The Butchers of Berlin (11 page)

‘Smart man.’ Morgen sighed. ‘And before Stoffel? Just so we know.’

‘Inspector Gersten. Local police brought it to his attention and he referred it to Inspector Stoffel because of the homicide.’

‘And does Inspector Gersten have any theories?’

‘He agrees with me that the Bolshevik-Jewish conspiracy might not be confined to the east and has managed to smuggle agents into Berlin.’

‘Is Gersten an expert?’ asked Morgen.

‘He seems to have considerable knowledge but accepts that I have first-hand experience, so can offer valuable advice.’

‘So you are Gersten’s consultant?’

‘I would like to think so.’

‘So who killed the man, according to this theory?’ asked Morgen.

‘Either a secret gang of Bolshevik Jews that has managed to disguise itself as part of the workforce, or it has teamed up with the last Jews in Berlin.’

‘And your grounds for thinking this?’

Lazarenko ventured that many Soviet commissars and party officials had escaped detection by murdering their rank and file and stealing their papers.

‘Their ruthlessness and cunning cannot be underestimated.’

He pulled a sad face and produced a wallet, taking from it a small photograph which he passed to Schlegel, who was not prepared for what he saw and quickly passed it to Morgen.

‘The bodies included my wife and children,’ said Lazarenko. ‘Thank God they weren’t desecrated. Many were.’ Lazarenko raised his spectacles and pinched the bridge
of his nose. ‘Senseless, senseless mutilation.’

Lazarenko explained how in the Soviet retreat of 1941 Bolsheviks had teamed up with Russian Jews to lay waste and carry out terrible reprisals among the local Ukrainian population. The
photograph Morgen was holding showed the results of one such action: a distant view of low foreign houses, a dusty square, plane trees in leaf on a hot day, and a dark stack of corpses, their blood
pooled on sandy ground.

Morgen handed the photograph back to Lazarenko and said the Russians were a formidable enemy. Sheer force of numbers made them fearless. And with a history of cruelty too.

Schlegel wondered about Lazarenko showing the photograph. It had sounded a wrong note. It was too shared a moment for a stranger, more a bid for sympathy or attention than sincere. But Morgen
seemed convinced. He told Lazarenko his theory made as much sense as anyone’s.

‘But I am surprised they didn’t take the dog, given the skill for scavenging you refer to.’

Lazarenko looked uncomprehending. Schlegel explained. Lazarenko feared they were joking at his expense. His German was passable but Schlegel wondered how much he missed. Once it was clear they
were serious, he expressed his relief with a fanning gesture.

Schlegel decided Lazarenko’s behaviour seemed to depend less on imitation than copying, without a full understanding of what was involved. He was reminded of the phonetic nonsense Francis
Alwynd resorted to when drunk, in the belief that it passed for German. But Alwynd had enough sense of himself not to care.

Morgen told Lazarenko he needed him to come and speak Russian to an old woman, then they would go to the paint factory where he could translate for them. Schlegel thought Lazarenko looked
grateful out of all proportion to what was on offer.

Morgen turned out to be an expert scrounger in his own right.

He protested he was not going anywhere without a car. Schlegel said they wouldn’t get one.

‘That’s because you don’t drive,’ said Morgen. Schlegel wondered how he knew.

The desk clerk in the motor pool couldn’t have cared less. He scratched his backside and refused. Morgen asked for a telephone. The clerk pointed to his. Morgen told the switchboard to
connect him to SS headquarters in Prinz-Albrechtstrasse. He asked for an extension, gave his name and rank and said, ‘What authority do I have here?’

He paused to ask the desk clerk his details. The clerk, nervous at how things were going, reached into a drawer and produced a set of keys.

Morgen said into the receiver the problem was now solved.

The clerk contrived to look churlish and chastened. Morgen told him to fill in the paperwork. He nonchalantly raised his arm, obliging the clerk to stand and return the salute.

The car was the one Stoffel had taken, with the hole in the floor.

Lazarenko suddenly told them he wasn’t allowed to travel in police cars. Any more than we are, thought Schlegel. Stoffel would have a fit. Technically it was a pool but Stoffel always got
the Opel.

Lazarenko droned on about how his job restricted him to public transport, for which he had a pass. He produced it, seeming to think they might doubt him.

Morgen said, ‘We can always arrest you and throw you in the back.’

Lazarenko waved his hands and Morgen explained he wasn’t being serious, however much it looked like he wished he were. ‘Have it your way,’ he said, and told him which station
to meet them at.

They drove in silence, Morgen humming and smoking. Schlegel was no closer to fathoming the man. They passed down a broad road in an affluent section with detached houses, discreetly screened
behind trees.

Morgen slowed down to examine this strange, still world and said, ‘You have no idea how unbelievable this all looks.’

The business with the old woman took five minutes. Lazarenko spoke Russian and the woman confirmed that was what she had heard on the night.

Morgen said, ‘Interesting.’

The woman bestowed upon them an ecstatic look and said her dog had returned. Schlegel and Morgen looked at each other. Lazarenko put his foot in it by saying he thought the dog was dead. Morgen
quickly said that they had been talking about another dog. He needn’t have bothered. The old girl was away in a world of her own.

‘He’s sleeping now,’ she said. ‘Otherwise I would invite you in to say hello.’

They left Lazarenko to his public transport and drove to Treptower-Köpenick. Morgen lit cigarette after cigarette, leaving Schlegel to wonder if the man drove while he smoked or smoked
while he drove. When they passed a gang of sturdy, shoeless women working on a building site Morgen grunted, ‘Russians.’

Schlegel asked if he didn’t like them.

That wasn’t what he had said, he replied and asked, ‘Did you know you can tell a Jew by the way he walks?’

Schlegel answered carefully that he wasn’t that observant.

‘Someone said, the other day. Even from behind.’

The Russian whose pay slip it was appeared reeling drunk, so incoherent he could barely talk, and kept clutching his stomach in obvious discomfort.

Lazarenko explained that the man worked with chemicals in the vats, which accounted for his state.

They spoke in the yard beneath an austere gigantic box of brick and glass, constructed in the style of twenty years before. Its main feature was an enormously tall chimney that made Schlegel
dizzy just to look at.

The Russian was obviously harmless, probably brain-damaged and certainly too addled to make sense of their questions. The idea of even going to another part of town seemed beyond his
comprehension. What would he do there and when would he go? They were marched to work, worked all day, and were marched back.

In his eagerness, Lazarenko appeared to have miscalculated, Schlegel thought. He even felt a little sorry for him, however irritating the man’s unctuous aggression.

Lazarenko produced the pay slip. The Russian stared at it and rattled off something that embarrassed Lazarenko.

‘Well?’ asked Morgen.

Lazarenko said the slip was meaningless. They all threw theirs away. He had no idea how it got where it had.

Morgen asked if that was all.

Lazarenko squirmed and mumbled that the man had said the slip wasn’t large enough to wipe his arse with.

Schlegel thought Lazarenko’s discomfort was more about making a fool of himself with them. Even if he had been told to follow up on the pay slip by Gersten, Schlegel was sure he had puffed
up his own importance.

Lazarenko continued to push hard on the fact that workers were let out unsupervised on Sundays. The Russian spoke fast, his contempt plain.

Lazarenko turned to them, his expression one of impotent anger.

‘He’s a lying bastard. It’s clear. He pretends he stayed at home all day playing cards. He says anyone can confirm that, but that’s because he knows they will cover for
him.’

Morgen dismissed the Russian and addressed Lazarenko. ‘Don’t waste my time. You’re going to have to come up with something better than this.’

Schlegel watched the Russian staggering off like he’d had a skinful.

Lazarenko, crestfallen, promised more. He hoped they would make a good team yet. Morgen whistled at the sky. Schlegel saw who he reminded him of. It was the actor Charles Laughton. He had been a
big star before the war. Schlegel had been with his mother to see
Mutiny on the Bounty
. His mother complained about the actor they used to dub Laughton’s beautiful speaking voice into
German. It was a quality he shared with Morgen.

Morgen said little on the drive back other than he thought there might be something to Lazarenko’s theory. There was more. The underbelly Lazarenko inhabited was riddled
with informers. Almost certainly he had come to them as someone’s spy.

Schlegel supposed Lazarenko was Gersten’s man, sent to sniff them out. He supposed even he, Schlegel, was Stoffel’s spy because he had been asked to report on Morgen. He wanted to
ask whose spy Morgen was.

Morgen said, ‘It would make perfect sense for the Russians to kill anyone they found spying, and be brutal, but I can’t see them leaving the money. They’re dirt poor. And why
transport the body across town?’ He added, ‘I wonder if Gersten knows Lazarenko calls himself a consultant.’

Schlegel asked whether Morgen was going to carry on wearing his uniform.

‘What you mean is, you don’t want anyone thinking you are SS.’

Touché
, thought Schlegel.

‘It is the authority with which I am invested,’ said Morgen, deadpan, leaving Schlegel wondering about him again. Sometimes he seemed deadly serious, at other times dangerously
flippant, as with the sloppy salute to the motor-pool clerk.

‘I don’t think I have a suit. The moths got them.’

Night had fallen as Schlegel walked up to Hackescher Markt. He cut under the railway and what sounded like chanting at a football match came from the direction of Rosenstrasse.
By the sound of it, the gathering of the few he had seen on Saturday was now a sizeable crowd. They shouted for their men to be released.

As he neared the scene, Schlegel saw that some carried torches. He was reminded of a dutiful congregation at a religious observance. No rowdy drunks sent in to wreck things, which was the usual
procedure.

That the police weren’t breaking it up meant the situation must be delicate.

They seemed eager to have their story heard, being naive enough to believe anyone among them was sympathetic. They also possessed the certainty of those in the right.

Schlegel presumed a significant armed presence was assembled nearby.

He saw the pale upturned faces of those around him. It had grown bitterly cold again. He sensed doughty women, so wrapped up as to be shapeless; middle-aged and older. An exception was a young
woman, who looked up at the building with an expression of almost ecstatic yearning.

A car drew up, sounding its horn. Men got out and went inside. Their arrival set the crowd off again. Schlegel watched the young woman shouting with unwavering fervour.

A long blast on a whistle sounded. Everyone ignored it. A man shouted through a megaphone for them all to disperse.

Silence fell. Schlegel heard a line of soldiers step forward, followed by the snap of rifle bolts. The sound threw him back, and filled him with dread.

The crowd melted away down side streets.

He thought it unlikely they would start firing in the dark, massacring civilians in the middle of the capital. They saved that sort of thing for elsewhere.

Fifteen minutes later the women started gathering again, their silent disapproval palpable.

Schlegel went and stood where he was before, near an advertising pillar. His ungloved hand was freezing in his pocket. The young woman took up her position next to him. She looked defeated, her
face pale in the moonlight, her tears frozen to her cheeks.

About a ten-minute walk from where Schlegel was standing in the crowd, another woman sat and waited in the dancehall in Auguststrasse that occupied the ground and first floors
of the building where he lived. It was the second evening she had gone and waited there. She had in fact noticed Schlegel on the Saturday night, watching her.

She did not know what the man she was assigned to meet looked like. He, however, knew her from her identity photographs. The arrangement had been made through a go-between, who left a message in
a particular café explaining where to go.

The waiting woman, as the photograph for her false papers showed, was still beautiful, if no longer young. It crossed the minds of most men looking at her to wonder what she was like in bed. She
had the air of someone who could pick and choose in a way that would make any man feel special.

That may have been the case once. Now life had become a matter of seeking protection, not on her own terms but for survival. She had been an entertainer and actress, not a very successful one.
Since meeting the man in the leather coat, with his questionable mouth, everything had become shrouded in fear and uncertainty.

The story in her mind for that evening was she was seeking romantic attachment in exchange for protection, and the obvious excellence of the man’s papers. Her hope was to throw herself at
his mercy so he would take pity and hide her, in return for being given the ride of his life. She wished him no harm. She would, in the language of romantic magazines, beguile him.

Nothing had happened on the Saturday. She sat in the large room at the back, near the kitchens, with a view of the floor. She got asked to dance and wondered each time if it was him. There
weren’t many in, apart from pimply youths and aged lotharios, a few soldiers on leave and what looked like a contingent from Prinz-Albrechtstrasse slumming it. For a while she watched the
strange young man with stranger white hair staring like he had seen a ghost or experienced something equally unsettling. She thought of asking him for a dance because he looked so lost.