by Philip Kerr
“Before she was murdered, the victim met up with a woman she sometimes bought drugs for,” I explained. “An American girl, name of Daisy Torrens.”
Weiss frowned. “Now, why does that name ring a distant bell?”
“Perhaps because she was awaiting the arrival of a man you yourself know, sir. That man’s name is Albert Grzesinski.”
“The new minister?” said Gennat.
“Unless he has a twin brother.”
“Are you sure?” asked Weiss. But he didn’t sound as if it was me he doubted so much as his own ears.
“Positive.”
“He was really with that woman in public?”
“Not just with her, but all over her.”
“Jesus.”
“Who is Daisy Torrens?” asked Gennat. “I’ve never heard of her.”
“An actress,” said Weiss. “She had the leading role in a recent UFA movie called We’ll Meet Again in the Homeland. I thought you were interested in cinema.”
“That was a dreadful film,” said Gennat.
“I don’t doubt it. Anyway, Grzesinski’s been having an affair with Miss Torrens but, until recently, he was much too discreet ever to be seen with her in public. He’s married, after all. But they share a house in Eichkamp.”
“She gave me the address,” I said.
“So far, the press have been ignoring the affair, but if the Nazis were to find out about it they could easily finish off his career in the pages of Der Angriff. There’s nothing they like more than a Jew with his hand in an American girl’s pants. Especially one who’s involved with drugs.” Weiss removed his pince-nez, polished the lenses gently, squeezed them back onto the bridge of his nose, and then shot me a look. “You’re sure about that part.”
“She told me herself,” I said.
“What kind of woman would you say she was?”
“A rich bitch. Glamorous and heartless.”
“That’s what I heard,” said Weiss. For a moment he seemed overcome with a mild fit of coughing, which he stifled with the back of his hand.
“If this gets out,” said Gennat, “the new government will be over before it’s even started. The last thing we need now unless you’re a goddamn Nazi is another election. There’s only so much democracy that one country can take before it starts to get tired of the idea.”
“Then we’d best keep this to ourselves,” said Weiss.
“Agreed,” said Gennat.
I nodded my assent as if that were important; the idea that I might have some influence over the fate of the government seemed absurd to me.
“I’ll speak to Grzesinski and suggest that he and his American friend might like to behave a little more discreetly in future,” added Weiss. “For his sake and the country’s. Anyway, this is all beside the point. You obtained another description of the murderer, Gunther. Which fits the one we already had from the woman who found Fritz Pabst. Good work, my boy. First thing in the morning I want you to visit the Reichsbank on Jägerstrasse and get them to start checking up on that ten-mark banknote you found. If you have any problems with this, telephone me at home and I’ll speak to Heinrich Köhler himself. He owes me a favor.”
Köhler was the German finance minister.
“But right now, you should go home. You, too, Ernst. We’ve done all we can tonight, short of staging a candlelit vigil for the dead girl.” He glanced up as someone in one of the higher windows whistled down to us. “If we stay out here any longer they’ll be wanting a few bars of ‘Berliner Luft.’”
* * *
—
“ACCORDING TO THE serial number, the banknote I found in Eva Angerstein’s handbag was issued just a week ago,” I said. “I’ve traced it to a branch of Commerzbank, in Moabit. The manager believes it was part of a batch of notes from the German central bank that was divided up and paid out to one or two local businesses in time to be distributed in workers’ wage packets last Friday. By far the largest of these payments was made to the Charité hospital, which means the killer could be a medical man. And that would certainly be consistent with the killer’s fondness for—and skill with—a sharp knife. It’s my belief that we should probably speak to the hospital director and arrange to have all male employees of the Charité interviewed by police officers from the Alex as soon as possible. We have a description of the man, we even have a possible handprint, and we can certainly check alibis. This note might be just enough to narrow down our inquiry quite significantly.”
Weiss listened carefully and then nodded. It was Monday afternoon and we were in his office at the Alex. I sensed I only had half his attention, which was perhaps hardly surprising. It had been a difficult weekend for the Berlin police and for him in particular—the large bruise on his face told me that much. At the communist march in West Berlin, the police had charged after the Reds had broken through their lines, shots had been fired, and a communist workman had been killed. And if all that wasn’t enough, Weiss had been assaulted on Frankfurter Allee by Otto Dillenburger while he himself was watching a different communist demonstration. An openly right-wing police colonel in command of the eastern police region, Dillenburger had previously alleged that Weiss was secretly colluding with the communists, and he was now suspended from duty pending an inquiry by the Praesidium. But already he’d lodged an appeal with the PPPO—the Prussian Police Officers’ Association—and it was widely held that the colonel would be quickly reinstated. The PPPO was almost as right wing as Dillenburger himself.
You didn’t have to be a detective to work out why Weiss was suspected of being a communist; not in Germany. Everyone who was sympathetic to the Nazis believed that a Jew was just a communist with a big nose and a gold watch. I felt desperately sorry for this man whom I and many others much admired, but I didn’t mention the incident with Dillenburger; Weiss wasn’t the type to dwell on his own misfortunes or to seek sympathy.
“Approximately how many people would you say work at the Charité hospital, Bernie?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps a thousand.”
“And how many men do you think work here, at the Alex?”
“About half that number.”
Weiss smiled. “True. I fear there are many reforms still needed to make this the force it might yet become. A great many policemen are just hanging on for a severance payment or a police maintenance claim with which to start up a business. Between you and me, I’ve heard of some patrolmen leaving the force with several thousand marks in their pockets.”
I whistled quietly. “So that’s why the uniformed boys wear those riding breeches. You need big pockets with that kind of money on offer.”
“Ironic, isn’t it?” said Weiss. “For all its antipathy to socialism and to trade unionism and workers’ rights, I know of no organization in the whole of Germany with more powerful unions than the Berlin police.”
He relit his cigar and stared up at the three-arm brass gasolier, as if things were clearer near the ceiling.
“Bernie, what you recommend is certainly what should be done, without question; and I’ve no doubt that in the future, all investigations will be conducted on the basis of cross-referenced witness statements. But I’m afraid that what you’re suggesting is quite impossible. For one thing, we don’t have the time, but even if we did, I’m not sure I should follow your recommendation. You see, there’s the politics of it to consider. Yes, the politics, although I hate mentioning a word like that in this building. Let me explain. I’m not one of those who believe that Berlin society is improved by the presence of fewer girls on the street, but there are many—Commissar Körner, for example—who believe exactly that. And the plain fact of the matter is that if we’re going to catch this psychopath it will have to be with the immediate resources of the Murder Commission and a few like-minded Kripo officers, rather than the whole police department. So as far as the Charité is concerned, feel free to
speak to the hospital director; maybe he can identify a few doctors who present themselves as morally insane. I’ve certainly met a few of those in my time. But I fear that if you do conduct any more interviews, it will have to be a mostly solo effort. I’m sorry, Bernie, but that’s just how it is and how it has to be. Understand?”
“I understand.”
“Was there anything else?”
“Yes. There’s a writer who’d like a little help with a script she’s writing about a police detective investigating a series of murders. Background research, I suppose. I’d like your permission to bring her into the Commission’s offices on one of my days off this week. Her name is Thea von Harbou.”
“Married to Fritz Lang, the film director. Yes, I’ve heard of her. Permission granted. With one proviso.”
“And that is?”
“Thea von Harbou comes from a family of minor Bavarian nobility. The same cannot be said of Fritz Lang. Lang is a Jew who identifies as a Roman Catholic but that means nothing to the likes of Hitler and his local ape, Josef Goebbels. Once a Jew always a Jew. So bring her here to the Alex by all means, and give her all the assistance you think appropriate, but please make sure you deal with her and with her husband discreetly, as if your name was Albert Grzesinski and hers was Daisy Torrens.”
* * *
—
IT WAS LIKE visiting Berlin Zoo but without the entry charge, which probably was why there was a longer line to be admitted to the place. Berlin’s showhouse for the dead—otherwise known as the police morgue—was just that: a popular spectacle and perhaps the last place in Europe where the murdered corpses of your fellow citizens could be viewed in all their anonymous ruination, no matter how horrific that might be. People queued along Hannoversche Strasse as far as Oranienburger Tor to get in to see the “exhibits.” Grouped in glass cases around the central hall, they most resembled the inhabitants of the zoo’s famous aquarium. Certainly many of these corpses looked as torpid as any ancient moray eel or crusty blue lobster. Children under sixteen were forbidden entry but it certainly didn’t stop them from trying to sneak past attendants who were employed not by the police, nor by the Charité hospital across the street, but by the city’s animal hospital next door. As a schoolboy, I myself had tried to get into the Hanno showhouse; and once, to my everlasting disgust, I had succeeded.
There was, of course, a sound forensic reason for this exhibition; it was argued that information about a deceased person was often very hard to obtain from a metropolitan citizenry that was enormously diverse except for a shared dislike of Prussians and the Berlin police, and the display of corpses, while no doubt titillating, sometimes produced valuable information. None of this counted for much with me. You just had to eavesdrop on what was said to know that the people who went to see the stiffs and be horrified were the same ones who would have bought a sausage and gone to watch a man broken on the wheel. Sometimes there is nothing quite so dreadful as your fellow man, dead or alive.
None of the bodies already exhibited in the central hall were familiar to me, but I wasn’t in search of a name or evidence so much as to confirm something I’d heard Arthur Nebe talking about in his speech to the Prussian Police Officers’ Association: that the Hanno showhouse was very popular with Berlin’s artists in search of something to draw. I assumed, wrongly as it transpired, that these artists were merely following in the tradition of Leonardo da Vinci and perhaps Goya, looking for human subjects that wouldn’t or couldn’t move while you were drawing them.
As it happened I only saw one artist at the Hanno showhouse that Tuesday afternoon. To my surprise, he wasn’t drawing anatomical studies but actual wounds—throats that were cut or torsos that had been comprehensively disemboweled—and he seemed not at all interested in drawing dead men, only dead women, preferably in a state of undress. He was about forty, thickset with dark hair and, for some obscure reason, dressed as an American cowboy. A pipe was in his mouth and he was almost oblivious of everyone around him—everyone who was alive, that is. Several times I looked over his shoulder at his sketchbook just to check my own appraisal of his work before I eventually introduced myself with the Kripo warrant disc. I’m no art critic but the word I’d have used to sum up his style was depraved. I suppose if he’d been dressed like an Apache Indian I might even have arrested him.
“Can we talk?”
“S’up? Am I in trouble?” he asked, and almost immediately I knew he was a Berliner. “Because I’m quite sure there’s no law against what I’m doing. Nor any rule in here that I’m breaking. I already asked the people in charge of this place and they said I was free to draw anything I liked but not to take photographs.”
Despite his eccentric appearance—he was even wearing spurs—the Fritz was a Berliner, all right: asserting your rights in the face of Prussian officialdom was as typical as the accent.
“Well, then, you know more than I do, Herr—”
“Grosz. George Ehrenfried Grosz.”
“No, you’re not in any trouble, sir. At least none that I know of. I’d just like to talk to you, if I may.”
“All right. But what shall we talk about?”
“This, of course. What you’re drawing. Your preferred subject. Murder. In particular, murdered women. Look, there’s a bar nearby, on Luisenstrasse—Lauer’s.”
“I know the place.”
“Let me buy you a drink.”
“Is this official? Perhaps I should invite my lawyer.”
“What’s the matter? Don’t you like our fine capital’s police?”
He laughed. “Clearly, you haven’t heard of me, Sergeant Gunther. The law and my work don’t seem to get on very well right now. And not for the first time, either. Currently I’m being prosecuted for blasphemy.”
“Not my department, I’m afraid. The only picture on my wall at home is a mezzotint of Hegel and you would think it had been originally drawn by his bitterest enemy. If he had his throat cut and his arse hanging out of his trousers he couldn’t look any worse.”
“History teaches us that no one ever learned anything from Hegel. Least of all about art or even history. But yours is a compelling image. I shall borrow it.”
In Lauer’s I bought us each a beer—two foaming glasses of Schultheiss-Patzenhofer, which was the best beer in the city—and we sat down at a quiet table. Not that it mattered much to George Grosz; he didn’t seem to mind that people looked at him as if he were a lunatic; maybe that was supposed to be artistic in itself, like walking your pet lobster through the streets on a blue silk ribbon. While we talked and sipped our beers he was also drawing me with pen and ink, and doing it with great skill and speed.
“So what’s with the Tom Mix outfit?”
“Did you ask me here to talk about my clothes or about my art?”
“Maybe both.”
“You know, I might be tempted to dress up as a police officer if I could buy myself a uniform.”
“You wouldn’t like the boots. Or the hat. Or for that matter the pay. And it probably is a crime to dress up as police in this town. On the whole, cops in Berlin don’t have much of a sense of humor about such things. Or about anything else, now I come to think about it.”
“You would think they would, considering those boots and that leather hat. There is one thing that cannot be denied, however: the truncheon always seems to hit at the left. Never at the right.”
I smiled weakly. “Haven’t heard that one before.”
“Witness Saturday’s demonstration in which a communist worker was shot.”
“Are you a communist?”
“Would it surprise you to learn that I’m not?”
“Frankly, yes.”
“I once met Lenin, that’s why I’m not a communist. He was a most unimpressive figure.”
“So might I ask, why would a man who’s met Lenin dress up as a cowboy?”
“You
might call it a romantic enthusiasm. I guess I’ve always loved America more than I love Russia. When I was a boy I read a lot of James Fenimore Cooper and Karl May.”
“Me too.”
“I’d have been surprised if you told me any different.”
“It’s said that as well as his fascination for the Old West, Karl May had a peculiar enthusiasm for using pseudonyms.”
“True.”
“So is George Grosz your real name? Or is it something else?”
Grosz fished in his jacket, took out his card, and handed it to me silently. I glanced over the details, held the card up to the light—this wasn’t just for show, there were plenty of forgeries around—and handed it back.
“But as it happens you’re right,” he said. “I also enjoy using pseudonyms. Anything like that seems not only possible when you’re an artist, but excusable, too. Even necessary. The reason a man becomes an artist these days is to make his own rules.”
“And here was me thinking a man only becomes an artist because he wants to paint and draw.”
“Then I guess that’s why you became a policeman.”
“What’s your favorite book by May?”
“It’s a toss-up between Old Surehand and Winnetou the Red Gentleman.”
“I assume you must have heard about the killer the Berlin newspapers have dubbed Winnetou.”
“The one who scalps his victims? Yes. Ah, now I begin to understand your interest in me, sergeant. You think that because I sometimes draw murdered women I might actually have killed someone in real life. Like Caravaggio. Or Richard Dadd.”
“It certainly crossed my mind.”
“Tell me, did you see any active service?”
“Four fun years in one place after another. But always the same nasty trench. You?”
“Jesus, four years? I did six months and it damn near killed me. They had me training recruits and guarding prisoners of war, on account of how I was partly an invalid.”
“You look all right now.”
