A Man Without Breath

‘It’s generally preferable to ending up like your friend Dr Berruguete.’

‘He was no friend of mine,’ she said. ‘I didn’t even know him.’

‘That’s good. Maybe that makes you the right person to perform an autopsy.’

‘Maybe,’ she said stiffly. ‘In the morning, perhaps. But right now I’m going to bed. So, if you want me, I’ll be in my hut.’

I watched her walk away into the darkness. I wanted her all right. I wanted to feel her smooth thighs wrapped around me the way I had the previous night. I wanted to feel my hands squashed under her behind as I nudged deep into her. But it bothered me a bit that she had tried – oh so subtly – to scare me off from behaving like a detective. It bothered me also that she had mentioned the word cannon before we’d found the broom-handle Mauser. Of course she might have been in the habit of describing guns as cannons – some people were. Then again, she’d used the name ‘box cannon’ when she’d been handling the gun in Von Gersdorff’s Mercedes, and that was what some people called a Mauser C96. And I knew she could handle a gun. I’d seen her handling the Mauser as comfortably as her Dunhill lighter.

It also bothered me that she’d been so quick to finger him for the murder and that she’d had mud on her shoes when I’d gone to see her in the hut – shoes she had not long changed into after removing her medical whites and boots.

I bent down and retrieved the object I’d seen on the ground: a cigarette end. There was more than enough left on it for a Berlin street vendor to have put it on his tray of half-smoked cigarettes, which was how most people – the poor anyway – went about supplementing their daily ration of three johnnies. Had she been smoking at the scene of the crime? I couldn’t remember.

Then there was the Spanish connection. I had a strong feeling there was a lot more about her time in Spain that Ines wasn’t telling me.

*

Von Gersdorff had a little glass in his fingers; the gramophone was playing something improving, only I wasn’t improved enough to recognize it. But he wasn’t alone: he was with General von Tresckow. They had a carafe of vodka, some caviar, pickles, slices of toast on an engraved silver salver, and some hand-rolled cigarettes. It wasn’t the German Club but it still looked pretty exclusive.

‘Henning, this is the fellow I was telling you about. This is Bernhard Gunther.’

To my surprise Von Tresckow stood up and bowed his bald head politely, which had my eyebrows up on my scalp: I wasn’t used to being treated with courtesy by the local flamingos.

‘I am delighted to meet you,’ he said. ‘We are in your debt, sir. Rudi told me what you did for our cause.’

I nodded back at him politely, but all the same it irritated me the way he’d talked about ‘our cause’ as if you needed a red stripe down your trouser leg or a gold signet ring with your family crest engraved on the face to want to be rid of Adolf Hitler. Von Tresckow and his piss-elegant, aristocratic friends had some airs – that was understandable – but this struck as me the worst air of all.

‘You make that sound like a kind of plutarchy, sir,’ I said. ‘I had the impression that half the world would like to see the back of that man. With a couple of holes in it.’

‘Quite right. Quite right.’ He puffed his cigarette and grinned. ‘According to Rudi here you’re a bit of a tough guy.’

I shrugged. ‘I was tough last year. And perhaps the year before. But not any more. Not since I got to Smolensk. I found out how easy it is to wind up dead, in an unmarked grave with a bullet in the back of your head just because there’s a “ski” at the end of your name. A tough guy is someone who’s hard to kill, that’s all. I guess that makes Hitler the toughest guy in Germany right now.’

Von Tresckow took that one on the chin.

‘You’re a Berliner, yes?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘Good.’ He made a fist that he held up in front of his face and mine; it was clear he’d been drinking. ‘Good. The ideal of freedom can never be disassociated from real Prussians like us, Gunther. Between rigour and compassion, pride in oneself and consideration for our fellow man, there must exist a balance. Wouldn’t you say so?’

I’d never really thought of myself as a Prussian, but there’s a first time for everything, so I nodded, patiently: like most German generals, von Tresckow was a little too fond of the sound of his own natural leadership.

‘Oh surely,’ I said. ‘I’m all in favour of a little balance. Where and when you can find it.’

‘Will you have some vodka, Gunther?’ said Von Gersdorff. ‘A little caviar, perhaps?’

‘No sir. Not for me. I’m here on business.’

That sounded provincial and dull – as if I was out of my depth – but I couldn’t have cared less what they thought. That’s the Berliner in me, not the Prussian.

‘Trouble?’