Marek Krajewski: Death in Breslau

Someone hammered loudly on the door. Friedlander, covering the stain on his trousers with the flaps of his gabardine, went into the other room. He was shaking and stumbling. Lea put her arm around him.

“Don’t be frightened, Father. It must be caretaker Kempsky.”

Isidor Friedlander looked at her uneasily: “Kempsky is an utter brute, but he never hammers on the door like that.”

He was right. It was not the caretaker.

BRESLAU, MONDAY, MAY 15TH, 1933

NINE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

Eberhard Mock was as angry on Monday morning as he was on Saturday. He cursed his foolishness and weakness for sensuous Jewish women. If he had acted by the book, he would have called someone from the Police Praesidium, brought Friedlander in to Neue Graupnerstrasse on remand and questioned him there. But he had not. He had politely agreed to Lea Friedlander’s request for an hour’s delay and instead of behaving like a proper policeman, had browsed through the newspapers in the Green Pole Inn on Reuschenstrasse 64 for an hour, drank beer and ate the speciality of the house — army bread with spicy, hashed meat. When he had returned an hour later, he had found the door prised open, a terrible mess and no sign of the tenants. The caretaker was nowhere to be seen.

Mock lit what was his twelfth cigarette of the day. He read, yet again, the results of the autopsy and Koblischke’s report. He learned no more than he had witnessed with his own eyes. He cursed his absent-mindedness. He had overlooked the old Criminal Sergeant’s important information: underwear belonging to the Baron’s daughter had been missing from the scene of the crime. Mock sprang to his feet and burst into the detectives’ room. Only Smolorz was there.

“Kurt!” he shouted. “Please check the alibis of all known fetishists.”

The telephone rang: “Good morning,” Piontek’s stentorian voice resounded. “I’d like to repay your hospitality and invite you to lunch at Fischer’s bar. At two. I’ve some new, interesting information on the Marietta von der Malten case.”

“Fine.” Mock replaced the receiver, adding no word of courtesy.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME MAY 15TH, 1933

TWO O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON

Fischer’s was crowded — as it usually was at lunchtime. The clientele was chiefly made up of policemen and uniformed Nazis who took pleasure in frequenting their idol Heines’ favourite restaurant. Piontek sat sprawled at a table in the small room. The sun, its rays refracted in the aquarium under the window, caressed his bald skull with reflections of light. Between fingers as chubby as sausages rested a smoking cigarette. He was watching a miniature tuna in the aquarium and making strange noises while moving his lips exactly like the fish. Having a splendid time, he tapped on the aquarium glass.

At the sight of Mock, who had arrived five minutes earlier, he was disconcerted. He pulled himself together, rose and greeted Mock effusively. The Counsellor manifested less joy at the encounter. Piontek opened a silver cigarette case with the engraving: “To a dear Husband and Daddy on his fiftieth birthday from his wife and daughters.” The musical box played, the cigarettes in blue paper gave off a sweet scent. An elderly waiter took their order and removed himself without a sound.

“I shan’t conceal, Counsellor,” Piontek broke the tense silence, “that all of us at the Gestapo were happy that somebody like yourself would like to work with us. Nobody knows more about the more or the less important personalities of this city than Eberhard Mock. No secret archive can be the equal of that which you have in your head.”

“Ah, you overestimate me, Hauptsturmfuhrer …” Mock cut him off. The waiter put down the plates of eel in dill sauce, sprinkled with glazed onions.

“I’m not suggesting you go over to the Gestapo.” Piontek was not put off by Mock’s indifference. “What I know about you makes me think that you would not accept such a proposal.” (But of course — and who could have told this tub of lard any such thing? Forstner, you mongrel, I’m going to destroy you.) “But, on the other hand, you’re a reasonable man. Look wisely into the future and remember: the future’s going to belong to me and my people!”

Mock ate with great appetite. He wrapped the last piece of fish around his fork, submerged it in the sauce and devoured it. For several seconds, he did not take the tankard of spiced Schweidnitz beer from his lips. He wiped his mouth with his napkin and contemplated the miniature tuna.

“I believe you had something to tell me about the murder of Marietta von der Malten …”

Piontek was a man who never lost his self-control. He took a flat, tin box from the pocket of his jacket, opened it and offered it to Mock to whom a strange suspicion occurred: did accepting a cigar amount to accepting the proposal that he go over to the Gestapo? He pulled back his hand. Piontek’s hand shook a little.

“Go on, Counsellor, have a smoke. They’re really good. One mark cigars.”

Mock inhaled so deeply that he felt a stabbing pain in his lungs.

“You don’t want to talk about the Gestapo. So, let’s talk about the C.I.D.,” Piontek said jovially. “Did you know that Muhlhaus has decided to take early retirement? In a month at the latest. That’s what he decided today. He told Obergruppenfuhrer Heines, who agreed. So at the end of June there’s going to be a vacancy for the post of Chief of the Criminal Department. I’ve heard that Heines has had some candidate from Berlin suggested to him by Nebe. Artur Nebe is an excellent policeman, but what does he know about Breslau … Personally I think that a better candidate would be someone who knows conditions in Breslau … You, for example.”

“Your opinion is, no doubt, the best reference for the Prussian Minister of Internal Affairs, Goring, and the Chief of Prussian Police, Nebe.” Mock tried, at all costs, to disguise with biting irony the reverie induced by the man from the Gestapo.

“Counsellor,” Piontek surrounded himself with cigar smoke. “The two men you mentioned do not have time to waste on provincial personnel pushovers. They can simply approve the personal recommendation of the Supreme President of Silesia, Bruckner. Bruckner will put forward whomsoever Heines supports. And Heines communicates in all matters of personnel with my chief. Have I made myself clear?”

Mock had a great deal of experience in conversations with people such as Piontek. Nervously, he unbuttoned the collar of his shirt and wiped his forehead with a chequered handkerchief: “That lunch has somehow made me hot. Maybe we could take a walk along the promenade by the moat …”

Piontek glanced at the aquarium with the tuna fish. (Could he have noticed the microphone?) “I haven’t got time for walks,” he said good-naturedly. “Besides, I haven’t given you the information on Fraulein von der Malten’s case yet.”

Mock got up, slipped on his coat and hat: “Hauptsturmfuhrer, thank you for the excellent lunch. If you want to know my decision — and I have already made it — I’ll be waiting outside.”

A group of young mothers, pushing their prams near the statue of Cupid Riding Pegasus on the promenade, remarked upon the two elegantly attired men walking in front of them. The taller of the two was of a heavy build. The pale trench-coat sat tightly on his shoulders. The shorter of the two was tapping his walking stick while studying his patent leather shoes.

“Well, look at that, Marie,” said the slim blonde woman quietly. “Those there must be some gentlemen.”

“That’s for sure,” muttered the plump Marie, a scarf tied around her head. “Could be artists because why aren’t they at work? Everyone works at this time, not yaps away in a park.”