Free Berlin Burning by Damien Seaman Page B

– beating her up, making her work the streets. But of course he had. He heard everything. The landlady had likely been one of his noses.
    A hospital orderly came by, said, ‘Everything ok here, chaps?’
    He stared at Fleischer’s blood crusted sleeve, the burns on Trautmann’s face and neck.
    Fleischer tried a smile, the kind a cat gives a mouse. ‘Just fine, thank you. I was about to help my friend up.’
    Trautmann saw his chance and put out his hands. ‘Don’t you want that?’ he said to Fleischer. ‘Maria’s guilt. Laid to rest. That’s what I can do for you.’
    The orderly looked from one man to the other. ‘Do you need a doctor? I can go and – ’
    â€˜No!’ the two men shouted at once.
    â€˜I’ll... just go and find a doctor,’ the orderly said, backing around the corner. ‘I think that’s best.’
    â€˜Well, shit,’ Fleischer said. Then he leaned down, took two fistfuls of Trautmann’s ruined suit jacket and hauled him up. ‘All right, you can come. But for Christ’s sake don’t slow me down. And if they’ve got to her already then all bets are off.’
    â€˜You’re so needlessly dramatic Fleischer, you know that?’
    â€˜Fuck you, Trautmann.’
    Chapter 17
    â€“–––––––
    I t was during the war when I first met Kessler. The turnip winter, you remember? When the price of pork went through the roof.
    Made me rich off black market piggies. But it’s funny what money will do to you. I’d been happy up till then sharing my patch with the Bergmann boys. You remember them? Course you do. Yeah, that’s right. Busted in ’17, but I’m getting to that.
    See, suddenly I just had all this cash. And people’s stuff. Old jewellery, the odd antique. Butter. Booze. Whatever people had to trade with.
    And it wasn’t enough anymore, being the black market guy. Now I was somebody, somebody who counted for something. And I wanted more. I looked at all the protection, the prostitution, the Jew-smuggling from the east – all that Bergmann stuff. And you know what I said to myself?
    I said now the pig business ain’t so different from the people business. It’s all just flesh when you get down to it.
    I could do what they do, I thought. Do it better than them, too.
    That’s right, Kessler was involved in the Bergmann sting. That’s how he made sergeant. In fact, he told me later he’d been asked if he wanted a transfer to Kripo. He could’ve taken it, you know. Imagine that, eh? Might have ended up working with him – how would you have liked that? But he turned it down. I told him to. He was more useful to me in uniform.
    Well how do you think he got involved in the first place? A rat like him wouldn’t know the first thing about going after the Bergmanns. Not unless he had help.
    So, one day, two of my guys bring in this lanky kid in a blue uniform and a big, scared look on his face. He’d been out in those empty wartime streets, driving one of the Schupo pool cars, racing it around just that little bit too fast.
    Well I’ll tell you what happened, you give me the chance. Drove right over a mother and her kid is what he did.
    And my guys were there to see it.
    Like I say, they brought him to me, told me what had happened. And Kessler’s practically shitting himself in fear. This is the end of his career, right?
    Well, hold up, I say. Maybe not.
    Maybe I can help make your problem go away if you make mine go away.
    What problem’s that, he says.
    The Bergmanns, I say.
    So he says what do I mean, and I tell him. And bless him, his eyes pop out of his head.
    But he went along with it, all right. Did you never wonder how it was he knew exactly where the latest consignment of women would be? Or where their counting house was?
    I’d been busy getting all the information I needed on them. Just