A Quiet Flame

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. Sometimes it’s not enough to test the side effects of a drug on other people. They are less able to describe the full effects of a drug on the human body. As I believe I stated when first we met, it’s rather difficult to keep tabs on patients in these cases. Sometimes the only patient one can really trust is oneself. I’m sorry if you think that makes me a suspect. But I can assure you that I’ve never murdered anyone. As it happens, though, I believe I can supply an alibi for the day and night of that poor girl’s death.”

“I’m delighted to hear it.”

“I was attending a urologists’ conference, in Hannover.”

I nodded and took out my cigarettes. “Do you mind?”

He shook his head and sipped some of his drink. The alcohol hit his stomach and made it start rumbling.

“Here’s what I’d like to suggest, Doctor. Something that might help this inquiry. Something you might like to do voluntarily that wouldn’t offend your sense of ethics.”

“If it’s within my power.”

I lit my cigarette and leaned forward so I was in range of the scallop-edged ashtray.

“Have you ever had any psychiatric training, sir?”

“Some. As a matter of fact, I did my medical training in Vienna and went to several lectures on psychiatry. Once I even considered working in the field of psychotherapy.”

“If you are agreeable, I’d like you to look over all your own patient notes. See if there’s any one of them who perhaps stands out as a possible murderer.”

“And supposing there was? One patient who stood out. What then?”

“Why, then we could discuss the matter. And perhaps discover some mutually acceptable way forward.”

“Very well. I can assure you I’ve no desire to see this man kill again. I have a daughter myself.”

I glanced around the apartment.

“Oh, she lives with her mother, in Bavaria. We’re divorced.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

“And the man who was here when I called earlier on today?”

“Ah, you must mean Beppo. He’s a friend of my wife’s and came to collect some of her things in his car. He’s a student, in Munich.” Kassner yawned. “I’m sorry, Commissar, but it’s been a very long day. Is there anything else? Only I’d like to take a bath. You can’t imagine how much I look forward to taking a bath after a day in the clinic. Well, perhaps you can imagine.”

“Yes, sir, I can imagine it quite well enough.”

We parted, more or less cordially. But I wondered just how cordial Kassner would have been if I’d mentioned Josef Goebbels. There was nothing around the apartment to indicate Kassner was a Nazi. On the other hand, I couldn’t imagine Goebbels taking the risk of being treated by anyone other than a trusted Nazi Party member. Joey wasn’t the type to put much faith in things like ethics and professional confidence.

Sadly, there was nothing to suggest that the Nazi Party leader in Berlin might actually be a psychopathic murderer, either. A dose of jelly was one thing. The murder and mutilation of a fifteen-year-old girl was quite another.

9 BUENOS AIRES, 1950

I DID NOT OPEN the old KRIPO files that Colonel Montalbán had somehow obtained from Berlin. In spite of what I had told him, the details of the case were still quite familiar to me. I knew perfectly well why it was I had been unable to apprehend Anita Schwarz’s murderer. But I started work all the same.

I was looking for a missing girl who just might be dead. And I was keeping an eye out for one of my old comrades who just might be a psychopath.

Neither of the investigative questions I had been set by the hero-worshipping Argentine policeman seemed likely to get the answer he was looking for. Mostly, I was just looking out for myself. But I went along with his idea, of course. What other choice did I have?

At first, I was nervous about playing the part the colonel had written for me. For one thing, I wanted as little to do with other ex-SS men as possible; and, for another, I was convinced that, in spite of Montalbán’s assurances, they would be hostile to someone asking a lot of questions concerning events most of them probably wanted to forget. But, more often than not, the colonel turned out to be right. As soon as I mentioned the word “passport,” it seemed there was nothing that Europe’s most wanted war criminals were not prepared to talk to me about. Indeed, sometimes it seemed that many of these creatures actually welcomed the chance to unburden themselves—to talk about their crimes and even to justify them, as if they were meeting a psychiatrist or a priest.