by Philip Kerr
I shook my head. I wasn’t ready to share what I’d learned from Emil nor the circumstances in which this information had been acquired. Not without some very hard evidence. I didn’t think any of my superiors—and certainly not the newspapers—were going to welcome the news that eight Berliners had all been murdered by a single cop in the city’s police department.
“No, I thought not. Gunther, I want you to spend the rest of your day in the records department, looking for anyone with a conviction for violent assault who happens also to be a member of the Stahlhelm.”
“I don’t know that something like that would be recorded,” I said.
“When arrested, a suspect is obliged to empty his pockets, isn’t he? A Stahlhelm membership card would be part of a man’s personal effects. You’ll find it listed there.”
“It would probably be quicker,” added Weiss helpfully, “to see what Commissar Dr. Stumm has in that respect. And then to cross-check with Records. Wouldn’t you agree, Ernst?”
Commissar Dr. Stumm was with the political police, created to forestall attacks by political agitators against the republic.
As it happened, some time in the records department suited me very well; the last place I wanted to be was at my desk manning the telephone. I needed somewhere quiet to think about what Prussian Emil had told me, and Records was as good as the public library in this respect.
“Yes, probably,” said Gennat. “Although as you know I’ve never been a fan of having a political police force in Germany. It smacks of spying on your own citizens. But however he does it, I think it will make a nice change for Gunther to carry out some good old-fashioned police work.”
* * *
—
I STAYED LATE in Records before returning to my desk, having found nothing in the files of any consequence. Not that I’d expected to, and not that I’d tried all that hard.
I hadn’t been at my own desk for very long before the telephone rang. It was Erich Angerstein.
“So what have you found out?” he asked.
“About a murderous cop? Nothing yet.”
“I thought we narrowed it down quite nicely last night. From a population of four million Berliners to one crazy cop.”
“You know, you ought to take a look at the number of cops there are in Berlin sometime. Oddly enough, even the sane ones are in plentiful supply. As a matter of fact, there are fourteen thousand uniformed police, three thousand detectives, three hundred cops in the political police, and four thousand police administration officials. It’ll take me a while to sift them out and figure which one of them is a murderer, Erich. You’re going to have to be patient for a little longer.”
“Not something I’m good at, Gunther. You should know that by now.”
“And I told you that we were going to have to do this my way. I’ve spent the whole day going through criminal records looking for what’s called evidence.”
“Find anything interesting?”
“Look, I’m a detective at the Alex.”
“You make that sound like it’s something respectable.”
“At the Alex we take a bit of time making up our minds. We’re known for it. Justice requires that we do a little bit more than just pick a name out of a hat.”
“I’m not in the Alex. I’m in a hurry. I want this bastard caught and punished. And I don’t much care about justice. At least not the way you understand it. Punishment—proper punishment—is what I care about. Retribution. You know, I checked out your friend in Wuhlgarten, the one who escaped the ax: Bruno Gerth. And it seems a lot of people thought he had police protection. Maybe I should speak to him. Maybe he has a disciple. These bastards often do.”
“I’d be careful about trying to get in there. They might not let you out.”
“They say you shouldn’t yell at a sleepwalker in case he falls and breaks his neck. But this is me yelling at you now, Gunther. Find this man. Find him soon. Otherwise, it’s your neck.”
He rang off, which was just as well, as I was on the verge of telling him to go to hell. But I was only thinking about it. With a man like Erich Angerstein it was as well to speak softly. I’d seen what he could do with a cane when he wasn’t even angry.
* * *
—
HEADING HOME, I caught the double-decker bus west. I went upstairs and smoked a cigarette. I like riding on the upper deck; you see the city from a whole different angle up on top so that it almost seems unfamiliar. It was the very opposite of being on the klutz wagon. As we headed down Unter den Linden I glanced in at the Adlon and was thinking of Thea von Harbou when I saw some of the white-shoe types going in for dinner. Except that they weren’t white shoes but spats. And I suddenly remembered a cop who wore spats. One of the very few cops—apart from Weiss himself—who ever wore spats. Spats that might easily have looked like white shoes to a man like Stefan Rühle. It was about then I remembered the tune this same cop was fond of whistling: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. The same cop who had a thick beard, fine clothes, and a heavy walking stick that could have looked like a scepter, I suppose, and who’d been on his way to an apothecary to get something for his red eye. Just as Rühle had described. The same cop who bitterly resented Bernhard Weiss. The same cop I’d always thought of as a good friend. Kurt Reichenbach.
Was it possible that he’d been about to shoot another disabled veteran, but had stopped when he realized that the vet was me? The more I thought about it, the more it seemed quite possible that instead of Reichenbach saving me from the wild boys outside Lehrter Bahnhof, it might have been they who’d saved me from him. The gun he’d lent me afterward was still in my pocket. I took it out and looked at it now: a Browning .25-caliber automatic—the same kind of vest pocket gun that had killed all those men; lots of cops carried one as a spare, only this one might actually have been a murder weapon. Reichenbach was certainly arrogant enough to lend it to me all the same. And why not? Who would ever have suspected him of being Dr. Gnadenschuss? He probably had another. He might have several. Reichenbach had never looked like a man who was short of anything, let alone a gun.
About the only thing I was still short of was a motive. Why would a man like him viciously attack nine people? To embarrass the Murder Commission and Weiss in particular? To clean up the streets just like he’d said in the letters to the Berliner Tageblatt? To put the blame on the Nazis? Somehow none of it seemed to be quite enough. And yet, lots of people had been murdered for less.
Of course this was all nonsense. Had to be. Reichenbach was a good cop. All the same, a cop who could afford a new Brennabor motorcar. And an expensive leather coat. Where did he get the money? Not from his wife; how much did a nurse at the Charité hospital make? No, the money had to be his. Could Reichenbach have been the source of the new ten-reichsmarks note I’d found in Eva Angerstein’s handbag?
It was all mostly circumstantial. I had no firm proof. But it seemed possible even if I couldn’t bring myself to believe any of it. Suddenly I had to get off the bus. I had to get back to the Alex.
* * *
—
SOMEONE WAS STILL working at the firearms laboratory in the cavernous basement of the Alex. I knew who it was before I walked in. I could smell the cigarette. Paul Mendel was quiet but ambitious; the open copy of Commissar Ernst van den Bergh’s book, Police and Nation—Their Spiritual Bonds, told me that much. I knew he hadn’t ever read it and kept it there next to Weiss’s book and History of the Police by Dr. Kurt Melcher to impress the commissars in case any of them came calling. He was gently spoken and bespectacled with lots of thick curly hair. He smoked foul-smelling Russian cigarettes that he always pinched twice to control the flow of the acrid-tasting smoke. He wore a lot of lime water—which is not my favorite cologne unless there’s plenty of good gin it—and I suspected he was queer, but not enough to make it noticeable, which was probably wise around Berlin policemen; even the queer on
es were difficult about that kind of thing. He might have been working late, but he still looked like he was about to go home. All three buttons of his jacket were done up and he was wearing a natty silk scarf against the evening heat.
“I hate myself for bringing you some work this late.”
“I know exactly how you feel. So don’t worry. I’m not staying.”
“Come on, Mendel. It won’t take long. Besides, what else were you going to do this evening? It’s not like you had tickets for the opera. Besides, you love your work. Almost as much as I love mine.”
“All right. I’m listening. What have you got for me?”
“A chance to help me crack the Dr. Gnadenschuss case.”
“Hmm. That’s a big sell you’re making there. You’re not just saying this to persuade me to work late.”
“No. I’m absolutely certain of it.”
“So then. A .25-caliber automatic. Probably a Browning. No spent brass. Just the bullet. Last-known victim, Johann Tetzel: shot in the head at point-blank range. The case file with the bullet is still on my workbench. Has there been another killing?”
“No. But I’ve got something better: a possible murder weapon.”
I laid the little automatic Reichenbach had given me on Mendel’s desk.
“Safety’s on,” I said. “And it’s loaded.”
“Interesting,” he said, picking it up and sniffing the barrel. “The Browning Vest Pocket pistol. Nice little gun. I have one myself. No real stopping power, but not bulky in the pocket. A Jew can’t be too careful these days. Did you hear that someone attacked Bernhard Weiss? You did. Of course you did. Yes, a lot of people think these guns are Belgian but in fact they’re American. John Browning was a Mormon, did you know? Born in Utah, of course. Several wives. Don’t know if he shot any. But he himself died in Belgium.”
“I almost died there myself. Lots of Germans did.”
Mendel took off his jacket and removed his scarf, donned a brown cotton coat, and rattled his pockets, which were usually full of ammunition. What Mendel didn’t know about guns could have been written on the back of a postage stamp. He ejected the Browning’s magazine, inspected the barrel, checked the number of rounds it contained, and laid the gun down again.
“This pistol has been cleaned, and recently, too. You can still smell the gun oil. If this is a murder weapon then the killer knows how to look after a weapon.”
“So you’ll do it. A test.”
Mendel smiled. “As it happens, you’re in luck, Gunther. We just took delivery of a new piece of equipment and I’ve been dying to try it out.”
“Oh, what? A human target? After the last meeting of the Schrader-Verband, I can think of a few people in this place I’d like to test a gun on. Even that one.”
“Me too. But nothing so messy. No, we have an expensive new toy in the lab. Just arrived today. A comparison microscope.”
“How does it work?”
“Well, as you know, when a gun is fired, all imperfections in the gun barrel leave a unique pattern of marks on the bullet. Two bullets fired from the same gun bear identical characteristics. With the comparison microscope we can now view a test bullet side by side against a bullet from a cadaver without touching either one. One eyepiece, two microscopes. Very convenient for a man like me. We bought this one from America. It was a microscope like this that helped put Sacco and Vanzetti in the electric chair.”
“That’s a cheerful thought.”
“Do you think they were innocent?”
“I don’t know. But a lot of other people do. Of course a trial like that could never happen here. German courts are rather more careful about proper legal procedure. Especially when it’s a capital crime.”
“I’m glad you think so. Me, I’m not so sure.”
Mendel switched on a light that illuminated a shooting range and then produced something square and wobbly and wrapped in brown paper, which he laid on a table. He unpeeled the paper to reveal a slab of what looked like aspic jelly.
“I get my local pork butcher to make these blocks of gelatin for me. They’re great for observing how bullets behave, and for retrieving them without too much trouble. Now then. If you’ll do the honors, Gunther. Someone’s stolen my spare ear mufflers so you’ll have to make the best of it, I’m afraid. Just shoot the pistol into the block.”
Using Reichenbach’s Browning, I fired off three test bullets. The shots were noisier than I’d expected and they left my ears ringing for several minutes. When I’d finished, Mendel cut the block open with a knife and retrieved a couple of spent rounds that could be examined underneath the comparison microscope, side by side with the bullet that had killed Johann Tetzel.
“By the way, you’re the first person in here in a while who hasn’t made a joke about how it is that a Jew can handle pork gelatin. You wouldn’t believe how many anti-Semites there are in this building.”
“Is there a joke?”
“Not a funny one. Besides, we’re only forbidden to eat pork, not to shoot it.”
“You know what they say about anti-Semitism. It isn’t a big problem for Jews. It’s a bigger problem for Germans.”
“Let’s hope you’re right. But if you are, who’s going to tell them?”
Mendel positioned one of the new rounds under the microscope and turned the focus bezel; but it wasn’t very long before he was frowning. The test was negative. The bullet retrieved from Johann Tetzel’s skull was not the one Mendel had cut from the gelatin block.
“I’m sorry. But this is not the gun that killed him.”
“That blows my theory out of the water,” I said. “Pity. I was quite sure this was it.”
“Not necessarily. You’re forgetting. This fellow shot more than one man. So let’s try a comparison with one of the earlier bullets that we have. Victim number two: Oskar Heyde.”
I held my breath and waited patiently while Mendel peered through his comparison microscope again. After a while he started to smile.
“Yes, In my opinion these two bullets match perfectly. Obviously the killer has used more than one weapon. But this is one of them. Without a shadow of a doubt. Take a look for yourself.”
I peered through the eyepiece. To my untrained, inexpert, and tired eye, the mangled bullets looked, at best, not dissimilar.
“You’re sure these were fired from the same gun?”
“I’m certain of it.”
The Browning .25 Reichenbach had so coolly lent me was a murder weapon.
“Well, I must say, you don’t look very pleased, Gunther. Surely this is a major step to solving the case.”
I was thinking of the scandal that was about to engulf the Alex, a scandal that might very well end up costing Bernhard Weiss his job. The right-wing newspapers were just looking for an excuse to go after him again, and this time even he wouldn’t be able to sue. What could have looked more incriminating for the Jewish deputy police commissioner than a multiple murderer who was a Jewish detective in Kripo? They would hang him out to dry. But who was going to believe me anyway? Not Ernst Gennat. He probably still thought I was a drunk. And it was Kurt Reichenbach’s word against mine that he had ever owned the Browning. What I needed was more evidence. But what kind of evidence? And how to get it?
“I’m grateful, Mendel. Don’t think I’m not. But while I may have the gun I don’t yet have the man who owns it in custody. So I’d be very grateful if you didn’t mention this to anyone for now.”
“Sure. No problem.”
“That Browning you said you own. Have you got it on you?”
“Of course.”
“Would you lend it to me?”
“Sure. But why?”
“Let me see it.”
Mendel fetched the little jet-black automatic from his jacket pocket and handed it to me. I examined it carefully. It looked identical to the p
istol I’d brought with me.
“The murder weapon. I can’t take it with me. Not now you’ve proved that’s what it is. But I need to return a Browning pistol to the man I borrowed it from. Even if it’s a different one.”
“Sounds dangerous.”
“So wish me luck.”
“Mazel tov.”
I went upstairs to look for Reichenbach. He wasn’t there. But one of his colleagues in Kripo was and told me he hadn’t been seen all day.
“But that’s not unusual.”
“Anything to do with a lead I gave him? About the mob killing outside Aschinger. He said he was going to check it out.”
The detective, a sergeant named Artner, shook his head.
“He hasn’t mentioned it.”
* * *
—
KURT REICHENBACH LIVED in an apartment on the top floor of a smart building in Halensee, at the west end of Kurfürstendamm, where Berlin turns very green. There were some lights on in the windows, and his car—the new Brennabor—was parked on the street outside. I rang the doorbell, ready to give him a story about how I was just passing and saw the car, and then the lights on in the apartment and had thought to quickly return his gun. I also had ready a follow-up story to the effect that I appreciated his offer of watching my back and how I wondered if he was prepared to keep an eye on me when I posed as a klutz again the following day. I’m not sure what I was expecting to find out, maybe I just wanted to look him in the eye. I certainly didn’t think a full confession was in the cards, but I did nurse a vain hope that somehow I might come away from his apartment with some of my suspicions allayed. After a minute or so I heard a window open upstairs and a woman, presumably Reichenbach’s wife, Traudl, called down to me.
“Yes. Who’s there?”
“Police. Bernhard Gunther, from the Alex.”