The Pale Criminal Read Free Page B

course, all this is quite beside the point. Most people who want the services of a private investigator don’t need to buy the firm. Usually they just ask their lawyers to find someone. You’ll find that I’m recommended by several law firms, including the ones who don’t like my accent or my manners.’
    ‘Forgive me, Herr Gunther, but in my opinion the law is a much overrated profession.’
    ‘I can’t argue with you there. I never met a lawyer yet that wasn’t above stealing his mother’s savings and the mattress she was keeping them under.’
    ‘In nearly all business matters I have found my own judgement to be a great deal more reliable.’
    ‘What exactly is your business, Frau Lange?’
    ‘I own and manage a publishing company.’
    ‘The Lange Publishing Company?’
    ‘As I said, I haven’t often been wrong by trusting my own judgement, Herr Gunther. Publishing is all about taste, and to know what will sell one must appreciate something of the tastes of the people to whom one is selling. Now, I’m a Berliner to my fingertips, and I believe I know this city and its people as well as anyone does. So with reference to my original question, which was to do with your being observant, you will answer me this: if I were a stranger in Berlin, how would you describe the people of this city to me?’
    I smiled. ‘What’s a Berliner, eh? That’s a good question. No client’s ever asked me to leap through a couple of hoops to see how clever a dog I am before. You know, mostly I don’t do tricks, but in your case I’ll make an exception. Berliners like people to make exceptions for them. I hope you’re paying attention now because I’ve started my act. Yes, they like to be made to feel exceptional, although at the same time they like to keep up appearances. Mostly they’ve got the same sort of look. A scarf, hat and shoes that could walk you to Shanghai without a corn. As it happens, Berliners like to walk, which is why so many of them own a dog: something vicious if you’re masculine, something cute if you’re something else. The men comb their hair more than the women, and they also grow moustaches you could hunt wild pig in. Tourists think that a lot of Berlin men like dressing-up as women, but that’s just the ugly women giving the men a bad name. Not that there are many tourists these days. National Socialism’s made them as rare a sight as Fred Astaire in jackboots.
    ‘The people of this town will take cream with just about anything, including beer, and beer is something they take very seriously indeed. The women prefer a ten-minute head on it, just like the men, and they don’t mind paying for it themselves. Nearly everyone who drives a car drives much too fast, but nobody would ever dream of running a red light. They’ve got rotten lungs because the air is bad, and because they smoke too much, and a sense of humour that sounds cruel if you don’t understand it, and even crueller if you do. They buy expensive Biedermeier cabinets as solid as blockhouses, and then hang little curtains on the insides of the glass doors to hide what they’ve got in there. It’s a typically idiosyncratic mixture of the ostentatious and the private. How am I doing?’
    Frau Lange nodded. ‘Apart from the comment about Berlin’s ugly women, you’ll do just fine.’
    ‘It wasn’t pertinent.’
    ‘Now there you’re wrong. Don’t back down or I shall stop liking you. It was pertinent. You’ll see why in a moment. What are your fees?’
    ‘Seventy marks a day, plus expenses.’
    ‘And what expenses might there be?’
    ‘Hard to say. Travel. Bribes. Anything that results in information. You get receipts for everything except the bribes. I’m afraid you have to take my word for those.’
    ‘Well, let’s hope that you’re a good judge of what is worth paying for.’
    ‘I’ve had no complaints.’
    ‘And I assume you’ll want something in advance.’ She handed me an envelope. ‘You’ll find a