'Plato.'
'Plato. It suits you. Well, Plato, you can kiss me if you want.'
'You don't creep around it, do you?'
'Haven't you heard the nicknames they have for the BdM? The German Mattress League? Commodities for German Men?' She put her arms about my neck and performed a variety of coquettish expressions she'd probably practised in front of her dressing-table mirror.
Her hot young breath tasted stale, but I let myself equal the competence in her kiss, just to be affable, my hands squeezing at her young breasts, kneading the nipples with my fingers. Then I cupped her chubby behind in both my moistening palms, and drew her closer to what was increasingly on my mind. Her naughty eyes went round as she pressed herself against me. I can't honestly say I wasn't tempted.
'Do you know any good bedtime stories, Plato?' she giggled.
'No,' I said, tightening my grip on her. 'But I know plenty of bad ones. The kind where the beautiful but spoilt princess gets boiled alive and eaten up by the wicked troll.'
A vague glimmer of doubt began to grow in the bright blue iris of each corrupt eye, and her smile was no longer wholly confident as I hauled up her skirt and started to tug her pants down.
'Oh, I could tell you lots of stories like that,' I said darkly. 'The sort of stories that policemen tell their daughters. Horrible gruesome stories that give girls the kind of nightmares which their fathers can be glad of.'
'Stop it,' she laughed nervously. 'You're frightening me.' Certain now that things weren't going quite to plan, she reached desperately for her pants as I yanked them down her legs, exposing the fledgling that nestled in her groin.
'They're glad because it means that their pretty little daughters will be much too scared to ever go into a strange man's house, just in case he should turn into a wicked troll.'
'Please, mister, don't,' she said.
I smacked her bare bottom and pushed her away.
'So it's lucky for you, princess, that I'm a detective and not a troll, otherwise you'd be ketchup.'
'You're a policeman?' she gulped, tears welling up in her eyes.
'That's right, I'm a policeman. And if I ever find you playing the apprentice snapper again, I'll see to it that your father takes a stick to you, understand?'
'Yes,' she whispered, and quickly pulled up her pants.
I picked up the pile of old shirts and towels from where I had dropped them on the floor, and pushed them into her arms.
'Now get out of here before I do the job myself.' She ran into the hall and out of the apartment in terror, as if I had been Niebelung himself.
After I'd closed the door on her, the smell and touch of that delicious little body, and the frustrated desire of it, remained with me for as long as it took to pour myself a drink and take a cold bath.
That September it seemed that passion everywhere, already smouldering like a rotten fuse-box, was easily ignited, and I wished that the hot blood of Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia could have been as easily dealt with as was my own excitation.
As a bull you learn to expect an increase in crime during hot weather. In January and February even the most desperate criminals stay home in front of the fire.
Reading Professor Berg's book, The Sadist, later on that same day, I wondered how many lives had been saved simply because it was too cold or too wet for Knrten to venture out of doors, Still, nine murders, seven attempted murders and forty acts of arson was an impressive enough record.
According to Berg, Knrten, the product of a violent home, had come to crime at an early age, committing a string of petty larcenies and enduring several periods of imprisonment until, at the age of thirty-eight, he had married a woman of strong character. He had always had sadistic impulses, being inclined to torture cats and other dumb animals, and now he was obliged to keep these tendencies in a mental straitjacket. But when his wife was not at home Knrten's evil demon at times grew too powerful to restrain, and he was driven to commit the terrible and sadistic crimes for which he was to become infamous.
This sadism was sexual in its origin, Berg explained. Knrten's home circumstances had rendered him predisposed to a deviation of the sexual urge, and his early experiences had all helped to condition the direction of that urge.
In the twelve months that separated Knrten's capture and his execution, Berg had met frequently with Knrten and found him to be a man of notable character and talent. He was possessed of considerable charm and intelligence, an excellent memory and keen powers of observation. Indeed, Berg was moved to remark upon the man's accessibility. Another outstanding characteristic was Knrten's vanity, which manifested itself in his smart, well-cared for appearance and in his delight at having outwitted the Dnsseldorf police for as long as he had cared to do so.
Berg's conclusion was not a particularly comfortable one for any civilized member of society: Knrten was not mad within the terms of Paragraph Fifty-one, in that his acts were neither completely compulsive nor wholly irresistible, so much as pure, unadulterated cruelty.
If that wasn't bad enough, reading Baudelaire left me feeling as comfortable in my soul as a bullock in an abattoir. It didn't require a superhuman effort of imagination to accept Frau Kalau vom Hofe's suggestion that this rather Gothic French poet provided an explicit articulation of the mind of a Landru, a Gormann or a Knrten.
Yet there was something more here. Something deeper and more universal than merely a clue as to the psyche of the mass murderer. In Baudelaire's interest in violence, in his nostalgia for the past and through his revelation of the world of death and corruption, I heard the echo of a Satanic litany that was altogether more contemporary, and saw the pale reflection of a different kind of criminal, one whose spleen had the force of law.
I don't have much of a memory for words. I can barely remember the words of the national anthem. But some of these verses stayed in my head like the persistent smell of mingled musk and tar.
That evening I drove down to see Bruno's widow Katia at their home in Berlin-Zehlendorf. This was my second visit since Bruno's death, and I brought some of his things from the office, as well as a letter from my insurance company acknowledging receipt of the claim I had made on Katia's behalf.
There was even less to say now than before, but nevertheless I stayed for a full hour, holding Katia's hand and trying to swallow the lump in my throat with several glasses of schnapps.
'How's Heinrich taking it?' I said uncomfortably, hearing the unmistakable sound of the boy singing in his bedroom.
'He hasn't talked about it yet,' said Katia, her grief giving way a little to embarrassment. 'I think he sings because he wants to escape from having to face up to it.'
'Grief affects people very differently,' I said, scraping around for some sort of excuse. But I didn't think this was true at all. To my own father's premature death, when I hadn't been much older than Heinrich was now, had been appended as its brutal corollary the inescapable logic that I was myself not immortal.
Ordinarily I would not have been insensitive to Heinrich's situation, 'But why must he sing that song?'
'He's got it into his head that the Jews had something to do with his father's death.'
'That's absurd,' I said.
Katia sighed and shook her head. 'I've told him that, Bernie. But he won't listen.'
On my way out I lingered at the boy's doorway, listening to his strong young voice.
' Load up the empty guns, And polish up the knives, Let's kill the Jewish bastards, Who poison all our lives.'
For a moment I was tempted to open the door and belt the young thug on the jaw.
But what was the point? What was the point of doing anything but leave him alone? There are so many ways of escaping from that which one fears, and not the least of these is hatred.
Chapter 8
Monday, 12 September.
A badge, a warrant card, an office on the third floor and, apart from the number of S S uniforms there were about the place, it almost felt like old times. It was too bad that there were not many happy memories, but happiness was never an emotion in plentiful supply at the Alex, unless your idea of a party involved working on a
