I Was Jack Mortimer

3

SPONER STARED, terror-stricken, not so much seeing as sensing in a flash what had happened. A wave of fear hit him like a blow to the body. He started, pushed the door open and, freeing his coat which had snagged on the steering wheel, staggered backwards onto the pavement, before tearing the back door open and leaning inside. He grabbed the dead man by the chest with both hands and shook him. His head, as though snapped at the neck, lolled this way and that, slumped forward under its own weight; the body sagged to the floor like a sack of potatoes between the seat and the suitcase, and the head then fell back again, the face turned up blankly to the roof of the cab. The mouth fell open, and a thin trickle of blood ran from one corner over his chin and behind his shirt collar.

As the head fell back it revealed a bullet hole in the man’s throat; the tie and shirt collar were soaked in blood. There must have been another bullet in his chest, because after Sponer withdrew his hands his gloves were wet and sticky.

He edged backwards out of the cab, straightened up and struck his head hard against the top of the door frame. His cap fell forward over his face. He instinctively pushed it back with his forearm instead of with his blood-stained gloved hand. He turned round.

A couple of people who were walking past some distance away took no notice. A taxi with its lights on and the driver standing next to it does not arouse anyone’s curiosity. Still dazed from the impact against the door frame, Sponer took two or three steps forward to attract someone’s attention, but, as nobody took any notice, he turned around towards a small news stand on the edge of the pavement where, despite the rain, they were still selling papers. A man had just bought a couple of evening editions and, as Sponer approached, both he and the newspaper seller turned their backs on him. Sponer wanted to say something, but couldn’t. His lips moved, but no sound issued. The man pulled out another paper from the rack and the seller passed him his change. Sponer, speechless that a dreadful thing had happened and no one seemed in the least concerned, stared at them. After a few moments he turned back to his cab as if in a trance.

He took a couple of slow steps, then three or four very quick ones. He pulled off his blood-stained gloves and threw them into the car. Closing his eyes momentarily, he slammed the rear door shut, then got in his seat, turned off the interior light and, closing his own door with his left hand, swung the car to the right and headed towards the policeman operating the traffic signals at the centre of the crossroads. Just at that moment, the lights turned green on the ring road. A stream of cars that had started moving again drove towards the crossing, but as Sponer cut across, all hell broke loose. Some drivers cursed and slammed on their brakes right in front of Sponer’s car, others tried to swerve around him, while the majority pulled up behind with a jolt. The policeman yelled something. Sponer drove right up to him. “What the hell?” the policeman shouted. Sponer suddenly found himself front bumper to front bumper with a convertible that had been waiting in the right-hand lane at the crossing in order to join the ring road, and the driver, who was already moving, had to brake in the nick of time.

“Get back!” the policeman yelled, and pulled out his notebook from under the cuff of his sleeve to take down Sponer’s number. Sponer leant out of the car window.

“Officer,” he said, “I’ve…”

“Are you mad?” the policeman yelled.

“Officer!” Sponer called out. “I’ve got a…”

“Get back!” the policeman shouted.

Sponer went into reverse, but immediately collided with a car that was trying to negotiate round him. The policeman screamed at him.

“There’s a dead man in my car!” Sponer shouted at the top of his voice, but the noise from the convertible which had braked in front of him and was now edging its way out of the jam drowned his words. The policeman raged and gesticulated; cars drove past. Sponer shouted to the policeman a few more times, but finally realized he couldn’t get through to him, engaged first gear with a curse, swung round the policeman and, changing up rapidly, raced off in the direction of Kärntner Strasse.

He had to get to a police station. He turned left off Kärntner Strasse into Neuer Markt, sped along Plankengasse, and pulled up in front of the police station in Bräunerstrasse.

A policeman was standing at the door, but Sponer rushed past him. He had had enough of policemen; he was going to talk directly to the inspector. When he entered the charging room he saw three or four officers who were trying to restrain a drunk who had just been brought in.

Two of them were holding the man by his arms while a third tried to force him down on a bench. The drunk, however, was lashing out with his feet. Sponer turned to the fourth officer, who was barking out the orders.

“Something’s happened,” he said, but received no answer. He grabbed the officer’s arm. “Inspector!” he said. The policeman turned towards him for a split second but was forced to turn round again because the drunk, having been briefly forced down onto the bench, had jumped up again and was about to break loose, whereupon all four officers hurled themselves at him. The drunk displayed extraordinary physical strength, as if the superior forces he was struggling against had driven him wild. In the end, however, the policemen overcame him by their sheer weight, and as he lay spluttering on the bench, they vented their anger in a torrent of abuse. Sponer stood in the middle of the room, and the events of the past minutes raced through his mind like short, randomly edited film clips: the dead man, the speeding cars, the news stand, the dead man, the carriageway, the blood, the dead man, the streets, the dead man. Caught a taxi at the station. “Hotel Bristol!” Ten minutes’ drive. “Old or New?” No reply. “There are two: the Old Bristol and the New.” No answer. Light on. The man sitting there, not moving. Leaves his seat, starts shaking him. He slumps forward, the head lolls back. Blood from his mouth. He’s wedged between the suitcase and the seat. Someone’s shot him through the throat. Who? He was in the cab by himself! “Who?” asks the inspector. “The dead man!”—“And the other one?”—“What other one?”—“The one who shot him!”—“There wasn’t anyone else.”—“There must’ve been a second person who’d…”—“No, he was on his own.”—“Where was the person who shot him then?”—“I don’t know.”—“But when you heard the shots and turned around…”—“I didn’t hear any shots.”—“You didn’t hear any shots?”—“No. I mean, yes: it was probably some exhaust backfiring…”—“What type of backfiring?”—“A lorry I was overtaking.”—“And when you turned around?”—“I didn’t turn around.”—“You didn’t turn around?”—“No.”—“Dammit, man!” the inspector yells. “Someone gets shot in your car, and you don’t so much as turn around?”—“No, I thought…”—“A murder is committed in your car as you drive along, and you don’t notice a thing? A man is bumped off so close behind you that you could reach out with your hand and touch him, and yet you see nothing, absolutely nothing of the murderer? You continue driving with the dead man in your car and expect me to believe you had no idea he was dead, and it was only after you touched him that he slumped forward, and is now lying between the seat and the suitcase, and the car’s outside the door…”

“What do you want?”

The policemen had overpowered the drunk at last, and the officer whose arm Sponer had pulled now stood facing him and said, “What do you want?”

Sponer stared at him. He must’ve committed suicide. The man shot himself. That’s right! Seeing as there wasn’t anybody else there… On the other hand, if it wasn’t suicide… If the dead man didn’t even have a weapon on him… He hadn’t seen one lying there. If, however, someone had jumped on the running board, pulled the door open, fired, slammed the door shut and jumped off… And you didn’t notice a thing? Didn’t hear the shots? Thought it was backfiring? And the man in the car didn’t shout out when the other person burst in and attacked him? A person who’d just arrived is attacked and murdered before he even reaches his hotel… Why? Why on earth should anyone… I haven’t got a clue who the murdered person was or who did it! How the hell should I know why the bastards did it in my car… the bastards, for that’s what they are…

“Well?” the policeman asked. “What’s the matter?”

“I…” Sponer said.

“Yes?”

“I… I only wanted to…”

“What did you want?”

“I wanted to see if a…”

“If a what?”

“If a mate of mine…”

“Yes?”

“If he’s here,” Sponer gasped.

“What mate?” the policeman asked.

“Another… another driver.”

“Should he be here?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Sponer stuttered, “because he… was involved in an accident.”

“Oh? Do you have any details.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Where did the accident take place?”

“In town.”

“Yes, but where?”

“On the Freyung.”

“I see. Who else was involved?”

“It… it was a car.”

“What type of car?”

“Another car.”

The policeman frowned.

“Really?” he cried, clearly still furious after the struggle with the drunk. “Another car? Not his own? Are you trying to be funny?”

“No, Inspector,” Sponer mumbled, “I only wanted to say…”

“What did you want to say?”

“I only wanted to ask if he was here.”

“Who?” the policeman yelled. “What’s his name?”

Let’s get out of here, Sponer thought. Quick, before I start saying things that aren’t true, otherwise they’ll keep me here, and in the car they’ll find the… “No, Inspector,” he mumbled, “he’s not here yet, but he’s sure to…”

“What’s his name?” the policeman bellowed.

“Georg… Georg Haintl,” Sponer mumbled.

“Right!” The policeman grabbed a notepad. “And his registration number?”

Sponer was spared the need to answer. Just at that moment the drunk, having shaken off the three men who were holding him down, noiselessly and unexpectedly leapt to his feet and launched himself with all his force in a flying tackle from the back, straight at the knees of the policeman who was questioning Sponer. The officer fell down with a crash, but was instantly back on his feet with a cry of rage, and the four again pounced on the drunk. Sponer turned on his heel and ran out.

The policeman was still standing outside the main door. He hadn’t a clue that there was a dead man in the car just three paces away from him. Sponer jumped into his seat and sped off.

For about ten minutes he raced aimlessly though the streets, then he came to his senses and looked round. He was in the ninth district, not far from the Liechtenstein Palace. He turned off the meter without thinking. The person for whom he’d turned it on wouldn’t be paying for the journey now.

He drove on and tried to recall the events. He found it impossible to gather his thoughts. It was as if there were an empty space, a blank between his brain and his thoughts. He couldn’t concentrate on what he wanted to think about, because all kinds of unrelated matter kept racing through his head like mad. The moment he tried to think what he should do next, all kinds of thoughts tumbled through his head, except the one he wanted to focus on. As clearly as a maniac sees visions, he kept on seeing one of the two men get into the cab at the station, followed immediately by the other man jumping onto the running board from the other side and opening the door as the cab drove off. The two men were now screaming at each other, but he couldn’t hear this due to the noise of the traffic, and then came the shots drowned by the noise of the confounded lorry and sounding confusingly like an exhaust backfiring; a split second later, the murderer had slammed the door shut and jumped clear. Had it not been for the lorry, Sponer would have turned around when he heard the bangs and seen the bastard jump clear. As it was, he hadn’t turned around, and… But even if he had seen him, the man would still have jumped off and run away! But at least he could have claimed the man was wearing a brown coat, say, or he was tall perhaps, wearing a round hat; he could have seen him running off, he could have said the fellow looked such-and-such, but he just ran away. “What was I supposed to do? Run after him? He was going like a bat out of hell, Inspector! A man who jumps onto a moving car in the middle of the traffic and shoots someone!..” However, supposing he were to drive to a police station and simply say he’d seen the murderer jump off?… “Where, sir?”—“Right by the station, between the dark… between the patches of open ground…”—“What time?”—“Well, the train arrived at five minutes past the half hour, it’s a couple of minutes to the exit, and then one, or at most two minutes on the road… It’d be about a quarter to…”—“Hell! A quarter to seven! It’s already half past!”—“Half past seven?”—“Yes! Where have you been in the meantime?”—“Where have I been?…”—“And how did you get here from the Westbahnhof?”—“How did I get here?…”—“Yes! Didn’t you stop immediately?”—“Yes, I did… no, yes… no, it wasn’t at the West… it wasn’t at the Westbahnhof at all, it happened in Währinger Strasse…”—“Did it now? Where did the man get in then?”—“Where?… Yes, he got in… he got in at the station, of course, but in the meantime I stopped…”—“Where did you stop in the meantime?”—“I broke down…”—“What was the matter?”—“I had a puncture…”—“And where in fact did the man ask you to take him? Hotel Bristol? How then did you manage to end up in the ninth district?”—“No, he wanted to go to… to Berggasse!”—“I see. What were you doing at the Opera House intersection in that case?”—“At the Opera?…”—“Yes, it says here in the report that you drove backwards and forwards like a madman over the Opera House intersection! You must have known at the time that the man was already dead, otherwise you wouldn’t have panicked as you did…”—“Yes, I panicked…”—“For three-quarters of an hour? You heard shots, you saw a man jump off, you didn’t stop, and only three-quarters of an hour — no, it’s now nearly a whole hour — later, you come here and…”—“I really… I really panicked, I can’t even think straight any longer, I don’t even know… I…” He leant forward with a groan as though about to slump over the wheel to hide his face, but then threw himself back again, clenched his teeth, and banged a couple of times with his fist on the edge of the car door. He couldn’t just carry on driving with the dead man in the car… He had to decide. He could no longer make a statement to the police. He had to get rid of the dead man.

Somewhere on the road, together with his luggage! Let the others, when they find him, work out for themselves how and when he’d been shot! He, Sponer, had nothing to do with it. Had he attacked him? No, it was rather the other way round. The chap had boarded an unsuspecting man’s cab, had snuffed it there and left the driver to pick up the pieces. How? Very simply. Out you go, my fellow, in some dark spot, suitcases and all! You can’t really expect me to do the decent thing, sit around for weeks, lose my job and get mixed up with the police, until, perhaps, one day they catch the real murderer. Or perhaps they won’t. It’s the least of my worries. You two can sort it out amongst yourselves!”

He looked around. He was now in the seventeenth district, on the road to Dornbach. Fine! In the hills of Dornbach, between the villas, there were a number of lanes running through the gardens and the shrubbery, and poorly lit roads connecting the villas, where you hardly saw anyone after dark. He could stop there and, when the coast was clear, drag the dead man out, throw him onto the roadside, together with his bags, and clear off. He’d lie there till someone found him. They wouldn’t know how he got there. They’d find out who he was, of course. He probably had some documents on him, a passport… But he, Sponer, could take care of that. They’d obviously open the suitcases and perhaps find something there, letters and such like, which would reveal the identity of the dead man… But one could throw the suitcases away somewhere else, a few hundred yards up the street… or perhaps right here, straight away? Maybe someone would see them lying there and simply take them home because of their contents. One doesn’t look a gift horse in the mouth… But what if they are were handed in?

Why not take them to his lodgings instead?

Suppose, though, they did find out who the dead man was from his distinguishing features, for the police were trained in that sort of thing.

As far as he was concerned, what did it matter if they found out? But in fact it did… it did matter. Once they’d found out who the man was… “Arrived at the Westbahnhof. And? Took a taxi? Which one?” The other drivers, put on the spot, insist, “Not ours.” But one of them could have seen Sponer drive up. “Ferdinand Sponer from the Brandeis Garage.”—“Did you pick up a fare?”—“Yes.”—“What did he look like?”—“I don’t know.”—“You don’t know?”—“No! He got in the cab when my back was turned, I only saw…”—“What did you see?”—“He was wearing an overcoat.”—“What sort of overcoat?”—“A large grey one.”—“And you saw nothing else?”—“No, all he said was…”—“What did he say?”—“He said… He said…”—“‘The Bristol’,” the porter intervenes. — “Yes, ‘the Bristol’. Hotel Bristol.”—“And what about you?”—“Me?… I took him there.”—“To which one?”—“To… the old one.”—“But when he got out and paid, you must have seen what he looked like.”—“No… Yes. That is…”—“Well?”—“I don’t remember precisely.”—“OK, not precisely! But roughly. What do you remember roughly?”—“He… he wasn’t very tall…”—“Not tall?”—“No.”—“But not very short either?…”—“That’s right.”—“Roughly what age?”—“Not old.”—“And what about his hair? Was it fair? Brown?”—“No, not fair… but not brown either…”—“Really? Not tall, not small, not old, not young, not fair, not brown? And what did he do when he got to the Bristol?”—“He paid the fare and went into the hotel.”—“What about his suitcases?”—“A… a hotel porter took them from the cab.”—“And went into the hotel with them, too?”—“Yes.”—“What about you?”—“I drove off.”—“So, he entered the hotel and the porter carried the suitcases in after him?”—“Yes.”—“You saw all this?”—“Yes.”—“Now, I put it to you that neither he nor his suitcases ever reached the hotel!”

If the body was found, he, Sponer, was lost.

Hundreds of people go missing in large cities every year. Without a trace. You don’t hear about it, but they disappear. There’s nothing in the newspapers about it. The papers report only the cases that have been solved. The unsolved ones are never reported in the papers. Hundreds of people, each one a grown person’s height, size and weight, disappear like something small that falls to the ground, like a matchstick that one throws away, like a button that pops off and suddenly is no longer there. Gone. Vanished into thin air. As though it never existed.

How do they do it, how do they get rid of people? Do they cut them up, burn them somewhere, throw them into the river?

Into the river!

They say that a corpse thrown into the water first of all sinks, later rises to the surface for about half an hour, then sinks once more; but for a time it’ll have been floating on the surface. If it’s to stay under, it’s got to be weighted down, and stones are best for this. In a fast-flowing river a body will be carried along by the flow; for a couple of days the corpse will float above the weights holding it down, it’ll be swept along, fish will swim around it and nibble at it, it’ll sink to the bottom, be buried and crushed in the debris, ground into pulp and be gone for ever.

Sponer had to throw the dead man into the Danube.

Not much more than an hour ago, he hadn’t even known the man existed. Now that he no longer existed, he had to get rid of him somehow, because if the body were discovered it would be even more dangerous than if he’d murdered him, which, of course, he hadn’t.

In order to turn back, he swung sharply to the left, but couldn’t make a complete U-turn and had to reverse. A man in an overcoat, carrying an umbrella and a briefcase, very likely a lawyer who was here on business and wanted to get back to the centre, hailed him from the pavement. Sponer did not answer and sped away.

Seeing as it was raining, other people, too, had probably tried to hail him, but he hadn’t noticed.

Now that he at least knew what he had to do, he began to think straight again. He could see where he was going. Previously he hadn’t taken anything in.

The long rows of lamps swung to and fro over the wet, glistening streets. A strong wind had got up, and the rain was gradually beginning to ease off. The cloud cover was torn into white fluffy patches which raced over the pitch-black sky, now exposing, now concealing a full moon. Sponer could see this every time he crossed a wide intersection.

He glanced at his watch. It was a quarter past eight.

He slowed down. If he wanted to get to the Danube, he’d have to wait till he was sure he wouldn’t meet anyone there.

When he approached the inner city, he turned right to make a detour and kill time, went through Josefstadt, and finally stopped in a side street off Burggasse, in the shadow of some dilapidated old houses.

There were only a few small shops, belonging to suburban shopkeepers, with heavy, old-fashioned doors. The pavements were narrow, the cobbled surface uneven. Some of the windows in the street were lit dimly from within, and every now and then the pale moonlight fell on the tall chimney stacks and grey walls of the houses, where here and there the stucco had come away in large patches.

The few passers-by paid no heed to Sponer and his car. A cat ran across the street, jumped over the steps of a doorway, and disappeared.

After a few minutes Sponer lit a cigarette.

Every time he drew on the cigarette the glow shone in the windscreen, the darkness behind Sponer’s back being simultaneously reflected in front of him.

He threw the cigarette away and turned around.

The glass panels that separated him from the rear compartment were still slid back, with a gap of about two handbreadths between them.

Sponer forced himself to look into the back of the car.

In the slanting light of a distant street lamp he saw the rear seat, the edges of the suitcase and, between the two, like something incongruous, the blurred outlines of the slumped body.

The face was cadaverously pale. Because of the jolting during the journey, the head must have shifted even farther forward.

Just for a second he doubted that the man was still in the car. Every now and again he would be overcome by a sense of unreality. Sponer could well have imagined leaving the street, driving to a cab rank, picking up a fare, and opening the door for him. And in the car — nothing. The body and the luggage — a mere figment of the imagination.

But the suitcase next to the driver’s seat was real enough.

He listened to see if anyone was coming, got out of the car, took the suitcase out, opened the rear door, and pushed the suitcase on top of the one that was already there. In the process, he avoided looking at the body. He quickly slammed the door and listened again.

As he was returning to his seat, it suddenly occurred to him that someone, a fare, could suddenly appear from behind while he was parked there, give an address, open the rear door and get in. Dammit! he thought.

He got back into his seat, pushed the glass panels even farther apart, and leant over into the interior.

He groped for the handles of the two doors and pushed them upwards so that the doors were locked and could no longer be opened from outside.

While he was leaning into the rear, he avoided breathing.

Then he pulled himself clear and sank back in his seat.

When he looked at his watch it was about nine.

He hadn’t eaten anything since midday, but didn’t feel at all hungry; all he had was a hollow, uncomfortable sensation in his stomach.

If only he could find something to drink somewhere, he thought. He didn’t want beer or wine, instead something like a sherry or vermouth.

He was already feeling a lot calmer, otherwise he wouldn’t even have thought of such a thing. He’d have something later, say in about an hour’s time, only now he had to drive to the Danube, throw the body and luggage into the river, and then he’d be safe.

While he sat there waiting, and while for a moment he had no need to think what to do next, he began to anticipate the sense of relief he’d feel after he’d got shot of his gruesome luggage, but at the same time he also felt he had to do something to relieve the tension of the last few hours.

If he could risk leaving the car unattended for a few minutes, he could go and get a drink somewhere.

After all, why shouldn’t he leave the car unattended somewhere for a short time where it was dark? He’d been driving for almost two hours through the town, and no one had seen or even imagined the gruesome cargo he was ferrying. Besides, he’d left the car open by the Opera, at the crossing the policeman had shouted at him to move on, in Bräunerstrasse he’d left the car for nearly ten minutes right in front of the other policeman, and no one had even thought of suspecting him.

And let’s face it, why should anyone suspect anything dreadful to have happened right there in broad daylight rather than somewhere out in the outer suburbs, near some rubbish tip, under a bridge, places where traditionally such things are banished to and where, to be honest, you expect them to happen! Who, unless he’d experienced this sort of thing for himself, would imagine that it could occur right in front of one’s eyes rather than behind the closed windows of a neighbour’s house, behind the locked door of an adjoining room, among casual passers-by in the street, or anywhere at all for that matter! It is in the nature of horror to remain hidden and for no one to discover it. Anything outrageous is generally so private that everyone involved tries to hide the fact, and it is only fortuitously that it ever comes to light. Who can ever be aware of all the awful things that happen? Least of all the police.

He could be reported for careless driving across the Opera House junction, but that would be all, whereas to park here in this dark side street was perhaps the most reckless thing he’d done so far. Here, where without a doubt nothing happens from one year to the next, the police would patrol the neighbourhood most frequently. Surely no policeman would ever think of looking for crime in the open, in the glare of bright lights.

Sponer turned on the engine, drove out of the side street, and crossed Siebensterngasse and Mariahilfer Strasse.

The route he’d been driving with the dead man on board had now come full circle.