'This town is sick with Jews,' said the Schupo man.
'Don't mind him, sir,' said the other cop. 'Anyone with a hat and a big nose is a Jew in his book. See if you can find any war reparations while you're down there.'
'Funny,' I said. 'If I wasn't up to my shoulder in stagnant water I might fucking laugh. Now put the cork back in.'
I felt a hard, metallic object and fished out a pistol with a long barrel. I handed it to the cop who wasn't holding my clothes.
'Luger, is it?' he said, wiping some of the filth off the gun. 'Looks like an artillery-corps version. That'll put an extra keyhole in your door.'
I kept on searching the bottom of the drain. 'No commies down here,' I said. 'Just this.' I brought up the other gun, an automatic with a curious, irregular shape, as if someone had tried to break the slide from the muzzle.
We carried the two weapons over to a street water pump and washed some of the filth away. The smaller automatic was a Dreyse. 32.
I washed my arm and put my clothes back on and took the two guns back to the Seventh Street Precinct Station on Bulowplatz. Back in the detectives' room, Heller hailed my arrival with a verbal pat on the back.
'Well done, Gunther,' he said.
'Thanks, sir.'
Meanwhile other cops were already gathering boxes of photofiles to take over to the State Hospital for Sergeant Willig to look at when he came out of surgery. And after a while, I said, 'You know, that's going to take a while. I mean, before he's conscious again. By then the killers will be out of the city. Maybe on their way to Moscow.'
'Got a better idea?'
'I might. Look, sir, instead of showing Sergeant Willig a picture of every Red who's ever been arrested in this city, let's just pull a few.'
'Like who? There are hundreds of these bastards.'
'The chances are the attack was orchestrated from K.L. House,' I said. 'So how about we pull the records of just seventy-six Reds? Because that's how many Reds were arrested when we raided K.L. last January. Let's stick to those faces for now.'
'Yes, you're right,' agreed Heller. He snatched up the telephone. 'Get me the State Hospital.' He pointed at another detective. 'Get on to IA. Find out who was on that raid. And tell the records boys in ED to find the arrest files and to meet us at the hospital.'
Twenty minutes later we were on our way to the State Hospital in Friedrichshain.
They were just wheeling Willig into the operating theatre when we arrived bearing the K.L. House arrest files. The wounded man had already received an injection, but against the advice of the doctors who were anxious to operate as quickly as possible, Willig understood immediately the urgency of what was being asked of him. And it took the sergeant no time at all to pick out one of his attackers.'
'Him, for sure,' he croaked. 'That one pulled the trigger on Captain Anlauf, for sure.'
'Erich Ziemer,' said Heller, and handed me the charge sheet.
'The other one was about the same age and build and colouring as this bastard. They might even have been brothers, they looked so alike. But he's not here. I'm certain of it.'
'All right,' said Heller. He spoke some words of encouragement to the sergeant before his doctors took the patient away.
'I recognise this man Ziemer,' I said. 'Back in May I saw Ziemer in a car with three other men. They were outside K.L. House, and according to Sergeant Adolf Bauer, who was on patrol in Bulowplatz, one of those others was Heinz Neumann.'
'The Reichstag deputy?'
I nodded.
'And the other two?'
'One of them, I don't know. Perhaps Bauer will remember it.'
'Yes, perhaps.'
He paused, expectantly. 'And the Red that you do know?'
I told him about the day I had saved the life of Erich Mielke from a troop of SA intent on killing him.
'He was the fourth man in that car. And it's true what Sergeant Willig says. He looks a lot like Erich Ziemer.'
'So. You believe that we're looking for two Erichs, yes?'
I nodded again.
'Gunther? I'd hate to be known around the Alex as the man who saved the life of a cop killer.'
'I hadn't really thought about that, sir.'
'Then perhaps you should. And from this moment on, my advice to you is this: that you make no further mention of exactly how you come to be acquainted with this Erich Mielke until he is safely in custody. Especially now. This is the kind of story the Nazis love to use to beat those of us in the police force who still count ourselves as democrats, is it not?'
'Yes, sir.'
We drove west and north of the Ring to Biesenthaler Strasse, which was the address on Erich Ziemer's charge sheet. It was a dreary-looking building off Christiana Strasse and within snorting distance of the Lowen Brewery and the distinctive smell of hops that was always in the air over that part of Berlin.
Ziemer had rented a big gloomy room in a big gloomy house that was owned by an old man with a face like the Turin Shroud. He was unhappy to be roused from his bed at such an early hour, but hardly surprised that we were asking questions about his tenant, who was not in his room and, it seemed, was unlikely to be returning to it; but we asked to see the room anyway.
Up against the window was a dilapidated leather sofa that was the size and colour of a slumbering hippo. On the dampish wall was a print of Alexander von Humboldt with a botanical specimen on an open book. The landlord, Herr Karpf, scratched his beard and shrugged and told us that Ziemer had disappeared like fog the previous day owing three weeks' rent, taking his belongings, not to mention a silver and ivory tankard worth several hundred marks. It was difficult to imagine Herr Karpf owning anything valuable but we promised to do our best to recover it.
There was a police call box on Oskar Platz, near the hospital, and from there we telephoned the Alex, where another officer had been looking for a crime sheet and an address for Erich Mielke, but so far without success.
'That's that, then,' said Heller.
'No,' I said. 'There's one more chance. Drive south, to the electricity works on Volta Strasse.'
Heller's car was a neat little cream-coloured DKW cabriolet with a small two-cylinder 600 c.c. engine, but it had front- wheel drive and held on to the corners like a welded bracket so that we were there in no time at all. On Brunnen Strasse, opposite Volta Strasse, I told him to turn left on Lortzing Strasse and pull up.
'Give me ten minutes,' I said and, stepping over the DKW's little door, I walked quickly in the direction of a lofty-looking apartment building that was all red and yellow brick with window-box balconies and a mansard roof that resembled a small Moroccan fortress.
Elisabeth's shapeless landlady, Frau Bayer, was only a little surprised to see me at this early hour, as I had got into the habit of visiting the dressmaker whenever I came off duty. She knew I was a policeman, which was normally enough to silence her grumbling at being got out of bed. Most Berliners were always respectful of the law, except when they were communists or Nazis. And when it wasn't enough to silence her grumbling I slipped a few marks into her dressing-gown pocket by way of compensation.
The apartment was a warren of shabby rooms full of old cherrywood furniture, Chinese screens, and tasselled lampshades. As always I sat in the living room and waited for Frau Bayer to fetch her lodger; and as always when she saw me, Elisabeth smiled a sleepy but happy smile and took me by the hand to lead me to her room where a proper welcome awaited me; only this time I stayed put on the living room sofa.
'What's the matter?' she said. 'Is something wrong?'
'It's Erich,' I said. 'He's in trouble.'
