The Pale Criminal (5 page)

‘How are you sleeping?' he said.

‘Badly. Couple of hours a night.'

‘Do you ever have nightmares?'

‘Yes, and I don't even like cheese.'

‘Any recurring dreams?'

‘Nothing specific.'

‘And what about your appetite?'

‘I don't have one to speak of.'

‘Your sex life?'

‘Same as my appetite. Not worth mentioning.'

‘Do you think much about women?'

‘All the time.'

He scribbled a few notes, stroked his beard, and said: ‘I'm prescribing extra vitamins and minerals, especially magnesium. I'm also going to put you on a sugar-free diet, lots of raw vegetables and kelp. We'll help get rid of some of the toxins in you with a course of blood-purification tablets. I also recommend that you exercise. There's an excellent swimming-pool here, and you may even care to try a rainwater bath, which you'll find to be most invigorating. Do you smoke?' I nodded. ‘Try giving up for a while.' He snapped his notebook shut.

‘Well, that should all help with your physical well-being. Along the way we'll see if we can't effect some improvement in your mental state with psychotherapeutic treatment.'

‘Exactly what is psychotherapy, Doctor? Forgive me, but I thought that the Nazis had branded it as decadent.'

‘Oh no, no. Psychotherapy is not psychoanalysis. It places no reliance on the unconscious mind. That sort of thing is all right for Jews, but it has no relevance to Germans. As you yourself will now appreciate, no psychotherapeutic treatment is ever pursued in isolation from the body. Here we aim to relieve the symptoms of mental disorder by adjusting the attitudes that have led to their occurrence. Attitudes are conditioned by personality, and the relation of a personality to its environment. Your dreams are only of interest to me to the extent that you are having them at all. To treat you by attempting to interpret your dreams, and to discover their sexual significance is, quite frankly, nonsensical. Now that is decadent.' He chuckled warmly. ‘But that's a problem for Jews, and not you, Herr Strauss. Right now, the most important thing is that you enjoy a good night's sleep.' So saying he picked up his medical bag and took out a syringe and a small bottle which he placed on the bedside table.

‘What's that?' I said uncertainly.

‘Hyoscine,' he said, rubbing my arm with a pad of surgical spirit.

The injection felt cold as it crept up my arm, like embalming fluid. Seconds after recognizing that I would have to find another night on which to snoop around Kindermann's clinic, I felt the ropes mooring me to consciousness slacken, and I was adrift, moving slowly away from the shore, Meyer's voice already too far away for me to hear what he was saying.

 

After four days in the clinic I was feeling better than I had felt in four months. As well as my vitamins, and my diet of kelp and raw vegetables, I'd tried hydrotherapy, naturotherapy and a solarium treatment. My state of health had been further diagnosed through examination of my irises, my palms and my fingernails, which revealed me as calcium-deficient; and a technique of autogenic relaxation had been taught to me. Dr Meyer was making progress with his Jungian ‘totality approach', as he called it, and was proposing to attack my depression with electrotherapy. And although I hadn't yet managed to search Kindermann's office, I did have a new nurse, a real beauty called Marianne, who remembered Reinhard Lange staying at the clinic for several months, and had already demonstrated a willingness to discuss her employer and the affairs of the clinic.

She woke me at seven with a glass of grapefruit juice and an almost veterinary selection of pills.

Enjoying the curve of her buttocks and the stretch of her pendulous breasts, I watched her draw back the curtains to reveal a fine sunny day, and wished that she could have revealed her naked body as easily.

‘And how are you this beautiful day?' I said.

‘Awful,' she grimaced.

‘Marianne, you know it's supposed to be the other way around, don't you? I'm the one who is supposed to feel awful, and you're the one who should ask after my health.'

‘I'm sorry, Herr Strauss, but I am bored as hell with this place.'

‘Well, why don't you jump in here beside me and tell me all about it. I'm very good at listening to other people's problems.'

‘I'll bet you're very good at other things as well,' she said, laughing. ‘I shall have to put bromide in your fruit-juice.'

‘What would be the point of that? I've already got a whole pharmacy swilling around inside of me. I can't see that another chemical would make much difference.'

‘You'd be surprised.'

She was a tall, athletic-looking blonde from Frankfurt with a nervous sense of humour and a rather self-conscious smile that indicated a lack of personal confidence. Which was strange, given her obvious attractiveness.

‘A whole pharmacy,' she scoffed. ‘A few vitamins and something to help you sleep at night. That's nothing compared with some of the others.'

‘Tell me about it.'

She shrugged. ‘Something to help them wake up, and stimulants to help combat depression.'

‘What do they use on the pansies?'

‘Oh, them. They used to give them hormones, but it didn't work. So now they try aversion therapy. But despite what they say at the Goering Institute about it being a treatable disorder, in private all the doctors say that the basic condition is hard to influence. Kindermann should know. I think he might be a bit warm himself. I've heard him tell a patient that psychotherapy is only helpful in dealing with the neurotic reactions that may arise from homosexuality. That it helps the patient to stop deluding himself.'

‘So then all he has to worry about is Section 175.'

‘What's that?'

“The section of the German penal code which makes it a criminal offence. Is that what happened to Reinhard Lange? He was just treated for associated neurotic reactions?' She nodded, and sat herself on the edge of my bed. ‘Tell me about this Goering Institute. Any relation to Fat Hermann?'

‘Matthias Goering is his cousin. The place exists to provide psychotherapy with the protection of the Goering name. If it weren't for him there would be very little mental health in Germany worthy of the name. The Nazis would have destroyed psychiatric medicine merely because its leading light is a Jew. The whole thing is the most enormous piece of hypocrisy. A lot of them continue privately to subscribe to Freud, while denouncing him in public. Even the so-called Orthopaedic Hospital for the SS near Ravensbrück is nothing but a mental hospital for the SS. Kindermann is a consultant there, as well as being one of the Goering Institute's founding members.'

‘So who funds the Institute?'

‘The Labour Front, and the Luftwaffe.'

‘Of course. The prime minister's petty-cash box.'

Marianne's eyes narrowed. ‘You know, you ask a lot of questions. What are you, a bull or something like that?'

I got out of bed and slipped into my dressing-gown. I said: ‘Something like that.'

‘Are you working on a case here?' Her eyes widened with excitement. ‘Something Kindermann could be involved in?'

I opened the window and leant out for a moment. The morning air was good to breathe, even the stuff coming up from the kitchens. But a cigarette was better. I brought my last packet in from the window ledge and lit one. Marianne's eyes lingered disapprovingly on the cigarette in my hand.

‘You shouldn't be smoking, you know.'

‘I don't know if Kindermann is involved or not,' I said. ‘That's what I was hoping to find out when I came here.'

‘Well, you don't have to worry about me,' she said fiercely. ‘I couldn't care what happens to him.' She stood up with her arms folded, her mouth assuming a harder expression. ‘The man is a bastard. You know, just a few weeks ago I worked a whole weekend because nobody else was available. He said he'd pay me double-time in cash. But he still hasn't given me my money. That's the kind of pig he is. I bought a dress. It was stupid of me, I should have waited. Well, now I'm behind with the rent.'

I was debating with myself whether or not she was trying to sell me a story when I saw the tears in her eyes. If it was an act it was a damn good one. Either way it deserved some kind of recognition.

She blew her nose, and said: ‘Would you give me a cigarette, please?'

‘Sure.' I handed her the pack and then thumbed a match.

‘You know, Kindermann knew Freud,' she said, coughing a little with her first smoke. ‘At the Vienna Medical School, when he was a student. After graduating he worked for a while at the Salzburg Mental Asylum. He's from Salzburg originally. When his uncle died in 1930, he left him this house, and he decided to turn it into a clinic.'

‘It sounds like you know him quite well.'

‘Last summer his secretary was sick for a couple of weeks. Kindermann knew I had some secretarial experience and asked me to fill in a while while Tarja was away. I got to know him reasonably well. Well enough to dislike him. I'm not going to stay here much longer. I've had enough, I think. Believe me, there are plenty of others here who feel much the same way.'

‘Oh? Think anyone would want to get back at him? Anyone who might have a grudge against him?'

‘You're talking about a serious grudge, aren't you? Not just a bit of unpaid overtime.'

‘I suppose so,' I said, and flicked my cigarette out of the open window.

Marianne shook her head. ‘No, wait,' she said. ‘There was someone. About three months ago Kindermann dismissed one of the male nurses for being drunk. He was a nasty piece of work, and I don't think anyone was sad to see him go. I wasn't there myself, but I heard that he used some quite strong language to Kindermann when he left.'

‘What was his name, this male nurse?'

‘Hering, Klaus Hering I think.' She looked at her watch. ‘Hey, I've got to be getting on with my work. I can't stay talking to you all morning.'

‘One more thing,' I said. ‘I need to take a look around Kindermann's office. Can you help?' She started to shake her head. ‘I can't do it without you, Marianne. Tonight?'

‘I don't know. What if we get caught?'

‘The “we” part doesn't come into it. You keep a look-out, and if someone finds you, you say that you heard a noise, and that you were investigating. I'll have to take my chances. Maybe I'll say I was sleepwalking.'

‘Oh, that's a good one.'

‘Come on, Marianne, what do you say?'

‘All right, I'll do it. But leave it until after midnight, that's when we lock up. I'll meet you in the solarium at around 12.30.'

Her expression changed as she saw me slide a fifty from my wallet. I crushed it into the breast pocket of her crisp white uniform. She took it out again.

‘I can't take this,' she said. ‘You shouldn't.' I held her fist shut to stop her returning the note.

‘Look, it's just something to help tide you over, at least until you get paid for your overtime.' She looked doubtful.

‘I don't know,' she said. ‘It doesn't seem right somehow. This is as much as I make in a week. It'll do a lot more than just tide me over.'

‘Marianne,' I said, ‘it's nice to make ends meet, but it's even nicer if you can tie a bow.'

‘The doctor told me that the electrotherapy has the temporary side-effect of disturbing the memory. Otherwise I feel great.'

Bruno looked at me anxiously. ‘You're sure?'

‘Never felt better.'

‘Well, rather you than me, being plugged in like that.' He snorted. ‘So whatever you managed to find out while you were in Kindermann's place is temporarily mislaid inside your head, is that it?'

‘It's not quite that bad. I managed to take a look around his office. And there was a very attractive nurse who told me all about him. Kindermann is a lecturer at the Luftwaffe Medical School, and a consultant at the Party's private clinic in Bleibtreustrasse. Not to mention his membership of the Nazi Doctors Association, and the Herrenklub.'

Bruno shrugged. ‘The man is gold-plated. So what?'

‘Gold-plated, but not exactly treasured. He isn't very popular with his staff. I found out the name of someone who he sacked and who might be the type to bear him a grudge.'

‘It's not much of a reason, is it? Being sacked?'

‘According to my nurse, Marianne, it was common knowledge that he got the push for stealing drugs from the clinic dispensary. That he was probably selling them on the street. So he wasn't exactly the Salvation Army type, was he?'

‘This fellow have a name?'

I thought hard for a moment, and then produced my notebook from my pocket. ‘It's all right,' I said, ‘I wrote it down.'

‘A detective with a crippled memory. That's just great.'

‘Slow your blood down, I've got it. His name is Klaus Hering.'

‘I'll see if the Alex has anything on him.' He picked up the telephone and made the call. It only took a couple of minutes. We paid a bull fifty marks a month for the service. But Klaus Hering was clean.

‘So where is the money supposed to go?'

He handed me the anonymous note which Frau Lange had received the previous day and which had prompted Bruno to telephone me at the clinic.

‘The lady's chauffeur brought it round here himself,' he explained, as I read over the blackmailer's latest composition of threats and instructions. ‘A thousand marks to be placed in a Gerson carrier-bag and left in a wastepaper basket outside the Chicken House at the Zoo, this afternoon.'