‘Here. This one. It’s been moved. Recently. And the lid’s a different colour from the rest.’ He lifted the lid, took a deep breath and then shone his torch inside. ‘It’s her all right.’
I came over to where he was standing and took a look for myself, and one for Hildegard. I’d seen enough photographs of Emmeline around the apartment to recognize her immediately.
‘Get her out of there as soon as you can, Professor.’
Illmann looked at me strangely and then nodded. Perhaps he heard something in my tone that made him think my interest was more than just professional. He waved in the police photographer.
‘Becker,’ I said.
‘Yes, sir?’
‘I need you to come with me.’
On the way to Reinhard Lange’s address we called in at my office to collect his letters. I poured us both a large glass of schnapps and explained something of what had transpired that evening.
‘Lange’s the weak link. I heard them say so. What’s more, he’s a lemon-sucker.’ I drained the glass and poured another, inhaling deeply of it to increase the effect, my lips tingling as I held it on my palate for a while before swallowing. I shuddered a little as I let it slip down my backbone and said: ‘I want you to work a Vice-squad line on him.’
‘Yes? How heavy?’
‘Like a fucking waltzer.’
Becker grinned and finished his own drink. ‘Roll him out flat? I get the idea.’ He opened his jacket and took out a short rubber truncheon which he tapped enthusiastically on the palm of his hand. ‘I’ll stroke him with this.’
‘Well, I hope you know more about using that than you do that Parabellum you carry. I want this fellow alive. Scared shitless, but alive. To answer questions. You get it?’
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’m an expert with this little india rubber. I’ll just break the skin, you’ll see. The bones we can leave until another time you give the word.’
‘I do believe you like this, don’t you? Scaring the piss out of people.’
Becker laughed. ‘Don’t you?’
The house was on Lutzowufer-Strasse, overlooking the Landwehr Canal and within earshot of the zoo, where some of Hitler’s relations could be heard complaining about the standard of accommodation. It was an elegant, three-storey Wilhelmine building, orange-painted and with a big square oriel window on the first floor. Becker started to pull the bell as if he was doing it on piecework. When he got tired of that he started on the door knocker. Eventually a light came on in the hall and we heard the scrape of a bolt.
The door opened on the chain and I saw Lange’s pale face peer nervously round the side.
‘Police,’ said Becker. ‘Open up.’
‘What is happening?’ he swallowed. ‘What do you want?’
Becker took a step backwards. ‘Mind out, sir,’ he said, and then stabbed at the door with the sole of his boot. I heard Lange squeal as Becker kicked it again. At the third attempt the door flew open with a great splintering noise to reveal Lange hurrying up the stairs in his pyjamas.
Becker went after him.
‘Don’t shoot him, for Christ’s sake,’ I yelled at Becker.
‘Oh God, help,’ Lange gurgled as Becker caught him by the bare ankle and started to drag him back. Twisting round he tried to kick himself free of Becker’s grip, but it was to no avail, and as Becker pulled so Lange bounced down the stairs on his fat behind. When he hit the floor Becker gripped at his face and stretched each cheek towards his ears.
‘When I say open the door, you open the fucking door, right?’ Then he put his whole hand over Lange’s face and banged his head hard on the stair. ‘You got that, queer?’ Lange protested loudly, and Becker caught hold of some of his hair and slapped him twice, hard across the face. ‘I said, have you got that, queer?’
‘Yes,’ he screamed.
‘That’s enough,’ I said pulling him by the shoulder. He stood up breathing heavily, and grinned at me.
‘You said a waltzer, sir.’
‘I’ll tell you when he needs some more of the same.’
Lange wiped his bleeding lip and inspected the blood that smeared the back of his hand. There were tears in his eyes but he still managed to summon up some indignation.
‘Look here,’ he yelled, ‘what the hell is this all about? What do you mean by barging in here like this?’
‘Tell him,’ I said.
Becker grabbed the collar of Lange’s silk dressing-gown and twisted it against his pudgy neck. ‘It’s a pink triangle for you, my fat little fellow,’ he said. ‘A pink triangle with bar if the letters to your bottom-stroking friend Kindermann are anything to go by.’
Lange wrenched Becker’s hand away from his neck and stared bitterly at him. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he hissed. ‘Pink triangle? What does that mean, for God’s sake?’
‘Paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code,’ I said.
Becker quoted the section off by heart: ‘Any male who indulges in criminally indecent activities with another male, or who allows himself to participate in such activities, will be punished with gaol.’ He cuffed him playfully on the cheek with the backs of his fingers. ‘That means you’re under arrest, you fat butt-fucker.’
‘But it’s preposterous. I never wrote any letters to anyone. And I’m not a homosexual.’
‘You’re not a homosexual,’ Becker sneered, ‘and I don’t piss out of my prick.’ From his jacket pocket he produced the two letters I’d given him, and brandished them in front of Lange’s face. ‘And I suppose you wrote these to the tooth-fairy?’
Lange snatched at the letters and missed.
‘Bad manners,’ Becker said, cuffing him again, only harder.
‘Where did you get those?’
‘I gave them to him.’
Lange looked at me, and then looked again. ‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘I know you. You’re Steininger. You were there tonight, at — ’ He stopped himself from saying where he’d seen me.
‘That’s right, I was at Weisthor’s little party. I know quite a bit of what’s been going on. And you’re going to help me with the rest.’
‘You’re wasting your time, whoever you are. I’m not going to tell you anything.’
I nodded at Becker, who started to hit him again. I watched dispassionately as first he coshed him across the knees and ankles, and then lightly once, on the ear, hating myself for keeping alive the best traditions of the Gestapo, and for the cold, dehumanized brutality I felt inside my guts. I told him to stop.
Waiting for Lange to stop sobbing I walked around a bit, peering through doors. In complete contrast to the exterior, the inside of Lange’s house was anything but traditional. The furniture, rugs and paintings, of which there were many, were all in the most expensive modern style — the kind that’s easier to look at than to live with.
When eventually I saw that Lange had drawn himself together a bit, I said: ‘This is quite a place. Not my taste perhaps, but then, I’m a little old-fashioned. You know, one of those awkward people with rounded joints, the type that puts personal comfort ahead of the worship of geometry. But I’ll bet you’re really comfortable here. How do you think he’ll like the tank at the Alex, Becker?’
‘What, the lock-up? Very geometric, sir. All those iron bars.’
‘Not forgetting all those bohemian types who’ll be in there and give Berlin its world-famous night-life. The rapists, the murderers, the thieves, the drunks — they get a lot of drunks in the tank, throwing-up everywhere–’
‘It’s really awful, sir, that’s right.’
‘You know, Becker, I don’t think we can put someone like Herr Lange in there. I don’t think he would find it at all to his liking, do you?’
‘You bastards.’