customer we're talking about? Someone who came for a massage?'
'I won't have to go to court, will I? I'm not saying anything if it means standing up in front of a magistrate and saying I'm a party-girl.'
'The only person you'll have to tell is me.'
The girl sniffed without much enthusiasm.
'Well, you seem all right, I suppose.' She shot a look at the cigarette in rny hand. 'Can I change my mind about that nail?'
'Sure,' I said, and held out the packet.
The first drag seemed to galvanize her. She smarted as she told the story, embarrassed a little, and probably a bit scared as well.
'About a month ago I had a client in one evening. I gave him a massage and when I asked him if he wanted me to dial his number he asked me if he could tie me up and then get himself frenched. I said that it would cost him another twenty, and he agreed. So there I was, trussed up like a roast chicken, having finished frenching him, and I ask him to untie me. He gets this funny look in his eye, and calls me a dirty whore, or something like that. Well you get used to men going mean on you when you've finished, like they're ashamed of themselves, but I could see that this one was different, so I tried to stay calm. Then he got the knife out and start to lay it flat on my neck like he wanted me to be scared. Which I was. Fit to scream my lungs out of my throat, only I didn't want to scare him into cutting me right away, thinking that I might be able to talk him out of it.' She took another tremulous drag on her cigarette.
'But that was just his cue to start throttling me, him thinking that I was about to scream, I mean. He grabbed hold of my windpipe and starts to choke me. If one of the other girls hadn't walked in there by mistake he'd have scratched me out and no mistake. I had the bruises on my neck for almost a week afterwards.'
'What happened when the other girl came in?'
'Well, I couldn't say for sure. I was more concerned with drawing breath than seeing that he got a taxi home all right, you know what I mean? As far as I know he just snatched up his things and got his smell out the door.'
'What did he look like?'
'He had a uniform on.'
'What kind of uniform? Can you be a little more specific?'
She shrugged. 'Who am I, Hermann Goering? Shit, I don't know what kind of uniform it was.'
'Well was it green, black, brown or what? Come on, girl, think. It's important.'
She took a fierce drag and shook her head impatiently.
'An old uniform. The sort they used to wear.'
'You mean like a war veteran?'
'Yes, that's the sort of thing, only a bit more Prussian, I suppose. You know, the waxed moustache, the cavalry boots. Oh yes, I nearly forgot, he had spurs on.'
'Spurs?'
'Yes, like to ride a horse.'
'Anything else you remember?'
'He had a wineskin, on a string which he slung over his shoulder, so that it looked like a bugle at his hip. Only he said that it was full of schnapps.'
I nodded, satisfied, and leant back on the sofa, wondering what it would have been like to have had her after all. For the first time I noticed the yellowish discoloration of her hands which wasn't nicotine, jaundice or her temperament, but a clue that she'd been working in a munitions factory. In the same way I'd once identified a body pulled out of the Landwehr. Another thing I had learned from Hans Illmann.
'Hey, listen,' said Helene, 'if you get this bastard, make sure that he gets all the usual Gestapo hospitality, won't you? Thumbscrews and rubber truncheons?'
'Lady,' I said, standing up, 'you can depend on it. And thanks for helping.'
Helene stood up, her arms folded, and shrugged. 'Yes, well, I was a schoolgirl myself once, you know what I mean?'
I glanced at Evona and smiled. 'I know what you mean.' I jerked my head at the bedrooms along the corridor. 'When Don Juan's concluded his investigations, tell him that I went to question the head-waiter at Peltzers. Then maybe I thought I'd talk to the manager at the Winter Garden and see what I could get out of him. After that I might just head back to the Alex and clean my gun. Who knows, I may even find time to do a little police work along the way.'
Chapter 9
Friday, 16 September.
'Where are you from, Gottfried?'
The man smiled proudly. 'Eger, in the Sudetenland. Another few weeks and you can call it Germany.'
'Foolhardy is what I call it,' I said. 'Another few weeks and your Sudetendeutsche Partei will have us all at war. Martial law has already been declared in most SDP districts.'
'Men must die for what they believe in.' He leant back on his chair and dragged a spur along the floor of the interrogation room. I stood up, loosening my shirt collar, and moved out of the shaft of sunlight that shone through the window. It was a hot day. Too hot to be wearing a jacket, let alone the uniform of an old Prussian cavalry officer. Gottfried Bautz, arrested early that same morning, didn't seem to notice the heat, although his waxed moustache was beginning to show signs of a willingness to stand easy.
'What about women?' I asked. 'Do they have to die as well?'
His eyes narrowed. 'I think that you had better tell me why I have been brought here, don't you, Herr Kommissar?'
'Have you ever been to a massage parlour on Richard Wagner Strasse?'
'No, I don't think so.'
'You're a difficult man to forget, Gottfried. I doubt that you could have made yourself look any easier to remember than if you had rode up the stairs on a white stallion. Incidentally, why do you wear the uniform?'
'I served Germany, and I'm proud of it. Why shouldn't I wear a uniform?'
I started to say something about the war being over, but there didn't seem like much point, what with another one on the way, and Gottfried being such a spinner.
'So,' I said. 'Were you at the massage parlour on Richard Wagner Strasse, or not?'
'Maybe. One doesn't always remember the exact locations of places like that. I don't make a habit of-'
'Spare me the character reference. One of the girls there says that you tried to kill her.'
'That's preposterous.'
'She's quite adamant, I'm afraid.'
'Has this girl made a complaint against me?'
'Yes, she has.'
Gottfried Bautz chuckled smugly. 'Come now, Herr Kommissar. We both know that's not true. In the first place there hasn't been an identification parade. And in the second, even if there was, there's not a snapper in the whole of Germany who would report so much as a lost poodle. No complaint, no witness, and I fail to see why we're having this conversation at all.'
'She says that you tied her up like a hog, nudged her mouth and then tried to strangle her.'
'She says, she says. Look, what is this shit? It's my word against hers.'
'You're forgetting the witness, aren't you, Gottfried? The girl who came in while you were squeezing the shit out of the other one? Like I said, you're not an easy man to forget.'
'I'm prepared to let a court decide who is telling the truth here,' he said.
'Me, a man who fought for his country, or a couple of stupid little honeybees.
Are they prepared to do the same?' He was shouting now, sweat starting off his forehead like pastry-glaze. 'You're just pecking at vomit, and you know it.'
I sat down again and aimed my forefinger at the centre of his face.
'Don't get smart, Gottfried. Not in here. The Alex breaks more skin that way than Max Schmelling, and you don't always get to go back to your dressing-room at the end of the fight.' I folded my hands behind my head, leant
