Hitler's Angel (16 page)

Herr Schwarz stared at Fritz for a long moment. Then he looked down. ‘Geli distracted the Führer. If she wanted to
shop, he would shop. If she wanted pastries, he found pastries. She was a creature controlled by whim. She had no place in the NSDAP.’

‘I didn’t realise she was part of the party,’ Fritz said.

‘She wasn’t.’ Herr Schwarz clasped his hands on the desktop again. He didn’t seem to know what to do with them. ‘She was only involved because of her uncle. And even then she was a distraction.’

‘It sounds as if you don’t mind that she’s gone.’

Herr Schwarz sighed. ‘I should lie to you, Inspector, and tell you that Geli will be missed, but she won’t. Does that mean I opened that door and killed her myself? No. I did not. But to tell you I am sorry about her death is to lie. I am sorry about the way she died, and I think that it is another sign of Geli’s selfishness that she killed herself at the exact moment the Führer needed no taint of scandal.’

‘Do you think someone could have killed her?’

‘I thought you were not interrogating me,’ Herr Schwarz said.

‘It is a routine question in any case of unusual death,’ Fritz said.

The colour in Herr Schwarz’s face grew even deeper. ‘No,’ he said finally. ‘I do not think anyone killed her. Who would want to?’

‘Gregor Strasser.’

Herr Schwarz laughed, then covered his mouth.

‘I do not see what is so funny, Herr Schwarz.’

‘Gregor Strasser is a loyal party man. It is his brother Otto who is trouble.’

‘Otto?’

‘Otto tried to divide the party. But that is old news now.’

Not to Fritz it wasn’t. ‘He didn’t succeed.’

‘He went to Berlin with his followers. But he was not very successful. Gregor believes in the Führer. He stayed behind to do what he could. He would not interfere, particularly with Geli.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because he lacks cunning, Inspector. It takes a devious mind to do such things. He is not devious.’

‘But his brother is.’

‘His brother is.’

‘And where was Otto this weekend?’

Herr Schwarz shrugged. ‘I do not keep track of former party members.’

‘But you keep track of current members.’

‘I try.’

‘What of their guns?’

Herr Schwarz froze. ‘What of them?’

‘Geli was holding a gun when she was found, was she not?’

‘I – I believe so.’

‘What happened to it?’

A bead of sweat formed on Herr Schwarz’s brow. It slowly ran down. He stared at Fritz like an animal startled by sudden light. ‘I – ah – I do not know.’

‘But you saw it in her hand.’

‘Of course.’

‘Who removed it?’

‘Perhaps no one. Perhaps it was buried with her.’

Fritz shook his head. ‘I saw her body, Herr Schwarz. There was no gun.’

‘Frau Winter –’

‘Has not seen it, and it was not in the apartment. You carried Geli to the car. Was it in her hand then?’

‘I – I don’t know.’

‘But you carried her.’

His gaze skittered away from Fritz’s. ‘I do not know what happened to the gun.’

‘How did you carry her, Herr Schwarz? Wrapped in a blanket? Or was she still alive when you arrived? Did you kill her because she was an embarrassment to the party? Because her relationship with Herr Hitler was not quite proper?’

Herr Schwarz leaned back. ‘She was dead.’

‘Then how did you carry her?’

‘By the feet,’he said. ‘I had her feet.’

‘But not the gun.’

‘Go, please.’ Herr Schwarz stood. His shirt stuck to him, the sweat heavy around his armpits. ‘This is an illegal interrogation. She killed herself. She is dead. I will say no more.’

Fritz stood too. ‘What kind of gun was she holding, Herr Schwarz?’

‘You are to leave now,’ Herr Schwarz said.

‘Surely it can’t hurt to tell me that.’

‘I do not know guns,’ Herr Schwarz said.

‘You were in the war, were you not? A soldier knows guns.’

‘If you do not leave, I shall call for assistance,’ Herr Schwarz said.

Fritz stared at him for a moment. Herr Schwarz was
clearly done. He would say no more, and he would contact help if he felt he needed it. Fritz didn’t need trouble with the NSDAP – at least no more than he already had.

‘I’ll go,’ Fritz said. ‘But you remind your people that a woman died. That is more than an inconvenience. That is a tragedy.’

‘Detective –’

Fritz held up his hand, and slowly backed out of the room. ‘I thank you for your time,’he said as he stepped into the hall.

It was empty.

He was able to leave the Brown House.

Alone.

‘Y
 ou thought the political party killed her?’ The girl is shocked. She has only studied Demmelmayer, a crime of passion by an intelligent man who thought he could outwit the Kripo. ‘To further Hitler?’

‘It was not so unusual then.’ Fritz is too calm. Atrocity made him calm decades ago. It is a fact which disturbs him only when he thinks of it.

‘You thought Strasser killed him.’

‘I thought nothing. I was exploring the possibilities.’

‘But if the party killed her, it would have been a conspiracy. Against Hitler.’

‘Or for him,’ Fritz says.

‘My God,’she gasps. ‘My God.’

‘It is not so shocking,’ he says dryly, ‘when you consider how many people later died for Herr Hitler’s ambitions.’

‘No.’ She speaks slowly, as if she is thinking. ‘No, I suppose not. But I thought you were investigating this as a way to discredit Hitler.’

‘I had many theories,’ he says. ‘Perhaps Gregor Strasser killed Geli to discredit Hitler and take over the party. Perhaps one of Hitler’s enemies killed her to discredit him. Perhaps the party
killed her to get rid of a roadblock to his candidacy. Perhaps her death was accidental.’

‘Or someone in the house killed her,’ the girl says, caught up now.

Fritz nods, once. ‘Or one of Hitler’s friends. Or Hitler himself.’

‘He would be the logical one,’ she says.

‘Because of his later history?’ Fritz asks.

She nods.

‘History does not record him killing anyone with his bare hands.’

‘But he was a soldier and he killed millions. He ordered their deaths.’

‘He did,’ Fritz says. ‘You forget one detail.’

‘He was out of the city when she died.’

‘Exactly.’ Fritz smiles. The expression feels tight on his face. She stares at him, as if waiting for him to go on, as if he will tell her the result before he reaches the end of his story.

‘You were going to get Photostats of the articles.’ He does not mind letting her take those. He can get other copies. It is the letters he minds. The letters and the photographs.

His remark makes her glance at her watch. ‘I’d have to leave now.’

‘Go,’ he says. Then more gently, ‘Go. I will still be here tomorrow.’

She nods and packs her things. He watches her small movements, domestic and tidy. Now he wishes that he had watched her cook. Such a rare thing to have a woman take care of him. He cannot remember the last time – before the war, perhaps. His mother used to make soup when he was ill as a boy. His mother. She too died in the starvation after the war.

The girl turns, seems about to say something but he shakes his head just enough to keep her silent. ‘Tomorrow I will provide the pastries,’ he says.

She laughs and then lets herself out, taking the energy from the room with her. He sits in the fading sunlight, feeling alone for the first time since those awful days after Gisela left. Then the solitude was a physical thing, something to be fought with activity and rigorous exercise. And he has not been out of the apartment in days. Rigorous exercise – at least his old man’s version – is a good idea.

He gets up, takes his dishes to the sink, and grabs his coat off the coat rack. He double-checks the pocket for his keys, finds them, and lets himself out.

The hallway is dark and smells of cabbage. The building has aged since he moved in, years before. Then it had seemed smart to rent while owning land outside of Munich. Now he wonders if he shouldn’t have built that house, as he had once planned. He would not have the city for company, but he would not have loud loutish neighbours either. He takes the stairs two at a time, gripping the wobbly wood banister as he goes down. When he reaches the street, he stops, takes a breath, and blinks in the brightness.

Munich has changed over the decades. Skyscrapers tower over buildings that have existed for hundreds of years. When the monks from Tegernsee settled on the Isar they never imagined that the site of their diocese would become a bustling place of wood, steel and glass. The sound of construction fills the city from morning to night. Munich will hold the Olympics, and the event will purify the city, wipe away the past.

If only it were so easy.

He glances down the concrete sidewalk to his favourite beer hall. It has changed ownership a dozen times since he first went inside in 1925, but it has not changed much. The food is the same: Weisswürscht, Brez’n, and sweet mustard served with good
Bavarian beer. The inside has steel counters in the kitchen, but out front the wood is worn and the walls still covered with paintings from the reign of Ludwig the Second. Fritz stares at the sign, repainted a decade ago in nineteenth-century style but somehow having lost its charm, and he realises that he does not want to sit alone in a place of merriment. The disquiet that has haunted him since he saw Wilhelm’s picture the day before colours each waking moment. Fritz does not know when he stopped living. He became famous long after Wilhelm died, but his only hope for joy starved to death in 1919. If he closes his eyes, he can still see Wilhelm’s face, skin drawn tight against the skull, eyes too big, too pale and tired to even ask for help.

Fritz sighs. Open the door to the past and all the memories crowd to the entrance. He should have stuck with Demmelmayer. He can recite the facts of the case in his sleep, explain his role in the simplest of terms. But he had to start telling the girl about Geli Raubal, digging through his boxes, and seeing his photographs again for the first time in years. It is bad enough that memories live on the streets of Munich, but now they also live in his own mind.

Before he knows it, he is walking away from the beer hall. His unplanned steps, guided more by memory than by any rational purpose, take him around the English Garden. He stops in a neighbourhood he has not walked through in decades. Prinzregentenplaz.

The building still stands. In fact, the street does not look much different. The cars are newer, smaller, and faster. Next door is a modern complex of glass and steel, looking to him like an American about to destroy a tradition. Boys with green and orange hair ride past on bicycles. The building has a layer of sooty grey it did not
have in its glory years, the result of too many car exhausts, too much smog. Official signs mark the doorway. He crosses the street and stands before it.

So many changes. The street has the same general feel, but it is not the same. Buildings once home to Munich’s elite now house clinics, solicitors, and advertising agencies. This building, though, whose residents he once envied for their comfort, this building which had seemed to him in his early days in Kripo, long before he became famous, a symbol of wealth he wanted to achieve is now owned by the government. Friends of his have worked inside. On the second floor, the sign says, is the traffic fines office for the city of Munich.

He does not go inside. He cannot. He wonders about the man who works in Geli’s old room. Does he know that below the carpet, the furniture, on the formerly polished wood floor, lies the permanent stain of blood from a woman who died violently? Does her ghost appear to him? Does she wander through the offices, searching for her canary, Hansi, or does she yell in defiance when her uncle tries to imprison her again?

Munich is an old city, full of ghosts. His apartment building dates from those dark days before the war. So much had happened before he moved in. He never looked under the threadbare grey carpet, never searched for blood spatters appearing through the paint coats on the walls. Someone could have died in his place and he would never know.

The thought only adds to his melancholy. Men come out the door wearing overcoats despite the day’s warmth. Women emerge, looking preoccupied, carrying bags under their arms. They walk beside him as if it is common for an old man to stand on the sidewalk staring at a government building. Perhaps it is. No one
wants to pay his fines, not even old men, especially not old men who should know better.

He is like a ghost to them, already barely visible, and certainly unimportant to the hustle and bustle of their daily lives. No. Ghosts only become visible to the aging when they have a chance to reflect on their lives, their failures, and the chances they have missed.

H
e met Henrich in the English Garden, near the Chinese Tower. Because Fritz had not eaten much that day, he bought himself some sausage, sauerkraut, and a stein of beer to wash it down. He sat at one of the wooden tables in the shadow of the pagoda roof, and watched the crowd. Once he had enjoyed coming here. Now he came when he had business to do. It was a good place to meet other officers and to discuss things he did not want discussed in the precinct.

The sun was warm, and since it was mid-morning, the crowd was slight. A Communist stood on a box in the meadow, speaking to a handful of people, his voice carried away by the wind. Women tugged tiny caps on their babies. Men walked by in pairs, discussing the day. An old man leaned off the second floor railing in the tower and watched the crowd pass. Fritz saw no member of the NSDAP.

Henrich arrived a few minutes later. He was wearing an overcoat, brown pants and regular shoes, his head covered with a beret. He licked his fingers and tossed away a food wrapper as he approached. He too had taken advantage of the Garden in order to eat his lunch.