The Pale Criminal (15 page)

‘No, I don't think so.'

‘You're a difficult man to forget, Gottfried. I doubt that you could have made yourself look any easier to remember than if you had rode up the stairs on a white stallion. Incidentally, why do you wear the uniform?'

‘I served Germany, and I'm proud of it. Why shouldn't I wear a uniform?'

I started to say something about the war being over, but there didn't seem like much point, what with another one on the way, and Gottfried being such a spinner.

‘So,' I said. ‘Were you at the massage parlour on Richard Wagner Strasse, or not?'

‘Maybe. One doesn't always remember the exact locations of places like that. I don't make a habit of — '

‘Spare me the character reference. One of the girls there says that you tried to kill her.'

‘That's preposterous.'

‘She's quite adamant, I'm afraid.'

‘Has this girl made a complaint against me?'

‘Yes, she has.'

Gottfried Bautz chuckled smugly. ‘Come now, Herr Kommissar. We both know that's not true. In the first place there hasn't been an identification parade. And in the second, even if there was, there's not a snapper in the whole of Germany who would report so much as a lost poodle. No complaint, no witness, and I fail to see why we're having this conversation at all.'

‘She says that you tied her up like a hog, nudged her mouth and then tried to strangle her.'

‘She says, she says. Look, what is this shit? It's my word against hers.'

‘You're forgetting the witness, aren't you, Gottfried? The girl who came in while you were squeezing the shit out of the other one? Like I said, you're not an easy man to forget.'

‘I'm prepared to let a court decide who is telling the truth here,' he said. ‘Me, a man who fought for his country, or a couple of stupid little honeybees. Are they prepared to do the same?' He was shouting now, sweat starting off his forehead like pastry-glaze. ‘You're just pecking at vomit, and you know it.'

I sat down again and aimed my forefinger at the centre of his face.

‘Don't get smart, Gottfried. Not in here. The Alex breaks more skin that way than Max Schmelling, and you don't always get to go back to your dressing-room at the end of the fight.' I folded my hands behind my head, leant back and looked nonchalantly up at the ceiling. ‘Take my word for it, Gottfried. This little bee isn't so dumb that she won't do exactly what I tell her to do. If I tell her to french the magistrate in open court she'll do it. Understand?'

‘You can go fuck yourself, then,' he snarled. ‘I mean, if you're going to custom-build me a cage then I don't see that you need me to cut you a key. Why the hell should I answer any of your questions?'

‘Please yourself. I'm not in any hurry. Me, I'll go back home, take a nice hot bath, get a good night's sleep. Then I'll come back here and see what kind of an evening you've had. Well, what can I say? They don't call this place Grey Misery for nothing.'

‘All right, all right,' he groaned. ‘Go ahead and ask your lousy questions.'

‘We searched your room.'

‘Like it?'

‘Not as much as the bugs you share with. We found some rope. My inspector thinks it's the special strangling kind you buy at Ka-De-We. On the other hand it could be the kind you use to tie someone up.'

‘Or it could be the sort of rope I use in my job. I work for Rochling's Furniture Removals.'

‘Yes, I checked. But why take a length of rope home with you? Why not just leave it in the van?'

‘I was going to hang myself.'

‘What changed your mind?'

‘I thought about it awhile, and then things didn't seem quite so bad. That was before I met you.'

‘What about the bloodstained cloth we found in a bag underneath your bed?'

‘That? Menstrual blood. An acquaintance of mine, she had a small accident. I meant to burn it, but I forgot.'

‘Can you prove that? Will this acquaintance corroborate your story?'

‘Unfortunately I can't tell you very much about her, Kommissar. A casual thing, you understand.' He paused. ‘But surely there are scientific tests which will substantiate what I say?'

‘Tests will determine whether or not it is human blood. But I don't think there's anything as precise as you are suggesting. I can't say for sure, I'm not a pathologist.'

I stood up again and went over to the window. I found my cigarettes and lit one.

‘Smoke?' He nodded and I threw the packet on to the table. I let him get his first breath of it before I tossed him the grenade. ‘I'm investigating the murders of four, possibly five young girls,' I said quietly. ‘That's why you're here now. Assisting us with our inquiries, as they say.'

Gottfried stood up quickly, his tongue tamping down his lower lip, the cigarette rolling on the table where he had thrown it. He started to shake his head and didn't stop.

‘No, no, no. No, you've got the wrong man. I know absolutely nothing of this. Please, you've got to believe me. I'm innocent.'

‘What about that girl you raped in Dresden, in 1931? You were in the cement for that, weren't you, Gottfried? You see, I've checked your record.'

‘It was statutory rape. The girl was under age, that's all. I didn't know. She consented.'

‘Now let's see, how old was she again? Fifteen? Sixteen? That's about the same age as the girls who've been murdered. You know, maybe you just like them young. You feel ashamed of what you are, and transfer your guilt to them. How can they make you do these things?'

‘No, it's not true, I swear it -'

‘How can they be so disgusting? How can they provoke you so shamelessly?'

‘Stop it, for Christ's sake — '

‘You're innocent. Don't make me laugh. Your innocence isn't worth shit in the gutter, Gottfried. Innocence is for decent, law-abiding citizens, not the kind of sewer-rat like you who tries to strangle a girl in a massage parlour. Now sit down and shut up.'

He rocked on his heels for a moment, and then sat down heavily. ‘I didn't kill anyone,' he muttered. ‘Whichever way you want to cut it, I'm innocent, I tell you.'

‘That you may be,' I said. ‘But I'm afraid I can't plane a piece of wood without dropping a few shavings. So, innocent or not, I've got to keep you for a while. At least until I can check you out.' I picked up my jacket and walked to the door.

‘One last question for the moment,' I said. ‘I don't suppose you own a car, do you?'

‘On my pay? You are joking, aren't you?'

‘What about the furniture van. Are you the driver?'

‘Yes. I'm the driver.'

‘Ever use it in the evenings?' He stayed silent. I shrugged and said: ‘Well, I suppose I can always ask your employer.'

‘It's not allowed, but sometimes I do use it, yes. Do a bit of private contracting, that sort of thing.' He looked squarely at me. ‘But I never used it to kill anyone in, if that's what you were suggesting.'

‘It wasn't, as it happens. But thanks for the idea.'

 

I sat in Arthur Nebe's office and waited for him to finish his telephone call. His face was grave when finally he replaced the receiver. I was about to say something when he raised his finger to his lips, opened his desk drawer and took out a tea-cosy with which he covered the phone.

‘What's that for?'

‘There's a wire on the telephone. Heydrich's, I suppose, but who can tell? The tea-cosy keeps our conversation private.' He leant back in his chair underneath a picture of the Fiihrer and uttered a long and weary sigh. ‘That was one of my men calling from the Berchtesgaden,' he said. ‘Hitler's talks with the British prime minister don't seem to be going particularly well. I don't think our beloved Chancellor of Germany cares if there's war with England or not. He's conceding absolutely nothing.

‘Of course he doesn't give a damn about these Sudeten Germans. This nationalist thing is just a cover. Everyone knows it. It's all that Austro-Hungarian heavy industry that he wants. That he needs, if he's going to fight a European war. God, I wish he had to deal with someone stronger than Chamberlain. He brought his umbrella with him you know. Bloody little bank manager.'

‘Do you think so? I'd say the umbrella denotes quite a sensible sort of man. Can you really imagine Hitler or Goebbels ever managing to stir up a crowd of men carrying umbrellas? It's the very absurdity of the British which makes them so impossible to radicalize. And why we should envy them.'

‘It's a nice idea,' he said, smiling reflectively. ‘But tell me about this fellow you've arrested. Think he might be our man?'

I glanced around the room for a moment, hoping to find greater conviction on the walls and the ceiling, and then lifted my hands almost as if I meant to disclaim Gottfried Bautz's presence in a cell downstairs.

‘From a circumstantial point of view, he could fit the laundry list.' I rationed myself to one sigh. ‘But there's nothing that definitely connects him. The rope we found in his room is the same type as the rope that was used to bind the feet of one of the dead girls. But then it's a very common type of rope. We use the same kind here at the Alex.

‘Some cloth we found underneath his bed could be stained with blood from one of his victims. Equally, it could be menstrual blood, as he claims. He has access to a van in which he could have transported and killed his victims relatively easily. I've got some of the boys checking it over now, but so far it appears to be as clean as a dentist's fingers.

‘And then of course there is his record. We've locked his door once before for a sexual offence — a statutory rape. More recently he probably tried to strangle a snapper he'd first persuaded to be tied up. So he could fit the psychological bill of the man we're looking for.' I shook my head. ‘But that's more “could-be” than Fritz fucking Lang. What I want is some real evidence.'

Nebe nodded sagely and put his boots on the desk. Tapping his fingers' ends together, he said: ‘Could you build a case? Break him?'

‘He's not stupid. It will take time. I'm not that good an interrogator, and I'm not about to take any short-cuts either. The last thing I want on this case is broken teeth on the charge sheet. That's how Josef Kahn got himself folded away and put in the costume-hire hospital.' I helped myself from the box of American cigarettes on Nebe's desk and lit one with an enormous brass table lighter, a present from Goering. The prime minister was always giving away cigarette lighters to people who had done him some small service. He used them like a nanny uses boiled sweets.

‘Incidentally, has he been released yet?'

Nebe's lean face adopted a pained expression. ‘No, not yet,' he said.

‘I know it's considered only a small detail, the fact that he hasn't actually murdered anyone, but don't you think it's time he should be let out? We still have some standards left, don't we?'

He stood up and came round the desk to stand in front of me.

‘You're not going to like this, Bernie,' he said. ‘No more than I do myself.'

‘Why should this be an exception? I figure that the only reason there aren't any mirrors in the lavatories is so that nobody has to look himself in the eye. They're not going to release him, right?'

Nebe leant against the side of the desk, folded his arms and stared at the toes of his boots for a minute.

‘Worse than that, I'm afraid. He's dead.'

‘What happened?'

‘Officially?'

‘You can give it a shot.'

‘Josef Kahn took his own life while the balance of his mind was disturbed.'

‘I can see how that would read nicely. But you know different, right?'

‘I don't know anything for certain.' He shrugged. ‘So call it informed guesswork. I hear things, I read things and I make a few reasonable conclusions. Naturally as Reichskriminaldirektor I have access to all kinds of secret decrees in the Ministry of the Interior.' He took a cigarette and lit it. ‘Usually these are camouflaged with all sorts of neutral-sounding bureaucratic names.

‘Well then, at the present moment there's a move to establish a new committee for the research of severe constitutional disease — '

‘You mean like what this country is suffering from?'

‘ — with the aim of encouraging “positive eugenics, in accordance with the Führer's thoughts on the subject”.' He waved his cigarette at the portrait on the wall behind him. ‘Whenever you read that phrase “the Führer's thoughts on the subject”, one knows to pick up one's well-read copy of his book. And there you will find that he talks about using the most modern medical means at our disposal to prevent the physically degenerate and mentally sick from contaminating the future health of the race.'

‘Well, what the hell does that mean?'

‘I had assumed it meant that such unfortunates would simply be prevented from having families. I mean, that does seem sensible, doesn't it? If they are incapable of looking after themselves then they can hardly be fit to bring up children.'

‘It doesn't seem to have deterred the Hitler Youth leaders.'

Nebe snorted and went back round his desk. ‘You're going to have to watch your mouth, Bernie,' he said, half-amused.

‘Get to the funny bit.'

‘Well, it's this. A number of recent reports, complaints if you like, made to Kripo by those related to institutionalized people leads me to suspect that some sort of mercy-killing is already being unofficially practised.'