Ollenborg”. “Height one hundred and sixty centimetres, weight seventy kilograms. Water on the lungs.” With a quiet crunch of the knife, Lasarius cut away the bloated, hard lobes of the lungs and made incisions with a pair of small scissors. “There, you see?” — he showed Mock the pulp and water that ran from the bronchi — “That’s typical of death by drowning.”
Lasarius’ assistant lifted the dead man’s skull a little, inserted the tip of his knife behind one ear and made another incision. He then got hold of the scored skin of the occiput and a whitish membrane and drew both layers across eyes which were no longer there. They had been gouged out.
“Write this down,” Lasarius said, turning to him. Blood was slowly filling the cavity in the body. “Internal bleeding into the right lung cavity. Perforations on the lungs made by a sharp instrument …”
The legs and arms of the corpse began to jerk. Lasarius’ assistant was sawing into the skull, causing the body to move. Mock swallowed and went outside. Muhlhaus and Smolorz were standing bare-headed in the morning sunshine, staring at the brick buildings of the university’s Department of Medicine and at the yellowing leaves on the old plane tree. Mock removed his bowler hat, loosened his buttoned collar and approached them.
“An angler found the body under the Scheitniger sluice,” Muhlhaus said. He extracted a pipe from the pocket of his frock coat, an anachronistic garment that was the object of much teasing in the entire Police Praesidium.
“Was a note about me, or to me, found on him?” asked Mock.
“‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.’” Muhlhaus extended his hand, holding in a pair of tweezers an ordinary sheet of paper torn from a squared exercise book. He pressed his pince-nez to his nose, brought the note closer to his eyes and read: “‘Mock, admit your mistake, admit you have come to believe. If you do not want to see more gouged eyes, admit your mistake’.” He handed the page to Mock. “Did you know this man, Mock?”
“Yes, he was a police informer, a man by the name of Ollenborg.” Mock slipped on a glove and scrutinized the scrap of paper. The writing was crooked and uneven, as if traced by somebody who was illiterate. “He was well acquainted with the people and the goings on in the port. I questioned him yesterday in connection with the Four Sailors case.”
“The writing is different,” Smolorz said. “Different to yesterday’s.”
“You’re right,” Mock looked at Smolorz with approval. “The piece of paper found on the four sailors was written in a neat hand by someone who went to school. The one on Ollenborg was written unevenly, messily and …”
“Which could mean they were written by the victims themselves. One of the ‘sailors’ went to secondary school … Explain something to me, Mock” — Muhlhaus filled all his respiratory passages with tobacco so as to kill off the odour of the mortuary — “How is it you’re here? I was informed by Duty Officer Pragst and I forbade him to tell anyone else about it. Only the angler, Pragst and myself know of the murder. Most strange.” He pondered for a few moments. “Yesterday the bodies were found several hours after the murder. The same thing today. Perhaps those boys yesterday and now the angler were somehow directed by the murderer … We ought to question them more closely …”
“Smolorz, show the Commissioner” — Mock made way for a hefty orderly who was pushing through another body on a squeaking trolley — “what I received today …”
“A letter was found in the Police Praesidium letterbox,” Smolorz stuttered. “Somebody dropped it in last night. Addressed to Criminal Assistant Mock. This was in the envelope.” He held a page from a maths exercise book under Muhlhaus’ nose.
“Don’t bother to read it to me,” Muhlhaus said, furiously sucking air into his pipe, which was going out. “I know what it says.”
“The same words are on the piece of paper in the envelope as were found on Ollenborg’s remains,” Mock said. “And there’s a short footnote: ‘Location of body — Scheitniger sluice’. He’s telling us where he’s leaving the corpses.”
BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 2ND, 1919
TEN TO NINE IN THE MORNING
The hot September sun broke into the Murder Commission’s briefing room at the Police Praesidium. The clatter of horses’ hooves, the grating of trams and the parping of automobiles rose up from the traffic on Schuhbrucke into the cloudless sky. Schoolchildren drifted along the narrow pavements, each with a briefcase under his arm or a belt holding a pile of exercise books slung over his shoulder. They were hurrying towards Matthiasgymnasium to be on time for their second lesson. Some of them dawdled, standing beneath the statue of St John Nepomuk to throw stones at the bursting husks of chestnuts. A coachman shouted in annoyance at some supplicants who were leaving the High Court and swarming into the road. An elderly man in a bowler hat approached the schoolboys and reprimanded them fiercely. “The schoolmaster, no doubt,” thought Muhlhaus. He closed the window and regretfully returned from the land of school memories. He looked at the gloomy, tired and irritated faces of his employees and felt a wave of despondency. He did not want to talk to these thick, hungover mugs; he did not know how to begin.
“Commissioner, sir.” Mock saved him the trouble of opening the discussion. “You can relieve all these men from the Four Sailors case, sir. They’re not needed …”
“I,” Muhlhaus said slowly, “am the one to decide who is going to work with me on this case.”
“Yes, Commissioner, sir.”
“And, just as a matter of interest” — the Commissioner approached the window once more, but this time did not open it — “why do you say ‘all these men’ are not needed? And what does ‘all’ mean? All except you? Is that what you had in mind, Mock?”
“Yes, that’s what I had in mind.”
“Explain yourself!”
“The murderer, as we have already established, wants me to admit to some mistake. So he murders four lads with pouches over their balls. It’s supposed to be a spectacular murder, one that the whole town will be talking about, and is to prevent me from ever sleeping peacefully again. The image of the murdered boys with gouged eyes is to forever work its way into my head.”
“We already know that, Mock,” said Reinert, sounding bored.
“Shut up, my friend. It’s not your name that swine’s putting in his notes.”
“Reinert, don’t interrupt Criminal Assistant Mock,” Muhlhaus snarled. “Let him continue.”
“Smolorz has observed quite rightly” — Mock gazed in concentration at Reinert’s face as waves of anger passed over it — “that the murderer is going to carry on killing unless I admit to my mistake. And, unfortunately, he’s proved himself a good prophet. Gentlemen, the victims have nothing in common with each other …”
“Oh, but they do,” Kleinfeld spoke for the first time. “They’re somehow connected with water. The first four were sailors, or pseudo-sailors. They were, as Mr Mock has suggested, debauched regulars at brothels. It’s not for no reason that they were wearing sailors’ hats and leather pouches on their balls. The next victim is an old sailor and a police collaborator. All sailors, some inauthentic, one authentic.”
“I do not know, Mock,” Muhlhaus said, ignoring Kleinfeld’s statement, “how you intend to justify your peculiar suggestion that everyone except yourself should leave the investigative team. Besides, I’m not interested in your justification. I’m not going to dismiss anyone or dispatch them to other cases. Gentlemen, there are now eight of us.” He looked around at his men and counted them out loud. “Holst, Pragst, Rohs, Reinert, Kleinfeld, Smolorz and Mock. Eight, and that’s how it’s going to stay. And now, down to business …” He went to the revolving board and below the words “doubting Thomas = Mock, Christ = murderer, murdered sailors = warning for Mock” written by Mock the previous day, he added: “In which brothel did the murderer meet the four sailors?” “Smolorz is going to look into that. As an employee of the Vice Commission he knows every brothel in the city. You’ll be assisted by my trusted men, Holst, Pragst and Rohs.” Below this the Commissioner wrote: “Ollenborg’s last moments”. “Kleinfeld and Reinert will take care of this. I want to see you all here, in this room, on Friday at nine in the morning. That’s all for today.”
“What about me?” Mock asked. “What I am to do?”
“Let’s go, Mock,” Muhlhaus said. “I’m going to introduce you to somebody.”
