Филип Керр - Metropolis

‘Is that all you’ve got?’

‘Not by a long chalk. In the first letter he suggests that the veterans were not only a disgrace to the uniform, they also reminded everyone of the shame of Germany’s defeat. But in the second letter it seems the mission has changed and he’s intent merely on cleaning up Berlin’s streets. These are important questions to which I should like to have had some answers. Only, I don’t suppose he left a written confession.’

‘You know he didn’t. A verdict of guilty was delivered by the people, a sentence of death — to be carried out immediately — was then pronounced and Kurt Reichenbach was hanged in the brewery yard. He made a poor end. Fear got the better of him: He tried to resist and then begged for his life, which reduced him even more in the eyes of those who were present. No one likes a coward. The body was cut down and taken away for disposal. I say disposal; I’m more or less certain the body was not buried. So I very much doubt that you could be taken to see it. The last time the people’s court carried out a capital sentence, the body was burned in secret. But if you’d been there you would have been convinced of his guilt, I can assure you.’

‘Oh, I am. As a matter of fact I was convinced of his guilt before I came here tonight. Earlier this evening I found enough evidence in his car to send Reichenbach straight to the guillotine: principally the murder weapon — a hammer — and a scalping knife. I even have the pistol with which he shot those disabled war veterans. Short of seeing the word murderer chalked on his back, it couldn’t be more obvious.’

‘Then I really don’t understand. What are you doing here? If you knew all that, why the hell did you shoot me?’

‘Because I don’t believe in lynchings.’

‘He got what he deserved. And how often can you say that these days? Do you honestly think the end result would have been different in the courts you serve?’

‘You can dress it up any way you like, Angerstein, but that’s what it was. A lynching. And what he deserved most was a fair trial.’

‘Because he was a cop?’

‘Because he was a citizen. Even a rat like you deserves a fair trial.’

‘And you say that even though you say you had ample evidence of his guilt.’

‘ Because I had evidence of his guilt. Sometimes being a cop is difficult because the law says the guilty get treated the same way as the innocent. It sticks in the throat a bit to respect the rights of a man who’s a piece of shit. But this republic will fall apart if we don’t stick to the legal process.’

‘On the contrary. In this case I think there’s every chance the republic would fall apart if the legal process was observed. Can you imagine the scandal that would have resulted from the news that it was a serving police officer who carried out these murders? Moreover, a serving police officer who was a Jew? The nationalists would assume Christmas had come early this year. I can almost see the headlines in Der Angriff and the Völkischer Beobachter . Bernhard Weiss would be out. Maybe even Gennat. Albert Grzesinski, too, probably. And I doubt the SPD could hope to keep a government together for more than a few hours. Very probably there would have to be another federal election. With all the economic uncertainty that such a thing entails.

‘Of course, it’s up to you what you tell the commissars. But if you’ll take my advice, Gunther, you’ll keep your mouth shut. This way everything can be swept neatly away and forgotten. In three months nobody will remember him or any of the people he killed. Not that you could use any of this against me in court, anyway. My lawyer would get any charges thrown out in a matter of minutes.’

‘I don’t doubt that, either.’

‘Then there’s the dead man’s wife. She’s a nurse, isn’t she? What do you think she’d prefer? To be known as the spouse of a multiple murderer? Or as the poor wife of a cop who disappeared, heroically, in the line of duty? Maybe you should ask her opinion before you go blundering down the road of absolute truth, Gunther. Can you imagine what her life would be like with every one of her friends knowing what her husband has done? Many would assume that she must have known something. Perhaps she did, at that. How could a wife not know that kind of thing? Take it from me, very soon she wouldn’t have any friends at all.

‘And lastly, there’s the great German people. Do you think any of them give a damn if someone like Kurt Reichenbach gets a fair trial? Nobody thinks in terms of justice and the rule of law, so why should we? Ask a bus driver or a boot boy if he thinks it’s a good idea to spend thousands of taxpayers’ reichsmarks putting a man like that on trial, or if it’s better just to put him to death quietly. I think I know what they’d say.

‘You’re guarding an empty safe, my friend. No one cares. The only people who profit from a trial are the lawyers and the newspapers. Not you. Not me. Not the ordinary man in the street.

‘Well, that’s what happened. There isn’t anything else. You can take it or leave it.’

Erich Angerstein stood up and walked painfully to the telephone. ‘And now if you don’t mind, I’m going to call a doctor.’ He gave me a quizzical look. ‘Unless you’re going to shoot me again. Are you going to shoot me again?’ He gave me a cynical smile; it was the only type he seemed to have. ‘No, I thought not.’

That’s the trouble with listening to the devil; it turns out that his most impressive trick is to tell us exactly what we want to hear.

Angerstein picked up the candlestick and started to dial a number, which is when I started to walk out of there.

‘Hey, stick around, Gunther. I’ll make it up to you. You’ll need another collar to help deflect the criticism that will come Kripo’s way when you don’t solve the Gnadenschuss case. I said if you helped me find Eva’s killer I’d give you the true facts about the Wolfmium factory fire. And I will. This will help you make commissar.’

But I was shaking my head.

‘What’s the matter, Gunther? Don’t you want to be a commissar? Don’t you want to know the truth about what really happened back there?’

‘I don’t want anything from you, Angerstein. Especially when it’s something as precious as the truth. Even truth sounds like a damned lie when it’s in your mouth. So I’d hate to have to rely on it or use it in any way to advance myself. If ever I make commissar, which I doubt, it will be as the result of my own doing.’

‘Have it your own way. You’re a stubborn bastard if ever I met one. I almost admire you for it. It seems it’s true what they say: There’s no fool quite as foolish as an honest fool. But ask yourself this: One day, one day soon if I’m not mistaken, when you’re the only honest man left in Germany, who’ll know?’

I was back at the Alex the next day, going through the slippery motions of investigating a series of murders I had already solved, just for the sake of appearances. I didn’t doubt for a minute the truth of what Erich Angerstein had told me, not with two bullets in him; nor the cold pragmatic wisdom of my not telling Weiss or Gennat anything of what I’d discovered about Kurt Reichenbach. Angerstein was just as right about that in daylight as he’d been the previous night; identifying Reichenbach as Winnetou and Dr Gnadenschuss looked like a quick way of bringing down not just Kripo, but also the fragile government coalition; another federal election so soon after the last one would have been a great opportunity for the German National People’s Party, the communists, the Workers’ Party or even the Nazis. So I spent a dull, quiet afternoon in Records, as ordered, compiling a list of five potential suspects from the Stahlhelm for Ernst Gennat. It was a total waste of time, of course, but then again, so much of my job in the Murder Commission looked like it was going to be a waste of time, at least for the next few weeks. And the longer I spent going through the motions, the more I came to realize that my deception could only end when there occurred another unrelated murder for us to investigate. But when, after forty-eight hours none came, I told myself that the quickest way to divert attention from Dr Gnadenschuss was by solving an existing murder case, if I could. It was fortunate that I had half an idea which case this might be.