The Fall of Inspector Escherich

For a year after Enno Kluge's 'suicide', Escherich enjoys real success, closing the pornographic-letter 'Filth' case against Goebbels and catching a forger of papal encyclicals and a delusional steelworks 'director'. But as the Hobgoblin's postcards keep coming, Obergruppenführer Prall and higher officials lose patience with Escherich's theory of patient waiting, demand action, and reject his suggestion of handing the case to Inspector Zott as cowardice — 'desertion in the face of the enemy'. Stripped of rank on the spot, Escherich is beaten by SS men Dobat and Jacoby, spits out teeth in front of Prall, and is thrown down the same stairs where he once had Borkhausen kicked out. Zott, asked if he needs Escherich for briefing, coldly declines him. Escherich is stripped, dressed in a prisoner's zebra suit, and locked in a cell with a whimpering pickpocket who grovels to the guards, forced to recognise he now belongs to the class of men he has hunted for years.

Escherich's fall repeats Enno's degradation almost beat for beat, down to the stairwell where Borkhausen was once thrown out, making him victim of the machine he served rather than its master. Sympathy is withheld even as poetic justice arrives: his crimes against Enno remain what he can't forgive himself.