invisible eyebrows, Streicher was a paler version of Benito Mussolini. His apparent belligerence was given greater force by an enormous rhino-whip which lay on the table before him like some long black snake.
He thumped the table with his fist so that all the glasses and cutlery rattled loudly.
'What the fuck does a man have to do to get some fucking service around here?' he yelled at the waiter. 'We're dying of thirst.' He pointed at another waiter.
'You, I told you to keep a fucking eye on us, you little cunt, and the minute you saw an empty bottle to bring us another. What, are you stupid or something?'
Once again he banged the table with his fist, much to the amusement of his two companions, who squealed with delight, and persuaded Streicher to laugh at his own ill-temper.
'Who does he remind you of?' said Korsch.
'Al Capone,' I said without thinking, and then added: 'Actually, they all remind me of Al Capone.' Korsch laughed.
We sipped our brandies and watched the show, which was more than we could have hoped for so early in our visit, and by midnight Streicher's and our own were the only parties left in the cafe, the others having been driven away by the Gauleiter's incessant cursing. Another waiter came to wipe our table and empty our ashtray.
'Is he always this bad?' I asked him.
The waiter laughed bitterly. 'This? This is nothing,' he said. 'You should have seen him ten days ago after the Party rallies were finally over. He tore hell out of this place.'
'Why do you let him come in here, then?' said Korsch.
The waiter looked at him pityingly. 'Are you kidding? You just try stopping him.
The Deutscher is his favourite watering-hole. He'd soon find some pretext on which to close us down if we ever kicked him out. Maybe worse than that, who knows? They say he often goes up to the Palace of Justice on Furtherstrasse and whips young boys in the cells there.'
'Well, I'd hate to be a Jew in this town,' said Korsch.
'Too right,' said the waiter. 'Last month he persuaded a crowd of people to burn down the synagogue.'
Streicher now began to sing, and accompanied himself with a percussion that was provided with his knife and fork and the table-top, from which he had thoughtfully removed the tablecloth. The combination of his drumming, accent, drunkenness and complete inability to hold a tune, not to mention the screeches and giggles of his two guests, made it impossible for either Korsch or myself to recognize the song. But you could bet that it wasn't by Kurt Weill, and it did have the effect of driving the two of us off to bed.
The next morning we walked a short way north to Jakob's Platz, where opposite a fine church stands a fortress built by the old order of Teutonic knights. At its south-eastern point, it includes a domed edifice that is the Elisabeth-Kirche, while at the south-western point, on the corner of Schlotfegergasse, is the old barracks, now police headquarters. As far as I was aware, there wasn't another police HQ in the whole of Germany which had the facility of its own Catholic church.
'That way they're sure to wring a confession out of you one way or the other,'
Korsch joked.
S S-ObergruppenFnhrer Dr Benno Martin, whose predecessors as police president of Nuremberg included Heinrich Himmler, greeted us in his baronial top-storey office. The look of the place was such that I half expected him to have a sabre in his hand; and indeed, when he turned to one side I noticed that he had a duelling scar on his cheek.
'And how is Berlin?' he asked quietly, offering us a cigarette from his box. His own smoke he fitted into a rosewood holder that was more like a pipe and which held the cigarette vertically, at a right-angle to his face.
'Things are quiet,' I said. 'But that's because everyone is holding their breath.'
'Quite so,' he said, and waved at the newspaper on his desk. 'Chamberlain has flown to Bad Godesberg for more talks with the Fnhrer.'
Korsch pulled the paper towards him and glanced at the headline. He pushed it back again.
'There's too much damned talk, if you ask me,' said Martin.
I grunted non-committally.
Martin grinned and laid his square chin on his hand. 'Arthur Nebe tells me that you've got a psychopath stalking the streets of Berlin, raping and cutting the flower of German maidenhood. He also tells me that you've a mind to take a look at Germany's most infamous psychopath and see if they might at least be holding hands. I refer of course to that pig's sphincter, Streicher. Am I right?'
I met his cold, penetrating gaze and held it. I was willing to bet that the general was no altar boy himself. Nebe had described Benno Martin as an extremely capable administrator. For a police chief in Nazi Germany that could have meant just about anything up to, and including, a Torquemada.
'That's right, sir,' I said, and showed him the Der Sturmerfront page. 'This illustrates exactly how five girls have been murdered. With the exception of the Jew catching the blood in the plate of course.'
'Of course,' said Martin. 'But you haven't ruled out the Jews as a possibility.'
'No, but '
'But it's the very theatricality of this same mode of killing that makes you doubt that it could be them. Am I right?'
'That and the fact that none of the victims has been Jewish.'
'Maybe he just prefers more attractive girls,' Martin grinned. 'Maybe he just prefers blonde, blue-eyed girls to depraved Jewish mongrels. Or maybe it's just coincidence.' He caught my raised eyebrow. 'But you're not the kind of man who believes much in coincidence, Kommissar, are you?'
'Not where murder is concerned, sir, no. I see patterns where other people see coincidence. Or at least I try to.' I leant back in my chair, crossing my legs.
'Are you acquainted with the work of Carl Jung on the subject, sir?'
He snorted with derision. 'Good God, is that what Kripo gets up to in Berlin these days?'
'I think he'd have made rather a good policeman, sir,' I said, smiling affably, 'if you don't mind me saying so.'
'Spare me the psychology lecture, Kommissar,' Martin sighed. 'Just tell me which particular pattern you see that might involve our beloved Gauleiter here in Nuremberg.'
'Well sir, it's this. It has crossed my mind that someone might be trying to sew the Jews into a very nasty body-bag.'
Now the general raised an eyebrow.
'Do you really care what happens to the Jews?'
'Sir, I care what happens to fifteen-year-old girls on their way home from school tonight.' I handed the general a sheet of typewritten paper. 'These are the dates on which the five girls disappeared. I hoped that you might be able to tell me if Streicher or any of his associates were in Berlin on any of these occasions.'
Martin glanced down the page. 'I suppose that I can find out,' he said. 'But I can tell you now that he is virtually persona non grata there. Hitler keeps him down here, out of harm's way, so that the only people he can annoy are the ones of no account, like myself. Of course, that's not to say that Streicher doesn't visit Berlin in secret sometimes. He does. The Fnhrer enjoys Streicher's after-dinner conversation, though I cannot imagine why, since he also apparently enjoys my own.'
He turned to the trolley of telephones that stood by his desk and called up his adjudant, telling him to establish Streicher's whereabouts on the dates I had provided.
'I was given to understand that you also had certain information regarding Streicher's criminal behaviour,' I said.
Martin got up and went over to his filing cabinet. Laughing quietly he took out a file that was as thick as a shoe box, and brought it back to the desk.
'There's virtually nothing I don't know about that bastard,' he snarled. 'His S
S guards are my men. His telephone is tapped, and I have listening devices in all of his homes. I even have photographers on constant vigil in a shop opposite a room where he sees a prostitute from time to time.'
Korsch breathed a curse that was both admiration and surprise.
'So, where do you want to start? I could occupy one whole department with what that bastard gets up to in
