Prague Fatale by Philip Kerr Read Free Book Online Page B

home.’
     
    ‘Just off the Kurfürstendamm. Next to the Theatre Centre.’
     
    ‘Good. That’s near me.’
     
    I helped her along to the taxi, which was where I’d left it, on the corner of Motz Strasse, and told the driver where to go. Then we drove west along Kleist Strasse with the driver telling me in exhaustive detail just what had happened and how it wasn’t his fault and that he couldn’t believe the fellow he’d collided with hadn’t been more seriously injured.
     
    ‘How do you know he wasn’t?’
     
    ‘He ran off, didn’t he? Can’t run with a broken leg. Believe me, I know. I was in the last war and I tried.’
     
    When we got to Kurfürstendamm I helped the girl out of the car and she was promptly sick in the gutter.
     
    ‘Must be my lucky night,’ said the taxi driver.
     
    ‘You’ve got a funny idea of luck, friend.’
     
    ‘That’s the only kind that’s going these days.’ The driver leaned out of the window and slammed the door shut behind us. ‘What I mean is, she could have been sick in the cab. And that Fritz I hit. I could have killed him, see?’
     
    ‘How much?’ I asked.
     
    ‘That all depends on whether you’re going to report this.’
     
    ‘I don’t know what the lady will want to do,’ I said. ‘But if I were you I’d get going before she makes up her mind.’
     
    ‘See?’ The driver put the taxi cab in gear. ‘I was right. It is my lucky night.’
     
    Inside the building I helped the girl upstairs, which is when I got a better look at her.
     
    She was wearing a navy-blue linen suit with a lace-cotton blouse underneath. The blouse was torn and a stocking was hanging down over one of her shoes. These were plumcoloured like her handbag and the mark under one of her eyes from when she’d been punched. There was a strong smell of perfume on her clothes and I recognized Guerlain Shalimar. By the time we reached her door I had concluded she was about thirty years old. She had shoulder-length blond hair, a wide forehead, a broad nose, high cheekbones, and a sulky mouth. Then again, she had a lot to feel sulky about. She was about 175 centimetres tall, and against my arm felt strong and muscular: strong enough to put up a fight when she was attacked but not strong enough to walk away without help. I was glad about that. She was good-looking in a catlike way with narrow eyes and a tail that seemed to have a whole life of its own and made me want to have her on my lap for a while so that I could stroke it.
     
    She found a door key and fumbled for the lock until I caught her hand and steered the key into the Abus and turned it for her.
     
    ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I’ll be all right from here, I think.’
     
    And but for the fact that she started to sit down on the floor I might have left her there. Instead I gathered her up in my arms and swung her through the door like an exhausted bride.
     
    Advancing into the barely furnished hall I encountered the house guard dog: a barely dressed woman of about fifty with short, bottle-blond hair and more make-up than seemed strictly necessary outside of a circus tent. Almost at once and with a voice like Baron Ochs she started to reproach the half-conscious girl I was carrying for bringing disrespect upon her house, but from the going-over the landlady’s eyebrows were giving me much of that seemed to be directed my way. I didn’t mind that. For a while it made me feel quite nostalgic for my Army days when some ugly sergeant would chew my ear off for nothing but the hell of it.
     
    ‘What kind of house do you think I’m running here, Fräulein Tauber? You should be ashamed to even think of coming back here in such a state as this, with a strange man. I’m a respectable woman. I’ve told you about this before, Fräulein Tauber. I have my rules. I have my standards. This is not to be tolerated.’
     
    All of this told me two things. One was that the woman in my arms was Fräulein Tauber. And the other was that