frat.'
After a moment I realized he meant fraternize, which was the euphemism in general military usage for what another American officer was doing to my wife. I squeezed my knee experimentally and stood up.
'Sure you're all right now?' said the soldier.
'Yes, thank you. You have been most kind.'
'Kind, nothing. Any friend of Captain Linden's '
Chapter 8
I inquired after the Drexlers at the Steglitz local post office on Sintenis Platz, a quiet, peaceful square, once covered in grass and now given over to the cultivation of things edible.
The postmistress, a woman with an enormous Ionic curl on either side of her head, informed me crisply that her office knew of the Drexlers and that like most people in the area they collected their mail from the office. Therefore, she explained, their precise address on Handjery Strasse was not known. But she did add that the Drexlers' usually considerable mail was now even larger in view of the fact that it was several days since they had bothered to collect it. She used the word 'bothered' with more than a little distaste, and I wondered if there was some reason she should have disliked the Drexlers. My offer to deliver their mail was swiftly rebuffed. That would not have been proper. But she told me that I could certainly remind them to come and take it away as it was becoming a nuisance.
Next I decided to try at the Sch/nberg Police Praesidium on nearby Grnnewald Strasse. Walking there, under the uneasy shadow of gorgonzola walls that leaned forwards as if permanently on tiptoe, past buildings otherwise unscathed but with just a corner balustrade missing, like an illicitly sampled wedding cake, took me right by the Gay Island nightclub, where Becker had reportedly met Captain Linden. It was a dreary, cheerless-looking place with a cheap neon sign, and I felt almost glad that it was closed.
The bull on the desk at the Police Praesidium had a face as long as a mandarin's thumbnail, but he was an obliging sort of fellow and while he consulted the local registration records he told me that the Drexlers were not unknown to the Sch/nberg police.
'They're a Jewish couple,' he explained. 'Lawyers. Quite well known around here.
You might even say that they were notorious.'
'Oh? Why's that?'
'It's not that they break any laws, you understand.' The sergeant's wurst-sized finger found their name in his ledger and traversed the page to the street and the number. 'Here we are. Handjery Strasse. Number seventeen.'
'Thank you, Sergeant. So what is it about them?'
'Are you a friend of theirs?' He sounded circumspect.
'No, I'm not.'
'Well sir, it's just that people don't like that kind of thing. They want to forget about what happened. I don't think there's any good in raking over the past like that.'
'Forgive me, Sergeant, but what is it that they do exactly?'
'They hunt so-called Nazi war-criminals, sir.'
I nodded. 'Yes, I can see how that might not make them very popular with the neighbours.'
'It was wrong what happened. But we have to rebuild, start again. And we can hardly do that if the war follows us around like a bad smell.'
I needed some more information from him, so I agreed. Then I asked about the Gay Island.
'It's not the sort of place I'd let my missus catch me in, sir. It's run by a sparkler called Kathy Fiege. The place is full of them. But there's never any trouble there, apart from the occasional drunken Yank. Not that you can call that trouble. And if the rumours are true we'll all be Yanks soon leastways all of us in the American sector, eh?'
I thanked him and walked to the station door. 'One more thing, sergeant,' I said, turning on my heels. 'The Drexlers? Do they ever find any war-criminals?'
The sergeant's long face took on an amused, sly aspect.
'Not if we can help it, sir.'
The Drexlers lived a short way south from the Police Praesidium, in a recently renovated building close to the S-Bahn line and opposite a small school. But there was no reply when I knocked at the door of their top-floor apartment.
I lit a cigarette to rid my nostrils of the strong smell of disinfectant that hung about the landing, and knocked again. Glancing down I saw two cigarette-ends lying, unaccountably uncollected, on the floor close to the door.
It didn't look as if anyone had been through the door in a while. Bending down to pick them up I found the smell even stronger. Dropping into a press-up position I pushed my nose up to the gap between floor and door and retched as the air inside the apartment caught my throat and lungs. I rolled quickly away and coughed half my insides on to the stairs below.
When I had recovered my breath I stood up and shook my head. It seemed hardly possible that anyone could live in such an atmosphere. I glanced down the stairwell. There was nobody about.
I stepped back from the door and kicked hard at the lock with my better leg, but it budged hardly at all. Once more I checked the stairwell to see if the noise had drawn anyone out of their apartment and, finding myself undetected, I kicked again.
The door sprang open and a terrible, pestilent smell flew forth, so strong that I reeled back for a moment and almost fell downstairs. Pulling my coat lapel across my nose and mouth I bounded into the darkened apartment, and, spying the faint outline of a curtain valance, I tore the heavy velvet drapes aside and threw open the window.
Cold air stripped the tears from my eyes as I leaned into the fresh air.
Children on their way home from school waved to me and weakly I waved back at them.
When I was sure that the draught between the door and the window had ventilated the room I ducked inside to find whatever I would find. I didn't think it was the kind of smell that was meant to take care of any pest smaller than a rogue elephant.
I went over to the front door and pushed it back and forwards on its hinges to fan some more clean air through while I surveyed the desk, the chairs, the bookcases, the filing cabinets and the piles of books and papers that filled the little room. Beyond was an open door, and the edge of a brass bedstead.
My foot kicked something on the floor as I moved towards the bedroom. A cheap tin tray of the kind you find in a bar or a сafe.
But for the congestion in the two faces that lay side by side on their pillows, you might have thought they were still sleeping. If your name is on someone's death-card, there are worse ways than asphyxia while asleep to collect it.
I pulled back the quilt and undid Herr Drexler's pyjama top, revealing a well-swollen stomach marbled with veins and blebs like a piece of blue cheese. I pressed it with my forefinger: it felt tight. Sure enough, a harder pressure with my hand produced a fart from the corpse, indicating a gaseous disruption of the internal organs. It appeared as if the pair of them had been dead for at least a week.
I drew the quilt over them again and returned to the front room. For a while I stared hopelessly at the books and papers which lay on the desk, even making a desultory attempt to find some clue or other, but since I had as yet only the vaguest appreciation of the puzzle, I soon abandoned this as a waste of time.
Outside, under a mother-of-pearl-coloured sky, I was just starting up the street towards the S-Bahn when something caught my eye. There was so much discarded military equipment still lying about Berlin that, but for the manner of the Drexlers' death, I should have paid the thing no regard. Lying on a heap of rubble that had collected in the gutter was a gasmask. An empty tin can rolled to my feet as I tugged at the rubber strap. Rapidly colouring in the outline scenario of the murder, I abandoned the mask and squatted down on to the backs of my legs to read the label on the rusting metallic curve.
'Zyklon-B. Poisonous gas! Danger! Keep cool and dry! Protect from the sun and from naked flame. Open and use with extreme caution. Kaliwerke A. G. Kolin.
In my mind's eye I pictured a man standing outside the Drexlers' door. It was late at night. Nervously he half-smoked a couple of cigarettes before pulling on the gas-mask, checking the straps to make sure he had a tight
