A Quiet Flame

The station was in the west end of the central part of Munich. The Police Praesidium was a ten-minute walk to the east, on Ettstrasse, between Saint Michael’s Church and the Cathedral of Our Lady. It was a newish, handsome building on the site of a former monastery. Outside the main entrance were several stone lions. Inside, I found only rats.

The desk sergeant was as big as a wrecking ball, and just as helpful. He had a bald head and a waxed mustache like a small German eagle. Every time he moved, his leather belt creaked against his belly like a ship straining on its hawsers. From time to time, he lifted his hand to his mouth and burped. You could smell his breakfast from the front door.

I tipped my hat politely and showed him my warrant disc.

“Good morning,” I said.

“Good morning.”

“I’m Commissar Gunther, from Berlin Alexanderplatz. To see Commissar Herzefelde. I just arrived at the station. I thought he’d be there to meet me.”

“Did you now?” He said it in a way that made me want to punch him in the nose. You get a lot of that in Munich.

“Yes,” I said patiently. “But since he wasn’t, I assumed he’d been delayed and that I’d better come and find him here.”

“Spoken like a Berlin detective,” he said, without a trace of a smile.

I nodded patiently and waited for some good manners to kick in. They didn’t.

“Spare me the sweet talk and tell him I’m here.”

The sergeant nodded at a polished wooden bench by the front door. “Have a seat,” he said coolly. “Sir. I’ll deal with you in a minute.”

I went over to the bench and sat down. “I’ll be sure to mention your red-carpet treatment when I see your commissar,” I said.

“You do that, sir,” he said. “I’ll look forward to it.”

He wrote something on a piece of paper, rubbed his ham hock of a nose, scratched his ass with his pencil, and then used it to pick his ear. Then he got up, slowly, and put something in a filing cabinet. The telephone rang. He let it ring a couple of times before answering it, listened, took down some details, and then put a sheet of paper into a tray. When the call ended, he looked at the clock above the door. Then he yawned.

“If this is how you look after the polenta in this town, I’d hate to be a criminal.” I lit a cigarette.

He didn’t like that. He pointed at a No Smoking sign with his pencil. I stubbed it out. I didn’t want to wait there all morning. After a while, he picked up the phone and spoke, in a lowered voice. Once or twice he flicked his eyes my way, so I got the idea he was probably talking about me. So when he finished the call, I lit another cigarette. He tapped the pencil on the desk in front of his belly and, having received my attention, pointed at the No Smoking sign again. This time I ignored him. He didn’t like that, either.

“No smoking,” he growled.

“No kidding.”

“You know what the trouble is with you Berlin cops?”

“If you could point to Berlin on a map, I might be interested, fat boy.”

“You’re all Jew-lovers.”

“Ah, now we’re getting to it.” I blew some smoke his way and grinned. “We’re not all Jew-lovers, in the Berlin police, as a matter of fact. Some of us are a bit like you, Sergeant. Ignorant. Bigoted. And a disgrace to the uniform.”

He tried to outstare me for minute or two. Then he said, “The Jews are our misfortune. It’s time the polenta in Berlin woke up to that fact.”

“Well, that’s an interesting sentiment. Did you just think of it yourself, or was it written on the skin of the banana you ate for breakfast?”

A detective arrived. I knew he must be a detective because he wasn’t dragging his knuckles on the floor. He glanced at the ape on the desk, who jerked his head my way. The detective came over and stood in front of me, looking sheepish. It might have worked, too, if his face hadn’t looked so peculiarly wolflike. His eyes were blue and his nose was more of a muzzle, but mostly it was because of his eyebrows, which met in the middle, and his canine teeth, which seemed slightly longer than was normal. But you get a lot of that in Munich as well.

“Commissar Gunther?”

“Yes. Is something wrong?”

“I’m Criminal Secretary Christian Schramma.” We shook hands. “I’m afraid I have some bad news. Commissar Herzefelde is dead. He was murdered last night. Shot three times in the back as he left a bar in Sendling.”

“Do you know who did it?”

“No, as you may know, he’d had several death threats.”

“Because he was Jewish. Of course.” I glanced the desk sergeant’s way. “There’s hatred and stupidity everywhere. Even in the police force.”

Schramma remained silent.

“I’m very sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know him for very long, but Paul was a good man.”

We went up to the detectives’ room. It was a warm day, and through the open windows you could hear the sound of children playing in the yard of the nearby Gymnasium. Human life never sounded so lively.

“I saw your name in his police diary,” said Schramma. “But he didn’t think to write down a telephone number or where you were from, otherwise I would have called you.”