The Pale Criminal (31 page)

I came over to where he was standing and took a look for myself, and one for Hildegard. I’d seen enough photographs of Emmeline around the apartment to recognize her immediately.

‘Get her out of there as soon as you can, Professor.’

Illmann looked at me strangely and then nodded. Perhaps he heard something in my tone that made him think my interest was more than just professional. He waved in the police photographer.

‘Becker,’ I said.

‘Yes, sir?’

‘I need you to come with me.’

On the way to Reinhard Lange’s address we called in at my office to collect his letters. I poured us both a large glass of schnapps and explained something of what had transpired that evening.

‘Lange’s the weak link. I heard them say so. What’s more, he’s a lemon-sucker.’ I drained the glass and poured another, inhaling deeply of it to increase the effect, my lips tingling as I held it on my palate for a while before swallowing. I shuddered a little as I let it slip down my backbone and said: ‘I want you to work a Vice-squad line on him.’

‘Yes? How heavy?’

‘Like a fucking waltzer.’

Becker grinned and finished his own drink. ‘Roll him out flat? I get the idea.’ He opened his jacket and took out a short rubber truncheon which he tapped enthusiastically on the palm of his hand. ‘I’ll stroke him with this.’

‘Well, I hope you know more about using that than you do that Parabellum you carry. I want this fellow alive. Scared shitless, but alive. To answer questions. You get it?’

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’m an expert with this little india rubber. I’ll just break the skin, you’ll see. The bones we can leave until another time you give the word.’

‘I do believe you like this, don’t you? Scaring the piss out of people.’

Becker laughed. ‘Don’t you?’

The house was on Lutzowufer-Strasse, overlooking the Landwehr Canal and within earshot of the zoo, where some of Hitler’s relations could be heard complaining about the standard of accommodation. It was an elegant, three-storey Wilhelmine building, orange-painted and with a big square oriel window on the first floor. Becker started to pull the bell as if he was doing it on piecework. When he got tired of that he started on the door knocker. Eventually a light came on in the hall and we heard the scrape of a bolt.

The door opened on the chain and I saw Lange’s pale face peer nervously round the side.

‘Police,’ said Becker. ‘Open up.’

‘What is happening?’ he swallowed. ‘What do you want?’

Becker took a step backwards. ‘Mind out, sir,’ he said, and then stabbed at the door with the sole of his boot. I heard Lange squeal as Becker kicked it again. At the third attempt the door flew open with a great splintering noise to reveal Lange hurrying up the stairs in his pyjamas.

Becker went after him.

‘Don’t shoot him, for Christ’s sake,’ I yelled at Becker.

‘Oh God, help,’ Lange gurgled as Becker caught him by the bare ankle and started to drag him back. Twisting round he tried to kick himself free of Becker’s grip, but it was to no avail, and as Becker pulled so Lange bounced down the stairs on his fat behind. When he hit the floor Becker gripped at his face and stretched each cheek towards his ears.

‘When I say open the door, you open the fucking door, right?’ Then he put his whole hand over Lange’s face and banged his head hard on the stair. ‘You got that, queer?’ Lange protested loudly, and Becker caught hold of some of his hair and slapped him twice, hard across the face. ‘I said, have you got that, queer?’

‘Yes,’ he screamed.

‘That’s enough,’ I said pulling him by the shoulder. He stood up breathing heavily, and grinned at me.

‘You said a waltzer, sir.’

‘I’ll tell you when he needs some more of the same.’

Lange wiped his bleeding lip and inspected the blood that smeared the back of his hand. There were tears in his eyes but he still managed to summon up some indignation.

‘Look here,’ he yelled, ‘what the hell is this all about? What do you mean by barging in here like this?’

‘Tell him,’ I said.

Becker grabbed the collar of Lange’s silk dressing-gown and twisted it against his pudgy neck. ‘It’s a pink triangle for you, my fat little fellow,’ he said. ‘A pink triangle with bar if the letters to your bottom-stroking friend Kindermann are anything to go by.’

Lange wrenched Becker’s hand away from his neck and stared bitterly at him. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he hissed. ‘Pink triangle? What does that mean, for God’s sake?’

‘Paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code,’ I said.

Becker quoted the section off by heart: ‘Any male who indulges in criminally indecent activities with another male, or who allows himself to participate in such activities, will be punished with gaol.’ He cuffed him playfully on the cheek with the backs of his fingers. ‘That means you’re under arrest, you fat butt-fucker.’

‘But it’s preposterous. I never wrote any letters to anyone. And I’m not a homosexual.’

‘You’re not a homosexual,’ Becker sneered, ‘and I don’t piss out of my prick.’ From his jacket pocket he produced the two letters I’d given him, and brandished them in front of Lange’s face. ‘And I suppose you wrote these to the tooth-fairy?’

Lange snatched at the letters and missed.

‘Bad manners,’ Becker said, cuffing him again, only harder.

‘Where did you get those?’

‘I gave them to him.’

Lange looked at me, and then looked again. ‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘I know you. You’re Steininger. You were there tonight, at — ’ He stopped himself from saying where he’d seen me.

‘That’s right, I was at Weisthor’s little party. I know quite a bit of what’s been going on. And you’re going to help me with the rest.’

‘You’re wasting your time, whoever you are. I’m not going to tell you anything.’

I nodded at Becker, who started to hit him again. I watched dispassionately as first he coshed him across the knees and ankles, and then lightly once, on the ear, hating myself for keeping alive the best traditions of the Gestapo, and for the cold, dehumanized brutality I felt inside my guts. I told him to stop.

Waiting for Lange to stop sobbing I walked around a bit, peering through doors. In complete contrast to the exterior, the inside of Lange’s house was anything but traditional. The furniture, rugs and paintings, of which there were many, were all in the most expensive modern style — the kind that’s easier to look at than to live with.

When eventually I saw that Lange had drawn himself together a bit, I said: ‘This is quite a place. Not my taste perhaps, but then, I’m a little old-fashioned. You know, one of those awkward people with rounded joints, the type that puts personal comfort ahead of the worship of geometry. But I’ll bet you’re really comfortable here. How do you think he’ll like the tank at the Alex, Becker?’

‘What, the lock-up? Very geometric, sir. All those iron bars.’

‘Not forgetting all those bohemian types who’ll be in there and give Berlin its world-famous night-life. The rapists, the murderers, the thieves, the drunks — they get a lot of drunks in the tank, throwing-up everywhere–’

‘It’s really awful, sir, that’s right.’

‘You know, Becker, I don’t think we can put someone like Herr Lange in there. I don’t think he would find it at all to his liking, do you?’

‘You bastards.’

‘I don’t think he’d last the night, sir. Especially if we were to find him something special to wear from his wardrobe. Something artistic, as befits a man of Herr Lange’s sensitivity. Perhaps even a little make-up, eh, sir? He’d look real nice with a bit of lipstick and rouge.’ He chuckled enthusiastically, a natural sadist.

‘I think you had better talk to me, Herr Lange,’ I said.

‘You don’t scare me, you bastards. Do you hear? You don’t scare me.’

‘That’s very unfortunate. Because unlike Kriminalassistant Becker here, I don’t particularly enjoy the prospect of human suffering. But I’m afraid I have no choice. I’d like to do this straight, but quite frankly I just don’t have the time.’

We dragged him upstairs to the bedroom where Becker selected an outfit from Lange’s walk-in wardrobe. When he found some rouge and lipstick Lange roared loudly and took a swing at me.

‘No,’ he yelled. ‘I won’t wear this.’

I caught his fist and twisted his arm behind him.

‘You snivelling little coward. Damn you, Lange, you’ll wear it and like it or so help me we’ll hang you upside down and cut your throat, like all those girls your friends have murdered. And then maybe we’ll just dump your carcass in a beer-barrel, or an old trunk, and see how your mother feels about identifying you after six weeks.’ I handcuffed him and Becker started with the make-up. When he’d finished, Oscar Wilde by comparison would have seemed as unassuming and conservative as a draper’s assistant from Hanover.

‘Come on,’ I growled. ‘Let’s get this Kit-Kat showgirl back to her hotel.’

We had not exaggerated about the night tank at the Alex. It’s probably the same in every big city police station. But since the Alex is a very big city police station indeed, it followed that the tank there is also very big. In fact it is huge, as big as an average cinema theatre, except that there are no seats. Nor are there any bunks, or windows, or ventilation. There’s just the dirty floor, the dirty latrine buckets, the dirty bars, the dirty people and the lice. The Gestapo kept a lot of detainees there for whom there was no room at Prinz Albrecht Strasse. Orpo put the night’s drunks in there to fight, puke, and sleep it off. Kripo used the place like the Gestapo used the canal: as a toilet for its human refuse. A terrible place for a human being. Even one like Reinhard Lange. I had to keep reminding myself of what it was that he and his friends had done, of Emmeline Steininger, sitting in that barrel like so many rotten potatoes. Some of the prisoners whistled and blew kisses when they saw us bring him down, and Lange turned pale with fright.

‘My God, you’re not going to leave me here,’ he said, clutching at my arm.

‘Then unpack it,’ I said. ‘Weisthor, Rahn, Kindermann. A signed statement, and you can get a nice cell to yourself.’

‘I can’t, I can’t. You don’t know what they’ll do to me.’

‘No,’ I said, and nodded at the men behind the bars, ‘but I know what they’ll do to you.’

The lock-up sergeant opened the enormous heavy cage and stood back as Becker pushed him into the tank.

His cries were still ringing in my ears by the time I got back to Steglitz.

Hildegard lay asleep on the sofa, her hair spread across the cushion like the dorsal fin of some exotic golden fish. I sat down, ran my hand across its smooth silkiness, and then kissed her forehead, catching the drink on her breath as I did so. Stirring, her eyes blinked open, sad and crusted with tears. She put her hand on my cheek and then on to the back of my neck, pulling me down to her mouth.

‘I have to talk to you,’ I said, holding back.

She pressed her finger against my lips. ‘I know she’s dead,’ she said. ‘I’ve done all my crying. There’s no more water in the well.’

She smiled sadly, and I kissed each eyelid tenderly, smoothing her scented hair with the palm of my hand, nuzzling at her ear, chewing the side of her neck as her arms held me close, and closer still.

‘You’ve had a ghastly evening too,’ she said gently. ‘Haven’t you, darling?’

‘Ghastly,’ I said.

‘I was worried about you going back to that awful house.’

‘Let’s not talk about it.’

‘Put me to bed, Bernie.’

She put her arms around my neck and I gathered her up, folding her against my body like an invalid and carrying her into the bedroom. I sat her down on the edge of the bed and started to unbutton her blouse. When that was off she sighed and fell back against the quilt: slightly drunk I thought, unzipping her skirt and tugging it smoothly down her stockinged legs. Pulling down her slip I kissed her small breasts, her stomach and then the inside of her thighs. But her pants seemed to be too tight, or caught between her buttocks, and resisted my pulling. I asked her to lift her bottom.

‘Tear them,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Tear them off. Hurt me, Bernie. Use me.’ She spoke with breathless urgency, her thighs opening and closing like the jaws of some enormous praying mantis.

‘Hildegard–’

She struck me hard across the mouth.

‘Listen, damn you. Hurt me when I tell you.’

I caught her wrist as she struck again.

‘I’ve had enough for one evening.’ I caught her other arm. ‘Stop it.’

‘Please, you must.’

I shook my head, but her legs wrapped around my waist and my kidneys winced as her strong thighs squeezed tight.

‘Stop it, for God’s sake.’

‘Hit me, you stupid ugly bastard. Did I tell you that you were stupid, too? A typical bone-headed bull. If you were a man you’d rape me. But you haven’t got it in you, have you?’

‘If it’s a sense of grief you’re after, then we’ll take a drive down to the morgue.’ I shook my head and pushed her thighs apart and then away from me. ‘But not like this. It should be with love.’

She stopped writhing and for a moment seemed to recognize the truth of what I was saying. Smiling, then raising her mouth to me, she spat in my face.

After that there was nothing for it but to leave.

There was a knot in my stomach that was as cold and lonely as my apartment on Fasanenstrasse, and almost immediately I arrived home again I enlisted a bottle of brandy in dissolving it. Someone once said that happiness is that which is negative, the mere abolition of desire and the extinction of pain. The brandy helped a little. But before I dropped off to sleep, still wearing my overcoat and sitting in my armchair, I think I realized just how positively I had been affected.