Филип Керр - Metropolis

I nodded. Anything to avoid giving my opinion of the case, which was that Ella Klein and Margarete Nebbe were a lesbian couple who’d richly deserved much harsher sentences than those handed down by the court; there wasn’t one cop in the Alex who didn’t think they should both have faced the falling axe. Arsenic was every happily married man’s abiding fear.

‘You see, Bernie, I was thinking that this essay might provide the inspiration for a new kind of detective work. Something much more immersive than merely searching a crime scene for clues and collecting witness statements.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like the same sort of thing you were doing last night, Bernie. You, investigating a crime undercover. At street level. No, really. This is the kind of detective work I’m talking about. No one is doing this at present. Not even Scotland Yard.’

‘I’m still not sure I understand, sir.’

‘It’s just this. Detective work is based on the assumption that we are better than the criminals we investigate. Wouldn’t you agree?’

‘Of course.’

‘That we do not descend to the level of criminals ourselves. However, it occurs to me that in this respect we are missing an important trick. That there may be occasions when this is exactly what’s required. That to solve the crime we need to be pro active rather than re active. That we need to inhabit the very milieu of the crime that has been committed. Do you see? We need to be in that world but not part of it.’

I bit my lip and looked at my fingernails. It was like working for a school headmaster and I was the slow-witted pupil who wasn’t quite following the line of his high-minded reasoning. I lit a cigarette and puffed it into life; if only Weiss’s conversation could have combusted as easily; as it was, his words had yet to catch fire in my mind. By now I was more or less certain I wasn’t being sacked. But was I listening to a lecture or merely a series of rhetorical questions?

‘Are you still drinking, Bernie? Well, of course you are. I can smell it on your breath. I know, this isn’t the Lutheran church. Men come off duty and they need a drink. But can you control it?’

‘I am controlling it.’

Weiss nodded sympathetically. ‘Because I think you’ll need your wits about you for what I have in mind.’

‘I saved your life, didn’t I?’

‘Yes, you did. Which is why I think you’re probably just the man for this. We have to do something. I’m under a lot of pressure from the minister to catch this Dr Gnadenschuss. And what we’re doing right now, well, it just doesn’t seem to be enough.’ He paused for a moment and regarded me through a haze of cigar smoke. ‘What do you think?’

‘Honestly? Until he kills again, I don’t think we’ve a chance of catching him, no. The thumbprint on the letter they received at the Berliner Tageblatt didn’t find a match with records, as you know. Right now we’re just whistling while we wait for another corpse to turn up.’

‘And yet I think we have to do something more. In fact, I don’t think we have any choice but to do something.’

‘What did you have in mind?’

‘Before I tell you, I want you to feel free to turn me down. It won’t in the least reflect badly on you, Bernie. You’re young and I think you’re still keen and you’ll probably say yes without thinking. But you need to think about this carefully. Because what I’m proposing is a little out of the ordinary. What I’m proposing is to make you a kind of hunting decoy. In short, that you use the klutz wagon you recovered from Eva Angerstein’s murder scene and pose as one of these unfortunate disabled war veterans yourself. Just as your friend Prussian Emil was doing. That’s right. I want you to pose as a klutz in the hope that Dr Gnadenschuss might try and kill you. And if he does try to kill you, then of course you would be perfectly placed to apprehend him. In flagrante delicto . But only if you’re agreeable to the idea.’

Weiss wasn’t smiling. So I knew it wasn’t a joke. But it certainly sounded like one.

‘It will mean living on the street for a while, begging outside railway stations for pennies, maybe even sleeping in a hostel for the homeless, going without the odd meal, not washing regularly, accepting some abuse. And all the time keeping your eyes peeled for someone trying to kill you.’

‘If it’s a question of catching Dr Gnadenschuss, then I’m game.’

‘Are you sure?’ He looked at me thoughtfully. ‘Yes, I think you are. Of course you’ll have a bit of help in looking like a real klutz . With the army uniform and disability. As if you were an actor in a play. The klutz wagon you found helps because it was made for a man who isn’t really disabled. For the rest of it, I was thinking of sending you to see a friend of mine at the Neues Theater on Schiffbauerdamm. A make-up artist and costumier called Brigitte Mölbling. She worked on that film Metropolis . That is, if you’re sure you actually want to do this, Bernie.’

‘I’d like to try. As you say, sir, we have to do something.’

‘Good, good.’

‘What does Ernst think about your plan, sir?’

‘I haven’t told him. In fact, I don’t propose to tell anyone, and nor should you. The fewer people who know about this the better. What we certainly want to avoid is any other police officers coming to look at you, as if you were an exhibit in the zoo. Or tipping off the newspapers that one of our detectives is working in disguise. What I will tell Ernst is that I’ve given you some compassionate leave to get your drinking sorted out. Which, I might add, wouldn’t be a bad idea anyway. And when you’ve decided where you’re going to make your pitch, from time to time, I may come and check on you myself, if only to put a few coins in your hat.’

Before I left to begin my mission I looked in on the new department at the Alex, the one handling commercial fraud. Created by Weiss, it was headed by Ulrich Possehl. He was a good officer, well respected, with an outstanding war record. But he was away on vacation and his deputy, Dr Alfred Jachode, was an altogether different animal. By training he was a lawyer and an accountant and his office was lined with some very dry books. He was also an adherent of the Steel Helmet, and although this was supposed to be an organization above party politics, many of its members were quite open about their allegiance — in fact, many wore a miniature helmet on a stickpin in their lapels. In practice they were so radically anti-democratic and anti-republican they made the Nazis look reasonable. The minute I walked into his office, I knew I was probably wasting my time asking if he had any reason to suspect the owners of the Wolfmium factory of commercial fraud.

‘You’ve got a nerve, do you know that? You’re wasting your time if you think I would do anything to help a Jew’s poodle like you, Gunther.’

‘If you’re suggesting that my position in the Murder Commission owes anything to Bernhard Weiss, then you’re wrong. It owes everything to him.’

‘What do you want?’

‘I was hoping to waste your time, which looks like a better outcome. Besides, I wasn’t thinking of you helping me so much as you helping the workers who were killed in the factory fire.’

‘Most of them were Russians, probably here illegally, so who gives a damn? I know I don’t. They got what they deserved.’

‘You make me think that if Germany ever gets what it deserves, we’ll have a very bad time of it.’

‘Communists.’

‘Actually, a lot of those workers were Germans.’

‘Volga Germans,’ he said. ‘There’s a big difference.’

‘Is there?’