But the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves and Berries – for that matter the whole damned tree – for the curling turd of the evening went to Colonel Doctor Hans Geschke, a 34-year-old lawyer from Frankfurt on the Oder who was chief of the Gestapo in Prague. While studying in Berlin, he’d seen my name in the newspapers, and in spite of our differences in rank, this was a good enough reason for him to try to make common cause with me. Which is another way of saying he needed someone to patronize.
‘After all,’ he explained, ‘we’re both policemen you and I, doing a difficult job, in very difficult circumstances.’
‘So it would seem, sir.’
‘And I like to keep abreast of ordinary crime,’ he said. ‘Here in Prague we have to deal with more serious stuff than some Fritz slicing his wife up with a broken beer bottle.’
‘There’s not so much of that around, sir. Beer bottles are in rather short supply in Berlin.’
He wasn’t listening.
‘You should come in and see us very soon, at the Pecek Palace. That’s in the Bredovska district of the city.’
‘A palace, eh? It sounds a lot grander than the Alex, sir.’
‘Oh no. To be quite honest with you it’s hard to see how it was ever a palace except in some dark corner of Hades. Even the executive rooms have very little charm.’
Geschke’s was a waxwork’s expressionless face. Captain Kuttner had said that at the Pecek Palace Geschke was known as ‘Babyface’, but this could only have been among people who knew some very frightening babies with duelling scars on their left cheeks. Geschke was one of those factory-manufactured Nazis they turned out like unpainted Meissen porcelain: pale, cold, hard, and best handled with extreme care.
‘I haven’t seen much of the city yet,’ I said. ‘But it does seem rather infernal.’
Geschke grinned. ‘Well, we do our best in that respect. So long as they fear us, they do what they’re told. We mustn’t let these Czechos make fools of us, you see. We have to be the master in our own house, so we can’t afford to overlook any wrong. We really can’t. You let them get away with one thing, there will be no end to it. But tell me, Gunther. In the Weimar Republic, when you had a suspect at the Alex and he refused to cooperate, what did you do? How on earth did you manage?’
‘We never hit anyone, if that’s what you’re driving at, sir. We weren’t allowed to. The Prussian Police Regulations forbade it. Oh, some cops smacked a suspect around now and then, but the bosses didn’t like that. We got results because we got the evidence. Once you have the evidence it’s hard for a man not to sign a confession. Find the evidence and everything else follows. We were good at that: finding evidence. The Berlin Detective Service was, for a while, the envy of the world and its backbone was the police commissars.’
‘But weren’t you at all frustrated by the stupidities of Prussian justice? Sometimes it seemed to be absurd that penal servitude for life rarely ever lasted longer than twelve years. And that so many criminals deserving of their death sentences were reprieved by the Prussian government. For example, those two Jews, Saffran and Kipnik. Remember them?’
I shrugged. ‘Honestly? I can think of many others I’d like to see under the falling axe before those two. Why, just a few months ago there was the S-Bahn murderer case. Fellow named Paul Ogorzow who killed six or seven women and tried to kill as many more again. Now,
‘Is it true that he was a Party member?’
‘Yes.’
‘Unbelievable.’
‘Lots of other people thought so, too. That’s probably why it took so long to catch him. But what you were saying is absolutely right. We can’t afford to overlook any wrong. Especially when it’s a wrong committed by our own, don’t you think?’
‘Ah, now there speaks a true policeman.’
‘I like to think so, sir.’
‘Well, if there’s anything I can do to help you, Gunther, in your new capacity as the General’s personal detective, then please let me know.’ Geschke raised his glass and bowed. ‘Anything to help General Heydrich and keep him safe for the new Germany.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
I glanced around the room and tried to picture which, if any, of the General’s guests might actually try to poison him and found that in the new Germany it wasn’t so hard. In a room full of murderers anything seemed possible.
About halfway through this unforgettable evening Major Dr Ploetz, Heydrich’s First Adjutant and number one myrmidon, turned on the library radio so that we could listen to Hitler’s speech from the Sports Palast, in Berlin.
‘Gentlemen, please,’ he said, while the radio was warming up. ‘If I could ask you to be silent.’
‘Thank you, Hans-Achim,’ said Heydrich, as if he and not the Leader had been at the microphone. And then solemnly, as the sound of the Sports Palast crept into that room, he intoned: ‘The Leader.’
