The Pale Criminal (12 page)

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 VC
₁
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 M
₂
, 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 M
₂
— 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.’

‘Like hell you do,’ Becker sneered.

I tried the filing cabinet, which was locked.

‘What’s in here?’

‘A few papers, sir. The petty-cash box. The account books, that sort of thing. Nothing to interest you, I think.’

‘Open it.’

‘Really, sir, there’s nothing of any interest -’ The words dried in his mouth as he saw the cigarette lighter in my hand. I thumbed the bezel and held it underneath the magazine I’d been reading. It burned with a slow blue flame.

‘Becker. How much would you say this magazine was?’

‘Oh, they’re expensive, sir. At least ten Reichsmarks each.’

‘There must be a couple of thousands’ worth of stock in this rat-hole.’

‘Easily. Be a shame if there was a fire.’

‘I hope he’s insured.’

‘You want to see inside the cabinet?’ said Helmut. ‘You only had to ask.’ He handed Becker the key as I dropped the blazing magazine harmlessly into the metal wastepaper bin.

There was nothing in the top drawer besides a cash box, but in the bottom drawer was another pile of pornographic magazines. Becker picked one up and turned back the plain front cover.

“‘Virgin Sacrifice”,’ he said, reading the title page. ‘Take a look at this, sir.’

He showed me a series of photographs depicting the degradation and punishment of a girl, who looked to be of high-school age, by an old and ugly man wearing an ill-fitting toupee. The weals his cane had left on her bare backside seemed very real indeed.

‘Nasty,’ I said.

‘You understand, I am merely the distributor,’ Helmut said, blowing his nose on a filthy handkerchief, ‘not the manufacturer.’

One photograph was particularly interesting. In it the naked girl was bound hand and foot, and lying on a church altar like a human sacrifice. Her vagina had been penetrated with an enormous cucumber. Becker looked fiercely at Helmut.

‘But you know who produced it, don’t you?’ Helmut remained silent only until Becker grabbed him by the throat and started to slap him across the mouth.

‘Please don’t hit me.’

‘You’re probably enjoying it, you ugly little pervert,’ he snarled, warming to his work. ‘Come on, talk to me, or you’ll talk to this.’ He snatched a short rubber truncheon from his pocket, and pressed it against Helmut’s face.

‘It was Poliza,’ shouted Helmut. Becker squeezed his face.

‘Say again?’

‘Theodor Poliza. He’s a photographer. He has a studio on Schiffbauerdamm, next to the Comedy Theatre. He’s the one you want.’

‘If you’re lying to us, Helmut,’ said Becker, grinding the rubber against Helmut’s cheek, ‘we’ll be back. And we’ll not only set fire to your stock, but you with it. I hope you’ve got that.’ He pushed him away.

Helmut dabbed at his bleeding mouth with the handkerchief, ‘Yes, sir,’ he said, ‘I understand.’

When we were outside again I spat into the gutter.

‘Gives you a nasty taste in the mouth, doesn’t it, sir? Makes me glad I didn’t have a daughter, really it does.’

I’d like to have said that I agreed with him there. Only I didn’t.

We drove north.

What a city it was for its public buildings, as immense as grey granite mountains. They built them big just to remind you of the importance of the state and the comparative insignificance of the individual. That just shows you how this whole business of National Socialism got started. It’s hard not to be overawed by a government, any government, that is accommodated in such grand buildings. And the long wide avenues that ran straight from one district to another seemed to have been made for nothing else but columns of marching soldiers.

Quickly recovering my stomach I told Becker to stop the car at a cooked-meat shop on Friedrichstrasse and bought us both a plate of lentil soup. Standing at one of the little counters, we watched Berlin housewives lining up to buy their sausage, which lay coiled on the long marble counter like the rusted springs from some enormous motor car, or grew off the tiled walls in great bunches, like overripe bananas.

Becker may have been married, but he hadn’t lost his eye for the ladies, passing some sort of nearly obscene comment about most of the women who came into the shop while we were there. And it hadn’t escaped my attention that he’d helped himself to a couple of pornographic magazines. How could it have? He didn’t try to hide them. Slap a man’s face, make his mouth bleed, threaten him with an india rubber, call him a filthy degenerate and then help yourself to some of his dirty books — that’s what being in Kripo was all about.

We went back to the car.

‘Do you know this Poliza character?’ I said.

‘We’ve met,’ he said. ‘What can I tell you about him except that he’s shit on your shoe?’

The Comedy Theatre on Schiffbauerdamm was on the north side of the Spree, a tower-topped relic ornamented with alabaster tritons, dolphins and assorted naked nymphs, and Poliza’s studio was in a basement nearby.

We went down some stairs and into a long alleyway. Outside the door to Poliza’s studio we were met by a man wearing a cream-coloured blazer, a pair of green trousers, a cravat of lime silk and a red carnation. No amount of care or expense had been spared with his appearance, but the overall effect was so lacking in taste that he looked like a gypsy grave.

Poliza took one look at us and decided that we weren’t there selling vacuum-cleaners. He wasn’t much of a runner. His bottom was too big, his legs were too short and his lungs were probably too hard. But by the time we realized what was happening he was nearly ten metres down the alley.

‘You bastard,’ muttered Becker.

The voice of logic must have told Poliza he was being stupid, that Becker and I were easily capable of catching him, but it was probably so hoarsened by fear that it sounded as disquietingly unattractive as we ourselves must have appeared.

There was no such voice for Becker, hoarse or otherwise. Yelling at Poliza to stop, he broke into a smooth and powerful running action. I struggled to keep up with him, but after only a few strides he was well ahead of me. Another few seconds and he would have caught the man.

Then I saw the gun in his hand, a long-barrelled Parabellum, and yelled at both men to stop.

Almost immediately Poliza came to a halt. He began to raise his arms as if to cover his ears against the noise of the gunshot, turning as he collapsed, blood and aqueous humour spilling gelatinously from the bullet’s exit wound in his eye, or what was left of it.

We stood over Poliza’s dead body.

‘What is it with you?’ I said breathlessly. ‘Have you got corns? Are your shoes too tight? Or maybe you didn’t think your lungs were up to it? Listen, Becker, I’ve got ten years on you and I could have caught this man if I’d been wearing a deep-sea-diver’s suit.’