It was about five o’clock in the morning when I got the telephone call from Kriminal Inspector Heimenz at the police station in Grunewald. There had been a murder at one of those fancy modern villas in Heerstrasse. He wouldn’t say who it was on the telephone; all I knew was that it was someone famous.
One of the good things about being on nights was that I had access to a car, so I was at the address in less than half an hour. And it was easy to find. There were several police cars parked outside, not to mention a huge silver Rolls-Royce. As soon as I stepped through the elegantly modern front door I guessed whose house it was. But I hardly expected that he was also the victim.
General Ernst Udet was one of the most famous men in Germany. At the age of just twenty-two he had survived the Great War as Germany’s highest-scoring air-ace. Only Manfred von Richthofen had more victories than he did. After the war he’d made several movies with Leni Riefenstahl and was a stunt-flier in Hollywood. The house was full of film posters, flying cups and photographs of aeroplanes. A polished wooden aircraft propeller hung on one wall and it was several minutes before I could tear myself from all of Udet’s memorabilia to look at his dead body. He wasn’t very tall, but then you don’t need to be tall to fly aeroplanes, especially when these are experimental: Udet was the Director-General of the Luftwaffe’s developmental wing. He was also a close friend of Hermann Goring. Or at least, he had been a close friend until someone shot him.
The body was naked. It lay in the middle of an enormous double bed, and surrounded by empty brandy bottles, most of them good-quality French brands. There was a neat hole in his forehead and a hammerless Sauer. 38 in his right hand. For a small man — he couldn’t have been more than one sixty — he had an enormous penis. But it wasn’t any of these details that drew the eyes. Not even the telephone line that was coiled around one of his muscular arms like a Jew’s tefillin. It was what was written on the headboard in red lipstick that tugged at my eyeballs and made me think I had walked in on a major scandal.
REICHSMARSHAL, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?
I suppose the choice of words was meant to make you think of Jesus Christ, nailed to the cross, and abandoned by God the Father. But that wasn’t what I thought of; and it wasn’t what Inspector Heimenz thought of, either.
‘This is one homicide I’m happy to leave to you boys at the Alex,’ he said.
‘Thanks. Let me tell you, he looks how I feel.’
‘Cut and dried, isn’t it?’
‘So you take the case.’
‘Not me. I want to sleep at night.’
‘You’re in the wrong job for that.’
‘The Grunewald is not like the rest of Berlin. This is a quiet district.’
‘So I see. Who found the body?’
‘The girlfriend. Name of Inge Bleyle. She claims they were on the telephone when she heard the shot. So she drove straight over here in that modest little car you saw parked outside and found him dead.’
‘That Rolls is hers?’
‘So it would seem. Apparently Herr Udet had been drinking heavily all week.’
‘From the look of things, Martell and Remy Martin are going to be inconsolable.’
‘It seems that he and the Air Ministry had had their differences concerning the success of the air war against the British.’
‘You mean the lack of it, don’t you?’
‘I know what I meant to say. Perhaps you’d better speak to Fraulein Bleyle yourself, sir.’
‘Perhaps I had. Where is she now?’
‘In the drawing room.’
I followed him downstairs.
‘Hell of a place isn’t it, sir?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hard to imagine anyone who owned a place like this shooting himself.’
‘Is that what you think happened?’
‘Well, yes. The gun was in his hand.’
I stopped on the stairs and pointed to one of the many photographs covering the wall: Ernst Udet and the actor Bela Lugosi, posing on a California tennis court.
‘Looks to me as if Ernst Udet was a lefty,’ I said.
‘So?’
‘The gun was in his right hand. I don’t know about you, but if I was going to shoot myself — and believe me I’ve considered it, seriously, these past few months — I’d probably hold the gun in my stronger hand.’
‘But the words written on the headboard, sir. Surely that was meant to be some sort of suicide message.’
‘I’m only sure that’s what it’s meant to look like. Whether it is or not we’ll only know when a doctor gets him on the slab. You’d expect a powder burn on the skin if he really did press the gun to his forehead, and I didn’t see one, that’s all.’
The inspector nodded. He was a small man with small hands and a small way about him.
‘Like I said, this is one homicide I’m glad to leave to the Alex.’
Inge Bleyle had stopped crying. She was about thirty years old, tall — much taller than Ernst Udet — and good-looking in an understated way. She was wearing her fur coat and there was a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other, neither of which looked like she’d paid much attention to them since they came her way.
I found an ashtray, held it under her cigarette and tapped the back of her hand. She looked up, smiled ruefully and then put out the cigarette in the ashtray while I continued holding it.
‘I’m Commissar Gunther. From the Alex. Feel like talking?’
She shrugged. ‘I guess so. I guess I have to, right? I mean, I found him, and I made the call, so someone has to start the ball rolling.’
‘I believe you told the other detective that you were on the telephone with Herr Udet when the shot was fired. Is that correct?’
She nodded.
‘What had you been talking about?’
‘When I first got to know him, well before the war, Ernst Udet was the life and soul of the party. Everyone liked him. He was a real gentleman. Kind, generous, impeccably well-mannered. But you couldn’t imagine he was even related to the Ernst Udet of recent memory. He drank, he was short-tempered, he was rude. He’d always drunk a lot. Half of those Great War pilots drank just to go up in those planes. But he always seemed like he could handle the drink. But lately he started drinking even more than usual. Mostly he drank because he was unhappy. Very unhappy. I’d left him because of his drinking, you see. And he wanted me back. And I didn’t want to come back because it was obvious that he was still drinking. As you have no doubt seen for yourself. It looks like a one-man house party in there.’
‘Why was he drinking? Any particular reason? I mean, before you left him.’
‘Yes, I understand. He was drinking because of what was happening at the Air Ministry. That Jew, Erhard Milch, was trying to undermine Ernst. All of the people in his department had been fired and Ernst took that very personally.’
‘Why were they fired?’
‘Because that bastard Goring didn’t have the guts to fire Ernst. He figured that if he fired all of Ernst’s people then Ernst’s sense of honour would compel him to resign. He blamed Ernst for the failure of our air attacks on Britain. That’s what he said to Hitler, to save his own skin. Of course it wasn’t true, not a damned word of it, but Hitler believed him anyway. But that was just one reason he was depressed.’
I groaned, inside. After Prague I needed this case like I needed a pair of silk stockings of the kind Inge Bleyle was wearing on her lovely legs.
‘And another reason?’
She shrugged. Suddenly she was looking evasive, as if it had dawned on her that she was talking to a cop.
‘What with the war in Russia, well that was getting him down too. Yes, he was depressed and drinking too
