Authors: Philip Kerr
Kahlo took one, lit up and then puffed with obvious satisfaction. Holding the cigarette in front of his eyes, like a rare diamond, he grinned happily.
‘I’d forgotten how good a cigarette can taste,’ he said.
‘There’s a page missing from this file,’ I said. ‘In my own SD file there’s a page headed “Personal Remarks”. I’ve only ever seen it upside down but it’s full of things my superiors have said about me like “insubordinate” and “politically unreliable”.’
‘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.’
Those present at the Lower Castle on the night of
2nd/3rd October 1941 included the following:
SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich
SS Obergruppenführer Richard Hildebrandt
SS Obergruppenführer Karl von Eberstein
SS Gruppenführer Konrad Henlein
SS Gruppenführer Dr Hugo Jury
SS Gruppenführer Karl Hermann Frank
SS Brigadeführer Bernard Voss
SS Standartenführer Dr Hans Ulrich Geschke
SS Standartenführer Horst Bohme
SS Obersturmbannführer Walter Jacobi
SS Sturmbannführer Dr Achim Ploetz
Wehrmacht Major Paul Thummel
SS Hauptsturmführer Kurt Pomme
SS Hauptsturmführer Hermann Kluckholn
SS Hauptsturmführer Albert Küttner
SS Unterscharführer August Beck
Staff
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Upper Castle Personnel
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For obvious reasons it is recommended that you conduct your interviews at the Lower Castle in strict order of seniority. For reasons of security and confidentiality, please confine all interviews to the Morning Room. Interviews at the Upper Castle should be conducted by arrangement with the Baron’s adjutant, SS Hauptsturmführer Eduard Jahn. A safe will be provided for your use in the Morning Room. All documents pertaining to this inquiry should be placed in it when not in use for reasons of confidentiality
.
Signed SS-Major Dr Achim Ploetz,
Adjutant to SS Obergruppenführer Heydrich
My eyes slid off the page and landed on the floor with a loud sigh.
‘If one were to assume that anyone at the Lower Castle might have had the opportunity and the motive to kill Captain Kuttner,’ I said, ‘that leaves us with thirty-one suspects.’
‘Christ,’ muttered Kahlo. ‘That’s at least one for every day of the month.’
‘Thirty-nine including the personnel at the Upper Castle with von Neurath. It’s only a short walk from there to the Upper Castle, so I don’t see how they can be excluded.’
‘And God knows how many if we include all of the SS up at the guard house.’
I grunted.
‘Do you want to include them?’
‘How many are in the garrison?’
‘At least two hundred.’
‘I don’t want to include them, no. No. But I hardly see how I can exclude them given the possibility that Albert Kuttner may have been warm. A bit of rough trade with an enlisted man in the woods might have been just his beer. The first thing we have to do—’
‘You mean apart from interviewing the senior ranks.’
I paused.
‘So far no one’s complained about being kept waiting by you,’ said Kahlo. ‘But it won’t be long.’
I nodded. ‘All right. While I start with the formal interviews, the first thing you have to do is to try and speak to everyone informally and get a sense of Kuttner’s movements last night. Who was the last person to see him alive and at what time? That kind of thing. Now, I saw him at about nine o’clock when he was having a fairly heated discussion in the garden with one of the other adjutants – Captain Kluckholn, I think. Then about half an hour later, after Heydrich had made a speech, he appeared in the library with some
champagne. So you might start with that in mind. I want times and places. And see if you can’t get a plan of the house. That way we can start plotting his various positions.’
‘Yes, I suppose that might help.’
‘Any suggestions of your own will be gratefully considered.’
‘Then a clairvoyant with a crystal ball couldn’t do any harm. Strikes me that’s the only way we’re going to find a murderer who walks through locked doors and shoots people without making a sound.’
‘You make me begin to wonder what I’m doing here, Kurt.’