The Killing of Emma Gross (18 page)

'What do I think?' I waved his jacket at him. 'I think I should kick you to bits down here for that shitty so-called interview you published.'

'What? Jesus, Marx and Engels, Tom, you're a piece of work.' He tried to get to his feet. His left ankle gave and he fell. 'You make a guy out to be a hero and he beats up on you for the privilege.' He tried to get up again and again he fell down. 'Shit, I think you've broken my ankle.' Panic filled his voice.

I blew cigar smoke at him. The cellar walls were brick, wooden beams running from floor to ceiling at regular intervals with wooden railings to break the space up into stalls. Each stall bore a number drawn in chalk, no doubt corresponding to the apartment numbers in the building above. Most of the stalls were empty, though some still contained small piles of coal.

'So I see you went with my Stausberg-is-innocent theory in the end,' Du Pont said.

'How would you know that?'

'Because I've been following you, you idiot. I saw you go into Grafenberg Asylum. Then I watched you pay a visit to Stausberg's mother. You're onto something, aren't you? I knew it.'

'Why've you been hanging around outside Frau Stausberg's apartment?'

'What?' Du Pont said.

'You heard. You've been hanging around, hassling her for a story.'

'Now why would I do that when I have you to hassle for stories?'

'I ought to kick your teeth in, you know that?' I shook his jacket at him.

'I ought to have an ankle left to kick with, you
arschloch
!'

'That's no more than you deserve. Did you know Kürten's name before you spoke to me, or was that the whole reason for showing me the damn letter?'

'Oh shit,' he said.

'Yeah oh shit. You fed me Baumgart's description without knowing his real name, right? Hoping that if it matched I'd just go ahead and give it to you, right? Well, let me tell you...'

I trailed off. Du Pont hadn't moved at all while I'd been ranting. He'd just sat there and stared past me.

I followed his gaze back to the cellar door. A man squatted on the top step. He was big enough and broad enough to block out the light. He wore a green fedora and had a green scarf wrapped around his neck all the way up over his chin.

He also had a piece of metal in his hand that was shaped very much like a Luger. He was moving the business end of the barrel from one to the other of us in quick succession.

I smiled. Didn't know if this guy had seen any action in the trenches, but I sure as shit had, and in the gloom and the close quarters I was right back there, shock trooper drill kicking in.
Rush them, keep them off balance, never let them draw breath –
Vorwärts!

I went in close, thrashing Du Pont's coat up and around the hand holding the Luger. I twisted and pulled it to the side. The Luger gave a muffled snarl, compressed hot air singeing the hand I was holding the jacket with, the bullet going wide. I hooked the man with my left fist, but he towered above me. I couldn't reach his nose or his jaw and my knuckles glanced off his chest.

It was enough to push him off balance and make him let go of the Luger. I snatched it away in the remains of Du Pont's powder-burned coat, hurling both of them behind me into the recesses of the cellar.

Disposing of the Luger had taken too long though, and the green man was ready for me as I raised my fists for another blow. He leapt at me, gravity taking the side of his bulk to propel me backwards and downwards. I curled into a ball. My shoulders took the brunt of the fall and I kicked out with my coiled legs. My leather soles snagged the green man in the throat. He choked once and dropped to his knees like a stunned bull.

That was all I needed. Du Pont crowded in and I pushed him out of the way to get at the green man with my fists, knocking him onto his back and straddling his chest as I pounded him into a swollen mess. This guy was big and he could handle himself. I had to make sure he wasn't going to get up again.

He stopped moving and I stopped punching, though I kept a fist hovering above him in case he tried anything.

'Shit, Thomas, is he dead?' Du Pont's voice shook with either shock or adrenaline, I didn't much care which.

'Fetch the gun,' I told him.

Du Pont didn't move.

'The Luger,' I told him. He looked from the green man to me. I lowered my fist and then he moved – as I flexed my fingers trying to get the blood to flow back into them – rooting for the Luger in the crumpled material of his ruined coat. He scrabbled back to me over some coals and I took the gun from him, put it in my hip pocket.

Dark blood oozed through the clipped red-blond moustache beneath the green man's nostrils to the scarf still wrapped around his chin. I didn't fancy being there when he came round, but a mystery man with a Luger was a mystery too far for the kind of day I was having. I slapped both cheeks a couple of times apiece. That failed to rouse him – to be fair I hadn't really expected it to. His hat had fallen off, exposing oiled hair that was probably some shade of red, though in that light it was hard to be sure. I pulled away the scarf. A wide, crooked scar ran from below his left ear to his adam's apple.

'Go through his pockets,' Du Pont said, 'go through his pockets.'

'Shut up, Andre, I'm doing it.'

I went through each pocket in his overcoat and the loose-fitting suit beneath. A wallet and a set of keys in the trousers and some ammunition for the pistol in an inside coat pocket, but that was it. The wallet contained ten Reichsmark and nothing else bar some lint. No ID of any kind. Unusual, and kind of worrying, too. Most citizens carried ID as a matter of course but this guy had a reason not to. A reason strong enough to involve a Luger.

'Who is he?' Du Pont said.

'I don't know. I think he's been following me.'

'Following you? But he can't have. I mean,
I
was following you.'

'He was on the omnibus. You were on there too, right?'

'Right.'

'Well, so was he. Whoever he is, he's been tailing me since Frau Stausberg's place at least.'

'Shit, Thomas. I mean, shit, who is he?'

I shushed Du Pont and took the pistol from my pocket. I checked it. Oiled and in good working order. The magazine carried the full load – minus one – and there was a cartridge in the chamber. The safety catch had been on. So, whoever he was, he was confident that the threat of shooting would do his work without the need to pull the trigger. I knew from the war that if you intended to shoot, the safety was off by the time you pointed the gun. Anything else was just messing around.

But what the hell did he want, this unconscious green man?

Until he came to, there was no way of knowing. My watch told me it was getting close to midday. It was bad enough I'd been absent from Mühlenstrasse all morning: I didn't like to think what Gennat's reaction was going to be if I missed the press conference too.

That said, was I really going to leave my friend Du Pont and a mystery man with a loaded pistol free to roam while I played nice back at headquarters?

'Help me drag him over there,' I said to Du Pont.

I nodded at a set of wooden railings close to the back wall of the cellar. We dragged the man over. It was slow going, with Du Pont moaning about his ankle all the way. When we got to the back wall I pressed the green man's unbroken wrist against a railing.

'Here, hold this,' I told Du Pont. He held the wrist in place and I bound it to the railing with his scarf. Before Du Pont could move away I looped the scarf around his hand a couple of times too, and then tied it to a second railing.

'What are you doing?' Du Pont shouted.

'Sorry, my friend, but I can't have either of you wandering free.'

Du Pont swung his free hand around to tug at the knots I'd tied. The green man wore a thin leather belt. I undid the clasp and pulled it free. I pushed Du Pont back against the railings with my foot and tied his free hand to another railing with the belt.

Du Pont wouldn't shut up. Okay, so the apartment block residents were unlikely to need coal at this time of year, even with the wind chill, but if Du Pont kept crying out like this, it wouldn't be long before someone heard him and came to investigate.

I went and picked up his fallen cap. The material was flexible enough for my needs. I scrunched up the cap and stuffed it into Du Pont's mouth. He kept on groaning and thrashing against his restraints.

I slapped his cheek, pretty much as I had with the green man. Du Pont stopped his thrashing.

'Consider this payback, comrade. And don't worry. I'll be back later.' I winked. 'If I don't forget about you, that is.'

I took hold of one of his shirt sleeves at the shoulder stitching and pulled. It tore free after a couple of goes, Du Pont resuming his thrashing as I wound the loose sleeve tight and tied it around his head to stop him from spitting out the cap.

I ascended the steps to the courtyard and leant the cellar door back in place. I put back the latch and tried to make it look as though it was still fastened to the wall. I had a matter of hours, at most, until someone discovered my two prisoners.

A matter of hours would just have to do. Maybe then I could come back and find out who this green man was.

When I got back to Mühlenstrasse, the
Schupo
at the door took one look at my dust-covered clothes and barred my way. I had to show him my ID before he'd stand aside. Even then, the salute he threw me was hesitant in the extreme.

A variety of parked sedans and convertibles crowded the cobbles outside the entrance. I pushed into the courtyard, hoping I could brush off the worst of the dust and slip into the press conference quietly enough to pretend to Gennat I'd been there from the beginning. The hum of voices came from the old Jesuit chapel building – now a training gym for the
Schupo
recruits – that lined the longest side of the yard.

Someone grabbed me by the ear and said, 'And where've you been, comrade?' It was Vogel. He sniffed and spat phlegm onto the cobbles. 'Jesus, you're a mess. You been applying for a job down the coal mines this morning or something?' He brushed me down with his free hand.

'I don't have time for this.'

'No, you don't have time. Gennat wants you at the conference.' Vogel pulled me towards the chapel.

'Come on, Vogel, I can't go in there looking like this.'

Vogel let go of my ear and came round to face me. He ran his eyes up and down my sorry clothing. He broke into a grin and shifted a trilby to the back of his blond head. Odd, but he'd never struck me as a trilby wearer.

'You are in one sorry state.' He laughed. 'Here, take off your jacket.'

He helped me out of my dusty suit jacket and handed me his. Then he put his hat on my head.

'There,' he said. 'Not great, but much better.'

'The sleeves are too long.' I stretched out my arms to show him.

'At least they're not covered in coal dust.' He grasped one of my outstretched arms and towed me towards the chapel. 'Though I don't reckon he's going to want you to make any kind of public announcement like this.'

'Thanks. This is
your
jacket.'

'Keep it. I hardly ever wear it, anyway.'

We'd crossed the yard. Vogel knocked on the chapel door. Ritter opened it, straightening up when it registered who he was looking at. I stared at his moustache until he took out a handkerchief and blew his nose. Then he pulled me inside and shut the door behind me.

A score of reporters and photographers sat in folding wooden chairs on the floor where the pews had once been. I recognised a couple of faces. The others must have been from the nationals, some of them, and the news wires too. They'd been following the case in Paris, London and New York as well as Munich, Hamburg and Berlin. A brace of hats in the group marked out the exotic lady reporters. The men, of course, sat with bared heads. I had no intention of following their example.

'Hey, it's Doubting Thomas,' someone shouted. That got a few laughs. A flashbulb went off and I covered my face with Vogel's hat. So much for intentions.

Gennat stood at a lectern facing the reporters. He wore Harris tweeds and smoked one of his cigars. All he needed to complete the look was a monocle. Behind him stood the public prosecutor, a tall man whose softening jawline announced the onset of his run to fat and whose ruddy complexion betrayed high blood pressure. He wore a sober charcoal-grey worsted.

'And so, in answer to your question,' Gennat was saying, 'while we would have been happy to consider any theories brought to us by Mr Wallace, the gentleman made no such approach to the murder commission during my time on the case. Anything you've heard to the contrary is just hearsay, I'm afraid.'

'But it is true you are a fan of Mr Wallace's novels?' asked a reporter with an English accent. Or possibly a Dutch accent. It was hard to tell the difference: neither nationality could handle German consonants without softening them. And what some island monkey crime novelist had to do with a real-life murder inquiry like ours, I could only guess. Goddamned reporters. Was a murder case not interesting enough for them any more?