“So Rita believed in cakes, too?” asked Popielski, calmly stroking his Spanish beard, which Lodzia called “Tartar”. “Believed who? The bandits?”
“Oh dear, Edward …” Leokadia stood up and began to pace the room. In her navy-blue dress and white collar she looked like a teacher from a girls’ boarding school. She spoke emphatically, like a dedicated pedagogue. “She left the house with Hanna and with her friend Jadzia Wajchendler …”
“I’ve not liked that Jewish girl for a long time …” muttered Popielski. “That little friend …”
“On the contrary,” Leokadia laughed, “you’ve always liked the Jewish look in a woman! Are you turning into a fraternity student† in your old age? But listen to what I want to say and don’t interrupt! Our good Hanna went to church, the girls went to the circus. That must have been what happened! What fun they must have had secretly putting on make-up in some gateway! First of all, nobody was going to recognize them; secondly, they were going to feel grown up! Maybe – and don’t get worked up, Edward! – they even lit a cigarette and choked on it, the poor things! They sat in the audience at the circus. And what does it take for some fox or Don Juan from Mościska to join them? Maybe it was the strongman who noticed their admiring glances? And invited them for pastries in the cake shop. Except that the cake shop turned out to be some place frequented by ruffians that sells illicit alcohol. And that’s all! The rogue you spoke to today had been buying alcohol too, and he didn’t know what happened to the girls afterwards! And nothing happened to them! They left, ran away, and maybe the woman who owns the drinking-den stood up for them like Mikulik did for me once. That’s all, Edward! Rita was clearly in high spirits when she talked to me. She was not dishonoured, believe you me! A girl acts differently when she loses her virtue!”
At that moment the phone rang. Popielski marched briskly to the hall and picked up the receiver.
“Popielski speaking,” he said, still in German, and immediately grew confused. He then wanted to say the same in Polish, but did not manage in time.
“How good of you to be expecting my call, Commissioner, and to answer in German,” he heard a hoarse bass voice speaking the purest German. “So you got the message that I would be calling? When I spoke to them at noon today, the Police Administration in Lwów told me it was best to reach you at eleven at night. Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot to introduce myself. Criminal Director Eberhard Mock from the Breslau Police Praesidium.”
LWÓW, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13TH, 1937 TWO O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON
The Head of the Investigative Bureau, Chief Inspector Marian Zubik, did not like Commissioner Edward Popielski for several reasons. His subordinate reminded Zubik of his own mistakes and shortcomings. The aristocrat’s manners and mysterious signet ring irritated Zubik, who tended to dress plainly and act simply. He had, in fact, heard that Popielski could be as violent and vulgar as a carter, but he had never witnessed this himself. Popielski’s studies in mathematics and philology in Vienna, although incomplete, painfully belittled Zubik’s education. This had been cut short when he was thrown out of school in Chyrów without finishing the fifth form because of his Latin, which his subordinate flaunted constantly and excessively. The immaculate and somewhat dandyish elegance of the commissioner reminded Zubik of his own worn-down, rarely polished shoes and too tight suit. He was even irritated by the ostentatious way in which Popielski carried his closely shaven head, while he himself tried desperately to hide his bald pate by combing his hair from just above one ear to the top of his head. And now as Popielski reported his conversation with the German police officer from Breslau, he irritated his superior with his glasses, so dark that one could not see the eyes behind them. Zubik had wanted to call his subordinate to order on many occasions, but the latter seemed unpunishable. He worked when it pleased him, attended parents’ meetings during working hours and generally went about his own business, and yet he enjoyed the support of Commander Władysław Goździewski, the chief himself!
“Well, Popielski?” muttered Zubik. “Why have you gone quiet?”
“May I ask, sir, that we draw the curtain?” Popielski stared anxiously into the intense January sun which sharply defined the contours of the Polytechnic College library visible from the window of Police Headquarters. “You know it’s bad for me, sir.”
“You may.” Zubik signed a document brought in by a secretary and glanced regretfully at Popielski as he drew the curtain. “And what happened with this Criminal Director … what’s his name?”
“Mock.”
“So what happened when Mock found out that this supposed pederast came to Breslau with the murdered girl from Lwów?”
“Mock went to the border crossing at Chebzie and found the men who were on duty on New Year’s Eve. The customs officer stated that that day he had checked the passport of a girl with a ticket from Lwów to Breslau. The girl had been travelling in a private compartment with – as the man with whom I spoke said a little ironically – a very beautiful young man who, in fact, the customs officer knew very well by sight.”
“A German customs officer knew a Polish lad from Lwów very well by sight?” Zubik asked in surprise as he trimmed a cigar.
“I didn’t say the lad was from Lwów, but your intuition is excellent, sir.” Popielski was sprawled out in the chair, the corners of his lips betraying a smile. “Yes, he knew him by sight because the lad made the journey to Breslau several times a year. Always in a private compartment. It was the first time he was with a girl. Usually he was with Germans, men much older than him who joined the compartment at the border, in Chebzie. Mock also questioned the train workers. One of them remembered the youth quite well since he returned to Lwów very frequently by the same train. No-one was with him on the way back. Since the train wasn’t due to leave until the next morning, the young man spent the night in Breslau. According to the Germans he looked like a Gypsy …”
“What do those Germans know? He could have been a Gypsy, Armenian, Georgian, Jew … But does he have a name, this Gypsy? Did that Prussian tell you?” Zubik shook some ash into a massive ashtray.
“Yes. The customs officers noted it down in their reports … Making terrible mistakes at that.”
“And?”
“His name’s Alfons Trębaszczkiewicz …”
“It’s hardly surprising they made mistakes … Strange name for a Gypsy … Well, Mr Popielski? Is there a Trębaszczkiewicz in our files?”
“Trębaszczkiewicz. I checked our files yesterday and those in the civil registrar’s office.” Popielski coughed. He could not stand the Patria cigars Zubik smoked. “There’s no man by this name. Yesterday I sent a telegram to Warsaw. Here’s their answer, handed to me by the charming Miss Zosia.”
He put the telegram on Zubik’s desk. Zubik took a long time to read the single line of text.
“Ah, well,” he said, removing his glasses thoughtfully, “there’s only one Alfons Trębaszczkiewicz in the whole of Poland … He’s in Posen … A master tailor.”
“The passport was forged, sir, and that’s what I told Mock over the phone yesterday. He only asked me to enquire about the name, but later he also asked me to find a homosexual looking like a Gypsy in Lwów. That’s when something hit me. I’ve got good intuition like you, sir. I said I wasn’t going to look for anyone unless Mock let me in on the circumstances surrounding the case. He didn’t say anything for a long time, but in the end he told me everything. The girl travelling with this Gypsy had been the victim of an abominable crime. Her name was Anna, as noted by the hotel receptionist …”
“A fine state of affairs in that Germany of theirs,” sighed Zubik. “They only record first names in hotel registers … I ask you!”
“The hotel’s a den, a bawdy house in disguise, sir. And now, hold tight because what I’m going to say is …”
“Alright! Go on!” Zubik did not wait for Popielski to find some sophisticated adjective.
“The girl was raped and her cheek had been gnawed away,
devoured! And she had been a virgin before the rape.”
“Bloody hell!” Zubik could not stop himself from swearing in front of his subordinate, something he had never done before. “And this also happened in a hotel …”
“Yes. It looks like the case of the Minotaur,” Popielski said and fell silent.
The silence spread through the chief’s office. Popielski removed his glasses, breathed on the lenses and wiped them with a white handkerchief on which a secret symbol had been embroidered by Lodzia, the same as that on his signet ring. Zubik rocked his hefty body back on the chair and interlaced his fingers behind his neck. A tram grated by beneath the window; the cigar smouldered in the ashtray.
Both men remembered well the unresolved case of two years earlier, reported by every newspaper in Poland and which had attracted odium to the Lwów police. The summer of 1935. Within a few days two girls had been found raped and murdered. The faces of both had been gnawed away. One had been sixteen, the other eighteen. One had been found in Hotel Fränkel in Mościska, the other in Hotel Europa in Drohobycz. In both cases the girls had been registered under the surnames they had given, and nobody had given them a second thought. The young ladies claimed they had missed their train and had to spend the night. Both names were false. Nobody had ever identified the victims, even though the forensic pathologist from the university, Doctor Ivan Pidhirny, had proved to be exceptionally gifted at reconstructing faces. They had been buried at the state’s expense. For half a year the Lwów police – secretly colluding with the criminal underworld – had searched for the Minotaur, a nickname thought up by none other than Popielski. Everyone had tried to track down the monster who ate and raped virgins. Popielski’s questionable methods of hypnosis and the use of a clairvoyant were of no avail. Every one of their efforts was in vain.
“And so?” Zubik broke the silence and crushed his cigar, which now reminded Popielski of a huge, trampled cockroach.
“So I told Mock it was our case and asked him to send me all the files.”
“And how did he react?”
“And he,” – Popielski smiled – “behaved just as I would in his place.”
“Meaning?”
“He told me to forget we’d ever had the conversation and beat it.”
Zubik leaped up and started pacing around the table like a beast. He turned puce and his neck expanded two sizes.
“What does he think, that Prussian!” he yelled. “It’s my case! It’s our case!” He picked up the receiver. “Miss Zosia, please arrange an appointment for me to see Commander Goździewski as soon as possible! And you” – he turned to Popielski – “make a note of the conversation straight away! Very accurately! And in Polish. And translate what he told you at the end. To hop it, right? The Hun!”
“I can’t translate it,” Popielski said.
“And why is that?” Zubik loosened his collar, his face nearly exploding.
“Because it’s obscene.” Popielski smiled again. “He told me exactly what I would have said in his place. He said: ‘Up your arse, you old Austrian!’”
Zubik stood glued to the spot. He had never before heard Popielski swear. He was so astounded his jaw dropped.
“Popielski, what are you saying? He addressed you so coarsely? A criminal director? Why ‘old Austrian’? And what did you do?”
“I’ve probably got an Austrian accent. And what did I do? I replied: ‘Up your arse, you old Prussian!’”
BRESLAU, MONDAY, JANUARY 18TH, 1937 SEVEN O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING
As he grew older, Mock got up earlier in the mornings. Perhaps because he no longer led as intensive a nightlife as even two or three years earlier. With a great deal of persuasion from his doctor he drank less alcohol and very rarely visited Madam le Goef’s salon in Nadślężański Manor in Opperau just outside Breslau, where on Fridays he had always found great satisfaction in the arms of two girls simultaneously. Now, if ever he looked in, it was about three times a year and he often left without availing himself of female charms. To a large extent this was the result not so much of a lessening of need and libido, but rather due to a sense of alienation in that exclusive temple. At once time, when he had been an important official in the Police Praesidium, he had been greeted there most warmly; the young ladies he picked had been exceptionally engrossed in their work and constantly paid him compliments, delighted as they were by his gentlemanliness and good manners. He, on the other hand – apart from professional competence – asked only one thing of them: the ability to play chess, a game which had always preceded his erotic excesses at Nadślężański Manor. Of Madam de Goef he expected only discretion and the provision on Friday evenings of a comfortable apartment where he could eat, drink, play chess and, in the arms of Ishtar’s priestesses, forget about the whole world. Unfortunately everything had changed once he deserted the Criminal Police for the Abwehr. Madame le Goef, realizing Mock was no longer as powerful and influential as he once had been, ceased to be accommodating and pleasant; the prettiest girls were ever more frequently reserved for high-ranking officers of the S.S., while the captain’s virility was not helped by spy-holes hidden in the walls. He knew about them perfectly well; when he had worked for the police they had allowed him to catch men in a vice of blackmail on more than one occasion. He had decided, therefore, to forgo the madam’s services. Nor did he have a permanent mistress because recently he had only happened upon women whose feigned enthusiasm for making love was obvious to him right from the start. Indeed he was not an idealist, nor did he believe that some twenty- or thirty-year-old would fall in love with a man who – according to Plato – stood on the threshold of old age, but he did like to keep up appearances. So Mock’s nights were not as exhausting as they had once been, and his mornings were more rarely spiced with a hangover. He rose at six every morning, walked his beloved Argos along the old city moat, bought the Breslauer Neueste Nachrichten and then partook of an enormous breakfast at home, which sometimes held hunger at bay even until supper.
The head of the Gestapo in Breslau, teetotaller and vegetarian Criminal Director Erich Kraus, did not know that Mock had undergone such a transformation. By making an appointment for seven in the morning without consulting von Hardenburg about the timing, he had wanted to humiliate Mock, whom he sincerely despised – a hatred which was reciprocated. But instead of a hungover gentleman with bloodshot eyes, a fat dandy smelling of cigar smoke and the perfume of numerous mistresses, he beheld before him a healthy man with ample but not excessive fat, who smelled of frost, wind and expensive eau de cologne.
“Please do not shake your cigarette ash into the palm pot.” Kraus’ treble grew even shriller.
“I’m sorry, Herr S.S.-Sturmbannführer,” Mock smiled derisively, knowing he was striking two blows in one, “but there’s no ashtray, sir.”
Kraus did not allow himself to be provoked by Mock’s use of the S.S. title rather than the official police “Criminal Director”. He knew perfectly well that he would never instil the habit in the old, obstinate police officer, who considered it inconceivable and shameful that the political police should be addressed as criminal police. The second blow – smoking a cigarette in defiance of the clear notice hanging on his office wall – hit its target.
“Then please extinguish that stinking cigarette butt!” yelled Kraus.
“Yes, sir,” retorted Mock, and he pressed the cigarette into the earth which filled the pot of the huge palm.
Arms behind his back, Kraus strolled across the room clearly appeased. All of a sudden he spun on his heel and stood in front of Mock with his legs astride.
“How is your work with Criminal Secretary Seuffert coming along?”
“It that why you summoned me here, to ask about your Seuffert?”
“And how’s your collaboration with the Police Praesidium in Lemberg going?” Kraus grinned from ear to ear.
“But you know that, Herr Sturmbannführer. I was refused the collaboration.”
“Because you treated their c
ommissioner boorishly.” Kraus was still grinning. “Anyway, that’s good, Captain Mock. Down with the Slav beasts! You’re acting like a loyal member of the N.S.D.A.P. You’re not one yet, but no doubt shortly … Eh, Mock?”
“You like insinuations, Herr Sturmbannführer.” Mock sensed that Kraus was beginning to make him angry and decided to work on the lordly and intellectual complexes of the plebeian from Frankenstein. “Insinuations or verbal ellipses. The phrase ‘How’s your collaboration going’ should be, ‘How’s your collaboration working out’, and that last ‘but no doubt shortly’, what does that really mean? ‘No doubt shortly you will be one’, suggesting ‘a member of the N.S.D.A.P.’? Can we please not use ellipses but sentences containing normal subjects and predicates?”
Kraus turned his back on Mock, walked to his desk and slowly sat down behind its wide, gleaming surface. He pretended to be calm but the appearance of a thick vein on his brow betrayed his true state of mind.
“You think you only answer to Colonel von Hardenburg, Mock,” Kraus hissed quietly. “But in actual fact nobody can protect you from me. I summoned you for seven o’clock in the morning, and what do we see? Mock is here in a flash. Obediently, punctually, even though he had something to drink the night before, had it off … You’re entirely in my disposition …”
“It’s ‘at my disposition’, Herr Sturmbannführer!”
“Nice, nice …” Kraus clenched his fists. “So contrarious from first thing in the morning … Hangover, eh, Mock? A hangover takes it out of you! But to the point. Really you belong to me, and you’re never going to free yourself of me. For example … Ah, this here.” Kraus put on his glasses and began to leaf through a file lying on his table. “Yes, I’ve got an assignment here that’s just right for you … Perfect, in fact …”
The Minotaur's Head: An Eberhard Mock Investigation (Eberhard Mock Investigation 4) Page 7