same.’
‘If that’s true then I’m impressed.’
‘Before the war I was a chemistry student.’
‘Why did you stop?’
‘Lack of money. Lack of opportunity. The Nazis like educated women almost as little as they like educated Jews. They prefer us to stay home polishing the hearth and stirring the pot.’
‘Not me.’
She tugged my wrist toward her and checked the time on my watch. ‘I have to go back to the cloakroom in a minute.’
‘I could wait but I might need to telephone the Reichs-bank to arrange a loan.’
‘It might be worth it, Parsifal. I finish at two. You could walk me home if you like. Better still you could drive me, if you have a car.’
‘I have a car. I just don’t have any petrol. And I’ll gladly walk you home. But I don’t think Frau Lippert would approve, do you?’
‘I said you could walk me home, not up the stairs. But if ever you did walk me up the stairs it’s actually none of her business. And she knows that, too. The other night, she was just mouthing off. If I hadn’t had that sock on the jaw I might have told her to shut up and mind her own business and she would have done. Up to a point. There’s nothing in our agreement that says I can’t have gentlemen friends in my room for a little quiet conversation. It’s hard to hear everything you say in a place like this. You need to speak up. I’m a little deaf.’
‘Now you tell me.’
‘That’s because last year I was near Kottbusser Strasse when a tame Tommy went off.’
A tame Tommy was what Berliners called an unexploded bomb.
‘It blew me through the air. Fortunately I landed in some bushes that broke my fall. But, for a few glorious moments, I thought I was dead.’
‘Why glorious?’
‘Haven’t you ever wanted to be dead? I have. Sometimes life is just so much trouble. Don’t you think so?’
I nodded. ‘Yes. I’ve wanted that, too. Quite recently as a matter of fact. I go to bed wanting to blow my brains out and wake up wondering why I didn’t do it. I guess that’s why I’m here. You make a very diverting alternative to the idea of self-slaughter.’
‘I’m glad about that, Parsifal. Hey, I don’t even know your name. And I should know something about you if I’m going to let you walk me home, don’t you think?’
‘My name is Bernhard Gunther.’
She nodded and closed her eyes as if she was trying to visualize my name in her mind’s eye. ‘Bernhard Gunther. Hmm. Yes.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Sssh. I’m trying to connect with it. I’m a little bit psychic, you see.’
‘While you’re there see if you can’t get a fix on where I’ve left my Postal Savings Bank Book. There’s five hundred marks in there I’d like to get my hands on.’
She opened her eyes. ‘That’s a solid name, Bernhard Gunther. Dependable. Honest. And wealthy with it, too. I can do a lot with five hundred marks. This is looking good. Tell me, what kind of work does Bernie Gunther do?’ She pressed her hands together in supplication. ‘No, wait. Let me guess.’
‘It’s better that I tell you.’
‘You don’t think I can’t guess? I’m certain you were in the Army. But now, I’m not sure. If you were on leave then it’s been quite a long one, hasn’t it? So maybe you were wounded. Although you don’t look like a man who was wounded. Then again maybe you got injured in the head. And that might be why you say you’re suicidal. A lot of boys are these days. I mean a lot. Only they don’t put that kind of thing in the newspapers because it’s bad for morale. Frau Lippert had another lodger who was a corporal in a police battalion and he hanged himself off a canal bridge in Moabit. He was a nice boy. You know, I might say you were a civil servant but you’re a little too muscular for that. And the suit — well, no civil servant would ever wear a suit like that.’
‘Arianne. Listen to me.’
‘You’re no fun at all, Gunther.’
‘I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about why I’m here.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means I’m a cop. From the Police Praesidium at Alexanderplatz.’
The smile dried on her face like I’d poured poison in her ears. She sat there for a moment, stunned, immobile, as if a doctor had told her she had six months to live.
I was used to her reaction and I didn’t blame her for it. There wasn’t anyone in Berlin who wasn’t deeply afraid of the police, including the police, because when you said ‘police’ everyone thought about the Gestapo and when you started to think about the Gestapo it was soon hard to think of anything else.
‘You could have mentioned that earlier,’ she said, stiffly. ‘Or is that how it works? You let someone talk themselves into trouble. Give them enough rope so that they can hang themselves, like my friend.’
‘It’s not like that at all. I’m a detective. Not Gestapo.’
‘What’s the difference?’
‘The difference is that I hate the Nazis. The difference is that I don’t care if you say Hitler is the son of Beelzebub. The difference is that if I was Gestapo you would already be in a police van and on your way to number eight.’
‘Number eight? What’s that?’
‘You’re not from Berlin, are you? Not originally.’
She shook her head.
‘Number eight Prinz Albrechtstrasse. Gestapo headquarters.’
I wasn’t exaggerating. Not in the least. If Sachse and Wandel had heard even half of her story, Arianne Tauber would have been sitting in a chair with her skirt up and a hot cigarette in her panties. I knew how those bastards questioned people and I wasn’t about to condemn her to that. Not without being damned sure she was guilty. As it happened, I believed at least half of her story, and that was enough to prevent me from handing her over to the Gestapo. I thought she was probably a prostitute. An occasional one. To make ends meet a lot of single women were. You could hardly blame them for that. Any kind of a living was hard to come by in Berlin. But I didn’t think she was a spy for the Czechs. No spy would have volunteered so much to a man in a club she hardly knew well.
‘So, what happens now? Are you going to arrest me?’
‘Didn’t I already tell you to forget all about what happened? Didn’t I tell you that? There never was an envelope. And there was no Gustav.’
She nodded silently, but still I could see she was unable to grasp what I was telling her.
‘Listen to me, Arianne, provided you take my advice, you’re in the clear. Well, almost. There are only three people who could possibly connect you with what happened. One of them is this fellow Gustav. And one of them is Paul. The man who attacked you. Only he’s dead.’
‘What? You didn’t tell me that. How?’
‘His body turned up in Kleist Park a day or so after that taxi hit him on Nolli. He must have crawled there in the blackout and died. The third person who knows about this is me. And I’m not about to tell anyone.’
‘Oh, I get it. I suppose you want to sleep with me. Before you hand me over to your pals in the Gestapo you want to have me yourself. Is that it?’
‘No. It’s not like that at all.’
‘Then what is it like? And don’t tell me it’s because you think I’m special, Parsifal. Because I won’t believe you.’
‘I’m going to tell you why, angel. But not here. Not now. Until then you think about everything I’ve said and then ask yourself why I said it. I’ll be waiting outside at two. I can still walk you home if you want. Or you can walk home by yourself and I give you my word you won’t be woken up at five a.m. by men in leather coats. You won’t ever see me again. All right?’
