Prague Fatale by Philip Kerr Read Free Book Online Page A

Germany. Surely it was time to let the Israelites leave, or at least to release them from their bondage.
     
    I was almost on the stairs when, from under the arches, I heard the sound of a struggle. I stopped for a moment, looked around and as a cloud shifted lazily off the moon I got a
sonet lumière
view of a man attacking a woman. She was lying on the ground trying to fight him off as, with one hand over her mouth, he fumbled under her skirt. I heard a curse, a muffled scream and then my own footsteps as they clattered down the stairs.
     
    ‘Hey, leave her alone,’ I yelled.
     
    The man appeared to punch the woman and as he stood up to face me I heard a click and caught a glimpse of the blade that was now in his hand. If I’d been on duty I might have been carrying a firearm but I wasn’t and as the man came toward me I shrugged the bread bag containing the food cans off my shoulder and swung it hard like a medieval ball and chain as he came within range. The bag hit him on his extended arm, knocking the blade out of his hand, and he turned and fled, with me in half-hearted pursuit. The moonlight dimmed momentarily and I lost sight of him altogether. A few moments later I heard a squeal of tyres from the corner of Motz Strasse and, arriving in front of the American Church, I found a taxi with its door open and the driver staring at his front fender.
     
    ‘He just ran out in front of me,’ said the driver.
     
    ‘You hit him?’
     
    ‘I didn’t have a chance.’
     
    ‘Well he’s not here now.’
     
    ‘He ran off I think.’
     
    ‘Where did he go?’
     
    ‘Toward the cinema theatre.’
     
    ‘Stay where you are; I’m a police officer,’ I told the driver and crossed the street, but I might as well have looked inside a magician’s top hat. There was no sign of him. So I went back to the taxi.
     
    ‘Find him?’
     
    ‘No. How hard did you hit him?’
     
    ‘I wasn’t going fast, if that’s what you mean. Ten or fifteen kilometres an hour, like you’re supposed to do, see? But still, I think I gave him a good old clunk. He went right over the hood and landed on his head, like he was off some nag at the Hoppegarten.’
     
    ‘Pull into the side of the road and stay there,’ I told the driver.
     
    ‘Here,’ he said. ‘How do I know you’re a cop? Where’s your warrant disc?’
     
    ‘It’s in my office at Alex. We can go straight there if you like and you can spend the next hour or two making out a report. Or you can do what I say. The fellow you knocked down attacked a woman back there. That’s why he was running away. Because I chased him. I was thinking you might take the lady home.’
     
    ‘Yeah, all right.’
     
    I went back to the station on Nollendorfplatz.
     
    The girl who’d been attacked was sitting up and rubbing her chin between adjusting her clothes and looking for her handbag.
     
    ‘Are you all right?’
     
    ‘I think so. My bag. He threw it on the ground somewhere.’
     
    I glanced around. ‘He got away. But if it’s any consolation a taxi knocked him down.’
     
    I kept on looking for her bag but I didn’t find it. Instead I found the switchblade.
     
    ‘Here it is,’ she said. ‘I’ve found it.’
     
    ‘Are you all right?’
     
    ‘I feel a bit sick,’ she said, holding her jaw uncomfortably.
     
    I wasn’t feeling very comfortable myself. I didn’t have my beer-token and I had a bag full of canned food that,within the limited purview of a uniformed bull, would have marked me out as a black-marketeer, for which the penalties were very severe. It was not uncommon for
Schmarotzers
to receive death sentences, especially if these also happened to be people who needed to be made an example of, like policemen. So I was anxious to be away from there; no more did I want to accompany her to the local police station and report the matter. Not while I was still carrying the bread bag.
     
    ‘Look, I kept the taxi waiting. Where do you live? I’ll take you