by Philip Kerr
‘Do you know any good bedtime stories, Plato?’ she giggled.
‘No,’ I said, tightening my grip on her. ‘But I know plenty of bad ones. The kind where the beautiful but spoilt princess gets boiled alive and eaten up by the wicked troll.’
A vague glimmer of doubt began to grow in the bright blue iris of each corrupt eye, and her smile was no longer wholly confident as I hauled up her skirt and started to tug her pants down.
‘Oh, I could tell you lots of stories like that,’ I said darkly. ‘The sort of stories that policemen tell their daughters. Horrible gruesome stories that give girls the kind of nightmares which their fathers can be glad of.’
‘Stop it,’ she laughed nervously. ‘You’re frightening me.’ Certain now that things weren’t going quite to plan, she reached desperately for her pants as I yanked them down her legs, exposing the fledgling that nestled in her groin.
‘They’re glad because it means that their pretty little daughters will be much too scared to ever go into a strange man’s house, just in case he should turn into a wicked troll.’
‘Please, mister, don’t,’ she said.
I smacked her bare bottom and pushed her away.
‘So it’s lucky for you, princess, that I’m a detective and not a troll, otherwise you’d be ketchup.’
‘You’re a policeman?’ she gulped, tears welling up in her eyes.
‘That’s right, I’m a policeman. And if I ever find you playing the apprentice snapper again, I’ll see to it that your father takes a stick to you, understand?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered, and quickly pulled up her pants.
I picked up the pile of old shirts and towels from where I had dropped them on the floor, and pushed them into her arms.
‘Now get out of here before I do the job myself.’ She ran into the hall and out of the apartment in terror, as if I had been Niebelung himself.
After I’d closed the door on her, the smell and touch of that delicious little body, and the frustrated desire of it, remained with me for as long as it took to pour myself a drink and take a cold bath.
That September it seemed that passion everywhere, already smouldering like a rotten fuse-box, was easily ignited, and I wished that the hot blood of Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia could have been as easily dealt with as was my own excitation.
As a bull you learn to expect an increase in crime during hot weather. In January and February even the most desperate criminals stay home in front of the fire.
Reading Professor Berg’s book, The Sadist, later on that same day, I wondered how many lives had been saved simply because it was too cold or too wet for Kürten to venture out of doors, Still, nine murders, seven attempted murders and forty acts of arson was an impressive enough record.
According to Berg, Kürten, the product of a violent home, had come to crime at an early age, committing a string of petty larcenies and enduring several periods of imprisonment until, at the age of thirty-eight, he had married a woman of strong character. He had always had sadistic impulses, being inclined to torture cats and other dumb animals, and now he was obliged to keep these tendencies in a mental straitjacket. But when his wife was not at home Kiirten’s evil demon at times grew too powerful to restrain, and he was driven to commit the terrible and sadistic crimes for which he was to become infamous.
This sadism was sexual in its origin, Berg explained. Kürten’s home circumstances had rendered him predisposed to a deviation of the sexual urge, and his early experiences had all helped to condition the direction of that urge.
In the twelve months that separated Kurten’s capture and his execution, Berg had met frequently with Kürten and found him to be a man of notable character and talent. He was possessed of considerable charm and intelligence, an excellent memory and keen powers of observation. Indeed, Berg was moved to remark upon the man’s accessibility. Another outstanding characteristic was Kurten’s vanity, which manifested itself in his smart, well-cared for appearance and in his delight at having outwitted the Dusseldorf police for as long as he had cared to do so.
Berg’s conclusion was not a particularly comfortable one for any civilized member of society: Kürten was not mad within the terms of Paragraph Fifty-one, in that his acts were neither completely compulsive nor wholly irresistible, so much as pure, unadulterated cruelty.
If that wasn’t bad enough, reading Baudelaire left me feeling as comfortable in my soul as a bullock in an abattoir. It didn’t require a superhuman effort of imagination to accept Frau Kalau vom Hofe’s suggestion that this rather Gothic French poet provided an explicit articulation of the mind of a Landru, a Gormann or a Kürten.
Yet there was something more here. Something deeper and more universal than merely a clue as to the psyche of the mass murderer. In Baudelaire’s interest in violence, in his nostalgia for the past and through his revelation of the world of death and corruption, I heard the echo of a Satanic litany that was altogether more contemporary, and saw the pale reflection of a different kind of criminal, one whose spleen had the force of law.
I don’t have much of a memory for words. I can barely remember the words of the national anthem. But some of these verses stayed in my head like the persistent smell of mingled musk and tar.
That evening I drove down to see Bruno’s widow Katia at their home in Berlin-Zehlendorf. This was my second visit since Bruno’s death, and I brought some of his things from the office, as well as a letter from my insurance company acknowledging receipt of the claim I had made on Katia’s behalf.
There was even less to say now than before, but nevertheless I stayed for a full hour, holding Katia’s hand and trying to swallow the lump in my throat with several glasses of schnapps.
‘How’s Heinrich taking it?’ I said uncomfortably, hearing the unmistakable sound of the boy singing in his bedroom.
‘He hasn’t talked about it yet,’ said Katia, her grief giving way a little to embarrassment. ‘I think he sings because he wants to escape from having to face up to it.’
‘Grief affects people very differently,’ I said, scraping around for some sort of excuse. But I didn’t think this was true at all. To my own father’s premature death, when I hadn’t been much older than Heinrich was now, had been appended as its brutal corollary the inescapable logic that I was myself not immortal. Ordinarily I would not have been insensitive to Heinrich’s situation, ‘But why must he sing that song?’
‘He’s got it into his head that the Jews had something to do with his father’s death.’
‘That’s absurd,’ I said.
Katia sighed and shook her head. ‘I’ve told him that, Bernie. But he won’t listen.’
On my way out I lingered at the boy’s doorway, listening to his strong young voice.
“‘Load up the empty guns, And polish up the knives, Let’s kill the Jewish bastards, Who poison all our lives.”’
For a moment I was tempted to open the door and belt the young thug on the jaw. But what was the point? What was the point of doing anything but leave him alone? There are so many ways of escaping from that which one fears, and not the least of these is hatred.
8
Monday, 12 September
A badge, a warrant card, an office on the third floor and, apart from the number of S S uniforms there were about the place, it almost felt like old times. It was too bad that there were not many happy memories, but happiness was never an emotion in plentiful supply at the Alex, unless your idea of a party involved working on a kidney with a chair-leg. A couple of times men I knew from the old days stopped me in the corridor to say hallo, and how sorry they were to hear about Bruno. But mostly I got the kind of looks that might have greeted an undertaker in a cancer ward.
Deubel, Korsch and Becker were waiting for me in my office. Deubel was explaining the subtle technique of the cigarette punch to his junior officers.
‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘When he’s putting the nail in his guzzler, you give him the uppercut. An open jaw breaks
real easy.’
‘How nice to hear that criminal investigation is keeping up with modern times,’ I said as I came through the door. ‘I suppose you learned that in the Freikorps, Deubel.’
The man smiled. ‘You’ve been reading my school-report, sir.’
‘I’ve been doing a lot of reading,’ I said, sitting down at my desk.
‘Never been much of a reader myself,’ he said.
‘You surprise me.’
‘You’ve been reading that woman’s books, sir?’ said Korsch. ‘The ones that explain the criminal mind?’
‘This one doesn’t take much explanation,’ said Deubel. ‘He’s a fucking spinner.’
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘But we’re not about to catch him with blackjacks and brass knuckles. You can forget all your usual methods — cigarette punches and things like that.’ I stared hard at Deubel. ‘A killer like this is difficult to catch because, for most of the time at least, he looks and behaves like an ordinary citizen. And with none of the hallmarks of criminality, and no obvious motive, we can’t rely on informers to help us get on his track.’
Kriminalassistent Becker, on loan from Department VB3 — Vice — shook his head.
‘If you’ll forgive me, sir,’ he said, ‘that’s not quite true. Dealing with sexual deviants, there are a few informers. Butt-fuckers and dolly-boys, it’s true, but now and again they do come up with the goods.’
‘I’ll bet they do,’ Deubel muttered.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘We’ll talk to them. But first there are two aspects to this case that I want us all to consider. One is that these girls disappear and then their bodies are found all over the city. Well, that tells me that our killer is using a car. The other aspect is that as far as I am aware, we’ve never had any reports of anyone witnessing the abduction of a victim. No reports of a girl being dragged kicking and screaming into the back of a car. That seems to me to indicate that maybe they went willingly with the killer. That they weren’t afraid. Now it’s unlikely that they all knew the killer, but quite possibly they might have trusted him because of what he was.’
‘A priest, maybe,’ said Korsch. ‘Or a youth leader.’
‘Or a bull,’ I said. ‘It’s quite possible he could be any one of those things. Or all of them.’
‘You think he might be disguising himself?’ said Korsch.
I shrugged. ‘I think that we have to keep an open mind about all of these things. Korsch, I want you to check through the records and see if you can’t match anyone with a record for sexual assault with either a uniform, a church or a car licence plate.’ He sagged a little. ‘It’s a big job, I know, so I’ve spoken to Lobbes in Kripo Executive, and he’s going to get you some help.’ I looked at my wristwatch. ‘Kriminaldirektor Müller is expecting you over in VC1 in about ten minutes, so you’d better get going.’
‘Nothing on the Hanke girl yet?’ I said to Deubel, when Korsch had gone.
‘My men have looked everywhere,’ he said. ‘The railway embankments, the parks, waste ground. We’ve dragged the Teltow Canal twice. There’s not a lot more we can do.’ He lit a cigarette and grimaced. ‘She’s dead by now. Everyone knows it.’
‘I want you to conduct a door-to-door inquiry throughout the area where she disappeared. Speak to everyone, and I mean everyone, including the girl’s schoolfriends. Somebody must have seen something. Take some photographs to jog a few memories.’
‘If you don’t mind me saying, sir,’ he growled, ‘that’s surely a job for the uniformed boys in Orpo.’
‘Those mallet-heads are good for arresting drunks and garter-handlers,’ I said. ‘But this is a job requiring intelligence. That’s all.’
Pulling another face, Deubel stubbed out his cigarette in a way that let me know he wished the ashtray could have been my face, and dragged himself reluctantly out of my office.
‘Better mind what you say about Orpo to Deubel, sir,’ said Becker. ‘He’s a friend of Dummy Daluege’s. They were in the same Stettin Freikorps regiment.’ The Freikorps were paramilitary organizations of ex-soldiers which had been formed after the war to destroy Bolshevism in Germany and to protect German borders from the encroachments of the Poles. Kurt ‘Dummy’ Daluege was the chief of Orpo.
‘Thanks, I read his file.’
‘He used to be a good bull. But these days he works an easy shift and then pushes off home. All Eberhard Deubel wants out of life is to live long enough to collect his pension and see his daughter grow up to marry the local bank manager.’
‘The Alex has got plenty like him,’ I said. ‘You’ve got children, haven’t you, Becker?’
‘A son, sir,’ he said proudly. ‘Norfried. He’s nearly two.’
‘Norfried, eh? That sounds German enough.’
‘My wife, sir. She’s very keen on this Aryan thing of Dr Rosenberg’s.’
‘And how does she feel about you working in Vice?’
‘We don’t talk much about what happens in my job. As far as she is concerned, I’m just a bull.’
‘So tell me about these sexual-deviant informers.’
‘While I was in Section M2, the Brothel Surveillance Squad, we only used one or two,’ he explained. ‘But Meisinger’s Queer Squad use them all the time. He depends on informers. A few years ago there was a homosexual organization called the Friendship League, with about 30,000 members. Well, Meisinger got hold of the entire list and still leans on a name now and then for information. He also has the confiscated subscription lists of several pornographic magazines, as well as the names of the publishers. We might try a couple of them, sir. Then there is Reichsführer Himmler’s ferris-wheel. It’s an electrically powered rotating card-index with thousands and thousands of names on it, sir. We could always see what came up on that.’
‘It sounds like something a gypsy fortune-teller would use.’
‘They say that Himmler’s keen on that shit.’
‘And what about a man who’s keen on nudging something? Where are all the bees in this city now that all the brothels have been closed down?’
‘Massage parlours. You want to give a girl some bird, you’ve got to let her rub your back first. Kuhn — he’s the boss of M2 — he doesn’t bother them much. You want to ask a few snappers if they’d had to massage any spinners lately, sir?’
‘It’s as good a place to start as any I can think of.’
‘We’ll need an E-warrant, a search for missing persons.’
‘Better go and get one, Becker.’
Becker was tall, with small, bored, blue eyes, a thin straw-hat of yellow hair, a doglike nose, and a mocking, almost manic smile. His looked a cynical sort of face, which was indeed the case. In Becker’s everyday conversation there was more blasphemy against the divine beauty of life than you would have found among a pack of starving hyenas.
Reasoning that it was still too early for the massage-trade, we decided to try the dirty-book brigade first, and from the Alex we drove south to Hallesches Tor.
Wende Hoas was a tall, grey building close to the S-Bahn railway. We went up to the top floor where, with manic smile firmly in place, Becker kicked in one of the doors.
A tubby, prim little man with a monocle and a moustache looked up from his chair and smiled nervously as we walked into his office. ‘Ah, Herr Becker,’ he said. ‘Come in, come in. And you’ve brought a friend with you. Excellent.’
There wasn’t much room in the musty-smelling room. Tall stacks of books and magazines surrounded the desk and filing cabinet. I picked up a magazine and started to flick through it.
‘Hallo, Helmut,’ Becker chuckled, picking up another. He grunted with satisfaction as he turned the pages. ‘This is filthy,’ he laughed.
‘Help yourselves, gentlemen,’ said the man called Helmut. ‘If there’s anything special you’re looking for, just ask. Don’t be shy.’ He leant back in his chair and from the pocket of his dirty grey waistcoat he produced a snuff box which he opened with a flick of his dirty thumbnail. He helped himself
to a pinch, an indulgence which was effected with as much offence to the ear as any of the printed matter that might have been available was to the eye.
In close but poorly photographed gynaecological detail, the magazine I was looking at was partly given over to text that was designed to strain the fly-buttons. If it was to be believed, young German nurses copulated with no more thought than the average alley-cat.
Becker tossed his magazine on to the floor and picked up another. “‘The Virgin’s Wedding Night”,’ he read.
‘Not your sort of thing, Herr Becker,’ Helmut said.
‘“TheStoryofaDildo”?’
‘That one’s not at all bad.’
“‘Raped on the U-Bahn”.’
‘Ah, now that is good. There is a girl in that one with the juiciest plum I’ve ever seen.’
‘And you’ve seen a few, haven’t you, Helmut?’
The man smiled modestly, and looked over Becker’s shoulder as he gave the photographs close attention.
‘Rather a nice girl-next-door type, don’t you think?’
Becker snorted. ‘If you happen to live next door to a fucking dog kennel.’
‘Oh, very good,’ Helmut laughed, and started to clean his monocle. As he did so, a long and extremely grey length of his lank brown hair disengaged itself from a poorly disguised bald-patch, like a quilt slipping off a bed, and dangled ridiculously beside one of his transparent red ears.
‘We’re looking for a man who likes mutilating young girls,’ I said. ‘Would you have anything catering for that sort of pervert?’
Helmut smiled and shook his head sadly. ‘No, sir, I’m afraid not. We don’t much care to deal for the sadistic end of the market. We leave the whipping and bestiality to others.’