The Butchers of Berlin (40 page)

‘Was it the flaying that killed them?’ asked Morgen.

‘I can’t say. As a victim you would rather be dead first, because death can last hours, even days, in cases of being flayed alive.’

He knew of no modern examples but there were historical precedents. The Neo-Assyrian tradition was for flaying alive. The Aztecs skinned victims of human sacrifice after death.

‘Yes,’ said Morgen. ‘I have been somewhere recently where there was talk of human lampshades.’

Schlegel looked at the man. What could he mean? It was the closest Morgen had come to admitting his recent absence was another assignment.

Lipchitz had also done the autopsies on Abbas and the unidentified woman.

‘Where are the reports on those?’ asked Morgen.

Lipchitz said he had been asked to forward them to the city pathology department.

‘Though they were Jews?’

‘No rhyme or reason.’

Morgen asked for Lipchitz’s report copies. The man was organised and had them to hand. Morgen studied them and looked up, puzzled.

‘The report says the autopsies were conducted by the city department. It’s even written on their forms.’

Lipchitz said quietly, ‘That’s the way they like it.’

‘So they subcontract to you and you make it look like it was done by them.’

‘It’s about quotas and bonuses.’

‘They pad their figures with your numbers?’ asked Morgen, astonished.

‘When they can make our dead count for something.’ He smiled coldly. ‘We are more valuable to them that way.’

Morgen asked if there was a possible connection between the two types of killing.

‘Show versus obliteration. Part of the same coin. Both obviously forms of display. As polar opposites they ought to be the work of different twisted minds, but these days . . . they could
be the product of a schizophrenia.’

A killer driven to extremes, thought Schlegel, both forms involving exhibition.

Lipchitz looked at what was left of his cigarette, which he had managed to keep going by letting it burn out and relighting.

‘The hour is getting late. I don’t care any longer, but do you mind if I ask if you do?’

Morgen said, ‘We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t.’

Lipchitz asked if he had been educated by Jesuits. No, said Morgen.

‘Such casuistry,’ murmured Lipchitz. ‘I was interested in the insistence on utter erasure, beyond anything that would render the flayed corpse identifiable. I’d never
heard of such a thing in a so-called civilised society and with this flaying I wonder if we haven’t arrived at something where what’s done to the body is more important than the actual
killing.’

‘You mean like dead meat?’ asked Schlegel.

Lipchitz looked at him properly for the first time and said yes, exactly.

‘I presume the preparation of the bodies in this manner is for symbolic reasons rather than actual consumption, but among natives in Brazil eating your enemy becomes part of a cycle of
vengeance. In this cycle one consumes the enemy, and is later consumed by the enemy, dying at his hands, precisely to bring vengeance into being, and so bring about a future.’

‘What does that tell us, other than about future vengeance?’ asked Morgen, interested.

The man looked desolate. ‘You ask me? There are so many things that are in the process of being obliterated. All I can suppose is it is a reflection of the larger viciousness.’

Morgen clicked his heels and formally addressed the man. ‘My dear doctor, our appetite for the epic and the trite knows no bounds. Those in thrall – and I include myself up to a
point – fooled ourselves we were being offered a narcotic sense of historical destiny, absolved of all responsibility.’

‘No,’ said Lipchitz. ‘Any Jew will tell you there is always a price to pay.’

Gersten, they discovered, was no longer available for questioning, being away on a course in Baden-Baden.

They wasted the best part of a day looking for a freezer in the slaughterhouse. They dismissed the huge ice factory as too public and conspicuous. Compared to the rest of the site, it appeared
as busy as a stock exchange.

Otherwise each animal section had its own cold-storage facilities, but the freezer sections had been decommissioned. They were told this by Baumgarten, whose slow and uncomprehending manner
became more questionable with each acquaintance.

With such widespread meat shortages there was no reserve to freeze, certainly not in the case of the pig section. Only one cool room remained in use, located next to the slaughterhouse, by the
railway siding. Entrance was by enormous thick steel doors. Inside was a gigantic vault, cold enough to make their breath visible.

The state of supply was evident from the empty hooks and only a handful of carcasses hanging.

Morgen asked, ‘What of Nöthling’s pigs?’

‘We didn’t deal with them,’ said Baumgarten.

‘Not what I asked.’

Nöthling had brought in his own team.

As to where a frozen body might have been kept – or the existence of any temporary morgue – Baumgarten made a good show of being clueless. He emphasised the enormity of the area.
Only about a quarter was currently in use.

Schlegel wondered if Baumgarten’s huge hands had been responsible for Keleman’s murder, but there was no motive or evidence, other than the man living with death every day.

Morgen asked to be shown the freezer room. The supply was switched off, as Baumgarten had said. The trenches were empty and unfrozen.

Morgen decided they should go and talk to Herr Nöthling about his pigs. Schlegel wondered if his mother still kept an account, and how toward was her use of ration cards.

Baumgarten seemed pleased by their wasted effort.

Schlegel expected them to go back to headquarters and take Stoffel’s Opel as usual. Morgen said he couldn’t be bothered.

They passed above the chambers and paths of the slaughter yards, along the seemingly endless pedestrian bridge, a windowless passageway known as the Long Sorrow that carried them over to
Zentralviehhof station. There they caught the S-Bahn, skirting the south-east of the city, past Treptower Park. Another day of overcast skies, the belching smoke of factory chimneys practically
indistinguishable.

What was this talk of lampshades? Schlegel asked.

Morgen stared for a long time before saying instead, ‘Maybe the bodies were frozen elsewhere.’

After Schöneberg they had the carriage to themselves and Morgen came closest to admitting what had been preoccupying him.

‘I joined the SS Judiciary partly because it offered a swifter rate of advance than its civilian counterpart. I thought stability and order would lead us out of the mire of the twenties.
But what I feared about too much power becoming invested in one man has come to pass. He has no military experience, apart from his time as a corporal runner in the war, and at the last count
monopolises no fewer than seventy state functions. No wonder we are paralysed.’

Schlossstrasse was a major shopping area in the affluent suburb of Steglitz, catering for the wealthy neighbourhoods of Lichterfelde and Dahlem, a boulevard with trams and
broad pavements. Substantial Wilhelmine buildings, castle-like apartments and public halls with imposing facades of rusticated stone, spoke of unassailable prosperity. It was a street down which
uniformed nannies still pushed prams and leisured women met in tea rooms.

Nöthling’s store had an impressive double frontage, with his name written in enormous letters above. The old pillared entrance was flanked by two large modern picture windows, filled
with an artful display of harvest baskets and produce boxes, which Schlegel suspected were empty.

Morgen asked, ‘How would you describe this place?’

‘A delicatessen, I suppose.’

‘Is that enough? I am sure Nöthling considers it an emporium and himself a purveyor of fine goods. I feel hungry just looking.’

Schlegel couldn’t remember when he had last eaten a decent meal, other than at his mother’s, and even she complained. Whatever she lacked, there was little shortage of meat, and he
wondered about her supplier. Pork, beef, chicken, game. Once she had put her knife and fork down and announced, ‘This meat tastes like horse,’ to which he asked, ‘How do you know
what horse tastes like?’ which shut her up.

The shop was large, clean and well-presented, presided over by female assistants, young and elderly, neat in white grocers’ coats and caps. The cashier sat in a booth of her own. Marble
countertops matched the floor, and looked expensive, as did the fearsome meat slicer. Nothing had been spared to convey an atmosphere of quiet ostentation, but in keeping with the times the shelves
were understocked. Homemade jam was for sale. Morgen whistled at the price.

He asked for ham. They had run out. More would be in tomorrow, they hoped. The same with everything. The daily supply sold out early.

Morgen asked for Nöthling. He gave his name and rank. One of the counter girls addressed the cashier, who spoke to Nöthling on an intercom and a minute later the man emerged, preceded
by the smell of expensive aftershave, rubbing his hands with bonhomie and professional concern.

He bore little resemblance to the traditional shopkeeper. His clean looks and antiseptic air made him appear more like a scientist, as though shopping were a modern discipline. Unlike the women
in their white coats his was blue, under which he wore an expensive suit. His shoes were well-heeled. Schlegel thought them handmade.

Nöthling was manners itself, leading them into a back office, done out as smartly as the front, with armchairs, an Oriental rug and a huge rosewood desk whose size reminded Schlegel of
criminal masterminds in old films, unlike the man, who sounded about as engaged as a speak-your-weight machine.

Nöthling’s brown hair was brilliantined, parted, worn short at the back and sides, with a cowlick at the front. His expression was guileless. Schlegel wondered how he had avoided the
army.

He denied knowing anyone from the tax office called Keleman; his books were in order.

‘Tell us about your pigs,’ said Morgen.

Nöthling pointed to himself and assumed an expression of surprise.

Morgen said, ‘We are bound to ask whether the import of pigs is a criminal business.’

‘Of course not! I have the paperwork.’

‘We would expect nothing less.’

‘They come from Sweden. Keleman, you say?’ He shook his head again.

‘Can we import from neutral countries?’

‘There’s nothing illegal about it.’

‘Swedish pigs?’ asked Morgen as though he didn’t quite believe it.

Schlegel asked if Nöthling had unloaded anything else from the train.

‘Human cargo?’ he prompted.

Nöthling blustered.

Morgen said, ‘A grocer with fingers in a lot of pies.’

He stood with his hands thrust in his pockets, looking suddenly miserable. Pigs were the bane of his life, he confessed. Food in general, but pigs in particular, as he was expected to provide
according to previous standards.

‘How much do you know about pigs?’

Morgen said he knew about dead ones, having eaten them, not so much about when they were alive, except they were not stupid.

‘They’re not unlike us. They eat the same. They are not a grazing animal, like cattle and sheep, which means they compete with us in the food chain. Two years ago, the cereal crop
that was their staple diet failed. So they had to be fed potatoes, which in a wartime economy is our standard diet. It caused rationing to be introduced, to allow enough for the pigs.’

‘And after that the market became harder,’ suggested Morgen.

‘For some. I had an employee transferred to the catering corps who was able to arrange regular transports of livestock from the Ukraine.’

He also had a brother who was a pig breeder in East Prussia.

‘Fat, healthy stock and no complaints until the herd was decimated by swine fever.’

‘And beef and mutton?’ asked Morgen.

‘The same shortages, though pork is more of a national dish.’

‘Yes, I suppose. A civilised animal, not nomadic. Principles of husbandry and tenure.’

‘You are right!’ replied Nöthling, apparently enthused. ‘As the British have their roast beef, we expect pork. Even the humble
Schnellimbiss
requires its bratwurst.
I wonder if the basis of our argument with the Jew isn’t that he regards such an upstanding animal unclean. One can have a relationship with a pig in a way one never can with a cow or a
sheep. Some say they are as intelligent as small children.’

Schlegel had once made the mistake of ordering chicken bratwurst from a food stand. He complained. The stall owner agreed not only was it unpopular because tasteless, it was seen as a sign of a
fundamental right being taken away.

Morgen said, ‘About your Swedish pigs.’

Nöthling pulled a long face. ‘My wife is Swedish. Her brother sends them from his farm in Ystad. He started breeding them upon my recommendation.’

‘Not happy pigs from what I am told.’

‘My brother-in-law blames shortages but the truth is he is a careless farmer and he drinks from early in the morning.’

Schlegel found Nöthling slippery and impressive – the cool demeanour, the appearance of openness, his answering in an apparently honest way. The real expertise probably lay in what he
chose not to reveal.

‘So your clientele is eating inferior pig,’ said Morgen.

‘My clientele is lucky to get what it has,’ answered Nöthling, showing a flash of anger that was the first sign of the pressure he might be under.

As they passed back through the shop, he asked them to wait and returned with a brown paper bag and handed it to Morgen, saying, ‘Wild boar sausage. Not a bribe, gentlemen, but I would
like you to appreciate the efforts to which we still go to satisfy our customers. It is hard these days to bring enjoyment into the world, but . . .’

He gave them a charming, boyish smile of embarrassment and dismissal.

The sausage came wrapped in greaseproof paper and had been sliced. They demolished it at a sitting on a bench down from the shop.

Morgen said, ‘The man most likely believes he will be protected by those he serves, instead of being hung out to dry. Still, he makes an excellent sausage.’