Philip Kerr - If the Dead Rise Not

“Your investigative method, perhaps? You could tell me something about that.”

“My method was a bit like what Field Marshal von Moltke said about a battle plan. It never survives contact with the enemy. People are different, Richard. It stands to reason that homicides are different, too. Perhaps if you were to tell me about a case you’re working on now. Better still, if you brought me the file, I could take a look at it and offer my thoughts. The chief mentioned one case that needed warming up. The murder of that cop. August Krichbaum, wasn’t it? Perhaps I could suggest something there.”

“That’s no longer a cold case,” said Bömer. “Looks like there may be a lead, after all.”

I bit my lip. “Oh? What’s that?”

“Krichbaum got himself murdered in front of the Kaiser Hotel, right? Pathologist reckoned someone clouted him in the gut.”

“Must have been quite a punch.”

“I guess if you’re not ready for it, it might be. Anyway, the hotel doorman got a look at the main suspect. Not much of a look, but he’s an ex-cop. Anyway, he’s looked at the photograph of every crook in Berlin, and no luck. Since then he’s been racking his brains and now reckons that the fellow who hit Krichbaum might have been another cop.”

“A cop? You’re joking.”

“Not at all. They’ve got him looking over the personnel files of the entire Berlin police force, past and present. As soon as he thumbs the right mug, they’ll have the guy, for sure.”

“Well, that’s a relief.”

I lit a cigarette and rubbed the back of my neck uncomfortably, as if I could already feel the blade of the falling ax. It’s said that all you ever feel is a sharp bite, like the angry nip of the electric clippers in a gentlemen’s hairdressers. It took me a moment or two to remind myself that the hotel doorman’s description of the suspect had been of a man with a mustache. And it took me a while longer to remember that in the original photograph on my own police personnel file I had been wearing a mustache. Did that make it more or less likely that he could identify me? I wasn’t sure. I took a deep breath and felt my head swim a little.

“But I brought the file on something else I’ve been working on,” said Bömer, unbuckling his saddle-leather briefcase.

“Good,” I said, without enthusiasm. “Oh, good.”

He handed me a buff-colored file.

“A few days ago, there was a body found floating in the Mühlendamm Lock.”

“A Landwehr Top,” I said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Nothing. So why didn’t the Mühlendamm Murder Commission deal with it?”

“Because there was some mystery about the man’s identity and about the cause of death. The man drowned. But the body was full of seawater, see? So he couldn’t possibly have drowned in the River Spree.” He handed me some photographs. “Plus, as you can see, an attempt had been made to weigh the body down. The rope around the ankles probably slipped the weight.”

“How deep is it there?” I asked, leafing through the pictures taken at the scene and in the morgue.

“About nine meters.”

I was looking at the body of a man in his late fifties. Big, blond, and typically Aryan, except for the fact that there was a photograph of his penis, which had been circumcised. Among German men that was a little unusual.

“As you can see, he might have been a Jew,” said Bömer. “Although from the rest of him, you wouldn’t say he looks like a Jew at all.”

“The strangest people are, these days.”

“I mean to say, he looks more typically Aryan, don’t you think?”

“Sure. Like a poster boy for the SA.”

“Well, let’s hope so.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning this: If it should turn out he’s German, then obviously we’d like to find out as much as we can. But if it should turn out that he’s Jewish, then my orders are that we don’t bother to investigate. That it’s understandable these things should happen in Berlin and not to waste any police time investigating it.”

I marveled at the calm way he said this. As if it were the most natural distinction in the world. I didn’t speak. I didn’t have to. I was looking at the pictures of a dead man. But I was still thinking about my own neck.

“Broken nose, cauliflower ear, big hands.” I flicked my cigarette away and tried to concentrate on what I was looking at, if only to get my mind off the death of August Krichbaum. “This fellow was no choirboy. Maybe he was a Jew, after all. Interesting.”

“What is?”

“That triangular mark on his chest. What is it? A bruise? The pathologist doesn’t say. Which is sloppy. Wouldn’t have happened in my day. I could probably tell a lot more from the actual body. Where is it now?”

“At the Charité Hospital.”

Suddenly, I figured that looking at Bömer’s Landwehr Top was the best way of taking my mind off August Krichbaum.

“Have you got a car?”

“Yes.”

“Come on. Let’s go and take a look. If anyone in there asks what we’re doing, you’re helping me to look for my missing brother.”

WE DROVE NORTHWEST in an open-top Butz. There was a two-wheel trailer attached to the back, almost as if Bömer were planning to go camping after he was through with me. This wasn’t so far from the truth.

“I lead a Hitler Youth troop of boys aged ten to fourteen,” he explained. “We were camping last weekend, which is why I still have the trailer attached to the car.”

“I sincerely hope they’re all still in there.”

“Go ahead and laugh. Everyone else at the Alex laughs. But I happen to believe in Germany ’s future.”

“So do I, which is why I also hope you locked them in. The members of your youth troop, I mean. Nasty little brutes. I saw some the other day playing piggy in the middle with some old Jew’s hat. Still, I guess we should forget about it. I mean, it’s understandable that these things happen in Berlin.”

“I don’t have anything against the Jews myself.”

“But. There’s always a ‘but’ after that particular sentiment. It’s like a stupid little trailer attached to the car.”

“But I do believe our nation has become weak and degenerate. And that the best way of turning that around is to make being German seem like something important. To do that properly, we have to make ourselves a special thing, a race apart. To make ourselves seem exclusively German, even to the extent of saying that it’s no good being a Jew first and a German second. There’s no room for anything else.”

“You make camping sound fun, Bömer. Is that what you tell the boys around the campfire? Now I understand what the trailer’s for. I suppose it’s full of degenerate literature to get the bonfire going.”

He grinned and shook his head. “Christ, did you speak like this when you were a detective at the Alex?”

“No. Back then we could all still say what the hell we liked.”

He laughed. “All I’m trying to do is explain why I think we need the government we have now.”

“Richard. When Germans look to their governments to fix things, you know we’re really in the shit. If you ask me, I think we’re an easy people to govern. All you have to do is make a new law once a year that says, do as you’re damn well told.”

We drove across Karlsplatz and onto Luisenstrasse, passing the monument to Rudolf Virchow, the so-called father of pathology and an early advocate of racial purity, which was probably the only reason why his statue hadn’t been moved. Next to the Charité Hospital was the Pathological Institute. We parked the car and went inside.

A red-haired intern wearing a white jacket showed us down to the ancient morgue, where a man armed with a pump-action spray gun was making short and pungent work of what remained of that summer’s insect life. I wondered if the stuff worked on Nazis. The man with the spray gun led us into the cold store, which, from the smell, wasn’t quite cold enough. He hit the air with some insecticide and walked us around a dozen, sheet-covered bodies laid out on slabs like a tented village, until we found the one we were looking for.