The Strangler's Waltz

by Richard Lord

  He thought of the extravagant plans he had once nurtured for reshaping this city, of adding new layers of architectural grandeur to the imperial capital. He felt a slight lump in his throat and his eyes started to moisten briefly.

  But then he remembered how this city had rejected him, rejected him over and over again, and he knew that his future lay elsewhere. Vienna would always remain a part of him, but even now, while still within the city’s confines, he felt it was a part that had grown worn and useless.

  Most of Vienna took no notice whatsoever of the departure of this lean young man who twenty-five years later would come back and alter the history, tenor and terrain of the city in ways no one could imagine in May 1913. For now, he was another barely noticeable dot in a sea of dots, and until he had assisted in catching its most notorious criminal of the pre-war era, Hitler had made little impression on most of the capital’s residents.

  Besides, most of the public’s attention that had been seized by the Spittelberg Strangler was now riveted on the scandal around Colonel Alfred Redl, former head of the imperial military intelligence. The very next day after Hitler’s departure, Redl committed suicide in an elegant hotel room.

  It had been discovered by the same military intelligence operation that Redl himself had set up and developed that the colonel had, in fact, been operating for years as a spy for the Russians, providing the empire’s arch-adversaries with vital military information.

  Confronted with the evidence against him, Redl was offered the chance to avoid a nasty trial – with its torturous, drawn-out humiliation – simply by self-administering justice. He did so with a single bullet to the head. But now all of Vienna was asking how he could have deceived everyone for so long and just how damaging was the intelligence he had provided to the Russians for handsome payments. So one undernourished draft-dodger slipping over the border into Bavaria was of no concern to the Viennese public.

  But as to the Redl affair, District Commander Schollenberg had offered the services of Stebbel and Dörfner to the current directors of military intelligence, to help in their investigations of anyone else who might be involved. Though the head of intelligence expressed his gratitude to Commander Schollenberg, he had to turn the offer down; they wanted to keep things in-house so as to control any further bad news that might seep out. Schollenberg understood completely.

  Chapter 43

  Strangely, no one came forward to claim the lion’s share of that reward money. Between the rewards offered by several newspapers and the one offered by the police and government, it would have added up to a tidy sum. All the principles at the police department were baffled that there was no attempt to collect the reward, except for a few all too obvious frauds hoping to snare a windfall from somebody else’s anonymous tip.

  The one most intrigued by this failure to collect the promised reward was Stebbel. At first, he – like everyone else concerned – was merely baffled. It was such easy money; why not drop in quietly, give the evidence of identity required, and walk out with the money.

  But then he began to craft a theory as to why the informant had not presented himself: The tipster probably knew the killer too well. He may have been afraid that friends of Brunner would come after him. Or, he himself was an accomplice. By turning up to collect the reward, he could very well be incriminating himself.

  * * *

  The next two weeks ran rather smoothly for the two new stars of the Vienna constabulary. They received praise from many quarters, along with those special privileges. Within the department, they had become something like envied celebrities. But Stebbel remained uneasy with the new life.

  One evening, shortly after the takedown of Arnold Brunner, he sat down at his desk at home intending to write a long letter to his wife. He had sent her a short missive right after Brunner was killed, but now he wanted to share more details about the case, how long and hard they had worked trying to solve it, and how much tension and sleeplessness it had cost him.

  He would also squeeze in the perfunctory declaration of how much he missed her and a promise to come to Slovenia soon for another visit, an extended one, as soon as he could manage to get away.

  But after writing just a few lines, he pushed the letter to the side and pulled out his journal. He opened it to the first empty page and stared at the white emptiness for about half a minute. Then he picked up his pen and again began to write.

  He just couldn’t pull himself away from the Strangler case. With the killing of the killer, the case was officially solved. The praise, the certificates of merit, the bonuses … even the Geheimrat’s shipment of Bordeaux wine affirmed that the long nightmare was over. But for Stebbel himself, there were still several nagging, unanswered questions sticking out like thorns. And he kept pricking himself on those thorns – intentionally.

  What was Frau von Klettenburg doing out all alone that night, and in that quarter frequented mainly by streetwalkers? And why was she dressed so provocatively, her makeup so ostentatious? Also, whose semen filled her vagina when she was murdered? They knew that her husband was hundreds of miles away in Bordeaux, so with whom had she been intimate just before her death?

  Was it Brunner? Did they have sex – full sex, no caution – shortly before he murdered her? And was there something about their sex that threw a switch deep inside Brunner, that set him off to kill first Frau von Kletterburg and then four other innocent women? He wouldn’t have sex with those other woman – couldn’t perhaps – but was the act of thrusting his hands around a woman’s neck, then strangling her, his substitute for intimacy.

  Was there something shocking, disgusting, or humiliating about his sex with that wealthy woman who ranked far above him on the social scale that plunged Brunner into one of the darker caverns of his own mind? Did he perhaps find himself caught in a labyrinth of his own depravity that he simply could not find a way out of, even if he had tried.

  Stebbel snapped the journal shut. Maybe Dörfner was right: maybe he had been reading too much Freud, sinking himself too deeply into his exotic theories. Perhaps he was becoming slightly mad himself, twisted around by those theories and how tightly they fit over the twisted world of the modern criminal.

  He went to the window and gazed out onto the Währing heath and beyond. His Vienna, decked in full evening splendor, was indeed a beautiful place – so beautiful it was sometimes hard to imagine it also as a home to such horrors. But the horrors were as much a part of his Vienna as the staunch splendor, the august architecture, the rich cultural life, the patchwork of districts and social classes.

  In fact, if it weren’t for the horrors, would he have been so successful in his career? Maybe he would have ended up a mediocre Gymnasium teacher, here or back home in Innsbruck. More likely, he would have wound up behind a desk in some useless ministry, a dyspeptic civil servant processing papers no one had any real interest in. So, he admitted, in a perverse way he owed a measure of gratitude to those horrors. Without them, he would be fully useless to himself and others.

  Stepping back into the dining area to retrieve his glass of brandy, he was seized by the feeling that his home had acquired a few more ghosts. Or at least one more. For the last week or so, his apartment – the spacious apartment for which others envied him – had become a rather uncomfortable place for the inspector as he felt himself being squeezed even more by these ghosts.

  Fortunately, Stebbel had now grown honest enough to know that he had to speak to someone about these problems.

  Chapter 44

  At 2.40, Sigmund Freud was already settled on the bench at the edge of the Liechtenstein Park, enjoying a cigar. Several minutes later, Inspector Stebbel arrived.

  “Excuse me,” Freud said with a generous smile, “but aren’t you the famous police inspector, Julian Stebbel? Scourge of criminals from one end of Vienna to the other? Won’t you join me.” Stebbel returned the smile and took his seat right next to the good doctor.

  Freud pulled out a cigar and extended it to Stebbel. “It
would be an honor for me if you’d join me in a congratulatory smoke. For your fine work in catching that ruthless murderer.”

  “Thank you, but … I’ve been having some problems with my breathing lately. That respiratory condition I mentioned once? So I’m afraid I’ll have to turn your kind offer down.”

  “That’s a shame. A hero deserves a good cigar.” To make his point clear, Freud took a deep draw on his own cigar and blew out a soft banner of smoke. “So, it must feel quite good having caught this … Bruning fellow?”

  “Brunner. Yes, it does feel … fairly good. Everyone tells me how good I should be feeling about finally bringing him down.” Freud nodded. “So why do I not feel as good as I’m supposed to feel?” He then looked at Freud in a way that told the doctor this was not a rhetorical question.

  Freud took two shallow puffs from his cigar before answering. “Well, you’ve suddenly become a hero of sorts.” Stebbel merely shrugged. “Maybe it’s still too strange a role for you. After all, being a hero carries certain obligations with it. People expect a certain … way about you. It takes some adjustment, I know. Perhaps you’re still not comfortable with everything.”

  “Yes … I guess that’s a big part of it.”

  “Let me offer some advice: don’t worry about how that hero’s mantel fits you. Just think of all the young women’s lives you may have saved by ending this Brunner’s reign of terror. Think of all the relief you’ve brought to so many of this city’s residents.

  “Honestly, a number of my female patients tell me how much safer they feel now that the strangler has been removed from our streets. I’ve even been able to halve the dosage for some tranquilizers because the patients are so much more relaxed now.

  He tapped Stebbel lightly on the shoulder. “You’ve accomplished so much by stopping this killer. Focus on that, Inspector. That should make you feel much better.”

  “Yes, I … I think that might help.”

  “And if you need something more, I can always write you a prescription for something that will relax you. In your case, I don’t know that I would recommend it, but if you think it would also help …”

  “Thank you, Herr Doktor. But …”

  “Yes?”

  “I think … a big part of my problem is that we did kill the killer. Before I ever got a chance to interrogate him. There are so many unanswered questions now. I wanted him to tell us the why. So many whys, actually. Now the mystery sits there forever.” He shook his head, the sting of frustration etched deeply into his face. “If only I could have had him alone in that interrogation room for an hour, two hours maybe.”

  Freud shook his head sympathetically and patted Stebbel on the shoulder again. “My friend – and I am proud to think of you as a friend – I must tell you that these things are not that easy. People like this strangler may not know themselves the true motivations for what they do.

  “I often have patients trying – trying desperately – to reach the caverns of their own minds, find the roots of their own fears, and it takes us many months, sometimes years, before they make that breakthrough and get to those roots.

  “And, unfortunately, I think that would have been the case with this killer of yours. It’s particularly true of people who do something awful: they lock their secrets so deep within their own hearts, they themselves have trouble digging them out again.”

  As Stebbel chewed on this, Freud pulled out his watch and threw a glance at it. “Sorry, but I do have to be leaving soon. I have this new patient, a challenging case, and I have to do a little extra preparation this time.”

  “Well thank you, Herr Doktor, for tending to this troubled soul.”

  Freud shook his head to demur. He then stood. But before leaving, he again pulled out that cigar. This time he squeezed it into the outside upper pocket of Stebbel’s suit jacket. “For later. When you’re breathing more easily again. After all, a hero deserves a good cigar.”

  “I’m sure I’ll enjoy it when I feel more like a hero.”

  Freud gave him another sympathetic smile, turned and started walking back towards Berggasse. About ten paces away, he stopped. Stebbel thought he was going to come back and add some last bit of advice. But after that slight hesitation, he continued on towards his appointment without even turning around.

  Stebbel continued sitting on the bench for a time, his arms folded, wondering how much of Freud’s advice he would really be able to use.

  Chapter 45

  Dörfner had invited Stebbel to join him for an evening out. He was planning to first go out for a nice dinner, then head over to his favorite brothel. “They have a number of new girls there. The spring line, I guess you’d call it. Real lookers, too.

  “There’s this one beauty from Galicia: red hair, fair skin, amazing blue eyes. Big boobs too, of course. They seem to come standard with those Galician girls.

  “Anyway, I’m sure this beauty would love to share all her charms with the great Inspector Stebbel, the man who helped make this city safe for women everywhere.”

  Stebbel pretended to mull over this offer for a few minutes before declining. He told his partner that he had some business to attend to at home and, besides, he wasn’t really feeling that well. But, he said, he was looking to joining Dörfner on a future excursion to that house of joy.

  But after returning home, Stebbel decided that it was not at all a bad idea to go out that evening. It was the beginning of a long weekend after all, and he felt he needed to push himself to again engage with life. He had gone through a long series of negative events, in both his personal and his professional life, and he knew he had to move past them.

  He bathed and then headed to a favorite café, where he took a table on the outdoor terrace. He ordered a double brandy and a slice of apple strudel. Both tasted delicious, a sign that his emotional doldrums were coming to an end.

  As he sipped at his brandy, he thought of all the things that had been troubling him in the weeks since he had become a “hero”. Why did his triumph seem to have a lingering echo of failure about it? Was he just one of those people Freud and his group wrote about who can never really be happy, never truly satisfied? Had he somehow lost the capacity for full joy? Could he ever recover it, or was it lost forever?

  He decided that he would have to jump back into life headfirst – into the life of the casual police inspector who took everything more easily. After all, he doubted that Rautz, Dörfner or the other inspectors in his office felt too often the way he’d been feeling of late.

  And then he recalled the moments he had come closest to a full symphony of joy in the last few months. It was that hour he had spent with Carina, the Spittelberg streetwalker. He knew that it was just the easy delights of early infatuation, but it did bring him to something like emotional abandon, embracing (literally) a fantasy, and he realized that’s what he really needed again.

  He finished the brandy quickly and called for the bill. He knew that his next stop was going to be Spittelberg, where he would stroll around until he found this Carina – or whatever her real name was.

  He caught a taxi and had it drop him off a few streets from the red-light section. He felt it somehow inappropriate to be dropped off in the district itself; walking into the streetwalker’s area was somehow more fitting, he thought. Well, when in Rome…

  Within minutes of reaching the zone, he felt better. The district’s cobble-stoned streets, framed by the subdued elegance of Biedermeier-style buildings, had a wayward charm that helped lift his mood. And, of course, there were the streetwalkers themselves.

  A number of these women really were quite pretty, he now realized, and the late spring breezes lapping the picturesque lanes just made the whole atmosphere more pleasant. He politely turned down every offer of a good time as he strolled past and just enjoyed the feeling of being approached by so many available young women. But he was looking for one specific woman.

  He had been sure he would see Carina again. After all, this was Friday, which had to
be a working night for her.

  He had it all planned out: after their meeting, she would take him to her room. He would pay her for two hours. For the first half hour or so, they would talk and he would find out what she had been doing lately. He wondered if she would know that he was one of the officers responsible for ending the Stranger’s killing spree. Then, after their conversation, they would make love, talk some more, and then see what the time and mood would allow.

  But though he kept walking and looking intensely now, searching out every face, Carina was not to be seen. Perhaps she had another customer who had already bought a few hours of her time. As he considered this, he felt betrayed, then realized how foolish such a feeling was.

  He noticed that as he prowled some of the lanes a second or even a third time, he was getting funny looks from some of the working girls as he passed them again. He suddenly wondered if this is the way Brunner had operated, cruising aimlessly until he found just the right girl, one standing all alone with no witnesses around.

  At the end of one lane, he saw a figure in a lemony half-light. She then stepped forward a step or two, just enough that he could see her better. “Are you looking for someone in particular, mein Herr? Maybe I can help you find her?”

  Her voice was soft and mellow, the way Carina’s voice had been. It wasn’t Carina, and she wasn’t quite as pretty as Carina. But she had that look of barely tarnished innocence that he needed that evening. Not much makeup, and her hairdo was what you might expect from a university student. Also, she was dressed seductively, showing just enough to make the promise of seeing the rest hard to negate. Suddenly, Stebbel felt a surge of lust. He stepped very close to her and the lust surged more.

  His opening line was strange. “Where are you from?” he asked. Her room was just a few minutes away, she said. “No,” he said. “Where are you from originally?”