Philip Kerr - Berlin Noir

‘Come on,’ I growled. ‘Let’s get this Kit-Kat showgirl back to her hotel.’

We had not exaggerated about the night tank at the Alex. It’s probably the same in every big city police station. But since the Alex is a very big city police station indeed, it followed that the tank there is also very big. In fact it is huge, as big as an average cinema theatre, except that there are no seats. Nor are there any bunks, or windows, or ventilation. There’s just the dirty floor, the dirty latrine buckets, the dirty bars, the dirty people and the lice. The Gestapo kept a lot of detainees there for whom there was no room at Prinz Albrecht Strasse. Orpo put the night’s drunks in there to fight, puke, and sleep it off. Kripo used the place like the Gestapo used the canal: as a toilet for its human refuse. A terrible place for a human being. Even one like Reinhard Lange. I had to keep reminding myself of what it was that he and his friends had done, of Emmeline Steininger, sitting in that barrel like so many rotten potatoes. Some of the prisoners whistled and blew kisses when they saw us bring him down, and Lange turned pale with fright.

‘My God, you’re not going to leave me here,’ he said, clutching at my arm.

‘Then unpack it,’ I said. ‘Weisthor, Rahn, Kindermann. A signed statement, and you can get a nice cell to yourself.’

‘I can’t, I can’t. You don’t know what they’ll do to me.’

‘No,’ I said, and nodded at the men behind the bars, ‘but I know what they’ll do to you.’

The lock-up sergeant opened the enormous heavy cage and stood back as Becker pushed him into the tank.

His cries were still ringing in my ears by the time I got back to Steglitz.

Hildegard lay asleep on the sofa, her hair spread across the cushion like the dorsal fin of some exotic golden fish. I sat down, ran my hand across its smooth silkiness, and then kissed her forehead, catching the drink on her breath as I did so. Stirring, her eyes blinked open, sad and crusted with tears. She put her hand on my cheek and then on to the back of my neck, pulling me down to her mouth.

‘I have to talk to you,’ I said, holding back.

She pressed her finger against my lips. ‘I know she’s dead,’ she said. ‘I’ve done all my crying. There’s no more water in the well.’.

She smiled sadly, and I kissed each eyelid tenderly, smoothing her scented hair with the palm of my hand, nuzzling at her ear, chewing the side of her neck as her arms held me close, and closer still.

‘You’ve had a ghastly evening too,’ she said gently. ‘Haven’t you, darling?’

‘Ghastly,’ I said.

‘I was worried about you going back to that awful house.’

‘Let’s not talk about it.’

‘Put me to bed, Bernie.’

She put her arms around my neck and I gathered her up, folding her against my body like an invalid and carrying her into the bedroom. I sat her down on jhe edge of the bed and started to unbutton her blouse. When that was off she sighed and fell back against the quilt: slightly drunk I thought, unzipping her skirt and tugging it smoothly down her stockinged legs. Pulling down her slip I kissed her small breasts, her stomach and then the inside of her thighs. But her pants seemed to be too tight, or caught between her buttocks, and resisted my pulling. I asked her to lift her bottom.

‘Tear them,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Tear them off. Hurt me, Bernie. Use me.’ She spoke with breathless urgency, her thighs opening and closing like the jaws of some enormous praying mantis.

‘Hildegard-’

She struck me hard across the mouth.

‘Listen, damn you. Hurt me when I tell you.’

I caught her wrist as she struck again.

‘I’ve had enough for one evening.’ I caught her other arm. ‘Stop it.’

‘Please, you must.’

I shook my head, but her legs wrapped around my waist and my kidneys winced as her strong thighs squeezed tight.

‘Stop it, for God’s sake.’

‘Hit me, you stupid ugly bastard. Did I tell you that you were stupid, too? A typical bone-headed bull. If you were a man you’d rape me. But you haven’t got it in you, have you?’

‘If it’s a sense of grief you’re after, then we’ll take a drive down to the morgue.’ I shook my head and pushed her thighs apart and then away from me. ‘But not like this. It should be with love.’

She stopped writhing and for a moment seemed to recognize the truth of what I was saying. Smiling, then raising her mouth to me, she spat in my face.

After that there was nothing for it but to leave.

There was a knot in my stomach that was as cold and lonely as my apartment on Fasanenstrasse, and almost immediately I arrived home again I enlisted a bottle of brandy in dissolving it. Someone once said that happiness is that which is negative, the mere abolition of desire and the extinction of pain. The brandy helped a little. But before I dropped off to sleep, still wearing my overcoat and sitting in my armchair, I think I realized just how positively I had been affected.

Sunday, 6 November

Survival, especially in these difficult times, has to count as some sort of an achievement. It’s not something that comes easily. Life in Nazi Germany demands that you keep working at it. But, having done that much, you’re left with the problem of giving it some purpose. After all, what good is health and security if your life has no meaning?

This wasn’t just me feeling sorry for myself. Like a lot of other people I genuinely believe that there is always someone who is worse off. In this case however, I knew it for a fact. The Jews were already persecuted, but if Weisthor had his way their suffering was about to be taken to a new extreme. In which case what did that say about them and us together? In what condition was that likely to leave Germany?

It’s true, I told myself, that it was not my concern, and that the Jews had brought it on themselves; but even if that were the case, what was our pleasure beside their pain? Was our life any sweeter at their expense? Did my freedom feel any better as a result of their persecution?

The more I thought about it, the more I realized the urgency not only of stopping the killings, but also of frustrating Weisthor’s declared aim of bringing hell down on Jewish heads, and the more I felt that to do otherwise would leave me degraded in equal measure.

I’m no knight in shining armour. Just a weather-beaten man in a crumpled overcoat on a street corner with only a grey idea of something you might as well go ahead and call Morality. Sure, I’m none too scrupulous about the things that might benefit my pocket, and I could no more inspire a bunch of young thugs to do good works than I could stand up and sing a solo in the church choir. But of one thing I was sure. I was through looking at my fingernails when there were thieves in the store.

I tossed the pile of letters on to the table in front of me.

‘We found these when we searched your house,’ I said.

A very tired and dishevelled Reinhard Lange regarded them without much interest.

‘Perhaps you’d care to tell me how these came to be in your possession?’

‘They’re mine,’ he shrugged. ‘I don’t deny it.’ He sighed and dropped his head on to his hands. ‘Look, I’ve signed your statement. What more do you want? I’ve cooperated, haven’t I?’

‘We’re nearly finished, Reinhard. There’s just a loose end or two I want tied up. Like who killed Klaus Hering.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘You’ve got a short memory. He was blackmailing your mother with these letters which he stole from your lover, who also happened to be his employer. He thought she’d be better for the money, I guess. Well, to cut a long story short, your mother hired a private investigator to find out who was squeezing her. That person was me. This was before I went back to being a bull at the Alex. She’s a shrewd lady, your mother, Reinhard. Pity you didn’t inherit some of that from her. Anyway, she thought it possible that you and whoever was blackmailing her might be sexually involved. And so when I found out the name, she wanted you to decide what to do next. Of course she wasn’t to know that you’d already acquired a private investigator in the ugly shape of Rolf Vogelmann. Or at least, Otto Rahn had, using money you provided. Coincidentally, when Rahn was looking around for a business to buy into, he even wrote to me. We never had the pleasure of discussing his proposition, so it took me quite a while to remember his name. Anyway, that’s just by the by.