Free March Violets by Philip Kerr Page B

ceased to regard a corpse as being in any way human. This acquaintance with death had persisted since my becoming a private investigator, when the trail of a missing person so often led to the morgue at St Gertrauden, Berlin’s largest hospital, or to a salvage-man’s hut near a levee on the Landwehr Canal.
    I stood there for several minutes, staring at the gruesome scene in front of me, and puzzled as to what had produced the condition of the head and the differing one of the body, before eventually Dr Illmann glanced round and saw me.
    â€˜Good God,’ he growled. ‘Bernhard Gunther. Are you still alive?’ I approached the table, and blew a breath of disgust.
    â€˜Christ,’ I said. ‘The last time I came across body odour this bad, a horse was sitting on my face.’
    â€˜He’s quite a picture, isn’t he?’
    â€˜You’re telling me. What was he doing, frenching a polar bear? Or maybe Hitler kissed him.’
    â€˜Unusual, isn’t it? Almost as if the head were burned.’
    â€˜Acid?’
    â€˜Yes.’ Illmann sounded pleased, like I was a clever pupil. ‘Very good. It’s difficult to say what kind, but most probably hydrochloric or sulphuric.’
    â€˜Like someone didn’t want you to know who he was.’
    â€˜Precisely so. Mind you, it doesn’t disguise the cause of death. He had a broken billiard cue forced up one of his nostrils. It pierced the brain, killing him instantly. Not a very common way of killing a man; indeed, in my experience it is unique. However, one learns not to be surprised at the various ways in which murderers choose to kill their victims. But I’m sure you’re not surprised. You always did have a good imagination for a bull, Bernie. To say nothing of your nerve. You know, you’ve got a hell of a nerve just walking in here like this. It’s only my sentimental nature that stops me from having you thrown out on your ear.’
    â€˜I need to talk to you about the Pfarr case. You did the PM, didn’t you?’
    â€˜You’re well informed,’ he said. ‘As a matter of fact the family reclaimed the bodies this morning.’
    â€˜And your report?’
    â€˜Look, I can’t talk here. I’ll be through with our friend on the slab in a while. Give me an hour.’
    â€˜Where?’
    â€˜How about the Künstler Eck, on Alt Kölln. It’s quiet there and we won’t be disturbed.’
    â€˜The Künstler Eck,’ I repeated. ‘I’ll find it.’ I turned back towards the glass doors.
    â€˜Oh, and Bernie. Make sure you bring a little something for my expenses?’
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    The independent township of Alt Kölln, long since absorbed by the capital, is a small island on the River Spree. Largely given up to museums, it has thus earned itself the sobriquet ‘Museum Island’. But I have to confess that I have never seen the inside of one of them. I’m not much interested in The Past and, if you ask me, it is this country’s obsession with its history that has partly put us where we are now: in the shit. You can’t go into a bar without some arsehole going on about our pre-1918 borders, or harking back to Bismarck and when we kicked the stuffing out of the French. These are old sores, and to my mind it doesn’t do any good to keep picking at them.
    From the outside, there was nothing about the place that would have attracted the passer-by to drop in for a casual drink: not the door’s scruffy paintwork, nor the dried-up flowers in the windowbox; and certainly not the poorly handwritten sign in the dirty window which read: ‘Tonight’s speech can be heard here.’ I cursed, for this meant that Joey the Cripp was addressing a Party rally that evening, and as a result there would be the usual traffic chaos. I went down the steps and opened the door.
    There was even less about the inside of the Künstler Eck that would