by Philip Kerr
It was early evening by the time that the train got into the Haupt Station in central Nuremberg. Outside, by the equestrian statue of some unknown aristocrat, we caught a taxi which drove us eastwards along Frauentorgraben and parallel to the walls of the old city. These are as high as seven or eight metres, and dominated at intervals by big square towers. This huge medieval wall, and a great, dry, grassy moat that is as wide as thirty metres, help to distinguish the old Nuremberg from the new, which, with a singular lack of obtrusion, surrounds it.
Our hotel was the Deutscher Hof, one of the city’s oldest and best, and our rooms commanded excellent views across the wall to the steep, pitched rooftops and regiments of chimney-pots which lay beyond.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Nuremberg was the largest city in the ancient kingdom of Franconia, as well as one of the principal marts of trade between Germany, Venice and the East. It was still the chief commercial and manufacturing city of southern Germany, but now it had a new importance, as the capital of National Socialism. Every year, Nuremberg played host to the great Party rallies which were the brainchild of Hitler’s architect, Speer.
As thoughtful as the Nazis were, naturally you didn’t have to go to Nuremberg to see one of these over-orchestrated events, and in September people stayed away from cinemas in droves for fear of having to sit through the newsreels which would be made up of virtually nothing else.
By all accounts, sometimes there were as many as a hundred thousand people at the Zeppelin Field to wave their flags. Nuremberg, like any city in Bavaria as I recall, never did offer much in the way of real amusement.
Since we weren’t appointed to meet Martin, the Nuremberg Chief of Police, until ten o’clock the following morning, Korsch and I felt obliged to spend the evening in search of whatever entertainment there was. Especially because Kripo Executive was footing the bill. It was a thought that had particular appeal for Korch.
‘This isn’t bad at all,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘Not only is the Alex paying for me to stay in a cock-smart hotel, but I’m also getting the overtime.’
‘Make the most of it,’ I said. ‘It’s not often that fellows like you and me get to play the Party bigshot. And if Hitler gets his war, we may have to live on this little memory for quite a while.’
A lot of bars in Nuremberg had the look of places which might have been the headquarters of smaller trade guilds. These were filled with militaria and other relics of the past, and the walls were often adorned with old pictures and curious souvenirs collected by generations of proprietors, which were of no more interest to us than a set of logarithm tables. But at least the beer was good, you could always say that about Bavaria, and at the Blaue Flasche on Hall Platz, where we ended up for dinner, the food was even better.
Back at the Deutscher Hof we called in at the hotel’s café restaurant for a brandy and were met by an astonishing sight. Sitting at a corner table, loudly drunk, was a party of three that included a couple of brainless-looking blondes and, wearing the single-breasted light-brown tunic of an NSDAP political leader, the Gauleiter of Franconia, Julius Streicher himself.
The waiter returning with our drinks smiled nervously when we asked him to confirm that it was indeed Julius Streicher sitting in the corner of the café. He said that it was, and quickly left as Streicher started to shout for another bottle of champagne.
It wasn’t difficult to see why Streicher was feared. Apart from his rank, which was powerful enough, the man was built like a bare-fist fighter. With hardly any neck at all, his bald head, small ears, solid-looking chin and almost invisible eyebrows, Streicher was a paler version of Benito Mussolini. His apparent belligerence was given greater force by an enormous rhino-whip which lay on the table before him like some long black snake.
He thumped the table with his fist so that all the glasses and cutlery rattled loudly.
‘What the fuck does a man have to do to get some fucking service around here?’ he yelled at the waiter. ‘We’re dying of thirst.’ He pointed at another waiter. ‘You, I told you to keep a fucking eye on us, you little cunt, and the minute you saw an empty bottle to bring us another. What, are you stupid or something?’ Once again he banged the table with his fist, much to the amusement of his two companions, who squealed with delight, and persuaded Streicher to laugh at his own ill-temper.
‘Who does he remind you of?’ said Korsch.
‘Al Capone,’ I said without thinking, and then added: ‘Actually, they all remind me of Al Capone.’ Korsch laughed.
We sipped our brandies and watched the show, which was more than we could have hoped for so early in our visit, and by midnight Streicher’s and our own were the only parties left in the café, the others having been driven away by the Gauleiter’s incessant cursing. Another waiter came to wipe our table and empty our ashtray.
‘Is he always this bad?’ I asked him.
The waiter laughed bitterly. ‘This? This is nothing,’ he said. ‘You should have seen him ten days ago after the Party rallies were finally over. He tore hell out of this place.’
‘Why do you let him come in here, then?’ said Korsch.
The waiter looked at him pityingly. ‘Are you kidding? You just try stopping him. The Deutscher is his favourite watering-hole. He’d soon find some pretext on which to close us down if we ever kicked him out. Maybe worse than that, who knows? They say he often goes up to the Palace of Justice on Furtherstrasse and whips young boys in the cells there.’
‘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 holdin
g 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.’