the Hungarian King Hotel and Restaurant. All of a sudden the dog growled. The man in the peaked cap stopped unbuttoning his trousers and looked round.
Some fifty metres from them two men were forcing their way through the bushes. Both wore bowler hats and had cigarettes between their teeth. The shorter one kept stopping, grasping his stomach and groaning loudly.
“Quiet, Bert,” the woman whispered as she stroked the dog. Bert growled softly and watched the two men shake thick drops of dew from their clothes.
The shorter man removed his bowler and wiped the sweat from his brow, and the two of them continued on their way towards the pond where some fat swans had now appeared. Suddenly the shorter of the two stopped and said something loudly, which the woman understood as: “Oh, damn it!” and her partner as: “Oh, fuck!” The groaning man handed his bowler and coat to his taller companion and, pressing his thighs together, he pushed his way into the bushes and squatted. The unfulfilled lover decided to carry on with humankind’s eternal act, but his consort had a different idea. She tied the dog to a tree and hid behind it. Leaning out a little, she watched anxiously as the squatting man ran his fingers over his cheek, looked at them carefully, then looked up. Once again he blurted out the words which the maid and her lover had understood so differently, but now his voice was amplified by horror. At the crown of the old plane tree swung a man hanging by his legs. The dog yelped, the woman screamed and her lover saw a freckled hand covered in red hair with a gun aimed at his nose. The early morning tryst had ended in total disaster.
BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 4TH, 1919
HALF PAST FIVE IN THE MORNING
Mock was familiar with the right wing of South Park Restaurant. There was a hotel in the wing where two rooms were forever reserved. Just under a year earlier, when he and Cornelius Ruhtgard had been sent, much to their delight, on a Polish train to Warsaw, where the Poles disarmed them, both had sensed a favourable wind at their backs. They had passed through Lodz and Posen on their way to the Silesian metropolis which, as Mock assured his friend, was to Konigsberg like fat carp to dry cod. On arriving in Breslau they had lodged with Franz, Mock’s brother, and that same day they had gone to South Park Restaurant. Their table had been next to the pond, by the stone steps leading down to the water, and the autumn sun had been exceptionally strong that day. Conversation had flagged because Mock’s eight-year-old nephew Erwin, bored by his uncle’s wartime stories and fed up with feeding indifferent swans, had kept on interrupting. Everyone had feigned distress at losing the war, when in fact all had been thinking about their own affairs: Franz about his frigid wife; Irmgard about little Erwin’s tendency to tears and melancholy; Erwin about the gun which he believed must be hidden in his uncle’s backpack; Ruhtgard about his daughter Christel, who was taking her final exams that year at a Hamburg boarding school for well-born young ladies, and whom he was to bring to Breslau; and Eberhard Mock about his dying mother in Waldenburg, with the old shoemaker Willibald Mock sitting at her side, trying to hide the tears that ran down the furrows on his face. When Franz’s family had hurriedly said their farewells and set off for the nearby tram terminus, Mock and Ruhtgard sat in silence. The festive mood which accompanied them through the elegant restaurants of Warsaw, the dens of Lodz that smelled of onions, and the steamed-up restaurants of Posen, had somehow evaporated into thin air. As they were knocking back their second tankard of beer that day, they had been approached by a head waiter endowed with impressive whiskers. As he changed their ashtray, he had smacked his lips and winked. Mock knew what that meant. Without a moment’s hesitation they had paid and gone up to the first floor of the hotel where, in the company of two young ladies, they had celebrated the end of the war.
That same head waiter was now sitting on reception. He did not wink or smack his lips; his eyelids and lips were glued together with sleep. Mock did not need to show his identification. Over the course of the year, head waiter Bielick had become well acquainted with Criminal Assistant Mock from the Vice Department of the Police Praesidium, and he did not feel like laughing.
“How many members of staff are there in the hotel, and how many guests?” Mock said with no introduction.
“I’m the only member of staff. The caretaker, the cooks and the chambermaid come at six,” Bielick said.
“And how many guests?”
“Two.”
“Are they alone?”
“No. The one in number four is with Kitty, the other in six with August.”
“What time did they get here?”
“Kitty’s one at midnight, the other — yesterday afternoon. August, the poor thing,” Bielick giggled, “he won’t be able to sit down.”
“Why did you lie to me by saying you’re the only member of staff?” Mock spoke softly, but his voice shook. “Kitty and August are here too.” He lit a cigarette and remembered the existence of a malady called drinking too much. “I’ve not been here for a long time, Bielick,” he muttered. “I didn’t know you were running a brothel for queers.”
“I informed Councillor Ilssheimer about it directly,” Bielick said, a little embarrassed. “And he gave his assent.”
“I’m going to pay Kitty and August a visit. Give me the keys!”
Jangling the keys, Mock climbed the stairs to the first floor. As he mounted the crimson carpet, he did not notice Bielick reach for the telephone. He paused on the mezzanine and glanced out of the window. The boughs of the plane trees swayed. The policeman cutting down the corpse was out of sight, whereas Smolorz was perfectly in view, questioning the unfulfilled lovers. He could see Muhlhaus too, as Smolorz pointed out the hotel to him. And now he could also see the body coming down — fat, and with a red, bloated neck. From that distance the eczema was not visible.
Mock arrived on the first floor and opened the door marked number four. The room was fitted out like an elegant, eighteenth-century boudoir. Mirrors set in gilt frames hung on the walls, and syringes containing powder stood in front of them. There was an enormous four-poster bed and the immense spider of a still-burning chandelier. Next to the bed stood a dress. It stood because it was supported by a whalebone frame from which flowed the skirt. There were two people in the bed: a small, slight man lay cuddled up to a pair of generous breasts squeezed into a corset. The breasts belonged to a woman who was snoring heavily, opening lips accentuated by a charcoal beauty spot. Wearing an abundantly powdered and tiered wig, she looked as if she had been transported from the days of Louis XIV.
Mock turned off the light, walked up to the chair where the man’s clothes hung and pulled out his wallet. He sat down heavily at the coffee table, pushed the woman’s lingerie off the marble surface with his elbow and noted down the man’s details. “Horst Salena, forwarding agent, Marthastrasse 23, two children.” Then he got up, yanked the eiderdown off the bed and scrutinized the man who was lying on his back, his ribs protruding above his long johns. He was very thin and ordinary. He could have done anything but haul Wohsedt’s hundred-kilogram body up a high tree. They both awoke. The woman cursed under her breath and covered herself again with the eiderdown.
Mock studied the forwarding agent’s frightened face.
“Beat it, Salena. Right now!”
Salena got dressed without a sound and quickly left, hardly daring to breathe. Mock stepped into the corridor, locking Kitty in her room, and pushed at the door to August’s room. The key did not fit. Mock swore at Bielick under his breath and with a furious expression went downstairs to reception. He looked so fierce that the receptionist slid the correct key across the counter without a word. Mock grabbed it and ran back up-stairs. From the corridor he heard a window slam, and then the dull thud of someone landing heavily. He drew his Mauser and rushed to the window. Criminal Councillor Josef Ilssheimer was running, limping, across the lawn. His bowler hat was missing and his coat was thrown carelessly over his shoulders. Mock rubbed his eyes in astonishment and burst into August’s room. The young man in a dressing gown was not in the least frightened and gazed at the intruder with a smile. Mock looked around the room and saw a bowler hanging on a peg. He took it down and examined it. On the sweat- stained ribbon inside he found the embroidered initials “J.I.” — Josef Ilssheimer had jumped from August’s window! Now Mock knew why he had not been informed by Bielick about the modification to the service offered by South Park Hotel. Mock swallowed acrid saliva and felt it scratch at his throat. He dropped the bowler on the floor and dug his heel into it several times before throwing it into a corner. From that day nothing could surprise him any more.
