Blood Roses by Douglas Jackson

Author:Douglas Jackson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
Published: 2024-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 23

The Polski Fiat sat with its chassis crumpled but still upright, chrome bumper wrapped around the scarred trunk of a lime tree on Aleja Ujazdowskie, with the body of the late Kripo investigator Günther Gruhl draped across the bonnet. Oddly, Gruhl’s battered felt hat remained in place on his head, only six inches closer to his neck than anyone could previously remember. He lay among shards of jagged glass from the windscreen, through which he’d been propelled head first into the tree by the impact of the crash. Gruhl’s grieving colleague, Investigator Müller, took the foul-smelling meerschaum pipe from between his teeth and stuck his head through a shattered side window, his nostrils twitching at the pungent scent of vodka from a smashed bottle in the footwell.

‘He wouldn’t have stood a chance.’ Kalisz injected a note of sympathy into his voice. He’d been ordered to the crash scene as soon as he’d arrived for work, and there was something unreal about standing beside the man he’d killed not twelve hours earlier. ‘Catastrophic head injury.’

‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ Müller said sourly.

‘No tyre marks,’ Kalisz pointed out. ‘He didn’t try to brake, or he didn’t have the chance.’

Müller brought his face threateningly close to the Pole’s. ‘Are you trying to insinuate my good friend Günther might have done this deliberately?’

Kalisz ignored the thick sarcasm that threw as much doubt on Müller’s friendship with Gruhl as it did on Kalisz’s theory. ‘I didn’t know him that well.’

‘All Günther Gruhl cared about was propping up a bar while pouring beer down his throat, followed by a warm bed and a warmer woman. He didn’t have the brains to be depressed. Lucky the car didn’t burn.’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Yes.’ Müller grinned. ‘Because then we’d have had to shoot a couple of hundred Poles on the off chance he might have been murdered.’

Kalisz wandered to the front of the car and studied the body. ‘You think it’s a possibility, sir?’

‘I wonder what happened to the little throwdown pistol he was so fond of.’

‘Maybe he felt he didn’t need it in Warsaw,’ Kalisz suggested. ‘Who was going to accuse him of anything just for shooting a few Poles?’

Kalisz winced as Müller spun him round and slammed him against the bodywork, drawing looks of surprise from the German guards and the Polish police who’d cordoned off the crash site. ‘Don’t think you can get clever with me, you little Polish shit.’ Müller’s bristling moustache seemed to have taken on a life of its own. His grip relaxed a little and his eyes turned knowing. ‘If I frighten you, Kalisz, you hide it well.’

‘I don’t understand, sir.’ Kalisz feigned puzzlement.

‘The question I ask myself is, what else are you good at hiding? You see, I don’t buy the dumb, submissive Polack routine.’

‘Begging your pardon, but I only try to do my duty.’

‘Gruhl hinted just yesterday that he was on to something big,’ Müller continued as if Kalisz hadn’t spoken. ‘He reckoned the Gestapo would be giving him a call this morning to offer him a job.

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