Philip Kerr - The Pale Criminal (Book Two of the Berlin Noir Trilogy)

To Jane

Much about your good people moves me to disgust, and it is not their evil I mean. How I wish they possessed a madness through which they could perish, like this pale criminal. Truly I wish their madness were called truth or loyalty or justice: but they possess their virtue in order to live long and in a miserable ease.

You tend to notice the strawberry tart in Kranzlers caf a lot more when your diet forbids you to have any.

Well, lately Ive begun to feel much the same way about women. Only Im not on a diet, so much as simply finding myself ignored by the waitress. There are so many pretty ones about too. Women, I mean, although I could as easily fuck a waitress as any other kind of female. There was one woman a couple of years ago. I was in love with her, only she disappeared. Well, that happens to a lot of people in this city. But since then its just been casual affairs. And now, to see me on Unter den Linden, head one way and then the other, you would think that I was watching a hypnotists pendulum. I dont know, maybe its the heat. This summer, Berlins as hot as a bakers armpit. Or maybe its just me, turning forty and going a bit coochie-coo near babies. Whatever the reason, my urge to procreate is nothing short of bestial, which of course women see in your eyes, and then leave you well alone.

Despite that, in the long hot summer of 1938, bestiality was callously enjoying something of an Aryan renaissance.

Friday, 26 August

Just like a fucking cuckoo.

What is?

Bruno Stahlecker looked up from his newspaper.

Hitler, who else?

My stomach sank as it sensed another of my partners profound analogies to do with the Nazis. Yes, of course, I said firmly, hoping that my show of total comprehension would deter him from a more detailed explanation. But it was not to be.

No sooner has he got rid of the Austrian fledgling from the European nest than the Czechoslovakia one starts to look precarious. He smacked the newspaper with the back of his hand. Have you seen this, Bernie? German troop movements on the border of the Sudetenland.

Yes, I guessed thats what you were talking about. I picked up the morning mail and, sitting down, started to sort through it. There were several cheques, which helped to take the edge off my irritation with Bruno. It was hard to believe, but clearly hed already had a drink. Normally a couple of stops away from being monosyllabic (which I prefer being a shade taciturn myself) booze always made Bruno chattier than an Italian waiter.

The odd thing is that the parents dont notice. The cuckoo keeps throwing out the other chicks, and the foster parents keep on feeding it.

Maybe they hope that hell shut up and go away, I said pointedly, but Brunos fur was too thick for him to notice. I glanced over the contents of one of the letters and then read it again, more slowly.

They just dont want to notice. Whats in the post?

Hmm? Oh, some cheques.

Bless the day that brings a cheque. Anything else?

A letter. The anonymous kind. Someone wants me to meet him in the Reichstag at midnight.

Does he say why?

Claims to have information about an old case of mine. A missing person that stayed missing.

Sure, I remember them like I remember dogs with tails. Very unusual. Are you going?

I shrugged. Lately Ive been sleeping badly, so why not?

You mean apart from the fact that its a burnt-out ruin, and it isnt safe to go inside? Well, for one, it could be a trap. Someone might be trying to kill you.

Maybe you sent it, then.

He laughed uncomfortably. Perhaps I should come with you. I could stay out of sight, but within earshot.

Or gunshot? I shook my head. If you want to kill a man you dont ask him to the sort of place where naturally hell be on his guard. I tugged open the drawer of my desk.

To look at there wasnt much difference between the Mauser and the Walther, but it was the Mauser that I picked up. The pitch of the grip, the general fit of the pistol made it altogether more substantial than the slightly smaller Walther, and it lacked for nothing in stopping-power. Like a fat cheque, it was a gun that always endowed me with a feeling of quiet confidencs when I slipped it into my coat pocket. I waved the gun in Brunos direction.

And whoever sent me the party invitation will know Im carrying a lighter.

Supposing theres more than one of them?

Shit, Bruno, theres no need to paint the devil on the wall. I can see the risks, but thats the business were in. Newspapermen get bulletins, soldiers get dispatches and detectives get anonymous letters. If Id wanted sealing-wax on my mail Id have become a damned lawyer.

Bruno nodded, tugged a little at his eyepatch and then transferred his nerves to his pipe the symbol of our partnerships failure. I hate the paraphernalia of pipe-smoking: the tobacco-pouch, the cleaner, the pocket-knife and the special lighter. Pipe-smokers are the grandmasters of fiddling and fidgeting, and as great a blight on our world as a missionary landing on Tahiti with a boxful of brassieres. It wasnt Brunos fault, for, in spite of his drinking and his irritating little habits, he was still the good detective Id rescued from the obscurity of an out-of-the-way posting to a Kripo station in Spreewald. No, it was me that was at fault: I had discovered myself to be as temperamentally unsuited to partnership as I would have been to the presidency of the Deutsche Bank. But looking at him I started to feel guilty. Remember what we used to say in the war? If its got your name and address on it, you can be sure itll be delivered.

I remember, he said, lighting his pipe and returning to his Vlkischer Beobachter. I watched him reading it with bemusement.

You could as well wait for the town-crier as get any real news out of that.

True. But I like to read a paper in the morning, even if it is a crock of shit. Ive got into the habit. We were both silent for a moment or two. Theres another one of those advertisements in here: Rolf Vogelmann, Private Investigator, Missing Persons a speciality.

Never heard of him.

Sure you have. There was another ad in last Fridays classified. I read it out to you. Dont you remember? He took his pipe out of his mouth and pointed the stem at me. You know, maybe we should advertise, Bernie.

Why? Weve got all the business we can handle, and more. Things have never been better, so who needs the extra expense? Anyway, its reputation that counts in this line of business, not column inches in the Partys newspaper. This Rolf Vogelmann obviously doesnt know what the hell hes doing. Think of all the Jewish business that we get. None of our clients reads that kind of shit.

Well, if you dont think we need it, Bemie

Like a third nipple.

Some people used to think that was a sign of luck.

And quite a few who thought it reason enough to burn you at the stake.

The devils mark, eh? He chuckled. Hey, maybe Hitlers got one.

Just as surely as Goebbels has a cloven hoof. Shit, theyre all from hell. Every damn one of them.

I heard my footsteps ringing on a deserted Knigsplatz as I approached what was left of the Reichstag building. Only Fismarck, standing on his plinth, hand on sword, in front of the western doorway, his head turned towards me, seemed prepared to offer some challenge to my being there. But as I recalled he had never been much of an enthusiast for the German parliament had never even set foot in the place and so I doubted that hed have been much inclined to defend the institution on which his statue had, perhaps symbolically, turned its back. Not that there was much about this rather florid, Renaissance-style building that looked worth fighting for now. Its facade blackened by smoke, the Reichstag looked like a volcano which had seen its last and most spectacular eruption. But the fire had been more than merely the burnt offering of the 1918 Republic; it was also the clearest piece of pyromancy that Germany could have been given as to what Adolf Hitler and his third nipple had in store for us.