Hitler's Angel Read online

  ‘Well, then, ‘he says, stirring the vegetables with his spoon. ‘Let’s make the most of it.’

  NINETEEN

  The caffeine had worn off by the time he reached his apartment. He could feel the stress of the long drive in his shoulders, the tension of the case in his back. He would have to set an alarm so that he could wake just after dawn, otherwise he would sleep the entire morning away.

  He unlocked his apartment door, and the slap of paper against wood startled him. He looked down to see a large envelope – the kind the Kripo used for inter-office correspondence – lying across the threshold. He kicked the envelope inside, then looked to either side. He appeared to be alone in the hallway. With one swift movement he slipped inside the apartment, closed the door, and locked it.

  The lights were still on and the paper was spread over his couch, just as he had left it. Nothing else was out of place. He slid his hand inside his sleeve, grabbed the envelope, took it to the table and sat, studying it.

  The envelope was new, without markings, a dull brown identifying it as foreign – probably British. The glued end was sealed. For a moment he toyed with waiting until morning to open it, but it would serve no purpose. He was conducting this investigation on his own, outside of the precinct, and he knew the procedures as well as any of them. He had helped develop those procedures.

  He set the envelope on the table and went to his small chest of drawers, removing his thinnest pair of gloves. He slipped them on, the wool warming his already hot skin. Then he used the tip of his pocket knife to carefully slit the bottom of the envelope. He did not want to interfere with the upper seal, in case anything was caught in it.

  He set the knife down, slipped his fingers inside the envelope, and pulled out six pieces of rag paper. They curled slightly when removed. He spread them out on the table and stared.

  They were watercolours of a nude woman. In the first, she was standing Grecian style, a white robe held in her right hand flowed over her legs, as if she had just revealed her nakedness to someone. She was looking down, her expression sad. In the second, she reclined on a lounge, one leg bent at the knee, the other straight. Again, she was looking away from the artist.

  All of the paintings were imitations of classic nudes, only without the delicate draping. The woman’s pubic hair showed in all of the paintings, her ski-jump breasts with their brown nipples a prominent feature. Only the sixth was done in a different style. In that painting, the woman was on her back, lying on rumpled sheets, one arm flung above her head, the other at her side. Her eyes were closed, her mouth open. Her legs were spread, and the artist spent loving time and detail on the pubic area. In fact, the woman’s pubis was the centre of the painting. The rest of the details flowed from there.

  The artist was marginally talented with an ability to mimic life. He appeared to have trouble with limbs. In all of the paintings, the woman’s arms were too long, and in the last, her legs had too much flesh between the thigh and knee. But he was good enough to make his subject recognisable.

  Geli, without the bruises or the broken nose. Fritz recognised her more from the light dusting of pubic hair than from her facial features. This was the body he had seen, bloodless and lifeless in Vienna.

  The paintings had been done by the same artist who had executed the watercolours in Hitler’s flat. The same use of colour, the same mistakes, were evident. Fritz thumbed through the watercolours looking for an artist’s signature. Most of them did not have signatures, but the one of the woman reclining on the lounge did. In the same mixed black-brown that filled in the legs of the lounge, the artist had written his name. The first name was almost unreadable – at first Fritz thought it said ‘by’ instead of a name at all – but the last name was clear. Hitler. A tiny, cramped signature that ran downhill. Fritz wondered what the graphologists would make of that. Then he was able to make out the loosely formed ‘A’ in Adolf, and the long lower-case ‘f’ with the bar on its tail.

  Fritz put a gloved hand on his forehead. Someone had wanted him to have this. More information about the case, information someone didn’t want to tell him directly.

  ‘Why didn’t they take the paintings to the press?’ the girl asks. ‘They would have discredited Hitler immediately.’

  Fritz shakes his head. ‘The papers were as easily discredited. We did not have the faith you Americans have in your media. We knew they could be bought and often were. No, I got the paintings because I was the only man in a position to do anything with them.’

  Now he wished he had searched the hallway more carefully. Perhaps he would have found the person who had left the paintings. Although he doubted it. This was not the kind of information a man kept on a political figure without good reason.

  How did you know it was a man?’ the girl asks.

  ‘I didn’t,’ he says.

  This case made his skin crawl. He couldn’t be certain of anything. Geli’s closeness to Hitler, and his presence as leader of the NSDAP made even the simplest things suspect. Fritz didn’t know if someone had left these paintings with him to discredit Hitler the candidate, or to point the finger of blame at Hitler the murderer. Or, if the paintings were meant as a diversion to cast suspicion on a man who was innocent, a man who had nothing to do with Geli’s death. Hitler claimed to have been out of town. If he was, then this murder of his niece was a great way to derail a candidacy that hadn’t yet started, just as Hess had implied.

  Fritz gathered up the paintings. He paused as he did so and stared at Geli’s face. In each she was looking away from the artist. In the last her eyes were closed, her face expressionless. Fritz had seen such paintings before. Usually the woman tried to seduce, her lips pouty, her eyes open, her expression flirtatious. Geli made no attempt here, and Hitler made no attempt to portray her in that manner. If anything, her expression in the other paintings was sad.

  He put them in a different order, with the signed one first. An artist signed his work when he expected others to view it. Hitler had signed the paintings in the flat. Fritz would wager the remaining five paintings, Hitler had done for himself.

  Hitler couldn’t have left them on Fritz’s doorstep. The last thing Hitler would have wanted would be to have the paintings in the hand of the Kripo. So someone else had to have had them in the first place. Someone with access to the apartment, perhaps, or access to Hitler. Or Geli.

  Fritz took a folder off his shelf and put the drawings in it. He would do the fingerprinting on them himself. He didn’t know anyone else he could trust. He didn’t want knowledge of the paintings getting out until he knew for certain who had killed Geli Raubal.

  But the envelope might carry a wealth of information. And the envelope he would take to the precinct.

  ‘Didn’t you think it dangerous to leave the paintings in your home?’ The girl is more animated than he has seen her. She usually listens to him, and questions little. But the paintings disturb her in a way he can’t completely identify.

  ‘It was more dangerous to have them at the precinct,’ he says. ‘At that time, policemen were encouraged to join political parties as long as their affiliation did not interfere with their work. Both the Communists and the Nazis – mostly the Communists – used their positions to gain information that would help their political parties. I was afraid someone would take the paintings and use them in a way I did not intend.’

  ‘But what could you do with them?’

  ‘Inquire about them. Use them to shock at the right moment. I was hoping to present them to Hitler and gauge his reaction.’

  ‘Hoping?’ she asks.

  He smiles. ‘You get ahead of me.’

  ‘You sound as if you did not show him the paintings.’

  He picks up the pack of matches and taps them next to the half-full soup bowl. ‘It bothers you that you know nothing about this case, doesn’t it? You want to know the ending so that you know how clever I was in my work.’

  She stops the tape. ‘I feel as if I am at your mercy. I have to
take your opinion as fact.’

  ‘You don’t have to. You can research this. I am sure the Münchner Post has record of this case.’

  ‘But you said it was an anti-Nazi newspaper.’

  ‘So I did.’ He cups the matches in his right hand. ‘But you have never asked me if I were anti-Nazi at that time.’

  ‘I don’t have to,’ she says. ‘You seem to have been afraid of them.’

  ‘Ach.’ He has not wanted to give her that impression. In those days, he was afraid of everyone and nothing at the same time. ‘I was so strong in those days I could lift a man twice my size without straining my back. I ran faster than any other man in Kripo, and I was often sent to riot patrol because I could use a truncheon better than any of my colleagues. I could defend myself from any physical threat, although I never wanted to.’

  ‘So you did not see them as a physical threat.’

  He reaches for a cigarette. The pack is empty. He tosses it aside, grabs another pack, and unwraps the cellophane. ‘I saw them as a measure of the craziness that we had allowed into Germany.’ He does not look at her as he says that. He has never really said that to anyone before.

  ‘Craziness?’ she says.

  ‘You would not understand. You and your peaceful, successful country.’ His fingers are too thick to grip the slim end of the gold foil covering the cigarette pack. When he is alone, he breaks the pack open with his teeth. He cannot do so now. He sets the pack down.

  ‘I understand,’ she says. ‘Hitler was your craziness.’

  ‘No.’ He clenches a fist, wondering how to explain everything to her. Her lack of history, her people’s continual search for the easy answer, makes this harder than it needs to be. He takes a deep breath.

  ‘We came back from the war, all of us, different in some way. A man cannot see –’ his voice cracks. He clears his throat, does not look at her, picks up the pack again ‘– he cannot see his best friend explode into tiny fragments beside him and ever be the same again.’

  ‘My grandfather saw such things. He never wanted to talk about war.’

  ‘Your grandfather –’ Fritz shakes the pack at her. ‘Your grandfather did not come home to a defeated country, remodelled after the countries that defeated it. He did not come home to starvation, and poverty, and disease –’

  He can still see Gisela, in the last month of her failed pregnancy, her body so thin that the bones in her neck are prominent. She screeches at him, and the baby cries, little Wilhelm, a tiny reedy sound, screeches that there is not enough food and what is he doing anyway? Nothing. Nothing to help them. Nothing to save their three lives. All she does is live for the new child. The new child, born dead one afternoon in a gout of blood.

  ‘– and then he cannot get a job, and his family starves, and the money he has, the things he has, are worth less and less, until he is begging on the street. Your grandfather did not come home to that.’ Fritz puts the cigarette pack in his teeth and bites off the end, pulling out a cigarette like the prize in a raffle.

  ‘No, he did not,’ the girl says. ‘But you did.’

  ‘I did, and millions of other men. Millions, my girl. Do you know what the First World War did to us? It killed or maimed seven million men, seven million Germans. That does not count Austrians or Russians. Just Germans. And you Americans talk of that war as if you had a part in it. Only four million of your men were even engaged. And only 300,000 were casualties of that war. You have no idea what it did to us.’

  ‘What it did to you,’ she says.

  He stares at her for a long moment. His cigarette has a piece of foil hanging from the end. She meets his gaze in the same measured fashion. ‘That’s right,’ he says finally. ‘You have no idea what it did to me.’

  TWENTY

  Fritz hated going to the Brown House. It had only been NSDAP headquarters for nine months, but in that time he had gone on many visits, sometimes with the political police as a guard, and sometimes on cases involving disputes with the Communists. The Brown House had once been Barlow Palace, and he continued to think of it that way, although to say so brought loud correction from anyone within hearing distance. The majestic view over Königsplaz belonged to a king, not to a tawdry political party whose leader’s niece had just been murdered.

  This part of Munich had been the home to Ludwig the First, who abdicated in 1848. Fritz had always thought of Ludwig as a much more ancient king, perhaps because the buildings he sponsored had the look of Greece to them – the long, flowing columns, the grand arches. This was a regal part of Munich, regal and cold. As a boy, Fritz had walked through it, imagining himself at the mercy of men who were greater than he was.

  The Brownshirts of the NSDAP did not belong here. Misfits and beer hall brawlers, they had obtained a sort of status in the last election, gaining almost 100 seats in the Reichstag by preaching a confused message of economic hope and hatred of groups, from the Communists to the Jews. Fritz had heard many of the speeches, impassioned all of them, and part of him wanted to believe them: that if Germany were only cleansed of its foreign element, it would be great again. If Germany stood on its own legs, it would be able to provide for its citizens. But ultimately, the speakers never said anything of consequence. They did not have a program for developing their reforms; they simply knew that change had to be made.

  Fritz believed in detail, and the NSDAP’s denial of detail would have troubled him even if he hadn’t been in the Kripo. But he was, and as a member of the police force – even though he was not often on the street – he saw the one thing that made him turn away from NSDAP altogether: the violence. If a man could not be silenced by words, he was silenced with truncheons. Dissenters were beaten, sometimes to death.

  A party based on violence would lead to a government based on the same violence, a government that would not listen to any voice raised in protest.

  Despite his dislike for the Brown House, he was at their door before most of the men had arrived. His day had started even earlier: he had already spoken to Henrich, who agreed to begin his assistance by getting the letter from Frau Winter. Henrich had offered to accompany Fritz to the Brown House, but Fritz felt better in such a place alone. He did not want to have to protect someone else, particularly someone he had brought along unofficially.

  When Fritz arrived, the door to the Brown House was unlocked. The lower floor was empty, except for a few party clerks who had arrived for work early. Even they wore pseudo military uniforms. They did not roll up their sleeves like other clerks in other party buildings. They wore boots and saluted crisply after speaking. Fritz avoided them and slipped into the small refreshment room he knew to be on the side.

  Once he had found Hitler there, on an afternoon after the SA had broken up a Communist rally. On this morning, the refreshment centre was empty except for a slender young clerk whose white shirt was buttoned tightly around his neck, and whose blond hair was cut short, military style.

  ‘I am looking for Herr Hitler,’ Fritz said.

  ‘He is not in, sir. May I help you?’ The boy’s voice still broke from youth.

  Fritz smiled at him, deciding in this military environ, the kindly older uncle routine would be a welcome change. ‘If he is not here, I would like to see Herr Amann or Herr Schwarz.’

  The boy flushed. ‘I’m sorry, sir. It is a bit early for the offices to be full.’

  ‘Is Herr Strasser in?’

  The boy straightened slightly. ‘I thought I saw Herr Strasser upstairs.’

  Fritz let his smile broaden. ‘I would love to see him, if I could.’

  ‘I will take you upstairs,’ the boy said.

  But Fritz laid a hand on his arm. ‘No. Just point me in the right direction. You probably have many tasks to get on with.’

  ‘Thank you, sir, but it would be no trouble.’

  ‘Ah,’ Fritz said quietly. ‘But it might, if you understand my meaning.’

  The boy did. He was clearly used to secret meetings and discussions that clerks were not p
rivy to. In clear, precise language accompanied by a flurry of hand signals, the boy gave Fritz directions to Strasser’s office. Fritz thanked the boy, and went upstairs.

  The Brown House still had some of the palace’s former glory, but it had been lessened somehow. Even though the House was spotless, it had a tawdry air. Some of the change was the decorations: the blood flags flown during the 1923 putsch hung from the walls, the desks, and the phones (which had started ringing shortly after Fritz arrived, and never seemed to stop), and the party members themselves, who marched in as if they were part of a military regime.

  When he reached the second floor, the sound of the phones grew fainter. The air was chill and smelled of leather. The ancient marble covering the floor was cloudy white, like ice on a wind-shrouded lake. Even though the large windows let in a lot of light, the glass diffused it, making it as cold as the rest of the place.

  He checked in the other offices. They were empty, the doors surprisingly unlocked, although nothing sat on desktops except telephones, pen holders and calendars. Hitler’s office was the largest and the most obvious. The marble floor had been covered with a reddish-brown carpet, with furniture to match. The windows overlooked Königsplaz. A large bust of Mussolini stood against one wall, along with a series of framed photographs.

  Fritz went inside and stood before the row of photographs. Among them was one of a World War I unit, with Hitler in the centre, looking thinner and tired. Another was a studio portrait of a beautiful woman. She had black hair combed into a subtle marcel. Her eyebrows were plucked to single curved lines, and she wore only a slight tinge of make-up. A fur wrap warmed her shoulders, leaving her neck and collar bare. But those details were not the ones that made her stunning: it was her expression. Her eyes held a proud warmth, her chin was jutted forward, suggesting confidence, and her near-smile was just enough to make her appear mysterious and inviting at the same time.