The Butchers of Berlin

by Chris Petit

  Morgen fired again and they fell silent. The tracksuited man with the tough face emerged out of the crowd and asked Morgen, ‘What makes you think you can walk in here?’

  Someone shouted they had been invited.

  Morgen asked what was going on.

  The tracksuited man played to the crowd, putting his hands on his hips. ‘We’re hanging a pig.’

  A few boys tittered behind their hands. The pig had been let go and was wandering around in a daze, her bonnet crooked and one trouser leg unravelled, which made it hard to walk.

  The tracksuited man went on. ‘It’s what happens to pigs that eat their young. It’s what happens to cannibal pigs. It’s a time-honoured tradition. So I would ask you to leave so we can proceed.’

  ‘We were invited,’ the same voice as before shouted.

  The tuba and tambourine had stopped with the gunshots, but the boy on the drum continued a muffled beat. The centrifugal force of the revel had dissipated, leaving everything tattered and dishevelled. The pig stood splay-footed, alone and docile in the middle of the room. The bonnet had slipped under her chin. The trouser legs had unravelled and were spattered with excrement.

  Morgen walked out. Schlegel experienced a moment of paralysis that prevented him leaving too.

  Stoffel stepped forward and watched Morgen go. He looked like he was swimming in booze. His clothes were awry and he had managed to lose a shoe. No one seemed to know what to do. Stoffel took a while getting his bearings then lumbered towards the pig. Everything appeared to go into slow motion as Stoffel took out a long-barrelled pistol, which snagged in his shoulder holster. Schlegel recognised Metzler’s old Mauser. The pig looked at them with trusting eyes as Stoffel stepped forward and fired a bullet behind her ear. The animal convulsed once, made a sound like she was sneezing, rolled over and died without another sound. There was almost no blood.

  The woman he had smooched drove them back. It turned out she was in the transport corps. Schlegel dozed in a state of dismay. Stoffel sat behind him and kept punching him on the shoulder. They were going to kill the pig anyway, he said, and not in a nice way.

  Back at the Kripo the party was still going on and looked like it would never end. Two o’clock passed. ‘I am still able to stagger home. What about you?’ Schlegel asked another woman he didn’t know. At three they were served sausages. There was no sign of Morgen. The rest of the room was a heaving sea of strange faces. Stoffel reached the sentimental stage, fell on Schlegel and called him his little white-haired freak. Schlegel woke up in the cells with no recollection of how he had got there, with vague memories or dreams of men lining up in the night to take turns with the stripper.

  PART TWO

  43

  Morgen had been gone several days; no sign of him in the office. Schlegel had carried on drinking after the party. They all had. He took to wandering around at night, seeking out dives and the cheapest, roughest bars, looking for what he could not tell. Was it Grigor, or Morgen, or Sybil and her lover he expected to run into, or a combination of all of them? He came to see this nocturnal existence as a submerged world that represented the last traces of everything they wanted rid of. It was thrillingly different, the cheap music with its sentiment, the black marketeers, the deserters and battle-hardened soldiers on leave looking to pick a fight, the racketeers, pimps and their blowsy tarts, all on a private adventure very different from the one prescribed. Some of the habitués of this netherworld looked so rough they could have been clinging to the last of the wreckage, but there were snappy dressers too, well-laundered, middle-aged men in the centre of groups of thuggish youths and insecure young women. Sometimes older, respectable females, who had no place in such dives, came in to sell themselves, a sign of how desperate everything was becoming. Disability was a common sight: a leg stump, a missing arm or hand, an unseeing eye. Schlegel came to recognise the strategic wounds: the limping man who’d shot himself in the foot; the missing fingers that prevented military service. All the men shared the same crafty look of instant calculation.

  Twice he heard people say they smelled copper. Often he was asked what he was doing coming to such places, and he lied, saying his wife had been killed in the air raid, which was enough to elicit grunts of sympathy. The act seemed not much different from his usual pretending. When two toughs in a bar wanted to beat him up he surprised everyone by laughing and they left him alone.

  He never got really drunk, nor was he ever entirely sober. Loose was the word he used to describe himself; alert but with a pleasant blur around the edges. Sitting in his office, alone and undisturbed, he wondered about the strangely vanished Morgen, and his mysterious disappearance.

  He kept returning to how the gun that had shot the pig also put the bullet in Metzler’s brain and blown out the eye of the warden, who had made Sybil masturbate him, while she was secretly in love with another woman, who knew Francis Alwynd, who knew his mother and maybe, he decided, had even been her lover. Schlegel felt like his face was pressed against a glass and he was watching all these connections play out on the other side.

  Seen one way, the links seemed as improbable as those made up by Stoffel and Lampe, whose version nevertheless acquired a veracity of its own. Sometimes he wondered if he was in the process of reinventing himself in the way Lampe had twisted the facts to suit himself.

  He took to staying out all night. One morning, staggering home at first light, he saw written on a wall: What is authority? Such graffiti was almost unheard of and rare enough to merit a second visit. He got lost trying to find it again and could not decide whether it was still there and he had misremembered its location; if it had been erased; or if it had been scrawled only in his imagination.

  He was stopped by patrols who thought he was a deserter or a Jew. He found it contemptible the way they were conditioned to look at him like dog shit on the heel of someone’s shoe then grew craven when he showed his badge.

  Maybe it would be more interesting to leave the badge at home.

  44

  Because of his role in Emil and the Detectives, Gersten was a great one for using kids. It was like the murder story where no one spotted the postman. Even when people noticed kids they didn’t consider them. The gang he used was paid to skip school; tiny amounts but better than sitting in lessons. They had been issued with laminated cards, which made them feel important.

  He called their leader Emil, although his real name was Anton. Emil checked in at the end of each day for what Gersten called a debriefing, which made the kids’ days sound more purposeful.

  The picture he was putting together of Sybil was not good. She was behaving like a woman on an unhappy holiday, using her privileges, hanging out in cafés hoping for a slice of luck, that she would spot someone or have a brainwave, and otherwise was bunking off with her girlfriend.

  Gersten had seen it before. The absence of any real strategy, like a patient with a terminal illness granted an unexpected reprieve. It made him appreciate the Stella Kübler woman all the more. She was his best agent. He could only admire the icy beauty, the nerveless calculation, the appetite and energy for the hunt. He had hoped with Sybil he might have another Kübler. He would dearly like to question Kübler in one of his private sessions, but kept reminding himself she was too good to waste. If the Sybil woman failed and survived to tell the tale he would treat himself to her.

  She had gone and visited her mother and stayed half an hour. The mother was posing as a housekeeper for one of the more spectacularly corrupt of the golden pheasants, a former minister, washed up but not without influence, given that he was one of the old guard, and a household name in his time. They were all mad for star gazers and card readers now. They always had been, but not so desperately. Given a leadership based on oracle and interpretation, divination became the obvious way for the second tier to try to get a march on rivals, and so on down to the humble newspaper horoscope.

  Sybil had also met with Schlegel, or at least Gersten presumed. There could be only so many
white-haired young men in town.

  Third, she had visited Schmidt’s photography shop, which was interesting, if only because Gersten had been keeping an eye on the man’s pornographic activities.

  Time to scare the wits out of her.

  He had her picked up and taken to the huge, cavernous morgue that lay below ground in the centre of the city. The Gestapo had its own section. Often those that had died under interrogation were withheld from cremation to be displayed to other prisoners as examples of what they would next look like unless they co-operated.

  The morgue was damp, more mildewed Gothic crypt than the usual antiseptic, modern space, but it created the right atmosphere of gloom and horror. If the space was medieval, the equipment was spot-on: stainless-steel drawers on smooth-gliding rollers to hold the stacked bodies.

  Sybil looked tiny and pale as she approached between two much taller men. Gersten waited until she was positioned before sliding open the drawer.

  He saw her gasp. It was an intimate moment. She swayed from shock and Gersten thought her legs would crumple. He pictured her lying on the ground in a dead faint.

  ‘Let’s hope this is not you some day soon.’

  Sybil’s throat made a strange clicking noise. Gersten told one of the men to fetch a chair and a glass of water.

  ‘This is an example of work by the man you are looking for.’

  Sybil sat, eyes wide, mouth open, rigid.

  ‘We think this may be a German woman. There is nothing left so you can tell, any more than if it were a lump of beef. But we found one pubic hair that had stuck to the flesh; very, very pale. We think he is shifting and starting to kill indiscriminately, so driven by his loathing that he wishes only to obliterate.’

  He told the men to take Sybil upstairs. It was reached by a complex series of tunnels, which led directly to the Gestapo building and by themselves were enough to thoroughly unnerve.

  Gersten took his time joining her in the room with the usual river view. A long barge hauling coal was making its slow way downriver, under rain-laden skies.

  ‘Did we give you an umbrella?’ he asked when he knew perfectly well he had chosen one, with a malacca cane handle.

  He made a helpless gesture and said what he was telling her was in confidence. ‘I thought it was over. The butchered bodies were the work of a Bolshevik agent, but we are now hearing through the grapevine more than one killer is at work.’

  Gersten paused, pondering the enormity of what they faced.

  ‘The man I need you to hunt is a confirmed murderer, with at least two scalps. Now it seems he is working for this campaign of terror, flaying victims like they were animals, then skinning them alive.’

  They were dealing with a killing virus which must be stopped before it spread.

  Schlegel was dozing in his office when Frau Pelz rang through to say a woman was asking to speak to him and wouldn’t give her name.

  Schlegel thought Frau Pelz had messed up the connection because no one seemed to be on the line and he was about to hang up when a small, distant voice announced it was Sybil Todermann.

  When they met in the Bollenmüller Schlegel worried he still smelled of last night’s drink. He was taking Pervitin because he could get by on no sleep. He attributed the sweating and occasional dizzy spells to a chill. No one seemed to notice, the simple reason being – his newly alert state told him – the rest of the department was pilled up too.

  Sybil Todermann appeared so withdrawn he insisted she took a pill. She told a rambling story about being threatened by two youths on her way back to Grosse Hamburger Strasse, who accused her of being a Gestapo spy. They were about sixteen, nervous and almost certainly Jewish. One had a hat on and the other a very low, straight hairline. She drew a line with her finger across her forehead to show him. Schlegel, paying more attention to her than to what she was saying, found the gesture touching.

  The incident had left her shaken. All she wanted to do now was stay in bed. She was too depressed to go out and hid in her room.

  Schlegel threw out suggestions. It could be shown that Grigor had been deported. She could offer that to Gersten.

  Sybil looked doubtful. Schlegel immediately revised that to say it was almost certainly a ruse.

  Sybil, not listening, said, ‘Gersten showed me this . . .’ She stopped, lost for words. ‘You could hardly call it a body.’

  ‘He said Grigor did that?’ asked Schlegel in surprise.

  ‘Gersten says there’s more than a single killer. Grigor is just one.’

  Schlegel described the man he had seen driving the hearse. ‘

  That’s Grigor.’

  Seeing her apathy, he added unless she pulled herself together Gersten would lose patience.

  ‘You are hanging by no more than a thread.’

  The waiter at Clärchens was her best lead and he offered to go with her. Sybil said his presence would compromise her if she was being followed.

  Schlegel suspected she would retreat back into her funk. He was no leading example. The real reason for offering to accompany her was because he could drink there and stagger upstairs afterwards.

  He got her to promise she would go to Clärchens and suggested they meet again the same time tomorrow.

  Sybil went back to Grosse Hamburger Strasse to tidy herself before going out but lay down instead. She was surprised she slept at all but she had only to shut her eyes and it was like someone had switched her off, however active her unconscious brain, for she always woke exhausted. On that occasion she failed to sleep. She supposed it was the pill. It failed to make her think any more clearly and she lay unable to move.

  The following morning she was pulled from her bed by two of Gersten’s men and taken to Gestapo headquarters. Schlegel must be right; she had used up the man’s patience. He would deport her.

  She was left on her own for several hours to fight her rising panic. She knew waiting was part of the torture. Eventually she was taken back into the space with the two-way mirror.

  The room was lit up and empty. Sybil didn’t know what to expect. Her mother again, she supposed. She would have no choice but to do as they ordered. Her reflection off the glass showed her looking eaten up and older. Whoever she was expecting to be brought in, it wasn’t Schmidt, the photographer, beaten up and very afraid.

  While Schlegel waited for Sybil at the Bollenmüller two Gestapo men swept in checking papers. He stared, daring them to challenge him.

  He couldn’t decide about Sybil. He wanted to help but he was feeling little more than drunkenly philosophical.

  He stuck his foot out as the Gestapo men passed and one had to grab the back of a chair to stop himself from falling. Schlegel held his hands up in mock surrender. The man glared and told him to watch what he was doing. Schlegel shrugged and said he was waiting for a friend. When Sybil didn’t show up, Schlegel decided he wasn’t surprised and put her down as unreliable.

  Sybil jumped at the sight of Gersten’s reflection. He was standing behind her with a manila folder.

  ‘Quite sweet,’ he said, showing the photographs of her posing in the nude in Alwynd’s apartment, as well as kissing Lore.

  ‘I am not so sure about these.’

  It was the contact sheet taken by Schmidt. Sybil stared, ashamed not of their nudity but her brassy calculation.

  ‘Like a fallen angel with a nasty look in her eye,’ said Gersten. ‘Such a fine line between survival and corruption, I find. It interests me. I had expected more of you, in terms of talent and honesty, not this inertia and lack of will.’

  How had he found out about the photographs was all she could think to ask.

  ‘We have been watching Schmidt for weeks. He’ll be lucky to escape with his neck.’

  Gersten had been surprised when he saw the stake-out photographs of Sybil going in and out.

  ‘To be honest, I wasn’t expecting that. Schmidt tells me he was quite friendly with your girlfriend when she was younger and it crossed my mind she might have sent
you, rather than go herself, because she knew the shop was being watched. Not that I am trying to mark your card. You can ask her.’

  He gestured with his head for Sybil to look behind her. Schmidt was gone and in his place sat the hunched and stricken figure of Lore.

  Sybil was aware of her cry reflected back at her.

  ‘She wouldn’t be here if you were doing your job.’

  Sybil pleaded for another chance, daring to clutch at Gersten’s sleeve, begging him to release Lore. She had a good lead now.

  ‘From that idiot with the white hair?’

  ‘How did you know where Lore lived?’

  Sybil feared she already had the answer.

  ‘You, precious. Spot checks to see what you got up to until we could trust you. You went home once too often.’

  Had Schlegel reported her?

  ‘I must say, Francis Alwynd is an irresponsible man. He was looking for an abortionist recently. Not you, I hope.’

  Gersten told Sybil he liked her. He had cut her a lot of slack as a result.

  ‘You don’t want to know about the ones I don’t like. But now this – pornographic photographs, a lesbian lover. The way I look at it, we’re no further forward. You don’t do enough. I want your girlfriend on the case as part of the team, working as a regular catcher. Same terms apply, but she now has to work for her papers. Do your job properly and I will let you both go. As an example of my good faith – and do not tax my patience further – you can share a room. Now you can watch while I cut her.’

  Lore, perhaps sensing Sybil’s presence, seemed to be staring right at her, though she could not see through the glass. Sybil suspected Gersten would try to split them, out of spite or idle amusement. Lore struggled when Gersten produced a scalpel. One of the thugs standing back stepped forward and grabbed her, then a quick slash and the clean handkerchief applied. Sybil saw in Lore’s face the same disbelief as when he had done it to her.