Phantoms of Breslau (12 page)

That same head waiter was now sitting on reception. He did not wink or smack his lips; his eyelids and lips were glued together with sleep. Mock did not need to show his identification. Over the course of the year, head waiter Bielick had become well acquainted with Criminal Assistant Mock from the Vice Department of the Police Praesidium, and he did not feel like laughing.

“How many members of staff are there in the hotel, and how many guests?” Mock said with no introduction.

“I’m the only member of staff. The caretaker, the cooks and the chambermaid come at six,” Bielick said.

“And how many guests?”

“Two.”

“Are they alone?”

“No. The one in number four is with Kitty, the other in six with August.”

“What time did they get here?”

“Kitty’s one at midnight, the other – yesterday afternoon. August, the poor thing,” Bielick giggled, “he won’t be able to sit down.”

“Why did you lie to me by saying you’re the only member of staff?” Mock spoke softly, but his voice shook. “Kitty and August are here too.” He lit a cigarette and remembered the existence of a malady called drinking too much. “I’ve not been here for a long time, Bielick,” he muttered. “I didn’t know you were running a brothel for queers.”

“I informed Councillor Ilssheimer about it directly,” Bielick said, a little embarrassed. “And he gave his assent.”

“I’m going to pay Kitty and August a visit. Give me the keys!”

Jangling the keys, Mock climbed the stairs to the first floor. As he mounted the crimson carpet, he did not notice Bielick reach for the telephone. He paused on the mezzanine and glanced out of the window. The boughs of the plane trees swayed. The policeman cutting down the corpse was out of sight, whereas Smolorz was perfectly in view, questioning the unfulfilled lovers. He could see Mühlhaus too, as Smolorz pointed out the hotel to him. And now he could also see the body coming down – fat, and with a red, bloated neck. From that distance the eczema was not visible.

Mock arrived on the first floor and opened the door marked number four. The room was fitted out like an elegant, eighteenth-century boudoir. Mirrors set in gilt frames hung on the walls, and syringes containing powder stood in front of them. There was an enormous four-poster bed and the immense spider of a still-burning chandelier. Next to the bed stood a dress. It stood because it was supported by a whalebone frame
from which flowed the skirt. There were two people in the bed: a small, slight man lay cuddled up to a pair of generous breasts squeezed into a corset. The breasts belonged to a woman who was snoring heavily, opening lips accentuated by a charcoal beauty spot. Wearing an abundantly powdered and tiered wig, she looked as if she had been transported from the days of Louis XIV.

Mock turned off the light, walked up to the chair where the man’s clothes hung and pulled out his wallet. He sat down heavily at the coffee table, pushed the woman’s lingerie off the marble surface with his elbow and noted down the man’s details. “Horst Salena, forwarding agent, Marthastrasse 23, two children.” Then he got up, yanked the eiderdown off the bed and scrutinized the man who was lying on his back, his ribs protruding above his long johns. He was very thin and ordinary. He could have done anything but haul Wohsedt’s hundred-kilogram body up a high tree. They both awoke. The woman cursed under her breath and covered herself again with the eiderdown.

Mock studied the forwarding agent’s frightened face.

“Beat it, Salena. Right now!”

Salena got dressed without a sound and quickly left, hardly daring to breathe. Mock stepped into the corridor, locking Kitty in her room, and pushed at the door to August’s room. The key did not fit. Mock swore at Bielick under his breath and with a furious expression went downstairs to reception. He looked so fierce that the receptionist slid the correct key across the counter without a word. Mock grabbed it and ran back up-stairs. From the corridor he heard a window slam, and then the dull thud of someone landing heavily. He drew his Mauser and rushed to the window. Criminal Councillor Josef Ilssheimer was running, limping, across the lawn. His bowler hat was missing and his coat was thrown carelessly over his shoulders. Mock rubbed his eyes in astonishment and burst into August’s room. The young man in a dressing gown was not in the least
frightened and gazed at the intruder with a smile. Mock looked around the room and saw a bowler hanging on a peg. He took it down and examined it. On the sweat-stained ribbon inside he found the embroidered initials “J.I.” – Josef Ilssheimer had jumped from August’s window! Now Mock knew why he had not been informed by Bielick about the modification to the service offered by South Park Hotel. Mock swallowed acrid saliva and felt it scratch at his throat. He dropped the bowler on the floor and dug his heel into it several times before throwing it into a corner. From that day nothing could surprise him any more. Nothing would have surprised him after having found Wohsedt’s letter in a drain at his very own home, and then discovering the man’s body hanging in a tree in South Park – even finding Councillor Ilssheimer, father of four, in August’s arms. But he could not understand why August was still smiling. He approached him and watched as his open palm struck August’s cheek, leaving a burning red mark.

“What the fuck are you smiling at?” Mock asked, and without waiting for an answer left the room.

Kitty’s little salon was already tidy and she herself was dressed; she had forgotten only to remove her tiered wig. Sitting at the table she lowered her eyes modestly. Mock sat opposite her and drummed his fingers on the marble slab set in the silver tabletop. “Not a bad imitation of an eighteenth-century table,” he thought. “Everything in here’s from the eighteenth century.”

“From what time were you with him, Kitty?”

“Who, Criminal Assistant, sir?”

“The man I just threw out.”

“Six, I think. That’s when he arrived. He paid for the whole night up front. He’s a good client. Bought a carafe of cherry schnapps and paid for dinner, too. A good client. He used to live not far from here …”

“A good client.” That’s what they had called Mock when he used to
drink away his wages in the Hungarian King. That’s what they called him when he used to take two girls to a room and paid them generously, although in his drunkenness he could not move his hands or legs, let alone anything else. They used to bow to him when he walked into his favourite Jewish taverns on Antonienstrasse and stood for hours at the bar, silent, furious and glum. That whore, she too would have bowed to him from afar in the days when he used to go for walks with his father in South Park. That was only a few months ago. Then Mock’s bad dreams had begun, as had his father’s apathy, broken only by his games with postman Dosche’s dog. A good client in taverns and brothels. A good client with whom nobody had any sympathy – no innkeeper and no whore. And why should they sympathize with him? After all, how were they to know that some monster was slaying people and writing him letters! They weren’t interested; they were too busy looking after their own affairs. They had their own problems. Mock banished these unpleasant thoughts and asked Kitty mechanically:

“So, he lived not far from here?”

“Yes. He once came with his dog, for a quickie.”

“A dog?”

“He took his dog for a walk and came to see me. The dog lay beside the bed, while on the bed we …”

“Well, I should hope the dog wasn’t in there with you … And has a fat man called Julius ever been to see you? He had nasty eczema on his neck …”

“My clients don’t introduce themselves … And I don’t recall anyone with eczema … No … There hasn’t been anyone like that … Besides, I wouldn’t take anyone like that on …”

“You’re demanding, Kitty.” Mock got to his feet. “And would you take me on?” He went to the window and watched Mühlhaus questioning the would-be lovers while Lasarius squatted beside the corpse. Mühlhaus
asked Smolorz something, and the latter pointed to the hotel. The commissioner strode briskly towards the building, as if he had seen Mock standing at the net curtain.

“Any time, Mr Mock,” Kitty smiled flirtatiously. It pained Mock to think that this beautiful woman in a crooked wig had once been a child, cuddled and kissed by her parents. “Naked or dressed up? I’ve got a Roman outfit too … And all sorts of lingerie accessories … For the clients, too …”

Mock studied the girl in silence. In his head thundered the words: “Dressed up …”, “outfit …”

“Listen Käthe,” he said, addressing her by her rightful name. “I’ve not been here for a long time. I didn’t know queers came here. I didn’t know anything about dressing up … Who thought all that up? Your new boss?”

“Yes, Mr Nagel.”

“And August, does he dress up for his clients, too?”

“Rarely.” Käthe smirked. “But some do ask.”

“And what does August dress up as?”

“A gladiator, a worker,” she mused. “Oh, I don’t know what else … Usually it’s a gladiator … There was one client who yelled” – and here Kitty shouted, imitating a drunkard’s gibberish – “I want a gladiator!”

Mock believed in the promptings of intuition and in the automatism of thought – a recent fashion in avant-garde art – and he appreciated the notion of a chain of even the most extraordinary associations. He believed in the prophetic value of a sequence of images, and he did not consider Duchamp’s manifestos to be inauthentic or degenerate. He believed in premonitions and in a policeman’s superstitions. He knew that now, too, it was intuition which had prompted him to ask about August dressing up. He closed his eyes and tried to conjure up associations. Nothing. Thirst. A hangover. Tiredness. A sleepless night. Kitty imitating a drunk and shouting: “I want a gladiator!” A lady in an alcove yelling, in a voice
distorted by alcohol: “I want a carter! Now! Immediately!” Mock heard the sounds of a foxtrot. A few days ago, heavy with gin, he had wrapped his arms round the waist of a slim dance-hostess. In the Hungarian King. A young waiter, who was helping him carry Rühtgard, had explained to him: “Our manager, Mr Bilkowsky, doesn’t allow the hiring of fiacres. The horses foul the pavement in front of the hotel.” The lady had shouted: “I want a carter!” The waiter had then replied … What had he replied? Yes, he had replied: “Right this minute, at your service, my lady.”

“Tell me, Käthe,” – Mock could sense the trail he was going to follow – “does August dress up as a carter? Or a sailor, perhaps?”

Kitty shook her head and watched in surprise as Mock, despite her negative reply, smiled gleefully and ran from the room, almost breaking the high mirror sprinkled with powder.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 4TH, 1919
SIX O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

Mock bumped into Mühlhaus in the hotel entrance. The new chief of the Murder Commission was crushing the mouthpiece of his pipe in his teeth and twirling his grey beard in his fingers. He took Mock by the arm and very slowly led him to where the corpse had been found. The birds, lost in song, announced another hot September day. Above the plane trees rose the yellow circle of the sun.

“Let’s take a little walk, Mock. Do you like taking early-morning walks in the park?”

“Only when there are no corpses hanging from the trees.”

“I see you’re in a good mood, Mock. Nothing like gallows humour.” Mühlhaus took the pipe from his mouth and squirted brown saliva into the bushes. “Tell me, are we dealing with a serial killer?”

“I’m not well up on criminal theory, and anyway, I don’t know
whether such a thing exists, or how serial killings are defined …”

“And according to you …”

“I think we are.”

“Victims of serial killings have something in common with each other. Firstly, the murderer leaves them in a place where they’re bound to be found. The sailors’ corpses at the dam, a body hanging from a tree in a popular walking spot … And secondly, what do these victims of ‘Mock’s enemy’, as the perpetrator is widely known, have in common?”

“‘Widely’ meaning where?”

“For the time being where we work, in the Police Praesidium … Before long in the Breslau newspapers and across the whole of Germany. Despite the secrecy of the operation, sooner or later there’s going to be a leak to the press. We can’t hold everybody in quarantine, like that maid in the park and her lover. You’re going to be famous …”

“What was it you asked me?” Mock wanted to slap Mühlhaus as he had August, and then to run, fly to where pimps offer up male prostitutes dressed in sailors’ outfits; instead of which he had to traipse along beside Mühlhaus with the acrid, smoky aroma of Badia tobacco in his nostrils. His fingers and his back itched; he knew that no amount of scratching would relieve him. The sensation overwhelmed him quite frequently, and he could never find quite the right word for it. A fragment from Livy came to mind in which a Latin adjective perfectly expressed the present state of his spirit:
impotens
– out of one’s mind with impotence.

“I asked you what the victims of ‘Mock’s enemy’ have in common with each other?”

“That singular name given to the perpetrator is an answer in itself. Why are you asking something we’ve already known for so long?”

“I could give you the cutting answer that I’m the one asking questions here, Mock, but I won’t. I’ll play at being Socrates and you’ll arrive at the truth yourself …”

“I haven’t got time …” said Mock, leaving Mühlhaus abruptly and walking resolutely alongside the pond.

“Halt!” shouted Mühlhaus. “That’s an order!” Mock stopped short, turned towards the pond, knelt on the grassy bank and scooped some water into his hands. “No time, eh? Well then, as from today you’ll have plenty of time. There isn’t much going on in the Vice Department. You don’t work for me any more. You’re going back to Ilssheimer.”

“Why?” Trickles of water ran down Mock’s face, and through them he could see the slits of Mühlhaus’ squinting eyes. He conjured up his future in the Vice Department: bisexual Ilssheimer sacking the man who had exposed him, giving as his reason “dereliction of duty due to alcohol abuse”.

“I took you on for two reasons. Firstly, the murderer wants something from you. I thought you knew what he wanted; I thought you would make after him like a rabid dog avenging the death of innocent people …”