Metropolis

Part Three: Sexuality

I WAS FOND of seeing Berlin from a great height; the view from the cathedral roof is unparalleled. But the world looks different when you’re no higher than a dog’s arse and no more significant than that to the people around you. So close to the ground I felt like a small child, one of those street urchins in summer usually seen jumping naked into the river or shouting to a friend in some poor courtyard inside another courtyard, where the sun rarely if ever shone. I didn’t know if The Threepenny Opera had any klutzes in the cast, but it probably should have done; my wagon played a squeaky little tune as it bowled lamely along that put me in mind of one of the numbers from the show. Perhaps it was because I was pretending to be a cripple, but it was only now that I noticed the theater was near the Charité hospital and on the edge of the city’s medical district, where surgical bookshops and specialist clinics were in plentiful evidence, along with orthopedic stores featuring a variety of equipment, including shiny modern wheelchairs that looked far more attractive than the contraption I was in. But from the prices I saw advertised in the shop windows, anyone who could have afforded a decent wheelchair could never have passed for a beggar.

I launched myself across Schiffbauerdamm, dodging piles of horse shit—I’d forgotten how many delivery horses were still on the streets of Berlin—before being blasted by the horn of a tour company charabanc whose impatient driver leaned out his window and shouted at me:

“Watch where you’re going, you dopey klutz. You’re going the right way to lose your arms as well, do you know that?”

The travel group seated behind him stared at me and one of them even took a picture, as if I was a sight no less interesting than Old Fritz on Unter den Linden or the bronze bear in front of City Hall. I waved at them cheerily and made it onto the street corner, where I waited to cross with everyone else. I was surrounded by the shapely calves of young women who took me for a diminutive pervert spying on their stocking tops and by businessmen who assumed, not unreasonably, that I was a pickpocket and moved quickly away. They had good reason; many klutzes were thieves. No one took me for a person, least of all a person in need. But it was clear that people did take me for what I purported to be: a disabled beggar, and that was just fine. The stocking tops were fine, too. Can’t see too many of those.

Across the Spree in Reichstagufer was a row of houses next to the railway station where I was now headed and behind these, the leafy charms of Dorotheenstrasse and the church where, at the age of nine, I’d once seen the tomb of the king’s son, Count van der Mark, who’d died at the same age, something that had made an enormous impression on me because if a nine-year-old royal prince could die, then so, I reasoned, might I. It was perhaps my first intimation of mortality and I never went near that particular church again.

I crossed the bridge onto Friedrichstrasse, where a lethal sandwich-board man barged me aside. By the time I reached the station, I was feeling battered and my legs and feet were turning numb. I took up a position in an isolated pool of sunshine underneath the overhead rail track. I thought I’d chosen the spot well as none of the shoe shiners and news vendors were too near, the noise from the trains being as loud as it was—as loud as Fafnir the giant dragon breathing into an amplified microphone—and, Friedrichstrasse station being one of the busiest, the arrival of a train every five minutes made most types of commerce all but impossible. I was looking to get shot, not to make new friends.

I lit a roll-up, placed my army cap on the ground in front of me, tossed a couple of coins into it for effect, and closed my eyes for a moment. Pushing myself around was harder than I’d imagined and I was already lathered with sweat. I laid my head back against the wall and the advertising mural that was painted there: Telefunken radios: A touch of the hand and Europe plays for you. Listening to the radio seemed a safer bet than sleeping.

Pay attention, I told myself; you’ve more to live for now you’ve decided to stop drinking. I knew it wasn’t just the sight of myself in the mirror that had helped me make this decision. It was also the sight of Brigitte Mölbling. My imagination had been drinking her in for almost twenty-four hours and I was still thirsty. And could I have imagined what she’d said as I was leaving the theater? That she found me interesting? I was certainly interested in her. And what did interesting mean, anyway? Someone with whom she could discuss the ballet or what was in Harper’s Bazaar, or someone she wanted to go to bed with?

After a while one of the news vendors came my way, squatted down at my side, and dropped a small coin in the cap. He was a sturdy, chaff-haired man of about forty with a chin like a boxing glove. His sleeves were rolled up and I could see a tattoo on his forearm that looked like the name of a regiment.

“My name’s Gallwitz,” he said. “Ernst Gallwitz.”

“Helmut Zehr,” I said.

“Listen, Helmut,” he said, “it’s none of my business where you ply your trade, friend. But where you’re sitting is where another old comrade was shot just a couple of weeks ago. Fellow named Oskar Heyde. According to the newspapers it was that Dr. Gnadenschuss who did it. You know—the spinner who’s been murdering injured veterans. Shot between the eyes he was and no one noticed. Least not for a while.”

This was exactly why I’d picked the spot, of course; there seemed to be no reason Dr. Gnadenschuss wouldn’t kill underneath the Friedrichstrasse station bridge again. But I wasn’t about to tell this to the news vendor, whose concern would have touched me more if I hadn’t also realized I was going to have to find another place to beg. I cursed silently; the last thing I needed or wanted was someone looking out for me. It was the sort of thing Dr. Gnadenschuss might easily notice.

“Thanks for the warning, comrade,” I said. “I heard about that bastard. As if life wasn’t already difficult enough. But I kind of figured that lightning doesn’t strike in the same place twice. That this is as safe as anywhere else in Berlin. Perhaps safer because he’s killed here before.”

The news vendor nodded. “You may well be right about that. Anyway, I’ll keep an eye out for you.”

“Did you know him? The man who got shot?”

“Oskar? Yes, I knew him. Believe it or not, he was my lieutenant in the war.” The news vendor showed me his tattooed forearm. “That’s us. The 107th Infantry. We were part of the Fiftieth Reserve. We were at Passchendaele, Cambrai, and then the Marne.”

I wondered why I hadn’t come across this man before. I was more or less certain that there had been no witness statement from a news vendor near the scene of Oskar Heyde’s murder. And I couldn’t help noticing the other tattoo on his hand: three dots, which usually meant “death to cops.”

“What about you?” he asked. “You look like you’ve seen a bit of action yourself.”

“Eighth Grenadiers. We were on the Somme. The best half of me is still there, probably, feeding some French worms.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Cops got any clues as to who did it yet?” I asked, changing the subject.

“No. They’re scratching their arses and sucking their thumbs. Just for a change. But I don’t speak to coppers, no matter what, see?” His speaking voice, a dark, gravelly tenor, added to the impression of feral animality he conveyed. “In this town, the law doesn’t care about the workingman. They’re on the side of big government and can only see out of the eye that’s on the right, if you know what I mean.”

I sighed silently and wished I’d had a mark for every time I’d heard that horse-shit remark.

“No descriptions of what the bastard looks like?”

“I only know what’s in the paper. That’s my profession, after all. The killer waited for a train coming into the station, see? The noise covered the shot. Paper said it was a .25-caliber automatic that shot him, which doesn’t make much more of a pop than an air rifle. So I reckon that’s when you’ll have to keep your wits about you, friend. When there’s a train coming in.”

I grinned. “That’s every five minutes.”

“So you want to live forever?”

“Not like this I don’t.”

“Look after yourself, will you?” he said, and went back to his stand, whistling “Ain’t She Sweet”—which seemed to be on every damned radio—but not before giving me a copy of the early edition of the Morgenpost, now rendered superfluous by the recent arrival of the late edition.

As well as wondering why we hadn’t come across Ernst Gallwitz before, I was also wondering how he knew it was a .25-caliber automatic that Dr. Gnadenschuss had used to kill Oskar Heyde. I’d persuaded the Berliner Tageblatt to leave out that particular detail from the letter they’d printed. A lucky guess, perhaps? Or something more? Apart from the three dots tattooed on his hand he didn’t look like a murderer; then again, nobody does these days, especially not the murderers; it’s one of the things that makes the job so difficult. All the same, his remarks about the Berlin police helped me decide to put him into my suspect file. After all, there was no one else in it.

I opened the newspaper and turned the pages almost mindlessly since it was mostly filled with advertisements. A full-page ad for a clearance sale of ladies’ fur coats at Meine in East Berlin did little to persuade me I was wrong about this; buying a fur coat on one of the hottest days of the year looked every bit as crazy as staking yourself out like a goat for a man-eating tiger.

Still cursing the news vendor, I tried to figure out where I was going to move to; the next nearest station was at the Stock Exchange, which was at least half a kilometer to the east. A fifteen-minute stroll when you were on legs, but something else when you were confined to a klutz wagon. That was clearly out of the question. But perhaps I might find a spot on Georgenstrasse, close to the all-important overhead railway line, and after a while I had marked out a place in my mind’s eye that was in front of the Trianon Theater, less than two hundred meters away. I waited a while, smoked another roll-up, and then set off.

ON MY THIRD DAY outside the Trianon I caught a glimpse of Käthe Haack, the actress, stepping out of a shiny Maybach limousine and going up to the stage door. She signed a few autographs, smiled her famous ingénue smile, and went inside, but not before putting a silver fifty-pfennig piece in my hat, which was the most I’d had since I’d started to beg and for which I blessed her, several times, and resolved not to think badly of her or her terrible movies ever again. A little later, Haack’s much older husband, Heinrich Schroth, turned up—and gave me nothing except a look of withering contempt before going in through the same stage door. He was always playing Prussian aristocrats in movies and I think he almost believed he was one. He wore his broad-brimmed hat Bohemian-style and his coat hung on his shoulders like a cape; for a while I entertained myself with the idea that he might have been Winnetou because, at a stretch, he fit the description given by Fritz Pabst.

The Trianon had five entrances: the main one on Georgenstrasse, and the other four on Prinz-Louis-Ferdinand-Strasse and on Prinz-Franz-Karl-Strasse. The back of the theater was a warren of alleys and small courtyards and gave onto the headquarters of the Green police, which was what the political police were called because it was their job to cover all outdoor political demonstrations, but it certainly didn’t stop them from interfering with the normal day-to-day policing of the city that was handled by the regular cops, the Schupo. From time to time, a Greenie would harass one of the many prostitutes who, at all hours of the day, brought their clients to the back alleys of the Trianon from the various bars, theaters, casinos, and revues that were located in the famous Admiralspalast on Friedrichstrasse. But the sheer number of pricks that were sucked around the back of the Trianon was only exceeded by the number of pricks inside the theater, although Schroth was by no means the biggest of these; Mathias Wieman and Gerhard Dammann were usually in and out of the Trianon, and so was the biggest prick of them all, the stage actor Gustaf Gründgens, who couldn’t have looked more pleased with himself if he’d been the devil incarnate. He wore a supercilious smile that persisted even after he’d flicked a half-smoked cigarette at my head. I wasn’t sure if he meant to hit me or if he intended me to smoke it, but since beggars can’t be choosers—and certainly shouldn’t look as if they can be—I picked it up and saluted him as if he’d done me a favor.

“Thank you, sir. You’re very kind. Very kind, indeed.” I puffed the cigarette and found it was excellent Turkish tobacco. Nothing but the best for Gustaf Gründgens.

“What’s this? Sarcasm? From a beggar?”

“No, sir. Never. Not me. Although it seems to me that even a great actor might learn something with a beggar for a teacher.”

“True.”

Gründgens fixed a monocle to his eye and regarded me as he might a strange species of beetle.

“You know who I am then.”

“Oh yes, sir. I expect everyone knows who you are. You’re the greatest actor in Germany, sir. At least that’s what educated people say. You’re the great Emil Jannings.”

Gründgens’s smile became a rictus and without another word he went on his way. It only takes a small triumph to make your day.

Actors were not the only artistes I saw at the Trianon. On my fourth day playing the tethered goat I realized that a man was sketching me. He was about forty, tall, handsome, with a good head, a rather boyish haircut, and a thoughtful knot between his gloomy, gray eyes. He wore a lightweight brown suit with plus four trousers, a rose-colored shirt with a collar pin, and a stiff pink bow tie. He didn’t look like he wanted to shoot me, just to draw me. Irritated I turned my head away, hoping he might leave. Being closely observed was bad for my purpose; Dr. Gnadenschuss was hardly likely to strike while I was having my portrait done. My turning away prompted the artist to come over, first to apologize and then to offer me fifty pfennigs to resume my previous pose. He also told me his name was Otto.

“All right,” I said without much grace.

“Where were you wounded?”

“In the legs,” I said bitterly.

“No, I meant— Well, I was wounded myself, as a matter of fact. In the neck. Although not as you’d notice. August 1918. Actually the wound in my neck—it saved my neck. They sent me on a flying course after that and by the time I’d completed it, the war was over.”

I grunted. “What’s the idea, anyway?” I asked, playing the surly bastard, and playing it well, too. Brigitte would have been proud. “Drawing someone like me. It doesn’t make any sense. After all, I’m no oil painting.”

“I disagree. There’s a certain beauty in the way you are. And I can assure you, you’re not the first injured war veteran I’ve sketched in this city.”

“You want to go around the back of the theater. You’ll see many more interesting subjects than a klutz on a cart.”

“Oh, you mean the whores.”

“I do mean the whores. And their clients.”

“No, I see enough of that when I go to a whorehouse. As a matter of fact, you and other unfortunate men like you are one of my favorite subjects. It’s more or less unique to Berlin.”

“Are you taking the piss?”

“No. Not at all. Look, everyone thinks they know what art should be—”

“A nice picture. Of something nice. That’s what art should be. Something you can hang on your wall that doesn’t make you feel like throwing up. That’s what art should be. Everyone knows that.”

“You might think so. But very few people have the wherewithal to experience painting as the sense of sight, to see colors and form as living reality.”

I shrugged. “I’ll tell you about living reality. You’re looking at it. And it’s shit. There’s not a day that passes that I don’t wish I was dead.”

“That’s exactly what I’m driving at. Germans are already beginning to forget what horrible suffering the war brought. I want to remind them of that. Drawing you, it’s an expression of what’s in my soul, that’s all. Sketching you is just drawing my own most innermost thoughts.”

I laughed. “Well, then, go ahead. But don’t expect to sell any pictures. People don’t want to be reminded of how crappy life is. They want to forget it. And there’s nobody who wants to remember how terrible the war was. Me least of all.”

He stopped spouting claptrap and went back to sketching me, which suited us both. After another half hour, he thanked me and then left on a bicycle, heading toward the university. I closed my eyes and told myself that if all artists were like Otto, if drawing a cripple on a klutz wagon really was what was in his soul, then Germany was in a lot more trouble than I could ever have imagined. And noting that an obsession with art depicting injured war veterans begging on the streets of Berlin was remarkable to say the least—almost as remarkable as George Grosz, who liked to draw the corpses of women—I mentally added him to the thin suspect file.

“YOU’RE ALIVE,” she said. “Thank God. I was thinking of sending out a search party.”

“I’m beginning to think this is all a waste of time.”

“What? And miss my professional care and attention?”

“Coming here to see you has been the only real compensation. My last thought as Dr. Gnadenschuss presses a pistol to my forehead will be: ‘I wonder if Brigitte can cover up this bullet hole and make me look like I’m still alive.’ For the sake of my loved ones, of course.”

“That’s a cheerful thought.”

“Oh, I’ve got others. But here’s something that will make you laugh. Someone drew my portrait today. A man wearing plus fours and a pink bow tie. The poor misguided fool mistook me for a work of art.”

“Since I dressed and painted you myself I should be flattered.”

“I never thought of it that way. But yes, maybe you’re right. Like a student copying a picture in an art gallery.”

“Not just any picture. Something by Velázquez, probably. A painting of one of those fashionable court dwarves owned by the King of Spain.”

“Now, that’s the kind of fashion you’d think a German must have invented.”

Brigitte Mölbling helped me climb out of the klutz wagon and then knelt down and began rubbing my legs vigorously to get some feeling back into them while I washed my hands in the sink. She was wearing a very thin, clingy gray muslin dress with a matching scarf and a collection of South American silver jewelry that looked as if it was the understudy of the gold collection I’d met before. The dress was like a map since it showed every place I now wanted to explore.

“How does that feel?” she said.

“Beats my mother’s coffee, I’ll tell you that much.”

“You look as though you need something a little stronger,” she said, taking off my army trousers. “Shall I fix you a drink?”

“No, thanks. I’m leaving the hard stuff alone for a while.”

“That sounds as if it’s a new thing.”

“As a matter of fact it is. I want to be sure I can take it without being unable to leave it, if you know what I mean. Frankly, I was in danger of not liking the stuff anymore; it was beginning to taste a lot like medicine. The next time I have a drink I want it to taste like it’s something I’m doing only for pleasure.”

“It sounds to me like you’ve had too much whiskey or too much sun.”

“In Berlin? That seems hardly possible.”

Brigitte slipped off my army tunic, and then steered me to the chair, where she began the business of removing my makeup. I was silent for a while, enjoying her breath and her scent and the brush of her breast against my shoulder and imagining the impression all of those might have on my pillow back home.

“I was thinking,” I told her. “I still don’t know much about you.”

“I was born in Berlin. I’ve worked here for six months and I have an apartment on Luther Strasse, not so very far from you. I’m convent educated. Studied art history and theater in Paris. I was married for a while to a very minor Prussian aristocrat, but it didn’t stick. One day I came home and found him wearing my clothes, including the underwear. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like anyone wearing my clothes except me. Least of all my husband. He’s happier now. Lives with a very poor boy in Hamburg and writes queer poetry that no one wants to read. Frankly he isn’t much of a man. And I can’t remember why I married him. Probably to please my father. It was all my fault, of course. My psychoanalyst says my problem is I like real men and, certainly since the war, they’re in very short supply. That’s probably the reason I like you. I get the feeling you’ve never worn a dress in your life.”

“Only because I can never find one that fits. And then?”

“I told you. I used to work at UFA.”

“That’s it?”

“It is in Berlin. UFA opens all kinds of locked doors. I worked on Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Which almost broke the studio. That’s why I’m working in the theater now. UFA couldn’t afford to keep me.”

“Then you must know Thea von Harbou.”

“Sure. You know Thea?”

“I helped her out with a story she’s writing for the cinema.”

“It figures. She and Lang—they’re a strange couple. In many ways they’re not a couple at all. They have what you might call a free relationship and neither seems to mind what the other gets up to. She has an Indian lover who’s not much more than a boy. And by the way, she’s a Nazi, just in case you thought you liked her. As for him, he sees a lot of girls, mostly professionals, and not always with happy outcomes. I certainly wouldn’t put anything past Fritz. Including murder, by the way. His first wife is supposed to have killed herself but like a lot of other people, I’m not so sure it was suicide. Thea and Fritz are fascinated with violent crime. The library in their house looks like it was assembled by Jack the Ripper, who’s something of an obsession for them both. They even have objects related to the Ripper murders. They’re just strange. Kurt—that’s Kurt Weill, the composer of our little show—he hates Fritz. Don’t ask me why, but pretty much everyone in theater and cinema hates Fritz Lang.”

“What about Daisy Torrens? Do you know her?”

“You certainly know some very peculiar people, Gunther. Yes, I know Daisy. Good-time girl. Yank. Plenty of money. Lives with the present minister for the interior. Albert Grzesinski. Even though he’s married. Still, he’s an improvement on her last boyfriend. Rudi. Rudi Geise. He was a swine.”

I’d heard this name before, but I couldn’t remember where.

“Tell me about Rudi.”

“He works for Reinhold Schünzel Films. Daisy said he was an assistant producer but the only thing I ever saw him produce was a knife. And a couple of grams of snow. Not sure why they were ever an item because Rudi hates women. Come to think of it, Rudi hates everyone. Something happened to him during the war. His boyfriend got killed, I think. Anyway, he told me that he got his revenge on the Tommies who killed him by mutilating their corpses whenever he got the chance. Cutting an ear off, he said. Slitting noses in half. I mean, he’d be a really horrible person even if none of that was true.” She straightened up and looked at me critically. “There. I’ve finished. You look more or less normal. Or at least as normal as you’re ever going to look for now.”

After what Brigitte had said I could see no good reason not to add the names of Fritz Lang and Rudi Geise to my suspect file and, as soon as I was done playing the tethered goat, assuming I was still alive and hadn’t caught Dr. Gnadenschuss, I resolved to go and interview both men. Especially Rudi. It was only a short step from slicing off ears to cutting off scalps. But right now I was more interested in Brigitte.

“I was thinking. The next time you’re making me up, you should paint my toenails.”

“Any particular color?”

“The same as yours. Whatever that is.”

“Generally speaking, a woman chooses the same shade for fingers and toes.” She kicked off one of her shoes and showed me her foot. There were five toes on the end of it and the nails were all painted lilac.

“Satisfied?”

“Not by a long way. It’s a lovely foot. I like it a lot. I imagine you’ve another just like it. But please don’t stop now you’ve started.”

“You want to see the other one, too. Is that it?”

“Just to check that the colors match.”

From the sound of things, rehearsals were going well; by now I knew the names of all the principal characters in the show and Polly and Macheath were presently singing a crappy love song. Maybe that’s what started all the sexuality between Brigitte and me. Sexuality: I don’t know what else to call this activity when it seems natural but also excessive. But it’s amazing how sexy a woman’s bare foot can look when the nails are painted lilac and there’s toe cleavage and you’ve been sitting in the sun all day and she’s locked the door, kicked off the second shoe, and is slowly gathering the gray dress at the hem and pulling it carefully over her head, and then draping it across the back of the chair I was still sitting on.

“I suppose you want me to take off my underwear.”

“Generally that’s recommended in these situations.”

“Is that what you’d call this? A situation?”

“Of course.”

“So what kind of a situation would you say this was?”

“An interesting one.”

“Is that all?”

“Complicated, too.”

She took off the underwear and tossed it silently onto the table, where it occupied not much more space than a handful of rose petals.

“One that I don’t want to get out of in a hurry.”

“Well, that’s why I locked the door, Herr Commissioner. To keep you here for my selfish pleasure.”

“That’s just the way I was going to handle it. Your pleasure, I mean. Only, right now I’m a little distracted. It’s not every day I get to look at the treasures of the world.”

She came and sat on my lap and stroked my head and for some reason I couldn’t put into words, I didn’t throw her onto the floor; it wasn’t that I couldn’t think of any words, at least the ones with more than one syllable, just that my mouth was busy kissing her.

“So what happens now?”

“I should have thought it was fairly straightforward.”

“You might think that. But then you’re a man. Which means you really haven’t thought this out at all. I’m happy to sit on your lap without my clothes on. As a matter of fact I’m rather enjoying the situation. If that’s what this is. But for the next stage I want a large bed with nice sheets. Which means going to my place. I’ve never yet met a man whose bed linen was up to my standard. Just so you know, the way to my heart is through one-hundred-percent Egyptian cotton. Good bed linen is nonnegotiable as far as I’m concerned. And then maybe we’ll have some dinner. Horcher’s, I think. And before you say policeman’s salary, I’m paying. Just because I’m working here doesn’t mean I need the money. My dad is Curt Mölbling.”

“The industrialist?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll check my diary. When were you thinking of?”

“Tonight. Now, if you can. Any sooner than that would be better.”

AT AROUND ELEVEN O’CLOCK the next morning, after having my makeup applied and in the hope of seeing something useful on the street, I sat outside Friedrichstrasse station under the bridge. If anything, the sun was even stronger than the day before and, always quick to complain, many Berliners were now grumbling about the heat and wishing for a rain shower. There was no sign of Ernst Gallwitz, the news vendor, and the shoe shiners had already packed up and gone home; they did a good trade first thing in the morning but not when it was getting near to lunch. I guess nobody wants a shoeshine in the middle of the day.

I’d been sitting listening to the monotonously atonal symphony of overhead trains for almost an hour when a yellow BMW Dixi pulled up at the edge of the sidewalk and, with the engine still running, the driver sat there looking to all the world as if he was waiting for someone to emerge from the station. But after a while he seemed to be eyeing me with real malice, so much so that I memorized his number, convinced I was looking at Dr. Gnadenschuss.

I put my hand inside my army tunic and took hold of the handle of my gun. In retrospect, I think he was probably trying to work out if the dark glasses meant I was also blind as well as crippled; but it was several minutes before I realized that he and his malice aforethought were waiting for someone else.

A Fritz came out of Aschinger, an old wheat-beer tavern with plain wooden tables and pictures of the Kaiser, and when he crossed Friedrichstrasse heading toward the station, the man in the car wound down the Dixi’s window and shot him thirty-two times with a Bergmann submachine gun—the same kind of gun that an assassin had planned to use on Bernhard Weiss at the circus. I knew it was thirty-two times because that’s how many the magazine on a Bergmann holds and the man in the car emptied the whole drum before throwing the gun onto the passenger seat and driving off.

Most people stayed back for fear of more shots being fired—a not-unreasonable precaution under the circumstances; this smelled like a ring killing, and it was safe to assume that there would be some kind of retaliation. Meanwhile, I wheeled myself onto the road to survey the bullet-ridden corpse at closer quarters; I didn’t recognize the dead man but I’d certainly recognized the man in the car who’d shot him: it was the same thug who’d been sitting next to me at the Sing Sing Club. There was nothing about that evening I was ever likely to forget. The killer’s name had been Hugo and his helpful girlfriend had been called Helga. Even as I recalled this detail, Helga herself came out of Aschinger, screaming like a prehistoric bird and in that same moment the true nature of the catastrophe was explained. It wasn’t a ring killing at all, but a simple case of sexual jealousy. Hugo must have suspected Helga was seeing someone else and had resolved to eliminate his rival. And there could be no doubt he’d done that: I’d rarely seen a victim so comprehensively shot and killed as the torn and bloodied man lying on the street.

Helga ran toward her dead lover, dropped to her knees, and, still keening, cradled his leaky head on her lap, hardly caring about the blood spilling onto her blouse, at which point a piece of his skull detached itself in her hands and her screams grew even louder. I didn’t say anything and having got halfway across Friedrichstrasse to check the man was dead, I didn’t stop, or look back. I kept on going. The last thing I needed was to blow my cover by helping the local law. There would be plenty of time and opportunity to telephone the Alex later on, when I was Bernie Gunther again. Besides, there was no way that Dr. Gnadenschuss was going to show up now when the whole street was about to swarm with cops. I needed to be somewhere else, and quickly.

I wheeled myself east, thinking a cold wheat beer was just the thing on a hot day. My path took me past a shop selling foreign stamps and Diana air rifles and the local canine clinic, which was offering docking, castrating, and painless destroying. From the state of his corpse, I guessed that all three of those services must already have been provided for Hugo’s unfortunate victim—except perhaps the painless part: being pumped full of bullets hurts.

OUTSIDE THE THEATER I resumed my position in front of the Trianon’s poster. Recently transferred from the smaller Rose Theater, The Spendthrift, a play by Ferdinand Raimund, was now booking. Someone with a sense of humor had crossed out Raimund’s name and substituted the name of Heinrich Köhler, the present finance minister. I could already hear the sound of police and ambulance sirens to the west. And so could the local control girls. One in particular was staring nervously into the distance, wondering if she dared risk taking her even more nervous-looking client around the back of the theater to conduct their business. She was wearing a pink cloche hat and a low-cut, thin pink dress that afforded me a fine view of her large unsupported pink breasts; evidently she’d been sunbathing. Then she saw me.

“Hey,” she said. “Hindenburg. Can you see?”

“Yes.”

“Then why the glasses?”

“It’s sunny.”

She shrugged. “Fair enough. Well, now you’ve had your free look at today’s special, do you want to make yourself some money?”

“Sure. Why not? How, and how much?”

She tossed a coin into my cap and then handed me a police whistle. “That was twenty-five pfennigs. There’s another twenty-five if you keep a lookout while I take care of this Fridolin’s signal box. If a bull shows up before I come back, just give a toot on that whistle, right?”

“I wouldn’t worry about it, love,” I said, keen to avoid any kind of role in their transaction. “There’s been a shooting outside the station on Friedrichstrasse that should keep the bastards busy for hours. That’s what all the commotion is about.”

“I’m not worried. It’s my friend here who’s worried. Just blow that whistle if a bull turns up, right? One blast, that’s all. Got that?”

“How long will you be?”

The whore looked at her client, whose blushing face told us both he was young and inexperienced, and grinned.

“We’d better ask him, hadn’t we?” She looked at the boy and smiled. “How about it, Fritz. How long will it take to get you off?”

The boy blushed a deeper shade of red, at which point the whore looked at me and said: “Ten minutes, tops.”

But as things turned out they were gone for a lot less than ten minutes. I didn’t see where the two Greenies came from who arrested them, but as they marched the pair out from behind the theater and around the corner to the police station, the whore shot me a look every bit as homicidal as the one I’d seen on the face of the man in the yellow Dixi.

“What, are you blind as well as stupid, you legless prick?” she yelled. “Christ, I hope you’re a better beggar than you’re a lookout. Did you actually lose those legs, or just forget where you left them?”

“Sorry.” I shrugged an apology but thought no more about it until half an hour later, when I was awoken from a light sleep and a dream of summer rain by something wet and the sound of a woman’s laughter. I opened my eyes and the first thing I saw was a woman’s genitals close to my face; it was another few seconds before I realized that the whore who’d been arrested by the Greenies had come back to the Trianon to hoist her dress up, plant one foot on the wall above my head, and then piss on me like a dog. By the time I realized what she’d done, she’d dropped her skirt and run off, shrieking with laughter, leaving me soaked in her stinking urine.

“That’ll teach you, dumbhead,” she yelled back at me. “Next time someone asks you to keep a lookout, try opening your fucking eyes.”

IT’S HARD TO DESCRIBE the shame I felt at this latest turn of events. I told myself it was no less than what Anita Berber used to do at the White Mouse on Jägerstrasse, until the place had closed. But the fact was, I felt curiously emasculated by what had happened. So much so that when I returned to the Schiffbauerdamm Theater and saw Brigitte again, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her exactly what had happened and instead chose to make a joke out of it; at least, that’s how I explained it to myself.

“A dog pissed on me,” I said, removing my reeking army tunic. “I must have dozed off in the sunshine and when I woke up a damn dog was pissing on me. I guess it mistook my field-gray uniform for a street corner. If I wasn’t so disgusted with myself I’d be laughing, so go right ahead, be my guest. Because it is kind of funny. Some detective, huh? If the boys at the Alex find out about this I’ll never hear the end of it.”

“You worry about me. Not them. My sense of humor is every bit as cruel as any man I ever met.”

“I can believe that.”

“What kind of a dog was it, anyway?” she asked, restraining a smile.

“A big one. With lots of teeth.”

“That’s not much of a description.”

“I don’t know about breeds. Next time I’ll pat it on the head, ask if it has a name, and get it to go and fetch me a stick to beat it with.”

“The poor thing was just marking out its territory.” Brigitte fetched a bottle of cologne from her bag and sprayed the air with it. “Really, you should feel flattered.”

“That’s just what I’ve been telling myself on the way back here. But that’s a little hard; now that the sun’s dried it off and I smell you, I realize I stink like a schnapper.”

I draped the tunic on a hanger, hung it out the window, slipped off the army pants, and washed my hands and face. Brigitte lit a black cigarette, which helped with the smell, and then threaded it in my mouth. I sucked the smoke down like it had come from an altar boy’s thurible.

“I can get that uniform cleaned if you like. Overnight. The cleaners we use here are very reliable.”

“If they’re anything like the overnight service I got from you then they must be the best in Berlin.”

Brigitte smiled. “I’m very glad to hear it. But that wasn’t a service. That was an errand of mercy.”

“So you’re an angel as well.”

“There are a lot of angels in the theater. Someone has to pay for these shows. My dad, mostly.” She shook her head. “You know, talking of angels, I thought of you today. As a matter of fact, for a while back there I got quite worried. There was a murder on Friedrichstrasse and I thought it might be you who was playing a harp.”

“What persuaded you it wasn’t, angel?”

“As soon as I heard about it I walked down to Friedrichstrasse and asked a cop.”

“What did he say?”

“Said it was a gang thing. But by then I knew it wasn’t you. The dead guy’s hand was sticking out from under the sheet. You didn’t have a girl’s name tattooed on the base of your thumb when you left here. Or pants with a cuff. And I wasn’t sure you had that amount of blood in you. No one does.”

“You were worried about me? I’m touched.”

“Don’t make a big thing about it. Besides, I needed the exercise and the fresh air.”

“And when you knew it wasn’t me who was dead?”

“I came back here.”

“Is that all?”

“No, I lit a candle in St. John’s, went down on my knees, and gave thanks to the Almighty.”

“You on your knees. I’d like to see that.”

“Your memory stinks worse than your army uniform, copper.”

“As a matter of fact, I was a witness to that murder. I saw the whole thing. I even recognized the killer.”

“What does that make you? An innocent bystander?”

“Kind of. Except that I wasn’t standing. And unless it’s a blue moon or a Sunday, I’m not so innocent.”

“After last night’s errand of mercy I can testify to that. But it is handy that it should be you who happened to see the whole thing. You being a cop ’n’ all. You think the defense lawyers will believe you? When it goes to court? I just happened to be sitting in a klutz wagon on another case when your client shot the dead man. Meanwhile, maybe the police commissioner will give you a promotion. Or a medal. Or a new magnifying glass. Whatever he does when you hand him the murderer’s head on a plate.”

“As soon as I get my own clothes on I’m going to telephone the Alex to make a report.”

“What’s your hurry? I like you just fine with your pants off.” She kicked off her shoes and showed me her toes. “Besides, the victim looked as though he would keep for a while.”

“You’re forgetting the killer. He might get away.”

“I very much doubt that. You look like the kind of cop who always gets his man. Not to mention his woman. And if not his woman then someone else’s. Maybe anyone else’s.”

“Now, what makes you say a thing like that?”

“You’ve got a way with women, Gunther. A nice way, but a way nonetheless. The same way a professional gambler knows the way to count cards. Or a good jockey knows how to handle racehorses.”

“You make me sound very cynical.”

“No. That’s not it. I’ll work out a name for it the next time I have a thesaurus in front of me. Anyway, now that I know you’re all right I was thinking of celebrating by locking the door again.”

“Just as long as I’m on the inside.”

“I can’t think of a better place for you to be.”

THE NEXT DAY, after my army uniform had been cleaned and Brigitte had swept the floor with it for good effect, I decided to cut my losses at Trianon and beg somewhere else: I chose Lehrter Bahnhof, which was west of the theater. It was a little farther away, but I was gaining confidence on the klutz wagon. I could go faster now. My arms and shoulders were stronger and I could bowl along without raising a sweat. On the journey down Friedrich-Krause-Ufer, I’d gone so fast I’d dropped my cigarette case and had to stop to look for it. The station was right at the junction of the canal and the river and, with its central nave and aisles, resembled the basilica of a site of modern pilgrimage, receiving millions of visitors per year, which wasn’t so far from the truth. There’s nothing Germans worship more than getting to work on time.

It was only when I got there and saw the newsstands that I found out a fifth disabled veteran had been murdered. I bought the lunchtime edition of an evening newspaper and discovered that Dr. Gnadenschuss had struck again, only this time he’d killed someone I’d actually met: Johann Tetzel, the one-legged sergeant with the bushy white mustache. I’d talked to him in front of the Berlin Zoo aquarium, and that’s where he was killed. It had been Tetzel who’d given me the tip about looking for Prussian Emil at the Sing Sing. Like the others, he’d been shot through the forehead at point-blank range by a small-caliber pistol.

My first thought was that Tetzel was the only one-legged man that Dr. Gnadenschuss had shot; and this only seemed remarkable when I remembered that Tetzel had partnered with another veteran, a man called Joachim who, like all the previous victims, was a double amputee. Why had Dr. Gnadenschuss killed the one-legged man and not the other? Unless Joachim had moved his pitch. My second thought was that I was probably wasting my time; it seemed highly unlikely that Dr. Gnadenschuss would kill again so soon. He was probably already composing another boasting letter for the newspapers alleging police incompetence. Possibly he was right about that. We seemed to be no nearer to catching him.

In my mind’s eye I pictured Weiss and Gennat in front of the Berlin Zoo aquarium with the murder wagon and I could already hear Gennat grumbling about my not being there. He had a point, too; and for a while I considered abandoning my disguise and reporting back to the Alex, sober and ready to do my proper job. Try as I might I couldn’t help but think there was something demeaning about what I was doing, especially after the events of the previous day. And I still had to make my report about the shooting in Friedrichstrasse. I’d already telephoned Bernhard Weiss a couple of times but, on both occasions, he’d been with Grzesinski at the Ministry of the Interior. Given that only he knew I was working undercover I had been reluctant to speak to anyone else for fear that I’d have to explain how it was that I’d come to be on Friedrichstrasse in the first place.

I was still processing this new information when I saw a gang of wild boys swaggering down Wilhelm-Ufer. In their distinctive attire—leather shorts, top or bowler hats, striped vests, and large pirate earrings—they were easy to spot. Unfortunately they had also spotted me and I found myself quickly surrounded.

“Well, well, well,” said the leader, a tall, muscular youth of about seventeen, with a cowboy-style bandanna around his neck. He carried a heavy blackthorn walking stick and was covered with tattoos proclaiming his allegiance to the “Forest Pirates”—which meant nothing to me. “And what do we have here? The legless wonder, is it? The human centipede, perhaps? The Red Baron? Half man, half shopping cart.”

His four delinquent friends thought all this was very funny. But the leader hadn’t finished with me; indeed, it seemed he’d hardly started.

“That’s a nice medal you’re wearing,” he said. “The Iron Cross. First class. Did they give you that for courage? For raping Belgian women? Nice work if you can get it. Or just for killing Franzis? You know, you should paint your cripple-cart red, like Manfred von Richthofen. And you could fly around Berlin as the red klutz. Then you really would look like that medal was deserved. I think I’d like a medal like that. In fact I think I’d like your medal. It will match my vest. What do you say, boys? Don’t you think a nice medal would suit me?”

More laughter from the pack of hungry young wolves. Other Berliners coming out of the station were wisely giving them a wide berth and I could see no one was going to come to my aid. I was in trouble and was already reaching inside my tunic for the automatic.

Except that it wasn’t there. And realizing it must have fallen out of my tunic when I’d dropped my cigarette case on Friedrich-Krause-Ufer, I felt a look of alarm on my face which, to my interrogator’s hard blue eyes, must have looked very like fear.

“Don’t worry, Baron. We won’t hurt you, not unless we have to. Just hand the medal over and we’ll leave you alone.”

He patted the thick handle of the blackthorn walking stick meaningfully. I didn’t doubt that if he hit me with it, I’d be in serious trouble. Already I was flexing the muscles in my hidden legs in the expectation that I was going to have to stand up and defend myself. Which, of course, was misinterpreted as another sign of fear on my part.

“Look, Erich.” One of the bull’s acolytes laughed. “The bastard’s shitting himself.”

“Is that right, Manfred? Are you shitting yourself?”

I was beginning to think that perhaps Gennat had been right about the Gnadenschuss killings—that it was vicious kids who were responsible after all.

“You’re not getting this medal, sonny,” I said. “Since I was almost killed winning it, I’m not about to hand it over because I’m scared of getting killed again, least of all by a nasty little queer like you. If you want a medal, why don’t you go and buy one from a joke shop? Better still, why don’t you join the army yourself and then win one? Posthumously. Yes, that might be best, I think. Best for you and best for society in general. Because what the country certainly doesn’t need are cowardly pipsqueaks in greasy shorts whose idea of courage is to try and rob a man with no legs.”

The rest of the wild-boy gang uttered a long and girlish groan of camp horror and one of them whistled as if this insult from me would have to be answered. The bull of the gang was going to do something now, I could see that.

“I’m sorry. What was that you said, Manfred?”

“I think you heard him clearly enough,” said someone out of my sight line. “But in case you’re deaf as well as stupid, the man said that if you want a medal of your own you should join the army and win one, posthumously. And I must say I agree with every word.”

The gang leader turned around and was immediately felled by a big-fisted right hook, which looked to have broken his nose. One of the others took a savage blow on the shoulder from a thick rattan cane. And then the rest ran off. All of which left me looking up at my impeccably dressed rescuer. And moreover at a rescuer I recognized.

It was Police Inspector Kurt Reichenbach.

I TOOK OFF my sunglasses to make sure it was him, at which point he frowned and then looked down at me, rubbing his eyes incredulously. When he stood immediately in front of the sun it was like he was a black hole in space. Someone who wasn’t there at all, but it was my good fortune that he was.

“Jesus Christ. Gunther? Bernhard Gunther? Is that you down there?”

My disguise was good, but it wasn’t so good it could deceive a man I’d known for several years, moreover one who was a good detective. But as usual Kurt Reichenbach was more flaneur than cop. He was wearing a smart lightweight beige suit with a blue-and-white-striped shirt, a white waistcoat and a white tie, a blue silk handkerchief in his top pocket and a carnation in his buttonhole; a light brown bowler worn at a jaunty angle topped off the whole ensemble. He might have been off to the racecourse in Grünewald, or to a nice lunch in Wannsee. His gray beard was longer and more luxuriant than usual and there was a ruby twinkle in his eye; he almost made being a cop look like it might be fun.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing? I could—you could have been killed. Those young bastards—I mean, they’re vicious. Heartless.” He kicked one of the wild boys still lying on the sidewalk, which stirred the youth enough to drag himself away. “I was at the local apothecary getting some drops for my eyes. It’s just as well I hadn’t yet used them, otherwise I might not have seen you at all and you’d be on your way to the Charité. One more bleeding body for my poor wife to patch up. You know she’s a nurse, right? Why, just the other night she had to fix up a hotel doorman who got himself beat up by some of these feral queers because they wanted to steal his top hat. Maybe these were the very ones who did it. But I still don’t understand—why the hell are you sitting here dressed up like a half-eaten war bagel?”

I waited until the remaining wild boy had run off before answering.

“Working undercover,” I said. “You might say I’m a tethered goat playing the klutz in the hope of ambushing Dr. Gnadenschuss.”

“Ambush, how? By rolling your wagon wheels over his toes before he can shoot you?”

“No, I’ve got a gun. At least I had one until this morning. I must have lost it when I was rolling myself over the bridge. I was looking for it when you showed up and saved my hide. Thanks, by the way. You were just in time to save me a beating. Or worse.”

“Who thought up this crazy scheme? No, don’t tell me. It was that idiot Bernhard Weiss, wasn’t it? Gennat would never have gone along with something as dumb as this. The Big Buddha’s got common sense. But Weiss—like any ex-lawyer, he reads far too many books. Typical Jew, of course. Always got his nose in a book. He should have been a rabbi, not a cop.”

“You’re a Jew yourself, Kurt.”

“Yes, but he’s a clever Jew and people don’t like that. I’m not a clever Jew like him. Weiss is the kind of Jew who has a surfeit of new ideas. People don’t like new ideas. Especially in Germany. They like the old ones. The old lies best of all. That’s what Hitler is all about. Says he’s got new ideas but they’re just the old ideas, reheated, like yesterday’s dinner. New ideas, nobody likes that. People are afraid of the new. Look here, we work for the Berlin police force, not a laboratory of human behavior. Jesus, you should never have been asked to do this without some backup. Some other cops to watch over you. One at the very least.”

“I think we both thought that Dr. Gnadenschuss is too smart not to spot something like that.”

“I don’t think he’s smart. I think he’s been lucky, that’s all. Probably because there are some people who just don’t want this monster to be caught. Who think he’s doing God’s good work. Cleaning up the streets. You know, respectable window-box folk who like things neat and tidy. And there’s nothing tidy about the way you look and what you’re doing. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about. I know this city like I know my own prick. Do you ever ask yourself why I’m on the street so much instead of being in the office, Bernie? Walking around like I’m just a citizen? I talk to the meat, that’s why. I’m a social animal. I like to talk. I chat to whores, pimps, thieves, and rapists. Shit, I’ll even speak to cops in uniform. I collect their stories like I’m a writer and, sometimes, I even see a connection. Hell, that’s true detection. When you talk to the meat on the street you hear things. And we both know that there are ways of keeping a man under surveillance without drawing attention to yourself. I wish you’d asked me. I could have helped.”

“In that outfit?”

“Listen to Lon Chaney.”

“Look, we thought we had to do something. Especially with those letters he keeps writing to the damn newspapers. They’re beginning to hit home. We’re no nearer to catching him now after five victims than we were before he killed anyone.”

“Sure, sure. But still, it’s a risk you’re running here, Bernie. When you play in the street, you risk getting yourself run over. It’s not just klutzes and whores who get killed in this city. It’s cops, too. Maybe you’ve forgotten Johannes Buchholz.”

“That was other cops who shot him.”

“If you say so. But those two cops they booked for it were acquitted. All I’m saying is that you need to be more careful. The first law of police work in Berlin is to go home at night without a new hole in your head; everything else is of secondary importance, my friend. So what are you going to do now?”

“Stick it out here for a while. See if I get a bite.”

“Really? Surely you’ve scared the fish away with all this commotion. You won’t get a bite now. I can guarantee it.”

“It’s not even lunchtime. Besides, if you knew how long it takes me to get this makeup on—I have to make that seem like it was worthwhile.”

“Yes, I can see you put a lot of energy into that disguise. It’s a good look for you. I suppose your legs are folded away inside your cripple-cart. Ingenious. Never seen that before.”

“I found it abandoned at the site of Eva Angerstein’s murder.”

“You did?”

“A yokel catcher had been using it. A burglar’s achtung. That’s what helped to give Weiss the idea.”

“I see. You know, it strikes me that Weiss looks more like a genuine klutz than you do. He’s small enough. Makes me wonder why he didn’t take on the role himself. But suppose he does turn up—Dr. Gnadenschuss. Without a gun, what can you do? Talk him into surrendering?”

“I’ll think of something.”

“And while you’re thinking he’ll blow your brains out. No, I don’t think that will work.” Reichenbach smiled and put his hand in his side pocket and produced a little pistol, which he handed to me. “Here. Take this. Just in case. Let me have it back when you’re through with this foolishness. Don’t worry. I’ve got another.” He unbuttoned the top button of his jacket to reveal a Walther in a shoulder holster. “Catch me, a Jew, walking around this town without a Bismarck. I should say not. I’ve got a lot of enemies. And not all of them work at the Alex. By the way, have you noticed the number of Nazis there are around the Praesidium these days? There’s something about the warmer weather that brings them out of their holes, like cockroaches. That bastard Arthur Nebe, for one. Not to mention that bastard who took a swing at you on the stairs at the Alex; Gottfried Nass, wasn’t it? Yes, Nass is another cop I’d like to shoot.” He nodded firmly. “Let me know if you need my help. Anytime.”

“Thanks, Kurt. Listen, one good turn deserves another. The fellow who got himself shot on Friedrichstrasse yesterday.”

“Pimp called Willi Beckmann. What about him?”

“I know the name of the Fritz who did it. At least, half his name. Hugo something. Hangs around the Sing Sing Club. Built like a wrestler. The girl who was weeping and wailing over Willi’s body was Hugo’s girlfriend, Helga. At least that’s what he thought. Which is why Hugo put all those coins in Willi’s slot. So it wasn’t ring related. It was a love triangle. You can have the collar. Like I say, one good turn.”

“Thanks. But how do you know all this?”

“Long story. But I was there when it happened. Playing klutz. And I saw the whole thing, from the quiet prologue to the fiery finale. Unlike the girl. Whatever she says now, she saw nothing except Willi’s dead body.”

“And you don’t want the credit, because?”

“Because I’m the witness. And because I don’t want to come into the Alex and do the paperwork. Not yet. And not dressed like this. I figured that maybe you could pick him up and see if he still has the Bergmann MP-18 that he used to kill Willi. And the car he was driving when he did it. A yellow BMW Dixi, registration IA 17938. If he does, you may not need a witness at all.”

“You’re wasted as a cop, you know.”

“How’s that?”

Reichenbach tossed a coin into my hat. “All that detail? You should have been a scientist. Or a philosopher.” Grinning broadly, he lit two cigarettes and put one in my mouth. “That’s made my day, Bernie. There’s nothing like arresting someone who’s guilty as sin itself to put you in a good mood, is there?”

“It certainly beats arresting someone who’s innocent.”

I WATCHED KURT REICHENBACH as he walked away, whistling and twirling his cane like Richard Tauber as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He was wearing spats, which I hadn’t noticed before. A cop wearing spats. I almost laughed; I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if he’d started to sing and dance. On the other side of Wilhelm-Ufer, he paused by a new open-top Brennabor—the car with the outside trunk and the tool kit on the running board—and opened the gray door. Before he climbed into the front seat, he turned and waved back at me, which did little for my cover, but made me grateful that Reichenbach was a friend. And he’d been right, of course. I should have had some backup. In too many ways I hadn’t thought through what I was doing at all. And I resolved to call Bernhard Weiss and discuss my undercover adventure with him as soon as I was home again.

But on my way back to the theater and Brigitte, my mission seemed to end when one of the axles on the klutz wagon snapped. For a moment I just sat there; then a taxi driver asked me if I needed some assistance and I was obliged to tell him against all evidence to the contrary that I could manage perfectly well, which left the poor fellow looking both puzzled and irritated.

It was already clear to me that Prussian Emil hadn’t been using the contraption to get around the cobbled streets of the city but just to sit in, for the sake of appearances. It wasn’t nearly as sturdy as it needed to be and I imagined the burglar he worked with must have transported him to the scene of a crime in a nice comfortable car. For a second I debated taking the klutz wagon to a bicycle shop for repair, but that would have meant carrying it through the streets and risking the contempt and wrath of my fellow Berliners, who would very reasonably have concluded that I was a yokel catcher just like Prussian Emil. The possibility that they might assume the worst about all veteran beggars—even the genuine ones—and stop giving them money was enough to make me throw the thing into the canal, which I did when I was sure no one was looking.

I took off my army tunic and cap and dark glasses and walked back to the theater on Schiffbauerdamm, relieved that the whole masquerade was very likely over. Rehearsals were finished for the day; the orchestra was already heading out the front door to the beer hall across the road. I went up to Brigitte’s room, and she removed my makeup. She didn’t say much because we had company: one of the stars of the show, the redheaded Lotte Lenya. She was smoking a cigarette, drinking whiskey, humming, and reading a copy of The Red Flag. I didn’t mind that she might have been a communist as much as that she seemed to mind me. It wasn’t that I was a cop: I’m sure Brigitte hadn’t told her. But as Brigitte worked on me and I began to relax, I started to whistle, which drew a look of such fierce hostility from Miss Lenya that I felt obliged to stop.

“My Viennese mother once told me that she couldn’t ever trust a man who whistles,” said Lotte, looking critically at me over the top of her spectacles. “Not ever. It’s the most damnable noise there is. When I asked her why she thought such a thing, she told me that thieves and murderers use whistling as a way to send each other coded signals. Did you know that even today whistling is banned in the Linden Arcade for this very reason? Oh yes. They’ll think you’re a rent boy and you’ll be asked to leave. But even worse than that, when some evil people wish to summon horrible devils and wicked demons that should not ever be named, they also whistle. This is why Muslims and Jews forbid it. It’s not just the fear of being ungodly; it’s the more ancient fear of calling something evil to your side. A dog that may not be a dog. A woman that may not be a woman. Or a man that may not be a man. A goat that may be the devil himself. The Vikings believed that whistling on board a ship would cause evil spirits to generate storm-force winds and they were quite likely to throw the offending man over the side to placate the gods.”

Lotte’s wide, heavily lipsticked mouth split open like a large fig in a mischievous smile. “All ignorant superstitions, of course. And much more important than any of these, the fact remains that you should never ever ever whistle in a theater. The stage crews use whistling to communicate scene changes. People who whistle in theaters can confuse the stagehands into changing the set or the scenery and this can result in serious accidents. I know because I’ve seen it happen. Generally speaking, we just call this bad luck. And you know what theater folk are like about that. Just remember that, my handsome friend; the next time you’re tempted to whistle in this place. Please, even when the lovely Brigitte is around, try to restrain your lips.”

With that, Lenya left. “Don’t mind her,” Brigitte said. “Lotte’s famously cantankerous.”

“No kidding.”

“She’s something though, isn’t she?”

“Not a female I’m likely to forget in a hurry. You’d best fetch some vinegar. I can still feel her sting.” I made a face. “Is she a ladies’ club scorpion, do you think? One of those irregular lilac-hued females who can do very well without men? You know, like Sappho and my old schoolmistress?”

“I told you. She’s married.”

“So were you. And look how well that turned out.”

“I can assure you, Lotte likes men as much as the next woman.”

“Well, if the next woman’s you, then that’s all right. But if the next woman is a sharper or a garçonne from the Hohenzollern lounge, then I’m not so sure. Besides, Weiss has got a friend called Magnus Hirschfeld who estimates that there are more than two hundred and fifty thousand lesbians in Berlin.”

Brigitte laughed. “Nonsense.”

“No, really. He counted them all as they came out of the city’s eighty-five lesbian nightclubs and sports associations. Not to mention all the theaters.”

“Why would anyone do such a thing?”

“Hirschfeld is pretty interested in sex. All kinds of sex. But don’t ask me why.”

“By the way, where’s your klutz cart?”

“It broke.”

“You broke it?”

“I guess I’m a bigger klutz than I realized.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“I don’t know. Call the boss, I guess. See what he wants me to do. But I’ll tell him I’m thinking of throwing in the towel before someone strangles me with it. I had a run-in with a gang of wild boys today and I almost ended up being crippled for real.”

“That doesn’t sound good. And just as I was getting used to you coming here.”

“There are other places we can meet. Restaurants. Bedrooms. We might even do something really crazy and go for a walk in the park one day.”

“Sure. But in here you’re under my control, and I like that. You’re very different from most of the men I meet in the theater.”

“I guess I must be. Now if I can only learn to control my whistling.”

“Can you?”

“Not when a first-division, bubble-bath blonde like you is around, angel. You’re going to make every Fritz you meet inclined to whistle like a castle in winter.”

LATER THAT DAY, when I was looking comparatively normal again, I returned to the house on Nollendorfplatz, where I found that Frau Weitendorf was again worried about Robert Rankin.

“You know I clean his room,” she said.

“I wish you’d clean mine.”

“You don’t pay me what he pays me. Anyway, look, I’m not worried about him so much as the rest of us. I was cleaning his room yesterday and I found this on the floor.”

She held up a bullet and then dropped it into the palm of my hand. It was a bullet for a .25-caliber automatic.

“No law against carrying a gun,” I said. “Even a Tommy’s entitled to look to his own self-defense.”

“I understand that. But he drinks. He drinks too much. My old man used to say guns and alcohol don’t mix.”

I smiled and restrained myself from telling her that I’d probably drunk alcohol on every day of the four years I’d spent in the trenches. Sometimes being drunk is the only good reason to pull a trigger.

“A man loading a gun while he’s drinking heavily,” she insisted, “is a recipe for disaster. If it’s done at all, it’s best done well. And best done sober. Besides, I don’t like guns in the house. They make me nervous.”

“I have a gun.” I remembered that while I might have lost the Walther somewhere, I still had Reichenbach’s little pistol. It felt snug against my abdomen as we spoke.

“That’s different. You’re a policeman.”

“You’d be surprised at the number of complaints the police receive about us shooting innocent people.”

“It’s not a joke, Herr Gunther. Besides, he’s English. They hate us, don’t they? Not him, maybe. But the rest of them hate us almost as much as the French.”

“Very well. I’ll ask him about it when I next see him.”

“Thank you. You might also mention that I don’t approve of his having women in his room at night any more than I approve of his having a gun. Specifically Fraulein Braun. I wouldn’t mind so much but they make a noise, which keeps me awake.”

“Was there anything else, Frau Weitendorf?”

“Yes, someone called Erich Angerstein telephoned. Twice. He asked you to call him back. But I didn’t like him. He sounded very common. I asked him for his number and he said you already had his business card, but that if you’d lost it you could find him at the Cabaret of the Nameless every night this week after midnight. Not that it’s any of my business, Herr Gunther, but I’ve heard that the Nameless is a place all respectable people should avoid.”

“I’m not respectable people, Frau Weitendorf. I’m a policeman and that means I go to evil places so you don’t have to. When I’ve been to the Nameless I’ll tell you all about it and you can thank me then.”

I telephoned Angerstein’s number but there was no answer. Then I telephoned the Alex. This time I got through to Weiss and told him that nothing much had happened except that I’d broken the klutz wagon. There was a long silence. He seemed to be thinking.

“That’s a pity.”

“I was wondering if you wanted me to stay out on the street,” I added, hoping that he would say no. “But without the contraption, I would have to adapt my look. Get myself a crutch and go begging with one leg instead of none at all.”

“And what’s your feeling about doing that?”

“I suppose I could do it.”

“Really, it’s up to you, Gunther.”

“But honestly? I’m beginning to think I’m wasting my time. Especially now that there’s been another murder. I do believe a change of tactics is called for.”

“Well, it was a brave attempt. A noble failure, if you like. I still am convinced we have to try everything to catch this killer, even when what we are doing seems unusual or disagreeable. But perhaps you’re right. Maybe now is the time to change our tactics. To try something new. Whatever that might amount to. Grzesinski is tearing his hair out. We’re really short of ideas. The public has been less than helpful. I don’t have to tell you how many time-wasters we had in response to my own newspaper article appealing for help. You’d think Berliners don’t want this man caught.”

“That’s certainly a possibility.”

He paused. “But you’re all right, in yourself. Feeling well?”

“If you’re asking me if I’ve stopped drinking then yes, I have.”

“That’s something, I suppose. What I mean is, you’re not getting tired of police work.”

“Not in the least, sir. And I want to get this murderer as much as you do.”

“Good, good.”

“But I haven’t changed my theory that Winnetou and Dr. Gnadenschuss are one and the same. For this reason, and with your permission, I’m going to have to speak to the minister’s girlfriend, Daisy Torrens. It seems that her previous boyfriend, a fellow named Geise, Rudi Geise, used to have a penchant for mutilating enemy corpses during the war. Cutting off ears and that kind of thing. Apparently he still carries a knife. So if you add that to the fact that by all accounts he hated women, then he might make a useful suspect. As I’ve said, it’s only a few centimeters from cutting off an ear to cutting off a scalp. Worth a look, I’d have thought.”

“Very well. But please tread very carefully. Right now I’m not so popular with the minister. I do believe he would fire me if he could. It would certainly make him look good in front of his enemies if he could dismiss a Jew from the police. Especially as he’s a Jew himself. He can even produce a good reason to get rid of me. It seems that President Kleiber of the Stuttgart police has complained about my book. Accused me of settling old scores. Which simply isn’t true.”

If I’d ever got around to finishing his dry book I might have agreed with him, loyally. Meanwhile, I decided not to tell Weiss that I was half inclined to interview Fritz Lang about his first wife and his interest in Jack the Ripper. It might have sounded like one fishing trip too many. Instead I gave him something else.

“This latest victim, sir: Johann Tetzel. I met him in the course of my investigations. Questioned him outside the Berlin Zoo aquarium not so long ago. It was Tetzel who gave me the tip about Prussian Emil.”

“Prussian Emil is the one whose klutz wagon you were using, right?”

“Yes, sir. As a matter of fact I’m going to follow up a lead on him tonight.”

“Excellent. It might interest you to know that Gennat is currently working on a theory that the murderer is a member of the Steel Helmet. We found a membership stickpin in Tetzel’s dead hand. As if he’d grabbed it from the murderer’s lapel. Do you remember Tetzel wearing such a pin himself?”

“No. I don’t, sir. And he didn’t strike me as a right-winger either.”

“Well, we can talk more about this when you come in to the Alex. You are coming in tomorrow, aren’t you? I mean, if you’re not out playing klutz any longer.”

“I’ll be in tomorrow, sir.” If nothing else, I needed to report the missing Walther and put in for a replacement.

“Good. We can catch up. Share some ideas. Then I wondered if you’d care to come for dinner with me one night soon.”

“Thanks. I’d like to.”

“My wife is keen to meet you, Gunther. I didn’t give her any details but I’m afraid I told her that you saved my life. She and I don’t have secrets from each other. Besides, I’m a terrible liar. Comes of being an honest cop, I suppose.”

“Take my word for it, sir; we honest cops have to lie like all the rest. Sometimes that’s what keeps us alive.”

IT WAS WELL past eleven but the Thomas Cook charabanc was collecting excited English guests from some of the more exclusive hotels to take them on a late-night tour of Berlin’s famous sex clubs: lesbian clubs like the Toppkeller in Schwerinstrasse, where there was a famous Black Mass featuring several naked girls; or the Zauberflote with its separate floors for queer men and queer women. These sex tours were especially popular with the English, since it was certain that there was no sex to see nor any to be had back home.

Since the English sex tourists were only interested in visual stimulation it seemed unlikely that the Thomas Cook charabanc would be stopping outside the Cabaret of the Nameless; while being a byword for Berlin malevolence and bad taste, it was not a sex show. The cabaret involved a series of ten-minute amateur acts. All the players were poor deluded souls especially selected for their astonishing credulity and lack of talent by the sadistic conférencier, Erwin Lowinsky, who, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, managed to convince the performers that they had real talent and that there were some influential people in the audience who could give the poor wretches a head start in show business. Meanwhile, the audience—which thought itself quite sophisticated—enjoyed the cruel contemplation of one entertainment catastrophe after another. The Cabaret of the Nameless was very popular; for many a Berliner it was nothing less than a perfect evening. A cultural anthropologist seeking to understand the German character could not have done better than to go to the Cabaret of the Nameless.

I found Erich Angerstein seated near the back of a busy room behind a bottle of good champagne and accompanied by a couple of table ladies who seemed to be enjoying the show although their smiles might just as easily have been owed to the fact that he had a hand inside each of their brassieres. Seeing me, he made no attempt to remove his hands to somewhere more respectable—nothing was out of bounds among guests in the Cabaret of the Nameless—nor to introduce me to his two companions, who appeared to be twins.

“Gunther,” he said. “I’ve been wondering when you’d show up. Margit, pour Bernie a drink, there’s a good girl. You like champagne, Bernie?”

“Not particularly.”

“Horrible stuff. Smells of goat and tastes of cheese. Like a woman’s mouse. Women drink it because it’s expensive, which they think implies quality. But it’s a lot of gas, really.” He jerked his head, summoning a waiter, and I asked for a glass of Mosel. “Where have you been anyway? Getting a haircut, I suppose.”

“Something like that.”

“If I were you I’d ask for my money back.”

Up onstage, a woman in a wheelchair with one arm and one leg was singing “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen.” Hers was an untrained voice—a bit like Lotte Lenya’s, only there the similarity ended; the woman in the wheelchair couldn’t have hit the right note if she’d swallowed a whole canteen of tuning forks. Every so often the laughter from the audience became too bovine and she stopped, at which point Erwin Lowinsky—“Elow”—would cajole her into believing she had a sweet, natural voice and that she might best ignore the audience. “Ah, Lucy,” he told her, “these fools have had too much to drink and wouldn’t know real talent when they saw it.” And then she would start all over again, to gusts of laughter.

“The trouble you’ve seen,” shouted a wag in the audience. “I’m just guessing, but might it involve an arm and a leg?”

The waiter came back with my Mosel. I sipped it slowly, even carefully, and then lit a cigarette.

“Is there a reason we’re meeting in this torture chamber?”

“In the front row. Table by the piano. Do you see the flax-haired Fritz with the cellar-mistress girlfriend? You can’t see them from here, but the girl is wearing spurs on her button-up boots.”

I looked over that way and saw a tall woman showing a good deal of snow-white thigh and quite a bit of purple garter. Beside her was a taller man wearing a coarse yellow wig. They were both in helpless fits of laughter, red-faced, tearful, slipping off the edge of their seats. The man looked like he was having an asthma attack.

“I see him.”

“That’s Prussian Emil. His real name is Emil Müller. Comes here regularly just before twelve after finishing work, so to speak. Last night he was in with a burglar by the name of Karl Szatmari, a Hungarian, I think. Both of them belong to a criminal ring called the Hand in Hand. I hope you’re impressed with my patience, Gunther. Sitting here and watching him for the last three or four nights has been a real test of character for me. I’ve just about chewed off my fingernails wanting to drag that bastard into an alley and beat some information out of him.”

“In that respect at least you strike me as the kind of man who needs a regular manicure.”

“I hope it’s been worth it. Which is why I’m going to have to insist on being there when you question Emil. I’d hate to think I’ve been coming here for no reason.”

“We’ll speak to him tonight. After he leaves we’ll follow him outside. How long does he normally stay here?”

“Couple of hours. I had him tailed one night. He went to the Heaven and Hell and then home to an apartment in Wedding.”

“Please try to remember what we agreed to. We do things my way. And you’ll be helping me with a witness. Not a suspect.”

“Sure, sure. But you try to remember this: These bastards don’t like giving out information at the best of times. Sometimes they need a little friendly persuasion.”

“Then let’s keep it as friendly as possible. I want him talking, not bleeding. He can’t talk if he’s spitting out teeth.”

“Whatever you say, commissioner. Always glad to help the Berlin police.”

I laughed. “If you mean the same way that Elow is helping poor Lucy’s singing career, then I can almost believe that.”

“He’s a genius, isn’t he?” said Angerstein. “How he can manage to persuade this one-legged no-hoper that she has a scintilla of talent is beyond me. He makes Svengali look like the Good Samaritan.”

But after my time on the street pretending to be a schnorrer, I had developed a certain sympathy for people with one leg, even the tone-deaf songbird who was at last leaving the stage in tears, followed by gales of laughter and derision. I stood up and started to applaud, as if I’d enjoyed her act.

Erich Angerstein looked at me with amusement and then pity. “You’re a decent man,” he said. “I can see that. Says a lot about you. But the people in this audience will only think you’re being sarcastic. You know that, don’t you? There’s no room for anything genuine in this place. You probably thought that show you and Old Sparky put on in Sing Sing was the cruelest spectacle in Berlin, but you were wrong, my friend. It’s not just dreams that are broken in here; it’s souls, too.”

Finally he removed his hand from Margit’s brassiere, but only to light a cigarette. For a moment I caught the girl’s narrowed eye and knew that she wasn’t much enamored of her host’s attentions. Or of the Cabaret of the Nameless. It wasn’t everyone in Berlin who enjoyed cruelty for cruelty’s sake or being constantly pawed.

Still looking at Margit, I said: “I wonder how the poor girl ended up in a wheelchair, anyway. With one leg and one arm, treated like she was shit on the cabaret carpet, pinning all her hopes on these heartless bastards.”

“You missed the beginning of her act,” said Margit. “She explained how she lost the arm in a factory accident, and the leg in hospital, as a result of losing the arm.”

Margit’s twin added: “She wanted to be the first one-legged actress and singer since Sarah Bernhardt.”

“Some people have all the luck,” said Angerstein. “While it seems that others have none at all. When it comes to good fortune, everyone believes they’re entitled to a fair share. And they’re not. They never were. And that’s where people like me come in.”

I sat down again. “Can you see all of human creation from on top of that high mountain, Siegfried?”

“My point is this: Can you imagine how much of existence would be impossible if people didn’t believe in a certain amount of luck in the face of all evidence to the contrary? The true essence of human life is delusion. That’s what we’ve got in here. And it’s been that way ever since the first Roman soldier blew on a handful of dice. It’s simple human nature to believe your luck is going to turn.”

“I’d hate to comb your hair, Erich. I’d probably cut myself.”

“Could be your own luck will turn tonight.”

“I hope it does. This case needs a break.”

“I’ve got a good feeling about that, Gunther. You’re going to crack this case wide open and turn yourself into a local hero. I’m sure of it. You’re going to catch Eva’s murderer. That man is going to have his head cut off. And I’m going to be there to see it, even if I have to bribe every guard in Plötzensee.”

He meant it, too. And just for a second I gained a small insight that perhaps Erich Angerstein was the wickedest thing in the club. I glanced around at the cabaret audience, just to make sure: Lucy was gone now, her hopes as dead as the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his poor wife. I had not thought vicious, conscience-free killing was so very common in Berlin. But in the Cabaret of the Nameless, it was the name of the game; and worse was to come. A one-eyed juggler with a bad speech impediment who couldn’t juggle; a grossly overweight impersonator who pretended to be Hitler and then Charlie Chaplin but looked and behaved more like Oliver Hardy; and a tap dancer who had no more sense of rhythm than a dying rhinoceros. Worst of all perhaps was the woman with the large breasts who fancied herself a mezzo-soprano and inexplicably had chosen to sing an aria from Richard Strauss’s Salomé and Elow had persuaded the poor creature that she might find more favor with the audience if, like Salomé, she removed her clothes while she was singing—this provided the most depressing sight of the evening when Salomé turned out to have a very large cesarian scar. Even Prussian Emil seemed to find this revelation too much, and soon after Salomé had left the stage, he and his hook-heeled girlfriend suddenly stood up and headed for the exit. Angerstein tossed some banknotes onto the table for the waiter and the twins. Then he and I followed our bewigged quarry outside.

“Where shall we pick him up?” I asked.

“This is your picnic basket, copper.”

“You said you had someone tail him to his place in Wedding?”

“Yes, it’s on Ackerstrasse. You see it and you’ll understand why he’s on the flypaper with the rest of them in that club we just came out of.”

“Well, let’s pick him up there. Are you in your Mercedes?”

“Not tonight. It’s having a little tune-up. Get it back first thing tomorrow.” He pointed at a little two-seat Hanomag. With its single headlight mounted in the middle of the hood, it looked more like a car in a children’s storybook than something a man such as Erich Angerstein might drive. “Which is why I’m driving that piece of shit toy. It’s my wife’s car. She’s away on vacation right now, so she doesn’t need it.”

PRUSSIAN EMIL DROVE a black Dixi north up Mauerstrasse, which traced the path of the old city wall. The curve of the street used to irritate Frederick the Great: Like any good Prussian, he much preferred straight lines. I was hoping to get a few myself when we caught up with Prussian Emil. With Angerstein driving, we headed across the river, into Red Wedding. It was red for a reason; like Schöneberg or Neukölln, the poverty in Wedding was the dispiriting kind they’d had back in Gaza, where sightless Samson had been forced to work grinding grain in a mill. Crushing poverty was the reason none of the thousands of Berliners who occupied Wedding’s sorry-looking tenement buildings would ever have dreamed of voting for anyone other than the communists or, at a pinch, the socialist SPD. Judging by the peeling signs painted on the gray walls of the Russian-doll courtyards, all human life was here: coalmen, dressmakers, butchers, pumpernickel bakers, car mechanics, kosher bakers, pigeon shops, cleaning ladies, briquette suppliers, fishmongers, housepainters; and quite a bit that was inhuman, too. The place was rat-infested, patrolled by mangy stray dogs and spavined horses and probably a Golem or two. Anything went in Red Wedding, and nobody paid much attention to what was deemed respectable by middle-class Berlin standards. Although it was the middle of the night, there were still small, undernourished children loitering in the lightless arched entryways under the watchful eyes of men and women wearing shabby Trachts and military surplus. It was the kind of place that made you feel lucky if you had a clean collar and a shine on your shoes.

“I hate this bloody neighborhood,” confessed Angerstein.

“Any particular reason, or are you just a student of fine art and architecture?”

“I grew up here. That’s the best reason of all.”

“Yours must have been quite an education.”

“That’s right. It was. I’ve had a lucky escape, right enough. Whenever I come back to Wedding it reminds me of what life might have been like if I’d had to—well, you know.”

“Make an honest living? Yes, I do see that.”

“No, you don’t. Nobody who hasn’t lived here can know what it’s like to grow up in a shit hole like this.”

Angerstein slowed the car to a halt for a moment; since he knew exactly where Prussian Emil’s car was going he wasn’t afraid of losing him. He looked at me with eyes that were brown and unflinching and almost lifeless, like cold rock pools in granite. They were the most intimidating eyes I’d ever seen. Gradually he smiled, but it took a while and there was little mirth in it.

“You see that stone bench? That’s the Wedding gamblers’ bench. My father sat on that bench for twenty years, playing skat and betting away what money he made from whatever temporary crap job he’d managed to get while my mother slaved her guts out taking in laundry and making children’s clothing. I swore I wasn’t ever going to end up like those poor bastards. The number of times since then I’ve wished I could go back in time and give them just a few hundred reichsmarks. Which would have transformed their lives. And mine.” He shook his head. “Sometimes it seems like it must have happened to someone else. Like a schizophrenic, you know? You ever want to know why people become criminals, just come and spend some time here and you’ll learn a thing or two.”

“Not everyone who lives here becomes a criminal, Erich. Some people manage to stay honest. A few even manage to better themselves. The hard way.”

“You’re right, of course. But mostly they get stuck here, see? Living their hopeless lives. And I’m not. If I had to live in Wedding again I think I’d kill myself. Or someone else, more likely. But murder’s not such a big crime when you live in a dump like Wedding. That’s called binding arbitration around these parts. A quick way to resolve disputes, one that doesn’t involve cops or courts. Leastways, not unless someone opens his flap.”

His laugh reminded me of just how dangerous a man he was. The Middle German Ring was one of the most feared in the whole of Germany.

“Which violates the first law of Wedding: Always keep your mouth shut, especially when there’s a cop around.” He shook his head. “I got out of this place for the sake of my family. I wanted something better for my children, you know? And when Eva got her Abitur, I couldn’t have been more proud. Kids round here wouldn’t even know how to spell Abitur. I was even proud when she got herself a job working as a stenographer for Siemens-Halske. I could have found her something better, but she was independent and wanted it that way. So I let it be. I didn’t interfere. Then something went wrong. I’m not sure what, exactly. Maybe a bad boyfriend, I don’t know. I’m still trying to find out. She started taking cocaine and going on the sledge now and then to help pay for it. You might even say she started to revert to type. And now that Eva’s dead I’m wondering why I bothered. Would she be alive now if we’d still been living here? I don’t know.”

“You did what you thought was right,” I said. “Even if what you did was wrong. That’s what matters. You give people chances. What they do with those chances is their own affair. It’s not down to you if she made mistakes, Angerstein. It’s not down to anyone except the person who makes those mistakes. At least, that’s the way I look at it.”

“Thanks for that, anyway. Even if you don’t mean it.”

Erich Angerstein’s life story over, we drove on a bit and then he pulled over, parking the car immediately behind the empty Dixi; Emil and his girlfriend had already gone inside the tenement. We followed through one gloomy courtyard and another, then up a narrow stone stairway that smelled of coal fumes and tobacco and fried food and carbolic and something worse. The whole place was like a black-and-white engraving of a deep pit and dry bones scene from The Divine Comedy.

“Top floor,” said Angerstein.

I looked up at the side of a building that was all wall cracks and dead concrete window boxes.

“Suppose he doesn’t answer the door,” I said. “I’m not sure I would answer it in this place and at this time of night.”

“Then it’s just as well we’re not going to knock,” said Angerstein.

At the top of the stairs were two apartment doors and, down a small flight of steps, a third, ill-fitting door that led outside again; this door was secured from the other side until Angerstein prised it open with a folding knife. “I know all these old tenement buildings like the back of my hand,” he explained. “From when I first started stealing. And other things.”

He led the way out onto an iron fire escape that overlooked a small, dark, rat-infested courtyard. Above us the sky was full of smoke and the sound of a couple having a furious argument—the kind that promised violence. I followed him quietly through a web of washing lines until we came to a grimy window. Inside, the lights were on, affording us a ringside view as Prussian Emil’s girlfriend finished tying his wrists and ankles to all four legs of a kitchen table with a selection of her client’s neckties. She herself was naked but for her boots and stockings and as soon as she was quite satisfied with her knots, she pulled down Emil’s trousers and underpants, picked up a cane and swished it in the air.

“Looks like we’re just in time for the late show,” said Angerstein.

“Somehow I can’t see the Thomas Cook sex tour making it up here.”

“No, but it saves us time.”

“How’s that?”

“You’ve read Kant, haven’t you? A man’s more likely to see reason when his trousers are around his ankles. And there’s no chance of his losing any teeth. Just like you said. It seems to me that he’s just waiting for us to question him.”

He walked along to the next window and while the cellar mistress went about her work, Angerstein silently jimmied it open with his knife and we climbed inside. It wasn’t much of an apartment. A green linoleum floor. A bed that looked and smelled like a nest of mice. A large wardrobe full of fur coats, probably stolen; and on the door, a military uniform and a bugle. We went into the living room where the cellar mistress was caning her client. He took it well enough, I thought, crying out only a little, but seeing us in the room he began to yell loudly—with outrage, not pain.

“Who the hell are you? Get out of here before I call the police.” And other words, most of them obscene, to that effect.

“What’s the twenty-mark word for this particular perversion?” Angerstein asked the mistress. “Algolagnia?”

The mistress nodded. Angerstein handed her a banknote.

“Get your clothes on, darling. Go home. Forget you ever saw us. We’ll finish up here with the algolagnia.”

The woman grabbed her clothes and ran. She could tell we meant business. For one thing, Angerstein had a gun in his hand.

“Put the Bismarck away,” I told him. “We won’t need it. Not now he’s trussed up and ready for some Socratic dialogue.”

He shrugged and slipped the pistol into a little holster on his belt.

“I don’t pretend to understand why anyone would want to be punished like this,” he said, picking up the cane. “But it takes all sorts. Especially in Berlin. Personally, I put it down to the armistice. We’re still beating ourselves up for the way the war ended. Or paying someone else to do it.”

“What the hell do you want?” demanded Emil.

“Answers to some questions,” I said, pulling a chair up beside his head, which was the much preferred alternative to the other end of the table. His wig had disappeared and the birthmark on his neck was just as Johann Tetzel had described; it looked as if a careless waiter had spilled something down his shirt collar. “As soon as we have those answers we’ll leave you alone. If you’re good, we may even untie you before we leave. Simple as that.”

“And who wants to know the answers?”

“Let’s get something straight,” Angerstein said, and hit him hard on his bare backside with the cane, which had me wincing with vicarious discomfort. “We ask the questions.”

“Yes, yes, yes. Whatever it is you want to know, I’ll tell you.”

“A few weeks ago,” I continued, “you went on a job one night with your friend Karl Szatmari. South of Wittenbergplatz, at the back of a building on Wormser Strasse. I found your klutz wagon. You were his achtung. That horn in the bedroom: You were meant to blow it if the cops turned up.”

“Who says?”

Angerstein beat him again. “Answers only, please. Not questions.”

“I’m not interested in any of that. What I want to know is why you ran away. What you saw that made you abandon the klutz wagon and leg it.”

“I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about,” insisted Emil. “You’re right. I used to play schnorrer and spot cops for Szatmari when he was on a job. Yokel catching. I plead guilty to that. No question. But I lost that wagon on Wittenbergplatz. Had to make a run for it when a nosy cop started asking me awkward questions. I’ve no idea how it turned up where you said it did. But Wormser Strasse isn’t so far away from Wittenbergplatz.”

“A woman was murdered that night,” I said. “Murdered and mutilated. And I think you caught a glimpse of the man who was responsible. I believe that’s the reason you ran away. Because you were afraid he might kill you, too.”

“Whatever gave you that idea?”

Angerstein beat him a third time and Emil’s face turned an interesting shade of purple. “Didn’t they teach you anything at school?” he said. “The difference between a question and an answer?”

“All right, all right. And not so hard, eh? I’ve told you. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

“So far you’ve told us nothing,” said Angerstein.

“Look, Emil, there was a burglary in Wormser Strasse on the same night as the murder. That’s a fact. And I’m guessing it was Szatmari who was responsible. If we ask him and he says it was you who was cop-spotting for him, and we have to talk again, then my friend here is going to do more than just beat you. But you shouldn’t worry about that. You should worry about what’s going to happen right now.” I lit a cigarette. “This is your last chance, Emil. If I have to ask you the same questions once more I’m going to tell my colleague to beat you like an old carpet. And when he’s tired of doing that, then I’m going to beat you myself. Which will be worse because I won’t enjoy doing it. Not for a moment. I’ll be very embarrassed and because I’m embarrassed I’ll be angry. Maybe angry enough to beat you harder than anyone has ever beaten you before. You understand? So I urge you to start telling me some things I don’t already know. Before you really do get hurt.”

“All right. I did see something. Only it wasn’t much. Hardly anything in fact. But look, if you’re cops I really can’t imagine anything I could tell you would be of any help.”

“Why don’t you tell us from the very beginning? And we’ll be the judge of that.” I leaned back on the chair, flicked my ash onto the floor, and waited expectantly.

But Erich Angerstein was shaking his head and giving me his best stoneface.

“You read books?” he asked.

“Of course I read books. What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Well, I read people the way you read books. I’m an avid reader, you might say. But the fact is that in my business you have to be. It’s my observation that you’ve got a lot to learn about interrogation, my young friend. When a man minimizes the importance of what he’s about to tell you, you can be damn sure he’s not going to tell you anything worth hearing. What you want is a whore who hasn’t eaten dinner for several days, someone who’s very keen to please her Fritz. And we don’t have that here. Not yet. Do you agree?”

I nodded. Emil was already repeating his willingness to answer all of our questions, but I was forced to agree with Angerstein. I didn’t want him to be right about this, but he was and we both knew it. And we both knew what was going to happen next. I didn’t like it, but all I cared about now was that we got whatever information we could get from Emil so that I could be out of that room and away from that loathsome scene as soon as possible. I nodded again.

Angerstein produced a folded white handkerchief, shook it out, and then stuffed it into Emil’s mouth. Then he turned to me. “So here’s what’s going to happen,” he said calmly, taking off his jacket and rolling up his shirt sleeves. “You’re going to go back in the bedroom, close the door, smoke a cigarette, and wait there patiently for five minutes. That’s because I don’t want you and your capacity for decency and fair play of the kind you exhibited back in the Cabaret of the Nameless interfering while I beat this bastard. Like an old carpet. Your words. That is what you said, right? I’m going to beat this bastard until he wants to tell me everything that’s happened to him since he let go of his mother’s teat.”

SITTING ON THE EDGE of the malodorous bed I smoked a cigarette to keep my mind off the smell and stared around at the blank room that stared back at me. As I waited uncomfortably—but not as uncomfortably as Prussian Emil—for Erich Angerstein to come and fetch me from the bedroom, I felt like a ghost and probably looked like one, too. But it was easier to keep my nose off the smell of the bed than it was to keep my ears detached from the sound of what was happening in the room next door. It was cowardly of me to let the gangster do the dirty work but that part of it seemed unimportant now beside the absolute imperative necessity of getting a name and a man I could arrest. I suppose I convinced myself that the end justified the means, which, in a case that refuses to crack, is always the honest policeman’s dilemma. Five minutes, he’d said, five minutes for me to smoke a cigarette and for him to force Emil to tell us everything he knew. Next to the lives of some other men and women who might yet be killed that didn’t seem so bad, but still, it was a long five minutes. I heard a little of what was going on, of course. I heard the slicing cuts of the cane and Emil’s muffled screams; and if I heard it, the neighbors very likely heard it, too, only no one would have tried to fetch the police in a building like the one we were in. It wasn’t as if cops or public telephones were plentiful in that part of Berlin. After a couple of minutes, I put the cigarette between my teeth and plugged my ears with my fingers, which only seemed to make my every guilty thought throb inside my skull as if I was suffering from a low fever.

When at last he came to fetch me, Angerstein was breathless, his forehead beaded with sweat and his cheeks flushed, as if he’d really put his shoulder into the beating, and the minute I laid eyes on Emil I knew that he’d done that and more. The man had passed out; his backside was the color of a crushed insect; blood was running down his thighs; and his face was as pale as goat’s cheese. The crimsoned cane lay on the floor like a murder weapon and in my guilty haste to erase the scene from my mind I kicked it angrily aside and bent down beside the unconscious man to retrieve the handkerchief from his mouth before he suffocated.

“I think he’ll tell us what we want to know now,” said Angerstein calmly. It was obvious that he didn’t despise himself in the least, as I would have done; he had probably intended to inflict the maximum violence necessary, and experience had told him the limit of what his victim could take. He rolled down his shirt sleeves and collected his jacket from the floor as I slapped Emil’s cheeks as firmly as I dared; and gradually the man started to come around. Angerstein was much less circumspect; he grabbed the man’s ear and lifted his head up.

“Now then,” he said. “Let’s hear it. Tell us the whole story. From the beginning. Exactly the way I told you a few minutes ago, Emil.”

It was a curious remark but at the time I thought no more about it.

“Tell my friend what you saw outside the building in Wormser Strasse. Or we’ll start again.”

“I was watching the street while my friend turned over an apartment,” said Emil. “I was supposed to . . . to blow my horn if any bulls turned up. Or anyone that looked like the apartment’s owner. I hadn’t been there for long when I saw this Fritz go into the courtyard with the girl. And I saw him when he came out again . . . just a few minutes later. Alone. Got a good look at him, too. Saw the blood on his—on his hands. I guessed what must have happened. That he had murdered her. But not only that. I recognized him. He was a cop.”

“A cop?”

“Yes. From Kripo.”

“A detective?” I said. “Are you sure?”

“Sure I’m sure. That’s why I didn’t want to tell you before. I was afraid you would kill me.”

“What’s this man’s name, Emil? I assume he has a name.”

“Don’t know his name. Right? I don’t know that. Please believe me. But I knew his face. From way back when I was being booked in the main hall at the Alex by another detective for a job I did. And this one saw I’d recognized him. Which was why I ran away. Before he could kill me. Laid low after that. As soon as that first schnorrer got shot, I guessed what it was about. That he was looking for me. Had to be.”

Shaking away my disbelief, I remembered what the homeless man, Stefan Rühle, had told me and Otto Trettin back at the Palme: that he’d seen the murderer, too, and that the murderer was a cop. Then I’d assumed the man was a lunatic, but now I wasn’t so sure. And already I was trying to match the policemen I knew with what sounded like Rühle’s description of Satan.

“Can you describe him?”

“Not very tall. Ordinary. I don’t know. I’m not very good at descriptions.”

“You’re not trying to put one over on us, are you? About the murderer being a copper.”

“No! I swear it was a cop that did it. A detective. I just don’t have a name.”

“A cop. I don’t believe it.”

“Please. You’ve got to believe me. I couldn’t take another beating.”

“It’s all right, Emil,” said Angerstein soothingly. “My friend is just a little surprised to hear this, that’s all. Unlike me. I’m much more inclined to believe the worst of Berlin policemen. All the same, I wouldn’t like it if you were taking the piss.”

“I told you everything I know, right? But please don’t hit me anymore.”

But Angerstein was already untying Emil’s ankles and hands, as if he was satisfied with what we had heard. Which surprised me; he wasn’t the type to be satisfied with anyone’s explanation of anything, let alone with a cursory description of the man who had probably murdered his daughter. Emil’s revelation that the suspect was a cop seemed to beg as many questions as it answered. Angerstein looked at me and shook his head.

“Well, that’s a bit of a turnup, eh?” he said. “A copper from the Alex. Narrows it down a bit, I suppose. Who was that other copper who was fond of murdering whores? The fellow who thought he was doing God’s work cleaning up the city.”

“Bruno Gerth.”

“And where is he now, exactly?”

“Still in the asylum at Wuhlgarten. Last I heard.”

“I don’t suppose a kind judge could have been persuaded to let him out?”

“No. As a matter of fact I went to see him just a couple of months ago.”

“Might I ask why?”

“I was seeking some information on another case.” This hardly stated it. I’d gone there specifically at the behest of Ernst Gennat, who knew I was well acquainted with Gerth, to see if he couldn’t help us with a few unsolved murders. More important, however, I’d been asked to check on a story circulating about Bruno Gerth at the time of his conviction; it was never confirmed but it was widely rumored that he’d had a partner. He’d denied everything, of course. It was obvious to me that he hoped at some stage to “prove” that he was sane again and effect his own early release: A late confession would have spoiled that.

“So he’s quite sane then. In spite of the fact he’s in Wuhlgarten. Otherwise you’d hardly have gone there asking for his help.”

“In my opinion, quite sane. He knew how to work the legal system, that’s all. To avoid a death sentence.”

“Any other homicidal cops you know that spring to mind?”

“Plenty,” I said. “But not like this. On the other hand.”

“Yes?”

“If he really is a cop, then it might explain the way he salted those crime scenes with clues. Like he knew the best way of making us waste our time. And maybe some other things, too. The way he taunted the police in the newspapers. As if he wanted to get back at Kripo—to show all of us up as incompetent.”

“It’s a pity Emil didn’t give us a name.”

“That’s the only reason I get paid to be a detective. To try and work it out for myself.”

Angerstein tapped Emil on the head with his knuckle. “We know where you live. And you know who I am. You know that I can find people and hurt them very badly. You think of anything else to do with this copper you saw, then you get in touch, Emil.”

“Yes, sir.”

Angerstein took out his wallet and laid some cash on the kitchen table. “Here. Go and see a doctor and get your stripes attended to.”

“Thanks.”

“We need to leave. Now.” Angerstein took my arm and moved me toward the door. “In case anyone heard something and decided to report it. Even in Berlin that’s just about possible.”

ANGERSTEIN DROVE ME back to Nollendorfplatz.

“You’re very quiet,” he said.

“I’m thinking.”

“Would you care to share some of that thinking with me, Gunther?”

“I’d be wasting your time. I’m still drilling for oil here. But I’ll let you know if I hit a gusher. Until then I’m just going to whistle a tune and keep my hands in my pockets.”

“If there’s one thing more ridiculous than the idea of a policeman who’s thinking, it’s a policeman saying he expects something important to come of it.”

“I’m glad we fill you with such confidence.”

“The police?” Angerstein laughed. “Maybe you weren’t there when I was beating that carpet. I just learned it was a cop who murdered my daughter. I’m doing my best not to blame you for that. You being a cop yourself and part of the general conspiracy of silence that afflicts this town.”

“It’s the part of me that’s a cop that’s doing the thinking.”

“Don’t take too long. The sooner you arrest someone, the sooner I can stop pecking your head.”

“Sorry, but a man has to do his thinking in private.”

“Maybe back in the day when you were a theology student in Heidelberg. But these days you’ve got to write reports so your superiors can help guide your thoughts with wisdom. If they can. That’s why they put cops in teams, isn’t it? It’s not the bar bills they expect you to share, it’s the brain work.” He lit a cigarette. “All I’m saying is that maybe I can help.”

“And all I’m saying is that if you’re expecting ninety-five theses nailed to your front door tomorrow morning, you’re going to be disappointed. Look, Herr Angerstein, I’ll tell you something just as soon as I have it. Until then, have a good night.”

I went inside the house and crept upstairs. There was a light under Rankin’s door, but I didn’t knock. And I didn’t go to bed; my mind was too active for sleep. Instead I went to my desk and drew a paper pad toward me and sat thinking and making idle marks with my pen, hoping that the business of writing and reconsideration might fix a number of things that remained jumbled in my thoughts. I was trying to remember a few forgotten facts, some blurred details, and any lurking inconsistencies. In short, I hoped to set something down on paper that had appeared altogether trivial but now nagged at me as being piercingly significant. I looked at the bottle of rum in my drawer and turned it down, like a man of real character, and kept on scribbling things on the pad as they occurred to me, in no particular order. And after a while I found myself yawning and thought it best to leave such compelling considerations to the subterranean part of my mind, about which nothing seemed clear except perhaps the antithesis between sleep and wakefulness, and a good policeman and a bad one. But was there ever any such antithesis in fact? A lot of good cops were capable of some very bad behavior, myself included. Some more than others. Which was why my thoughts returned to the meeting of the Schrader-Verband at the Schlossbrauerei in Schöneberg, and the anti-republican cops I’d seen there. Many held opinions that I found objectionable—and one, Gottfried Nass, had even attempted to kill me—but were any of them capable of psychopathic murder? The only truly psychopathic cop I’d ever met had been someone I actually liked: Bruno Gerth. At the time I visited him, I’d thought bad policemen didn’t come much worse than Bruno Gerth, and yet he’d been warm and courteous and, to my layman’s eyes, more or less sane. We’d known each other since before the time I’d joined Kripo, when I was still in uniform like him; and he’d greeted me in his room at the asylum in Wuhlgarten like a long-lost friend.

“BERNIE GUNTHER,” said Gerth, shaking my hand. “How long has it been?”

“Four years.” I lit us each a cigarette and transferred one to him.

“Four years. Incredible, isn’t it? I heard you were out of uniform. In plainclothes.”

“Who told you that?”

“Oh, I couldn’t say. But I get visitors. Tell me, are you enjoying being a detective? You’re in Vice now, aren’t you?”

“Vice. That’s correct. It’s all right, I guess. But I’m never off duty. That’s the thing about wearing a uniform. Once you hang it in your locker, you’re finished for the day.”

“So what brings you to east Berlin? I take it this isn’t a social call.”

Bruno wasn’t much older than me. With his blue eyes, blond hair, and regular features, he was also a war hero and a policeman with a commendation for bravery. He fit no one’s profile of a violent murderer; certainly not that of the judge of the court that had tried him. His lawyers had argued that he would never have killed anyone if he hadn’t also been an epileptic. I wasn’t so sure about that. Not only had the detectives investigating Elsie Hoffmann’s and Emma Trautmann’s murders described a scene of horrifying brutality, they’d also revealed Gerth’s obsession with a book by a popular criminologist by the name of Erich Wulffen. Gerth’s copy of The Sexual Criminal was heavily underlined and annotated, and both his victims were eviscerated in a way that seemed to be a copycat version of what was in Wulffen’s near-pornographic book.

“I could tell you I’m here because I wanted to see how you are, Bruno. Because we’re Bolle boys. To see if there was anything I could do for you. But that would be a lie. The truth is, Ernst Gennat found out we’d been colleagues and prevailed upon me to come and talk to you. Not as a friend but as a cop.”

“Hoping I might help with his clear-up rate, I suppose.”

“Something like that.”

“I already put out my wrists for those two whores, Elsie Hoffmann and Emma Trautmann. I don’t see how I can help any more than I have already.”

“That would be true if they were your only victims.”

“What makes you think they weren’t?”

“Not me. Gennat. He likes you for another girl called Frieda Ahrendt.”

“Never heard of her.”

“As well as some others we don’t even know about.”

“He’s fishing in a cold spot, Bernie. Let me tell you as an old friend. Those two women were the only ones I killed. But I suppose if I hadn’t been caught I would have killed again. Depending on my physiological state at the time.”

“Then as a friend, let me ask you this: Why the hell did you do it? And don’t say it was because of a preexisting medical condition. I’m not buying it. That book they found in your apartment was also covered in your own handwriting; lurid accounts of fantasy sexual murders.”

“Which were themselves the result of my condition. But I will say this, Bernie. And you being a detective in Vice will appreciate it. At the time I killed those women, the absolute logic of what I did seemed unassailable. You can hardly deny that Berlin has been suffering from an almost biblical plague of prostitutes. Killing one or two to put the fear of God in the majority and perhaps deter them from their profession seems an effective means of control. Much better than registration and medical examinations.”

“So it wasn’t that you just wanted to kill them for the pleasure of it, like the prosecutor said?”

“Really, what kind of man do you take me for?”

“It’s also been suggested by some that you may have had a partner. Another copper who agreed with what you were doing and who looked the other way. Who shielded you from arrest. At least for a while.”

“Lots of police agreed with what I did. Surely you must know that by now. Following my arrest, no less a figure than the chairman of the Schrader-Verband, Police Colonel Otto Dillenburger, told me he fully supported my actions. Now, that’s what I call a union.”

“I’m more interested in what police support you might have received before you were arrested, Bruno.”

“Now, that would be telling. Let’s just say that I had my fans. I get lots of letters in here, you know. From people who applaud what I did. Those who think that something has to be done to help turn the tide of filth and immorality that threatens to engulf this town. From morally minded women, too, who strongly disapprove of prostitution. I’ve even had offers of marriage.”

“After the war there’s a severe shortage of single men, right enough. I guess you just about pass in that respect.”

“Don’t knock it. Some of them have money. I could marry well if I play my cards right.”

“Is that how you were able to afford to retain Erich Frey to defend you? Because someone else paid for it?”

Gerth didn’t answer.

“And not just him. No less a figure than Magnus Hirschfeld was the physician for the defense.”

Again Gerth didn’t answer.

“But for those two, your head would be leaking in a cold bucket.”

“Yes. That’s true. Isn’t liberal German justice wonderful?”

AFTER MY VISIT I had gone to see the director of the asylum, a doctor by the name of Karl-Theodor Wagenknecht, who had the most unruly joined-up eyebrows I’d ever seen; they looked like the nest of a very large and untidy species of eagle.

“Do you keep a record of a patient’s visitors? I’m particularly interested in those people who’ve visited Bruno Gerth.”

“Yes.”

“I’d like to see it if I may.”

He disappeared for several minutes, leaving me in his curious office, half of which was given over to what looked like a sort of electric chair; I decided not to inquire about it in case the doctor offered me a free demonstration. When he returned, he handed me a sheet of paper.

“You can keep that,” he said.

I glanced down the list. One name drew my attention immediately. It was the name of Police Commissioner Arthur Nebe.

Ever since that visit to Wuhlgarten Asylum, I’d been possessed of the idea that there was a lot more to Nebe than met the eye, and his speech to the Schrader-Verband at the Schlossbrauerei in Schöneberg had left me convinced that if there was anyone in the Berlin police who approved of ending useless or criminal lives it was Commissioner Nebe.

I CLOSED MY EYES and laid my head on my forearm, drifting somewhere in the middle of nowhere near a tall house on Nollendorfplatz. For a moment I thought I was back at the Palme, in Dr. Manfred Ostwald’s office, with Stefan Rühle and Lotte Lenya and Arthur Nebe and Frizt Pabst, among several others. There were solid clues all over the place but I didn’t pick them up because I didn’t trust them. If only Ernst Gennat could learn to take his own advice. Lotte was whistling a snatch of a tune from The Threepenny Opera only it wasn’t, it was from The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, by the French composer Paul Dukas—the very tune Fritz Pabst remembered his or her attacker whistling when she was being Louise Pabst. Meanwhile, Rühle was babbling at her about a devil in white shoes whose face was covered in hair and whose eyes were red; and Nebe was making a tidy speech about cleaning up Berlin’s streets and how the Nazis were going to fix everything because nobody else could, especially not Bernhard Weiss. After a while Gottfried Nass came into the office and succeeded in throwing Weiss out the window. Then it was my turn. Two other officers arrived to help him: Albert Becker, who’d assaulted a senior officer because he was a communist; and Kurt Gildisch, who was a violent drunk given to singing Nazi party songs when he’d had a few. But Nass was the most determined of the three; like Bruno Gerth, he’d also been tried for the murder of a prostitute, albeit acquitted. None of them succeeded in my defenestration because I had the door with the wet green paint and the handprint from the Patent Office on Alte Jakobstrasse and I was able to keep it pressed shut against all three until Kurt Reichenbach came to my aid in his usual timely fashion and hit them on the head with his stick and then walked away whistling and dancing. Which pleased Brigitte Mölbling enough for her to shed some clothes and try to sit on my lap while I was still standing up, much to the amusement of Robert Rankin, who was pointing a small gun at the center of my forehead. Meanwhile, someone was screaming in pain, and Prussian Emil was being beaten with a cane for the pleasure of the crowd from the Cabaret of the Nameless, a prospect that I, too, enjoyed, albeit from the comfort of an electric chair. Then I was briefly out of the chair and flat on the bed in Nollendorfplatz with my clothes on.

That was the last thing of which I took any notice. After this there was just the dark and silence and a general sense of impending doom.

ON AWAKENING, I felt strongly that much of this nagging vivid dream made sense. Scowling at the clock, which told me I was late, I found pen and paper and, even before I could shave and throw some cold water in my face, I hurriedly began to write, intent on preserving some memory of the dream.

I had the strong sense I was on the edge of understanding everything about the case, as if, like van Leeuwenhoek with his primitive compound microscope, I was about to see the great significance in all that was small, but at this moment I was summoned to the window by a loud commotion in the street below: a running battle between Nazis and communists that detained me for almost ten minutes. On returning to my desk, I found, to no small surprise, that though I still retained a dim recollection of what I had so clearly understood in my dream, with the exception of a few scattered words and phrases, all the rest lay hidden away in the clouds, and no amount of staring at the sky could restore it.

Cursing, I shaved and washed, put on a clean shirt, and went to the Alex—my first day back in the Praesidium since my adventures with the klutz wagon—and immediately joined a meeting that had just begun in Weiss’s office, where Ernst Gennat was explaining his latest theory: that Dr. Gnadenschuss was a member of the Stahlhelm because a Steel Helmet stickpin had been found in the latest victim’s hand.

I listened patiently until Gennat finished and then made my objections.

“I’m afraid that Tetzel’s stickpin sounds suspiciously like a soft clue to me.”

“A soft clue?” said Weiss. “What the hell’s that?”

“It was Ernst himself who thought Winnetou was deliberately planting soft clues like that to put us off the scent. Or onto the wrong one. Don’t you remember the Freemason cuff link that was found at the scene of Helen Strauch’s murder? And the British pound note we found next to Louise/Fritz Pabst? And the cigar holder next to Eva Angerstein’s corpse?”

“Yes.”

“A Steel Helmet stickpin fits the same pattern. An object for us to waste time on.”

“Yes, but the stickpin would fit in with the Nazi profile of the killer that we’ve seen in his letters to the newspapers.”

“Would it? I’m not so sure. Members of the Stahlhelm regard themselves as conservative nationalists, yes, but above politics and very separate from the Nazis. At least that’s my understanding.”

Gennat wasn’t about to give up on his theory without a struggle.

“There must be plenty of those bastards who admire Adolf Hitler as much as they hate the Jews,” he said. “Wouldn’t you agree? And unless you’ve had some luck finding Prussian Emil, it’s about all we’ve got to go on right now.” He paused and lit a cigar. “Well, have you?”

I shook my head. I wasn’t ready to share what I’d learned from Emil nor the circumstances in which this information had been acquired. Not without some very hard evidence. I didn’t think any of my superiors—and certainly not the newspapers—were going to welcome the news that eight Berliners had all been murdered by a single cop in the city’s police department.

“No, I thought not. Gunther, I want you to spend the rest of your day in the records department, looking for anyone with a conviction for violent assault who happens also to be a member of the Stahlhelm.”

“I don’t know that something like that would be recorded,” I said.

“When arrested, a suspect is obliged to empty his pockets, isn’t he? A Stahlhelm membership card would be part of a man’s personal effects. You’ll find it listed there.”

“It would probably be quicker,” added Weiss helpfully, “to see what Commissar Dr. Stumm has in that respect. And then to cross-check with Records. Wouldn’t you agree, Ernst?”

Commissar Dr. Stumm was with the political police, created to forestall attacks by political agitators against the republic.

As it happened, some time in the records department suited me very well; the last place I wanted to be was at my desk manning the telephone. I needed somewhere quiet to think about what Prussian Emil had told me, and Records was as good as the public library in this respect.

“Yes, probably,” said Gennat. “Although as you know I’ve never been a fan of having a political police force in Germany. It smacks of spying on your own citizens. But however he does it, I think it will make a nice change for Gunther to carry out some good old-fashioned police work.”

I STAYED LATE in Records before returning to my desk, having found nothing in the files of any consequence. Not that I’d expected to, and not that I’d tried all that hard.

I hadn’t been at my own desk for very long before the telephone rang. It was Erich Angerstein.

“So what have you found out?” he asked.

“About a murderous cop? Nothing yet.”

“I thought we narrowed it down quite nicely last night. From a population of four million Berliners to one crazy cop.”

“You know, you ought to take a look at the number of cops there are in Berlin sometime. Oddly enough, even the sane ones are in plentiful supply. As a matter of fact, there are fourteen thousand uniformed police, three thousand detectives, three hundred cops in the political police, and four thousand police administration officials. It’ll take me a while to sift them out and figure which one of them is a murderer, Erich. You’re going to have to be patient for a little longer.”

“Not something I’m good at, Gunther. You should know that by now.”

“And I told you that we were going to have to do this my way. I’ve spent the whole day going through criminal records looking for what’s called evidence.”

“Find anything interesting?”

“Look, I’m a detective at the Alex.”

“You make that sound like it’s something respectable.”

“At the Alex we take a bit of time making up our minds. We’re known for it. Justice requires that we do a little bit more than just pick a name out of a hat.”

“I’m not in the Alex. I’m in a hurry. I want this bastard caught and punished. And I don’t much care about justice. At least not the way you understand it. Punishment—proper punishment—is what I care about. Retribution. You know, I checked out your friend in Wuhlgarten, the one who escaped the ax: Bruno Gerth. And it seems a lot of people thought he had police protection. Maybe I should speak to him. Maybe he has a disciple. These bastards often do.”

“I’d be careful about trying to get in there. They might not let you out.”

“They say you shouldn’t yell at a sleepwalker in case he falls and breaks his neck. But this is me yelling at you now, Gunther. Find this man. Find him soon. Otherwise, it’s your neck.”

He rang off, which was just as well, as I was on the verge of telling him to go to hell. But I was only thinking about it. With a man like Erich Angerstein it was as well to speak softly. I’d seen what he could do with a cane when he wasn’t even angry.

HEADING HOME, I caught the double-decker bus west. I went upstairs and smoked a cigarette. I like riding on the upper deck; you see the city from a whole different angle up on top so that it almost seems unfamiliar. It was the very opposite of being on the klutz wagon. As we headed down Unter den Linden I glanced in at the Adlon and was thinking of Thea von Harbou when I saw some of the white-shoe types going in for dinner. Except that they weren’t white shoes but spats. And I suddenly remembered a cop who wore spats. One of the very few cops—apart from Weiss himself—who ever wore spats. Spats that might easily have looked like white shoes to a man like Stefan Rühle. It was about then I remembered the tune this same cop was fond of whistling: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. The same cop who had a thick beard, fine clothes, and a heavy walking stick that could have looked like a scepter, I suppose, and who’d been on his way to an apothecary to get something for his red eye. Just as Rühle had described. The same cop who bitterly resented Bernhard Weiss. The same cop I’d always thought of as a good friend. Kurt Reichenbach.

Was it possible that he’d been about to shoot another disabled veteran, but had stopped when he realized that the vet was me? The more I thought about it, the more it seemed quite possible that instead of Reichenbach saving me from the wild boys outside Lehrter Bahnhof, it might have been they who’d saved me from him. The gun he’d lent me afterward was still in my pocket. I took it out and looked at it now: a Browning .25-caliber automatic—the same kind of vest pocket gun that had killed all those men; lots of cops carried one as a spare, only this one might actually have been a murder weapon. Reichenbach was certainly arrogant enough to lend it to me all the same. And why not? Who would ever have suspected him of being Dr. Gnadenschuss? He probably had another. He might have several. Reichenbach had never looked like a man who was short of anything, let alone a gun.

About the only thing I was still short of was a motive. Why would a man like him viciously attack nine people? To embarrass the Murder Commission and Weiss in particular? To clean up the streets just like he’d said in the letters to the Berliner Tageblatt? To put the blame on the Nazis? Somehow none of it seemed to be quite enough. And yet, lots of people had been murdered for less.

Of course this was all nonsense. Had to be. Reichenbach was a good cop. All the same, a cop who could afford a new Brennabor motorcar. And an expensive leather coat. Where did he get the money? Not from his wife; how much did a nurse at the Charité hospital make? No, the money had to be his. Could Reichenbach have been the source of the new ten-reichsmarks note I’d found in Eva Angerstein’s handbag?

It was all mostly circumstantial. I had no firm proof. But it seemed possible even if I couldn’t bring myself to believe any of it. Suddenly I had to get off the bus. I had to get back to the Alex.

SOMEONE WAS STILL working at the firearms laboratory in the cavernous basement of the Alex. I knew who it was before I walked in. I could smell the cigarette. Paul Mendel was quiet but ambitious; the open copy of Commissar Ernst van den Bergh’s book, Police and Nation—Their Spiritual Bonds, told me that much. I knew he hadn’t ever read it and kept it there next to Weiss’s book and History of the Police by Dr. Kurt Melcher to impress the commissars in case any of them came calling. He was gently spoken and bespectacled with lots of thick curly hair. He smoked foul-smelling Russian cigarettes that he always pinched twice to control the flow of the acrid-tasting smoke. He wore a lot of lime water—which is not my favorite cologne unless there’s plenty of good gin it—and I suspected he was queer, but not enough to make it noticeable, which was probably wise around Berlin policemen; even the queer ones were difficult about that kind of thing. He might have been working late, but he still looked like he was about to go home. All three buttons of his jacket were done up and he was wearing a natty silk scarf against the evening heat.

“I hate myself for bringing you some work this late.”

“I know exactly how you feel. So don’t worry. I’m not staying.”

“Come on, Mendel. It won’t take long. Besides, what else were you going to do this evening? It’s not like you had tickets for the opera. Besides, you love your work. Almost as much as I love mine.”

“All right. I’m listening. What have you got for me?”

“A chance to help me crack the Dr. Gnadenschuss case.”

“Hmm. That’s a big sell you’re making there. You’re not just saying this to persuade me to work late.”

“No. I’m absolutely certain of it.”

“So then. A .25-caliber automatic. Probably a Browning. No spent brass. Just the bullet. Last-known victim, Johann Tetzel: shot in the head at point-blank range. The case file with the bullet is still on my workbench. Has there been another killing?”

“No. But I’ve got something better: a possible murder weapon.”

I laid the little automatic Reichenbach had given me on Mendel’s desk.

“Safety’s on,” I said. “And it’s loaded.”

“Interesting,” he said, picking it up and sniffing the barrel. “The Browning Vest Pocket pistol. Nice little gun. I have one myself. No real stopping power, but not bulky in the pocket. A Jew can’t be too careful these days. Did you hear that someone attacked Bernhard Weiss? You did. Of course you did. Yes, a lot of people think these guns are Belgian but in fact they’re American. John Browning was a Mormon, did you know? Born in Utah, of course. Several wives. Don’t know if he shot any. But he himself died in Belgium.”

“I almost died there myself. Lots of Germans did.”

Mendel took off his jacket and removed his scarf, donned a brown cotton coat, and rattled his pockets, which were usually full of ammunition. What Mendel didn’t know about guns could have been written on the back of a postage stamp. He ejected the Browning’s magazine, inspected the barrel, checked the number of rounds it contained, and laid the gun down again.

“This pistol has been cleaned, and recently, too. You can still smell the gun oil. If this is a murder weapon then the killer knows how to look after a weapon.”

“So you’ll do it. A test.”

Mendel smiled. “As it happens, you’re in luck, Gunther. We just took delivery of a new piece of equipment and I’ve been dying to try it out.”

“Oh, what? A human target? After the last meeting of the Schrader-Verband, I can think of a few people in this place I’d like to test a gun on. Even that one.”

“Me too. But nothing so messy. No, we have an expensive new toy in the lab. Just arrived today. A comparison microscope.”

“How does it work?”

“Well, as you know, when a gun is fired, all imperfections in the gun barrel leave a unique pattern of marks on the bullet. Two bullets fired from the same gun bear identical characteristics. With the comparison microscope we can now view a test bullet side by side against a bullet from a cadaver without touching either one. One eyepiece, two microscopes. Very convenient for a man like me. We bought this one from America. It was a microscope like this that helped put Sacco and Vanzetti in the electric chair.”

“That’s a cheerful thought.”

“Do you think they were innocent?”

“I don’t know. But a lot of other people do. Of course a trial like that could never happen here. German courts are rather more careful about proper legal procedure. Especially when it’s a capital crime.”

“I’m glad you think so. Me, I’m not so sure.”

Mendel switched on a light that illuminated a shooting range and then produced something square and wobbly and wrapped in brown paper, which he laid on a table. He unpeeled the paper to reveal a slab of what looked like aspic jelly.

“I get my local pork butcher to make these blocks of gelatin for me. They’re great for observing how bullets behave, and for retrieving them without too much trouble. Now then. If you’ll do the honors, Gunther. Someone’s stolen my spare ear mufflers so you’ll have to make the best of it, I’m afraid. Just shoot the pistol into the block.”

Using Reichenbach’s Browning, I fired off three test bullets. The shots were noisier than I’d expected and they left my ears ringing for several minutes. When I’d finished, Mendel cut the block open with a knife and retrieved a couple of spent rounds that could be examined underneath the comparison microscope, side by side with the bullet that had killed Johann Tetzel.

“By the way, you’re the first person in here in a while who hasn’t made a joke about how it is that a Jew can handle pork gelatin. You wouldn’t believe how many anti-Semites there are in this building.”

“Is there a joke?”

“Not a funny one. Besides, we’re only forbidden to eat pork, not to shoot it.”

“You know what they say about anti-Semitism. It isn’t a big problem for Jews. It’s a bigger problem for Germans.”

“Let’s hope you’re right. But if you are, who’s going to tell them?”

Mendel positioned one of the new rounds under the microscope and turned the focus bezel; but it wasn’t very long before he was frowning. The test was negative. The bullet retrieved from Johann Tetzel’s skull was not the one Mendel had cut from the gelatin block.

“I’m sorry. But this is not the gun that killed him.”

“That blows my theory out of the water,” I said. “Pity. I was quite sure this was it.”

“Not necessarily. You’re forgetting. This fellow shot more than one man. So let’s try a comparison with one of the earlier bullets that we have. Victim number two: Oskar Heyde.”

I held my breath and waited patiently while Mendel peered through his comparison microscope again. After a while he started to smile.

“Yes, In my opinion these two bullets match perfectly. Obviously the killer has used more than one weapon. But this is one of them. Without a shadow of a doubt. Take a look for yourself.”

I peered through the eyepiece. To my untrained, inexpert, and tired eye, the mangled bullets looked, at best, not dissimilar.

“You’re sure these were fired from the same gun?”

“I’m certain of it.”

The Browning .25 Reichenbach had so coolly lent me was a murder weapon.

“Well, I must say, you don’t look very pleased, Gunther. Surely this is a major step to solving the case.”

I was thinking of the scandal that was about to engulf the Alex, a scandal that might very well end up costing Bernhard Weiss his job. The right-wing newspapers were just looking for an excuse to go after him again, and this time even he wouldn’t be able to sue. What could have looked more incriminating for the Jewish deputy police commissioner than a multiple murderer who was a Jewish detective in Kripo? They would hang him out to dry. But who was going to believe me anyway? Not Ernst Gennat. He probably still thought I was a drunk. And it was Kurt Reichenbach’s word against mine that he had ever owned the Browning. What I needed was more evidence. But what kind of evidence? And how to get it?

“I’m grateful, Mendel. Don’t think I’m not. But while I may have the gun I don’t yet have the man who owns it in custody. So I’d be very grateful if you didn’t mention this to anyone for now.”

“Sure. No problem.”

“That Browning you said you own. Have you got it on you?”

“Of course.”

“Would you lend it to me?”

“Sure. But why?”

“Let me see it.”

Mendel fetched the little jet-black automatic from his jacket pocket and handed it to me. I examined it carefully. It looked identical to the pistol I’d brought with me.

“The murder weapon. I can’t take it with me. Not now you’ve proved that’s what it is. But I need to return a Browning pistol to the man I borrowed it from. Even if it’s a different one.”

“Sounds dangerous.”

“So wish me luck.”

“Mazel tov.”

I went upstairs to look for Reichenbach. He wasn’t there. But one of his colleagues in Kripo was and told me he hadn’t been seen all day.

“But that’s not unusual.”

“Anything to do with a lead I gave him? About the mob killing outside Aschinger. He said he was going to check it out.”

The detective, a sergeant named Artner, shook his head.

“He hasn’t mentioned it.”

KURT REICHENBACH LIVED in an apartment on the top floor of a smart building in Halensee, at the west end of Kurfürstendamm, where Berlin turns very green. There were some lights on in the windows, and his car—the new Brennabor—was parked on the street outside. I rang the doorbell, ready to give him a story about how I was just passing and saw the car, and then the lights on in the apartment and had thought to quickly return his gun. I also had ready a follow-up story to the effect that I appreciated his offer of watching my back and how I wondered if he was prepared to keep an eye on me when I posed as a klutz again the following day. I’m not sure what I was expecting to find out, maybe I just wanted to look him in the eye. I certainly didn’t think a full confession was in the cards, but I did nurse a vain hope that somehow I might come away from his apartment with some of my suspicions allayed. After a minute or so I heard a window open upstairs and a woman, presumably Reichenbach’s wife, Traudl, called down to me.

“Yes. Who’s there?”

“Police. Bernhard Gunther, from the Alex.”

“Has something happened to Kurt?”

“No. Not that I know of. I was hoping to find him at home.”

“He’s not here. Wait. I’ll throw some keys down. Top floor. Number ten.”

I found the keys and let myself in the front door. I took the stairs instead of the elevator, only because it gave me time to adjust my story. If I was going to speak to his wife, then there might be a way to get some information out of her without raising the woman’s suspicions; at the same time I was thinking that if his car was there and he wasn’t at home or at the Alex, then where the hell was he?

Traudl Reichenbach opened the door to the apartment wearing a nurse’s uniform and a look of deep concern. I showed her my warrant disc just to reassure her that I was on the level.

“Are you sure there’s nothing the matter?” she asked, ushering me inside. “It’s just that Kurt still hasn’t come home from work. That’s not so very out of the ordinary, him being a detective, but he usually manages to let me know. So this is not like him. Plus his car is still where he left it yesterday.”

“Are you sure?”

“It’s not like there are many other cars in the street.”

“I see. Well, I’m sorry to have missed him. I was in the area and thought I’d drop in and ask him if he wanted to come out for a drink.”

“Would you like to wait for him? Perhaps you’d like some coffee, Herr Gunther?”

She smelled, lightly, of sweat, as if she’d just come from work, but was no less attractive for that: a tall, fair-haired woman with brown eyes, wide hips, and strong, defensively folded arms.

From what I could see of it, the apartment’s interior was modern with the kind of expensive furniture you only see in magazines. We stayed in the entrance hall, which was patrolled by a black cat and smelt lightly of cinnamon, as if she’d been baking. The cat wrapped its tail around my leg, prompting her to shoo it away impatiently.

“No, thanks,” I said. A minute later I spotted a typewriter on the dining table and regretted turning down the coffee. It was an Orga Privat Bingwerke. I wondered if it was going to be possible for me to check to see if the machine displayed a horizontal alignment defect in which the capital letter G printed to the right, which would have certainly proved that it was Reichenbach who’d sent the letters to the newspapers. But it was clear that an examination of the machine would probably have to wait until later. The same way I was going to have to wait to try to match Reichenbach’s handprint to the one we’d found in the wet paint of the door to the Patent Office on Alte Jakobstrasse.

“I’m worried,” she confessed. “This isn’t like Kurt at all. He knows I worry enough about him as it is.”

“All copper’s wives worry. It’s natural.”

“Maybe. But he suffers from extreme melancholy, you see. Has done ever since the war. Sometimes he’s suicidal.”

I shrugged. “I’m that way myself sometimes, Frau Reichenbach. There’s hardly a man who came out of the trenches who isn’t scarred in some way. Often those scars aren’t obvious.”

“I suppose so.”

I glanced through another door at an impressively equipped kitchen, where a second black cat stared back at me with unblinking green eyes as if, like a cynical lawyer, it knew what I was up to.

“But look, maybe I can help. Maybe he left something in the car that will help tell us where he is. Would you like me to go and have a look, Frau Reichenbach? It’s the gray Brennabor, right?”

She fetched the key from a hook on the kitchen wall and handed it over and I told her I wouldn’t be long.

I went back downstairs and unlocked the car. There was nothing in the front or rear seat, so I went around the back and opened the enormous trunk. There was a flashlight and I picked it up, turned it on, and lifted an old army-style woolen blanket. Underneath a surprise awaited me, and not a pleasant one: There, on the floor of the trunk, I found a heavy hammer, a razor-sharp knife, and a fedora hat to which a bit of yellow wig was attached on one side; there was also a loden coat with a smudge of green paint on the sleeve. And looking at these four objects it was immediately plain that Reichenbach was Winnetou. The only thing missing was a motive explaining why he had murdered all those people. Because it made no sense to me. Frau Reichenbach seemed like a nice woman; it was hard to imagine how a man married to her could have brutally murdered three prostitutes. The anticlimax of my discovery was only exceeded by the terrible disappointment of being proved right; I thought of some of the other policemen I’d have preferred the killer to have been and realized I had little or no appetite for arresting a brother officer I liked and admired.

I covered the evidence with the blanket, closed the Brennabor’s big trunk, locked it carefully, and trudged back upstairs, wondering what to do next. I badly wanted to speak to Reichenbach himself before doing anything, but after what I’d found in the trunk, the sensible thing would have been to telephone the Alex and summon the murder wagon. I may not have had a suspect in custody but I already had more than enough evidence to justify a search of Reichenbach’s apartment and to get a warrant for his arrest.

“How long has it been since you last saw him?” I asked when I reached the top floor.

“This morning, before we both went to work. I’m a nurse at the Charité, and sometimes, because we both keep such irregular hours, we don’t see each other for days. But we managed to have breakfast together. Which hadn’t happened for a while.”

“How did he seem?”

“In good spirits. He said he was about to make an arrest. Which always put him in a good mood.”

“Did he say who?”

I thought of Hugo, the man who’d murdered Willi Beckmann in front of Aschinger, and concluded that it might have been him that Reichenbach had planned to arrest following my own tip. But it was impossible to imagine that Reichenbach would have tried to arrest a man like that by himself; he was much too experienced a policeman, especially given Hugo’s willingness to use a Bergmann machine gun. It was clear that I was going to have to speak to someone else on Reichenbach’s team back at the Alex. But I was almost hoping that something might happen to Reichenbach while I was making this arrest if only because it looked like a less ignominious end for him.

“No. He didn’t.”

“Oh well, I expect there’s a perfectly innocent explanation,” I said, trying to think of one. Perfect innocence was already something far beyond my own understanding. I was beginning to wonder if such a thing could even exist in Berlin. “There was a meeting tonight of a new police union: the Betnarek-Verband. It’s always possible he went to that. I was going to go myself and then thought better of it. Don’t worry. I expect he’ll come through the door at any moment. And when he does, tell him Bernie Gunther was here.”

“Bernie Gunther. All right. I’ll do that.”

She opened the apartment door so that I could leave.

“There is one thing,” she added. “And I don’t know if it’s worth mentioning. It’s probably nothing, but when I went to work I noticed there was a brand-new Mercedes parked near Kurt’s car. I had half an idea that the two men inside were keeping an eye on it. As if they were waiting there for Kurt.”

“Oh? Did you get a good look at them?”

“Smartly dressed. I might have thought they were policemen but for the car. I was paying more attention to it, really. An expensive item. A cream-colored roadster.”

I felt my heart miss a beat. The Mercedes roadster was not a common car. I knew of only two people who owned a cream Mercedes roadster: one was Thea von Harbou; the other was Erich Angerstein, and the thought of him knowing half of what I did about Kurt Reichenbach filled me with alarm.

“You’re sure it was a Mercedes?”

“Oh, yes. I’m sure about it because that was Kurt’s favorite type of car. They’ve got one in the Mercedes showroom on the Kurfürstendamm. We would stop and admire it when we were out for a walk. I used to say that one day I was going to win the Prussian State Lottery and buy the car for him.”

“I see. Well, thanks. Like I say, I expect he’ll turn up safe and well before long.”

But hearing this latest information I had a strong sense of foreboding that this was never going to happen, that Kurt Reichenbach was probably dead, or worse.

I OUGHT to have despised myself. At the very least I’d been very stupid. I’d trusted Erich Angerstein to keep his word when all my better instincts had told me he wouldn’t. It was now obvious what must have happened in that awful apartment in Wedding. No wonder the bastard had asked me to leave the room before he’d started to beat the man, and like a fool I’d done it. A few minutes before Prussian Emil told me that the man he’d seen near the scene of Eva Angerstein’s murder had been an anonymous policeman from Kripo, he had informed her father that this same cop was called Kurt Reichenbach. With me sitting safely out of the way in the bedroom, all Angerstein had to do was order Emil to withhold Reichenbach’s name from me. That would give him ample time to find Reichenbach and then take him to a ring hideout to exact his own personal revenge. The earlier telephone call I’d taken at my office desk from Angerstein had doubtless been designed to help bolster some sort of deniability when, eventually, I discovered Reichenbach was missing.

I’d made it so easy for him. But all that was over now. Angerstein wasn’t the only one who could turn up armed and unannounced. I had a gun. I had the gangster’s business card. I had an address in Lichterfelde.

THE ANGERSTEIN HOUSE was a white stucco building near the former cadet school at the southwest end of the Teltow Canal. A three-story Wilhelmine, with a short Corinthian portico, topped with a balcony about the size of a laundry basket; it looked like the most expensive house in the road. I’d have been disappointed if Erich Angerstein had been staying anywhere else. The carriage light that hung in the portico was lit, and the cream-colored Mercedes roadster was parked out front. I laid my hand on the bonnet and felt the still-warm engine underneath. Angerstein hadn’t been home long.

There was a small garden with a cherry tree in front of the house, and a larger one at the back, which was where I began my search, having climbed over a low picket fence. The ground-floor windows were dark and fitted with louvered shutters that prevented my peering in, but all the lights were on in the upper floors and, having tried, unsuccessfully, to gain entry through a kitchen door and then a set of French windows, I returned to the front door and prepared to ring the bell, which is to say I took Mendel’s Browning out of my pocket, worked the slide, put one in the barrel, and kept it close to my armpit, ready to point at whoever answered.

I was angry enough now to go all the way. I’d been suckered by Angerstein, but that was over now. I felt sure of it. All the same, I wouldn’t have minded a drink to put a little iron in my soul. I told myself I wasn’t prepared to kill him, but I was ready to shoot him; with a little .25 there were all sorts of places I could shoot Erich Angerstein without killing him.

Behind me the Teltow district steamer let out a mocking toot as it headed down the canal to Potsdam. The purpling night was clear and warm, with just a hint of honeysuckle in the air, or perhaps it was jasmine; something sweeter than the way I was feeling, anyway. I pulled on the butcher’s-weight brass doorbell and waited while the big bell in the entrance hall did its job, sounding as if it were summoning the local people to mass. I heard a couple of bolts slide away and then the door opened to reveal Erich Angerstein.

“Where is he?”

“Who?”

I pushed him back into the double-height entrance hall and kicked the door shut behind me.

“Don’t waste my time. You know perfectly well who I’m talking about.”

In his silk dressing gown he looked as if he’d been about to go to bed, but I frisked him for a gun anyway and while I did, he smiled like a schoolteacher who has been obliged to humor an unruly pupil, which did very little for my own humor.

“I haven’t the least idea what you’re talking about, Gunther. I thought you were here to tell me something interesting. In which case, come in, take a load off, sit down, and have a drink.”

“Yesterday I was an idiot, Angerstein, but not today. Today I’m smarter than the paint on a new car. Today I know you’re a lying bastard and that it was you who snatched Kurt Reichenbach from outside his apartment in Halensee.”

“Who’s he? The man who killed my daughter, I suppose. I told you on the telephone, Gunther. I’m impatient. But I’m not a mind reader. It’s me who’s following your lead, remember?”

“That’s how it was supposed to be. Only, you persuaded Prussian Emil to give the cop’s name to you but not to me. That gave you a head start—enough time to deal with him yourself.”

“That’s crap.”

“I don’t think so.”

“For Christ’s sake put the gun down and let’s have a drink.”

I shook my head. “Not tonight.”

“You don’t mind if I do? Look, whoever it is you’re searching for, he’s not here. Take a look around, if you don’t believe me. I’m quite alone. My wife’s away. And just as well for you, my friend. She wouldn’t like this at all.”

Instinctively I glanced at my surroundings. The entrance hall was largely given over to a bar under the curving staircase; on the other side of the room was a white grand piano; and on one of the taller walls was a full-length painting of an old bald man with rotten feet copulating with a generously endowed naked lady that owed more to the artist’s sense of humor than it did to accurate draughtsmanship or skill with a paintbrush. Angerstein moved slowly toward the bar, where he picked up a bottle of schnapps and filled a small schooner.

“You wouldn’t have brought him here, to your lovely home,” I said. “I expect your friends in the ring are holding him somewhere quiet where nobody will complain about his screams. And you’re going to tell me where that is. Or he’s already dead. In which case I’m going to need some evidence. Like a body.”

“Listen to me, Gunther. And listen to yourself. You’re like some crazy scientist with a dumb theory. Flat earth. Phlogiston. Or maybe the planet Vulcan. But whatever you think you know for sure, you don’t.”

“I was crazy ever to think a scumbag like you would keep his word. My own mother could have told me that.”

“Mothers can be wrong. They often are. Otherwise they wouldn’t have sons. At least that’s what mine always told me.”

“So you’re not going to tell me where he is.”

“I’ll admit, I’ve made some inquiries of my own. Asked around. Sure I did. You can’t blame me for that. I figured I could help.”

“You’re an interesting man, Herr Angerstein. I’ve learned quite a bit from my brief association with you. Not all of it good, I’m afraid. Principally, I’ve learned that I’m quite like you in a lot of ways.”

“Really? You surprise me, Herr Gunther.”

“Yes. You’re not the only person who can thrash another man until he tells you exactly what you want to know. Metaphorically speaking. Thanks to you, I’ve realized that at the right time and in the right place, I’m capable of almost anything. The same way you are.”

“Like what, for instance.”

“Like this, for instance.” I smiled thinly and then shot him in the shoulder. He dropped the schooner and suddenly the air was strong with the smell of liquor and gunpowder.

“Jesus.” Angerstein winced with pain and grabbed at his shoulder. “What the hell did you do that for?”

“I tell you what I’m going to do, Herr Angerstein. If you don’t tell me where Kurt Reichenbach is, I’m going to shoot you again. I might not kill you. But I will inflict the maximum amount of pain this little gun can provide. I haven’t got the time or the inclination to ask you more politely.”

Angerstein sat down on the piano stool and glanced uncomfortably at his shoulder; the silk dressing-gown was now shiny with blood. He shook his head. “You’re making a big mistake.”

So I shot him again, this time in the pajama leg.

Angerstein yelled out with pain. I figured the second one hurt more than the first.

“I can’t believe you shot me.”

“Shouldn’t be too hard to believe, what with two bullets in you. And I will shoot you a third time if I have to. Just count yourself lucky it’s this little peashooter and not my usual cannon.”

“That little peashooter, as you call it, hurts like hell, damn you.”

“All the more reason for you to tell me where you’ve cached Kurt Reichenbach.” I pointed the gun at his other leg.

“All right, all right. I’ll tell you. Reichenbach is dead.”

“How do I know you’re telling the truth? How do I know he’s not being tortured somewhere even as we speak?”

“He’s dead, I tell you.”

“Tell me exactly what happened. Convince me he’s dead and maybe I won’t shoot you again.”

“What do you care, anyway? He was a multiple murderer. The city’s well rid of a man like that. But I’d like to know how a public trial would have helped anyone. Least of all this city’s cops.”

“That’s not for you to say.”

“Why not? He killed my daughter.”

“I’m asking the questions, remember?”

I pulled the trigger on the Browning a third time, only this time I let the bullet graze his earlobe.

“Isn’t that what you said to Prussian Emil?”

“What do you want? A confession? You might think you’ve got my neck under the blade, but I certainly didn’t kill him. And I didn’t order him to be killed. Not that it matters. None of this will stand up in court.”

“Eva was your daughter. Fine. I get that. And you have my sympathy. But she was my case. The law’s still a set menu in this city, Angerstein. You don’t get to pick and choose what you’ll have and what you won’t.” I lit a cigarette. “So what’s it to be? An explanation of what exactly happened, or another bullet in the leg?”

“That’s the trouble with cops. You people think you own every meter of the moral high ground between here and the Vatican. So he goes to court. And then what happens? A smart Jew lawyer invokes paragraph fifty-one and before you know it another sharp-witted murderer like your pal Bruno Gerth is serving out his sentence weaving baskets in a home for the bewildered instead of getting the sentence he deserves. I couldn’t risk that happening.”

“You better let me have it, Angerstein. And don’t give me that crap about you being a father. After seeing you in action with a cane I figure you haven’t got a kindly bone in your crooked body, let alone one that resembles anything paternal. I want the whole story beginning with when you picked him up in your car. Otherwise you’ll be picking these little slugs out of your teeth for the rest of the week.”

“ALL RIGHT. You guessed what happened between me and Prussian Emil. I’ll give you that. While you were out of the room I gave him a few extra hard ones with the cane and then told him he was a dead man unless he told me exactly what he knew about the man who killed Eva. Which is when he dropped the bombshell and said it was a cop called Reichenbach. But here’s the real reason I didn’t let you in on that. With you being a cop, I asked myself if Reichenbach being a cop might persuade you to go easy on him, the same way it went for Bruno Gerth, and concluded it might and I couldn’t take that risk. So I stuffed the handkerchief back in Emil’s mouth and told him that I didn’t want you to know the name, just that it had been a cop who’d killed her. I figured that by the time you could put a name to the description, I’d have Reichenbach safely in the bag. I couldn’t have told you any more than I did about what I was planning. You wouldn’t have stood for it.”

“You were right about that much anyway.”

“I didn’t have time to figure all the angles, but it seemed like a good idea. I still think you should let things lie the way they are.”

“I can’t. It’s just not in me. I’ve got standards and I try to live up to them. Whereas you’ve got no standards at all, and you certainly live up to those. I should have realized that. So. Let’s have the rest of it. The whole story. Exactly what happened to Kurt Reichenbach.”

“If you insist. Just don’t shoot me again.”

“LIKE MOST COPS in Berlin you actually know very little about it. The city, I mean. For people like you, German society is very simple. It’s the one familiar social order that has existed since time immemorial, a hierarchy in which everyone knows his or her place. The reality is very different. For more than a century there has existed another world that lies beyond the bounds of this hierarchy—a world of outcasts and people who belong to no recognized social class—which, for better or worse, people like you call the underworld. At the center of this underworld are professional criminals, bandits, robbers, thieves, and murderers. Oh, some of you—Ernst Engelbrecht, perhaps—they think they know this netherworld, but believe me, they don’t. No one does who is not a part of it.

“This underworld exists deep beneath this city, like an intricate labyrinth of old mine shafts and tunnels. A criminal society, yes, but one with its own rules and institutions: a professional brother-and sisterhood that is restricted to those who’ve done time in the cement and that severely punishes not just those who inform on one another to the police, but also those who scorn our influence, or whose crimes are considered so heinous that they are beyond the merely criminal; crimes that fly in the face of what it is to be human, such as compulsive murder. In short, it’s the Middle German Ring that brings a bit of order and stability to the criminal world.”

I laughed. “If you’re telling me that there’s honor among thieves, I don’t believe it.”

“Oh, it’s much more than honor, I can assure you. It’s about organization where otherwise there would be chaos. The Middle German Ring imposes statutes on the local gangs and clubs, controls their activities, exacts money tributes, and punishes those who break our laws, which are as binding as anything a German jurist would recognize. We even have our own court to judge what sanctions and punishments are to be inflicted on those who have broken our laws.”

“Next thing you’ll be telling about Esmerelda and Quasimodo and the court of the gypsies.”

“You asked me to tell you what happened to Reichenbach and I’m telling you now. It’s your business what you believe.”

“Go on.” I tossed him my handkerchief to mop some of the blood off his thigh and shoulder. “I’m listening.”

“This people’s court meets once a month or by special session in the cellar of an old disused brewery in Pankow.”

“Which one?”

“The Deutsches Bauernbrauerei near the water tower on Ibsenstrasse.”

“I know it. There’s a hole in the west wall as tall as the Brandenburg Gate from when they took the copper fermentation tanks out.”

“That’s right. It’s the kind of place where we can meet without disturbance. The court’s judges are the ring’s most senior bosses, but the jury is made up of some of the city’s thieves, pimps, prostitutes, drug dealers, yokel catchers, illegal gamblers—all of whom are paying members of the local clubs—in short, all those men and women who can’t go to the police for protection.”

“Hell of a country club you have there.”

“Just give your mouth a rest and listen. You might learn something. So, as you surmised, this morning I kidnapped Kurt Reichenbach outside his own apartment and took him before a specially convened people’s court. In your world this has no official standing, of course, but in mine, it is a legitimate judicial authority, as important as the Imperial Court of Justice in Leipzig. As many as a hundred people were present to see that true justice was done. I myself acted as his prosecutor, and Prussian Emil was my chief witness. Reichenbach was given a defense attorney appointed by the court and allowed to argue his case. But the evidence—more evidence than you were aware of, perhaps—was compelling, not to say overwhelming.

“The chief witness told the court he saw the accused enter the courtyard with my daughter, and not soon after, he saw him again, with blood on his hands. And if that wasn’t enough to convince the court he was Winnetou, a second witness, a prostitute, came forward to say that months before any of the Winnetou murders, she’d met with the accused and they’d agreed to have sex, but he’d changed his mind and started calling her the vilest names and said it was wrong that decent men like him could be tempted in this way, and how it was high time someone cleaned up the streets.

“A few days later, she said she was attacked from behind by someone who hit her on the back of the head with a stone in a sock and that she was only alive because her attacker had been interrupted, as she was quite certain he’d meant to kill her. The man ran away leaving the sock and the stone. She is convinced it had been Reichenbach because she recognized the sweet smell of his cigars. Not only that, but one of the women who saved her life found a cigar stub at the scene and she’d kept it in her handbag intending to give it to the police when she reported the attack, but she changed her mind and never did. Decided she didn’t need police attention. Well, who does? Anyway, she told the court she had thrown away the cigar but remembered the brand on the wrapper clearly enough because it was such a beautiful name: Dominican Aurora. It was this information that truly sealed his fate, since a summary search of the accused’s personal effects had revealed some unsmoked Dominican Aurora cigars in his breast pocket, which, one of the judges informed the court, could only be obtained in Germany as an import from Amsterdam.

“In the face of this damning evidence, Reichenbach’s defense attorney then argued a simple case of diminished responsibility: only a lunatic could have killed so many people. The court was not persuaded. At that point, the accused, asked if he had anything to say for himself before sentence was pronounced, demanded to know by what right the scum of Berlin were putting him on trial—his words, not mine—and it was then that he confessed to his crimes, which he justified by saying he’d intended first to drive Berlin’s whores out of business, and then to make the city’s streets fit for decent law-abiding citizens to walk in. It seems he had a closer acquaintance with Bruno Gerth than even you did. It was when Gerth got arrested that Reichenbach decided to carry on the good work.”

“Did he say why he scalped them?”

“No, but I should have thought it was obvious; he wanted to cause the maximum amount of terror among the city’s whores. And he succeeded, too. After all, it was this part—the scalping—that made the killings newsworthy. Let’s face it: Whores being murdered in this town is almost commonplace.”

“This is what I was afraid might happen. I now have a hundred questions that will very likely never be answered.”

“Such as?”

“Such as why did he wait until he’d killed Werner Jugo before he wrote a taunting letter to the newspapers? And why didn’t he admit to killing any of the girls in either of those two letters? He suggested he might get around to killing some prostitutes, but that’s not the same as admitting he’d already killed three. It’s almost as if he wanted to make sure we didn’t establish a connection between Winnetou and Gnadenschuss. Which, of course, would have doubled our chances of catching him.”

“Is that all you’ve got?”

“Not by a long chalk. In the first letter he suggests that the veterans were not only a disgrace to the uniform, they also reminded everyone of the shame of Germany’s defeat. But in the second letter it seems the mission has changed and he’s intent merely on cleaning up Berlin’s streets. These are important questions to which I should like to have had some answers. Only, I don’t suppose he left a written confession.”

“You know he didn’t. A verdict of guilty was delivered by the people, a sentence of death—to be carried out immediately—was then pronounced and Kurt Reichenbach was hanged in the brewery yard. He made a poor end. Fear got the better of him: He tried to resist and then begged for his life, which reduced him even more in the eyes of those who were present. No one likes a coward. The body was cut down and taken away for disposal. I say disposal; I’m more or less certain the body was not buried. So I very much doubt that you could be taken to see it. The last time the people’s court carried out a capital sentence, the body was burned in secret. But if you’d been there you would have been convinced of his guilt, I can assure you.”

“Oh, I am. As a matter of fact I was convinced of his guilt before I came here tonight. Earlier this evening I found enough evidence in his car to send Reichenbach straight to the guillotine: principally the murder weapon—a hammer—and a scalping knife. I even have the pistol with which he shot those disabled war veterans. Short of seeing the word murderer chalked on his back, it couldn’t be more obvious.”

“Then I really don’t understand. What are you doing here? If you knew all that, why the hell did you shoot me?”

“Because I don’t believe in lynchings.”

“He got what he deserved. And how often can you say that these days? Do you honestly think the end result would have been different in the courts you serve?”

“You can dress it up any way you like, Angerstein, but that’s what it was. A lynching. And what he deserved most was a fair trial.”

“Because he was a cop?”

“Because he was a citizen. Even a rat like you deserves a fair trial.”

“And you say that even though you say you had ample evidence of his guilt.”

“Because I had evidence of his guilt. Sometimes being a cop is difficult because the law says the guilty get treated the same way as the innocent. It sticks in the throat a bit to respect the rights of a man who’s a piece of shit. But this republic will fall apart if we don’t stick to the legal process.”

“On the contrary. In this case I think there’s every chance the republic would fall apart if the legal process was observed. Can you imagine the scandal that would have resulted from the news that it was a serving police officer who carried out these murders? Moreover, a serving police officer who was a Jew? The nationalists would assume Christmas had come early this year. I can almost see the headlines in Der Angriff and the Völkischer Beobachter. Bernhard Weiss would be out. Maybe even Gennat. Albert Grzesinski, too, probably. And I doubt the SPD could hope to keep a government together for more than a few hours. Very probably there would have to be another federal election. With all the economic uncertainty that such a thing entails.

“Of course, it’s up to you what you tell the commissars. But if you’ll take my advice, Gunther, you’ll keep your mouth shut. This way everything can be swept neatly away and forgotten. In three months nobody will remember him or any of the people he killed. Not that you could use any of this against me in court, anyway. My lawyer would get any charges thrown out in a matter of minutes.”

“I don’t doubt that, either.”

“Then there’s the dead man’s wife. She’s a nurse, isn’t she? What do you think she’d prefer? To be known as the spouse of a multiple murderer? Or as the poor wife of a cop who disappeared, heroically, in the line of duty? Maybe you should ask her opinion before you go blundering down the road of absolute truth, Gunther. Can you imagine what her life would be like with every one of her friends knowing what her husband has done? Many would assume that she must have known something. Perhaps she did, at that. How could a wife not know that kind of thing? Take it from me, very soon she wouldn’t have any friends at all.

“And lastly, there’s the great German people. Do you think any of them give a damn if someone like Kurt Reichenbach gets a fair trial? Nobody thinks in terms of justice and the rule of law, so why should we? Ask a bus driver or a boot boy if he thinks it’s a good idea to spend thousands of taxpayers’ reichsmarks putting a man like that on trial, or if it’s better just to put him to death quietly. I think I know what they’d say.

“You’re guarding an empty safe, my friend. No one cares. The only people who profit from a trial are the lawyers and the newspapers. Not you. Not me. Not the ordinary man in the street.

“Well, that’s what happened. There isn’t anything else. You can take it or leave it.”

Erich Angerstein stood up and walked painfully to the telephone. “And now if you don’t mind, I’m going to call a doctor.” He gave me a quizzical look. “Unless you’re going to shoot me again. Are you going to shoot me again?” He gave me a cynical smile; it was the only type he seemed to have. “No, I thought not.”

That’s the trouble with listening to the devil; it turns out that his most impressive trick is to tell us exactly what we want to hear.

Angerstein picked up the candlestick and started to dial a number, which is when I started to walk out of there.

“Hey, stick around, Gunther. I’ll make it up to you. You’ll need another collar to help deflect the criticism that will come Kripo’s way when you don’t solve the Gnadenschuss case. I said if you helped me find Eva’s killer I’d give you the true facts about the Wolfmium factory fire. And I will. This will help you make commissar.”

But I was shaking my head.

“What’s the matter, Gunther? Don’t you want to be a commissar? Don’t you want to know the truth about what really happened back there?”

“I don’t want anything from you, Angerstein. Especially when it’s something as precious as the truth. Even truth sounds like a damned lie when it’s in your mouth. So I’d hate to have to rely on it or use it in any way to advance myself. If ever I make commissar, which I doubt, it will be as the result of my own doing.”

“Have it your own way. You’re a stubborn bastard if ever I met one. I almost admire you for it. It seems it’s true what they say: There’s no fool quite as foolish as an honest fool. But ask yourself this: One day, one day soon if I’m not mistaken, when you’re the only honest man left in Germany, who’ll know?”

I WAS BACK at the Alex the next day, going through the slippery motions of investigating a series of murders I had already solved, just for the sake of appearances. I didn’t doubt for a minute the truth of what Erich Angerstein had told me, not with two bullets in him; nor the cold pragmatic wisdom of my not telling Weiss or Gennat anything of what I’d discovered about Kurt Reichenbach. Angerstein was just as right about that in daylight as he’d been the previous night; identifying Reichenbach as Winnetou and Dr. Gnadenschuss looked like a quick way of bringing down not just Kripo, but also the fragile government coalition; another federal election so soon after the last one would have been a great opportunity for the German National People’s Party, the communists, the Workers’ Party, or even the Nazis. So I spent a dull, quiet afternoon in Records, as ordered, compiling a list of five potential suspects from the Stahlhelm for Ernst Gennat. It was a total waste of time, of course, but then again, so much of my job in the Murder Commission looked like it was going to be a waste of time, at least for the next few weeks. And the longer I spent going through the motions, the more I came to realize that my deception could only end when there occurred another unrelated murder for us to investigate. But when, after forty-eight hours none came, I told myself that the quickest way to divert attention from Dr. Gnadenschuss was by solving an existing murder case, if I could. It was fortunate that I had half an idea which case this might be.

IT WAS SOON OBVIOUS that Reichenbach had done nothing about arresting Hugo “Mustermann”—the man I’d recognized from Sing Sing, the same man who’d shot Willi Beckmann. Arresting him was now my secret priority. I telephoned the Office for Public Conveyances in Charlottenburg and asked them to check the owner of the yellow BMW Dixi, registration IA 17938. They told me that the car was owned by a man called Hugo Gediehn. On the face of it, this now looked like a straightforward bit of detective work. I’d seen the murder myself, and it doesn’t get much more straightforward than that. But there was something about it—a minor detail—I wanted to check out first with Brigitte Mölbling before I called on Hugo Gediehn.

I arranged to see her for lunch at Aschinger. It wasn’t just because I liked the beer at Aschinger that she and I met there, although I did. I wanted to ask her about the shooting and assumed that being on-site would help her to remember everything she’d seen on the street outside.

“But you already told me you saw the whole thing,” she said.

“I did. And I just found out the killer’s name and address from the Office of Public Conveyances. He has an apartment in Kreuzberg.”

“Are you going to arrest him?”

“Yes. As soon as you’ve helped me sort something out in my own head.”

“Me? I don’t see how I can help. You’ve got his name and address, what do you need from me?”

“The fact is, I didn’t pay too much attention to the dead man’s corpse. You told me that you came down here to check it wasn’t me lying on the street. Correct?”

“Yes. I did. Can you imagine that? Me being concerned about you?”

“I try to, when I’m alone and naked, but somehow it’s difficult to picture.”

“Shouldn’t be too difficult if you think of all the other pictures of me that ought to be in your head by now. The ones I wouldn’t like anyone else to see.”

I picked up her hand and kissed it.

“You mentioned seeing a tattoo on the dead man’s hand. A woman’s name. On the base of his thumb. You see, I didn’t see that.”

“That’s right. I did.”

“Can you remember what the name was?”

“No. I don’t remember very much, actually.”

“Was it Helga?”

“I don’t think so. Besides, there was too much blood for me to remember very much. It’s been preying on my mind ever since.”

“I guess that means I have to go to the city morgue and take a look for myself.”

“You mean that place by the zoo? On Hannoversche Strasse?”

“I do. Perhaps you could drive me there.”

“Now?”

“Sooner the better. Before someone claims Beckmann’s body.”

“All right.”

We found her car, another BMW Dixi, and drove west to the morgue. She parked out front, and I kissed her hand again.

“Will you wait here for me? I won’t be long.”

“If you like. But it’s open to the public, isn’t it?”

“It is. Only, I don’t recommend you go in. You wouldn’t like the show any more than you’d enjoy a hard-boiled egg rolled in sand.”

“Lots of people do go in there, don’t they? There are people going in there now.”

“Almost a million people just voted Nazi, but that doesn’t mean you should do what they do.”

“It can’t be that bad. Otherwise they wouldn’t let the public in, surely.”

“The Prussian state authorities let the public in because they want to scare them into submission. The sight of violent death is usually enough to cow the most rebellious spirits. Even in Berlin.”

“In case you hadn’t noticed, Gunther, I’m kind of rebellious myself. At least that’s what my father says. Maybe I’m not the little snowdrop you think I am.”

“If you’d just finished telling me that crime pays, I might recommend that you go in and see the sights, sure. But not otherwise. Look, angel, it simply hadn’t occurred to me you might want to go inside. If it had crossed my mind, I’d have caught the bus. Or taken the U-Bahn.”

“You’re beginning to sound suspiciously like a hero.”

“Maybe. And what kind of a knight in shining armor would I be if I didn’t try to talk the princess out of walking into the ogre’s castle?”

“I get that. And I’m grateful. But I like to think I can look after myself. Since my ex-husband started wearing my underwear instead of shining armor I’ve learned to be a lot tougher than people take me for. You included, it would seem.”

“That’s the trouble with real men, sugar. They expect women to behave like real women.”

She was already getting out of the Dixi. “That doesn’t mean you should treat them like they’re made of Venetian glass. Or is it just me you want to wrap in some tissue paper?”

“No, I’m against the existence of this place in general. It’s bad enough that there are so many men who remember how abominable things were in the trenches. I see no use for a public morgue in which we afford women and children an approximate sight of that same horror.”

“Maybe women should know something about this side of life.”

“All right. But bear this in mind. When it comes to seeing lots of dead people, your brain is like a camera with the shutter open. Everything gets recorded on the film. I was a schoolboy the first time I went in this place. I sneaked in, without permission. What I saw then has stayed with me forever. Somehow it always seems worse than anything I’ve seen since. So please don’t complain to me when you don’t sleep because you can’t destroy the negatives.”

She followed me inside and while I went to ask to see the body of Willi Beckmann, I left Brigitte to stroll around the morgue on her own. Maybe she was right. Thanks to people like George Grosz and his friends, you could probably see things that were just as unpleasant in the city’s modern art galleries.

Beckmann’s body contained more lead than Berlin’s water pipes. Fortunately for me, his right hand was one of the few parts of his body that had not been hit with a machine-gun bullet. So it took only a few minutes to satisfy my own curiosity; but rather longer than that for Brigitte to satisfy hers. I went outside, leaned against her car, and smoked a cigarette. When eventually she came out of the morgue she looked a little pale and was very quiet. Which was only to be expected, I thought.

“Well, that was horrible.”

“To say the least.”

“Is that all you’ve got to say?”

“See anyone you recognized?”

“Funny.”

“That’s why it exists. To help the cops identify the unidentifiable.”

“Did you find what you were looking for?” she asked, starting the engine.

“Yes.”

“Did he have a girl’s name tattooed on his hand?”

“He did.”

“Good. And was it Helga, after all?”

“Better than that. It was Frieda.”

“Where to?”

“I have to go back to the Alex.”

She turned the car around and drove east, on Lützowstrasse.

“Are you going to tell me about Frieda?”

After what she’d just seen I decided she could probably handle the whole story. I was wrong about that, too.

“About a year ago a man walking his dog in the Grünewald found some female body parts wrapped in butcher’s paper and buried in a shallow grave. There was no head. Just a torso, a foot, and a pair of hands. Which was thoughtful of the killer in that the girl’s fingerprints enabled us to identify her as Frieda Ahrendt, and they revealed that she had a record for petty theft. She also had the name Willi tattooed at the base of her thumb. In spite of all that, we never managed to find a family, a job, not even a last known address. And certainly not the murderer, who is probably still at large.”

“And you think Willi Beckmann—the man in the morgue—might be the same man.”

“I don’t think Willi Beckmann was dumb enough to chop her up and bury a severed hand that had his name on it. But it’s possible he could have told us something more about her. If he hadn’t been shot. Maybe enough to find her killer—the man the newspapers had dubbed the Grünewald Pork Butcher.” I’d already decided to visit Willi’s apartment in Tegel, to see what evidence I could find before I went looking for Hugo. “Who knows? Maybe he still can.”

Brigitte listened in silence and then said: “My God, the things that must be inside your head. You go looking at things that no one should ever have to see, with no idea of the effect it’s going to have on your mind, and all for not much money. I don’t think you even know why you do it. Do you?”

“Sure I know. Because I have nothing to say as a painter. Because I couldn’t finish my unfinished symphony. Because being a cop is a job for honest men, and since there are not many of those around these days, they’ll take anyone they can get.”

“Well, I think you’re crazy. And if you’re not, then you soon will be. Still, I suppose that’s what being a detective is all about.”

WILLI BECKMANN had lived in Tegel, part of the northwestern borough of Reinickendorf and not far from the giant Borsig locomotive works. The whole area was dominated by a modern red brick ziggurat that was the model for the New Tower of Babel in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. That had been a silent movie—with talking pictures now arriving on the scene, it already looked like a remnant from the past. As for the Borsig works, there was nothing futuristic about it; noisy and dirty, it seemed a throwback to an industrial Berlin that was fast disappearing. Willi’s apartment was on the top floor of a more traditional Berlin building with its mustard-yellow walls, red-tiled mansard roof, and a curving balcony that was home to a spectacular window box full of pink carnations, which possibly explained the buttonhole poor Willi had been wearing at the time of his death. The concierge admitted me to the apartment. He was a man of few words and those he had expressed a kind of awed pride in the size and layout of the accommodation.

“I’d forgotten what a nice big apartment this is,” he said. “All these rooms. And the ceilings so high. You could play tennis in here.”

He had very little curiosity about what I was doing there or indeed about Beckmann’s death. To my relief, he quickly left me alone.

There wasn’t a lot of furniture but what there was was good stuff—Biedermeier copies, mostly, and on the walls were prints of hunting scenes in the gardens of Schloss Tegel. Of course, the police had already been there searching for leads to the identity of the dead man’s murderer and, according to an official notice taped to the apartment door, they had taken away some photographs and papers.

Not knowing what they were looking for, they’d removed very little.

I had better luck. In a cylinder cabinet, I found a couple of photograph albums, and in these were pictures of a quartet of good friends. Several had been taken at a nearby restaurant on the edge of Lake Tegel. The quartet was made up of Willi Beckmann, Hugo Gediehn, Helga “Mustermann”—I still didn’t know her surname—and Frieda Ahrendt. What was clear from the photographs was that Hugo and Frieda had once been lovers. Some time after the photos were taken Frieda and Willi became lovers, which was when they each had the tattoos made. None of the pictures provided a neat explanation for Frieda’s murder, but they were all the excuse I needed to detain both Hugo and Helga. These four wouldn’t have been the first good companions to fall out violently. There’s nothing like an old friendship to provide a solid basis for a lasting enmity.

Since I had the free run of the apartment, I spent another hour raking through drawers and closets, which is how I found several letters addressed to Frieda from her loving sister, Leni in Hamburg. I wondered if Leni even knew her sister was dead. I was still short of an ironclad motive as to why two of the people in the pictures had been murdered, but everything else seemed to be falling into place.

Leni’s letter had included a telephone number and since there was still a working telephone in Willi’s apartment, I called her.

“Forgive me for telephoning you out of the blue like this,” I said, “but my name is Bernhard Gunther and I’m a detective with Berlin Kripo.” Choosing my words carefully, I added, “I’ve been investigating your sister’s disappearance.”

Leni sighed. “It’s all right, Herr Gunther. I know she’s dead. If she were alive she’d have contacted me. But it’s been almost a year. And I gave up all hope of ever seeing her again several months ago. We were very close, you see, always in touch. Also, the man she was living with in Berlin at the time of her disappearance, Willi Beckmann, he came to see me here in Hamburg and told me he thought she was dead, too.”

“But why didn’t you contact the police?”

“Willi said that for his sake and for mine we’d best not say anything about it to the police because the man who told him she was dead was a member of a criminal ring and very dangerous.”

“Did he say what that man’s name was?”

“He did. But I’m not going to repeat it now, even after all this time.”

“Willi Beckmann’s dead. Did you know that?”

“No.”

“The man who murdered him is called Hugo Gediehn. And I’m going to arrest him today or tomorrow. Is that the name Willi told you?”

“Yes, it is.”

“I have him cold for Willi’s murder.”

“May I ask how you know that?”

“Because I have a witness.”

“A witness who’ll stand up in court?”

“Yes.”

“Sure about that?”

“Yes. I’m the witness. I saw him pull the trigger on Willi. But he’s also my only suspect in your sister’s murder. Frankly, I was hoping you might be able to help me out there.” I paused, and hearing nothing, added, “You’ll be quite safe, I can assure you. No one need ever know I spoke to you.”

“How can I help?”

“I have a suspicion as to why Hugo killed your sister, but I have no real proof. Getting proof would be help enough, I think.”

“The why is quite simple. Hugo and Frieda were lovers. Then Willi enticed her away from Hugo—Willi was a very attractive man—and Hugo decided to get his revenge. Killed her. Buried her in a shallow grave somewhere. That much he told Willi. To torture him. Of course, Hugo knew that Willi was also in a ring, and that the last thing he could ever do was talk to the police. But I don’t understand, Herr Gunther. Why did Hugo kill Willi now, after all this time?”

“I can’t be sure, but I think it was because Willi went and stole Hugo’s new girl, Helga.”

“Makes sense, I suppose. If you’re looking for him, Hugo has an apartment in Kreuzberg. But I expect you know that.”

“Yes. I do.”

“Will you let me know what happens?”

“Of course.”

“Thanks. And good luck. Hugo being Hugo, you might need it.”

BACK AT THE ALEX I made out a good case for Hugo Gediehn’s arrest to Weiss and Gennat and, accompanied by several heavily armed uniformed officers, we proceeded to his apartment in Kreuzberg and took him into custody. To my surprise, he came with us quietly, saying very little except to insist we had the wrong man, a detail to which we might have paid more attention if it hadn’t been for the Bergmann MP-18 that was still in his car and my discovery in his desk drawer of a single souvenir photograph of Frieda’s severed hand, the one featuring the tattoo of Willi’s name. It was what the lawyers called prima facie evidence, which is just a fancy way of saying that as soon as Gediehn saw that we had the photograph, his expression changed and all the color drained from his face as if we’d introduced him to a pack of hungry wolves.

The rest of the day and half of the night was spent interrogating him and eventually he confessed to both murders, with no sign of remorse. If I’d known that the court would later sentence him to just fifteen years in prison I almost might not have bothered, but of course clearing up a couple of murders was only part of the reason I’d gone after him. There’s nothing like solving a cold case to deflect attention from several hot ones.

For days no one mentioned Dr. Gnadenschuss. Bernhard Weiss was able to call a press conference and make a big song and dance about the fact that Frieda Ahrendt’s case was almost a year old and to call for a little more patience when it came to reporting crime in the city. He even singled me out for praise, but this did little to allay my feelings of guilt at having covered up a greater crime.

Even Gennat offered me his congratulations although I could tell he was convinced that there was rather more to my tenacious detective work than met his eye. It was the elapse of time between my witnessing the murder of Willi Beckmann and the arrest of Hugo Gediehn that seemed to cause him the biggest problem.

“You had the car registration number, a description of the killer, and his Christian name—you almost had his shoe size—and yet you didn’t call it in,” he said. “I don’t get that. Suppose Hugo Gediehn had taken off? He could have slipped across the Polish border and we’d have been none the wiser.”

“It was a risk I was prepared to take.”

“That wasn’t your decision to make. And that’s not how this Commission operates. You should know that by now. You could have telephoned me or someone else in this department and dictated the car’s registration number without breaking your cover.”

“Look, when I saw Frieda’s name tattooed on Beckmann’s dead hand I wanted to see if I could make him a suspect for her murder. I couldn’t do any of that until I was through playing the klutz.”

“But Willi Beckmann wasn’t going anywhere,” objected Gennat. “He was dead. No, it looks very much as though you wanted to make yourself a hero. On the face of it, that would make you a glory seeker.”

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe I am. Maybe I decided that we need a bit of glory around here.”

“But only on the face of it. You’re not out for glory. Why say it when we both know it’s not true? That’s not who you are. I think I know you well enough to say that.”

“I don’t know where you’re going with this, sir. The Murder Commission just put two unsolved murders to bed. What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

“I was doing my job.”

“Come on, Gunther. You’re playing an angle here. Only, I can’t see it. And that irritates me, because I’m supposed to be smart. They don’t call me the Big Buddha for nothing.”

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

“Then I’ll spell it out for you. It’s the way this digs the Murder Commission out of a hole that I don’t like. It’s too convenient. All the bad press we were getting for not doing our jobs properly and now you come along and fix that overnight by solving two cases for the price of one. They’ll make you an inspector for this. Maybe give you a medal. Bernhard Weiss is ecstatic. So’s the minister.”

“But you’re not.”

“I’m a man with an ulcer. And when that’s not grumbling, I am. You’re a good detective, Gunther. One day you’ll be an excellent commissar. But you’re a man with secrets. That’s what I think. That there’s a lot more to you than meets the eye. I can’t help thinking that there’s a reason you solved these two murders when you did. And so very neatly it’s like they had pink bows on them.”

“A reason?”

“A reason. I haven’t figured out what that might be. But I will. And when I do I can promise you we’ll have this conversation again. Until then, try to remember this: You can’t cut corners in our business. And you can’t make deals with the truth. That’s good advice, from one who knows. Otherwise, one day you’ll try to do the right thing and discover you’re so out of practice you can’t.”

IT DID NOT, of course, go unremarked that Kurt Reichenbach, a serving detective, was missing. But Police Praesidiums are busy places and it wasn’t long before the buzz about his absence subsided to little more than a murmur. There were some at the Alex who ascribed his sudden disappearance to a nefarious Prussian land deal gone wrong, that he’d been obliged to disappear before he could be arrested by his own department. One or two mentioned a rich mistress in Charlottenburg and were adamant that he’d run away with her; someone even claimed to have seen him taking the waters in Marienbad. Others suggested that he’d been murdered by the Polish intelligence services as a result of his supposed acquaintance with the Weimar foreign minister, Gustav Stresemann, who hoped to annex the so-called Polish Corridor and much of Upper Silesia. (It transpired that Reichenbach had occasionally acted as Stresemann’s bodyguard and, at the foreign minister’s request, had once met with agents of the Soviet OGPU, who were collaborating with Stresemann in opposing Polish statehood.)

But the majority of the men in Kripo, including Bernhard Weiss, were convinced he’d been murdered by right-wing nationalists simply because he was a Jew. It wasn’t just German politicians who were attacked because they were Jews, as Weiss himself knew only too well; several German bankers and businessmen had also been attacked, one of them fatally. What was more certain was that if Kurt Reichenbach hadn’t been a Jew, then perhaps some of his Kripo colleagues would have tried a bit harder to find him. Without a body or a witness, however, it was soon a case of out of sight, out of mind.

Even Traudl Reichenbach seemed reluctant to demand answers to her husband’s sudden disappearance, and eventually I wondered if she’d actually known more about the Winnetou murders than any of us could have suspected. I kept thinking of the Brennabor and the contents of the car’s trunk: the hammer, the razor-sharp knife, the coat, and the hat with the piece of wig attached. How innocent were those? Would anyone other than a homicide detective like me ever have connected those objects with a series of vicious murders? Surely there must have been one night when she had suspected her husband was guilty of something unusual: some blood on his shirt cuff perhaps; a trace of another woman’s perfume on his collar; a single stray hair. A wife just knows these things, doesn’t she? And what about those human scalps? What had Kurt done with the scalps? I don’t suppose I’ll ever know. But did she know? If anyone could handle that, it was Traudl. Being a nurse, she was likely made of strong stuff, stronger stuff than most women, stronger stuff even than Brigitte Mölbling.

“ROBERT HAS INVITED me to his home in England,” Rosa told me. “To meet his mother and father.”

“That sounds serious,” I said.

“Oh, it’s nothing like that.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure. The minute you start speaking to parents you’ve got some innocent bystanders.”

“No. It’s just that he wants me to meet them because they’re very old.”

“So’s the Sabre of Charlemagne, but it’s not every girl I want to take to Vienna to see it.”

“It isn’t how you think it is.”

But of course it was; it always is. Four weeks later I received a gold-embossed invitation to their wedding in Oxford and I never saw either of them again. Later on, Frau Weitendorf told me they were going to live in Cairo, that Rankin had been offered a job teaching English at the university. I was glad for them both, of course, especially Rosa, not least because I still had Brigitte in my life; at least I thought I did.

Then one day, like Orpheus, I looked around expecting to see Eurydice and found she’d vanished. Brigitte had written me a letter that tried to explain why she was ending our relationship; she even offered to meet me to talk about it but I couldn’t see the point; it’s hard not to take that kind of letter personally.

“You know you should write a book on how to be a detective, angel,” I said out loud to no one except the ghost of Eurydice. “You almost make it sound interesting. From a metaphysical point of view.”

I burned her letter. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t had one before, and I suppose that before my time is up, I’ll have others. Never forget, always replace. That’s the first rule of human relationships. Moving on: This is the important part. Which is why later on I telephoned Fritz Lang’s wife.

“Thea, it’s Bernie Gunther. I was wondering if we might meet for dinner again. I’ve got some great ideas for your script.”