I switched off the basement light, which also controlled the light inside the wine cellar, and I pushed Max Merten toward the stairs, as if we really were leaving.
“All right, all right,” shouted Schramma. “You win, Gunther. I’ll do it your way, you bastard.”
I switched the light on and walked back to the spy hole ready to invigilate the whole laborious process of ensuring I had something closely resembling a future.
NINE
–
It went to plan, almost. Even with four bottles of good Spätburgunder inside of him, Schramma still managed to find a gun in his pocket to try to shoot me—it was the one he’d been planning to use on me all along, after I’d shot the two dead men with the .38—and I was obliged to render him completely unconscious with a quick uppercut. After we’d taken his photograph with the dead men, we dragged him upstairs and out into the garden, where we loaded him onto the wheelbarrow and transported him back to his car. It was dark and snowing heavily and no one saw us. In Bogenhausen we could probably have carried him out of the house in the middle of a summer’s day and no one would have noticed.
With Merten following I drove the BMW across the bridge to the English Garden and abandoned it and Schramma in a quiet spot close to the Monopteros, which is a sort of hilltop Greek temple to Apollo, one of the more popular gods in Munich. He is after all the god of prophecy, and the Bavarians like a bit of that. Hitler certainly thought so.
“Suppose he freezes to death,” said Merten.
“I doubt that’ll happen.”
“I wouldn’t like to have any man’s death on my conscience.”
“Don’t worry about it. He’ll be fine. When I was pounding the beat in Berlin I came across many a drunk who’d survived a colder night than Schramma’ll have in that BMW. Besides, this is my idea, not yours. So even if he does die, you needn’t blame yourself. I can live with it after what he had in mind for me.”
“I need a drink.”
“Me too.”
“Somewhere jolly, I think. Those two dead men are stuck on my retinas. Come on. I’m buying.”
Merten drove us south to the Hofbräuhaus on Platzl, a three-floor beer hall that dates back to the sixteenth century and where Hitler once made an important speech in the upstairs hall, only no one mentions that now. These days people are more appreciative of a small brass band. We took a corner table with a window ledge as wide as a coffin lid and ordered beers that were as tall as umbrella stands. I tried to keep count of the lawyer’s smokes, not from bland curiosity but out of a desire to feel better about my own habit; sitting beside Merten I felt better than I’ve felt in a long time. I even managed to convince myself I was in the peak of health. The man smoked like the Ruhr Valley. For a while we just drank and smoked and spoke not at all but gradually the music and the beer got to us and eventually I said, “Speaking as a Berliner, there’s a lot that’s wrong with Munich but it certainly doesn’t include the beer. Nowhere on earth has beer like this. Not even Asgard. At one time or another I must have sampled every beer in this place. Not much of a hobby, I know, but it beats collecting stamps. Tastes better, too.”
“Do you ever miss Berlin, Bernie?”
“Sure. But right now Berlin’s Amelia Earhart, isn’t it? Marooned on an island in the middle of a vast and hostile sea of red. So there’s no point in wishing we were with her.”
“Yes, but there’s something about Munich that’s not as good as Berlin. Only I’m not sure what that is.”
“If Berlin is Amelia Earhart, then Munich is Charles Lindbergh: rich, private, vain, and with a very questionable history.”
Merten smiled into a beer that was the color of a good night already enjoyed and soon to be flushed away. “I owe you,” he said.
“You said that. And you needn’t say it again. Just keep buying me beers.”
“No, but really I’d like to help you, Bernie. For old times’ sake. You said you’re a mortuary attendant at the Schwabing Hospital?”
“Did I?”
“A man of your special skills is wasted doing that.”
“To what skills are you referring, Max? Covering up a murder scene? Knocking a man out? Managing not to get shot?”
“Being a cop, of course. Something you did for a great many years.”
“That must be why I’m on such a generous police pension now.”
“I happen to know of a job that’s going, here in Munich. You might be very good at it.”
“I have a job I’m very good at. Looking after the dead. So far I’ve had no complaints. They don’t mind me and I don’t mind them.”
“I mean a regular job. A job with a few prospects.”
“All of a sudden everyone’s offering me work. Listen, Max, cops are not good people. All of our best qualities get poured into the job and life gets the dregs. Don’t ever mistake me for a decent guy. Nobody else does.”
“Look, just listen to me, will you?”
“All right. I’m listening.”
“A respectable job.”
“Ah. That lets me out then. I’ve not been respectable for a great many years. Probably never will be again.”
“I’m talking about a job in insurance.”
“Insurance. That’s when people pay money for peace of mind. I wouldn’t mind some of that myself. Only I doubt I
