Prague Fatale (26 page)

‘You have to be alive to feel like that, I suppose.’

‘What’s that? Oh, yes. I heard one of the adjutants got Stalin’s greatcoat. A terrible business.’

Stalin’s greatcoat was a coffin.

‘Which one was he? All of these adjutant fellows sort of look the same to me.’

I found what I was looking for: the second shell casing. I stood up and found myself facing a man of about the same age as me.

‘Captain Kuttner.’

He shook his head as if he couldn’t remember him. ‘And you’re the detective fellow, from Berlin, aren’t you? Gunther, isn’t it?’

‘That’s correct, sir.’

‘I suppose that accounts for why you’re crawling around the place on your hands and knees.’

‘I do quite a lot of that anyway, sir. Even when I’m not hunting for evidence. I like to drink, you see, sir. That is, when I can get it.’

‘There’s no shortage of it here, Gunther. If this keeps up I shall need a new liver. Major Paul Thummel, at your service. If there’s anything I can do to help, just let me know. Major Ploetz says that you want to interview everyone who was
staying here last night. Fine by me. Just say when. Always glad to help the police.’

I pocketed the little shell casing. ‘Thank you, sir. Perhaps we could speak later on. I’ll have Captain Pomme contact you to arrange a time.’

‘Sooner the better, old man. Ploetz says that none of us can leave the house until we’ve given a statement. Frankly it all sounds a bit excessive. After all, it’s not like any of us is going to run away, is it?’

‘I think it has rather more to do with remembering details that might seem unimportant anywhere else. In my experience, it’s always better if you can interview witnesses as close to the crime scene as possible.’

‘Well, you know your job, I suppose. Just don’t interview people in alphabetical order that’s all. You’ll find that puts me last, I think.’

‘I’ll certainly bear that in mind, sir.’

Investigating the murder of one young SD officer who had almost certainly participated in the murders of hundreds, perhaps thousands of Latvian Jews, Gypsies and ‘other undesirables’ struck me as absurd, of course. A mass murderer who’d been murdered. What was wrong with that? But how many had I killed myself? There were the forty or fifty Russian POWs I knew about for sure – nearly all of them members of an NKVD death squad. I’d commanded the firing squad and delivered the
coup de grâce
to at least ten of them as they lay groaning on the ground. Their blood and brains had been spattered all over my boots. During the Great War there had been a Canadian boy I’d put the bayonet into when it was him or me, only he’d died hard, with his head on my shoulder. God knows how many others I’d killed when, another time,
I’d taken over a Maxim gun and squeezed the trigger as I pointed it at some brown figures advancing slowly over No Man’s Land.

But it seemed that Albert Kuttner’s death mattered because he’d been a German officer and a close colleague of General Heydrich’s. That was supposed to make a difference, only it didn’t. At least not to me. Investigating a murder in the autumn of 1941 was like arresting a man for vagrancy during the Great Depression. But I did what I was told and started to go through the motions the way a proper policeman would have done. What choice did I have? Besides, it kept my mind off what I knew was happening out there, in the East. Most of all it kept my mind off the growing sense that I’d been to the worst place on the planet only to realize that the worst place of all was inside me.

‘I’ve prepared a list of everyone who stayed at the Lower Castle last night and therefore who you will want to interview,’ said Major Ploetz.

He handed me a sheet of neatly typed, headed notepaper.

‘Thank you, Major.’

We were in the Morning Room. With its greenish silk Chinoise wallpaper, the room felt like an extension of the garden and a little more natural than the rest of the house. There were a couple of big sofas facing each other like very fat chess-players across a polished wooden coffee-table. In the window was a grand piano and in the fireplace there was a fire that cheered the room. Either side of the marble fireplace was a mosaic of picture frames featuring Heydrich and his family. Kahlo was inspecting these, one at a time, as if looking to judge a winner. Now wearing my civilian clothes, I was seated on one of the sofas, smoking a cigarette.

‘Here is your mail, Commissar, forwarded from the Alex in Berlin. And here is a copy of Albert Kuttner’s SD personnel file. The General thought it might help you to get a better sense of the man and what he was like and – you never know – perhaps why he was killed. The personnel files of everyone staying here this weekend are being sent over from Hradschin Castle this morning.’

‘That’s very efficient of you, Major.’

It was easy to see why Ploetz was Heydrich’s Chief Adjutant. There was no doubting his efficiency. With his lists and memoranda and facts and figures Achim Ploetz was a real electric Nazi. Before the war I’d been to a town called Achim. It was near Bremen in a nice part of the country that, in its natural state, is mostly moorland. But there was nothing natural about Achim Ploetz, and in that respect at least, Doctor Jury was right: all of Heydrich’s adjutants were a bit like the golem of Prague.

Outside the Morning Room window a Mercedes drew up and Heydrich’s driver got out and opened the passenger door expectantly.

Ploetz saw him out of the corner of his eye.

‘Well, I’d better go and tell the General that our car is here,’ he said. ‘If there is anything you want, just ask Pomme.’

‘Yes. I will.’

Then he was gone and Kahlo and I were standing at the window peering around the heavy drapes like two comedians getting ready to take a curtain call. The convertible’s top was down and the engine was purring smoothly like some green metal dragon. Ploetz climbed aboard first and sat in the rear. Heydrich sat up front with the driver as if that might help him to control the car despite the fact someone else was at the wheel. He was just like that, I guess.
As we watched them drive away there was no sign of an armed escort.

‘So, what do you make of it, sir?’

‘Bloody fool,’ I muttered.

‘How’s that, sir?’

‘Heydrich. The way he drives around the city like he’s invulnerable. Like Achilles. As if daring the poor bastards to come and have a go.’

‘The Czechos are just mad enough to do it, too.’

‘You think so?’

Kahlo nodded.

‘How long have you been in Prague?’

‘Long enough to know that the Czechos have got guts. More than we like to give them credit for.’

‘Kurt, isn’t it?’

Kahlo nodded.

‘Where are you from, Kurt?’

‘Mannheim, sir.’

‘How did you become a cop?’

‘I’m not exactly sure. My dad was a car-worker at the Daimler-Benz factory. But I never much fancied being stuck in a factory myself. He wanted me to become a lawyer, only I wasn’t clever enough, so becoming a cop seemed like the next best thing.’

‘So what do
you
make of it?’

‘It’s a puzzle, sir. A man is found shot dead inside a first-floor bedroom that’s locked from the inside. The windows are bolted and there’s no murder weapon present. Down the corridor there’s a spent nine-millimetre Parabellum round on the floor, so clearly a gun was fired at some time between the hours of midnight and, say, five o’clock this morning. And yet you’d also expect someone to have remarked on that,
because a P38 wasn’t picked as the Army’s choice of firearm because it’s so bloody quiet. They can’t all have been so pissed they didn’t hear anything. The staff weren’t pissed. Not with Kritzinger in charge. Why didn’t they hear something? And not just a gunshot, either. I can’t imagine Kuttner standing on the landing upstairs and saying nothing as someone is about to shoot him. Me I’d have shouted “Help” or “Don’t shoot”, or something like that.’

‘I agree.’

‘Kuttner was under the influence of a sleeping pill,’ he said. ‘Maybe he didn’t realize quite how much peril he was in. Maybe it was dark and he didn’t see the gun. Maybe he was shot outside and because he was drugged he didn’t realize the severity of his injury. So he comes back in the house, goes back to his room, locks the door, lies down, and dies. Maybe.’

I shook my head. ‘You’ve got more maybes there than Fritz bloody Lang.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘Frankly, I wouldn’t know where to start with this one, sir. However, I’m keen to learn from someone who does, such as you. That is, if General Heydrich is to be believed. Anyway, you have my full cooperation, sir. Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it, with no questions asked.’

‘Questions are good, Kurt. It’s obedience I have a problem with. In particular, my own.’

Kahlo grinned. ‘Then I think yours should be an interesting career, sir.’

I opened Kuttner’s SD file and glanced over the details of the dead man’s short life.

‘Albert Kuttner was from Halle-an-der-Saale. Interesting.’

‘Is it? I can’t say I know the place.’

‘What I mean is, Halle is where Heydrich is from.’

‘So he could be taking this personally.’

‘Yes. True. Kuttner was born in 1911. That makes him seven years younger than Heydrich. His father was a Protestant pastor at a local church. But instead of pursuing a career in the Church, or in the Navy – like his boss—’

‘Heydrich was in the Navy? I didn’t know that.’

‘It’s said he got kicked out of it for conduct unbecoming when he knocked up some admiral’s daughter. But don’t tell anyone I said so.’

‘This admiral’s daughter. Is that the present Frau Heydrich?’

‘No. It’s not.’

‘So he is human, after all.’

‘I wouldn’t go that far.’

‘Kuttner studied law at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg and the Humboldt University of Berlin, where it seems he was a brilliant student. He received his doctor of laws in 1935 and worked for the ministries of justice and the interior before joining the SD.’

‘So far, so predictable.’

‘Hmm. Near the top of his class in officer school. Highly praised by everyone who assessed him; he was being groomed for one of the top jobs in Berlin. In May this year he was transferred to the Einsatzgruppen and ordered to Pretzsch, where he was assigned to Group A and sent east. Nothing unusual about that. Lots of decent men have been sent east. Decent men and some lawyers. On June 23rd he and the group were ordered to proceed to Riga, in Latvia, to help with “the resettlement of the indigenous Jewish population”.’

‘Resettlement. Yes, I know what that entails.’

‘Good. It will save me having to explain the distinction between “resettlement” and “mass murder”.’

‘Am I to assume that your appreciation of the distinction is based on personal experience, sir?’

‘You are. But please don’t assume that I did a good job. There are no good jobs out east. Albert Kuttner didn’t take to his work any more than I did. Which is why he felt guilty. Like me. And why he wasn’t sleeping.’

‘Thus the Veronal in his room.’

I turned the page in Kuttner’s file and read on a little before speaking again.

‘That guilt appears to have manifested itself for the first time just three weeks into his tour of Latvia when he put in for a transfer to the Army. But the request was refused by his commander, Major Rudolf Lange. Well, that hardly surprises me. I knew Rudolf Lange when he was with the Berlin police. The cat never stops catching mice. He was a bastard then and he’s a bastard now. Reason given for refusal of request for transfer: personnel shortages. But a week later he puts in for another transfer. This time he’s given an official reprimand. For conduct likely to damage morale.’

‘It’s a dirty job so someone has to do it, right?’

‘Something like that, I suppose.’

I turned another page in Kuttner’s file.

‘By August however, Albert is back in Berlin facing a disciplinary inquiry. It seems he threatened a superior officer with a pistol – it doesn’t say who, but I hope it was Lange, I’ve often wanted to stick a gun in that fat fucker’s face. Kuttner’s placed under close arrest, but not close enough because he then attempts suicide. No details on that either. But he’s sent back to Berlin for that disciplinary inquiry. A so-called SS court of honour. Only the disciplinary inquiry is suspended. No reason given.’

‘Do you think Heydrich might have pulled some strings?’

‘That’s what it looks like, because the next thing is that Albert is on the General’s staff in Berlin. Lighting his cigarettes, booking seats at the opera, and fetching coffee.’

‘Now that is a good job,’ said Kahlo.

‘You don’t strike me as an opera fan.’

‘Not the opera. The cigarettes.’ His eyes were on my cigarette. ‘The tobacco ration being what it is.’

‘Sorry.’ I opened my cigarette case. ‘Help yourself.’