by Philip Kerr
An unnamed and supposedly independent commissioner in the Berlin political police made a speech last night to a private meeting of the Schrader-Verband at the Eden Hotel during which the following remarks were made by him: “This is no longer a healthy nation. We’ve stopped striving for something higher. We seem quite happy to wallow in the mire, to sink to new depths. Frankly, this is a republic that makes me think of South America, or Africa, not a country at the heart of Europe. And Berlin makes me almost ashamed to be German. It’s hard to believe that just fourteen years ago we were a force for moral good and one of the most powerful countries in the world. People feared us; now they hold us up to scorn and ridicule. Foreigners flock here with their dollars and pounds to take advantage not just of our weakened reichsmark, but also of our women and our liberal laws regarding sex. Berlin especially has become the new Sodom and Gomorrah. All right-thinking Germans should feel the same way as I and yet this government of Jews and apologists for Bolshevism does nothing but sit on its gold-ringed fingers and feed the people lies about how wonderful things really are. These are terrible people. They really are. They lie all the time. But there is, thank God, one man who promises to tell the truth and to clean up this city, to wash the filth off Berlin’s streets, the scum you see every night: the drug dealers, prostitutes, pimps, transvestites, queers, Jews, and communists. That man is Adolf Hitler. There’s something sick about this city and only a strongman like Hitler, with his Nazi Party, has the cure. I’m not a Nazi myself, just a conservative nationalist who can see what’s happening to this country, who can see the sinister hand of the communists behind the erosion of our nation’s values. They aim to undermine the moral heart of our society in the hope that there will be another revolution like the one that’s destroyed Russia. They’re behind it all. You know I’m right. Every cop in Berlin knows I’m right. Every cop in Berlin knows that the current government intends to do nothing about any of this. If I weren’t right, then maybe I could point to some judicial sentences that might make you think the law is respected in Berlin. But I can’t because our judiciary is full of Jews. Answer me this. What kind of deterrent is it when only a fifth of all death sentences are ever carried out? You mark my words, gentlemen, a storm is coming—a real storm, and all these degenerates are going to get washed away. That’s what I said: degenerates. I don’t know what else to call it when you have abortion on demand, mothers selling their daughters, pregnant women selling the mouse, and young boys performing unspeakable acts on men in back alleys. I went to the morgue the other day and saw an artist drawing the corpse of a woman who’d been murdered by her husband. Yes, that’s what passes as art these days. If you ask me, this killer the press has dubbed Winnetou is just another citizen who’s had enough of all the prostitution that’s ruining this city. It’s high time the Prussian police recognized that crimes like Winnetou’s are perhaps the inevitable result of a supine, spineless government that threatens the very fabric of German society.
Gennat must have guessed it was probably me who’d fingered Arthur Nebe for the Tageblatt and while he didn’t say anything at the time, later on he reminded me that it wasn’t just cops from Department 1A who were supposed to leave their politics at home, it was Praesidium detectives, too. Especially detectives who disliked Arthur Nebe as much as he and I did. A higher standard was expected of people like us, said Gennat; there was, he said, enough division in the Prussian police without adding to it ourselves. I figured he was right and after that I stopped calling Olden.
Alone in my room I rolled and lit a cigarette, moistened the end with a little rum, and opened the window to clear the smoke. Then I unloaded my briefcase and settled down to read the Silesian Station files. Even for me they made uncomfortable reading, especially the black-and-white pictures taken by Hans Gross, the Alex police photographer.
There was something about his work on crime scenes that really got under your skin. They say every picture tells a story, but Hans Gross was the kind of photographer whose work made him the Scheherazade of modern criminalistics. This was only partly down to the fact he favored a big Folmer & Schwing Banquet camera on a rolling platform and a mobile version of the same carbon arc lamps they used at Tempelhof airport, both of which took up at least half the space in the murder wagon. More important than the camera equipment, it seemed to me, Hans had a feel for a crime scene that was nothing short of cinematic; Fritz Lang couldn’t have framed his pictures better, and, sometimes, Gross’s Murder Commission photographs were so sharp it seemed that the poor victim might not be dead at all, might in fact be faking it. It wasn’t just the framing and sharp focus that made the photographs effective, it was the way all the background details helped to bring them alive. Detectives often saw things in his photographs they’d failed to spot at the actual crime scene. Which was why detectives at the Alex had nicknamed him Cecil B. DeMorgue.
The picture in the first case file, that of Mathilde Luz, found murdered in Andreasplatz, was so clear you could see every line of Red Front graffiti on the dilapidated brick wall her body lay next to. A pair of thick-framed glasses lay to the right of her head as if she’d just taken them off for a second; you could even see the label in one of the Hellstern shoes she’d been wearing and which had come off during death. But for the fact that a strip of her scalp was missing, Mathilde Luz looked as if she’d just lain down for a moment to take a nap.
I read the notes and various statements and then tried to imagine the conversation I might have had with her if she herself had been able to tell me what had happened. This was a new technique Weiss was encouraging us to try, as a result of a paper he’d read by a criminalist called Robert Heindl. “Let the victim talk to you,” was what Heindl had said. “Try to imagine what she might tell you if you were able to spend some time with her.” So I did.
* * *
—
MATHILDE LUZ WAS a good-looking girl all right and still wearing the clothes she’d been murdered in: the hat, the coat, and the dress all from C&A, but no less becoming for that. There are some girls who manage to wear cheap fashion and make it look good and Mathilde Luz was one of those. The police report noted her perfume was 4711, worn in the kind of quantity that made you think it served to disguise rather than allure. The report also stated she was dark, with large brown eyes and lips the same red as her nail varnish. Her face was powdered dead white; at least I thought it was powder. It might have been that way just because she was dead.
“I made incandescent mantles at the German Incandescent Light Company for two years,” I heard her saying. “Liked it, too. I had some good friends there. The wages weren’t much, but with my husband Franz’s wage—he works at the Julius Pintsch factory, making gas meters for a living—we had just about enough to keep a roof over our heads. It wasn’t much of a roof, it’s fair to say. We lived on Koppenstrasse in a one-room apartment, if you can call it that—slum more like. It’s a poor area, as you probably know. There were two butter riots there in 1915. Can you imagine Berlin without any butter? Unthinkable. I remember them well. I guess at the time I must have been about fourteen.”
“Which made you twenty-seven at the time of your unfortunate death.”
“That’s right. Anyway, the landlord, Lansky, was a Jew like us, but he was never the kind to put his own tribe ahead of profit; if we hadn’t paid the rent on time the bailiff would have had us out double-quick. He always told us how lucky we were to have the place at all, but then he never had to live there himself. I know for a fact he lives in a nice apartment off Tauentzienstrasse. A real gonif, you know? Anyway, I got laid off just after Christmas last year. I looked for another, of course, but half the women in Berlin are looking for jobs now, so I knew that wasn’t ever going to happen. If I hadn’t been laid off, I wouldn’t ever have had to go on the sledge. With the rent due, it was Franz’s idea and I went along with it because it was better than taking a beating.”
“The shoes you were wearing. Style Salome, by
Hellstern. Expensive.”
“Girl needs to look her best.”
“Where did you get them?”
“A friend stole them to order from Wertheim.”
“And the glasses?”
“Some men like the secretarial type. Especially around that pitch north of Silesian Station. Makes them feel like you’re the girl next door, which gives them confidence.”
“It’s a stone’s throw from the Julius Pintsch factory, isn’t it?”
“That’s right. Sometimes my darling husband worked a late shift and came and found me just to take what I’d earned so he could go and buy himself a beer or two. Franz was thoughtful that way. He told me he was looking out for me, like a proper Alphonse, but I knew different.
“Of course it was dangerous. I knew that, too. We all did. Everyone remembers Carl Grossmann. He killed God only knows how many women in the very same part of Berlin. When was that?”
“Between 1919 and 1921.”
“They say he ate his victims.”
“No, that was Haarmann. Grossmann merely chopped his victims up after he’d killed them. Usually in his apartment on Lange Strasse. But you’re right. It’s not far from where you were killed.”
“Bastards. If you ask me, all men are bastards.”
“You’re probably right.”
“You, too, probably. Bulls are just as bad as all the others. Worse. You’re all taking stocking money or shoveling snow, pretending you hold the law in respect. But sometimes you’re worse than anyone. Who was that cop bastard at the Alex who was killing women a few years ago? The one they let off with a smack on the wrist?”
“Bruno Gerth.”
“Did you know him?”
“Yes. But I wouldn’t exactly say they let him off.”
“No? He kept his head, didn’t he?”
“True, but he’s in a mental asylum now. And likely to stay there for the rest of his natural life. As a matter of fact I went to visit him a couple of months ago.”
“That must have been very nice for you both. They say he put it on for the trial judge. The loony act. He knew how to work the system and the court bought it.”
“That may be right. I don’t know. I didn’t attend the trial myself. But let’s get back to what happened to you, Mathilde. Tell me about the evening you were murdered. And I’m sorry for what happened.”
“I spent the early evening in the Hackebär. That was common. Lots of chontes like me would drink a couple of glasses of courage before we went out looking for a client.”
“There were traces of cocaine in your system, too.”
“Sure, why not? Puts a bit of spring in your step. Helps you when you’re coming onto a likely-looking Fritz. It even helps you enjoy it, you know. When they actually fuck you. And it’s not like the stuff is hard to get or particularly expensive. The sausage vendor in front of the Silesian Station is usually good for a toot.”
“We asked him. But he denied it.”
“You probably asked him at the wrong time. When all he had was salt and pepper.”
“Then what happened?”
“A couple of us girls went to the Rose Theater and maybe the Zur Möwe.”
“The dance hall. On Frankfurter.”
“Right. It’s a bit old-fashioned, but there are usually plenty of men looking for it. Mostly men like Franz, it has to be said. Someone saw me leave with a man, but I can’t tell you anything at all about him for obvious reasons. Things start to get a little bit fuzzy. Somewhere on Andreasplatz there’s a fountain with a statue of a Fritz holding a hammer.”
“A witness says he saw a man washing his hands in that fountain about ten or fifteen minutes after we think you must have been murdered.”
“It figures. Anyway, I reckon that’s what killed me. A hammer like that one. I felt a heavy blow on the back of my neck.”
“That’s what killed you, Mathilde. Your murderer broke your neck with one blow.”
“After that. Nothing. The big blank. Over to you, copper.”
“And then he scalped you.”
“Shame. I always had nice hair. You ask Franz. He used to brush it for me when he was feeling sweet. I found it very relaxing after a night on my back. Like someone really cared for me as a person, and not just a bit of mouse.”
“He told us that. But it struck my bosses as a bit strange. Not many men would brush their wives’ hair. It’s like he was perhaps abnormally interested in a woman’s hair.”
“Nothing abnormal about it. He could see I was tired and wanted to do something for me. Something nice. Something that would help me to relax.”
“Let’s talk about Franz. We interviewed him several times. Mostly on account of the fact that you and he were reported to have had several violent arguments.”
“It was Koppenstrasse, right? Not a suite at the Adlon Hotel. Everyone argues in a dump like that. Show me a couple who lives there who doesn’t have violent arguments.”
“He has several convictions for assault. And he owns plenty of sharp knives. Knives sharp enough to have scalped someone easily.”
“He did a lot of woodworking. Made toys to sell for the Christmas markets. To bring in a bit of extra money. Wasn’t bad at it, either. But the night I was killed he had an alibi. He was working the night shift at Julius Pintsch.”
“It’s my job to break alibis. So he was close enough to sneak out of the factory for ten minutes, kill you, and then go back to work.”
“Kill his golden goose? I don’t think so. I was good at being a whore, copper. Franz may be a bastard, but he isn’t entirely stupid. And lots of his fellow workers—including the factory foreman—say they never had him out of their sight.”
“The police also found several novels by Karl May in your apartment. Including Winnetou. In fact, that was what persuaded the press to start calling your killer Winnetou.”
For some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to think of the murderer as the Silesian Station killer. I knew Gennat felt the same way and so long as Weiss wasn’t around he always called him Winnetou; everyone did, and I was no exception.
“I’m not much of a reader myself. But from what Franz told me, half the men in Germany have read those damn books.”
“You’re probably right.”
“Look, Franz was a lot of things, my friend. But somewhere deep inside that barrel chest of his was a heart that loved me. That’s what kept us together. We quarreled, yes, but usually because he’d had a skinful. What Fritz doesn’t drink himself into a state on a Friday night and then knock his wife around for the hell of it? You wouldn’t know much about that in a nice little room like this. Carpet on the floor. Curtains on the windows. Windows that you can see through. I gave Fritz a couple of smacks with a chair leg on occasion when he was properly out of line. One time I even thought I’d killed him. But he has a head like a walnut and he came around after an hour or so, full of apologies for having kicked off. Didn’t even bear me a grudge. In fact, I’m pretty sure he didn’t even remember me hitting him. We made it up nicely that time.”
“Sounds very romantic.”
“Sure, why not? That’s romance, Berlin style. Let me tell you something, copper; it’s only when a man is lying insensible at your feet and you realize you could beat his head to a pulp with a chair leg if you wanted to that you really know if you love him or not.”
“Like I said before, I’m sorry for what happened to you. And I’ll do my very best to catch the man who did it. You have my word.”
“That’s very sweet of you, Herr Gunther. But to be honest, it really doesn’t matter to me now one way or the other.”
“Is there anything else you can tell me?”
“No.”
“According to the lab report you were pregnant. Did you know?”
“No. I—we always wanted a baby. Not that we could
have afforded one.” She wiped away a tear and was very quiet for a moment; and then she was very quiet forever.
* * *
—
I WASN’T USUALLY back home in Nollendorfplatz for supper, but it being a Friday and having missed lunch, I was glad I was, because this was the night Frau Weitendorf usually went to the theater and left a lung hash that only had to be heated up on the stove. There was always enough for about ten people and, having been quite particular to lung hash since I was a schoolboy, I was pleased to join my fellow lodgers around the dinner table. Rosa did the honors with the hash and some boiled potatoes, while Fischer, the Bavarian salesman, cut the black bread, and Rankin poured malted coffee into large mugs. I laid the table with the second-best china. They were curious as to why I was there at all, of course, but didn’t ask me why directly; not that I would have told them I’d been promoted to the Murder Commission. The last thing I wanted to talk about when I was at home was crime. But most of the talk was about the explosion at the Wolfmium factory and all the workers who’d been killed, and Fischer told us that this was one of the reasons he was going to march through Berlin with the communists the next day, which he would never have mentioned if Frau Weitendorf had been at home. If there was one subject likely to make our landlady fly into uncontrollable rage it was Bolshevism. It wasn’t just the fact that she was a Nazi that made her so vehemently anti-communist; it was the several bullet holes in the front of the house made by the Spartacist militia during Berlin’s Bolshevik revolution of 1919. Frau Weitendorf took each one of them personally.