The End of the World in Breslau (21 page)

† As a reminder of my military service.

Until now he had not seen many murdered prostitutes, but all had possessed names, thanks to which he could neatly place their files into the relevant compartment of his register, which Doctor Lasarius described as “containing unnatural – that is, not venereal – causes of death for the priestesses of Venus”.

“This murdered girl was unworthy even of the company of those like her; even after death she has landed outside the pale of her dirty caste simply because I was not interested in her name,” Mock thought. “And it’s only because I’m chasing after another whore whose name is – yes indeed – the same as my own. That is the only reason I have robbed that butchered girl of the most basic right, of finding herself in the same file as all this city’s filth.”

In his mouth Mock tasted the bitterness of his conscience, and turned back. He did not go to the station from where the Berlin train was due to leave half an hour later; Rainer Knüfer could look for deceitful Sophie in the city of Marlene Dietrich by himself. Not far from the stall where the Silesian goose-vendor’s bayonet had flashed in the bright winter sun, he threw away his ticket to the city on the Spree, and remained in the city on the Oder. He turned into Messerstrasse, tossed his half-empty bottle of schnapps to a beggar sitting outside the Three Roses tenement, and dragged himself towards the Police Praesidium – this gloomy, silent Criminal Counsellor cherished order in his files above all.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME DECEMBER 9TH, 1927 TEN O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

All the officers from the Murder Commission were present in Mühlhaus’ office; all, that is, except Smolorz. The group was complemented by Reinert and Kleinfeld, Mühlhaus’ detectives for special assignments. Coffee and milk steamed in cups. Shafts of tobacco smoke swirled lazily in the sun.

“Any ideas?” Mühlhaus asked.

Everyone remained silent. Their heads were buzzing with Mock’s disquisition. Means, place and time – only these are important. The victim is immaterial, incidental. That was Mock’s theory, a theory with which no-one but he agreed. Tired from trying for half an hour to convince them – in vain; tired from thinking about Sophie, from remembering the bloody wound inflicted on the nameless whore; tired from the several generous swigs of dogberry schnapps, he looked at Reinert, Kleinfeld, Ehlers and Meinerer and read resignation and boredom in their eyes. This they shared with the stenographer, an old Jew by the name of Herman Lewin who, with hands folded on top of his belly, sat twiddling his thumbs at the speed of lightning. Mock poured himself another cup of hot milk and reached for the tray of chocolates that stood on a lace napkin. Mühlhaus’ red, swollen eyelids were closed. Only the bands of smoke rising to the ceiling from his lidded pipe testified to the feverish workings of his brain.

“Do I have to call upon you one by one, gentlemen, to answer like schoolboys?” the chief opened his eyes and whispered ominously. “Counsellor Mock has presented you with his hypothesis. Do you all agree with it? Does nobody have any comments? Maybe you will be inspired when I repeat what the Mayor and the President of Police both said when they lost patience with us on hearing of Councillor Geissen’s death. Reinert, what do you think about all this?”

“Don’t be afraid, Reinert,” said Mock, grimacing as he swallowed the thick, milky-chocolate suspension. “If you’ve got a different theory, go ahead and tell us. I’m not going to rant and rage.”

“Yes, I do have a different theory,” Reinert said emphatically. “So what if all the victims had different professions and were glaringly different in their education, interests and political views? There is something that brings people together irrespective of all that, and that is addictions: destructive
ones such as, for example, gambling, sexual deviation, alcohol, drugs, and milder ones, such as all sorts of hobbies. That is the path we must follow. Investigate the victims’ past and ascertain what they had in common.”

Reinert fell silent. Mock did not reveal the slightest inclination to disagree with him. He drank yet another cup of milk and watched the swift movements of the fountain pen with which the stenographer Lewin recorded Reinert’s theory.

“Now I call upon you to give your hypothesis.” Spittle gurgled in Mühlhaus’ pipe as he fixed his eyes on Kleinfeld. “When everyone has presented his own point of view, I’ll decide which path to follow.”

“Gentlemen, let us take a moment to look at the dates of the murders and the crime scenes.” Kleinfeld polished his pince-nez. “But not from Counsellor Mock’s angle. The first corpse, walled in at the shoemaker’s workshop, was the hardest to find. It was a real coincidence that the shoemaker was told about stinking eggs being bricked up in walls and that he smashed the wall down with a pick-axe. He might have waved it off and carried on working in the stench, or found another workshop. And the next craftsman to rent that hole might have done the same. The complaint brought to the owner of the tenement need not necessarily have led to the discovery of the corpse. The owner could have looked for something in the sewerage, and that would have been the end of the matter. In the end, some craftsman wouldn’t have cared about the stench and would have gone on working quite happily, grateful to have a workshop in such an excellent location. To put it briefly, Gelfrert’s body could have remained undiscovered. And what do you have to say, gentlemen, about Honnefelder and Geissen …?”

“That’s it!” Reinert jumped, spilling a little coffee on his saucer. “Honnefelder was killed in his apartment. So he was certain to be found, but this might only have occurred once the stench of the corpse had become unbearable to his neighbours …”

“And Geissen?” Kleinfeld drummed his claw-like fingernails on the desk.

“Finding Geissen was an absolute certainty,” Mock joined in the discussion. “And half an hour after the crime was committed at that – when the doorman knocked to remind the client his time was up …”

“So what we are seeing is something like a gradation,” Kleinfeld acknowledged Mock’s participation with noticeable satisfaction. “The first murder could have been discovered a very long time after it was committed or not at all, the second would certainly have been discovered, but only after a long time, the third would have been discovered after half an hour. How can we explain this gradual shortening of the time lapse?”

“Do you have any suggestions?” Mühlhaus tapped his pipe on a crystal ashtray to empty it.

“I do,” Kleinfeld said tentatively. “The murderer was afraid we would-n’t find the first victim – that’s why he killed the second …”

“It’s obvious,” Mock cut him short. “He wants to draw our attention to the dates. If we hadn’t found the victims, we wouldn’t understand the murderer’s message carried by the calendar pages.”

“I think the murderer wants to get close to us,” continued Kleinfeld, undeterred by Mock’s ironic smile. “I once read an account in the Criminology Archive about serial murderers in America. Some of them subconsciously want to be caught and punished for their crimes. This applies particularly to criminals who had a very strict upbringing, and who have a strong sense of guilt, punishment and sin. It looks like the man we’re after wants us to pick up his trail. But to be sure of this, we have to understand his mentality.”

“But how can we understand the mentality of someone we don’t know at all?” Meinerer, to Mock’s scarcely concealed annoyance, was showing an interest in the case for the first time.

“We’ll have to ask a psychiatrist who’s had dealings with criminals to
give us a hypothesis, to attempt an expert opinion,” said Kleinfeld slowly. “Let him write something like a report: what could the time lapses signify? Why does he murder so elaborately? And what could those calendar pages mean? There’s never been a serial killer in Breslau before. Let’s assemble copies of files on serial killers throughout Germany, for example Grossmann, Haarmann the butcher of Hanover, and others. Let our expert read them. Maybe he’ll find similarities. That’s all that occurs to me at this stage, Criminal Director.”

“A fair amount, indeed” Mühlhaus remarked with a smile. “And what do the Counsellor’s closest colleagues say?”

Ehlers’ silent expression clearly proclaimed: “Nothing that Mock wouldn’t say.” Meinerer, on the other hand, said:

“I think we ought to check the dates bearing in mind the significance of numbers. Perhaps they have a symbolic meaning. A specialist in the Kabbala ought to be brought in on the case.”

A drop of ink fell onto Lewin’s shorthand notes. The old stenographer sighed, then spreading his arms and raising them to heaven, shouted:

“I cannot bear to hear such nonsense! He” – pointing to Meinerer – “wants to take on a Kabbala specialist! Do you have any idea what the Kabbala is?”

“Did anybody ask you for your opinion, Lewin?” Meinerer asked coldly. “Concentrate on your duties.”

“I’ll tell you something,” the stenographer laughed loudly – his forthright language made him a favourite with Mühlhaus – “I’ll throw in another idea. Draw some lines on the map to join up the crime scenes. A mysterious sign is sure to appear. Perhaps the symbol of a sect … Shall we give it a go …?” He went to the map of Breslau on the wall.

“Yes, let’s,” Mock said seriously. “Ring 2 – the Griffins tenement, Burgfeld 4 and Taschenstrasse 23–24. Well, what are you waiting for, Lewin … Stick some pins in.”

“Could it be possible that you got bottom marks in geometry at school, Counsellor?” Lewin responded in astonishment. “One way or another, it’s going to form a triangle. Three points – three vertices.”

Ignoring the stenographer’s gabbling, Mock stood up, walked over to the map and stuck pins into the three crime scenes. They formed an obtuse triangle. Mock stared at the coloured pinheads for a moment, then took his coat and hat from the hat-stand and made towards the door.

“Where are you off to, Mock?” Mühlhaus growled. “The briefing’s not over.”

“My dear gentlemen, these buildings are all located within the perimeter of the Old Town moat,” he said quietly, gazing at the map. A second later he was gone.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME DECEMBER 9TH, 1927 NOON

“Counsellor, so what if these buildings are located within the perimeter of the Old Town moat?” Leo Hartner, Director of the University Library, smiled faintly.

Mock rose from the newly upholstered, eighteenth-century green-plush armchair and began to pace Hartner’s office feverishly. The thick purple carpet muffled his steps as he went to the window and gazed at the bare tree tops on Holteihöhe.

“Director, sir, I spent practically a whole day at the Construction Archives recently.” Mock turned away from the window and leaned against the sill. “Then in the Evidence Archives looking for any trace of a crime which might have taken place in these buildings because, as I’ve told you …”

“I know, you’ve told me, ‘what matters are the means, place and time,’” interrupted Hartner somewhat impatiently. “Not the victim …”

“Exactly …” Mock relieved the sill of his weight. “And I found nothing … Do you know why? Because the archives I visited only hold files from the nineteenth century, with very few earlier ones. The archivists informed me that most of the older files were inundated during the flood of 1854. The Municipal Archives, on the other hand, house files from an earlier date: criminal, construction, and all the others. So that something that is imperative to our case may have taken place in these buildings earlier, but for various reasons all trace of it has disappeared, or can only be found by a specialist reader of old documents.”

“I still don’t understand why you attach so much importance to the fact that these crimes were committed within the perimeter of the Old Town moat.”

“My dear Director,” Mock said, approaching the map of Breslau on the wall and studying the date at the bottom of it, “this beautiful map was produced in 1831, so it probably represents the town within boundaries that were established at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Am I mistaken?”

“No,” said Hartner. He reached towards a shelf by his desk and took down a book, then opened it slowly and leafed through it carefully. Within a few minutes he had found the information he was looking for. “You’re not mistaken. In 1808 the villages of Kletschenkau, Tschepin and Elbing, as well as the land alongside the Ohlau and what is known today as Ofenerstrasse, were added to our metropolis on the Oder. This map represents the city after these villages were annexed to it.”

“When earlier, before 1808, had the town’s territory been expanded?” Mock asked in the sharp tone of an interrogator.

Hartner paid no attention to the Counsellor’s tone of voice and focussed his entire attention on the book. A moment later he had the answer.

“In 1327. The territory of the so-called New Town was added at that
time.” Hartner approached Mock, took him by the arm, led him to the window and pointed to the high-rise Cheque Post Office building. “Meaning the area beyond Ohlau Ufer and Alexanderstrasse.”

“And earlier still?” Mock stared at the eleven-storeyed skeleton of the Post Office building jutting out from behind the trees on Holteihöhe.

Hartner screwed up his nose, detecting alcohol on his guest, and went back to the map. Pointing at it with one hand, he held the book in the other. His glasses slipped to the tip of his nose and his short, greying hair bristled at the nape of his neck.