‘I’m afraid Gunther is right, Hugo,’ said Heydrich. ‘This is really no time to be sensitive. I must have this situation cleared up as soon as possible if I am to avoid any embarrassment. That’s embarrassment to me and my office, you understand, not to you, Hugo. I can’t allow anything to get in the way of an early conclusion to this unfortunate matter. Even if that does mean us riding roughshod over your feelings and quite possibly your whole future, too, if you refuse to cooperate with the Commissar’s inquiry.’
Heydrich looked at me now.
‘The fact is, Gunther, that Captain Kuttner heard this story from me. It was I who told him about General Jury’s affair with Fräulein Schwarzkopf. I’m sorry, Hugo, but everyone in Berlin knows what’s been going on. Except perhaps the Leader, and your wife, Karoline. Let us hope that she above all people can remain in ignorance of all this.
‘But, Herr Commissar, I think that the part of the story at which poor General Jury will have taken most offence relates not to her talents in the bedroom, which I assume are considerable, but to her talent as a singer. I’m afraid it’s true, Hugo. If the Fräulein was really any good as a soprano she’d be singing with the Berlin State Opera and not the German Opera. And you may not know it for sure but the Commissar is quite right that she has been sharing her sexual favours with the Minister of Propaganda. I have the incontrovertible proof of that, which at some future stage I would be happy to show you. So there’s no need to get on your high horse about all of this. You’ve both been fucking her and that’s all there is to it. I mean, how else do you think she was made a principal soprano so soon after joining the chorus? It was Goebbels who fixed that for her. In return for services that she rendered to him horizontally.’
Jury’s cheeks were now quite red and his hands were fists. I wondered if that showed a man who was angry enough to kill a brother officer in cold blood.
‘I don’t care for your manners, General Heydrich,’ said Jury.
‘That is of small account to me, Hugo.’ Heydrich paused. ‘Well, how about it? Did you kill Captain Kuttner?’ He paused. ‘If you did then I promise that we can arrange things so as to avoid too much of a scandal. You can resign, quietly, and go back to your loyal wife, Karoline. Perhaps you can even pick up your medical career again. But I can promise that if you deny it and it turns out to be you after all who murdered the Captain, then it will go very hard for you. We have plenty of filthy prison cells in Terezin Castle where even a distinguished man such as you can be forgotten for years, right up until the moment when I sign his death-warrant and have him hanged the old Austro-Hungarian way. By strangulation from a pole.’
‘I didn’t kill him,’ insisted Jury and then, with a short click of his heels and a bow of the head, he left the room abruptly.
‘I hope you enjoyed that capricious demonstration of your new powers,’ said Heydrich. ‘I know I did.’
A few seconds later there was a knock on the open door. It was Kurt Kahlo.
‘I searched underneath the window, sir,’ he told me. ‘Nothing. But I found this lying on the floor further down the corridor. I marked the spot, so don’t worry.’
He placed a small brass object in my hand.
‘What is it?’ asked Heydrich.
I held the object up in my fingers. It looked like a metallic cigarette end.
‘Unless I’m very much mistaken, sir, it’s a shell case from a Walther P38.’
Heydrich tossed the shell case back to me.
‘Well, Gunther. Much as I should like to stay and observe you destroy the character of another of my guests, I do have urgent business to attend to. The rather more urgent matter of finding Vaclav Moravek.’
‘Yes, of course, sir.’
‘I’ve told Major Ploetz that no one is to leave until you’ve had a chance to question him. No one, apart from him and me and Klein, my driver.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘I shall see you this evening when you can tell me of the progress you’ve made.’
‘All right, sir.’
When he was gone I opened Captain Kuttner’s tunic and pulled up his bloody shirt to inspect the bullet wound and was surprised to find not one but two holes, both in the centre of his chest and each about the size of the nail on a man’s little finger. Kahlo was searching the floor again. I didn’t say anything about there being two gunshot wounds. After a minute or so I turned the dead man onto his side so that I could inspect his back.
‘There’s no exit wound,’ I said, carefully using the singular. I rubbed my hand up and down the dead man’s back. ‘But sometimes you can find the bullet just underneath the skin. I’ve seen bullets just fall out of people who’d been shot, after which they can end up just about anywhere. But I think this poor sonofabitch is still carrying metal.’
I pushed Kuttner onto his back again and stood up.
‘Show me where you found that shell case.’
