Phantoms of Breslau Read online

  “A good day to you, Doctor Lasarius!” he called, then he raised both arms and boomed at the policemen: “Gentlemen, silence, please!”

  The detectives stamped their cigarettes into the ground; the schoolboys soon disappeared, squeezing past the knees of the stretcher-bearers; Doctor Lasarius removed his top hat and began to inspect the bodies, tossing the broken limbs about; his men rested on their stretchers as if they were spears; Smolorz shook the mud off his trousers and Mock leaned towards Ilssheimer and asked:

  “Councillor sir, who is that?”

  “My name is Criminal Commissioner Heinrich Mühlhaus,” said the police officer giving the orders, as if he had heard Mock’s question, “and I’m the new chief of the Murder Commission. I’ve come from Hamburg, where my duties were similar. And now, ad rem. Two schoolboys from Green Oak Community School came to the dam at half past seven this morning for a cigarette. They found the bodies of four men; two lying on the ground, the other two on top of them.” The police officer approached the bodies and used his walking stick as a pointer. “As you see, gentlemen, the deceased are lying in a very irregular configuration. Where one has his head, another has his legs. All are practically naked.” The walking stick spun pirouettes. “All they are wearing are sailor’s hats on their heads and leather pouches over their genitals. This peculiar outfit is why I’ve invited Vice Department IIIb of the Police Praesidium to work with us. We have here its chief, Criminal Councillor Ilssheimer.” Mühlhaus glanced respectfully at his colleague. “With his best men, Criminal Assistant Eberhard Mock and Criminal Sergeant Kurt Smolorz.” Mühlhaus’ tone as he uttered the adjective “best” expressed at least a shadow of doubt. “Briefing in my office at midday sharp, after the post-mortem examination. That’s all from me. Over to you, Doctor.”

  Doctor Lasarius completed his perfunctory examination. He removed his top hat, wiped his forehead with fingers that had touched the corpses, reached into his gown and, after some time, extracted a cigar stump. He accepted a light from one of the stretcher-bearers and said with deliberate irony:

  “Thank you, Commissioner Mühlhaus, for so accurately specifying the time of the post-mortem. I was not aware until now that I was your subordinate.” His voice became serious. “I’ve ascertained that the four men have been dead for approximately eight hours. Their eyes have been gouged out and their arms and legs broken. Here and there contusions are visible on their limbs which would indicate imprints made by the sole of a shoe. That’s all I can say for now.” He turned to his men: “And now we can remove them from here.”

  Doctor Lasarius fell silent and watched as the stretcher-bearers grabbed the corpses by their arms and legs and gave them a mighty swing. The bodies landed on the stretchers, leather suspensories protruding from between their spread legs, and then came the dull thump of the remains as they hit the deck of the police barge. On Lasarius’ orders, the schoolboys standing on deck turned their heads from the macabre sight. The doctor set off towards the car, but before he had gone far he stopped in his tracks.

  “That’s all I can say for now, gentlemen,” he repeated in a hoarse voice. “But I have something else to show you.”

  He looked around and extracted a thick, dry branch from the bushes. He rested it on a stone and jumped on it with both legs. A brittle crack resounded.

  “Everything points to the fact that this is how the murderer broke their limbs.” Lasarius flicked his cigar stump into the thorn bushes beside the Oder. The cigar caught on one of the bushes and hung there, wet with spittle, torn from lips a moment earlier by fingers sullied by the touch of a corpse.

  Mock felt hair in his throat once more and squatted. Seeing his convulsions, the police officers moved away in disgust. Nobody held his sweating temples; nobody pressed his stomach to hasten its work. Today, the world was not looking after Mock.

  BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 1ST, 1919

  NINE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

  The large motorboat in which the six plain-clothes police officers sat had not seen a war; it came from Breslau’s river police surplus. Steering it was First Mate Martin Garbe, who studied the men from beneath the peak of his hat. When their broken conversation began to bore him, he looked out at the unfamiliar river banks overgrown with trees and lined with formidable buildings. Although he had lived in Breslau for a couple of years, he had only been working for the river police for a few weeks and the city as seen from the Oder fascinated him. Every now and then he leaned towards the police officer nearest to him, a slim man with Semitic features, to make sure he was correctly identifying the places they passed.

  “Is that the zoo?” he asked, pointing to a high wall behind which could be heard the roar of predators being fed their daily ration of mutton.

  The banks of the Oder passed slowly. Occasional anglers, mostly retired men, were returning home with nets full of perch. The trees dripped with foliage; nature was refusing to recognize the approach of autumn.

  “That’s the water tower, isn’t it?” Garbe whispered, pointing to a square brick building on their left. The police officer nodded and addressed a colleague sitting opposite him clutching a locked hold-all marked MATERIAL EVIDENCE:

  “Look how fast we’re going, Reinert. I told you we’d get there quicker by river.”

  “You’re always right, Kleinfeld,” muttered the other man. “Your Talmudic mind is never mistaken.”

  First Mate Garbe looked up at Kaiserbrücke spanning the river on its steel web and accelerated. The air was hot and muggy. The police officers on the motorboat fell silent. Garbe focussed his attention on the rivets in the bridge, and once they had cleared it, on the faces of his passengers. Four of them sported moustaches, one a beard, and another was clean-shaven. The bearded man blew smoke rings from his pipe which then trailed over the water, and talked in a whisper to the fair-haired moustachioed man sitting next to him. Both men were trying to make it clear with every word and gesture that it was they who gave the orders around here. Kleinfeld and Reinert wore small moustaches, and red whiskers bristled on the top lip of the stout and taciturn police officer. Next to him sat a stocky, clean-shaven, dark-haired man. He looked exhausted. He leaned over the water, breathing in the damp air, and then a cough would tear at his lungs, persistent and dry, as if something was irritating his throat. He rested his arm on the boat’s machine-gun and stared down at the water. First Mate Garbe soon tired of scrutinizing the six silent men and looked up at the underside of Lessingbrücke, which they were now approaching. From its girders dripped water or horse urine. Garbe navigated in such a way that not a single drop fell onto his motorboat. When they had passed under the bridge, Garbe caught a very interesting snippet of conversation:

  “I still do not understand, Excellency” – barely suppressed irritation could be heard in the dark-haired man’s voice – “why my man and I have been summoned to this crime. Would you, as my immediate superior, care to explain it to me? Has our duty remit been extended?”

  “Of course, Mock,” the fair-haired, moustachioed man said in a shrill voice. “But let us first get one thing straight. I don’t have to explain anything to you. Have you never heard of ‘orders’? Police work is founded on issuing orders and often calls for a strong stomach. And subordinates are to execute these orders, even if it means throwing up a hundred times a day. Do we understand each other, Mock? And do not address me as Excellency unless you’re attempting to be extremely ironic.”

  “Yes sir, Criminal Councillor sir,” the dark-haired man said.

  “I’m glad you’ve understood.” The blond moustache curved into a smile. “And now, think about it yourself and answer me: why do you think you and I are both here? Why has Criminal Commissioner Mühlhaus asked us for help?”

  “Naked corpses with leather pouches on their balls,” came a muttering from beneath the red moustache. “They could be queers. Those of us in IIIb have come across men like that before.”

  “Good, Smolorz. I didn’t actually ask you, but you’re
right. Four murdered queers. That’s a case for Commissioner Mühlhaus and the men in IIIb. As of today, you and Mock are to be transferred, for the duration of this investigation, to the Murder Commission under the direction of Commissioner Mühlhaus.”

  The dark-haired man stood up so abruptly that the boat rocked: “But of our men Lembcke and Maraun are much more sure of themselves in the homosexual demi-monde than we are; they’re the ones best acquainted with it. Smolorz and I book girls and sometimes raid illegal clubs. So why …”

  “First of all, Mock,” said the man with the pipe and thick beard, “Councillor Ilssheimer has already explained the meaning of an order. Secondly, we don’t know whether or not these four sailors were homosexuals. We’d like you to tell us who else might wear leather suspensories. Third, and finally, my respected colleague Ilssheimer has told me a great deal about you, and I know I wouldn’t be able to stop you conducting your own private investigation into this case. But why would you conduct your own investigation when you can do so under my command?”

  “I don’t understand.” The dark-haired man spoke slowly and huskily. “What private investigation? Why should I want to conduct any sort of investigation into the case of a few murdered queers?”

  “Here’s why.” From the greying beard puffed a cloud of Badia tobacco smoke. “Read this. This card was stuck in the belt of one of the dead men’s underpants. Be so kind as to read it. Out loud.”

  First Mate Garbe did not pay the slightest attention to the Regier-ungsbezirk Schlesien building which they were just passing on the left, or to St Joseph’s Hospital built of white clinker bricks on their right. He was listening to the cryptic message being read slowly from the card:

  “‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. Mock, admit your mistake, admit you have come to believe. If you do not want to see more gouged eyes, admit your mistake.’”

  “What?” shouted the man with the red moustache. “Are you talking to yourself?”

  “Listen to me, Smolorz, use that thick brain of yours,” the dark-haired man said quietly and deliberately. “No, that’s too much of an effort for you. Read it yourself. Read the card yourself. Well, go on, read it, damn you!”

  “‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. Mock, admit your mistake, admit you have come to believe. If you do not want to …’”

  “Commissioner, sir, Councillor Ilssheimer was right … I’d have conducted a private investigation into this case.” The dark-haired man now coughed as violently as if it were splinters stuck in his throat, not hair.

  BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 1ST, 1919

  NOON

  Thick clouds floated across the sky and obscured the sun. Ten men were present in the briefing room on the second floor of the Police Praesidium at Schuhbrücke 49. Doctor Lasarius held a thick, brown cardboard box full of handwritten documents. Next to him sat three police officers with short names: Holst, Pragst and Rohs. They had searched the scene of the crime and then, on Mühlhaus’ orders, had been present at the postmortem and taken down minutes of the proceedings. Smolorz and Mock settled on either side of their chief, Councillor Ilssheimer, while to the right and left of Mühlhaus sat his own most trusted colleagues: Kleinfeld and Reinert. Tea in Moabit porcelain was set out in front of the men.

  “This is what happened, gentlemen,” Lasarius began as he extracted a cigar from a tin carrying the logo of Dutschmann tobacconist’s. “At about midnight, what was probably a horse’s dose of drugs entered the bodies of these four sailors, all aged between twenty and twenty-five. This is indicated by traces of opium on their fingers. There was so much it could have put them to sleep for a good many hours. As a result it acted as an anaesthetic while their limbs were being broken. Let us add that all these men were, most likely, drug addicts, as demonstrated by their emaciated bodies and numerous scars along their veins. One of them had even injected morphine into his penis … So nobody would have had much trouble persuading them to smoke a pipe containing a large quantity of opium.”

  “Were they homosexuals?” Kleinfeld asked.

  “An examination of their anuses does not support this theory.” Lasarius did not like to be interrupted. “We can be certain that none of them had anal intercourse over the past few days. Returning to my interrupted train of thought … At about midnight, while they were under the influence of the drug, their eyes were gouged out and their arms and legs broken. The perpetrator broke sixteen limbs, all more or less in the same place, at the knee joint and the elbow joint.” Lasarius passed the police officers an anatomical atlas and pointed to the elbows and knees on an ink drawing of a skeleton. “I’ve already mentioned that the contusions are the imprints of a shoe …”

  “Could it be a shoe with a print like this?” This time it was Reinert who had interrupted. “I made this drawing at the scene of crime.”

  “Yes, it’s possible,” Lasarius said without bridling at the policeman. “These contusions are the result of significant pressure, conceivably applied by somebody wearing shoes jumping on their limbs. Gentlemen” – he drew on his cigar and extinguished it in an ashtray, scattering sparks – “it is as if the murderer jumped onto their arms and legs while they were propped on a bench, stone or some other object …”

  “But surely that was not the cause of their death?” Mock asked.

  “No, I’m just going to read you my findings,” Lasarius sighed with evident annoyance. He began: “The cause of death was stab wounds to both lungs as well as a haemorrhage of the left pulmonary cavity and a clot in that same cavity.” Lasarius looked at Mock and said in a hoarse voice: “The murderer stuck a long, sharp instrument between their ribs and then practically pierced the lungs all the way through. They would have been in agony for several hours. Now, please ask your questions.”

  “What kind of instrument could that have been, Doctor?” Mühlhaus asked.

  “A long, sharp, straight knife,” the pathologist replied. “Although there is another instrument which seems even more likely to me …” He passed his hands – their skin devoured by chemicals – over his bald pate. “No, that would be absurd …”

  “Go on, Doctor!” Mock and Mühlhaus shouted almost simultaneously.

  “Those men’s lungs were pierced with needles.”

  “What sort of needles?” Kleinfeld leaped from his chair. “Needles for knitting socks?”

  “Exactly.” Lasarius hesitated briefly, then formed an elaborate conditional sentence: “Were I to examine these remains in the context of a medical error, I would say that some quack had made a bad job of tapping their lungs.” Lasarius slipped his cigar stump into his waistcoat pocket. “That’s exactly what I’d say.”

  Silence descended. The steady, powerful voice of an interrogating police officer reached them from the next room: “Listen, you and your men have to try harder … What are we paying you for, you shits? We want to know everything that’s going on in your area, understand?” Drops of rain rapped against the windows. The officers sat in silence, frantically racking their brains for intelligent questions. Mock stretched his hands out in front of him and studied his knuckles which were lost in folds of skin.

  “One more question.” Mock lifted his hands, then dropped them on the table again. “You inspected the scene where the bodies were found very carefully, Doctor. Could that also be where the crime was committed?”

  “I found no traces of blood from the eye sockets on the ground or grass around the victims’ heads, which means that their eyes were gouged out elsewhere. The remaining injuries led only to internal haemorrhaging, and from those we can deduce nothing as to where the crime was committed. But I’ll still carry out an Uhlenhuth blood test, as a formality. Can I go now?” Lasarius got to his feet and made towards the exit without waiting for a response. “Some of us have work to do.”

  “Commissioner, sir,” Mock’s hands rose once more and fell with a slap on the table top. “The murderer wrote a message on a card for me. I’m to admit to
some mistake, I’m supposed to believe in something, or we’re threatened with more murders. Let’s read it again. ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. Mock, admit your mistake, admit you have come to believe. If you do not want to see more gouged eyes, admit your mistake.’” Mock lit a cigarette and immediately regretted it when he realized that all those assembled had noticed his hands were shaking. “I assure you I don’t know what mistake he’s referring to, or what I am to admit to. But there is also this Biblical quotation. Let us pursue that. Unless I’m mistaken it refers to doubting Thomas, who came to believe only when he had seen the risen Christ with his own eyes.”

  Mock approached the revolving board in the corner of the briefing room, wedged it still and wrote in even, beautiful script: “doubting Thomas = Mock, Christ = murderer, murdered sailors = warning for Mock.”

  “The first two equations are clear,” Mock said, angrily shaking the chalk dust from his sleeve. “The murderer is a religious fanatic who has sent a message to an unbeliever – me. When I discover what ‘mistake’ I am being punished for, I’ll also discover the murderer and my ‘mistake’ will become evident to everyone. Because everyone is going to ask: ‘Why did that swine kill four young men?’ The answer is: because he wanted to punish Mock for something. ‘And what did Mock do?’ everyone is going to ask. And I don’t know the response to that at this stage. Everyone will find out how Mock once harmed the murderer, everyone will find out what Mock has been punished for. And that’s what the murderer is aiming at. If that pig had killed some old woman, it would have blown over without a murmur. A week ago, in Morgenau, two old women were killed by P.O.W. soldiers freed by the Russians. They stole twelve marks from them. Imagine – the equivalent of two theatre tickets! Did that shake public opinion? Not in the least! Who cares about some murdered old women?”

  “I know what you’re saying,” interrupted Mühlhaus. “The murder has to be spectacular because only in this way will the murderer draw people’s attention to your alleged guilt. And what could be more spectacular than gouging out the eyes of four young men in leather underpants?”