‘We are receiving complaints about the way you’re spending your vacation.’ The Chief Inspector’s wire-rimmed glasses had slipped to the edge of his nose. He leaned back in his chair. His sleeves were pushed up to his elbows, and the cuffs were smudged with ink.
‘I thought you were going to handle those complaints.’
‘And I have been. What a man does on his own time is his own business.’ The Chief pushed up his glasses with the knuckle of his right forefinger. ‘But I had thought you would be a bit more discreet.’
‘This case is making discretion impossible.’ Fritz sighed and sat down. The Chief’s office was hot. Someone had turned on the heat in the building even though the afternoon was warm. ‘And now I think I’m going to need the help of the political branch.’
The Chief placed his hands on his thighs – a deliberate gesture designed to prevent an involuntary response. Fritz had seen him use it before, each time in a trying situation.
‘Why?’ the Chief asked.
‘Because I cannot find Hitler and I don’t know where to look.’ Fritz pulled his chair closer to the desk. The metal legs dragged on the wooden floor, scratching it. The Chief looked pained even though he couldn’t see the damage.
‘I thought, from all the complaints I’ve been getting, that you spoke to him already.’
‘Briefly,’ Fritz said. ‘On Saturday. He said he would see me on Sunday, but I was already in Vienna. It wouldn’t have mattered. I heard from Schupo that he left the apartment before dawn on Sunday morning and hasn’t been back.’
‘Then who wrote the letter in the Münchner Post?’ the Chief asked.
Fritz shrugged. ‘It could have been Hitler. It could have been his men. I don’t know. I do know that I need to talk with him, and he has disappeared from Munich. None of my sources know where he is, but I rarely work on political cases. I need the help of the Political Branch.’
The Chief took off his glasses and sucked on the earguard. His face looked naked without them, younger, as if he were revealing a part of himself no one else saw. ‘Have you evidence that links him with Angela Raubal’s death?’
Fritz shoo his head. ‘I have information that links everyone from a 19-year-old jealous shopgirl to political enemies of Hitler to intimations of Hitler himself. If I could talk with the man, I might get a sense of what happened.’
‘What sense have you now?’
Fritz leaned against the desk. The wood had absorbed the warmth of the room. The papers nearest him smelled of pipe tobacco, even though the Chief didn’t smoke.
‘Hitler’s people are covering up the crime,’ Fritz said. ‘But I do not know if they are doing so merely to avoid a scandal planned by opposing parties, or if they are doing so to protect one of their own.’
‘The shopgirl?’
Fritz shook his head. ‘A lover of Hitler’s, perhaps, but she was startled enough by the news of his affection for his niece that I can rule her out. Also, the housekeeper used the girl as a reason for the niece’s suicide. I think they are trying to lead me down a blind alley.’
‘I don’t want you to talk with Hitler until you have something concrete,’ the Chief said. ‘It is difficult enough to interview a political candidate, particularly one with the kind of connections that Hitler has. The last thing we want is for this unofficial investigation to be forced to a conclusion.’
Fritz sighed. This investigation had given him a sense of unease from the moment he walked into the apartment on Prinzregentenplaz. ‘You tell me I need to work this case, and then you tie my hands. What do you want here, Chief? Are you hoping that I will find Hitler to be the murderer?’
The Chief stared at something over Fritz’s head for so long that at first it seemed as if he hadn’t heard. Then the Chief said, ‘A year ago, in Berlin, members of the NSDAP kicked my younger sister to death. They claimed she had threatened them, but witnesses said the men were baiting her, calling her names like jewbait, schieber, and kike –’
‘Schieber?’ the girl says. ‘You have used the word “schieber”.’
‘Ach.’ Fritz takes a sip of beer. He does not want to be sidetracked now. He wants her to listen. Is that too much to ask. ‘Not all schiebers were Jews.’
‘Then why was the Chief offended by this?’
The exasperation makes him stand. He paces around the small apartment, his fists clenched. ‘Because the schiebers got rich after the war. They took food from the mouths of children and sold it for profit. After the war, any German who was well fed was probably a schieber. It was a shameful thing.’
‘And the NSDAP called her a schieber because she was Jewish, because Jews stereotypically get rich off other people’s pain, because –’
‘I did not make up the rule or the story. And I did not mention the stereotype. You did.’ Fritz stops behind her chair. His fists are clenched so hard his nails have dug into his palm. ‘Just because I am a German of a certain age, I am judged anti-Semitic. Let me remind you. I spent the years you have read about, the years of the atrocities before the war, and the years of the war, in London.’
‘It does not automatically provide a defence,’ she says. ‘The attitude was prevalent. Even I know that –’
‘I have enough guilt without adding this,’ he says. A drop of blood falls from his right palm onto the back of the chair. ‘I warned you that this story is not pretty. It is not pretty for women, or Jews, or Germans, for that matter. If you do not want to hear any more, I would be glad to take your tapes and apologise for the use of your time. I will talk about Demmelmayer and we never have to see each other again.’
When he finishes, the room is so quiet all he can hear is his own breathing. Somewhere in the middle of his rant, she has paused the recorder.
‘Why have you chosen to tell this to me?’
He stands behind her. She is wearing a light perfume, flowery, very feminine. Hes can lie to her. He can say he is reminiscing because he is getting old, because the story needs to be told, because she is the only one who appeared even slightly interested. But he has got into the habit of telling her everything. So he says, ‘I tell you because you remind me of her.’
‘Of Geli?’
‘No,’ he says, and returns to his chair.
‘– then,’ the Chief said, ‘when she ignored them and kept trying to walk down the street, they grabbed her, beat her and kicked her to death.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Fritz said, hoping he sounded sincere.
It had become a litany through the Twenties. Somewhere around 1925, people stopped talking about their personal grief because the collective grief was too overwhelming. Compassion had become a rare commodity. Fritz still had trouble feeling it, although he knew that the Chief wanted something from him.
The Chief did not appear to have heard him. ‘The witnesses were bribed, the case closed from lack of evidence. I am not naïve. Perhaps I would have understood the difficulties the Berlin force had. Lord knows how many cases we have had here where the witnesses have been silenced, the criminals have disappeared. But Hitler –’ the Chief took a deep breath ‘– Hitler said that decent women cannot walk the street when there are Jews around, that it is up to all Germans to banish the Jewish scourge from the face of Germany, that my sister’s death was merely part – part – of what all Jews deserved. No sorrow. No remorse. Just a pledge to continue the slaughter and the persecution.’
‘So this is a personal vendetta,’ Fritz said.
The Chief blinked and looked at him as if remembering he were there. ‘No,’ the Chief said. ‘Yes. Perhaps. All I know is that the NSDAP is a cancer among us and if we allow them to grow, then my sister’s death will become one of many.’
She already was one of many, but Fritz did not say that. Instead, he moved away from the desk. ‘I cannot conduct a secret investigation so that you can get revenge.’
‘I don’t want that kind of revenge,’ the Chief said. ‘I don’t care if Hitler pays for this. I just want to prevent the NSDAP from covering up another murder, especially one that might destroy their power.’
‘Sir, it would seem to me that those are not the right reasons to conduct an investigation.’
The Chief slipped his glasses back on, taking the vulnerable edge from his face. He leaned forward. ‘You took those pictures of Angela Raubal. Someone beat her before she died. You concluded that she was murdered. When someone is murdered in Munich, the case is handled by the Kripo, no?’
‘Yes, but sometimes those cases are closed, like this one was, and ruled something other –’
‘Only the Kripo had no say in the Minister of Justice’s ruling, did they?’
‘No, sir.’
‘We never even had a chance to investigate, did we?’
‘No, sir.’
‘A girl was murdered in the home of a political candidate with enough clout to cover over that murder. In the last election, his party gained 95 seats in the Reichstag. In the next election, they could gain more. Germany is already considered a nation of thugs. We are bent under reparations and –’
‘Sir, this could cost me my career.’
The Chief stopped. He crossed his arms, and looked down his long nose at Fritz. ‘Yes, it could,’ he said. ‘You work for me, not for Franz Gürtner or Adolf Hitler.’
‘But if anyone gets in trouble for this investigation, it will be me.’
The Chief shook his head. ‘All of Munich knows that no one in Kripo takes a piss without my permission. You inflate your position here. The complaints have been coming to me, and will continue to do so. I would simply like there to be fewer of them.’
Fritz’s hands were shaking. Instead of reassuring him, the conversation made him feel even more alone. He stood. ‘Will I be able to get assistance from the Political Branch?’
The Chief stared at him for a moment. ‘I will have them find Herr Hitler for you. But you will not learn of his location until you have a suspect and clear evidence.’
‘Sir, I need to talk with Hitler.’
‘You need to continue your investigation. Quietly.’ And with that, Fritz was dismissed.