Free Prague Fatale by Philip Kerr Page B

building I had half an idea might once have been the Prussian State Art School, but given that the Gestapo was now headquartered in the old Industrial Art School on Prinz Albrechtstrasse, there seemed to be little or no chance that anyone was being taught how to paint someone’s portrait in the Prussian State Art School; not when they could more usefully be taught how to torture people. It was a fact that the Gestapo had always taken its share of the city’s best public buildings. That was to be expected. But lately they’d started confiscating the premises of shops and businesses that had been abandoned as a result of the shortages. A friend of mine had gone into the Singer Sewing Machine salesroom on Wittenberg Platz looking for a new treadle-belt only to discover that the place was now being used as an arsenal by the SS. Meyer’s Wine Shop, on Olivaer Platz, where once I’d been a regular customer, was now an SS ‘Information Bureau’. Whatever that was.
     
    In the centre of the park was a curving promenade where you could walk, or perhaps sit, but only on the grass, since all of the city’s many wooden park benches had been taken away for the war effort; sometimes I imagined a fat Wehrmacht general conducting the siege of Leningrad while warming his hands over a brazier that was fuelled with one of these. On the eastern edge of this promenade, and bordering Potsdamer Strasse, was an area of shrubs and trees that had been closed off to the public by several uniformed policemen. The dead body of a man lay under a huge rhododendron that was in late flower, but only just, since he was covered withred petals that looked like multiple stab wounds. He was wearing a dark blouson-type jacket, a lighter brown pair of flannel trousers, and a pair of severely down-at-heel brown boots. I couldn’t see his face as one of my new Gestapo friends was blocking the sun, as was their habit, so I asked him to move and, as he stepped out of the way, I squatted down on my haunches to take a closer look.
     
    It was a typical mortuary photograph: the mouth wide open as if awaiting the attentions of a dentist – although the teeth were in remarkably good condition and certainly better than mine – the wide eyes staring straight ahead so that, all things considered, he looked more surprised to see me than I was to see him. He was about twenty-five with a small moustache, and on the front of his left forehead below the line of his dark hair a contusion that was the shape and colour of an outsized amethyst and which more than likely was the cause of death.
     
    ‘Who found the body?’ I asked Sachse. ‘And when?’
     
    ‘A uniformed cop on patrol. From the Potsdamer Platz station. About six o’clock this morning.’
     
    ‘And how is it that you picked up the order?’
     
    ‘The duty detective from Kripo telephoned it in. Fellow named Lehnhoff.’
     
    ‘That was clever of him. Lehnhoff’s not usually so quick on his toes. And what did this Fritz have in his pocket that marked him out as your meat? A Czech passport?’
     
    ‘No. This.’
     
    Sachse dipped into his pocket and then handed me a gun. It was a little Model 9 Walther, a palm-sized .25 calibre automatic. Smaller than the Baby Browning I had at home for when I wasn’t expecting visitors, but quite accurate.
     
    ‘A bit more lethal than a set of door keys, wouldn’t you say so?’ said Sachse.
     
    ‘That will open a door for you,’ I agreed.
     
    ‘Be careful. It’s still loaded.’
     
    I nodded and handed the gun back to him.
     
    ‘This makes it a Gestapo matter.’
     
    ‘Automatically,’ I said. ‘I can see that. But I still don’t see how this connects him with the Three Kings.’
     
    ‘One of our officers from the Documentation Section looked over his papers and found some discrepancies.’
     
    Wandel handed me a yellow card with the dead man’s photograph in the top left-hand corner. It was his Employment Certificate. He said, ‘Notice