by Frank Tallis
“Next to the monument, sir,” the constable added.
Rheinhardt pulled a box of cigars from his pocket and lit a slim panatela.
“Wait here,” said Rheinhardt. He could see that the young man was not keen to join him. “If anyone comes along, don’t let them walk anywhere near the body. Make them walk on the other side of the road.”
“Yes, sir,” said the constable, clicking his heels.
A breeze corralled wispy threads of mist around the hem of the Virgin’s robe. She gazed expectantly up into the gray sky, her head tilted to one side. The effect was peculiarly dreamlike, and for a moment the detective inspector wondered whether he was still lying in his bed, and whether, in a few more seconds, he would wake up, throw his arms around his wife’s soft belly, and bury his nose in the sweet-smelling dishevelment of her hair. However, the scene did not dissolve and deliver him to his bed, but instead became more intense and more insistently real.
The shadows at the foot of the monument seemed to shift with Rheinhardt’s approach, breaking up and coalescing into new forms. This process of clarification eventually revealed the dead man’s head. He was probably in his fifties, and his expression was strangely peaceful: eyes closed, mouth slightly open. Rheinhardt managed to block out the dreadful glistening interior of the man’s neck, the sickening flounce of stretched skin, but his stomach still contracted, and he had to fight the urge to retch. He puffed on his cigar to steady his nerves.
The monument’s column twisted organically like a deformed tree, its trunk swelling and bulging with uneven excrescences. Cherub heads, with little wings sprouting out like oversize ears, adhered to the lumpy surface. They increased in number as the column spiraled upward, and at its summit the stone blistered with a chaotic outcrop of faces—some ecstatic, some anguished, others upside down. The entire edifice was supported by a cross-shaped pedestal, each arm of which was occupied by a large angel. Their expressions were inscrutable, having been worn down to vacant smoothness by the weather. One was kneeling in the throes of religious rapture—or grief—while another seemed to be flexing its wings, preparing to take off.
Rheinhardt moved away from the plague column and dropped what was left of his cigar into a drain. He heard the sound of hooves and the jangling of a bridle. Looking up, he saw the glow of carriage lamps in the haze. The vehicle halted next to him, and his assistant, Haussmann, jumped out, landing with effortless grace and stirring something close to envy in the portly inspector.
“What kept you?” said Rheinhardt.
Haussmann’s brow wrinkled. “I came as soon I could, sir. The driver didn’t arrive until—”
“Never mind,” said Rheinhardt, swatting the air.
Haussmann glanced toward the church, where the constable stood by a conspicuous mound.
“Is that the body, sir?”
“Yes. You’ll find the head by the plague column.”
“Like Josefstadt?”
“Identical.”
“Who is it, sir?”
“I don’t know. He’s rich, though. He’s wearing some very expensive jewelry. I’m going to talk to the witness. Start with a plan of the location and instruct the photographer when he arrives.”
Rheinhardt set off for the church but stopped when he felt the ground sucking at his feet. He looked down at his shoes and noticed that they were filthy. The cobbles were covered in mud. He squatted and tested its consistency, pressing his fingers into the mush. The clods were thick and sticky, like clay. He remembered doing the same thing outside the Maria Treue Kirche. Once again, there were no tracks to suggest that mud had fallen off the wheels of a carriage. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his hands clean.
What could it mean? So much mud…
His handkerchief now looked as if it had been smeared with excrement. He put it back into his pocket, guiltily, knowing that his wife would surely discover it in the laundry and scold him.
“Haussmann?” he called out. “Be sure to get some samples of this mud.”
“Yes, sir.”
Rheinhardt stood up, privately lamenting the stiffness of his joints, and marched to the church door.
The interior was gloomy, illuminated by a single tree of candles. Nevertheless, the light found the reflective surfaces of a fabulously ornate altar that was decorated with gilded statues and flanked by marble columns. A man was sitting in one of the front pews, talking in a low voice to a constable. When Rheinhardt entered, they both stood up. The constable gripped the hilt of his sabre.
“It’s all right, Constable. You won’t be needing that! I’m Detective Inspector Rheinhardt, from the security office.” He advanced, showing the policeman his identification. “Perhaps you would be so kind as to join your colleague outside while I interview Herr Quint.”
“I’m sorry, sir. I thought you—”
“It doesn’t matter.”
The constable bade Herr Quint farewell and made his way down the aisle. The noise of the closing door resonated loudly in the empty church.
“Please sit,” said Rheinhardt.
Herr Quint was in his late thirties, but he looked much older. He was a rather shabby man, his hair mussed, his necktie loose, and his wing collars projecting at different angles. His frock coat was greasy, and when he sighed, the air became tainted with the smell of stale cigar smoke and alcohol.
“Terrible, terrible,” Quint muttered. Then, as if responding to a challenge, he added, “I’m not leaving here until it is properly light outside. Whoever did it must be a madman—completely insane! None of us are safe!”
He clasped his hands together, and his exaggerated expression reminded Rheinhardt of a melodramatic actor. The impression was reinforced by Quint’s accent, which was, unexpectedly, very refined.
“You may stay here as long as you wish,” said Rheinhardt. “This is a church.”
Quint muttered something to himself and finally responded, “Indeed. A church.”
Rheinhardt took out his notebook.
“Do you live in Hietzing, Herr Quint?”
“I rent an apartment in the twelfth district. Längenfeldgasse.”
“That is some distance. Almost Margareten.”
“It’s not that far, Inspector…”
“And the number?”
“Forty-four.”
“What were you doing in Hietzing?”
“Seeing friends. Well, I say friends… associates, really.”
“Associates?”
“Yes.”
Rheinhardt looked at Herr Quint more closely. Although his frock coat was in a parlous state, it was well tailored and lined with silk. He had only recently fallen upon hard times. The reason was not difficult to deduce.
“Would I be correct in assuming that your associates are members of the gaming fraternity?”
Herr Quint’s lips widened and turned downward, suggesting painful resignation.
“I was rather unlucky and had to leave the table early.”
“Where do your associates meet, Herr Quint?”
“Oh, that can’t be very important, can it, Inspector? I mean, after all, there has been a murder!”
“The address, Herr Quint?”
“Lainzerstrasse 23.”
“Who lives there?”
“Widhoezl. I don’t know his Christian name. I’ve only ever called him Widhoezl, and he’s only ever called me Quint.”
“You left the table early. Did you intend to walk home?”
“Yes. There weren’t any cabs, of course. Besides, I don’t have a single heller left.” He turned out his pockets by way of demonstrating this and then stuffed them back in again.
“How much did you lose, Herr Quint?”
“I’m not sure exactly, but I can assure you that it won’t happen again.”
Herr Quint attempted to recover some of his dignity by tightening his necktie and sitting up straight.
“How did you discover the body?”
“I was walking behind the church—”
“Yes.”
“What were you doing down there? I would have thought you would have been following the main road.”
Herr Quint sighed. “Oh, this is most embarrassing…”
“Go on.”
“My bladder was very full, and I needed to relieve myself.”
“So you went behind the church?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“I was very tired. The night had been long and rather taxing. I suffer from nervous exhaustion, you see, and had allowed myself to become somewhat overexcited. Subsequently I decided I should rest a little. I sat in a doorway and… er…”
“Fell asleep?”
“Yes.”
“Then what happened?”
“I was woken up… by a noise.”
“What kind of noise?”
“A sort of whirring sound—a clicking, whirring sound, like a giant insect.”
“A giant insect?”
“It frightened me. I was confused, having just woken up. To be quite candid, Inspector, I’d forgotten how I’d gotten there.”
“Did you hear anything else?”
“I’m not sure.”
“A carriage? Footsteps?”
“A carriage… possibly… I can’t be sure. I was disorientated, Inspector. Whatever you may think, I am not a man who is accustomed to waking up on other people’s doorsteps. I remained in this confused state for some time. Eventually my head cleared and I became calmer. I got up and walked around the church, and there he was! I couldn’t believe it.” Quint shuddered and wrung his hands. “I ran to the hotel across the road, and the night porter telephoned the police station. When the constables arrived, I was escorted back here. That is all I can tell you.”
Rheinhardt removed his hat and scratched his head.
“Thank you, Herr Quint. Let me know when you are ready to leave, and I will get one of the constables to escort you home.”
24
PROFESSOR MATHIAS STOOD BETWEEN two mortuary tables. On one was the headless body, on the other the abomination of its disconnected head. He looked from one to the other. “Yes.” The syllable was prolonged, and its satisfied descent suggested sudden insight.
“What?” asked Rheinhardt.
“The head definitely belongs to the body,” replied the old professor.
Rheinhardt sighed loudly, betraying his irritation.
Mathias turned toward the inspector, and his eyes—enlarged behind the thick glass of his spectacles—delivered a tacit but powerful reproach.
“A rather important fact, I feel,” said the pathologist, pronouncing each syllable with precise and equal emphasis.
“But one that has already been established, Herr Professor!”
“Has it? Have you made a close examination of his trapezius, his levator scapulae, his arytenoid cartilage? I think not.”
“Why would anybody trouble to decapitate two people, mix up the parts, leave one chimera where it can be found, and conceal the other?”
“It’s no more absurd than bothering to decapitate anyone in the first place. After all, there are much more convenient ways of ending a life. Who is he, by the way?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“The wristwatch looks expensive.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Professor Mathias crouched down and rested his hands on his thighs. He stared at the man’s head, peering into the neck. Then, turning slowly—while maintaining his stance—he stared into the great, gaping hole between the man’s shoulders. He repeated this maneuver several times, while humming to himself. The tune wandered around a tonal hinterland before finally settling in a key that was rather too high for Professor Mathias. The upper notes broke up and became nothing more than hoarse croaking.
“Well, Rheinhardt?”
“I believe you are trying to sing Lachen und Weinen by Schubert.”
“Trying?”
“Your rendition of the opening phrase took certain liberties with the concept of key.”
Mathias shrugged. Then he raised his arm and stretched out his fingers in a manner reminiscent of a stage hypnotist. The tips of his fingers almost made contact with the interior of the dead man’s neck. Looking down his arm as if he were aiming a pistol, he closed one eye and began to rotate his wrist—first clockwise, then counterclockwise. As he did this, he muttered anatomical terms to himself: “Thyroid cartilage, cricothyroid muscle, fifth vertebra…”
Rheinhardt gazed across the morgue to the bank of square metal doors behind which, he knew, the dead had been stacked. He imagined their supine bodies, their bloodless lips and ice-block feet, the enfolding darkness, and the reek of decay. He imagined their brains dissolving, the last physical traces of recollection losing their integrity, and each skull filling with an insensate chemical sludge: memories of love and friendship, clear skies and the sound of rain, music, tears, and laughter—all reduced to nothing. The fate of all of us, he thought. Even his daughters, within whom the life force seemed so strong, and whose ebullience and flashing smiles seemed powered by an inexhaustible source of energy, they too would one day surrender their memories to an inexorable process of disintegration. At that moment the terrible sadness of the human condition was converted into a heavy weight that fell squarely on Rheinhardt’s shoulders. He became dimly aware of a querulous voice. Its reedy wheedling coaxed him out of his grim meditation like a snake charmer’s pipe.
“Wake up, Rheinhardt!”
“I’m sorry. I was thinking…”
The professor gave him an equivocal look, seasoned with just enough skepticism to suggest an unspoken (but intentional) slur.
“I said the method employed is identical.”
“What?”
“The monk you brought in two weeks ago. Exactly the same—the displacements suggest that the head was twisted off the body. Clockwise cranial rotation.”
Mathias rotated his hand to demonstrate the direction.
“How many men would it take to do this?”
“Difficult to say…”
“Could you hazard a guess?”
“I would prefer not to.”
Rheinhardt sighed again, a great expulsion of air that declared his patience was at an end.
“Oh, very well,” said the pathologist, grumbling and wiping his hands on his apron, even though they were perfectly clean. “Come closer, will you? That’s it. Bend down so you can take a good look. Good. Now… see here.” Mathias urged Rheinhardt to peer into the dead man’s neck. Under the bright electric light every detail was revealed with sickening clarity. Rheinhardt realized that—until that moment—he had never fully acknowledged what his eyes were seeing. An instinctive revulsion had made him gloss over the arabesques and flourishes of human flesh. He had only registered an impression of gory redness and felt with it a sympathetic horror, a vague tingling of imaginary pain. Now that he was faced with the stark reality, he realized that the interior of the human neck did not correspond with the sketchy representation that had hitherto occupied his mind, that of a hollow tube down which food and air could pass. In fact, the neck was complex, and dense with glistening slabs of meat.
“Look at these muscles. See how thick they are… and look at this tissue here.” Mathias pulled at a flap of rubbery white gristle. “See how elastic it is? Have you ever seen a fat man hang? No? Well, the neck often stretches. It doesn’t tear.” Mathias released the elongated sinew, and it snapped back, wetly. “What are you doing, Rheinhardt? Don’t look away. I’m trying to explain! Now… if I were to pick up that saw and cut through the neck to create a clean transverse section, what would it look like? I’ll tell you: the flat end of a substantial ham. Now, let us return to your question, which might be expressed in another form: How many men would it take to tear a large joint of meat apart?”
“It would take quite a few, wouldn�
��t it?”
Mathias gave his tacit assent by raising an eyebrow.
“And it would take time,” Rheinhardt added.
“Of course.”
“Yet the Piarist monk and this man were both killed in conspicuous locations, on open concourses next to street lamps! They must have been able to achieve these decapitations very quickly. Otherwise they would have risked being caught.”
“Then you are looking for two exceptionally strong men… or a gang of some kind. Although…” Mathias’s fingers circumnavigated the ragged perimeter of the giant wound, occasionally lifting the repugnant skirt of skin. “I can’t help thinking about that poor chap I told you about, the one who got killed by a bear when I was doing national service. If this man’s clothes were torn, and there were scratches…”
“You’d say he’d been mauled by a wild animal.”
“Precisely.”
Rheinhardt frowned. “But his clothes haven’t been torn.”
“No.”
“And an angry bear running loose in Vienna would surely have come to someone’s attention by now.”
“Indeed,” said Mathias. The two men looked at each other, neither of them very sure what the other was thinking. Mathias broke the silence. “It was only an observation, Rheinhardt! I wasn’t suggesting that you should go to the zoo to look for suspects!”
The pathologist rolled the head over and riffled through the hair, as if looking for nits. He discovered a laceration on the crown.
“Again—just like the other one, just like the monk. He was struck on the back of the head.”
“What with?”
“Something blunt. That’s all I can say.” Professor Mathias righted the head and stroked the wrinkled brow. He opened both of the eyes, and then closed them again. “‘There is a gentle sleep,’” he whispered, “‘Where sweet peace dwells, Where quiet rest heals the weary soul’s sorrow.’”
“You have me there,” said Rheinhardt.
“‘Secret Grief,’ by Ernst Koch.”
25
THE PRIVATE DINING ROOM in which Councillor Schmidt sat—one among many—was where he usually met with his mistress; however, he also used it for other “business” purposes. Schmidt could depend on the landlord, Herr Linser, to be discreet. When it had been proposed by the transport committee that the block of dilapidated eighteenth-century houses, in which the dining room was located, should be demolished to make way for a new streetcar line, Schmidt had argued that the route extension was not really necessary. In due course an alternative had been approved. And when two health and safety officers had paid the establishment an impromptu visit, and had subsequently forwarded a damning report to the relevant bureau in the town hall, Schmidt had made sure that the report was unavailable when the municipal hygiene group met to discuss what action should be taken.
