back and looked nonchalantly up at the ceiling. 'Take my word for it, Gottfried. This little bee isn't so dumb that she won't do exactly what I tell her to do. If I tell her to french the magistrate in open court she'll do it. Understand?'
'You can go fuck yourself, then,' he snarled. 'I mean, if you're going to custom-build me a cage then I don't see that you need me to cut you a key. Why the hell should I answer any of your questions?'
'Please yourself. I'm not in any hurry. Me, I'll go back home, take a nice hot bath, get a good night's sleep. Then I'll come back here and see what kind of an evening you've had. Well, what can I say? They don't call this place Grey Misery for nothing.'
'All right, all right,' he groaned. 'Go ahead and ask your lousy questions.'
'We searched your room.'
'Like it?'
'Not as much as the bugs you share with. We found some rope. My inspector thinks it's the special strangling kind you buy at Ka-De-We. On the other hand it could be the kind you use to tie someone up.'
'Or it could be the sort of rope I use in my job. I work for Rochling's Furniture Removals.'
'Yes, I checked. But why take a length of rope home with you? Why not just leave it in the van?'
'I was going to hang myself.'
'What changed your mind?'
'I thought about it awhile, and then things didn't seem quite so bad. That was before I met you.'
'What about the bloodstained cloth we found in a bag underneath your bed?'
'That? Menstrual blood. An acquaintance of mine, she had a small accident. I meant to burn it, but I forgot.'
'Can you prove that? Will this acquaintance corroborate your story?'
'Unfortunately I can't tell you very much about her, Kommissar. A casual thing, you understand.' He paused. 'But surely there are scientific tests which will substantiate what I say?'
'Tests will determine whether or not it is human blood. But I don't think there's anything as precise as you are suggesting. I can't say for sure, I'm not a pathologist.'
I stood up again and went over to the window. I found my cigarettes and lit one.
'Smoke?' He nodded and I threw the packet on to the table. I let him get his first breath of it before I tossed him the grenade. 'I'm investigating the murders of four, possibly five young girls,' I said quietly. 'That's why you're here now. Assisting us with our inquiries, as they say.'
Gottfried stood up quickly, his tongue tamping down his lower lip, the cigarette rolling on the table where he had thrown it. He started to shake his head and didn't stop.
'No, no, no. No, you've got the wrong man. I know absolutely nothing of this.
Please, you've got to believe me. I'm innocent.'
'What about that girl you raped in Dresden, in 1931? You were in the cement for that, weren't you, Gottfried? You see, I've checked your record.'
'It was statutory rape. The girl was under age, that's all. I didn't know. She consented.'
'Now let's see, how old was she again? Fifteen? Sixteen? That's about the same age as the girls who've beeh murdered. You know, maybe you just like them young.
You feel ashamed of what you are, and transfer your guilt to them. How can they make you do these things?'
'No, it's not true, I swear it '
'How can they be so disgusting? How can they provoke you so shamelessly?'
'Stop it, for Christ's sake '
'You're innocent. Don't make me laugh. Your innocence isn't worth shit in the gutter, Gottfried. Innocence is for decent, law-abiding citizens, not the kind of sewer-rat like you who tries to strangle a girl in a massage parlour. Now sit down and shut up.'
He rocked on his heels for a moment, and then sat down heavily. 'I didn't kill anyone,' he muttered. 'Whichever way you want to cut it, I'm innocent, I tell you.'
'That you may be,' I said. 'But I'm afraid I can't plane a piece of wood without dropping a few shavings. So, innocent or not, I've got to keep you for a while.
At least until I can check you out.' I picked up my jacket and walked to the door.
'One last question for the moment,' I said. 'I don't suppose you own a car, do you?'
'On my pay? You are joking, aren't you?'
'What about the furniture van. Are you the driver?'
'Yes. I'm the driver.'
'Ever use it in the evenings?' He stayed silent. I shrugged and said: 'Well, I suppose I can always ask your employer.'
'It's not allowed, but sometimes I do use it, yes. Do a bit of private contracting, that sort of thing.' He looked squarely at me. 'But I never used it to kill anyone in, if that's what you were suggesting,'
'It wasn't, as it happens. But thanks for the idea.'
I sat in Arthur Nebe's office and waited for him to finish his telephone call.
His face was grave when finally he replaced the receiver. I was about to say something when he raised his finger to his lips, opened his desk drawer and took out a tea-cosy with which he covered the phone.
'What's that for?'
'There's a wire on the telephone. Heydrich's, I suppose, but who can tell? The tea-cosy keeps our conversation private.' He leant back in his chair underneath a picture of the Fnhrer and uttered a long and weary sigh. 'That was one of my men calling from the Berchtesgaden,' he said. 'Hitler's talks with the British prime minister don't seem to be going particularly well. I don't think our beloved Chancellor of Germany cares if there's war with England or not. He's conceding absolutely nothing.
'Of course he doesn't give a damn about these Sudeten Germans. This nationalist thing is just a cover. Everyone knows it. It's all that Austro-Hungarian heavy industry that he wants. That he needs, if he's going to fight a European war.
God, I wish he had to deal with someone stronger than Chamberlain. He brought his umbrella with him you know. Bloody little bank manager.'
'Do you think so? I'd say the umbrella denotes quite a sensible sort of man. Can you really imagine Hitler or Goebbels ever managing to stir up a crowd of men carrying umbrellas? It's the very absurdity of the British which makes them so impossible to radicalize. And why we should envy them.'
'It's a nice idea,' he said, smiling reflectively. 'But tell me about this fellow you've arrested. Think he might be our man?'
I glanced around the room for a moment, hoping to find greater conviction on the walls and the ceiling, and then lifted my hands almost as if I meant to disclaim Gottfried Bautz's presence in a cell downstairs.
'From a circumstantial point of view, he could fit the laundry list.' I rationed myself to one sigh. 'But there's nothing that definitely connects him. The rope we found in his room is the same type as the rope that was used to bind the feet of one of the dead girls. But then it's a very common type of rope. We use the same kind here at the Alex.
'Some cloth we found underneath his bed could be stained with blood from one of his victims. Equally, it could be menstrual blood, as he claims. He has access to a van in which he could have transported and killed his victims relatively easily. I've got some of the boys checking it over now, but so far it appears to be as clean as a dentist's fingers.
'And then of course there is his record. We've locked his door once before for a sexual offence a statutory rape. More recently he probably tried to strangle a snapper he'd first persuaded to be tied up. So he could fit the psychological bill of the man we're looking for.' I shook my head. 'But that's more could-be than Fritz fucking Lang. What I want is some real evidence.'
Nebe nodded sagely and put his boots on the desk. Tapping his fingers' ends together, he said: 'Could you build a case? Break him?'
'He's not stupid. It will take time. I'm not that good an interrogator, and I'm not about to take any short-cuts either. The last thing I want on this case is broken teeth on the charge sheet. That's how Josef Kahn got himself folded away and put in the costume-hire hospital.' I helped myself from the box of American cigarettes on Nebe's
