‘It must have been after one o’clock. I heard the clock chime in the hall. Some of the cauliflowers were still up, of course, swigging brandy in the library. And one or two were drunk. One in particular. I wouldn’t like to say who he was but he got a bit too familiar with me, if you know what I mean. You see, there’s something about this uniform. When some of the cauliflowers get drunk they think we’re little better than camp-followers and they take liberties with us. This particular officer touched my breasts, and he tried to put his hand up my dress. I didn’t care for it and told him so; but he’s my senior officer and it’s not easy trying to put a man in his place when he’s a general. It was Captain Kuttner who came to my assistance. Rescued me, if you like. He told the General off, in so many words. The General was furious and swore a lot at the Captain and told him to mind his own effing business. But Captain Kuttner was wonderful, sir. He ignored the General and escorted me back below stairs before the General could touch me again.’
I shook my head. ‘Some of these SS generals are loath-some,’ I said. ‘I’ve just come out of a rather rough meeting with General Hildebrandt. And he really put me back in my shell. Was it he who touched you?’
‘No.’
I sighed. ‘Rosa. Please. I’m in a real spot here. One of these men – yes, maybe even one of these cauliflowers – murdered a man in cold blood. Right here in this room. The room was locked from the inside and the window was bolted, which means that this investigation is already difficult. Don’t make it impossible. You need to tell me who it was who touched you last night.’
‘It was General Henlein.’
‘Thank you.’
‘What happened when Captain Kuttner escorted you below stairs, Rosa?’
‘We talked a bit. Like we usually did. About nothing much, really.’
‘Tell me one of the things you used to talk about, Rosa.’
She shrugged. ‘Prague. We talked about Prague. We both agreed that it’s very beautiful. And we also talked about our home town.’
‘You’re not from Halle-an-der-Saale, too?’
‘Sort of. I’m from Reidesburg, which is just outside Halle.’
‘It seems as though everyone but me is from Halle. General Heydrich is from Halle, do you know that?’
‘Of course. Everyone knows about the Heydrichs in Halle. Someone else here is from Halle, too; at least that’s what Albert told me, but I’m afraid I don’t remember who that is.’
‘What else did he tell you?’
‘That he went to the same school as the General. The Reform Real-gymnasium. My brother Rolf went there, too. It’s the best school in town.’
‘Sounds like they had a lot in common. Albert and the General.’
‘Yes. He said things had been difficult for him, lately. But that the General had been very kind to him.’
The idea of Heydrich being kind was not something I felt like contemplating. It was like hearing that Hitler liked children, or that Ivan the Terrible had owned a puppy.
‘Did he elaborate on any of that? On why things had been difficult? On exactly how the General had been kind to him?’
Rosa looked at her handkerchief as if the answer lay crushed inside its sodden interior.
‘Albert made me promise not to tell anyone about it. He said that people in the SS were not supposed to talk about such things. And that it might get me into trouble.’
‘So why was he telling you about it?’
‘Because he said he had to tell someone. To get it off his chest.’
‘Well, he’s dead now and so is that promise, I think.’
‘I suppose so. But do
‘Yes. I promise.’
Rosa nodded. And hesitantly, she gave voice to what Kuttner had told her.
‘He said he was in our Latvian provinces during the summer and that Germany had done terrible things there. That lots of people, thousands of people, had been killed for no other reason than that they were Jews. Old men, women and children. Whole villages full of defenceless people who had nothing to do with the war. He said that, at first, he carried out his orders and commanded the firing squads that murdered these people. But after a while, he’d had enough and refused to have anything more to do with these killings himself. Only this landed him in trouble with his superior officers.’ She shook her head. ‘It seemed unbelievable to me, but when he talked about it he started to cry and so I couldn’t help but believe him, at the time. I mean a man – especially an officer – he doesn’t cry for nothing, does he? But now, I don’t know. Do you really think it can be true what he told me, Commissar Gunther? About the killings?’
‘I’m afraid it’s true, Rosa. Every word of it. And not just in Latvia. It’s going on everywhere east of Berlin. For all I know it’s even going on here in Bohemia. But he was wrong about one thing. Within the SS and the SD, it’s an open secret what’s been going on in the eastern territories. And just to put your mind at rest, I’m almost certain it wasn’t his talking about this that got him killed, but something else.’
