by Dan Vyleta
‘Ah, the report.’ Teuben cast a glance at it, then placed it face down on his desk. ‘It is hard to believe a man would kill himself with a knife, don’t you think? Stick it in his guts, I mean, rather than just cutting his wrists or throat.’
Beer shrugged. ‘It happened all the same,’ he said stiffly. ‘And besides, he was drunk. Perhaps the idea had stolen into his head with all the rumours going around, everybody talking about knives.’
‘An idée fixe. Next you will tell me there’s a precedent. In the literature.’ He smiled, fished a mint from his pocket and slipped it into his mouth.
‘More than one.’
‘But you are missing the point, Dr Beer. All I said was that it was hard to believe.’ He turned, located a cube of marble that served him as a paperweight, placed it on top of the report, then walked over to Beer, dustballs scrambling to avoid his tread.
‘Here now, come with me.’
Teuben led him out into the corridor and down a set of stairs. At the bottom, uniformed policemen opened a door for them, allowing them entry to a row of cells, recognisable at once by the heavy metal doors that lined the walls. Each door was equipped with a rectangular slit at eye-level that could be opened or closed from the outside only. No noise was audible at present. A row of benches lined the gaps between the doors.
‘Holding cells?’ Beer asked, a note of anxiety in his voice. How easy it would be for Teuben to keep him there; to take away his keys and go to Eva. He would protest, and earn a truncheon to the teeth for his troubles. Teuben seemed to notice his fear, and smiled.
‘Holding, interrogation, whatever is needed. There are more on the other side of the building. Where the Gestapo do their work.’ He slid open the peephole on one of the doors, then dragged Beer over by one arm, gently, as though walking a debutante on to the dance floor.
‘Do you know him?’
It took Beer a moment to recognise the man. He was sitting on a cot, in a room not much larger than a broom cupboard, lit by a single naked bulb that hung high from the centre of the ceiling: arms wrapped around his knees, his heels drawn up and planted near the buttocks, he was rocking and humming a low tune. His lips looked large and pursed on his long and horse-like face. A welt near the temple and the inflammation of one ear were the only signs that he’d been beaten.
‘But it’s the laundry boy,’ Beer realised at last.
‘Yes. Wolfgang Fromm is his name. I noticed you were on his client list. We held him before for a day or two, but got nothing definite out of him, so I decided to let him go.’ He gave a snort, as though to mock his own stupidity. ‘I had him picked up again this morning.’
‘What has he done?’
‘For all I know – nothing. Or everything. He’s half an idiot. We pick the idiots up first, you know, see what we find.’
Beer stared uncomprehendingly as Teuben slid the metal cover back over the peephole.
‘You see, Dr Beer, the mistake I made all along was this –’ He smiled, it was meant to look sheepish, red lips parting for his mint-fresh breath. ‘I was chasing the actual culprit, would you believe? Old habits. Childish, wasn’t it? And then I decided that the deaths were unconnected, and Speckstein a damn fool. Got snappish about it, too, pissed off the Chief, made all sorts of blunders.’
He took a seat upon one of the benches and gestured for Beer to join him. Mechanically, the doctor peeled a cigarette from the packet. Teuben watched him, spat out the mint, helped himself to cigarette and match.
‘Then it dawned on me last night, right there, in the dead man’s kitchen. I had been trying to dig up the truth, while what was called for was initiative. Auf den Führer zuarbeiten. Working towards the Führer. It’s the watchword of the age. Speckstein wants a serial killer, someone who also killed his dog. He’s more than half convinced the Chief. And Hitler is waging a war on cretins, antisocials: the stupid, the useless, and the mad.’
He paused, made a flourish towards the cells, the cigarette cupped in his hand. ‘Voila!’
Beer heard it and put his head in his hands.
‘You’d charge an innocent man?’ he asked, his protest meek, his forehead cool against his palms.
‘Who is to say he isn’t guilty? A little time with us, and I’m sure he will confess.’
Teuben rose, lifting Beer up by his elbow, walked him out the corridor and back up the stairs. His office was as they had left it, desolate; a stack of paper on his desk, face down, burdened by a stone.
‘Of course it does not have to be the laundry boy. There is someone else who comes to mind.’ He paused, raised his hands in front of his chest, palms out, as though leaning them against an invisible pane of glass.
‘The mime.’
‘Yes, the mime. Otto Frei. Might not be his real name, incidentally. Something fishy about his registration papers. I had them brought to me this morning. Also, there is the matter of his sister –’
Beer looked at him, gauged his smile. ‘A sister?’
‘You didn’t think I noticed?’ The smile widened. ‘I saw it at once: something about the eyes. Subtle but distinct. He’ll look more like her once he drops forty pounds. The thing is, if I arrest him, he might blab about her, and what happens then?’
Beer was silent, watched as Teuben retrieved the report from under the marble paperweight, read it, then folded it carefully in half.
‘Barbiturates,’ he said to the doctor. ‘That’s how I’m told they do it. At the hospital. They add barbiturates to their diet, little by little. Within a few weeks the patients catch pneumonia and die quite naturally.’ He folded the report a second time, down to the size of an envelope, and threw it into the bottom drawer of his desk. ‘Of course, now that the war is on they may expedite things. War is an impatient business.’
Beer swallowed, noticed that his hand had started to shake. He pushed it down one pocket. Inside, his fingers brushed against a handwritten note.
‘Your report needs reworking,’ Teuben said. ‘I’m relying on you. All the forensics have to add up. Something incontrovertible. So we know what we want the culprit to confess.’
Once again he took Beer by the arm, and slowly walked him out of the office. The policemen on duty stopped to watch them as they passed but left them well alone, eyes darting to avoid the detective’s. Perhaps it should have reassured the doctor that he was not the only one who feared this man.
Outside, the massive bulk of the police station at their backs, Teuben flagged a driver, then turned his attention back to Beer.
‘I’ll visit tonight,’ he said. ‘We can speak further. And look in on your patient.’
‘Don’t. The maggots –’
‘Yes, I called the hospital about that. Talked to an internist there, a certain Dr Wolf. He tells me it’s a form of therapy that the Americans are fond of. He recommended a 1931 article by a certain Dr Baer, from the University of Johns Hopkins, then got flustered when I asked was Baer a Jew. Baer and Beer – a funny co-incidence, don’t you think? In any case, Wolf assures me it’s a sign of the patient being on the mend.’
‘All the same, Teuben, you can’t come tonight.’ Beer tried to leave, was unable to break the detective’s hold on his arm. ‘Eva has a bad infection.’
‘Eva.’ The red lips took the flavour of the name. ‘Nice. I’ll tell you what, Dr Beer. The party’s in three days. It gives you time to figure out what we need to finish the arrest. The laundry boy, or Otto, just as you please. Three days, too, to get her healthy. I’ll want to see her then, tête-à-tête.’
He released Beer, watched him get into the car.
‘And no funny stuff, as they say in the radio plays. Heil Hitler, my friend, see you soon. Better dust off your dinner jacket.’
He waved after them as the driver steered the car into the road.
They hadn’t yet gone more than three blocks when Beer asked to be let out. He waited until the car was out of sight, then climbed on the tram and got off at the hospital. There was a note in his pocket on
which he wished to follow up.
Later that afternoon – after he had looked in on Eva, and fixed himself a bite to eat – he could be found standing in the yard, eyes closed, neck thrown back and face raised to the sky, listening for the buzz of a trumpet high above.
4
And what after all is a trumpet? In purely physical terms it is a long piece of brass tubing of cylindrical or conical bore, twice bent to render it an oblong oval, opening into a bell at one end, and into a much smaller ‘cup’ – the mouthpiece – at the other. The earliest trumpets are ascribed to an ancient civilisation living by the River Oxus in the third millennium before Christ, though, lacking valves, they might best be considered precursors to the bugle. There were valveless trumpets made from precious metals found in Tutankhamun’s tomb in Egypt: one imagines Howard Carter dusting them off with his archaeologist’s brush and staring first uncomprehendingly, then with sudden recognition at the tuliped mouth emerging from the slender pipe. The ancient Chinese knew it, as did the Moche of Peru. Its shrill and cutting sound commended it to generals, who used the trumpet to direct their fortunes on the battlefield. So useful was its signal sound, and so vulnerable the army to the cry of enemy bleaters, that trumpet playing grew into a guarded art, protected by the ordinance of a guild: no layman was to learn the secrets of embouchure. The instrument did not shed its military connotations until late in the nineteenth century, when composers began to invite it to their concert halls with increasing frequency. By now the valve had been invented, a simple piston mechanism that would extend the length of tubing when depressed. Three valves taught the horn chromatics; a fourth was sometimes added, to battle the vagaries of intonation. In 1864 Jean-Baptiste Arban published the first edition of La grande méthode complète de cornet à piston et de saxhorn par Arban. By the end of the 1920s, Louis Armstrong, satchel-mouthed, Storyvilled, and in complete ignorance of the Frenchman’s method book, was plucking high Cs from the skies like so many stars. It is said that one trumpeter can recognise another just by looking at his lips. The embouchure leaves its mark upon the muscles of the mouth, and the steady pressure of the metal rim distorts the lip itself. The modern trumpet is equipped with a lever that allows the player to pour accumulated moisture from the instrument, and thus the trumpet can be found expectorating in philharmonic orchestras across the world. Its spit collects around the feet of those condemned to sit amongst the brass, dress shoes tapping on horn-moistened floors. When playing the trumpet, it is said, one needs to blow as though aiming to cool one’s bowl of soup; cheeks puffy like a baby’s. The trumpet can be muzzled by a mute: it changes its tone, but will not censor its speech. It is a curious fact of acoustics that a toilet plunger, skilfully waved before the open bell, can transform the trumpet’s sound into that of the human voice. It is a versatile instrument. The trumpet can ring of the whorehouse, or of God on high; can hail the King, or stand weeping at his infant’s grave. Ellington used it for the catcall of the urban jungle; in the second Brandenburg Concerto it is said to take the part of Pheme – Fame – who guides the august to Parnassus. Everywhere it travels the trumpet finds friends, supporters, lovers; those who pour their pains and triumphs through its twisted tubes. Herr Yuu is one of its disciples. Just now he has placed it in its leather case, the insides of which are dressed in satin and shape a padded hole precisely measured to its size.
5
Herr Yuu was a contemplative man. He liked books and he liked mirrors, both of which were on display in his tiny garret room, though the former outnumbered the latter by a ratio of five to one. Besides the bookshelves and the many reflections of himself (the mirrors, most of which were no larger than the cover of a pocket Bible, were nailed to the walls at various heights and quite surrounded him), there was in Yuu’s room a bed, a chair, a music stand, and a little wooden table. On top of this table rested the trumpet in its open case. A lampshade fell from the slanting ceiling and was made from green velvet; its heavy material smothered the bulb so that the room was only very imperfectly lit. A small window opened to the courtyard, and a strip of flypaper hung from the ceiling near its frame, coated with lint rather than insects and trembling in the breeze. In one corner there stood a metal wood-stove, unlit, a dozen logs of firewood stacked on top. Yuu himself was sitting on the bed and musing on the history of trumpets. He played for dance bands and had recently had trouble finding work. His looks were doing him a disservice, though they had once been seen as a welcome curiosity. He was Japanese, which is to say he belonged to one of the world’s Master Races, but such subtleties of Nazi anthropology seemed lost on the managers of Vienna’s dance halls. They held to an older wisdom: that in times of war, the foreigner was suspect. He had not eaten since dawn, and was wearing his hat against the draught.
Yuu heard the movement on the stairs and landing long before the knock. What surprised him was the length of time that separated the two sounds, and he registered the hesitation this implied. He himself took a breath before admitting his guest and practised a ninefold smile in as many mirrors.
‘En-ter,’ he called.
The door swung open. It wasn’t locked.
It was Dr Beer who stepped in, and immediately the room felt cramped. The bookshelves, the lampshade, the slant of the ceiling: they all seemed designed to push the visitor towards the bed, upon which throned the burly figure of the Japanese. After a moment’s thought, Beer ducked to the left and took a seat upon the lone chair. The table was right next to him, three wobbly legs, and on its top the trumpet in its battered case. Looking at it now, he was struck by the instrument’s complexity. There seemed to be an awful lot of little parts.
Beer looked at Yuu. It was the first time he had seen the man up close. He was intrigued by his skin, its colour and texture, acne scars dimpling his cheeks and giving them the appearance of mottled wood. The sparse beard contrasted starkly with the fullness of his hair, unevenly cut and shaven above the ears so as to show a strip of stubbled scalp. The eyes were foreign and rather becoming, the elegance of a single-folded lid. Yuu’s brow was bony, prominent, and his whole figure exuded an air of firmness and strength. Beer judged him the sort of fat man whose weight sits in the bones. He might starve, but would never grow thin.
Yuu for his part studied Beer with close attention and was struck above all by the symmetry of the doctor’s features. He wondered idly whether he was the sort of man with whom women fell in love. Other than that he seemed to him a study in pent-up emotion, leaking lightly from the eyes. Yuu was a scholar of the trumpet, and of men. Beer was the kind of man he liked. He carried secrets. Both men removed their hats in greeting. The doctor spoke first.
‘You sent me a note, Herr Yuu,’ he said. He didn’t phrase it as a question.
‘Yes.’
‘I went to the hospital as you suggested. They told me a man left an unconscious girl in the waiting room two days ago and then ran off. One of the nurses said she remembered he was foreign. When pressed, she indicated there was a slant to his eyes.’
Yuu nodded, his hat in his hands. ‘Is the girl well? There was blood on her clothing, and on her face.’
Beer ran a hand through his hair, an elegant gesture, and somehow effeminate.
‘She ran away. Woke up, screamed, and wouldn’t give her name. They had administered a sedative and were inclined to think her stupid. She was transferred – for observation – and then she ran off. An institution at the edge of town. She was not wearing any shoes.’
‘I see.’
‘Tell me what happened, Herr Yuu. She’s all alone and her father is dead.’
Yuu related his story. He had been practising the trumpet, he said, sitting by the window and playing scales. One couldn’t see an awful lot from up here, but the one thing that one could not help but see was the bedroom window of Herr Grotter. The angle was steep, and through the half-drawn curtains all one could make out was the floor near the window and one corner of the bed. The day was overcast, Yuu’s spirits depressed, and he’d regi
stered almost in passing that Herr Grotter was in the bedroom and was lying next to the bed in such a manner that only his feet were visible. Yuu thought nothing much of it. The man was a known drinker and may have rolled out of bed, senseless, sleeping off the liquor. He’d paused in his practice and eaten some boiled potatoes.
When Yuu reclaimed the chair by the window and was about to attend to some further exercises, he saw the little girl, Anneliese, cross the yard. His eyes followed her quite mechanically, and found once again her father’s feet. Only now it struck Yuu that the feet – the shoes – were wet and perhaps bloody. He hesitated until he saw the feet move, jerkily, as though someone was trying to move the body or wake up the man. There was something so unnatural about the movement that he concluded at once that it must be the girl, either pressing against the bedroom door, or against the body itself. He might have remained where he was in sudden horror had not the rain come pouring down just then. It released him and he ran downstairs and through the door into the back wing. The girl came flying towards him in the hallway and quite simply passed out. He bent down to her, found her bloody, and feared she had injured herself. In his initial panic he rang a doorbell on the ground level but received no response. He was about to ring another when he came to realise what the situation might look like. To leave her lying in the dirty hallway seemed unconscionable, and so, not knowing what else to do, he carried the girl into the yard instead, into the steady rain. Had he seen anyone out in the yard, he would have explained everything at once, but there was nobody about, and given the proximity of the hospital he thought it best to bring her there. By the time he arrived, the blood had washed off her face. She was still unconscious but looked otherwise fine. Yuu left her slumped on a bench in the hospital corridor and returned home to his trumpet. He had been wondering what had happened to her ever since.