The Butchers of Berlin (27 page)

‘Such as the man who was supposed to meet us.’

‘Regrettably, he is dead now.’

‘He was alive last Sunday.’

‘Not by the time he was supposed to meet you on Monday. The one we want was responsible.’

‘He rapes and kills women, you said.’

‘That too. He selects from among those whose papers he is forging. He may well have chosen you if your photograph had reached him.’

He flicked Sybil’s photograph on to the table between them.

‘Undeniably pretty. We think he’s good-looking too. He makes his approach via his go-between.’

‘You said he no longer has a go-between.’

‘There’ll be another. You found the last. I am sure you can find the next. Think of it as a challenge.’

He scribbled out his cigarette in the ashtray.

‘Do well for me and everything will go swimmingly. I must say the elusiveness of this man is getting on my nerves so forgive me if I get tetchy from time to time.’

He stared at her levelly, inviting her to share in his game. Sybil found him very frightening and knew she must not let him see that.

‘Can I ask a question?’

‘Please.’

‘Why do you care if he is murdering Jewish women?’

It was not the right question.

Gersten answered sharply, ‘We don’t want him moving on to German women. Isn’t that obvious?’

He became amenable again and said he needed her signature on documents for a pass that would let her move freely around the city.

‘Everything by the book,’ he said lightly as he showed her where to sign. The old-fashioned pen required an inkwell. Sybil had a violent image of driving the pen into the man’s
eye, then throwing herself out of the window.

‘As for your terms, I can pay the same as your previous job, plus per diems. Keep receipts. Avoid previous company. Tonight you stay here. Tomorrow you will be given a private room in the
Grosse Hamburger Strasse centre, in your own wing and with your own exit. You will live a private existence away from the rest of the building, apart from your immediate colleagues and myself. You
have your own staff room where you can eat. You personally are not subject to curfew or travel restrictions. I will use the photograph I have of you for your pass card, which will show you work for
us. You will report to me on a daily basis between nine and ten in the morning. I will be at the office which is in your quarters. If not they will know where I am.’

Her first thought on being told how few restrictions she had was Lore, and how they could still spend time together after all. Her spirits lifted.

‘You’re in this building tonight. You needn’t worry. It’s a room not a cell. But first come with me. I want to show you something.’

They walked down empty corridors past closed doors. The only sound was their footsteps. Sybil clung on to when she would next see Lore. Otherwise she was wandering in the forest, utterly
forsaken. They went down two flights, through a series of doors, into a darker part of the building. Gersten led her into a room. She gasped in surprise. It was her mother seeming not to see her
back. Then she understood. The space was divided by a two-way mirror.

‘She’s quite safe. She will be taken back tomorrow.’

Gersten stood with his hands in his trouser pockets, absentmindedly fiddling with himself. He answered Sybil’s next question for her.

‘From my side your mother was not difficult to find. Her seances or whatever you want to call them are hugely popular with important men who are insecure about the future.’

The sight of her in that glass cage nevertheless knocked the stuffing out of Sybil. She had been negligent in looking, however much she suspected her mother hadn’t been searching that hard
in return. Whatever she had imagined, it was never that her mother would end up being played by Gersten as a pawn in his game. As he gauged her reaction, she knew he could apply as much leverage as
he liked because she was, in the end, too dutiful and conforming to break the taboo of betraying her mother.

‘There she is, protected, as long as you don’t get ideas above your station. I will give you the address of where she is staying. Go and see her. You must have a lot to catch up
on.’

‘Can I see her now?’

‘No. I don’t wish her to know of our arrangement. She thinks she is here because a prospective client wishes to broker an arrangement through a third party, i.e. myself. As I say,
she has official protection, highly placed. She performs a fashionable service. She will be secure as long as you and I understand each other, and you tell her nothing of our arrangement. Do we
understand each other?’

Her room that night was on the top floor. There were bars on the window but otherwise it was like a hotel, with soap in a dish, a new toothbrush, toothpaste, a metal-framed bed
with a mattress, with proper sheets, blankets and a floral bedspread, two pillows, a rug on the floor, and a lavatory behind a screen, with the almost unheard-of luxury of real toilet paper.

Gersten unlocked the door, stood back to let her in, gave her the Chanel and, without another word, shut her in.

Sybil sat on the bed, unscrewed the top of the Chanel and wondered how her life had come to this.

Schlegel was surprised to find Otto Keleman sitting on his doorstep, smoking and drinking a bottle of brandy. He said he’d forgotten to leave it behind the bar. He had
been with Schlegel’s Irish friend but as they lacked a common language there had been more drink than talk.

‘Lovely man, dirty fingernails. Bottoms up!’

Keleman giggled and slapped his backside. He looked a mess. Schlegel was surprised he knew where he lived.

‘Of course I know. I work for the fucking tax office.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘We need to talk.’

Keleman bowed with mock pomposity. Schlegel thought if he invited him up he would never get rid of him. He suggested the dancehall. What was so important that it couldn’t wait? He wanted
an early night. Keleman lurched and stumbled and Schlegel saw how drunk he was.

They stood in the yard outside where Keleman was less afraid of being overheard. Inside a lugubrious waltz was being played badly. They had passed a one-armed dancer on the way through.

Keleman stood close enough to brush Schlegel’s lapel as he murmured, ‘Go easy, if I were you.’

‘What makes you say that?’

Keleman prodded him in the chest. ‘Leave it, all right?’

Keleman looked around melodramatically, as though eavesdroppers lurked.

‘Tell me what you know about Nöthling.’

‘Nothing apart from what you’ve told me.’

Keleman sniggered. ‘Refresh my memory.’

The man was being so tiresome.

‘Shopkeeper. Corrupt. You should go home. I’ll walk you if it’s not far.’

‘Ah ha!’ Keleman pointed wildly. ‘I know where you live but you don’t know where I live!’

His eyes widened and he quickly excused himself. Schlegel listened to him spew in the dark. He returned, swigging from his bottle. Schlegel caught a wave of alcohol and vomit.

‘Come on. You can clean yourself upstairs.’

Keleman had to stop several times on the way. Schlegel showed him the bathroom and listened to him piss noisily before retching again.

He emerged chastened, more like his normal self. He sat down in Schlegel’s only decent chair, arms dangling between his knees.

‘The big fish never get caught,’ he announced morosely. ‘Let’s really mix our metaphors. I predict a big shit storm coming.’

He rambled on, saying there was a series of wars going on in the upper leadership.

Schlegel said he’d heard as much.

‘Do you remember how they got the Chicago gangster, Al Capone?’

‘Tax evasion.’

‘Exactly! You couldn’t think of anything less fashionable in our office until six weeks ago. Now they could all go down. Give me a name.’

‘Goering.’

They laughed. Everyone knew about Hermann’s corruption.

‘Goebbels.’

Keleman made an equivocal gesture. Schlegel said he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

Keleman agreed. ‘There’s nothing worse than finding yourself caught between the upper and lower jaws of bureaucracy when they are about to snap shut.’

‘Your meaning seems plain, but I still don’t see.’

Keleman sighed. ‘It’s very different from the Bolsheviks. Step out of line, you get shot. Even if you don’t step out of line you get shot. If you have your snout in the trough
here the chances are you never get it taken away completely. It’s the underlings, you and me, my friend, who get shafted.’

‘In that case lose whatever it is you need to lose in the system.’

‘Not good enough. They nail us for losing it and they nail us for not losing it.
Capiche
?’

‘Us?’

‘It might be wise for me to keep a back channel open, so you are aware of what is going on.’

Keleman reached into his coat pocket and handed over several sheets of paper. It was a typed list of names and, next to each name, different figures running into the thousands.

‘What is this?’

‘Famous names, some very much so.’

‘I can see that. And the figures?’

‘Money probably. Lists it’s better to be ignorant of, unless you compiled it.’

‘How did you get it?’

‘A little birdie.’

‘Anonymous?’

‘What do you think?’

‘Why do I need to know?’

‘I am being quite selfish in that respect. Sorry. When they fish me out of the Landwehr Canal I would like someone else to be aware of why I was put there. Consider it a case of being
forewarned. It’s financial. You’re financial.’

Swim in murky waters and you probably did end up in the canal, and what Keleman had showed him certainly did affect him.

Nebe’s name was on the list, with a figure of ‘2000’ next to it.

Schlegel watched the scene unfold through the two-way mirror. They were in the downstairs tank. Stoffel was on the other side of the mirror, jacket off, sweating, stubbled,
bowler hat tilted back, cigar on the go. The scene was being watched by a bunch of homicide cops that barely moved to let them in. Already the flask was being passed around.

‘Celebration,’ one said dourly, not offering.

Stoffel gave sly looks to his observing cronies, and at one point gave a thumbs up behind the suspect’s back. Stoffel wore garters on his sleeves and looked unintentionally comic, having
removed the front stud of his stiff collar, which stuck out either side of his neck. A bright light shone in the face of the suspect, a sorry specimen with a pudding-basin haircut, a
dullard’s look and a mouthful of crooked teeth.

‘Going well?’ Morgen asked the cop standing next to him, a grey little ghost of a man with a reputation for unstinting use of blackjack and knuckleduster.

The cop took his time.

‘A classic, if you ask me. Axel Lampe. Has one of those invisible jobs that allows him to move around, driving the family laundry van. Repeated cruelty to animals. Reported for beating a
horse and molesting a woman. He was sterilised for that, but it didn’t stop him from carrying on raping and killing. He says he’s been at it since he was eighteen.’

‘How old is he now?’

‘Forty-six. Sometimes the animal fucked them when they were dead.’

‘How many is he admitting to killing?’

‘As many as eighty.’

‘Eighty! The man looks incapable of tying his own laces.’

‘Down the years. Think of it as once every four months.’

‘What’s he doing here now?’

‘Pulled up for a traffic offence, went crazy and attacked the cops. When they hauled him in he said he wanted to talk to homicide. They thought him a time-waster and didn’t bother
until he tried to hang himself.’

‘Why does Stoffel want to see us?’

‘You’ll have to ask him.’

Stoffel took a break after twenty minutes, by when his method was clear. Carrot and stick: the cigarettes with which the suspect was plied; the strategically placed
knuckleduster on the table, which Stoffel fingered occasionally. Lampe had the air of a clumsy innocent who would smash things without meaning to. Stoffel’s focus on his subject was total and
flattering and the man basked in the attention while volunteering nothing, waiting for Stoffel to suggest the answer, then agreeing.

Morgen was furious when Stoffel came out, confronting him for trying to frame the man as some kind of super-murderer.

‘You’re wrong. He has huge animal cunning.’

Axel Lampe’s case-history folder had been left in the anteroom. Morgen waved it and said he had just read it.

‘Lampe is a simpleton. He doesn’t know how many days in a year or minutes in an hour. He thinks Silesia is a city. Is there any forensic evidence?’

‘I am doing you a favour. Come and talk to him and he will tell you. Strangulation! Strangulation! Strangulation!’

They went into the stifling tank. Lampe resented their intrusion and looked at Schlegel with sulky eyes.

‘Tell these gentlemen about the Jew you killed last week,’ said Stoffel.

‘Which one was that?’

Before Stoffel could prompt him, Morgen snapped, ‘Let the man remember for himself.’

Lampe accused Morgen of spoiling his train of thought.

Stoffel said gently, ‘In your own time. Tell the gentlemen what you told me.’

Lampe furrowed his brow in a show of concentration and at last asked, ‘Is this about Abbas?’

Morgen gave Stoffel a warning look not to interrupt.

‘I am not stupid. It’s important to get it right.’

After another silence, Lampe said in a rush, ‘I killed Abbas because he was an interfering Yid.’

Morgen asked how Lampe knew Abbas was a Jew.

‘This woman told me she was being pestered by this Yid.’

‘What is this woman’s name?’

‘I met her in a bar. I come up to town on my days off. She said she didn’t want to take the Jew’s money. That’s why I stuffed it in his mouth.’

‘Where did you leave the body?’

‘I don’t know. The last thing I remember was cutting off the Jew’s tool.’

‘Remember that then you must remember where you were.’

‘I just went along. I can’t remember where.’