weeks ago I worked a whole weekend because nobody else was available. He said he'd pay me double-time in cash. But he still hasn't given me my money. That's the kind of pig he is. I bought a dress. It was stupid of me, I should have waited. Well, now I'm behind with the rent.'
I was debating with myself whether or not she was trying to sell me a story when I saw the tears in her eyes. If it was an act it was a damn good one. Either way it deserved some kind of recognition.
She blew her nose, and said: 'Would you give me a cigarette, please?'
'Sure.' I handed her the pack and then thumbed a match.
'You know, Kindermann knew Freud,' she said, coughing a little with her first smoke. 'At the Vienna Medical School, when he was a student. After graduating he worked for a while at the Salzburg Mental Asylum. He's from Salzburg originally.
When his uncle died in 1930, he left him this house, and he decided to turn it into a clinic.'
'It sounds like you know him quite well.'
'Last summer his secretary was sick for a couple of weeks. Kindermann knew I had some secretarial experience and asked me to fill in a while while Tarja was away. I got to know him reasonably well. Well enough to dislike him. I'm not going to stay here much longer. I've had enough, I think. Believe me, there are plenty of others here who feel much the same way.'
'Oh? Think anyone would want to get back at him? Anyone who might have a grudge against him?'
'You're talking about a serious grudge, aren't you? Not just a bit of unpaid overtime.'
'I suppose so,' I said, and flicked my cigarette out of the open window.
Marianne shook her head. 'No, wait,' she said. 'There was someone. About three months ago Kindermann dismissed one of the male nurses for being drunk. He was a nasty piece of work, and I don't think anyone was sad to see him go. I wasn't there myself, but I heard that he used some quite strong language to Kindermann when he left.'
'What was his name, this male nurse?'
'Hering, Klaus Hering I think.' She looked at her watch. 'Hey, I've got to be getting on with my work. I can't stay talking to you all morning.'
'One more thing,' I said. 'I need to take a look around Kindermann's office. Can you help?' She started to shake her head. 'I can't do it without you, Marianne.
Tonight?'
'I don't know. What if we get caught?'
'The we part doesn't come into it. You keep a look-out, and if someone finds you, you say that you heard a noise, and that you were investigating. I'll have to take my chances. Maybe I'll say I was sleepwalking.'
'Oh, that's a good one.'
'Come on, Marianne, what do you say?'
'All right, I'll do it. But leave it until after midnight, that's when we lock up. I'll meet you in the solarium at around 12.30.'
Her expression changed as she saw me slide a fifty from my wallet. I crushed it into the breast pocket of her crisp white uniform. She took it out again.
'I can't take this,' she said. 'You shouldn't.' I held her fist shut to stop her returning the note.
'Look, it's just something to help tide you over, at least until you get paid for your overtime.' She looked doubtful.
'I don't know,' she said. 'It doesn't seem right somehow. This is as much as I make in a week. It'll do a lot more than just tide me over.'
'Marianne,' I said, 'it's nice to make ends meet, but it's even nicer if you can tie a bow.'
Chapter 4
Monday, 5 September.
'The doctor told me that the electrotherapy has the temporary side-effect of disturbing the memory. Otherwise I feel great.'
Bruno looked at me anxiously. 'You're sure?'
'Never felt better.'
'Well, rather you than me, being plugged in like that.' He snorted. 'So whatever you managed to find out while you were in Kindermann's place is temporarily mislaid inside your head, is that it?'
'It's not quite that bad. I managed to take a look around his office. And there was a very attractive nurse who told me all about him. Kindermann is a lecturer at the Luftwaffe Medical School, and a consultant at the Party's private clinic in Bleibtreustrasse. Not to mention his membership of the Nazi Doctors Association, and the Herrenklub.'
Bruno shrugged. 'The man is gold-plated. So what?'
'Gold-plated, but not exactly treasured. He isn't very popular with his staff. I found out the name of someone who he sacked and who might be the type to bear him a grudge.'
'It's not much of a reason, is it? Being sacked?'
'According to my nurse, Marianne, it was common knowledge that he got the push for stealing drugs from the clinic dispensary. That he was probably selling them on the street. So he wasn't exactly the Salvation Army type, was he?'
'This fellow have a name?'
I thought hard for a moment, and then produced my. notebook from my pocket.
'It's all right,' I said, 'I wrote it down.'
'A detective with a crippled memory. That's just great.'
'Slow your blood down, I've got it. His name is Klaus Hering.'
'I'll see if the Alex has anything on him.' He picked up the telephone and made the call. It only took a couple of minutes. We paid a bull fifty marks a month for the service. But Klaus Hering was clean.
'So where is the money supposed to go?'
He handed me the anonymous note which Frau Lange had received the previous day and which had prompted Bruno to telephone me at the clinic.
'The lady's chauffeur brought it round here himself,' he explained, as I read over the blackmailer's latest composition of threats and instructions. 'A thousand marks to be placed in a Gerson carrier-bag and left in a wastepaper basket outside the Chicken House at the Zoo, this afternoon.'
I glanced out of the window. It was another warm day, and without a doubt there would be plenty of people at the Zoo.
'It's a good place,' I said. 'He'll be hard to spot and even harder to tail.
There are, as far as I remember, four exits to the Zoo.' I found a map of Berlin in my drawer and spread it out on the desk. Bruno came and stood over my shoulder.
'So how do we play it?' he asked.
'You handle the drop, I'll play the sightseer.'
'Want me to wait by one of the exits afterwards?'
'You've got a four-to-one chance. Which way would you choose?'
He studied the map for a minute and then pointed to the canal exit.
'Lichtenstein Bridge. I'd have a car waiting on the other side in Rauch Strasse.'
'Then you'd better have a car there yourself.'
'How long do I wait? I mean, the Zoo's open until nine o'clock at night, for Christ's sake.'
'The Aquarium exit shuts at six, so my guess is that he'll show up before then, if only to keep his options open. If you haven't seen us by then, go home and wait for my call.'
I stepped out of the airship-sized glass shed that is the Zoo Station, and walked across Hardenbergplatz to Berlin Zoo's main entrance, which is just a short way south of the Planetarium. I bought a ticket that included the Aquarium, and a guidebook to make myself look more plausibly a tourist, and made my way first to the Elephant House. A strange man sketching there covered his pad secretively and shied away at my approach. Leaning on the rail of the enclosure I watched this curious behaviour repeated again and again as other visitors came over, until by and by the man found himself standing next to me again. Irritated at the presumption that I should be at all interested in his miserable sketch, I craned my neck over his shoulder, waving my camera close to his face.
'Perhaps you should take up photography,' I said brightly. He snarled something and cowered away. One for
