‘Lange, what are you doing here?’
Andreas Lange had previously worked as an assistant detective in Homicide before starting his inspector training in the same intake as Charly.
‘Inspector!’ Lange placed the list on Rath’s desk. He, too, seemed pleased to see a familiar face. ‘I’ve been with the Political Police since December. Didn’t you know?’
‘Right. Of course.’ Gennat had almost certainly announced the news while Rath’s mind had been elsewhere. ‘How do you like it on the upstairs floor?’
‘Better view for sure,’ Lange said, and went on his way.
‘You can always tell CID officers,’ Zientek said. ‘Comedians…’ He had made a disappointed face as Lange set down the list on Rath’s desk, but couldn’t say anything given Rath’s status as superior officer. ‘Let’s go and find an interrogation room,’ he said, snatching the list gruffly and making for the door. Rath followed, smiling inwardly but hurrying to keep up.
‘These lists,’ he asked. ‘Where are they compiled?’
‘Pardon me?’
‘Is there a central list containing the names of all prisoners being held by the police and auxiliary forces?’
‘There might be, if the SA weren’t so damn sloppy, but every so often a prisoner slips through, never to be found. Their prisons are a mess.’
‘The SA have their own prisons? Since when?’
‘Where do you think all this lot are kept? Berlin doesn’t have that many free cells.’
‘But the SA does?’
‘You can be sure of it.’
‘What kind of prisons are these?’
‘For the most part they’re normal basements, though sometimes they cart Thälmann’s boys off to the nearest Sturmlokal to teach them some manners. Which means their record-keeping isn’t quite what it could be. Still, Commies can be dealt with off the books too.’ Zientek laughed, sounding like a goat with pneumonia.
‘Say you’re looking for someone specific, how would you find them?’
‘The men on our list are all brought in from elsewhere. Shouldn’t be much looking involved.’
‘What if they haven’t been brought in yet?’
Zientek halted outside the interrogation room. He seemed wary. ‘If you’re looking for someone specific we can submit a request to SA leadership. Usually they’re delivered the next day. Free of charge.’ He laughed his bleating laugh. ‘Occasionally they can be a little worse for wear. Which is hardly the worst thing for our purposes.’
37
He still didn’t know why he had been locked up or what they intended to do with him.
They weren’t going to beat him to death. They had kicked him and thrashed him with an iron bar, but always stopped just in time. Luckily for Leo, he could take a lot of punishment. He wouldn’t break any time soon, and that, he now believed, was their purpose. They wanted to cut him down a peg, make an example of a head of a Ringverein. To deter other career criminals in the city.
The rest of the inmates were nobodies. Communists mainly, as well as a few Social Democrats who had been taken out of circulation. Also, doctors, authors and lawyers who were united, besides their high school diplomas and university degrees, above all, by being Jewish. Some of them had long forgotten this fact until the SA reminded them.
In the meantime Leo also knew where he was being held, albeit this information was of little use as he had no contact with the outside world. The SA must have only just moved into the former barracks on General-Pape-Strasse since the whole thing retained an improvised feel. The prisoners were herded together in the basement. Thirty or forty men in the one room with only a single steel trough for their toilet, emptied all too infrequently given their captors’ fondness for the castor oil treatment.
Upstairs, the offices and interrogation rooms were a world apart from this basement hell. There were beatings upstairs, too, but the really sadistic torture was carried out by the SA men downstairs, almost all of them in their early or mid-twenties.
Other buildings were also in use, though they housed normal enterprises. From time to time Leo would hear the screeching of a saw, the pounding of hammer on metal alongside footsteps, cries, laughter and the murmur of voices. Berlin workers going about their business as the SA tortured their most vocal supporters in the basement next door.
The Communists, who made up the majority of prisoners, managed to smuggle out the odd message. They were well organised, but didn’t trust Leo, the Ringverein man, which meant he hadn’t got word to Marlow. Whether someone like Dr Kohn, Marlow’s go-to weapon in such cases, would be much help in a situation like this remained to be seen. What happened down here had nothing to do with the rule of law. Besides, wasn’t Kohn Jewish himself? There was more chance of him joining Leo than bailing him out.
A key turned in the lock. ‘Juretzka, follow me!’
Leo stood up. His bones ached, he had bumps and bruises everywhere, and in some places the skin had burst open. His wounds had only just started to heal, and now the bastards would open them again. Since encountering Katsche on the first day, he had begun memorising his torturers’ faces, storing names whenever they were mentioned, as well as any other information he could lay his hands on. If he should ever get out, he’d find them all, no matter where they lived or where they were hiding. Katsche above all, the piece of shit.
He’d only seen him on the first day, but he was almost certain that Horst Kaczmarek had denounced him, perhaps on behalf of the Nordpiraten. Apparently Marczewski had seen Lapke, the head of the Pirates, taking part in an SA rally in Wedding sometime in November. He’d been right in the midst of it, dressed in brown.
Leo blinked as they stepped into the light. They were taking him upstairs. That was good. There would be no messing around with castor oil, or anything that involved severe blood loss. They saved that for the basement.
It was the first time they’d taken him upstairs in daylight. For the first time he could see something on the other side of the windows, a gravel yard where a few cars were stationed. Two men in workers’ overalls leaned by the wall of a brick building and smoked. Outside a large gate a truck waited to be loaded. It really was business as usual. Did the workers realise who had moved in next door?
Behind the desk was a man whom the two guards addressed as Sturmführer Sperling. It was the first time Leo had seen him, but he noted his face, and his name. He was less concerned about the man’s rank, though evidently he was a big fish.
‘Prisoner Juretzka,’ Sperling said. ‘You will be pleased to know that we are preparing your release.’
‘Then you’ve finally realised I’m not a Communist. Congratulations. It only took you six days, or was it seven?’
‘There are plenty of reasons to hold you a little longer. You have one man, and one man alone, to thank for your release. Scharführer Lapke put in…’
‘Come again?’ Leo interrupted the Sturmführer, paying for it with a truncheon blow to the ribs.
‘No need to thank me,’ a voice said from the door. Leo turned around and couldn’t believe his eyes. Hermann Lapke, the head of the Nordpiraten, stood in the doorway, but even in SA uniform the man looked more like a grey, middle-class bore than a gangster. The whole world underestimated him, the underworld above all.
‘That sort of thing goes without saying, doesn’t it, Leo?’ Lapke said. ‘What’s a good word between friends?’
Leo spat. ‘I can do without you.’
Lapke leaned casually on the desk, downgrading Sturmführer Sperling, his superior, to a bit-part role.
‘I don’t think you can. If you really want to get out of here, I’m the only who can save you.’