Филип Керр - Metropolis

‘How much is that worth?’ I asked.

‘About twenty reichsmarks.’

‘Which is about twice the going rate for a street whore,’ I said. ‘So maybe the killer offered it to Fritz Pabst, or Louise. In lieu of German money. Not that it really mattered.’

‘How do you mean?’ asked Gennat.

‘If the murderer was going to kill Fritz Pabst anyway, what difference would it make how much it was, or if it was even legal tender? By the time Fritz was holding it up to the light to see what it was, it was probably too late.’

‘So you think Fritz could be lying about having picked someone up.’

‘Not necessarily. If someone has hit you with a hammer with intent to kill, you probably forget more than just the latest rate of exchange. You forget everything, I shouldn’t wonder. I know I would. Either way it means the killer could be an Englishman. Or someone who wants it to look like an Englishman.’ I shrugged. ‘Or perhaps it was someone else completely unrelated to the case who dropped it.’

‘We found traces of green paint on the note,’ said Weiss. ‘The same paint that was used on the Patent Office wet-paint signs. We contacted the Bank of England for some information on the banknote, but all they can tell us is that it was one of a batch sent to a bank in Wales. Which doesn’t get us much further forward.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It might let an awful lot of Germans breathe more easily at night if the killer should turn out to be British.’

‘Why do you say that?’ asked Weiss.

‘I suppose I worry that, as a people, we’ve become very cruel since the war. The fact is, we’re still coming to terms with what happened. With our immediate history.’

‘You make it sound as if history is something that could be over,’ said Weiss. ‘But I’m afraid the lesson of history is that it’s never really over. Not today and certainly not tomorrow.’

‘That may be so, but it cannot be denied that people get an appetite for blood and human suffering. Like the ancient Romans. And I think any German who was proud of his country would prefer Winnetou to come from somewhere other than Germany.’

‘Good point,’ admitted Gennat.

‘Perhaps our man is a sex tourist,’ I said. ‘Berlin is full of Englishmen and Americans getting the best rate of exchange in our nightclubs and with our women. They screwed us at Versailles and now they screw us here at home.’

‘You’re beginning to sound like a Nazi,’ said Weiss.

‘I never wear brown,’ I said. ‘Brown is definitely not my colour.’

‘It wasn’t the English and the Americans who screwed us at Versailles,’ said Weiss. ‘It wasn’t even the French. It was the German high command. It’s them who’ve sold us all that stab-in-the-back horseshit. If only to get themselves off the hook.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I’d like you to meet Dr Hirschfeld sometime, Gunther,’ said Weiss. ‘He’s convinced that the killer isn’t a man who hates women, but a man who loves women so much he wants to be one.’

‘He’s got a funny way of showing that love, sir,’ I said. ‘It seems to me that any man who really wants to be a woman only has to do what Fritz Pabst did — buy himself a nice dress and a good wig, call himself Louise, and head for the Eldorado. There are plenty of men in there who want to be women. Not to mention quite a few women who want to be men.’

‘That’s not quite the same thing as actually becoming a real woman,’ said Weiss. ‘According to Hirschfeld.’

‘True,’ I said. ‘And I’ll certainly be hanging on to that fact for dear life when I next talk to a strange girl. Real women are born that way. Even the ugly ones. Anything else is just hiding the family silver and moving the ornaments to the back of the shelf. But who knows? Maybe he’s just dumb enough to cut off his own private parts. And when we arrest him we’ll find there’s just one thing missing.’

‘No one’s that stupid,’ said Gennat. ‘You’d bleed to death.’

‘I thought you said most of our clients were stupid.’

‘Most. But what you’re describing is plain crazy,’ said Gennat.

‘Nobody’s that crazy,’ said Hans Gross. ‘Not even in Berlin.’

‘Could be this fellow comes the closest,’ I said. ‘If he slices off his manhood in pursuit of becoming a woman, he’ll certainly save us the trouble of cutting off his head.’

Weiss laughed. ‘You know, I’m beginning to think that glass of schnapps was too much for Gunther. This is the most I’ve heard him say since we gave him the seat. Some of it even makes sense.’

I wound down the window and took a deep breath of the damp night air. It wasn’t the schnapps I found intoxicating, it was the tobacco smoke; I could see that if I was ever going to make it as a homicide detective I was going to have to work on my smoking habit. Beside these people in the murder wagon, I was a rank amateur. And I was beginning to appreciate why both Ernst Gennat and Hans Gross had a voice like a farrier’s rasp. Frau Künstler’s voice was more like black coffee, like her manicure.

‘Sorry, sir.’

‘No, I like my detectives to talk because, surprising as it might seem, I need food for thought, no matter how strange and exotic that food might be. You can say anything in this car. Anything, to me or the Big Buddha, just as long as it doesn’t offend Frau Künstler.’

‘Don’t worry about me,’ she said, taking the cover off her Torpedo. ‘I’m from Wedding and I can take care of myself.’

‘But if you do talk, do try and make it entertaining. We hate boring people. And drop the sir when you’re in the wagon. I like things in here to be informal.’

The murder wagon’s window was still down because I was feeling a little nauseated and the rain and cool air felt good on my face. Southeast of Alexanderplatz, we stopped at a traffic light on Friedrichstrasse, immediately outside the James-Klein Revue, which, at number 104A, was right next door to the Haller-Revue. Both establishments were brightly lit and looked full of life, full of people — full of people with plenty of money who were drunk or on drugs. It seemed unlikely that any of them were thinking about the Wolfmium factory explosion and the dead workers, now at a count of fifty. At the very least it was probably a better Friday night out than our expedition in the murder wagon. You could hear their screams of laughter as well as a cacophonous mixture of jazz blaring out from both clubs, which only added to the feeling of corruption and intemperance in the air. An SA brownshirt was positioned between the two clubs with a collection box, as if any of the clubs’ patrons might be inclined to forget that the Nazis wanted to close down all of Berlin’s showgirl nightclubs. The Jimmy Klein doorman, a very tall Russian named Sasha carrying an umbrella as big as the dome on the Reichstag, approached the car with an oily, gap-toothed smile and leaned down towards my open window.

‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘please, why not join us inside? I can promise you won’t be disappointed. We have completely nude dancers in here. Seventy-five naked models — more than any other club in Berlin — whose daring and audacity is nothing short of priceless. The James-Klein Revue is proud to present an evening without morals in twenty-four scenes of startling eroticism.’

‘Just an evening?’ murmured Weiss. ‘Or a whole decade?’

It was about now that Sasha recognized me. We were old acquaintances from my time in Vice. Now and then he’d been a useful informer.

‘Oh, sorry, Herr Gunther,’ he said. ‘I didn’t realize it was you. You going into the undertaking business, then?’ He was talking about the murder wagon and its occupants and it had to be admitted that we did resemble a group of mourners. ‘You want some free tickets? Paul Morgan’s the conférencier tonight. He’s got the best dirty jokes in Berlin, if you ask me.’