I shrugged. ‘I ask too many questions, Herr Haupthandler,’ I said. ‘Forgive me. It’s habit, I’m afraid. A suspicious nature goes with the job. Please don’t be offended. Well, I must be going.’ He smiled thinly, and as he showed me to the door he seemed relaxed; but I hoped I had said enough to put a few ripples on his pond.
The Hanomag seems to take an age to reach any sort of speed, so it was with a certain amount of misplaced optimism that I took the Avus ‘Speedway’ back to the centre of town. It costs a mark to get on this highway, but the Avus is worth it: ten kilometres without a curve, all the way from Potsdam to Kurfurstendamm. It’s the one road in the city on which the driver who fancies himself as Carraciola, the great racing driver, can put his foot down and hit speeds of up to 150 kilometres an hour. At least, they could in the days before B V Aral, the low- octane substitute petrol that’s not much better than meths. Now it was all I could do to get ninety out of the Hanomag’s 1.3 litre engine.
I parked at the intersection of Kurfurstendamm and Joachimsthaler Strasse, known as ‘Grunfeld Corner’ because of the department store of the same name which occupies it. When Grunfeld, a Jew, still owned his store, they used to serve free lemonade at the Fountain in the basement. But since the State dispossessed him, as it has with all the Jews who owned big stores, like Wertheim, Hermann Teitz and Israel, the days of free lemonade have gone. If that weren’t bad enough, the lemonade you now have to pay for and once got free doesn’t taste half as good, and you don’t have to have the sharpest taste-buds in the world to realize that they’re cutting down on the sugar. Just like they’re cheating on everything else.
I sat drinking my lemonade and watching the lift go up and down the tubular glass shaft that allowed you to see out into the store as you rode from floor to floor, in two minds whether or not to go up to the stocking counter and see Carola, the girl from Dagmarr’s wedding. It was the sour taste of the lemonade that put me in mind of my own debauched behaviour, and that decided me against it. Instead I left Grunfeld’s and walked the short distance down Kurfurstendamm and onto Schluterstrasse.
A jewellers is one of the few places in Berlin where you can expect to find people queueing to sell rather than to buy. Peter Neumaier’s Antique Jewellers was no exception. When I got there the line wasn’t quite outside the door, but it was certainly rubbing the glass; and it was older and sadder looking than most of the queues that I was used to standing in. The people waiting there were from a mixture of backgrounds, but mostly they had two things in common: their Judaism and, as an inevitable corollary, their lack of work, which was how they came to be selling their valuables in the first place. At the top of the queue, behind a long glass counter, were two stone- faced shop assistants in good suits. They had a neat line in appraisal, which was to tell the prospective seller how poor the piece actually was and how little it was likely to fetch on the open market.
‘We see stuff like this all the time,’ said one of them, wrinkling his lips and shaking his head at the spread of pearls and brooches on the counter beneath him. ‘You see, we can’t put a price on sentimental value. I’m sure you understand that.’ He was a young fellow, half the age of the deflating old mattress of a woman before him, and good-looking too, although in need of a shave, perhaps. His colleague was less forthcoming with his indifference: he sniffed so that his nose took on a sneer, he shrugged a half shrug of his coathanger-sized shoulders, and he grunted unenthusiastically. Silently, he counted out five one-hundred-mark notes from a roll in his skinny miser’s hand that must have been worth thirty times as much. The old man he was buying from was undecided about whether or not he should accept what must have been a derisory offer, and with a trembling hand he pointed at the bracelet lying on the piece of cloth he had wrapped it up in.
‘But look here,’ said the old man, ‘you’ve got one just like it in the window for three times what you’re offering.’
The Coathanger pursed his lips. ‘Fritz,’ he said, ‘how long has that sapphire bracelet been in the window?’ It was an efficient double-act, you had to say that much.
‘Must be six months,’ responded the other. ‘Don’t buy another one, this isn’t a charity you know.’ He probably said that several times a day. Coathanger blinked with slow boredom.
‘See what I mean? Look, go somewhere else if you think you can get more for it.’ But the sight of the cash was too much for the old man, and he capitulated. I walked to the head of the line and said that I was looking for Herr Neumaier.
‘If you’ve got something to sell, then you’ll have to wait in line with all the rest of them,’ muttered Coathanger.
‘I have nothing to sell,’ I said vaguely, adding, ‘I’m looking for a diamond necklace.’ At that Coathanger smiled at me like I was his long-lost rich uncle.
‘If you’ll just wait one moment,’ he said unctuously, ‘I’ll just see if Herr Neumaier is free.’ He disappeared behind a curtain for a minute, and when he returned I was ushered through to a small office at the end of the corridor.
Peter Neumaier sat at his desk, smoking a cigar that belonged properly in a plumber’s tool-bag. He was dark, with bright blue eyes, just like our beloved Fuhrer, and was possessed of a stomach that stuck out like a cash register. The cheeks of his face had a red, skinned look, as if he had eczema, or had simply stood too close to his razor that morning. He shook me by the hand as I introduced myself. It was like holding a cucumber.
‘I’m pleased to meet you, Herr Gunther,’ he said warmly. ‘I hear you’re looking for some diamonds.’
‘That’s correct. But I should tell you that I’m acting on behalf of someone else.’
‘I understand,’ Neumaier grinned. ‘Did you have a particular setting in mind?’
‘Oh, yes indeed. A diamond necklace.’
‘Well, you have come to the right place. There are several diamond necklaces I can show you.’
‘My client knows precisely what he requires,’ I said. ‘It must be a diamond collet necklace, made by Cartier.’ Neumaier laid his cigar in the ashtray, and breathed out a mixture of smoke, nerves and amusement.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘That certainly narrows the field.’
‘That’s the thing about the rich, Herr Neumaier,’ I said. ‘They always seem to know exactly what they want, don’t you think?’
‘Oh, indeed they do, Herr Gunther.’ He leaned forwards in his chair and, collecting his cigar, he said: ‘A necklace such as you describe is not the sort of piece that comes along every day. And of course it would cost a great deal of money.’ It was time to stick the nettle down his trousers.
‘Naturally, my client is prepared to pay a great deal of money. Twenty-five per cent of the insured value, no questions asked.’
He frowned. ‘I’m not sure I understand what you’re talking about,’ he said.
‘Come off it, Neumaier. We both know that there’s a lot more to your operation than the heart-warming little scene you’re putting on out front there.’
He blew some smoke and looked at the end of his cigar. ‘Are you suggesting that I buy stolen merchandise, Herr Gunther, because if you are -’
‘Keep your ears stiff, Neumaier, I haven’t finished yet. My client’s flea is solid. Cash money.’ I tossed the photograph of Six’s diamonds at him. ‘If some mouse walks in here trying to sell it, you give me a call. The number’s on the back.’
Neumaier regarded it and me distastefully and then stood up. ‘You are a joke, Herr Gunther. With a few cups short in your cupboard. Now get out of here before I call the police.’
‘You know, that’s not a bad idea,’ I said. ‘I’m sure they’ll be very impressed with your public spirit when you offer to open up your safe and invite them to inspect the contents. That’s the confidence of honesty, I suppose.’
‘Get out of here.’
I stood up and walked out of his office. I hadn’t intended to handle it that way, but I hadn’t liked what I’d seen of Neumaier’s operation. In the shop Coathanger was half-way through offering an old woman a price for her jewel-box that was less than she might have got for it at the Salvation Army hostel. Several of the Jews waiting behind her looked at me with an expression that was a mixture of hope and hopelessness. It made me feel about as comfortable as a trout on a marble slab, and for no reason that I could think of, I felt something like shame.
Gert Jeschonnek was a different proposition. His premises were on the eighth floor of Columbus Haus, a nine-storeyed building on Potsdamer Platz which has a strong emphasis on the horizontal line. It looked like something a long-term prisoner might have made, given an endless supply of matches, and at the same time it put
