‘S o many names,’ the girl says. She has brought a notebook with her this morning, and is scribbling as Fritz speaks. A pile of cassette tapes sit beside her tape recorder, as if she expects him to talk all day. ‘I do not know this one.’
Fritz’s fingers are wrapped around a glass cup filled with coffee and cream. The rich smell of the blend is more enticing than the pastries she has purchased from the faux German bakeries that cater to tourists. Next time he will tell her where to get real food.
The sun is warm on his back and shoulders. He has opened the curtains and straightened the apartment, no longer willing to be ashamed of where he lives. It took him most of the night, but it prevented the dreams.
‘Some you will recognise. Some you will not. You will find all of the names in the papers of the day.’ Fritz takes a sip of coffee. It is warm, bitter, and sweet at the same time. Soothing. ‘We were all famous once.’
‘I’m sure,’ she says, patronising him. ‘Go on.’
He sets the cup down next to the full ashtray. ‘If you are uninterested, I can find someone else –’
‘No!’ she says quickly. ‘I mean.…’
She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear (her nervous gesture, he notes), and sighs. ‘This worries me, dealing with Hitler. I never expected to.’
‘None of us ever expected to,’ he says.
Fritz did not have time for meetings with the Chief Inspector. Fritz had a case to finish, witnesses to interview. But that was the message waiting for Fritz at the desk.
One of his men remained on the scene. The other three had returned, bringing evidence and witnesses. Fritz glanced over the preliminary list of seized evidence, noting that Hitler had a gun collection, although none of the weapons had been fired. Fritz let Henrich supervise the witnesses, keeping them safe until Fritz could question them. Then he headed to the Chief Inspector’s office.
The office of the Chief Inspector had once been a hallway, but reorganisation in the precinct after the war had caused a redesign in the building. The exit leading to the alleyway had been sealed off and the hallway leading to that exit became a dead end. The walls were knocked out and a wall was built along the front, with a new door. The space was larger than any of the other offices, but it had never been repainted, and the grey walls served as a reminder of the room’s former status. The Chief Inspector had covered the sealed-up door with posters announcing police charity events, and through the window which no one had bothered to remove were the bricks that now covered the back side of the building.
Fritz entered without knocking and closed the door behind him. The Chief Inspector was a slender man with a hawk-like nose who wore gold wire-rim glasses and kept his hair cropped short. He wore suits and ties, but never buttoned his sleeves, rolling the cuffs over the edges of the coat so that his wrists stuck out as if he were an overgrown schoolboy. His desk was littered with books, most taken from the shelves he had built on the new wall. A stack of papers teetered at the edge of the desk, and Fritz resisted the urge to straighten them.
‘You knew,’ Fritz said. ‘You knew that the body was gone and that Gürtner was involved.’
‘A crime was committed. We needed to look at it.’ The Chief Inspector’s blue eyes sparkled. He often worked Saturdays, but he rarely looked so cheerful about it.
‘Gürtner says it was a suicide.’
The Chief Inspector folded his hands over the open book before him. ‘What do you know of our friend Hitler?’
‘I didn’t know that he lived in Prinzregentenplaz until this morning.’
The Chief Inspector laughed. ‘Ah, and I thought you did. I should have told you then.’
Fritz nodded. He lifted the books off the metal chair in front of the desk, looked at the Chief Inspector who said nothing, then set the books on the floor and sat on the chair. ‘Our friend Hitler, his housekeeper says, is in Hamburg to give a speech.’
‘Not just any speech. He is to kick off his presidential campaign at a rally tonight.’ The Chief Inspector leaned forward. ‘And how, you may ask, does a man imprisoned seven years ago for high treason, a crime that usually commands the death penalty, get out of jail within a year and become a national figure? No one knows, exactly, although some say that a certain Minister of Justice influenced the three judges hearing the case to be lenient. After all, Herr Hitler was following a moral imperative higher than the law.’
Fritz remembered hearing that argument before. Hitler’s beer hall putsch in 1923 was known for its ineptness and for the egoism of its leader. Eighteen men died and a number more were wounded. But the loss of life didn’t seem to matter, nor did Hitler’s failure. Even the Schupo who had been in the crossfire swore that Hitler had the right to attack a weak and ineffective government.
No one was comfortable with the democracy forced upon Germany after the war. But that did not make treason right. The police knew that best; they were in charge of keeping the peace.
‘Hitler has important friends,’ Fritz said. ‘Perhaps we should acknowledge that.’
‘Oh, I do,’ the Chief Inspector said. ‘But Hitler was, as you say, out of town. Perhaps he does not yet know of his niece’s death.’
‘What are you saying?’
The Chief Inspector leaned back. ‘I am speculating. Hitler has become an important man. A death occurred in his home. Such an event could be used to discredit him.’
‘By whom?’ Fritz asked, feeling cold.
‘By anyone with motive.’ The Chief Inspector’s odd joy seemed to have grown.
‘What do you want me to find?’ Fritz asked.
‘The truth,’ the Chief Inspector said.
‘There is no body,’ Fritz said.
‘The body is in Vienna,’ the Chief Inspector said.
‘But the Minister of Justice has already ruled. The girl died by her own hand.’
‘Do you believe that?’ the Chief Inspector asked.
‘What I believe does not matter.’
‘Nor does what you do when you are not working for the Kripo.’
Fritz’s chill grew. ‘Are you relieving me, sir?’
‘Only for a short time. It seems to me that you need a vacation. I have heard that Austria is lovely in September.’
‘Are you ordering me to do this, sir?’
‘I believe you would be the best man for the task,’ the Chief Inspector said.
‘Will I have the backing of the Kripo?’
‘You will have my backing,’ the Chief Inspector said.
Fritz rubbed his hands along his knees. ‘And if I see the girl in Austria, sir, and I believe the Minister of Justice is wrong? I will have to speak to Herr Hitler. I will have to talk with his sister, his associates. His housekeeper.’
‘Hitler is used to police pressure. I am sure one Detective Inspector will not bother him over much.’
‘He will tell the Minister of Justice. I will be breaking the law.’
‘Then I will speak to the Minister of Justice.’
‘And say what? That I am a wild man, that I do not belong in the department?’
The Chief Inspector smiled. ‘I will merely tell him that you have a moral imperative higher than the law.’
‘A moral imperative will not change the Minister’s ruling.’
‘No, but the truth might.’
‘A man who can be bought cannot be swayed by the truth.’
The Chief Inspector pressed his fingers together. ‘Ah, but there you are wrong, my friend. Such a man can be swayed by the truth when it threatens everything he has worked for.’
‘So we are trying to protect Herr Hitler, then?’
‘We are protecting no one,’ the Chief Inspector said, ‘except Bavaria herself.’
‘Did you give him the letter?’ the girl asks.
He feels a tension in his shoulders that he hasn’t felt in forty years. The memory of that conversation terrifies him, although he was not afraid at the time.
In those days, he had known Hitler as a common, brutish politician: a small, loud Austrian who had managed to convince thugs and a few people in power to follow him.
Fritz had no idea what Hitler would become, what he was transforming into, even as the case unfolded. If he had known then what he learned later, he would not have pursued the case at all, despite the pressures put on him.
He would have politely declined, and faced the consequences.
‘What?’ Fritz asks the girl.
‘The Chief Inspector. Did you give him the letter?’ She is caught in the story now. She has stopped writing as he speaks, her notebook upside down and forgotten on the ground. She looks at her recorder only when it clicks and stops. He is relieved about that. He has chosen the right person after all.
Fritz holds up one finger, then pushes himself out of the chair. He no longer cares if she sees the ripped back, the mottled brown stuffing, the ruined spring. She is seeing inside his life now. He can hide nothing from her if she is to understand.
As he walks into the bedroom, he hears a faint click. She has finally remembered to pause her recorder. He smiles.
The bedroom is dark. He still makes his bed military fashion, the corners precise, the blanket smooth and untouched. The room shows an obsessive neatness not reflected in the front room. His clothes hang in his closet, shirts arranged by sleeve length, suitcoats by age. The colours are all the same: blacks and whites. Only his First World War uniform tucked in the very back adds colour to the wardrobe. His police uniform and his undercover clothes are in the footlocker behind the shoes. He avoids it and instead pulls out a box of mildewing cardboard. He has not opened it in years, and he resists the urge to sit on his haunches and look through the memories.
Instead, he reaches inside and removes a cigar box sealed with brittle, yellow tape. He tucks the box under his arm and returns to the living room.
She is picking the edges off a pastry, avoiding the frosting and eating only the cake. She is studying her hands, but he caught the nervous glance she shot at the bedroom just before he came back. He returns to his chair, sets the box on his lap and slits the tape with his thumbnail. The lid flops open, flimsy with age. A pile of letters, still in their envelopes, line one side. He reaches to the bottom of the pile, to the only letter not in an envelope. The paper is still crinkled. The ink has faded, but Gürtner’s signature is clear. He puts the box on the floor and hands the letter to her.
‘My God.’ Her hands shake as she takes the letter from him. ‘My God.’
She stares at it for a moment, rereading it, realising (probably) that he can quote it from memory. This has been only a story to her until this moment. Now, though, she knows. She knows he tells her the truth. He can see it in her eyes, in her shaking hands. She looks at him over the paper’s edge.
‘May I take this with me?’ she asks.
‘No,’ he says, unwilling, even forty years later to part with evidence. ‘But you may photograph it here.’
She nods and, after a moment, hands the paper back to him. He folds it carefully and returns it to the bottom of the cigar box. She scribbles in her notebook, then adds a series of exclamation points. It irritates him that she writes her notes in English. If she wrote in German, he could read it upside down.
‘Is there more in the box?’ she asks.
He resists the urge to pick it up and clutch it to his chest. He had thought that speaking of this would be easy, like singing during an all-night drinking session. He did not expect this protectiveness, this odd, almost unclean feeling as he reveals his secrets. He cannot breach the past all at once. He must let it unfold, as much for himself as for her.
‘There is more,’ he says.
She waits. He stares at her. She has small lines around her eyes, a bit of facial hair beneath her chin. Finally she glances down at the box, and then at him.
‘You do not have your recorder on,’ he says.
She flushes and presses the play button. He grips the arms of his chair as he sinks back into his memories.