The End of the World in Breslau (39 page)

“Don’t you want to know what they did to that swine, Counsellor?”

“They? They were but tools in my hands.”

Mock was dazzled by the lights of a car coming from the opposite direction, and stiffened in the sudden glare. Then he took off his coat and threw it on the frozen prism next to the curb. He knelt in the snow, tipped back his hat and began to rub crystals of ice into his cheeks.

“I’ve gone mad, but I’m going to do it!” he shouted out loud. Nobody heard his shrill declaration. The contented people of Breslau were sitting at copiously laid tables, enjoying the holy peace of Christmas.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME DECEMBER 24TH, 1927 A QUARTER PAST SIX IN THE EVENING

A stocky, red-haired man without a hat got out of the Adler. He ran over to the dark-haired man kneeling in the snow, grabbed him under the arms and pulled him to his feet. The dark-haired man put on his hat and a pair of gloves, and climbed into passenger seat of the car.

“We’re going back to where we’ve just come from.”

The Adler moved off, turned left into Webskystrasse and left again into Brockauerstrasse. It stopped at the corner of Briegerstrasse, by Linke’s bar. The man in the pale coat with the bloodstain eating into its collar got out of the car. He once again found the gap in the fence that surrounded the derelict building and entered the grounds of the property. Lighting his way with his torch, he went through the gate and down to the cellar. Moments later he was standing beside the crib, the Christmas tree, and the stool with the syringes and the pharmaceutical jar of colourless liquid, once known as the most miraculous medicine in God’s pharmacy. The man drew some liquid from the jar into the two syringes. He looked around and his eyes fell on an old medicine chest standing in the corner next to von Orloff’s coat. He opened the small chest and paused as several
black spiders scurried out of it. He then stowed the syringes and the jar inside. His footsteps echoed in the cellar, then out into the yard and onto the pavement. The car sank on its suspension as the man with the medicine chest jumped inside.

“Now for the prisoners,” he said to the driver, “and then we’ll all go to Antonienstrasse 27. Is that clear?”

The Adler pulled away.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME DECEMBER 24TH, 1927 HALF PAST SEVEN IN THE EVENING

Meinerer stood on the empty, dark staircase, staring at the door of the last dwelling in the garret. From below came the sound of families having their Christmas Eve dinner; the clatter of cutlery, the hiss of gas escaping from beer bottles, the drawn-out syllables of carols. The only door from which no such sound issued was the one Meinerer stood outside. There, silence had descended not long before. There, his beloved had stopped playing the piano. The voice of the man who was her lover had also fallen silent. Meinerer approached the door and put his ear to it. He could hear whispers and muffled laughter. Leaning his back against the doorframe, he slid down and sat on the floor. He listened, clutching his head in his hands. Whispers reached him from behind the door, whispers reached him from below, grew clearer, became strangely familiar, filled his skull, hissed in his temples, drilled into his jaw. The whispers became voices, playful voices, lustful, raised, tender; his daughters’ voices full of reproach as he left them during dinner on this Christmas Eve; the sweet voices of his lovers, who always abandoned him on winter evenings; Mock’s bellowing, which humiliated him. All these merged and then Meinerer heard only a swish as he lost consciousness.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME DECEMBER 24TH, 1927 HALF PAST SEVEN IN THE EVENING

The air in the Adler was stuffy. The three people sitting in the back seat gave off a strong odour that was familiar to both Mock and Smolorz. This was the sweat of fear, of people being interrogated. Similar to the stench that emanates from the accused in a courtroom. This was the odour of people being led to their death. Mock stopped the car outside the tenement at Antonienstrasse 27. He opened the small chest and passed it to Smolorz.

“Take the syringes, Smolorz, and get Hockermann’s fingerprints on them,” he said as he got out of the car.

Smolorz reached into the chest and felt round, smooth shapes and round, rough ones. He presumed the first to be the syringes, the second torches. He turned around to look at the gagged and bound prisoners. The Baron was shaking and his eyes bulged; Sophie, wrapped in a blanket they had found in Wirth’s warehouse, sat quietly with lowered eyes; Hockermann tensed his muscles and the lines on his face contracted and relaxed. Smolorz grabbed him by the shoulder and forced him round to face Sophie. Hockermann’s sweating forehead landed on her chest. Smolorz pressed his gloves firmly over his fingers, then reached for the syringes with his left hand, and, with his right, for the prisoner’s hands tied behind his back. After a few unsuccessful attempts he squeezed the man’s blue, swollen fingers around the syringes. As he was doing so he saw Hockermann’s gag grow damp, then wet.

“Oh shit!” Smolorz groaned. “He’s spewed up, the son of a bitch. Now he’ll probably go and choke …”

Smolorz threw the syringes into the box and tore the gag from Hockermann’s mouth. He was wrong. Epileptic froth bloomed from the prisoner’s mouth. Hockermann doubled over, rested his head on Sophie’s knees, stiffened and began to shake. The inside of the windows covered
over with condensation. Mock, seeing the car rock on its suspension, opened the door on Hockermann’s side and dragged him out into the snow.

“Shut the door,” he shouted to Smolorz, not wanting to see Sophie’s eyes fixed on him.

Smolorz did as he was told and raced up to Mock, who was trying to shove his own wallet into the prisoner’s mouth to prevent him biting his tongue. All of a sudden Hockermann opened his eyes and began to laugh.

“The last murder before the coming of the prophet is being committed right now,” he said quietly to Mock. “There, there! He’s coming!” he yelled, and he suddenly lurched with all his strength towards the tenement.

“Oh shit,” sighed Smolorz, and shoved the gag back into Hocker-mann’s mouth. He grabbed him under the arms, opened the car door and, just about managing to keep his own balance, pushed the body inside.

Over the light, powdery snow came a sound that was familiar to them all. The clock on the Town Hall chimed twice. Mock froze.

“Half past seven!” he shouted to Smolorz. “That’s when the merchant killed them! Let’s go! We’ll check all the apartments! Starting at the top.” The policemen burst into the building and switched on the light in the entrance hall. Their heavy, snow-covered boots clattered on the wooden stairs. Various sounds reached them from behind the doors as they passed, some joyful, some less so. Sounds of life. Mock put his ear to each door and breathed a sigh of relief. When they got to the top floor, they paused.

“There’s only the attic up there,” Smolorz said, pointing.

Mock started to climb. Light refracted on the landings and half-landings, with only feeble remnants reaching the garret. Mock moved cautiously, feeling for each stair with the tip of his shoe. When he got to the top, he was in complete darkness. He lifted one foot and waggled it in
the air, feeling for the next stair. Suddenly, he heard a muffled groan. He took a gun from one coat pocket, and from the other a cigarette lighter. He looked down and saw that his foot was resting on somebody’s stomach. Bending over, he made out Meinerer’s pale face in the flickering light of the gas flame. He stepped over him and approached the door. No sound came from within.

“They’re in there,” he heard Meinerer say. “She and her lover.”

Mock grabbed hold of the handle. The door was locked. He stepped back and leaned against the rickety banister, pushed himself off and charged at the door. A loud crash resonated through the entire tenement. Mock felt plaster and pieces of rubble fall down the back of his cracked corset. He nodded to Smolorz, who then resumed the onslaught with his shoulder. Rubble poured onto the floorboards. Somewhere below somebody stepped out onto the landing. Smolorz charged again and fell inside the apartment, together with the door and some lumps of brick. Mock slipped his hand through the doorway and ran it up and down the wall near the doorframe. He felt the light switch. He pressed the small switch down and jumped aside as the electricity blazed. Nothing happened. Smolorz remained on the floor, motionless; Mock stood out in the corridor next to Meinerer, who was still prostrate. Both peered into the dwelling. There was one large room whose focal point was a piano. On the piano stood two bottles of wine and some half-empty plates of food. Around the walls and next to the divan stood wooden stands. Mock felt his corset tighten. The stands had a name he could not remember. One corner of the room was divided from the rest by two screens. Mock had seen screens like that somewhere else recently … His memory was clearly playing up on him. Smolorz clambered to his feet, crouched and charged into the room. Nothing happened; nobody fired. Mock stepped tentatively into the dwelling and edged towards the screens. He grabbed one of them and clapped it together like an accordion. Behind the screen was a semicircular
sink. Under it lay two naked bodies. Those of a man and a woman. Blood trickled from small, round puncture wounds. The heads were obscured in the shadow cast by the sink. Mock did not approach the bodies, but sat on the divan and closed his eyes. He had just remembered what those frames were called. He pressed his red, swollen eyelids to stop the flow of hot tears. There was a stinging, bitter taste in his throat. He could not catch his breath. He now knew perfectly well that those frames were called “easels”, and that they usually stood in an artist’s studio.

BRESLAU, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 27TH, 1927 NINE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

Magnesium flashed on the first floor of the Police Praesidium building on Schuhbrücke, and columns of smoke drifted towards the ceiling. Journalists thronged and hollered in the briefing room. Heinrich Mühlhaus sat behind the wide table, calmly puffing away at his pipe. Ernst von Stetten, Mock’s secretary, pointed at the journalists in turn to give each of them the voice.

“Is it true that the lovers were poisoned with a drug?”

“It is.”

“What was Counsellor Mock doing there at the time?”

“The murdered man is … was his nephew. Counsellor Mock went to visit him to wish him a happy Christmas.”

“That’s strange … an uncle visiting his nephew … Shouldn’t it be the other way round?”

“I have no idea.
Savoir vivre
isn’t my speciality.”

“What was the motive?”

“The perpetrator killed out of jealousy. He was a spurned lover.”

“The murdered woman had left him for Counsellor Mock’s nephew?”

“Yes.”

“A thirty-year-old woman has a nineteen-year-old lover?”

“
Had
, my good man. And may I congratulate you on your good memory. I mentioned the victims’ ages five minutes ago. You’re a bright lad.”

“How did Mock arrest the perpetrator?”

“He found him mourning over the woman’s corpse.”

“How did the perpetrator, a policeman, come to know Inge, a princess of the demi-monde?”

“Police work often involves contact with the demi-monde.”

“How is the perpetrator linked to the ‘calendar murderer’?”

“The perpetrator impersonated the ‘calendar murderer’.”

“Who is the ‘calendar murderer’?”

“Erich Hockermann. This morning he confessed to having committed five murders in Breslau and one in Wiesbaden.”

“Why did he commit them? What was his motive?”

“He was a fanatical follower of von Orloff and a well-known occultist. He claimed to be the hand of God, God’s scourge … Someone who is preparing the world for Christ’s Second Coming … With his knowledge of history he had no Difficulty finding accounts of old crimes in files, and then replicating them …”

Mühlhaus stood and left the room while von Stetten politely thanked the journalists for attending.

NEW YORK, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 21ST, 1960 FIVE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

Anwaldt got to his feet and went to the map on the wall. He ran his finger over it and found himself for a moment in the snow-covered town, a town of slender church steeples, a town wrapped in factory smoke, a town now called by a different name, which lies in a different country.

“You didn’t tell me, Eberhard,” Anwaldt said, turning away from the map and sitting in the armchair once more, “what you did with your wife …”

From the window came the barking of a dog and the splash of paws in a puddle.

“I set her free,” Mock said. “I let her carry on sinning with the Baron. Not long after that, I divorced her.
Per procura
. She didn’t take any money from me and went away somewhere.”

The gurgling of the drip cut the night’s silence. Mock stared at Anwaldt in silence.

“It’s an unusual and tragic story.” Anwaldt rubbed his sleepy eyes. “But why does your confession depend on it? Oh, I think I understand … You’ve never confessed the sin to anyone … And you wanted to tell me about it first … I see …”

“You don’t see anything at all,” Mock wheezed. “Firstly, I’ve already confessed this sin, and secondly, I’m brave enough to make my confession on my deathbed without having to rehearse in front of you.”