A Man Without Breath

‘No, indeed, you’re quite right,’ he said as I peered through the eyepiece. ‘Quite right. On the bottom of the shell casing that your Russian friend Dyakov found in the mass grave you’ll see that the trademark and calibre are clearly visible on the brass.’

He was pulling on his army tunic while he spoke. I dare say that slicing open Corporal Quidde meant he’d worked up an appetite.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Geco 7.65. Bloody hell, that’s the Gustav Genschow factory in Durlach, isn’t it?’

‘You really are a detective, aren’t you?’ said Buhtz. ‘Yes, it’s a German shell. A 7.65 won’t fit a Tokarev or a Nagant. Those pistols only take 7.62-calibre ammo. But 7.65 does fit a Walther like the one I bet you’re wearing under your arm.’

I shrugged. ‘So what are you saying? That they were shot by Germans after all?’

‘No, no. I’m saying they were shot by German weapons. You see, I happen to know that before the war, the factory exported weapons and ammunition to the Ivans in the Baltic states. The Tokarev and the Nagant are all right as far as they go. The Nagant you can actually use with a sound-suppressor, unlike any other pistol, and a lot of NKVD murder squads like to use it where silence is required. It really is very quiet. But if you want to get the job done as efficiently and quickly as possible and you don’t mind about the noise – and I can’t see that they would have minded, particularly, in the middle of Katyn Wood – then the Walther is your weapon of choice. I’m not being patriotic. Not in the least. The Walther doesn’t jam, and it doesn’t misfire. If you’re shooting four thousand Polacks in one weekend then you need German pistols to get the job done. And my guess is that you’ll find that all four thousand of these fellows were topped in the same way.’

Now I remembered Batov describing a briefcase full of automatic pistols, and I guessed that these must have been Walthers.

‘Makes it a hell of a lot harder to argue that these fellows were all shot by the Ivans,’ I said. ‘There’s a delegation of prominent Polacks arriving here from Warsaw, Krakow and Lublin next week, including two fucking generals, and we’re going to have to tell them that their comrades were shot with German pistols.’

‘You know, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the NKVD used Walthers for another reason too. Other than their reliability. I think they might have used them to help cover their tracks. To make it look like we did it. Just in case anyone ever discovered this grave.’

I groaned, loudly. ‘The minister is going to love this,’ I said. ‘On top of everything else.’

I told him about Batov and the documentary evidence that no longer was.

‘Sorry,’ said Buhtz. ‘All the same I’m going to ask the ministry to telephone the Genschow factory and see what their export records say. It’s possible they can locate a batch of similar ammunition.’

‘But you said this is standard German issue, didn’t you?’

‘Yes and no. I’ve been working in the field of ballistics since 1932, and even though I say so myself, I’m something of an expert in this field. I can tell you Gunther that while the calibre remains standard, over the years the trace metallurgy of ammunition can change quite a bit. Some years there’s a bit more copper; other years there might be a bit more nickel. And depending on how old this ammunition is, we might be able to get an idea about when it was made, which would help to substantiate the export record. If we can do that we might be able to say for sure that this bullet was part of a batch of ammo exported to the Baltic Ivans in say 1940, when we had the non-aggression pact with Comrade Stalin. Or even before the Nazis were in power, when we had those Red-loving bastards in the SPD running the show. That would be documentary proof that they did do it, and almost as good as finding a Russian-made bullet.’

I saw little point in mentioning my own former allegiance to the SPD, so I nodded silently and stood away from the microscope.

‘So then,’ said Buhtz, ‘perhaps we’ll just tell the Polish delegation what we know about the bodies that we’ve found so far, and leave it at that for now. No point in speculating unnecessarily. Under the circumstances I think we should let them take over as much of the actual work at the site as possible.’

‘Suits me.’

‘By the way, do you speak any Polish?’ asked Buhtz. ‘Because I don’t.’

‘I thought you were at the University of Breslau?’

‘For only three years,’ said Buhtz. ‘Besides, that’s very much a German-speaking university. My Polish is fine for ordering a shitty meal in a restaurant, but when it comes to forensics and pathology it’s a different story. What about Johannes Conrad?’