'You had a reason, I take it?'
'Yes sir.'
'You can say something other than “yes sir”, can you?'
'Yes sir.'
'Glad to hear it. I'm going to go in this direction now,' I pointed past the church, 'though you're quite welcome to follow me until you decide to speak up.'
'It was that woman, sir,' the girl said. 'The nurse you were looking for?'
'Yes?'
'I know her. Or, that is, I did know her. Or, I don't know, maybe met her is a better way of saying it.'
'How?'
The girl took my hand and led me into the park. She sat on a wooden bench beneath the shade of a tree and she pulled me down next to her. She was thin, a loose skirt and sweater doing nothing to hide the sharp edges of her shoulder blades. She looked around before leaning in and whispering.
'She helped me with a problem.'
'What sort of problem?' I couldn't bring myself to whisper, but I pitched my voice low nevertheless.
'I was pregnant. I was ill, and I couldn't support a kid. So I found out about her and she sorted it for me.' I opened my mouth to ask a question but she put a finger to her lips. 'You won't tell them at the hostel, will you?' she said. 'I wouldn't want them to know. They've been all nice to me and everything, letting me stay there for nothing and all, but I know what I did is against the Lord's teachings.'
Not to mention the law
, I thought, though I didn't say it. I was in no position to judge. Exactly the opposite, in fact.
I took her hand and squeezed it. 'Don't worry. I understand. But tell me how you got in touch with her, would you?'
'There's a shop, out in Flingern. A pharmacy. It's on a corner. You go there and say you have a menstrual irreg...well, a menstrual problem but that you heard there's a woman there who works miracles and can take away the problem. They ask you who told you about the miracle cure and you tell them. Then they ask you to go away and come back in half an hour. If they like the look of you then she comes and leads you up to a room in the building above the shop. You have to pay, like. She doesn't do it for free.'
'How much?'
'She did mine at a discount, she said. Fifty Reichsmark.'
'Where'd you get that kind of money?'
She shrugged. No point pushing it and making her clam up, so I dropped it.
'How long ago was this?' I said.
'Couple of weeks.'
'What's the name of the pharmacy?'
'Oh, I can't remember. But it's on the corner of Hermanstrasse and Lindenstrasse.'
I patted her hand. 'I know it. What's your name?'
'Why?'
I held my hands up, palms out. 'I need to know so I can tell them at the pharmacy.'
'Oh yeah,' she said.
'And I want to thank you properly.'
'Well...' She trailed off and I turned to look at her. She took the cigar from me, leaned over and latched her lips onto mine. My mouth opened in surprise and she stuck her tongue into it. Her tongue plunged to the back of my throat as though searching for any lingering morsels of breakfast, or trying to make me throw my breakfast back up, perhaps.
I seized her hips and threw her off. She landed on the grass at my feet. She rubbed her bony rump and screwed her face up at me. I didn't know if she was going to shout or cry.
'Don't you want me?' She pouted, or tried to. Her lips were in no state to carry off a pout.
'Well, no.'
'Oh.' She thought about this. The thin skin of her forehead creased with the effort. 'Then why did you stroke my hand?'
I pulled her up by her arm and sat her back on the bench. 'Well, I...didn't realise you'd take it that way.'
'How else is a girl in my station supposed to take it? You were the one wanted to know how I'd made that money, weren't you?'
I plucked the squashed remnants of my cigar from the grass, puffed on the end a couple of times to get it going again, and held it out to the girl. She smiled and went to take the cigar from me. I pulled back.
'So, what is your name?' I said.
She eyed the cigar. 'Sophie Ackerman.'
'Thank you, Sophie.'
I gave her the cigar and then I stood up. Across the park, a dark-haired woman ripe with curves was looking right at me. Took me a few seconds to work out who it was, and then my heart cringed. Gisela. No doubt on her way to morning mass. A couple of months after Lilli's death it had started, Gisela's attending mass every day.
The old hot needle back to resume its jabbing, I set off in her direction. That galvanised her. She turned and rushed off, heading for the tower entrance at the front of the building. Damn it, had she seen that girl canoodling with me? Had she, in fact, interpreted it as my canoodling with the girl?
I sped up and called her name. That stopped her. She hunched over as though I'd go away if she didn't look at me, but she waited all the same. When I got close I reached out to touch her, but I couldn't. She wasn't mine any more. Of course, she never had been, but she wasn't the woman I'd loved is what I meant, though I loved her still despite that. Was it only thoughts of Lilli that made me feel this way? I was chewing the inside of my cheek now.
'You don't have to explain yourself to me,' Gisela said, her voice soft but unwavering.
'Gisela, I'm sorry – '
'No,' she cut me off. 'You think you can apologise for what we did?' She backed away, closing the gap with the church wall. 'There is no apologising for what we did!' She lowered her voice. 'All we can do is beg the Lord for forgiveness and hope that He is listening. It's the only path to salvation, Thomas.'
She turned her back on me and headed off once again.
'Don't you remember that summer, Gisela?'
She stopped.
'The time you locked me in the wardrobe when Michael came home early? You remember that? How we laughed for hours the next morning once he'd gone back out to work, and you sneaking food in to me overnight. How you managed to persuade him you'd lost the key I'll never know.'
'Don't,' she said.
'Or the time we went swimming in the lake and ended up covered in mud, getting funny looks from the people we passed all the way back to the city? We were always laughing, Gisela, don't you remember?'
She rustled in her purse and turned back to me with her rosary beads in her hand. Her eyes were dry and she held the beads out as though to ward me off.
'There is no space left in my heart for laughter, Thomas. Is there really any in yours?'
'I'm sorry Gisela.'
'That's not enough, Thomas, don't you see?' And she turned away again, hunching her shoulders against me. 'I'll pray for you,' she said as she went.
'I gave her a name, after,' I called, but Gisela began to walk faster. 'Don't you want to know what I called her?'
But she'd turned the corner of the building and gone. I could have caught up with her, but where would that get me? She'd been lost to me a long time ago. There was nothing I could do about it now, and there was no point getting sidetracked. I left Gisela to her praying in the church and I left the acne-scarred girl to her cigar in the park while I headed east to a pharmacy in Flingern. The jabbing in my guts was making my knees wobble, but I didn't care. I kept on chewing my cheek, not to cover the pain now but to add to it, to mingle with it, and I welcomed it as I kept on walking.
Sunlight sparkled in the windows in the corner building across from me. Behind one of those windows Brandt helped women with their menstrual 'irregularities'. Was I really up to it, to speaking to her, knowing what she did to fund her morphine addiction? The killing of unborn innocents, of countless Lillis like my own?
A couple of autos trundled past as I crossed the street. The pharmacy took up all of the ground floor, the plate glass windows either side of the door displaying seasonal allergy remedies. Beneath the painted sign of the green cross and above the door was the name
Mahler's Pharmacy
. Flingern was my district, my precinct, and I'd had no idea this place had existed as anything other than a pharmacy. What kind of detective did that make me?
I pushed on the glass panel of the door. It didn't budge. I scanned the opening times:
Mon-Fri, 09.00-18.00; Sat 09.00-13.00; closed Sun
. I checked my watch. It was only eight am, and a 'closed' sign quivered on a chain on the inside of the door.
I pushed again. This door was definitely locked. I backed up to look through the windows, but the sun shone off the glass, making it difficult to see inside. I shielded my eyes and leaned closer. No one stood at the counter. Behind the counter were shelves of herbal teas and cold remedies, racks of skin lotions and ointments and hair products, a cash register, and a thick curtain hanging in a doorway. Surely someone should have been in the shop getting ready to open? I knocked on the door. Then I caught sight of a bell push. I pressed it, twice.
A couple of minutes went by, and still no one entered.
An auto backfired in the road behind me. I jumped. Down the street, some men in shirt sleeves unlocked the back of their dray cart and began unloading beer barrels. Across the way a grocer bellowed his best prices at passers by. Apparently, the asparagus was good. Given the lateness of the season, I doubted that. Next door to the grocer, a lady newsagent smoked a cigar and held a kaffeeklatch with customers who flicked through their morning papers.
The sun had brought them all out, these people, and brought all their noise out with them. I looked at the windows above the pharmacy as though looking would help me hear any commotion up there. Of course, I heard nothing.
I shut my eyes and leaned against the door. I held my breath until I could hold it no longer. The air burst out of me, smothering what sounded like a cry from upstairs. Or was that cry just in my head? It seemed more likely I'd imagined it.
I rang the bell again. This time I leant on it without pause and a minute or two later someone did come, dragging aside the heavy curtain; a man with no hair on his head and a white coat that was losing its shape. The coat hung over the shelf of the bald man's protruding belly.
He waved me away.
I knocked on the door.
He waved me off again, but this time he flipped up the hinged counter top and approached the door. 'We're closed,' he said, his voice muffled. 'Please go away.'
I pressed my ID to the glass and his eyes widened. I pressed my Luger to the glass with my other hand, shielding it from the street with my body.
'Open the door,' I said, 'or I'll break it in.'
The man's eyes popped. He ran back to the counter, shouting at me over his shoulder. He opened the cash register and withdrew a set of keys. He came back to the door and opened it, glancing up and down the street as he beckoned me inside.
'What do you want?' he said. I don't think he realised he was whispering.
I put away the gun and showed him my photo of Brandt. He took a deep breath, shuddering when he let it out. I pointed up at the ceiling and he nodded.
'Now?' I mouthed.
He nodded again.
'Stefan?' came a voice from behind the curtain. A woman's voice. There was some urgency in it. 'Who was it, Stefan?'
The man ran for the hinged counter top and the curtain beyond it. I couldn't have him warning Brandt so I snagged his leg with my foot. He hurtled into the counter. His head smacked against it and he slid loose-limbed to the floor.
I went after him and turned him over. His eyes were closed. Blood dribbled from a gash in his forehead and his breathing came out heavy, close to a snore. He didn't move, even when I slapped his cheeks.
'Stefan?' That woman's voice again, but louder this time, and with more of an edge.
I grabbed the front of Stefan's coat and dragged him behind the counter. I knelt and rooted through his pockets for the door keys. I found a selection of keys and returned to the door, trying two keys that didn't fit before the correct one slid home in the lock. I turned the key and pulled down the roll blind that hung on the inside of the glass portion of the door.
I ran back through the gap in the counter, hoping Brandt hadn't panicked and left via some back way. I didn't pay attention to what I was doing and I caught my hip on the counter's edge. I cried out.
'Stefan? Have they gone? I need help up here, damn it!'
I flung back the curtain. Behind it lay a short, dingy hallway that ended in a set of lamp-lit stairs going up. A dark shadow fell on the stairs. The middle-aged woman casting the shadow ran a hand over her drawn face and through her greying hair. The face matched my photo of Brandt.
'Who are you?' she said. 'Where's Stefan?' Then, 'Oh, hell with it, you'll do.'
She gripped my jacket sleeve and pulled me up the stairs behind her. The stairs turned back on themselves, pitching us into a wider hallway that was filled with sunlight from the two large rooms at the far end. A window at my elbow gave onto a fire escape. But it was the open door to our left that Brandt dragged me through.
This room was west facing, so it wouldn't have got any light anyway at that time of day, but to add to the natural gloom the curtains were shut tight. A girl lay on a single bed against the wall. Her dress was rolled up to her midriff so that she was naked below the waist. At the sight of me she sat up like a shot of electricity had just passed through her.