. I can’t imagine this sort of thing goes down well in Berlin.’

Hamperl exchanged a look with Doctor Honek, who was looking equally amused.

‘Of course one hears things. About Berlin and transvestitism.’

I nodded. ‘All the same, if I were you I wouldn’t mention
this either. The SS doesn’t have much of a sense of humour about that sort of thing. It would be a shame to find that out the hard way.’

‘You’ll have my histological report on the organs and my pathological diagnosis in forty-eight hours, Commissar.’

‘Thanks, again.’

The Professor escorted me to the door.

‘So, Commissar, will you be leaving your own body to science do you think? For medical students to use in the anatomy lab.’

I glanced at the shambles that was a man I had been speaking to about a painting by Gustav Klimt at Jungfern-Breschan just twenty-four hours earlier.

‘No, I don’t think I will.’

‘Pity. A man as tall as you must have a fine skeleton. I sometimes think that the real fun stuff for our bodies doesn’t start until we’re dead.’

‘I’m already looking forward to it.’

Kahlo apologized again as Klein drove us away from the hospital.

‘You get used to it,’ I said.

‘Not me. Not ever. It was the smell of the ether that really got to me I think. Reminded me of when my mother died.’

‘Bad huh?’ said Klein.

Kahlo shook his head, but his expression told a different story and seeing it in his rear-view mirror Klein reached into the leather pocket on the inside of the driver’s door and took out a silver flask.

‘I keep this for cold days,’ he said and handed it to me.

‘It doesn’t get much colder than that,’ I said. ‘Not for Captain Kuttner, anyway.’ I took a bite off the flask, which
was full of good schnapps, and handed it back to Kahlo.

‘That bastard.’ Kahlo upended the flask. ‘That bastard Professor was enjoying it, too. My discomfort. Did you hear him, sir? The way he started laying it on. I thought, fuck this. I’m off. He’s having a laugh at my expense.’

‘That he was,’ I said. ‘But a man has to take pleasure in his work where and when he can. Especially in this country.’

I bent forward to the floor of the car, lit a cigarette and handed it back to him.

‘There was a time when
I
took pleasure in my work, too. When I was good at it. Those were the days when the Berlin Murder Squad was the best in the world. When I was a real detective. A professional. What I didn’t know about the science of murder wasn’t worth knowing. But now.’ I shook my head. ‘Now I’m just an amateur. A rather quaint and old-fashioned amateur.’

It was five-thirty in the afternoon, and back in the library at the Lower Castle irritation and disappointment hung in the air like mustard gas ready to contaminate the lungs of all who were unfortunate enough to breathe it in. SS and Gestapo officers shook their heads and smoked furiously and looked around for someone to blame. Opinions were offered and rejected angrily and offered again until voices were raised and accusations made. There appeared to be several of them in the library, and while ultimately there was only one man whose opinion counted there were others who were determined not to be held responsible for ‘the failure’.

Kahlo and I had crept into the Morning Room so as to avoid being drawn into these recriminations; but we left the door wide open so that we could hear and increase our
strength, for a wise man is strong and a man who listens at doors increases his strength.

‘We let him slip through our fingers,’ raged Heydrich. ‘We have at our disposal the most powerful police force ever seen in this city and yet we don’t seem to be able to catch one man.’

‘It’s too early to give up hope, sir.’ This sounded like Horst Bohme, the head of the SD in Prague. His Berlin accent was instantly recognizable to me. ‘We’re continuing to conduct house-to-house searches for Moravek and even now I’m certain that something will turn up.’

‘We know his name,’ said Heydrich, ignoring him. ‘We know what he looks like. We even know he’s somewhere in the city and yet we can’t find him. It’s a total bloody failure. An embarrassment.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘An opportunity thrown away, gentlemen,’ stormed Heydrich. ‘However, I suppose I shouldn’t really be all that surprised, given what happened here in May. At the UVOD safe house in – what was the name of that dumb Czecho street, Fleischer?’

‘Pod Terebkov Street, sir,’ said Fleischer.

‘You had them all in your fucking hands,’ yelled Heydrich. ‘They were trapped in that damned apartment. And still you managed to let two of them escape. Jesus, I should have you shot for incompetence or for being complicit in their evading capture. Either way I should have you shot.’

‘Sir,’ protested Fleischer. ‘With all due respect they were thirty metres off the ground. They used a steel radio aerial to slide out of the window thirty metres down to that courtyard. It was covered in blood when we found it. A man’s fingers were on the ground.’

‘Why didn’t you have men in the courtyard? Is there a shortage of SS and Gestapo here in Prague? Well, Bohme? Is there?’

‘No sir.’

‘Fleischer?’

‘No, Herr General.’

‘So this time you would think we could get it right. This time we have a photograph of Vaclav Moravek. We know the safe house he’s been using for the last five months. And what do we find? A note, addressed to me. Remind me of what Moravek’s note said, Fleischer.’