Phantoms of Breslau

BRESLAU, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 2ND, 1919

A QUARTER PAST EIGHT IN THE MORNING

Criminal Commissioner Heinrich Muhlhaus slowly climbed the stairs to the second floor of the Police Praesidium building at Schuhbrucke 49. Placing his foot on each step in turn, he pressed down with his full weight, to check whether the eighteenth-century sandstone would crack beneath the heels of his shining brogues. He would have liked to crumble the old stone to bits, scattering dust, and then retrace his steps to draw the caretaker’s attention to the mess. He would then be able to delay going into his office. He would not have to see the pained expression on the face of his secretary, von Gallasen, nor look at the wall calendar, filled with important deadlines, with its picture of the recently constructed Technische Hochschule, or the framed photograph of his son, Jakob Muhlhaus, taken at his confirmation. Above all, he could avoid the troubling and unpleasant presence of the pathologist, Doctor Siegfried Lasarius, whom the police messenger had announced a moment earlier. This information had spoiled the Commissioner’s mood. He did not like Lasarius, a man who considered the dead to be the best partners in conversation. And the dead appreciated him, too, even if they did not laugh at his jokes, lying as they were in the concrete troughs of the Institute of Forensic Medicine, bathed in the icy water that streamed from a shuddering rubber hosepipe. Every one of Lasarius’ visits heralded at best difficult questions, at worst serious problems. Nothing less than an interesting conceptual problem or a threat could induce Charon to leave his holdings. The Commissioner wanted to believe it was the former. He looked about him. He could see nothing that would give him an excuse to delay meeting the taciturn physician. Once again, he pressed his foot down on a stair. The lacquered leather of his shoes, reflecting the metallic leaves entwined around the bars of the banister and the colossal elevation of the stairs, creaked a little. A din and a loud cursing drifted up from the courtyard. Muhlhaus peered over a neglected fern, whose abominable condition was noticed by every woman who entered this male world. Although not a woman himself, he noted the gnarled twigs begging for water and, with an enraged expression, turned and ran downstairs towards the duty room. He did not reach it, however.

“Commissioner, sir!” he heard Lasarius’ stentorian voice from above. He stopped and caught sight of the dark spread of a hat and the damp pattern formed by sparse wisps of hair on a skull. Lasarius was descending majestically. “I couldn’t wait to see you.”

“It’s only five to nine,” Muhlhaus said, pulling out a silver fob watch from his waistcoat. “Can’t you wait a few seconds, Doctor? Is your business so urgent that we have to discuss it on the stairs?”

“There’s nothing to discuss.” Lasarius opened his leather briefcase and handed Muhlhaus two pages headed “Post-mortem Report”, then stared out at the courtyard where the caretaker and a carter were clanking cans of paraffin about. “We’re not going to say anything at all. Not a word. To anybody.”

“Especially not to Mock,” Muhlhaus rounded off after quickly reading the report. He observed the bewhiskered carter who was passing the cans to the caretaker and was so puffed up his waistcoat buttons seemed about to shoot across the courtyard in all directions. “Doctor Lasarius, don’t your stiffs have names? Why are these two anonymous? If you don’t know their names, you should give them some. Even farm cattle have names.”

“In my book, Commissioner Muhlhaus,” the physician murmured, “there’s no difference between cattle and humans, apart from the size of their heart or liver. What is it like in your profession?”

“We’ll call them …” the police officer passed over the question and glanced at the paraffin cart which bore the logo: “Lighting Articles — Salomon Beyer”. “… we’ll call them Alfred Salomon and Catarina Beyer.”

“I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost,” said Lasarius. He rested his briefcase on the banister, jotted down the names in the relevant spaces and made a sign of the cross over the pages.

“Not a word to anybody … especially Mock,” repeated Muhlhaus, lost in thought, and he shook the physician’s hand. “There’s no distinction between men and animals in my profession either. But it’s hard to keep files without names.”

BRESLAU, THAT SAME OCTOBER 2ND, 1919

NINE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

Criminal Assistant Eberhard Mock staggered out of Affert’s tobacconists in a dark gateway on the north side of Ring. The October sun dazzled his cloudy irises over which, every now and again, his swollen eyelids drooped. Swaying on his feet, he leaned on the gate to the Ring Theatre and slipped a pince-nez with vivid yellow lenses onto his nose. Now, thanks to the skill of Jena Opticians, everything around him was drenched in a bright glow. Acrid cigarette smoke found its way between the lenses and the whites of Mock’s eyes, which were scored with red veins. Mock gasped and blew out the smoke, instinctively covering his eyes with his hands. He hissed in pain: his eyelids were a mass of neuron endings, and hard nodules drifted beneath the clammy skin. Holding on to the wall with one hand, he proceeded like a blind man and turned into Schmiedebrucke. His palm glided over the glazed shopfront of Proskauer’s Menswear. Glare reflecting off the golden watches laid out in the window of Kuhnel’s pierced his eyes. He scraped along the rough walls of the building occupied by the German Fisheries Company until he eventually crossed Nadlerstrasse and hit upon the glass door of Heymann’s Coffee House.

Mock staggered inside. At this time of day the coffee house was still empty and quiet. In the main room, a boy in a stiff white apron was busy stacking tables and chairs into pyramids, breaking up the activity from time to time with skilful swipes of a damp cloth to gather dust and cigarette ash from the surfaces of the tables and tablecloths. Seeing Mock trip and fly straight towards the fragile pyramid of furniture, he unintentionally swung his cloth and whipped the face of this early customer. The bright-yellow pince-nez danced on its chain, Mock lost his centre of gravity, and the tables and chairs their stability. The boy watched aghast as the well-built, dark-haired man landed on the chairs’ jutting legs and curved back-supports, breaking some of them with a terrible crash while starched tablecloths tumbled onto his head. Particles of dust flickered in the October morning sun. An open salt cellar fell into Mock’s thick hair and salt trickled down his cheeks with a faint rustle. The Criminal Assistant closed his eyes in defence and the stinging intensified. He was pleased — the pain would prevent him from falling asleep, would work better than the six cups of strong coffee which he had already managed to consume since five o’clock that morning. Contrary to the young waiter’s assumption, there was not a milligram of alcohol in Mock’s veins. Mock had not slept for four days; Mock was doing everything he could so as not to sleep.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME OCTOBER 2ND, 1919

A QUARTER PAST NINE IN THE MORNING

Although Heymann’s Coffee House was not yet open, two men sat there raising cups of steaming black coffee to their lips. One of them was smoking cigarette after cigarette, the other — ivory stem of his pipe clenched between his teeth — expelled small columns of smoke from the corner of his mouth into the thicket of his beard. The young waiter did everything he could to make the dark-haired man — a police officer, as it turned out — forget the recent incident. He cleared away the broken furniture, brought coffee and milk, had the famous Friedrichshof biscuits delivered from S. Brunies, the nearby patisserie, twisted cigarettes into his little pipe-shaped cigarette-holder for him, and listened attentively to the conversation in order to read every wish of the man he had so severely mistreated. At one point the victim of his cleaning manoeuvres took a few sheets of folded paper from the inside pocket of his jacket and handed them to the bearded man. The latter read them, puffing out squat mushrooms of smoke from his pipe. His companion brought a small phial to his nose and the pungent smell of urine drifted across the table. The boy escaped behind the bar in disgust. The bearded man read carefully, his features and folds of skin forming a question mark.

“Mock, why have you written this absurd statement to the press? And why are you showing it to me?”

“Commissioner, sir, I am …” — Mock pondered his next words, as if speaking a language he was not in full command of — “a loyal subordinate. I know that if … if a newspaper were to print this, then I’m finished. Yes, finished. Dismissed from the police force. Without a job. That’s why I’m telling you about it.”

“And what?” In a shaft of sunlight which cut through the clouds of smoke, tiny droplets of spittle could be clearly seen settling on Muhlhaus’ beard. “You want me to save you from being thrown out?”

“I don’t know what I want,” Mock whispered, afraid he might close his eyes at any moment and be transported to the land of his childhood: to the Heuscheuergebirge, covered in dry leaves and warmed by the autumn sun, where he used to go with his father. “I’m like a soldier, informing my commanding officer of my resignation.”

“You’re one of the men I want for my new murder commission.” The bowl of Muhlhaus’ pipe gurgled. “I don’t want idiots who trample over evidence left at crime scenes, whose only assets are exemplary military service. I don’t want former informers who work for both sides. And I don’t want to lose you because of this absurd statement of yours which will make a laughing stock of the entire Police Praesidium. You’ve been holding back from sleep for several days now. If you’ve gone clean out of your mind, as both this statement and your behaviour seem to indicate, then you won’t be much use to me anyway. So you have to tell me everything. If you remain silent, I’ll take you for a lunatic and leave. If you talk nonsense, I’ll also leave.”

“Commissioner, sir,” Mock said, placing the phial of smelling salts on the table. “Please hold this under my nose if I start to fall asleep. I’m glad you don’t mind the stench of ammonia. Hey, you,” he called to the boy. “What time do you open? We’ve enough time, Commissioner,” he said when he heard the answer. “And you, boy, I want you out of my sight. Come back just before opening time.”

The boy ran out, happy to relieve his nostrils of the unpleasant smell. Mock rested his elbows on the table, slipped on his world-brightening pince-nez, and turned his face towards the sunlight pouring through the lace curtains on the front window. He rubbed his eyes, hissed in pain and then slapped them with open palms. Fireworks exploded beneath his eyelids. The corners of his eyes stung. His cigarette burned down in the ashtray.

“I’m fine now,” Mock said, taking a few breaths. “I won’t fall asleep. I can tell you now. As you might have gathered, it’s all to do with that investigation of ours, the Four Sailors case …”

BRESLAU, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 1ST, 1919

HALF PAST SEVEN IN THE MORNING

Mock opened the heavy two-winged door and found himself in a flagstoned hallway in near darkness. He made his way forward slowly, without bothering to muffle the ringing of his spurs. Suddenly he came across a velvet curtain, and drawing it aside he entered another hallway, a waiting room with doors leading to several rooms. One of them was open but another curtain hung from its lintel, which made Mock hesitate for a moment. In one of the waiting-room walls, instead of a door, there was a window that gave, so Mock assumed, on to the ventilation pit. On its outside sill stood a paraffin lamp whose feeble glow barely penetrated the dusty windowpane. In this meagre twilight, Mock could make out several figures sitting in the waiting room. He did not, however, manage to get a closer look at them since his attention was drawn to the curtain hanging at the door of the room. It moved abruptly, and from behind it came a sigh. Mock made towards it but a tall man in a top hat barred his way. When Mock tried to move him aside, the man took off his headwear. In the pale semi-darkness, knots of scar tissue were clearly visible as they refracted the light. Instead of eyes, the man had a tangle of criss-crossing and interweaving scars.

Mock looked at their thick lines, at the dark patches that stood out on the wall next to his bed. He rubbed his eyes and turned away from the wall. The curtain isolating his bed alcove was bathed in sunlight.

From beyond the curtain came the sound of his father’s bustling. Mugs clattered, stove lids rattled, fire crackled and bread crunched beneath the weight of a knife. Mock reached for the metal jug beside his bed and sat up so as not to spill the water as he drank. He tilted the jug and liquid poured into his dried-up orifice of a mouth and over his rough, swollen tongue. It flowed in a broad stream and soaked his nightshirt, which was tied at the neck with stiffly starched straps. Rusty rings squeaked along the metal rail, the curtain parted and let a bright band of light into the stuffy alcove.

“You look like the seven plagues of Egypt,” said a short, stocky man holding a chipped mug in his gnarled fingers.

His facial features, which had absorbed the fumes of boiling shoe-glue, his brown liver spots and stern, grey eyes had combined to make Willibald Mock the bogeyman of local children. Eberhard Mock was not afraid of his father, as he had long since ceased to be a child. He was thirty-six years old and had a piece of metal in his thigh, as well as rheumatism, bad memories, and a weakness for alcohol and red-headed women. Now, above all else, he had a hangover. He stowed the jug under his bed, sidestepped his father and entered the sun-drenched room which served as both kitchen and his father’s bedroom. Uncle Eduard, who had died several months earlier, had once jointed beef carcasses here, flattened tender pieces of pork and pounded sticky chunks of liver. It was here that he had stuffed intestines smelling of Riesengebirge bonfires, and then hung rings of sausages above the stove where Willibald Mock had set milk to warm for his hungover son.

“Don’t drink so much,” his father said as he left the alcove. Grey whiskers bristled above his thin lips. “I never neglected my work. I always sat down to my shoes at the same time each day. My hammering in the workshop was like the cuckoo of a clock.”

“I’ll never match up to you, Father,” said Mock a touch too loudly as he went over to the basin by the window and splashed his face with water. He opened the window and hung a razor-sharpening strap onto a nail. “Besides, I’m on duty a little later today.”

“What kind of duty is that?” Willibald Mock struggled with small bottles of medicine. “Booking whores and pimps. You should be out on the beat helping people.”

“Let it be, old man,” Mock said as he sharpened his razor and rubbed soap onto the thick bristles of a shaving brush. “You, on the other hand, spent your life breathing in the odour of other people’s smelly feet.”

“What did you say?” His father cracked eggs into a cast-iron frying pan. “What did you say? You’re talking quietly on purpose because I’m deaf.”

“Nothing. I’m talking to myself.” Mock scraped the foam off his cheeks with the razor.

His father sat down at the table, breathing heavily. He stood the frying pan with its yellowy mush on the bread board from which he had first carefully removed all crumbs. Then he spread slices of bread with dripping and arranged them one on top of the other to form a rectangular stack, evening out the edges so that none protruded at the sides. Eberhard Mock wiped the foam from his face, rubbed his cheeks and chin with a shaving stick, pulled on his vest and sat down at the table.

“How can you knock back so much?” With a pair of scissors, his father snipped the stalks of an onion growing in a flower pot and sprinkled them over the scrambled eggs. He separated the slices of bread he had already stuck together and scattered a tiny amount of chives between each one, and then stuck them back together and wrapped them in greased parchment. “I never got so drunk. But you do almost every day. Remember to bring the paper home — I’ll use it again tomorrow.”

Mock ate the semi-liquid egg garnished with its thatch of chives with relish, then got to his feet, slid the frying pan into a tub of water by the washbasin, put on his shirt, fastened a square collar to it and knotted his tie. On his head he placed a bowler hat, then he walked to the corner of the room and opened a hatch in the floor. He descended the steps to the former butcher’s shop and stopped to glance at the row of hooks from which pigs’ carcasses had once hung, at the polished counter, at the gleaming shop window and stone slabs that slanted slightly towards a drain covered with an iron grille. Uncle Eduard had once poured warm animal blood into this grille.

Mock heard the wheeze of his father’s breathing and violent coughing coming from overhead. He smelled coffee being poured into a thermos. The coffee’s steam had momentarily taken his father’s breath away, he thought, or rather whatever had not already been taken away by the bone-glue fumes. Mock stepped outside, tinkling the brass bell on the doorframe.

From the window Willibald Mock watched his son as he walked through the back door and into the yard. Bowing to the caretaker, Mrs Bauert, Eberhard Mock glimpsed the friendly smile bestowed on him by the maid of Pastor Gerds — the tenant of a four-roomed apartment at the front of the house — who was standing by the pump. Snorting at a stray cat, he accelerated his step, jumped over a puddle and, unfastening his trousers and swearing at the excessive number of buttons, forced the rusty padlock and entered the privy in the corner of the yard.

His father closed the window and returned to his chores. He washed the frying pan, plate and milk pan, and wiped the oilcloth that was fastened to the table with drawing pins. He took his medicines and sat in the old rocking chair for a moment in silence. He stepped into his son’s alcove and stared at the tangled sheets on the bed. As he leaned over to fold them, his foot kicked the jug containing what remained of the water. It overturned and water ran into one of his leather slippers.

“Damn it!” he yelled, shaking his leg; the slipper flew straight into Mock’s face as he closed the hatch in the floor. His father sank onto his son’s bed and quickly unfastened the straps holding up his sock, which he removed and smelled.

“Don’t get worked up,” smiled Mock. “I don’t use a chamber pot any more, and even if I did I wouldn’t hide it under my bed. It’s only water.”

“Alright, alright …” muttered his father, pulling his sock back on with difficulty. He was still on his son’s bed. “Why do you need water under your bed? Oh, I know. It’s there ready for your hangover. You’re always knocking it back, knocking it back … If you got married, you’d stop drinking …”

“Did you know, Father” — Mock handed his father the slipper, sat down at the table and sprinkled a few pinches of blond tobacco onto the oilcloth — “that schnapps actually helps me?”

“Do what?” his father asked, taken aback by the friendly tone. His reproaches about alcohol and bachelorhood usually incensed his son.

“Sleep through the night.” Eberhard lit a cigarette and arranged on the table the objects which would soon find themselves in his briefcase: the packet with bread and dripping, a tobacco pouch and an oilcloth file containing reports. “I’ve told you a hundred times — if I go to bed sober, I get terrible nightmares; I wake up and can’t get back to sleep! I prefer hangovers to nightmares.”

“You know what’s better for helping you sleep?” The father began to make his son’s bed. “Chamomile and hot milk.” He straightened the sheet and suddenly looked up at him. “Do you always have nightmares when you’re sober?”

“Not always,” Eberhard smiled, closing the steel fastenings on his briefcase. “Sometimes I dream of the nurse in Konigsberg. Red-headed and very pretty.”

“You’ve been to Konigsberg? You never told me.” The father held up a jacket as his son slipped his arms and broad shoulders into the sleeves.

“I was there during the war.” Eberhard fanned himself with his bowler hat and reached for his watch. “There’s nothing else to say. Goodbye, Father.”

He made his way towards the hatch in the floor, hearing his father muttering behind his back: “He’d better not drink so much. Only chamomile and hot milk. Chamomile and hot milk.”

In the Hospital of Divine Mercy in Konigsberg, a cadet officer of one year’s standing used to be given chamomile before he went to sleep. The beautiful, red-headed nurse gazed with admiration at the polished boots fitted with spurs that stood by his bed. She had called him “Officer”, not realizing that every scout from the artillery regiment wore spurs since they rode on horseback. Addressing him thus, she had poured spoonfuls of the infusion into his mouth. Twice-wounded Cadet Officer Mock did not have the strength to protest that he was not an officer, and was ashamed to admit that he had not passed his exams or undergone the appropriate training, but had found himself in the war simply through conscription. He was too shy to ask his angel her name, and he did not have the strength to turn his head to watch her go. In an attempt to broaden his field of vision, he had traced burning circles with his eyes. All they took in, unfortunately, was the neo-Gothic vaulting of the hospital. They did not see either the soldiers lying next to him or Cornelius Ruhtgard, the greying, slender orderly to whom Mock owed his life; and the red-headed nurse did not fall within the wounded cadet officer’s field of vision ever again. Much later, when his broken limbs had set and he could move around on crutches; when finally he learned that his injuries indicated that he must have fallen from a great height, that the orderly Ruhtgard — until recently a doctor in Cameroon — had, on his way to work, found him abandoned on Litauer Wallstrasse, and had quickly taken him to the hospital to treat his ribs and his lungs, which had been punctured by splintered rib bone; when Cadet Officer Mock knew all of this, he began his search for the red-headed nurse. Limping along, he rapped his crutches on the sandstone flags, but everywhere he met with a lack of understanding. The nurses grew impatient when the convalescent produced yet another description of their supposed red-headed colleague, looked them in the eyes for the hundredth time and tried to catch the scent of their bodies. The caretakers and ward attendants shook their heads, some tapping their brows when he spoke of steaming cups of chamomile, until finally the former doctor Ruhtgard, demoted to the rank of orderly, explained to the patient that the red-headed nurse may have been a figment of his imagination. Hallucinations were not unknown in people in similar states to that of Cadet Officer Mock on his arrival at the Hospital of Divine Mercy in Konigsberg. For he had been totally unconscious. Not because he had fallen from a great height, but from alcohol.

Now Eberhard Mock went down the stairs to his Uncle Eduard’s old butcher shop.

“Chamomile and hot milk. Gets drunk, so he gets what’s coming to him,” came the voice of his father from overhead; he had remedies for all his son’s ailments.

Eberhard heard a hard hammering on the windowsill. “Must be that moron Dosche with his foul dog,” he thought. “That mongrel’s going to be shitting all over the polished stairs again while Dosche and my father play chess all day.”

The scrambled eggs and chives made him gag like a hair stuck in his throat. “Chamomile and hot milk. He knocks it back, always knocking it back.” Mock turned and went back up the stairs. His head appeared above the floor. The sill rattled again. His father was at the window, hopping on one foot; on his other hung a darned sock.

“Can you not understand, Father,” yelled Eberhard, “that chamomile and milk don’t bloody well work on me? I don’t have a problem falling asleep, it’s the dreaming!”

Willibald Mock stared at his son, understanding nothing. The torso above the hatch. Clenched fists. Hangover gushing in his head like the sea. Chamomile and hot milk. The father grew pale and did not say a word.

“And tell that shitty chessplayer, Dosche, not to come here with his mongrel and not to thump on the windowsill so hard, or he’ll be sorry.”

Eberhard’s legs were now in the room too. Without looking at his father, he went to the basin, knelt beside it, removed his bowler hat and poured a few ladles of water over his wavy hair. He heard his father’s voice through the stream of water that gushed over his ears: “It’s not Dosche hammering on the sill, it’s somebody for you.”

Eberhard leaned towards the old man and slipped the sock over his foot.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 1ST, 1919

EIGHT O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

Kurt Smolorz had not been working under Mock in Vice Department IIIb of Breslau’s Police Praesidium for long. He had landed there straight off the streets of Kleinburg, where he had walked the beat without knowing why; in truth, this beautiful villa district adjacent to South Park had about as much in common with crime as Constable Smolorz had with poetry. Yet on one warm day in 1918, it was precisely there that some dangerous criminals, sought by all the police in Europe, had crossed the constable’s path. And it was a happy day for him. Criminal Assistant Mock had been doing a routine check in a plush house of ill repute on Akazienallee. He had a habit of combining pleasure with work. After checking the income ledger and the health records, and when he had quizzed the madam about her more eccentric clients, he had begun to look around for his favourite lady who, as it turned out, was busy, along with two other employees, pleasuring two — and here the madam sighed — very rich gentlemen.

Intrigued by the configuration of two to three, Mock had peeped through a concealed window into the so-called pink room and received a shock. He had run out into the street and immediately bumped into the red-headed constable, who was clanging his sword threateningly and tugging at the collar of a rascal he had apprehended a moment earlier for firing a catapult at passing droschkas. On Mock’s orders, Constable Smolorz had punished the rascal with a hefty clout and let him go. Then, together with Mock, he had burst into the pink room of Madame Blaschke’s establishment and — rubbing his eyes in astonishment at such a complicated arrangement of bodies as he had never seen before — arrested the two men, who had turned out to be none other than Kurt Wirth and his mute bodyguard Hans Zupitza, pioneers of European coercion and extortion. That day a great deal changed in the lives of the protagonists of this event, and they all became permanently linked: Wirth collaborated with Mock and was rewarded when the latter turned a blind eye to his extortion of smugglers who floated arms from Austria, coffee from Turkey and tobacco down the River Oder. Mock had become a rich and influential man in the criminal underworld, and this was to prove extremely useful to him. Smolorz, meanwhile, had gone from being a district constable to an employee at the Police Praesidium. Like all the dramatis personae, he held a sizeable bank account of dollars paid by Europe’s most wanted criminals in return for their freedom. Mock soon recognized Smolorz’s assets as a colleague, and one of the most valuable of these was his reticence.

Smolorz was silent even now as he sat next to Mock in a river-police motorboat steered by a uniformed boatswain. They navigated the shallow flood waters of the River Ohlau among sparse trees and partially submerged fields. The motorboat moored at a temporary landing stage not far from a paved road.

“New House!” shouted the boatswain, as he helped Smolorz and Mock to disembark.

A droschka was waiting for them on the road. Mock recognized the cabby, whose services the police had often found indispensable. He shook his hand and threw himself onto the settle, rocking the carriage. Smolorz took the seat up on the box and the droschka moved off. Mock, attempting to forget the thirst which tormented him, studied the outbuildings of New House. The lowing of cattle could be heard from Swia$$$tniki Farm, two kilometres away. The smell of damp air from the Oder wafted through the sunlight. After a while they came to a lock where they climbed out of the droschka and crossed over to the island, Ottwitzer Werder.

At Ottwitzer Dam, among blackthorn bushes, Mock spied the destination of his morning’s travels across the flood waters of the Oder and the Ohlau tributary. A dangerous cascade of water spurting from the base of the dam kept at bay the gawpers who were standing on the embankment by the hamlet of Bischofswal, trying to see what the police had discovered on the island on which only the previous day they had enjoyed their picnics and beer. They were prevented from stepping onto the dam by the strong arms and fierce glares of three sword-bearing gendarmes who wore shakos adorned with a blue star and on their chests sported badges that gleamed with the words “Gendarme Station Schwoitsch”. Mock gazed with nostalgia at the elegant pseudo-Gothic building in the vicinity of Landungsbrucke and remembered the nocturnal pleasures to which he had so recently surrendered. Now duties of a different nature had summoned him to this distant corner of Breslau. He turned to the riverbank fringed with thorn bushes and to the pile of four — so Mock guessed — human bodies. They were covered with the Institute of Forensic Medicine’s grey sheets, which were always carried in the carriages and first cars to arrive from the Police Praesidium. Seven detectives were already there, five of whom were examining the ground immediately surrounding the bodies; squatting, they searched centimetre by centimetre the wet grass and rich earth which clung to their heels. Having examined a chosen square of ground, they grunted as they shifted the weight of their bodies from one foot to the other and, still squatting, continued their search. Despite the coolness of the morning, none of them wore a jacket. Sweat trickled from beneath their bowler hats down to their moustaches. One of the men, not believing in the accuracy of photography, was drawing a shoe print he had found in the damp soil. Two policemen wearing jackets stood on a police barge moored to the bank and questioned two teenage boys in school uniform who were trembling as much from nerves as from the cold. One of the policemen waved to Smolorz and Mock, indicating a square of land marked out with little flags where the corpses lay covered with sheets. This man was their boss, Criminal Councillor Josef Ilssheimer, head of Vice Department IIIb, and the area he was pointing to had already been examined.

Mock and Smolorz entered the marked-out plot and took off their bowler hats. Ilssheimer came over to join them, lifting his feet high and moving swiftly. It seemed to Mock that their chief was about to perform a high jump and fall heavily on the sheets, but instead he stopped beside the bodies. He leaned over and tugged at the cloth. At first Mock could not make head nor tail of the stiff, blue limbs, frozen in rigor mortis. Stretched out before his eyes was a most peculiar sight, as if someone had arranged a pyre for a large bonfire. But instead of dry twigs and branches there were four human torsos from which heads, legs and arms protruded at various angles. Furthermore, all these limbs were connected to each other in some way or other: here a foot protruded from an armpit, there a knee grew from a collarbone, while a shoulder emerged from between a pair of shins. In many places, the skin of the deceased was pierced by sharp shards of bone, jutting through and disappearing among blue swellings. So as to set the twisted human limbs on a “top-bottom” or “right-left” axis, Mock’s eyes searched for a head. He soon found one, and thanks to a thick beard, he identified its gender as male. From beneath a sailor’s hat, long, pomaded strands of hair tumbled over the dead man’s face while curly, stiff bristles propagated over his jaw and on his upper lip. All this hair was stuck together with reddish-brown clots of dried blood mixed with a watery fluid. The source of all this gore was two eye-sockets — two dead lakes filled with blood and shreds of membrane from perforated eyes.

When he suffered from a hangover, Mock was tormented by various sensitivities. After eating fried onion, the delicate smell of burning would not leave him for the entire day; the keen odour of a horse — or even worse, that of a sweating man — would evoke associations of sewage and cause convulsions in his bowels; spittle meandering down a window grille would hasten his mistreated stomach’s reflexes … In order to function in any way, a hungover Mock should be left to himself in the lair of his bedding, isolated from all stimuli. But today the world did not protect him. Mock glanced at the wisps of hair, stiff with blood, that fell from beneath the sailor’s hat, at the curled growth of the beard, at the sparse hair on the torso and the pubic hair that poked out from beneath the leather pouch covering the victim’s genitals. He felt all this hair in his throat and started to take deep breaths. He gazed up at the bright, September sky and through his mouth released the sour stench of his hangover, the onion-like reek of chives, the insipid smell of scrambled eggs. He kept his head tilted back and inhaled rapidly. He felt he was losing his balance and gave himself a violent jolt, almost toppling Smolorz who was standing behind him on one leg wiping a mud-covered shoe with his handkerchief. Smolorz stepped aside and Mock sat down on the damp grass. Still busy with the dirty toe of his shoe, Smolorz did not help him to his feet. The world did not favour Mock today; it was not protecting him.

Ilssheimer nodded and stared at the Landungsbrucke from where a small steam boat was departing. The investigative police had already gathered the evidence. They rolled down their shirtsleeves, donned their jackets and exhaled clouds of smoke into the dew-scented air. A huge van stopped on the opposite bank and eight stretcher-bearers in leather aprons emerged. A man in his forties hopped down after them wearing a doctor’s gown tied at the neck and a top hat which barely covered his skull. In a voice hoarse from tobacco, he began to give out orders. The stretcher-bearers penetrated the crowd, clearing a way for their boss, their folded stretchers serving as pikes to break up the dense throng. A moment later, the dam was swarming with employees from the Institute of Forensic Medicine who were making their way forward carefully, holding on to the taut rope. The unsecured far side of the dam still spurted water, whipping up cones of thick froth. The police officer who had been questioning the two schoolboys with Ilssheimer now shut his notebook and called every-body’s attention with an authoritative glance. Waving his left hand he dismissed those giving evidence towards the moored barge and extended his right to the man in the top hat who was now making his way down the dam.

“A good day to you, Doctor Lasarius!” he called, then he raised both arms and boomed at the policemen: “Gentlemen, silence, please!”

The detectives stamped their cigarettes into the ground; the schoolboys soon disappeared, squeezing past the knees of the stretcher-bearers; Doctor Lasarius removed his top hat and began to inspect the bodies, tossing the broken limbs about; his men rested on their stretchers as if they were spears; Smolorz shook the mud off his trousers and Mock leaned towards Ilssheimer and asked:

“Councillor sir, who is that?”

“My name is Criminal Commissioner Heinrich Muhlhaus,” said the police officer giving the orders, as if he had heard Mock’s question, “and I’m the new chief of the Murder Commission. I’ve come from Hamburg, where my duties were similar. And now, ad rem. Two schoolboys from Green Oak Community School came to the dam at half past seven this morning for a cigarette. They found the bodies of four men; two lying on the ground, the other two on top of them.” The police officer approached the bodies and used his walking stick as a pointer. “As you see, gentlemen, the deceased are lying in a very irregular configuration. Where one has his head, another has his legs. All are practically naked.” The walking stick spun pirouettes. “All they are wearing are sailor’s hats on their heads and leather pouches over their genitals. This peculiar outfit is why I’ve invited Vice Department IIIb of the Police Praesidium to work with us. We have here its chief, Criminal Councillor Ilssheimer.” Muhlhaus glanced respectfully at his colleague. “With his best men, Criminal Assistant Eberhard Mock and Criminal Sergeant Kurt Smolorz.” Muhlhaus’ tone as he uttered the adjective “best” expressed at least a shadow of doubt. “Briefing in my office at midday sharp, after the post-mortem examination. That’s all from me. Over to you, Doctor.”

Doctor Lasarius completed his perfunctory examination. He removed his top hat, wiped his forehead with fingers that had touched the corpses, reached into his gown and, after some time, extracted a cigar stump. He accepted a light from one of the stretcher-bearers and said with deliberate irony:

“Thank you, Commissioner Muhlhaus, for so accurately specifying the time of the post-mortem. I was not aware until now that I was your subordinate.” His voice became serious. “I’ve ascertained that the four men have been dead for approximately eight hours. Their eyes have been gouged out and their arms and legs broken. Here and there contusions are visible on their limbs which would indicate imprints made by the sole of a shoe. That’s all I can say for now.” He turned to his men: “And now we can remove them from here.”

Doctor Lasarius fell silent and watched as the stretcher-bearers grabbed the corpses by their arms and legs and gave them a mighty swing. The bodies landed on the stretchers, leather suspensories protruding from between their spread legs, and then came the dull thump of the remains as they hit the deck of the police barge. On Lasarius’ orders, the schoolboys standing on deck turned their heads from the macabre sight. The doctor set off towards the car, but before he had gone far he stopped in his tracks.

“That’s all I can say for now, gentlemen,” he repeated in a hoarse voice. “But I have something else to show you.”

He looked around and extracted a thick, dry branch from the bushes. He rested it on a stone and jumped on it with both legs. A brittle crack resounded.

“Everything points to the fact that this is how the murderer broke their limbs.” Lasarius flicked his cigar stump into the thorn bushes beside the Oder. The cigar caught on one of the bushes and hung there, wet with spittle, torn from lips a moment earlier by fingers sullied by the touch of a corpse.

Mock felt hair in his throat once more and squatted. Seeing his convulsions, the police officers moved away in disgust. Nobody held his sweating temples; nobody pressed his stomach to hasten its work. Today, the world was not looking after Mock.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 1ST, 1919

NINE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

The large motorboat in which the six plain-clothes police officers sat had not seen a war; it came from Breslau’s river police surplus. Steering it was First Mate Martin Garbe, who studied the men from beneath the peak of his hat. When their broken conversation began to bore him, he looked out at the unfamiliar river banks overgrown with trees and lined with formidable buildings. Although he had lived in Breslau for a couple of years, he had only been working for the river police for a few weeks and the city as seen from the Oder fascinated him. Every now and then he leaned towards the police officer nearest to him, a slim man with Semitic features, to make sure he was correctly identifying the places they passed.

“Is that the zoo?” he asked, pointing to a high wall behind which could be heard the roar of predators being fed their daily ration of mutton.

The banks of the Oder passed slowly. Occasional anglers, mostly retired men, were returning home with nets full of perch. The trees dripped with foliage; nature was refusing to recognize the approach of autumn.

“That’s the water tower, isn’t it?” Garbe whispered, pointing to a square brick building on their left. The police officer nodded and addressed a colleague sitting opposite him clutching a locked hold-all marked MATERIAL EVIDENCE:

“Look how fast we’re going, Reinert. I told you we’d get there quicker by river.”

“You’re always right, Kleinfeld,” muttered the other man. “Your Talmudic mind is never mistaken.”

First Mate Garbe looked up at Kaiserbrucke spanning the river on its steel web and accelerated. The air was hot and muggy. The police officers on the motorboat fell silent. Garbe focussed his attention on the rivets in the bridge, and once they had cleared it, on the faces of his passengers. Four of them sported moustaches, one a beard, and another was clean-shaven. The bearded man blew smoke rings from his pipe which then trailed over the water, and talked in a whisper to the fair-haired moustachioed man sitting next to him. Both men were trying to make it clear with every word and gesture that it was they who gave the orders around here. Kleinfeld and Reinert wore small moustaches, and red whiskers bristled on the top lip of the stout and taciturn police officer. Next to him sat a stocky, clean-shaven, dark-haired man. He looked exhausted. He leaned over the water, breathing in the damp air, and then a cough would tear at his lungs, persistent and dry, as if something was irritating his throat. He rested his arm on the boat’s machine-gun and stared down at the water. First Mate Garbe soon tired of scrutinizing the six silent men and looked up at the underside of Lessingbrucke, which they were now approaching. From its girders dripped water or horse urine. Garbe navigated in such a way that not a single drop fell onto his motorboat. When they had passed under the bridge, Garbe caught a very interesting snippet of conversation:

“I still do not understand, Excellency” — barely suppressed irritation could be heard in the dark-haired man’s voice — “why my man and I have been summoned to this crime. Would you, as my immediate superior, care to explain it to me? Has our duty remit been extended?”

“Of course, Mock,” the fair-haired, moustachioed man said in a shrill voice. “But let us first get one thing straight. I don’t have to explain anything to you. Have you never heard of ‘orders’? Police work is founded on issuing orders and often calls for a strong stomach. And subordinates are to execute these orders, even if it means throwing up a hundred times a day. Do we understand each other, Mock? And do not address me as Excellency unless you’re attempting to be extremely ironic.”

“Yes sir, Criminal Councillor sir,” the dark-haired man said.

“I’m glad you’ve understood.” The blond moustache curved into a smile. “And now, think about it yourself and answer me: why do you think you and I are both here? Why has Criminal Commissioner Muhlhaus asked us for help?”

“Naked corpses with leather pouches on their balls,” came a muttering from beneath the red moustache. “They could be queers. Those of us in IIIb have come across men like that before.”

“Good, Smolorz. I didn’t actually ask you, but you’re right. Four murdered queers. That’s a case for Commissioner Muhlhaus and the men in IIIb. As of today, you and Mock are to be transferred, for the duration of this investigation, to the Murder Commission under the direction of Commissioner Muhlhaus.”

The dark-haired man stood up so abruptly that the boat rocked: “But of our men Lembcke and Maraun are much more sure of themselves in the homosexual demi-monde than we are; they’re the ones best acquainted with it. Smolorz and I book girls and sometimes raid illegal clubs. So why …”

“First of all, Mock,” said the man with the pipe and thick beard, “Councillor Ilssheimer has already explained the meaning of an order. Secondly, we don’t know whether or not these four sailors were homosexuals. We’d like you to tell us who else might wear leather suspensories. Third, and finally, my respected colleague Ilssheimer has told me a great deal about you, and I know I wouldn’t be able to stop you conducting your own private investigation into this case. But why would you conduct your own investigation when you can do so under my command?”

“I don’t understand.” The dark-haired man spoke slowly and huskily. “What private investigation? Why should I want to conduct any sort of investigation into the case of a few murdered queers?”

“Here’s why.” From the greying beard puffed a cloud of Badia tobacco smoke. “Read this. This card was stuck in the belt of one of the dead men’s underpants. Be so kind as to read it. Out loud.”

First Mate Garbe did not pay the slightest attention to the Regier-ungsbezirk Schlesien building which they were just passing on the left, or to St Joseph’s Hospital built of white clinker bricks on their right. He was listening to the cryptic message being read slowly from the card:

“‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. Mock, admit your mistake, admit you have come to believe. If you do not want to see more gouged eyes, admit your mistake.’”

“What?” shouted the man with the red moustache. “Are you talking to yourself?”

“Listen to me, Smolorz, use that thick brain of yours,” the dark-haired man said quietly and deliberately. “No, that’s too much of an effort for you. Read it yourself. Read the card yourself. Well, go on, read it, damn you!”

“‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. Mock, admit your mistake, admit you have come to believe. If you do not want to …’”

“Commissioner, sir, Councillor Ilssheimer was right … I’d have conducted a private investigation into this case.” The dark-haired man now coughed as violently as if it were splinters stuck in his throat, not hair.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 1ST, 1919

NOON

Thick clouds floated across the sky and obscured the sun. Ten men were present in the briefing room on the second floor of the Police Praesidium at Schuhbrucke 49. Doctor Lasarius held a thick, brown cardboard box full of handwritten documents. Next to him sat three police officers with short names: Holst, Pragst and Rohs. They had searched the scene of the crime and then, on Muhlhaus’ orders, had been present at the postmortem and taken down minutes of the proceedings. Smolorz and Mock settled on either side of their chief, Councillor Ilssheimer, while to the right and left of Muhlhaus sat his own most trusted colleagues: Kleinfeld and Reinert. Tea in Moabit porcelain was set out in front of the men.

“This is what happened, gentlemen,” Lasarius began as he extracted a cigar from a tin carrying the logo of Dutschmann tobacconist’s. “At about midnight, what was probably a horse’s dose of drugs entered the bodies of these four sailors, all aged between twenty and twenty-five. This is indicated by traces of opium on their fingers. There was so much it could have put them to sleep for a good many hours. As a result it acted as an anaesthetic while their limbs were being broken. Let us add that all these men were, most likely, drug addicts, as demonstrated by their emaciated bodies and numerous scars along their veins. One of them had even injected morphine into his penis … So nobody would have had much trouble persuading them to smoke a pipe containing a large quantity of opium.”

“Were they homosexuals?” Kleinfeld asked.

“An examination of their anuses does not support this theory.” Lasarius did not like to be interrupted. “We can be certain that none of them had anal intercourse over the past few days. Returning to my interrupted train of thought … At about midnight, while they were under the influence of the drug, their eyes were gouged out and their arms and legs broken. The perpetrator broke sixteen limbs, all more or less in the same place, at the knee joint and the elbow joint.” Lasarius passed the police officers an anatomical atlas and pointed to the elbows and knees on an ink drawing of a skeleton. “I’ve already mentioned that the contusions are the imprints of a shoe …”

“Could it be a shoe with a print like this?” This time it was Reinert who had interrupted. “I made this drawing at the scene of crime.”

“Yes, it’s possible,” Lasarius said without bridling at the policeman. “These contusions are the result of significant pressure, conceivably applied by somebody wearing shoes jumping on their limbs. Gentlemen” — he drew on his cigar and extinguished it in an ashtray, scattering sparks — “it is as if the murderer jumped onto their arms and legs while they were propped on a bench, stone or some other object …”

“But surely that was not the cause of their death?” Mock asked.

“No, I’m just going to read you my findings,” Lasarius sighed with evident annoyance. He began: “The cause of death was stab wounds to both lungs as well as a haemorrhage of the left pulmonary cavity and a clot in that same cavity.” Lasarius looked at Mock and said in a hoarse voice: “The murderer stuck a long, sharp instrument between their ribs and then practically pierced the lungs all the way through. They would have been in agony for several hours. Now, please ask your questions.”

“What kind of instrument could that have been, Doctor?” Muhlhaus asked.

“A long, sharp, straight knife,” the pathologist replied. “Although there is another instrument which seems even more likely to me …” He passed his hands — their skin devoured by chemicals — over his bald pate. “No, that would be absurd …”

“Go on, Doctor!” Mock and Muhlhaus shouted almost simultaneously.

“Those men’s lungs were pierced with needles.”

“What sort of needles?” Kleinfeld leaped from his chair. “Needles for knitting socks?”

“Exactly.” Lasarius hesitated briefly, then formed an elaborate conditional sentence: “Were I to examine these remains in the context of a medical error, I would say that some quack had made a bad job of tapping their lungs.” Lasarius slipped his cigar stump into his waistcoat pocket. “That’s exactly what I’d say.”

Silence descended. The steady, powerful voice of an interrogating police officer reached them from the next room: “Listen, you and your men have to try harder … What are we paying you for, you shits? We want to know everything that’s going on in your area, understand?” Drops of rain rapped against the windows. The officers sat in silence, frantically racking their brains for intelligent questions. Mock stretched his hands out in front of him and studied his knuckles which were lost in folds of skin.

“One more question.” Mock lifted his hands, then dropped them on the table again. “You inspected the scene where the bodies were found very carefully, Doctor. Could that also be where the crime was committed?”

“I found no traces of blood from the eye sockets on the ground or grass around the victims’ heads, which means that their eyes were gouged out elsewhere. The remaining injuries led only to internal haemorrhaging, and from those we can deduce nothing as to where the crime was committed. But I’ll still carry out an Uhlenhuth blood test, as a formality. Can I go now?” Lasarius got to his feet and made towards the exit without waiting for a response. “Some of us have work to do.”

“Commissioner, sir,” Mock’s hands rose once more and fell with a slap on the table top. “The murderer wrote a message on a card for me. I’m to admit to some mistake, I’m supposed to believe in something, or we’re threatened with more murders. Let’s read it again. ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. Mock, admit your mistake, admit you have come to believe. If you do not want to see more gouged eyes, admit your mistake.’” Mock lit a cigarette and immediately regretted it when he realized that all those assembled had noticed his hands were shaking. “I assure you I don’t know what mistake he’s referring to, or what I am to admit to. But there is also this Biblical quotation. Let us pursue that. Unless I’m mistaken it refers to doubting Thomas, who came to believe only when he had seen the risen Christ with his own eyes.”

Mock approached the revolving board in the corner of the briefing room, wedged it still and wrote in even, beautiful script: “doubting Thomas = Mock, Christ = murderer, murdered sailors = warning for Mock.”

“The first two equations are clear,” Mock said, angrily shaking the chalk dust from his sleeve. “The murderer is a religious fanatic who has sent a message to an unbeliever — me. When I discover what ‘mistake’ I am being punished for, I’ll also discover the murderer and my ‘mistake’ will become evident to everyone. Because everyone is going to ask: ‘Why did that swine kill four young men?’ The answer is: because he wanted to punish Mock for something. ‘And what did Mock do?’ everyone is going to ask. And I don’t know the response to that at this stage. Everyone will find out how Mock once harmed the murderer, everyone will find out what Mock has been punished for. And that’s what the murderer is aiming at. If that pig had killed some old woman, it would have blown over without a murmur. A week ago, in Morgenau, two old women were killed by P.O.W. soldiers freed by the Russians. They stole twelve marks from them. Imagine — the equivalent of two theatre tickets! Did that shake public opinion? Not in the least! Who cares about some murdered old women?”

“I know what you’re saying,” interrupted Muhlhaus. “The murder has to be spectacular because only in this way will the murderer draw people’s attention to your alleged guilt. And what could be more spectacular than gouging out the eyes of four young men in leather underpants?”

“You know,” Mock said slowly, “I’ve got a terrible feeling … I don’t know what I’m supposed to be admitting to so I can’t say anything … I’m not going to say anything and the world’s not going to find out a thing from me … And he …”

“He’s going to get more and more frustrated,” said Lasarius, who was standing in the doorway listening attentively to Mock’s deductions. “He’s going to wait and wait for you to admit to your guilt … Until, until …” Lasarius searched for the appropriate word.

“Until he gets truly pissed off …” Smolorz came to his aid.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 1ST, 1919

TWO O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON

Above the entrance gate to Casar Wollheim, River Shipyard and Navigation Company at the river port of Cosel, hung enormous banners with the slogans: “Strike — Unite with our Comrades in Berlin” and “Long Live the Revolution in the Soviet Union and Germany”. In the gateway stood workers wearing armbands; some wielded Mauser rifles in their calloused hands. On the other side of the street, with West Park at their backs, soldiers from the Freikorps were arranged in battle formation, staring starkly at their adversaries’ red-starred banners.

The droschka carrying Mock and Smolorz stopped a fair distance from the entrance to the shipyard. The passengers climbed out and the cabby pulled slowly to the side, unhitched his horse and gave it some fodder. Mock contemplated the ideological conflict before him and decided that, as a state functionary, he rather sided with the opponents of proletarian revolution. Not wanting to hear the whistle of flying bullets in the square, which was on the verge of becoming a battleground, he and Smolorz hurriedly approached the commander of the Freikorps. Mock showed his identification and, silently rueing his rough tongue swollen with yesterday’s alcohol and tobacco, forced himself to ask questions. He did not need an explanation of the present situation; all he needed was one piece of information: the location of the port’s director. Company Commander Horst Engel immediately summoned an old sailor whom he introduced to Mock as his informer. Mock thanked Engel and, stooping beneath a non-existent yet possibly imminent hail of bullets, led the informer Ollenborg to the droschka. The old sailor told him that the grand launching of a small passenger ship, the Wodan, which was to cruise the Oppeln-Stettin line, was taking place at that very moment. Julius Wohsedt, the director of the port, was sure to be there. Ollenborg then showed Mock a side gate which was not blockaded by revolutionaries.

“Oh, he’s a very hard-working man, Wohsedt,” replied Ollenborg in answer to Mock’s question about whether the strike was not interfering with the port director’s grand launching. “He’s got to sell the new ship, but he can afford the odd strike. Haven’t you heard of strike insurance, Officer?”

“And tell me, my good man,” Mock said, looking in bewilderment at the shipyard’s ivy-patterned side gate guarded by several Freikorps soldiers, above which hung the non-revolutionary banner “Welcome”. “Who’s going to launch his new ship for him when everyone’s out on strike?”

“Everyone, my foot!” the old sailor said with a toothless grin. “Have you not heard, Officer sir, of non-striking workers? Old Wohsedt has considerable influence over both strikers and scabs. Besides, he persuades them both with the same …”

They had arrived in a square where tables laden with bottles, joints of poultry and rings of sausages had been arranged in a horseshoe. At one table sat a priest with a stoup and around him perched shy port officials, as well as proud-looking businessmen in black suits and top hats. But in the faces of the ladies who accompanied them Mock read nothing other than anticipation of a sign that they could throw themselves upon the victuals. Nobody was eating yet; everybody was waiting for something. The man standing beneath a magnificent parasol selling ice creams and lemonade, however, was not waiting for anyone. He did not have to. Customers weary of the sun stood in a long queue at his cart. Smolorz, Mock and Ollenborg climbed down from the droschka and mingled with the large crowd on the shore where a small passenger ship was moored, carrying the Danzig flag with its two crosses and a crown. Ollenborg started talking to an acquaintance whom he addressed as Klaus, while Mock and Smolorz listened attentively. It soon became clear that the director of the river port and his wife, who was to be the ship’s godmother, had not yet arrived; it was for them that everybody was waiting.

“Maybe old Wohsedt is irrigating his wife before launching the ship,” Klaus laughed, and he used his rotten teeth to lever a porcelain cap off a bottle of beer bearing the seal of Nitschke’s tavern, which was nearby. On seeing the frothy drink, Mock felt alcohol upset the balance of liquids in his body. “It’s an old custom, irrigating the wife or lady friend. Besides, the buyer might even have requested it. I’ve heard of a similar custom when carts are sold. Before sealing a deal, the seller uses the cart to transport whatever the buyer’s going to carry in it. It’s supposed to be good luck …”

“You’re right” said Ollenborg, who could only dream of using his teeth. “Irrigation, in this case, is a must. It’s like baptizing a brothel. After all, that’s what this new ship’s going to be used for …”

“What’s that rubbish you’re saying, old man?” A sailor with a strong Austrian accent had turned to Ollenborg. “What’s this ship supposed to be used for? A brothel? Am I to sail a brothel? Me, Horst Scherelick, a sailor on S.M.S. Breslau? Say that again, old man.”

Klaus reassured the sailor: “Oh, come, it was a slip of the tongue. My friend meant to say ‘initiate’, not ‘irrigate’. And you, Ollenborg,” he said more quietly, “stop jabbering or somebody’s going to stick a knife in your ribs.”

For a few minutes Mock looked on intently as Scherelick was pacified. Then he shifted his gaze to the huge magnum of champagne carried by a small boy in a sailor’s outfit. As he wondered whether the champagne was cold or warm, he once again felt a pang in his stomach and dry splinters in his throat. He beckoned to Smolorz and Ollenborg.

“I’ve a favour to ask of you, Smolorz,” he whispered. “Find that port director and bring him to the droschka. Discreetly. I’ll question him there. And you, Ollenborg, I’d like to talk to you now.”

Smolorz pressed his way through the throng and went off in search of the head of the river port. Mock distanced himself a little from the crowd, sat down on an old lemon crate and pulled out his cigarette case. Ollenborg squatted down next to him and willingly accepted a cigarette. The march “Under Full Sail” resounded on the quay, and an orchestra approached the ship in step with the music. When the musicians came into view, many of the sailors started cheering and throwing their hats in the air. The priest got to his feet, the businessmen looked about for the master of ceremonies and the ladies waited for the first daredevil to help themselves, uninvited, to the food and drink.

“Listen, sailor,” Mock said. “The moment director Wohsedt appears, you’re to point him out to me.”

“Yes, Officer sir,” Ollenborg replied.

“One more thing.” Mock knew he had to formulate his question skilfully. He did not, however, want to have to think. He wanted to drink. “Do you know, or have you heard of four young men, twenty, twenty-five years of age? Good-looking, bearded sailors? Maybe they came looking for work here? You might have seen them wandering around the port? They wore leather underpants. Here are their photographs — dead.”

“I don’t peer down people’s trousers, Officer sir,” Ollenborg said indignantly as he studied the pictures. “I don’t know what sort of under-pants anyone wears. And how do you know they were sailors?”

“Who’s asking the questions here?” Mock said in a raised voice, arousing the interest of a blonde woman in a blue dress who was walking past.

“I haven’t seen them and I haven’t heard of them,” Ollenborg smiled. “But allow me, Officer sir, to give you one piece of advice. Barba non facit philosophum.^† Why are you looking at me like that? Because I’ve studied Latin? Once, on a voyage to Africa, I avidly read Georg Buchmann’s Geflugelte Worte;^‡ I practically know it by heart.”

Mock said nothing. He did not feel like talking. Today it seemed hard to find the right words. Lost in thought, he watched the young blonde woman in the long blue dress and veil. She was on her way to the table but suddenly changed direction, approached the ice-cream and lemonade vendor and smiled at him. As she did so, she stuck out her neck which had been hidden by a high lace collar held in place with hooks; it was covered with dark, scaly patches. The vendor handed the woman some lemonade without her having to queue. “Where have I seen that girl before?” Mock asked himself. “In some brothel, no doubt,” was his own response. Trapped in a tedious existence, between booking prostitutes, alcoholic delirium and the superhuman effort it took to continue to show his father respect, Mock realized that he saw a harlot in every woman. But this is not what horrified him. He was already used to unhappy thoughts and his own partially feigned cynicism, and he was well acquainted with his own demons. But all of a sudden he was afraid for his future. What would he do if he had a wife who, faithful up to now, suddenly started coming home late at night, her lips concealing alcohol fumes, deceit lurking in her eyes, satiation slumbering in her body, and on her breasts the marks of passionate bites? What would this brave conquerer of indifferent prostitutes and venereal pimps do then? Mock did not know how he would behave. How much easier it would be if the entire female kind was made up of harlots! Then nothing would surprise him.

Sergeant Smolorz interrupted these dismal thoughts.

“The port’s director was in his office,” he said loudly, trying to shout above the orchestra which was now playing “Der Prasentiermarsch”, a tune from the time of East African colonization.

“And what, was he irrigating his wife?” Ollenborg said, spitting out his cigarette butt.

“Probably,” Smolorz muttered and pointed to the blonde who was drinking lemonade from a thick glass. Her scaly blotches were not visible. “She looks quite happy, doesn’t she?”

“That’s the port director’s wife?” asked Mock.

“I found his office. Went in. He and that woman were there. I introduced myself. He said goodbye to her nervously: ‘Bye, my little wifey. I’ll be there in a minute.’”

“Take me to his office,” Mock said, springing to his feet and talking more fluently now. “Now that he’s irrigated his wife, and before he launches the ship, the port director has some questions to answer.”

“I’ve already asked them,” Smolorz said as he pulled out a notebook. “And I showed him the photographs. He didn’t recognize the murdered men. But he gave me a list of all the agents in Breslau who recruit river-boat sailors.”

“How did you know I wanted to ask that?” Mock secretly admired the terseness and love of hard facts which distinguished his colleague.

“Ah well, I just guessed. I do know you a little.” Smolorz reached into his pocket and pulled out a bottle of dark beer with the Biernoth Tavern label. “I guessed this too. I do know you a little.”

“You’re irreplaceable,” Mock said as he spontaneously squeezed Smolorz’s hand.

The orchestra began to play “Marsch der freiwilliger Jager”. From behind the building strode a red-faced, fifty-year-old man in a top hat. His cheeks looked fit to burst with a surplus of blood, and the buttons on his waistcoat strained under the pressure of excess fat. He approached the table, picked up a glass of champagne with his plump fingers, and raised it in a toast.

“That’s Wohsedt, the director of Wollheim’s shipyard,” Ollenborg informed them.

The buzzing in Mock’s ears — intensified by the bubbles in the beer — drowned out Wohsedt’s speech. The police officer heard only the words “godmother” and “my wife”. Whereupon a buxom, short, fifty-year-old woman who had previously been sitting next to the priest made her way to the table where the magnum of champagne stood. She smashed the bottle against the hull of the ship and gave it its mythological Germanic name. The blonde in the blue dress put down her glass of lemonade and watched the ceremony. Mock sipped his beer slowly, straight from the bottle. Unlike Smolorz, who no longer knew which was the wife and which the mistress, he was not surprised by anything. To his satisfaction he was able to confirm that the world was returning to its old ways.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 1ST, 1919

FOUR O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON

Cabby Helmut Warschkow, who for several years now had been working solely for the Police Praesidium, was riding up on the box in a most uncomfortable position, forced as he was to share the seat with Sergeant Kurt Smolorz, the size of whose body was inversely proportional to the economy of his speech. Pressed into the iron frame by Smolorz’s hefty shoulders, he lashed his whip, deep down beside himself with indignation that his carriage was being used for ignoble purposes by Eberhard Mock from Vice Department IIIb. Mock had closed the roof and, having thus isolated himself from prying eyes, was subjecting an innocent girl in a blue dress — whom he had none too courteously invited into the droschka during the ship-launching ceremony — to a ritual as old as the hills. Warschkow’s suspicions, however, were wrong. The rocking of the carriage was not caused by the movement of Mock’s loins but by the bumpiness of the alley in South Park along which they were travelling. The otherwise lecherous Mock, looking at the scales on the girl’s neck, thought of everything but the mating dance and its consequences. The girl herself was in no way innocent; on the contrary, she was highly amenable to the kinds of requests made by men that no virgin could satisfy. Now she was reacting with equal submission to Mock’s demands, beating her shapely breast and swearing to “sir” that, whatever the consequences, she would confirm that she had been kept by Wohsedt for several months now, especially since it was he who had infected her with “this filth”.

“I beg of you, don’t lock me up … I have to work … I have a small child … No doctor’s going to stamp my book …”

“You have two options,” Mock said, feeling disgust towards the sick girl, and disgusted with himself for revelling in her consternation. “Either I bring you in for having an out-of-date health record or I don’t. In which case you have only one way out: to work with me. Agreed?”

“Yes, agreed, honourable sir.”

“Now you’re addressing me as you should.”

“Yes, honourable sir. And that’s how I’m going to address you from now on, honourable sir.”

“So you’re Wohsedt’s kept woman. Do you have other clients as well?”

“Sometimes, honourable sir. He keeps me, but he’s too miserly to have exclusivity.”

“Are you sure he’s the one who infected you?”

“Yes, honourable sir. He had it already the first time I was with him. He liked biting my neck. He infected me like a rabid dog.”

Mock studied the girl. She was shaking. Tears glistened in her cornflower-blue eyes. He touched her cold, wet hand. She was moulting, layers of skin flaked from her neck. Mock felt sick; he was revolted by all kinds of things when he had a hangover. With a hangover he could never be a dermatologist.

“What’s your name?” he said, swallowing.

“Johanna, and my three-year-old daughter’s name is Charlotte.” The girl smiled, pulling her high collar further up over her neck. “My husband died in the war. We’ve also got a little boxer. We love her … She’s called …”

When he was young Mock had a boxer at his family home in Waldenburg. The dog would lie on its side and little Ebi would snuggle his head into its short fur. In the winter, the dog was happiest lying beneath the stove. Dog-catcher Femersche also lived in Waldenburg. The dogs he disliked most were Alsatians and boxers.

“I don’t give a damn what your mongrel is called!” Mock roared and pulled out his wallet. “I don’t give a damn about your bastard child!” He took out wads of banknotes and threw them into the girl’s lap. “I’m interested in one thing only: that you get rid of that fungus! There’s enough money for you to live off for a month. The doctor won’t take anything from you, he’s a friend of mine: Doctor Cornelius Ruhtgard, Landsbergstrasse 8. You’re to come and see me in a month, when you’re cured! If you don’t, I’ll track you down and destroy you! You don’t believe me? Ask your friends! Do you know who I am?”

“I do, honourable sir. You paid me a visit when I was working in the Prinz Blucher cabaret, Reuscherstrasse 11/12.”

“Ah, that’s interesting …” Mock tried to remember the circumstances. “Was I a client of yours? And what? How did I behave? What did I say?”

“You were …” she hesitated, “after some alcohol …”

“And what did I say?” Mock felt increasingly tense. Often, after nights of heavy drinking, he would hide his head in the sand like an ostrich. To his companions in these nocturnal escapades he would say: “Don’t remind me of it. Don’t talk about it. Not a word. Not a single word.” But now he wanted to know. May it fall on him like a sentence.

“You told me, honourable sir … that I look like your beloved … nurse… Except that she was ginger …”

“One says ‘red-headed’ or ‘flame-haired’. And what else?”

“That of all dogs, honourable sir, boxers are your favourite …”

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 1ST, 1919

FIVE O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON

Cabby Warschkow stopped once more at the wharf of the Wollheim shipyard, alongside the Wodan which had been launched that day. The guests were just boarding the ship, where the rest of the festivities were to take place. Blood-like stains of wine remained on the tablecloths alongside yellowy spillages of beer. Chewed duck and goose bones were being swept into a bowl to form a crumpled skeleton, a funeral pyre of poultry. Mashed potatoes and beetroot — which only moments earlier had encircled ducks’ breasts, but now looked more like tubercular spittle — were being scraped off plates with a spoon. The September sun casting its benevolent light on this culinary battlefield revealed nothing, but did add radiance. The last of the revellers, unwilling to part with their bratwurst, were stepping onto the ship which was to sail up the Oder. Just as they were about to raise the gangway, one final passenger appeared: Eberhard Mock. Nobody asked for his invitation, nor was anyone surprised by his somewhat staggering gait.

Dancing couples occupied the upper deck as the orchestra played a foxtrot that was very much in vogue. Women wearing low-cut dresses, many decorated with strips of fabric slung low across their hips, leaned on the shoulders of their partners, moving swiftly with the dance. Elderly ladies stared through opera glasses; elderly gentlemen smoked, played skat or did both; younger men crowded around the gleaming bar and poured liquids of various colours down their fathomless throats from glasses, some of which — so Mock thought — had the coarse charm of cut prism, others the questionable refinement of a cone. Mock ordered a cognac and, without taking a sip, looked out at the iron spans of Posenerbrucke. Against its backdrop he caught sight of the man he had come to see — the river port director, Julius Wohsedt. Under what Mock was convinced was a fungal arm, he sheltered his wife and the ship’s godmother, the short and exceptionally corpulent Mrs Eleonore Wohsedt. Her husband was flushed with alcohol and dressed to the nines. He carried himself stiffly and formally, but had foregone his top hat. Mock burst out laughing at the sight of his sparse hair, which pomade had fashioned into an elaborate curl. He knocked back his cognac and silently toasted well-matched married couples.

The director felt alcohol-spiced breath on the triple folds of his neck. He turned to bestow a broad and sincere smile upon what he imagined would be one of his guests, and instead saw a dark-haired man he did not know. The man, who was of medium height and slightly overweight, was clenching his jaw and holding out a business card in gnarled fingers: CRIMINAL ASSISTANT EBERHARD MOCK, POLICE PRAESIDIUM, VICE DEPARTMENT IIIB. Wohsedt glanced at his wife, and Eleonore, registering the words “Vice Department” with a flicker of her eyes, moved away with a polite smile.

“One of your men,” said Wohsedt, reading the words on the business card, “has already been to see me today. Have you also come about those murdered sailors?”

“Yes, I’m leading the investigation,” Mock said, resting his hands on the polished railings. “I have to establish the identities of the victims.” He took a large envelope from his jacket pocket and handed it to Wohsedt. “Take another good look at them.”

Wohsedt flicked through the photographs carelessly. As he was sliding them back into the envelope, one of them caught his attention. He pulled them out again and considered every detail, turning them upside down and even examining the reverse sides. At length he sighed and returned the photographs to Mock.

“I don’t know them,” he said and wiped his sweaty head with a handkerchief. “I really don’t know them.”

“You don’t know them, sir,” Mock said quietly and clearly, “but maybe those working under you, your managers, your foremen, your caretakers — maybe they know them. Maybe the agents who recruit crews for river lines know something?”

“Do I have to ask all of them?” Wohsedt smiled at an elderly lady and lowered his voice. “Perhaps you’d like me to interrupt my negotiations with the striking workers, stop repairing ships and walk into my office every morning asking the question: ‘Does anybody know anything about the murdered sailors yet?’ Is that what I’m supposed to do?”

“Yes,” Mock said even more softly.

“Very well then,” Wohsedt said, yet again baring acrylic teeth. “That is what I shall do. When would you like me to report back to you?”

“In a week at the latest, sir.” Mock slipped the photographs into an envelope on which he had neatly written: “Tuberculosis of the skin after being bitten by someone with tuberculosis”.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 1ST, 1919

SEVEN O’CLOCK IN THE EVENING

The cruise ship Wodan, having safely navigated the Burgerwerder and Sand locks, ploughed its way to the small landing stage opposite Sandinsel, at the foot of Holteihohe. Several passengers disembarked to climb the steep embankment, leaving behind the bright, dancing deck where brogues thumped and high heels clattered. Mock was among those leaving, tormented by a keen thirst and chaotic thoughts. His throat cried out for crystalline liquids, his mind for a clear breeze which would disperse the trails of mist and fog that shrouded his capacity for cause-and-effect analysis. He found relief in the garden of the Steamboat Landing Stage Restaurant near Sandbrucke. Admiring the edifice of the modern market hall, he relished a chilled glass of schnapps, which cut the taste of the Bismarck herrings whose silver skins were slashed with black criss-crosses. He divided a hot potato with his fork and slathered half of it with the soured cream coating the herrings. The fork impaled a piece of potato, then speared a slice of onion with a crunch before finally piercing a chunk of apple. In ecstasy Mock slid all these specialities into his mouth and chased them down with some more cold schnapps to stimulate his digestion. Next, he sucked down a long draught of Kulmbacher beer, then sprawled himself comfortably with his legs apart. Threads of gossamer brushed his cheeks and neck. He welcomed imminent drowsiness with warm hospitality. A tall, handsome man approached his table and sat down opposite him. He covered his ears with outstretched fingers through which the yellowish-red fluid began to flow; his ears were bleeding, his eyes were pouring out onto his sailor’s collar. Mock sprang to his feet, knocking into a waiter who was making his way towards two distinguished-looking ladies with some apple cake and glasses of brown liqueur. The waiter neatly tossed the tray from one hand to the other, spilling only a few drops which ran down the glasses’ slim stems.

Mock raised his bowler hat and apologized to the waiter and the two ladies, then turned to confront the spectre which had disturbed his sleep. In its place, a little sparrow was hopping around on the table, picking at what remained of the potato on his plate. Mock did not shoo it away. He rolled a cigarette of Georgian blond tobacco and lit it, listening to the chimes of the school chapel’s bells. Moments later the frightened bird flapping its wings in his heart had also calmed down. Mock’s thoughts and chain of logic became clearer: “The murderer commits a spectacular crime to force me to admit to some past mistake. Here one has to consider two things,” he explained to the sparrow hopping across the starched tablecloth. “Firstly, the singularity of the crime; secondly, my past mistake. The singularity of the crime might have gone unnoticed if the corpses had been discovered only later, in a decomposed state, after several months, for example. In that case, it would only have been noticeable to Doctor Lasarius and his men, who would find gouged eyes and broken bones even in a jelly of corpses. So why does the murderer count on his luck? But is it luck? Every day a large number of people cross Ottwitzer lock to the island and then continue on to Klein Tschansch. The bodies would certainly have been discovered, and news of the four murdered men would have gone round the whole district and then the entire city. Then there’s my past error, if one is to presume that the victims are there to illustrate the gravity of this error, accusing me through their very absurdity, then none of their characteristics have anything in common with me. The crime is little more than ostentation, form without content.”

The sparrow flew away and Mock noticed with some surprise and satisfaction that his thoughts were not only mere associations, not only a stream of chaotic images, but were acquiring the form of a small treatise, dictated in perfect, elaborate sentences. The more inebriated he became, the more sober were his thoughts. He forgot about the spectre with lymphatic fluid pouring from his ears, quickly pulled out a notebook and began to write feverishly: “The dead men have two characteristics that have been deliberately emphasized by the murderer. These are the only characteristics we have that can lead us to identify the victims. They were sailors, and their genitals were adorned with leather thongs. Wohsedt will take care of the first aspect; I will deal with the second. Wohsedt is dealing with sailors, and I with lechers. To whom would genitalia be displayed in such a dissolute manner?”

Here Mock interrupted himself and recalled a certain illegal brothel in the centre of Ring, which he and Smolorz had come to know about via an informer. The stool pigeon had been trying to destroy the competition and at the same time distract the police from his own establishment, which was fronted by a kind of photographic studio. Mock and Smolorz swept both places off the face of the metropolis. In both they had discovered an assortment of outfits and straps, and no shortage of leather underwear consisting of nothing but a belt and suspensoria.

“It matters not to whom one displays one’s genitalia,” Mock wrote. “More important is where this is done. The answer is: in brothels. Another question springs to mind: what might the victims have had to do with brothels? There are two possible answers: they could either have worked in one, or they could have made use of the pleasures on offer. Unfortunately, utrum possible est. If they were clients at some brothel and wanted to enhance their arousal by wearing suspensoria, then our investigation should begin with an interrogation of all the prostitutes in Breslau.”

Mock was surprised to note how paper and a pencil appeared to ennoble his morals. If he had been relating his train of thought to someone in speech, he would have said “whores in Breslau”.

“If, on the other hand, they worked in a brothel to arouse guests of the female sex (after all, Lasarius had ascertained that they were not homosexuals), we have but to delve into the memory of Breslau’s brothel specialist and ask him: where would a four-man crew serve to enthral female clients?”

And here Breslau’s most accomplished bawdy-house specialist fell into hopeless reflection which yet another cigarette failed to enlighten. It could only be an illegal brothel, kept strictly secret and intended solely for trusted members. It dawned on Mock that, in fifteen years of working for the police Vice Department, or in his numerous official and unofficial wanderings through the temples of the goddess Ishtar, he had never come across a club where women were not employees, or where men were anything other than clients, or guards there to keep an eye on the clients.

“And on top of all that, these sailor’s hats!” Mock muttered to himself, forgetting that he was venturing into territory allocated to Wohsedt. “It would have to be an exclusive and secret brothel for society ladies! A Chinaman in one room, a sailor in another, and a soldier in a third!”

The waiter serving Mock a third glass of schnapps listened to this monologue with surprise and interest, as did the two women of a certain age who were drinking cocoa liqueur at the next table. Mock looked at them intently and set his imagination to work — one of them approaches and asks him: “Kind sir, I would like a sailor … where can I find one?” He glanced again at the ladies nearby and realized how inauthentic such a hypothetical scene sounded. In fact the inauthenticity was so acute that he tasted its bitterness in his mouth. He decided to rinse it out with rowanberry schnapps.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 1ST, 1919

A QUARTER TO MIDNIGHT

Mock sat at a table in the dance hall of the Hungarian King Hotel and, holding a square bottle of gin to his eye, observed three couples dancing on an area marked out with coloured lights. The surrounding tables were occupied by a few lone men, all of whom were leaning on the railings encircling the floor, puffing out clouds of smoke, occasionally drinking from their glasses and watching the movements of the dancers. Beyond the tables and up a few steps were alcoves, some with cherry-coloured velvet curtains drawn across them, some with the curtains pulled back. The open alcoves shone with emptiness, and those that were closed resounded with women’s high-pitched laughter. Whenever the head waiter discreetly struck his little hammer against one of the iron curtain rods, Mock pricked up his ears and strained his eyes. The waiter would then draw the curtains aside, and the ladies would adjust their hair and run slender fingers over their velvety nostrils. There were not many men in the alcoves. Mock smelled sweat and face powder, as well as the scent of perfume. The haughtiness with which they addressed the waiters made it apparent that the ladies belonged to high society. Their laughter, on the other hand, was quite plebeian, and greatly aroused the plebeian in Mock.

The orchestra played a shimmy in the rhythm of a funeral march and it was obvious that the musicians would have liked most of all to return to their former occupation, namely that of immersing their moustaches into enormous tankards of beer. The dance hostesses displayed a typical Monday-morning willingness to work as they turned with studied elegance in the arms of three merry dancers, while their eyes — which Mock could see quite clearly through the magnifying lens of the gin bottle — betrayed reluctance and indifference.

This observation made Mock think of women of ill repute, who — like dance hostesses tired out after a working Sunday — also concealed smooth apathy in their eyes. Eyes that would usually come to life three times in a session: once when the girl approached her client, once when she feigned pleasure and once when she took his money. In the first two situations, she was generally a poor actress; in the last, an efficient calculator. He remembered his reasoning: the dead men were clients, not employees of a brothel. The thought had been prompted when he had imagined one of the ladies sitting next to him in Michael’s restaurant asking for a sailor-stud, and the image had not rung true. Sensing this inauthenticity at the time, he had resolved to take the difficult and long road which he was going to describe at the briefing the following day in Muhlhaus’ office. He was going to question all the prostitutes in town, starting now. He poured his first glass of gin and conceded that he was going to stop at the one. He did not want to fall asleep. There was no way he wanted to fall asleep. Dreams were not his allies, either in this investigation or in life.

Mock the rationalist intended to begin his questioning at this very venue. He would fire the prostitutes with questions concerning clients who had a penchant for leather underwear. If, however, someone had asked him why he had begun his explorations at the Hungarian King on Bischofstrasse, he would not have known what to say. Had he been sober, his answer would have been: “Because the lighting is good and the venue is made up of three ascending circles — the dance floor, the tables and the alcoves — so it has the best view. I need to start in a place like this before I bury myself in the dark corners of those forbidden dives near Blucherplatz.” Had he been drunk, he would have retorted: “Because the prettiest whores are here, and I want them — all at the same time.” Mock the rationalist did not want to permit the thought that something might be controlling him; he did not want to admit, with his petty bourgeois conscience, that his trousers concealed a ruthless and capricious demon. Right then it reminded him of its existence.

Mock removed the cold bottle from his burning cheek and acknowledged that the statement about the beauty of the girls working there was indeed true. He got up and made towards the steps leading down to the dance floor. As he walked by one of the alcoves, he heard a woman say to a waiter in a slurred voice: “Call me a cabby!” He passed, followed by the woman’s persistent: “I want a carter! Now! Immediately!” and the waiter’s reply: “Right this minute, at your service, my lady.” Mock stepped onto the dance floor and sensed the eyes of the men at the railings turn to him; the opera glasses and pince-nez belonging to the ladies in the alcoves burned into him; and the eyes of the female dancers enticed him. He asked one of them to dance, a petite, slim, red-headed girl with Jewish looks. He held her tight, and beneath the thin material of her dress he could feel the hooks of her brassiere. After a few wrong steps the girl helped him catch the rhythm. Not for long. Mock had no talent for dancing. After a while he realized that his partner’s dancing skills were not up to much either. Fortunately, the orchestra took a break and the weary musicians sank their noses into their frothy beer. The girl stood helplessly in the middle of the dance floor, not knowing what to do with herself. Mock kissed her on the hand and offered his arm, aware of the ironic smiles of the lone drinkers and the astonishment of the ladies in the alcoves. “He kissed a whore on the hand,” he could almost hear them whisper.

The girl held him gently by the arm and allowed herself to be led to his table. She was very docile and devoured the snacks and drinks Mock bought for her with relish. She agreed with everything he said, which was not hard since he did not say much, nor did he ask for her opinion. She nodded automatically. But she did not consent when he proposed they spend the night together in a hotel. Instead she invited him to a room she rented in the house next door.

I.IX.1919

An ordinary school day. I was woken by the cries of children hurrying to school. I tried to get back to sleep. Despite tremendous tiredness, I did not succeed. This happens sometimes. You are dead tired, yet are not able to fall asleep. Maybe it is your daimon which prevents you from doing so.

It is noon. I am going to the Municipal Library.

Evening. Today I translated a number of pages from Augsteiner’s work. It is written in difficult Latin. It is as if some spirit is speaking through the author. Sentences are broken and unclear. Often there are no predicates. Yet one can look at them from a different angle: they are the notes of a scholar, lacking grammatical brilliance, yet abounding in the brilliance of truth. Augsteiner fascinates me more and more. According to him, Platonic notions are nothing other than souls. This is not, however, a primitive animism of reality. Augsteiner makes precise distinctions between souls. He divides them into active and passive on the one hand, and potential and actual on the other. Objects have a passive soul, meaning they are ordinary reflections of the ideal, while human beings have an active soul, meaning they are independent reflections of the ideal. Independent in the sense that they possess the possibility of abstraction. This may take place actually or potentially. The author poses the question: How can a subject, that is, a human being, abstract the active soul? But unfortunately he does not offer an answer. His complex epistemological system, saturated with the ideals of Christian Rosenkreuz (not surprising, they lived at the same time!), lacks even the slightest nod towards spiritualism. There are no instructions whatsoever: How is one to set about it? How is one to abstract a man’s soul from him? This past night, I followed Gregorius Blockhus’ instructions and tried to perceive the souls leaving these four bodies at the moment of their deaths. I proceeded according to Blockhus’ writings. I opened up the energy channels in their bodies, did away with the blockages in their joints and arranged them just as he advised. By puncturing them at precise points, I took away their breath. According to Blockhus one cannot help but perceive such concentrated energy. I did not sense this energy. I failed. I do not know whether I understood Augsteiner’s difficult Latin correctly, or Blockhus’ instructions, which smack of superstition. Tomorrow I shall get down to Augsteiner’s work again. Maybe there will be other passages with instructions on how to proceed. Maybe Augsteiner will finally drop his haughty philosopher’s mask and assume the attitude of a classical spiritualist?

BRESLAU, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2ND, 1919

SEVEN O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

The small yard at Plesserstrasse 24, in the Breslau suburb of Tschansch, was full of the the usual morning bustle. Pastor Gerds’ maid was hanging bedlinen over the balustrade, while the concierge, Mrs Bauert, scrubbed away at the wooden stairs that lead to the locksmith’s workshop at the back of the small building. Konrad Dosche, the retired postman, emerged from the lavatory, and a small ginger mongrel leaped at his feet with unrestrained joy. Streams of sunlight cut through the yard, and as the pump squeaked and tiny particles of dust soared above the linen recently thrashed by the strong hands of the pastor’s maid, an elderly man walked out into the yard. The skin on his face and hands was deeply furrowed, his eyes were bloodshot, and his breathing wheezy. He sat down heavily on a bench and whistled to the ginger dog, which raced up and began to fawn at his feet, all the while glancing at its master. Dosche approached the elderly man and shook his hand.

“And a very good day to you, Mr Mock.” Dosche’s face radiated delight. “How did you sleep?”

“Badly,” Willibald Mock said shortly. “Something stopped me getting to sleep …”

“A bad conscience, no doubt,” Dosche laughed, “gnawing away at you after yesterday’s game of chess …”

“What do I have to do” — Willibald Mock rubbed his eyes edged with crusts of pus — “to make you believe that I didn’t move that bishop when you were in the toilet?”

“Alright, alright,” Dosche reassured his friend, still smiling. “And how is your son? Had enough sleep yet? Got up, has he?”

“He’s just coming.” Relief registered on the old man’s face.

Eberhard Mock marched briskly across the yard. He walked up to his father and kissed him on the cheek. The old man did not detect a strong smell of alcohol and drew a long breath. Eberhard shook Dosche’s hand and an uncomfortable silence descended.

“I’m just on my way to the pharmacy,” Dosche said, to break it. “My dog’s got diarrhoea. Terrible diarrhoea. Can I get you anything?”

“If you’d be so kind, Mr Dosche,” replied the old man, “as to buy us a loaf of bread from Malguth’s on your way. It has to be from Malguth’s”.

“I know, I know, Mr Mock,” Dosche nodded and told his dog: “You stay here, Rot. Mr Mock will look after you. You can crap in the yard but not under the bench!”

Dosche set off in the direction of Rybnikerstrasse. The old man played with Rot. Murmuring, he tickled him lightly on the neck while the dog growled and squirmed, catching the old man’s hand gently in its teeth. Eberhard sat down next to his father and lit his first cigarette of the day. He smiled at the events of the night. He realized he had not got around to asking the girl about any clients in leather underpants. “Never mind,” he thought, “yesterday I was there outside working hours. As of today, the actual investigation starts. I’ll ask her today.”

“It’s so early and you’re already awake, Father.” He blew smoke straight at the sun.

“Old people get up early. They don’t wander around in the night and they sleep in their own beds.”

“I didn’t drink that much yesterday. I’m conducting a very difficult case over the next few weeks. I’ve been seconded to the Murder Commission, and I’m no longer booking whores. You ought to be pleased, Father.”

“You’re always knocking it back and mixing with whores.” The old man’s stale morning breath engulfed Mock like a cloud. “You ought to get married. A man ought to have a son to hand him a tankard of beer when he comes home from work.”

Mock placed an arm on his father’s bony shoulder and rested his head against the wall. He imagined this idyllic scene: his future son, Herbert Mock, handing him a tankard of beer and with a smile turning to his mother at the kitchen stove. The woman nods approvingly, praises Herbert: “You’re a good boy, you’ve given your papa some beer”, and stirs the large pot on the hob. She is tall and handsome, her generous breasts pressing tight against her clean apron, her skirt touching the pale, scrubbed floorboards. Mock strokes little Herbert’s hair, then walks up to his wife and holds her by the waist. Red hair frames her delicate face, the apron is a nurse’s apron, an appetizing smell emanates from the pot where syringes are being boiled. Mock lifts the lid and sees a decoction of bones. “Bones for shoe glue,” he hears his father say. Large globules float to the surface — human eyes.

Mock felt his lips burning, then shook his head and spat out the cigarette butt. A trickle of sweat flowed down from beneath his bowler hat. He looked about him. He was still sitting on the bench by the wall. His father was just disappearing through the gate. Mock got to his feet, picked up the cigarette butt — much to the concierge’s satisfaction — and hurried after his father. Willibald Mock had wanted to get home, but feeling tired he had sat down on a bench by the butcher’s shop. He was breathing heavily. Rot lay down beside him and hung his pink tongue out. Mock hurried over to his father, touched him on the hand and said:

“Let’s move out. I’m plagued by nightmares here. Right from the start, ever since we inherited this apartment after Uncle Eduard’s death, I’ve been plagued by phantoms in my dreams, right from the very first night in this foul butcher’s shop … That’s why I drink, do you understand? When I’m dead drunk, I don’t dream …”

“Every drunkard has some sort of excuse …”

“This isn’t some twisted explanation. I didn’t sleep at home last night and I didn’t have any bad dreams, not one. And now, I only just got here, I nodded off for a moment and had another bad dream …

“Chamomile and hot milk. That does the trick,” his father muttered. He began to breathe more easily and returned to his favourite pastime other than chess, that of amicably teasing Rot.

“I’ll buy a dog,” said Mock quietly. “We’ll move to the centre and you’ll be able to take the dog for a walk in the park.”

“And what else!” The old man caught the dog by its front paws and listened with pleasure to his growl. “He’d have diarrhoea like Rot. He’d be bound to soil the house … Anyway, stop talking nonsense. Get yourself to work. Be on time. Somebody’s always having to come to get you, always having to remind you it’s time for work … Look, here they are again.”

Mock turned to see Smolorz climbing out of a droschka. He did not expect to hear good news, and his intuition did not fail him.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 2ND, 1919

EIGHT O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

No noise from the street reached the mortuary on Auenstrasse; the rays of the strong September sun did not penetrate; the smoke and smell of the bonfires burning on the nearby banks of the Oder near Passbrucke did not float in on the air. In Doctor Lasarius’ kingdom reigned a silence that was broken only by the grating of trolleys bringing in more bodies. There was an odour hanging in the air like that of overboiled carrots, but nobody was cooking vegetables here. All that could bring a kitchen to mind was the sharpening of knives.

And so it was now. Doctor Lasarius’ assistant sharpened a knife, approached the corpse lying on the stone table and made an incision from the collar bone down to the pubic hair. The grey skin fell aside to reveal a layer of orange fat. Muhlhaus snorted violently; Smolorz rushed out of the mortuary, and when outside the building opened his mouth wide to take in as much air as he could. Mock stood on the viewing platform intended for medical students and fixed his eyes on the open body, absorbing the information the pathologist was passing on to his assistant.

“Male, aged about sixty-five.” Mock saw the assistant note the information beneath the name “Hermann Ollenborg”. “Height one hundred and sixty centimetres, weight seventy kilograms. Water on the lungs.” With a quiet crunch of the knife, Lasarius cut away the bloated, hard lobes of the lungs and made incisions with a pair of small scissors. “There, you see?” — he showed Mock the pulp and water that ran from the bronchi — “That’s typical of death by drowning.”

Lasarius’ assistant lifted the dead man’s skull a little, inserted the tip of his knife behind one ear and made another incision. He then got hold of the scored skin of the occiput and a whitish membrane and drew both layers across eyes which were no longer there. They had been gouged out.

“Write this down,” Lasarius said, turning to him. Blood was slowly filling the cavity in the body. “Internal bleeding into the right lung cavity. Perforations on the lungs made by a sharp instrument …”

The legs and arms of the corpse began to jerk. Lasarius’ assistant was sawing into the skull, causing the body to move. Mock swallowed and went outside. Muhlhaus and Smolorz were standing bare-headed in the morning sunshine, staring at the brick buildings of the university’s Department of Medicine and at the yellowing leaves on the old plane tree. Mock removed his bowler hat, loosened his buttoned collar and approached them.

“An angler found the body under the Scheitniger sluice,” Muhlhaus said. He extracted a pipe from the pocket of his frock coat, an anachronistic garment that was the object of much teasing in the entire Police Praesidium.

“Was a note about me, or to me, found on him?” asked Mock.

“‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.’” Muhlhaus extended his hand, holding in a pair of tweezers an ordinary sheet of paper torn from a squared exercise book. He pressed his pince-nez to his nose, brought the note closer to his eyes and read: “‘Mock, admit your mistake, admit you have come to believe. If you do not want to see more gouged eyes, admit your mistake’.” He handed the page to Mock. “Did you know this man, Mock?”

“Yes, he was a police informer, a man by the name of Ollenborg.” Mock slipped on a glove and scrutinized the scrap of paper. The writing was crooked and uneven, as if traced by somebody who was illiterate. “He was well acquainted with the people and the goings on in the port. I questioned him yesterday in connection with the Four Sailors case.”

“The writing is different,” Smolorz said. “Different to yesterday’s.”

“You’re right,” Mock looked at Smolorz with approval. “The piece of paper found on the four sailors was written in a neat hand by someone who went to school. The one on Ollenborg was written unevenly, messily and …”

“Which could mean they were written by the victims themselves. One of the ‘sailors’ went to secondary school … Explain something to me, Mock” — Muhlhaus filled all his respiratory passages with tobacco so as to kill off the odour of the mortuary — “How is it you’re here? I was informed by Duty Officer Pragst and I forbade him to tell anyone else about it. Only the angler, Pragst and myself know of the murder. Most strange.” He pondered for a few moments. “Yesterday the bodies were found several hours after the murder. The same thing today. Perhaps those boys yesterday and now the angler were somehow directed by the murderer … We ought to question them more closely …”

“Smolorz, show the Commissioner” — Mock made way for a hefty orderly who was pushing through another body on a squeaking trolley — “what I received today …”

“A letter was found in the Police Praesidium letterbox,” Smolorz stuttered. “Somebody dropped it in last night. Addressed to Criminal Assistant Mock. This was in the envelope.” He held a page from a maths exercise book under Muhlhaus’ nose.

“Don’t bother to read it to me,” Muhlhaus said, furiously sucking air into his pipe, which was going out. “I know what it says.”

“The same words are on the piece of paper in the envelope as were found on Ollenborg’s remains,” Mock said. “And there’s a short footnote: ‘Location of body — Scheitniger sluice’. He’s telling us where he’s leaving the corpses.”

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 2ND, 1919

TEN TO NINE IN THE MORNING

The hot September sun broke into the Murder Commission’s briefing room at the Police Praesidium. The clatter of horses’ hooves, the grating of trams and the parping of automobiles rose up from the traffic on Schuhbrucke into the cloudless sky. Schoolchildren drifted along the narrow pavements, each with a briefcase under his arm or a belt holding a pile of exercise books slung over his shoulder. They were hurrying towards Matthiasgymnasium to be on time for their second lesson. Some of them dawdled, standing beneath the statue of St John Nepomuk to throw stones at the bursting husks of chestnuts. A coachman shouted in annoyance at some supplicants who were leaving the High Court and swarming into the road. An elderly man in a bowler hat approached the schoolboys and reprimanded them fiercely. “The schoolmaster, no doubt,” thought Muhlhaus. He closed the window and regretfully returned from the land of school memories. He looked at the gloomy, tired and irritated faces of his employees and felt a wave of despondency. He did not want to talk to these thick, hungover mugs; he did not know how to begin.

“Commissioner, sir.” Mock saved him the trouble of opening the discussion. “You can relieve all these men from the Four Sailors case, sir. They’re not needed …”

“I,” Muhlhaus said slowly, “am the one to decide who is going to work with me on this case.”

“Yes, Commissioner, sir.”

“And, just as a matter of interest” — the Commissioner approached the window once more, but this time did not open it — “why do you say ‘all these men’ are not needed? And what does ‘all’ mean? All except you? Is that what you had in mind, Mock?”

“Yes, that’s what I had in mind.”

“Explain yourself!”

“The murderer, as we have already established, wants me to admit to some mistake. So he murders four lads with pouches over their balls. It’s supposed to be a spectacular murder, one that the whole town will be talking about, and is to prevent me from ever sleeping peacefully again. The image of the murdered boys with gouged eyes is to forever work its way into my head.”

“We already know that, Mock,” said Reinert, sounding bored.

“Shut up, my friend. It’s not your name that swine’s putting in his notes.”

“Reinert, don’t interrupt Criminal Assistant Mock,” Muhlhaus snarled. “Let him continue.”

“Smolorz has observed quite rightly” — Mock gazed in concentration at Reinert’s face as waves of anger passed over it — “that the murderer is going to carry on killing unless I admit to my mistake. And, unfortunately, he’s proved himself a good prophet. Gentlemen, the victims have nothing in common with each other …”

“Oh, but they do,” Kleinfeld spoke for the first time. “They’re somehow connected with water. The first four were sailors, or pseudo-sailors. They were, as Mr Mock has suggested, debauched regulars at brothels. It’s not for no reason that they were wearing sailors’ hats and leather pouches on their balls. The next victim is an old sailor and a police collaborator. All sailors, some inauthentic, one authentic.”

“I do not know, Mock,” Muhlhaus said, ignoring Kleinfeld’s statement, “how you intend to justify your peculiar suggestion that everyone except yourself should leave the investigative team. Besides, I’m not interested in your justification. I’m not going to dismiss anyone or dispatch them to other cases. Gentlemen, there are now eight of us.” He looked around at his men and counted them out loud. “Holst, Pragst, Rohs, Reinert, Kleinfeld, Smolorz and Mock. Eight, and that’s how it’s going to stay. And now, down to business …” He went to the revolving board and below the words “doubting Thomas = Mock, Christ = murderer, murdered sailors = warning for Mock” written by Mock the previous day, he added: “In which brothel did the murderer meet the four sailors?” “Smolorz is going to look into that. As an employee of the Vice Commission he knows every brothel in the city. You’ll be assisted by my trusted men, Holst, Pragst and Rohs.” Below this the Commissioner wrote: “Ollenborg’s last moments”. “Kleinfeld and Reinert will take care of this. I want to see you all here, in this room, on Friday at nine in the morning. That’s all for today.”

“What about me?” Mock asked. “What I am to do?”

“Let’s go, Mock,” Muhlhaus said. “I’m going to introduce you to somebody.”

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 2ND, 1919

NINE O’CLOCK IN THE EVENING

Doctor Kaznicz was Professor Hoenigswald’s assistant. He specialized in experimental psychology and described himself as a disciple of Freud and Wernicke. He held lectures and classes in psychoanalysis at the University of Breslau which took the form of experimentation on students. From these experiments he drew generalized conclusions which led the more malicious academics to state that “the psychology practised by Doctor Kaznicz is no more than a study of students”. His probing questions, which frequently touched on personal behaviour, initially annoyed Mock a great deal. Later, realizing he could not allow there to be any more victims, he lowered his guard and told all he knew about the people he had met or been in contact with in as much as this contact may have inspired in somebody a desire for revenge. He did not mention Wirth, Zupitza or the nurse in Konigsberg’s Hospital of Divine Mercy. Kaznicz’s assistant noted everything down carefully in a thick copybook and looked imploringly at his master for at least one nod of approval. The master, however, barely acknowledged his helper and merely nodded when Mock offered him ever bolder confessions from his childhood and youth. He would then smile encouragingly and repeat the same thing each time: “I understand.”

Mock heard these words clearly even as he lay in his bedroom alcove kissing a bottle of cognac. He cradled it in his arms, bestowing it with a tenderness no woman had yet received from him apart from those in his imagination and dreams — apart from the nurse in Konigsberg, who may not even have existed. Behind the curtain, Mock’s father settled himself to sleep on his rickety bed, while in the alcove his son caressed his mistress Booze. “I understand,” Mock heard, and recalled the more interesting fragments of the psychological interview conducted over eight hours by Doctor Kaznicz. He pictured the psychologist’s wise eyes, and his faint smile through the thicket of his black beard when Mock recounted how he had tormented fat Erich Huhmann in the yard of their Waldenburg primary school. Twelve-year-old Mock, along with some other children, had poked his finger into Huhmann’s stomach and chest. The latter had cowered, struggled, squirmed; brick-red patches spread across the skin of his cheeks, blood ran from his nose and stained his buttoned collar, neatly ironed by his mother. Erich Huhmann fell to his knees among the bushes surrounding the yard; Erich Huhmann begged for mercy; Erich Huhmann begged heaven for the fiery sword of vengeance; Erich Huhmann dug a long needle into the bodies of the murdered sailors.

Mock acknowledged that this thought — that fat Erich Huhmann, taking revenge on him for past humiliations, could transport the bodies of the murdered men and break their bones — was absurd. “People change,” he thought, “grow up, grow strong, cultivate past hatreds.” Paying no attention to his father’s grumblings that he could not get to sleep because of his son’s creaking bed, Mock reached for his jacket which was hanging over the chair and pulled out a notebook. He took a large swig from his bottle and wrote down Huhmann’s name.

“I understand,” Mock heard Doctor Kaznicz say again and recalled another confidence he had shared that day. Schoolboy Eberhard Mock washed out a flask and test tube, then sat at a stone table in the chemistry laboratory. He had got the highest mark for proving that the salts of certain heavy metals do not dissolve in water to produce precipitation. Envious looks from the other boys. His body found no support, his arms flapped at his sides, his shoes slid forward along the floor, his hand grabbed the tray that held the chemicals, glass cracked, a pungent liquid spilled, his head hit the edge of the chair that Karl Giencke had pulled out from under him as a joke. Then Mock sees himself striking blindly with the tray; its pointed edge digging into Giencke’s head; a trickle of blood appearing on the spiteful schoolboy’s neck. Giencke losing consciousness; Giencke in hospital; Giencke in a wheelchair; Giencke walking again — “That Giencke has a funny way of walking!”

“He walked in a funny way before,” Mock thought as he slid into his leather slippers, “nothing changed.” He emerged from the alcove in his nightshirt, over which he had thrown a quilted dressing gown. In his hand was the bottle of cognac. He raised the hatch in the corner of the room and went down into the butcher’s shop. He squatted next to the heavy metal grille that covered the drain and listened for the squeaking of rats. He heard nothing. He sat on the counter and put the bottle to his lips. After a few swigs he tied some string around its neck, hid it in the drain and replaced the grille. Now his father would not find the bottle and pour it out. He went back upstairs and lowered the hatch, thinking about the rats he occasionally saw on the ground floor. Sitting heavily on his bed, he extinguished the candle and was sure he would soon be overcome by the sleep of a drunkard: heavy, thick, and free of nightmares. “It’s a good thing I didn’t tell him about my dreams.” He did not think kindly of Doctor Kaznicz’s wise eyes as he drifted off. His suppositions were correct: he did not dream of anything.

2. IX.1919

Eureka! I think I have found the clue that will enable me to continue, after all my endless searching. Today I came across a very interesting passage in Augsteiner, a quotation from a letter by Pliny the Younger. We read one of his letters in secondary school — trivial, charming holiday reading. This was towards the end of the school year, after a whole year of read the cripplingly difficult and dull-as-ditchwater Livy. That letter was light relief for us, if any Latin text can be considered light relief and not merely a superhuman exercise for the brain. It was a beautiful story about a boy swimming on a dolphin. I had not known that this same Pliny also wrote about ghosts. I quote the most important fragments of this letter in my clumsy translation:

“In Athens there was a house which was large and spacious, yet sinister and and surrounded by ill fame. In the night’s silence, at first as if from a distance and then ever closer, the clanking of iron would be heard, and if one listened carefully, the rattling of chains. Shortly afterwards a phantom would appear: a thin old man, dirty and emaciated, with a matted beard and his hair standing on end. There were chains on his hands and manacles on his feet. He shook them as he walked.

“The terrified inhabitants passed long sleepless nights of horror and gloom. Sleeplessness was followed by sickness, ever-increasing fear by death. Even by day, though the ghost had withdrawn, the memory of it tormented the household. It seemed to them that the spectre still glided before their eyes — fear tormented them for longer than what had caused it. So the house was uninhabited and condemned to being deserted; and all that it contained seemed to belong to this horror.

“The building was put up for sale — should someone ignorant of such great misfortune wish to buy or rent it.

“There arrived in Athens at this time a philosopher named Atenodor, who read the announcement about this sale or rental. Intrigued by the low price, he enquired about everything in great detail and when he learned the whole truth he nevertheless — or all the more so — rented the mysterious house.

“As dusk fell he ordered his bed to be made up in the front part of the house and asked for some tablets on which to write, as well as a graver and a candle. His family, on the other hand, he settled in the inner rooms. He tried to occupy his mind, eyes and hands solely with writing, so that none of the phantoms he had heard about and no unnecessary fears would arise in his idle mind.

To begin with there was nothing but silence, but a short time later the rattle of chains and clanging of manacles could be heard. The philosopher did not look up, did not set down his graver and remained deaf to the noise. The noise, on the other hand, grew louder and could already be heard on the threshold, already in the room …

He looked up and recognized the apparition that had been described to him. The spectre stood wagging its finger as if beckoning Atenodor. Atenodor, however, reached once again for his graver and wax tablets. Meanwhile the ghost continued to rattle its manacles, now almost above the philosopher’s head. Atenodor looked at it again, and the ghost made the same sign as before. So he stood, picked up the candle and followed the phantom. It moved slowly, dragging its heavy chains. As it turned into the courtyard of the building, it suddenly dissolved into thin air. Atenodor remained alone. He picked up some leaves and grass and used them to mark out the spot where the spectre had disappeared.

“The following day he went to the administration and asked that the yard be dug up at that exact spot. Bones, bare and gnawed, were found bound by chains. Only they remained; the body had, over the years, perished in the soil. These remains were gathered up and officially buried. Ever since then ghosts have, fortunately, ceased to torment the household.”

What conclusion can be drawn from Pliny’s text? Man’s spiritual element can be abstracted, and then perceived through its urge to return, which must be appropriately contrived. Maybe this is a way of activating clusters of spiritual energy. We shall see. I have conducted an experiment; time will verify its results. How did I do it? I isolated the man and forced him to confess to his adultery in writing. It was a terrible confession for him to have to make since he was permeated to the bone with middle-class morality. I brought this man to a certain place late at night. He was bound and gagged. I freed his right hand, tied him to a chair and then asked him once again to deny what he had written previously, promising him that if he obeyed I would give this second letter to his wife. He feverishly scribbled something down. I took the second letter, the denial, and slipped it down the drain. I witnessed his fury and his pain. “I’m going to come back here,” his eyes told me. Then I took the man out to the carriage and drove away. Later I killed him, leaving him where he was sure to be found. His ghost will return and draw the attention of the inhabitants of that place to the drain.

BRESLAU, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3RD, 1919

TWO O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON

Doctor Cornelius Ruhtgard, specialist in sexually transmitted diseases, received patients in his five-room apartment at Landsbergstrasse 8, near South Park, on Wednesdays. The apartment occupied the entire first floor of the detached tenement building, so its windows looked out in all four directions. From one of the bathrooms stretched a view of the park, which was now being admired by a young woman pulling on a long-legged undergarment after her thorough examination. Doctor Ruhtgard sat in his surgery writing out a prescription for Salvarsal. He smiled as he thought of her earnest protestations that over the past year, that is, ever since the death of her husband in the war, she had not had intercourse. The state of her health clearly indicated otherwise, and the time she last surrendered to the above-mentioned act — with all its consequences — could be established to within a few days. Pretending to take her at her word, he walked her to the door, then returned to his surgery and gazed out of the window. His patient approached a smart Daimler parked by a lamp post. She did not get into the car but, clearly upset, explained something to the person inside. Ruhtgard knew what would happen next; he could almost hear the infected man yelling with fury and the tyres squealing as the automobile violently pulled away.

He would certainly have heard the shouts had it not been for the racket and piano cacophony coming from the parlour adjacent to the surgery. He wrenched open the door and a singular sight met his eyes: two young men were sitting at the piano, their four hands thumping the delicate keyboard on which his wife, who had died a few years earlier, had once painted the crystalline landscapes of the Goldberg Variations and executed the precise strophes of Das wohltemperierte Klavier. Clasped around the waist by some scoundrel, Doctor Ruhtgard’s daughter, nineteen-year-old Christel, was prancing beside the piano. Both she and her partner were pulling silly faces, evidence that these barbaric chords were giving them unutterable pleasure.

Ruhtgard smelled sweat, an odour he loathed almost as much as the lice which had tormented him only a year earlier on the Eastern Front, or the pathogens of syphilis which devastated the bodies of his patients. The odour was strong, and he swiftly discovered its source: dark stains beneath the arms of one of the men at the piano. Both players noticed the doctor at once and leaped to their feet, bowing politely. The dancer stopped his prancing, bowed and clicked his heels. Christel stood still, smiling and flushed from movements which only a blind man would have called dancing. But Doctor Ruhtgard was neither blind nor deprived of the sense of smell. And so his reaction was violent.

“What are all these savage dances?” he yelled. “What’s all this roaring like wild animals? Goodbye, gentlemen! Leave at once!”

“We’re sorry, Papa,” Christel said, frightened by his outburst. “We were just fooling around a bit …”

“Quiet, please” — the doctor was short of breath — “Go to your room. And to you, gentlemen, I bid farewell! Do I have to repeat myself?”

The young men quickly vanished, unlike the odour emanating from them. Ruhtgard opened a window and with relief drew in the fresh air suffused with the scent of late summer. He sat down in an armchair and looked at Christel. She was so unlike his wife. His daughter did not have the warmth, softness and fragility he had so loved. Christel was rebellious, sporty, angular, strong and independent. “Probably deflowered already.” The thought pained him as he imagining her lying beneath the male with the sour smell.

“Christel,” he said as gently as he could. “The parlour is not a circus. How could you allow those stinking Hereros to demolish the piano on which your mother played?”

“And what would you say, Papa,” she snorted, “if one of those savages was to become your son-in-law?”

Without waiting for an answer, she went to her room; Ruhtgard frowned and lit a cigar. He cast an eye around the parlour to seek solace in the beauty of the apartment he had been renting fully furnished for a year now, for the considerable sum of a thousand marks a month. Five rooms and two bathrooms. Tomes over a hundred years old. Eighteenth-century paintings. Turkish rugs and Arabian carpets. And amongst these works of art his sporty, baby daughter, with a dull-witted bull who knew nothing but how to thrust himself between her open legs. Ruhtgard smoked his cigar and paced the apartment. He had to talk to somebody. Then he remembered that, apart from his daughter, his servant and himself there was someone else in the apartment. Someone he trusted completely. He knocked on the door of the second bathroom and, hearing a strident “Come in!”, he entered. In the bath spread with a sheet, lay a well-built, dark-haired man with a cigarette between his teeth. Criminal Assistant Eberhard Mock.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 3RD, 1919

THREE O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON

Mock and Ruhtgard sat at the chessboard devising clever strategies for the opening. Mock picked up a pawn from e2 and placed it on e4.

“You’ve got it made, Ebi,” muttered Ruhtgard as he moved a pawn from b7 to b5. “You didn’t go to work after yesterday’s drinking binge … Nothing’s going to happen to you …”

“I did go to work, but not for as long as usual. Apart from talking to the psychologist I did nothing for five hours. It’s to do with the case I’m working on.” Mock looked miserable. “I’m not going to talk about it. Tell me” he said, suddenly coming to life, “is the thing I came to see you about serious? Did I catch anything from that girl?”

“Itching with no other symptoms” — the doctor smiled — “doesn’t mean anything. It might be nothing more than a desperate appeal for hygiene.”

“If you lived where I do” — Mock brought his knight into action — “you wouldn’t be making daily offerings to Hygiea either.”

“Well said. And what about your offerings to Hypnos?”

“I’m not sleeping.” Mock lost the desire to juggle with mythology. “I’m having nightmares. That’s why I drink or take up with harlots. When I’m pissed, I don’t dream at all. When I’m with a whore, I don’t sleep at home. And I only get nightmares at home. Unfortunately, I can’t move out because my father doesn’t want to. The only two friends he has live there: a retired postman and his dog.”

“Sorry for poking my nose into something that’s not my business, but why don’t you ask Franz to take your father in, at least for a while?”

“My father’s difficult. Irmgard, Franz’s wife, is even more difficult … But I don’t need to tell you that. Quietly and gracefully, she’s sucking away at my brother’s blood. Franz drinks and my ten-year-old nephew, Erwin, is constantly ill. That explains everything.”

“Yes, that’s clear enough.” Ruhtgard attacked the knight with his bishop. “You know what, Ebi? I’ve been thinking about your nightmares and a simple solution occurred to me. Don’t eat supper and abstain from women for a time. I stick to a vegetarian diet, I don’t eat anything at night and I abstain from sex. Does that surprise you? It’s not difficult in my profession. I’ve seen my fair share of syphilitic pubes. Apart from that, I’m seven years older than you. We’ll see whether you’re such a stud at forty-three … If I do have dreams, they’re only pleasantly erotic ones. And another thing … You wouldn’t have to worry about any itching, or spend your time soaking in my bath. Do you know how much I have to pay the caretaker to heat the water?” He smiled. “Now, tell me honestly: how much did you eat last night?”

“A lot.” Mock threatened the bishop with a pawn. “A huge amount. But I can’t get to sleep if I’m hungry.”

“Then don’t sleep. And you won’t have nightmares.” The physician was deep in thought. “Either way, you’d get rid of the nightmares if you changed your way of life.”

“I don’t believe my nightmares have anything to do with overeating …” Mock said. He felt uneasy about his knight.

“It’s not a matter of what you believe,” Ruhtgard said, then remained silent for a long while, pondering a winning move. “I’ll prove to you what a proper diet can do. But first of all, you yourself have to believe that the nightmares stem from your overloaded and overworked bowels. I’ll prove it to you, if you do as I say.” He struck a decisive and powerful blow. “Give up, or still struggling?”

“Are you talking about chess or my hunger therapy?”

“Both.”

Mock no longer felt like playing and as a sign of surrender laid his king on the chessboard.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 3RD, 1919

TEN O’CLOCK AT NIGHT

In one of the discreet alcoves beside the dance floor at the Hungarian King Hotel, the head waiter was taking down an enormous order. The slim figure of the distinguished, greying man who was giving it might have suggested a completely different taste in food than what was being jotted down on the order pad.

Another man, a few years younger, was nodding in agreement at his companion’s culinary decisions, but remained silent.

“Yes, as I said, Eberhard,” said the first man as he dismissed the waiter with a perfunctory gesture. “First comes the painful part of the therapy. Do you know how young smokers are encouraged to give up their addiction? They’re told to inhale the smoke and cough. Try it, go on try …”

Eberhard took a drag of his cigarette and coughed. He felt pain in his lungs and bitter bile rose to his mouth. For some time he breathed in the smoky air as the cigarette burned down in the huge ashtray. The orchestra was playing a foxtrot and two shapely dance-hostesses were dancing alone, illuminated by bulbs that flickered all around the dance floor, while single, ageing men drank glass after glass to give themselves the courage to dance and debauch. Giggling and snorting could be heard from behind the drawn curtains of the alcoves. “Probably some ladies snorting white powder,” said one waiter to another. A wheezing reverberated in Mock’s alcove. “Probably some asthmatic choking,” the other waiter retorted.

“Come on, Cornelius,” Mock groaned. “Look what you’ve done to me …”

“So now you’ve experienced the hideous taste of tobacco,” Cornelius said, staring at the dance-hostesses. “But that’s not the addiction we want to destroy in you … We want you to eliminate your addiction to supper, to devouring mountains of meat in the evenings … This evening you’re going to experience the awful consequences of overeating on your own skin, or rather your own liver. Your brain is going to pick up signals from your burdened bowels, and it’s going to respond in a way that will punish you — with nightmares… Mock, are you hungry now?”

“I’m starving.” Mock reached into the ashtray and ground his cigarette butt into the powdered ash. “I did as you told me. I haven’t eaten a single thing since coffee and cakes this afternoon at your place.”

“So now eat to your heart’s content, until you’re full.” Cornelius watched the waiter lay out the hors d’oeuvres on the table. “Think of our conversations in the trenches at Dunaburg. That’s all we talked about, nothing but food … We didn’t have the courage to talk about women … We didn’t know each other well enough then.” Cornelius grasped the slender neck of the litre carafe of schnapps and filled their glasses. “You could talk about Silesian meatloaves for hours, while I responded with the characteristics of plaice a la Teutonic Knights, which the medieval knights liked so much.”

Mock poured a burning stream of Krsinsik’s lemon schnapps down his throat and plunged his knife into the thick cube of butter garnished with a spring of parsley. He spread some onto a slice of wheat bread and then with his fork broke into the delicate insides of pigs’ trotters in aspic. The cubes and oblongs of aspic, in which wedges of eggs, cloves of garlic and strips of pork had been set, disappeared into Mock’s mouth. As he swallowed he touched the rim of both empty glasses with his fork, creating a pure sound.

“Zack, zack,” Mock said, looking at the oily consistency of the chilled lemon schnapps he was pouring. “Here’s to you, Ruhtgard. To the health of the one who’s paying.”

He then emptied his glass, holding it by its fragile stem, and started on the fried herrings which lay on a long dish in a puddle of vinegar marinade. He crushed flakes of the fish joyfully between his teeth, delighted that the bones, softened by the vinegar, were pliable and harmless.

“That’s how it was.” The two large shots of schnapps were evident in Ruhtgard’s voice. “We talked about women much later. When we were no longer ashamed of our feelings. When …”

“When we had got to know what friendship is.” Mock scraped his fork across the empty dish and sprawled out comfortably on the couch. “When we had grasped that, in a world of shrapnel, splinters and vermin, it was the only thing that made sense. Not the Fatherland, not conquering yet another barbaricum bridge-head, but friendship …”

“Don’t be so pompous, Mock, old comrade.” Ruhtgard smiled at the sight of two waiters laying the table with silver dishes whose dome covers were embellished with the two-headed Austrian eagle. “Look” — he lifted a cover as if to sit it on his head — “This is what our helmets looked like …”

Mock laughed out loud as a drop of hot fat rolled off the cover and landed on Ruhtgard’s neck. While the doctor whacked himself violently, as if stung by a mosquito, Mock filled the empty glasses, gradually increasing the distance between bottle and glass. The last drops fell from a height little short of ten centimetres.

“Pathos was a poor background to what we experienced during those two years.” Ruhtgard got to his feet and drew the curtains of their alcove. “The wrong background. Friendship and comradeship aren’t born in the face of death. There are no friends then. Everyone faces death alone, and stinks of fear. Our comradeship was sealed by the daily humiliation, the daily contempt we experienced. Do you know when I realized that?”

“When?” Mock asked, lifting the covers off the dishes.

“When we had to crap on command.” Ruhtgard broke off to clink glasses with Mock and swallow the burning liquid. His throat barely accepted it. “Captain Mantzelmann would come along and order the entire platoon to crap at the same time. Even me, a medical orderly. When he decided it was time to crap, we’d squat in the trenches with the icy wind lashing our backsides. Mantzelmann marked out the time for us to crap. Pity he didn’t mark out the time to die. Mock, damn it!” he yelled. “There’s only the two of us in this world! You and I!”

“Be quiet, and stop drinking.” Mock tied a starched napkin around his neck. “You’re not having supper, so you shouldn’t drink so much. Three large shots are more than enough.”

Four browned goose necks landed on Mock’s plate. He cut this delicacy into strips and arranged them on round, crunchy slices of potato. Enclosed in a sheath of goose skin was a stuffing made from onion, liver and goose fat. Mock placed soft, braised onion rings on top of these pyramids and began a concentrated assault. He ate slowly and methodically. First he plunged his cutlery into a dish where hunks of roast pork swam in a thick sauce of flour and cream. On top of a piece of meat now speared on his fork, he balanced a mound of potato and goose. When he had devoured this complicated formation he slid a layer of fried cabbage with crackling onto his fork as if it were a shovel. The plates gradually emptied.

“We spoke about women later,” Ruhtgard said, lighting a cigarette, “when the Russians started singing their dumkas.^† We’d stare at the starry sky and each one of us would think about warm bodies, soft breasts, smooth thighs …”

“Cornelius, stop making things up.” Mock pushed aside the empty plates, lit a cigarette and poured another two shots from the carafe. “We didn’t talk about women, but about one woman. Each one of us spoke about one woman. I told you about my romantic ideal, about the mysterious, red-headed, unknown Lorelei from the hospital in Konigsberg, while you only talked about …”

“My daughter, Christel.” Ruhtgard drank without waiting for Mock. “About my little princess Christel who now flirts with men, who smells of rutting …”

“Let it go.” Mock was suddenly very thirsty. He pulled the curtain aside to summon a waiter with a frothy tankard. “Your little princess is now a grown-up young lady and ought to be getting married.”

Ruhtgard threw off his jacket and began to unbutton his waistcoat.

“Mock, my brother!” he shouted. “Our friendship is like that of Patroclus and Achilles! Let’s exchange waistcoats, as Homer’s heroes exchanged their armour!”

As he said this Ruhtgard threw off his waistcoat and sat down heavily. A moment later black sleep, brother of death, descended over him. Mock left the alcove to look for a waiter, but instead caught sight of the drunken smile of the Jewish-looking girl who was swaying on the dance floor, alone, her handbag slung over her neck. He also saw spilled schnapps, stained tablecloths and the white dust of cocaine; he saw a soldier hiding pamphlets under his greatcoat; he saw his friend, Doctor Ruhtgard, who had once saved his life in a town on the Pregolya. He clicked his fingers and a young waiter appeared.

“Be so kind,” Mock could scarely pronounce the syllables as he went through the notes in his wallet, “as to call a droschka for me and my friend… And then help me carry him to it …”

“I can’t do that, sir,” said the lad, putting the ten-mark note in his pocket, “because our manager, Mr Bilkowsky, doesn’t allow the hiring of fiacres. Their horses foul the pavement in front of the hotel. For important patrons such as yourself, sir — I saw you here yesterday, and again today — and your friend, we provide our own automobile. The chauffeur has just arrived outside, and he’s probably still free.”

The young waiter disappeared. Mock returned to his alcove, paid the head waiter for his supper, and then spent a long time tying his laces, a task much hindered by a belly bloated with the heavy delicacies. Puffing and panting, he helped Doctor Ruhtgard to the beautiful Opel whose roof was adorned with a flag bearing the Austrian eagle and the name of the hotel. The automobile made its way through the city. The night was warm. The people of Breslau were preparing for sleep. Only one man was preparing himself for a meeting with phantoms.

BRESLAU, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 4TH, 1919

TWO O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

The net curtain billowed at the open window. Mock sat at the table, listening to his father’s snoring. Beyond the window, a shaft of light from the gas lamp in the square yard illuminated the pump where Pastor Gerds’ maid stood stretching lazily and gazing at Mock’s window with a smile. She stroked the arm of the pump and wrapped her whole body around it. The pump played a rusty tune into the night. Water poured into a bucket while the pastor’s maid, swinging on the lever, kept on smiling up at Mock’s window. Once the bucket was full, she slid lower and squatted, holding on to the upper part of the lever. Her nightdress strained across her buttocks, the pump lever protruding between them. Smiling, she glanced one more time at Mock’s window, picked up the bucket and made towards the gate. Mock listened intently. The bucket clanked against the window of what used to be the butcher’s shop. The bell tinkled gently. He heard light footsteps on the stairs. Mock got up and looked closely at his father, fast asleep. Then he crept to his bedroom alcove, lay on his bed and pulled his nightshirt up to his chest. He waited, tense. The hatch in the floor squeaked. He waited. A window casement blew against the wall. Crash. The trapdoor in the corner of the room hit the floor with a dull thud. His father muttered something in his sleep. Mock got up to close the window and, at that very moment, heard what he had feared. The tin bucket tumbled down the stairs. Every stair forced from it an ear-piercing racket. The empty bucket rasped against the sandstone slabs and landed in a puddle.

“Do you have to make such a noise, damn it?” said his father, opening his eyes and immediately closing them again. He turned over and began to snore.

Mock doubled over to conceal his arousal, then covered himself with his nightshirt and tiptoed to approach the hatch. He knew how to open it without it squeaking; he had done so many a time when he returned drunk and did not want to hear his father say: “You’re always knocking it back”. He half-opened the hatch and peered into the depths of the butcher’s shop. Light footsteps on the stairs. From the square of darkness loomed a head and neck. Wisps of pomaded hair were arranged in an intricate curl; the neck was covered with flaking eczema. The head tipped back to reveal congealed red lava flowing from its eyes. The mouth opened and spat a bubble of blood. More appeared, bursting without a sound. Director Julius Wohsedt looked far less handsome than he had at the launching of the ship Wodan.

Mock quickly backed away from the trapdoor and tripped over a basket of logs. Flapping his arms, he knocked down a large bottle of paraffin.

“Ebi, wake up, damn it!” His father was shaking his arm. “Look what you’ve done!”

Sitting amongst the shards of glass, he felt the burning of small cuts on his legs and buttocks. Threads of his blood meandered over the surface of the paraffin. The hatch was closed.

“I must be a lunatic, Father,” he croaked, his breath reeking of four large shots of schnapps.

“Knocking it back, always knocking it back.” The old man waved him aside and shuffled over to his bed. “Clean it up — it stinks and it’ll stop me sleeping. We’ll have to air the room.” He opened the window and looked at the sky. “You’re a drunkard, not a lunatic. There’s no moon tonight, you idiot.” He yawned and clambered into the warm refuge of his quilt.

Mock took the first-aid kit which hung on the wall. His father had put it together himself when they moved in: “So that no inspector picks on us. Every workshop ought to have a first-aid kit. That’s what the labour law says.” Hammering little nails into the pale planks, he had did not want to hear the fact that the apartment was not a craftsman’s workshop and that he himself had not been a shoemaker for some time.

Mock gathered up the shards, removed his nightshirt and used it to wipe the floor. He felt the cold instantly. “Not surprising,” he thought. “After all, I’m naked.” He threw over his shoulders an old coat which served him in winter for his trips to the toilet, took an iron candlestick from the kitchen and opened the hatch. His back prickled. In the weak glow of the street lamp outside the shop, he looked down the stairs. Empty and dark. Cursing his own fear under his breath, he lit his way with the candle. There was no bucket below, nor any trace of spilled water. Mock squatted to study the drain in the floor, listening for sqeaking rats. Nothing. Silence. A shadow glided across the wall. Mock felt a rush of adrenaline, his hair stood on end and he began to sweat. Postman Dosche and his dog with its upset bowels had crossed Plesserstrasse. Mock felt a gust of cold wind. All of a sudden he remembered his grandmother, Hildegard, who considered a downy duvet a remedy for everything. In her well-scrubbed kitchen in Waldenburg, she would wrap the duvet around little Franz and little Eberhard, saying: “Hide your heads in the duvet. The room’s cold. And where it is cold there are evil spirits. It’s a sign from them.”

Mock sat on the counter and opened the first-aid box. He moistened a piece of cotton wool with hydrogen peroxide and by the feeble light of the candle dabbed at the three small wounds on his thigh and buttock. Then he approached the drainage grille. He levered it up with his fingernail and moved it aside to reveal a square hole. Mock knew the remedy for everything — for evil spirits and the cold. It was hidden beneath the grille. He felt the familiar shape of the flat bottle in his hand and pulled it out without using the candle, which was burning down on the counter. This was a task he could accomplish even in the dark. He heard a rustling in the hole. A rat? He held the candlestick aloft. A crumpled piece of paper lay embedded in the depths. A squared sheet, torn from a maths exercise book. He held it up to the flame and began to read. There were things in this world for which Mock did not have a remedy.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 4TH, 1919

FOUR O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

Mock sat next to Smolorz in a covered two-person gig manufactured years ago for the police at Hermann Lewin’s carriage factory, and blessed the skill of the builders who had laid the cobblestones on Kaiser-Wilhelm-Strasse. Thanks to their good work he no longer had to hold his stomach and curse his gluttony as he had for an hour, from the moment he had found Julius Wohsedt’s letter in the drain of Eduard Mock’s former shop and rushed out into the street, half-naked, to catch a droschka. The four large shots of schnapps he had drunk in the night had been offset by a mountain of fat-ridden food, and should not have seethed and surged in Mock’s body as he was well trained in battling with alcohol. And yet they had made themselves felt as the droschka sped along the bumpy streets of Klein Tschansch, turned abruptly, braked and finally came to a standstill when the old hack slipped on a cobble and broke a shaft in the fall. Despite suffering digestive agonies, Mock finally made it to the XV District police station at Ofenerstrasse 30 and telephoned the lawyer Max Grotzschl who, inveighing against night-time calls, had descended several floors to pass the information on to his neighbour, Kurt Smolorz. Mock had then borrowed a police bicycle and transported his leaden stomach to the Police Praesidium on Schuhbrucke. There in the yard, coachman Kurt Smolorz was waiting for him on the box of a fast, two-person gig.

During those two nocturnal hours, Mock did not have the opportunity to re-read the letter he had found in the sewers of his house. His hands had been occupied either with his quivering stomach or with the handle-bars of the bicycle. Now, with Smolorz driving skilfully along cobbles damp with warm rain, Mock could read the peculiar text once more.

“To Eleonore Wohsedt, Schenkendorfstrasse 3. The swine is wearing an executioner’s hood.” Mock held the note up to his eyes and read the scribbles with some difficulty. The task was not made any easier by the streaks of light and shadow gliding across the page as the carriage passed the street lamps surrounding Kaiser-Wilhelm-Platz. “I wouldn’t be able to recognize him. He tortured me, forced me to admit that I’m an adulterer. It isn’t true Eleonore, my dear wife. I was forced to write the letter you’re going to get from him. I do not have, nor ever have had a mistress. I love only you. Julius Wohsedt.”

They were approaching the crossroads at Kurassierstrasse. Broad avenues ran on either side, and between them a pavement planted with maples and plane trees. This sort of road planning had been hatched by the militarized brains of German architects, who had designed the green belt with cavalry officers in mind. Just one such powerfully built soldier in cuirassier’s uniform was now riding across the street that had been dedicated to his unit. Clearly angry, he allowed the speeding gig to pass, throwing Mock a hostile look. Mock did not notice, however, being too busy observing a group of drunks who had poured out of a taproom hidden in the yard behind Kelling’s dye-works. A few men were watching two women as they fought and whacked each other with their handbags. Mock asked Smolorz to pull up. The women stopped fighting and looked at the police officers, ironically and provocatively. Through the layer of powder on the face of one of them, prickles of morning stubble were beginning to appear. Mock waved them away and told Smolorz to move on and pull up after turning right into Schenkendorfstrasse. Smolorz tied the reins to a lamp post and rang the bell. Unnecessarily. Nobody was asleep in the huge house where all lights were ablaze. Mrs Eleonora Wohsedt would certainly not be asleep. Wrapped in a checked blanket, she stood with two servants at the entrance door and stared helplessly at the police officers coming up the stairs. The butlers were ready to fend off the attack, their eyes betraying the friendliness of a cobra. Mrs Wohsedt was shaking. In the woollen blanket, and without her false teeth, she looked like a street vendor who might stamp her feet to chase away the cold. The September morning was cool and crystal-clear.

“Criminal police.” Mock held his identification under Mrs Wohsedt’s nose, and for a few moments fixed his eyes on the butlers as their faces softened. “Criminal Assistant Mock and Sergeant Smolorz.”

“That’s what I thought. I knew you’d come. I’ve been standing like this for two days waiting for him,” said Mrs Wohsedt, starting to cry. The tears fell silently and profusely. Her huge, soft body shook as she wept. Sniffing, she brushed aside the tears, rubbing them into her temples. A thought struck Mock which was so hideous and absurd that even he was disgusted by it. Swiftly he pushed it aside.

“Why didn’t you report your husband’s disappearance if he vanished two days ago? Where could he have gone?” The hideous thought would not leave Mock in peace.

“Sometimes he doesn’t come home. He takes our little bitch out for a walk in the evenings and goes down to the shipyards. He works in his office through the night and only comes home for dinner the next day. The day before yesterday he took the dog for a walk” — her alto voice lowered to a whisper — “at about six o’clock in the evening. And he didn’t come back for dinner …”

“What breed is the dog?” Smolorz asked.

“A boxer.” Mrs Wohsedt wiped away the last of her tears.

Mock imagined the scene: a little girl playing with two boxer bitches, while on an iron bed behind a partition two people covered in eczema are cavorting, Wohsedt’s fat, triple chin resting between Johanna’s shapely breasts.

“Is this your husband’s writing?” Mock showed her the piece of paper he had found in the drain, now protected by two sheets of transparent tracing paper. “Read it, but please handle it only through the tracing paper.”

Mrs Wohsedt put on her glasses and began to read, moving her sunken lips. Her face lit up:

“Yes, it’s his writing,” she said quietly, and then suddenly she shouted with joy: “I trusted him! I trusted him and he didn’t let me down! So what he wrote in that other letter isn’t true …”

“What other letter?” Mock asked.

“The one I got today,” Mrs Wohsedt said, turning in circles. “It’s not true, it’s not true …”

“Calm down, please.” Mock grabbed her by the shoulders and glared at the butlers who were ready to pounce.

“This one, this one.” She pulled out an envelope from under her blanket, tore herself away from Mock’s grasp and carried on spinning in a joyful dance. Mock noticed flaking skin on her neck.

“You’ve got a pair of gloves, Smolorz,” Mock said as he lit his first cigarette of the day. “Take the letter from Mrs Wohsedt and read it out loud.”

“‘My dear wife,’” Smolorz obeyed. “‘I keep a mistress. She lives on Reuscherstrasse …’”

“‘I was forced to write the letter you’re going to get from him,’” Mrs Wohsedt’s voice sang. “‘I do not have, nor ever have had a mistress. I love only you. Julius Wohsedt.’”

“‘… You can easily check,’” Smolorz continued reading. “‘She has the same eczema as I do. Julius Wohsedt.’”

“When did you get this letter?” Mock asked.

“At about eight.” Mrs Wohsedt’s lips turned into a horseshoe. She had clearly got to the part about the torture. “I was waiting for Julius on the terrace. I was worried he hadn’t come home yet.”

“The postman came and handed you the letter?”

“No, some scruff on a bicycle came to the fence, threw the envelope on the path, then quickly rode away.”

“Mock, sir,” Smolorz said before his chief could ask about the “scruff’s” appearance. “There’s something else …”

Mock looked at the squared sheet of paper. He ran the tip of his tongue over his rough palate and felt extremely thirsty. Faint fumes of alcohol emanated from his body, and his head was absorbing the heavy acids of a hangover.

“Lost your tongue, Smolorz?” hissed Mock. “Why the hell are you showing me this? You’ve just read it.”

“Not all of it.” Smolorz’s pale and freckled face turned pink. “There’s something else on the back …”

“Then read it, damn it!”

“‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. Mock, admit your mistake, admit you have come to believe. If you do not want to see any more gouged eyes, admit your mistake.’” Smolorz turned purple. “There’s a postscript too: ‘South Park.’”

“Didn’t I tell you, didn’t I tell you,” Mrs Wohsedt said in a high singsong. “I told you he went to South Park with the dog …”

“A long walk,” muttered Smolorz as Mock tried hard to force from his mind the hideous thought that had occurred to him.

They left the port director’s house and climbed into the gig. As they set off towards Kaiser-Wilhelm-Strasse, Smolorz said to Mock:

“This might be silly, Mock, sir, but it’s no wonder the director had another woman.”

Mock did not say anything. He did not want to admit even to himself that the hideous thought which had tormented him from the moment he set eyes on Mrs Wohsedt had now been put into words.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 4TH, 1919

FIVE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

South Park was completely empty at this hour. In the alleyway leading from Kaiser-Wilhelm-Strasse appeared the figure of a woman in a long dress. Next to her, tugging her from side to side, trotted a large dog. The cold, pale-pink glow of the goddess Eos sharpened the image: the woman wore a bonnet, and on her body was not a dress, but a coat from beneath which trailed the straps of a nightgown. She was walking briskly, not allowing the dog to stop for any length of time to do what a dog sets out to do on its morning walk. She passed the pond and skipped along the footbridge, hastened by the sight of a man in a peaked cap standing beneath a tree. She ran to him and threw herself into his arms. Now left to its own devices, the giant schnauzer bucked up at its mistress’ decision. The man twisted his moustache, turned the woman around and pulled up her nightdress. The woman bent over, supported her hands on the tree and noted with relief that no lights were burning in the enormous edifice of the Hungarian King Hotel and Restaurant. All of a sudden the dog growled. The man in the peaked cap stopped unbuttoning his trousers and looked round.

Some fifty metres from them two men were forcing their way through the bushes. Both wore bowler hats and had cigarettes between their teeth. The shorter one kept stopping, grasping his stomach and groaning loudly.

“Quiet, Bert,” the woman whispered as she stroked the dog. Bert growled softly and watched the two men shake thick drops of dew from their clothes.

The shorter man removed his bowler and wiped the sweat from his brow, and the two of them continued on their way towards the pond where some fat swans had now appeared. Suddenly the shorter of the two stopped and said something loudly, which the woman understood as: “Oh, damn it!” and her partner as: “Oh, fuck!” The groaning man handed his bowler and coat to his taller companion and, pressing his thighs together, he pushed his way into the bushes and squatted. The unfulfilled lover decided to carry on with humankind’s eternal act, but his consort had a different idea. She tied the dog to a tree and hid behind it. Leaning out a little, she watched anxiously as the squatting man ran his fingers over his cheek, looked at them carefully, then looked up. Once again he blurted out the words which the maid and her lover had understood so differently, but now his voice was amplified by horror. At the crown of the old plane tree swung a man hanging by his legs. The dog yelped, the woman screamed and her lover saw a freckled hand covered in red hair with a gun aimed at his nose. The early morning tryst had ended in total disaster.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 4TH, 1919

HALF PAST FIVE IN THE MORNING

Mock was familiar with the right wing of South Park Restaurant. There was a hotel in the wing where two rooms were forever reserved. Just under a year earlier, when he and Cornelius Ruhtgard had been sent, much to their delight, on a Polish train to Warsaw, where the Poles disarmed them, both had sensed a favourable wind at their backs. They had passed through Lodz and Posen on their way to the Silesian metropolis which, as Mock assured his friend, was to Konigsberg like fat carp to dry cod. On arriving in Breslau they had lodged with Franz, Mock’s brother, and that same day they had gone to South Park Restaurant. Their table had been next to the pond, by the stone steps leading down to the water, and the autumn sun had been exceptionally strong that day. Conversation had flagged because Mock’s eight-year-old nephew Erwin, bored by his uncle’s wartime stories and fed up with feeding indifferent swans, had kept on interrupting. Everyone had feigned distress at losing the war, when in fact all had been thinking about their own affairs: Franz about his frigid wife; Irmgard about little Erwin’s tendency to tears and melancholy; Erwin about the gun which he believed must be hidden in his uncle’s backpack; Ruhtgard about his daughter Christel, who was taking her final exams that year at a Hamburg boarding school for well-born young ladies, and whom he was to bring to Breslau; and Eberhard Mock about his dying mother in Waldenburg, with the old shoemaker Willibald Mock sitting at her side, trying to hide the tears that ran down the furrows on his face. When Franz’s family had hurriedly said their farewells and set off for the nearby tram terminus, Mock and Ruhtgard sat in silence. The festive mood which accompanied them through the elegant restaurants of Warsaw, the dens of Lodz that smelled of onions, and the steamed-up restaurants of Posen, had somehow evaporated into thin air. As they were knocking back their second tankard of beer that day, they had been approached by a head waiter endowed with impressive whiskers. As he changed their ashtray, he had smacked his lips and winked. Mock knew what that meant. Without a moment’s hesitation they had paid and gone up to the first floor of the hotel where, in the company of two young ladies, they had celebrated the end of the war.

That same head waiter was now sitting on reception. He did not wink or smack his lips; his eyelids and lips were glued together with sleep. Mock did not need to show his identification. Over the course of the year, head waiter Bielick had become well acquainted with Criminal Assistant Mock from the Vice Department of the Police Praesidium, and he did not feel like laughing.

“How many members of staff are there in the hotel, and how many guests?” Mock said with no introduction.

“I’m the only member of staff. The caretaker, the cooks and the chambermaid come at six,” Bielick said.

“And how many guests?”

“Two.”

“Are they alone?”

“No. The one in number four is with Kitty, the other in six with August.”

“What time did they get here?”

“Kitty’s one at midnight, the other — yesterday afternoon. August, the poor thing,” Bielick giggled, “he won’t be able to sit down.”

“Why did you lie to me by saying you’re the only member of staff?” Mock spoke softly, but his voice shook. “Kitty and August are here too.” He lit a cigarette and remembered the existence of a malady called drinking too much. “I’ve not been here for a long time, Bielick,” he muttered. “I didn’t know you were running a brothel for queers.”

“I informed Councillor Ilssheimer about it directly,” Bielick said, a little embarrassed. “And he gave his assent.”

“I’m going to pay Kitty and August a visit. Give me the keys!”

Jangling the keys, Mock climbed the stairs to the first floor. As he mounted the crimson carpet, he did not notice Bielick reach for the telephone. He paused on the mezzanine and glanced out of the window. The boughs of the plane trees swayed. The policeman cutting down the corpse was out of sight, whereas Smolorz was perfectly in view, questioning the unfulfilled lovers. He could see Muhlhaus too, as Smolorz pointed out the hotel to him. And now he could also see the body coming down — fat, and with a red, bloated neck. From that distance the eczema was not visible.

Mock arrived on the first floor and opened the door marked number four. The room was fitted out like an elegant, eighteenth-century boudoir. Mirrors set in gilt frames hung on the walls, and syringes containing powder stood in front of them. There was an enormous four-poster bed and the immense spider of a still-burning chandelier. Next to the bed stood a dress. It stood because it was supported by a whalebone frame from which flowed the skirt. There were two people in the bed: a small, slight man lay cuddled up to a pair of generous breasts squeezed into a corset. The breasts belonged to a woman who was snoring heavily, opening lips accentuated by a charcoal beauty spot. Wearing an abundantly powdered and tiered wig, she looked as if she had been transported from the days of Louis XIV.

Mock turned off the light, walked up to the chair where the man’s clothes hung and pulled out his wallet. He sat down heavily at the coffee table, pushed the woman’s lingerie off the marble surface with his elbow and noted down the man’s details. “Horst Salena, forwarding agent, Marthastrasse 23, two children.” Then he got up, yanked the eiderdown off the bed and scrutinized the man who was lying on his back, his ribs protruding above his long johns. He was very thin and ordinary. He could have done anything but haul Wohsedt’s hundred-kilogram body up a high tree. They both awoke. The woman cursed under her breath and covered herself again with the eiderdown.

Mock studied the forwarding agent’s frightened face.

“Beat it, Salena. Right now!”

Salena got dressed without a sound and quickly left, hardly daring to breathe. Mock stepped into the corridor, locking Kitty in her room, and pushed at the door to August’s room. The key did not fit. Mock swore at Bielick under his breath and with a furious expression went downstairs to reception. He looked so fierce that the receptionist slid the correct key across the counter without a word. Mock grabbed it and ran back up-stairs. From the corridor he heard a window slam, and then the dull thud of someone landing heavily. He drew his Mauser and rushed to the window. Criminal Councillor Josef Ilssheimer was running, limping, across the lawn. His bowler hat was missing and his coat was thrown carelessly over his shoulders. Mock rubbed his eyes in astonishment and burst into August’s room. The young man in a dressing gown was not in the least frightened and gazed at the intruder with a smile. Mock looked around the room and saw a bowler hanging on a peg. He took it down and examined it. On the sweat-stained ribbon inside he found the embroidered initials “J.I.” — Josef Ilssheimer had jumped from August’s window! Now Mock knew why he had not been informed by Bielick about the modification to the service offered by South Park Hotel. Mock swallowed acrid saliva and felt it scratch at his throat. He dropped the bowler on the floor and dug his heel into it several times before throwing it into a corner. From that day nothing could surprise him any more. Nothing would have surprised him after having found Wohsedt’s letter in a drain at his very own home, and then discovering the man’s body hanging in a tree in South Park — even finding Councillor Ilssheimer, father of four, in August’s arms. But he could not understand why August was still smiling. He approached him and watched as his open palm struck August’s cheek, leaving a burning red mark.

“What the fuck are you smiling at?” Mock asked, and without waiting for an answer left the room.

Kitty’s little salon was already tidy and she herself was dressed; she had forgotten only to remove her tiered wig. Sitting at the table she lowered her eyes modestly. Mock sat opposite her and drummed his fingers on the marble slab set in the silver tabletop. “Not a bad imitation of an eighteenth-century table,” he thought. “Everything in here’s from the eighteenth century.”

“From what time were you with him, Kitty?”

“Who, Criminal Assistant, sir?”

“The man I just threw out.”

“Six, I think. That’s when he arrived. He paid for the whole night up front. He’s a good client. Bought a carafe of cherry schnapps and paid for dinner, too. A good client. He used to live not far from here …”

“A good client.” That’s what they had called Mock when he used to drink away his wages in the Hungarian King. That’s what they called him when he used to take two girls to a room and paid them generously, although in his drunkenness he could not move his hands or legs, let alone anything else. They used to bow to him when he walked into his favourite Jewish taverns on Antonienstrasse and stood for hours at the bar, silent, furious and glum. That whore, she too would have bowed to him from afar in the days when he used to go for walks with his father in South Park. That was only a few months ago. Then Mock’s bad dreams had begun, as had his father’s apathy, broken only by his games with postman Dosche’s dog. A good client in taverns and brothels. A good client with whom nobody had any sympathy — no innkeeper and no whore. And why should they sympathize with him? After all, how were they to know that some monster was slaying people and writing him letters! They weren’t interested; they were too busy looking after their own affairs. They had their own problems. Mock banished these unpleasant thoughts and asked Kitty mechanically:

“So, he lived not far from here?”

“Yes. He once came with his dog, for a quickie.”

“A dog?”

“He took his dog for a walk and came to see me. The dog lay beside the bed, while on the bed we …”

“Well, I should hope the dog wasn’t in there with you … And has a fat man called Julius ever been to see you? He had nasty eczema on his neck …”

“My clients don’t introduce themselves … And I don’t recall anyone with eczema … No … There hasn’t been anyone like that … Besides, I wouldn’t take anyone like that on …”

“You’re demanding, Kitty.” Mock got to his feet. “And would you take me on?” He went to the window and watched Muhlhaus questioning the would-be lovers while Lasarius squatted beside the corpse. Muhlhaus asked Smolorz something, and the latter pointed to the hotel. The commissioner strode briskly towards the building, as if he had seen Mock standing at the net curtain.

“Any time, Mr Mock,” Kitty smiled flirtatiously. It pained Mock to think that this beautiful woman in a crooked wig had once been a child, cuddled and kissed by her parents. “Naked or dressed up? I’ve got a Roman outfit too … And all sorts of lingerie accessories … For the clients, too …”

Mock studied the girl in silence. In his head thundered the words: “Dressed up …”, “outfit …”

“Listen Kathe,” he said, addressing her by her rightful name. “I’ve not been here for a long time. I didn’t know queers came here. I didn’t know anything about dressing up … Who thought all that up? Your new boss?”

“Yes, Mr Nagel.”

“And August, does he dress up for his clients, too?”

“Rarely.” Kathe smirked. “But some do ask.”

“And what does August dress up as?”

“A gladiator, a worker,” she mused. “Oh, I don’t know what else … Usually it’s a gladiator … There was one client who yelled” — and here Kitty shouted, imitating a drunkard’s gibberish — “I want a gladiator!”

Mock believed in the promptings of intuition and in the automatism of thought — a recent fashion in avant-garde art — and he appreciated the notion of a chain of even the most extraordinary associations. He believed in the prophetic value of a sequence of images, and he did not consider Duchamp’s manifestos to be inauthentic or degenerate. He believed in premonitions and in a policeman’s superstitions. He knew that now, too, it was intuition which had prompted him to ask about August dressing up. He closed his eyes and tried to conjure up associations. Nothing. Thirst. A hangover. Tiredness. A sleepless night. Kitty imitating a drunk and shouting: “I want a gladiator!” A lady in an alcove yelling, in a voice distorted by alcohol: “I want a carter! Now! Immediately!” Mock heard the sounds of a foxtrot. A few days ago, heavy with gin, he had wrapped his arms round the waist of a slim dance-hostess. In the Hungarian King. A young waiter, who was helping him carry Ruhtgard, had explained to him: “Our manager, Mr Bilkowsky, doesn’t allow the hiring of fiacres. The horses foul the pavement in front of the hotel.” The lady had shouted: “I want a carter!” The waiter had then replied … What had he replied? Yes, he had replied: “Right this minute, at your service, my lady.”

“Tell me, Kathe,” — Mock could sense the trail he was going to follow — “does August dress up as a carter? Or a sailor, perhaps?”

Kitty shook her head and watched in surprise as Mock, despite her negative reply, smiled gleefully and ran from the room, almost breaking the high mirror sprinkled with powder.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 4TH, 1919

SIX O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

Mock bumped into Muhlhaus in the hotel entrance. The new chief of the Murder Commission was crushing the mouthpiece of his pipe in his teeth and twirling his grey beard in his fingers. He took Mock by the arm and very slowly led him to where the corpse had been found. The birds, lost in song, announced another hot September day. Above the plane trees rose the yellow circle of the sun.

“Let’s take a little walk, Mock. Do you like taking early-morning walks in the park?”

“Only when there are no corpses hanging from the trees.”

“I see you’re in a good mood, Mock. Nothing like gallows humour.” Muhlhaus took the pipe from his mouth and squirted brown saliva into the bushes. “Tell me, are we dealing with a serial killer?”

“I’m not well up on criminal theory, and anyway, I don’t know whether such a thing exists, or how serial killings are defined …”

“And according to you …”

“I think we are.”

“Victims of serial killings have something in common with each other. Firstly, the murderer leaves them in a place where they’re bound to be found. The sailors’ corpses at the dam, a body hanging from a tree in a popular walking spot … And secondly, what do these victims of ‘Mock’s enemy’, as the perpetrator is widely known, have in common?”

“‘Widely’ meaning where?”

“For the time being where we work, in the Police Praesidium … Before long in the Breslau newspapers and across the whole of Germany. Despite the secrecy of the operation, sooner or later there’s going to be a leak to the press. We can’t hold everybody in quarantine, like that maid in the park and her lover. You’re going to be famous …”

“What was it you asked me?” Mock wanted to slap Muhlhaus as he had August, and then to run, fly to where pimps offer up male prostitutes dressed in sailors’ outfits; instead of which he had to traipse along beside Muhlhaus with the acrid, smoky aroma of Badia tobacco in his nostrils. His fingers and his back itched; he knew that no amount of scratching would relieve him. The sensation overwhelmed him quite frequently, and he could never find quite the right word for it. A fragment from Livy came to mind in which a Latin adjective perfectly expressed the present state of his spirit: impotens — out of one’s mind with impotence.

“I asked you what the victims of ‘Mock’s enemy’ have in common with each other?”

“That singular name given to the perpetrator is an answer in itself. Why are you asking something we’ve already known for so long?”

“I could give you the cutting answer that I’m the one asking questions here, Mock, but I won’t. I’ll play at being Socrates and you’ll arrive at the truth yourself …”

“I haven’t got time …” said Mock, leaving Muhlhaus abruptly and walking resolutely alongside the pond.

“Halt!” shouted Muhlhaus. “That’s an order!” Mock stopped short, turned towards the pond, knelt on the grassy bank and scooped some water into his hands. “No time, eh? Well then, as from today you’ll have plenty of time. There isn’t much going on in the Vice Department. You don’t work for me any more. You’re going back to Ilssheimer.”

“Why?” Trickles of water ran down Mock’s face, and through them he could see the slits of Muhlhaus’ squinting eyes. He conjured up his future in the Vice Department: bisexual Ilssheimer sacking the man who had exposed him, giving as his reason “dereliction of duty due to alcohol abuse”.

“I took you on for two reasons. Firstly, the murderer wants something from you. I thought you knew what he wanted; I thought you would make after him like a rabid dog avenging the death of innocent people …”

“The rabid dog of vengeance.” Mock wiped the water from his cheeks. “Are you acquainted with Auweiler’s poetry?”

“Whereas you have no idea what the murderer wants. The psychotherapy session with Doctor Kaznicz certainly hasn’t moved the investigation …”

“And that’s why you’re dismissing me?” Mock saw columns of magnesium shoot into the sky several metres away, where the body had been discovered. Smolorz had just left the spot and, carrying the notes he had taken when questioning the unfulfilled lovers, was making his way over to Mock and Muhlhaus. “The rabid dog of vengeance no longer proved necessary, right?”

“That’s not the reason, Mock.” Muhlhaus took him once again by the arm. “That’s not the reason. You haven’t answered me. I’m not going to play at being Socrates and you’re not going to be my Alcibiades …”

“No, especially as the latter came to a sticky end …”

“Secondly, what do the victims have in common? Their murderer’s hatred of Mock. That’s what all six have in common. But what do the last two victims have in common?” Muhlhaus raised his voice and glanced at Smolorz as he approached. “Well, tell me, damn it, what do the last two victims have in common? The old sailor Ollenborg and Wohsedt, the river port director?”

“They were both questioned by Criminal Assistant Mock,” Smolorz said.

“Correct, Sergeant.” Muhlhaus looked approvingly at Smolorz. “That swine wants to tell us: ‘I’m going to kill everyone you question, Mock. So don’t question anyone. Don’t conduct the investigation.’ Now do you understand why I’m taking you off the case? Who else did you question, Mock? Who have you poisoned? Who else is going to die in this city?”

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 4TH, 1919

A QUARTER PAST SIX IN THE MORNING

A prison wagon pulled up outside South Park Hotel. Two uniformed policemen climbed out and ran briskly into the building, swords clanking at their sides. A moment later they emerged holding Kitty by the arms as she thrashed about and tried to bite them in an attempt to break free. One of the men’s shakos was knocked askew. Muhlhaus, Mock and Smolorz watched attentively. Kitty stared at Mock, her eyes full of hatred. He walked up to her and whispered:

“Try to understand, Kathe, it’s for your own good. You’ll be put up in the best single, warm cell for a few days and then you’ll be able to leave.” He moved closer and whispered even more quietly: “Then later I’ll make it up to you …”

The promise did not impress Kitty in the slightest. She spat at Mock, her spittle landing on the sleeve of his jacket. He looked round. All the policemen were smiling to themselves, banking on a violent reaction from the Criminal Assistant. They were disappointed. Mock approached Kitty, removed the wig from her head and smoothed her somewhat greasy hair.

“I’ll visit you in your cell, Kathe,” he said. “Everything’s going to be alright.”

The policemen had no trouble loading Kitty into the wagon. One of them joined her under the tarpaulin while the other took a seat on the box and cracked his whip.

“Commissioner, sir.” Mock wiped his sleeve with a large leaf. “We can set a trap for the killer. He must be following me. Otherwise, how would he know who to kill? It should be enough for me to question someone and then for us to keep a close eye on that person. Kitty, for example. Let’s free her. If we don’t lose sight of her day or night we’ll get hold of that swine in the end. And besides … I want to work for you. Of course, I don’t have to lead this particular investigation, I could …”

“I’m not a street preacher. I don’t repeat myself.” Muhlhaus folded Smolorz’s notes in four. “Besides, we don’t have any other cases on apart from the Four Sailors. Every policeman in town is on the Four Sailors case or, to be precise, Six Sailors counting Ollenborg and Wohsedt. Wohsedt also held the honorary title of Rear Admiral. Goodbye, gentlemen.”

Muhlhaus set off towards the Horch which was just drawing up outside the hotel. He climbed in and Ehlers the photographer, laden with his tripod, tumbled in after him. Doctor Lasarius’ men heaved the stretcher bearing the corpse into their wagon. The engine of the Horch growled and shot a cloud of fumes from the exhaust. The car pulled away but did not go far, stopping beside Mock and Smolorz.

“Just explain one thing to me,” Muhlhaus said, leaning his beard out of the window. “Why are there no signs of torture on Wohsedt’s body when in the letter he wrote to you … I think he expressed it as ‘the man in the executioner’s hood tortured me’?”

“Maybe he meant mental torture.” Lines appeared on Mock’s face, mercilessly highlighted by the bright yellow sun. “Wohsedt wasn’t difficult to break …”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course. One medical term was enough to get him to agree to work for me immediately. He nearly pissed himself in fright.”

“And what term was that?”

“‘Tuberculosis of the skin after being bitten by someone with tuberculosis’,” Mock said, and at that moment he paled. Smolorz knew why. There was one other person Mock had condemned to death because he had questioned her on the Four Sailors case.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 4TH, 1919,

HALF PAST SEVEN IN THE MORNING

Thiemann amp; Co.’s cigar factory was located in the last of the inner yards on Reuscherstrasse. Since it was in full operation until all hours of the night, it gave out stinking fumes, and the clatter of its machinery disturbed the afternoon peace of everyone who lived in the tenements; they never stopped complaining, protesting, even demonstrating, and forming blockades at the gates of the establishment. Eventually the tenement landlords, descendants of Niepold, prevailed on the factory management to open up the establishment an hour later and shut it down an hour earlier. Having worked there for twenty years, even during the time of Mr Thiemann senior, Hildegard Wilck could not get used to the new working arrangements, and the clacking of her wooden clogs could invariably be heard in the inner yard before seven in the morning. And that day — as on every other day — fifty-year-old Miss Wilck stood outside the closed laundry gossiping with the concierge, Mrs Annemarie Zesche. Their interminable conversations drew facetious criticism from Siegfried Franzkowiak, a carpenter living on the ground floor, who did not cease to be amazed at the eloquence of both women. “Those wenches can go on and on about nothing!” he would say to himself.

That day Franzkowiak was in no mood for jokes. He had not slept half the night because little Charlotte Voigten, who lived above him, had been crying. The child’s wailing had been accompanied by the dog’s howling. Franzkowiak had knocked several times on the door of the bedsit which Charlotte’s mother, Johanna, had occupied with her daughter and dog for the past two months. The mother was not in, which did not surprise the carpenter since the entire tenement knew that the city at night was her natural place of work. Some kind person, however, would always look after the child — frequently it was Franzkowiak’s wife — and the exceptionally trusting little girl had always allowed herself to be comforted by her carers. Finally, at about four o’clock that morning, the child had fallen asleep. Silence had descended on the lodgings and Franzkowiak had happily laid his weary head next to that of his spouse. It was hardly surprising that he was truly angry now when, after only a few hours’ sleep, he heard the yapping of the two women.

“Just tell me, Mrs Zesche, what sort of times do we live in? The child lies asleep behind a screen while the mother and some stranger …”

“She’s got to make a living somehow, my dear Miss Wilck. You do the laundry and she lives off men …”

“Animals, that’s what those men are, Mrs Zesche, all they want to do is have it off …”

“And all you want to do is natter!” Franzkowiak yelled, leaning out of his window. “You can’t let anyone sleep, can you, damn it!”

“What’s up with him!” Hildegard Wilck had come to her own conclusions about men. “I’ve seen him going up to her room! An animal, he is! No better than the others!”

“You look after your own arse, not someone else’s!” Now Mrs Franzkowiak had leaned out too, coming to her husband’s defence. “We’re both helping that poor woman! One has to be human, not a swine!”

The shouting in the yard had obviously woken the child because little Charlotte’s crying suddenly erupted again, followed by the rattling of a window being opened. The little girl’s head appeared above the sill. Still sobbing, she shouted something which was drowned out by the dog’s howling. People began to gather in the yard. Charlotte moved a chair closer to the window and stood on it. Tears had traced dirty furrows down her cheeks, and her nightdress was yellow with urine.

From the street came the drone of an automobile and a large Horch drove into the yard. The driver, a sturdy, dark-haired man, squeezed the horn and jumped out. An ear-piercing sound filled the well of the yard, this time occasioned by the passenger, a red-headed man with a moustache. The child fell silent, everyone fell silent, even the dog fell silent. As the two men ran through the gate, Miss Wilck’s voice could clearly be heard in the silence:

“See, Mrs Zesche? That’s one of her suitors. Just look what drink’s done to his mug?”

The crash of a forced door resounded through the tenement, followed by the rustle of crumbling plaster and the shrill squealing of the dog. The dark-haired man ran to the windowsill and took the child in his arms. Charlotte looked at him in fright and tried to push him away with straight arms. Siegfried Franzkowiak, who was blessed with good hearing, detected sighs of relief in the child’s crying. He also heard Mrs Zesche’s commentary:

“See, my dear Miss Wilck, how the child has calmed down? That must be her father. See how alike they are? Tears are even running down that mug of his.”

“Her father died in the war, you idiot!” Franzkowiak yelled.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 4TH, 1919

FOUR O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON

Mock woke up in detention cell number 3 at the Police Praesidium on Schuhbrucke 49. He felt heavy and tired. He closed his eyes and tried to remember his dream, and succeeded without difficulty. The dream was hazy, unreal and melancholic. A meadow and a forest, grass criss-crossed by streams of water. There was a person there, too: beautiful, red-headed, with gentle eyes and dry, soft hands. Mock reached for the jug of unsweetened mint tea which the guard, Achim Buhrack, had prepared for him. He swallowed and established with some relief that he did not need the beverage after all. His hangover had disappeared — and here Mock felt blood rush to his head — along with that morning’s events. He remembered the drop of blood which had dripped from Wohsedt’s head onto his cheek as he squatted by the pond in South Park; he recalled Commissioner Muhlhaus’ words: “Now do you understand why I’m taking you off the case? Who else did you question, Mock? Who have you poisoned? Who else is going to die in this city?” He remembered all too well the little girl’s despair as she first pushed him away, then snuggled into him; he remembered questioning the inhabitants of the dark inner yards on Reuscherstrasse: “Nobody knows anything, she often went out at night, but always came home — yesterday she came home at about four o’clock.” He remembered Smolorz forcefully tearing the child away from him and saying: “We’ll catch him. We’ll catch him with or without Muhlhaus. It’s too early now; we’ll do it this afternoon.” The last scenes he replayed were distorted and unclear — Smolorz pushing him into the car, saying: “You haven’t slept all night. Get some sleep, the carpenter’ll take care of the little one.” Then the jug of mint tea and cell number three.

Mock got up from the bunk and performed several squats. He went to the cell door and knocked several times. The old guard, Achim Buhrack, opened up and said in his strong Silesian accent:

“It’s the first time I’ve seen a police officer sleeping in cell number three when he’s not drunk.”

“Sometimes some people don’t have anywhere to go to get enough sleep,” Mock said as he ran his hand over the rough stubble on his cheeks. “I’ve one more favour to ask of you, Buhrack … Is there a razor around here anywhere …”

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 4TH, 1919

SIX O’CLOCK IN THE EVENING

As yet there were very few customers in the Hungarian King. Only one alcove had been occupied, and its heavy curtain was drawn. A few ladies, judging by the high pitch of their voices, could not make themselves comfortable. The curtain rippled and the rail separating the alcove from the rest of the restaurant kept ringing as if someone were striking it with a rod.

“They can’t find anywhere to put their umbrellas,” whispered Adolf Manzke, the young waiter who had helped Mock transport an unconscious Ruhtgard to the car the previous night. Manzke was far from pleased that Mock had not ordered any alcohol that evening, but the first twenty-mark note with which this regular customer paid for his Wiener Schnitzel without asking for any change dispersed any concerns he may have had about his tip.

“What is your name, young man?” Mock asked, and on hearing his answer continued: “Explain something to me, Manzke. I asked for a fiacre yesterday and you called for the automobile which usually ferries drunken clients home. Isn’t that so?”

“It is,” Manzke said, and when he saw Mock fold another enormous twenty-mark note in four, he leaned in even closer.

“The fiacre’s horses soil the pavement outside your establishment, isn’t that what you said?”

“It is,” — the waiter’s neck was getting stiff — “Mr … Mr … I don’t know your name — what should I call you?”

“Call me Periplectomenus,” Mock said, remembering the sybarite from Plautus’ comedy Miles Gloriosus. “So how would you explain the behaviour of your colleague when he was attending to the demands of one of the ladies? She called for a carter and he promised to fulfil her wish immediately. Explain that to me, Manzke.”

“Maybe he needed to fetch the carter from far away and the lady was appropriately generous.” The waiter kept glancing at the folded note Mock was weaving between his fingers. “Anyway, you should ask him …”

“Indeed, Manzke, you’re right.” Mock slipped the note into the waiter’s waistcoat pocket. “But I don’t know which waiter it was … Will you help me find him?”

Manzke nodded stiffly and moved away between the tables. The musicians bowed to the audience and blew on their trumpets. Several dance-hostesses — including a dark-haired woman who smiled broadly at Mock — began to sway to the music without leaving their tables. Three elderly men who, like Mock, had in the meantime taken their seats on the second tier overlooking the dance floor eyed the girls through coils of smoke. Eventually one of them made up his mind and approached the dark-haired hostess. She stood up slowly, and did not spare Mock a look of disappointment.

The Criminal Assistant settled down to his goose-liver pate. He was interrupted in his consumption of this delicate cold meat by Manzke the waiter, who placed a napkin on the table and quickly disappeared. Beneath the napkin lay a clean strip of cash register ribbon on which was written: “Kiss my arse.” Mock rubbed his eyes and lit a cigarette. He looked at the scrap of paper once more and heard a ringing in his ears. He stubbed out the cigarette, stood up and made his way through the tables. He entered the bar and, guided by his instinct for alcohol, soon found the serving counter. There stood Manzke, collecting slim, frothing glasses of beer from the barman. When he saw Mock he made towards the flapping kitchen door, but Mock was faster. The waiter did not manage to open the door of his own accord, but did so involuntarily when the weight of Mock’s body shoved against his. He tumbled into the kitchen, but there, instead of running from the enraged man, he stood behind a table at which a bald waiter sat in his shirtsleeves counting his tips. Manzke glanced meaningfully at his colleague, who was surprised by the commotion, and apologized to Mock for not bringing him his bottle of gin in good time. Nobody said a word. The Criminal Assistant left the kitchen lobby and made towards the toilets. In the cubicle he tore off a scrap of toilet paper and wrote: “The bald, fat waiter.” He went out, paid his bill and discreetly gave Manzke a considerable tip. He also handed him the piece of toilet paper and with his eyes indicated Smolorz, who was sitting in the bar. Manzke drifted over to Smolorz, and Mock towards the exit. “That Manzke ought to be employed by the police,” he thought. “As an informer, for the time being; I liked the way he pointed out that waiter to me.”