Free The Butchers of Berlin by Chris Petit

suggested he had come straight from the station. Schlegel wondered where before that.
    ‘Is this yours?’ Morgen asked, reaching down to produce Schlegel’s hat. It was like watching a conjuring trick.
    ‘Where did you find it?’
    ‘In the locker they gave me downstairs.’
    Schlegel stared in astonishment. ‘How did you know it was mine?’
    ‘It has your name inside.’
    Schlegel turned the hat awkwardly in his hands, thinking the man must have him down for a fool.
    ‘An English hat too,’ said Morgen.
    Schlegel gave an unnecessary account of the hat, all the while thinking he couldn’t even be sure what rank Morgen was. SS insignia were notoriously hard to read, even among the SS.
    Schlegel hoped the uniform was more frightening than the man. Morgen appeared neither good-looking nor otherwise, somewhere in between, with hair already thinning on top, a cleft chin, the
beginnings of a jowl, round wire-framed spectacles, and a pendulous lower lip that gave him what Schlegel could only think of as a disappointed way of looking at the world. He suspected the
slothful manner was deceptive.
    Morgen’s ashtray was already full. Schlegel’s asthma meant he didn’t smoke. He envied smokers the way women leaned in when a light was held. He supposed Morgen about eight or
nine years older, thirty-three or -four. He wondered how the man managed to smoke so much with cigarettes in such short supply.
    The slither of sunlight began its daily twenty-minute crawl across the blank wall opposite.
    Morgen reminded him, ‘You have a dead body waiting. Stoffel.’
    Not again, he thought.
    ‘Dead bodies are Stoffel’s department, not ours.’
    ‘This one has money stuffed in its mouth.’
    Schlegel could have ignored Stoffel’s request. He was technically off duty but his life seemed to have taken on the illogical air of an unpleasant dream. Morgen insisted
on accompanying him.
    Schlegel usually took public transport, not being eligible to use what was left of the motor pool. Morgen would have none of that and hailed a taxi. He sat filling the cab with smoke.
    Schlegel asked him to open the window. Morgen obliged by lowering it a crack.
    Schlegel crossed his legs and was aware of Morgen staring at his shoe. It was tied with a broken lace, long enough only to string through a couple of eyes. Laces and razor blades were among the
latest shortages.
    He asked where Morgen had been. Morgen returned the question, asking if Schlegel had ever been to Russia.
    Schlegel said he hadn’t. He was uncomfortable lying, and presumed Morgen could tell. It seemed quite possible that Morgen had been sent to shake the place up because they were all on the
take.
    Morgen lit another cigarette, opened the window to throw out the butt and rewound it so the crack was even more infinitesimal.
    Whatever else the man was, he was a smoking machine.
    A dead man in a long overcoat lay on his back. He had been found on the floor of a large reception room in a substantial ground-floor apartment near the zoo, after local police
broke into the already sealed premises, following a report of lights showing in contravention of blackout regulations.
    The dead man was tall, over six foot, of sallow complexion and probably in his late thirties. From the neck down he didn’t appear much disturbed and his state of repose reminded Schlegel
of the way the old man had lain. The shoes had large holes in the soles. Unlike the old man, his hat had fallen off and rolled on the parquet floor.
    The only extraordinary feature was the wedge of money spilling out of the gaping mouth. Schlegel had imagined a neat roll inserted like a cork, not stuffed in anyhow, in what looked like a
frenzy, leaving the dead man’s eyes appearing to protrude in disbelief.
    Stoffel, a man rarely surprised, did a double take on seeing Morgen’s uniform. Two more men walked in. The younger was Gersten, the Gestapo man from the roundup. Schlegel didn’t know
his companion, an elderly