The Pale Criminal (14 page)

‘He's much the same,' I said.

‘Tell him to come and visit me sometime,' she said. ‘He can storm free with me any time he wants. Or just a nice massage. Yes, that's it. Tell him to come here for a nice rub. I give it to him myself.' She laughed loudly at the idea and lit a cigarette.

‘I'll tell him,' I said, wondering if I would, and wondering if she really cared one way or the other.

‘And you, Emil. Maybe you would like a little company? Maybe you would both like a rub yourselves, eh?'

I was about to broach the real purpose of our visit, but found that Becker was already clapping his hands and chuckling some more.

‘That's it,' he said, ‘let's relax a little. Be nice and friendly.' He glanced at me meaningfully. ‘We're not in a hurry are we, sir?'

I shrugged and shook my head.

‘Just as long as we don't forget why we came,' I said, trying not to sound like a prig.

Evona Wylezynska stood up and pressed a bell on the wall behind a curtain. She made a tutting noise, and said: ‘Why not just forget everything? That's why most of my gentlemen come here, to forget about their cares.'

While her back was turned Becker frowned and shook his head at me. I wasn't sure exactly what he meant.

Evona took the nape of my neck in the palm of her hand and began to knead the flesh there with fingers that were as strong as blacksmith's pincers.

‘There's a lot of tension here, Bernhard,' she informed me seductively.

‘I don't doubt it. You should see the cart they've got me pulling down at the Alex. Not to mention the number of passengers I've been asked to take.' It was my turn to glance meaningfully at Becker. Then I took Evona's fingers away from my neck and kissed them amicably. They smelt of iodine soap, and there are better olfactory aphrodisiacs than that.

Evona's girls walked slowly into the room like a troupe of circus horses. Some were wearing just slips and stockings, but mostly they were naked. They took up positions around Becker and myself, and started to smoke or to help themselves to drinks, almost as if we hadn't been there at all. It was more female flesh than I had seen in a long time, and I have to admit that my eyes would have branded the bodies of any ordinary women. But these girls were used to being eyed, and remained coolly undisturbed by our prurient stares. One picked up a dining chair and, setting it down in front of me, sat astride it so that I had as perfect a view of her genitals as I could have been expected to have wished for. She started flexing her bare buttocks against the seat of the chair for good measure.

Almost immediately Becker was on his feet and rubbing his hands together like the keenest of street-traders.

‘Well, this is very nice, isn't it?' Becker put his arms around a couple of the girls, his face growing redder with excitement. He glanced around the room and, not finding the face he was looking for, said: ‘Tell me, Evona, where is that lovely little child-bearing machine of a Jewess who used to work for you?'

‘You mean Esther. I'm afraid she had to go away.' We waited, but there was no sign of anything other than smoke coming from Evona's mouth to expand upon what she had said.

‘That's too bad,' said Becker. ‘I was telling my friend here just how nice she was.' He shrugged. ‘Never mind. Plenty more where she came from, eh?' Ignoring the look on my face, and still supported like a drunk by the two snappers, he turned and walked down the creaking corridor and into one of the bedrooms, leaving me alone with the rest of them.

‘And what is your preference, Bernhard?' Evona snapped her fingers and waved one of her girls forward. ‘This one and Esther are very much alike,' she said, taking hold of the girl's bare backside and turning it towards my face, smoothing it with the palm of her hand. ‘She has two vertebrae too many, so that her behind is a long way from her waist. Very beautiful, do you not think?'

‘Very beautiful,' I said, and patted the girl's marble-cool bottom politely. ‘But to be honest, I'm the old-fashioned type. I like a girl to have all her mind on me and not my wallet.'

Evona smiled. ‘No, I did not think you were the type.' She smacked the girl's behind like a favourite dog. ‘Go on, off you go. All of you.'

I watched them troop silently out of the room and felt something close to disappointment that I wasn't more like Becker. She seemed to sense this ambivalence.

‘You are not like Emil. He is attracted to any girl who will show him her fingernails. I think that one would fuck a cat with a broken back. How's your drink?'

I swirled it demonstratively. ‘Just fine,' I said.

‘Well, is there anything else that I can get you?'

I felt her bosom press against my arm and smiled down at what was hanging in the gallery. I lit a cigarette and looked her in the eye.

‘Don't pretend to be disappointed if I say that all I'm after is some information.'

She smiled, checking her advance, and reached for her drink. ‘What kind of information?'

‘I'm looking for a man, and before you rip a hole for the joke, the man I'm after is a killer, with four goals on the score-sheet.'

‘How can I help you? I run a whorehouse, not a private detective agency.'

‘It's not uncommon for a man to use one of your girls roughly.'

‘There's none of them wears velvet gloves, Bernhard, I'll tell you that much. Quite a lot of them figure that just because they've paid for the privilege, it gives them a licence to tear a girl's underwear.'

‘Someone who went beyond what is considered to be a normal hazard of the profession, then. Maybe one of your girls has had such a client. Or heard of someone who has.'

‘Tell me more about your killer.'

‘I don't know much,' I sighed. ‘I don't know his name, where he lives, where he came from or what he looks like. What I do know is that he likes tying up schoolgirls.'

‘Lots of men like tying girls up,' Evona said. ‘Don't ask me what they get out of it. There are even some who like to whip girls, although I don't permit that sort of thing. That kind of pig should be locked away.'

‘Look, anything might help. Right now there's not a great deal to go on.'

Evona shrugged, and stubbed out her cigarette. ‘What the hell,' she said. ‘I was a schoolgirl myself once. You said four girls.'

‘It may even be five. All aged about fifteen or sixteen. Nice families, and bright futures until this maniac kidnaps them, rapes them, cuts their throats and then dumps their naked bodies.'

Evona looked thoughtful. ‘There was something,' she said carefully. ‘Of course you realize that it's unlikely that the sort of man who comes to my place or any place like it is not the sort of man who preys on young girls. I mean, the point of a place like this is to take care of a man's needs.'

I nodded, but I was thinking of Kürten, and of how his case contradicted her. I decided not to press the point.

‘Like I said, it's a long shot.'

Evona stood up and excused herself for a moment. When she returned she was accompanied by the girl whose elongated backside I had been obliged to admire. This time she was wearing a gown, and seemed more nervous clothed than she had been while naked.

‘This is Helene,' Evona said, sitting down again. ‘Helene, sit down and tell the Kommissar about the man who tried to kill you.'

The girl sat down on the chair where Becker had been sitting. She was pretty in a tired sort of way, as if she didn't sleep enough, or was using some sort of drug. Hardly daring to look me in the eye she chewed her lip and tugged at a length of her long red hair.

‘Well, go on,' Evona urged. ‘He won't eat you. He had that chance earlier on.'

‘The man we're looking for likes to tie girls up,' I told her, leaning forward encouragingly. ‘Then he strangles them, or cuts their throats.'

‘I'm sorry,' she said after a minute. ‘This is hard for me. I wanted to forget all about it, but Evona says that some schoolgirls have been murdered. I want to help, really I do, but it's hard.'

I lit a cigarette and offered her the packet. She shook her head. ‘Take your time, Helene,' I said. ‘Is this a customer we're talking about? Someone who came for a massage?'

‘I won't have to go to court, will I? I'm not saying anything if it means standing up in front of a magistrate and saying I'm a party-girl.'

‘The only person you'll have to tell is me.'

The girl sniffed without much enthusiasm.

‘Well, you seem all right, I suppose.' She shot a look at the cigarette in my hand. ‘Can I change my mind about that nail?'

‘Sure,' I said, and held out the packet.

The first drag seemed to galvanize her. She smarted as she told the story, embarrassed a little, and probably a bit scared as well.

‘About a month ago I had a client in one evening. I gave him a massage and when I asked him if he wanted me to dial his number he asked me if he could tie me up and then get himself frenched. I said that it would cost him another twenty, and he agreed. So there I was, trussed up like a roast chicken, having finished frenching him, and I ask him to untie me. He gets this funny look in his eye, and calls me a dirty whore, or something like that. Well you get used to men going mean on you when you've finished, like they're ashamed of themselves, but I could see that this one was different, so I tried to stay calm. Then he got the knife out and start to lay it flat on my neck like he wanted me to be scared. Which I was. Fit to scream my lungs out of my throat, only I didn't want to scare him into cutting me right away, thinking that I might be able to talk him out of it.' She took another tremulous drag on her cigarette.

‘But that was just his cue to start throttling me, him thinking that I was about to scream, I mean. He grabbed hold of my windpipe and starts to choke me. If one of the other girls hadn't walked in there by mistake he'd have scratched me out and no mistake. I had the bruises on my neck for almost a week afterwards.'

‘What happened when the other girl came in?'

‘Well, I couldn't say for sure. I was more concerned with drawing breath than seeing that he got a taxi home all right, you know what I mean? As far as I know he just snatched up his things and got his smell out the door.'

‘What did he look like?'

‘He had a uniform on.'

‘What kind of uniform? Can you be a little more specific?'

She shrugged. ‘Who am I, Hermann Goering? Shit, I don't know what kind of uniform it was.'

‘Well was it green, black, brown or what? Come on, girl, think. It's important.'

She took a fierce drag and shook her head impatiently.

‘An old uniform. The sort they used to wear.'

‘You mean like a war veteran?'

‘Yes, that's the sort of thing, only a bit more — Prussian, I suppose. You know, the waxed moustache, the cavalry boots. Oh yes, I nearly forgot, he had spurs on.'

‘Spurs?'

‘Yes, like to ride a horse.'

‘Anything else you remember?'

‘He had a wineskin, on a string which he slung over his shoulder, so that it looked like a bugle at his hip. Only he said that it was full of schnapps.'

I nodded, satisfied, and leant back on the sofa, wondering what it would have been like to have had her after all. For the first time I noticed the yellowish discoloration of her hands which wasn't nicotine, jaundice or her temperament, but a clue that she'd been working in a munitions factory. In the same way I'd once identified a body pulled out of the Landwehr. Another thing I had learned from Hans Illmann.

‘Hey, listen,' said Helene, ‘if you get this bastard, make sure that he gets all the usual Gestapo hospitality, won't you? Thumbscrews and rubber truncheons?'

‘Lady,' I said, standing up, ‘you can depend on it. And thanks for helping.'

Helene stood up, her arms folded, and shrugged. ‘Yes, well, I was a schoolgirl myself once, you know what I mean?'

I glanced at Evona and smiled. ‘I know what you mean.' I jerked my head at the bedrooms along the corridor. ‘When Don Juan's concluded his investigations, tell him that I went to question the head-waiter at Peltzers. Then maybe I thought I'd talk to the manager at the Winter Garden and see what I could get out of him. After that I might just head back to the Alex and clean my gun. Who knows, I may even find time to do a little police work along the way.'

‘Where are you from, Gottfried?'

The man smiled proudly. ‘Eger, in the Sudetenland. Another few weeks and you can call it Germany.'

‘Foolhardy is what I call it,' I said. ‘Another few weeks and your Sudetendeutsche Partei will have us all at war. Martial law has already been declared in most SDP districts.'

‘Men must die for what they believe in.' He leant back on his chair and dragged a spur along the floor of the interrogation room. I stood up, loosening my shirt collar, and moved out of the shaft of sunlight that shone through the window. It was a hot day. Too hot to be wearing a jacket, let alone the uniform of an old Prussian cavalry officer. Gottfried Bautz, arrested early that same morning, didn't seem to notice the heat, although his waxed moustache was beginning to show signs of a willingness to stand easy.

‘What about women?' I asked. ‘Do they have to die as well?'

His eyes narrowed. ‘I think that you had better tell me why I have been brought here, don't you, Herr Kommissar?'

‘Have you ever been to a massage parlour on Richard Wagner Strasse?'