36
‘Well, well, look what the cat brought in.’ Becker smiled as he said it, but there was a tightness to his jaw, to his eyes, that belied his levity. He glanced at the paper as the sergeant handed it to him. ‘Wait outside,’ he said to the Feldgendarmes. There was a surge of light as the door opened and closed, and Reinhardt saw that Becker was holding a pistol against his leg. He smiled again. ‘Quite a merry chase you’ve led us on, Gregor.’
‘Well, if I’d known you wanted to play, Major, I’d have made a bit more of an effort for you,’ said Reinhardt, forcing a levity into his voice that he did not feel.
Becker’s eyes flicked to Claussen, and his brow creased slightly, as if trying to remember if he had ever met the sergeant. ‘Who is this?’
‘My driver.’
Becker flushed, as he always did when Reinhardt did not address him by rank. ‘You. Wait outside with the other Feldgendarmes.’
Claussen did not move, and Becker’s flush deepened. ‘Wait outside, Sergeant,’ said Reinhardt, after a moment. ‘I’ll call you if I need you.’
‘Very good, sir,’ said Claussen.
Becker smiled as the door closed. ‘You have a habit of backing the wrong horse, Gregor. And you’ve done it again.’
‘Which horse would that be?’
‘A highly placed one. One that you should never have started to piss off. One that you know something about, and I want to know it, too.’
‘You’re not making sense, Becker,’ said Reinhardt, dismissively, allowing his eyes to roam away from the major. There was not much, just a couple of rickety-looking chairs, a battered table with a tin water bottle on it, and a stack of chopped wood piled next to a blackened iron stove. The scent of earth and wood smoke mixed and merged in the humid atmosphere in the house.
‘Look, I’m going to put this away,’ Becker said, making a show of holstering his pistol. He took his glasses off, holding the frames in his two hands, facing to his left with his head up. ‘You were right, the other day at police headquarters. I am looking for my ticket out of here. I’ve got a good one, but I think I see a better one with you, and what I reckon you’ve got.’
‘Sense, Becker,’ snapped Reinhardt, using the tone he used to use when he was Becker’s superior in Kripo. ‘Make sense. Start naming names. Or this is all so much hot air.’
‘Names are dangerous, Gregor,’ Becker snapped back. ‘You know that.’ Becker bit his lip, and Reinhardt could see the perspiration that lined his hair on either side of his parting. ‘Look, I can tell you this much. Someone asked me to help them. Someone you don’t say no to.’
‘I never knew what to think when you opened your mouth, Becker. I still don’t. So stop pissing around the pot. I’ll give you a name, Becker. General Paul Verhein. How’s that?’
‘That’s not a bad name, and he’s part of it but not all of it.’ Becker twisted his glasses in his hands, his stance shifting to his right, looking down. ‘So this someone offered to help me in return. They didn’t need much. They needed Lieutenant Krause found, and they needed whatever they thought he had. That’s all.’
‘And for that, you impeded an investigation into the murder of a German officer.’
‘Oh, get off your high horse, Gregor, for fuck’s sake,’ Becker snapped. ‘Yes, I impeded your investigation. So bloody what? You should never have had it in the first place.’
‘And then what?’
‘Then what?’ Becker paused, as if he were about to say something else and thought better of it. ‘Then things began getting out of hand. I couldn’t find Krause, then there was the film, then you got in on the act and began making waves. Making people uncomfortable.’ His stance shifted again.
‘Tell me about Thallberg. And try to keep still, will you?’
Becker’s mouth made an O of surprise. ‘Keep… ?’
‘Forget it. Thallberg.’
Becker shrugged. ‘That wasn’t supposed to happen like that.’
‘Well, it did.’
‘He came to me last night, accused me of… well, accused me of what I’d been doing, I suppose,’ he said, nonchalantly, the old Becker starting to reemerge. ‘Tempers flared, and he let slip that this was much bigger than covering up how some tart of a journalist met a sticky end. I told the people I was working for, and they told me to get what Thallberg knew. By any means.’
‘You killed him.’
‘I tried to make him a deal, but he was having none of it. Things… got out of hand. He didn’t say much, actually. I got more out of his corporal. Like Hendel being SD, maybe Krause too, and actually after Verhein as well. What’re the odds, eh?!’ Becker giggled, suddenly. ‘You can imagine my position, Gregor. Trying to get Verhein out of a sticky patch was my ticket out of here. Actually being able to get him into an even stickier patch might even be better for me. What’s an honest cop to do?!’ He giggled again, an edge to his hilarity like rust on a blade. ‘I don’t know exactly what Hendel and Krause had on Verhein, but I think you do, and I want to know what it is.’
‘How did this “someone” know to ask you for your help?’
Becker shook his head, a little grin on his face, and he turned again. ‘No. You don’t get to know tha -’
‘I said keep still. Still want to play silly games with the names? You were out at Ilidza the night Vukic was killed. Trying to calm Stolic down.’ Becker maintained his grin, but it went tight at the edges. ‘An officer with a history of violence. You were last seen out there with him. And Vukic turns up dead shortly afterwards.’
Becker swallowed, moved his mouth a few times. ‘That’s good, Reinhardt. Very good. But you can’t pin her murder on me.’ He shook his head. ‘No. You have something I need. A file, on Verhein, I believe. I’ll trade for it. They’ll kill you for it.’
‘If I had such a file, you would be the last person I would give it to,’ Reinhardt replied, with a confidence he was not sure he felt. It was so hot in the house. He picked up the water bottle, keeping Becker in his line of sight as he swigged from it.
‘Help yourself,’ murmured Becker.
‘I didn’t say I was trying to pin her murder on you. Hendel’s, shy;perhaps… A bit of a stretch, but I could probably do it.’ His turn to grin now.
‘You might,’ Becker said after a moment. ‘How about this, though? As much as you think you’ve got me over a barrel, I know I’ve got you over one. Disobeying orders. Consorting with the enemy. Interfering with a Feldgendarmerie investigation. Oh,’ he said, looking down at the paper, ‘and I’ll want to talk to you about the deaths of Captain Hans Thallberg and Corporal Jurgen Beike.’
‘Not interested.’
Becker held his eyes as he calmly tore the paper in two, then again. ‘Still want to play silly buggers, Gregor?’
‘Still not interested,’ said Reinhardt, forcing a smirk as he held Becker’s gaze.
‘What exactly do you hope to achieve, here?’ Becker’s tone seemed honestly intrigued. ‘You’re trying to bring down a general. People like him don’t sit still waiting for someone like you to prick them on the arse. Nor do the people around them. They’ll swat you aside, especially at a time like this. Normally,’ he grinned, ‘I’d stand aside and enjoy that, but if you go down, I end up with a losing hand. Rather, I end up with a winning hand – I get that either way – but marginally less good,’ he giggled.
Something in what Becker was saying sparked something in shy;Reinhardt’s mind. Something similar to what he and Thallberg had talked about. ‘You keep saying “someone”, referring to “they”. You’re not hiding Verhein from me. So he’s not the one you’re dealing with. Is he?’ Becker’s grin went tight again, and Reinhardt knew he had hit a nerve, and he had to keep hitting it. ‘What do you have on them? Or what do they have on you? What happened in Ilidza that night? How did they bring you into this? Who is it, Becker?’
‘You’re fishing again, Gregor.’