Len Deighton 3-Book War Collection Volume 1: Bomber, XPD, Goodbye Mickey Mouse

for the Burgomaster

Niels had initialled the carbon as was his usual practice. Acting on impulse the Burgomaster phoned through to police records and asked them for their file on this man Hans-Willy Meyer.

‘You have it already,’ said the police constable.

‘You are sure?’

‘I am certain, Herr Bürgermeister. Herr Niels came down for it personally. He said you had asked for it.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Is everything in order?’

‘Yes,’ said the Burgomaster. He knew the man with whom he had spoken, an elderly constable who had been put in charge of records after being badly injured in a fight with two drunks at the beginning of the war. He was a man of experience and would have made no mistake. The Burgomaster picked up the phone but replaced it and walked along to Niels’ office instead. The wedding party were still waiting in the corridor.

Niels was not in his office and although at first Ryessman was about to dismiss the matter from his mind he had second thoughts and went through the cabinet to find Meyer’s police file. It was not there. There were in fact none of the grey-covered police files anywhere in the cabinet. It was then that he remembered that Niels had been carrying a grey file when he had come into the office and found Ryessman behind his desk. Yes, there it was, stuffed into a cabinet of purchase agreements so carelessly that its cover was bent double.

The Burgomaster read through the file of documents. Meyer was a twenty-one-year-old Jewish farmworker. He was not permitted to serve in the Wehrmacht. His file was a very ordinary one that could have been that of any of Altgarten’s two dozen Jews. Ryessman had hoped that his data card with its identity photo and fingerprints would have been there, but it was not. Perhaps police records filed them separately.

Meyer had been down-graded because his grandfather, a butcher from Lübeck hitherto listed as an Aryan, had now been classified as purely Jewish. This made Meyer’s father two-thirds Jewish like his mother, and, as everyone knew, the offspring of two such Jews was a two-thirds-Jewish son, not a one-third-Jewish son. What puzzled Ryessman was where the information had come from. Usually in cases of this sort one found in the file a short unpleasant note from a neighbour or fellow worker. Typed sometimes, or written in block capitals to conceal the writer’s identity. Often they contained obscenities, sometimes they ended with Nazi slogans instead of a signature. This file had no such note. The grandfather had been dead since before the Party came into power and these documents had originated with the Lübeck police records office. It seemed unlikely that they would have made a mistake but then perhaps in 1933, the first year of Hitler’s power, they had been overworked, for that was when all these Jewish files began. Before that the police had dealt only with criminals.

It was time to go for his fitting. He replaced the file as he had found it, even bending it as before. As he left his office he saw the wedding party again. They were no longer tense and the bridegroom held his wife’s hand protectively. Herr Holländer, the registrar, brandished a huge bunch of keys and used them to unlock the cupboard on the landing. He reached for one of the hundreds of black-bound volumes that lined its shelves. The ceremony was not yet complete and Holländer looked the groom in the eye warningly. They were hushed and solemn as Holländer handed the official edition of Mein Kampf to the bride as was mandatory in all Reich weddings. The Burgomaster nodded approvingly at them as he passed.

The sun now shone from a clear blue sky and Ryessman enjoyed the walk up Dorfstrasse past the ruined windmill on the corner. As he crossed Vogelstrasse he could smell the sweet, freshly cut timber in the carpentry shops where as a young child he had lingered on his way to school. He tried to forget the business of Meyer but he could not. Even as the tailor – old Herr Voss himself – supervised the fitting of his fine Party uniform he remembered it again. What sort of spiteful motive was behind the reclassification? Not that Ryessman had much sympathy for Jews; it was simply a matter of procedure. If there was a reclassification, then the file should show the evidence for it. If the reclassification had been upwards instead of downwards then Ryessman would have suspected corruption. It did happen, it was useless to deny it. There were such large sums of money involved. Some of them would offer a fortune rather than go into a concentration camp. It wasn’t fair that these Jews put that sort of temptation to loyal policemen and Party workers, but what could you expect from such people?

‘Raise your arm,’ said Herr Voss. ‘Too tight?’

‘Exactly right.’

‘Bend forward and straighten up.’

The Burgomaster did so and Herr Voss fussed around the back of his collar, slashing at the soft brown cloth with his chalk. It was a smart uniform; he wished it had been ready this morning when the family had had its group photo taken. How fine his mother had looked even at eighty-six, and the children in their best suits had been transfixed and silent in case the photo should show them as having moved. For their parents had promised them dire punishments if this photograph for grandfather’s birthday was less than perfect.

‘Sit down. Clothes must look as well on a man seated as upon him standing.’ Again he applied the sharp edge of the chalk. It was an honour to be fitted by Voss himself. Voss was among the wealthiest men in the town. In 1930 in an upstairs room in this very building he had first tried his hand at making a uniform. It was for an old and valued customer who had just joined the SA. One of his fellow officers had admired it and by 1933 Voss uniforms had become famous for miles around. One wealthy SS officer came from Berlin and had previously been a customer of the famous Stechbarth, Göring’s tailor. It made Voss very proud. Some people said things against them, but the Nazis had done wonders for the uniform business, whatever other faults they might have. There were so many part-time organizations that many Germans had two or three uniforms. Voss’ greatest complaint against the Nazis was the way they had deprived him of his skilled Jewish staff. It was all very well, these arrogant young men complaining about stitching and the cut of the breeches. They didn’t seem to understand that there were secrets to tailoring a pair of breeches that were known to very few cutters, and they were all Jewish.

‘Stand up.’

It was almost as though the Burgomaster had read Voss’ mind. He said, ‘Are there many Jews still in the tailoring business?’

‘Yes, Herr Bürgermeister,’ said Voss. ‘I still have one cutter downstairs and there are certain lining materials which can be obtained only from Jewish concerns in the Netherlands. Now take this lining in your tunic …’

‘I don’t wish to know about it,’ said the Burgomaster hurriedly. ‘I was asking in case you have heard of a person named Meyer: Hans-Willy Meyer.’

‘I don’t recall the name, Herr Bürgermeister, but my cutter Jakob might know. Shall I fetch him?’

‘Yes,’ said the Burgomaster.

Poor Jakob; he came into the room in answer to old Mr Voss’ call and found the Burgomaster in his full Party uniform. For a moment he completely forgot that this was the very garment he had been handling only an hour before and went white with horror.

‘There’s nothing to fear, Jakob,’ said Voss. ‘There’s nothing to fear, Herr Bürgermeister, is there?’ he added.

‘Nothing,’ said the Burgomaster. ‘I merely wondered whether you knew a young man named Hans-Willy Meyer. He lives in Florastrasse.’

‘No, Herr Bürgermeister,’ said Jakob.

‘It will not mean trouble for him,’ promised the Burgomaster. ‘I promise it upon my word as a German officer.’

‘You are sure, sir?’

Voss said, ‘Of course, Jakob.’ All these Jews were suspicious; why couldn’t they behave like patriots.

‘The fellow has been denounced,’ declared the Burgomaster dramatically. ‘Tell me what you know of him; it can only help.’

There were so few Jewish families left in Altgarten that it was foolish to deny that he knew young Meyer.

‘He is a fine young man,’ said Jakob. ‘His family comes from Lübeck. He works on a farm. It means catching a bus at five-thirty AM.’

‘When did you first know him?’ The Burgomaster offered Jakob a cigarette. The Jews didn’t get a tobacco ration – or a meat ration either – and Jakob dearly loved to smoke.

‘I lived near his parents in Lübeck,’ said the old tailor. He took a cigarette but stored it carefully away.

‘His father’s parents were Jewish?’

‘No, both his father’s parents were Aryan. It was just his mother’s mother who was Jewish.’

‘Are you quite sure?’

‘I am quite sure, Herr Bürgermeister. There was so much talk about it.’ Jakob gave a short laugh. ‘His father was one of the most prosperous pork butchers in Lübeck.’

Ryessman smiled. ‘So this fellow Meyer is only one-third Jewish.’

‘For you perhaps, Herr Bürgermeister,’ said the old tailor. ‘For me, he is not Jewish at all.’

The thing that still puzzled the Burgomaster was the way in which this Jewish fool Meyer had signed the reclassification form. It was almost as if he wanted to be down-classified.

‘See the shoulder, Jakob: high when the Herr Bürgermeister is seated, but straight when he stands.’

Ryessman was irritated that they should talk of him as though he was deformed. Like surgeons rather than tailors, and that’s the way they looked at him too.

‘Are you finished?’

‘Yes, thank you, Herr Bürgermeister. The day after tomorrow for another fitting. We must have it exactly right.’

‘My secretary will phone,’ said Ryessman.

‘Is he well?’ asked Voss.

‘Niels?’ said Ryessman. He smiled. ‘He was when I left him an hour ago.’