“Would you recognize the man?”
“I’d recognize the man and the other woman. They didn’t hide their faces.”
“And the one in the wheelchair?”
“The cripple always wore a hat with a veil.”
“What did the man look like, and the other woman, the one who wasn’t an invalid?”
“I don’t know … He was tall, she had red hair. A pretty woman.”
“How old?”
“He was about fifty, she about twenty.”
“Weren’t you surprised when those four men disappeared? Why didn’t you report it to the police?”
“Surprised? Yes, I was surprised. Sometimes they’d drink for two days at Orlich’s before coming home, but now a whole week … As for the police … Sorry, I don’t much care for the police … But I would have reported it today anyway …”
“Why today?”
“The Schmidts were always here on Saturdays because that man with the girl and the invalid came on Saturdays.”
“Are you saying they came regularly, every Saturday?”
“Yes, every Saturday. At the same time. But not together. First the man with the invalid, then a few minutes later the red-head.”
“At what time did they come?”
“They’ll be there in about half an hour.” Frenzel pulled out his watch. “Always at six.”
“Were they there last Saturday?”
“Yes. But without the red-head.”
“Was that the last time you saw the Schmidts?”
“No, it was the previous day. The fat man came for them in his car. They went off somewhere.”
“How do you know they were at home on Saturday if you saw them for the last time on Friday?”
“I didn’t see them, but I heard them in their apartment.”
“You eavesdropped?”
“Yes.”
“And what did you hear?”
“Their voices, and the moans of the invalid woman.”
“Did you hear the man too?”
“The man? No.”
“You’re free to go.” The police officer took out his watch and showed Frenzel the door. “Here’s for a cab.” He tossed him two ten-mark notes. “You can go home. But remember, this giant here” — he indicated the man-wardrobe — “is going to keep a discreet eye on you for the next few days. Wait, just one more thing … Tell me, why don’t you like the police?”
“Because they’re too mistrustful, even when you go to them of your own accord and want to report something.” Again, he was frightened by his own impudence. “But that doesn’t apply to you, sirs … I really … Besides, you don’t look like a policeman …”
“So what do I look like?”
“A pastor,” Frenzel replied, and thought “out whoring.”
He went to the winding staircase and ran down as fast as his legs could carry him. Once he reached the ground floor and was out of the building, all his tiredness left him. He ran to the nearest crossroads and whistled with two fingers to passing droschkas, showing no interest whatsoever in the enormous, multi-storied building from which he had just emerged. Frenzel could only think of how to get home as quickly as possible, fetch his money, and go to watch the strongmen arm-wrestling across a beer-soaked table in a back room at Cafe Orlich.
BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 6TH, 1919
A QUARTER TO SIX IN THE EVENING
The stairs groaned under the heavy footsteps of the three men. Mock, Wirth and Zupitza finally made it to the fourth floor of the tenement at Gartenstrasse 46. They stood panting outside the door of apartment 20 and sniffed the air in disgust. The rank odour came from the toilet on the landing.
“The lav’s probably blocked,” muttered Wirth as his gloved hand unlocked the apartment door with a picklock.
Mock kicked the half-open double door with a patent brogue — very gently, so as not to scuff the toe. Fetid air surged from the room. He screwed up his nose at a stench he abhorred, one which reminded him of a changing room at a sports gymnasium. He pulled out his Mauser and nodded to Zupitza to do likewise. Once in the dark hallway, he groped for the light switch and turned it on, drenching the hall in a dirty yellow glow. He leaped at once to the side to avoid a possible attack. None came. The brown, painted floorboards in the hallway creaked beneath their shoes. Zupitza wrenched open a huge wardrobe. It was empty save for some coats and suits. The dim light of a bulb covered with newspaper made it impossible to examine the clothes properly. Mock gestured to Wirth and Zupitza to search the main room while he turned on the light in the kitchen. The lighting proved as miserable as that in the hallway. He could, however, discern the mess one might expect to find in an apartment devoid of the female touch: stacks of plates covered in congealed tongues of sauce, cups with sooty traces of black coffee, rock-hard remnants of bread rolls and chipped glasses streaked with a tar-like liquid. This was everywhere: in the deep, semi-circular sink; on the table; on stools, and even on the floor. Mock was not at all surprised to see several glistening blowflies which lifted off at the sight of him to settle on the flaking wainscoting and on an embroidered picture bearing the words “The Early Bird Catches the Worm”. Despite the open window, there was an overwhelming smell of wet rags.
“No-one here!” he heard Wirth call from the main room. He left the kitchen and entered quarters which he thought would be far cleaner, as befits a place of work where hygiene plays rather an important role. He was not mistaken. The room had a window which gave on to the main road, and it looked like any other room that had not been cleaned for a week. Two huge iron beds were neatly covered with bedspreads embroidered with red roses. Between them was a bedside table on which stood a lamp with an intricately twisted shade. There were no pictures on the walls. It was a room with no soul, like in a miserable hotel where all one could do was lie on the bed, stare at the lamp, and try to banish suicidal thoughts. Mock sat on one of the beds and looked at his men.
“Zupitza, go and keep an eye on the caretaker for the rest of the evening and the whole of tomorrow.” He waited for Wirth to pass on his instructions in hand signals, then turned to the interpreter. “Wirth, you go and see Smolorz at Opitzstrasse 37, and bring him here. If he’s not at home, go to Baron von Bockenheim und Bielau’s villa at Wagnerstrasse 13 and give him this note.”
Mock took out his notebook, tore a page from it and wrote in an even, slanted script, far smaller than the classic Sutterline handwriting: “Kurt, come to Gartenstrasse 46, apartment 20, as soon as possible.”
“And I,” Mock said slowly in answer to Wirth’s mute question, “am going to wait here for the red-headed girl.”
BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 6TH, 1919
A QUARTER PAST SIX IN THE EVENING
Mock had realized long ago that, since leaving the hospital in Konigsberg, he was highly susceptible to women with red hair. Not wishing to believe that the red-headed nurse taking care of him was merely a figment of his imagination, a phantom brought to life by morphine, he would carefully scrutinize every pyrrhokomes (as he called them) he met. Walking down a street he would often see loose red locks escaping from beneath a hat in front of him, or fiery, thick plaits bouncing on spry shoulder-blades in time with their owner’s brisk footsteps. He would rush after these women, overtake them and look them in the face. He would raise his hat, whisper “I beg your pardon, I mistook you for somebody else,” and walk away as they looked after him with eyes full of fear, disdain or disappointment, depending on whether they were inexperienced virgins, happily married women or debauched maids. As for Mock, he was usually deeply disappointed, not to say frustrated. Because when these red-headed women revealed their faces to him, not one of them resembled the face of the nurse in his dreams.
He was not frustrated now, even though he could not be at all sure that the girl standing on the threshold was not the one he had told Ruhtgard about during those frosty nights in Kurland. So little light came from the four sailors’ room that any woman standing in the doorway would have looked like a vision from a dream.