The Butchers of Berlin (43 page)

She admitted she had been informing to the Austrian Commission, which was investigating Gersten, aware of his connection to her husband.

‘They paid quite well actually.’

But that dried up when the Austrians moved on before anything of consequence happened.

The meat of her statement concentrated on the night before the roundup, starting with an argument overheard between her husband and Metzler.

‘More of a blazing row really.’

She was in the kitchen when the voices next door became raised.

They were quarrelling over the warden’s sexual abuse of Sybil and the warden bragged how he was going to pass her on to Gersten. The row developed a tangent when he boasted how, some
nights before, he had been out all night on secret business, which he told Metzler would ‘settle the hash of your Jews’.

The argument then turned to what was referred to as the accident and what the warden sneeringly referred to as other kinds of trains.

It was the first they’d heard of any accident. The widow didn’t know what it meant either.

As for other trains, from what they understood, the smuggling stopped when the Austrians came, and after that Metzler was transferred, through Gersten’s intervention, to a cushy job at the
slaughterhouse goods yards.

Morgen said to Schlegel, ‘Let’s be clear. This is no time for faint-hearted speculation. In every case reality has turned out more extreme than any speculation.’

‘What if Metzler transferred to his new job to replace one escape line with another?’

Morgen smoked another cigarette. They were back upstairs.

He finally said, ‘We have to presume Metzler was working for Gersten.’

‘As in using him?’

‘Perhaps not running rings but playing him well enough.’

Morgen went to the blackboard. ‘Say, for argument’s sake . . .’

He wrote:
1) Gersten was persuaded or fooled by Metzler into continuing the arrangement.

‘For whatever reason,’ Morgen said, chalk poised, then added:
2) Something went wrong.
‘We don’t know what.’

He turned back to the board. Schlegel couldn’t see what he was writing until he had finished. He read:
3) What if Metzler’s transfer to the pig room was to do with whatever went
wrong?

‘What if. Whatever.’ Morgen threw down the chalk. ‘I can tell you what I see but it doesn’t answer anything!’

‘What exactly do you see?’

‘It’s obvious, man! You don’t need a crystal ball. Seismic tremors in the east. A change in historical weather. Our glorious summer of 1940 replaced by the endless winter of
discontent. Austerity. A brooding city full of foreign men and too many lonely women. And now these bodies, where we have two conditions. Are you with me?’

‘The conditions being?’

‘Intense agitation and glee of killing.’

What was the difference in the end, Schlegel asked.

‘Skinning someone alive, I would venture, comes from living with lots of bodies. What was your main impression of your time in the east?’

‘Everyone’s fear of what was out there. Figures lurking in empty landscapes.’

‘Figments of the imagination. Exactly! Superstition. Agitation is cutting off a man’s penis and dressing the corpse with money. Flaying something beyond recognition is about the
pleasure of killing. I doubt if you will find Grigor is the flayer. His killings seem too directed as messages to Gersten.’

‘Is the flayer one of Gersten’s crew, or even Gersten himself?’

‘Maybe Gersten knows. Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe it is more than one of his men. From my experience of the east, they like to watch. For all that, you could argue the desire to strip
the victim of all identity is a secret wish on the part of the perpe- trator to embrace what he fears most.’

Schlegel wondered what Morgen feared most.

‘The fear without reflects the fear within,’ Morgen went on. ‘Which means he will give himself away in the end. Anyway, it’s very different from Metzler’s day of
sticking your head over the parapet for three seconds and nailing someone six hundred metres away. Simpler times.’

‘And until then?’

‘Nothing probably. No proof, no evidence or hope of a confession. For Gersten’s lot it would be a mark of toughness and honour not to tell. Gersten is probably arranging to have
himself moved on. Nebe is covering up. There’s no body for Keleman. I would say the situation we are dealing with is amoebic, involving a series of splittings and doublings. We may be
witnesses but it would be wrong to think we can solve anything or bring anyone to book.’

Schlegel thought of something else and paled. ‘How many flayed bodies have there been?’

Morgen looked at him with incredulity. ‘Come on. Three!’

‘Yes, first the railway wagon, number two in Treptower Park and the third just now on the banks of the Spree. But Gersten showed me another which he said had been found in Alexanderplatz
by a Polish cleaner.’

The flayed body shown by Gersten to Schlegel was no longer in the Gestapo morgue. The search warrant – a waste of time given how long it took to get – was to no
avail. Morgen brought several men and they clattered about and found nothing.

A frustrated Morgen lit up in defiance of no-smoking signs. Schlegel recognised Gersten’s hatchet-faced, tubercular-looking assistant when he came down to see what the fuss was about. He
was expert at what was commonly known as the bureaucrat’s shrug.

Nebe, Schlegel suddenly thought. What if Nebe knew what was going on and had been dragged into the cover-up? He had much to hide. His name was on Keleman’s bribe list. Those charges alone
would be enough to destroy him.

Was Nebe being squeezed or squeezing? Covering up on his own initiative or for someone else? Did it explain why he was so disturbed by Morgen? Schlegel now understood Keleman’s fear. It
was like facing a giant tidal wave about to crash down. His hands were clammy. He wished he could sit in the bar with the green door with Keleman and be a better friend.

He felt compelled to explore, to see if the place was as frightening as before. Once he had been taken to a theatrical green room as a boy, where the makeshift warrens backstage and the
unpainted reverses of scenery flats reminded him of where he was now, the secret runs in marked contrast to the building’s public facade. As with backstage, the illusion was threadbare,
however palpable the menace. The pain in the building was the realest thing about it.

Five minutes later he might as well have been wandering in a forest for all the sense of direction he had, yet he was more fascinated than afraid, drawn by a strange buzzing which made him
wonder why there should be flies in winter. He found himself thinking about Sybil. He worried he had been remiss. All the messages she left when he was with Gersten she must have thought he had
ignored. He should have protected her more, even in the knowledge that his motives were conflicted. She was haunted and beautiful, all the more for being forbidden.

The buzzing sounded electrical. The building was a monument to bad wiring. Many corridor lights, hanging on exposed cables, didn’t work. Others flickered and hissed as the buzzing grew
closer.

He was aware of a residual aroma. He couldn’t think what he was reminded of, then identified it as the same sticky smell as butchers’ shops. He came to an open door. The lights
inside were off. He put his hand round the frame, feeling for the switch.

The flickering neon hurt his eyes. Blinking, he was confronted by a near replica of the slaughterhouse murder room. The only difference was it was quite stripped and appeared recently tidied and
cleared. It was a common utility space, ubiquitous even, but the similarity struck him as uncanny.

The humming was coming from next door.

Schlegel paused outside. The light was on.

Several sets of naked feet were laid out in rows on the floor. He stepped into what more resembled a stack room for the dead than an official morgue. A dozen and more corpses were stretched out
on the tiles, covered except for bare feet. Schlegel forced himself to look under each cover. None was flayed.

One he was sure was the still-bandaged man he had seen unloaded from the train in the fog.

The generator whose noise had drawn him there was powering a freezer trench of ice. In it Schlegel found a severed hand in a transparent envelope, then a foot and a thigh bone in their own
see-through bags. The round object he supposed was a head, flayed or boiled, as were the other parts, reduced to musculature and bone, stripped to their essence.

Schlegel forced himself to look at the head. It was intact; no hole in the forehead, so not Keleman. Its size suggested a woman. He feared for Sybil.

Metal heel-tips rang down the corridor. Footsteps approaching; Schlegel couldn’t tell how many. A sound of squeaky wheels. Step into the corridor and they would see him. He could hide
behind the door and use his pistol to club anyone, but the prospect of behaving like a tough guy was ridiculous. If they were pushing a trolley they were bound to be coming there. He was
trapped.

From what he could hear, two men were loading a pair of bodies onto the trolley. They complained of the epic proportions drunk the night before, and the size of their
livers.

Schlegel was lying among the corpses, under sacking, hoping he looked dead, praying they would not choose to cart him off. His feet were naked, socks and shoes under his head. He was positioned
in the far corner, gripping his pistol.

One of the men farted malodorously. The situation was so close to leaden farce that Schlegel was reminded of bad theatrical turns, at the same time thinking: this is a living morgue, serving a
purpose beyond death.

It was a stupid observation. The dead were dead.

He heard his name called from a distance. It sounded like Morgen.

The two men engaged in an urgent exchange, telling each other they should get out.

Schlegel thought one of the voices could belong to Haager, who had snuck up on him with the stun gun.

They hurried off. The wheels didn’t squeak with the trolley loaded. Morgen called for them to stop, but he still had too far to catch up.

Schlegel was sitting on the floor putting on his shoes when Morgen came in. It was the first time he had seen him look properly surprised.

Morgen inspected the bodies in turn, as Schlegel had.

‘Fourteen, not including the two taken away. Eleven I would say died from wounds sustained in action. The bandaged man is a case of severe burning. Numbers thirteen and fourteen, I
can’t say. I would hazard these boys are our glorious dead from the east.’

‘Do body parts have any intrinsic value?’ asked Schlegel.

Morgen looked at him queerly. ‘Not these days. Two a penny.’

Schlegel said he had been thinking about grave robbers.

‘Now you are clutching at straws.’

They took the parts from the freezer, wrapped in old sacking, and delivered them to Lipchitz at the Jewish hospital, an occasion that caused Lipchitz ghoulish amusement.

‘What am I to do with these?’

‘Keep them safe,’ said Morgen. ‘I don’t suppose analysis will reveal anything.’

‘Not with the equipment they give us,’ said Lipchitz.

On his way home Schlegel stopped off at the back entrance to the Grosse Hamburger Strasse holding centre. He spoke into an electronic grille on the outside gate. A caretaker
came out to let him in.

‘Warmer weather,’ he observed laconically as he led the way. Schlegel couldn’t say. He had stopped noticing weather.

Inside, the man made him wait until he was in his hutch-like room and opened the glass divide. He asked Schlegel to state his business. It was all ridiculously formal.

Schlegel said he wanted to speak to someone who had known Sybil. The caretaker referred him to what he called the residents’ common room and said he thought Frau Kübler was in.
Actually they all were because they were confined to quarters.

‘You can’t miss her.’

You could not, was Schlegel’s first thought. The blonde perm. Bright red nails and lipstick. The coquettish angle of the head. Schlegel had never encountered anyone so aware of being
watched, like a spotlight was on her, and she adjusted accordingly. He supposed that was how life was for film stars. Stella made the others in the room look dowdy. She was sitting in a chair
reading an out-of-date fashion magazine.

She put it down when Schlegel addressed her, stood up, looked at him ruefully, as an equal, and said, ‘No more fashion now. I had to make this skirt myself. Not bad.’

She pouted at the mention of Sybil’s name. For all the woman’s star quality, she was not a good actress. Perhaps she didn’t have to be because she was there only to please
herself, leaving others to stand in her reflected glory. She was magnificently superficial.

Schlegel asked if they could speak in private.

Stella suggested they go to her room. Schlegel was aware of blushing. She touched his arm and smiled becomingly.

‘Get your coat,’ he said, stiffly. ‘We can talk in the grounds. I’ll wait downstairs.’

The caretaker looked at them askance and told Stella she had to sign out. She called over her shoulder that she wasn’t leaving.

It was nearly dark. The garden consisted of unkempt grass, a few laurel bushes and naked flower beds. Stella took her cue from this forlorn sight to talk about her grandparents’ summer
garden, bursting with blooms.

Everything about the woman was predicated on seduction. She must be very successful, otherwise she would not have lasted so long.

He could see she dismissed him as harmless and only useful as a rehearsal for trickier situations.

‘What is your interest in the Todermann woman, if I may be so bold?’

‘She was helping us locate someone.’ How awkward he sounded.

‘Grigor,’ she said, contemptuous. ‘They deserve each other.’

‘Do you know Grigor?’

‘Most of the pretty girls made a point of having him once.’

Stella pulled a face. ‘Less than meets the eye. Insecure, then he would get angry afterwards for being no good and blame the girl. I can see you’re dying to ask. Just the once. He
came in his trousers.’