Esther thought it admirable. But those who’d taken Anna up in the hope that some of her fame would reflect on them found it a disappointment, which, allied with her erratic behavior, eventually caused a parting of the ways.
She left 29c a second time as abruptly as she’d come, this time at the behest of Duke George of Leuchtenberg, another believer, who’d installed her in his castle near Munich. That relationship, too, had petered out, and over the years Anna had been passed from hand to aristocratic hand like a baton as the previous recipient dropped exhausted. At which point Anna always returned to 29c Bismarck Allee.
Jewish or not, Esther realized she was about the only constant in Anna’s life.
When, in 1928, America had beckoned and Anna set sail on the Berengaria for New York and the glare of popping flashbulbs, her hosts hadn’t been the only ones to be relieved. Esther hoped, for Anna’s sake, that she would make her home there.
Everybody else seemed to have forgotten Olga’s and Natalya’s murders. The police certainly had, and so had most of their friends. The flowers Esther put on their graves every year in the Russian cemetery were not joined by anybody else’s.
Nick, she’d been sure, had forgotten, so he startled her now by suddenly asking, “Remember that police inspector? What was his name? Schmidt?”
“Yes.” She remembered him.
“What did he say about Natalya’s killer?”
“He said he thought he was a member of the SA.”
“Sturmabteilung ...Why do the Germans stretch words like that? Didn’t he say anything else?”
“ ‘One of Röhm’s lot,’ that’s all he said.” She could remember exactly. Every word.
“A queer, then.” He raised his eyebrows at her surprise. “Esth-er. Everybody knows about Ernst Röhm. Ladies are completely not his cup of tea. He could get through bum-boys like ...I tell you, just one of his visits to the Pink Parasol put up my profits for a week.” Nick sighed. “He ain’t been to Berlin lately. Not now the Nazis are gone respectable, I bet Herr Hitler’s keeping poor old Ernst on a leash.”
“Oh?” she said. “And when did the Nazis become respectable?”
“Don’t you go Jewish on me. Some of my best customers are Nazis.”
“What do you want, Nick?”
He held out his glass, and she refilled it from the shaker. “I dropped in for a chat, that’s all. Old days, old friends.”
“What do you want?”
He eyed her over the glass’s wide rim. “That Schmidt ...When he was talking about the killer, did he mention Munich?”
“No, he ...Oh, God, Nick, is that where he comes from? Do you know anything?”
“Esther, Esther. If I had the goods on the bastard, wouldn’t I take it to the police?”
“That’d be the day,” she said. “Is it, Nick? Is Munich where he lives?”
“How would I know? We ain’t sending each other postcards.”
“Nick.”
“It’s just something Vassily said the other day—you remember Vassily? My sommelier? Well, he just brought the killer to mind, that’s all. Esther, I swear on the saints.”
“You don’t believe in the saints. You believe in money.”
And you’re short of it, she thought. News of the imminent sale of the Green Hat had reached her. There were other signs: His hair was the uniform black that comes out of a self-inflicted bottle. One of the larger diamond rings was missing from his finger. His eyes were tired.
“Nick, if you were in trouble, you would tell me.”
“Sure, sure. Who else? It’s just a cash-flow problem, nothing. You know me, I got plans. I’m expecting to make a killing any day. Prince Nick will ride again.”
He stayed a while longer, talking of other things, mainly his third wife, “a complete disappointment.” His farewell, so like him, was a flurry, a glance at his watch, another appointment. “See you, kid.”
Three days later she heard he was dead.
“WHAT THE HELL was he doing in Munich?” Schmidt wanted to know.
Since his return to Berlin, most of his sentences had begun with “What the hell . . . ?” What the hell happened to ...? Why the hell did they ...? It had become what-the-hell city: everything bigger, faster, more crowded. Trees had gone—which, to judge from the pulp required to print the city’s enormous number of newspapers and magazines, wasn’t surprising. New estates had arisen. Department stores were seven stories high and proudly declared Jewish names. Alexanderplatz had been refurbished but was no prettier. There was a new West End—ditto. A massive broadcasting center had sprung up; so had a radio tower that might have been spawned by Eiffel.
It was election time—it was always election time this summer—and every litfass in the streets carried posters that blamed the other parties for a sliding economy given its push by the Wall Street crash.
At first glance the Depression that Schmidt had seen turn industrial Düsseldorf into a ghost town was leaving Berlin unaffected. It appeared prosperous, but he knew that waiting behind the façade—in Moabit, Wedding, Kreuzberg, the docks—were the dreary lines of unemployed, the soup kitchens—and their faithful companions, Nazis and Communists.
When he got off the train, he’d been taken for a tourist and touted to ride on an open-topped bus to see the sights of “the biggest city in the world.”
“I thought that was New York,” he’d said.
“Biggest in population,” he was told, “but Berlin’s biggest in size. Do you know, sir, a sprightly pedestrian walking ten hours a day would take five days to circumambulate the two hundred thirty kilometers of Berlin’s municipal boundary?”
“Poor bugger,” Schmidt said.
His visits over the last nine years had been mostly confined to police headquarters, and much of the development had passed him by. Now that he was back for good, it seemed he’d have to learn Berlin all over again.
He’d met Willi in a bar across from police headquarters. It had once been the decently stolid Waffenrock and was now a star-spangled, overpriced lounge called “The U.S. of A.”
“So?” He tapped the item in the newspaper. Willi had phoned him in Düsseldorf to tell him of it. He’d been about to take his leave of Düsseldorf anyway but at that had cut the farewells short and set out.
The Berliner Morgenpost he bought on the train showed a photograph of Nikolai Potrovskov below a headline: BERLIN NIGHTCLUB OWNER MURDERED.
“Throat cut. Found two days ago on the bank of the Isar under some trees,” Willi said, repeating what he’d said over the phone. “No suspects so far, according to the Munich boys. Thought you’d be interested, boss.”
He was, he was. “He seems to like beauty spots,” he said.
“Who does?”
“Our killer.”
“Now, boss.” Willi pushed his chair an inch backward as from someone dangerously insane. “Don’t start that again. Guy like Prince Nick, there’s dozens of reasons for cutting his throat. They say gangland was lining up. Or it could’ve been one of his women. Coincidence, that’s what it is. Wish now I hadn’t told you.”
They’d stayed in touch. Schmidt had twice returned to stand as godfather to extra Ritte children, now numbering seven in all. Willi’s use of “boss” was a courtesy; he was an inspector himself—in Traffic, a busy division compared to the old days when it had consisted virtually of one man and a red flag.
“Coincidence, eh?” It could be, certainly it could be. Only it wasn’t. Schmidt had been waiting for it to happen for nine years—not this particularly, but an occasion that Hannelore’s killer could deal with only by killing again—and leaving some mark by which Schmidt would know it.
Here it was. Victim: someone who’d been connected to Natalya. Method: a cut throat, like Natalya’s.
Location: Munich, which was where one of his initialed suspects in the Sturmabteilung had come from. R.G. of Munich.
“What the hell was Potrovskov doing in Munich?” he said again.
“Lot of pe
ople go to Munich,” Willi said, still tender with the afflicted. “Winter sports, beer drinking, visiting their auntie. Very popular place, Munich.”
“Yep. Been there myself.” He patted Willi on the shoulder. “And in case you’re worried, Inspector, I’m not going again. Not for a bit anyway. I presume nobody there saw who bumped off Potrovskov? No, he’s good at that.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. I got a letter from Ringer saying he wants to see me on my return. How is the old bastard?”
Willi sucked his teeth. “He’s not happy.”
“Somebody steal his mustache wax?”
More teeth sucking indicated that levity was not called for. “We got a new department, boss. Political.”
“We’ve always had a Political Department.”
“Not like this one. You ever heard of a man called Diels? Rudolf Diels?”
“No.”
“You will. He’s ...I don’t know what exactly. The Minister of the In-terior’s Special Representative to Police Headquarters or some fancy title, sort of government adviser on dealing with Commies and Nazis.”
“About time somebody did, isn’t it?” On the way into the Platz, he’d been passed by open riot trucks, klaxons blaring, carrying police stacked like milk bottles to a street battle near the zoo. “We’re going back to the bad old days.”
“We’re back in the bad old days of unemployment as well, boss, but . . . Oh, well, you’ll find out. Everything’s got to go through Diels’s crew. My boys attend a traffic accident, seems a report has to go to Diels. Ringer’s not happy—he’s being bypassed, like.”
Schmidt didn’t take much notice. Government ministers always tried to justify their existence by making changes in departments under their control; meddling was what they were good at.
The first real indication that this particular change went deep was Ringer’s pleasure at seeing him. “Sit down, sit down, Inspector. A glass of sherry to welcome your return?”
Schmidt, seated in the comfortable chair provided for him, peered into the cabinet from which a decanter and glasses were being produced, in case it also contained a fatted calf.
“It seems we did rather well in Düsseldorf,” Ringer said, toasting him.
“Did we?” Ringer hadn’t been there. Over the years seventy-nine people had died at the hands of a man called Peter Kurten in ways Schmidt tried to forget. He didn’t blame himself—he’d come late to the case—nor did he blame the Düsseldorf police. They’d all been flailing in the dark as, on his previous assignment, he and the Hanover police had flailed in the dark for the mass murderer Haarmann. But he didn’t congratulate himself either.
“The trial’s publicity reflected well on our involvement, I think,” Ringer said. “We are being approached from several regions for advice on dealing with these”—the kaiser mustache waggled over a choice of words—“these killings in multiples with which the country seems afflicted. I have decided to set up a special unit to answer the call.” He gave a congratulatory nod. “And you are the man to run it.”
“Look.” Schmidt sat forward. “It’s a matter of luck, there isn’t a method. You just have to wait until the swine makes a mistake. With Haarmann it was different, but Kurten didn’t have a pattern—he’d kill anybody. In the end he more or less gave himself up.”
“Luck, Inspector? It is my maxim that luck devolves on those who are prepared to grasp it when it is manifested. I envisage your job being public relations as much as anything—advice to forces, lectures on the subject. A new department for you to set up. I’ve given you a secretary.”
“First I want some time off.”
Ringer blinked.
“I’m owed,” Schmidt told him. “I haven’t taken leave in years.”
“Of course, of course. As long as you like, within reason.”
Ringer’s face set suddenly, becoming a mask with a ridiculous mustache. Behind Schmidt someone had come into the room without knocking. He swiveled around and struggled for recognition of a familiar figure out of context.
“Ah, yes,” it said. “I heard the inspector was here.”
“You know Major Busse?” Ringer’s was more an accusation than an introduction.
“Good God, Busse, how are you?” Schmidt rose. “What’re you doing here?”
They shook hands. Franz Busse was in smart civvies, looking every inch the prosperous accountant. “Liaison, between Department 1A and...well, everybody else.”
“Major?” Schmidt asked.
“Courtesy title.” Busse shifted his spectacles on his nose. “Well, well, Schmidt, so you’re to run our new multiple-murder department?” He was ignoring Ringer, Schmidt noticed; he might have been in the office of an inferior.
“My multiple-murder department,” Ringer said.
“It has our full approval,” Busse said, as if nobody had spoken. “And I am sure it could not have a better man in charge of it. Come along. I want you to meet Colonel Diels.”
“Inspector Schmidt and I still have matters to discuss,” Ringer said.
“Later, then,” Busse said, clicking his heels. He went out, leaving Schmidt aware that there’d been a psychological chess game in progress in which he’d been a pawn.
The silence was painful. Ringer filled it by downing another glass of sherry.
“Very military,” Schmidt said at last.
Ringer shrugged. “You are a friend of Busse’s?”
“We were neighbors. I haven’t seen him in years.”
There was more silence. Ringer roused himself. “Well, I think that’s all. Your office is ready for you when you’re prepared to take up duty.”
“Thank you, sir.” He saluted and went to the door.
“Inspector.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Keep me informed.” It was a plea. Christ, Ringer was begging him.
“I shall, sir.”
He’d been allocated his old office on the third floor, though the sign on its door was fresh. It still read GEHEIMPOLIZISTKOMMISSAR SCHMIDT, but the lettering was gold and had the added designation of his department: 7B. Inside, it had been newly painted, the filing cabinets were bigger and smarter, the telephone modern Bakelite, and the table desk was green metal with drawers and had a wastepaper basket to match.
There was a secretary. “Helena Pritt, Inspector.” Another heel clicker. She wore tweeds and heavy shoes. Her graying hair was coiled in tight earphones, and her face, while it wouldn’t have launched a thousand ships, would certainly have sunk them unmoved.
“They haven’t changed the linoleum, I see,” Schmidt said amiably.
“Do you wish me to order new?”
“No, no. Some of these cracks are old friends.”
Frau Pritt didn’t smile, probably couldn’t. Schmidt opened his briefcase and brought out his film poster of M. “Let’s start untidying. Got any pushpins?” The actor Peter Lorre had given him the poster and signed it “To Inspector Schmidt, in gratitude and respect for his part in the arrest of the real M.”
He pinned it to the wall. “Fine film that,” he said. “Did you see it?”
“No, Inspector.”
“Based on the mass murderer Peter Kurten. Fitting for the new department, I think.”
Frau Pritt’s face suggested that she didn’t.
Schmidt opened the filing cabinets. The drawers were empty except for a few official-looking forms. He said, “Would you go down to Records and bring up my personal files?” Old friends again, old arrests, his who-was-who among Berlin’s criminal fraternity—out-of-date now, probably, but a starting point. Hell, he’d just feel more at home for having them around.
“I will need a signed C22 form, Inspector. For Department 1A.”
“What?”
“Department 1A, Inspector. The transfer of files must go through the Political Department.”
“Since when?”
“Since the order from Colonel Diels, Inspector.”
“T
hey’re my files, Frau Pritt, collated while this Colonel Diels was still a corporal—if he ever was.”
“They won’t release them without a C22.”
“All right, give me one.” He signed the damned thing.
“Is there anything else you require while I’m downstairs, Inspector?”
“An ashtray and a cup of coffee. One other thing, Frau Pritt: you’re working for me now, not the Political Department.”
“Of course, Inspector.”
“In which case I’d be obliged if you’d take that badge off.”
Frau Pritt unpinned the little enamel swastika from her lapel and put it in her pocket.
When she’d gone, Schmidt tried out his new swivel chair. He took a pencil from a metal container on his desk and started drumming, staring at the telephone.
Eventually he lifted the receiver and gave her number to the switchboard operator. God knew how many times he’d thought of phoning her these last nine years, stretched out his hand to do it ...and put the phone down again.
This time he let it ring. And ring. She wasn’t in. She’d moved, emigrated.
Somebody lifted the receiver at the other end. “What?”
It was a man’s voice. Why wouldn’t it be? What else to expect?
“Can I speak to Fräulein Solomonova?”
“Out.”
“When will she be back?”
“Oh, God, I don’t know. Sixish, I expect.”
“I’ll come by at seven, if I may.” He was about to ask whom he was talking to, but the man at the other end had put down the phone.
So.
Carefully, he put the pencil back in its holder. He saw he’d broken its point, crushed it. Well, Frau Pritt could sharpen it. With that face she wouldn’t need a sharpener.
ESTHER DRAGGED HERSELF up the stairs to 29c and let herself in.
Marlene shouted from the bathroom. “Is that you, dear?”
“Better be,” Esther said.