Pale Horse Riding

by Chris Petit

  Sybil’s whereabouts remained a mystery. Schlegel became aware of seeking Ilse out, as one of the few agreeable souls. They continued to find no record of who had removed Sybil or where she had been taken. Her registry card hadn’t been updated, showing her still working at the commandant’s house.

  Schlegel risked quizzing Groenke, who claimed to be in the dark, then blamed the security police.

  That was a new one on Schlegel.

  ‘Don’t be naïve, man. Unless the commandant’s servants act as informers they lose their jobs.’

  ‘Including the seamstress?’

  ‘I thought she came with high protection, but apparently not.’

  ‘Are you saying she was put there by the security police to spy on the commandant?’

  ‘Maybe more of a Mata Hari thing.’

  ‘Seduce the commandant?’ Schlegel could not believe what he was saying.

  Palitsch strolled into their office unaccompanied. ‘I hear you want to speak to me, skip,’ he said to Schlegel, and gave Schulze a breezy smile.

  Morgen said ponderously to Schulze, ‘This is confidential.’

  Schlegel watched her make herself scarce with the practised efficiency of one used to being told to clear out for private meetings.

  Palitsch asked, ‘Can I take a load off?’ and sat in Schulze’s place without waiting for an answer.

  ‘Confidential,’ Morgen repeated.

  Palitsch nodded. ‘These four walls. It’s how ninety-five per cent of conversations start here, no problem. Shoot.’

  He listened carefully to Morgen. Schlegel hadn’t properly noticed the paleness of the man’s eyes, barely blue.

  Palitsch looked from one to the other and slowly said, ‘You think because I had an affair with one of the missing women it puts me on the list of those to question about Tanner.’

  ‘You know her name?’

  ‘Open secret.’ He gave a hoot of laughter. ‘Like everything else here.’

  ‘How did you hear?’ asked Morgen.

  ‘They sent an ambulance.’ He beat out a rhythm on the table top. ‘She was a good kid.’

  He didn’t sound particularly convinced, but surprised them by turning serious.

  ‘Not counting prisoners, the garrison has several thousand living or working here. There were about fifty when I started. Our little planet grew, full of so many dramas. My wife died last year. What can I say? Hands up, I fooled around, everyone does, but no one could doubt my devotion. I don’t care about anything now. I drink all the time, but everyone does. In my case, without trying to stoop to self-pity, I believe every drink is a result of her tragedy.’

  ‘How did she die?’ asked Morgen.

  ‘Not by my bashing her brains in.’ He gave an inappropriate guffaw. ‘She died of the sickness.’ He stopped, eaten by sadness, and recomposed himself. ‘I am loathed. I make a point of it. The prisoners hate me. The commandant hates me. I look like a poster boy and he doesn’t, and nor do you, and nor do the prisoners. The wildest story was that prisoners had a plan to contaminate my laundry so I got the sickness, but my wife died instead. I held her in my arms as she passed, wanting only to take her place.’

  He looked at them with watery eyes. Schlegel thought Palitsch’s description of himself as a poster boy flattered him somewhat.

  ‘We were told Tanner was having an illicit affair with a Gypsy,’ he said.

  Palitsch laughed in disbelief. ‘She was reckless, not foolish.’

  ‘What’s your version?’ asked Morgen.

  ‘Some women go missing, probably leave for their own reasons. The woman I had a thing with had every cause, given her asshole husband. I may be a bastard but I know how to respect a woman. As for Tanner, the Poles detest us. It’s their old homeland, after all, and they’re going the way of the Apache and the Sioux. Endangered species. If a partisan cuts the throat of a guard it is an act of terrorism and will lead to roundups, shootings, maybe even their own family. Bash a German woman over the head. Nothing. Easy score. No reprisals.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Palitsch laughed. ‘Women aren’t seen to be worth the candle.’

  Schlegel caught himself surreptitiously inspecting Schulze when she wasn’t looking, legs and knees especially. He put it down to boredom, while also being uncomfortably aware of the irony of mirroring the commandant’s infatuation. He blamed the garrison’s combustible mix of repression and social decorum, fuelled by bouts of drunkenness that were anything but liberating. The unrequited state was bound to prevail, even when combined with open carnality.

  He tortured himself with his impossible obsession and guilt at entertaining thoughts of other women. Any true feeling, beyond hysteria and rage, from what he could tell, was impossible. The general mood of desperate sentimentality corresponded to his own state, of which he did not feel he was the real author, as though someone else was writing it for him.

  Morgen, with a lighter touch, plied Schulze with questions about the garrison’s social habits.

  She enlightened them on why people were generally so hard to get hold of. Since the lifting of the quarantine there had been what was jokingly referred to as an epidemic of truancy. Any excuse to get out. Courses were invented. Schlegel asked about Krick and she said she thought in his case it was genuine. He had connections to Swiss psychiatry and travelled to Zurich.

  ‘While I sit at a desk.’

  She remembered one strange manifestation during the big confinement: terrible giggling fits among the women; the more inappropriate the setting, the more acute the attack.

  ‘And the men?’

  ‘Raucous, as you would expect.’

  Schlegel saw it wouldn’t do to condescend to her.

  ‘And what about garrison women as a whole?’ Morgen asked.

  ‘The same as anywhere.’

  They divided into good-time girls and those that held back, who were treated with a mixture of false respect and contempt.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Morgen eagerly. ‘It’s what you get in any encoded society, a mixture of idealism and hypocrisy.’

  It seemed a remarkably grown-up conversation, thought Schlegel, to which he was contributing nothing.

  Morgen raised an eyebrow before asking, ‘Which category do you fall into, if I may be so bold?’

  Schulze had the grace to laugh. ‘Neither.’

  The dormitory where Ingeborg Tanner had slept was immaculate: hospital corners on the beds, no more than three personal items on display, a metal locker and chest of drawers.

  The dormitory was at the top end of the camp, in one of the ubiquitous wooden huts that had sprung up in the last years. When Schlegel waved the chit finally giving written permission for an appointment he had to endure the whole tedious routine of sighing and scratching and questioning from the block supervisor, who made it plain with every twitch and grimace that she regarded his request as tantamount to persecution. He listened to the insolent slap of her slippers as he followed her down the corridor. He tried asking about Tanner but she wasn’t interested, she minded her own business and didn’t care for anyone else’s. She unlocked the door and slouched her way back.

  Schlegel counted six beds. Tanner’s was stripped, the chest of drawers empty and the top cleared. Waste of time, he thought. The locker was locked. He went back to the warden’s hutch and asked for the duplicate key. He got the whole eye-rolling act and as she was about to say ‘written permission’ something in him snapped. She lifted her hands, thinking he was about to hit her, and handed over the key. Fuck it, Schlegel thought. He was not in good shape.

  Ingeborg Tanner’s locker was in fantastic contrast to its plain surroundings. Two hangers were taken up with frumpy uniforms; otherwise it was a row of colourful dresses. There was even a fur coat and fox stole. French fashion houses. Continental labels. Oslo. Athens. Half a dozen pairs of shoes crammed in the foot of the locker, none practical, mostly heeled and open-toed. Stuffed on top was a bag full of silk underwear and nightdresses, silk stocking
s, French brassieres, a pessary, lipstick, foundation, powder, eyeliner, mascara, scent with names Schlegel recognised, in all a treasure trove of items that the healthy make-up-free young German woman should not possess. When would Tanner have worn any of this? He had noticed women in the hotel relatively well turned out for evening sessions, but it didn’t go beyond a discreet application of frowned-upon lipstick and a smartish dress. He had memories of the immaculate and beautiful friends of his mother wearing such clothes before the war, but had seen nothing like it since.

  He stuffed everything back and on the locker floor noticed a green brooch, beautiful and expensive-looking. He pocketed it without thinking.

  ‘What sort of clothes?’ Schulze asked carefully when Schlegel told them about the contents of Tanner’s locker.

  She made a show of no interest. He sensed she was resorting to the garrison’s standard blocking technique.

  Morgen roused himself from his inertia to ask, ‘How many balls in the air? The death of the dentist; the extent of the racket; the mystery of our beloved seamstress; the motives of the commandant’s wife, regarding the seamstress’s dismissal and the special project she speaks of; the garrison wars; Fegelein and the real reason for him being here; and who killed Tanner?’ He turned to Schulze and said, ‘Enlighten us on any of these if you can.’

  Schulze asked only, ‘Beloved seamstress?’

  Morgen sighed. ‘Not now.’

  Schlegel considered his priority Sybil and she was probably lost to him already.

  Morgen declared himself sufficiently interested to inspect the contents of Tanner’s locker. Schlegel walked with him.

  They heard laughter coming from the dormitory and interrupted two giggling young women.

  One, standing by her locker in her slip, said, ‘Men aren’t allowed.’

  She showed no self-consciousness about her state of undress. Her companion sat on her bed painting her toenails. Both on the right side of attractive, and insolent, Schlegel decided.

  Morgen ignored them and inspected Tanner’s locker. The one standing by her locker had the door open. Its contents were modest compared to Tanner’s.

  ‘Is she allowed to paint her nails?’ Morgen asked.

  The other woman said, ‘Keep your shoes on and nobody knows.’

  Morgen held up a pair from Tanner’s locker. ‘What if you have open-toed ones like these?’

  The same one said, ‘Then you wouldn’t paint your nails.’

  Morgen looked amused.

  The women claimed to know little about Tanner, apart from her being superior, largely unpleasant and mainly absent.

  ‘Any men?’ asked Morgen.

  The one on the bed said, ‘What else are we going to do?’

  ‘There was a boyfriend,’ said the other.

  ‘Several.’

  They grew vague. They worked in quite another part of the garrison, they said, and Tanner wasn’t around much and often stayed out.

  They had no recollection of her wardrobe either. Morgen pointed to the locker and they shrugged.

  ‘Canada,’ one said, sounding bored.

  ‘Where’s Canada?’

  ‘North America,’ said the other.

  ‘Ha-ha,’ said the first.

  ‘Why Canada?’ asked Morgen.

  They didn’t understand the question.

  ‘Why is it called Canada?’ Morgen asked slowly.

  The women started to look sulky.

  ‘Land of plenty,’ the one sitting mumbled.

  ‘And what is it?’ Morgen insisted.

  ‘A storage depot,’ the one standing eventually offered.

  ‘Out of bounds,’ confirmed her friend, implying that the state of their lockers meant they weren’t helping themselves, unlike Tanner.

  Morgen moved from Tanner’s locker to her stripped bed. He inspected under her mattress and found nothing. He opened and closed the drawers of her bedside locker and saw they were empty.

  ‘Where is Tanner now?’ Morgen asked, becoming exasperated.

  ‘Gone,’ said the one painting her nails. They started to get the giggles.

  ‘Gone how?’

  Spluttering turned to outright laughter. Schlegel found it contagious and Morgen’s stony face made it funnier.

  Morgen returned his attention to the drawers, taking them all the way out. His ponderous manner made him look vaguely comic, or maybe it was just the girls giggling.

  Schlegel thought back to the days of Stoffel in Berlin – tough old-school cops, aggressive investigation, backup, scene-of-crime tape, forensic outlines, a machine in itself – and how they would have fared in the garrison. Quite easily: Stoffel would have cosied up to the security police, knocked heads, made his mark, arrested the suspect who could be most made to fit the frame, dusted his hands and gone home with a citation. Any rough-house behaviour would be excused by a corresponding instinct for the emotional pattern of any case, akin to feminine intuition, or so it was claimed, which was why Berlin homicide referred to each other as girls. To be called girl was a sign of acceptance. Schlegel never had been.

  The young woman standing by the locker eventually managed to compose herself enough say, ‘She gave an officer a dose of clap and had to leave in a hurry.’

  That set them off again.

  The one on the bed steadied her hand enough to apply the finishing touches to her nails, and said, ‘Blow on them, dear.’

  Schlegel thought: We are being made fools of.

  Morgen told the woman with the nails to open her locker. She said to ask her friend. ‘I’m not dry yet.’

  The other did so, disagreeably. The locker contained a couple of uniforms and ordinary cheap civilian dresses. He asked again about Tanner’s wardrobe.

  Both shook their heads.

  Schlegel supposed they were implicated but had cleared their lockers.

  Sensing their seriousness, the one standing said, ‘We’re not told and we don’t ask.’

  They left carrying the contents of Tanner’s locker, over their arms and stuffed in bags.

  Morgen said, ‘This was taped to the back of the drawer.’

  It was a tiny battered black leather notebook, blank except for two pages of numbers.

  Schlegel hadn’t seen Morgen find it. He looked at the neat columns, always the same amount of digits; telephone numbers, he supposed. There was nothing to say to whom they belonged, not even initials.

  It was obvious Morgen expected him to do the legwork. He also wanted to know whether Tanner’s autopsy showed her having gonorrhoea.

  ‘I want to see the report.’

  Schlegel spent a sticky, uncomfortable forty minutes sweating in a hot telephone booth, chasing Ingeborg Tanner. He was used to being treated as Morgen’s dogsbody. It had less to do with rank than Morgen being nearly a decade older.

  The garrison pathology department had no record of holding Tanner’s body, or any autopsy. The largely helpful clerk said postmortems were sometimes done on behalf of the medical department by prisoner doctors in a laboratory located in one of the new crematoria. Schlegel found the number and spoke to a doctor with a thick middle-European accent, who drolly informed him he’d had no women with bashed-in skulls.

  All this takes the time it takes, he thought, while I sweat like a pig.

  He spoke again to the same clerk, who asked with which authority the body was lodged. Apparently that made a difference. Schlegel said the commandant’s office. He was told in that case it should be in the morgue next to the old camp crematorium. Schlegel said the one he had been in was more like a sauna.

  ‘Yes, but the room next to it is nearly as cold as a deep freeze. You will need a pass from the commandant’s office.’

  Schlegel was desperate to get out of the booth. There was no way of jamming the door open, not that it would make any difference; it was just as hot outside. The glass was condensing like in a greenhouse. He was about to leave when he remembered Tanner’s black book and sat down again with a sigh.


  Upstairs in the office, Morgen was inspecting Tanner’s clothes.

  Schulze was saying, ‘I think it is a famous French fashion house.’

  She looked uncomfortable. Schlegel supposed they had all helped themselves.

  He mentioned about needing a pass for the morgue.

  ‘Fuck that,’ Morgen said, and apologised to Schulze for his language. Schlegel detected a trace of amusement, or perhaps it was relief at being spared further quizzing on Tanner’s couture.

  The morgue was all of two minutes’ walk. It struck Schlegel how close together everything was. There was plenty of outer sprawl – the hotel was a twenty-minute walk – but within the garrison everything involved little more than crossing the street.

  Schlegel told Morgen he had tried two numbers in Tanner’s book. They were telephone numbers, as they had thought. The first was the general one for the motor pool where Tanner worked and was accessed via the switchboard. The second he had let ring for a long time and was about to hang up when a female answered, young and heavily accented. Schlegel presumed she was one of the Polish housekeeping girls. He spoke slowly and asked which house.

  House Palitsch.

  Morgen looked doubtful. ‘A bit convenient, perhaps, given the commandant’s suspicions. Anyone could have put the book there for us to find.’

  They arrived at the crematorium complex. The sentry posted was wanting to know on what authority when Morgen grumpily cut him short and said they were there to inspect the mouths of the dead.

  There was no answer to that and the sentry waved them past.

  Schlegel had noticed how the correct accent, bad temper, an assumption of stupidity on the part of those addressed, and the presumption of limitless authority cut through a lot of bullshit when dealing with the lower levels. Morgen possessed the knack; he didn’t.

  The complex was smaller than it looked from outside. One sign pointed to the incinerators. A notice issued by the construction department stated them out of order. Down a short corridor was the room where they had first seen Tanner and next to it double doors led into another corridor of delicious Arctic chill, taking them into a space commanded by what looked like a garden shed, in which sat a female orderly, wearing a thick coat and wrapped in blankets, who was playing a complicated-looking game of patience.