The Butchers of Berlin by Chris Petit

Author:Chris Petit
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781471143427
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

36

Schlegel watched the scene unfold through the two-way mirror. They were in the downstairs tank. Stoffel was on the other side of the mirror, jacket off, sweating, stubbled, bowler hat tilted back, cigar on the go. The scene was being watched by a bunch of homicide cops that barely moved to let them in. Already the flask was being passed around.

‘Celebration,’ one said dourly, not offering.

Stoffel gave sly looks to his observing cronies, and at one point gave a thumbs up behind the suspect’s back. Stoffel wore garters on his sleeves and looked unintentionally comic, having removed the front stud of his stiff collar, which stuck out either side of his neck. A bright light shone in the face of the suspect, a sorry specimen with a pudding-basin haircut, a dullard’s look and a mouthful of crooked teeth.

‘Going well?’ Morgen asked the cop standing next to him, a grey little ghost of a man with a reputation for unstinting use of blackjack and knuckleduster.

The cop took his time.

‘A classic, if you ask me. Axel Lampe. Has one of those invisible jobs that allows him to move around, driving the family laundry van. Repeated cruelty to animals. Reported for beating a horse and molesting a woman. He was sterilised for that, but it didn’t stop him from carrying on raping and killing. He says he’s been at it since he was eighteen.’

‘How old is he now?’

‘Forty-six. Sometimes the animal fucked them when they were dead.’

‘How many is he admitting to killing?’

‘As many as eighty.’

‘Eighty! The man looks incapable of tying his own laces.’

‘Down the years. Think of it as once every four months.’

‘What’s he doing here now?’

‘Pulled up for a traffic offence, went crazy and attacked the cops. When they hauled him in he said he wanted to talk to homicide. They thought him a time-waster and didn’t bother until he tried to hang himself.’

‘Why does Stoffel want to see us?’

‘You’ll have to ask him.’

Stoffel took a break after twenty minutes, by when his method was clear. Carrot and stick: the cigarettes with which the suspect was plied; the strategically placed knuckleduster on the table, which Stoffel fingered occasionally. Lampe had the air of a clumsy innocent who would smash things without meaning to. Stoffel’s focus on his subject was total and flattering and the man basked in the attention while volunteering nothing, waiting for Stoffel to suggest the answer, then agreeing.

Morgen was furious when Stoffel came out, confronting him for trying to frame the man as some kind of super-murderer.

‘You’re wrong. He has huge animal cunning.’

Axel Lampe’s case-history folder had been left in the anteroom. Morgen waved it and said he had just read it.

‘Lampe is a simpleton. He doesn’t know how many days in a year or minutes in an hour. He thinks Silesia is a city. Is there any forensic evidence?’

‘I am doing you a favour. Come and talk to him and he will tell you. Strangulation! Strangulation! Strangulation!’

They went into the stifling tank. Lampe resented their intrusion and looked at Schlegel with sulky eyes.

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