Hitler's Angel (23 page)

‘So Hitler killed her.’

‘There was no proof of that,’ Fritz says. ‘Only discrepancies in a story filled with them. It really didn’t matter what time Hitler got to the hotel, if the girl died during the night as they claimed. He was still out of the way. The phone call the next morning, though, that had me baffled. I wasn’t certain why they lied about that.’

She shakes her head, looks at him, her perplexity showing on her face. ‘I don’t understand. If everyone lies and the physical evidence is unimportant, how do you get at the truth?’

‘You hope you find someone who will not lie,’ he says. ‘Or you hope you can bluff your way to getting someone to confess.’

B
y the time he returned to Munich, it was late. He had timed the drive again, and again it had come out to two hours, subtracting the time he spent in Ebenhausen. The traffic police did have a record of the ticket given to Hitler’s Mercedes, but no one in the office remembered the man driving, or if he had a passenger.

Fritz drove by the coroner’s office, and swung the car through the narrow alley between the buildings. The alley had once been a road, but it was barely big enough for an automobile, so it had became an alley in recent years. Zehrt used it for his coroner’s wagon, and often kept the road blocked. It was not blocked tonight.

Fritz stopped his car near the rear door. A single light burned in the offices, in the examining room. Through the unshaded window, Zehrt worked over a corpse, alone.

The Schupo had spoken to Zehrt about his unwillingness to cover the windows, saying it was both a breach of security and a danger for the coroner himself. But Zehrt had merely laughed. He claimed that only those with the strongest stomachs could watch him cut open a corpse, and he also
maintained that it took an even stronger man to break into a place with a dead body already on the table.

The years had proven him correct.

Fritz, however, had watched many an autopsy. His stomach was not as strong as Zehrt’s, but it was close.

Fritz got out of the car, and walked to the window. His feet crunched on the small parking space. Grass had grown over cobblestones so brittle that they had broken into tiny rocks. Still Zehrt did not look up. He was intent on the corpse in front of him, a beefy, balding man with a tattoo on his right forearm. Zehrt was examining the tattoo when Fritz rapped on the window.

Zehrt looked up slowly, as if people knocked on his window every night. He shook his head when he saw Fritz, but Fritz knocked again. Finally Zehrt set his tools down, pulled off his gloves, and came to the window. He yanked it open. The odours of formaldehyde and death surrounded him.

‘I am in the middle of work,’ he snapped.

‘I have a few questions. It will only take a moment.’

‘I don’t have a moment,’ Zehrt said.

‘Looks like you have a Communist on the table.’

‘I don’t know what he is. He was knifed in the English Garden, but the wounds seem superficial. I am beginning to wonder if his heart went with the fear and shock.’

Fritz shrugged. ‘If anyone could tell it would be you.’

Zehrt stared at him. ‘You aren’t going to go away, are you?’

Fritz shook his head.

‘All right, then. Come in.’ He closed the window so quickly that Fritz had to step away from it. Fritz went to the
wide wooden door in the back. The bolts clicked as Zehrt unlocked the door, and pulled Fritz inside. Then he slammed the door shut.

‘I didn’t want to be seen talking to you,’ Zehrt said. The odour of formaldehyde was so strong it almost made Fritz sneeze.

‘Do you work for the NSDAP now?’

‘No,’ Zehrt said. The light from the examining room filtered into this small hallway. Tables and cabinets lined the walls. Zehrt had not turned on any other lights.

‘Then they have something on you. Tell me, Gerhart. I will get them away from you.’

Zehrt shook his head. ‘It is not worth the Kripo’s time. Just ask your question and get out.’

‘Two questions,’ Fritz said. He was not willing to let the blackmail go, but it could wait until a later time. ‘First, when did you see Geli Raubal’s body?’

Zehrt let out a small breath of air. The girl’s name seemed to diminish him. ‘I am not supposed to talk about the girl.’

‘Police reasons or NSDAP?’

‘Please, Fritz –’

‘Gerhart, I am only going to ask questions that should have been in your report, had there been one.’

‘I already told you to see the body for yourself.’

‘And I did. I don’t want to know how she died. That’s obvious. I need to know when they brought the body to you.’

Zehrt rubbed his hands together. ‘Saturday morning, just like I told you. You were only a few hours behind them.’

Fritz nodded. He expected that Zehrt wouldn’t have been
in the office if he hadn’t had a body to tend to. ‘I want to know time of death.’

‘You know I can’t pinpoint that with any kind of accuracy. And it was a cursory exam –’

‘Time of death, Gerhart. You can give me that within a few hours just by looking at a body.’

Zehrt put his hand on Fritz’s arm. Zehrt was trembling. ‘Please, my friend, go. You are angering people you shouldn’t anger.’

‘And what can they do to me? They aren’t even the party in power.’

‘They will be, though. They are second in the country right now. Please, Fritz. You don’t know these men. I do.’

Fritz shook Zehrt’s hand off him, and crossed his arms. ‘I won’t leave unless you answer my very simple question.’

Zehrt ran his hands over his bloodstained smock. He glanced at the window, then at the body on the table. ‘Friday afternoon,’ he said. ‘She died Friday afternoon.’

F
 ritz pauses, takes a breath, then opens a new pack of cigarettes. He is filled with the same elation he felt the moment Zehrt had told him when Geli died. Then, for a brief second, he had believed he would be able to find her killer. But Zehrt had thrown him out, and Fritz realised that he would have to fight fear.

Others’ fear.

He is still fighting fear.

Only now it is his own.

‘So,’ the girl says, obviously filling the silence. ‘He did kill her. But you didn’t catch him. Is this why you’re telling me all of this? To let me know that you had the power to stop one of the greatest madmen in the history of the world, and you did not?’

The cigarette he is holding snaps in half. Tobacco spills on his lap. He brushes it off to hide his shaking hands.

‘What I had was circumstantial,’ he says. He takes another cigarette and puts it into his mouth. ‘I had only speculation and testimony of eye-witnesses that contradicted it. No one could place him there. No one saw him. I had nothing yet.’

She runs a hand through her long hair. ‘But I thought you said you solved this.’

‘I did.’

‘And Hitler did not kill her?’

He sets the pack back on the table and runs his hand over the smooth paper. His fingernails have yellowed over the years from the force of his habit.

‘It is not so simple,’ he says. ‘Why do you always look for it to be simple?’

She stares at him a moment, then sighs. ‘I can stay longer if you think we would finish tonight.’

He wants to ask what her hurry is, but then he realises he has probably conveyed a 40-year old sense of urgency. He knew, leaving Zehrt’s, that he only had so much time before all the holes were filled, all the cracks were painted over.

He had been like this girl, thinking that once he solved the case, everything would be all right. He too had got lost in the simple answer. He had believed his own press after Demmelmayer, had thought that science was the way of the future, that science would shed a light on the darkness of the human heart.

He was wrong.

He was always wrong.

‘We will not finish tonight,’ he says. ‘Go get yourself a good German dinner. We still have a day or two. That is, if you want to hear the rest.’

‘Of course I do,’ she says. ‘I want to hear how this concluded.’

Concluded. Her words ring as she packs her equipment, tucks her notebook in her bag, and lets herself out the door. Concluded meant conclusions, and he has none. She is still young enough that she does not understand life’s inability to resolve. Even when an event ends, its memory lingers and the questions it raises linger as well. Perhaps,
if he had not taken the case, things would have been different. Perhaps, if he had asked for help from the start, he might have had a proper investigation. Perhaps, if the Chief had not had a vendetta against the NSDAP, there would have been no case at all.

Fritz waits until he can no longer hear her footsteps on the stairs, then he goes like a man possessed into his bedroom. He flicks on the light. The blanket is rumpled – he slept on top of it the night before and did not straighten it for the first time since the years in London – and a pair of shoes lie toe-to-toe in the middle of the floor. He steps over them and heads for his closet, yanking the cardboard box toward him so hard that it tears. He squats on the floor and pulls the photographs out, placing them around him like still frames from an old movie.

The wedding picture from before the war. Gisela made her dress. Its white simplicity flows around her, half hidden by the flowers she holds, blooms downward. His boutonnière is also upside down, a detail he has forgotten. The suit he wore was his father’s, and it was too tight in the shoulders, the sleeves rise showing his wrists. He was young then, barely 21, and he looked 16.

According to the custom of the age, they do not smile, but Gisela’s eyes are young and warm.

He cannot look at them.

Nor can he clearly see Wilhelm’s christening picture. Or the last picture taken
en famille
during the war. The photograph of Fritz, formal in his uniform, is dog-eared on the edges. Gisela told him that she used to clutch it in her hand when she slept at night, praying that he would be safe.

Safe.

Prayers.

He had survived at least, but God had never allowed him to be safe.

The last photograph is actually a clipping, one he pasted to a piece of cardboard. The tape is yellow. He cannot look at it either.

She had been so angry, as if it had been his fault that Wilhelm died. She had been with the boy; Fritz had been looking for work, for money, for anything. The family could not survive on the weekly ration of two loaves of bread, 10 ounces of meat, a bit of butter and a bit of jam. They tried to hoard everything, give what they could to Wilhelm, but he did not thrive. Nor did Gisela’s garden.

Or her mind.

When they finally moved to the city, after Wilhelm’s death, Fritz thought she might improve, she might find something to fill her time while he searched for ways of making money, keeping them fed.

She filled her time.

He gets up, steps over the photographs and goes to the phone in the kitchen. He has the number memorised. This time he waits for an answer. He demands Maria, says he will pay extra for the stockings and properly applied make-up, only he needs her to hurry, can she hurry? He needs her there, right now.

The voice on the other end quotes a price double what he has paid before.

Fritz does not care. He says he will pay in cash if she can arrive within the half hour. Then he hangs up.

While he waits he cleans the apartment, dumps the ashtray, and does the dishes. Gisela hates dirt, always has, complains about it when he tracks it in. He closes the bedroom door because he cannot bring himself to go inside. Something on the floor bothers him. He doesn’t need the bedroom. A bedroom is a luxury he has not had much of during his life. She will understand.

He takes the money out of the drawer and places it on the tiny key stand beside the door. Then he brushes his hair and tries not to go to the window to see if she is waiting outside.

He hates it when she waits outside.

Finally, there is a knock on the door. The handle goes down, and the door opens. Gisela slips in, her hair and coat dotted with drops of rain.

‘Detective?’ she asks, her voice small and wrong, just as the word is wrong. For a moment, he sees Maria, and he shakes his head. She is wrong.

‘Detective?’ she says again.

He puts a finger to his lips. He wants to see
her.
Gisela, his wife. ‘Take off the coat.’

She does, her hands trembling. Her eyes are wide. The kohl makes them dark and foreign, exotic, with no touch of innocence, no happiness at all. Her lips are full and red and her hair, once brown and wrapped around her head like a proper woman’s, is clipped to an American bob, held out of her eyes with tiny pins.

She wears a black teddy that comes to the edges of her nipples and lines her bony hips. The weight she lost has not come back, will never come back, and time has ravaged her skin, making it yellow and tough as parchment. Her stockings are crooked, the seam wobbling up the sides of her legs, the garter improperly hooked. Her brown shoes do not match. In her left hand, she holds a riding crop as if she is going to use it.

He takes a step toward her. She cringes against the door. ‘Take off the shoes,’ he says.

‘They’re all we had –’

‘Quiet!’ He cannot stand the voice. He doesn’t want to hear the voice.

She pulls off her shoes and drops them beside her.

‘Turn around,’ he says.

She does, still hunched.

He goes to her, unhooks the stockings, and she squeals in fright, wresting herself away from him. Her garter snaps against her leg, and she squeals again, bringing her hands to protect her head, riding crop forgotten.

‘I was only going to fix your stockings,’ he says.

She doesn’t appear to hear him. She swallows and pushes up against the door so hard her pancake make-up leaves a trail of faint brown powder. ‘Please, Detective, please,’ she says in that wrong voice. ‘The last time I couldn’t work for a month and they almost turned me out. Please. I can’t do it again. I can’t.’