Metropolis

by Philip Kerr

“It means we have found an important clue at three of the murder scenes. A cuff link. A pound note. And now this.”

  “You believe the killer is playing games with us?”

  “I’m beginning to think so. Christ only knows how much police time Reichenbach was obliged to waste on the idea that the killer might be a Freemason.”

  “Of course, they might all be genuine, those clues. He really could smoke cigars, wear Freemason cuff links, and have a pocket full of foreign currency.”

  “Sure, why not? If it helps you to believe that a little mouse will pay you a nice shiny penny if you leave a tooth on your bedside table, then go right ahead. But I think Winnetou’s playing us for fools. It’s always been my experience that clues are like wine; they need a bit of time to grow in stature. Clues only look like clues in stories. But I’m smelling a rat because my nostrils are more sensitive to rats than yours. The question is why? Why tease us like this? It looks very premeditated.”

  “He wants to waste our time. Doubles back like a fox to throw us off the scent. Surely that’s got to be a good thing for him.”

  “Looks that way. To my mind that banknote looks like the real clue here. Now go and back it up.”

  * * *

  —

  I STALKED AROUND the courtyard with my flashlight, staring at the ground like a heron. From time to time I glanced up at the surrounding windows, some of which were occupied by interested onlookers. Nothing like a murder to bring Berliners out of their pigeonholes. A few of them shouted to me but I couldn’t hear what was said and even if I had, I wouldn’t have answered.

  Close to the stairwell was a solitary tree that had seen better days. At the base of the tree was a hole; I pushed my arm in up to the elbow and quickly found a leather wallet that matched the dead girl’s Hulbe handbag. There was no money in it but there was a bus ticket and a photograph of Eva Angerstein. She was pictured standing on Potsdamer Platz in front of the famous traffic-light clock. Behind her you could see the equally famous Haus Vaterland on Köthener Strasse, which would have been exactly the kind of place a half-silk like Eva would have plied her trade. She was wearing a little navy cloche and a loose blue dress, which she had raised with one hand just enough to show off her red garter: a provocative pose for laughs, it looked like. It was the first time I’d got a proper look at her face. She was pretty, with a Cupid’s-bow mouth, dark hair, and a nice smile. Someone’s daughter, I thought; someone’s sister, perhaps; and now someone’s victim.

  I had another feel around inside the tree and came up with a lipstick. I put the lipstick in a paper bag and the photograph in my pocket. Then I brought the evidence back to the murder wagon, told Bernhard Weiss where I was going, and said I might get back before they left, and if not, I’d catch them in the morning. Then I set off for the Kakadu, a five-minute walk away, in the hope that someone there would remember her.

  But nobody did.

  Over every dining table was a caged cockatoo that was supposed to squawk for the bill when you tapped the glass with a knife, and probably I’d have been better off asking the birds for information for all the help I got. But on my way out I got lucky when I asked the hatcheck girl if she recognized the girl in the photograph. She said she did, and even mentioned another girl she’d been with for part of the previous evening. Her name was Daisy and she was an American and the hatcheck girl thought I’d probably find her in the small lounge, which I’d forgotten existed.

  The lounge was full of cozy corners with lots of little fireplaces and sofas and chaises longues and couples getting to know each other, some of them quite intimately; fortunately for me, Daisy wasn’t one of these. She was easily distinguishable from the other women in the Kakadu: American women always looked better-dressed than German women. She was sitting on her own, drinking champagne, and, seeing me out of the corner of her eye, she glanced at her watch impatiently as I approached. She was slender, small-breasted, and good-looking, probably in her twenties, and quite sure of herself, the way girls are when they have plenty of money. The wristwatch told me that much; it was all jade and diamonds and she probably couldn’t have cared less what time it was.

  “Daisy?”

  “I’m waiting for someone, Fritz,” she said. “And he’ll be here any minute, so don’t bother sitting down.”

  “It’s no bother. At least not for me. And my name’s not Fritz.” I sat down and showed her my new beer token. “It’s police. Maybe police trouble for you, maybe not. That’s what we need to find out.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Some information. First of all, your full name.”

  “Torrens. Daisy Torrens. What’s this about?”

  “You seem nervous, Daisy.”

  “Like I said, I’m waiting for someone.”

  “Then I’ll make it quick.” I took Eva’s photograph out of my pocket. “Ever seen this girl before?”

  “No.” Daisy might have been looking at someone’s tram ticket for all the attention she paid to the picture.

  “I think you should look at it again. Because I’ve a witness who says you were speaking to her last night. And it wouldn’t do for an American girl to mislead a German policeman. It will look bad for international relations when I’m forced to arrest you on suspicion of withholding evidence.”

  “All right, I spoke to her. So what?”

  “What about?”

  “Look, I really don’t remember. We just spoke for a few minutes. About nothing at all really. Girl talk. Men. This place. How the cockatoos shit on the tables in the other room. I don’t know.”

  “We could always do this at Alexanderplatz if you prefer. But I can’t promise that someone won’t shit on the tables there, I’m afraid.”

  “What’s the big deal? I speak to all kinds of people in here. Everyone does. There’s no law against it.”

  “The big deal is that Eva Angerstein was murdered after she left here last night. And there is a law against that. For all I know you were the last person to see her alive.”

  “Oh, I see. That’s terrible. I’m sorry.” She didn’t sound in the least bit sorry. She thought for a moment, bit her pouty lip, and then looked squarely at me. “Look, if I tell you what I know, which really isn’t much, will you go away and leave me alone? My gentleman friend won’t like it if he sees me talking to the police.”

  “Sure. Why not. But I’ll need to see an identity card. Just to know you’re on the level.”

  She grabbed her purse and handed me her identity card. Hers was a good address, and easily remembered: villa G, street 6, number 9, in the fashionable suburb of Eichkamp. The kind of address where diamond-and-jade wristwatches were easily afforded. I handed the card back.

  “So. Talk to me.”

  “Eva used to buy me cocaine,” said Daisy Torrens. “There’s a dealer on Wittenbergplatz. Outside the station. Sells sausages as well as dope. But he doubles his price when he sees me coming. Because I’m an American, he figures I’m good for it. And I don’t much like the smell of sausages. That’s one of the reasons I come here; the vegetarian restaurant. It’s the best in Berlin.”

  “You’re supposed to have a prescription to buy cocaine,” I said. “And only from a pharmacist.”

  “Yes, I know, but at this time of night where are you going to get one of those?”

  “So Eva was your go-between. You’d done this before?”

  “Sure. Lots of times. We met in here a while ago. I wouldn’t say we were friends. But I’d give her ten percent for the trouble. She used to do that for lots of people. They don’t like anyone selling drugs in here. Anyway, Eva was always reliable. Until last night. I gave her fifty marks to get me some coke and she never came back.” Daisy glanced at her watch again. It was worth a second look. “I guess now I know why.”

  “Did you know Eva was a prostitute?”

  “She never said as much, but I
had a pretty shrewd idea she was at it. A lot of girls in here are.”

  “But not you.”

  “No.” Her tone stiffened and her chin raised a little as if she was thinking of telling me to go to hell, and she might have done if I hadn’t been a policeman. “I’m an actress, as a matter of fact. And now if you don’t mind, I’d like you to leave me alone.”

  “One more question and then I will. Did you see her talk to any men last night? Any men at all.”

  “Honestly? No. The lighting in here is a little subdued as you can see and I wasn’t wearing my glasses, so even if I had seen her talking to someone I wouldn’t have recognized them.”

  “You’re shortsighted?”

  “Yes.”

  “May I see those glasses?”

  “Sure.” She opened her handbag and took out a spectacle case, which she handed me. I took out a pair of glasses and held them up, inspecting the lenses. “Satisfied?” she asked.

  I handed them back. “Thank you.” I stood and walked away without another word but at the edge of the small lounge I hung back behind a pillar in the hope I might see the gentleman friend on whom she was waiting. Daisy didn’t see me. I was sure about that; she wasn’t wearing her glasses. But I did see the man she’d been waiting for, whom she now kissed very fondly. Dressed in a dinner jacket, he was probably twice her age and certainly twice her size: dark, fleshy, balding, with eyebrows like hedgerows and a nose the size of a car horn. In short, he was every German bigot’s idea of what a rich Jew was supposed to look like and, what’s more, I recognized him and only to see him was to feel as if I had stepped onto the roller coaster at Luna Park. His name was Albert Grzesinski, once Berlin’s chief of police and now the new Weimar government’s minister of the interior.

  * * *

  —

  I WAS DOG-TIRED by the time I reached Wittenbergplatz. My feet hurt even more than before and my brain felt like a half lemon in a bartender’s fist. There’s something about all that neon light at night that seems to bleach out a man’s spirit. I was much too tired to be as polite as I’d been in the Kakadu and I was already regretting I hadn’t been a little harder on Daisy Torrens. The indifference she’d demonstrated at the news of Eva Angerstein’s murder had shocked me a little; in those days I was still capable of being shocked at human behavior, in spite of having worked in Vice for two years.

  Wittenbergplatz was known for two things: the Hermann Tietz department store, formerly known as Jandorf’s, where I did most of my own clothes shopping, and the art nouveau U-Bahn station; with its neoclassical facade and grand entrance hall, it looked more like a church than a railway station. That was Berlin for you. Make something look better, nicer, a little more grand than what it was. The same way that the UFA Cinema on Nollendorfplatz looked more like the ancient Temple of Dagon before Samson turned up and rearranged the architecture.

  Inside the entrance hall of the Wittenbergplatz station was the usual gauntlet of whores through which men coming up from the trains were obliged to pass, and indeed there was a man balancing a boiler tray of sausages on his chest, and a couple of beggars—injured war veterans trying to make a few pennies. It was a fairly typical metropolitan scene right down to the fat lawyer type coming into the entryway who looked at the whores and the beggars and then harrumphed loudly.

  “Disgraceful,” he said to the two beggars. Why he should have singled them out for criticism I don’t know. “You should be ashamed of yourselves. The way you degrade that uniform. And those medals.”

  Which was my cue to walk over and drop a handful of coins into each man’s cap and that was more than enough to send the fat man scuttling down to catch his train to somewhere as respectable as his opinions.

  I bought twenty Salem Aleikum, presented myself in front of the sausage seller, and asked for a bag of salt, which, without the sausage, only meant one thing; when I was certain it was in his hand, I showed him my beer token. Selling cocaine without a prescription didn’t count as much of a crime but it was probably enough for me to have taken him in, and might even have been enough for him to have lost his street vendor’s license.

  “You can put the bag of salt away,” I said. “I’m not interested in that. I’m more interested in talking about one of your regular customers. Half-silk. Name of Eva Angerstein.”

  “They’ve got names? You surprise me.”

  “This one has a photograph.”

  I handed him the picture and he took it between a greasy thumb and forefinger, found some glasses in the breast pocket of his jacket, looked at the photo, ate a bit of a sausage he obviously wasn’t going to sell that night, and then nodded.

  “Nice-looking girl.”

  “Isn’t she just.”

  “All right, I know her,” he admitted. “Buys from me two or three nights a week. Too much to use herself. Takes it to one of the clubs, I reckon, and probably sells it in the ladies’ toilets. I take that into account when I give her the price.”

  “When did you last see her?”

  “Last night. About this time. Why? What’s she done?”

  “She’s been murdered.”

  “Pity. Lot of that about these days. As a matter of fact it’s got so bad that some of these girls are afraid to work. You wouldn’t think it, but there’s only half as many girls on the streets these days. Afraid of getting scalped by Winnetou. Well, who wouldn’t be? Was she scalped?”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “You just did. So Eva bought some salt and then went to talk to those girls over there. At least I think it was them. Hard to tell them apart from this distance. Then after a few minutes this fellow comes into the station and eventually she leaves with him. Out the front door.”

  “Could you describe him?”

  “Now you’re asking. These girls talk to more men than I sell sausages. It’d be like you asking me to describe a würst I just sold.”

  “Try.”

  “Well dressed. Gentleman, looked like. Wore his hat on the side of his head. Sort of rakishly. Big raincoat. I was only half paying attention.” He shrugged. “That’s about it. You’d best ask the grasshoppers. They don’t miss anything. In less than ten seconds they can size you up and tell how much you’ve got in your pockets and if you’re in the mood for some mouse or not.”

  * * *

  —

  HE WAS RIGHT.

  I turned toward the girls, but they’d already taken a good look at me talking to the sausage seller, concluded I was police, and scattered to the four winds. I walked back to my informant.

  “See what I mean?” He laughed. “They had you fingered as a bull the minute you handed me that photograph, son. Hard enough to make a living without you scaring away the fish.”

  I nodded and turned away wearily. My bed in Nollendorfplatz felt very close by and I badly wanted to be there. On my own.

  “One more thing,” said the sausage seller. “I don’t think it was him who killed her. The Fritz with the hat, I mean.”

  “Why do you say so?”

  “Because it’s my opinion he didn’t look or sound like he was going to kill anyone.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, he was whistling, wasn’t he? Fellow who’s going to scalp a girl and kill her doesn’t whistle before he does it. Does he? No. I wouldn’t say so. A man whistling is a carefree sort of sound, I’d say. Hardly the type to go on the warpath.”

  “You’re probably right. But just as a matter of interest, do you remember the tune he was whistling?”

  “No. Not a chance, I’m afraid. I’m tone deaf. Here. Have a sausage. On the house. I’m not going to sell these and I’m knocking off soon. They’ll only go to waste.”

  * * *

  —

  BACK OUTSIDE THE COURTYARD in Wormser Strasse, eating my sausage in the darkness, I barked my shins on some short wooden crutches and
a vagrant’s trolley, the type a legless or partially paralyzed man might have used in lieu of a proper wheelchair to get around the city. It reminded me of some medieval painting of amusing German beggars wearing cardboard crowns and foxtails on their backs. We always had a cruel sense of humor in Germany. The trolley was homemade and crude, but many men had little choice but to use one. Modern orthopedic wheelchairs of the kind produced by Germany’s agency for the disabled were expensive and, immediately after the war, there had been many instances of men being robbed of them. Maybe that’s why it struck me as strange that one of these “cripple-carts,” as they were commonly known, should have been abandoned in this way. Where was the man who’d been using it? And it says a lot about my own attitude to Germany’s disabled that I should have forgotten about this cart almost as soon as I’d encountered it earlier in the evening. Ten years after the armistice, Berlin’s disabled veterans were still so ubiquitous that nobody—myself included—gave them a second thought; they were like stray cats or dogs—always around. The few coins I had dispensed at the station on Wittenbergplatz had been the first I’d parted with in more than a year.

  I hurried inside the courtyard in search of further head-swelling praise for what I had recently discovered.

  Commissar Körner had gone home, leaving behind just a few uniformed cops from Sophie-Charlotte-Platz to help police the crime scene. People were still leaning out their high windows to see what was happening; it was that or listen to the radio, or maybe go to bed. I knew which one I was keenest on. My bed couldn’t have felt more enticing if it had contained a bottle of good rum and a clean pair of pajamas. Hans Gross had finished taking his photographs. Frau Künstler had pulled the cover on top of the typewriter and was lighting another cigarette. Weiss was checking his pocket watch; his own car and police driver had arrived to take him home and he looked as if he was getting ready to leave; at least he was until I took him and Gennat aside to tell them what I’d discovered on Wittenbergplatz and, more intriguingly, in the Kakadu.