March Violets (18 page)

‘I guess I'm lucky you didn't decide to knock me out, otherwise . . .' I nodded at my papers which the giant was holding in his great paws. ‘Looks like you know who I am. Mind telling me who you are? It seems like I ought to know you.'

‘Rienacker, Wolf Rienacker. Gestapo. You used to be a bull, didn't you? Up at the Alex.'

‘That's right.'

‘And now you're a sniffer. So what brought you up here?'

‘Looking for Herr Von Greis.' I glanced about the room. There was a lot of mess, but it didn't seem that there was much missing. A silver epergne stood immaculate on a sideboard, the empty drawers of which were lying on the floor; and there were several dozen oil paintings leaning in neat ranks against the walls. Clearly whoever had ransacked the place hadn't been after the usual variety of loot, but something in particular.

‘I see.' He nodded slowly. ‘You know who owns this apartment?'

I shrugged. ‘I had supposed it was Herr Von Greis.'

Rienacker shook his bucket-sized head. ‘Only some of the time. No, the apartment is owned by Hermann Goering. Few people know about it, very few.' He lit a cigarette and threw me the packet. I lit one and smoked it gratefully. I noticed that my hand was shaking.

‘So the first mystery,' continued Rienacker, ‘is how you did. The second is why you wanted to speak to Von Greis at all. Could be that you were after the same thing that the first mob were after? The third mystery is where Von Greis is now. Maybe he's hiding, maybe someone's got him, maybe he's dead. I don't know. This place was done over a week ago. I came back here this afternoon to have another poke around in case there was something I missed the first time, and to do some thinking, and what do you know, you come through the door.' He took a long drag on his cigarette. In his enormous ham of a fist it looked like a baby's tooth. ‘It's my first real break on this case. So how's about you start talking?'

I sat up and straightened my tie and tried to fix my sodden collar. ‘Let me just figure this out,' I said. ‘I've got this friend up at the Alex who told me that the police don't know about this place, and yet here you are staking it out. Which leads me to suppose that you, or whoever it is you're working for, likes it that way. You'd prefer to find Von Greis, or at least get your hands on what makes him so popular, before they do. Now, it wasn't the silver, and it wasn't the paintings, because they're still here.'

‘Go on.'

‘This is Goering's apartment, so I guess that makes you Goering's bloodhound. There's no reason Goering should have any regard for Himmler. After all, Himmler won control of the police and the Gestapo from him. So it would make sense for Goering to want to avoid involving Himmler's men more than was necessary.'

‘Aren't you forgetting something? I work for the Gestapo.'

‘Rienacker, I may be easy to slug, but I'm not stupid. We both know that Goering has lots of friends in the Gestapo. Which is hardly surprising, since he set it up.'

‘You know, you should have been a detective.'

‘My client thinks much the same way as yours about involving the bulls in his business. Which means that I can level with you, Rienacker. My man is missing a picture, an oil painting, which he acquired outside any of the recognized channels, so you see, it would be best if the police didn't know anything about it.' The big bull said nothing, so I kept on going.

‘Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, it was stolen from his home. Which is where I fit in. I've been hanging around some of the dealers, and the word I hear is that Hermann Goering is a keen art buyer - that somewhere in the depths of Karinhall he has a collection of old masters, not all of them acquired legitimately. I heard that he had an agent, Herr Von Greis, in all matters relating to the purchase of art. So I decided to come here and see if I could speak to him. Who knows, the picture I'm looking for might very well be one of the ones stacked up against that wall.'

‘Maybe it is,' said Rienacker. ‘Always supposing I believe you. Who's the painting by, and what's the subject?'

‘Rubens,' I said, enjoying my own inventiveness. ‘A couple of nude women standing by a river. It's called
The Bathers,
or something like that. I've a photograph back at the office.'

‘And who is your client?'

‘I'm afraid I can't tell you that.'

Rienacker wielded a fist slowly. ‘I could try persuading you perhaps.'

I shrugged. ‘I still wouldn't tell you. It's not that I'm the honourable type, protecting my client's reputation, and all that crap. It's just that I'm on a pretty substantial recovery fee. This case is my big chance to make some real flea, and if it costs me a few bruises and some broken ribs then that's the way it will have to be.'

‘All right,' said Rienacker. ‘Take a look at the pictures if you want. But if it is there I'll have to clear it first.' I got back onto my wobbly legs and went over to the paintings. I don't know a great deal about Art. All the same, I recognize quality when I see it, and most of the pictures in Goering's apartment were the genuine article. To my relief there was nothing that had a nude woman in it, so I wasn't required to make a guess as to whether Rubens had done it or not.

‘It's not here,' I said finally. ‘But thanks for letting me take a look.' Rienacker nodded.

In the hallway I picked up my hat and placed it back on my throbbing head. He said: ‘I'm at the station on Charlottenstrasse. Corner of Französische Strasse.'

‘Yes,' I said, ‘I know it. Above Lutter and Wegner's Restaurant, isn't it?' Rienacker nodded. ‘And yes, if I hear anything, I'll let you know.'

‘See that you do,' he growled, and let me out.

When I got back to Alexanderplatz, I found that I had a visitor in my waiting room.

She was well-built and quite tall, in a suit of black cloth that lent her impressive curves the contours of a well-made Spanish guitar. The skirt was short and narrow and tight across her ample behind, and the jacket was cut to give a high-waisted line, with the fullness gathered in to fit under her substantial bust. On her shiny black head of hair she wore a black hat with a brim turned up all the way round, and in her hands she held a black cloth bag with a white handle and clasp, and a book which she put down as I came into the waiting room.

The blue eyes and perfectly lipsticked mouth smiled with disarming friendliness.

‘Herr Gunther, I imagine.' I nodded dumbly. ‘I'm Inge Lorenz. A friend of Eduard Müller. Of the
Berliner Morgenpost?'
We shook hands. I unlocked the door to my office.

‘Come in and make yourself comfortable,' I said. She took a look around the room and sniffed the air a couple of times. The place still smelt like a bartender's apron.

‘Sorry about the smell. I'm afraid I had a bit of an accident.' I went to the window and pushed it open. When I turned round I found her standing beside me.

‘An impressive view,' she observed.

‘It's not bad.'

‘Berlin Alexanderplatz. Have you read Döblin's novel?'

‘I don't get much time for reading nowadays,' I said. ‘Anyway, there's so little that's worth reading.'

‘Of course it's a forbidden book,' she said, ‘but you should read it, while it's in circulation again.'

‘I don't understand,' I said.

‘Oh, but haven't you noticed? Banned writers are back in the bookshops. It's because of the Olympiad. So that tourists won't think things are quite as repressive here as has been made out. Of course, they'll disappear again as soon as it's all over but, if only because they are forbidden, you should read them.'

‘Thanks. I'll bear it in mind.'

‘Do you have a cigarette?'

I flipped open the silver box on the desk and held it up by the lid for her. She took one and let me light her.

‘The other day, in a café on Kurfürstendamm, I absentmindedly lit one, and some old busybody came up to me and reminded me of my duty as a German woman, wife or mother. Fat chance, I thought. I'm nearly thirty-nine, hardly the age to start producing new recruits for the Party. I'm what they call a eugenic dud.' She sat down in one of the armchairs and crossed her beautiful legs. I could see nothing that was dud about her, except maybe the cafés she frequented. ‘It's got so that a woman can't go out wearing a bit of make-up for fear of being called a whore.'

‘You don't strike me as being the type to worry much about what people call you,' I said. ‘And as it happens, I like a woman to look like a lady, not a Hessian milkmaid.'

‘Thank you, Herr Gunther,' she said smiling. ‘That's very sweet of you.'

‘Müller says you used to be a reporter on the DAZ.'

‘Yes, that's right. I lost my job during the Party's “Clear Women out of Industry” campaign. An ingenious way of solving Germany's unemployment problem, don't you think? You just say that a woman already has a job, and that's looking after the home and the family. If she doesn't have a husband then she'd better get one, if she knows what's good for her. The logic is frightening.'

‘How do you support yourself now?'

‘I did freelance a bit. But right now, well frankly, Herr Gunther, I'm broke, which is why I'm here. Müller says you're digging for some information on Hermann Six. I'd like to try and sell what I know. Are you investigating him?'

‘No. Actually, he's my client.'

‘Oh.' She seemed slightly taken aback at this.

‘There was something about the way he hired me that made me want to know a lot more about him,' I explained, ‘and I don't just mean the school he went to. I suppose you could say that he irritated me. You see, I don't like being told what to do.'

‘Not a very healthy attitude these days.'

‘I guess not.' I grinned at her. ‘Shall we say fifty marks then, for what you know?'

‘Shall we say a hundred, and then you won't be disappointed?'

‘How about seventy-five and dinner?'

‘It's a deal.' She offered me her hand and we shook on it.

‘Is there a file or something, Fraulein Lorenz?'

She tapped her head. ‘Please call me Inge. And it's all up here, down to the last detail.'

And then she told me.

 

‘Hermann Six was born, the son of one of the wealthiest men in Germany, in April 1881, nine years to the day before our beloved Fuhrer entered this world. Since you mentioned school, he went to the König Wilhelm Gymnasium in Berlin. After that he went into the stock exchange, and then into his father's business, which, of course, was the Six Steel Works.

‘Along with Fritz Thyssen, the heir to another great family fortune, young Six was an ardent nationalist, organizing the passive resistance to the French occupation of the Ruhr in 1923. For this both he and Thyssen were arrested and imprisoned. But there the similarity between the two ends, for unlike Thyssen, Six has never cared for Hitler. He was a Conservative Nationalist, never a National Socialist, and any support he may have given the Party has been purely pragmatic, not to say opportunistic.

‘Meanwhile he married Lisa Voegler, a former State Actress in the Berlin State Theatre. They had one child, Grete, born in 1911. Lisa died of tuberculosis in 1934, and Six married Ilse Rudel, the actress.' Inge Lorenz stood up and started to walk about the room as she spoke. Watching her made it difficult to concentrate: when she turned away my eyes were on her behind; and when she turned to face me they were on her belly.

‘I said that Six doesn't care for the Party. That's true. He is equally opposed, however, to the trade-union cause, and appreciated the way in which the Party set about neutralizing it when it first came to power. But it's the so-called Socialism of the Party that really sticks in his throat. And the Party's economic policy. Six was one of several leading businessmen present at a secret meeting in early 1933 held in the Presidential Palace, at which future National Socialist economic policy was explained by Hitler and Goering. Anyway, these businessmen responded by contributing several million marks to Party coffers on the strength of Hitler's promise to eliminate the Bolsheviks and restore the army. It was a courtship that did not last long. Like a lot of Germany's industrialists, Six favours expanding trade and increased commerce. Specifically, with regard to the steel industry he prefers to buy his raw materials abroad, because it's cheaper. Goering does not agree, however, and believes that Germany should be self-sufficient in iron ore, as in everything else. He believes in a controlled level of consumption and exports. It's easy to see why.' She paused, waiting for me to furnish her with the explanation that was so easy to see.