The Butchers of Berlin (20 page)

To access the murder scene they had to crawl through a hole. There in a dark cave Schlegel sensed the presence of several men.

‘Good afternoon, girls. Better late than never,’ said Stoffel. ‘Save your batteries. We’re waiting for the light.’

They stood around in the darkness, apart from the occasional flare of a match and flash of a torch as the electricians fed cables down. Schlegel held his nose. Boots crunched on rubble. Stoffel
told everyone to move as little as possible in order not to disturb the evidence.

‘Money stuffed up the vagina of this one,’ he announced, as though he were a tour guide. ‘Female, obviously. Not so young. Hard to say with the bloating. She may have been a
pretty one. Two or three days since death, at a guess. Rigor mortis subsided. Black putrefaction setting in. A nice bouquet. The pancreas will be in the course of digesting itself. The flies, such
as they are at this time of year, are having a feast. Probable cause of death, strangulation. Whether sexual intercourse took place remains to be established, but she has been interfered
with.’

He switched on his torch and gave them a brief glimpse of splayed, mottled legs, the exposed thatch of pubic hair and money, a few notes lying crumpled between the legs, the rest stuffed into
the vagina.

‘Who found the body?’ Morgen asked.

‘Rescue workers. Alerted by the bruising to the throat. They must have been too scared to help themselves.’

‘Is the money the same as before?’

‘Don’t know yet.’

Gersten spoke up for the first time. ‘I would still say we are talking about acts of terror perpetrated by a Bolshevik Jewish slayer.’

Schlegel was surprised he was there. He supposed Lazarenko was lurking one step behind.

‘Says you,’ said Stoffel.

Their voices echoed in the dark. There seemed to be none of the usual crime scene activity in terms of doctors or medical orderlies and general police. It was as though they were being granted a
special preview.

‘Has the body been cut, like the other one?’ Morgen asked.

‘Not obviously. We must wait for an examination.’

The lights arrived and didn’t work so they continued with torches, pointing half a dozen at the body, whose top half was clothed. The head was turned away, russet hair covered in dust.
Schlegel saw livid bruising on the throat. The hands were thrown up, as if in surprise. One shoe was gone, the other half off.

The dimly lit scene, within the greater destruction, was too bleak to invite comment, other than Stoffel saying she looked like a great big rag doll, which prompted him to add with a guffaw that
the children in the house must have been giants.

Nebe put in an appearance and looked irritated at getting his boots dirty. The mood remained strangely lethargic until he clapped his hands and said the clock was ticking. They had until four
o’clock to come up with a presentable theory for Dr Goebbels, otherwise he was cancelling all leave.

He lectured them about how the Jewish maniac had struck again. He demanded to know whether this latest lot of money was forged like last time.

No one had looked because of rules about disturbing the scene of crime.

‘Fuck the crime scene!’ Nebe screamed. ‘Schlegel!’

Schlegel stepped forward while someone shone a torch. Not wanting to look, from modesty as much as revulsion, he saw one of the crumpled notes that lay outside the body was a fifty. He passed it
to Morgen who confirmed it was fake.

Nebe put his hands on hips, looking expectant.

Morgen said, ‘We are working on the theory it was Jews that printed the money.’

That set Nebe off.

‘Jews printing their own money! Jews running around killing people! What next?’

Nebe was at his most insufferable, throwing his weight around because he hadn’t the faintest idea what to do. He was notorious for getting others to do the work and taking credit or
attributing blame accordingly.

Morgen said, ‘Perhaps you could advise us, sir, as it is not clear whether you want these cases solved or for them to go away so they don’t become part of some underground
propaganda.’

‘Both! Both!’

Morgen said, ‘In that case, you should hear what Herr Lazarenko has to say.’

‘Who’s Lazarenko?’

Lazarenko was produced out of the shadows and Gersten explained who he was. Lazarenko, ever pushy, immediately offered his translation services to Nebe.

‘Get on with it, man. Has anyone got a cigarette?’

When no one else volunteered Morgen got around to offering one of his. Schlegel thought Nebe, usually so impeccable, looked haggard in the match flare.

Lazarenko gave a practised little speech. Bolshevik atrocities committed in northern Ukraine the summer before last overlapped with the current spate of killings. As a result of his latest
intelligence he believed a killing gang was at work, and it was part of an internecine civil war among the last of the Jews, in which Russians were also involved.

It was the last thing Nebe wanted to hear. He rounded on Lazarenko.

‘How can you know this? A civil war! Are you saying there is a chance of rebellion among these slaves?’

Gersten had to step in. He drew attention to himself by shining his torch upwards to show his face, unintentionally making himself look grotesque. Stoffel tittered.

Gersten reassured Nebe that there was no chance of any uprising among what remained of the Jews, or the Russians.

‘They are in hand.’

‘He said civil war.’

‘An exaggeration. Think of it more like a Sicilian vendetta. A tiny group killing out of betrayal and revenge. It will soon burn itself out. Such death throes are typical of Jewish
behaviour in general. When threatened from outside they fall to squabbling among themselves.’

Stoffel clapped his hands in ironic applause.

Nebe took Morgen aside. Schlegel heard him say Morgen was making the case too political. Then he announced that he didn’t want to hear another word about vendettas or historical
connections.

‘Dr Goebbels is a very busy man. He is only interested in headlines.’

Morgen was only interested in the money, and where that took them. If Abbas and this new body were killed in retaliation for something specific, then dressing the bodies was a
message.

He speculated the length of Auguststrasse. ‘Hunter and hunted. Hunter uses agents but the hunted is too good. The bodies become trophies.’

‘Is Gersten the hunter?’

‘No names for the moment. We seek only the pattern.’

Morgen stopped, looking suddenly deflated. He took something from his pocket and slipped it in his mouth, a gesture reminiscent of Gersten’s chapstick flourish.

‘What’s that?’ he asked, thinking of Stoffel’s grown-up pill.

Pervitin, Morgen said.

Schlegel knew about it from his mother, in connection with slimming; she spoke of its aphrodisiac qualities. Morgen said it would give him stamina and concentration. It was the official wonder
drug.

‘You sound like an advertising salesman. Will I find myself down the rabbit hole?’

They walked on.

Morgen said, ‘For argument’s sake, let’s assume the hunted is the forger.’

‘How do we find him?’

‘Wait to see what bait the hunter sets up next and follow that. Is there anywhere to get a drink round here?’

Schlegel thought it a bit early. That wasn’t what Morgen meant.

‘I am thinking of the dead woman being used as a soft trap, to draw the hunted. You could see, despite her state, she was a looker. A siren.’

Given the whereabouts of the body, he thought it likely they had met locally.

Schlegel said there weren’t many bars left. The dancehall downstairs from him didn’t open until later.

The bars didn’t either and they had to get the owners out of bed. Morgen insisted on inspecting every one and each time he walked away without a thank you, which was left to Schlegel, in
return for sour looks. In the last bar the owner was up and changing his barrels. Morgen was more interested. The premises was less of a spit-and-sawdust affair than the rest, with tablecloths and
candles stuck in empty bottles.

Outside, Morgen stopped again.

‘You be the hunted and I the hunter. A woman wants to meet you but you can’t be sure. Would you choose that last bar, or any of the rest?’

They were all too small, Schlegel said, with no escape if there was a trap.

‘That can only mean the dancehall.’

It was still officially shut, but the kitchen staff were in. The manager had yet to arrive and the waiters were not in until later. The kitchen staff weren’t any help because there was a
second evening shift. Schlegel followed Morgen through to the dancehall where a female cleaner was swabbing the floor. He had been there only a few nights ago. The place had the depressed air of
all out-of-hours joints dedicated to false cheer. Quite the little philosopher, he thought, when it came to hackneyed observations.

He couldn’t resist sitting behind the drum kit on the low podium. He worked the bass pedal and flicked the cymbal. It must be the pill, he thought. He would amaze them with a spontaneous
drum solo.

Morgen was talking to the cleaner, who said she had been doubling up on the kitchen’s evening shift on Monday night when a well-dressed woman hurried through the kitchen just before the
sirens and left by the staff door.

Her appearance matched the dead woman.

Morgen asked when the manager would be in. His name was Herr Valentine and he lived upstairs. Schlegel went to fetch him.

Valentine turned out to be a presentable if threadbare elderly man with silver brilliantined hair that smelled of violets. He said he was about to go down as it was.

He vaguely recognised Schlegel, turning to ask over his shoulder where he knew him from. Before entering the dancehall, he paused on the threshold and shot his cuffs.

‘You’re asking a lot,’ he said after Morgen finished. ‘My memory isn’t what it was.’

He cheerfully admitted most evenings were spent in his office getting sozzled.

‘Not much else to do these days. The clientele is no fun. The girls don’t come in as much. I can’t pay the musicians what Kurt Widmann does. The last man we auditioned for a
drummer had a wooden leg.’

Nothing turned out to be wrong with the man’s memory. He remembered the woman being in on the Saturday and the Monday for the obvious reason of her being on her own when her kind usually
came escorted. He had spent a long time trying to decide whether she was on the game.

‘Was she?’ asked Morgen.

‘Not obviously. She wasn’t looking to pick up just any man.’

Herr Valentine turned to Schlegel.

‘You were in on Saturday as well. Not for long.’

Schlegel supposed it was his hair again.

‘You’re Kripo, aren’t you?’ Valentine asked. ‘Not the other lot.’

Morgen said yes, criminal police, not Gestapo.

‘The other lot were in on Saturday night.’ He asked if Schlegel had spotted them. ‘They’re not subtle.’

Schlegel shook his head. But the dead woman sounded like the one he had happened to be looking at. It was starting to resemble the sort of trap Morgen was talking about.

‘And on the Monday?’ Morgen asked the manager.

‘I would say she left with the waiter. Perhaps not
with
the waiter but around the same time.’

‘What waiter?’

‘He was in for a couple of evenings, filling in.’

‘Do you think they’re connected?

‘Human nature. They fuck in the toilets given half a chance, especially the ones coming back from the war. Monday was the night of the bombers so we had to close. I made the announcement
when the sirens went and she was gone by then. I know the waiter left early.’

‘Are you sure?’ asked Morgen.

‘I settle up each night when the staff go home and he didn’t come for his pay, which is a first during my running of the place.’

‘What was he like?’

‘Tall. Handsome. Dark. Only in for a couple of nights.’

‘Name?’

‘I don’t remember. I doubt if it was real.’

‘You must have a job sheet,’ said Morgen.

‘It doesn’t work like that, not down at this end. Cash on the night, no questions asked. Report me for all I care.’

‘Do you remember hiring him?’

‘I didn’t. He turned up to fill in for someone who was sick. Which was fine. He was presentable, didn’t trip over. I would have kept him and fired the other fellow.’

‘What about the other fellow?’

‘In this evening. Come back and ask him. Have a drink on the house. Crème de menthe. It’s pretty revolting.’

After the dancehall Morgen said they must draw up a list of possible forgers. Jewish professional records would list all printers, graphic designers, anyone with access to
etching tools, the ones who had been to art schools before they closed.

‘It will be someone with the right kind of training.’

They had no lead to speak of on Abbas, apart from a dubious Russian connection.

‘But I can’t see that turning up anything about money. To switch for a moment, what do we really know about Metzler, since the money links him to both bodies?’

Schlegel admitted the man was an enigma.

‘He does rather become
our
enigma. What was his profession?’

‘Teacher, I think.’

‘Do we know where?’

‘No. Some of his files have been mislaid.’

‘It doesn’t matter. Jews have been banned from teaching for years.’

Schlegel remembered the little key from Metzler’s apartment, which he had attached to his own key ring.

‘There’s this. It looks like it belongs to a locker.’ Morgen read the tag.

‘Two-seven-one-six.’

‘He worked in something called shed twenty-seven.’

‘Now no one can complain if we look,’ said Morgen, turning round and walking back up towards Rosenthaler Strasse.

Schlegel pointed out the station was the other way, but Morgen had something in mind. When they reached the scene of crime, Stoffel’s Opel was still parked in the street, with the keys in
the ignition.

‘Proper meatballs too,’ said Morgen. They came with noodles and a sauce that was hard to identify.