A Quiet Flame

“However, you have a natural wit that sometimes you would do well to restrain. Especially in a political case like this one.”

“Is that what this is, sir?”

“Oh, I’d say so, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ernst Gennat and I will attend the conference, of course. But it’s your investigation and your conference. If questioned, Ernst and I will confine ourselves to statements regarding your competence. Commissar Gunther’s impressive reputation, his extraordinary perseverance, his keen psychological insights, his cleanup record. The usual crap.”

“Thank you for your confidence, sir.”

Izzy’s lips puckered, as if savoring the taste of his own intelligence like a freshly made matzoh ball. “Well, what have you come up with so far?”

“Not much. She wasn’t killed in the park, that’s for sure. We’ll know more about the cause of death later on today. Hard to say if it was a lust murder or not. Maybe that was the point of removing all her sexual organs and everything that was attached to them. On the face of it, you might say that’s the most remarkable feature of the case. But you might just as easily point to the reaction of Herr and Frau Schwarz themselves. Last night, neither of them seemed particularly upset when I told them that their daughter was dead.”

“God, I hope you’re not suggesting you think they did it?”

I thought for a moment. “Maybe I’m misjudging them, sir. But the girl was disabled. Somehow I got the feeling that they were glad to be rid of her, that’s all. Maybe.”

“I trust you won’t be mentioning any of this at the press conference.”

“You know me better than that.”

“It’s true, some Nazis do have a few ruthless ideas concerning the treatment of society’s unfortunates. People who are physically and mentally handicapped. However, even the Nazis aren’t stupid enough to think that’s a vote winner. Nobody’s going to vote for a political party that advocates the extermination of the sick and the infirm. Not after a war that left thousands of men disabled.”

“No, I suppose not, sir.” I lit a cigarette. “There’s one other thing. The murdered girl had five hundred marks on her. That’s a lot more pocket money than I used to get when I was her age.”

“Yes, you’re right. Did you ask the parents about it?”

“They suggested there must have been some mistake.”

“I’ve heard of money disappearing from a dead man’s pockets. But I’ve never heard of money being planted on one.”

“No, sir.”

“Ask the neighbors, Bernie. Speak to her school friends. Find out what kind of girl Anita Schwarz was.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Bernie. Get yourself a new tie. That one looks like it’s been in your soup.”

“Yes, sir.”

BEFORE THE PRESS CONFERENCE I went and had my hair cut at the KaDeWe. Henry Ford himself couldn’t have arranged the business of cutting German hair more efficiently. There were ten chairs, and I was in and out in less than twenty minutes. The KaDe We wasn’t exactly around the corner from the Alex. But it was a good place to have a haircut and buy a new tie.

As always, the conference itself took place in the Police Museum at the Alex. This was Gennat’s idea following the Police Exhibition of 1926, so that KRIPO might present itself to the world among the photographs, knives, test tubes, fingerprints, poison bottles, revolvers, rope, and buttons that were the exhibits of our many proud investigative successes. The modern face of policing we were keen to display to the world might have looked a bit more efficient had the glass cases containing this assortment of forensic trash and the heavy curtains that shrouded the tall windows of the exhibition hall not been so dusty. Even the most recent photograph, of Ernst Gennat, looked like it had been there for a hundred years.

There were about twenty reporters and photographers gathered among our previous triumphs. Behind a table that had been cleared of a selection of curious murder weapons, I sat between Weiss and Gennat. As if we had been arranged in ascending order of size. The men of Berlin’s press heard me appeal for any witnesses who might have seen a man behaving suspiciously in Friedrichshain Park on the night of the murder and then go on to assure the Berlin public that we were doing all in our power to catch the killer of Anita Schwarz—which, of course, was something I was determined to do. Things seemed to be going quite well until I uttered the usual bromides about interviewing known sex offenders. At this, Fritz Allgeier, the reporter for Der Angriff, a boss-eyed specimen with a gray beard and arms that seemed longer than his legs—hardly master-race material—said that the German people demanded to be told why known sex offenders were allowed to walk our streets in the first place.

Later on, I agreed with Weiss that my next comments could have been a little more diplomatic: