Филип Керр - Metropolis

‘No.’

‘According to the lab report you were pregnant. Did you know?’

‘No. I — we always wanted a baby. Not that we could have afforded one.’ She wiped away a tear and was very quiet for a moment; and then she was very quiet forever.

I wasn’t usually back home in Nollendorfplatz for supper, but it being a Friday and having missed lunch, I was glad I was, because this was the night Frau Weitendorf usually went to the theatre and left a lung hash that only had to be heated up on the stove. There was always enough for about ten people and, having been quite particular to lung hash since I was a schoolboy, I was pleased to join my fellow lodgers around the dinner table. Rosa did the honours with the hash and some boiled potatoes, while Fischer, the Bavarian salesman, cut the black bread, and Rankin poured malted coffee into large mugs. I laid the table with the second-best china. They were curious as to why I was there at all, of course, but didn’t ask me why directly; not that I would have told them I’d been promoted to the Murder Commission. The last thing I wanted to talk about when I was at home was crime. But most of the talk was about the explosion at the Wolfmium factory and all the workers who’d been killed, and Fischer told us that this was one of the reasons he was going to march through Berlin with the communists the next day, which he would never have mentioned if Frau Weitendorf had been at home. If there was one subject likely to make our landlady fly into uncontrollable rage it was Bolshevism. It wasn’t just the fact that she was a Nazi that made her so vehemently anti-communist; it was the several bullet holes in the front of the house made by the Spartacist militia during Berlin’s Bolshevik revolution of 1919. Frau Weitendorf took each one of them personally.

‘Which part?’ I asked. ‘Of Berlin.’

‘We’re starting in Charlottenburg.’

‘Not many communists there, I’d have thought.’

‘And heading east, along Bismarckstrasse.’

‘I didn’t know you were a communist, Herr Fischer,’ said Rosa.

‘I’m not. But I feel I have to do something after the terrible tragedy at Wolfmium. You might say I want to show a bit of worker solidarity. But it’s no surprise to me that this kind of thing happens. Employers in this country don’t care anything about their workers and the conditions they have to endure. Some of the things I see when I’m on the road and visiting customers, you wouldn’t believe. Underground illegal factories, slum sweatshops; places you wouldn’t believe could exist in a city like Berlin.’

‘Good for you, Herr Fischer,’ said Rankin. ‘I agree with you about worker conditions. Here and in England, they’re awful. But you’re not saying that what happened at Wolfmium was the result of the employer’s negligence, are you? I mean there’s no evidence of that, surely. It was an accident. I imagine some of the materials they use in the manufacture of electric light bulbs are inherently dangerous.’

‘I’ll make you a bet now,’ insisted Fischer. ‘That someone’s to blame. Someone who ignored fire safety codes just to make a bigger profit.’

Rankin lit a cigarette with a handsome gold lighter, stared into the flame for a moment as if it might provide a clue to the origins of the explosion, and then said, ‘What do you think, Herr Gunther? Are the police investigating what happened?’

‘Not my department,’ I said. ‘It’s the fire brigade that has charge of this kind of investigation.’ I smiled patiently and helped myself from Rankin’s cigarette case. As I leaned towards his lighter I caught a strong smell of alcohol. I puffed on the nail for a minute and then rolled it thoughtfully between my fingers. ‘But I will say this: A nail is always the most effective way to start a most effective fire. Chances are that’s all it was. A careless cigarette end. To that extent we’re all potential arsonists.’

Fischer looked scornful. ‘The Berlin police,’ he said. ‘They’re part of the same conspiracy. These days the only crime is getting caught.’

Rankin smiled politely. He might have been a bit drunk, but he was still equal to the task of changing the subject on my behalf for the sake of politeness.

‘I was reading in the newspaper,’ he said to no one in particular. ‘Benito Mussolini has ended women’s rights in Italy on the same day that my own country has lowered the age of women voters from thirty to twenty-one. More or less the same day, anyway. For once I’m almost proud to be an Englishman.’

We finished supper not saying anything of much consequence, which suited me very well. After we’d cleared up, I returned to my room and was preparing to read the case file of Winnetou’s second murder when I heard the telephone downstairs. A minute or two later Rosa came up and spoke to me. She’d changed her clothes and was now clad in the male evening attire she was required to wear to play in the Haller-Revue’s band. The white tie and tails made her look oddly sexy; as a Vice detective, I was used to seeing transvestites — the Eldorado on Lutherstrasse was notorious for transvestites and a frequent source of information about what was happening in Berlin’s underground scene — but I wasn’t at all sure I was the kind of man who felt comfortable in the company of a woman dressed as a man. Not while there were still so many women who dressed like women.

‘That was the Police Praesidium at Alexanderplatz on the telephone,’ she said. ‘Someone called Hans Gross said he’ll pick you up outside our front door in half an hour.’

I thanked her, glanced at my watch, and quietly enjoyed the scent of her Coty perfume in my room. It made a nice change from rum, cigarettes, Lux, Nivea, fried potatoes and cheap hair oil, not to mention a lot of old books and unwashed laundry.

‘Think you’ll be working late?’ she asked.

‘I won’t know for sure until that police car turns up. But yes, maybe. That’s the nature of the job, I’m afraid.’

At the same time, I was thinking that it was still a little early for a murder. Berliners usually wait until they’ve loosened up with a few drinks and a couple of songs before battering someone to death. Only a few weeks before I’d seen a prisoner in the main reception hall at the Alex singing ‘From the Age of Youth’ at the top of his voice. He was drunk, of course, but he’d also just beaten his elder sister to a pulp with a golf club.

‘She comes, she comes no more! She comes, she comes no more!’

Which, sadly, was all very true, of course.

Chances were it was just an accident we were to attend, what some of the uniformed boys called a Max Mustermann; a body some citizen had found in circumstances that raised the question of foul play.

‘Why don’t you come by the club tonight?’ she said. ‘I’ll be there until well after midnight. Hella Kürty is on the bill.’

I shook my head blankly.

‘Singer. She was in that movie Who Throws the First Stone .’

‘Didn’t see it.’

‘I could leave you a ticket at the box office if you like.’

‘I can’t promise I’ll be there,’ I said. ‘But sure. If I can. Thanks.’

‘It’s probably not your thing, I know,’ she said, a little sadly. ‘The show is very empty and pretentious, it’s true. But these days, tell me what isn’t? If you ask me, the inflation didn’t just affect our money, but everything else, too. Sex, drinking, drugs, nightlife, art, you name it. It’s like everything is rampantly out of control, you know? Especially in Berlin. The inflated money was just the beginning. The city’s become one great big department store of debauchery. Sometimes when I walk along the Kurfürstendamm and see all the boys powdered and rouged like tarts and behaving outrageously I fear for the future. I really do.’