Mercedes's big seat.
'Yes, I was in Turkey.' Christ, there were so many people taking an interest in my war record all of a sudden, that I wondered if I hadn't better apply for an Old Comrades Badge. I looked out of the window and saw that we were driving towards the Grunewald, an area of forest that lies on the west side of the city, near the River Havel.
'Commissioned?'
'Sergeant.' I heard him smile.
'I was a major,' he said, and that was me put firmly in my place. 'And you became a policeman after the war?'
'No, not right away. I was a civil servant for a while, but I couldn't stand the routine. I didn't join the force until 1922.'
'And when did you leave?'
'Listen, Herr Doktor, I don't remember you putting me on oath when I got into the car.'
'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I was merely curious to discover whether you left of your own accord, or '
'Or was pushed? You've got a lot of forehead asking me that, Schemm.'
'Have I?' he said innocently.
'But I'll answer your question. I left. I dare say if I'd waited long enough they'd have weeded me out like all the others. I'm not a National Socialist, but I'm not a fucking Kozi either; I dislike Bolshevism just like the Party does, or at least I think it does. But that's not quite good enough for the modern Kripo or Sipo or whatever it's called now. In their book if you're not for it you must be against it.'
'And so you, a Kriminalinspektor, left Kripo,' he paused, and then added in tones of affected surprise, 'to become the house detective at the Adlon Hotel.'
'You're pretty cute,' I sneered, 'asking me all these questions when you already know the answers.'
'My client likes to know about the people who work for him,' he said smugly.
'I haven't taken the case yet. Maybe I'll turn it down just to see your face.'
'Maybe. But you'd be a fool. Berlin has a dozen like you private investigators.'
He named my profession with more than a little distaste.
'So why pick me?'
'You have worked for my client before, indirectly. A couple of years ago you conducted an insurance investigation for the Germania Life Assurance Company, of which my client is a major shareholder. While the Kripo were still whistling in the dark you were successful in recovering some stolen bonds.'
'I remember it.' And I had good reason to. It had been one of my first cases after leaving the Adlon and setting up as a private investigator. I said: 'I was lucky.'
'Never underestimate luck,' said Schemm pompously. Sure, I thought: just look at the Fuhrer.
By now we were on the edge of the Grunewald Forest in Dahlem, home to some of the richest and most influential people in the country, like the Ribbentrops. We pulled up at a huge wrought-iron gate which hung between massive walls, and Freshface had to hop out to wrestle it open. Ulrich drove on through.
'Drive on,' ordered Schemm. 'Don't wait. We're late enough as it is.' We drove along an avenue of trees for about five minutes before arriving at a wide gravel courtyard around which were set on three sides a long centre building and the two wings that comprised the house. Ulrich stopped beside a small fountain and jumped out to open the doors. We got out.
Circling the courtyard was an ambulatory, with a roof supported by thick beams and wooden columns, and this was patrolled by a man with a pair of evil-looking Dobermanns. There wasn't much light apart from the coachlamp by the front door, but as far as I could see the house was white with pebbledash walls and a deep mansard roof as big as a decent-sized hotel of the sort that I couldn't afford.
Somewhere in the trees behind the house a peacock was screaming for help.
Closer to the door I got my first good look at the doctor. I suppose he was quite a handsome man. Since he was at least fifty, I suppose you would say that he was distinguished-looking. Taller than he had seemed when sitting in the back of the car, and dressed fastidiously, but with a total disregard for fashion. He wore a stiff collar you could have sliced a loaf with, a pin-striped suit of a light-grey shade, a creamy-coloured waistcoat and spats; his only hand was gloved in grey kid, and on his neatly cropped square grey head he wore a large grey hat with a brim that surrounded the high, well-pleated crown like a castle moat. He looked like an old suit of armour.
He ushered me towards the big mahogany door, which swung open to reveal an ashen-faced butler who stood aside as we crossed the threshold and stepped into the wide entrance hall. It was the kind of hall that made you feel lucky just to have got through the door. Twin flights of stairs with gleaming white banisters led up to the upper floors, and on the ceiling hung a chandelier that was bigger than a church-bell and gaudier than a stripper's earrings. I made a mental note to raise my fees.
The butler, who was an Arab, bowed gravely and asked me for my hat.
'I'll hang on to it, if you don't mind,' I said, feeding its brim through my fingers. 'It'll help to keep my hands off the silver.'
'As you wish, sir.'
Schemm handed the butler his own hat as if to the manor born. Maybe he was, but with lawyers I always assume that they came by their wealth and position through avarice and by means nefarious: I never yet met one that I could trust. His glove he neatly removed with an almost double-jointed contortion of his fingers, and dropped it into his hat. Then he straightened his necktie and asked the butler to announce us.
We waited in the library. It wasn't big by the standards of a Bismarck or a Hindenburg, and you couldn't have packed more than six cars between the Reichstag-sized desk and the door. It was decorated in early Lohengrin, with its great beams, granite chimney-piece in which a log crackled quietly, and wall-mounted weaponry. There were plenty of books, of the sort you buy by the metre: lots of German poets and philosophers and jurists with whom I can claim a degree of familiarity, but only as the names of streets and cafTs and bars.
I took a hike around the room. 'If I'm not back in five minutes, send out a search party.'
Schemm sighed and sat down on one of the two leather sofas that were positioned at right angles to the fire. He picked a magazine off the rack and pretended to read. 'Don't these little cottages give you claustrophobia?' Schemm sighed petulantly, like an old maiden aunt catching the smell of gin on the pastor's breath.
'Do sit down, Herr Gunther,' he said.
I ignored him. Fingering the two hundreds in my trouser pocket to help me stay awake, I meandered over to the desk and glanced over its green-leather surface.
There was a copy of the Berliner Tageblatt, well read, and a pair of half-moon spectacles; a pen; a heavy brass ashtray containing the butt of a well-chewed cigar and, next to it, the box of Black Wisdom Havanas from which it had been taken; a pile of correspondence and several silver-framed photographs. I glanced over at Schemm, who was making heavy weather of his magazine and his eyelids, and then picked up one of the framed photographs. She was dark and pretty, with a full figure, which is just how I like them, although I could tell that she might find my after-dinner conversation quite resistible: her graduation robes told me that.
'She's beautiful, don't you think?' said a voice that came from the direction of the library door and caused Schemm to get up off the sofa. It was a singsong sort of voice with a light Berlin accent. I turned to face its owner and found myself looking at a man of negligible stature. His face was florid and puffy and had something so despondent in it that I almost failed to recognize it. While Schemm was busy bowing I mumbled something complimentary about the girl in the photograph.
'Herr Six,' said Schemm with more obsequy than a sultan's concubine, 'may I introduce Herr Bernhard Gunther.' He turned to me, his voice changing to suit my depressed bank balance. 'This is Herr Doktor Hermann Six.' It was funny, I thought, how it was that in more elevated circles everyone was a damned doctor.
I shook his hand and found it held for an uncomfortably long time as my new client's eyes looked into my face. You get a lot of clients who do that: they reckon themselves as judges of a man's character, and after all they're not going to reveal their embarrassing little problems to a man who looks shifty and dishonest: so it's fortunate that I've got the look of someone who is steady and dependable. Anyway, about the new client's eyes: they were blue, large and prominent, and with an odd son of watery brightness in them, as if he had just stepped out of a cloud of mustard gas. It was with some shock that it dawned on me that the man had been crying.
Six released my hand and picked up the photograph I'd just been looking at. He stared at it for several seconds and then sighed profoundly.
