The Butchers of Berlin (26 page)

Schlegel took that to mean they had got rid of those that knew too much.

They arrived at the crucial area. Franz sat looking like he might say more. Morgen persuaded him, with a second cigarette.

Franz took his time composing himself, the cool customer again.

‘Would you be able to give us a name?’ asked Morgen.

‘Gersten.’

Metzler’s sack lay neglected on the floor in the office until Frau Pelz asked if it could be thrown out.

‘I suppose we should look,’ said Morgen. It was an unedifying prospect. The contents smelled awful. The newspapers turned out to be just random, from what they could tell, rather
than collected for a reason. The boots were boots, the gloves were gloves and the hat was a hat.

The stiff and grubby waterproof apron was the only item of interest. It had a large pocket across the front. Morgen felt inside. There was something.

‘A photograph.’

It was regular snapshot size with a crinkled border.

‘Well, well,’ said Morgen. ‘Friend Franz again.’

Schlegel looked at the picture, taken in a café with a group of youngsters sitting around a table. Students. There was a time when Schlegel could have found himself sitting among such a
group: vaguely rebellious, quietly dissident, stylish but scruffy; he too had aspired to that look in his younger years.

Franz was at the front of the picture, wearing dark glasses and with his collar turned up.

Opposite was Sybil with shorter hair, looking dreamy and unconcerned in contrast to Franz’s scowl.

She and Franz were the most stylish of the crowd.

‘It was taken in the Café Quik,’ said Morgen. ‘I recognise it. But why does Metzler have it?’

‘Metzler’s notebook hints that he had a crush on Sybil, but it also suggests Franz knew Metzler better than he made out.’

Morgen turned the apron over. It was made of a stiff material that was awkward to handle.

‘Sybil was a seamstress, am I right?’

He went out of the room. Schlegel heard him talking to Frau Pelz. He returned with scissors and snipped at the hem of the apron until the backing came away.

‘See,’ said Morgen.

Sewn into the apron were more banknotes, all fifty marks, all fake.

When Sybil went to wait for Franz he didn’t come. He had said he thought it would be the last or second-last day serving at Rosenstrasse. They had been releasing
prisoners in batches and now there were only a few hundred left. Apart from wondering where he had got to, she was relieved. Franz seemed altogether callous about what had happened, and continued
to manipulate, claiming he was desperately short-handed, with the dangled carrot of a possible job at the hospital. Sybil suspected he was getting ready to renew his demands.

The S-Bahn was open again, a sign the crisis had passed. Knowing she was unlikely to witness anything like it again, she returned to the crowd.

Given what Franz had told them, they were within their rights to request a formal interview with Gersten.

‘Let’s surprise him. I want to see his face when we tell him,’ said Morgen.

According to his office he was down at Rosenstrasse, supervising the last of the releases.

The crowd was still gathered. People talked openly, in defiance of the inevitable clampdown. A story was circulating about how when the releases were announced a Gestapo man had presented
himself to the crowd with a clenched fist of solidarity, as though between them they had achieved something.

Morgen asked the crowd if the Gestapo man had long hair. As he sounded chatty he was taken for one of them. Yes, came back the answer.

The arrests were now being officially referred to as an error and a violation. Morgen, yawning, made a joke about how awkward it must be to eat humble pie while climbing down at the same
time.

The atmosphere grew stranger and more carnival-like, full of cautious celebration and foreboding.

Morgen announced he was fading fast and needed to sleep. Gersten could wait or Schlegel take care of it.

‘They don’t warn you about the crashing tiredness.’

Sybil watched the tall white-haired young man and the shorter one who constantly smoked, and she couldn’t decide if they were dangerous.

The women’s persistence had won the day. Their struggle made her more optimistic about her and Lore’s chances.

She told herself: We will learn to live on the run; we will lie, cheat and steal, do whatever it takes to survive. I will not let the way Franz used me happen again.

Start with what you know, she told herself. She would find or make uniforms for herself and Lore. A nurse’s would be too obvious because they might get asked to help.

They would keep moving. There were lofts, basements, empty trams, parks, houseboats, even brothels, a whole city of hidden courtyards and secret spaces. The Jewish Cemetery in Weissensee had
remained open. Tomorrow she would go there with Lore to check for buildings that could be used as refuge. Lore could carry on working for Alwynd, but continuing to stay there was out of the
question.

She and Lore had discussed damaged apartments and fresh corpses, both offering a potential crop of the right stamps and cards and papers. It would be no test of her nerve to explore these
abandoned blocks. She would scavenge. She would not flinch from touching dead flesh. She would do all this for Lore and Lore in return would make her special. They would become vixens by day and
she a creature of the night.

Lore had asked what of those bombed out of their homes who had lost everything. The authorities would have to make provision. If they went and said their papers had been destroyed there would be
no way to prove them wrong. There was bound now to be a certificate for such people.

It was a windless night. As darkness started to fall candles were lit. A waning moon hung in a clear sky, turning faces ghostly in the dark.

After Morgen had gone, Schlegel looked in vain for the young woman with the frozen tears.

Part of him wanted to shout out that this truce would be forgotten and everything would continue to be relentless.

He thought he spotted Gersten and his henchman.

There was no reason to go home. He could always go to his mother’s and sleep in his childhood bed, with the guarantee of a hot bath and a decent meal. She was forever telling him in her
provocative way it made no sense to live in that ghastly hole when he could be comfortable with her. ‘Safer too when the bombs come.’

It was her way of saying he was a hopeless case. She had once deigned to inspect his apartment and pronounced it a slum, saying she knew of rooms belonging to White Russians living in
Woyrschstrasse. ‘Impeccably connected. Stunning daughter.’ Schlegel had met her; a princess, no less, achingly beautiful. The last he’d heard she worked for the Foreign
Ministry’s Office of Information. At more formal parties he still occasionally saw her, drawing a clear circle around her by conversing in French, Russian or English. Schlegel had been
briefly admitted, until stumbling before company much cleverer and more politically daring, and, here was the warning, dangerously careless in their dismissal of the regime for its lack of class,
which they by contrast had in spades. Schlegel’s mother was frowned on as a fellow traveller because she didn’t hang out with the diplomatic crowd, which was the accepted way of social
agnostics and passive resisters.

A male voice asked gently if she was Fräulein Todermann.

Sybil thought of Lot’s wife turned to a pillar of salt. She tried to run. Others were waiting.

The man strolled over. She couldn’t see his face.

‘You slipped past me last time.’

The crowd started to melt away, as though her taking was an abrupt signal that normal service was resumed. No one looked at her or the men around her.

A hand took her shoulder and gripped it until she winced. The man addressing her appeared in excellent spirits, like he had run into an old friend he was delighted to see. He produced a
chapstick and greased his lips.

Schlegel derived satisfaction from surprising Gersten, making him spin round. He had an impression of two other men folding a third party into the back of a car, which,
incongruously, was a regular taxi.

Gersten had his chapstick in his hand.

‘Split lips,’ he said with a nonchalant grin.

‘Morgen needs to talk to you. Officially.’

‘Bad timing. You just spoiled the pleasure of arrest.’

Gersten recomposed himself to assume an air of amused tolerance.

‘Oh, all right. I’m intrigued. My place, noon tomorrow.’

He gave a cheery wave and moved briskly into the taxi. Schlegel could see enough to make out the silhouette of a woman. The car departed. She turned and looked through the back window. He
recognised her from the identity card Morgen had showed him, and the photograph they had found in Metzler’s apron.

Driven away in a taxi of all things. The officer in charge got in and patted her knee, making her instinctively recoil. He noticed and she knew she would be punished for it
later.

She was too numb to feel afraid. She dreaded the moment when Lore’s anxiety turned to certain knowledge that she wouldn’t be coming back. Reckless kissing in the dark, for their
pleasure only: Sybil prayed the strength of that memory would be enough to block out the men surrounding her.

‘There’s a twist,’ said Gersten. ‘I have you in mind for something. You still have a choice, but this is different from what I can usually
offer.’

Sybil had to remind herself to be scared. This was not what she was expecting. The consideration. The politeness. A sense of talking as equals. The lazy, even effeminate turn of the man’s
wrist to indicate an unfortunate twist of fate. The possibility in a raised eyebrow of a different course being offered. The man was frightening for not being frightening.

Nor was the room the expected interrogation space.

The ride had lasted a couple of minutes. They could have walked it in five. Gersten told his man to pay.

It was the most feared address, once part of the stock exchange, where Room 23 was known as the gateway to the east.

The imposing entrance gate had dwarfed them and opened of its own accord. Sybil felt herself starting to shrink. Gersten smelled of 4711.

She was reminded of that when he placed a bottle of perfume between them.

‘Chanel Number Five. Consider it an introductory gift.’

She stared in disbelief.

He said the room had a view of the river by day.

Taxis. Armchairs. Perfume. Unbelievable luxuries. Riverside views. She was being seduced, not sexually, though she could not discount that.

‘Tell me about yourself,’ he said, as though she were applying for a regular job.

She stared at her scuffed shoes and thought there was no point in pretending. She had lost Lore.

‘We’re not animals,’ Gersten prompted. ‘We can be heartless when dealing with our enemies, but I am sure we can be friends.’

He offered a cigarette from a silver box. Sybil wanted to say she wouldn’t touch anything of his were it the last thing on earth.

She said instead, ‘I work for many influential women. I am a dress designer.’

‘Yes, it’s important work.’

He knew where she lived, and who her mother was.

It was warmer sitting there than anywhere she could remember. Gersten seemed fond of his hair, constantly running his fingers through it.

‘Where is your mother now?’

Sybil said she didn’t know.

‘I know.’

She feared the worst. It meant Gersten had her.

‘Is she safe?’

He stared back enigmatically before remarking matter-of-factly, ‘I know people who pull out nails with pliers, teeth too sometimes, but that’s not my style. One colleague
doesn’t even bother with the pliers. He smashes teeth with a hammer. Not personally, of course. Thugs do that.’

Gersten let the remark hang.

‘Pretty girl,’ he murmured.

She couldn’t tell if he meant her or a previous victim.

He went on as if discussing nothing serious. She asked about her mother. He ignored her.

‘There’s this room and there are other rooms. It’s nice here. Let’s say, I offer you a choice where it’s possible to stay in the equivalent to this room.’

He explained what he could normally offer – ‘could’ thought Sybil, as he said it. People came and worked for him. In exchange for their freedom they took on the job of seeking
out those that had gone underground.

She could always watch them slam her fingers in the door and call her a Jewish whore before doing whatever they liked. If she said yes? Or she could pretend to go along then disappear like
others, out near the lakes perhaps.

‘I want you to look for one man. This is almost certainly the one you were due to meet next in the process of acquiring your new papers.’

He offered another cigarette, which she accepted without thinking and repressed a shiver when he said, ‘Let me match you.’

She leaned forward into the flame and hated herself, then, playing the game, thanked him and blew smoke out of the corner of her mouth. She couldn’t remember when she had last had a
cigarette.

‘He’s dangerous. He’s a psychopath. He rapes and kills women. We need you to find him so we can put an end to his killing spree. What I ask is dangerous but it’s better
than the train.’

He looked at her calmly. ‘Poland is death. We both know that.’

‘What’s to stop you sending me later?’ The cigarette was making her sick.

‘You’ll get your new papers. You don’t look Jewish. We are realists. Life remains negotiable for the lucky few.’

‘Am I lucky?’

‘Do a job for me and you’ll get a nice set of papers.’

‘And my girlfriend?’

Gersten looked surprised, deliberated and said, ‘I will throw her in too, if you are successful. She doesn’t look Jewish either.’

The idea seemed to strike him as funny.

It wasn’t as if she was being asked to betray anyone, she reasoned, and asked how she was supposed to track this man.

‘That’s your job. We don’t know what he looks like or his name but there must be those that do.’