Metropolis

Part Two: Decline

BERLIN’S SUMMER FINALLY arrived in earnest and the city bloomed with light and shrugged off its greasy loden overcoat. Lovers sat on five-penny benches in the Tiergarten not far from Apollo, who stared at his stringless stone lyre and wondered impotently what to play for them. On Sundays, workers in their thousands took an S-Bahn train to the white sandy beaches of Wannsee. One day I went myself and you couldn’t see the beach for the people, so that it was hard to make out where the sand ended and the water began; they paddled their dirty feet in the warm shallow water before returning home to the gray eastern slums, their faces pink from the sun, their sweating bellies full of sausage and sauerkraut and beer. Pleasure steamers headed noisily down the Spree to Grünau and Heidesee, and the statue of Victoria at the top of Berlin’s victory column blazed in the bright sunlight like a fiery angel as if it had come to announce some new apocalypse.

At the Alex, we paid lip service to summer by calling in the painters and plasterers, by hosing down the basement cells and leaving the upper-floor windows ajar all day, allowing the air to blow away some of the gloom and the stink of tobacco smoke and perspiration. But it never lasted very long. A cage is still a cage however wide open you leave the doors, and it always stinks of the animals who’ve been kept there: murderers, thieves, gartersnappers, queers, grasshoppers, control girls, drug addicts, alcoholics, wife beaters, and gangsters. But mostly just cops. No one smells worse than us.

There’s something about a big Police Praesidium on a broiling summer’s night; it’s easy to think that crime kicks off its tight shoes and takes a holiday like the rest of Berlin, but that would be a mistake. It’s never the cold that brings out the worst in people, it’s the heat. If you can call them people: the sick, venal, lowlife that lies oozing at the bottom of the strata we are wont to call Berlin society. Sometimes I had the strong idea that George Grosz was right and I was wrong; that he was only recording what was already there: the indifferent fat bankers, the crippled veterans, the mutilated beggars, and the dead prostitutes—that this was how we really were, ugly and obscene, hypocritical and callous.

But there’s always something new in this job that surprises you. Something that throws you off guard, such as the kind of murder you never expected to see because naïvely you thought you’d seen everything. That’s what happened in the long hot summer of 1928.

It was on a day when public interest in Winnetou was at its highest that everything changed abruptly and, almost overnight, a very different sort of killer took his place in the febrile imagination of the metropolis. One moment the Kripo’s Murder Commission was investigating Eva Angerstein’s killing, and the next it seemed as if she and Winnetou’s other unfortunate victims had never existed. For a while I tried to keep a discreet handle on the case but it was to no avail. The orders came from the very top.

One day Bernhard Weiss found himself summoned to a meeting at the Ministry of Justice on the Wilhelmstrasse, where he was told, in no uncertain terms, that the Murder Commission was to lay off the Winnetou murders and devote all its energies to catching the man the press had dubbed “Dr. Gnadenschuss,” which was how he had represented himself in the letter he’d sent to all the city’s newspapers. In it, he had claimed responsibility for these latest murders while also mocking the Berlin police and, in particular, the Murder Commission. And since those present at the meeting included the minister of justice, Hermann Schmidt; the minister of the interior, Albert Grzesinski; and the ViPoPra, Karl Zörgiebel, Weiss had little choice but to bite his lip and comply with his orders. It was as if someone had overheard my conversation at dinner with Thea von Harbou. The word from the Wilhelmstrasse was that almost nobody in government gave a damn about a few dead grasshoppers—not when there was a killer at large deemed to be of much greater political importance. Our government and politicians had deemed what Dr. Gnadenschuss was doing to be a disgrace to the Republic, and catching him was now to be the Murder Commission’s top priority. Meanwhile, Police Colonel Magnus Heimannsberg, who was also briefed in the same meeting, had his uniformed boys in Schupo advise Berlin’s prostitutes to stay off the streets or to sell it at their own risk.

As it happened, Magnus Heimannsberg knew a lot more about risk than he did about prostitutes, at least the female ones. According to Gennat, he lived with a handsome police major called Walther Encke, in an apartment on Apostel-Paulus-Strasse, in Berlin Schöneberg. Which probably also explained why he was not one of the Republic’s great police reformers. But he was very popular with the common patrolmen by virtue of the fact he’d started his career at the bottom of the ladder and also was totally apolitical, which is to say he was a staunch republican, like me. Neither a communist nor a Nazi, he was interested only in the welfare of the men whom he commanded and he suffered a lot of fools gladly in a way that Weiss would never have countenanced. There was no love lost between these two senior officers but they both agreed on the importance of avoiding any further national scandal, and of avenging the published insult to the Berlin police by capturing this Dr. Gnadenschuss as soon as possible.

WHAT OTHER NATIONS called the coup de grâce, we Germans called the Gnadenschuss: a single shot to the head that puts a badly injured man out of his misery. Except that the men to whom this dubious mercy was accorded on the streets of Berlin in broad daylight in 1928 had been severely injured more than a decade before. All these new murder victims were disabled war veterans, half-men on cripple-carts who for years had been begging for coins in front of the city’s S-Bahn stations. The victims were men who couldn’t run away. The first three were shot through the head at point-blank range with a .25-caliber pistol in less than a week; the small-caliber shot was barely heard above the noise of the trains in the station overhead. And in the case of two of the victims, it took several hours before anyone noticed they were dead, such was the commonplace status of these disabled veterans and the almost silent method by which they had been dispatched.

We case-reviewed these three killings in Gennat’s office: Weiss, Heller, Gennat, Otto Trettin, and me, with Frau Künstler typing up the transcript of what was said. Trettin had just returned after a length of time at a local sanatorium, which meant we were at last back to full strength.

“Take Otto through the facts as we know them, Bernie,” said Weiss. “He can read the files later.”

“The first victim was Werner Schlichter,” I said. “Age thirty-six, with no family that we know of. Formerly a sergeant with the 180th Infantry. Took a bullet in the spine in 1916 at the Battle of the Somme, which left him paralyzed from the waist down. A Berliner, he’d been a gardener at the Botanical Garden in Dahlem before the war. More recently he lived in the Salvation Army hostel on Müllerstrasse. His body was found near the railway station at Wedding, just south of Nettelbeckplatz, on June 6. He’d been shot once through the forehead in broad daylight at close range with a .25-caliber automatic. There was no used brass found at the scene, which means the killer felt confident enough to pick it up and take it away with him. The body was found by a schoolteacher from the Lessing Gymnasium on Pankstrasse—a Herr Kesten. A veteran himself, he’d spoken to Schlichter on previous occasions, when he put a few coins in the man’s cap. Except that on this occasion, the cap was on the dead man’s head, covering the bullet wound, instead of lying on his thigh, where it could more usefully collect coins. Again, it’s assumed that it was the killer who put the man’s cap on his head. Still on Schlichter’s army tunic were the Honor Cross with Swords and a German Imperial Wound Badge, black grade, and in his pockets were several marks. The Salvation Army commander at the hostel is a man called Harfensteller, also an army veteran, who said that Schlichter kept to himself and had no particular friends or enemies that he could think of. Before going on the streets to beg he had worked at the Oskar-Helene Home here in Berlin but apparently he didn’t care for the regime there and left.”

“Nobody saw anything?” asked Trettin.

“Not a thing,” I said, and handed Trettin the photograph taken by Hans Gross. From the picture it was easy to see why the murder had gone unnoticed for several hours; Schlichter was seated on his klutz cart and looked to all the world as if he was asleep; the entry wound resembled nothing more than a small carbuncle on his forehead.

“Why didn’t he like the Oskar-Helene?” asked Trettin.

“I’ll come back to that in a minute.”

Otto Trettin was a good detective but, like Kurt Reichenbach, he was at times a little bit heavy-handed; he’d once been attacked by two thugs from a criminal ring called Apache Blood and had put both men in hospital, with one losing an eye. He was not a man to tangle with. He’d also been rapped over the knuckles by Gennat for fiddling his expenses. He was said to be working with another detective on a book about famous Berlin murder cases. A moneymaker, perhaps; all of us were interested in making a little extra money, of course. Even Bernhard Weiss had recently published a book, Police and Politics. Somewhat dull, it didn’t have much appeal to the general public and it was bruited that one or two Berlin coppers hadn’t liked what he had to say about them in print. Gennat was also rumored to be working on a book. Sometimes I thought I was the only detective in the Commission who wasn’t planning a separate career as a writer.

“Thirty-six hours later,” I said, “we found the second victim: Oskar Heyde, age forty. The body was underneath the Friedrichstrasse station bridge. He’d been shot twice through the head at close range. Originally a businessman from Silesia, he joined the Fiftieth Reserve Division as an infantry lieutenant and was badly injured at the Third Battle of Ypres in September 1917, when he was blown up by a British mine, which cost him both legs and the sight in his left eye. For which he was awarded the Iron Cross. After the war he went to live with his brother Gustav in Potsdam, but the brother lost everything in the inflation and killed himself. Heyde then went to the Oskar-Helene Home, but he didn’t care for the regime either, and left soon afterward, since when he was on the street. Again, the body was undisturbed for several hours before anyone noticed anything suspicious.”

“So what is it with the Oskar-Helene?” asked Trettin.

I looked at Weiss. “Boss? Perhaps you’d like to take that question.”

Weiss removed his pince-nez, relit his cigar, and leaned back in his chair. “Gunther and I visited the home, which is in Berlin-Zehlendorf, the day before yesterday,” he said. “It was most informative. And utterly depressing. Quite the most depressing experience I’ve had in a long time. It’s my opinion that those who run it represent everything that’s wrong with modern Germany. The place is under the control of two doctors, Konrad Biesalski and Hans Wurtz, who have very definite, not to say inflexible, ideas on rehabilitation and social integration. They believe hard work is the only true cure for an injured man’s maladies; that a man who remains work-shy and dependent on society demonstrates ‘a crippled soul’ and is constitutionally deficient to the extent of being degenerate. Frankly, they leave nothing for a man’s pride, even half a man, with half a face, as was the case with several of the men we encountered.

“I don’t doubt that their intentions are good. But it seems to me that not every man who was badly injured is capable of work. If you submit to their regime and become a morally healthy, curable cripple, then you agree to be retrained and to become a useful member of society, or at least society as it is perceived by these two doctors. If you don’t, you find yourself classed as a feeble-minded, morally unhealthy, incurable invalid; more important, you put yourself beyond any financial compensation for war-related suffering.”

“Jesus,” muttered Trettin.

“Effectively, they’re both eugenicists, which is to say that the logical conclusion of their theories is nothing short of euthanasia, according to which, men who won’t work are not only a burden on society, but are psychopathic, unpatriotic, and unworthy of life. They are war neurotics deserving only of extermination.” Weiss replaced his pince-nez on his nose. “Now, tell him about the third victim, Bernie, if you would.”

“Boss. Age forty-two, Werner Jugo lived with his wife in a basement in Meyerheimstrasse. Before the war he was a bus driver with the Berlin Transport Company. Joined the Twenty-Seventh Field Artillery Division in 1914. In 1918, he was hit by mortar fire at the Battle of Amiens.”

“The blackest day of the German Army,” muttered Weiss, quoting Ludendorff.

“Lost an arm and both legs. After the war, he spent several years at Spandau Hospital. Then served a year in Fühlsbuttel Penitentiary in Hamburg for an assault on a prostitute.”

“It’s an occupational hazard,” said Trettin. “That is, if you’re a gartersnapper.”

“We don’t know why he attacked her. He then spent a year in St. Joseph’s Sanatorium.”

I paused for a second, acutely aware that this was the same place from which Otto Trettin had just returned. St. Joseph’s was a monastery near the lake in Weissensee where Berliners were treated for cocaine addiction.

“It’s all right,” he said. His face was a thick-lipped rictus with a broken nose and large, cold dark eyes, a bit like a totem pole with piles. “I don’t mind talking about it. I had a little habit that got out of hand, that’s all. Well, you know how the hours are on a job like this. Up and down. Sometimes I needed a lift just to function. Anyway, all that’s behind me now. Thanks to the boss here.”

“We’re glad to see you back in harness, Otto,” said Weiss. “That’s what matters. And especially now.”

Gennat grunted and got up to adjust the clock on the wall of his office, which he did several times a day; it was an old railway clock and more decorative than useful. Every time I looked at it, it was wrong and there was a general suspicion that Gennat liked it that way, that it gave him an excuse to interrupt a meeting he wanted to end, and the fact was, he didn’t like Otto Trettin very much. He didn’t trust anyone who’d been addicted to drugs. While Gennat corrected and then rewound the clock, I carried on with my exposition of the case.

“He may have been a beggar, but Werner Jugo was strongly suspected of having been a coke dealer. We found several grams of the stuff on his body. His wife, Magda, is an attendant in the ladies’ lavatory at the Excelsior, and it’s possible she also sells drugs. But given the two previous cases, we are of the opinion that the murder was not drug related. Like the two previous victims, Jugo was shot through the forehead at close range. The body was found under the station on Schönhauser Allee, still on his cripple-cart. This was just twenty-four hours after victim two was found dead. Again, no one saw or heard anything, with the noise of the train concealing the gunshot.

“The day after Jugo’s murder, four Berlin newspapers—the Morgenpost, the Vossische Zeitung, the Lokal-Anzeiger, and the Tageblatt—received an identical typewritten letter that claimed to have been written by the murderer. The letter to the Morgenpost was accompanied by an army cap on which was written Oskar Heyde’s name. It also contained his army number, which we have since checked with the Bendlerblock, and the Reichswehr have confirmed that the number is genuine.”

“Which would seem to make the letter genuine also,” said Weiss. “Incidentally, Gottfried Hanke, Kripo’s in-house typewriter and graphology expert, believes the letters were typed on an Orga Privat Bingwerke machine. Not only that, but he says the machine displays a defect in the horizontal alignment: the capital letter G prints to the right. I’ve asked Hanke to check out office-supply companies in Berlin to see if they have a record of sales of that particular machine. The postmark on the envelope was Friedrichshain, but I doubt there’s any significance in that. I live in Friedrichshain. Anyway, read the letter, Bernie.”

“Any comments, gentlemen?” asked Weiss.

“It’s been two years since we had the Murder Commission,” said Trettin. “He’s not very up-to-date with current police practice.”

“Perhaps that’s just as well,” said Weiss.

“I’ve a comment,” said Gennat. “And it relates to the very peculiar sort of anti-Semitism that’s demonstrated in this letter.”

“There is no anti-Semitism in that letter,” observed Weiss.

“That’s what’s peculiar about it. This must be the first time anyone made a criticism of Kripo and the Murder Commission that didn’t make mention of the fact that there’s a Jew in charge of this department. Specifically, you. Especially when they’ve signed off with a Heil Hitler.”

“Yes, that’s true,” admitted Weiss. “I never thought of that.”

“In every other respect he sounds exactly like a Nazi,” added Gennat.

“Or someone who wants to sound like a Nazi,” I said. “But I agree with Ernst. It’s curious that a Nazi of all people should miss out on a good opportunity to libel you, sir. They’re not normally so careless about such things.”

“Especially that bastard Goebbels,” agreed Trettin. “Hey, wouldn’t it be great if a Nazi really had killed these men? Hitler loves to pose as the veterans’ friend. Something like this would truly embarrass him.”

Weiss said nothing but I could tell he was thinking the same thing.

“You know, boss,” added Trettin, “listening to that letter reminded me of how you described those two doctors at the Oskar-Helene Home in Zehlendorf. You said they were eugenicists. Only more so. That they believe in the extermination of those who serve no useful purpose in society.”

“Sadly, this kind of perverted science is a commonly held view today,” said Weiss. “Especially in Germany. And among some quite respectable people, too. Until his death a few years ago, Karl Binding was a leading exponent of ‘mercy’ killing, as he called it. And psychiatrist Alfred Hoche has been advocating euthanasia for the disabled and mentally ill for many years.”

“Nevertheless,” said Trettin, “maybe there’s some useful purpose in seeing if Doctors Biesalski and Wurtz are somehow involved in these killings.”

“You mean, in seeing if they’re murderers?”

“I’m not sure I would go that far. No, in seeing if perhaps they counseled others at the home to carry out the murders.”

Weiss frowned. “I think it’s highly unlikely. I didn’t like them. I didn’t like them at all. But I don’t think there’s any German doctor who would put a gun to a man’s head and pull the trigger in the name of so-called racial hygiene, or ask someone else to do so. Things are morally bad in Germany, yes, but they’re not that bad. But by all means pursue it as a possible lead if you think it’s worth it, Otto. It’s not as if we have a lot of other theories to work with right now. Only do it discreetly. I don’t want them complaining to the Ministry.”

Gennat came back to the meeting table and clasped his pink hands in front of his belly, like an innocent choirboy. He didn’t sit down. Looking as if he wished to make a point, he addressed the table with the air of an angry chairman berating a board of directors.

“If you ask me, it’s teenagers who are behind these killings,” he said. Gennat seemed a little more red-faced and pop-eyed than usual, and his voice could have blunted the edge of a saber. “That’s right. Our delightful, all-important, patriotic German youth who don’t know anything and want to know even less. Lazy little bastards. Most of them regard cops as figures of comedy.” He stared up at the ceiling with a look of sarcastic innocence and tried to speak like an adolescent. “‘What, me, Officer? I really don’t know what you’re talking about, Officer. No sir, I can’t remember where I was last night. And I wouldn’t dream of doing what you suggest. As a matter of fact, I’ve just come from church, where I was praying for my grandmother.’

“They make me puke.” Gennat caught the smile on the face of Bernhard Weiss and pointed his cigar holder the boss’s way. “And why not them? You know what I’m talking about, boss. A gang of juveniles looking for amusement. And what could be more amusing than murder for the hell of it, especially when you’re just killing off a few old men who’ve outlived their usefulness? That’s just Darwinism, according to some lawyers I’ve spoken to.”

“You’re exaggerating a bit, Ernst,” said Weiss. “Young people are really not as bad as that, are they?”

“No, they’re far worse than that. You don’t believe me, then go down to the Juvenile Court and take a good look for yourself, Bernhard. They have no souls, half of them. But why should that be a surprise to anyone? Many of them have grown up without any kind of discipline in their lives because their fathers were killed in the trenches.”

“What about the letter? Are you seriously saying a juvenile could have written that?”

“Excuse me, chief, but why not?”

With a magnanimous gesture of his hand, Weiss encouraged Gennat to continue.

“They can write. They’ve been educated. Some of these teenage swine are a lot cleverer than you think, chief. Paul Krantz, for example. Remember him? He was attending a good school, a gymnasium, and would have got his Abitur but for the small matter of a murder trial.”

Paul Krantz was a juvenile whose case had recently come before the Berlin courts; he’d been accused of murdering two of his teenage friends, youngsters from a nice, middle-class home in Berlin-Steglitz, along with another boy who was his rival for the affections of a local girl. The murders had been a source of enormous fascination in the Berlin newspapers.

“But Paul Krantz was acquitted of murder,” protested Weiss.

“All the worse. But everyone in Berlin knows he did it. Three murders and all he gets is a rap over the knuckles; three weeks in the cement for the illegal possession of a .25-caliber pistol. That’s what I call clever. You think I’m exaggerating? Well, I’m not. I seem to recall the trial judge in his case referring to dangerous tendencies that are present in the German youth of today. Frankly a lot of German teenagers are communists or Nazis and don’t even know it yet. Maybe Dr. Gnadenschuss is just one of those: young Pifkes the Nazis are working hard to recruit because none of them possesses so much as a vestigial conscience. The ideal Nazi.

“And by the way, you notice I made mention of Paul Krantz owning a .25-caliber pistol. That’s because lots of kids in juvenile gangs have them. Forget about knives and saps; a lot of these wild boys own small automatics. It’s a status symbol. Like an earring, a good pair of leather shorts, or an old tuxedo. They’re a lawless breed bent only on their own lawless pleasure.”

“So what are you suggesting?” asked Weiss, fiddling with his immaculate shirt cuffs. He seemed like a study in patience—the very opposite of his more passionate deputy.

“Let’s have Schupo round them all up for questioning early one morning. See what we can shake out of their lederhosen pockets. If nothing else it will look to the minister like we’re doing something. Who knows? Maybe we’ll get lucky. It’s about time we did. We find one kid in possession of a typewriter that has a misaligned G and we’re laughing all the way to the falling ax.”

“But where are they? These gangs of teenagers?”

“They’re easy enough to find. They hang out in encampments in park sites, abandoned warehouses, and old beach huts on the outskirts of Berlin, mostly to the west. Did you know that some of these gangs even call themselves after names in Karl May’s novels?”

“How do you know all this, Ernst?” asked Weiss.

“Because there’s a fourteen-year-old runaway in a cell over in Charlottenburg who stabbed another gang member in a knife fight. A vicious little queer who thought he was playing bare-arsed Boy Scouts. He just happens to be my brother-in-law’s cousin. My sister telephoned to see if I could help him and I told her she could forget it. Help was something he needed a year ago in the shape of a thick ear; now he needs a good lawyer. Besides, I’m a detective, not a damn psychiatrist.”

“We had noticed,” said Heller.

“So what do you say, boss? Shall we round them up for questioning?”

“I don’t like the idea of mass arrests,” said Weiss. “It smacks of the Freikorps and the right wing. But if you think it’s worth a shot, then let’s do it. I’ll speak to Magnus Heimannsberg and see when we can arrange it.”

“The sooner, the better,” said Gennat. “The last thing we need is another letter, let alone another murder.”

“Yes, indeed,” agreed Weiss. “It’s awkward the way this letter puts Kripo on the spot. It makes it harder for us to deflect criticism from both conservatives and communists. I think perhaps I shall have to write a newspaper article for the Tageblatt myself. Dr. Gnadenschuss isn’t the only one who can command some newspaper space. I’ll speak to Theo Wolff.”

Gennat looked as if he were about to say something but Weiss silenced him with a raised index finger.

“I know you’ll say I should pick a newspaper that isn’t run by Jews, but the Berliner Tageblatt has a circulation of a quarter of a million. And the others are bound to pick it up. It’s high time we persuaded our citizens that they should become the eyes and ears of their own police force. Maybe we can persuade the people to catch Dr. Gnadenschuss for us.”

“‘Good luck with that’ is actually what I was going to say.”

“You don’t think such a thing is possible?”

Gennat looked momentarily exasperated. “Newspapers are in the business of creating mass hysteria,” he said. “They don’t give a damn if we catch this bastard. All they care about is stoking fear and spreading panic and selling even more newspapers. You write an article in the paper about Dr. Gnadenschuss, then you’re showing the world that we’re taking this lunatic seriously.”

“What’s wrong with that?” asked Weiss.

“It’s as good as telling every spinner and nutcase in this city that he’ll be taken seriously, too. It was before your time, chief, but the last time the newspapers published a murderer’s letter to the editor was the Ackermann case in 1921. There was a press conference then, too, after which we had two hundred people who walked into this police station, each of them claiming to be the murderer. All of whom had to be checked out, of course. It was as if all the metronomes in Berlin suddenly started to swing in time with one another. Not to mention the three copycat murders that followed. In my opinion, public enthusiasm to catch a murderer can hinder progress as much as it can promote it.”

“I hear what you say, Ernst. But we can’t have it both ways. Public apathy or public hysteria—we have to choose the lesser of two evils here. Yes, I feel we have to do something. At the very least, the honor of the department demands that I answer this man’s taunts. And, of course, disabled veterans need to be warned to take precautions, to stay off the streets if they can. Not to mention the fact that we need to mobilize their help as well.”

“They’re beggars,” objected Gennat. “Most of them don’t have much choice but to beg on the streets, let alone enough money to buy a newspaper.”

“Nevertheless, we’re going to need their help,” said Weiss.

For the rest of us seated around the table in Ernst Gennat’s office, seeing these two men argue was like watching Dempsey versus Firpo, but on the whole it was easier for me to agree with Gennat than with Bernhard Weiss: Gennat was the older dog who knew all the tricks of the trade. Weiss commanded attention, but Gennat commanded respect. Not that I would have commented either way; it certainly wasn’t for me to offer my opinion on the arguments of my superiors. Still, I thought it was greatly to Weiss’s credit that he tolerated—even encouraged—his deputy’s dissenting view, like Wilhelm I and Bismarck perhaps, except that Gennat didn’t threaten to resign if he didn’t get his way.

But in truth, most of my mind was still back at the Oskar-Helene Home in Zehlendorf. Some of the things I’d seen in that creamy-white building on the edge of leafy Dahlem had left me feeling profoundly depressed and wondering how it was I’d been lucky enough to come through the whole war with a face, two eyes, and four limbs. Almost ten years had passed since the 1918 armistice, but what had happened in the trenches was still powerfully inside my head, as if it had been yesterday. Where did it come from, this sudden recrudescence of horror, this revival of mental anguish and pain that I thought had been long forgotten? For the life of me I couldn’t explain it, but seeing all those badly maimed men had brought things flooding back so powerfully I’d barely slept since our visit. Now, whenever I went to bed, I encountered the prologue to a nightmare that was indelibly printed on the inside of my eyelids—grotesquely vivid images of myself back in the trenches, the complete mud-encrusted disaster. In particular there were three silent films that kept coming back to haunt me: my best friend’s brains in my hair after a stray bullet from a Lewis gun shattered his skull; a man screaming his last breath into my face, followed by most of his blood and guts; a field surgeon amputating wounded limbs with a guillotine, to save the time a surgical saw would have demanded.

And because of this, ever since our visit to the home, like some shaky neurotic trying to stave off madness, I’d been drinking more than was good or usual for me—with Rankin; with Gennat; with Trettin; but mostly on my own. Whiskey, schnapps, and rum, it was all the same to me. Drinking so that I was always on the edge of being drunk, sucking lots of mint PEZ to try to hide the booze on my breath, and saying very little in case I spoke one adventitious word that would give the game away. But there was no hiding that kind of thing from a man like Ernst Gennat, who knew a bit about drinking himself. After the meeting in his office he took me aside.

“Tell me, Gunther, did you always drink a lot?”

“I don’t drink a lot. Just often. And lately, more often than I should, perhaps.”

“Why’s that, do you think? Is the job getting to you already? It’s the most interesting job in the world, but the pressure it creates can break a man.”

“It’s not the job. At least not directly. The fact is, I’ve been drinking much more since I visited that damned home for the disabled in Zehlendorf. It awoke all sorts of bad thoughts—things from the war I thought were asleep forever. Being at the home just reminded me of how many had gone. Comrades. Friends. Men I cared about. I still see their faces, you know. Hundreds of them. I heard a car backfire last night and I damned near shit myself. You’ll laugh but I saw a ditch today in the Tiergarten and wanted to climb in and get my head down. A ditch looks like somewhere nice and safe. Getting into a glassful of schnapps looks a bit cleaner, that’s all.”

Gennat nodded and put an avuncular hand on my shoulder. It felt as heavy as a military kit bag. “I don’t trust a man who doesn’t drink,” he said. “It means he doesn’t trust himself and I’ve no use for a man who doesn’t trust himself. You can’t rely on a man like that. Not in this business. But there’s a drink and then there’s drinking. One’s a cop’s good friend and the other’s a cop’s worst enemy. You know that, of course, otherwise you wouldn’t have tried to cover it up with those mints you keep sucking on, not to mention that terrible cologne. And because you know that, you also know it’d be best if you were to try and put the cork back in the bottle, lad. Get over it. Sooner than later. You’ll have to try to live with those trench demons of yours without the help of the holy spirit. Because neither I nor the chief has any use for a man who smells like a bar towel at eleven o’clock in the morning.”

But as things turned out he was wrong about that.

“WEISS IS QUITE RIGHT, you know,” said Trettin when, toward the end of the day, he and I were ensconced in the Zum. “If we’re ever going to catch Dr. Gnadenschuss we are going to need the help of the city’s vagrants and beggars. It stands to reason that one of them must have seen something. But I’m afraid Gennat is also right. Those people don’t buy newspapers. And plenty of them don’t even speak German, let alone read it. As I see it, there’s no point in interviewing them one at a time. That would take too long. So we should go to the barrel and talk to them in number.”

“The barrel?”

“That’s right.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll see.” He looked at his watch. “I think we’ll be just in time.”

We finished our drinks and then Trettin drove us northwest to Weissensee and parked on Fröbelstrasse, next to the gasworks. A long line of the city’s poor, some of them barefoot, were waiting to get inside the building opposite while a couple of SA men did their best to recruit new members for the Nazi Party.

“The Palme,” I said. “Of course.”

With five thousand beds, the Palme was Berlin’s oldest and largest night shelter for the city’s homeless. Support was limited to the bare necessities: accommodation in one of the dormitories for no longer than five consecutive nights, disinfection of clothing, access to personal-hygiene facilities, a plate of soup and a piece of bread mornings and evenings. Berliners sometimes called it the pauper’s Adlon. It was almost as inaccessible: more than two kilometers northeast of the Alex, it was far enough away from any respectable people that no one could have complained.

“You know, it doesn’t matter where you go,” I said, “it seems there’s a Nazi there ahead of you.”

“A brown shirt is at least a clean shirt. But if ever those bastards get into power they’ll arrest everyone in this place. Mark my words. They’re recruiting homeless men today, but they’ll be arresting them tomorrow. On the grounds of being a public nuisance or something like that.”

“They can’t arrest them all,” I said. “Besides, they’d only have to accommodate them somewhere else.”

“You think that will stop them? I don’t.”

“Poor bastards.”

“Why? Because they’re homeless? Listen, for a lot of them that’s the life they’ve chosen. And the rest are just crazy.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“It’s true.”

“You’re hard enough to ice skate on, Otto, do you know that?”

WHY IT WAS CALLED the Palme, Trettin didn’t know for sure.

“It might have been because there used to be a palm tree in the entrance hall,” he said. “At least there was back in 1886, when the Palme got started.”

“A palm tree? In Berlin? Someone’s idea of a joke, perhaps.”

He pulled a face. “I agree, that does sound unlikely.” He fetched a little tin from his vest pocket and handed it to me.

“What’s this?”

“Mentholated camphor. I keep some in my pocket in case I have to attend a police autopsy. Wipe some on your nostrils. It will help with the smell when we’re in there.”

We left the car and, pushing our way through the line of unwashed bodies, went inside. Trettin had been right about the mentholated camphor. The place smelled like a trench on a hot day. Toothless, gnarled gray faces surrounded us; it was like stepping onto the page of some mildewed engraving of grim metropolitan life.

Trettin led the way to the closed-in admissions counter, showed the warder his beer token, and asked to see the director.

Five minutes later we were in a large office overlooking the courtyard of the main building. On one wall was a portrait of the Berlin planning commissioner who’d helped found the Palme, and on another a picture of St. Benedict Joseph Labre. The director, Dr. Manfred Ostwald, was a stout man with white hair and very dark eyes; with his stiff collar and morning coat he reminded me of a badger in a children’s story. On his desk were several copies of a magazine called The Tramp; he said it was published by the International Brotherhood of Vagabonds, which sounded like a joke but wasn’t. He listened to our request and then invited us to use a newly installed public address system that, he explained, was connected to a loudspeaker in every one of the Palme’s forty dormitories.

“If I might add a word of advice, gentlemen,” he said. “Write down what you want to say first. That way you won’t repeat yourself and you’ll avoid any hesitation while you work out what to say.”

“Good idea,” said Trettin, and then handed me his copy.

“You want me to read it?”

“You’ve had more to drink than I have.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“You’re relaxed. I get nervous when I read my wife a story in the newspaper.”

“Yes, well, I’ve seen your wife and that doesn’t surprise me. She’d frighten a hyena with a law degree.”

Trettin chuckled. “That she would.”

After reading our appeal for information under my breath several times, I read it out loud into the microphone, and while we waited to see if anyone would come forward, Dr. Ostwald pressed a glass of schnapps on us, which was brutal of him, but we weren’t about to complain. There’s nothing like a glass in your fingers to make a line of inquiry seem as if it’s going well. Fifteen minutes passed and then Ostwald’s secretary knocked on the door to tell him that we had someone who wanted to give us some information. But she also added a name that made her boss hesitate.

“Well, show him in,” said Trettin. “That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”

By now Dr. Ostwald’s hesitation was accompanied by a grimace. “Wait, I know this fellow of old,” he said. “Stefan Rühle is one of our regulars and a little bit of a troublemaker. Quite apart from the fact that he will want money, he has some eccentric, not to say lunatic, ideas. And by the way, don’t give him any money, at least not right away, or there’ll be another ten just like him in this office. You spend six minutes talking to this man and if you’re still in your right mind, then you can tell me I was wrong. Otherwise I’ll simply say I told you so.”

“We can spare him six minutes,” I said. “Even those Nazis outside probably gave him more than that.”

“All right. Just remember not to swallow all of what he says. Not unless you want your stomach pumped.” Dr. Ostwald waved at his secretary. “Show him in, Hanna, dear.”

She went outside and returned trying not to smell the air surrounding the man behind her. He was a shifty, pop-eyed individual, with a cap that looked like it was moss growing on his head, and a jacket that was more grease than wool. Seeing us, he grinned and swung his arms excitedly.

“You the police?”

“That’s right.”

“If you’re the police, where are your warrant discs? I’ll need to see some identification before I say anything. I’m not stupid, you know.”

I showed him my beer token. “So. Have you got some information for us, Herr Rühle?”

“Stefan. Nobody calls me Herr Rühle. Not these days. Not unless I’m in trouble. I’m not in any trouble, am I?”

“No trouble at all,” I said. “Now then. How about it? Have you any information about this man who’s been killing disabled war veterans?”

“If I tell you what I know, how can I be sure that you’re not going to kill me?”

“Why would we want to kill you?” asked Trettin.

“You’ll know why when I give you the information you’re looking for. Besides, you’re police. That means you have the right to hurt people like me.”

Trettin smiled patiently. “We promise not to kill you, Stefan. Don’t we, Bernie?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

“Sounds like a copper’s promise. Which is to say not a promise at all. Maybe if I had a drink. That might help me believe you’re sincere.”

I looked at Ostwald, who shook his head.

“If you tell us something interesting then we’ll take you out for a beer,” said Trettin. “As many beers as you like if we get a name.”

“Don’t like beer. Schnapps. I like schnapps. Same as you fellows. I can smell it on your breath.”

“All right. We’ll buy you a schnapps. Until then, why not have a cigarette?” Trettin opened his case and let Rühle help himself to several. He put them in his pocket for later.

“Thanks. Well, then, to business, as you say. The man who is killing these war veterans is a copper, like you. I know that because I saw him shoot a man.”

It was my turn to smile patiently. “Why do you say that?”

“Because it’s true. I recognized him. It was a policeman who killed those men. I saw him do it. And if you ask me, it was an act of mercy.”

“Was he wearing a uniform?”

“No.”

“Then how did you know he was a policeman?”

“How? I mean, I knew. All right? I’d seen him before. Somewhere. I don’t remember where, exactly. But I’m sure that at the time he identified himself as a policeman. This was the same man who shot one of those schnorrers.”

Rühle spoke in an abrupt, runaway manner, with almost no eye contact, which immediately made me think he was a little unhinged. Most of the time he was staring at the carpet as if there was something in the pattern he found fascinating.

“Yes, but why would a policeman do such a thing?” asked Trettin.

“Oh, simple. Because he probably believes that these men are vagabonds. That they’re part of an infectious epidemic that’s afflicting this city. Because they are indecent and beneath contempt. That’s why he’s doing it, for sure. Because beggars force their poverty upon people in the most repulsive way for their own selfish purposes. People will only feel that things are improving in Germany when someone launches a successful action against beggars of all descriptions. That’s why he’s doing it. I should have thought that was obvious. He’s doing it for reasons of urban hygiene. And frankly I agree with him. It’s a necessary defensive measure against uneconomic behavior.”

“What my colleague was saying,” I said, “is that he doesn’t believe that a policeman is capable of cold-blooded murder like this.”

“Well, that doesn’t surprise me. Everyone believes that policemen are a necessary evil. But they are evil. They—you—do the devil’s work. When a policeman shoots someone because he’s committed a crime it’s the most cold-blooded murder there is because it’s his job, see? He gets paid to do it. There’s no emotion or feeling involved. A policeman does that work because we need evil men to do evil work to keep us safe from other evil men. Or so he imagines. But really he does it because the devil told him to. And when he goes home at night he can sleep because he can tell himself that he was only obeying the devil’s orders.”

“The devil.” Trettin sighed and shook his head. It was clear he’d already given up hope of getting any sensible information from Stefan Rühle.

“What did this policeman look like?” I asked.

“He looked like a demon, that’s what he looked like. I’m not sure which one. But his face was covered in hair. His eyes were red. And he wore the very finest clothes available to man. As if money was no object. His shoes were like snow. The scepter he carried was the symbol of his power on earth. And his smile was as white as a wolf’s. I don’t doubt he would have torn out my throat with his teeth if I’d stayed to speak with him. If you have a police artist I will be glad to help him draw the man’s portrait.”

“I don’t think that will be necessary,” I said, looking at my watch. The man had had his six minutes. And when finally we managed to get rid of him, Dr. Ostwald looked at me with a twinkle in his eye.

“I told you so.”

THE ROUNDUP and temporary detention of Berlin’s wild boys went ahead as planned but revealed very little that was of interest to us in the Murder Commission. Petty crime and general delinquency. Ernst Gennat shrugged off the disappointment. Just because the sweep hadn’t found anything didn’t mean it wasn’t the right thing to do; that was the way he looked at it. Meanwhile, the Berliner Tageblatt published the article by Bernhard Weiss and, as predicted, the department was quickly overwhelmed with men—and one lesbian transvestite—who claimed to be Dr. Gnadenschuss. And it was perhaps fortunate for us that almost immediately afterward a fourth war veteran turned up dead and we were able to shoo them all out the door with a warning about wasting police time.

Age thirty-seven, Walther Frölich had been born in Dresden and served with the Third Army’s Ninth Landwehr Division as a corporal, winning a second-class Iron Cross. Shot through the spine at Verdun in October 1918 and paralyzed from the waist down; his body was found under the Oberbaum Bridge, near Schlesisches Tor, which was a stone’s throw from the Wolfmium factory, its blackened ruins still overlooking the Spree like a modern gate of hell. He’d been shot just once through the head.

IF BERNHARD WEISS still didn’t realize that his newspaper article was a mistake, it wasn’t very long before he had to.

At Uncle Pelle’s Circus in Wedding, there was a famous freak show. Some of its members were actually war veterans, including a man without arms and legs who was billed on the posters as “the human centipede.” A couple of days after Weiss’s article appeared in the Berliner Tageblatt, he received a telephone call at the Alex from this man alleging that Surehand Hank, the celebrated circus marksman, had confessed to being Dr. Gnadenschuss and was now threatening to shoot Weiss. Since Surehand Hank was a known Nazi who often gave shooting lessons to SA members and had been linked to a violently right-wing anti-Semitic organization previously involved in several political assassinations, it was a persuasive-enough profile. Quite how the human centipede made the telephone call was anyone’s guess, but Weiss felt obliged to go and check it out himself when his informant insisted that they meet in person. Since the human centipede could hardly come to him, Weiss asked me to drive him to the circus.

The chief’s own private car had been chosen for safety: a blue Audi Type K that was easily distinguishable from most other Berlin motorcars by virtue of the fact that it was a left-hand drive. I liked driving it although changing gear with my right hand took some getting used to. The car provided a better view of oncoming traffic and seemed a lot safer than the majority of right-hand-drive cars, an impression enhanced by the fact that beside the driver’s seat was a door pocket containing a broom-handle Mauser. That was a good gun, but if I had as many enemies as Bernhard Weiss I think I’d have kept a sawn-off in the car.

Turning out of the Alex courtyard I steered the Audi north and west toward Wedding, and it wasn’t long before I realized that the chief was paying attention to every one of the decisions I was making behind the wheel. His eyes were all over my gear changes.

“Does the human centipede have a name?” I asked, missing a gear change.

“Kurzidim, Albert Kurzidim. He says that he’s suspected Togotzes from the beginning, but that my article persuaded him he had to call. That’s Surehand Hank’s real name. Hans Togotzes.”

“Haven’t been to the circus since I was a boy,” I said, missing another gear.

“Are you up to this?” he asked, as we drove up Oranienburger Strasse and then Chausseestrasse.

“Up to what, sir?”

“This. What you’re doing now. Driving.”

“What are you getting at, sir?”

“What I mean is, are you fit to be behind the wheel of this car?”

“Is there something wrong with my driving, sir?”

“Then let me put it another way: Have you had a drink today?”

“Not since last night,” I lied.

“I believe you,” he said in a way that made me think he didn’t believe me at all. “Gennat mentioned he thought you were drinking too much since we visited that damned disabled home. And I just wanted to say, I understand you, Bernie. Perhaps in a way that Ernst doesn’t. In fact I’m sure of it. Ernst didn’t see any army service during the war. Not like us. I was the officer in charge of a medical company before becoming a captain in a cavalry unit, and I saw things I never want to see again. As I’m sure you did. And I don’t mind telling you that I’ve had a few drinks myself since we went to the Oskar-Helene. I may even have had a bit of a problem myself a few years ago. There’s no shame in this, Bernie. There’s even a name for it, these days. Shell shock, or neurasthenia. Did you know there are as many as eighty thousand German veterans still being treated in hospitals for this condition? Men who are every bit as seriously injured as some of those we encountered the other day; but mentally.”

Seeing the sign for Uncle Pelle’s I turned off the main road and headed along a narrow gravel track between two small cemeteries. The track was lined with poplar trees beyond which could be seen the distinctive candy stripes of the circus big top.

“So take some time off if you need it. As much time as you need. I’d rather have you back in Kripo as a recovering drinker than not at all. Drunk or sober, you’re one of the best men I’ve got.”

“Thank you, sir. But I’ll be fine.”

IT WAS ALL A SETUP, of course. I might have drunk my breakfast out of a bottle, but there was nothing wrong with my eyesight. Even at thirty meters I could tell that the man emerging from the side of the track with one hand in the air had an MP-18 in the other. The MP-18’s thirty-two-round left-side drum-magazine, which resembled the wing mirror on a car, was all too distinctive, not to mention deadly. And as he raised it to fire at us, I swerved to the right, braked hard, pulled Weiss down onto the floor of the Audi, and then reached for the Mauser.

“Stay there,” I yelled, and, opening the driver’s door, rolled out of the car even as I heard several rounds hit the bodywork, startling the crows but startling me even more. But these were wild shots, since thirty meters was on the far side of what was comfortably in the Bergmann’s range; it was a better weapon for clearing a trench at close quarters.

I ran around the back of the Audi, climbed into the cemetery on my left, and, using the wall as cover, ran in the direction of the shooter. Even as I ran I slipped the safety off the Mauser and thumbed back the hammer so that it was ready to use. There was another burst of gunfire and I guessed the gunman must have thought I’d run away and that he now had all the time in the world to finish his attack on the deputy police president; I smelled his cigarette, heard his footsteps on the gravel, and then the unmistakable sound of another magazine being loaded into the machine gun. I was now behind our assailant and so I climbed over the wall again, which is one advantage of a rum breakfast and exactly why they used to give us a tot in the trenches before we went over the top.

The assassin was standing with his back to me about ten meters away, working the bolt action on the machine gun and getting ready to fire again. He was tall, with a workman’s cap, a sleeveless pullover, and boots that laced up to the knee. Over his shoulder was a small kit bag containing the used magazine and possibly another weapon. There was little or no time for a fair warning, especially as I had half an idea that there was another man lurking in the undergrowth of the other cemetery, but I tried all the same.

“Police. Put your gun down.”

The man threw away his cigarette and turned, and I saw that he was no more than twenty, with a hard, empty face and bright blue eyes that were still full of murderous intent—that much was clear; he was going to shoot if he could. I think he smiled because he had so much more gun in his hands than me. The hot summer sun flashed intermittently through the leaves above our heads, dappling the ground beneath our feet so that it was like standing on a lake, which only added unreality to the reality that confronted us both now. On a perfect summer’s day, in a place of almost preternatural quiet, one of us was going to die. He started firing the MP-18 even before he’d aimed it my way, as if he was hoping that might stop me from pulling the trigger on the Mauser, but of course it didn’t.

I shot him in the chest and he fell back, still shooting for a second, before he hit the ground like a starfish. I walked toward him carefully, ready to fire again, saw that he was still alive, kicked the MP-18 out of his hand, and then retrieved a Nazi Party badge from his pullover. The heels of his big hobnailed boots shifted as if he was trying to stand, but it was hopeless. He was drowning in his own blood and that was all there was to it; in ten or fifteen minutes he’d have expired, and nothing I nor anyone else could have done would prevent that. But this was of lesser importance beside the continuing danger of our situation: I was already looking around for a second and even a third assassin, as this was how an ambush worked, and since there was little time or inclination on my part for anything other than mercy of the kind practiced by Dr. Gnadenschuss, I put the barrel of the Mauser against the dying man’s head, pulled the trigger, and ran back to the car.

Bernhard Weiss was still on the floor of the Audi where I’d left him. He had a Walther in his hand and almost shot me as I jumped into the driver’s seat. The engine was still running and without further explanation I ground the gear into reverse and accelerated backward down the track before a grenade could be tossed at the car or someone else started shooting. Holding his hat on his head, Weiss stared straight ahead at the body of the man who’d just tried to assassinate him.

“I like your car,” I said, trying to improve his spirits.

“For Christ’s sake, Bernie, forget about the car; he was going to kill me.”

“He would have killed us both. Had to. No witnesses. We were lucky.”

“I guess there is no connection with Surehand Hank or the human centipede. Never was. The whole thing was a hoax, cooked up to lure me into a trap.”

“I have to tell you I had my doubts. When something’s too good to be true it usually is.”

“Goddamn, why didn’t I see that? What kind of a detective am I if I couldn’t spot that?”

“I reckon that’s what comes of posting articles in the newspapers. One of your readers decided to offer a critique of your writing.”

“That’s one way of looking at it.”

“It beats a letter to the editor.”

At the end of the track I spun the Audi around on the gravel and then steered the car south and east, away from the scene as quickly as possible. Weiss turned around in the passenger seat and pointed through the rear window.

“What about him?”

“Who?”

“The gunman, of course. Maybe he’s still alive.”

I didn’t answer.

“Is he still alive?”

“I sincerely hope not.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s dead, chief. I made sure of that. But right now that’s hardly our concern. He might have some partners. These cowards usually do. That’s how they killed Rathenau. And Erzberger. In armed groups of two. I don’t figure you’ll be safe until we’re back at the Alex.” I stamped on the accelerator, hoping the speed would reduce Weiss to silence. It didn’t.

“We can’t just leave him there.”

“Can’t we? That’s what he’d have done to us.”

“But we’re not like that.”

“No?”

“We’re police, which means we should stop and telephone this in.”

“If you take my advice you’ll say nothing about this to anyone except your car mechanic. You chose a left-hand-drive car for the sake of your safety; now you have to listen to me and do what I say for exactly the same reason.”

“That’s not possible.”

“Isn’t it?”

“I’m the head of Kripo, Bernie. The deputy police president. And a lawyer. An officer of the court. I can’t leave the scene of a crime even if I am the intended victim. It wouldn’t be right. And it certainly wouldn’t be legal.”

“There’s only you and me know about this, chief. Why not keep it that way?”

“What are you talking about, Bernie? You know very well we can’t do that.”

“Look, chief, do you want to be in the evening newspapers? Do you really want your wife and daughter to know that someone tried to murder you today? Is that what you want? Because the minute we report this, that’s what will happen. You’ll never leave home again without Lotte worrying for the rest of the day that something dreadful has happened to you.”

Weiss was silent for a moment.

“You’re right about that much, anyway,” he said eventually. “Ever since Otto Dillenburger assaulted me, my daughter Hilda’s been begging me to resign from the force. My wife hasn’t said anything about it but I know she agrees.”

“And another thing: leaving that body there for his friends to find is a clear message to these nationalist bastards. After all, they don’t know that it was me who shot him and not you. Maybe now they’ll think twice about trying to kill you again. Maybe they’ll think you’re tougher and more ruthless than you look. There’s all that and the fact that you don’t know what the Nazis will make of it in their newspapers if you report exactly what happened. Who knows? Maybe they’ll find that poor boy back there had a mother and a sister, and that he sang in a church choir and was kind to little animals, and that he didn’t stand a chance against us. That he only meant to scare you. Maybe someone like Goebbels will call him a martyr and write a poem about what a great Fritz he was and how a dirty Jew helped shoot him down like a dog.”

“You don’t know that he was a Nazi.”

“Don’t I?”

I handed Weiss the party badge I’d pulled off the dead man’s pullover.

“And just in case you thought I’m only thinking of you, chief, here’s another thing. You make this thing public and it’s not only you that’s on a Nazi death list. It’s me, too. Maybe you’re used to it by now, being a Jew and all. But I’ve got enough to worry about seeing snakes in my boots, with the booze. The last thing I want is to have to look over my shoulder as well.”

Weiss was silent until we reached the safety of the Alex. I parked the car in the central courtyard, turned off the engine, and lit us each a cigarette.

“And if none of those arguments convince you, then consider this, if you would, sir. You’re a decent man and you have my respect and my admiration; but you’re also a Jew in Germany, which means that whether you like it or not your people are at war with the Fatherland. Have been since 1893, when anti-Semites won sixteen seats in the Reichstag, including Prussia. In case you’ve forgotten, that election made the hatred of Jews in this country socially respectable. You may not like it, sir, but you should remember that when you’re at war the most important thing is to win at all costs. And by any means. You won’t win doing things by the book, sir. You’ll only win by being more ruthless than they are, by doing things the Prussian way. By killing them before they kill you.”

Weiss took a puff of his cigarette and then looked at the end thoughtfully. “I can’t tell you I like what you say, but you’re probably right.”

“I wish I wasn’t, but I am. So. We don’t tell anyone. Not the ViPoPra, not your secretary, and not even Ernst Gennat. Although I happen to think he might agree with me.”

“He might at that. Although not on much else. He wants you out of the Murder Commission. He thinks I should send you back to Vice. At least until you’ve stopped drinking. He thinks you’re about to crack.”

“That’s not an unreasonable assumption.”

“Are you about to crack?”

“This is Berlin. Who’d notice? But no, I’m not about to crack, chief. I’m hard-boiled, at least ten minutes. I may have had a drink in my coffee this morning, but you didn’t see me going to pieces. The way I feel now you could write the works of Goethe on my shell with a fountain pen without putting a hole in me.”

“You saved my life. I won’t forget that. If it hadn’t been for you, I’d be dead and my wife, Lotte, would be a widow. A sheynem dank, Bernie Gunther.”

I delved into my jacket pocket and produced a hip flask full of good Austrian rum. I unscrewed the cap and took a large bite off the top that was part nerves and part bravado; I didn’t care what Weiss thought about me now. Having just saved his neck I figured I could afford to stick mine out a bit.

“Then here’s to your wife,” I said. “You get to go home and see her and your family. That’s all that matters. You get to go home. That’s all that matters for anyone who’s a cop in this city.”

I handed him the flask and watched him take a drink with hands that looked as unsteady as my turbulent heartbeat. It had been a while since I’d killed anyone. I wondered if I would have shot the assassin a second time if I hadn’t already enjoyed a few drinks. When you think about it, sometimes that’s all it takes to kill anyone.

IT WASN’T a detective’s instinct that led me back to the scene of Eva Angerstein’s murder off Wormser Strasse so much as my dismay at the ferocious indifference of the authorities to her death and the deaths of the other girls. That as well as a perverse and insubordinate desire to disobey the Ministry’s orders in the name of true justice; somehow it’s easier to understand what justice amounts to when you’ve had a drink. Besides, it wasn’t like we had a lot of clues to work with in the case of Dr. Gnadenschuss. That’s the trouble with random murders and why they’re so hard to solve; where there is no connection between murderer and victim, you might as well try to mate a German mastiff and a dachshund.

As it happened not everyone was indifferent to Eva Angerstein’s death; at least that was the conclusion I drew from the large bouquet of flowers—twenty-seven white lilies—that someone had left at the foot of the stairs where her body had been found. There was a damp handwritten card on the flowers with a name that was hard to read but the identity of the florist was clear enough: Harry Lehmann’s on Friedrichstrasse. Twenty-seven flowers from an expensive florist that was at least four or five kilometers east of Wormser Strasse meant that the buyer was someone close to the dead girl, someone who’d made a special journey to the scene of her murder. I wondered about the number until I remembered Eva Angerstein had been twenty-seven years old, which seemed to indicate the buyer was very close to the dead girl. We’d tried and failed to trace Eva’s next of kin. Not that I was surprised at this outcome; most girls who went on the sledge lost contact with their families, for obvious reasons. So I was keen to speak to the person who’d bought these flowers and decided to look in at Harry Lehmann’s on my way back to the Alex. Twenty-seven white lilies was the kind of order that would be easy to remember.

I went back up the stairs and was met by a man wearing a blue pinstriped suit with lapels like halberds, a bowler hat, and leather gloves. He was carrying a thick cane, his fair hair was longish, and the lines on his red forehead were so deep they looked as if they’d been carved there by a glacier. It was obvious he’d seen me looking at the flowers.

“Can I help you with something?” he asked.

“Not unless these are your flowers,” I said, facing him now. He was about fifty and a Berliner; his accent was as thick as Stettin soot.

“Who wants to know?”

I showed him my beer token and his eyes narrowed.

“You don’t smell much like a cop.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment, shall I?”

“What I mean is, I could put a match to your breath and torch this whole damn neighborhood. That’s what I mean. Most cops I’ve met at this time of the morning are still digesting their first coffee.”

“Who are you? The local insurance man?”

He nodded over my shoulder down the stairs. “You’re investigating Eva’s death?”

“That’s right.”

“From the Murder Commission?”

I nodded. “Try it sometime. We see a lot of dead bodies in various stages of disrepair. And we like a drink to edit some of that shit out. It helps keep us sane, if not always sober.”

“I can imagine.”

“I hope not, for your sake, Herr—?”

“Angerstein.”

“Eva’s father?”

He nodded.

“I’m Sergeant Gunther, Bernhard Gunther, and I’m sorry for your loss.”

He nodded again, barely hanging on to his composure. “They cremated her before I even knew she was dead.”

“We tried our best to trace the next of kin.”

“Not that you’d have found me. I’ve been away.” He glanced around pugnaciously as if trying to decide if he should punch the wall or me. “According to the locals they haven’t seen many cops down here since the night Eva was killed. So what brings you back?” His voice was more animal than human, all bared teeth and smoked tonsils.

“I’m looking for something.”

“Mind telling me what?”

“I’ll know it when I see it. Something I didn’t see before, perhaps. Until then, I don’t mind telling you at all. The job’s like that, Herr Angerstein. Like playing the tray game, you know? You keep on looking at it, then maybe later on, you’ll remember an object that you missed the first time.”

“Eva wasn’t a whore, you know. At least not full-time. She had a good job. I just want you to know that.” He took out his wallet, found a fifty-mark note, and tucked it into my breast pocket like a handkerchief. “Find her killer, son, clear her name, and there’s more where that came from. A lot more if you let me deal with him myself.”

I removed the crushed note and handed it back to him. “It’s rum I have on my breath, Herr Angerstein, not greed. So thanks, but I can’t take this. If I did, then you’d start to think I owed you something. You might feel sore about your fifty if I don’t catch the killer.”

“Not catching him. Is that a possibility?”

“It’s always a possibility when the killer doesn’t leave a name and address.”

“Catch the bastard who killed her and I’ll give you something else. Something better perhaps.”

“There’s nothing I want from you.”

“Sure there is. You’re a copper, aren’t you? You catch him and you clear her name and I’ll give you the name of the man who burned down the Wolfmium factory. That’s fifty murders solved in one fell swoop. Maybe more—the final death toll isn’t in yet. I’ll give you his name and I’ll give you his address and I’ll even give you a reason why.” He returned the fifty to his wallet. “Think about it. That’s the kind of collar that could make your career, son. Always supposing you’re interested in that kind of thing. The way you smell today, I’m not so sure about that.”

“What makes you think it was murder?”

“Let’s just say that I move in the kind of circle that occasionally overlaps yours. Or perhaps I should say, the kind of ring.”

The rings were professional criminal gangs, mostly in the north of Berlin, of which there were a great many, all with names, strict codes of conduct, and sometimes distinctive tattoos. Organized crime, German style. There wasn’t much professional crime in Berlin they didn’t have a finger in. They were powerful, too, with an influence that extended all the way into the Reichstag. I’d once seen the funeral of a ring leader, a gangster called Long Ludwig, and you’d have been forgiven for believing the Kaiser himself had died.

“Which one?”

“Now, that would be telling and I’ve told you enough for now. But I’ll tell you a lot more if you get a result, Gunther. If you find this bastard.”

“Fair enough.”

“What’s fair got to do with anything? If there was any fairness in this world my little girl would still be alive.” He lit a cigarette and smiled a crocodile sort of smile. “Fair, he says. Listen, son, this country—and this city in particular—are full of shit. And the shit keeps on piling up around our ears. Communists, Nazis, Junkers, Prussians, military men, pimps, drug addicts, perverts. You mark my words, Gunther, one day there’s going to be nowhere clean left for anyone to stand on and we’ll all be in the shit.”

And with that he walked off.

I’d walked the length and breadth of the courtyard when a man arrived with a barrel organ and started to play “The Happy Wanderer,” except it sounded about as happy as a wander across a field in Flanders. But some women came out of a door and started to dance with each other as if they were in a ballroom. The ballroom of Berlin, that’s what it was. With men in short supply, older women who wanted to dance were obliged to dance with each other. I had another look inside the coal bunker and inside the bole of the tree where I’d found Eva’s purse, but there was nothing.

Some kids were playing with a cripple-cart, which reminded me that it was probably the same one I’d seen abandoned on Wormser Strasse the night Eva Angerstein had been killed. Then, it had meant nothing; now, since Dr. Gnadenschuss, it perhaps meant something. Why had the cart been abandoned in the first place? How would the disabled man who’d once used it have got around Berlin without it? A cart like that represented not just a means of transport but also a way of making a living. Just seeing it again begged all kinds of questions.

I walked over to the kids, showed them my beer token, and confiscated the cripple-cart before shooing them off; I could more kindly have bought it from them, I suppose, for the price of a couple of ice creams, but I was feeling a little short. Turning down Angerstein’s fifty hadn’t been easy for a man like me.

I took the cripple-cart and examined it. There seemed to be nothing remarkable about it; it was made of wood, with a worn leather seat and four wheels taken off an old pram. It was only very gradually that I began to see things a little differently. The platform, which was meant for a legless man, was actually an artfully designed box on wheels, about forty centimeters deep, so that its occupant might have sat back on his haunches and presented his knees to the world as if they’d been the stumps of severed legs. The more I looked at the cart, the more I began to understand that the person using it hadn’t been a cripple at all but a swindler, a yokel catcher, a zhulik, a man posing as a disabled veteran for gain. There was a name painted on the inside, Prussian Emil, which sounded like an underworld name, the kind Angerstein might have used himself. I decided to speak to the disabled veterans I’d seen begging outside the station on Wittenbergplatz.

IT WAS TOO EARLY for the whores, but the sausage salesman was in the station entrance and he waved me over.

“Hey, copper, I was hoping I’d see you again. I remembered something that might be useful to you. That girl who was scalped. The one who used to buy snow from me. Eva something. Couple of times she had a Fritz with her. Not a client, though.”

“How do you know he wasn’t?”

“He was queer, that’s how I know. Eva said his name was Rudi something. Geise, I think. That’s it, Rudi Geise. He came on his own a couple of times with a boy who looked like a girl with a prick and bought some dope himself. Said he worked at UFA Babelsberg and that some of the movie stars liked a bit of a lift when they were filming. Which was why he usually bought a lot of stuff from me. And carried quite a bit of money in his pocket. I asked him if it was safe carrying so much coal and he showed me a knife inside his coat. Not just any knife: a big fixed blade about twenty centimeters long, with a cross guard. Like he was planning to skin a bear or something. Said it was for show. But I don’t think it was the kind of show they have at the Wintergarten, know what I mean?”

“Yes, indeed. Thanks for the tip.”

“What’s with the wheels?”

“I was looking for the two legless wonders I saw here the last time.”

“Cops moved them on. For their own safety. Because of this killer who’s been preying on them.”

“Any idea where they went?”

“You could try outside the aquarium. That’s a popular pitch. Safer there, too. At least that’s what the Schupo men said.”

“How’d they work that out?”

“No trains there. Not much noise to cover the sound of a gunshot. Just the occasional bark of a sea lion.”

STILL CARRYING the cripple-cart I walked north up Ansbacher Strasse and onto Kurfürstenstrasse, at the western end of which was the recently built zoo and aquarium. The two disabled veterans I was looking for were on either side of the main entrance, each positioned under the relief of one of the ancient animals that embellished the exterior. Farther down the street was a life-size iguanodon. There was something about it that reminded me of the Reichsadler, the red-legged German imperial eagle; maybe it was the dinosaur’s beak-like snout, but it might have been the fact that both the iguanodon and Germany’s empire were extinct.

As well as being a dual amputee, the first man I spoke to was blind and a bit deaf, which made asking questions a more or less pointless endeavor; it seemed unlikely that he would have seen or heard anything of much interest to me. But the other man—a veteran staff sergeant with one leg and a pair of polished wooden crutches who was sitting underneath the stegosaurus relief—looked like a better bet. He was wearing a field cap with the canvas camouflage strip—safer than the previous red, and the transitional gray tunic that was typical of men from the early part of the war. On his remaining foot, he wore an ankle boot with puttees—a lot more comfortable than jackboots; the ribbon on his tunic was for the Prussian second-class Iron Cross, worn, correctly, in the second buttonhole, which was usually the quickest way of telling if a man was faking it. He had a thick white mustache that resembled a couple of sleeping polar bears, the kind of bright blue eyes that belonged in a German jeweler’s shop window, and two well-tanned ears that were almost as large as the Metzger biscuit tin now functioning as his begging bowl. I dropped several coins into the tin and then squatted down beside him. I lit a couple of Salem cigarettes and handed him one.

“I hope you’re not here to feel sorry for me,” he said.

“I’m not even going to try, sarge.”

“Or tell me I’m a disgrace to the uniform.”

“You’re not. Any fool can see that. You get around the city much?”

“Like a Canada goose. What do you think?”

“No, I can believe it.”

“You believe that, you believe anything, which is unusual in a cop. Listen, me and Joachim, my friend over there, we’ve already been moved once today. We’re not about to get up again.”

“I am a cop. But I don’t intend trying to move you on. Besides, I don’t imagine you’re so easy to move when you don’t want to move.”

“So I guess you want to talk about Dr. Gnadenschuss.”

I pointed to his companion. “What about him?”

“He doesn’t talk so well. Not since he got a bullet through his windpipe. But I don’t mind talking. I don’t mind talking at all.”

“You’re not afraid of Gnadenschuss?”

“Were you in the trenches yourself, young man?”

“Yes.”

“Then you already know the answer to that question. Besides. I’m not going to die today. I can’t.”

“You seem very sure about that.”

“They say that on the day you die you see your name written on the Spree. And since I already looked this morning, I’m not at all worried. I’d say I’m certain to outlive this government, wouldn’t you?”

He had a little tin mug on a piece of string that was tied to one of his crutches, into which I poured a generous measure of rum, before offering him a toast.

“I’ll drink to that.”

He took the drink and I sipped from my flask.

“Anyone wave a .25-caliber automatic in your direction, lately?”

“No.”

“Anyone else you know report anything like that?”

“No.”

“What about abuse? Respectable-citizen outrage. Get any of that?”

“Plenty. Just the other day I got bawled out by some right-wing prick who thought I was a disgrace to the uniform. And once or twice from some kids. Queers from up west.” He smiled. “These days, I come prepared for almost anything.” From his puttee he drew a trench dagger, which had been meant to replace an off-duty soldier’s bayonet. “I used to say to myself, ‘How low can you get?’ Then, in Berlin, I found out. What’s that you’ve got there, anyway? Looks like some Fritz’s klutz wagon.”

“That’s exactly what it is. I found it abandoned on Wormser Strasse just a short way south of Wittenbergplatz. There’s a name inside it. Prussian Emil. I was wondering if you knew who he was, and maybe why he might have left it behind.”

“The who is easy. Prussian Emil is a drug dealer, a burglar’s achtung—his lookout—and a very occasional beggar, for the sake of appearances. He carries a bugle and gives the brass a blow if the owner or the police should unexpectedly show up while the burglary is still in progress. He was in the army and was nearly shot for desertion, but he’s not crippled, which is one reason genuine beggars like me haven’t managed to put a stop to him; the other is that he’s a member of a ring. Only don’t ask me which one. He usually gives genuine schnorrers like me a few marks to help keep us sweet. But supposing we were to inform on him to the local police or take the law into our own hands—assuming we could get near him—then we’d soon find the ring had something to say about it. The why is pure speculation. If he abandoned that klutz wagon, the chances are he was obliged to leg it for some reason. Come to think of it, it’s a while since I saw him around.”

“Does he work with one man in particular? Or just anyone who pays?”

“Anyone who pays, I think.”

“Can you give me a description?”

“I’ll say one thing for him, at least, he looks like the real thing. Standard 1910 uniform with Swedish cuffs. Brown corduroy trousers. If you asked him he’d swear he was with the 248th Regiment from Württemberg. That’s deliberate and clever because he knows that if he was wearing a Prussian military uniform, there’s always a chance he might run into trouble in this town. Also a Charlotte Cross ribbon and a silver military merit medal. Dark glasses, which make him look like he’s blind. Of course, that’s when he’s working. When he’s not working, he’s thin, painfully thin. Cadaverous, even. And completely hairless. Oh, and he has a port-wine stain on his neck, like a careless waiter spilt something down his shirt collar.”

“You know where I could find him? Or just look for him?”

“No. Besides, for a drink, a cigarette, and a few coins, I think you did pretty well out of me, copper.”

“Would it make any difference if I put some paper in your box?”

“Probably not. Look, there’s a club called Sing Sing, like the American prison. They say they’ve even got an electric chair, just for laughs. You could look for him there, if you dare. It’s the kind of place you need a steel undershirt. Just don’t say I mentioned it.”

I nodded and started to walk away. “There’s a password to get in,” he added. “That has to be worth a couple of marks.”

I put a couple of notes in his hand and he saluted me and told me the password.

“It was nice talking to you,” I said. “If you think of anything else, my name is Bernhard Gunther and I’m at the Alex.”

“Sergeant Johann Tetzel.”

ERNST ENGELBRECHT had left the Berlin police but he was frequently to be found behind his regular table at the Zum, in the arches of the S-Bahn station near the Alex. It was an atmospheric place. The owner, Lothar Kuckenburg, was an ex-cop and he’d decorated the walls with photographs of Schupo men and police athletic clubs. In pride of place, next to the till, was a picture of Lothar shaking hands with a previous Schupo commander, Hugo Kaupisch. Until he’d left, Engelbrecht had been an expert on local crime syndicates, and figuring he still was, I’d sought him out to ask what he knew about Angerstein. He might have disliked Jews and, of course, one Jew in particular, but he and I got on well enough and he never seemed to mind me picking his brains; indeed he always seemed to welcome it.

“Bernhard Gunther,” he said.

“Buy you a beer?”

“Sure. I’ll take a beer. And maybe an explanation.”

“About what?”

“The Schrader-Verband. What were you doing there?”

“I pay my dues.”

“Yes. But there’s the Schrader-Verband and then there’s a drinks party with the right wing of the Schrader-Verband. They’re very different things. One’s a union and the other’s a new way of looking at things.”

“Maybe I wanted to hear Arthur Nebe talk before I made up my mind about that.”

“And?”

“I’ll take a drink with more or less anyone. Listen to anyone, anywhere. Work with anyone if it gets the job done. But when it comes to politics, I’m a natural independent.”

“Fair enough. But very soon that will be a luxury you can’t afford.”

“I’m a cop. There are lots of luxuries I can’t afford. But that doesn’t include principles.”

“You know there are financial advantages for a cop in Berlin to be allied with the Nazis. A cop like you for instance. Expenses. Walking-around money.”

“Cops get paid to take risks not money.”

“Oh sure, but this isn’t a bribe. This is just a top up. I could speak to someone and work something out for you. A little dash of raspberry sauce in your beer, you might say.”

“I never did like the taste of that. I like my beer just the way it comes out of the tap. Talking of which.”

I went to the bar and brought back some beers.

“So what can I do for you, Bernie?”

“Tell me about the rings. And Herr Angerstein.”

“Any particular reason you mention him?”

“No reason other than he’s a gangster. Last I heard it’s men like him who are our client base.”

“There are at least eighty-five underworld clubs in Berlin,” he told me. “Strictly speaking, Angerstein—his given name, by the way, is Erich, in case you’re wondering—isn’t a member of any of them, for the simple reason that he’s part of a syndicate that supervises a large number of these clubs. The Middle German Ring. They impose rules on the clubs, control their activities, and exact a financial tribute that is supposed to provide legal assistance for club members. I haven’t met him myself; he’s very private. But from what I’ve heard, he’s to be feared, the kind of man other criminals would obey without question. That makes him very dangerous. Every year he hosts a banquet for the clubs at the Eden Hotel and over a thousand men and women attend. Even a few cops are invited. The Middle German maintains good relations with all the top police councilors and quite a few politicians. Which makes him a man of some influence. If you’re planning to have any dealings with him, son, be careful. That man has very sharp teeth.”

“Thanks. I’ll bear it in mind.”

“Almost as sharp as Arthur Nebe’s.”

“Why should that worry me?”

“Just don’t get too independent, Bernie. When a cop gets too independent he’s got no friends. And when he’s got no friends, his luck runs out.”

“AND WHERE THE HELL have you been, Gunther?”

Ernst Gennat was wearing a new suit, but his temper was badly frayed. His eyes were bloodshot and restless, his face was red, and there was a whole shingle beach of sweat on his brow. As usual his pink fists were raised in front of his substantial belly, as if he was ready to fight someone off: me perhaps. His rasping, bass tenor voice was sounding just the one note, a sour one, as if he’d been gargling with vinegar.

“I’ve been looking for you, Gunther. According to your diary you should be here. And you weren’t. You know the way we work. If you’re out on a case you’re supposed to write it up on the chart outside my office. So that I can keep track of you bastards. At least that’s the theory.”

“Sorry, boss. I was scratching an itch. I wanted to take another look at the place where Eva Angerstein’s body was found.”

“Drinking in a bar more like. And didn’t you hear the chief’s order? We’re to lay off the Winnetou cases until we’ve caught Dr. Gnadenschuss. Besides, Winnetou hasn’t killed in a while.”

“You noticed that, too? As a matter of fact, he hasn’t killed since Dr. Gnadenschuss started work. Maybe that should tell us something.”

“It tells me you’re not listening to the orders. Now, listen—no, don’t interrupt, this is important—I want you to equip yourself with a criminalistics kit and then get over to the Mosse building in Friedrichstadt. Apparently the Tageblatt has received another letter from Dr. Gnadenschuss, and this time a medal, too. There’s a fingerprint on the letter and I want you to go and take a look at it before the world and his dog have contaminated any possible evidence. Ask for the editor in chief, Theodor Wolff. He’s expecting you. And for Christ’s sake suck some mints before you speak to him. Your breath smells like a brewery.”

“None of the other papers have received it?”

“Not as far as I’m aware.”

“Can I take a car from the pool?”

“No. Take the tram. It’s quicker at this time of day. And probably safer for a soak like you. Then, as soon as you’re back here, I want you to interview some of these spinners who’ve walked in off the streets to claim responsibility for the Gnadenschuss murders. We’ve got at least five of them locked up in the cells right now.” He shrugged. “One day someone in this department is going to listen to me when I advise against doing something.”

I caught a number 8 from Alexanderplatz going west to Potsdam Station, where I got off and walked northeast. The Mosse publishing group owned a stable of magazines and newspapers, of which the Berliner Tageblatt, with a daily circulation of a quarter of a million, was easily the most important. Even if you didn’t buy it, nearly everyone in Berlin, including me, managed to read the Tageblatt; it was essential reading for anyone of a vaguely liberal disposition and only the fact that the paper’s owner—Hans Lachmann-Mosse—and editor—Theo Wolff—were both Jews probably prevented Germany’s conservative right wing from reading it, too.

The building where the Mosse group was headquartered was more like a fortress, complete with rusticated walls, enormous iron-bound oak gates, and stone balustrades, which probably explained why it had been taken over and fortified by the right-wing Freikorps during the Spartacist uprising of 1919. It was even said that several left-wingers had been executed in the courtyard where now there were dozens of bicycles awaiting the men who would deliver the papers to all corners of the city. Stacked nearby were several giant rolls of newsprint. Just to see the place was to conclude that a free press in Germany was something that needed to be defended at all costs.

I showed my warrant disc to the burly doormen at the castle gates and an elevator carried me to the upper floor where the Tageblatt was put together. In the enormous reception area, a messenger boy took my name and then went to find someone while I sat down on a bench along the back wall and amused myself by watching brass capsules drop out of a pneumatic tube into a net next to the main door. It made being a journalist look a lot easier than being a detective. Eventually the boy returned and led me down a long hall in which a whole crowd of trolls, gnomes, and goblins might have paid court to some urban mountain-king.

Theo Wolff was almost as powerful, I suppose. As well as founding a political party—the DDP—Wolff had once refused the post of German ambassador to Paris, preferring to remain in journalism, which said a lot for his belief in the importance of newspapers in Germany. He was about sixty, small and pugnacious, and he viewed my arrival in his office with no more enthusiasm than if I’d belonged to the anti-Semitic Hugenberg publishing group. I may have worked for Bernhard Weiss, but the Berlin police wasn’t exactly known for its liberal views.

Also around his editorial table were a number of men whose names were more familiar than their faces: Rudolf Olden, Ernst Feder, Fred Hildebrandt, Kurt Tucholsky, and, most famously, Alfred Kerr.

I shook hands with Wolff, nodded at the others as he made the introductions, and then pointed at the letter, which lay flat on the table in front of him, next to the envelope it had arrived in, the medal it had also contained, and a typewriter that someone had probably already copied it on.

“Is that it?”

“Yes.”

“How many people have handled this, sir?” I asked.

“Three, I should think. The postboy. My secretary. And me. As soon as I saw what it was I called the Alex.”

I put on the surgeon’s rubber gloves I’d brought from the Alex and pulled a pair of tweezers from my pocket. I drew the letter carefully across the table, sat down, and checked that it had been typed on a machine with the capital letter G printed to the right. Then I read it to myself.

“Where’s the lock of hair?”

“Still in the original envelope,” said Wolff. “Untouched by anyone around this table. The letter was posted in Humboldthain.”

“Are you going to print this?” I asked.

“We’re a newspaper. Not a church magazine. And that’s front-page news.”

“I’ll take that as a yes, shall I, sir?”

“I can see that you don’t think we should print it. But this is Germany. Not Soviet Russia. Unlike the Bolsheviks we don’t practice press censorship in this country. It’s what makes our readers know they can trust the Tageblatt. News is news. The minute we start deciding on what news we choose not to print, then people might as well subscribe to Pravda.”

“That’s a nice speech, sir. And on the whole I agree with it. All I’m asking is that you delay printing the letter until we’ve had a chance to read and digest it. To give us time to check this fingerprint. In case that or something else here gives us a lead.”

“How long would you suggest?”

“Seventy-two hours.”

“Twenty-four.”

“Forty-eight.”

“Thirty-six.”

“Agreed.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes. If you don’t mind, maybe you could leave out the make of the gun and the fact that it was an automatic. It’s important for us to know just a little more than your readers. That’s fair, isn’t it?”

“Agreed,” said Wolff. “What about that fingerprint? Think it’s genuine?”

“Oh, it’s a genuine fingerprint, all right. The question is, who does it belong to? Emil Jannings, Gösta Ekman, or Werner Krauss; Hindenburg perhaps. But I’ll stake my life on the fact that it doesn’t belong to the good doctor. I’ve got a feeling this fellow likes wasting police time the way the Nazis like beating drums and waving flags.”

I picked the letter up with the tweezers and carefully slid it into a thin manila file: I repeated the procedure with the enclosing envelope and the medal before glancing around the smoke-filled room and asking myself a question. I knew what I thought about the letter, but I was curious what they thought.

“I’m not often in such illustrious company,” I said. “I wonder if any one of you distinguished gentlemen might care to speculate on why someone would do something as heinous as killing four disabled men? What’s his motive?”

“Seriously?” said a voice.

“Of course.”

“Now?”

“Now, this minute, yes. If you can do it sooner I’d appreciate it. Look, thousands of people already pay attention to your daily opinions. So why not give me the scoop on your thinking. On what you’re going to write in the paper. I’m a reader. But I’m also a listener.”

“He sounds quite intelligent,” said someone.

“He means the killer,” said someone else. “Not you, sergeant.”

I smiled at the general laughter that followed this remark. “I’m not very handsome, either. Next time I’ll comb my hair, brush my teeth, wear a clean shirt, and bring a nice sharp pencil.”

“You’re rather assuming Dr. Gnadenschuss doesn’t actually believe the reasons he provides in his letter,” said Wolff.

“I’m a cop, there’s a lot I don’t believe. I think that letter is just him ringing a few bells at the funfair. That’s right. The ones he thinks people like us want to hear. Frankly, I’m not convinced by any of that monkey talk.”

“Surely you’re just saying that to undermine our resolve to publish it,” said Wolff.

“No, not even if I thought I could. But I’ve heard this kind of political testament before. It’s the sort of crap that people write when they’re pulling a stretch in Landsberg Prison.”

“He signs off with Heil Hitler. That’s all we need to know, isn’t it? Surely it’s obvious the murderer’s a Nazi.”

“Exactly,” said another man.

“That’s certainly what he’d like you to believe,” I said. “Only, I do wonder why he sent his letter only to a Jewish-owned newspaper. So far as we know, none of the other papers has received it. And let’s face it, gentlemen, it’s not like he’s preaching to the choir here. I imagine none of you believes in ridding this city of disabled beggars at the barrel of a gun.”

“No, of course not.”

“So I’d say he sent this letter to you because you printed the article by Bernhard Weiss and because you’ll believe this latest letter was written by a Nazi. And because it suits your agenda to print a murdering Nazi letter, doesn’t it? But you should ask yourself this: Do you think the Völkischer Beobachter or Der Angriff would publish this letter? Or any of the newspapers in the Hugenberg publishing empire?”

“That’s a fair question,” said Wolff.

“And what’s the answer?”

“I suspect they would not publish it.”

“You’re not a Nazi yourself, are you, sergeant?” asked Wolff.

“I guess you didn’t understand my joke about Landsberg Prison.”

“It’s only that you seem a little anxious for us to believe it might not be a Nazi who wrote the letter.”

“Anxious, no, sir. I want the truth, that’s all. The first letter contained no references to Bernhard Weiss’s Jewishness. Which for a Nazi shows a degree of restraint that’s hardly typical.”

“He’s got a point.”

“This new letter mentioned his Jewishness only once. And not in any really poisonous words, which would be more usual.”

“What are you saying, sergeant?” asked Wolff.

“I’m not sure, sir. Right now all I have are questions and not enough facts. That kind of journalism might be good enough for Der Angriff, but not for the newspapers I like to read.”

“I’m just the theater critic,” said a bald, horse-faced man with a Charlie Chaplin mustache. This was Alfred Kerr, perhaps the most famous writer working for the Tageblatt. “But in answer to your question about what I’d like to write about this fellow, Shakespeare teaches us that a man like this is probably someone who’s been disappointed in life. Who’s fallen short of his own expectations. Who desperately wants significance and power. Above all I should say this is a man who knows how to hate. Motiveless malignancy, as Samuel Taylor Coleridge put it when talking about Iago in Othello. Yes, there’s your problem, sergeant. Quite possibly this man has no real motive. It may be that he is someone who simply enjoys wickedness for its own sake. I’m afraid you may be dealing not just with the mystery of whodunit but with the mystery of life itself.”

I scratched my head and nodded. “Thank you, sir. I’m certainly glad I asked.”

ON MY WAY back to the Alex I stopped in at the Berlin Fire Department to see the chief fire commissioner, Walter Gempp. He was a genial, helpful man of about fifty whose modernization of the fire department and public allegiance to the left-leaning German Democratic Party made him a natural ally of men like Grzesinski and Weiss. Gempp was accompanied by Emil Puhle, the senior fire chief at Linienstrasse and, effectively, Gempp’s second-in-command.

“I asked you to come and see me because I heard from Waldemar Klotz that you’d been asking him questions about the Wolfmium factory fire.”

Klotz was the fire chief of Company 7, in Moabit. After what Angerstein had told me about the Wolfmium factory fire, I’d telephoned him to ask if there was any evidence of arson.

“That’s right, sir.” Reluctant to mention that my information about the fire had come from a Berlin gangster, I decided to make less of my interest than there was, especially as I hadn’t yet shared these suspicions with Gennat or Weiss.

“Might I ask why?”

“You might say it was a routine inquiry. With at minimum fifty workers dead, I just wanted to check that there was nothing in it for the Murder Commission. Which there would be if there was any evidence of arson.”

“Yes, of course. Well, we’ve found nothing that raises any cause for suspicion. Nothing at all. Our investigating officers are convinced that the fire started in a faulty electrical switchboard. Once the fire got hold, there was every chance of it becoming a disaster. Osmium, which is used in the production of light bulbs, has an oxide—osmium tetroxide—that is extremely flammable. It also produces a highly toxic gas, which is what killed all those people. Indeed, several of my own officers are still recovering in hospital after sustaining respiratory tract injuries. Thirty years after the Schering company fire in Wedding, this city still does not have enough breathing respirators, despite the fact one of my predecessors, Fire Chief Erich Giersberg, died as result of that fire.

“I will say this, Gunther, as someone who is often publicly associated with the DDP, I care very much about the safety conditions for workers in this country. And the workers at Wolfmium were no exception, in spite of their being mostly Russians and Volga Germans. So anything you yourself discover that gives me cause for believing there was any criminal negligence would be of great interest to me.”

“I understand, sir.”

“For example: I have a relation who’s a broker at the Berlin Bourse. And he tells me that in recent months Wolfmium had lost a large contract to Osram, one of their major competitors. And that, before the fire, the price of shares in Wolfmium had halved. I mention that because the Hamburger Fire Insurance Company has just settled the factory owners’ claim in the amount of more than a million reichsmarks. Which more than compensates for any losses the owners might have sustained on the stock market. Obviously it’s not the sort of thing I’m able to investigate myself, but someone in the police might very well conclude this alone could constitute grounds for further investigation. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Yes, sir. I would.”

I WASTED THE rest of the day interviewing a few of the men who’d been inspired by Bernhard Weiss’s article in the Tageblatt to claim that they were Dr. Gnadenschuss. It was hard to believe Ernst Gennat had been wrong regarding the wisdom of Weiss in writing a newspaper article about the Gnadenschuss murders. I doubt that the Holy Inquisition would have accepted the confessions that came in, and my instinct was to call the lunatic asylum at Wuhlgarten and have these men taken away in straitjackets so that they might be subjected to the old tried and tested cure, which was a half hour under a fire hose. The only one of these time wasters who struck me as sane was the youngest and probably the strangest.

Just fifteen, Sigmar Gröning was a pupil at the Leibniz Gymnasium on Wrangelstrasse, which was about a ten-minute walk from where Frölich’s crippled body had been found. He was one of a group of schoolboys who’d discovered the body. Gröning had white-gold hair, pitiless gray eyes, a high forehead, a rather self-satisfied, sneering mouth, and a prominent chin. He was wearing a tailored black jacket, black knickerbockers, long lace-up black boots, a stiff white collar and tie, and a naval-style black cap with a small shiny peak that probably resembled his soul. Bloodless, coldhearted, straight-backed—he was likely everyone’s idea of a fallen angel.

Unlike the others I’d questioned, he at least had done his homework and knew all the details of what had been printed in the first letter to the newspapers. In fact, he knew almost as much about the Gnadenschuss killings as I did. But it was immediately obvious to me that he hadn’t killed anyone; just as obvious was the fact that he would have liked to kill someone, probably anyone would do. I’d looked enough murderers in the eye to recognize what was lurking inside this young man’s skull. After half an hour in the company of this ruthless little monster, I wondered where the country might be going if this was a sample of its youth. I tried to envisage Gröning in ten years’ time and concluded that in all probability I was talking to a future lawyer, assuming I didn’t throw the book at him for wasting police time.

His father was the manager at the Luisen Theater on Reichenberger Strasse and his middle-class family lived in a comfortable apartment on Belle-Alliance-Platz. Nice people, probably. I wondered what they might say if I telephoned and told them that their son was being questioned at the Alex.

“Do you own a typewriter, Sigmar?”

“I think my father has one. Why do you ask?”

“Do your parents know you’re here?” I asked. “Confessing to five murders?”

It was four murders, of course, but he didn’t contradict me.

“It’s nothing to do with them,” he insisted. “And I came here of my own accord. I’m the man you’re looking for.”

I shrugged. “Why not keep going? Until your confession we were nowhere near catching you. Why quit now when you’re making such a good job of running rings around the police?”

Gröning shrugged. “I’m bored with it. And I think I’ve made my point.”

“That you have. That you have. You know, I hate to break it to you, sonny, but they’ll probably execute you for this.”

“That’s a matter of small importance to me.”

“To you, maybe. But I would think your mother might be upset to see you sent to the guillotine at Plötzensee.”

“Might wake her up a bit. She’s horribly complacent. I’m actually looking forward to her having to see my death.”

“Only because you’ve never seen what the falling ax can do. I have. It’s not a pretty sight. One time I saw the condemned man—a real skinny-looking Fritz, like you—pull his head back in the lunette, just a couple of centimeters, but enough for the blade to lodge in the skull instead of slicing cleanly through the neck. It was a terrible situation. Took us almost fifteen minutes to get the blade out of his cranium. And all the time this Fritz was still alive, screaming like a pig—it was a real mess. I almost threw up, myself.”

“You don’t scare me.”

“That’s what they all say, sonny. But believe me, when they first catch sight of the man in the top hat, they soon change their minds.”

I lit a cigarette and leaned back in my chair. “Your father. Let’s talk about him, shall we?”

“Must we? I hate him.”

“Oh sure. That goes without saying. All fifteen-year-old boys hate their fathers. I know I did. But I would think that his is an interesting job. He must see a lot of plays. In his theater. You, too, for that matter.”

“Could I have one of those, please?” he said, nodding at my cigarettes. He placed a hand on the table between us; it was a violinist’s hand, slender, delicate, with badly bitten fingernails.

“You’re too young to be smoking.”

Gröning bit his lip, perhaps irritated he wasn’t being treated with the respect he had expected.

“Well, does he? See a lot of plays?”

“Dumb question.”

“I guess it was. All right. Let’s get to it, Siggy. Why did you kill them? That’s more to the point. Wouldn’t you agree? I mean, I have to write something on my report to the public prosecutor. It doesn’t look good in court if I just write down any old reason. I killed them because I could and stopped because I got bored. Nobody will believe you. That is the point of you coming in here and confessing, isn’t it? You do want us to believe you, don’t you, Sigmar?”

“Yes.”

“So why did you do it? Why did you shoot those five men?”

“Like I said in my letter. They’re Germany’s shame, not to mention a burden on society.”

“You don’t actually believe that crap, do you?”

“Of course I believe it. Just as I believe that this country has a destiny.”

“And you really think Hitler has the answers?”

“I think only he can deliver Germany from its present humiliation, yes.”

“Fair enough. You know, I expect this will make you famous, Sigmar. I can’t think of any other fifteen-year-old boys who’ve killed five people. You’ll probably end up a Nazi hero. They seem to admire this kind of decisive action.”

“The deed is everything, the glory nothing.”

I smiled, recognizing a quote from Goethe’s Faust, and suddenly I thought I understood exactly what he was doing. I got up and wandered around the room before coming back to him and blowing some smoke in his face. What I really wanted to do was hit him very hard with my fist. To knock some of the arrogance out of him before it was too late—for him and for Germany.

“You know what I think? That you’re playing a part. Like an actor playing Faust in your daddy’s theater. You’ve taken on this very difficult and challenging role—the part of a murderer—and you want to play it out, to see how far you can get with it before an expensive lawyer pulls your chestnuts off the brazier and tells the court that your confession is all a pack of lies. You fancy yourself to be a great actor—the next Emil Jannings. Get your name in the paper, and everyone will be impressed that you’ve pulled this off. That you’ve convinced those dumb cops you did it. Now, those are real notices that any actor would be proud of.”

The boy reddened.

“That’s it, isn’t it? Look, did someone at school put you up to this nonsense, Sigmar? Or is there someone in the theater you want to impress? A girl perhaps. An actress.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you do, sonny. Maybe you think you can beat the rap, like Paul Krantz did. That in spite of your confession people will look at your sweet chorister’s face and think it impossible you could have done such a thing. Or maybe you think the worst that can happen is that you’ll be charged with wasting police time. Although a good lawyer could probably make that go away, too. ‘My client is just a boy, Your Honor. It was all a stupid prank that got out of hand. He’s at a good gymnasium and is a promising student. It would be a shame to spoil his chances of his Abitur and going to university by imposing a custodial sentence.’

“So you know what we do with snot-nosed kids like you who waste our valuable time? We let the police dogs have them for a few minutes. That way we can let the dogs take the blame when you get injured. Nobody’s about to prosecute an Alsatian for police brutality.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Let’s find out, shall we?”

I stood up and took hold of his ear, twisting it hard for good measure. I was tired and pissed off and keen to go home. And much as I would have liked to have left him alone with a police dog, it was time to put a quick end to the whole charade.

“All right, sonny, out you go.”

I hauled him onto his feet and dragged him to the door of the interview room, picking up speed as we passed through the main hall. One or two uniformed cops laughed as they realized what was happening; none of us liked time wasters, especially when they were just out of short trousers. Once through the big door, I let go of the Pifke’s ear and then kicked his skinny behind, hard.

“And don’t come back. Not without a sick note from your mother.”

I watched him sprawled on the pavement for a moment and smiled, recalling my own gymnasium days.

“I always thought I should have been a schoolteacher.”

“I’D LIKE YOU both to listen to my theory,” I told Weiss and Gennat. My office was the size of a goldfish bowl and, walled mostly with glass, just as public. A phone was ringing in the next office, and the hot twilight and the noise of traffic were coming in through the open window.

“A theory,” said Gennat. “You need a long gray beard to make one of those sound persuasive in this temple of cynicism, Gunther. Like Feuerbach. Or Marx.”

“I can stop shaving if it helps.”

“I doubt it. A cop with a theory is like a lawyer going into court with an empty briefcase; he doesn’t have a shred of evidence. And that’s what matters in this place.”

“Not a theory, then. A new interpretation of some facts.”

“Still sounds like a theory.”

“Just hear me out. Then you can have as much fun as you like picking it apart.”

“Let the boy talk, Ernst,” said Weiss. “He’s been right before.”

“I don’t wind up my pocket watch and it’s still right, twice a day.”

I pointed to the cripple-cart I’d brought with me, which now lay on the floor like a child’s toy.

“I found this klutz wagon at the entrance to a courtyard on Wormser Strasse. On the same night Eva Angerstein was killed.”

“I told you to drop that damn case,” said Gennat.

“It was previously used by a yokel catcher and burglar’s lookout called Prussian Emil. From what I’ve heard he’s not even disabled. He positions himself outside a house that’s being turned over by his partner and then blows a bugle if the owner comes back or a cop shows up. I’ve been wondering why the cart was left abandoned at the scene of Eva Angerstein’s murder. So I checked with Commissar Körner. There was a burglary in an apartment on the corner of Bayreuther Strasse on that same night. Just a short way along from the Wormser Strasse courtyard.”

“Interesting,” said Weiss.

“So what are you saying?” asked Gennat.

“I’m saying that Prussian Emil may have seen the man who killed Eva Angerstein. Maybe even recognized him. And legged it before Winnetou could murder him, too. Since when he’s been trying to do exactly that.”

“So you’re saying that Winnetou is also Dr. Gnadenschuss,” said Gennat. “Jesus Christ. Is that your damn theory?”

“That’s right. Look, it can’t have escaped your attention that Winnetou hasn’t struck since Dr. Gnadenschuss started killing disabled war veterans.”

“It’s nice and neat. I’ll give you that. Two murderers for the price of one. They should put you in charge of the shop floor at Teitz.”

“It might just be that he’s killing them in the hope of eliminating someone who could identify him as Eva Angerstein’s killer. Since when, maybe he’s developed a taste for it. Maybe he prefers what he’s doing now. After all, there was never anything sexual about the Winnetou killings.”

“Killing and scalping a girl seems like a very different crime from shooting a klutz in the head,” said Gennat.

“True. But you said yourself that it was murder for the sake of it. He enjoys killing and nothing else. That and tormenting the police, of course.”

“Maybe Prussian Emil abandoned his klutz wagon when the police showed up to investigate Eva Angerstein’s murder,” objected Gennat. “That seems just as likely, to me. Where does that leave your theory?”

“In tatters,” I conceded. “But why suppose yours is the only explanation, when there’s at least a possible chain of causation between Winnetou and Gnadenschuss? That’s the kind of chain of causation that helps us.”

“Or wastes valuable police time.”

“You’re both right,” said Weiss. “And you’re both wrong. But that’s the true character of police work. Right now we have to work on the assumption that you’re both right. I can’t think of any other way of advancing this investigation, Ernst. We’ll let Gunther run with his theory for a while and see how far it carries us. Any ideas on that, Bernie?”

“There’s a club on Chausseestrasse, near Oranienburger Tor. A place called Sing Sing. Prussian Emil has been known to drink there with other members of his ring. I thought I’d go there and see what I can find out.”

“Bar work.” Gennat laughed. “I might have known. Just up your street, I’d have thought.”

“That used to be the Café Roland,” said Weiss. “I’ve never been there myself but I’ve heard about it. The headwaiter is a loan shark called Gustav. Wasn’t a Schupo man found dead near there, a year ago?”

“On Tieckstrasse,” said Gennat. “But it was an accident. Live wire underneath the pavement electrocuted him when he walked through a deep puddle after some heavy rain.”

“I have a question that potentially undermines your theory, Bernie,” said Weiss. “If Dr. Gnadenschuss saw Prussian Emil run away from the scene of Eva Angerstein’s murder, then surely he’d know that Emil was a yokel catcher. A fraud. And that there was no point in shooting other disabled veterans on klutz wagons. So why bother with them at all?”

“Prussian Emil isn’t the only yokel catcher in Berlin. Everyone knows that a good percentage of these men are faking it to make a living. In his first letter, Dr. Gnadenschuss actually mentions he’d seen one get up and walk away from his cripple-cart as if his middle name had been Lazarus. Well, suppose it was Prussian Emil that he saw get up and walk away. Suppose he concentrates only on men who are using klutz wagons. Suppose he figures that maybe he’ll shoot the right man eventually.”

“Why suppose when you can say pretend?” said Gennat. “Or presume? Or once upon a time?”

“At the same time, he starts to get it into his head that he’s performing a valuable public service in getting rid of these men. And that he can taunt us about it in the newspapers. That there’s nothing we can do about it until we get lucky. Which is probably what it’s going to take to crack a case like this.”

“This is the part I don’t understand,” said Weiss. “The need to taunt us. Does he do it to have us chasing our tails, or just for the hell of it?”

“Simple,” said Gennat. “He hates the police. I’ve heard it said that lots of people do, chief.”

“And here was me thinking to run for election to the Reichstag,” said Weiss. “Pity.”

“Meanwhile, he helps build his notoriety by creating the public perception that we’re just a bunch of village idiots,” said Gennat.

I glanced at my watch. “I’d better get going.”

Weiss smiled. “You’re going to that ring bar, Bernie? The Sing Sing? Tonight?”

“I thought I might.”

“With any luck they’ll kill him,” said Gennat. “Even the rats tiptoe past the front door of that place.”

“Ernst is right, Bernie. Be careful. They don’t like cops in there.”

“I know. That’s why I thought I’d take someone with me. Someone no one would ever suspect of being with a cop in a million years.”

“Oh? Who’s that?”

“A girl.”

WHEN ROSA BRAUN finished playing her saxophone in the Haller-Revue orchestra, we left the club and walked north up Friedrichstrasse toward Oranienburger Tor. It was almost one a.m., but the streets were still full of sweaty Berliners gathered like damp moths outside the more brightly lit bars, loudly enjoying the high summer temperatures and the prospect of even further intoxication.

“I certainly didn’t expect to see you tonight,” she said. “And certainly not wearing that suit. Where on earth did you get it?”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“You know perfectly well.”

“Says the woman wearing male evening dress.”

“These are my working clothes.”

“So are mine, as a matter of fact. This bar we’re going to, it’s full of thieves and murderers. Which means it’s best if I try to blend in.”

“It’s a little hard to imagine that suit blending in anywhere except a shooting party or a racecourse.”

“Well, you’re not so far from the mark. A couple of years ago, I had to spend a bit of time hanging around Hoppegarten, looking for some pimp we were after. And I bought this and the matching cap on expenses to make me look more like a sporting man.”

“More Irish pimp, I’m afraid.”

“Good.”

“So you’re working then?”

“In a manner of speaking. In truth I’m just keeping my eyes peeled for someone. But I thought it would be a good idea to invite you along and combine business with pleasure. Especially as the whole evening’s on expenses. Which reminds me. The one subject we never mention in this place is that I’m a cop. Got that? You’ll see why when we get there.”

“So what’s your name. Just in case anyone should ask.”

“Zehr. Helmut Zehr.”

“Nice to meet you, Helmut. But aren’t you afraid someone will recognize you?”

“I’m a police sergeant, not the deputy commissioner. Besides, I figure by this time most of the patrons at Sing Sing will be too drunk to know me from a leprechaun.”

“I’ve heard of this place, of course. People say Sing Sing is the most dangerous bar in Berlin.”

“That’s probably true.”

“So what makes you think I’d like to go there?”

“Any girl who wears green lipstick and matching nail varnish strikes me as someone who likes to live dangerously. With a color combination like that, you should fit right in.”

“I think we make a good combination ourselves, don’t you? Your looks, Irish. My talent. My green lipstick. Your green suit. People will think we’re a couple. Albeit a couple without much in the way of taste. Mostly on your side.”

“We are a couple. Seriously. While we’re in Sing Sing we should watch out for each other like we’re two convicts manacled at the wrist. Anything you hear that sounds remotely untoward, you should say so immediately.”

“You’re scaring me.”

I put my arm around her. “You’ll be quite safe as long as you mind what I say, Rosa.”

“Ah, now I understand your technique, Irish. It’s very sneaky. You aim to frighten me into your arms and, after that, who knows where?”

“I think we both know where, don’t you?”

I stopped and moved to kiss her green lips.

“No, wait,” she said. “Do you want to spoil my lipstick? You can kiss me all you want after we’ve been to this place. But for now, I need you to behave like Tannhäuser and treat me like a virgin princess. Does that sound about right?”

“It’s a deal.”

We walked on. She said: “Isn’t Sing Sing a prison in China?”

“No, it’s in New York. But don’t ask me why it’s called that. More famously they have an electric chair at Sing Sing called Old Sparky. Which is more of a nickname, is my guess. I’m told they have one at the club, too. But it’s just for show.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

We arrived at the rusticated club door. Like everything else in the place, it was designed to look as if it belonged in a prison, with a window grille and a door within a door. I rang the bell, and an eye and then a mouth like a vicious-looking mollusk appeared at the grille and demanded to know the password.

Without much confidence I said, “Hitler.”

A few seconds later I heard the door being unlocked and bolts being drawn.

“Let’s hope it’s just as easy to get out of this place,” I murmured, and then the inner door swung open, releasing a lot of boozy, smoky noise.

The spanner on the door was part man and part bull mastiff. His nose had a big scar running down the center so that it looked like it was two noses and one of his ears reminded me of an unborn fetus. He wasn’t anyone’s idea of a reasonable man unless your idea of one was Frankenstein. Wearing the uniform of a prison guard and carrying a truncheon, he smelled strongly of beer and when he smiled it was like looking at an ancient graveyard. He slammed the door shut behind us, locked it, and waved a waiter over. The shaven-headed waiters, all dressed like convicts, with numbers on their backs, were as tough-looking as the spanner. The one who fetched us to table 191819 looked like the rail tracks at Potsdam Station, he had so many scars on his face. I gave him five marks and told him to bring us a bottle of German champagne and two glasses; he was back quickly with a bottle of Henkell and two enamelware cups.

“No glasses here,” he said. “Only prison mugs.”

He wrote his number on the bill—191819/22—and placed it underneath the champagne bucket.

The champagne at least was cold. I poured some out and then toasted Rosa, who smiled at me nervously. She said something, but I couldn’t hear what because the man seated next to us was shouting at a pretty girl dressed in stockings and suspenders, a tight basque, and not much else; they were both smoking marijuana. After a few seconds she spat the chewing gum out of her mouth and began kissing him. Her partner kept calling her Helga, so I assumed that was her name. Just looking at her you knew she was tough enough to survive another Krakatoa.

The champagne tasted a lot better than I’d expected, even in a tin mug. Rosa must have thought so, too, because she downed the mug in one and then came and sat on my knee.

“At least I can hear you now,” she said, and let me pour her another.

Using Rosa’s body as cover, I took the opportunity to look around. The place was set up like the mess hall at Plötzensee Prison, with heavy wooden tables, thick iron grilles on the windows, and, at the top of a tall stepladder, an observation guard who, our waiter informed us, was keeping an eye out for pickpockets. The place was full of Berlin lowlife, but I saw no one who fit the description of Prussian Emil I’d been given by the veteran outside the aquarium.

Up front, there was a small stage with a black curtain and I kept thinking a cabaret performer was going to show up and entertain us, but even as I thought this a man came to our table and did just that. In his hands were a set of manacles.

“Here,” he said. “Look at these bracelets. Genuine coppers’ clinkers, they are. Go on, folks. Check them out.”

I took hold of the handcuffs and examined them carefully.

“They look like the real thing,” I said.

“Look like? Of course they’re the real thing. Go on, love, snap them on my wrists. Tight as you like. That’s it. Go on, you’re not putting on bandages, you know. There you are. Now what do you think? Am I your prisoner, or what?”

Rosa nodded. “I’d say your goose is cooked and no mistake.”

I didn’t see how he did it, but it took him less time to get out of the handcuffs than it took to take off his cap and solicit a coin, which I duly provided.

We drank some more champagne and settled in. The man next to us was telling Helga about his time in Moabit Prison; in another place it was something you might have kept quiet about, but in Sing Sing it was like telling someone at the German Opera House that you were a trained tenor from Milan.

“How long were you in the cement, Hugo?” she asked.

“Five years.”

“What for?”

“Writing poetry,” he said, and laughed.

“There’s a lot of poets who deserve to be in prison.”

I couldn’t disagree with that, but I kept my eyes and my opinion to myself. Keeping your opinions to yourself was essential in Sing Sing; some of the patrons seemed likely to take offense at the slightest remark. A fight was already breaking out on the other side of the club but the spanner quickly broke it up by the simple means of breaking the heads of both the combatants with his truncheon, to loud cheers and applause. They were carried insensible to the door and thrown unceremoniously into the gutter.

We’d been there almost an hour when desire for Rosa began to take precedence over my desire to find Prussian Emil; it seemed unlikely that he was going to show up now. I was about to pay the bill when a man dressed like a prison guard and wearing lots of makeup arrived onstage and blew a whistle. Some of the audience seemed to know what was going to happen and gave a loud cheer, and gradually the place fell silent.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, removing his peaked cap. “And welcome to Sing Sing!”

More cheers.

“Most Berlin clubs have bands or naked girls these days; or ventriloquists, or magicians. I’ve even heard it said that at certain clubs you can watch two people having sex. And sometimes three or four. So many cocks, so much mouse, so very passé. But Sing Sing has something unique in the annals of entertainment. I promise you that you will not forget what we have to show you. Because, ladies and gentlemen, and without further ado, once again I have the honor to introduce you to the greatest star in all Berlin cabaret. Please give a warm Sing Sing welcome to Old Sparky himself!”

More cheers and more stamping on the sawdust-covered wooden floor as the curtains drew back to reveal a large wooden chair equipped with leather straps. The master of ceremonies sat down in the chair and crossed his legs nonchalantly.

“As you can see, this is an exact working facsimile of the electric chair at Sing Sing prison in New York, which was most recently used to execute a Jewish housewife named Ruth Snyder who murdered her husband for his life insurance. Poor woman. As if such a thing was in any way unusual. In Berlin, they’d probably have given her a medal and a pension.”

Cheers again.

“Now, many of you will know that the use of the electric chair was introduced as a humane alternative to hanging. However, it has often been the case that the electrocution did not go as smoothly as the authorities or the condemned would have preferred. Sometimes they used too much electricity, in which case the victim caught fire; and sometimes they used not enough, in which case the victim lived and had to be electrocuted again. Of course it’s all a question of money and a lot depends on whether the prison has paid its electricity bill. Or not. Fortunately the Sing Sing Club has no such problems with the Berlin Electrical Company. We always pay our bills. Not always with our own money, mind you. But we pay because without electricity there would be no Old Sparky for your entertainment.

“Yes, I’m pleased to announce that it’s that very special, not to say galvanizing, time of the night when we invite a member of the Sing Sing audience to join us up here onstage and volunteer to be put to death by electrocution. What more could you reasonably ask in the way of entertainment? If only some of our politicians in the Reichstag were similarly inclined to volunteer for electrocution, eh? It’s only what those bastards deserve. So do we have a volunteer? Come on, ladies and gentlemen, don’t be shy. Old Sparky is keen to say hello and good evening in his own peculiar way.

“No? Well, I can’t say I’m very surprised. Old Sparky makes everyone a little shy, doesn’t he? After all, it’s no small thing to be fried in the electric chair for the amusement of your fellow citizens. Which is why we usually choose someone by ballot. So ladies and gentlemen: If you check your bill you’ll find that it contains a number. Please take a look at it while I select one of those numbers at random.”

The master of ceremonies placed his hand into a large bag labeled SWAG, and came out with a piece of paper containing a number, which he read: “And the losing number tonight is 191819/22.”

To my surprise and then horror I realized that the number was mine and I was about to crush the bill and head for the door but Hugo’s friend Helga had already spotted the number and was helpfully pointing me out to the master of these grotesque ceremonies.

“He’s here,” she shouted excitedly, and suddenly everyone was looking at me. “The condemned man. He’s sitting right beside me.”

I smiled at her, though I’d like to have bitten a piece out of Helga’s neck. But I was cornered. I had little choice but to fake good humor and participate in Sing Sing’s tasteless charade. With my ears full of applause I stood up as unseen hands started to pull and push me toward the stage. As I neared the MC, I looked around for Rosa, but all I could see were the sweating faces of my fellow citizens as they took a loud and sadistic pleasure at my obvious discomfort. A few people at the back were even standing on their chairs so as not to miss a minute of my last moments on earth and I was inevitably reminded of a public hanging on the old gallows at Neuer Markt, where Berlin’s citizenry had once flocked in their thousands to see a man die.

“What’s your name, son?” asked the MC as I stepped up beside him and he pushed me down into the chair.

“Helmut Zehr,” I said.

The MC, who smelled strongly of illegal absinthe, took the bill from my hand and ostentatiously tore it up, as if my debt to the club had been canceled. Already two of the burliest convict waiters were strapping my arms and legs to the wooden chair; one of them rolled up my trouser legs and attached something cold and metallic to my calves as if they really did mean to electrocute me. It was about then that I saw the two huge H-switches on the bare brick wall, and another man standing beside these wearing heavy leather gauntlets. He seemed to be the only man present, apart from me, who wasn’t smiling.

“Well, Helmut,” said the MC, “in case you don’t know how this works, there’s an applause meter, so the more convincing the show you put on in this chair, the more money you will leave with tonight. By the way, you’ll feel a small amount of current in your hands and legs, just to help with your performance.” He grinned and then added, “Always supposing that you manage to survive the experience. Not everyone does. Just once in a while everything goes wrong and the man seated in that chair really does get toasted. But only if he deserves it.”

The MC stood back and at a sign from the two waiters that the straps on my legs and arms were secure, raised his hands for silence before shouting, “Roll on one” to the man wearing the gauntlets. My executioner threw one of the H-switches and, as the lights in the club turned suddenly much brighter, the MC addressed me again in sonorously judicial tones. I wanted to punch his painted face and might have done, but for the straps that held me.

“Helmut Zehr: you have been sentenced to die by three judges of the German Supreme Court. Do you have anything to say before your sentence is carried out?”

The Sing Sing audience greeted my death sentence with great enthusiasm and I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if they’d have viewed the real thing with just as much enthusiasm.

“Just get on with it,” I muttered.

“Electricity shall now be passed through your body until you are dead, in accordance with Prussian state law. May God have mercy on your soul.”

After a brief pause, the MC shouted, “Roll on two,” and the gauntleted man threw the second H-switch. At the same time, the lights in the club flickered like lightning and I felt an electric current in my limbs that was strong enough to be uncomfortable. Anxious to end this loathsome spectacle as quickly as possible and get out of the club, I let out a yell, jerked around spasmodically for several seconds, and played dead. Then, from underneath the chair, a small smoke bomb went off, which made me jump one last time, and finally my ugly ordeal was over.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” shouted the MC, “I give you Helmut Zehr.”

With the straps on the chair undone, I struggled weakly to my feet and acknowledged the thunderous applause with a wave of my hand.

“Take a bow,” said the MC. “You were a good sport, Helmut.”

OUTSIDE THE SING SING CLUB I leaned on the exterior wall to catch a breath of what passed for fresh air in that part of Berlin. My hands were trembling as they steered a cigarette uncertainly toward the biggest hole in my face, lit it, and then fumbled the rest of the matches onto the ground. Rosa regarded me with concern.

“That’s an evening I’m not going to forget in a hurry,” she said.

“Me neither.”

“For a minute back there I thought you were dead.”

“Believe me, I had the same feeling. There was real electricity in that damn chair.”

“Are you all right now?”

“Just about. You might say what happened in there—touched a raw nerve. Once, when I was in the trenches, I found myself trapped up to my neck in a shell hole full of mud, unable to move my arms and legs and thinking I was going to drown. It’s a recurring fear I have in all my nightmares. Not being able to escape. Thinking I’m about to die. After ten years you’d think I was over it. But I’m not. Most of the time I can handle it, but now and again it’s every bit as vivid as if it had happened yesterday.” I took a deep drag of my cigarette. “I’ll be all right in a minute. In fact, I already am.”

“What’s in the envelope?”

I looked at the envelope in my hand; someone had put it there as we’d walked out Sing Sing’s door. “I think it’s the fee,” I said. “For my performance. Look here, I should never have taken you there. I’m sorry. That was criminal.”

“I’d say you already paid the ultimate price for that particular crime, Bernie.”

I tried a smile. It felt a little tight on my face, as if someone had glued it there.

“Come on,” she said. “I’ll take you home. Let’s find a cab.”

BUT THE EVENING was not quite over. We hadn’t walked very far when a brand-new Mercedes roadster pulled up and a man I half recognized leaned over the cream-colored door.

“Hey. Helmut Zehr. Need a ride?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Get in,” he said curtly.

It was Erich Angerstein, Eva’s father.

I opened the door and nodded at a reluctant Rosa. “It’s all right,” I said. “We know each other. Sort of.”

We climbed into the car, which still smelled strongly of the showroom.

“Where to?” he asked.

“Nollendorfplatz,” I said.

“Good. That’s on my way.”

The big car took off smoothly. After a while Angerstein said, “You look like you need some schnapps. There’s a hip flask in the glove box.”

I helped myself to a couple of bites of Angerstein’s liquor and then nodded some thanks his way. He was wearing a smart single-breasted silk suit and a nice white shirt with a green silk tie. Only, the leather gloves on his hands seemed a little out of place. Maybe the car was stolen. Then again, he was probably a man who was always careful about where he left his fingerprints.

“You do know that was a ring bar you were in back there?” he said.

“Of course.”

“What the hell possessed you?”

“You were there?”

“I saw the whole damn thing. You and Old Sparky. You’re lucky it was only me who recognized you, otherwise they might have fried you for real.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“Am I?”

“When we met earlier I told you I was a cop. Otherwise I’d be just another Fritz to you. Rosa, this is Erich Angerstein. He’s a gangster. But you can relax for now. He wouldn’t hurt a fly. Not unless there was profit in it.”

“Pleased to meet you, Herr Angerstein. I think.”

“It’s all right, sugar. I don’t bite. Not when I’m driving a new car.”

“Nice. What is this, anyway? The Mercedes Getaway?”

“Oh, I like her, Gunther. You should hang on to this one. She has courage.”

“More than me, I think.”

“Could be. Look here, Gunther, the people who run that club hate cops more than they hate losing money. Suppose I’d turned you in to them?”

“Why would you do that when you know I’m trying to find your daughter’s killer?”

“Maybe so. But I still don’t understand why you went there in the first place.”

“I was looking for someone. A potential witness.”

“To my daughter’s murder?”

I didn’t want to say too much on this score. The last thing I wanted was for Angerstein to find Prussian Emil and question him on his own. There was no telling where that might end up.

“I’m not really sure. It all depends on what he tells me when I catch up with him. He might know something useful. Then again he might not.”

“Maybe I can help you find him.”

“Maybe.”

“This Fritz have a name?”

“Yes, but I’m not sure I’m going to tell you what it is.”

“Why not?”

“In case you decide to go rogue and look for him on your own account. Maybe even find him, too. A man with your education and background, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you did find him. But you might get impatient. And not knowing the right questions to ask, you might come up with the wrong answers.”

“I see what you mean.”

“Look, under the circumstances I could hardly blame you for taking the law into your own hands. But it really wouldn’t help my investigation if you did.”

“And if I gave you my word?”

“Come on, you’re a Berlin gangster, not a Prussian Army officer.”

“And that means my word isn’t worth anything?”

“It could. Look, I don’t know about you but me, I’m a cynical bastard. It’s the secret of my charm.”

“I told you before. I want to help you catch the man who killed my daughter.”

“Sure, I get that. The difference is that I want to build a case against this Fritz and you want to murder him.”

“In the long run, what’s the difference?”

“Frankly, none. But my job is to see that the right man loses his head.”

“So you’re not going to tell me his name.”

“I don’t see how I can.”

Angerstein sighed. “They’ve got a name for this in chess when, after several hours of playing, neither side can move and nobody can win or lose.”

“A complete waste of time?”

“Stalemate. What, you never played chess?”

“Sure. I played Hamlet, too, but it certainly won’t bother my conscience if I don’t win or lose with you, Herr Angerstein. You’re not the only informant in this town. There never was a detective who couldn’t find himself another informer.”

“No, but trust me, I am the best-informed informer you’re likely to find. There’s not much crime that happens in Berlin that I don’t know about. The fact is, it’s not just me who wants this bastard caught; it’s all the bosses I represent in the syndicate. A killer like this is bad for business. There are too many cops out looking for him. With the result that they see more than they should.”

“Now, that I can believe. But I already told you, I’m not the trusting kind, Herr Angerstein. They don’t pay me enough to think too much. When it snows I know to stay indoors. These days that’s considered enough to make detective.”

“I think you’re a lot smarter than you say you are. And you’d have to be smarter than that suit says you are. Look, Gunther, by the oath I took to the ring to which I belong, I’m supposed to finger cops for the benefit of our fellow members. But I didn’t give you away back there. That has to be worth something.”

“They have a name for that, too?”

“You could call it a sign of good faith. I see your dilemma. But I really do want you to get this bastard. Not just for me and Eva, but for all the others he’s killed as well. And all the others he might yet kill. So please give me a chance. Let me help. The Berlin underworld is a sardine can without a key for a cop like you. But with my contacts I can probably find this fish in no time.”

“That’s the first reasonable thing you’ve said since you offered to drive us home.”

“So you’ll give me a name to work on?”

“I’m still thinking about it.”

“Well, think up, copper, we’re here.”

“Don’t rush me. My head still feels like a Chinese switchboard.”

Nollendorfplatz looked a lot better from the inside of an expensive car; most things probably did. A new Mercedes roadster was like rose-tinted spectacles with wire wheels and hand-stitched leather upholstery. Even the exhaust fumes smelled good. Angerstein peeled off a glove, reached into the pocket of his silk suit, and took out a stiff little business card that he handed to me with nicely manicured fingers. On it was embossed a smart address in Lichterfelde on the Teltow Canal, a telephone number, and his name. They say crime doesn’t pay, but the benefits looked just fine to me.

Rosa and I got out of the car. Then I leaned in the driver’s window of the Mercedes and said, “Prussian Emil.”

“That’s it?”

“He’s a yokel catcher and snow shoveler. Pretends to be a disabled veteran. But mostly he’s a lookout for some of the city’s burglars. Positions his klutz wagon outside a house and blows a bugle if any law turns up. On the night your daughter was murdered, one of the apartments in the vicinity got turned over.”

“And you went to Sing Sing to do what? Ask the locals if anyone had done a job with him? It’s amazing you’ve stayed alive this long, Gunther.”

“I’ve got eyes as well as ears. As it happens, the man I went looking for is tall, cadaverous, vaguely military, with a port-wine stain on his neck like a careless waiter spilled something down his shirt collar. We detectives call that a description. You might have heard of it somewhere.”

“It’s not much, is it?”

“When you’re a cop, sometimes not much is all there is to go on, Herr Angerstein. You should try it sometime.”

MY HANDS WERE still shaking as I tried to undo my collar stud, prompting Rosa to come to my aid.

“Here, let me do that.”

It felt strange allowing someone wearing men’s clothes to help me undress but that problem soon disappeared when she herself was naked and lying beside me in my bed and looking more like a woman than I remembered—slender, her beautiful long hair, liberated from its tight bun, tumbling down her elegant back like a silk waterfall. There was a tenderness in her eyes. I’d had a severe shock, but not as severe as the one endured by poor Mrs. Snyder in the real Sing Sing, which made me feel a bit of a fraud and I almost apologized for the way my body was behaving. Still, I could hardly ignore the twitching of my own muscles, like a frog whose legs had been touched by Galvani’s electrodes. But for her being with me, I’d probably have emptied the rum bottle that was in my desk drawer.

“It’s all right,” she said gently. “It’s all over now. You’re safe with me. Just lie still and close your eyes.”

It had gone four a.m. but even though the window was wide open the room was stifling; we lay on top of the covers for a while, exhausted and sheened with sweat, listening to the symphonic adagio that was the city’s smallest hours, too tired to smoke or to touch each other but knowing without having to say anything that there would be another time for all those mysteries. Somewhere a horse and cart were going about their early-morning deliveries; two cats had reached a stalemate in a game of feline chess; and, in the far distance, a barge was announcing its presence like a lost dinosaur as it made its lumbering way down the Spree.

Neither of us said anything and it seemed to me that for a fleeting instant we reached out into the void and touched a perfect innocence. After a while I stepped out of my body and stared down at these two intertwined lovers and marveled at the small differences between us that made Rosa so much more beautiful and desirable than me. I watched my lips move as if to form an elusive, loving phrase but since nothing really needed to be said in that department it stayed unspoken. Eventually Rosa yawned and then whispered something that sounded like, “What very peculiar lives we both lead, don’t you think, Bernie?” and laid her head on my chest and went to sleep.

This seemed incontrovertible and not just because of what had happened that evening. Life itself was so fast-moving it was impossible not to feel that sometimes things were completely out of control, like being alone in one of Berlin’s elongated open-topped tourist charabancs as it careered frantically around the metropolis, driverless, taking in the sights, heading toward some unknown peculiar disaster of our own making.

BERNHARD WEISS LISTENED to the tale of my night at Sing Sing and shook his head.

“It was a brave effort,” he said. “And I commend you for trying. But you mustn’t reproach yourself for having failed. The point is that the thinking behind what you were doing was sound. You couldn’t possibly have anticipated what happened when you got to the club. That was just bad luck, coming up against the German sense of humor. I don’t really understand it, myself. I suspect it is the kind of laughter that conceals a scream against modern life, man cut loose from all the certainties that once comforted him—God, tradition, love of country. Laughter that hides an existential crisis.”

I tried to control my expression; I’d heard the man talking out of his arse before, but this was something new. I wanted to tell him that a lot of people were just cunts and that was all there was to it, but with a breakfast drink or two already inside me I thought it best to keep my face shut; the last thing I wanted was an argument with the boss about the true moral caliber of our fellow citizens.

“But you must be tired if you were out so late. Would you like some coffee, Bernie?”

“No, thanks, sir.”

“I know. It’s hardly the sort of weather for coffee. There is water if you’d prefer.”

“I’m fine, thank you, sir.”

He got up and crossed the floor to open a window. “You would think they could supply an electric fan that worked properly. But that one on my desk is more or less useless. Really, it’s quite unforgivable when the temperature is as hot as this.”

Weiss was slow coming to the point, which made me nervous. I half suspected he was going to deliver a dry-as-mummy-dust lecture about police discipline and then fire me from the Murder Commission before sending me back to the ranks of Vice, realizing that he’d made a mistake in giving me Lindner’s seat and that Kurt Reichenbach should have had it after all.

Back at the desk he retrieved his cigar from the ashtray and relit it before sitting down. “Tell me, Bernie, do you remember the Klein and Nebbe case?”

“Everyone in Berlin remembers the Klein and Nebbe case.”

“Well, I’ve been reading this essay about the case by a writer called Alfred Döblin. From Stettin. I recommend you read it. Anyone who’s interested in criminalistics should read his essay. It contains newspaper reports, trial records, medical testimony, everything. Only, it’s not an attempt to sensationalize what happened but to understand it. To explain it.”

“Two women poisoned one husband and attempted to poison the second,” I said helplessly. “What’s to understand or explain? That’s a crime in any language.”

Weiss took out a small notebook, opened it, and ignoring my objections, prepared to read aloud.

“One phrase that the writer uses in the essay struck me as particularly interesting. He says, I had the impulse to travel the streets that they—the murderers—routinely traveled. So I also sat in the pubs in which the two women got to know each other. I visited the apartment of one of them, spoke with her personally, spoke with others involved, and observed them.”

“There doesn’t seem much point in going into it now,” I said. “It was six years ago.”

“Döblin wrote his essay in 1924. And I disagree with you. His is a brave attempt to examine where in society the noncriminal ends and the criminal begins. But it’s not so much his conclusions that interested me as his whole investigative method.”

I nodded. Anything to avoid giving my opinion of the case, which was that Ella Klein and Margarete Nebbe were a lesbian couple who’d richly deserved much harsher sentences than those handed down by the court; there wasn’t one cop in the Alex who didn’t think they should both have faced the falling ax. Arsenic was every happily married man’s abiding fear.

“You see, Bernie, I was thinking that this essay might provide the inspiration for a new kind of detective work. Something much more immersive than merely searching a crime scene for clues and collecting witness statements.”

“Like what?”

“Like the same sort of thing you were doing last night, Bernie. You, investigating a crime undercover. At street level. No, really. This is the kind of detective work I’m talking about. No one is doing this at present. Not even Scotland Yard.”

“I’m still not sure I understand, sir.”

“It’s just this. Detective work is based on the assumption that we are better than the criminals we investigate. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Of course.”

“That we do not descend to the level of criminals ourselves. However, it occurs to me that in this respect we are missing an important trick. That there may be occasions when this is exactly what’s required. That to solve the crime we need to be proactive rather than reactive. That we need to inhabit the very milieu of the crime that has been committed. Do you see? We need to be in that world but not part of it.”

I bit my lip and looked at my fingernails. It was like working for a school headmaster and I was the slow-witted pupil who wasn’t quite following the line of his high-minded reasoning. I lit a cigarette and puffed it into life; if only Weiss’s conversation could have combusted as easily; as it was, his words had yet to catch fire in my mind. By now I was more or less certain I wasn’t being sacked. But was I listening to a lecture or merely a series of rhetorical questions?

“Are you still drinking, Bernie? Well, of course you are. I can smell it on your breath. I know, this isn’t the Lutheran church. Men come off duty and they need a drink. But can you control it?”

“I am controlling it.”

Weiss nodded sympathetically. “Because I think you’ll need your wits about you for what I have in mind.”

“I saved your life, didn’t I?”

“Yes, you did. Which is why I think you’re probably just the man for this. We have to do something. I’m under a lot of pressure from the minister to catch this Dr. Gnadenschuss. And what we’re doing right now, well, it just doesn’t seem to be enough.” He paused for a moment and regarded me through a haze of cigar smoke. “What do you think?”

“Honestly? Until he kills again, I don’t think we’ve a chance of catching him, no. The thumbprint on the letter they received at the Berliner Tageblatt didn’t find a match with records, as you know. Right now we’re just whistling while we wait for another corpse to turn up.”

“And yet I think we have to do something more. In fact, I don’t think we have any choice but to do something.”

“What did you have in mind?”

“Before I tell you, I want you to feel free to turn me down. It won’t in the least reflect badly on you, Bernie. You’re young and I think you’re still keen and you’ll probably say yes without thinking. But you need to think about this carefully. Because what I’m proposing is a little out of the ordinary. What I’m proposing is to make you a kind of hunting decoy. In short, that you use the klutz wagon you recovered from Eva Angerstein’s murder scene and pose as one of these unfortunate disabled war veterans yourself. Just as your friend Prussian Emil was doing. That’s right. I want you to pose as a klutz in the hope that Dr. Gnadenschuss might try and kill you. And if he does try to kill you, then of course you would be perfectly placed to apprehend him. In flagrante delicto. But only if you’re agreeable to the idea.”

Weiss wasn’t smiling. So I knew it wasn’t a joke. But it certainly sounded like one.

“It will mean living on the street for a while, begging outside railway stations for pennies, maybe even sleeping in a hostel for the homeless, going without the odd meal, not washing regularly, accepting some abuse. And all the time keeping your eyes peeled for someone trying to kill you.”

“If it’s a question of catching Dr. Gnadenschuss, then I’m game.”

“Are you sure?” He looked at me thoughtfully. “Yes, I think you are. Of course you’ll have a bit of help in looking like a real klutz. With the army uniform and disability. As if you were an actor in a play. The klutz wagon you found helps because it was made for a man who isn’t really disabled. For the rest of it, I was thinking of sending you to see a friend of mine at the Neues Theater on Schiffbauerdamm. A makeup artist and costumier called Brigitte Mölbling. She worked on that movie Metropolis. That is, if you’re sure you actually want to do this, Bernie.”

“I’d like to try. As you say, sir, we have to do something.”

“Good, good.”

“What does Ernst think about your plan, sir?”

“I haven’t told him. In fact, I don’t propose to tell anyone, and nor should you. The fewer people who know about this the better. What we certainly want to avoid is any other police officers coming to look at you, as if you were an exhibit in the zoo. Or tipping off the newspapers that one of our detectives is working in disguise. What I will tell Ernst is that I’ve given you some compassionate leave to get your drinking sorted out. Which, I might add, wouldn’t be a bad idea anyway. And when you’ve decided where you’re going to make your pitch, from time to time, I may come and check on you myself, if only to put a few coins in your hat.”

BEFORE I LEFT to begin my mission I looked in on the new department at the Alex, the one handling commercial fraud. Created by Weiss, it was headed by Ulrich Possehl. He was a good officer, well respected, with an outstanding war record. But he was away on vacation and his deputy, Dr. Alfred Jachode, was an altogether different animal. By training he was a lawyer and an accountant and his office was lined with some very dry books. He was also an adherent of the Steel Helmet, and although this was supposed to be an organization above party politics, many of its members were quite open about their allegiance—in fact, many wore a miniature helmet on a stickpin in their lapels. In practice they were so radically anti-democratic and anti-republican they made the Nazis look reasonable. The minute I walked into his office, I knew I was probably wasting my time asking if he had any reason to suspect the owners of the Wolfmium factory of commercial fraud.

“You’ve got a nerve, do you know that? You’re wasting your time if you think I would do anything to help a Jew’s poodle like you, Gunther.”

“If you’re suggesting that my position in the Murder Commission owes anything to Bernhard Weiss, then you’re wrong. It owes everything to him.”

“What do you want?”

“I was hoping to waste your time, which looks like a better outcome. Besides, I wasn’t thinking of you helping me so much as you helping the workers who were killed in the factory fire.”

“Most of them were Russians, probably here illegally, so who gives a damn? I know I don’t. They got what they deserved.”

“You make me think that if Germany ever gets what it deserves, we’ll have a very bad time of it.”

“Communists.”

“Actually, a lot of those workers were Germans.”

“Volga Germans,” he said. “There’s a big difference.”

“Is there?”

“I assume one or two of them are decent people. But most are probably thieves and rapists and murderers and therefore Russians in all but name. And every bit as illegal. It’s only Jews and Jews’ poodles who care about these people.”

The Volga Germans were ethnic Germans, largely descended from Bavarians and Rhinelanders and Hessians who were invited in 1762 by the Empress Catherine the Great—herself a Pomeranian native of Stettin—to come and farm Russian land. They’d helped to modernize backward Russian farming and, being German, had thrived, at least until the Bolshevik revolution, when their lands had been confiscated by the communists and they’d been forced to return to the Fatherland. It goes without saying that they were not welcomed back with joy.

“So the way I look at it is this: Fifty dead Volga Germans in Berlin is fifty damned Russians we won’t have to send back to the eastern swamps when finally we elect a proper government that believes in protecting our borders.” He smiled thinly. “Was there anything else?”

“No, I think we’ve covered it.”

“It’s not too late, you know,” said Jachode. “For you, I mean. Personally. You could always join us. In the Stahlhelm. In making the new Germany.”

“Yes, well, I’m afraid it’s the always part I don’t care for.”

“Get out. Before I throw you out.”

Most of the time I’m very proud to be a cop. I think there’s nothing wrong with being a cop—unless there’s something wrong with the cop, of course. But sometimes it took a great deal of courage to see the Berlin police force with all its faults and still love it.

THE NEUES THEATER was a tall neo-Baroque building with a high mansard roof and a bell tower. It was under the management and direction of Max Reinhardt and it frequently staged operettas and musicals. I never much liked musicals. It’s the music I don’t care for, but as well, it’s the relentlessly jolly theater folk who cavort across the stage—I hate them. But mostly it’s the idea that when the nearly always tenuous story reaches its greatest dramatic intensity, someone sings or dances, or sings and dances, and for no discernible reason. Speaking as someone who doesn’t much care to be entertained, I always prefer dialogue to song because it takes half the time to get through and brings the sanctuary of the bar, or even home, just that little bit closer. I never yet saw a musical I didn’t think could be improved by a deeper pit for the orchestra, and a bottomless chasm for the cast.

They were rehearsing a new opera when I showed up at the stage door and from the sound of it I knew I wasn’t going to enjoy The Threepenny Opera any more than I’d enjoyed The Cheerful Vineyard, which was the last musical I’d seen at the Neues Theater some three years before. The band sounded desperately out of tune, like a waterlogged barrel organ, while the mezzo-soprano could hold a note no better than I could hang on to a hot poker. She was plain, too—I caught a glimpse of her onstage as I made my way up to one of the dressing rooms—one of those thin, pale-faced, red-haired Berlin girls who reminded me of a safety match.

By contrast, Brigitte Mölbling was an Amazonian blonde whose perfectly proportioned windswept head looked like the mascot on the hood of a fast car. She had a cool smile, a strong nose, and eyebrows that were so perfectly drawn they might have been put there by Raphael or Titian. She wore a plain black dress, more bracelets than Cleopatra’s pawnbroker, a long gold necklace, a big ring on almost every finger, and an enormous single earring, on the end of which was a little frame containing a laughing Buddha. I figured the Buddha was laughing at me for playing along with Weiss’s crazy idea. He was probably trying to work out what kind of animal I was going to be in the next life: a rat or a louse, or just another cop.

There was a black cigarette burning in the ashtray and a glass of something cold in her hand. She put the glass down and then rose from her armchair, before sitting again, this time on the edge of a big table that was covered with pots and bottles, a finished game of solitaire, and some ice in a bowl that matched the ice in her glass. “So you’re the policeman who thinks he can play a klutz,” she said, sizing me up through narrowed eyes.

“I know what you’re thinking: He’s more leading man than character actor, but that’s the part I’ve been assigned, yes.”

She nodded, reclaimed the cigarette, and did some more sizing up.

“It’s not going to be easy. For one thing, you’re in good shape. Too healthy to have been living on the street. Your hair is wrong and so’s your skin.”

“That’s what all the magazines are saying.”

“We can fix that, I suppose.”

“That’s why I’m here, doc.”

“And as for your teeth, they could use a bit more yellow. Right now they look like you chew tree bark. But we can fix that, too.”

“I’m all ears.”

“No, they’re fine. A little clean maybe. It’s the rest of you that needs some close attention.”

“My mother would be pleased to hear it. She always said that in the final analysis it all comes down to clean ears and clean underwear.”

“Your mother sounds very sensible.”

“Unfortunately, I don’t take after her. If I did I wouldn’t be a cop and I wouldn’t have volunteered to play the klutz.”

“So what you’re doing, is it dangerous?”

“Could be.”

“Yes. I suppose there’s always the possibility that Dr. Gnadenschuss might shoot you, too. That’s what Bernhard Weiss said this was about, anyway. The crazy who’s been shooting disabled veterans: I suppose he’s more important than Winnetou. Isn’t that just the thing? You murder a girl in this town and no one gives a damn. You murder a disabled war vet, they ask questions in the Reichstag. But you’re taking a risk, surely.”

“There’s a risk, yes. But now that I’m here talking to you, it seems like a risk worth running.”

“Smooth, aren’t you? For a cop, that is. Most of the ones I’ve met were bullies in bad suits with ugly cigars and beer guts.”

“You forgot the flat feet. But I seem to remember you didn’t like my skin or my hair.”

“No, your skin is good. That’s why I don’t like it. At least for what you’ve got in mind. But as I said, we can fix that. We can even fix your hair.”

“I imagine there’s not a lot you can’t fix when you put your mind to it. Like some refreshment, perhaps. Is that a drink you’re drinking?”

“I’m sorry. Would you like one?”

“Let’s just say one will do for now.”

She opened a bottle of Scotch and poured a generous measure on top of a piece of ice. Meanwhile, all her gold jewelry shifted in a vain attempt to distract my eyes from her breasts. She handed me the drink and I toasted her. Apart from the medicine I was holding, she was just what I’d have told the doctor to order.

“Here’s to you and the opera. Whatever it is. From what I’ve seen on the poster outside, it looks as if I might actually be able to afford a ticket.”

“You remind me of a comedian I used to know. He thought he was funny, too.”

“Only you didn’t.”

“Not only me. Lots of other girls didn’t think he was funny, either.”

“I’ve had no complaints so far.”

“You surprise me.”

“I’m working on that.”

“Save your breath. Didn’t you know? There are no surprises in the theater. That’s why we have rehearsals.”

“Is that what’s happening onstage?”

“It is. That’s Lotte singing. She’s married to the show’s composer, Kurt.”

“I guess that explains a lot.”

“You don’t like her voice?”

“I like it fine. The music, too. It’s been a useful reminder that I need to call a piano tuner.”

“It’s supposed to sound like that.”

“Is that why it’s called the threepenny opera?”

“You are a detective, aren’t you?”

“That’s what they tell me at the Alex.”

“You should really come and see the show. It’s about cops and gangsters, beggars and pimps, a murderer called Macheath and a whore called Polly.”

“I get plenty of the real thing at the office.”

Brigitte smiled. “I bet you do.”

“On the other hand, if you’re asking me, then I’ll check my schedule.”

“We’ll see, shall we?” She looked at the cripple-cart I’d brought with me. “This is a curious-looking contraption.”

“That’s a klutz wagon,” I said. “But this one was made for a man who isn’t crippled at all. He’s a yokel catcher. A con man. He used to put his legs inside the thing, which made him look like he was a double amputee. Clever, eh?”

“I don’t know. Seems a lot of trouble to go to for a few lousy coins.”

“The main part of his work is selling coke and acting as a lookout for a burglar.”

“So he wasn’t sitting in this all day.”

“No.”

“And you’re planning to be in this for how long?”

“I hadn’t given that much thought.”

“Then perhaps you should. I was at UFA studios before I came here and we made a movie featuring a character with one leg. A pirate. Only, he was played by an actor with two legs so he had to strap one up every day. He found it was very uncomfortable. After an hour or two his leg lost feeling and worse, he got cramps. So I recommend you get some liniment. And an alcohol rub. Better still, make friends with a good masseur. You’ll need one.”

“Thanks for the tip.”

“How do they propel themselves?” she asked.

“Most of them wear leather gloves and use their hands. But I’ve seen one or two use short crutches. I’m going to see how I get on with leather gloves.”

“And are you just going to beg, or actually sell something? Like some genuine Swedish matches?” She said the words genuine Swedish matches as if she’d been a beggar herself.

“I’m just going to beg. I’m not actually interested in making money. I’m watching people, not pennies.”

“Good point.” She finished her cigarette and stubbed it out. “I see you also brought your old army uniform. Well, put it on and let’s see how you look, soldier. You can get changed behind that curtain.”

I picked up my uniform and eyed it uncomfortably.

“Go ahead. I promise not to peek.”

“That’s not why I’m hesitating. I haven’t worn this since 1919.”

“Then let’s hope it still fits, for my sake, otherwise I’ll have to have it altered.”

I went behind the curtain and put the uniform on. It felt strange wearing it again. It gave me a bad feeling of the kind that felt a lot better with some strong drink in my hand.

“What happened to this yokel catcher anyway?” she asked.

“He’s disappeared.”

I swept the curtain aside and stood to attention while Brigitte looked at me even more critically.

“Not bad,” she said. “Now all you need is a rifle and a sweetheart.”

“Are you volunteering?”

“I don’t have a rifle. And I don’t even have a sweet tooth. But I do recommend we shave your head. That way you’ll also avoid catching head lice. We can do that now if you like. Your skin is going to be harder to fix. You could chew a small piece of cordite but it will make you feel sick and you don’t want to deal with that every day. Better to use some white face paint. Like you were a Pierrot. I’ll show you how to apply it. I also recommend you wear dark glasses, as if your eyes had been damaged; yours are much too healthy-looking. But the Iron Cross is a nice touch. Did you win it, or is it a prop?”

“No, they gave me that for cleaning out a trench.”

“Seriously?”

“Sure. There were some Tommies in it at the time, but you know how it is when you want to clean up a bit.”

“So you’re a hero.”

“No. Don’t say that. I used to know some real heroes. And I certainly don’t fit that description. Not like they did. Besides, I wouldn’t like you to get any ideas about me being brave or honorable.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t. Now let’s see what you look like in the wagon.”

I emptied my glass, knelt down in the contraption, winced, and then stood up again.

“Need a cushion?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She picked one off the armchair and arranged it in the klutz wagon. I knelt in it once again and nodded to Brigitte.

“Better?” she asked.

“Much.”

She nodded. “Not bad. Where are you going to beg? Any ideas about that?”

“I was thinking just across the river at the Friedrichstrasse railway station. There are plenty of pitches over there. Lots of people. Lots of trains. The killer likes it noisy, you see. A train rolls in, a shot rings out. Only, no one hears it because of the train. That’s his cover.”

“Maybe I’ll come and see you. Check you’re still alive. Toss a coin your way if you’re breathing. Call an ambulance if you’re not.”

“I’d like that. But don’t speak to me. That would spoil everything. Just treat me like vermin.”

“Ask me to do something more difficult than that, please.”

I thought for a moment. Of course I knew she’d made a joke because that was how we were talking, as if we didn’t care for each other’s company one little bit, but already I could see that this wasn’t how it really was between us. I amused her and she amused me and we were like two fencers trying each other out with foils because that’s how it is with men and women sometimes; it’s fun not saying what you mean and not meaning what you say. Only now it suddenly occurred to me that if I leveled with Brigitte, then perhaps I could count on her to do something that really was difficult.

“Can I tell you something in confidence?”

“I’d like to hear you try.”

“I’m serious. Look, what you were saying about Winnetou. I certainly haven’t given up looking for that bastard. But before I say any more I’m going to need your promise that you won’t tell anyone what I’m going to tell you now, Brigitte.”

“All right, soldier. I promise.”

“I think the yokel catcher who was using this klutz wagon witnessed the most recent Winnetou murder: Eva Angerstein. I found this cripple-cart near where her body was found. I think the owner ran away and I think that her murderer is killing other disabled war vets in the hope that he’ll eventually eliminate someone who can identify him.”

“You mean that Winnetou and Dr. Gnadenschuss are one and the same?”

“It’s just a theory, but yes, I think so.”

“Hell of a difference killing a whore and killing a klutz, I’d have thought.”

“You might think so, but a lot of people believe that they’re both bad for the moral climate of the city. That too many whores and too many beggars make Berlin look ugly and degenerate. That the city needs cleaning up.”

“I’ve heard that opinion. And it’s true, perhaps something does need to be done. Maybe things have gone a little too far and a bit of order and decorum need to be restored. You wouldn’t believe the number of times I’ve been solicited on my way home from this theater. And once worse than just solicited. But some of these girls need help to get them off the streets—proper wages, for a start—maybe some of those poor men, too.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying—that and that the killer seems to want to embarrass the Berlin police. From the letters the newspapers have published, he seems to be playing with us. Trying to cause us maximum embarrassment. Maybe he’s a Nazi, maybe he hates the fact that there’s a Jew in charge of the criminal police. Then again, maybe it’s just enough that he hates. There’s a lot of it around these days.”

“I can buy that. But what’s the reason you’re telling me all this?”

“What time do you start work?”

“I usually begin here around midday. Why?”

“Because it occurred to me that you might do a lot more than show me how to make myself look like a klutz.”

“Go on.”

“What you said about the one-legged actor at UFA. That was smart. It’s got me thinking that I haven’t really thought this through, not nearly enough. I realize now that there’s going to be a limit to how much time I can tolerate in this contraption. And perhaps, left to my own devices, to how convincing I am. Look, I know it’s asking a great deal, Brigitte, but I was thinking I might come to this theater every day, at about eleven, before you start your proper work, when you could help fix me up, make me look like a proper klutz before I head across the bridge to beg. I could come back after a few hours and then go home. Maybe even leave my costume and the wagon here.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because I think you’re a smart person, and helping me beats sitting around in here playing solitaire. Because I think that like any woman in Berlin, you want Winnetou caught. And because right now I’m the best chance of making that happen.”

“You’re very sure of yourself, aren’t you?”

“Not in the least. When I said chance I meant one chance in a hundred. This is a long shot, bright eyes, a very long shot, with a long gun and a deep breath and only the slightest chance of succeeding or being accurate. But right now it’s the only shot we’ve got.”

THE NEXT DAY was almost worthy of a short poem by Goethe about a German summer, with the sparrows on the linden trees singing in the sun’s warm clear rays. Above Berlin’s grim gray buildings the sky was as blue as the stripes on a Strandbad chair and the air was already cooking nicely as if ready to steam all the human sausage that inhabited the metropolis. In front of the Neues Theater, the rippling river Spree glinted like a cut sapphire. Inside the theater, onstage, the band was already rehearsing one of the numbers from the opera, but it hardly seemed to be the weather to be playing anything that was deliberately out of tune. Call me old-fashioned but there’s something about a perfect day that demands perfect music. Schubert, probably.

In Brigitte Mölbling’s room I changed into my uniform and sat in the makeup chair. She tucked a sheet into the collar of my old army tunic and went to work on my shaven head with paints and sponges. I liked her attention to my face; it brought her own beautiful face nearer to mine, which felt like a good place for it to be. Up close I could smell the Nivea on her face and the perfume on her fingers; in other circumstances I might even have tried to kiss her. She hummed along with the band as she worked and before long I was humming, too; one of the tunes they were rehearsing was unfeasibly catchy.

“And now, because we don’t want anyone to turn a deaf ear to your misfortune—” Brigitte burned a couple of small holes into the tunic with a cigarette and, in spite of my protests, made some stains with candle wax. “We need to ensure the pity of those who see you, Gunther. It certainly wouldn’t do to walk into the rattrap looking like you’ve just come off the parade ground.”

After thirty minutes she pronounced herself satisfied that I was ready to go out and meet my public. So I knelt on the klutz wagon and wheeled myself eagerly to her full-length mirror, where a seismic shock awaited me. I was staring at an abbreviated, nightmarish version of myself that made me gasp out loud.

“Holy Christ,” I said.

The pitiful creature looking back at me was a badly damaged man who hadn’t been as lucky as me; a Gunther who, blown to pieces by an enemy mortar bomb and then salvaged by the German Army medical corps against all odds, might easily have existed in Weimar Germany’s half-Brueghel world of the blind leading the blind. The round dark glasses contrasted sharply with the creature’s pale face and bald head, so that they resembled the empty eye sockets in a human skull. A living, breathing Golgotha, I felt like Faust being shown one of my alternative futures by a rather less than accommodating Mephistopheles who cared nothing for seductively indulging me with all the pleasure and knowledge of the world. It was enough to make any man count his blessings and swear off the drink—almost.

“Well?” she asked. “What do you think?”

“Holy Christ,” I muttered again. “I look terrible.”

“I’ll take that as a professional compliment.”

“Well, yes, you can. It’s just that—I guess I never realized how very lucky I’ve been. I’m looking at the fellow in the mirror and asking myself what it must be like to wake up and be confronted with this horror every day.”

“And what’s the answer?”

I thought for a moment. Seeing myself like this had made me realize something important. Something profound that was probably going to affect me for the rest of my days. Thanks to Bernhard Weiss and Brigitte Mölbling, I’d achieved something useful, even if I never did manage to catch Dr. Gnadenschuss. I’d been given a genuine life lesson.

“It’s this. That you can’t put a price on good fortune. It’s the difference between two men: One, the man in the mirror with no legs and no future other than selling Swedish matches, and the other, a stupid, able-bodied idiot of a detective who’s full of drunken self-pity instead of humble gratitude. I just got myself reminded of what a lucky break I had—to walk away from 1918 without a scratch.”

“Well, you have to be smart to be lucky. But what you’re saying sounds like an epiphany, if you ask me.”

I took her heavily ringed hand and kissed it with fond gratitude.

“It’s not Archimedes but yes, why not? An epiphany. They say that when you’re drinking you have to reach rock bottom to turn your life around; I think I’ve just been shown a small preview of what rock bottom might actually look like. Thanks to you I may never drink again. Well, perhaps not as much.” I kissed her hand again.

“If I didn’t know better I’d snatch my hand away and fetch some disinfectant. I’ve seen stray dogs that had more to recommend themselves than you do.”

“I get that a lot.”

“So. Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

“Hey, what will you do if Dr. Gnadenschuss really does try to kill you? How will you protect yourself?”

“The usual way.” I reached into my tunic and took out a Walther automatic.

“Good,” she said, as if it mattered to her that I was able to look out for myself. And that was good, too: that it mattered.

She accompanied me to the front door of the theater, where she kissed the top of my shaven head.

“You’re interesting to me now. So be careful, Gunther. There are plenty of other wicked bastards out there who can do you harm, not just Dr. Gnadenschuss.”

I wheeled myself out the door and into the sunshine, onto the cobbled streets of Berlin, and headed across the Friedrichstrasse bridge in search of a killer.