The Butchers of Berlin Read Online Free

sorry for themselves, which they
seemed to be even better at than hating. Whenever her mother predicted they would come in great numbers to take their people away Sybil had refused to listen. For a start, there was a labour
shortage, and they were told they were needed because of their jobs. Now this. It didn’t make sense.
    A voice came out of nowhere. ‘Fräulein?’
    Sybil jumped. She looked up at what appeared to be a pleasant, elderly gentleman, wanting to know if she had finished with the paper.
    He wore a Party pin. She dreaded he would insist on sitting with her, pat her on the knee and talk about the Jewish filth being rounded up. Perhaps she should let him sleep with her, in exchange
for his protection. But he paid her no attention, accepted the paper and walked away.
    The lesson was salutary. From now on she could not allow for any more approaches made unawares. Next time the voice could be saying she had better come with them.
    Sybil reached the conclusion she had been dreading. She would have to join Lore and go underground. The ones that went into hiding were known as U-boats, with reason; one might as well be at the
bottom of the ocean. Many buckled from the pressure. Those with the discipline to forgo all outside contact had the best chance. That was not her, and probably not Lore.

4
    Schlegel was coming up from the cells after searching in vain for his hat when Stoffel, standing by the main desk, collared him again and said, ‘You’ll do. We have
another body.’
    ‘Why me again?’
    He had been looking forward to slipping off and going back to bed.
    ‘You’re fraud, son, I know that, but as of oh-six hundred hours this morning one slacker is requisitioned to the homicide department on my say-so.’
    Schlegel knew the rest of the man’s crew were down in the cells still sleeping it off. He had just seen them, lying on their backs, snoring, oblivious.
    ‘Where’s your other glove, boy?’
    He didn’t answer and followed Stoffel back to the car, confused because he was blushing for the second time that day. He supposed it must be to do with tired blood fighting the
hangover.
    They drove east, towards the poorer districts. Streets were empty, shops and bars boarded up. Schlegel stared at the surroundings and had trouble imagining what trees with leaves looked
like.
    Set on the edge of the city, bordered by the outer-ring railway, the meat district was a town in itself, a walled citadel, built fifty years before as a testament to civic
pride, now fallen on hard times. It spread as far as the eye could see, a substantial complex of squat barracks, glass halls and sheds, dwarfed by the twin towers of the ice factory.
    They parked on Landsberger Allee, by the north-west entrance. On top of the gate pillars stood two large statues of the Berlin bear. A line of low buildings led down to a railway siding where
wagons stood. Weeds pushed up through the concrete.
    Local cops, slaughterhouse and railway officials were waiting down below, looking green. A doctor and photographer were on their way. A cop led them to a cattle car, gestured to the ladder and
stepped back. Stoffel’s fat arse stuck out as he went up. Schlegel heard him say, ‘Take a look at this, son.’
    What he saw in the corner of the carriage more resembled something found hanging in a butcher’s shop. No evidence was left of the pain inflicted, not even a head to register death’s
agony, just a flayed limbless torso, with the skin gone to reveal the muscle. What remained lay on its back, surgically treated to make it impossible to tell what sex it had been.
    ‘Tell me what you see,’ said Stoffel.
    Dead meat was all he could think. A rack of meat.
    ‘You would think they were going to eat it. No mess. No blood. Control. Precision. And where are we?’
    ‘A slaughterhouse.’
    ‘And what are we standing in?’
    ‘A cattle car.’
    The photographer arrived. They were still waiting for the doctor. Stoffel told the photographer