‘Bastard,’ muttered Lobbes.
‘It’s quite all right,’ she said, adding some copies of the German Police Journal to the pile of textbooks. ‘You can’t teach Hans what he won’t learn.’ I smiled, appreciating her cool resilience, as well as the fine breasts which strained at the material of her blouse.
After the meeting was concluded, I lingered there a little in order to be alone with her.
‘He asked a good question,’ I said. ‘One to which I didn’t have much of an answer. Thanks for coming to my assistance when you did.’
‘Please don’t mention it,’ she said, starting to return some of her books to the briefcase. I picked one of them up and glanced at it.
‘You know, I’d be interested to hear your answer. Can I buy you a drink?’
She looked at her watch. ‘Yes,’ she smiled. ‘I’d like that.’
Die Letze Instanz, at the end of Klosterstrasse on the old city wall, was a local bar much favoured by bulls from the Alex and court officials from the nearby court of last instance, from which the place took its name.
Inside it was all dark-brown wood-panelled walls and flagged floors. Near the bar, with its great draught pump of yellow ceramic, on top of which stood the figure of a seventeenth-century soldier, was a large seat made of green, brown and yellow tiles, all with moulded figures and heads. It had the look of a very cold and uncomfortable throne, and on it sat the bar’s owner, Warnstorff, a pale-skinned, dark-haired man wearing a collarless shirt and a capacious leather apron that was also his bag of change. When we arrived he greeted me warmly and showed us to a quiet table in the back, where he brought us a couple of beers. At another table a man was dealing vigorously with the biggest piece of pig’s knuckle either of us had ever seen.
‘Are you hungry?’ I asked her.
‘Not now I’ve seen him,’ she said.
‘Yes, I know what you mean. It does put you off rather, doesn’t it? You’d think he was trying to win the Iron Cross the way he’s battling that joint.’
She smiled, and we were silent for a moment. Eventually she said, ‘Do you think there’s going to be a war?’
I stared into the top of my beer as if expecting the answer to float to the surface. I shrugged and shook my head.
‘I haven’t really been keeping that close an eye on things lately,’ I said, and explained about Bruno Stahlecker and my return to Kripo. ‘But shouldn’t I be asking you? As the expert on criminal psychology you should have a better appreciation of the Fuhrer’s mind than most people. Would you say his behaviour was compulsive or irresistible within the definition of Paragraph Fifty-one of the Criminal Code?’
It was her turn to search for inspiration in a glass of beer.
‘We don’t really know each other well enough for this kind of conversation, do we?’ she said.
‘I suppose not.’
‘I will say this, though,’ she said lowering her voice. ‘Have you ever read Mein Kampf?’
‘That funny old book they give free to all newlyweds? It’s the best reason to stay single I can think of.’
‘Well, I have read it. And one of the things I noticed was that there is one passage, as long as seven pages, in which Hitler makes repeated references to venereal disease and its effects. Indeed, he actually says that the elimination of venereal disease is The Task that faces the German nation.’
‘My God, are you saying that he’s syphilitic?’
‘I’m not saying anything. I’m just telling you what is written in the Führer’s great book.’
‘But the book’s been around since the mid-twenties. If he’s had a hot tail since then his syphilis would have to be tertiary.’
‘It might interest you to know,’ she said, ‘that many of Josef Kahn’s fellow inmates at the Herzeberge Asylum are those whose organic dementia is a direct result of their syphilis. Contradictory statements can be made and accepted. The mood varies between euphoria and apathy, and there is general emotional instability. The classic type is characterized by a demented euphoria, delusions of grandeur and bouts of extreme paranoia.’
‘Christ, the only thing you left out was the crazy moustache,’ I said. I lit a cigarette and puffed at it dismally. ‘For God’s sake change the subject. Let’s talk about something cheerful, like our mass-murdering friend. Do you know, I’m beginning to see his point, I really am. I mean, these are tomorrow’s young mothers he’s killing. More childbearing machines to produce new Party recruits. Me, I’m all for these by-products of the asphalt civilization they’re always on about — the childless families with eugenically dud women, at least until we’ve got rid of this regime of rubber truncheons. What’s one more psychopath among so many?’
‘You say more than you know,’ she said. ‘We’re all of us capable of cruelty. Every one of us is a latent criminal. Life is just a battle to maintain a civilized skin. Many sadistic killers find that it’s only occasionally that it comes off. Peter Kurten for example. He was apparently a man of such a kindly disposition that nobody who knew him could believe that he was capable of such horrific crimes as he committed.’
She rummaged in her briefcase again and, having wiped the table, she laid a thin blue book between our two glasses.
‘This book is by Carl Berg, a forensic pathologist who had the opportunity of studying Kurten at length following his arrest. I’ve met Berg and respect his work. He founded the Diisseldorf Institute of Legal and Social Medicine, and for a while he was the medico-legal officer of the Düsseldorf Criminal Court. This book, The Sadist, is probably one of the best accounts of the mind of the murderer that has ever been written. You can borrow it if you like.’
‘Thanks, I will.’
‘That will help you to understand,’ she said. ‘But to enter into the mind of a man like Kurten, you should read this.’ Again she dipped into the bag of books.
‘Les Fleurs du mal,’ I read, ‘by Charles Baudelaire.’ I opened it and looked over the verses. ‘Poetry?’ I raised an eyebrow.
‘Oh, don’t look so suspicious, Kommissar. I’m being perfectly serious. It’s a good translation, and you’ll find a lot more in it than you might expect, believe me.’ She smiled at me.
‘I haven’t read poetry since I studied Goethe at school.’
‘And what was your opinion of him?’
‘Do Frankfurt lawyers make good poets?’
‘It’s an interesting critique,’ she said. ‘Well, let’s hope you think better of Baudelaire. And now I’m afraid I must be going.’ She stood up and we shook hands. ‘When you’ve finished with the books you can return them to me at the Goering Institute on Budapesterstrasse. We’re just across the road from the Zoo Aquarium. I’d certainly be interested to hear a detective’s opinion of Baudelaire,’ she said.
‘It will be my pleasure. And you can tell me your opinion of Dr Lanz Kindermann.’
‘Kindermann? You know Lanz Kindermann?’
‘In a way.’
She gave me a judicious sort of look. ‘You know, for a police Kommissar you are certainly full of surprises. You certainly are.’
7
Sunday, 11 September
I prefer my tomatoes when they’ve still got some green left in them. Then they’re sweet and firm, with smooth, cool skins, the sort you would choose for a salad. But when a tomato has been around for a while, it picks up a few wrinkles as it grows too soft to handle, and even begins to taste a little sour.
It’s the same with women. Only this one was perhaps a shade green for me, and possibly rather too cool for her own good. She stood at my front door and gave me an impertinent sort of north-to-south-and-back-again look, as if she was trying to assess my prowess, or lack of it, as a lover.