For a moment the three women stood horrified.
‘My God, it’s a man’s member!’ Berthe hissed.
Erika was the first to regain her composure. ‘And two little fingers. I do believe we have found the lodestone.’
Forstl had never been so happy to reach the apartment building on the Florianigasse. He was actually beginning to feel sick. All in my head, he kept telling himself. But he knew he could try to calm himself. The only thing that would make him feel better was to put these papers in a safe place.
He gave his mail box in the foyer a quick glance and noticed that there was a note indicating a package had been left with the Portier. He groaned to himself; he had no time to spare. But it might be something urgent from Schmidt: they sometimes made contact in this way. Instead of going directly to his apartment on the third floor, he stopped at Frau Novak’s apartment in the mezzanine to collect the package.
He knocked at the door and could hear voices inside. When Frau Novak finally came to the door, Forstl could see the pinched face of another woman seated at the deal table in her kitchen. Some old friend he thought, come to share coffee. The woman’s eyes seemed to brighten when Frau Novak addressed him by name and handed over the package. He looked at the return address. It was not important after all. Just a hat he had ordered from a milliner in Salzburg. Not even the thought of this lovely creation, with its nest of feathers, could take his mind off the damning papers stuck in his boot.
‘Oh, but Captain Forstl, please do not run off,’ Frau Novak’s friend said as he was about to make his way up the stairs. ‘I must ask you a question. You see I have a nephew who is interested in the military as a career. What branch would you recommend? Manfred is such a good young man. How would he serve his country best?’
‘I am sure I do not know, Madam,’ he said, irritation sounding in his voice. ‘I know nothing about your nephew. It would be better for him to speak with a recruiter.’
‘But you appear such an intelligent man and so young to have gone so far in the army. Surely you can spare an old lady a dram of advice?’
‘The cavalry,’ he said, exasperated. ‘They get all the pretty women.’
Frau Novak looked shocked at the pronouncement, but her friend merely laughed. A high cackle that grated on his raw nerves.
‘And a joker to boot,’ the woman said.
‘No,’ Berthe said. ‘We cannot take this with us. We have to leave it as evidence. Let the authorities discover it here. And leave the flat just as we found it, so that Captain Forstl is none the wiser.’
Frau von Suttner nodded at the wisdom of this.
‘Quickly, though,’ Erika said. She took a handkerchief from the waist of her skirt and picked up the grotesquely gray pieces of anatomy and returned them to their wooden box. She made sure it was locked and then placed the box back on the small table, careful to set it inside the rectangle of dust that had accumulated on the surface.
They hurriedly tidied up after themselves and were at the door when they heard footsteps on the stairs outside.
‘Captain Forstl!’
He turned abruptly on the stairs just below his landing. It was the old lady from Frau Novak’s. What now?
‘Captain Forstl!’
‘Yes. What is it?’ His voice had a sharp edge.
‘Your package,’ she said, her voice echoing in the stairway. ‘You forgot your package.’
They could hear Frau Ignatz’s voice. She had said Forstl’s name twice, as an obvious warning. Now or never, Berthe thought, opening the door as silently as she could and making sure the lock was in place before the three of them slipped out into the hallway, closing the door behind them.
There was nothing for it but to brazen their way down the stairs. If Forstl came up the last steps now and saw them moving towards the upper floors, he would surely know they had been in his apartment. Descending the stairs, however, there was no way for him to know where they had come from.
And it worked, Berthe was amazed to discover, as she passed the tall, thickset officer on the stairs. The three of them looked straight ahead as they passed him and Frau Ignatz, and quickly made their way to the vestibule and out on to the bright street.
Berthe breathed in a long draught of fresh air. None of them spoke as they waited several houses away for Frau Ignatz to appear. She did so several moments later and joined them.
‘Well,’ she said as she approached her friends. ‘That was a waste of time.’
Berthe looked at her, puzzled.
‘He is most definitely not the man I saw in the stairwell at Habsburgergasse the night before the explosion.’
‘I think you will find it was far from a waste of time,’ Erika told her, taking her arm as they hurried along the street to safety.
THIRTY-ONE
‘You could have been killed!’
‘We did not really consider that,’ Berthe said. Werthen had gone from relief to anger as she told him her story of discovery.
‘And how are we supposed to get the authorities to search the man’s premises?’
‘You men will think of something, I am sure,’ Berthe said, her voice sounding bolder than she felt. The adrenalin was wearing off, the moment of excitement passing, and she realized that Karl was right: they all could have been killed had Forstl caught them in his apartment.
Gross had remained silent throughout Berthe’s recitation of events. Frau von Suttner and Frau Ignatz had left earlier, but Erika continued working in the study. She came in now as she heard raised voices.
‘It was my fault, Advokat Werthen,’ she said. ‘I was the one who suggested we do something concrete.’
‘Well, to be completely truthful,’ said Berthe, regaining some of her former fearless giddiness, ‘it was actually Frau Ignatz who suggested we break into the man’s flat. She’d read stories about such endeavours.’
‘Proves once again the danger of an education in the wrong hands,’ Gross muttered.
Berthe finally said. ‘I am sorry this has given you a fright, Karl. But you must stop wearing a funereal face, both of you.’
‘It’s the fruit of an illegal search,’ Gross said. ‘You broke into the man’s apartment.’
‘But you’re the only ones to know that,’ Berthe insisted, suddenly tired of having to apologize for breaking the case wide open.
Karl smiled at her, then turned to Gross.
‘She’s right, you know.’ Then swinging back to Berthe, ‘Not that I condone such an action, but we had apparently come to a standstill in the case. This puts the murders squarely on Forstl’s shoulders.’
‘But Frau Ignatz did tell us he was not the man she had seen on the stairs that evening,’ Erika reminded them.
‘And who is to say that was the man who set the lethal charge?’ Werthen replied.
Gross made a sound somewhere between clearing his throat and moaning. Was he actually growling? Berthe wondered.
‘May I point out the results of the investigative work your husband and I have done today?’ Gross said this as if speaking to a classroom of first-year students.
‘Point away,’ Berthe said.
He quickly filled her and Erika in on the conversation with Moos.
‘Then we know that Forstl was in charge of the Bower operation,’ Berthe said. ‘It all fits.’
‘And what of this other man, the nondescript one who visited the Moos farm, who would also seem to fit the descriptions given by Frau Ignatz and the good Duncan? It would make sense that he is running Forstl for St Petersburg. And protecting him, keeping him undiscovered.’
‘Then why that horrible collection in Forstl’s flat?’ Erika said.
‘Ah, I was hoping you would ask about that,’ Gross said, looking awfully pleased with himself. ‘Now, a professional – and I assume our man, shall we call him Herr X, is a professional – would never keep such a collection. That is the sort of perverse action that bespeaks a neurosis. I do see a connection with such macabre ornaments and Herr X, how
ever. The way the man holds his fingers . . . Moos was quite insistent about that. It indicates that the injuries to his little fingers were quite savagely applied. One does not like to make surmises on such scant facts . . .’
‘Please, Doktor Gross,’ Berthe interrupted. ‘feel free to do so.’
Werthen shot her a look, but Gross was so wrapped up in his thoughts that he did not hear the sarcastic tone to her voice.
‘Well, in point of fact, our Herr X might have suffered a most grievous injury that set him on the path of becoming an agent provocateur.’
‘You are right, Gross,’ Werthen said. ‘Scant facts for such a surmise.’
Gross eyed Werthen with something very close to disdain. ‘An agent must be among the fittest of the fit. Able to use brains and brawn. Able to kill with gun or knife, and even with his bare hands. Herr X appears to have a disability in that regard. It’s doubtful whether an intelligence service would actively recruit such a man. Ergo, Herr X was able to overcome such a seeming disability by sheer force of will, perhaps inspired by the injuries done to him. To convince skeptical professionals that he could perform the tasks of a secret agent as well as, or better than, others.’
The three of them listened closely to Gross’s argument.
‘You have been giving this some thought,’ Werthen said.
‘You must become one with your nemesis in order to conquer him.’
‘And what if Herr X is imaginary? And Forstl is the one responsible for all of this?’ Berthe asked.
Gross did not bother with this question, but instead plunged on.
‘There is one way to make Herr X become visible,’ Gross said. ‘It appears that his task is to protect Captain Forstl, to keep him from being exposed. If he were to suspect that Forstl was in imminent danger, he might come out from under his rock, might expose himself. He has been following us, of this I am sure. Watching our every step as we get ever closer to dropping the net on Forstl. That, Werthen, was what the bomb at your office was about. An attempt to stop our investigation before it reached the door of Forstl’s office at the Bureau.’
‘Not much of a professional,’ Berthe said. ‘Killing the wrong man.’
Gross nodded. ‘Exactly, Frau Meisner. He should have known about the Portier’s brother, but time was running out. He could not undertake a meticulous operation. Urgency was his undoing. And I am counting on that for my plan, as well.’
They saw little of Gross the rest of that day. He kept to the study, displacing Fräulein Metzinger. The only communication Werthen or Berthe had was via Frau Blatschky, who complained mightily about the prodigious amounts of coffee being consumed by the criminologist.
Werthen knew this routine only too well from his days in Graz: Gross was removing himself from the distractions of society in order to concentrate all his formidable powers on this most challenging case. As with so much investigative work, Werthen was coming to understand, the real problem was not discovering who did it, but making sure they paid for their transgressions.
Before entering his ruminative hibernation, Gross issued a stern caveat: no one was to attempt to have the incriminating evidence hidden at Forstl’s apartment ‘discovered’ by the police.
Berthe fumed at this directive. ‘I risked my life to uncover that evidence and now he wants to give the man a chance to dispose of it.’
Werthen raised his eyebrows at this.
‘What?’ she said. ‘It was dangerous. You said so yourself.’
Next morning, Gross deigned to breakfast with the mere mortals of the household. But Berthe was still with Frieda, so Werthen and Gross had the dining table to themselves.
‘Have you got the solution, Gross?’ Werthen asked as he passed the warmed milk for the coffee.
‘Time will tell,’ he said, pouring a trickle of milk into his steaming cup of coffee. There were fresh Kipferls today, and he plucked one of these predecessors to the croissant from the linen-lined basket and dunked it exuberantly into the coffee, leaving a brown trail dripping on the tablecloth as he maneuvered it to his mouth.
‘I have but one request,’ he said, reaching into his pocket and removing a small sheet of paper. On it the criminologist had written a telephone number and a paragraph of text.
‘Ten minutes after I leave this morning, I want you to place a phone call to that number and relay the accompanying information to the person who answers the phone.’
Werthen quickly perused the note.
‘You cannot be serious, Gross.’
‘I am only too serious, my friend. Deadly serious.’
‘But this is far too rash.’
‘That is exactly what I am hoping.’
‘And where exactly will you be while I am making this call?’
‘Paying a long overdue visit.’
‘This isn’t a plan, it’s a death wish.’
‘Drama so early in the morning, Werthen. It is unbecoming.’
He rose suddenly before Werthen could proffer further arguments and passed out of the dining room just as Berthe was coming in, with Frieda in tow.
‘Doktor Gross,’ she said. ‘We are honored by your presence.’
Gross shot her a sly smile. ‘I am only sorry I cannot stay to converse over coffee. There is business to attend to.’
‘Gross,’ Werthen called to him, but it was no use. He heard the door of the flat open, and then close behind the criminologist.
The phone rang six times before it was finally picked up. Werthen looked at the script that Gross had provided, and immediately said ‘I have something to tell you.’
A voice at the other end replied, ‘Forstl, is that you?’
Werthen paused a moment, needing to extemporize. Obviously some colleague of Forstl’s had answered his telephone; just as obviously this meant that Captain Forstl was not at the Bureau this morning.
Werthen coughed once into the mouthpiece and then automatically replied to the man’s question, ‘Yes.’
‘Then you had better damn well get in here quick. The Colonel is about to explode. Somebody’s been messing around in the vaults. The mobilization plans against Russia have been stolen. Do you hear me, Forstl?’
Werthen paused again. ‘Yes. I will be there. Sick today. A summer cold.’
‘Well, you don’t sound like yourself. But this is no time for personal considerations.’
The receiver on the other end slammed down, then Werthen set his own down.
Berthe was standing by him in the hall. ‘Well?’
‘I think Gross is walking into a trap.’
He maneuvered past the Portier with ease, waiting for her to finish sweeping the sidewalk at the far end of the building and then slipped inside behind her. He knew where to find the apartment, from the story Werthen’s wife had told them, and reached it without any curious residents passing him on the stairs.
Gross took deep breaths as he stood in front of the door, not because he was out of breath from climbing the stairs, but because he wanted to calm himself. He patted his jacket pocket automatically, and was reassured by the hard bulge of the Steyr pistol. He knew he might have to use the gun if, as he hoped, his message to Forstl – relayed by Werthen – brought the man’s Russian controller out of the woodwork.
‘I have something to tell you,’ Gross had written. ‘You are being watched. Your every move is tracked. We know about your memento mori collection, and your double agent status at the Bureau. We are coming for you.’
Melodramatic, to be sure, Gross thought as he waited a moment longer outside the door. But it should prove effective, spurring not only Forstl but also his controller into action.
What had Werthen called it? Rash? Sometimes subtlety was insufficient to the moment, and Gross thought this was such a moment.
He reached inside his breast pocket and brought out the leather case containing his lock-picking tools. Arrayed on one side of the case was a set of skeleton keys; and on the other, more intricate L-shaped picks for a lock that proved more diff
icult and that would need its tumblers lifted one by one before the bolt could be slid back and the door opened. Gross was ready with the picks, for he assumed that a man like Forstl, acting as a double agent, would have at least a modern mortise lock in place – though it could not be difficult, as Werthen’s secretary had managed the feat with a hatpin.
But, with his many years of experience in gathering evidence, Gross knew he should simply try the door first. It was amazing how many times a person forgot to lock the door when leaving in the morning.
He looked both ways along the corridor; there was no one about. He put his hand on the cool brass knob and twisted. The door opened. He hesitated. Luck or the unexpected?
Either way, there was no going back now.
A heavy brass smell assaulted his nostrils once he was inside the apartment, but Gross was sure this was not from the hardware on the door. The room was still in semi-darkness with the long drapes on the windows securely closed. A dim light shone from a room deeper in the flat.
Suddenly, more cool metal met his skin, but this time it felt like the barrel of a pistol biting into the back of his head.
‘Move inside, Doktor Gross. Slowly. Do not reach for the pistol in your pocket or it will be your last action.’
‘Tidying up, are you?’ Gross said as the barrel dug deeper into his scalp, forcing him to move forward. The door closed behind them.
‘Well, what did the pompous fool expect?’ said Berthe, letting the note Gross had composed for Werthen drift from her hand to the parquet.
‘This is hardly the time for recriminations. Forstl is most likely at his apartment now and it would seem that Gross is on his way there.’
‘I’m sorry, Karl. I didn’t mean to sound so shrewish, but sometimes Gross can be exasperating. He had a full night of cogitating and this is the best he could come up with? Stirring a nest of snakes?’
‘He had to find a way to trap both Forstl and his controller. I assume this was it. With what you found in his apartment, Forstl would be the one to take the blame for everything. The controller would walk away free.’
‘If there is a controller. I think we should call Inspector Drechsler.’
The Keeper of Hands Page 29
