Page 2: This last night, the vampire of Breslau, Isidor Friedlander, committed suicide in his cell. He killed himself in a manner as macabre as that in which he killed his victims: he bit through his veins …
Extract from an interview with Criminal Director Eberhard Mock, the new Chief of the Criminal Police in the Police Praesidium of Breslau, page 3:
“Where did Friedlander know Coptic from?”
“He learned Semitic languages at the Talmud High School in Lublin.
“The murderer expressed the Coptic text in the ancient Syrian alphabet. This is a difficult task even for an eminent Semitist, but for the average graduate of a Jewish high school — unfeasible …
“After an attack of epilepsy, the accused would have apocalyptic visions, speak in various languages, apparently unknown to him, fall into a trance. Dangerous schizophrenia, from which he suffered ever since childhood, would then re-appear. He revealed more than natural abilities, skills in resolving tasks which were, in fact, impossible to resolve.”
“One last question. Can the people of Breslau now sleep in peace?”
“The inhabitants of such a large city as Breslau face various dangers more frequently than people in the provinces. We will counteract these threats. If, God forbid, other criminals manifest themselves, I will most certainly apprehend them.”
III
BERLIN, WEDNESDAY, JULY 4TH, 1934
HALF-PAST FIVE IN THE MORNING
Herbert Anwaldt opened his eyes and then immediately shut them. He had the vain hope that when he opened them again all around would turn out to be a dismal mirage. It was a futile hope: the drunkard’s den where he found himself was an unshakeable reality, pure realism. In Anwaldt’s head, a small gramophone replayed the refrain he had heard yesterday, over and over again — Marlene Dietrich’s “
He moved his head several times. The dull ache slowly spread beneath the vault of his skull; cigarette fumes filled his eye sockets. Anwaldt screwed up his eyes. The pain had become intense and unremitting. In his throat nestled a thick, burning mass tasting of vomit and sweet wine. He swallowed it — through the dry pipeline of his gullet pressed a red-hot bullet. He did not want to drink; he wanted to die.
He opened his eyes and sat up on the bed. The brittle bones of his temples crunched as if squeezed by a vice. He looked around and concluded that he was seeing this interior for the first time. Next to him lay a drunken woman in a dirty, slippery petticoat. At the table slept a man in a vest; his massive hand, with its tattoo of an anchor, caressingly crushed a fallen bottle against the wet oilcloth. On the window, a paraffin lamp was dying. A light streak of dawn filtered into the room.
Anwaldt glanced at the wrist on which he wore a watch. The watch was no longer there. Oh yes, yesterday, overcome with pity, he had offered it to a beggar. A persistent thought stung him: how to get out of the place. This was not going to be easy. He could not see his clothes anywhere. Although he had no shortage of extravagant ideas, he was not wont to go out into the street wearing nothing but his underpants. He noted with relief that, true to a habit which he had acquired at the orphanage, he had tied his shoes together and hung them around his neck.
He picked himself up from the bed and almost fell. His legs slid apart on the wet floor, his arms waved about frantically and found support: the left on a child’s metal bed, the right on a stool where someone had spilt the contents of an ashtray.
Hammers continued to bang within his head, his lungs pumped fiercely, his throat emitted a rasping sound. Anwaldt struggled with himself for a moment — he wanted to lie beside the drunken nymph, but when he looked at her and smelt the odour of rotten teeth and putrid gums, he put the idea firmly aside. In the corner, he espied his creased suit. As swiftly as he could, he dressed in the darkness of the stairwell, dragged himself out into the street and remembered its name: Weserstrasse. He did not know how he had got there. He whistled at a passing droschka†. Criminal Assistant Herbert Anwaldt had been drinking for what was already the fifth day. With short intervals, he had been drinking for six months.
BERLIN, THURSDAY, JULY 5TH, 1934
EIGHT O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING
Criminal Commissioner Heinrich von Grappersdorff was exploding with rage. He thumped the table with his fist and screamed blue murder. It seemed to Anwaldt that the snow-white, round collar of his superior’s shirt would snap over the distended, bull-like neck. He was not especially perturbed by the screaming. Firstly, because any thoughts getting through to his mind were muffled by the thick filter of a hangover; secondly, because he knew that the “old ox from Stettin” had not fallen into a genuine fury yet.
“Look at yourself, Anwaldt.” Von Grapperdorff grasped the Assistant under the armpits and stood him in front of a mirror mounted in an engraved frame. The gesture gave Anwaldt pleasure, as if it were a coarse masculine caress. He saw, in his reflection, the slim, unshaven face of an auburn-haired man which undeniably betrayed the five-day binge. The whites of his eyes, shot with blood, were lost in their swollen sockets, from the dry lips stuck out flakes of sharp skin, the hair clung to a deeply furrowed brow.
Von Grappersdorff took his hands from Anwaldt and wiped them with revulsion. He stood behind his desk and once more assumed the stance of Thunderer.
“You’re thirty and look as if you were forty. You’ve sunk to the very bottom like the worst whore! And all because of some rag with the face of an innocent. Soon any Berlin thug will buy you out for a tankard of beer! And I don’t want any corruptible whores here!” He drew in a breath and roared: “I’m throwing you out, Schnappswald! Reason: five days’ unauthorised leave.”
The Commissioner sat down behind his desk and lit a cigar. Blowing clouds of smoke, he did not take his eyes off what used to be his best employee. The filter of a hangover had stopped working. Anwaldt realized that he would soon be left without a pension and would only be able to dream of alcohol. This thought had the necessary effect. He looked pleadingly at his superior, who suddenly started reading a report from the previous day. After a long while, he sternly said:
“I am dismissing you from the Berlin police. As of tomorrow, you start work at the Breslau Police Praesidium. A certain very important person there wants to entrust you with a rather difficult mission. So? Do you accept my proposition or are you going to beg on Kurfurstendamm? If the local boys let you in on a cushy job …”
Anwaldt tried not to burst into tears. He did not think about the Commissioner’s proposition so much as about holding back his tears. This time von Grappersdorff’s fury was genuine.
“Are you going to Breslau or aren’t you, you wine-sodden tramp?”
Anwaldt nodded. The Commissioner calmed down immediately.
“We’ll meet on Friedrichstrasse this evening at eight, on platform three. I’ll give you a few essential details then. Here are fifty marks to clean yourself up. Pay me back when you’re settled in Breslau.”
BERLIN, THAT SAME JULY 5TH, 1934
EIGHT O’CLOCK IN THE EVENING
Anwaldt arrived punctually. He was clean, shaven and — most importantly — sober. He was dressed in a new, lightweight, pale-beige suit and matching tie. He carried a tattered briefcase and an umbrella. His hat, somewhat askew, made him look like an American actor whose name von Grappersdorff did not know.
“Well. Now, that’s more like it.” The Commissioner approached his former employee and sniffed. “Breathe out!”
