scaly blotches were not visible. “She looks quite happy, doesn’t she?”
“That’s the port director’s wife?” asked Mock.
“I found his office. Went in. He and that woman were there. I introduced myself. He said goodbye to her nervously: ‘Bye, my little wifey. I’ll be there in a minute.’”
“Take me to his office,” Mock said, springing to his feet and talking more fluently now. “Now that he’s irrigated his wife, and before he launches the ship, the port director has some questions to answer.”
“I’ve already asked them,” Smolorz said as he pulled out a notebook. “And I showed him the photographs. He didn’t recognize the murdered men. But he gave me a list of all the agents in Breslau who recruit river-boat sailors.”
“How did you know I wanted to ask that?” Mock secretly admired the terseness and love of hard facts which distinguished his colleague.
“Ah well, I just guessed. I do know you a little.” Smolorz reached into his pocket and pulled out a bottle of dark beer with the Biernoth Tavern label. “I guessed this too. I do know you a little.”
“You’re irreplaceable,” Mock said as he spontaneously squeezed Smolorz’s hand.
The orchestra began to play “Marsch der freiwilliger Jager”. From behind the building strode a red-faced, fifty-year-old man in a top hat. His cheeks looked fit to burst with a surplus of blood, and the buttons on his waistcoat strained under the pressure of excess fat. He approached the table, picked up a glass of champagne with his plump fingers, and raised it in a toast.
“That’s Wohsedt, the director of Wollheim’s shipyard,” Ollenborg informed them.
The buzzing in Mock’s ears — intensified by the bubbles in the beer — drowned out Wohsedt’s speech. The police officer heard only the words “godmother” and “my wife”. Whereupon a buxom, short, fifty-year-old woman who had previously been sitting next to the priest made her way to the table where the magnum of champagne stood. She smashed the bottle against the hull of the ship and gave it its mythological Germanic name. The blonde in the blue dress put down her glass of lemonade and watched the ceremony. Mock sipped his beer slowly, straight from the bottle. Unlike Smolorz, who no longer knew which was the wife and which the mistress, he was not surprised by anything. To his satisfaction he was able to confirm that the world was returning to its old ways.
BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 1ST, 1919
FOUR O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON
Cabby Helmut Warschkow, who for several years now had been working solely for the Police Praesidium, was riding up on the box in a most uncomfortable position, forced as he was to share the seat with Sergeant Kurt Smolorz, the size of whose body was inversely proportional to the economy of his speech. Pressed into the iron frame by Smolorz’s hefty shoulders, he lashed his whip, deep down beside himself with indignation that his carriage was being used for ignoble purposes by Eberhard Mock from Vice Department IIIb. Mock had closed the roof and, having thus isolated himself from prying eyes, was subjecting an innocent girl in a blue dress — whom he had none too courteously invited into the droschka during the ship-launching ceremony — to a ritual as old as the hills. Warschkow’s suspicions, however, were wrong. The rocking of the carriage was not caused by the movement of Mock’s loins but by the bumpiness of the alley in South Park along which they were travelling. The otherwise lecherous Mock, looking at the scales on the girl’s neck, thought of everything but the mating dance and its consequences. The girl herself was in no way innocent; on the contrary, she was highly amenable to the kinds of requests made by men that no virgin could satisfy. Now she was reacting with equal submission to Mock’s demands, beating her shapely breast and swearing to “sir” that, whatever the consequences, she would confirm that she had been kept by Wohsedt for several months now, especially since it was he who had infected her with “this filth”.
“I beg of you, don’t lock me up … I have to work … I have a small child … No doctor’s going to stamp my book …”
“You have two options,” Mock said, feeling disgust towards the sick girl, and disgusted with himself for revelling in her consternation. “Either I bring you in for having an out-of-date health record or I don’t. In which case you have only one way out: to work with me. Agreed?”
“Yes, agreed, honourable sir.”
“Now you’re addressing me as you should.”
“Yes, honourable sir. And that’s how I’m going to address you from now on, honourable sir.”
“So you’re Wohsedt’s kept woman. Do you have other clients as well?”
“Sometimes, honourable sir. He keeps me, but he’s too miserly to have exclusivity.”
“Are you sure he’s the one who infected you?”
“Yes, honourable sir. He had it already the first time I was with him. He liked biting my neck. He infected me like a rabid dog.”
Mock studied the girl. She was shaking. Tears glistened in her cornflower-blue eyes. He touched her cold, wet hand. She was moulting, layers of skin flaked from her neck. Mock felt sick; he was revolted by all kinds of things when he had a hangover. With a hangover he could never be a dermatologist.
“What’s your name?” he said, swallowing.
“Johanna, and my three-year-old daughter’s name is Charlotte.” The girl smiled, pulling her high collar further up over her neck. “My husband died in the war. We’ve also got a little boxer. We love her … She’s called …”
When he was young Mock had a boxer at his family home in Waldenburg. The dog would lie on its side and little Ebi would snuggle his head into its short fur. In the winter, the dog was happiest lying beneath the stove. Dog-catcher Femersche also lived in Waldenburg. The dogs he disliked most were Alsatians and boxers.
“I don’t give a damn what your mongrel is called!” Mock roared and pulled out his wallet. “I don’t give a damn about your bastard child!” He took out wads of banknotes and threw them into the girl’s lap. “I’m interested in one thing only: that you get rid of that fungus! There’s enough money for you to live off for a month. The doctor won’t take anything from you, he’s a friend of mine: Doctor Cornelius Ruhtgard, Landsbergstrasse 8. You’re to come and see me in a month, when you’re cured! If you don’t, I’ll track you down and destroy you! You don’t believe me? Ask your friends! Do you know who I am?”
“I do, honourable sir. You paid me a visit when I was working in the Prinz Blucher cabaret, Reuscherstrasse 11/12.”
“Ah, that’s interesting …” Mock tried to remember the circumstances. “Was I a client of yours? And what? How did I behave? What did I say?”
“You were …” she hesitated, “after some alcohol …”
“And what did I say?” Mock felt increasingly tense. Often, after nights of heavy drinking, he would hide his head in the sand like an ostrich. To his companions in these nocturnal escapades he would say: “Don’t remind me of it. Don’t talk about it. Not a word. Not a single word.” But now he wanted to know. May it fall on him like a sentence.
“You told me, honourable sir … that I look like your beloved … nurse… Except that she was ginger …”
“One says ‘red-headed’ or ‘flame-haired’. And what else?”
“That of all dogs, honourable sir, boxers are your favourite …”
BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 1ST, 1919
FIVE O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON
Cabby Warschkow stopped once more at the wharf of the Wollheim shipyard, alongside the
