Philip Kerr - Berlin Noir

‘Christ, the only thing you left out was the crazy moustache,’ I said. I lit a cigarette and puffed at it dismally. ‘For God’s sake change the subject. Let’s talk about something cheerful, like our mass-murdering friend. Do you know, I’m beginning to see his point, I really am. I mean, these are tomorrow’s young mothers he’s killing. More childbearing machines to produce new Party recruits. Me, I’m all for these by-products of the asphalt civilization they’re always on about – the childless families with eugenically dud women, at least until we’ve got rid of this regime of rubber truncheons. What’s one more psychopath among so many?’

‘You say more than you know,’ she said. ‘We’re all of us capable of cruelty. Every one of us is a latent criminal. Life is just a battle to maintain a civilized skin. Many sadistic killers find that it’s only occasionally that it comes off. Peter Kürten for example. He was apparently a man of such a kindly disposition that nobody who knew him could believe that he was capable of such horrific crimes as he committed.’

She rummaged in her briefcase again and, having wiped the table, she laid a thin blue book between our two glasses.

‘This book is by Carl Berg, a forensic pathologist who had the opportunity of studying Kürten at length following his arrest. I’ve met Berg and respect his work. He founded the Düsseldorf Institute of Legal and Social Medicine, and for a while he was the medico-legal officer of the Düsseldorf Criminal Court. This book, The Sadist , is probably one of the best accounts of the mind of the murderer that has ever been written. You can borrow it if you like.’

‘Thanks, I will.’

‘That will help you to understand,’ she said. ‘But to enter into the mind of a man like Kürten, you should read this.’ Again she dipped into the bag of books.

‘ Les Fleurs du mal ,’ I read, ‘by Charles Baudelaire.’ I opened it and looked over the verses. ‘Poetry?’ I raised an eyebrow.

‘Oh, don’t look so suspicious, Kommissar. I’m being perfectly serious. It’s a good translation, and you’ll find a lot more in it than you might expect, believe me.’ She smiled at me.

‘I haven’t read poetry since I studied Goethe at school.’

‘And what was your opinion of him?’

‘Do Frankfurt lawyers make good poets?’

‘It’s an interesting critique,’ she said. ‘Well, let’s hope you think better of Baudelaire. And now I’m afraid I must be going.’ She stood up and we shook hands. ‘When you’ve finished with the books you can return them to me at the Goering Institute on Budapesterstrasse. We’re just across the road from the Zoo Aquarium. I’d certainly be interested to hear a detective’s opinion of Baudelaire,’ she said.

‘It will be my pleasure. And you can tell me your opinion of Dr Lanz Kindermann.’

‘Kindermann? You know Lanz Kindermann?’

‘In a way.’

She gave me a judicious sort of look. ‘You know, for a police Kommissar you are certainly full of surprises. You certainly are.’

Sunday, 11 September

I prefer my tomatoes when they’ve still got some green left in them. Then they’re sweet and firm, with smooth, cool skins, the sort you would choose for a salad. But when a tomato has been around for a while, it picks up a few wrinkles as it grows too soft to handle, and even begins to taste a little sour.

It’s the same with women. Only this one was perhaps a shade green for me, and possibly rather too cool for her own good. She stood at my front door and gave me an impertinent sort of north-to-south-and-back-again look, as if she was trying to assess my prowess, or lack of it, as a lover.

‘Yes?’ I said. ‘What do you want?’

‘I’m collecting for the Reich,’ she explained, playing games with her eyes. She held a bag of material out, as if to corroborate her story. ‘The Party Economy Programme. Oh, the concierge let me in.’

‘I can see that. Exactly what would you like?’

She raised an eyebrow at that and I wondered if her father thought she wasn’t still young enough for him to spank.

‘Well, what have you got?’ There was a quiet mockery in her tone. She was pretty, in a sulky, sultry sort of way. In civilian clothes she might have passed for a girl of twenty, but with her two pigtails, and dressed in the sturdy boots, long navy skirt, trim white blouse and brown leather jacket of the BdM – the League of German Girls – I guessed her to be no more than sixteen.

‘I’ll have a look and see what I can find,’ I said, half amused at her grown-up manner, which seemed to confirm what you sometimes heard of BdM girls, which was that they were sexually promiscuous and just as likely to get themselves pregnant at Hitler Youth Camp as they were to learn needlework, first aid and German folk history. ‘I suppose you had better come in.’

The girl sauntered through the door as if she were trailing a mink wrap and gave the hall a cursory examination. She didn’t seem to be much impressed. ‘Nice place,’ she murmured quietly.

I closed the door and laid my cigarette in the ashtray on the hall table. ‘Wait here,’ I told her.

I went into the bedroom and foraged under the bed for the suitcase where I kept old shirts and threadbare towels, not to mention all my spare house dust and carpet fluff. When I stood up and brushed myself off she was leaning in the doorway and smoking my cigarette. Insolently she blew a perfect smoke-ring towards me.

‘I thought you Faith-and-Beauty girls weren’t supposed to smoke,’ I said, trying to conceal my irritation.

‘Is that a fact?’ she smirked. ‘There are quite a few things we’re not encouraged to do. We’re not supposed to do this, we’re not supposed to do that. Just about everything seems to be wicked these days, doesn’t it? But what I always say is, if you can’t do the wicked things when you’re still young enough to enjoy them, then what’s the point of doing them at all?’ She jerked herself away from the wall and stalked out.

Quite the little bitch, I thought, following her into the sitting-room next door.

She inhaled noisily, like she was sucking at a spoonful of soup, and blew another smoke-ring in my face. If I could have caught it I would have wrapped it round her pretty little neck.

‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘I hardly think one little drummer is going to knock over the heap, do you?’

I laughed. ‘Do I look like the sort of dog’s ear who would smoke cheap cigarettes?’

‘No, I suppose not,’ she admitted. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Plato.’

‘Plato. It suits you. Well, Plato, you can kiss me if you want.’

‘You don’t creep around it, do you?’

‘Haven’t you heard the nicknames they have for the BdM? The German Mattress League? Commodities for German Men?’ She put her arms about my neck and performed a variety of coquettish expressions she’d probably practised in front of her dressing-table mirror.

Her hot young breath tasted stale, but I let myself equal the competence in her kiss, just to be affable, my hands squeezing at her young breasts, kneading the nipples with my fingers. Then I cupped her chubby behind in both my moistening palms, and drew her closer to what was increasingly on my mind. Her naughty eyes went round as she pressed herself against me. I can’t honestly say I wasn’t tempted.

‘Do you know any good bedtime stories, Plato?’ she giggled.

‘No,’ I said, tightening my grip on her. ‘But I know plenty of bad ones. The kind where the beautiful but spoilt princess gets boiled alive and eaten up by the wicked troll.’

A vague glimmer of doubt began to grow in the bright blue iris of each corrupt eye, and her smile was no longer wholly confident as I hauled up her skirt and started to tug her pants down.