Death in Breslau (7 page)

Extract from an interview with Criminal Director Eberhard Mock, the new Chief of the Criminal Police in the Police Praesidium of Breslau, page 3:

“Where did Friedländer know Coptic from?”

“He learned Semitic languages at the Talmud High School in Lublin.

“The murderer expressed the Coptic text in the ancient Syrian alphabet. This is a difficult task even for an eminent Semitist, but for the average graduate of a Jewish high school – unfeasible …

“After an attack of epilepsy, the accused would have apocalyptic visions, speak in various languages, apparently unknown to him, fall into a trance. Dangerous schizophrenia, from which he suffered
ever since childhood, would then re-appear. He revealed more than natural abilities, skills in resolving tasks which were, in fact, impossible to resolve.”

“One last question. Can the people of Breslau now sleep in peace?”

“The inhabitants of such a large city as Breslau face various dangers more frequently than people in the provinces. We will counteract these threats. If, God forbid, other criminals manifest themselves, I will most certainly apprehend them.”

III

BERLIN, WEDNESDAY, JULY 4TH, 1934
HALF-PAST FIVE IN THE MORNING

Herbert Anwaldt opened his eyes and then immediately shut them. He had the vain hope that when he opened them again all around would turn out to be a dismal mirage. It was a futile hope: the drunkard’s den where he found himself was an unshakeable reality, pure realism. In Anwaldt’s head, a small gramophone replayed the refrain he had heard yesterday, over and over again – Marlene Dietrich’s “
Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuß auf Liebe eingestellt
 …”

He moved his head several times. The dull ache slowly spread beneath the vault of his skull; cigarette fumes filled his eye sockets. Anwaldt screwed up his eyes. The pain had become intense and unremitting. In his throat nestled a thick, burning mass tasting of vomit and sweet wine. He swallowed it – through the dry pipeline of his gullet pressed a red-hot bullet. He did not want to drink; he wanted to die.

He opened his eyes and sat up on the bed. The brittle bones of his temples crunched as if squeezed by a vice. He looked around and concluded that he was seeing this interior for the first time. Next to him lay a drunken woman in a dirty, slippery petticoat. At the table slept a man in a vest; his massive hand, with its tattoo of an anchor, caressingly
crushed a fallen bottle against the wet oilcloth. On the window, a paraffin lamp was dying. A light streak of dawn filtered into the room.

Anwaldt glanced at the wrist on which he wore a watch. The watch was no longer there. Oh yes, yesterday, overcome with pity, he had offered it to a beggar. A persistent thought stung him: how to get out of the place. This was not going to be easy. He could not see his clothes anywhere. Although he had no shortage of extravagant ideas, he was not wont to go out into the street wearing nothing but his underpants. He noted with relief that, true to a habit which he had acquired at the orphanage, he had tied his shoes together and hung them around his neck.

He picked himself up from the bed and almost fell. His legs slid apart on the wet floor, his arms waved about frantically and found support: the left on a child’s metal bed, the right on a stool where someone had spilt the contents of an ashtray.

Hammers continued to bang within his head, his lungs pumped fiercely, his throat emitted a rasping sound. Anwaldt struggled with himself for a moment – he wanted to lie beside the drunken nymph, but when he looked at her and smelt the odour of rotten teeth and putrid gums, he put the idea firmly aside. In the corner, he espied his creased suit. As swiftly as he could, he dressed in the darkness of the stairwell, dragged himself out into the street and remembered its name: Weserstrasse. He did not know how he had got there. He whistled at a passing droschka
^†
. Criminal Assistant Herbert Anwaldt had been drinking for what was already the fifth day. With short intervals, he had been drinking for six months.

BERLIN, THURSDAY, JULY 5TH, 1934
EIGHT O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

Criminal Commissioner Heinrich von Grappersdorff was exploding with rage. He thumped the table with his fist and screamed blue murder. It seemed to Anwaldt that the snow-white, round collar of his superior’s shirt would snap over the distended, bull-like neck. He was not especially perturbed by the screaming. Firstly, because any thoughts getting through to his mind were muffled by the thick filter of a hangover; secondly, because he knew that the “old ox from Stettin” had not fallen into a genuine fury yet.

“Look at yourself, Anwaldt.” Von Grapperdorff grasped the Assistant under the armpits and stood him in front of a mirror mounted in an engraved frame. The gesture gave Anwaldt pleasure, as if it were a coarse masculine caress. He saw, in his reflection, the slim, unshaven face of an auburn-haired man which undeniably betrayed the five-day binge. The whites of his eyes, shot with blood, were lost in their swollen sockets, from the dry lips stuck out flakes of sharp skin, the hair clung to a deeply furrowed brow.

Von Grappersdorff took his hands from Anwaldt and wiped them with revulsion. He stood behind his desk and once more assumed the stance of Thunderer.

“You’re thirty and look as if you were forty. You’ve sunk to the very bottom like the worst whore! And all because of some rag with the face of an innocent. Soon any Berlin thug will buy you out for a tankard of beer! And I don’t want any corruptible whores here!” He drew in a breath and roared: “I’m throwing you out, Schnappswald! Reason: five days’ unauthorised leave.”

The Commissioner sat down behind his desk and lit a cigar. Blowing clouds of smoke, he did not take his eyes off what used to be his best employee. The filter of a hangover had stopped working. Anwaldt realized
that he would soon be left without a pension and would only be able to dream of alcohol. This thought had the necessary effect. He looked pleadingly at his superior, who suddenly started reading a report from the previous day. After a long while, he sternly said:

“I am dismissing you from the Berlin police. As of tomorrow, you start work at the Breslau Police Praesidium. A certain very important person there wants to entrust you with a rather difficult mission. So? Do you accept my proposition or are you going to beg on Kurfürstendamm? If the local boys let you in on a cushy job …”

Anwaldt tried not to burst into tears. He did not think about the Commissioner’s proposition so much as about holding back his tears. This time von Grappersdorff’s fury was genuine.

“Are you going to Breslau or aren’t you, you wine-sodden tramp?”

Anwaldt nodded. The Commissioner calmed down immediately.

“We’ll meet on Friedrichstrasse this evening at eight, on platform three. I’ll give you a few essential details then. Here are fifty marks to clean yourself up. Pay me back when you’re settled in Breslau.”

BERLIN, THAT SAME JULY 5TH, 1934
EIGHT O’CLOCK IN THE EVENING

Anwaldt arrived punctually. He was clean, shaven and – most importantly – sober. He was dressed in a new, lightweight, pale-beige suit and matching tie. He carried a tattered briefcase and an umbrella. His hat, somewhat askew, made him look like an American actor whose name von Grappersdorff did not know.

“Well. Now, that’s more like it.” The Commissioner approached his former employee and sniffed. “Breathe out!”

Anwaldt did as he was told.

“Not a single beer?” Von Grappersdorff was incredulous.

“Not even a beer.”

The Commissioner took him by the arm and they began to walk along the platform. The engine was expelling clouds of steam.

“Listen carefully. I don’t know what it is you’ve got to do in Breslau, but the task is very difficult and dangerous. The bonus you’ll receive will allow you not to work for the rest of your life. Then you’ll be able to drink yourself to death, but during your stay in Breslau, not a drop … Understood?” Von Grappersdorff laughed heartily. “I must admit, I advised Mühlhaus, my old friend from Breslau, against this. But he insisted. I don’t know why. Maybe he heard that you used to be good from somewhere. But, to the point. You’ve got the entire carriage to yourself. Have a good time. And here’s a going-away present from your colleagues. It’ll help with the hangover.”

He wagged his finger. A shapely brown-haired woman in a playful hat came up to them. She handed Anwaldt a piece of paper: “I’m a present from your colleagues. Take care and drop in to Berlin again from time to time.”

Anwaldt looked around and behind the ice-cream and lemonade stall on the platform he saw his laughing colleagues pulling silly faces and making rude gestures. He was embarrassed. The girl, not in the least.

BRESLAU, FRIDAY, JULY 6TH, 1934
HALF-PAST FIVE IN THE AFTERNOON

Criminal Director Eberhard Mock was getting ready to leave for Zoppot, where he intended to spend a two-week holiday. The train was leaving in two hours so it was not surprising that an indescribable mess reigned in his apartment. Mock’s wife felt like a fish in water. The short and corpulent blonde was giving the servants brief instructions in a loud voice. Mock sat in an armchair, bored and listening to the radio. He was
in the process of searching for a different wavelength when the telephone rang.

“The Baron von der Malten’s residence here,” he heard the butler Matthias’ voice. “The Baron is expecting you, Criminal Director, just as soon as is possible.”

Without ceasing to search for his wavelength on the radio, the Criminal Director said in a calm voice:

“Listen here, you lackey, if the Baron wants to see me then let him take the trouble ‘just as soon as is possible’ himself because I’m just about to leave on holiday.”

“I was expecting just such a reaction, Eberhard.” Eberhard heard the deep and cold voice of the Baron over the receiver. “I foresaw it and, since I have respect for time, I have placed a visiting card with a telephone number on it next to the receiver. It cost me a lot of trouble to get hold of it. If you don’t come here straight away, I’ll dial the number. Do you want to know who I’ll be connected to?”

Mock was suddenly no longer interested in the martial music transmitted over the radio. He ran his finger along the top of the radio set and muttered: “I’ll be there directly.”

A quarter of an hour later he was on Eichen-Allee. Without a word of greeting, he passed the old butler, who was standing – straight as an arrow – in the doorway, and growled: “I know how to find the Baron’s study!”

His host was in the open door, dressed in a long, piqué dressing gown and slippers of pale leather. Beneath the unbuttoned collar of his shirt was a silk neckerchief. He was smiling, but his eyes were extremely mournful. The slim, furrowed face was aflame.

“It’s a great honour for us that your Excellency has deigned to trouble himself to come and see us,” he contorted his face in a joker’s grin. All of a sudden he grew serious. “Come inside, sit down, have a smoke and don’t ask any questions!”

“I’ll ask one.” Mock was clearly angry. “Who were you going to phone?”

“I’ll start with that. If you hadn’t come, I’d have phoned Udo von Woyrsch, Chief of the S.S. in Breslau. He’s a nobleman from an excellent family, somehow even connected to the von der Maltens by marriage. He would most certainly have helped me get through to the new Head of the Gestapo, Erich Kraus. Did you know … von Woyrsch has been in an excellent mood for a week now. He drew his knife during ‘the night of the long knives’ too, and destroyed the despised enemy: Helmuth Brückner, Hans Paul von Heydenbreck and other S.S.-men. Oh my, and what a terrible thing met our dear rake and conqueror of boys’ hearts, Edmund Heines! The S.S. killed him in beautiful Bavarian Bad Wiessee. They dragged him out of not just anybody’s bed, but that of the Chief of the S.A., Ernst Röhm himself, who not long after, shared his loved one’s fate … And what happened to our beloved, hearty Piontek that he had to go and hang himself in his own garden? Apparently they showed his darling wife a few photographs where old Walter, dressed in a spherical cap, was performing what the ancients used to call lesbian love, with a nine-year-old girl. If he hadn’t done away with himself, our brown-shirt cubs from Neudorfstrasse would have dealt with him.”

The Baron, a dedicated lover of Homer, adored retardation. This time the retardation was actually an introduction.

“I’ll ask you a brief and succinct question: do you want Kraus to see the documents I keep and which prove irrefutably that the Chief of the Criminal Department used to be a Freemason? Answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Did you know that the Chief of the Gestapo of barely a few days feverishly wants to prove himself so as to show his principals in Berlin that their decision had been correct. We have in the Gestapo now a man who is more of a Hitlerite than Hitler himself. Do you want the Hitler of Breslau to find out the whole truth about your career?”

Mock began to wriggle in his chair. The choice cigar suddenly took on a sour after-taste. He had known somewhat earlier about the planned attack on Röhm and his Silesian followers, but he had, with particular relish, forbidden his men to intervene in any way. “Let them kill themselves, the swine,” he had told the one and only man in the police whom he trusted. And he, himself, had gladly supplied the S.S. with a number of compromising photographs. He had wanted to greet the fall of Piontek, Heines and Brückner with champagne, but as he was raising a solitary toast his arm suddenly stiffened. He had realized that the thugs had executed a purge among themselves but that they continued to rule. And that after the few bad specimens, even worse might follow. He had anticipated correctly: Erich Kraus was the worst of all the Hitlerites he had known.

“Don’t answer, you little shoemaker from Waldenburg, you little hustler, you mediocrity! Even your interpretations of Horace had the finesse of a shoemaker’s hoof.
Ne ultra crepidam
.
^†
You did not heed the warning and lied at our door. For your career. You left the Lodge. You secretly served the Gestapo. Don’t ask how I know all this … Of course, you also did this for your career. But it is my daughter who served your career best. You remember – the same one who, limping, would run to meet you. You remember how much she liked you? ‘Dear Herr Ebi’ … she’d cry when she saw you.”