photographs; one of these was an obscene postcard in which a man was doing things to a girl's bottom with a length of rubber tube; and the other was a publicity still of Lise Rudel, signed, 'with much love'. I burned the photograph of my former bedmate, poured myself a stiff one and, marvelling at the picture of the erotic enema, I called the police.
A couple of bulls came down from the Alex. The senior officer, Oberinspektor Tesmer, was a Gestapo man; the other, Inspektor Stahlecker, was a friend, one of my few remaining friends in Kripo, but with Tesmer around there wasn't a chance of an easy ride.
'That's my story,' I said, having told it for the third time. We were all seated round my dining table on which lay the Parabellum and the contents of the dead man's pockets. Tesmer shook his head slowly, as if I had offered to sell him something he wouldn't have a chance of shifting himself.
'You could always part exchange it for something else. Come on, try again. Maybe this time you'll make me laugh.' With its thin, almost non-existent lips, Tesmer's mouth was like a slash in a length of cheap curtain. And all you saw through the hole were the points of his rodent's teeth, and the occasional glimpse of the ragged, grey- white oyster that was his tongue.
'Look, Tesmer,' I said. 'I know it looks a bit beat up, but take my word for it, it's really very reliable. Not everything that shines is any good.'
'Try shifting some of the fucking dust off it then. What do you know about the canned meat?'
I shrugged. 'Only what was in his pockets. And that he and I weren't going to get along.'
'That wins him quite a few extra points on my card,' said Tesmer. er sat uncomfortably beside his boss, and tugged nervously at his eyepatch. He had lost an eye when he was with the Prussian infantry, and at the same time had won the coveted 'pour le mTrite' for his bravery. Me, I'd have hung onto the eye, although the patch did look rather dashing. Combined with his dark colouring and bushy black moustache, it served to give him a piratical air, although his manner was altogether more stolid: slow even. But he was a good bull, and a loyal friend. All the same, he wasn't about to risk burning his fingers while Tesmer was doing his best to see if I'd catch fire. His honesty had previously led him to express one or two ill-advised opinions about the NSDAP during the '33 elections. Since then he'd had the sense to keep his mouth shut, but he and I both knew that the Kripo Executive was just looking for an excuse to hang him out to dry. It was only his outstanding war record that had kept him in the force this long.
'And I suppose he tried to kill you because he didn't like your cologne,' said Tesmer.
'You noticed it too, huh?' I saw Stahlecker smile a bit at that, but so did Tesmer, and he didn't like it.
'Gunther, you've got more lip than a nigger with a trumpet. Your friend here may think you're funny, but I just think you're a cunt, so don't fuck me around. I'm not the sort with a sense of humour.'
'I've told you the truth, Tesmer. I opened the door and there was Herr Kolb with the lighter pointing at my dinner.'
'A Parabellum on you, and yet you still managed to take him. I don't see any fucking holes in you, Gunther.'
'I'm taking a correspondence course in hypnotism. Like I said, I was lucky, he missed. You saw the broken light.'
'Listen, I don't mesmerize easy. This fellow was a professional. Not the sort to let you have his lighter for a bag of sherbet.'
'A professional what haberdasher? Don't talk out of your navel, Tesmer. He was just a kid.'
'Well, that makes it worse for you, because he isn't going to do any more growing up.'
'Young he may have been,' I said, 'but he was no weakling. I didn't bite my lip because I find you so damned attractive. This is real blood, you know. And my dressing-gown. It's torn, or hadn't you noticed?'
Tesmer laughed scornfully. 'I thought you were just a sloppy dresser.'
'Hey, this is a fifty-mark gown. You don't think I'd tear it just for your benefit, do you?'
'You could afford to buy it, then you could also afford to lose it. I always thought your kind made too much money.' I leaned back in my chair. I remembered Tesmer as one of Police Major Walther Wecke's hatchet-men, charged with rooting out conservatives and Bolsheviks from the force. A mean bastard if ever there was one. I wondered how Stahlecker managed to survive.
'What is it you earn, Gunther? Three? Four hundred marks a week? Probably make as much as me and Stahlecker put together, eh, Stahlecker?' My friend shrugged non-committally.
'I dunno.'
'See?' said Tesmer. 'Even Stahlecker doesn't have any idea how many thousands a year you make.'
'You're in the wrong job, Tesmer. The way you exaggerate, you should work for the Ministry of Propaganda.' He said nothing. 'All right, all right, I get it.
How much is it going to cost me?' Tesmer shrugged, trying to control the grin that threatened to break out on his face.
'From a man with a fifty-mark gown? Let's say a round hundred.'
'A hundred? For that cheap little garter-handler? Go and take another look at him, Tesmer. He doesn't have a Charlie Chaplin moustache and a stiff right arm.'
Tesmer stood up. 'You talk too much, Gunther. Let's hope your mouth begins to fray at the edges before it gets you into serious trouble.' He looked at Stahlecker and then back at me. 'I'm going for a piss. Your old pitman here has got until I come back into the room to persuade you, otherwise ' He pursed his lips and shook his head. As he walked out, I called after him:
'Make sure you lift the seat.' I grinned at Stahlecker.
'How are you doing, Bruno?'
'What is it, Bernie? Have you been drinking? You blue or something? Come on, you know how difficult Tesmer could make things for you. First you plum the man with all that smart talk, and now you want to play the black horse. Pay the bastard.'
'Look, if I don't black horse him a little and drag my heels about paying him that kind of mouse, then he'll figure I'm worth a lot more. Bruno, as soon as I saw that son of a bitch I knew that the evening was going to cost me something.
Before I left Kripo he and Wecke had me marked. I haven't forgotten and neither has he. I still owe him some agony.'
'Well, you certainly made it expensive for yourself when you mentioned the price of that gown.'
'Not really,' I said. 'It cost nearer a hundred.'
'Christ,' breathed Stahlecker. 'Tesmer is right. You are making too much money.'
He thrust his hands deep into his pockets and looked squarely at me. 'Want to tell me what really happened here?'
'Another time, Bruno. It was mostly true.'
'Excepting one or two small details.'
'Right. Listen, I need a favour. Can we meet tomorrow? The matinee at the Kammerlichtespiele in the Haus Vaterland. Back row, at four o'clock.'
Bruno sighed, and then nodded. 'I'll try.'
'Before then see if you can't find out something about the Paul Pfarr case.' He frowned and was about to speak when Tesmer returned from the lavatory.
'I hope you wiped the floor.'
Tesmer pointed a face at me in which belligerence was moulded like cornice-work on a Gothic folly. The set of his jaw and the spread of his nose gave him about as much profile as a piece of lead piping. The general effect was early-Paleolithic.
'I hope you decided to get wise,' he growled. There would have been more chance of reasoning with a water buffalo.
'Seems like I don't have much choice,' I said. 'I don't suppose there's any chance of a receipt?'
Chapter 7
Just off Clayallee, on the edge of Dahlem, was the huge wrought-iron gate to Six's estate. I sat in the car for a while and watched the road. Several times I closed my eyes and found my head nodding. It had been a late night. After a short nap I got out and opened the gate. Then I ambled back to the car and turned onto the private road,
