Phantoms of Breslau (23 page)

“Yes. Very regularly. The one who called me ‘old man’ always came with the rent towards the end of the month. I gave it to Mr Rosenthal and he was perfectly happy.”

“What sort of business were they in?”

“They were visited by ladies.”

“What sort of ladies, and what for?”

“Rich ladies, judging by the way they dressed. They wore hats with veils. And what for? What do you think, Commissioner sir?”

The police officer lit a cigarette and stared at Frenzel for a long time.

“Remember what I said at the beginning of our talk? The rules of our conversation?”

With difficulty Frenzel breathed in the dust that swirled in the light falling from the window. He racked his brains and had no idea how to answer the question. All he knew was that in two hours the strongman from Poland was going to be sitting at a table in Café Orlich.

“I’m the one asking the questions here, Frenzel, not you. Understand?”

“Sorry,” Frenzel said. “I’ve forgotten what you asked me.”

“What did the ladies visit them for? Answer quickly, don’t pick your words.”

“They visited them” – a toothless grin brightened Frenzel’s face – “for hanky-panky.”

“How do you know?” There was not a trace of amusement on the face of the interrogator.

“I eavesdropped at the door.”

“How many rooms in the apartment?”

“One room and a kitchen.”

“The lady would be in the room with one of the boys and the others stayed in the kitchen?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t go in. The ladies came alone, sometimes in pairs. Sometimes one of the Schmidts would go out during these visits. Sometimes all of them were there. It varied …”

“And this didn’t disturb the neighbours?”

“There were only two complaints, about the ladies shrieking and shouting … Because there weren’t all that many ladies. Barely more than a handful.”

“Did you ever see these men dressed up?”

“Dressed up?” Frenzel did not understand. “What do you mean? How?”

“Have you ever been to the theatre, Frenzel?”

“A few times.”

“Did the Schmidts ever wear costumes like actors in a theatre? Zorro, for example, knights and so on?”

“Yes, sometimes, when that fat man came for them.”

“What fat man?”

“I don’t know. Fat, spruced up. He drove a car with ‘Entertainment’ or something written on it … I’m not sure, my eyesight isn’t that good.”

“How often did the fat man come?”

“Several times.”

“Did he go up to their apartment?”

“Yes, and then they’d all climb into his car and go off somewhere. He must have paid them well because they’d drink twice as much afterwards and go and have a good time at Orlich’s, not far from here.”

“Did any other men visit the Schmidts?”

“There was one other. But he never came alone. There were always two women with him, one in a wheelchair. He’d lug the wheelchair with the invalid up the stairs himself.”

“Would you recognize the man?”

“I’d recognize the man and the other woman. They didn’t hide their faces.”

“And the one in the wheelchair?”

“The cripple always wore a hat with a veil.”

“What did the man look like, and the other woman, the one who wasn’t an invalid?”

“I don’t know … He was tall, she had red hair. A pretty woman.”

“How old?”

“He was about fifty, she about twenty.”

“Weren’t you surprised when those four men disappeared? Why didn’t you report it to the police?”

“Surprised? Yes, I was surprised. Sometimes they’d drink for two days at Orlich’s before coming home, but now a whole week … As for the police … Sorry, I don’t much care for the police … But I would have reported it today anyway …”

“Why today?”

“The Schmidts were always here on Saturdays because that man with the girl and the invalid came on Saturdays.”

“Are you saying they came regularly, every Saturday?”

“Yes, every Saturday. At the same time. But not together. First the man with the invalid, then a few minutes later the red-head.”

“At what time did they come?”

“They’ll be there in about half an hour.” Frenzel pulled out his watch. “Always at six.”

“Were they there last Saturday?”

“Yes. But without the red-head.”

“Was that the last time you saw the Schmidts?”

“No, it was the previous day. The fat man came for them in his car. They went off somewhere.”

“How do you know they were at home on Saturday if you saw them for the last time on Friday?”

“I didn’t see them, but I heard them in their apartment.”

“You eavesdropped?”

“Yes.”

“And what did you hear?”

“Their voices, and the moans of the invalid woman.”

“Did you hear the man too?”

“The man? No.”

“You’re free to go.” The police officer took out his watch and showed Frenzel the door. “Here’s for a cab.” He tossed him two ten-mark notes. “You can go home. But remember, this giant here” – he indicated the man-wardrobe – “is going to keep a discreet eye on you for the next few days. Wait, just one more thing … Tell me, why don’t you like the police?”

“Because they’re too mistrustful, even when you go to them of your own accord and want to report something.” Again, he was frightened by his own impudence. “But that doesn’t apply to you, sirs … I really … Besides, you don’t look like a policeman …”

“So what do I look like?”

“A pastor,” Frenzel replied, and thought “out whoring.”

He went to the winding staircase and ran down as fast as his legs could carry him. Once he reached the ground floor and was out of the building, all his tiredness left him. He ran to the nearest crossroads and whistled with two fingers to passing droschkas, showing no interest whatsoever in the enormous, multi-storied building from which he had just emerged. Frenzel could only think of how to get home as quickly as possible, fetch his money, and go to watch the strongmen arm-wrestling across a beer-soaked table in a back room at Café Orlich.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 6TH, 1919
A QUARTER TO SIX IN THE EVENING

The stairs groaned under the heavy footsteps of the three men. Mock, Wirth and Zupitza finally made it to the fourth floor of the tenement at
Gartenstrasse 46. They stood panting outside the door of apartment 20 and sniffed the air in disgust. The rank odour came from the toilet on the landing.

“The lav’s probably blocked,” muttered Wirth as his gloved hand unlocked the apartment door with a picklock.

Mock kicked the half-open double door with a patent brogue – very gently, so as not to scuff the toe. Fetid air surged from the room. He screwed up his nose at a stench he abhorred, one which reminded him of a changing room at a sports gymnasium. He pulled out his Mauser and nodded to Zupitza to do likewise. Once in the dark hallway, he groped for the light switch and turned it on, drenching the hall in a dirty yellow glow. He leaped at once to the side to avoid a possible attack. None came. The brown, painted floorboards in the hallway creaked beneath their shoes. Zupitza wrenched open a huge wardrobe. It was empty save for some coats and suits. The dim light of a bulb covered with newspaper made it impossible to examine the clothes properly. Mock gestured to Wirth and Zupitza to search the main room while he turned on the light in the kitchen. The lighting proved as miserable as that in the hallway. He could, however, discern the mess one might expect to find in an apartment devoid of the female touch: stacks of plates covered in congealed tongues of sauce, cups with sooty traces of black coffee, rock-hard remnants of bread rolls and chipped glasses streaked with a tar-like liquid. This was everywhere: in the deep, semi-circular sink; on the table; on stools, and even on the floor. Mock was not at all surprised to see several glistening blowflies which lifted off at the sight of him to settle on the flaking wainscoting and on an embroidered picture bearing the words “The Early Bird Catches the Worm”. Despite the open window, there was an overwhelming smell of wet rags.

“No-one here!” he heard Wirth call from the main room. He left the kitchen and entered quarters which he thought would be far cleaner, as
befits a place of work where hygiene plays rather an important role. He was not mistaken. The room had a window which gave on to the main road, and it looked like any other room that had not been cleaned for a week. Two huge iron beds were neatly covered with bedspreads embroidered with red roses. Between them was a bedside table on which stood a lamp with an intricately twisted shade. There were no pictures on the walls. It was a room with no soul, like in a miserable hotel where all one could do was lie on the bed, stare at the lamp, and try to banish suicidal thoughts. Mock sat on one of the beds and looked at his men.

“Zupitza, go and keep an eye on the caretaker for the rest of the evening and the whole of tomorrow.” He waited for Wirth to pass on his instructions in hand signals, then turned to the interpreter. “Wirth, you go and see Smolorz at Opitzstrasse 37, and bring him here. If he’s not at home, go to Baron von Bockenheim und Bielau’s villa at Wagnerstrasse 13 and give him this note.”

Mock took out his notebook, tore a page from it and wrote in an even, slanted script, far smaller than the classic Sütterline handwriting: “Kurt, come to Gartenstrasse 46, apartment 20, as soon as possible.”

“And I,” Mock said slowly in answer to Wirth’s mute question, “am going to wait here for the red-headed girl.”

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 6TH, 1919
A QUARTER PAST SIX IN THE EVENING

Mock had realized long ago that, since leaving the hospital in Königsberg, he was highly susceptible to women with red hair. Not wishing to believe that the red-headed nurse taking care of him was merely a figment of his imagination, a phantom brought to life by morphine, he would carefully scrutinize every
pyrrhokomes
(as he called them) he met. Walking down a street he would often see loose red locks escaping from beneath a hat in
front of him, or fiery, thick plaits bouncing on spry shoulder-blades in time with their owner’s brisk footsteps. He would rush after these women, overtake them and look them in the face. He would raise his hat, whisper “I beg your pardon, I mistook you for somebody else,” and walk away as they looked after him with eyes full of fear, disdain or disappointment, depending on whether they were inexperienced virgins, happily married women or debauched maids. As for Mock, he was usually deeply disappointed, not to say frustrated. Because when these red-headed women revealed their faces to him, not one of them resembled the face of the nurse in his dreams.

He was not frustrated now, even though he could not be at all sure that the girl standing on the threshold was not the one he had told Rühtgard about during those frosty nights in Kurland. So little light came from the four sailors’ room that any woman standing in the doorway would have looked like a vision from a dream.

“Sorry I’m late, but …” Seeing a stranger, the girl broke off.

“Please, come in.” Mock moved away from the door on which he had heard a gentle knock a moment earlier.

The girl entered hesitantly. She looked around the empty apartment with unease and wrinkled her slightly upturned, powdered nose in disgust at the sight of the filthy kitchen. Mock closed the door with his foot, took her by the arm and led her into the main room. She removed her hat with its veil and tossed her summer coat onto one of the beds. She was wearing a red dress which reached down to her calves and stretched teasingly across her considerable breasts. The dress was old-fashioned, giving nothing away, and to Mock’s irritation it ended in a pleated frill. The girl sat on the bed next to her discarded coat and crossed one leg over the other, revealing high, laced boots.

“What now?” she asked with feigned fear. “What are you going to do to me?”

“Criminal Assistant Eberhard Mock,” he replied, squinting at her. He said nothing more. He could not.

The girl gazed at him with a smile. Mock did not smile. Mock did not breathe. Mock’s skin was on fire. Mock was sweating. Mock was by no means sure if the girl sitting in front of him resembled the nurse in his dreams. At that moment the image of the red-headed angel from Königsberg was blurred, indistinct, unreal. All that was real was the girl who was smiling at him now – charmingly, disdainfully and flirtatiously.

“And what of it, Criminal Assistant, sir?” She rested the elbow of her right arm in her left palm and gestured mutely with her middle and index finger that she wanted a cigarette.

“You want a cigarette?” Mock croaked, and seeing the amusement in her eyes he began to search his jacket pockets for his cigarette case. He opened it right in front of her nose and was taken aback when he realized that its lid had almost grazed her delicate nostrils. She deftly plucked out a cigarette from under the ribbon and accepted a light, holding Mock’s trembling hand in her slim fingers.

Mock lit a cigarette too and remembered old Commissioner Otton Vyhlidal’s advice. He was the one who had assigned him to work in Department IIIb, in a two-man team which, after the eruption of prostitution during the war, had become the official Vice Department. Vyhlidal, knowing that the young policeman could be vulnerable to a woman’s charms, used to say: “Imagine, Mock, that the woman was once a child who cuddled a fluffy teddy to her breast. Imagine she once bounced up and down on a rocking horse. Then imagine that once-small child cuddling to its breast a prick consumed by syphilis or bouncing up and down on greasy, wet, lice-ridden pubic hair.”

Vyhlidal’s drastic words acted as a warning now as Mock fixed his eyes on the red-headed girl. He set his imagination to work and saw only the first image: a sweet, red-headed child nuzzling her head into an
ingratiating boxer. He could not envisage the child dirty, corrupted or destroyed by the pox. Mock’s imagination refused to obey him. He looked at the girl and decided not to overstretch his imagination. He sat on the bed opposite her.

“I’ve told you who I am,” he said, trying to make his voice as gentle as possible. “Now please reciprocate.”