‘S he could see it at least,’ the girl says. ‘She knew what kind of monster he was.’
‘But I didn’t,’ Fritz says. ‘I still thought he was like the rest of us.’
‘What will he do, Frau Dachs?’ Fritz asked.
She stared at him as if he were insane. ‘He will be satisfied with nothing less than complete power. He will treat the country as he treated her. He says he loved her, and he killed her. He will kill us all.’ She raised her chin. ‘You must stop him. You must stop him now.’
Fritz stops. He cannot continue. He is breathing hard. Frau Dachs’s words are as painful today as they were then. The girl is watching him, that frown furrowing her forehead. He can’t even make an excuse.
‘But you didn’t stop him,’ she says. ‘You didn’t arrest him.’
‘No,’ he says. ‘I did not.’
She stands. ‘You could have saved millions of lives. You!’ She doesn’t seem to remember the tape player running. ‘Don’t you think of that?’
‘Every day,’ he says. His calm tone stops her. She sits, anguish on her face.
‘Did you even try?’ she asks.
He nods, gropes for the cigarette box, nearly knocking it off the table. He catches it with the other hand, and replaces it. She crouches, takes a cigarette out for him, and hold it out to him. His hands are shaking; he doesn’t want to take it. She turns it so that the filter faces him. He puts it in his mouth. She takes his lighter and lights the tip for him. They are so close he can smell the flowery shampoo she uses on her hair.
‘Are you all right?’ she asks, with more compassion than he deserves.
‘Yes,’ he says, holding the cigarette tightly between his lips. ‘Really.’
The cigarette adds to his light-headedness. She pats his knee, her hand warm, then returns to her chair, once again the prim and proper scholar.
Waiting. Waiting to hear his failure.
‘I told you,’ he says. ‘I told you that sometimes solving the case is not enough. I told you that.’
‘You did,’ she says.
‘We tried.’ His voice is soft. ‘Henrich came back with the Chief in two separate cars. Henrich took Frau Dachs to a safe place – I never knew where – and the Chief and I talked. He had to find a way around Franz Gürtner. Geli was a suicide. You can’t charge a man with murder on a case that’s already solved.’
‘He failed.’
‘Of course. Hitler owned Gürtner. He owned so many.’ Fritz set the cigarette on the ashtray. ‘But the Chief did take most of the evidence, although he left the paintings with me.’
‘We didn’t learn until much later. Gregor Strasser, working independently of his brother. They both apparently wanted to take advantage of the situation. Gregor figured that if the police had the paintings, we would investigate Hitler even more.’
‘It worked. You investigated.’ She is watching his hand as he taps his fingers on the chair. It is as if she is intent on his every movement, as if she is afraid something will happen to him unless she stares.
‘Yes,’ he says, hating the scrutiny. The room is too hot. A trickle of sweat runs down the back of his neck. His shirt reeks of cigarette smoke and his own body odour. He should have cleaned up before she arrived.
‘So it ended where it began, with the Minister of Justice?’ She asks the question with such an intensity, he knows she has asked it before. He wonders how long he was quiet. He cannot remember what he was thinking about.
He shakes his head. ‘The Chief tried everything he could think of. In a matter of days, he went to the Burgermeister, and the District Committee. None of them wanted to touch the case. Finally, he went to the Minister of the Interior.’
She frowns again. ‘The Criminal Police Law of 1922? I thought Bavaria didn’t follow it.’
‘We followed it, up to a point. We shared information just as we were supposed to, but the state branches remained separate. No state listened to the head of another state. The Minister of the Interior for all of Germany did not want to overturn a ruling by the Bavarian Minister of Justice.’
‘Was he corrupt too?’ she asks.
Fritz shakes his head. ‘Just very smart.’
‘So what did the Chief do?’
‘It is not what he did. It is what I did.’