by Chris Petit
The man’s thesis had been on pacifism, Schlegel remembered.
‘Anyway,’ Morgen continued, ‘as of this January we have officially entered the new age of panic. Blame what you like, the army’s failures in the east, the alignment of the planets . . . but with panic comes superstition.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘Because I see you as the perfect representative of panic and inertia. You are a paradigm of the system. And you know it’s true, which is why you don’t take offence. You are, Schlegel, a fascinating specimen.’
Schlegel sat there incapable of thinking, other than admiring how effectively the tables had been turned.
‘As for me,’ Morgen continued, ‘let us for the moment play Nebe’s game. You are all terrified of your corruption being exposed, and corruption is the last resort of inertia. I could deny that I am a spy with powers of judicial enquiry – perhaps I already did, I no longer remember – but I may be lying, because lying is the cornerstone of the edifice. This is not criticism but fact. And I would go further to say that sometimes the virtues of lying are underestimated. Of course, if I am lying now you will find yourself answering for that shop in the cellar you run.’
Morgen waited for Schlegel to deny it. Schlegel said nothing. He had never heard such strange talk. From Morgen it didn’t sound defeatist or subversive. Schlegel wondered if it came from some condoned higher level, dedicated to a constant re-evaluation of the entire project. Perhaps, far from being the outsider, Morgen operated at the heart of the system, in some rarefied strata, beyond the usual strictures and propaganda control, secretly dedicated to philosophical enquiry. But if it were really the case, he wouldn’t be sitting in Schlegel’s backwater.
Morgen resumed smoking and became businesslike, moving papers around his desk.
‘That’s all for you to decide. However, I will throw this in for free. No one has asked me to investigate your little shop.’
‘Who told you about it?’
‘Stoffel, of course. He wants to get you in trouble. He doesn’t like you. He’s crafty though. He slipped it in very well. Stoffel is such a good representative of inertia that he should be made its formal ambassador. I doubt if we will see Stoffel go through the necessary evolutionary stages to reach a state of paranoia, but I may be wrong. As for friend Stoffel, I suggest you tell him that I am a spy because it is always good when men like that are made to sweat. And in the meantime, please note that I have just raised your paranoia levels, by giving you confidential information in the guise of a favour that is more of a poisoned chalice.’
Morgen, pleased by his bamboozling, went back to his papers before quietly announcing, not looking up, ‘To tell the truth, I don’t know why I am here, but it is always possible someone will ask me to make a report of the sort you are all so afraid of.’
They worked in silence. After some time thinking about it, Schlegel volunteered to Morgen that he thought the dead man’s penis had been amputated because he was circumcised.
Morgen sat back and said, ‘Do explain.’
‘As a rule, all Jewish men are circumcised.’
Schlegel was too, thanks to his mother being English where the practice was not unusual. German boys never were, he had found to his cost. During his compulsory labour service he was regularly taken for a Jew and beaten up in the communal showers, being told that a Jew couldn’t hide when it came to his cock.
Morgen switched his cigarette to the other side of his mouth. ‘Are you saying the man’s cock was cut off to hide the fact that he was a Jew?’
‘Or as an act of desecration because he was.’
‘No one will bother to identify a dead Jew.’
Morgen stood up abruptly, put on his overcoat and announced he was going out.
Schlegel read over his report. His efforts struck him as pathetic. For whom was he writing? It would be filed unread and never referred to again. It was, in Morgen’s assessment, a perfect product of inertia. Morgen had analysed him more effectively in two minutes than anyone else had managed in years.
Show some initiative, he thought.
Metzler was someone’s agent, according to Nebe. Whose? Schlegel suspected Gersten’s, which meant murky waters. Yet could he afford to ignore it? The hard question everyone had to ask, probably even Nebe, was have I done enough to cover myself? In dealing with superiors, the point unconsidered was invariably the one that was exposed, however thorough in other respects. Plenty of stories circulated of innocent parties sent to punishment camp under the amorphous charge of professional negligence.
He called Gersten’s office, thinking if he couldn’t reach him he would leave it at that; let chance decide.
Gersten disappointed him by answering. Schlegel explained why he was calling.
‘Yes, the old Jew,’ said Gersten enigmatically.
‘I’m told he was your agent.’
Gersten laughed. ‘Says who?’
The block warden’s widow, Schlegel answered, thinking serve her right, she could deny it all she liked. He said he feared the case was not as straightforward as everyone assumed.
‘You’ll find it is. The old man was a fantasist.’
He pointed out Gersten had not mentioned knowing Metzler at the scene of crime.
‘Because I hadn’t seen him.’
‘You must have realised. He was brought into the yard. He was identified.’
Gersten insisted it was of no consequence to Schlegel’s report.
‘The only issue as far as you are concerned is his motive for killing the warden. The rest is irrelevant.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the man had nothing to sell.’
‘Did he offer?’
‘Yes, but they all do and he was as bad as the rest, saying he had this and that, he could help, but when you call their bluff they give you nothing.’
Gersten was too clever for him. According to Morgen’s new categories, Schlegel could not work out the man’s operating method at all. Not paranoia or inertia. Something slipperier.
Gersten, patronising, said, ‘I expect he was trying to sell information in exchange for his safety, but nothing came of it. I wouldn’t waste time. No one is interested.’
Schlegel had overplayed his hand. He was about to hang up when Gersten appeared to relent.
‘We’re not in the business of being obstructive. If it helps, say that aspects of the report are off limits because of their confidential nature. Everyone will know what that means and you will have covered your bases.’
It was a putdown; the favour of the senior party on behalf of an incompetent junior. Gersten was probably only a few years older but outranked Schlegel by several levels.
‘And is Morgen interested yet?’ asked Gersten.
‘I think you will find him too paranoid,’ Schlegel replied, amused. Gersten asked what was funny and Schlegel hung up without answering.
‘You’re right,’ said Morgen, taking off his hat and coat. ‘He was a Jew. By name of Abbas. He worked in the Jewish picture library.’
He sat down and passed over a copy of the dead man’s identity card, showing a fellow with a long equine face, recognisably that of the one lying on the parquet floor.
Schlegel looked up in surprise. ‘Where did you get this?’
‘The Jewish Association is obliged to keep a copy of all identity cards. I had no idea what I was looking for. There are thousands to look through. I was lucky. There aren’t many As before Abbas.’
Schlegel was equally impressed when Morgen produced cards for the old man and Sybil Todermann.
‘We can confirm from his work card that Metzler ended up in the slaughterhouse, and the Todermann woman worked as a seamstress near Savignyplatz.’
Schlegel said, ‘I think I know what this is about.’
It was Morgen’s turn to look surprised.
‘I think it’s Gersten.’
‘Who killed Abbas? You can’t be serious.’
‘Of course not. I thi
nk Abbas was his spy. Gersten is an active intelligence gatherer. Lazarenko calls himself a consultant but he’s really his spy. Nebe says Metzler was someone’s agent.’
‘Except Gersten denies it is him?’
‘A colleague of mine in the tax office was telling me the Gestapo was turned inside out last year for corruption, with a lot of dismissals.’
‘If Abbas was Gersten’s agent, it would explain his shock at seeing him when he wasn’t expecting to.’
‘But why cut off the man’s penis?’
‘Perhaps we are dealing with a psychopath.’
‘There’s something else,’ said Schlegel, reaching into his desk. ‘We now have a direct link between Abbas and old man Metzler. I found these fifties.’
He counted out the notes. Ten fifties. Five hundred marks. Brand new and all with the telltale points to say they were forgeries. Morgen picked up a note and inspected it.
‘Exactly the same as the others. Where were these?’
‘Behind a ventilation grille in Metzler’s bedroom, more or less hiding in plain sight.’
‘Did you think of keeping them?’ asked Morgen, reading him perfectly.
‘Of course. I have a history of recidivism.’
There seemed no point denying it. He told Morgen about his shoplifting sprees.
Morgen said, ‘Boys will be boys.’
They found Stoffel in the canteen, wearing his bowler hat and reading a newspaper. He looked at Morgen’s worn flannel suit and said he looked better out of uniform.
Morgen said, ‘The dead man in the apartment was a Jew named Abbas.’
Stoffel gave a couple of slow handclaps, returned to his newspaper and licked his finger before idly turning the page.
‘Jew cases are not priority.’
‘Quite,’ said Morgen. ‘What’s to investigate if they are all being packed off?’
‘Quite. The only thing Herr Abbas did was to be inconsiderate enough to die on our patch.’
Stoffel looked at Schlegel with opaque, watery eyes, his dislike evident.
‘Your Metzler report?’
It was on its way, he said.
‘Are you being told not to investigate the Abbas case?’ asked Morgen.
Stoffel made an equivocal motion. ‘Nothing active.’
‘Who told you not to?’
‘It doesn’t work like that.’
‘How does it work?’
Stoffel turned to Schlegel. ‘Educate the man.’
‘I want to hear it from you,’ said Morgen.
Stoffel considered the challenge. ‘It’s no skin off my nose. Just because there is a flap on doesn’t mean anyone has to do anything. Besides, there’s no budget for dead Jews.’
From Stoffel’s studied indifference and the comfortable spread of his haunches, Schlegel suspected the man had a card up his sleeve.
‘You know the old joke about murder,’ Stoffel went on. ‘If you have to commit one, kill a Jew because no one will investigate.’
Neither of them laughed.
‘How are we supposed to interpret Nebe’s panic?’ Morgen asked.
‘Biggest boy hits bigger boy, bigger boy hits big boy, big boy hits biggest of the small boys and so on down. Nebe will tell you if you ask nicely that he has to be seen to bang the drum for the sake of his superiors.’ He sat back and looked at them wearily. ‘Everyone knows the problem is about to go away. Soon no Jews will be left.’
‘And those in hiding?’
Stoffel went back to his newspaper. ‘They are jumping off buildings and throwing themselves under trains and drowning in rivers faster than we can pick them up.’
He flicked over another page and carried on reading as he said, ‘The money’s your problem, I believe.’
‘Can we expect any sort of help?’ asked Morgen.
‘You’re on your own with that.’ He gave Schlegel another nasty look. ‘I will sort you out later for telling tales out of school.’
They were climbing the stairs back up to the office. Schlegel was already out of breath when Morgen paused on a half-landing.
‘About Gersten. Let’s say he’s at the top of a triangle and at the base you have Abbas and Metzler. And in the middle you have the money. Agreed?’
‘Agreed.’
‘You also have Gersten trying to send us off on a wild-goose chase by using Lazarenko. I think Gersten doesn’t want us to make any connection between him and the money.’
‘But he was the first to mention it was fake, when we were all standing around looking at Abbas. He sounded very certain.’
‘I think it was an involuntary admission. He was in a state of shock, finding his agent stretched out on the floor.’
Having inadvertently instigated the investigation, Gersten was now perhaps in a position of having to thwart it.
Schlegel asked if they should confront the man. He didn’t confess to his own failed effort. Morgen said they had nothing and for the moment Gersten was probably capable of running rings round them. What they were going to do was what they had been told.
‘We’re going to follow the money.’
Schlegel told Morgen he was meeting a friend that night who might be useful.
‘I have to return your files to him. They made interesting reading.’
Morgen had the grace to concede this subterfuge, and they carried on upstairs with Schlegel thinking it probably wasn’t too often that Morgen was caught out.
25
Sybil was optimistic when Franz said a vacancy had come up in the hospital laundry room, and there might be a job for Lore working in the grounds. Sybil thought her luck might be changing, until she understood from the way Franz looked at her that his benevolence had a price.
He wasn’t unpleasant about it and smiled attractively.
‘This is the way it is now.’
Franz was in a flirtatious mood and Sybil realised he intended to make his demand after they were done with serving and unless he got what he wanted now he wouldn’t do any more to help. Be philosophical, she told herself. The stakes were high enough to make what he wanted meaningless by comparison.
Franz said they could go downstairs. He knew the building.
Sybil thought back to when they were students and how much she had liked him, if not physically. He wasn’t so bad, she told herself. He wasn’t some monster. He took care of himself. He was one of the few whose breath wasn’t terrible.
He took her to a storeroom in the basement. Once the door was shut he told her to get in the mood. Sybil knew she was too passive when they kissed. He grew impatient. Then he couldn’t get hard and made her suck him. She had to kneel down. She thought how easy and natural it was with Lore, compared to Franz’s flaccid dick slipping in and out of her mouth. She felt nothing. She said to herself, this is how it is now. Then he got harder and told her to help push him inside her because he still wasn’t properly stiff, and there was the demeaning business of lubricating him with her spit. After that it was over almost as soon as he started. She despised him as another man taking advantage, and felt a little sorry for him for being so pathetic. He hadn’t even lain her down, just fucked her standing. His thighs quivered when he came while he cursed for being too quick. She tried not to show her contempt and even kissed him, as if to say it would be better next time, hoping it would never come to that.
Sybil Todermann’s work card described her as a seamstress. Schlegel suspected this was a rather modest description because he knew from his mother’s friend of the young woman who copied fashions and he doubted if there were many women’s tailors around Savignyplatz.
On the train he brooded on all the machinations he had got sucked into since Morgen’s arrival, the latest of which was Stoffel’s enmity. He remained puzzled by Stoffel’s lack of concern over Nebe’s impending deadline. Not only could he not be bothered to do anything, he couldn’t be bothered to be seen to be doing it.
The place where Sybil Todermann worked was smarter than her job definition implied. Fr
om the front it appeared a fancy shop where it was necessary to ring a bell to gain admission. Immediately inside was a well-appointed if dated reception with cubicles for clients to try on clothes.
When he said who he was to the woman who answered she went pale.
‘Frau Zwicker?’
The woman nodded, frightened. He reassured her it was a routine enquiry. He only needed to speak to Sybil as a witness to something else.
Frau Zwicker said Sybil hadn’t turned up all week.
He asked to see where she worked.
She took him through. The space was bigger than the front of the shop suggested. Two dozen women worked in rows and the air was full of the hum of sewing machines.
‘What can you tell me about her?’
Frau Zwicker said she was a good worker who kept to herself.
‘What do you make here?’
‘Clothes for export mainly.’
A seamstress who had lived with a crazy mother, he thought; end of story. Except for his mother’s friend and her Jewish seamstress.
‘Show me some of the stuff she makes for the important wives.’
Frau Zwicker tried to pretend they did no such thing.
‘I am not here to cause trouble. I only need to follow up on Fräulein Todermann. Your business is of no concern to me.’
Frau Zwicker mumbled for him to follow. She led the way down a corridor with a glass roof, at the far end of which stood a studio where clothes hung on rails.
Frau Zwicker gestured and said nothing, still expecting trouble.
Schlegel fingered his way through the hangers. Winter coats mainly, some evening dresses.
Frau Zwicker showed him a smart woman’s suit. He knew enough about clothes to know it was both à la mode and well made. He also knew fashion was becoming scarce.
‘It’s very good, isn’t it?’
‘She was the best.’
‘What else can you tell me?’
Frau Zwicker hesitated.
‘Perhaps you could give me a list of her clients.’
‘There isn’t one. It was done through personal contact.’
‘You must know who these women are.’
‘I trusted her to make her own connections. She needed the money.’
