‘You read good upside down.’ Kahlo grinned. ‘I’m a bit of a beefsteak Nazi myself, sir. Brown on the outside but red in the middle. Although I’m not as rare as my old dad. Being a car-worker he was red all the way.’
‘Mm hmmm.’
I handed Kahlo the file.
‘It’s not much to go on,’ he said, flicking through it.
‘Let’s see what we can find out for ourselves.’
I picked up the telephone and asked the Lower Castle switchboard to connect me with the Alex in Berlin. A few minutes later I was able to speak with the Records Division. I asked them if they had a file on Albert Kuttner. They didn’t. So I had them run a check on his address, which was always something you could do in Berlin because it wasn’t just individuals who generated records in Prussia, it was places, too. The Prussian State Police were nothing if not thorough. And a few minutes later Records called back to tell me that Flat 3, 4 Pestalozzi Strasse, in Charlottenburg was home to another man besides Albert Kuttner.
And when I had the Records people check him out, I started to believe I had something.
‘Lothar Ott,’ I said, reading aloud my notes of these several telephone conversations. ‘Born Berlin February 21st 1901. Two convictions for male prostitution, one 1930, the other 1932. Not only that but his previous address was number one Friedrichsgracht, near Berlin’s Spittelmarkt. That won’t mean much to a cop from Mannheim but to a bull from Berlin it means a lot. Until 1932, number one Friedrichsgracht was a notorious homosexual club called the Burger Casino. Either the late Captain Kuttner was very tolerant of homosexuals or—’
‘Or he was maybe a bit warm himself.’ Kahlo nodded. ‘I mean, you wouldn’t live with someone like that unless you were, would you?’
‘What do you think? You met him.’
‘You’re asking if Kuttner struck me as the type? I dunno. A lot of officers strike me that way. It’s possible, I suppose. He could have been the type. You know, a bit fastidious. A bit too careful about his appearance. A bit too much Cologne on his hair. The way he walked. Now I come to think of it, yes, I can see it. When he shrugged it looked just like my brother’s daughter.’
‘I agree.’
‘Someone ought to give this other fellow, Ott, a knock and see how he takes the news that Kuttner’s dead.’
‘That’s an idea.’
So I telephoned the Alex again and explained Kahlo’s idea to an old friend in Kripo called Trott, who promised to go and see Lothar Ott and give him the bad news in person and then report back on the show.
As soon as I replaced the receiver, the telephone rang. Kahlo answered it.
‘It’s Doctor Honek,’ he said, handing me the candlestick. ‘Calling about the autopsy.’
I took the phone.
‘This is Gunther.’
‘I managed to find someone to perform an autopsy on Captain Kuttner,’ said Honek. ‘Today. Like you asked me, Commissar. In view of the circumstances, Professor Hamperl, from the Pathological Institute of the German Charles University in Prague, has agreed to carry out the procedure at four o’clock this afternoon. He’s most distinguished.’
‘Where?’
‘At the Bulovka Hospital.’
‘All right. We’ll be there at four.’
After I hung up, Kahlo said, ‘We? What’s this “we”? You don’t want me there, do you?’
‘You said you were keen to learn, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, but well, the thing is, I’ve never seen an autopsy before.’
‘There’s nothing to it. Besides, we have a distinguished professor to perform the autopsy.’
‘I don’t know,’ he said, anxiously. ‘I mean, dead people. I don’t know. They look like they’re dead, right?’
‘It’s best that way. When they look alive it puts the pathologist a bit off his knife.’ I shrugged. ‘It’s your choice. Now let’s have a look at that list of names that Major Ploetz gave us. I think some of them look like they’re people.’
