The Pale Criminal (20 page)

‘Well, I'd hate to be a Jew in this town,' said Korsch.

‘Too right,' said the waiter. ‘Last month he persuaded a crowd of people to burn down the synagogue.'

Streicher now began to sing, and accompanied himself with a percussion that was provided with his knife and fork and the table-top, from which he had thoughtfully removed the tablecloth. The combination of his drumming, accent, drunkenness and complete inability to hold a tune, not to mention the screeches and giggles of his two guests, made it impossible for either Korsch or myself to recognize the song. But you could bet that it wasn't by Kurt Weill, and it did have the effect of driving the two of us off to bed.

 

The next morning we walked a short way north to Jakob's Platz, where opposite a fine church stands a fortress built by the old order of Teutonic knights. At its south-eastern point, it includes a domed edifice that is the Elisabeth-Kirche, while at the south-western point, on the corner of Schlotfegergasse, is the old barracks, now police headquarters. As far as I was aware, there wasn't another police HQ in the whole of Germany which had the facility of its own Catholic church.

‘That way they're sure to wring a confession out of you one way or the other,' Korsch joked.

SS-Obergruppenführer Dr Benno Martin, whose predecessors as police president of Nuremberg included Heinrich Himmler, greeted us in his baronial top-storey office. The look of the place was such that I half expected him to have a sabre in his hand; and indeed, when he turned to one side I noticed that he had a duelling scar on his cheek.

‘And how is Berlin?' he asked quietly, offering us a cigarette from his box. His own smoke he fitted into a rosewood holder that was more like a pipe and which held the cigarette vertically, at a right-angle to his face.

‘Things are quiet,' I said. ‘But that's because everyone is holding their breath.'

‘Quite so,' he said, and waved at the newspaper on his desk. ‘Chamberlain has flown to Bad Godesberg for more talks with the Fuhrer.'

Korsch pulled the paper towards him and glanced at the headline. He pushed it back again.

‘There's too much damned talk, if you ask me,' said Martin.

I grunted non-committally.

Martin grinned and laid his square chin on his hand. ‘Arthur Nebe tells me that you've got a psychopath stalking the streets of Berlin, raping and cutting the flower of German maidenhood. He also tells me that you've a mind to take a look at Germany's most infamous psychopath and see if they might at least be holding hands. I refer of course to that pig's sphincter, Streicher. Am I right?'

I met his cold, penetrating gaze and held it. I was willing to bet that the general was no altar boy himself. Nebe had described Benno Martin as an extremely capable administrator. For a police chief in Nazi Germany that could have meant just about anything up to, and including, a Torquemada.

‘That's right, sir,' I said, and showed him the
Der Stürmer
front page. ‘This illustrates exactly how five girls have been murdered. With the exception of the Jew catching the blood in the plate of course.'

‘Of course,' said Martin. ‘But you haven't ruled out the Jews as a possibility.'

‘No, but — '

‘But it's the very theatricality of this same mode of killing that makes you doubt that it could be them. Am I right?'

‘That and the fact that none of the victims has been Jewish.'

‘Maybe he just prefers more attractive girls,' Martin grinned. ‘Maybe he just prefers blonde, blue-eyed girls to depraved Jewish mongrels. Or maybe it's just coincidence.' He caught my raised eyebrow. ‘But you're not the kind of man who believes much in coincidence, Kommissar, are you?'

‘Not where murder is concerned, sir, no. I see patterns where other people see coincidence. Or at least I try to.' I leant back in my chair, crossing my legs. ‘Are you acquainted with the work of Carl Jung on the subject, sir?'

He snorted with derision. ‘Good God, is that what Kripo gets up to in Berlin these days?'

‘I think he'd have made rather a good policeman, sir,' I said, smiling affably, ‘if you don't mind me saying so.'

‘Spare me the psychology lecture, Kommissar,' Martin sighed. ‘Just tell me which particular pattern you see that might involve our beloved Gauleiter here in Nuremberg.'

‘Well sir, it's this. It has crossed my mind that someone might be trying to sew the Jews into a very nasty body-bag.'

Now the general raised an eyebrow.

‘Do you really care what happens to the Jews?'

‘Sir, I care what happens to fifteen-year-old girls on their way home from school tonight.' I handed the general a sheet of typewritten paper. ‘These are the dates on which the five girls disappeared. I hoped that you might be able to tell me if Streicher or any of his associates were in Berlin on any of these occasions.'

Martin glanced down the page. ‘I suppose that I can find out,' he said. ‘But I can tell you now that he is virtually
persona non grata
there. Hitler keeps him down here, out of harm's way, so that the only people he can annoy are the ones of no account, like myself. Of course, that's not to say that Streicher doesn't visit Berlin in secret sometimes. He does. The Führer enjoys Streicher's after-dinner conversation, though I cannot imagine why, since he also apparently enjoys my own.'

He turned to the trolley of telephones that stood by his desk and called up his adjudant, telling him to establish Streicher's whereabouts on the dates I had provided.

‘I was given to understand that you also had certain information regarding Streicher's criminal behaviour,' I said.

Martin got up and went over to his filing cabinet. Laughing quietly he took out a file that was as thick as a shoe box, and brought it back to the desk.

‘There's virtually nothing I don't know about that bastard,' he snarled. ‘His SS guards are my men. His telephone is tapped, and I have listening devices in all of his homes. I even have photographers on constant vigil in a shop opposite a room where he sees a prostitute from time to time.'

Korsch breathed a curse that was both admiration and surprise.

‘So, where do you want to start? I could occupy one whole department with what that bastard gets up to in this town. Rape charges, paternity suits, assaults on young boys with that whip he carries, bribery of public officials, misappropriation of Party funds, fraud, theft, forgery, arson, extortion — we are talking about a gangster, gentlemen. A monster, terrorizing the people of this town, never paying his bills, driving businesses into bankruptcy, wrecking the careers of honourable men who had the courage to cross him.'

‘We had a chance to see him for ourselves,' I said. ‘Last night, at the Deutscher Hof. He was boozing it up with a couple of ladies.'

The general's look was scathing. ‘Ladies. You're joking, of course. They'd have certainly been nothing more than common prostitutes. He introduces them to people as actresses, but prostitutes is what they are. Streicher is behind most of the organized prostitution in this city.' He opened his box-file and started to leaf through the complaint-sheets.

‘Indecent assaults, criminal damage, hundreds of charges of corruption — Streicher runs this city like his personal kingdom, and gets away with it.'

‘The rape charges sound interesting,' I said. ‘What happened there?'

‘No evidence offered. The victims were either bullied or bought. You see, Streicher is a very rich man. Quite apart from what he makes as a district governor, selling favours, offices even, he makes a fortune off that lousy newspaper of his. It's got a circulation of half a million, which at thirty pfennigs a copy adds up to 150,000 Reichsmarks a week.' Korsch whistled. ‘And that's not counting what he makes from the advertising. Oh yes, Streicher can buy himself an awful lot of favours.'

‘Anything more serious than the rape charges?'

‘You mean, has he murdered anyone?'

‘Yes.'

‘Well, we won't count the lynchings of the odd Jew here and there. Streicher likes to organize a nice pogrom for himself now and then. Quite apart from anything else, it gives him a chance to pick up a bit of extra loot. And we'll discount the girl who died in his house at the hands of a backstreet angel-maker. Streicher wouldn't be the first senior Party member to procure an illegal abortion. That leaves two unsolved homicides which point the finger at his having been involved.

‘One, a waiter at a party Streicher went to, who decided to choose that occasion to commit suicide. A witness saw Streicher walking in the grounds with the waiter less than twenty minutes before the man was found drowned in the pond. The other, a young actress acquainted with Streicher, whose naked body was found in Luitpoldhain Park. She had been flogged to death with a leather whip. You know, I saw the body. There wasn't a centimetre of skin left on her.'

He sat down again, apparently satisfied with the effect his revelations had had on Korsch and myself. Even so he could not resist adding a few more salacious details as they occurred to him.

‘And then there is Streicher's collection of pornography, which he boasts is the largest in Nuremberg. Boasting is what Streicher is best at: the number of illegitimate children he has fathered, the number of wet-dreams he's had that week, how many boys he has whipped that day. It's even the sort of detail he includes in his public speeches.'

I shook my head and heard myself sigh. How did it ever get to be this bad? How was it that a sadistic monster like Streicher got to a position of virtually absolute power? And how many others like him were there? But perhaps the most surprising thing was that I still had the capacity to be surprised at what was happening in Germany.

‘What about Streicher's associates?' I said. ‘The writers on
Der Stürmer.
His personal staff. If Streicher is trying to hang one on the Jews he could be using someone else to do the dirty work.'

General Martin frowned. ‘Yes, but why do it in Berlin? Why not do it here?'

‘I can think of a couple of good reasons,' I said. ‘Who are Streicher's main enemies in Berlin?'

‘With the exception of Hitler, and possibly Goebbels, you can take your pick.' He shrugged. ‘Goering most of all. Then Himmler, and Heydrich.'

‘That's what I thought you'd say. There's your first reason. Five unsolved murders in Berlin would cause maximum embarrassment to at least two of his worst enemies.'

He nodded. ‘And your second reason?'

‘Nuremberg has a history of Jew-baiting,' I said. ‘Pogroms are common enough here. But Berlin is still comparatively liberal in its treatment of Jews. So if Streicher were to bring down the blame for these murders on to the heads of Berlin's Jewish community, then that would make things even harder for them as well. Perhaps for Jews all over Germany.'

‘There might be something in that,' he admitted, picking another cigarette and screwing it into his curious little holder. ‘But it's going to take time to organize this kind of investigation. Naturally I assume that Heydrich will ensure the full cooperation of the Gestapo. I think that the highest level of surveillance is warranted, don't you, Kommissar?'

‘That's certainly what I'll be writing in my report, sir.'

The telephone rang. Martin answered it and then handed me the receiver.

‘Berlin,' he said. ‘For you.'

It was Deubel.

‘There's another girl missing,' he said.

‘When?'

‘Around nine last night. Blonde, blue-eyed, same age as the others.'

‘No witnesses?'

‘Not so far.'

‘We'll catch the afternoon train back.' I handed the receiver to Martin.

‘It looks as if our killer was busy again last night,' I explained. ‘Another girl disappeared around the time that Korsch and myself were sitting in the café at the Deutscher Hof giving Streicher an alibi.'

Martin shook his head. ‘It would have been too much to hope that Streicher could have been absent from Nuremberg on all your dates,' he said. ‘But don't give up. We may even yet manage to establish some sort of coincidence affecting Streicher and his associates which satisfies you, and me, not to mention this fellow Jung.'

Steglitz is a prosperous, middle-class suburb in south-west Berlin. The red bricks of the town hall mark its eastern side, and the Botanical Gardens its west. It was at this end, near the Botanical Museum and the Planzen Physiological Institute, that Frau Hildegard Steininger lived with her two children, Emmeline aged fourteen, and Paul aged ten.

Herr Steininger, the victim of a fatal car crash, had been some brilliant bank official with the Privat Kommerz, and the type that was insured up to his hair follicles, leaving his young widow comfortably off in a six-room apartment in Lepsius Strasse.

At the top of a four-storey building, the apartment had a large wrought-iron balcony outside a small, brown-painted French window, and not one but three skylights in the sitting-room ceiling. It was a big, airy sort of place, tastefully furnished and decorated, and smelling strongly of the fresh coffee she was making.

‘I'm sorry to make you go through all this again,' I told her. ‘I just want to make absolutely sure we didn't miss anything.'

She sighed and sat down at the kitchen table, opening her crocodile-leather handbag and finding a matching cigarette box. I lit her and watched her beautiful face tense a little. She spoke like she'd rehearsed what she was saying too many times to play the part well.