He pointed. “In there.”
While Bömer went to fetch the dead man’s clothes, I put the contents of his fingernails into a Petri dish and stared at them for a while underneath a microscope. I was no scientist and no geologist, either, but I knew gold when I saw it. There was just a tiny crumb, but it was enough to catch the light and my attention. And when Bömer came into the lab carrying a cardboard box, I went ahead and told him what I’d found, even though I knew what he was going to say.
“Gold, huh? A jeweler, maybe? That might also be evidence that the man was a Jew.”
“I told you, Richard. This man was a boxer. Most likely he was working on a building site. That would account for the dirt under the nails.”
“And the gold?”
“Generally speaking, outside of a goldsmith’s, the best place to look for gold is in the dirt.”
I opened the cardboard box and found myself looking through the clothes of a workingman. At a pair of strong boots. At a thick leather belt. At a leather cap. The cheap flannel shirt interested me more, as there were no buttons on it, and there were small tears on the material where they should have been.
“Someone tore this man’s shirt open in a hurry,” I said. “Most likely when his heart stopped beating. It looks as though someone tried to revive him after he drowned. That would certainly explain the shirt. It was ripped open so that an attempt could be made to start his heart again. With a hot iron. It’s an old boxing trainer’s trick. Something about the heat and the shock, I think. Anyway, that explains the burn.”
“Are you saying someone threw this man in the water and then tried to revive him?”
“Well, it wasn’t the Spree. You told me that yourself. He drowned somewhere else.
Then
someone tried to revive him. Then they dumped him in the river. That’s the chain of causation, but I can’t attach any whys to that. Not yet.”
“Interesting.”
I looked at the man’s jacket. It was a cheap corduroy from C&A. Except the lining had been opened and then restitched, and, squeezing the material under the breast pocket, I felt something crumple in my fingers. I took out my knife again, cut away some of the stitches on the lining, and picked out a folded piece of paper. Carefully I unfolded it until I was able to spread a strip of paper about the size of a schoolboy’s ruler on the bench beside the microscope. After being in the waters of the River Spree, whatever it was that had been printed on the strip of paper was gone forever. The paper was quite blank. But there was no mistaking its meaning.
Bömer’s face was equally blank. “Could this have been his name and address?”
“It might have been, if he was a ten-year-old boy and his mother worried about him getting lost.”
“Well, then. What does it mean?”
“It means that what you first suspected is now confirmed. I believe this strip of paper was probably a fragment from the Torah.”
“The
what
?”
“If God is German, I for one won’t be at all surprised. Apparently he enjoys being worshipped, issuing people with ten commandments at a time, and has even written his own unreadable book. But the God that this man worshipped was the Hebrew God. Jews sometimes sew a piece of the word of God into their clothes, next to their heart. Yes, that’s right, Richard. He was a Jew.”
“Shit. God damn it all.”
“You really mean that, don’t you?”
“I told you, Gunther. The chief is never going to authorize me to investigate the death of a Jew. Damn it all. I thought this might have been a chance to prove myself. To lead a proper murder investigation, you know?”
I said nothing. It wasn’t that I was speechless, but I certainly didn’t feel like making a speech. What would be the point?
“I don’t make police policy, Gunther,” said Bömer. “Even Liebermann von Sonnenberg doesn’t do that. If you really want to know, the policy comes down from the Ministry of the Interior. From Frick. And Frick gets it from Goering, who probably gets it from—”
“The devil himself. I know.”
Suddenly I badly wanted to be away from Richard Bömer and his vaulting forensic ambition. And it was now obvious in a way it hadn’t been obvious before that being a policeman had changed a lot more than I had supposed. I couldn’t ever go back to the Alex even if I had wanted to.
“I expect there will be other murders, Richard. In fact, I’m sure of it. In that respect at least, you can rely on the Nazis.”
“You don’t understand. I want to be a detective, like in the stories. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to be. A proper detective, like you were, Gunther. But police states are bad for crime and bad for criminals. Because everyone’s a policeman in Germany now. And if they’re not yet, they soon will be.” He kicked the laboratory workbench and swore again.
“Richard. You almost make me feel sorry for you.” I picked up the dead man’s file and handed it back. “Well, I can’t say it’s not been fun. I’ve missed the job. I’ve even missed the customers. Can you believe that? But from now on I’m going to miss the job the way I miss the Lustgarten. Which is to say, not at all. Because it’s not the same. It’s not like it used to be. When someone gets murdered—it doesn’t matter who it is—you investigate. You investigate, because that’s what you do when you live in a decent society. And when you don’t, when you say that someone’s death isn’t worth the candle, then the job’s not worth having anyway. Not anymore.”
I held the file out to him. But he stared at it as if it wasn’t there.
“Go ahead,” I said. “Take this. It’s yours.”
But we both knew it wasn’t.
Ignoring the file, he turned and walked out of the laboratory, and although I wasn’t there to see it, the Pathological Institute, as well.
A few months later Erich Liebermann von Sonnenberg told me that Richard Bömer had left KRIPO and joined the SS. At the time it looked like the better career move.
12
T
HE TWO OFFICERS FROM KRIPO were very polite,” Georg Behlert told me. “Frau Adlon couldn’t have been more grateful for the way you’ve handled this whole affair. Excellent. Well done.”
We were seated in Behlert’s office overlooking the Goethe Garden. Through the open doors of the adjoining Palm Court, a piano trio was doing its best to ignore a statue of Hercules that seemed to demand something rather more muscular than a selection of Mozart and Schubert. I felt a little like Hercules myself, returning to Mycenae after carrying out some pointless labor.
“Perhaps,” I said. “But I can’t think it was a good idea for me to get involved like this. I should just have let them get on with it. I might have known they would extract some sort of price.”
Behlert looked puzzled. “What price? You don’t mean—?”
“Not from the hotel,” I added. “A price from me.” And just to see the look of horror on his smooth, shiny face, I told Behlert about Liebermann von Sonnenberg and the dead man in the Charité.
“Next time,” I said. “If there is a next time. I shan’t try to influence a police investigation. It was naive of me to think I could. And for what? Some fat guy in room 210 I never even met. Why should I worry about his wife? Maybe she hated him. If she didn’t, she ought to have. It would serve him damn well right if the cops put their feet right through her feelings when they gave her the bad news. He should have thought of her when he started monkeying around with a Berlin joy lady.”
“But you were doing what you did for the sake of the good reputation of the Adlon Hotel,” said Behlert, as if that was all the justification required.
“Yes, I suppose so.”
He was on his feet now, removing a stopper from a decanter of the good stuff and pouring us each a thimble-sized glass.
“Here. Drink this. It looks like you need it.”
“Thanks, Georg.”
“What’s going to happen to him?”
“To Rubusch?”
“No, I mean, to the poor fellow in the morgue?”
“You really want to know?”
He nodded.
“With an unidentified body, what usually happens is, they take him around to the university anatomical institute and let the students loose on him.”
“But suppose the investigation reveals his true identity.”
“I didn’t make that clear, did I? There isn’t going to be an investigation. Not now that we—I mean, I—not now that I’ve established that he was a Jew. The Berlin police don’t want to know about dead Jews. It’s not considered a proper use of police time and resources. As far as the cops are concerned, his murderer—if indeed he was murdered, I’m not at all sure about that—that person is more likely to be congratulated than prosecuted.”
Behlert drained his glass of the excellent schnapps and shook his head with disbelief.
“I’m not making this up,” I said. “I know it seems incredible, but it’s all true. Hand on heart.”
“I believe you, Bernie. I believe you.” He sighed. “One of the guests has just returned from Bavaria. He’s a British Jew. From Manchester. Apparently he saw a road sign that said something like DANGEROUS BEND, SPEED LIMIT 50. JEWS HURRY UP. What could I tell him? I said it was probably a sick joke. But I knew it wasn’t. In my own hometown of Jena, there is a similar sign outside the Zeiss Planetarium that suggests a new homeland for Jews on the planet Mars. And the terrible thing is, they mean it. Some of the guests are saying they’re never coming back to Germany. That we’re no longer the considerate people we were. Even in Berlin.”
“These days a considerate German is someone who doesn’t knock at your door early in the morning in case you think it’s the Gestapo.”
I handed him the letter containing Muller’s resignation as an Adlon Hotel detective. He read it and then laid it on his desk.
“I can’t say I’m surprised or sorry. I’ve had my suspicions about that man for some time. Of course, for you it will mean there’s more to do. At least until we can find a replacement. Which is why I’m going to increase your salary. How does an extra ten marks a week sound?”
“It’s not Handel, but I guess I like it.”
“Good. Perhaps you can find a replacement. After all, you were very helpful with Fräulein Bauer. The stenographer? She’s been doing a lot of work for Herr Reles in 114. Apparently he’s very pleased with her.”
“Good.”
“You might know someone else. An ex-policeman. Someone like yourself. Someone reliable. Someone discreet. Someone smart.”
I nodded slowly and poured the drink down my throat.
Georg Behlert seemed to think he knew me, but I wasn’t sure I knew myself. Not anymore. Certainly not since my visit to see Otto Schuchardt on the Jewish Desk at Gestapo House.
It was, perhaps, time I did something about that.
I CAUGHT A NUMBER 10 TRAM WEST, across Invalidenstrasse and into Old Moabit, past the criminal courts and the prison. Next to Bolle’s Dairy—from which a strong smell of horse manure blew down the street toward the Lessing Bridge—was a dilapidated tenement. It was a crummy sort of area—even the trash in the street looked like something someone had thrown away.
Emil Linthe was on the top floor, and through the open window on the landing in front of his door, one could hear noise from the machine-tool factory on Huttenstrasse. It had been silent for almost a year during the Great Depression, but since the Nazis had come into government, the place was constantly active. There were just three iron beats, over and over again, like a waltz conducted by Thor, the god of thunder.
I knocked on the door, and eventually it opened, to reveal a tall, slim man in his thirties with a plentiful head of hair that was high at the front and almost nonexistent at the back. It was like finding a chaise longue on top of someone’s head.
“Do you ever get used to that noise?” I asked.
“What noise?”
“I guess you do. Emil Linthe?”
“Gone away. On holiday. Rügen Island.”
There was ink on his fingers. Enough to make me suspect I was talking to the right man after all.
“My mistake,” I said. “Maybe you’re going by a different name these days. Otto Trettin said it might be Maier, or maybe Schmidt. Walter Schmidt.”
Linthe’s persona deflated like a balloon. “A copper.”
“Relax. I’m not here to squeeze your wrists. I’m here on business. Your kind of business.”
“And why would I want to do business with the Berlin polenta?”
“Because Otto still hasn’t found your file, Emil. And because you don’t want to give him any reason to start looking for it again. Or you might find yourself back in the Punch. His words, not mine. But I’m like a brother to that man.”
“I always thought coppers killed their brothers when they were still in their cradles.”
“Ask me in. There’s a good fellow. It’s a bit noisy out here, and you wouldn’t want me to raise my voice, now, would you?”
Emil Linthe stepped aside. At the same time he drew up his suspenders and picked up a cigarette he’d left burning in an ashtray on a ledge inside the door. As I came inside, he closed the door and then quickly moved ahead of me along the corridor to close the sitting room door. But not soon enough to prevent me from seeing what looked like a printing press. We went into the kitchen.
“I told you, Emil. I’m not here to squeeze your wrists.”
“The leopard doesn’t change its spots.”
“As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what I wanted to talk to you about. I hear you can do exactly that. For the right money. I want you to give me what Otto Trettin called an Aryan transfusion.”
I told him the problem about my grandmother.
He smiled and shook his head. “It makes me laugh,” he said. “All those people who got on the Nazi train, now running back down the aisle to look for the station they started from.”
I might have told him I wasn’t one of those people. I might have admitted I wasn’t a cop, but I didn’t want to deliver myself into his potentially blackmailing hands. Linthe was a crook after all. I needed to hold on to the whip, or else I might lose control of a horse I planned to ride for as long as I needed it.