‘That’s too bad,’ said Becker. ‘I was telling my friend here just how nice she was.’ He shrugged. ‘Never mind. Plenty more where she came from, eh?’ Ignoring the look on my face, and still supported like a drunk by the two snappers, he turned and walked down the creaking corridor and into one of the bedrooms, leaving me alone with the rest of them.
‘And what is your preference, Bernhard?’ Evona snapped her fingers and waved one of her girls forward. ‘This one and Esther are very much alike,’ she said, taking hold of the girl’s bare backside and turning it towards my face, smoothing it with the palm of her hand. ‘She has two vertebrae too many, so that her behind is a long way from her waist. Very beautiful, do you not think?’
‘Very beautiful,’ I said, and patted the girl’s marble-cool bottom politely. ‘But to be honest, I’m the old-fashioned type. I like a girl to have all her mind on me and not my wallet.’
Evona smiled. ‘No, I did not think you were the type.’ She smacked the girl’s behind like a favourite dog. ‘Go on, off you go. All of you.’
I watched them troop silently out of the room and felt something close to disappointment that I wasn’t more like Becker. She seemed to sense this ambivalence.
‘You are not like Emil. He is attracted to any girl who will show him her fingernails. I think that one would fuck a cat with a broken back. How’s your drink?’
I swirled it demonstratively. ‘Just fine,’ I said.
‘Well, is there anything else that I can get you?’
I felt her bosom press against my arm and smiled down at what was hanging in the gallery. I lit a cigarette and looked her in the eye.
‘Don’t pretend to be disappointed if I say that all I’m after is some information.’
She smiled, checking her advance, and reached for her drink. ‘What kind of information?’
‘I’m looking for a man, and before you rip a hole for the joke, the man I’m after is a killer, with four goals on the score-sheet.’
‘How can I help you? I run a whorehouse, not a private detective agency.’
‘It’s not uncommon for a man to use one of your girls roughly.’
‘There’s none of them wears velvet gloves, Bernhard, I’ll tell you that much. Quite a lot of them figure that just because they’ve paid for the privilege, it gives them a licence to tear a girl’s underwear.’
‘Someone who went beyond what is considered to be a normal hazard of the profession, then. Maybe one of your girls has had such a client. Or heard of someone who has.’
‘Tell me more about your killer.’
‘I don’t know much,’ I sighed. ‘I don’t know his name, where he lives, where he came from or what he looks like. What I do know is that he likes tying up schoolgirls.’
‘Lots of men like tying girls up,’ Evona said. ‘Don’t ask me what they get out of it. There are even some who like to whip girls, although I don’t permit that sort of thing. That kind of pig should be locked away.’
‘Look, anything might help. Right now there’s not a great deal to go on.’
Evona shrugged, and stubbed out her cigarette. ‘What the hell,’ she said. ‘I was a schoolgirl myself once. You said four girls.’
‘It may even be five. All aged about fifteen or sixteen. Nice families, and bright futures until this maniac kidnaps them, rapes them, cuts their throats and then dumps their naked bodies.’
Evona looked thoughtful. ‘There was something,’ she said carefully. ‘Of course you realize that it’s unlikely that the sort of man who comes to my place or any place like it is not the sort of man who preys on young girls. I mean, the point of a place like this is to take care of a man’s needs.’
I nodded, but I was thinking of Kürten, and of how his case contradicted her. I decided not to press the point.
‘Like I said, it’s a long shot.’
Evona stood up and excused herself for a moment. When she returned she was accompanied by the girl whose elongated backside I had been obliged to admire. This time she was wearing a gown, and seemed more nervous clothed than she had been while naked.
‘This is Helene,’ Evona said, sitting down again. ‘Helene, sit down and tell the Kommissar about the man who tried to kill you.’
The girl sat down on the chair where Becker had been sitting. She was pretty in a tired sort of way, as if she didn’t sleep enough, or was using some sort of drug. Hardly daring to look me in the eye she chewed her lip and tugged at a length of her long red hair.
‘Well, go on,’ Evona urged. ‘He won’t eat you. He had that chance earlier on.’
‘The man we’re looking for likes to tie girls up,’ I told her, leaning forward encouragingly. ‘Then he strangles them, or cuts their throats.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said after a minute. ‘This is hard for me. I wanted to forget all about it, but Evona says that some schoolgirls have been murdered. I want to help, really I do, but it’s hard.’
I lit a cigarette and offered her the packet. She shook her head. ‘Take your time, Helene,’ I said. ‘Is this a customer we’re talking about? Someone who came for a massage?’
‘I won’t have to go to court, will I? I’m not saying anything if it means standing up in front of a magistrate and saying I’m a party-girl.’
‘The only person you’ll have to tell is me.’
The girl sniffed without much enthusiasm.
‘Well, you seem all right, I suppose.’ She shot a look at the cigarette in my hand. ‘Can I change my mind about that nail?’
‘Sure,’ I said, and held out the packet.
The first drag seemed to galvanize her. She smarted as she told the story, embarrassed a little, and probably a bit scared as well.
‘About a month ago I had a client in one evening. I gave him a massage and when I asked him if he wanted me to dial his number he asked me if he could tie me up and then get himself frenched. I said that it would cost him another twenty, and he agreed. So there I was, trussed up like a roast chicken, having finished frenching him, and I ask him to untie me. He gets this funny look in his eye, and calls me a dirty whore, or something like that. Well you get used to men going mean on you when you’ve finished, like they’re ashamed of themselves, but I could see that this one was different, so I tried to stay calm. Then he got the knife out and start to lay it flat on my neck like he wanted me to be scared. Which I was. Fit to scream my lungs out of my throat, only I didn’t want to scare him into cutting me right away, thinking that I might be able to talk him out of it.’ She took another tremulous drag on her cigarette.
‘But that was just his cue to start throttling me, him thinking that I was about to scream, I mean. He grabbed hold of my windpipe and starts to choke me. If one of the other girls hadn’t walked in there by mistake he’d have scratched me out and no mistake. I had the bruises on my neck for almost a week afterwards.’
‘What happened when the other girl came in?’
‘Well, I couldn’t say for sure. I was more concerned with drawing breath than seeing that he got a taxi home all right, you know what I mean? As far as I know he just snatched up his things and got his smell out the door.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘He had a uniform on.’
‘What kind of uniform? Can you be a little more specific?’
She shrugged. ‘Who am I, Hermann Goering? Shit, I don’t know what kind of uniform it was.’
‘Well was it green, black, brown or what? Come on, girl, think. It’s important.’
She took a fierce drag and shook her head impatiently.
‘An old uniform. The sort they used to wear.’
‘You mean like a war veteran?’