Free Hitler's Angel by Kris Rusch

body before the police had a chance to see it, and we believe that the death may not have been a suicide.’
    The priest was placing his robe on a hanger. He stoppedwhen Fritz said the word ‘suicide’. For a moment, he stood with his back to Fritz, then turned his head slightly. ‘I have documents from the Bavarian Minister of Justice and from a police doctor. Are you saying these documents are false?’
    ‘No, Father. They’re authentic. But the circumstances were unusual, and the doctor suggested, in a roundabout way, that I look at matters myself. By the time the Kripo had even been informed of the death, the body was on its way here.’
    The priest finished adjusting his robe, then he hung it on a peg behind the door. ‘I suppose you have papers?’
    Fritz pulled out his identification papers, and showed them to the priest. The priest picked up a pair of half glasses off the table and held them in front of his eyes without attaching them to his ears. Then, with one hand, he folded the glasses, and with the other, he returned Fritz’s papers.
    ‘I have known the Raubals a long time,’ the priest said. ‘Angela, Geli’s mother, was quite upset when she spoke with me yesterday.’
    ‘She called you?’
    The priest nodded. ‘She will be here this afternoon.’
    ‘Where is the body?’ Fritz asked.
    ‘At the Central Cemetery. No one arranged for a mortician, so I did.’ The priest put his glasses in their case and stuck the case in his breast pocket. His hands were sure, his manner calm. ‘The mortician will also arrive this afternoon.’
    Fritz felt his mouth go dry. A mortician would alter the body – it was his job. Fritz waited for the priest to continue with his comments, but he did not. ‘Have you another mass this morning?’
    Father Pant shook his head. ‘We have a nine a.m. mass and a noon mass, but I shall perform neither. I was going to use the time to prepare for tomorrow’s services.’ He took his long coat off the wall peg. ‘Come along. We shall take my car. No one will remark upon it.’
    ‘Thank you,’ Fritz said. For all his matter-of-factness, the Father seemed as curious about the circumstances of Geli’s death as Fritz was.
    ‘No thanks needed,’ Father Pant replied. ‘I do this for Geli. Her soul is still my responsibility.’

    A click stops him. The girl smiles at him apologetically. ‘Something’s wrong with the tape,’ she says.
    Fritz still wants a beer. A headache throbs at the back of his skull, has throbbed since he saw the photograph. ‘This is a fine place to end,’ he says. ‘I will see you in the morning then.’
    ‘Would you like me to bring breakfast again?’ She has not even begun to pack her equipment. He wishes she would move. He wants to be alone.
    ‘Yes, fine,’ he says. Their relationship seems to be based on food. Of course, all of his relationships with women seemed to have revolved around food.
    She nods, places her tapes in her large bag, and slings it over her shoulder. Then she picks up the recorder. ‘Until tomorrow, then.’
    ‘Until tomorrow,’ he says.
    She lets herself out, pulling the door closed quietly.
    The endings of these sessions are awkward for him. He feels as if she expects something more from him. Entertainment? A quiet dinner? He does not know.
    He stays in the chair as darkness grows around him. For years, he was afraid to speak of this, afraid to remind people that he was the one who had been forced to retire from the Kripo over the Raubal case. He had tried to speak then and was silenced. Then he did not speak at all. No one cared in London. When he returned to Germany, when he had his measure of fame, when he was ready to speak in the decades after the Second World War, no one wanted to listen. He had become a national hero, somehow, the man who had solved Demmelmayer, the man who had developed modern crime-solving techniques. The London Times had called him ‘Germany’s Sherlock Holmes’. The New York Times had