The Minotaur's Head: An Eberhard Mock Investigation (Eberhard Mock Investigation 4) Page 10

  “Yes, something just like that.” Mock waved his hand as if chasing away a wasp. “You must have read my mind … And let’s not mess around with formal addresses, alright?” Mock was still staring into the depths of the corridor. “Nobody ever told me there were such beautiful women in Poland!” He smiled lustfully.

  “Let it go.” Popielski removed his bowler and stared at Mock. “Miss Zosia could be your daughter!”

  Mock removed his hat in turn. He ran a bone comb through his thick, wavy hair, straightened his coat, pulled his gloves firmly over his fingers and stood in front of Popielski with his legs apart, resting his fists on his hips. He was the shorter man but had a stronger build. With a jutting jaw he hissed through his teeth:

  “I forbid such comments, dear sir! You have no right to play the moralist! I’m not the one who travels by train with floozies!” He used Zaremba’s word. “And I’m not the one who has it off with them in a private compartment, like some bull!”

  Popielski’s eyes remained on Mock for a long while. He had to react fast in order to show this Swabian that he was not on home territory, that here he was nothing more than a helping hand, an apprentice in the Polish State Police. But if it had not been for Mock and his evidence, Popielski would now be wringing his hands in helplessness over the monster who had crawled across the roofs of Drohobycz and Mościska and into the rooms of young girls, robbing them of their virtue, butchering their faces and throttling them. And it was not at all certain, as Mock had stressed, that he had done it in that order. If the German police officer had not come from faraway Breslau, he himself would be gazing each day, powerless and anguished, at sleeping Rita’s beautiful, still-childish face, wondering whether his daughter would be the beast’s next victim. Fleeting images ran through his head: the private compartment filled with Blondie’s sighing and moaning, his hands grasping her hips, the Sicilian defence in chess, Doctor Pidhirny bent over the corpse and sewing up the girl’s face, the receptionist at the Jewish hotel in Mościska, sobbing his heart out, Rita smoking in the drinking-den on Zamarstynów, his hands entangled in Blondie’s hair, Mock smiling meaningfully, Homo sum et nil humani a me alienum esse puto. These images superimposed themselves on each other and heralded an attack. But it was he who had the power over his epilepsy, not the other way round! He had the authority to let it momentarily blacken yet simultaneously enlighten his mind. But not yet. He had screwed like a bull. Like a bull. He liked that phrase a great deal. Suddenly he burst out laughing.

  “I have to tell you, sir” – he rested his hands on his knees and howled with laughter – “it’s all because of you that I didn’t have it away as much as I would have liked. And I had so much time left ’til we reached Lwów …”

  “The trains are still running between Lwów and Breslau!” reposted Mock; he squinted, stuck his tongue out and, clenching his fist, pumped his forearm like a steam engine. “I invite you to the metropolis on the Oder in the company of a couple of young ladies from Poland! We’ll visit this and that!”

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen,” hissed Zaremba. “Aren’t you ashamed of corrupting the young? How old are you? Hairless, don’t play about!”

  Miss Zosia stood before them blushing, the telegram awaiting final approval in her hand. She did not understand German, but she knew perfectly well what Mock’s gesture meant.

  LWÓW, THAT SAME JANUARY 25TH, 1937 FIVE O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON

  Despite the heavy traffic on Słowacki, the street was drowned in silence. A blizzard was falling so thickly over the town that no eye could penetrate it further than a few metres. It muffled all sound, blocked the exhaust pipes of cars, and covered the nostrils of sleigh-drawing horses with sticky moisture. Shop windows glowed with coloured lamps. A caretaker spread sand over the pavement outside the Main Post Office, and an irritated policeman controlling traffic at the crossroads kept removing his oilcloth hat to shake off wet layers of snow as they swelled in front of his very eyes. Students from the nearby university clapped hands blue with cold as they waited for a tram.

  Popielski, Mock and Zaremba sat in their Chevrolet in a long queue of cars and carts. They were silent and cold, though not as cold as the students, who were hopping up and down. Each was thinking about something different. Wilhelm Zaremba thought about the delicious dessert which his maidservant, unable to wait for him, must already be putting into the gently preheated oven; Edward Popielski about Rita, who was leaving in a few days with her Aunt Leokadia to go skiing in Worochta; and Mock about the two orphanages they were still to investigate.

  They had already visited two such institutions that day. The reaction had been the same everywhere. Initial fear on seeing a delegation of three police officers who spoke German amongst themselves had given way to indignation at the questions they asked.

  “No, it’s impossible. The victim couldn’t have come from our orphanage. Our wards are virtuous girls who continue to visit our institution throughout their adult lives, or at least send us Christmas cards. We’re constantly in touch.”

  So spoke Mrs Aniela Skarbkówna, Director of the Abrahamowicz Educational Institution. Mr Antoni Świda, Director of the Municipal Orphanage, put it a little differently, but his words came to exactly the same thing. That time Popielski had reacted angrily:

  “But those girls were virgins,” Hairless had exclaimed, raising his voice, “so they must have been virtuous!” The heads of the charitable institutions had generally tried to conclude the conversation by saying: “No decent girl spends the night alone in a hotel!”

  Popielski had not given them the chance. With savage satisfaction he questioned them about any wards who may have displayed certain aberrations in their sexuality, or who were unsettled or were the cause of issues of moral concern. Their indignation was then so fierce that the police officers had no choice but to leave empty-handed.

  The windscreen wiper gathered layers of snow as rubber squeaked across the window. The men’s breath condensed and settled on the inside of the glass. The coloured bulbs in Markus Ludwig’s menswear shop began to flicker. Popielski pulled on his bowler hat and closed his eyes. Despite his glasses and tightly closed eyes, he could still see flashes lighting up the elegant hats, walking sticks and ties. He broke into a sweat. All of a sudden he opened the car door, climbed out and walked off, tripping over clods of snow.

  “Where’s he gone? Home?” Mock leaned out but the commissioner’s massive figure had already disappeared down a side street. “Does he live far from here? What’s the matter with him? Did he feel unwell?”

  “He hasn’t gone home.” Zaremba turned and looked at Mock with a serious expresson. “I know where he’s gone. You don’t, and you won’t for a long time. Let me tell you something, sir – just because you’ve played a game of chess with somebody, it doesn’t mean you know everything about them.”

  LWÓW, THAT SAME JANUARY 25TH, 1937 HALF PAST FIVE IN THE AFTERNOON

  Popielski slackened his pace once he was a considerable distance from the automobile. He passed his house and walked slowly down the alleys of Jesuit Gardens, taking care not to slip. Once he had removed his dark glasses he was able to gather speed. The feeble flicker of the gaslights was as harmless as the sputtering of a flame in a paraffin lamp.

  He walked along Mickiewicz, Zygumntowska and Gródecka, passing the massive building which housed the Railways Head Office, Gołuchowski manor house and the church of St Anne. He hopped across the street’s pot-holed cobblestones and a moment later arrived at the corner of Kleparowska and Janowska, the site of a taproom that went by that very name, “At the Corner of Kleparowska and Janowska”. A few days earlier he had abused Felicjan Kościuk, alias Felek Dziąsło, known as “Gum”, in the Sea Grotto tavern, but a different danger threatened him in this place. Here he would not have received a warning in the guise of a pig’s ear skewered by a nail, but would instead have been sneered at or flogged with insults. He would have lost every brawl or argument here; he would have had beer thrown in his face, or so
meone would have hawked and spat into his bowler hat.

  This is what had happened one night several years earlier when he and Zaremba had ended a bar crawl there. He had pulled out his gun in fury and waved it about, but the laughter had been so thunderous that Popielski had immediately sensed how ludicrous the whole situation was. He had run his bloodshot eyes over the place, rammed his spat-in bowler onto the head of the student laughing the loudest, and left. He had later tried to take his revenge on the owners of the den but met with unexpected obstacles in the political branch of the Investigative Department. It had been explained to him that no harm was to come to the owners of a place that served a considerable cluster of stool pigeons. Members and sympathizers of the Communist Party of West Ukraine gathered here, as well as poor consumptive students, raving radicals and drunken representatives of Lwów’s bohemia with their passing muses.

  Pushing away these recollections, Popielski passed by the taproom and entered the first doorway on Kleparowska. Stepping quietly, he soon found himself on the first floor. He tapped a light bulb which glowed feebly for a moment before going out altogether. But the moment sufficed for him to catch a glimpse of a couple kissing passionately in a recess next to a small column which blended with the building about as well as gothic vaulting blends with a cowshed. He knocked loudly on number 3. Before long the door opened with a rasp, and in the doorway stood a man wearing a long white coat and holding a cigarette.

  “Ah, the commissioner!” he smiled. “We haven’t seen you here for a long time!”

  “But it’s not the first time the police have been here today, is it, Mr Szaniawski?” Popielski held out a hand which the man clasped firmly.

  “Indeed.” Szaniawski closed the door and positioned his slender fingers beneath his chin, in a gesture which was to denote deep thought. “Your young partner was here today and asked about some sallow-skinned boy. I told him two things …”

  Popielski cast an eye over Szaniawski’s apartment which had been rented from the owner of the corner tavern for the past few years. It was furnished in bad taste, with the fake glamour of Lwów’s suburbs. This was the style adored by a dancer who took particular delight in fake chrysanthemums and tacky ornaments from second-rate music-halls. The apartment served as a venue for his secret meetings with young bandits and artists procured for him by various go-betweens. He could not hold the meetings in his own home for fear of losing his good reputation, one he strove to maintain. Here Szaniawski allowed various boys to spend the night and bring their friends. He had been sympathetic, invariably in a good mood with a song on his lips. Until the moment when one of the street urchins had cracked open his head with a candlestick and robbed him. Popielski had found the thief that same day. Once his battle with death in the surgical clinic on Pijarów had been won and a week later he beheld his stolen wallet in which he kept a valuable piece of jewellery – his beloved late mother’s ring – Szaniawski had asked the commissioner if they could meet, and in a quiet, faltering voice assured him that he was forever at his service. Popielski was not long in giving Szaniawski an opportunity to repay the courtesy. A few weeks later he requested that he make his apartment available to him so that he could give vent to his – as he called them – harmless eccentricities.

  “It’s a good thing you passed on the information to my younger colleague.” Popielski looked around the apartment once more and it seemed quite empty to him. “Thank you, on behalf of the police. The usual brings me here today: my little eccentricity.”

  “Welcome.” Szaniawski pointed to the door next to the entrance. “Your bathroom is free. And my Cossack boy has lit the stove. As if I’d known you were coming!”

  “Thank you.” Popielski pressed the door handle and entered the long dark room with its small window. In its centre stood a narrow bathtub and a rather large water closet.

  Heat radiated from the stove. He shut the door and turned on the light, then stripped off and folded his clothes on the chair. He reached for the box of lye standing on the bath tub, and washed and rinsed the tub scrupulously. Then he turned off the light, drew the curtains and lit several long, thin candles. He stepped naked into the tub without running the water. And waited.

  LWÓW, THAT SAME JANUARY 25TH, 1937 EIGHT O’CLOCK IN THE EVENING

  Despite the keen cold Popielski’s eyes kept closing. He sat in the Chevrolet which Zaremba had brought round to Zielona Street, pinched his cheeks, smoked, constantly aired the car’s interior – but nothing helped. It was always like this after his sessions at Szaniawski’s. After these extreme and utterly indescribable experiences full of anguish, pain and sudden muscular spasms came such deep relaxation that he longed above all to go home and do what he enjoyed most: to throw the window wide open and half an hour later crawl beneath his duvet to warm the sheets with his body. But this was never possible, because if he fell asleep early in the evening he was sure to wake up in the morning and this would disrupt his old rhythm of living and working and subject him to further epileptic fits triggered by the sharp morning light. And so after his sessions at Szaniawski’s, he generally returned to his day-to-day duties but did not perform them as well as he should. Perspicacity vanished somewhere along the way, and he was drowsy and forgiving of the world.

  Now, too, he was fending off sleep, trying to keep his watery eyes fixed on Queen Jadwiga’s Secondary School for Girls on Zielona 8. For some peculiar reason his usual fifteen-minute nap in Szaniawski’s apartment had extended to three-quarters of an hour, and he had been torn from it by a strange noise which sounded neither like a motor revving nor a dog growling. He had slept too long and had not made it on time to Rita’s performance of tableaux vivants. He did not want to enter during the show as she would be sure to notice him and would not have spared him a string of biting comments. All he could do was wait patiently until the show was over.

  Catching sight of a newspaper vendor, Popielski climbed out of the car and beckoned him over. He handed him five groszys and opened the Lwów Illustrated Evening Express’ special supplement. On the first page was a photograph of the three police aces. “Detectives Popielski, Mock and Zaremba partnership leads investigation” stated the headline. “Yes,” he thought, “that sounds excellent. A good, cadenced name for their organisation. Popielski, Mock and Zaremba.” What metre was that in? He pulled out his Waterman and began to write the syllables and accents on the newspaper, on which rare snowflakes settled: Popiel-ski-Mock-and-Za-rem-ba. A man jostled him and tipped his hat, apologizing.

  Torn from his philological ponderings, Popielski noticed that parents and daughters were already leaving the secondary school. A mother hugging her radiant and happy child awoke in him bad thoughts and memories. His eyes followed mother and daughter to the end of Jabłonowska, where the pair disappeared in the dim gaslight. “There goes Rysia Tarnawska,” he thought with a sneer, “top of Rita’s class, the best in Latin! I wonder if the girl knows that her proud father, engineer Marcel Tarnawski, who barely returned my greetings just now, once sat on the other side of my desk in tears, and – not failing to mention the fact that we knew each other from parents’ evenings at school! – begged me to hush up the suicide of a certain young manicurist?” The newspapers had claimed that the woman, addicted to morphine for several years, had committed suicide because of an unhappy love affair. The engineer had feared the case would bring out into the open the months he had been carrying on with her. Now widow Zacharkiewicz with her daughter Beata – “Beanpole” – pretended not to see him. How indignant she had been when he had once explained to the tutor why he had arrived so late at a parents’ evening – he had gone to class 3A, whereas Rita was in 3B! “It’s unheard of,” the widow had said to the woman next to her, addressing her by some title, “for a father not to know which class his child is in! No wonder …” But Popielski had not heard the rest.

  And all of a sudden a terrible thought occurred to him, one so awful he did not want to admit it even to himself. Fortunately Rita had just emerged
from the school building and swept away all bad premonitions. She was flushed and laughing, and he knew why. Her talent for acting had been appreciated by the new Polish teacher who was teaching them Romanticism that year. The previous teacher – dull, pedantic Miss Mąkosów – had not allowed Rita to take part in school productions because this would have had an effect on her already poor school marks. Professor Kasprzak, on the other hand, did not countenance such details as they were entirely irrelevant to the theatre.

  “Good evening, Papa,” Rita greeted him joyfully. “And did you like the whole thing?”

  “Very much, my little one.” He kissed her on the forehead, drawing air in deeply through his nostrils.

  He breathed a sigh of relief. Not a trace of cigarette smoke.

  “Oh, hello, my darling Jadzia,” called Rita, holding out her hand to her good friend who approached and curtsied to Popielski.

  Once the girls had kissed, he realized Jadzia Wajchendler had come out earlier, that she had stood by the little newspaper rotunda not far from him and greeted him several times, but he had not reacted. She gave him a bad conscience, and he had already had enough such scruples for one day.

  “I saw you earlier, sir.” Jadzia smiled at him. “But I didn’t want to disturb you. You were so lost in thought, Commissioner … Another fascinating riddle …”

  “Tell me, Papa,” Rita interrupted, much to her father’s relief, “which scene did you like most? Well, which one?”

  She demanded this with the same tone of voice as when she had asked him for a toy as a child. They could not walk past Aptawag toyshop on Sykstuska without her gluing her nose to the window and her lips to his cheek. She had never needed to terrorize him, stamp her feet or throw herself on the pavement; he had always bought her everything. “You spoil her too much, Edward,” Leokadia used to say. And then he used to hurt his cousin by saying: “And who’s going to spoil her if not me? You love bridge, books and concerts more than my daughter!” When later he had apologized to Lodzia he saw a flash of anxiety in her eyes, but also a certain amusement inspired by, as she said, “a father madly in love with his daughter”.