‘Be careful. It’s still loaded.’
I nodded and handed the gun back to him.
‘This makes it a Gestapo matter.’
‘Automatically,’ I said. ‘I can see that. But I still don’t see how this connects him with the Three Kings.’
‘One of our officers from the Documentation Section looked over his papers and found some discrepancies.’
Wandel handed me a yellow card with the dead man’s photograph in the top left-hand corner. It was his Employment Certificate. He said, ‘Notice anything wrong with it?’
I shrugged. ‘The staples in the picture are a bit rusty. Otherwise it looks all right to me. Name of Victor Keil. Doesn’t ring any bells.’
‘The impression of the rubber stamp on the corner of the photograph can hardly be seen,’ said Wandel. ‘No German official would have permitted that.’ Then he handed me the dead man’s identity card. ‘And this? What do you make of this, Herr Commissar?’
I rubbed the document in my fingers, which drew a nod of approval from Sachse.
‘You’re right to check it that way first,’ he said. ‘The forgeries just don’t feel right. Like they’re made of linen. But that’s not what gives this one away as a fake.’
I opened it up and took a closer look at the contents. The photograph on the ID card had two corner stamps, one on the top right-hand corner and the other on the top left, and these both looked clear enough. The two fingerprints were similarly clear, as was the police precinct stamp. I shook my head. ‘Beats me what’s wrong with it. It looks completely right.’
‘The quality is actually quite good,’ admitted Sachse. ‘Except for one thing. Whoever made that can’t spell “forefinger”.’
‘My God, yes, you’re right.’
Sachse was starting to look satisfied with himself once more.
‘All of which prompted us to investigate further,’ he said. ‘It seems that the real Victor Keil was killed during a bombing raid in Hamburg last year. And we now know, or at least we strongly suspect, that this man isn’t a German at all, but a Czech terrorist by the name of Franz Koci. Our sources in Prague tell us that he was one of the last Czech agents operating here in Berlin. And he certainly fits the last description we had of him. Until October 1938 he was a lieutenant in a Czech regiment of artillery that was deployed to the Sudetenland. After the capitulation of the Benes government at Munich, he disappeared, along with many others who subsequently worked for the Three Kings.’
I shrugged. ‘It sounds like you know everything about him,’ I said. ‘I can’t imagine why you need me to look at his fingernails.’
‘We don’t know who killed him,’ said Wandel. ‘Or why. Or even how.’
I nodded. ‘For the how you’ll need a doctor. Preferably a doctor of medicine.’ I smiled at my joke, thinking of the American, Dickson, and his aversion to the doctors of deceit at the Ministry of Propaganda. But it wasn’t a joke for sharing, especially with the Gestapo. ‘As for the who and the why, maybe I could take a closer look.’ I pointed at the body. ‘Do you mind?’
‘Be my guest,’ said Sachse.
I took out my handkerchief and then laid it neatly beside the body. ‘Somewhere to lay any evidence I find. You see I intend going through the dead man’s pockets.’
‘Help yourself. But all of the useful evidence has already been collected.’
‘Oh, I don’t doubt that. If there’s anything of value that the uniforms and Inspector Lehnhoff have left behind, I’ll be pleasantly surprised.’
Sachse frowned. ‘You don’t mean—’
‘Cops in this city are just as crooked as anyone else. Sometimes they’re even as crooked as the crooks. These days most of them only join so they can steal a man’s watch without getting caught.’
I lifted the dead man’s left arm by way of illustration. There was a tan mark on his wrist, only the watch that might have made it wasn’t there.
‘Yes, I see what you mean,’ said Sachse.
‘The body’s a little stiff, which means that rigor is setting in or passing off. It takes about twelve hours to get established, lasts about twelve hours and takes another twelve hours to pass.’ I tugged at the dead man’s cheek. ‘It starts in the face however and this fellow’s face is soft to the touch, which probably means the rigor is passing off. You understand that all of this is very crude but I’d say your man has been dead for at least a day or so. Of course, I might be wrong, but I’ve seen plenty of dead men who would say I’m probably right about that.’
I undid the buttons on the blouson and then pulled open the shirt to inspect the torso. ‘This man took a hard fall. Or received a substantial impact. There is substantial bruising on the left-hand side of his body.’ I pressed hard directly on the bruise and the lowest part of the ribcage. ‘Feels like one of the ribs has separated from the chest wall. In other words, it’s broken.’
