About a lot of things I’m not always right. But about the Nazis I wasn’t often wrong.
Geert Vranken was a voluntary worker and had come to Berlin in search of a better job than the one that was available to him in Holland. Berlin’s railway, which was experiencing a self-inflicted crisis in recruiting maintenance staff, had been glad to have an experienced track engineer; Berlin’s police was less keen to investigate his murder. In fact, it didn’t want to investigate the case at all. But there was no doubting that the Dutchman had been murdered. When eventually his body was given its grudging, cursory examination by the ancient doctor brought back from retirement to handle forensic pathology for the Berlin police, six stab wounds were found on what remained of his torso.
Commissioner Friedrich-Wilhelm Lüdtke, who was now in charge of the Berlin Criminal Police, wasn’t a bad detective. It was Lüdtke who had successfully headed the S-Bahn murder investigation that led to the arrest and execution of Paul Ogorzow. But as he himself explained to me in his newly carpeted office on the top floor of the Alex, there was an important new law coming down the pipe from the Wilhelmstrasse, and Lüdtke’s boss, Wilhelm Frick, Minister of the Interior, had ordered him to prioritize its enforcement at the expense of all other investigative matters. Lüdtke, a doctor of law, was almost embarrassed to tell me what this important new law amounted to.
‘From September 19th,’ he said, ‘all Jews in Germany and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia will be obliged to wear a yellow star inscribed with the word “Jew” on their outer garments.’
‘You mean like in the Middle Ages?’
‘Yes, like in the Middle Ages.’
‘Well, that should make them easier to spot. Great idea. Until recently I’ve found it rather hard to recognize who is a Jew and who isn’t. Of late they do look thinner and hungrier than the rest of us. But that’s about it. Frankly I’ve yet to see just one who looks anything like those stupid cartoons in Der Stürmer.’ I nodded with fake enthusiasm. ‘Yes, this will certainly prevent them from looking exactly like the rest of us.’
Lüdtke, looking uncomfortable, adjusted his well-starched cuffs and collar. He was a big man with thick dark hair neatly combed off a broad, tanned forehead. He wore a navy-blue suit and a dark tie with a knot that was as small as the Party badge in his lapel; probably it felt just as tight on his neck when it came to speaking the truth. A matching navy-blue bowler hat was positioned on the corner of his double-partner’s desk, as if it was hiding something. Perhaps it was his lunch. Or just his conscience. I wondered how the hat would look with a yellow star on the crown. Like a Keystone Kop’s helmet, I thought. Something idiotic, anyway.
‘I don’t like this any more than you,’ he said, scratching the backs of his hands nervously. I could tell he was dying for a smoke. We both were. Without cigarettes, the Alex felt like an ashtray in a no smoking lounge.
‘I’d like it a whole lot less, I think, if I was Jewish,’ I said.
‘Yes, but you know what makes it almost unforgivable?’ He opened a box of matches and bit one. ‘Right now there’s an acute shortage of material.’
‘Yellow material.’
Lüdtke nodded.
‘I might have guessed. Mind if I have one of those?’
‘Help yourself.’ He tossed the matches across the desk and watched as I fished one out and put it in the corner of my mouth. ‘I’m told they’re good for your throat.’
‘Are you worried about your health, Wilhelm?’
‘Isn’t everyone? That’s why we do what we’re told. In case we come down with a dose of the Gestapo.’
‘You mean like making sure Jews wear their yellow stars?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Oh sure, sure. And while I can see the obvious importance of a law like that, there’s still the matter of the dead Dutchman. In case you’d forgotten, he was stabbed six times.’
Lüdtke shrugged. ‘If he was German it would be different, Bernie. But the Ogorzow case was a very expensive investigation for this department. We went way over budget. You’ve no idea how much it cost to catch that bastard. Undercover police officers, half the city’s rail workers interviewed, increased police presence at stations – the overtime we had to pay out was enormous. It really was a very difficult time for Kripo. To say nothing of the pressure we came under from the Propaganda Ministry. It’s hard catching anyone when the newspapers aren’t even allowed to write about a case.’
‘Geert Vranken was a rail worker,’ I said.
‘And you think the Ministry is going to be happy to learn that there’s another killer at work on the S-Bahn?’
‘This killer is different. As far as I can tell nobody raped him. And unless you count the train that drove over him, nobody tried to mutilate him either.’
‘But murder is murder, and frankly I know exactly what they’ll say. That there’s enough bad news around right now. In case you hadn’t noticed, Bernie, this city’s morale is already lower than a badger’s arse. Besides, we need those foreign workers. That’s what they’re going to tell me. The last thing we want is Germans thinking that there’s a problem with our guest workers. We had enough of that during the Ogorzow case. Everyone in Berlin was convinced that a German couldn’t possibly have murdered all those women. A lot of foreign workers were harassed and beaten up by irate Berliners who thought that one of them must have done it. You don’t want to see any more of that, do you? Christ, there are problems enough on the trains and the underground as it is. It took me almost an hour to come to work this morning.’
‘I wonder why we bother to come in at all given that the Ministry of Propaganda is now deciding what we can and what we can’t investigate. Are we really supposed to find people who look Jewish and check to see if they’re wearing the right embroidery? It’s laughable.’
‘I’m afraid that’s just how it is. Perhaps if there are any more stabbings like this one then we can devote some resources to an investigation, but for now I’d rather you left this Dutchy alone.’
‘All right, Wilhelm, if that’s the way you want it.’ I bit hard on my match. ‘But I’m beginning to understand your twenty-a-day match habit. I guess it’s easier not to scream when you’re chewing down on one of these.’
As I stood up to leave I glanced up at the picture on the wall. The Leader stared me down in triumph but, for a change, he wasn’t saying very much. If anyone needed a yellow star it was him; and sewn just over his heart, assuming he had one; an aiming spot for a firing squad.
The Berlin city map on Lüdtke’s wall told me nothing either. When Bernhard Weiss, one of Lüdtke’s predecessors, had been in charge of Berlin Kripo, the map had been covered with little flags marking the incidents of crime in the city. Now it was empty. There was, it seemed, no crime to speak of. Another great victory for National Socialism.
‘Oh, by the way. Shouldn’t someone tell the Vranken family back in Holland that their major breadwinner stopped a train with his face?’
‘I will speak to the State Labour Service,’ said Lüdtke. ‘You can safely leave it to them.’
I sighed and rolled my head wearily on my shoulders; it felt thick and heavy, like an old medicine ball.
‘I feel reassured already.’
‘You don’t look it,’ he said. ‘What’s the matter with you, these days, Bernie? You’re a real bat in the balls, do you know that? Whenever you walk in here it’s like rain coming in at the eaves. It’s like you’ve given up.’
‘Maybe I have.’
‘Well, don’t. I’m ordering you to pull yourself together.’
I shrugged. ‘Wilhelm? If I knew how to swim I’d first untie the anvil that’s tied around my legs.’