The Butchers of Berlin (6 page)

Franz gave a dismissive suck of his teeth. This is going badly, Sybil thought.

‘It doesn’t work like that. People keep everything separate now.’

‘What should I do?’

The blatant way he stared left her uncomfortable.

‘Go to the Association’s headquarters in Oranienburger Strasse at the time he told you. Ask at the main desk if there are any messages for Fräulein Hecht.’

Sybil thought she should have been able to work that out for herself.

‘Even so, you can’t walk in there without a pass.’

‘It’s a lesson. You are on your own. I know only what I have told you. If you want to find him so badly you will work out a way. That’s how it is. He knows that too. No one can
afford to make it easy any more.’

On the train back, she realised her mother’s suitcase had not been in its usual place by the chest beside the bed. The luggage left in Metzler’s apartment indicated
that their owners had been forbidden to pack. Only now did it strike her that her mother’s possessions, including her Tarot cards, were gone.

Schlegel spent Sunday at his mother’s, for the sake of a hot bath and a couple of square meals. It was a kind of normality he detested, but never enough to stop taking
advantage of its comforts. This is you being hypocritical, said the voice in his head. Why not; everyone else was.

His mother was by contemporary standards horribly rich, with a big house in Westend. She drove herself around in a Hispano-Suiza, claiming that managing without a chauffeur was her contribution
to the war effort. Schlegel’s stepfather came from a family that manufactured ball bearings, fitted into almost every conceivable moving part, on top of which he had made a fortune on the
stock market.

Schlegel’s real father had been a Roman Catholic. His earliest memories were of being taken to Mass in Shanghai. His mother was English. It was an unusual alliance at a
time when Germany and Great Britain had been at war for three years. Schlegel was the single result of the union, born 1918.

His mother was what she called English aristo, her mother half-German, a reflection of the complex intermingling of Anglo-German minor royalty. His father had been a civil official. Schlegel
remembered only bay rum in jet-black hair, a pair of monogrammed brushes in a dressing room, cheeks that smelled of shaving soap, and polished shoes, black in the week, brown otherwise. His mother
was always vague about what he did. ‘Something terribly boring, darling.’

His father’s subsequent whereabouts were almost never discussed, apart from his mother claiming he had gone to Argentina and was possibly dead. There was no death certificate, only a
report of him having drowned, which had been passed on by the embassy in Buenos Aires.

‘In a river,’ his mother said, as though such an end were somehow vulgar. ‘And not even fishing.’

Schlegel could not decide to what extent his mother and stepfather were really married: the separate bedrooms; her society life; his racehorses, which took him away most
weekends. He was a strange man, rather anonymous, not unlikeable, who rarely ventured an opinion. Unusually he was at home that Sunday, closeted in an enormous study where he spent a lot of time on
the telephone.

Schlegel was sitting with his mother in the morning room. She had got up late and was eating breakfast and sucking a sugar lump – a luxury in itself – for a hangover.

They were briefly joined by Schlegel’s boss, Arthur Nebe, head of criminal police. His mother pulled a face when he was announced.

Under normal circumstances of rank and order, Schlegel would never have had to address Nebe, being so far beneath him, but Nebe was bound to acknowledge Schlegel because his stepfather was one
of his oldest friends.

Nebe wore his uniform even though he was off duty. He ostentatiously kissed Schlegel’s mother’s hand.

‘Dear Arthur,’ she said.

Nebe smoothly made excuses to join Schlegel’s stepfather. Once he was gone and over cups of Darjeeling, which was brought in by a complicated smuggling process involving Japanese
diplomatic immunity, his mother told him that Nebe had a reputation as a playboy, which he knew; that Frau Nebe remained invisible, which was certainly true as no one had ever seen her; and that
Nebe was referred to behind his back as Top Dog, which Schlegel hadn’t known.

‘Why?’

‘Pedigree looks and attention to grooming.’ She took another sugar lump from a silver bowl. ‘Arthur has a very large nose, what one might call in certain circles a real Jewish
conk.’

Schlegel conversed with his inner voice, which said, this is you stuck with your mother who always insists you behave more like friends.

She subjected him to her full range. The sniggers. The smut. The gossip. The peals of laughter. The risqué. That bitch Riefenstahl. Wallace Simpson as a sexual contortionist. Those
ghastly Mitfords. His mother’s breakfasts were like runway rehearsals for her in later full flight. If nothing else, she always turned up immaculate and fully rehearsed. Even in a dressing
gown she made sure her hair and make-up were perfect.

Schlegel pointed out how she had kept the English habit of putting her butter on the plate first rather than spread it directly on the toast.

‘You can hardly call this toast. They barely seem to know what toast is.’

Schlegel knew Nebe had a fondness for summoning underlings by telegram, usually to the Adlon, and stiffing them with extortionate drinks bills.

‘I do find his style rather too American,’ his mother said. ‘All that eating out, staying in hotels, even here in town, with rooms taken by the hour for his secretarial
flings.’

Schlegel added that Nebe was known to go to the Fatima club, whose novelty feature was interconnecting telephones on all the tables.

His mother rolled her eyes. ‘So American. Is he seen talking on the telephone?’

‘Yes.’

‘In uniform or out of uniform?’

‘I have no idea. Out, I suppose.’

‘Uncomfortable in a civilian suit, I would imagine. He would have been talking to a call girl.’

‘How do you know?’

‘They’re all call girls there.’

‘That’s just another of your sweeping statements.’

‘He talks disparagingly enough about you.’

He couldn’t tell if this was her mischief or true.

‘They’re all such terrific intriguers. None is satisfied until things achieve Venetian proportions. Does any of that reach down to you?’

She was being disingenuous. It was a loaded question. His lack of ambition disappointed her.

Schlegel was reminded of her remark when he found himself standing soon after in the garden for what was known as one of those little talks. Nebe used a cigarette holder, which
he held cupped from underneath, a dandy’s touch.

Nebe had found him in the morning room and asked for a word. His mother had just gone upstairs to change. Schlegel suspected the timing was deliberate.

Nebe wanted to speak outdoors, which struck Schlegel as unnecessary.

They didn’t even walk but stood on the lawn.

Nebe asked, ‘Do you think it wise that you should be running around with homicide?’

He made it sound like the choice had been Schlegel’s.

It was cold, the grass damp underfoot. Nebe’s smoke hung in the still air. A ragged chorus of crows came from the nearby woods. Two gunshots sounded. The crows flew up into the grey sky.
Schlegel supposed it was his stepfather seeing what he could bag. The last time he was there his mother said, ‘I would rather starve than eat more rabbit.’

‘Tell me about this flayed body,’ Nebe went on. ‘What did it look like?’

‘Like something out of a butcher’s shop.’

‘Any closer to finding the Jews that did it?’

‘No one has got around to compiling their lists.’

‘Why don’t the bloody Jews just use the arrests lists?’

‘I don’t know, sir, but they were quite adamant about having to do their own.’

‘Bureaucracy! Nobody’s happy until everything is done twice. What’s with the other case? Stoffel tells me you are writing the report on that too.’

Schlegel said the only outstanding feature was why the block warden had been shot.

Nebe appeared to find that funny. ‘Because most of them are ghastly little tinpot dictators.’

It was an odd statement. Was Nebe being critical in a wider sense? Was he making a veiled political remark?

Schlegel saw what his mother meant. Slippery slope.

‘Don’t waste time on it.’ Nebe looked at Schlegel archly. ‘It is not as though homicide is your beat.’

‘They were short, sir. I had to fill in.’

‘Good party, was it?’

He should have guessed. Nebe had spies everywhere.

‘That flaying, are you telling me the suspects are all in custody, even if you can’t find them?’

‘That’s right, sir.’

‘They’ll be gone soon. Save yourself the paperwork.’

He gave Schlegel a light touch on the shoulder to signal their chat was done. Casual superiority was the man’s style.

Nebe paused on the terrace as they prepared to go back in through the French windows. ‘That double shooting.’

Schlegel said there was a shortage of character witnesses. It was too complicated to explain about the palm-reader. He could picture Nebe’s look of incredulity if he told him how the woman
had read his fortune in the middle of a roundup.

‘Nevertheless, go easy. The man may have been someone’s agent.’

Schlegel presumed he meant the block warden.

‘No! The Jew. Don’t go digging up skeletons.’

‘Can you say whose agent, so I know where not to dig?’

Nebe became vague. The question went unanswered. His gaze was that of a born dissembler, leaving Schlegel uncomfortable at the prospect of being drawn into his web. The floated initiative,
rather than anything resembling a straightforward order, was typical.

If the old man had shot himself because he had been spying on his own people that changed everything.

They were on the S-Bahn to Börse for Oranienburger Strasse, passing the giant flak tower, followed by the street camouflage, hung like circus safety nets over main
thoroughfares, as if waiting to catch something. Sybil was more than usually aware of the money belt strapped to her waist. Life from now on would become a series of erasures, eaten away by the
constant gnawing in the pit of the stomach.

She whispered that she was for abandoning the meeting. They should get off. It was too dangerous. Too much had happened.

The train stopped at Tiergarten. Most trees were gone, cut down.

Sybil saw how useless her previous way of thinking was. Untrammelled imagination was of no use now. Everything had to be stripped down. Raw animal instinct was needed. Their bodies had to become
like antennae that learned to calculate the exact moment when to cross a road or leave to avoid getting caught.

Lore whispered, ‘We take a look. Too dangerous, we leave. Don’t worry.’

They became synchronised after that. Sybil knew Lore would get off a stop early. Lore seemed to enjoy the risk.

She made them wait at a bus stop across the street from the Association, housed in an old synagogue whose dome was a local landmark. They watched for ten minutes. Those allowed in and out wore a
special armband which they didn’t have. When one young man left the building Lore set off after him.

Once around the corner of Auguststrasse she approached the young man, gave her most charming smile, and explained what they needed.

He wanted to know what was in it for him.

Lore pointed at Sybil and said, ‘My friend will show you a nice time.’

Lore winked at Sybil and Sybil winked at the man.

Lore said, ‘For two minutes of your time.’

When he agreed and went off Sybil asked, ‘Why him?’

‘He was the first one that looked enough of a mug.’

The young man returned with an envelope addressed in the name of Hecht, inside of which was an address to the south towards Kreuzberg in Lindenstrasse. Sybil thought it about a thirty-minute
walk.

When the young man asked for his reward, Sybil surprised herself by telling him to fuck off. Her language shocked her as much as her decisiveness.

Ten minutes later they were laughing about it.

Lore said, ‘Look at all the couples out on their Sunday stroll. That’s us.’

The address turned out to be a gramophone shop. This being Sunday, it was closed. Sybil feared a trap. Lore was relaxed.

‘Hang around ten minutes, then we go.’

They left after five. As they did, a tall man of cadaverous appearance approached and pointed down the side of a building to a garage with a door inside a larger one. His gestures were
economical. Seeing Sybil hesitate he turned on his heel. She was forced to grab his sleeve to prevent him leaving, which was when she committed them.

The man ushered them through the door after unlocking it. Inside was an empty space, apart from a motorbike and sidecar stored under a groundsheet.

Sybil said, ‘There are two of us now. We need papers.’

He asked if she had money. He ignored Lore.

She said she had even though he could produce a gun and take everything she had.

With that he seemed to take pity and asked if she could type. She couldn’t.

‘I suggest you learn. We can give you papers that say you are a secretary. Then you will always be able to find work. I only need your photographs now. Regrettably there is a
fee.’

Lore could have taken the photographs. She had a camera and tripod. Not being told anything seemed to be part of the process.

The man named his price. Sybil complained it was too much. He said she was free to go elsewhere. He did it this way because the police kept a watch on commercial developers.

The man looked away while Sybil fished in her underwear. His shoes didn’t quite match. Sybil felt at the limits of her identity, watching two young women on the point of abandoning their
previous life, with everything dependent on a squalid and possibly untrustworthy financial exchange.

The man made a point of smelling the money before taking them to a small studio room with a photographer’s lamp and a camera on a stand.