Sorg said nothing and with his finger inspected the hole in his uniform where the Baltic Cross had hung.
BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 5TH, 1919
HALF PAST ONE IN THE MORNING
Wirth fired the engine, and Mock fell heavily onto the back seat next to the girl. His clothes were permeated with the smell of tobacco, and a hint of alcohol and expensive eau de cologne. The girl was intrigued by the man she had never spoken to but had frequently seen at home. Her interest was all the greater due to the circumstances of their meeting: a dark night, kisses in a back street, and men who looked like murderers. Suddenly she was overcome with disgust. Her thoughts had been absorbed by the man who was Alfred’s aggressor. And now Alfred, beaten up and humiliated, was trying to come to his senses in one of the seediest corners of the city! She turned away from Mock.
“I’m not going to say anything to your father, Christel.” Mock wanted to put his hand on the girl’s shoulder, but stopped himself in time.
“You can tell him whatever you want,” Christel Rühtgard growled as she stared out at the military cemetery on the corner of Kirschallee and Lohestrasse. “I don’t care what you or my father think of me …”
“I’m not saying it,” Mock snorted, “to win you over or calm you down after that love scene in a stinking back street …”
“Then why are you saying it?” Christel’s eyes were blazing.
“Because I don’t know how to start the conversation.” Mock glanced at her prominent bust and recoiled a little, frightened of his own thoughts.
“Don’t even start one! I’ve got nothing to talk to you about …”
Silence descended. Mock was tired and would most happily have put the spoiled young madame across his knee and given her a thorough spanking. The thought which had frightened him a moment earlier was very innocent compared to what Mock now imagined might follow such a spanking. He plastered his cheek to the cold window and gaped dully at South Park as they approached. His eyes were closing of their own accord. Beneath his eyelids floated the lights of the Three Crowns beer cellar, then silent cemeteries. Trees rustled somewhere in the distance, a carpenter’s plane swished, and a small child cried, pressing a face wet with tears against the tired man’s face. She put her little arms around his neck and tried to say something, tugging at his arm, contorting her lips fretfully and then calling in a raised voice:
“Wake up, Mr Mock! The driver’s asking where we want to go!”
Mock rubbed his eyes, extracted his watch from his pocket and glanced at Christel Rühtgard’s angry face.
“I wanted to see you home,” he muttered, “so that you’re not accosted by any more drunks.”
“Like you?”
Mock got out of the Horch and looked around. They were at the bottom of Hohenzollernstrasse. Wind blew through the treetops in South Park to his right. To his left, the satiated incumbents of the modern detached houses and stately villas slept the sleep of the righteous. None of them were getting ghastly notes from demented murderers; none of them had a child who had just been deserted – or maybe even orphaned – put her arms around their neck. They were not told to pay a gruesome penance for fabricated mistakes. Mock walked round the car, opened the door and offered his arm to the girl. She spurned his polite gesture and nimbly jumped onto the pavement of her own accord.
“Like me,” he replied. “Those are especially dangerous.”
“Don’t make yourself out to be a demon,” Miss Rühtgard said and she set off towards the park. “I haven’t got far to go from here. I don’t want you to walk me home.”
“Today, not far from here,” he called after her, “my men found a man hanging from a tree by his legs!”
Christel Rühtgard stopped and looked at Mock with distaste, as if he had been responsible for decorating trees with dead people. They stood for a while in silence.
“This park is not as safe as the promenade by the moat on Sunday mornings,” Mock said, “where people go for an ice cream after church. It’s haunted here at night, and corpses can be found hanging on trees or floating in the pond.”
“You really won’t say anything to my father about me and Fred?” Christel asked quietly.
“On the condition that I walk you home.”
BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 5TH, 1919
TWO O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING
They walked in silence through the dark park, lit up here and there by islands of light from the few street lamps. Mock lit a cigarette.
“You don’t know how to begin the conversation,” laughed Miss Rühtgard quietly. She walked proud and upright. Irritation had given way to faint amusement.
“I know how to begin it, but I don’t know whether you’re going to want to talk about what interests me.”
“I’m not going to talk to you about Alfred Sorg. Is there anything else you’re interested in?”
“You’re an intelligent young lady. I could talk to you about anything.” Mock realized he had paid her a compliment and felt as embarrassed as a schoolboy. “But to touch on certain subjects we’ll have to get to know each other better …”
“You want to get to know me better? Isn’t what my father tells you enough?”
“I remember what your father said about you in the trenches at Dünaburg. You were his only chance of survival. You saved him, dear Christel.” Mock stopped and rubbed the sole of his shoe hard against the pathway, swearing under his breath when he realized he had stepped into one of the mementoes Bert and other dogs leave in parks. He wiped it on the grass and returned to his broken train of thought. “And not only him, by the way. You saved quite a few Russian soldiers. If it hadn’t been for you, your father would have thrown himself at the Russian trenches with his rifle and killed a lot of Russians, then he’d have died himself …”
“What makes you think he had suicidal thoughts?” In the dim light, Christel observed Mock as he pulled out a checked handkerchief and wiped the dust from the tip of his shoe.
“A lot of us had suicidal thoughts,” he muttered. “A good many of us tried hard to imagine the end of the war, but couldn’t. Your father did. You were the end of the war for him.”
“He talked to you about me?”
“Constantly.”
“And you listened? You sympathized with him? As far as I know, you don’t have any children of your own … How long can one listen to somebody talking about their children, about boys exploding with energy and moody girls?”
“You weren’t a moody girl in his eyes.” This time Mock pulled out a starched white handkerchief and wiped his brow. The September night was almost sweltering. “You were the very idea of a beloved child. An idea in the Platonic sense. A paragon, an archetype … After those conversations I’d envy him… I wanted to have a child like that myself …”
“And after this evening?” Christel looked at Mock in despair. “Would you still like to have a daughter like that?”
“One evening doesn’t cancel out a whole lifetime.” Even though Mock said these words quickly, he hoped the girl had heard the negative in his reply. “I don’t know what things are like between you on a day-to-day basis …”
Mock offered her his arm. After a moment’s hesitation, Christel took him gently by the elbow. They circled the pond.
“You beat up my friend,” she said quietly. “I ought to hate you for that. And yet I’m going to tell you how things are with my father on a day-to-day basis … He’s possessive. Every boy I get friendly with, everyone who visits me, he considers a rival … Once he told me that after my mother’s death – I was two at the time – I jumped for joy … I was happy my mother had died, my alleged rival … Note that … He always has books by Freud on his desk. In one of them he’s boldly underlined the father of psychology’s definition of the Electra complex. Entire pages scribbled on with horrible, smudged ink …”
“Try to understand your father.” Mock felt uncomfortable to be so near the girl. “Young ladies ought to meet young men in the compan
y of chaperones. They shouldn’t be taking part in gatherings of drunken, fired-up commoners.”
Christel let go of Mock’s arm and looked around absent-mindedly.
“Please give me a cigarette,” she said.
Mock offered her his cigarette-case and struck a match.
“Men always strike matches towards themselves, did you know that? You did too. You’re one hundred percent male.”
“Anyone would feel one hundred percent male, walking through a park on a fine night in the company of a young and beautiful lady.” Mock suddenly realized he was courting his best friend’s daughter again. “I apologize, Miss Rühtgard, I didn’t want to say that. I’m supposed to be acting as your Cerberus now, not your Romeo.”
“But the latter is decidedly nicer for any woman,” laughed Miss Rühtgard.
“Is that right?” Mock asked, blessing the dark shadows for concealing his blushes. Feverishly he searched for an apt pun, a humorous retort, but his memory let him down. Minutes passed. Miss Rühtgard smoked her cigarette awkwardly and smiled at him, waiting for him to say something. He was seized by anger – anger at himself and at this chit of a girl who was wrapping him around her little finger. What was most infuriating was the fact that the role suited him.
“Stop it, my dear,” he raised his voice a little, forsaking the formal “Miss Rühtgard”. “You’re not a woman. You’re still a child.”
“Is that so?” she asked playfully. “I stopped being a child in Hamburg. Perhaps you’d like to know the circumstances?”
“There’s something else I’d like to know,” Mock said, in spite of himself. “Are you aware of any of Alfred Sorg’s friends dressing up and putting themselves at the disposal of rich ladies?”
“What does that mean, ‘at the disposal’?” Miss Rühtgard asked. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m still a child …”
Mock stood still and wiped the sweat from his brow. He moved away from his companion a little, aware that too many cigarettes did nothing to improve the smell of his breath. To his annoyance, Christel moved closer and her eyes grew enormous and naive.
“What does that mean, ‘at the disposal’?” she asked again.
“Do you know of four young men” – Mock stepped away from the girl again and lost his self-control – “who dress up as sailors and pleasure rich ladies? They work with your friend Alfred Sorg. Maybe Alfred dresses up and screws ladies too? Does he dress up like that for you?”
Mock bit his tongue. It was too late. Silence. A chill wind blew from the pond. The lights in South Park Restaurant began to go out. The maid was waiting for the first glow of the pink-fingered maiden before going for a walk with Bert the dog. Corpses hung on trees and floated in the water. Mock felt terrible and did not look at Miss Rühtgard.
“You’re just like my father. He’s always asking who I’ve just screwed.” Anger had turned her face to stone. “I’m going to tell him right now that you’re interested too. I’ll give him an account of our entire conversation. Then he’ll understand that people don’t stop being men and women just because they wear the words ‘father’ or ‘daughter’ on their chest. Even you, usually so self-controlled, got carried away and gloated over the word ‘pleasure’. I thought you were completely different …”
“I’m sorry.” Mock smoked the last of his cigarettes. “I’ve used inappropriate words when talking to you, Miss Rühtgard. Please forgive me. Don’t tell your father about our conversation. It would put a strain on our friendship.”
“You ought to put an announcement in the Schlesiche Zeitung,” Christel said thoughtfully. “It would say: ‘I dispel your illusions, Eberhard Mock’.”
Mock sat on a bench and in an effort to control himself called to mind the first verses of Lucretius’ poem “De rerum natura”, about which he had once written an essay. When he arrived at the lines describing Mars’ and Venus’ amorous rapture, he was overcome with fury. Suddenly he became aware that he was not admiring Lucretius’ hexameters at all, but imagining instead how the lovers were moving against each other, tangled up in Vulcan’s net.
“Am I to feel guilty for exposing that creature Sorg to you?” His voice hissed with annoyance. “That I spared you from having to visit a doctor of venereal diseases? You don’t have to worry about catching syphilis, do you? You’ve got one of the so-called bachelor disease’s most eminent specialists close at hand! Am I to have scruples for having shown you that your knight in shining armour is, de facto, a slave in the bedroom?”
“How typical!” Miss Rühtgard shouted. “A knight in shining armour! What a stereotype! Can’t you understand that not every woman is waiting for a fairy-tale prince, but for someone who will …”
“Give them a good screwing,” Mock finished furiously.
“That’s not what I had in mind,” Miss Rühtgard countered in a low voice. “I wanted to say: ‘who will love them’.” She stubbed out her cigarette on a tree. “Fred is a nice boy, but I know he’s a cad. You haven’t shattered any of my illusions about him, but about you. I opened my heart to you, but you didn’t want to listen. You gave me some beautiful lines about chaperones. You didn’t want … All you wanted was to reprimand and warn me. A policeman through and through. When will you stop being a policeman? When you’re dead? Goodnight, policeman, sir. Please don’t see me home. I think I prefer the company of drowned and hanging bodies to yours.”
BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 5TH, 1919
A QUARTER TO NINE IN THE MORNING
Mock woke up in detention cell number three. Morning light edged through the small, barred window. Sounds of the usual bustle reached him from the Police Praesidium courtyard. A horse snorted, glass smashed against the cobblestones, one man swore a thousand curses at another. Mock pulled himself upright on his bunk and rubbed his eyes. He was thirsty. To his joy he spied a jug standing on the stool next to the bunk. A strong smell of mint wafted from it. The door opened and Achim Buhrack stood there. In his hand he wielded a towel and a razor.
“You’re priceless, Buhrack,” Mock said. “You remember everything. To wake me up on time, the razor, even the mint …”
“You don’t need it today, I see.” Buhrack’s eyes expressed surprise. “Today, you’re not …”
“I’m not going to need it,” Mock took the jug from Buhrack, “not today nor ever again. I’m going to stop drinking and I’m not going to have any more hangovers.” From another jug he poured some water into a basin, then took the towel and razor from the guard. “You don’t believe me, do you, Buhrack? You’ve heard a lot of promises like that, haven’t you?”
“Oh, many times over …” the guard muttered, and he left before Mock could thank him.
The Criminal Assistant took off his shirt, washed his armpits, sat on the bunk and reached into his pocket for a packet of talcum powder. He plunged his hand in it and rubbed the talc under his arms, then generously sprinkled some into his shoes. He spent the next ten minutes scraping the stubble from his face, which was no easy task seeing as the blade was blunt. Nor did it help that he had to use ordinary soap, which dried instantly and tightened his skin. Reluctantly he slipped on his shirt from the day before. “Father must be worried,” he thought. He imagined his father hopping on one leg with a sock hanging off the other foot. “Always knocking it back,” he heard his voice nag. All of a sudden Mock longed for a bottle and the mute, empty night that followed a drinking binge. He pulled on his shoes and left the cell. He shook Buhrack’s hand warmly and made his way down the gloomy corridor through the morning hubbub coming from the cells: the groaning and the clanging of mess tins, the yawning and the passing of wind. He was glad to leave the detention wing and slowly climbed the stairs, wondering how the gunge which filled his lungs and head would react to the first cigarette of the day.
BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 5TH, 1919
NINE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING
Everyone had arrived at Mühlhaus’ office punctually. Mühlhaus’ secretary, von Gallasen,
stood a pot of hot tea and nine glasses in high metal holders on the table. The September sun burned the necks of the detectives sitting with their backs to the window and illuminated the streams of tobacco smoke. Mock stood in the doorway with an unlit cigarette in his mouth, scrutinizing those present. He felt a sharp pain in his chest. Smolorz was missing.
“What are you doing here, Mock?” Mühlhaus freed his mouth of excess smoke. “You’re supposed to be working for the Vice Department. Yesterday morning I terminated your transfer to the Murder Commission. Could it be that you’ve forgotten? Have you reported to Councillor Ilssheimer today?”
“Commissioner, sir,” Mock said, sitting down uninvited between Reinert and Kleinfeld. “In this world of ours, people have killed in the name of God and the emperor. People commit murder with a sovereign’s name on their lips. Over the past few days people have been murdered in this city in my name. The name Eberhard Mock has become this swine’s trademark. He has murdered six people and perhaps made an orphan of a little child who wept in my arms last night. Forgive me, please, but today I don’t want to book pimps or check the medical records of whores. I’m going to sit here with you and think about how to get rid of that bastard who is murdering in my name.”
There was silence. Mock and Mühlhaus measured each other. The others stared over their steaming glasses of tea at the chief of the Murder Commission. Mühlhaus put his pipe aside, scattering shreds of blonde Virginia tobacco over his files.
“The person to decide who sits here,” he said quietly, “is myself and myself alone. It is no secret that I consider you to be an excellent policeman. That I want to see you in my commission. But after the Four Sailors case. Only then.”
Mühlhaus poked a cleaning skewer into his pipe and twisted it forcefully into the stem.
“Take a rest, go away somewhere.” Unlike the expression in his eyes, the Commissioner’s tone was exceptionally gentle. “Just for a while. Until this investigation is concluded. I don’t want any more dead bodies, so you can’t question anybody else … How do we know that the swine isn’t going to think up something else? … Or start killing everyone you talk to? … When I’ve locked him up, I’ll gladly welcome you amongst my men. I’ve spoken to Councillor Ilssheimer. He has willingly agreed to your transfer. But now you’ve got to go away. Don’t think you won’t be helping us in the investigation. Doctor Kaznicz is going to talk to you again, and you might remember some clue as to the identity of the murderer.”
Phantoms of Breslau Page 13
