The Pale Criminal

by Philip Kerr

  ‘. . . and then the rain really started to come in at the eaves. I get the picture.’

  ‘The time is coming when everyone will have to do the same. There’s no room for agnosticism in the Germany that Himmler and Heydrich have got planned for us. It’ll be stand up and be counted or take the consequences. But it’s still possible to change things from the inside. And when the time is right we’ll need men like you. Men on the force who can be trusted. That’s why I’ve asked you here — to try and persuade you to come back.’

  ‘Me? Back in Kripo? You must be joking. Listen, Arthur, I’ve built up a good business, I make a very good living now. Why should I chuck all that away for the pleasure of being on the force again?’

  ‘You might not have much choice in the matter. Heydrich thinks that you might be useful to him if you were back in Kripo.’

  ‘I see. Any particular reason?’

  ‘There’s a case he wants you to handle. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that Heydrich takes his Fascism very personally. He generally gets what he wants.’

  ‘What’s this case about?’

  ‘I don’t know what he’s got in mind; Heydrich doesn’t confide in me. I just wanted to warn you, so that you’d be prepared, so that you didn’t do anything stupid like tell him to go to hell, which might be your first reaction. We both have great respect for your abilities as a detective. It just happens that I also want somebody in Kripo that I can trust.’

  ‘Well, what it is to be popular.’

  ‘You’ll give it some thought.’

  ‘I don’t see how I can avoid it. It’ll make a change from the crossword, I suppose. Anyway, thanks for the red light, Arthur, I appreciate it.’ I wiped my dry mouth nervously. ‘You got any more of that lemonade? I could use a drink now. It’s not every day you get such good news.’

  Nebe handed me his flask and I went for it like a baby after its mother’s tit. Less attractive, but damn near as comforting.

  ‘In your love letter you mentioned you had some information about an old case. Or was that your equivalent of the child-molester’s puppy?’

  ‘There was a woman you were looking for a while back. A journalist.’

  ‘That’s quite a while back. Nearly two years. I never found her. One of my all too frequent failures. Perhaps you ought to let Heydrich know that. It might persuade him to let me off the hook.’

  ‘Do you want this or not?’

  ‘Well, don’t make me straighten my tie for it, Arthur.’

  ‘There’s not much, but here it is. A couple of months ago, the landlord of the place where your client used to live decided to redecorate some of the apartments, including hers.’

  ‘Big-hearted of him.’

  ‘In her toilet, behind some kind of false panel, he found a doper’s kit. No drugs, but everything you’d need to service a habit — needles, syringes, the works. Now, the tenant who took over the place from your client when she disappeared was a priest, so it didn’t seem likely that these needles were his, right? And if the lady was using dope, then that might explain a lot, wouldn’t you say? I mean, you never can predict what a doper will do.’

  I shook my head. ‘She wasn’t the type. I’d have noticed something, wouldn’t I?’

  ‘Not always. Not if she was trying to wean herself off the stuff. Not if she were a strong sort of character. Well then, it was reported and I thought you’d like to know. So now you can close that file. With that sort of secret there’s no telling what else she might have kept from you.’

  ‘No, it’s all right. I got a good look at her nipples.’

  Nebe smiled nervously, not quite sure if I was telling him a dirty joke or not.

  ‘Good were they — her nipples?’

  ‘Just the two of them, Arthur. But they were beautiful.’

  2

  Monday, 29 August

  The houses on Herbertstrasse, in any other city but Berlin, would each have been surrounded by a couple of hectares of shrub-lined lawn. But as it was they filled their individual plots of land with little or no space for grass and paving. Some of them were no more than the front-gate’s width from the sidewalk. Architecturally they were a mixture of styles, ranging from the Palladian to the neo-Gothic, the Wilhelmine and some that were so vernacular as to be impossible to describe. Judged as a whole, Herbertstrasse was like an assemblage of old field-marshals and grand-admirals in full-dress-uniforms obliged to sit on extremely small and inadequate camp stools.

  The great wedding-cake of a house to which I had been summoned belonged properly on a Mississippi plantation, an impression enhanced by the black cauldron of a maid who answered the door. I showed her my ID and told her that I was expected. She stared doubtfully at my identification, as if she were Himmler himself.

  ‘Frau Lange didn’t say nothing to me about you.’

  ‘I expect she forgot,’ I said. ‘Look, she only called my office half an hour ago.’

  ‘All right,’ she said reluctantly. ‘You’d better come in.’

  She showed me into a drawing-room that you could have called elegant but for the large and only partially chewed dogbone that was lying on the carpet. I looked around for the owner but there was no sign of one.

  ‘Don’t touch anything,’ said the black cauldron. ‘I’ll tell her you’re here.’ Then, muttering and grumbling like I’d got her out of the bath, she waddled off to find her mistress. I sat down on a mahogany sofa with dolphins carved on the armrests. Next to it was a matching table, the top resting on dolphin-tails. Dolphins were a comic effect always popular with German cabinet-makers, but, personally, I’d seen a better sense of humour in a three-pfennig stamp. I was there about five minutes before the cauldron rolled back in and said that Frau Lange would see me now.

  We went along a long, gloomy hallway that was home to a lot of stuffed fish, one of which, a fine salmon, I stopped to admire.

  ‘Nice fish,’ I said. ‘Who’s the fisherman?’ She turned impatiently.

  ‘No fisherman here,’ she said. ‘Just fish. What a house this is for fish, and cats, and dogs. Only the cats is the worst. At least the fish is dead. You can’t dust them cats and dogs.’

  Almost automatically I ran my finger along the salmon’s cabinet. There didn’t seem to be a great deal of evidence that any kind of dusting took place; and even on my comparatively short introduction to the Lange household, it was easy to see that the carpets were rarely, if ever, vacuumed. After the mud of the trenches a bit of dust and a few crumbs on the floor don’t offend me that much. But all the same, I’d seen plenty of homes in the worst slums of Neukölln and Wedding that were kept cleaner than this one.

  The cauldron opened some glass doors and stood aside. I went into an untidy sitting-room which also seemed to be part office, and the doors closed behind me.

  She was a large, fleshy orchid of a woman. Fat hung pendulously on her peach-coloured face and arms, making her look like one of those stupid dogs that is bred to have a coat several sizes too large for it. Her own stupid dog was altogether more shapeless than the ill-fitting Sharpei she resembled.

  ‘It’s very good of you to come and see me at such short notice,’ she said. I uttered a few deferential noises, but she had the sort of clout you can only get from living in a fancy address like Herbertstrasse.

  Frau Lange sat down on a green-coloured chaise longue and spread her dog’s fur on her generous lap like a piece of knitting she intended to work on while explaining her problem to me. I supposed her to be in her middle fifties. Not that it mattered. When women get beyond fifty their age ceases to be of interest to anyone other than themselves. With men the situation is entirely the opposite.

  She produced a cigarette case and invited me to smoke, adding as a proviso: ‘They’re menthol.’

  I thought it was curiosity that made me take one, but as I sucked my first lungful I winced, realizing that I had merely forgotten how disgusting a menthol tastes. She chuckled at my obvious discomfort.

  ‘Oh, put
it out man, for God’s sake. They taste horrible. I don’t know why I smoke them, really I don’t. Have one of your own or I’ll never get your attention.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, stubbing it out in a hub-cap of an ashtray, ‘I think I will.’

  ‘And while you’re at it, you can pour us both a drink. I don’t know about you but I could certainly do with one.’ She pointed to a great Biedermeier secretaire, the top section of which, with its bronze Ionic columns, was an ancient Greek temple in miniature.

  ‘There’s a bottle of gin in that thing,’ she said. ‘I can’t offer you anything but lime juice to put in it. I’m afraid it’s the only thing I ever drink.’

  It was a little early for me, but I mixed two anyway. I liked her for trying to put me at my ease, even though that was supposed to be one of my own professional accomplishments. Except that Frau Lange wasn’t in the least bit nervous. She looked like the kind of lady who had quite a few professional accomplishments of her own. I handed her the drink and sat down on a creaking leather chair that was next to the chaise.

  ‘Are you an observant man, Herr Gunther?’

  ‘I can see what’s happening in Germany, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘It wasn’t, but I’m glad to hear it anyway. No, what I meant was, how good are you at seeing things?’

  ‘Come now, Frau Lange, there’s no need to be the cat creeping around the hot milk. Just walk right up and lap it.’ I waited for a moment, watching her grow awkward. ‘I’ll say it for you if you like. You mean, how good a detective am I.’

  ‘I’m afraid I know very little of these matters.’

  ‘No reason why you should.’

  ‘But if I am to confide in you I feel I ought to have some idea of your credentials.’

  I smiled. ‘You’ll understand that mine is not the kind of business where I can show you the testimonials of several satisfied customers. Confidentiality is as important to my clients as it is in the confessional. Perhaps even more important.’

  ‘But then how is one to know that one has engaged the services of someone who is good at what he does?’

  ‘I’m very good at what I do, Frau Lange. My reputation is well-known. A couple of months ago I even had an offer for my business. Rather a good offer, as it happened.’

  ‘Why didn’t you sell?’

  ‘In the first place the business wasn’t for sale. And in the second I’d make as bad an employee as I would an employer. All the same, it’s flattering when that sort of thing happens. Of course, all this is quite beside the point. Most people who want the services of a private investigator don’t need to buy the firm. Usually they just ask their lawyers to find someone. You’ll find that I’m recommended by several law firms, including the ones who don’t like my accent or my manners.’

  ‘Forgive me, Herr Gunther, but in my opinion the law is a much overrated profession.’

  ‘I can’t argue with you there. I never met a lawyer yet that wasn’t above stealing his mother’s savings and the mattress she was keeping them under.’

  ‘In nearly all business matters I have found my own judgement to be a great deal more reliable.’

  ‘What exactly is your business, Frau Lange?’

  ‘I own and manage a publishing company.’

  ‘The Lange Publishing Company?’

  ‘As I said, I haven’t often been wrong by trusting my own judgement, Herr Gunther. Publishing is all about taste, and to know what will sell one must appreciate something of the tastes of the people to whom one is selling. Now, I’m a Berliner to my fingertips, and I believe I know this city and its people as well as anyone does. So with reference to my original question, which was to do with your being observant, you will answer me this: if I were a stranger in Berlin, how would you describe the people of this city to me?’

  I smiled. ‘What’s a Berliner, eh? That’s a good question. No client’s ever asked me to leap through a couple of hoops to see how clever a dog I am before. You know, mostly I don’t do tricks, but in your case I’ll make an exception. Berliners like people to make exceptions for them. I hope you’re paying attention now because I’ve started my act. Yes, they like to be made to feel exceptional, although at the same time they like to keep up appearances. Mostly they’ve got the same sort of look. A scarf, hat and shoes that could walk you to Shanghai without a corn. As it happens, Berliners like to walk, which is why so many of them own a dog: something vicious if you’re masculine, something cute if you’re something else. The men comb their hair more than the women, and they also grow moustaches you could hunt wild pig in. Tourists think that a lot of Berlin men like dressing-up as women, but that’s just the ugly women giving the men a bad name. Not that there are many tourists these days. National Socialism’s made them as rare a sight as Fred Astaire in jackboots.

  ‘The people of this town will take cream with just about anything, including beer, and beer is something they take very seriously indeed. The women prefer a ten-minute head on it, just like the men, and they don’t mind paying for it themselves. Nearly everyone who drives a car drives much too fast, but nobody would ever dream of running a red light. They’ve got rotten lungs because the air is bad, and because they smoke too much, and a sense of humour that sounds cruel if you don’t understand it, and even crueller if you do. They buy expensive Biedermeier cabinets as solid as blockhouses, and then hang little curtains on the insides of the glass doors to hide what they’ve got in there. It’s a typically idiosyncratic mixture of the ostentatious and the private. How am I doing?’

  Frau Lange nodded. ‘Apart from the comment about Berlin’s ugly women, you’ll do just fine.’

  ‘It wasn’t pertinent.’

  ‘Now there you’re wrong. Don’t back down or I shall stop liking you. It was pertinent. You’ll see why in a moment. What are your fees?’

  ‘Seventy marks a day, plus expenses.’

  ‘And what expenses might there be?’

  ‘Hard to say. Travel. Bribes. Anything that results in information. You get receipts for everything except the bribes. I’m afraid you have to take my word for those.’

  ‘Well, let’s hope that you’re a good judge of what is worth paying for.’

  ‘I’ve had no complaints.’

  ‘And I assume you’ll want something in advance.’ She handed me an envelope. ‘You’ll find a thousand marks in cash in there. Is that satisfactory to you?’ I nodded. ‘Naturally I shall want a receipt.’

  ‘Naturally,’ I said, and signed the piece of paper she had prepared. Very businesslike, I thought. Yes, she was certainly quite a lady. ‘Incidentally, how did you come to choose me? You didn’t ask your lawyer, and,’ I added thoughtfully, ‘I don’t advertise, of course.’

  She stood up and, still holding her dog, went over to the desk.

  ‘I had one of your business cards,’ she said, handing it to me. ‘Or at least my son did. I acquired it at least a year ago from the pocket of one of his old suits I was sending to the Winter Relief.’ She referred to the welfare programme that was run by the Labour Front, the DAF. ‘I kept it, meaning to return it to him. But when I mentioned it to him I’m afraid he told me to throw it away. Only I didn’t. I suppose I thought it might come in useful at some stage. Well, I wasn’t wrong, was I?’

  It was one of my old business cards, dating from the time before my partnership with Bruno Stahlecker. It even had my previous home telephone number written on the back.

  ‘I wonder where he got it,’ I said.

  ‘I believe he said that it was Dr Kindermann’s.’

  ‘Kindermann?’

  ‘I’ll come to him in a moment, if you don’t mind.’ I thumbed a new card from my wallet.

  ‘It’s not important. But I’ve got a partner now, so you’d better have one of my new ones.’ I handed her the card, and she placed it on the desk next to the telephone. While she was sitting down her face adopted a serious expression, as if she had switched off something inside her head.

  ‘And no
w I’d better tell you why I asked you here,’ she said grimly. ‘I want you to find out who’s blackmailing me.’ She paused, shifting awkwardly on the chaise longue. ‘I’m sorry, this isn’t very easy for me.’

  ‘Take your time. Blackmail makes anyone feel nervous.’ She nodded and gulped some of her gin.

  ‘Well, about two months ago, perhaps a little more, I received an envelope containing two letters that had been written by my son to another man. To Dr Kindermann. Of course I recognized my son’s handwriting, and although I didn’t read them, I knew that they were of an intimate nature. My son is a homosexual, Herr Gunther. I’ve known about it for some time, so this was not the terrible revelation to me that this evil person had intended. He made that much clear in his note. Also that there were several more letters like the ones I had received in his possession, and that he would send them to me if I paid him the sum of 1,000 marks. Were I to refuse he would have no alternative but to send them to the Gestapo. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you, Herr Gunther, that this government takes a less enlightened attitude towards these unfortunate young men than did the Republic. Any contact between men, no matter how tenuous, is these days regarded as punishable. For Reinhard to be exposed as a homosexual would undoubtedly result in his being sent to a concentration camp for up to ten years.

  ‘So I paid, Herr Gunther. My chauffeur left the money in the place I was told, and a week or so later I received not a packet of letters as I had expected, but only one letter. It was accompanied by another anonymous note which informed me that the author had changed his mind, that he was poor, that I should have to buy the letters back one at a time, and that there were still ten of them in his possession. Since then I have received four back, at a cost of almost 5,000 marks. Each time he asks for more than the last.’

  ‘Does your son know about this?’