Филип Керр - Metropolis

‘The sooner, the better,’ said Gennat. ‘The last thing we need is another letter, let alone another murder.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ agreed Weiss. ‘It’s awkward the way this letter puts Kripo on the spot. It makes it harder for us to deflect criticism from both conservatives and communists. I think perhaps I shall have to write a newspaper article for the Tageblatt myself. Dr Gnadenschuss isn’t the only one who can command some newspaper space. I’ll speak to Theo Wolff.’

Gennat looked as if he were about to say something but Weiss silenced him with a raised index finger.

‘I know you’ll say I should pick a newspaper that isn’t run by Jews, but the Berliner Tageblatt has a circulation of a quarter of a million. And the others are bound to pick it up. It’s high time we persuaded our citizens that they should become the eyes and ears of their own police force. Maybe we can persuade the people to catch Dr Gnadenschuss for us.’

‘ “Good luck with that” is actually what I was going to say.’

‘You don’t think such a thing is possible?’

Gennat looked momentarily exasperated. ‘Newspapers are in the business of creating mass hysteria,’ he said. ‘They don’t give a damn if we catch this bastard. All they care about is stoking fear and spreading panic and selling even more newspapers. You write an article in the paper about Dr Gnadenschuss, then you’re showing the world that we’re taking this lunatic seriously.’

‘What’s wrong with that?’ asked Weiss.

‘It’s as good as telling every spinner and nutcase in this city that he’ll be taken seriously, too. It was before your time, chief, but the last time the newspapers published a murderer’s letter to the editor was the Ackermann case in 1921. There was a press conference then, too, after which we had two hundred people who walked into this police station, each of them claiming to be the murderer. All of whom had to be checked out, of course. It was as if all the metronomes in Berlin suddenly started to swing in time with one another. Not to mention the three copycat murders that followed. In my opinion, public enthusiasm to catch a murderer can hinder progress as much as it can promote it.’

‘I hear what you say, Ernst. But we can’t have it both ways. Public apathy or public hysteria — we have to choose the lesser of two evils here. Yes, I feel we have to do something. At the very least, the honour of the department demands that I answer this man’s taunts. And, of course, disabled veterans need to be warned to take precautions, to stay off the streets if they can. Not to mention the fact that we need to mobilize their help as well.’

‘They’re beggars,’ objected Gennat. ‘Most of them don’t have much choice but to beg on the streets, let alone enough money to buy a newspaper.’

‘Nevertheless, we’re going to need their help,’ said Weiss.

For the rest of us seated around the table in Ernst Gennat’s office, seeing these two men argue was like watching Dempsey versus Firpo, but on the whole it was easier for me to agree with Gennat than with Bernhard Weiss: Gennat was the older dog who knew all the tricks of the trade. Weiss commanded attention, but Gennat commanded respect. Not that I would have commented either way; it certainly wasn’t for me to offer my opinion on the arguments of my superiors. Still, I thought it was greatly to Weiss’s credit that he tolerated — even encouraged — his deputy’s dissenting view, like Wilhelm I and Bismarck perhaps, except that Gennat didn’t threaten to resign if he didn’t get his way.

But in truth, most of my mind was still back at the Oskar-Helene Home in Zehlendorf. Some of the things I’d seen in that creamy-white building on the edge of leafy Dahlem had left me feeling profoundly depressed and wondering how it was I’d been lucky enough to come through the whole war with a face, two eyes and four limbs. Almost ten years had passed since the 1918 armistice, but what had happened in the trenches was still powerfully inside my head, as if it had been yesterday. Where did it come from, this sudden recrudescence of horror, this revival of mental anguish and pain that I thought had been long forgotten? For the life of me I couldn’t explain it, but seeing all those badly maimed men had brought things flooding back so powerfully I’d barely slept since our visit. Now, whenever I went to bed, I encountered the prologue to a nightmare that was indelibly printed on the inside of my eyelids — grotesquely vivid images of myself back in the trenches, the complete mud-encrusted disaster. In particular there were three silent films that kept coming back to haunt me: my best friend’s brains in my hair after a stray bullet from a Lewis gun shattered his skull; a man screaming his last breath into my face, followed by most of his blood and guts; a field surgeon amputating wounded limbs with a guillotine, to save the time a surgical saw would have demanded.

And because of this, ever since our visit to the home, like some shaky neurotic trying to stave off madness, I’d been drinking more than was good or usual for me — with Rankin; with Gennat; with Trettin; but mostly on my own. Whisky, schnapps and rum, it was all the same to me. Drinking so that I was always on the edge of being drunk, sucking lots of mint PEZ to try to hide the booze on my breath, and saying very little in case I spoke one adventitious word that would give the game away. But there was no hiding that kind of thing from a man like Ernst Gennat, who knew a bit about drinking himself. After the meeting in his office he took me aside.

‘Tell me, Gunther, did you always drink a lot?’

‘I don’t drink a lot. Just often. And lately, more often than I should, perhaps.’

‘Why’s that, do you think? Is the job getting to you already? It’s the most interesting job in the world, but the pressure it creates can break a man.’

‘It’s not the job. At least not directly. The fact is, I’ve been drinking much more since I visited that damned home for the disabled in Zehlendorf. It awoke all sorts of bad thoughts — things from the war I thought were asleep forever. Being at the home just reminded me of how many had gone. Comrades. Friends. Men I cared about. I still see their faces, you know. Hundreds of them. I heard a car backfire last night and I damned near shit myself. You’ll laugh but I saw a ditch today in the Tiergarten and wanted to climb in and get my head down. A ditch looks like somewhere nice and safe. Getting into a glassful of schnapps looks a bit cleaner, that’s all.’

Gennat nodded and put an avuncular hand on my shoulder. It felt as heavy as a military kit bag. ‘I don’t trust a man who doesn’t drink,’ he said. ‘It means he doesn’t trust himself and I’ve no use for a man who doesn’t trust himself. You can’t rely on a man like that. Not in this business. But there’s a drink and then there’s drinking. One’s a cop’s good friend and the other’s a cop’s worst enemy. You know that, of course, otherwise you wouldn’t have tried to cover it up with those mints you keep sucking on, not to mention that terrible cologne. And because you know that, you also know it’d be best if you were to try and put the cork back in the bottle, lad. Get over it. Sooner than later. You’ll have to try to live with those trench demons of yours without the help of the holy spirit. Because neither I nor the chief has any use for a man who smells like a bar towel at eleven o’clock in the morning.’

But as things turned out he was wrong about that.

‘Weiss is quite right, you know,’ said Trettin when, towards the end of the day, he and I were ensconced in the Zum. ‘If we’re ever going to catch Dr Gnadenschuss we are going to need the help of the city’s vagrants and beggars. It stands to reason that one of them must have seen something. But I’m afraid Gennat is also right. Those people don’t buy newspapers. And plenty of them don’t even speak German, let alone read it. As I see it, there’s no point in interviewing them one at a time. That would take too long. So we should go to the barrel and talk to them in number.’