Death in Breslau (2 page)

Nor was there any shortage of artistic performances in the salon. Artistes were recruited from among the salon staff or – as was more often the case – generously remunerated guest performances were given by dancers from the “Imperial Cabaret” or some other small theatre. Two evenings a week were designated in Oriental style (with dances – not only of the belly – by several “Egyptians” who were otherwise employed in a cabaret), two in Classical style (bacchanalia), one in bawdy German (Heidi in lace drawers), and one was set aside for special guests, who had hired the whole club for discreet rendez-vous of their own. On Mondays the establishment was closed. Before long, telephone reservations were introduced and the Prussian manor called “the little Lohe manor” in Opperau, just outside Breslau, become famous throughout the city. The capital outlay was swiftly recovered, the more so as Madame was not the only investor. The lion’s share of expenses was borne by the Police Praesidium of Breslau. This institution’s costs were repaid not only in material form. And so everybody was happy, most of all the occasional and regular clients. The number of the latter kept on growing. Because where else could the Professor of Oriental Studies, Otto Andreae – armed with a
khanjar
and wearing a turban – chase a defenceless houri so as to possess her on a pile of crimson cushions; where else could the Director of the Municipal Theatre, Fritz Rheinfelder, expose his fat back to the sweet cuffs of riding boots worn by a slender Amazon?

Madame understood men well and was happy if she could meet their demands. She had recently experienced such a moment of joy in finding for the Deputy Head of the Criminal Department of the Police Praesidium, Counsellor Eberhard Mock, two girls who could play chess. Madame especially liked this stocky man with his thick, black, wavy hair. The Counsellor never forgot to bring flowers for Madame and small gifts
for the girls who were glad to serve him. He was level-headed and taciturn, he loved charades, bridge, chess and curvaceous blondes. He could gratify his passions at Madame le Goef’s without inhibition. He would arrive at midnight every Friday, enter by the side door and, without pausing to watch whatever was being performed on the stage, go to his favourite room where his two odalisques would be waiting for him. They would change him into a silk dressing gown, feed him caviar and give him red Rhine wine to drink. Mock would sit still, though his hands would rove over the alabaster skin of his slaves. After dinner, he would settle down with one of them to a game of chess. The other, in the meantime, would go under the table and do something known already to pre-historic peoples. The girl playing chess with Mock had been instructed that every successful move was assigned a specific erotic configuration. So, after eliminating a pawn or a bishop, whatever, Mock would get up from the table and land on the sofa with his partner where, for a few minutes, they would enact the configuration.

According to rules drawn up by himself, Mock was not allowed to satisfy his desire if either of his opponents called checkmate. It had happened once, and he had got up, given the girls each a flower and left, masking his anger and frustration behind a jester’s smile. He had never allowed himself to lose concentration at the chessboard again.

After one such long session, Mock was resting on the sofa reading his reflections on human characters to the girls. This was his third passion, one which he revealed only in his favourite club. The Criminal Counsellor – a lover of ancient literature who surprised his subordinates with long Latin quotations – envied Nepos and Theophrastus and reconstructed, not without some literary pretensions, the characteristics of people he met. He based his findings both on his own observations and on police files. On average, he would put together a description of one person a month and top up existing ones with fresh facts. These descriptions and
newly arising characteristics created great confusion in the girls’ tired heads. Be that as it may, they sat at Mock’s feet, looked into his round eyes and felt the tide of happiness rise within the client.

Indeed, Criminal Counsellor Mock
was
happy and when he left – which was usually at about three in the morning – he would give small presents to the girls and a tip to the sleepy porter. Mock’s good humour was felt even by the cabby who took him along Gräbschener Strasse, quiet at this hour, to the grand tenement on Rehdigerplatz, where the Counsellor would fall asleep at his wife’s side, listening to the ticking of the clock and the shouts of carters and milkmen.

Unfortunately, on the night of the 12th to 13th May, Counsellor Eberhard did not experience happiness in the arms of Madame le Goef’s girls. He was just playing out an interesting Sicilian defence when Madame tapped gently on the door.

A moment later she tapped again. Mock sighed, adjusted his dressing gown, rose and opened the door. His face was expressionless, but Madame could imagine what that man felt when someone interrupted an elaborate erotic-chess manoeuvre.

“Dear Counsellor,” the owner of the club spared herself what she knew would be futile apologies. “Your assistant is downstairs.”

Mock thanked her politely, quickly dressed – helped by his obliging geishas, one of whom tied his tie while the other buttoned his trousers and shirt – took two small boxes of chocolates from his briefcase and said goodbye to the inconsolable chess-players. He threw a goodnight to Madame and ran downstairs, colliding forcefully with his assistant, who was leaning against the crystal shade of a lamp in the hall. The crystals clinked in warning.

“Marietta von der Malten, the Baron’s daughter, has been raped and murdered,” panted Max Forstner.

Mock ran down the steps into the drive, got into his black Adler,
slammed the door a little too hard and lit a cigarette. Forstner sat eagerly behind the steering wheel and turned on the engine. They moved off in silence. They had crossed the bridge over the Lohe before Mock finally gathered his thoughts.

“How did you find me here?” asked the Counsellor, carefully observing the walls of the Communal Cemetery flitting past on their right. The triangular roof of the crematorium was clearly silhouetted against the sky.

“The Criminal Director Doctor Mühlhaus suggested where you might be, sir.” Forstner shrugged as if he would have preferred to say: “Everyone knows where Mock is on a Friday.”

“Don’t permit yourself any such liberties, Forstner.” Mock looked at him intently. “You are still only my assistant.”

This sounded threatening, but it did not make the slightest impression on Forstner. Mock did not lower his gaze from the broad face (“small, fat, red-haired scoundrel,” he was thinking) and for the n
^th
time resolved, against his better judgment, to destroy his insolent subordinate. This was not going to be easy since Forstner had been received into the Criminal Department when the new President of Police, the fanatical Nazi, Obergruppenführer S.A. Edmund Heines, had taken over command. Mock had learned that his assistant was not only Heines’ protégé but boasted of having good relations with the new Supreme President of Silesia, Helmuth Brückner, who had been imposed upon them by the Nazis shortly after they had won the elections to the Reichstag. But the counsellor had worked in the police for nearly a quarter of a century and knew that anyone could be destroyed. While he had the authority, while the Chief of the Criminal Department was the old Freemason and liberal Heinrich Mühlhaus, he could keep Forstner away from serious cases and transfer him, for example, to booking prostitutes outside the Savoy Hotel on Tauentzienplatz or checking the credentials of homosexuals beneath
the statue of Empress Auguste on the promenade by the School of Fine Arts. What most irritated Mock was that he did not know any of Forstner’s weaknesses – his files were clean and day to day observation prompted only one, concise description: “a dumb stickler”. The close bond with Heines, who was well known to be a homosexual, did provide Mock with murky suspicions, but that was not enough to bend this “mole”, Gestapo agent Forstner, to his will.

They approached Sonnenplatz. The city pulsated with subcutaneous life. A tram carrying workers from the second shift at the Linke, Hofmann & Lauchhammer factory grated on the corner, gas lamps flickered. They turned right into Gartenstrasse: carts delivering potatoes and cabbages crowded by the covered market, the caretaker of the art-nouveau tenement on the corner of Theaterstrasse was repairing a lamp and cursing, two drunks were trying to accost prostitutes proudly strolling in front of the Concert House with their parasols. They passed the Kotschenreuther and Waldschmidt Car Showroom, the Silesian Landtag building and several hotels. The night sky dispersed a light, misty rain.

The Adler drew up on the far side of Main Station, on Teichäckerstrasse, opposite the public baths. They got out. Their coats and hats were soon covered with watery dust. Drizzle settled on Mock’s dark stubble and Forstner’s clean-shaven cheeks. Tripping over the rails, they made their way to a side track. Uniformed policemen and railwaymen stood all around, talking in raised voices. The police photographer, Helmut Ehlers, with his trademark limp, was just approaching the scene.

The old policeman, who was always sent to the most macabre crimes, came up to Mock carrying a paraffin lamp.

“Criminal Sergeant Emil Koblischke reporting,” he introduced himself unnecessarily; as usual, the Counsellor knew his subordinates well. Koblischke hid his cigarette in his cupped hand and looked gravely at Mock.

“Where you and I, sir, are both to be found, things must be bad.” With his eyes, he indicated a saloon carriage with the sign “
BERLIN–BRESLAU
”. “And things in there are very bad indeed.”

All three carefully stepped over the body of the prostrate rail worker in the carriage corridor. A bloated face, frozen in a mask of pain. There was no sign of blood. Koblischke grasped the corpse by the collar and sat it up; the head flopped to one side and, as the policeman pulled down the collar, Mock and Forstner leaned forward to get a better view.

“Bring that lamp nearer, Emil. I can’t see a thing,” Mock said.

Koblischke stood the lamp closer and turned the corpse over on to its front. He freed one arm from the uniform and shirt, then tugged hard and exposed the dead man’s back and shoulders. He moved the paraffin lamp even closer. The policemen could see several red marks with blue swellings on the nape and shoulder blade. Between the shoulder blades lay three dead, flattened scorpions.

“Three insects like that can kill a man?” For the first time Forstner betrayed his ignorance.

“They’re not insects, Forstner, they are arachnids.” Mock did not even moderate his contempt. “Apart from which, the post-mortem is still to come.”

While the policemen could be in some doubt with regard to the rail worker, the cause of death of the two women in the saloon car was only too obvious.

Mock frequently caught himself reacting to tragic news with perverse thoughts, and to a shocking sight with amusement. When his mother had died in Waldenburg, the first thought that had come to him was about orderliness: what was to be done with the old, massive divan which couldn’t be lugged out either through the window or the door? At the sight of the thin, pale shins of a demented beggar cruelly beating a puppy near the old Police Praesidium on 49 Schuhbrücke, he had been seized by foolish
laughter. So too now, when Forstner slipped on the puddle of blood which covered the floor of the saloon car, Mock burst out laughing. Koblischke did not expect such a reaction from the Counsellor. He, himself, had seen a great deal in his time, but the spectacle in the saloon car set him shaking for a second time. Forstner left the carriage, Mock began his inspection.

Seventeen-year-old Marietta von der Malten was on the floor, naked from the waist down. Her loose, thick, ash-blonde hair was saturated with blood, like a sponge. Her face was contorted as if by a sudden attack of paralysis. Garlands of intestines lay scattered at the sides of her slashed body. The torn stomach revealed remnants of undigested food. Mock caught sight of something in the abdominal cavity. Overcoming his revulsion, he leaned over the girl’s body. The stench was unbearable. Mock swallowed. In the blood and mucus moved a small, vigorous scorpion.

Forstner vomited violently in the toilet. Koblischke jumped comically as something crunched under his shoe.

“
Scheisse
, there’s more of them here,” he shouted.

They examined the corners of the saloon car with care and killed three more scorpions. “Good thing none of them stung us.” Koblischke was breathing heavily. “Otherwise we’d be prostrate like that one in the corridor.”

When they had made sure that there were no more sinister creatures in the carriage, they approached the second victim, Mlle Françoise Debroux, governess to the Baron’s daughter. The woman, about forty years old, was lying flung over the back of a couch. Torn stockings, varicose veins on her shins, a modest dress with a white collar, yanked up to her armpits, sparse hair freed from its spinster’s bun. Her teeth biting into her swollen tongue. A curtain cord was pulled tight around her neck. Mock inspected the corpse with revulsion and, to his relief, did not see another scorpion.

“That’s the strangest thing,” Koblischke indicated the wall, lined with striped, navy-blue fabric. Writing could be seen between the carriage windows. Two lines of strange signs. The Criminal Counsellor brought his face closer to them. Again he swallowed hard.

“Yes, yes …” Koblischke understood him instantly. “Written in blood …”

Mock told the obliging Forstner that he did not wish to be driven home. He walked slowly, his coat unbuttoned. He felt the burden of his fifty years. After half an hour, he found himself among familiar houses. In the doorway of one of the tenements on Opitzstrasse, he came to a standstill and looked at his watch. Four o’clock. At this time, he would normally be coming back from his Friday “chess”. Yet never had any of the exquisite sessions wearied him so much as today’s experience.

Lying next to his wife, he listened to the ticking of the clock. Before falling asleep, he remembered a scene from his youth. He was staying as a twenty-year-old student on the estate of his distant family near Trebnitz and flirting with the wife of the manor steward. In the end, after many unsuccessful attempts, he had arranged a tryst with her. He was sitting on the river bank under an old oak tree, certain that the day had come when he was finally going to have his fill of her voluptuous body. Smoking a cigarette, he listened to an argument between a few country girls who were playing on the other side of the river. The cruel creatures, their voices raised, were chasing away a lame girl and calling her a cripple. The child was standing by the water and looking in Mock’s direction. In her outstretched arm, she held an old doll, her darned dress rippled in the breeze, her newly polished shoes were splattered with clay. Mock realized that she reminded him of a bird with a broken wing. As he watched the girl, he all of a sudden began to cry.