The Butchers of Berlin (10 page)

Downstairs she sat on the toilet without using it, thinking she might as well give up and wait until they came for her. She pulled herself together, to set a proper example to Lore, went back
out into the washroom and stuffed her hair inside her hat as much as possible, to appear less obvious to anyone using the photograph, in which she was hatless.

How transparent and scared the woman in the mirror looked.

She decided to make a beeline for the door, and somehow bluff her way past the man. She would say she was going to see her SS lover. She could even give a name because a woman she had sewn for
was married to one.

As she came back up, Lore was walking exposed towards her, on her way to the newspapers. One of the two Gestapo men started to look at her. There was no way to warn her. An insignificant little
man in a shabby raincoat stood up and started to walk out, crossing Lore’s path. His exit was cut off by the second Gestapo man, who asked for his papers. Lore veered towards the newspapers
as the little man panicked and tried to run. She grabbed the newspaper and quickly sat down, gesturing to Sybil that she should take advantage of the altercation. The little man was being wrestled
to the floor and thumped.

Most people carried on as though nothing were happening. Some craned their necks and one or two stood to see better what was going on. The man started sobbing.

Sybil walked fast to the exit. The Gestapo man on the door was distracted and held it for her automatically. She thanked him with a brief look; another secretary on her way back from lunch.
Their eyes met briefly. She saw them shift from indifference to a flicker of recognition, but the moment was broken by his colleagues shouting to him.

‘Your lucky day,’ he said in an easy way. ‘Catch you later.’

He laughed when she stood rooted to the spot and said, ‘Hurry along now.’

Sybil ran out into the rain, losing herself among the umbrellas, dazed with relief. One glimpse of the man’s sensuous mouth was enough to warn her his cruelty would be complicated.

Her adrenaline was flowing. It wouldn’t last. Doubt already chased at her heels. Had they been betrayed? It made no difference. They were no nearer to getting papers.

Iranische Strasse was four stops and a walk. Regarding Lore, Sybil reassured herself that the Gestapo hadn’t been checking everyone’s papers and the Party rag
amounted to virtually a passport.

At the hospital she went to the kitchen entrance where she found Franz supervising several trucks that were backed up to the door. He said she was fortunate; he should be off duty but had been
called back to organise food distribution to the holding centre in Rosenstrasse.

He said he was dog tired because they had run out of the pills they usually took to get them through.

Sybil asked to talk in private for a couple of minutes.

‘Two minutes, no more.’

He took her through the kitchens, where huge vats of cooking vegetables smelled like dishrags, to a tiny larder where they had to stand too close.

She said she and Lore had been betrayed or the Gestapo had arrested the man Franz had sent them to. Fearing for Lore’s safety, she broke down and was not altogether comfortable when Franz
took her in his arms. He said he would try to find out what had happened. Sybil said they still needed papers and were compromised because the Gestapo would have their identity photographs. She
asked if there were any way he could smuggle her and Lore into the hospital, even for a few days. She had no idea how realistic their current arrangement was. She couldn’t see it lasting
another week.

‘If Lore or you were ill we might.’

‘She suffers from night blindness,’ she said lamely.

He asked what if Lore were to break a leg. Sybil thought he must be joking.

‘You could pay to have it done. I could do it.’

Was he saying he wanted to break Lore’s leg because he had heard gossip about them and was jealous, or was it a sign of how tough everything had got? She regretted having to stand so
close, did not want to be held. It felt like he was taking advantage. She stared at the floor, seeing herself on the edge of a strange new area of barter and transaction, in which people were both
her friend and not.

She asked Franz if there was any chance of a lift back into town.

‘I can drop you near Hackescher Markt. Better still, come and dish out our stinking soup, then you can see if your mother is there.’

Sybil knew she was obliged to look, however much she told herself her mother had the necessary connections to ensure her own safety. But she couldn’t be sure. There had been no time to
check anything. Her life had felt split since she’d run away from the shooting. Her flimsy belief that her mother had managed to escape now struck her as irresponsible and fanciful.

Franz found a pinafore and a white coat, and as an afterthought plonked a cook’s cap on Sybil’s head. He promised it was safe because no one asked food distributors for papers and
inside there were no Germans.

Thinking of Lore, she hesitated.

Franz said, ‘In our situation it is hard not to see danger everywhere, but the Germans are actually remote. It’s why they don’t know what to do with the demonstration. Their
fear rules. They themselves are lazy penpushers, worried about making a decision. We are dealing with dross not the elite. The best are away fighting.’

She sat in the cab of the lorry between Franz who drove and another man who kept his mouth shut. After a while she ignored their silence. She had never been driven before in a
private vehicle. From her elevated position the streets looked shabby, frighteningly ordinary and remote. An S-Bahn train ran above them as they drove alongside. There was even blue sky.

The cowl running down the middle of the floor of the cab grew warm and vibrated through her shoes. She had to move her knee whenever Franz changed gear.

Even more unbelievable than her being there was what was going on outside their destination. A crowd spilled into the street, reducing the lorry to nudging its way through. Franz returned the
many thumbs-up.

They went in the back where a single guard waved them through.

While they waited for a trolley Sybil looked up at the daunting building with its soot-blackened stone. She heard the rumble of the S-Bahn, even with the noise of the protesting crowd. According
to Franz, the nearest station had been closed, to discourage people from turning up to the demonstration.

The S-Bahn ran directly from the attic where Lore had been hiding to where she was standing now, yet she could see no connection between the two points in her life. She forced herself to believe
that Lore had stayed in the Bollenmüller behind her newspaper until the men left with their trophy catch, then strolled out as cool as you like. The man had seemed amused to let her go, after
all.

Franz told her to stick with him. Their entrance into the building was entirely unquestioned, as he had promised. They took a service elevator. They wheeled the heavy trolley into a large
assembly room where a long line of forlorn and famished men stood waiting, supervised by marshals. The whole process had to take place in silence. Someone muttered that the marshals were Jews like
the rest of them.

The soup smelled like pigswill yet Sybil was so hungry that the prospect of dishing it out and not being able to help herself was torture.

She saw tables and benches and bowls, not nearly enough. This was the case. Most had to stand and dirty bowls were left for others to use. There were no utensils.

The queue shuffled past. The smell of rank, unwashed bodies combined with that of the unpalatable soup. A few tried to ask for news from outside and were shouted at by the marshals.

Sybil developed the habit of sticking her thumb in the bowl and ladling soup over it, just to get a taste between servings. She managed to pocket a piece of bread for later, and asked Franz if
they got fed as part of the job.

If there was any left, he said. Her helpings became more meagre.

She saw no women. She supposed they were on another floor. She had thought they would take the soup to the prisoners, pushing the trolley, which would allow her to look properly. Perhaps women
were served second.

What would Sybil say if she saw her mother? Worst would be to see her and be unable to talk.

Whenever the chanting started up outside, with the women shouting for their husbands to be returned, some men in the queue stood straighter, but most continued to look dejected, as though they
considered the demonstration hopeless.

The marshals pushed off early, leaving her and Franz to feed the stragglers. Sybil’s arm ached from ladling.

There was no soup left by the time they were done. She asked Franz to give her ten minutes while he packed up. In the corridor a marshal asked where she thought she was going. Upstairs, she said
briskly, because they were short-staffed.

There the real nature of conditions became apparent. Hundreds of silent people crammed into rooms. Franz had said over a thousand. Floors so crowded there was no space to lie down. Befouled air
like a physical presence pervaded everything. The stink all over of shit and unclean bodies. Toilets without doors; more queues; a man holding his head in his hands, noisily emptying liquid bowels.
All utterly demoralised and demeaning. Part of Sybil was angry that these people allowed themselves to be treated like that. She saw the dead eyes of those who had abandoned hope; with reason.

In the women’s rooms Sybil was reduced to holding her nose to stop from gagging. Many were menstruating and had no sanitary towels or the wherewithal to clean themselves.

Although Jews, these people were technically citizens, protected by law thanks to their marriages. And all this within yards of those going about their business, trams and buses, cafés
and cinema shows; all dignity lost. Words failed her.

Out in the courtyard she went and crouched in a doorway, hoping no one could see, and wept dry, racking sobs as she devoured her crust of bread.

Franz found her, and seeing the state of her took her in his arms again, saying they must go. She said he smelled of tobacco. He said that for extra day shifts he was now paid in cigarettes
because the money was running out. He asked if she would help tomorrow. He could pick her up nearby on Dircksenstrasse to save her the journey to the hospital. Sybil nodded. Everything was like it
was down the wrong end of a telescope: her thoughts, Franz, the courtyard.

She was shakily relieved not to have found her mother under such conditions, however scant the consolation. The fate of those wretches awaited her too if she put a foot wrong. Ten minutes that
had seemed like a lifetime left her swearing never to let anyone force her to become so degraded. She would kill herself first.

‘Which of you is Detective Schlegel?’

Schlegel looked up from his desk and saw a thin man of Slavic appearance in the open doorway of the office, with his hand up like he was pretending to knock.

‘You have a visitor when I expect you don’t have many,’ said Morgen, not looking up and doing what Schlegel couldn’t tell, apart from endless smoking.

The stranger wore rimless spectacles. His hair was like a black skullcap. He had on a fur-collared coat that Schlegel coveted. The riding boots were in good condition and highly shined.

‘Lazarenko.’

‘So not German?’ said Morgen, again not looking up.

‘Ukrainian. Working as a consultant and translator for the Gestapo. I will show you my card.’

The card was printed, with a Gothic typeface.

Morgen ignored it. ‘Be our guest.’

Schlegel saw he was going to have to be the polite one. He offered Lazarenko the only spare chair. The man smelled of cheap cologne and had one of those moustaches that failed to grow beyond a
faint smudge.

Lazarenko crossed his legs and produced an envelope. From it he took a crumpled strip of paper, which he smoothed out before passing over. Schlegel wondered how he could afford his coat on a
translator’s pay.

The paper strip was a wage slip from the big paint factory out in Treptower-Köpenick. The amount was pathetic. Schlegel understood why when he saw the payee was Russian. He was rather
surprised forced labour was paid at all.

‘That’s the thing,’ said Lazarenko. ‘It’s notification of wages. They don’t actually get the money.’

‘Who does?’

Morgen interrupted. ‘Their employer, the economic division of the SS, the WVHA, which leases its workforce to the factory.’

Lazarenko nodded.

‘Do they get anything?’ asked Schlegel, feeling behind.

‘A bit of cash each week from the firm’s float.’

‘Enough to live off?’

‘Everything is provided anyway. Food, accommodation, clothing. The rest is down to scavenging, which they are very good at.’

‘No love lost between you and them then,’ said Morgen.

Lazarenko agreed. Like many of his countrymen he was not a Bolshevik and happy to take sides against its tyranny.

Morgen said he’d had Ukrainians fighting alongside him.

Lazarenko asked where. Morgen didn’t care to answer and asked, ‘What is this about? You didn’t come here to discuss our
entente cordiale
.’

Lazarenko offered an unsteady smile. The obedient underdog, thought Schlegel, all manners, in perfect imitation of his masters. Lazarenko’s problem was the gestures were skewed. He held
eye contact longer than was necessary, so it turned into presumptuous staring. The manners looked like a front. The secretive smile, to suggest superior knowledge, was a further irritation.

He offered the pay slip as a possible clue to the murder the day before. ‘It was found by local police when they searched the garden.’

‘Not well enough to find the dog,’ muttered Morgen. He asked to see the wage slip.

‘Is it likely? A Russian wandering around a smart suburb at night, miles from where he should be.’

‘They are allowed out unsupervised on Sundays.’

‘Even so. What’s it got to do with us?’

‘Inspector Stoffel asked me to address you because he is busy.’