Josef’s parents were dead, but Marta’s were still alive and, to her distress, they refused to leave. ‘This is our home,’ said her father. ‘We are Germans. I am a war veteran.’ He was more than a war veteran. He had retired as a colonel after the Great War ended, a renowned fighter pilot, an ace with thirty-six air victories to his name. He had ended the war with one eye, one hand shot away and a chest full of medals. He was sure that would protect them from Hitler’s wrath.
It didn’t.
Lili Marlene
‘Here are the files you asked for, Sergeant.’ Bergemann held a thin packet in Gruber’s direction. Gruber looked puzzled. ‘The Willi Geismeier files from Central Records,’ said Bergemann.
‘That’s all there is?’ said Gruber.
‘Yeah,’ said Bergemann. ‘I thought there’d be more.’
‘There has to be more,’ said Gruber.
‘This is all I could get.’
‘Anything useful?’
‘No. Mostly old official complaints, Sergeant. And a few papers about his suspension. But nothing about the arrest attempt back when he went missing. And nothing recent. Whatever there was is gone.’
‘Gone? What do you mean, gone? Signed out maybe?’
‘Could be. Nobody would say. They wouldn’t even show me the logbooks.’
‘Do we have any of his old case files here?’
‘Everything should be in Central Records.’
‘But it isn’t.’
‘Maybe somebody else is interested in him too,’ said Bergemann.
‘Somebody else …’ Gruber thought for a moment. ‘Who?’
‘I don’t know, Sergeant. Gestapo maybe?’
Gruber took the packet of documents into his office and sat down. Bergemann watched him frowning at each page before turning it over to study the next. He stopped once in a while to write something down. After a while he got up and closed his door. Bergemann could hear him talking on the phone but couldn’t make out what he said. Gruber put on his hat and coat and came out of the office.
‘I looked again, Sergeant,’ said Bergemann. ‘There aren’t any records here. Did you learn anything useful?’
‘No, not really,’ said Gruber, and headed for the door.
‘Where’re you off to, Sergeant?’
Gruber stopped and studied Bergemann for a moment. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be working on something, Bergemann – that robbery case or something like that?’
The sun had just set when Bergemann met Willi to warn him about Gruber. The clouds turned crimson around the edges and then went black, and the temperature seemed to drop ten degrees at the same moment.
‘That doesn’t sound like Gruber,’ said Willi. They sat on a park bench looking out at the Isar. The ice had mostly melted except along the banks. Some ducks were swimming around, diving under the water and bobbing back to the surface.
‘No, this isn’t the Gruber we know,’ said Bergemann. Gruber was lazy and uncurious. Except now he was running off to Central Records to do research. ‘Could I have missed anything?’
Willi shook his head, but he looked worried. ‘What’s he up to?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you think something has come his way?’ He thought of Heinz Schleiffer and his earlier snooping around. Frau Schimmel was sure he had filed at least two complaints against Karl Juncker. And there were the two men, Weber and Meier, who had gone into his apartment and rummaged around. These things could have worked their way through the system and finally found their way to Gruber.
‘If he’s on to anything, he’s not giving it away,’ said Bergemann. ‘And that’s not like him either. I’ll keep looking, though, and I’ll let you know what I find out.’
‘Be careful, Hans,’ said Willi. ‘You know, if you try to drag your feet or get in the way of whatever he’s doing, he’ll know it. If he’s paying attention, you could be in a lot of danger. So do whatever he expects of you. Help him out if you have to.
‘We shouldn’t meet again for a while,’ he said finally. The two men stood and shook hands. Willi turned away, swung his leg over his bicycle, and rode off into the night.
Gruber’s determination, a quality that had mostly been missing from his character until now, continued unabated. He spent hours each day going through papers he dredged up from who knew where. ‘SS files,’ said Gruber.
‘Can I help?’ said Bergemann.
‘No. It’s on a need-to-know basis,’ said Gruber.
Bergemann got busy on the robbery case. Someone had been holding up businessmen, three so far, all late at night, all claiming to be on their way home from work. Two admitted to having stopped for a drink. Well, maybe a couple of drinks. All three surmised they had been followed. Then a man grabbed them from behind and held a pistol against their cheek while they fished out their wallets. He instructed them to face the wall and count to ten slowly while he disappeared. None had seen the robber or could say anything useful about him.
The trouble was, Bergemann was pretty sure all three were lying about why they had been in the locations where they were robbed. There were plenty of decent bars and restaurants along the routes they would normally have taken home from work, while the bars where they had stopped and the sites of the robberies were far from any such route. Moreover, the bars they named were seedy establishments in a seedy neighborhood, not the sort of places a well-heeled businessman would be likely to stop. Unless he was trying to cover up something illicit or embarrassing. Since these were married men, a sexual adventure came to mind. And sure enough, Bergemann found a well-known whorehouse on Pfortzheimgaße, not far from where the men had been robbed.
Werner Deutlich was the eldest of the three victims. His wife answered the door when Bergemann knocked. When Werner recognized Bergemann, he quickly stepped past her and into the hall. ‘It’s business, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘I’ll be right back.’ He steered Bergemann down the hall and around a corner.
‘You
