Phantoms of Breslau (6 page)

“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 Rühtgard, 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 Blücher 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 Posenerbrücke. 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 Bürgerwerder and Sand locks, ploughed its way to the small landing stage opposite Sandinsel, at the foot of Holteihöhe. 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 Sandbrücke. 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.