Later on it occurred to me that I had shot – or to be more exact, executed – Martin Quidde in the exact same way as the NKVD had murdered all those Polish officers. It’s fair to say that this gave me some cause for reflection. I also learned that the music on the fence around Glinka’s feet was from his opera A Life for the Tsar. That’s not a great title for an opera. But then A Life for a Group of Posh Traitors doesn’t have much of a ring to it either. And on the whole, I much prefer solving a murder to committing one.
After what had happened in Glinka Park I didn’t feel much like going to see Doctor Batov. I’m peculiar like that. When I kill a man in cold blood it unsettles me a little, and the good news I had to tell the doctor – that the ministry had approved his resettlement to Berlin – might have sounded rather less like good news than it ought to have done. Besides, I was half expecting Lieutenant Voss of the field police to come around to Krasny Bor and take me on in the role of a consulting detective just like before. That’s certainly what I wanted to happen. The fact of the matter is, I was hoping to steer his simple mind away from any wild theories he might have had about murder. I wasn’t back in my tiny little wooden bungalow for very long when true to form, he came calling.
There was something mutt-like about Voss. That might just have been the brightly polished metallic gorget he wore on a chain around his thick neck to show that he was on duty – this was the reason why most Fritzes referred to the field police as kennel hounds or attack dogs – but Voss had such a lugubriously handsome face it would have been easy to confuse him with the real thing. His earlobes were as long as his leather coat and his big brown eyes contained so much yellow that they resembled the distinctive field police badge he wore on his left arm. I’ve seen pure-bred bloodhounds that looked more human than Ludwig Voss. But he was no amateur soldier: the Eastern Front ribbon and infantry assault badge told a more heroic story than simple law enforcement. He’d seen a lot more action than manning the barrier on a turnpike.
‘A fire, a kettle, a comfy chair, it’s a nice place you have here, Captain Gunther,’ he said, glancing around my cosy room. He was so tall he’d had to stoop to come through the door.
‘It’s a bit Uncle Tom’s cabin,’ I said. ‘But it’s home. What can I do for you, lieutenant? I’d open a bottle of champagne in your honour but I think we drank the last fifty bottles last night.’
‘We’ve found another dead signaller,’ he said, brushing aside the wisecrack.
‘Oh, I see. This is becoming an epidemic,’ I said. ‘Was his throat cut, too?’
‘I don’t know yet. I just picked up the report on the radio. A couple of my men found the body in Glinka Park. I was hoping you might come and take a look at the scene with me. Just in case there’s some sort of pattern to all this.’
‘Pattern? That’s a word we cops only use back in civilization. You need sidewalks to see a pattern, Ludwig. There’s no pattern to anything out here. Haven’t you figured that out yet? In Smolensk everything is fucked up.’
How fucked up, I was only just beginning to understand, thanks to Martin Quidde and Friedrich Ribe.
‘It’s Corporal Quidde.’
‘Quidde? I was speaking to the poor man just the other day. All right. Let’s go and take a look at him.’
It felt curious to be standing over the dead body of a man I had murdered myself not two hours before. Investigating the death of my own victim wasn’t something I’d ever done – and would prefer never to do again – but there’s a first time for everything and the novelty of it helped sustain my interest long enough to inform Voss that to my rheumy but experienced eye, the deceased gave every appearance of having committed suicide.
‘The gun in his mitt looks ready to fire,’ I said. ‘Actually I’m surprised he’s still holding it at all. You’d think some Ivan would have pinched it. Anyway, after careful consideration of all the available facts that can be observed here, suicide would seem to be the most obvious explanation.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Voss. ‘Would you keep your tin helmet on if you were planning to shoot yourself?’
That ought to have given me pause, but it didn’t.
‘And would he have shot himself in the back of the head like that?’ continued Voss. ‘I had the impression that most people who shoot themselves in the head put one through the side of the head.’
‘Which is exactly why a lot of people who do that, survive,’ I said, authoritatively. ‘Temple shots are like a sure thing at the races. Sometimes it just doesn’t finish. For future reference, if you want to do it, then shoot yourself in the back of the head. The same way those Ivans killed those Poles. Nobody ever survives a shot that goes through the occipital bone like this one has. It’s why they do it that way. Because they know what they’re doing.’
‘I can see how that works, yes. But is it even possible to do it in this way – to yourself, I mean?’
I took out my own Walther – the very gun that had killed Quidde – checked the safety, lifted my elbow and placed the muzzle of the automatic against the nape of my own neck. The demonstration was eloquent enough. It was easily possible.
‘There was no need even to remove his helmet,’ I said.
‘All right,’ said Voss. ‘Suicide. But I don’t have your Alexanderplatz experience and training.’
‘I never mind the obvious explanation. Sometimes it’s just too damned hard to be clever – clever enough to ignore what’s obvious. Well, I’m not sufficiently clever to offer an alternative in this case. It’s one thing shooting yourself in the head, it’s something else altogether to cut your own throat. Besides, this time we even have the weapon.’
Voss tugged off Quidde’s helmet to reveal a hole in the man’s forehead. ‘And it looks like we have the bullet, too,’ he said, inspecting the inside of the signaller’s tin hat. ‘You can see it embedded in the metal.’
‘So you can,’ I said. ‘For all the good it will do us out here in Smolensk.’
‘Perhaps we should search his billet for a suicide note,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘Perhaps there was a woman. Or perhaps there wasn’t a woman. Either one of those can seem like a good enough reason for some Fritzes. But even if there’s not a note, it won’t make a difference. Who’d read it anyway, apart from you and me and maybe Colonel Ahrens?’
‘Still it’s curious, don’t you think? Three fellows from the one signals regiment meeting an untimely end in as many weeks.’
‘We’re at war,’ I said. ‘Meeting an untimely end is what being in this crummy country is all about. But I take your point, Ludwig. Maybe there’s something dodgy in those radio waves after all. That’s what some people think isn’t it? That they’re hazardous? All that energy heating up your brain? It would certainly explain what’s been happening at the Ministry of Enlightenment.’
‘Radio waves – yes, I never thought of that,’ said Voss.
I smiled; I was taking to obfuscation like a duck to water, and I wondered how much muddier my wings and webbed feet could make that water before flying away from the scene of my crime.
‘Those signals boys are living right next to a powerful transmitter, day in, day out. The mast at the back of the castle looks just like the lanky lad. It’s a wonder they haven’t sprouted aerials on their damn heads.’
Voss frowned and then shook his head. ‘The lanky lad?’
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘That’s what we Berliners call the radio tower in Charlottenburg.’ I shook my head. ‘So maybe radio waves gave poor Quidde’s brain an itch that he decided he had to scratch with a bullet from a Walther automatic. Probably while he was standing up, too, from the way the blood’s splattered across the grass.’