Fatal Lies (18 page)

The fifth boy, Kiefer Wolf, was quite different.

At first he behaved impeccably, but very soon he began to show signs of boredom and impatience – he sighed, toyed with his sabre, and looked around the room in a distracted fashion.

‘Did you know Thomas Zelenka?'

‘No.'

‘You must have spoken to him.'

‘No – I don't think so.'

‘But he was in your year.'

‘There are many people in my year whom I don't speak to.'

‘Why's that?'

‘I don't know . . . I just don't.'

‘Perhaps there is something about them?'

‘Possibly.'

‘Perhaps you feel that you have nothing in common?'

‘Perhaps.'

‘That they do not come from very good families?'

‘Their origins are of no consequence to me.'

‘Then why don't you speak to them?'

‘One cannot be familiar with everyone.'

‘You don't dislike them, then?'

‘Dislike them? I am indifferent to them . . .'

There was nothing particularly incriminating about the boy's answers, except a general evasiveness; however, his facial expressions
were becoming increasingly provocative. An ugly smirk occasionally disturbed the neutrality of his thin mouth, and his declarations of ignorance were delivered in a tone rich with sarcasm. It was an accomplished performance, in which tacit mockery never quite amounted to insult – but came very close.

The boys who were still waiting in the next room had been getting progressively louder. Rheinhardt could hear squeals of delight, the sound of scraping chairs, and running. They seemed to be playing a game of some kind. Strange, thought Rheinhardt, that those same young men (who only an hour before had been smoking and playing cards like hardened campaigners) were now enjoying the infantile pleasures of tag. Such was the peculiarity of their age . . .

Wolf raised his hand to his mouth as if politely covering a yawn – but his steady gaze and relaxed neck muscles showed that the gesture was pure artifice.

‘Are you tired?' asked Rheinhardt.

‘Yes,' Wolf replied, without inflection. ‘We were practising drill – at sunrise.'

The boy smiled.

Rheinhardt watched the bloodless lips curl and, as they twisted, he observed in their convolution, in their counterfeit charm, something unsettling.

Policeman's intuition . . .

He had trusted his instincts before, and he must trust them again.

This was not an ordinary smile. This was a cruel smile, a malignant smile.
This
was the smile of a sadist.

‘You tortured Zelenka, didn't you?' said Rheinhardt softly. ‘You and your friends. You held that poor boy down, and you cut him.'

A peal of good-humoured laughter sounded through the walls.

Wolf's smile did not vanish – if anything, it intensified.

‘That is a very serious allegation,' he said calmly.

‘I know,' said Rheinhardt.

‘The kind of allegation,' Wolf continued, ‘that one should only make when one has sufficient evidence. And I know for a fact, Inspector, that you have nothing of the kind.'

Rheinhardt was unnerved by the boy's confidence. By his steady, silky delivery.

‘My uncle,' added Wolf, ‘will be most aggrieved when he hears about your conduct.'

‘Your uncle?'

‘Yes. My uncle Manfred.'

‘What has your uncle got to do with this?'

‘A great deal.' Wolf's lips parted, showing his even teeth. ‘He is not only my uncle, but your superior. He runs the security office: he is Commissioner Manfred Brügel.'

LIEBERMANN SAT, HIS
clenched fist against his cheek, his forefinger extended, tapping his temple, while the old jurist again discoursed at length on the
principle of plurality
as revealed to him by the angelic being from Phobos. But the young doctor was not really listening. His mind was wholly occupied by the events of the preceding evening. A monochrome recreation of Miss Lydgate repeatedly surrendering herself to the mysterious stranger's embrace flickered in his head like the moving images of a kinetoscope. This harrowing, cruel
coup de théâtre
was accompanied by an interminable torrent of inner speech:
Why didn't she tell me about him? Why should she? She was not obliged to tell you anything! Her private life is no concern of yours . . . but she must have known that I . . . that I . . . You were indecisive – you dithered and procrastinated. Unforgivable.
And so it continued throughout the morning – an endless stream of questions, remorse and self-recrimination.

After the old jurist, Liebermann saw a young woman with a pathological fear of spiders, a civil servant who derived pleasure from dressing in his wife's clothing, and an utterly miserable ‘comic' actor. The peculiar and ironic condition of the latter would ordinarily have piqued his interest, but Liebermann was completely unable to focus on what the man was saying. Eventually, the young doctor was forced to concede defeat. There was no point in proceeding – he was in no fit state to practise. He fabricated an excuse that would account
for his absence, and retired to a nondescript coffee house located behind the hospital.

On entering the establishment, he felt somewhat ashamed of his white lie – particularly so on observing that all the other patrons were absconding medical students trying to recover after a night of excessive drinking.

Liebermann stirred his
schwarzer
and sank into a state of ruminative abstraction. In the play of light on the surface of his coffee he saw – once again – a trembling suggestion of Miss Lydgate falling into the arms of her lover.

Although the notion was unjustified, Liebermann could not rid himself of the feeling that he had been deceived, and the longer he sat, ordering
schwarzers
, smoking
Trabuco
cheroots, and thinking, thinking, thinking, the less unreasonable his position seemed. Miss Lydgate had given him the impression that she was a bookish intellectual: refined, elevated, untroubled by baser instincts, with little or no interest in gentlemen. The young doctor tapped his cigar, and a long cylinder of fragile ash dropped onto the table top, creating a star-burst of white ash. How could he, the most astute judge of character, have been so wrong! (Like all psychiatrists, he had immense difficulty grasping the fundamental truth that self-understanding is considerably more problematic than understanding others.)

A dark thought, like a black storm cloud, rolled over the flat horizon of his consciousness. Miss Lydgate had once suffered from hysteria . . . and
he
had treated her. He remembered something that Professor Grüner, the former head of department, had said to him – a warning that he had instantly dismissed: ‘
As we all know, the female hysteric is cunning, malicious and histrionic. She is a consummate seductress. The credulous physician is easy prey . . .
'

At the time, Liebermann had considered Grüner an old fool: unsympathetic, misogynistic, and an advocate of barbaric electrical
treatments. Yet now, as Liebermann sank deeper and deeper into a quagmire of unhappy, bitter confusion, he found himself reviewing his opinion.

‘No,' he said, quite suddenly – surprised and embarrassed to discover that he had spoken the word aloud. An unshaven medical student sitting at the next table raised his head and looked around the room with bleary bloodshot eyes.

I cannot blame her! I cannot think this way!

Annoyed at his own weakness, annoyed at his willingness to entertain a pernicious, morally bankrupt account of hysterical illness, annoyed at the ease with which he had condemned Miss Lydgate (just like the patriarchal women-hating psychiatrists he most despised), Liebermann sprang up from his chair. He tossed some coins on the table and departed the coffee house, eager to put his unsavoury descent into self-pity and despair behind him.

Liebermann walked back to the hospital at a brisk pace. He went directly to his office where he applied himself to revising the wholly inadequate patient notes he had made earlier.

There was a knock on the door.

‘Enter,' Liebermann called out.

A man appeared, wearing a smart uniform with orange and gold piping, two rows of buttons bearing relief eagles, and a green hooded cloak. The splendour of his appearance (which revealed the typically Viennese fondness for civic grandeur) vastly inflated the importance of his station and function.

‘Herr Doctor Liebermann?' he asked, breathlessly.

‘Yes.'

The telegraph messenger handed Liebermann an envelope and retreated a few steps. He lingered in the doorway. Liebermann dug deep into his pockets but could only find the makings of a sorry tip, having disposed of most of his change in the coffee house.

Liebermann opened the envelope and found a note inside, written in an elegant, looping hand.

So that's why she's in Vienna! She's a violinist!

Liebermann raised the note and passed it under his nose. He recognised the woman's perfume: the upper register, a combination of clementine and mimosa, the lower, white amber and musk.

‘Trezska Novak.' He said her name out loud, affecting a Hungarian accent. It tripped off his tongue with a jaunty dance rhythm. For the first time that day he smiled. Not a great, radiant smile, but a smile nevertheless.

ON LEAVING THE
hospital, Liebermann walked to Café Landtmann, where he ordered a large plate of
Wiener schnitzel
followed by two slices of
topfenstollen.
His appetite, which had been notably absent, had suddenly returned. As his fork sliced through the crumbly pastry, the fragrance of lemon zest, cinnamon and rum intensified. He relished the sharp flavours which seemed to revive all his senses: the world became more vivid.

By seven o' clock he was on a tram, which took him to the nearby Seventh District. He soon found the small concert venue where Trezska was playing. Examining the billboard, he discovered that she was sharing the platform with two other musicians: a pianist, József Kálman, and a cellist called Bertalan Szép. The concert seemed to be part of a cultural initiative and was sponsored by Árpád Arts, a charitable foundation promoting young musicians from Hungary.

Liebermann entered the building, deposited his coat in the cloakroom, and purchased a programme. He loitered in the foyer for a few minutes and studied the audience. They were entirely unremarkable, although there were more Hungarians present than might ordinarily have been expected. Capturing an usher's attention, he was guided to a central seat in the fourth row. The auditorium was already quite full and an obese woman, wearing a feather boa and a floral hat, scowled at him when she had to stand up to let him pass.

As he settled down, Liebermann noticed a group of men advancing
up the side aisle. They were dressed in elegant black suits and looked, so Liebermann thought, like representatives of the charitable foundation. One of them sported an award of civil merit: a large cross, hanging from a violet and green ribbon – the Royal Hungarian Order of St Stephen. Among their number, Liebermann was surprised to glimpse the white tunic and gold sash of an Austrian general. He did not get a very clear view of the man, but he saw that he was carrying a bouquet of flowers. The dignitaries took their seats – all in the front row – and almost immediately the lights dimmed.

A door at the back of the stage opened, and József Kálman – a thin, sallow man with sunken eyes – marched to the piano. He played some fanciful pieces by Karl Goldmark and a selection of mazurkas, nocturnes, and
ballades
by Stephen Heller. Liebermann judged Kálman to be technically proficient, but his interpretations were far too literal. Be that as it may, the audience were determined to praise the young artist, and responded with vigorous applause and hearty cries of ‘Bravo! Bravo!'

The cellist, Bertalan Szép – a stout fellow with comically horripilated hair – was an altogether more accomplished performer. He produced an excellent account of Bach's Suite Number Six in D major, managing to make the melancholy voice of his instrument sing with joy. He continued his recital with an amusing transcription of an orchestral interlude by a Russian composer, titled ‘The Flight of the Bumble Bee' – the conceit of the piece being that its curious chromatic melody emulated precisely the frantic buzzing of the busy insect. When Szép took his bow, Liebermann was pleased to bring his hands together with genuine enthusiasm.

Contemplating the vacant platform, Liebermann found that he was peculiarly excited by the prospect of seeing Trezska Novak again. He began to wonder if his recollection of her was accurate: the full mouth, the strong nose, and those striking eyebrows. She had seemed very
beautiful – at the time – but they had met under exceptional circumstances. Perhaps his heightened state of emotion had affected his perception of her. He was hoping – rather anxiously – that his memory had not deceived him, and that the woman who was about to occupy the stage would prove to be an exact copy of the woman he had rescued in Landstrasse.

The door at the rear of the stage opened and Trezska Novak materialised out of the shadows. Liebermann was not disappointed. Indeed, so arresting was her appearance that the audience produced an appreciative soughing which preceded their applause. She was wearing a black satin dress and her hair fell in thick lustrous locks around her shoulders. Above her heart, she had pinned a brooch – shaped like a horned moon – which burned with a fiery white, adamantine light. Her expression was serious and purposeful. She curtsied, gripped the violin beneath her chin, and waited for the clapping to subside. Then, closing her eyes, she drew her bow across the strings.