Филип Керр - Metropolis

It was soon obvious that Reichenbach had done nothing about arresting Hugo ‘Mustermann’ — the man I’d recognized from Sing Sing, the same man who’d shot Willi Beckmann. Arresting him was now my secret priority. I telephoned the Office for Public Conveyances in Charlottenburg and asked them to check the owner of the yellow BMW Dixi, registration IA 17938. They told me that the car was owned by a man called Hugo Gediehn. On the face of it, this now looked like a straightforward bit of detective work. I’d seen the murder myself, and it doesn’t get much more straightforward than that. But there was something about it — a minor detail — I wanted to check out first with Brigitte Mölbling before I called on Hugo Gediehn.

I arranged to see her for lunch at Aschinger. It wasn’t just because I liked the beer at Aschinger that she and I met there, although I did. I wanted to ask her about the shooting and assumed that being on-site would help her to remember everything she’d seen on the street outside.

‘But you already told me you saw the whole thing,’ she said.

‘I did. And I just found out the killer’s name and address from the Office of Public Conveyances. He has an apartment in Kreuzberg.’

‘Are you going to arrest him?’

‘Yes. As soon as you’ve helped me sort something out in my own head.’

‘Me? I don’t see how I can help. You’ve got his name and address, what do you need from me?’

‘The fact is, I didn’t pay too much attention to the dead man’s corpse. You told me that you came down here to check it wasn’t me lying on the street. Correct?’

‘Yes. I did. Can you imagine that? Me being concerned about you?’

‘I try to, when I’m alone and naked, but somehow it’s difficult to picture.’

‘Shouldn’t be too difficult if you think of all the other pictures of me that ought to be in your head by now. The ones I wouldn’t like anyone else to see.’

I picked up her hand and kissed it.

‘You mentioned seeing a tattoo on the dead man’s hand. A woman’s name. On the base of his thumb. You see, I didn’t see that.’

‘That’s right. I did.’

‘Can you remember what the name was?’

‘No. I don’t remember very much, actually.’

‘Was it Helga?’

‘I don’t think so. Besides, there was too much blood for me to remember very much. It’s been preying on my mind ever since.’

‘I guess that means I have to go to the city morgue and take a look for myself.’

‘You mean that place by the zoo? On Hannoversche Strasse?’

‘I do. Perhaps you could drive me there.’

‘Now?’

‘Sooner the better. Before someone claims Beckmann’s body.’

‘All right.’

We found her car, another BMW Dixi, and drove west to the morgue. She parked out front, and I kissed her hand again.

‘Will you wait here for me? I won’t be long.’

‘If you like. But it’s open to the public, isn’t it?’

‘It is. Only, I don’t recommend you go in. You wouldn’t like the show any more than you’d enjoy a hard-boiled egg rolled in sand.’

‘Lots of people do go in there, don’t they? There are people going in there now.’

‘Almost a million people just voted Nazi, but that doesn’t mean you should do what they do.’

‘It can’t be that bad. Otherwise they wouldn’t let the public in, surely.’

‘The Prussian state authorities let the public in because they want to scare them into submission. The sight of violent death is usually enough to cow the most rebellious spirits. Even in Berlin.’

‘In case you hadn’t noticed, Gunther, I’m kind of rebellious myself. At least that’s what my father says. Maybe I’m not the little snowdrop you think I am.’

‘If you’d just finished telling me that crime pays, I might recommend that you go in and see the sights, sure. But not otherwise. Look, angel, it simply hadn’t occurred to me you might want to go inside. If it had crossed my mind, I’d have caught the bus. Or taken the U-Bahn.’

‘You’re beginning to sound suspiciously like a hero.’

‘Maybe. And what kind of a knight in shining armour would I be if I didn’t try to talk the princess out of walking into the ogre’s castle?’

‘I get that. And I’m grateful. But I like to think I can look after myself. Since my ex-husband started wearing my underwear instead of shining armour I’ve learned to be a lot tougher than people take me for. You included, it would seem.’

‘That’s the trouble with real men, sugar. They expect women to behave like real women.’

She was already getting out of the Dixi. ‘That doesn’t mean you should treat them like they’re made of Venetian glass. Or is it just me you want to wrap in some tissue paper?’

‘No, I’m against the existence of this place in general. It’s bad enough that there are so many men who remember how abominable things were in the trenches. I see no use for a public morgue in which we afford women and children an approximate sight of that same horror.’

‘Maybe women should know something about this side of life.’

‘All right. But bear this in mind. When it comes to seeing lots of dead people, your brain is like a camera with the shutter open. Everything gets recorded on the film. I was a schoolboy the first time I went in this place. I sneaked in, without permission. What I saw then has stayed with me forever. Somehow it always seems worse than anything I’ve seen since. So please don’t complain to me when you don’t sleep because you can’t destroy the negatives.’

She followed me inside and while I went to ask to see the body of Willi Beckmann, I left Brigitte to stroll around the morgue on her own. Maybe she was right. Thanks to people like George Grosz and his friends, you could probably see things that were just as unpleasant in the city’s modern art galleries.

Beckmann’s body contained more lead than Berlin’s water pipes. Fortunately for me, his right hand was one of the few parts of his body that had not been hit with a machine-gun bullet. So it took only a few minutes to satisfy my own curiosity; but rather longer than that for Brigitte to satisfy hers. I went outside, leaned against her car and smoked a cigarette. When eventually she came out of the morgue she looked a little pale and was very quiet. Which was only to be expected, I thought.

‘Well, that was horrible.’

‘To say the least.’

‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’

‘See anyone you recognized?’

‘Funny.’

‘That’s why it exists. To help the cops identify the unidentifiable.’

‘Did you find what you were looking for?’ she asked, starting the engine.

‘Yes.’

‘Did he have a girl’s name tattooed on his hand?’

‘He did.’

‘Good. And was it Helga, after all?’

‘Better than that. It was Frieda.’

‘Where to?’

‘I have to go back to the Alex.’

She turned the car around and drove east, on Lützowstrasse.

‘Are you going to tell me about Frieda?’

After what she’d just seen I decided she could probably handle the whole story. I was wrong about that, too.

‘About a year ago a man walking his dog in the Grünewald found some female body parts wrapped in butcher’s paper and buried in a shallow grave. There was no head. Just a torso, a foot and a pair of hands. Which was thoughtful of the killer in that the girl’s fingerprints enabled us to identify her as Frieda Ahrendt, and they revealed that she had a record for petty theft. She also had the name Willi tattooed at the base of her thumb. In spite of all that, we never managed to find a family, a job, not even a last known address. And certainly not the murderer, who is probably still at large.’