The Pale Criminal (17 page)

‘All the same, sir, it doesn’t look like this little Sudeten spinner you’re holding could have done it, does it? If you don’t mind me saying so.’

‘Not unless he had a telephone in his cell, no. Still, we’ll see if the left-luggage people at Zoo Bahnhof like the look of him. You never know, he might have had an associate on the outside.’

Tanker nodded. ‘That’s true enough,’ he said. ‘Anything is possible in Germany just as long as Hitler shits in the Reich Chancellery.’

Several hours later I was back at Zoo Bahnhof, where Korsch had already distributed photographs of the trunk to the assembled left-luggage staff. They stared and stared, shook their heads and scratched their grizzly chins, and still none of them could remember anyone leaving a blue-leather trunk.

The tallest of them, a man wearing the longest khaki-coloured boiler coat, and who seemed to be in charge of the rest, collected a notebook from under the metal-topped counter and brought it over to me.

‘Presumably you record the names and addresses of those leaving luggage with you,’ I said to him, without much enthusiasm. As a general rule, killers leaving their victims as left-luggage at railway stations don’t normally volunteer their real names and addresses.

The man in the khaki coat, whose bad teeth resembled the blackened ceramic insulators on tram cables, looked at me with quiet confidence and tapped the hard cover of his register with the quick of a fingernail.

‘It’ll be in here, the one who left your bloody trunk.’

He opened his book, licked a thumb that a dog would have refused, and began to turn the greasy pages.

‘On the trunk in your photograph there’s a ticket,’ he said. ‘And on that ticket is a number, same one as what’s chalked on the side of the item. And that number will be in this book, alongside a date, a name and an address.’ He turned several more pages and then traced down the page with his forefinger.

‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘The trunk was deposited here on Friday, 19 August.’

‘Four days after she disappeared,’ Korsch said quietly.

The man followed his finger along a line to the facing page. ‘Says here that the trunk belongs to a Herr Heydrich, initial “R”, of Wilhelmstrasse, number 102.’

Korsch snorted with laughter.

‘Thank you,’ I said to the man. ‘You’ve been most helpful.’

‘I don’t see what’s funny,’ grumbled the man as he walked away.

I smiled at Korsch. ‘Looks like someone has a sense of humour.’

‘Are you going to mention this in the report, sir?’ he grinned.

‘It’s material, isn’t it?’

‘It’s just that the general won’t like it.’

‘He’ll be beside himself, I should think. But you see, our killer isn’t the only one who enjoys a good joke.’

Back at the Alex I received a call from the head of what was ostensibly Illmann’s department — VD1, Forensics. I spoke to an SS-Hauptsturmführer Dr Schade, whose tone was predictably obsequious, no doubt in the belief that I had some influence with General Heydrich.

The doctor informed me that a fingerprint team had removed a number of prints from the telephone box at West Kreuz in which the killer had apparently called the Alex. These were now a matter for VC1, the Records Department. As to the trunk and its contents, he had spoken to Kriminalassistent Korsch and would inform him immediately if any fingerprints were discovered there.

I thanked him for his call, and told him that my investigation was to receive top priority, and that everything else would have to take second place.

Within fifteen minutes of this conversation, I received another telephone call, this time from the Gestapo.

‘This is Sturmbannfuhrer Roth here,’ he said. ‘Section 4B1. Kommissar Gunther, you are interfering with the progress of a most important investigation.’

‘4B1? I don’t think I know that department. Are you calling from within the Alex?’

‘We are based at Meinekestrasse, investigating Catholic criminals.’

‘I’m afraid I know nothing of your department, Sturmbannfuhrer. Nor do I wish to. Nevertheless, I cannot see how I can possibly be interfering with one of your investigations.’

‘The fact remains that you are. It was you who ordered SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer Dr Schade to give your own investigation priority over any other?’

‘That’s right, I did.’

‘Then you, a Kommissar, should know that the Gestapo takes precedence over Kripo where the services of VD1 are required.’

‘I know of no such thing. But what great crime has been committed that might require your department to take precedence over a murder investigation? Charging a priest with a fraudulent transubstantiation perhaps? Or trying to pass off the communion wine as the blood of Christ?’

‘Your levity is quite out of order, Kommissar,’ he said. ‘This department is investigating most serious charges of homosexuality among the priesthood.’

‘Is that so? Then I shall certainly sleep more soundly in my bed tonight. All the same, my investigation has been given top priority by General Heydrich himself.’

‘Knowing the importance that he attaches to apprehending religious enemies of the state, I find that very hard to believe.’

‘Then may I suggest that you telephone the Wilhelmstrasse and have the general explain it to you personally.’

‘I’ll do that. No doubt he will also be greatly disturbed at your failure to appreciate the menace of the third international conspiracy dedicated to the ruin of Germany. Catholicism is no less a threat to Reich security than Bolshevism and World Jewry.’

‘You forgot men from outer space,’ I said. ‘Frankly, I don’t give a shit what you tell him. VD1 is part of Kripo, not the Gestapo, and in all matters relating to this investigation Kripo is to take priority in the services of our own department. I have it in writing from the Reichskriminaldirektor, as does Dr Schade. So why don’t you take your so-called case and shove it up your arse. A little more shit in there won’t make much of a difference to the way you smell.’

I slammed the receiver down on to its cradle. There were, after all, a few enjoyable aspects to the job. Not least of these was the opportunity it afforded to piss on the Gestapo’s shoes.

At the identity parade later that same morning, the left-luggage staff failed to identify Gottfried Bautz as the man who had deposited the trunk containing Irma Hanke’s body, and to Deubel’s disgust I signed the order releasing him from custody.

It’s the law that all strangers arriving in Berlin must be reported to a police station by their hotelier or landlord within six days. In this way the Resident Registration Office at the Alex is able to give out the address of anyone resident in Berlin for the price of fifty pfennigs. People imagine that this law must be part of the Nazi Emergency Powers, but in truth it has existed for a while. The Prussian police was always so efficient.

My office was a few doors down from the Registration Office in room 350, which meant that the corridor was always noisy with people, and obliged me to keep my door shut. No doubt this had been one of the reasons why I had been put here, as far away from the offices of the Murder Commission as it was possible to be. I suppose the idea was that my presence should be kept out of the way of other Kripo personnel, for fear that I might contaminate them with some of my more anarchic attitudes to police investigation. Or perhaps they had hoped that my insubordinate spirit might be broken by first being dramatically lowered. Even on a sunny day like this one was, my office had a dismal aspect. The olive-green metal desk had more thread-catching edges than a barbed-wire fence, and had the single virtue of matching the worn linoleum and the dingy curtains, while the walls were a couple of thousand cigarettes’ shade of yellow.

Walking in there after snatching a few hours of sleep back at my apartment, and presented with the sight of Hans Illmann waiting patiently for me with a dossier of photographs, I didn’t think that the place was about to get any more pleasant. Congratulating myself on having had the foresight to eat something before what promised to be an unappetizing meeting, I sat down and faced him.

‘So this is where they’ve been hiding you,’ he said.

‘It’s supposed to be only temporary,’ I explained, ‘just like me. But frankly, it suits me to be out of the way of the rest of Kripo. There’s less chance of becoming a permanent fixture here again. And I dare say that suits them too.’

‘One would not have thought it possible to cause such aggravation throughout Kripo Executive from such a bureaucratic dungeon as this.’ He laughed, and stroking his chin-beard added: ‘You, and a Sturmbannfuhrer from the Gestapo, have caused all sorts of problems for poor Dr Schade. He’s had telephone calls from lots of important people. Nebe, Muller, even Heydrich. How very satisfying for you. No, don’t shrug modestly like that. You have my admiration, Bernie, you really do.’

I pulled open a drawer in my desk and took out a bottle and a couple of glasses.

‘Let’s drink to it,’ I said.

‘Gladly. I could use one after the day I’ve had.’ He picked up the full glass and sipped it gratefully. ‘You know, I had no idea that there was a special department in the Gestapo to persecute Catholics.’

‘Nor had I. But I can’t say that it surprises me much. National Socialism permits only one kind of organized belief.’ I nodded at the dossier on Illmann’s lap. ‘So what have you got?’

‘Victim number five is what we have got.’ He handed me the dossier and started to roll himself a cigarette.

‘These are good,’ I said flicking through its contents. ‘Your man takes a nice photograph.’

‘Yes, I thought you’d appreciate them. That one of the throat is particularly interesting. The right carotid artery is almost completely severed thanks to one perfectly horizontal knife cut. That means that she was flat on her back when he cut her. All the same, the greater part of the wound is on the right-hand side of the throat, so in all probability our man is right-handed.’

‘It must have been some knife,’ I said, observing the depth of the wound.

‘Yes. It severed the larynx almost completely.’ He licked his cigarette paper. ‘Something extremely sharp, like a surgical curette I should say. At the same time, however, the epiglottis was strongly compressed, and between that and the oesophagus on the right were haematomas as big as an orange pip.’

‘Strangled, right?’

‘Very good,’ Illmann grinned. ‘But half-strangled, in actual fact. There was a small quantity of blood in the girl’s partially inflated lungs.’

‘So he throttled her into silence, and later cut her throat?’

‘She bled to death, hanging upside down like a butchered calf. Same as all the others. Do you have a match?’

I tossed my book across the desk. ‘What about her important little places? Did he fuck her?’

‘Fucked her, and tore her up a bit in the process. Well, you’d expect that. The girl was a virgin, I should imagine. There were even imprints of his fingernails on the mucous membrane. But more importantly I found some foreign pubic hairs, and I don’t mean that they were imported from Paris.’

‘You’ve got a hair colour?’

‘Brown. Don’t ask me for a shade, I can’t be that specific.’

‘But you’re sure they’re not Irma Hanke’s?’

‘Positive. They stood out on her perfectly Aryan fair-haired little plum like shit in a sugar-bowl.’ He leaned back and blew a cloud into the air above his head. ‘You want me to try and match one with a cutting from the bush of your crazy Czech?’

‘No, I released him at lunchtime. He’s in the clear. And as it happens his hair was fair.’ I leafed through the typewritten pages of the autopsy report. ‘Is that it?’

‘Not quite.’ He sucked at his cigarette and then crushed it into my ashtray. From his tweed hunting-jacket pocket he produced a sheet of folded newspaper which he spread out on the desk. ‘I thought you ought to see this.’

It was the front page of an old issue of
Der Stürmer,
Julius Streicher’s anti-Semitic publication. A flash across the top left-hand corner of the paper advertised it as ‘A Special Ritual Murder Number’. Not that one needed reminding. The pen-and-ink illustration said it eloquently enough. Eight naked, fair-haired German girls hanging upside-down, their throats slit, and their blood spilling into a great Communion plate that was held by an ugly caricature Jew.

‘Interesting, don’t you think?’ he said.

‘Streicher’s always publishing this sort of crap,’ I said. ‘Nobody takes it seriously.’

Illmann shook his head, and reclaimed his cigarette. ‘I’m not for one minute saying that it should be. I no more believe in ritual murder than I believe in Adolf Hitler the Peacemaker.’

‘But there is this drawing, right?’ He nodded. ‘Which is remarkably similar to the method with which five German girls have already been killed.’ He nodded again.

I glanced down the page at the article that accompanied the drawing, and read: ‘The Jews are charged with enticing Gentile children and Gentile adults, butchering them and draining their blood. They are charged with mixing this blood into their masses (unleavened bread) and using it to practise superstitious magic. They are charged with torturing their victims, especially the children; and during this torture they scream threats, curses and cast magic spells against the Gentiles. This systematic murder has a special name. It is called Ritual Murder.’

‘Are you suggesting that Streicher might have had something to do with these murders?’

‘I don’t know that I’m suggesting anything, Bernie. I merely thought I ought to bring it to your attention.’ He shrugged. ‘But why not? After all, he wouldn’t be the first district Gauleiter to commit a crime. Governor Kube of Kurmark for example.’

‘There are quite a few stories about Streicher that one hears,’ I said.

‘In any other country Streicher would be in prison.’

‘Can I keep this?’

‘I wish you would. It’s not the sort of thing that one likes to leave lying on the coffee-table.’ He crushed out yet another cigarette and stood up to leave. ‘What are you going to do?’