A Quiet Flame

I suppose it was the sarcastic grin that did it for him. I hardly saw the punch. I hardly even felt it. One second I was standing there, grinning like Torquemada, and the next I was lying on the cobbled ground, felled like a heifer and feeling as if I’d been struck by a bolt of electricity. In the half-light available to my eyes, Grund was standing over me with fists clenched, like Firpo staring down at Dempsey, and shouting something at me. His words were quite silent to my ears. All I could hear was a loud, high-pitched noise. Finally, Grund was hustled away by a couple of uniformed bulls while their sergeant bent down and helped me to my feet.

My head cleared and I shifted my jaw against my hand.

“The bastard hit me,” I said.

“He did that,” said the cop, searching my eyes like a referee wondering if he should allow the fight to proceed or not. “We all saw it, sir.”

From his tone I assumed he meant that he took it for granted I was going to press disciplinary charges against Grund. Hitting a superior officer was a serious offense in KRIPO. Almost as bad as hitting a suspect.

I shook my head. “No, you didn’t,” I said.

The cop was older than me. Nearing retirement, probably. His short hair was the color of polished steel. He had a scar in the center of his forehead: it looked as if a bullet had struck him there.

“What’s that you say, sir?”

“You didn’t see anything, Sergeant. Any of you. Got that?”

The sergeant thought about this for a moment and then nodded. “If you say so, sir.”

There was blood in my mouth but I was uncut.

“No harm done,” I said, and spat onto the ground.

“What was it all about?” he asked.

“Politics,” I said. “That’s what everything’s always about in Germany these days. Politics.”

I DIDN’T GO straight back to the Alex. Instead I drove to Kassner’s apartment on Dönhoff-Platz, which wasn’t exactly on the way, being at the eastern end of Leipziger Strasse. I stopped on the north side of some ornamental gardens. The bronze statues of two Prussian statesmen stared at me across a low privet hedge. A small boy out for a walk with his mother was looking at the statues and probably wondering who they were. I was thinking about how Dr. Kassner’s home address had come to be on a list of names I had got from Jewface Klein. I knew Kassner would still be at the hospital, so I really haven’t a clue what I was expecting to find out. But I am an optimist like that. When you’re a detective, you have to be. And sometimes you just have to do what your instincts tell you to do.

I walked up to the shiny black front door and took a closer look. There were three bells. One of them was clearly labeled KASSNER. Beside the door were two cast-iron planters filled with geraniums. The whole area oozed respectability. I pulled the bell and waited. After a while I heard the key being turned and the door opened to reveal a man in his early twenties. I lifted my hat innocently.

“Dr. Kassner?”

“No,” said the man. “He’s not here.”

“My name is Hoffmann,” I said, raising my hat once again. “From Isar Life Insurance.”

The young man nodded politely but said nothing.

I glanced quickly at the other two names by the bell pulls. “Herr Körtig?”

“No.”

“Herr Peters, is it?”

“No. I’m a friend of Dr. Kassner’s. And as I said, he’s not here right now.”

“When will the doctor be back do you think, Herr—?”

“You can probably find him at the state hospital. At the urological clinic.” The man grinned as if somehow he hoped that this piece of information might embarrass me. There was a large gap between his front teeth. “I’m sorry, but I really do have to go. I’m late for an appointment. Would you excuse me?”

“Certainly.”

I stepped aside and watched him descend the front steps onto the square. He was of medium height, good-looking and dark in a Gypsy kind of way, but neat with it. He was wearing a light-colored summer-weight suit, a white shirt, but no tie. At the bottom of the steps he climbed over the door of a little open-topped Opel. It was white with a blue stripe. I hadn’t paid any attention to it before—maybe I was still a little bit punchy—but as he started the engine and drove off, I suddenly realized I needed to take down the license plate. All I got was the characters 11A before the car disappeared around the corner of Jerusalemstrasse. At least I knew that the slippery young man was from Munich.

An hour later, I was back at my desk. I saw Heinrich Grund on the other side of the detectives’ room and was just about to go over and tell him there were no hard feelings on my part when the Full Ernst arrived beside me like a bus reaching its depot. He was wearing a three-piece blue pin-striped suit in a size huge and had a Senior going full-blast in the corner of his mouth. He removed the cigar and I heard what sounded like the bellows on a church organ. An invisible choir of smoke and sweet coffee and something stronger perhaps descended on me as from Mount Sinai, and a lung ailment of a voice commanded my attention.