For a long while they did not say anything. Mock tried to choose his words carefully.
“If you saw what I saw, you’d think differently.” They were nearing the imposing Wenzel-Hancke Hospital building, where Doctor Ruhtgard worked in the Department of Contagious Diseases. “The dog was on the other side of the room, standing by the hatch in the floor wagging its tail.”
“You know what?” Ruhtgard stopped on the steps leading up to the hospital and looked intently at Mock’s ravaged countenance. Every wrinkle and every bit of puffiness caused by his sleepless nights was accentuated by the merciless September sun. “I’ll prove to you that I’m right. I’ll stay at your place tonight. I sleep very lightly, the slightest sound wakes me up. Today I’ll find out whether phantoms actually exist. See you this evening! I’ll come to your place after supper, before the ‘phantom’s hour’, meaning midnight!”
Ruhtgard opened the hospital’s huge double door and was about to reply to the old porter’s greeting when he heard Mock’s voice and saw his friend’s massive frame coming up the steps. The Criminal Assistant caught him by the sleeve, his face hard and his eyes fixed.
“You mentioned some dead blinded men a moment ago. Tell me, how do you know about the investigation I’m conducting?” Fear rang in Mock’s voice. “I must have blurted something out on Wednesday, when I was drunk. Is that it?”
“No. It’s not.” Ruhtgard squeezed Mock’s hand tightly. “You do far worse things when you’re drunk, things you push out of your conscious mind. I know about the murders from little Elfriede on Reuscherstrasse.”
“From who? What the bloody hell are you talking about?” Mock tried to tear his hand away from the iron grip.
“You know those buildings on Reuscherstrasse.” Ruhtgard would not let go of Mock’s hand. “The ones enclosing all those courtyards. If you were to go into one of the yards at midday, what would you hear, Ebbo?”
“I don’t know … children screaming and playing certainly, on their way home from school … noise from several factories and taverns …”
“What else? Think!”
“The crooning of organ grinders, that’s for sure.”
“Right.” Ruhtgard let go of his friend’s hand. “One of the organ grinders is called Bruno. He’s blind. Lost his eyes in the war, in an explosion. He plays and his daughter, Little Elfriede, sings. When Elfriede sings, tears flow from Bruno’s eye sockets. Go there today and see what Elfriede is singing about.”
BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 6TH, 1919
NOON
Mock sat in his office in the Police Praesidium trying to stifle the incessant musical rondo which had been going around in his head for over an hour, ever since he had returned from his gloomy walk through the labyrinth of inner yards between Reuscherstrasse and Antonienstrasse. In the dark side streets, from which not even the sweltering September sun could burn away the musty dampness, pan vendors had set up temporary stalls; grindstones whistled in a hiss of sparks and organ grinders set down their boxes and played picaresque and romantic urban ballads. The yard’s morality play, sung by Bruno the organ grinder’s ten-year-old daughter, did not belong in either of those categories:
In the city of Breslau after the war
No longer safely can you all live.
For a vampire prowls, a terrible brute,
Like a spider, a bloody web does he weave.
Mock looked up at his colleague, Herbert Domagalla, who was clattering on the platen of a Torpedo typewriter, transforming the statements given by the prostitute sitting opposite him into the rhythmic scansion of well-oiled machinery. Mock grabbed a pencil and snapped it in two. A small splinter of wood hit the prostitute on the cheek, and she glared at Mock. He was looking at her too, but he did not see her. Instead he saw himself the day before: an energetic police officer who blackmails his chief, gets carte blanche to do what he likes and then, his head brimming with ideas, follows in the murderer’s footsteps with his loyal helpers from the criminal underworld. After the death of a prostitute covered in rashes, that same police officer turns into a dried-up, moaning little soul who renounces everything he is doing and at night shakes with terror at imaginary ghosts. The following day that weepy and meek anima over-dramatizes his experiences in the presence of a friend from the front.
The vampire kills in our dark city streets.
Our officers strive to track the fiend down.
Led by our brave Commissioner Mock,
A hunt for the vampire runs through the town.
Soon I will tell you why Mock leads this case,
I’ll tell you what gives him this admirable knack
But now, for the moment, I must be still
For a grim shudder runs down my back.
Mock rested his chin on one fist and thumped his desk with the other. The inkwell and chewed bone penholder jumped, the antique sand shaker with Breslau’s coat of arms rocked, the rolled-up newspaper with its headline prisoners of war return rustled. The prostitute glared at Mock again.
“If only you had seen me yesterday,” he said to her and broke off.
“Pardon?” Domagalla and the prostitute said at the same time.
Mock ignored them and continued in his head: “… you’d have seen a moron, fluctuating between contradictory decisions. One minute he abandons Alfred Sorg to the mercy of the murderer, then he locks him up in Wirth’s ‘storeroom’. One minute he wants to attack the perpetrator, the next he practically drowns in tears for fear that somebody he has questioned is going to die. I’ve got the address of the four sailors. Why haven’t I gone there? Because I’m afraid of killing somebody. I’m like Medusa: I kill with my eyes. I drill holes in stomachs and pierce lungs with my eyes alone. So how am I supposed to conduct this investigation, damn it? Not look at people? Not question them? Write letters?” After this last question, an answer occurred to him.
“Use the telephone,” he said, and this time neither Domagalla nor the woman were surprised.
With eyes gouged out whole, and hearts pierced with pins,
This violent vampire’s offering’s grim
O, dear Commissioner, when is it ending,
The vampire’s fearful and terrible hymn?
Only Mock knows the truth, only he understands
In all of the world it is only he,
O, dear Commissioner, when can you stop this?
Why all this killing? Pray tell this to me.
Mock dialled the number of Smolorz’s neighbour, the lawyer Max Grotzschl, and asked him to let the Criminal Sergeant know that he had called. Ten minutes later a polite voice, polished by appearances at tribunals, informed him that a tearful Mrs Ursula Smolorz did not have the slightest idea where her inebriated husband had gone the previous day. Mock thanked Mr Grotzschl and hung up in a fury, almost overturning the telephone. Unlike Mrs Smolorz, he knew perfectly well that for the past two days her husband had been mingling with Breslau’s aristocracy.
The vampire sends notes to Commissioner Mock,
In which he reveals those motives of his.
Read these aloud to the folk of your city
Tell the people of Breslau the horror that is.