by Dan Vyleta
He finished, exhausted, pleased with himself. ‘But anyway, look who I am preaching to.’
He paused just long enough for Beer to misinterpret the phrase.
‘You are a psychiatrist. You have no need for my policeman’s theories.’
They sat in silence until a noise distracted them. It came from outside the room, a woman’s high-pitched shout. Boltzmann rose from his chair, rounded his desk, and opened the door. The shouts grew louder, but no more distinct. Whoever the woman was, she was clearly in a state of deep distress. Disturbed by the sound, thinking that his services might be required, Beer rose and stood behind Boltzmann in the half-open door. At the far end of the corridor – where it opened into the front reception area – there stood a woman dressed in black. Her son was by her side. The boy was anaemic-looking, nine, maybe ten years of age, had dark hair and rings around his eyes. The woman was shouting at two uniformed policemen who were holding her by the arms and trying to calm her down. She was clutching the boy’s wrist with obvious violence. The child did not complain but simply stood there, staring up at his mother.
‘Teuben’s wife,’ Boltzmann murmured over one narrow shoulder. ‘She has been three times already.’
The policemen were dragging her over to a chair, then leaned on her shoulders to force her to sit down. The boy staggered after her, dragged along by her white-knuckled grip. He was wearing a little velvet jacket. The collar was askew. Beer could not take his eyes off him.
‘It’s hard to make sense of,’ Boltzmann went on. ‘He was a real swine, Teuben was. And yet she loved him.’
Gently, as though not to startle anyone, the detective closed the door and returned to his chair. Beer remained where he was, standing in front of the closed door, though he turned around to face Boltzmann when the detective resumed their conversation.
‘Well I suppose that settles it, Dr Beer. All there remains to do is for me to call the Chief and tell him the good news. That we are stuck with five unsolved murders, and not a suspect to our name.’
Beer tried to focus on the detective, his mind still busy with the boy. ‘Won’t he be upset?’ he asked. ‘Teuben hinted that the people in charge would prefer a clean solution.’
The detective smiled – sadly, it seemed to Beer – straightened some papers on his desk.
‘I have cancer of the bowel, Dr Beer. It’s unpleasant, but it releases me of any need to be politic in my dealings with power.’
He stood, smoothed down his shirt, held a hand out to Beer. They shook across his desk.
‘Thank you for your time.’
Beer turned, drifted towards the door, then stopped himself short.
‘Morphine,’ he said quietly. ‘Find someone who will sell you morphine. Take lots of it. It won’t cure anything, but–’
‘Thank you, Dr Beer.’
On the way out, Beer was afraid he would run into the woman and her boy, but it seemed they had been ushered out of sight. From behind one of the many doors there issued the sound of her shouting, quieter now, her voice trembling under the strain. Beer fought the instinct to break into a run.
It wasn’t until he was back at the front of his own building and stood staring up at its familiar façade that a sense of relief began to displace the thought of Teuben’s son. The police had dismissed Teuben’s death as an accident. Otto’s brazen action was to have no consequence; Eva was safe. As he climbed the stairs and passed the first-floor landing he bumped into Yuu. The trumpeter was closing the door to Speckstein’s flat behind himself and looked flustered when he recognised Beer. The ground beneath their feet remained littered with cigarette butts and broken glass; it crunched when they moved.
‘I for-got my bow tie,’ said the Oriental in his high, lilting voice.
Beer shrugged, muttered a greeting, brushed quickly past. Upstairs in his room, he sat down in his armchair and poured himself a drink. All his problems were solved. All he needed to do now was to find a home for Lieschen. He took a sip and wondered whether his wife could be convinced to take an interest in the crippled girl.
4
While Beer was speaking to Boltzmann at the police station, Zuzka went to see Otto. It was the middle of the afternoon. The police had quit the building some hours ago and a sense of Sunday quiet had settled in, despite the events of the morning; the smell of baking was spreading through the yard. Her uncle had been questioned extensively, of course, but had forestalled any interrogation of his niece. All day then, she had spent in bed, getting up on occasion to stand by the window and watch the scene down below. There was no doubt in her mind as to what had occurred. Her symptoms were better, though there remained an awkward limp.
When she walked over to Otto’s rooms, she did so in plain view, defying the gaze of Frau Berger, who was leaning out the window, staring at her. The mime opened his door at once, and asked her in. He seemed unchanged: laughter, anger, suspicion running through his features in constant succession. He flopped down on the bed and gestured for her to join him, but she remained standing, studying its dirty sheets. Otto shrugged, picked up a beer bottle, drank from it, then wedged it insolently between the tops of his thighs. Zuzka blushed and looked away. Her eyes found the sink and splattered mirror. It was easier to speak to him like this, looking only at herself.
‘You lied to me,’ she said. ‘The girl in the article. The medium, or whatever she was. She isn’t Eva.’
He gave her no answer, sat breathing behind her, quiet on his bed.
‘Why did you kill Uncle’s dog?’
‘Who says I did?’
His voice was mocking, playful. He had spoken like that when he’d told her to step out of her skirt. It had made her bashful then; aroused. It made her angry now.
‘I know you killed the detective,’ she hissed, turning around to face him in her anger. ‘You threw him out the window. I will tell them everything. Everything.’
She took two steps towards the bed. On it sat Otto and stared back at her, first fearful, then predatory, the muscles bunching in his face.
‘What do you want?’
She thought about this, bit her lip. When she replied it was to stall for time.
‘Tell me what happened to Eva. How did she get to be the way she is?’
So he told her, his body moving with the story, frowns and gestures filling in the gaps. ‘When we were thirteen,’ he said. ‘She was laying cards, telling the future. Mother had taught her, and she was making good money, attracting big crowds. She worked on a stage, telling people what was in their pockets, or on their minds. Afterwards, you could come to her tent. Get a proper reading. Women asking who’d they marry, were they with child. A lot of people came. She never got it wrong.
‘One night, after the show, a man went in to hear his fortune. He was a gentleman, a doctor, a lawyer, I don’t know. I never even saw him. He came out the tent very pale and told us that Eva had some sort of seizure. Mother rushed in and right away there was a lot of shouting. She kept yelling it was rape. The man ran away. Father went looking for him. Late that night he came home, and his fists and shirt were all bloody. Maybe he found him, or maybe he got drunk and into a fight. As for Eva, she stopped speaking, moving, bit by bit. Would stare at us with those eyes she has. We took her to the doctor, but it was no use.’
He shrugged, swung himself up from the bed, knocking over the beer that had nestled against his crotch. The liquid poured out and soaked into his mattress and sheet. She saw it, slipped past him, reached for the bottle with shaking hands.
‘You love her,’ she said, struck by the thought. ‘I always thought you wanted rid of her.’
He grunted, took the bottle away from her, dropped it on the floor. His hands, when they reached for her, seemed enormous to her: two calloused shovels folding over her shoulders and back. Up close he stank. His cotton vest was stiff with old sweat.
‘I’m going away,’ she said, then kissed him on his mouth. All her fear poured into that kiss, and all that yearning she thoug
ht of as love. But when she opened her eyes halfway through, she caught him watching her with calculation, not tenderness. She let go of him then, and ran out the room, her heels very noisy as though she were punishing the stairs.
5
Frau Vesalius came to fetch Beer a good hour after he had finished his dinner. He assumed it was to tend to Zuzka’s hypochondria and accepted with good humour, then was surprised when the housekeeper led him into Speckstein’s living room instead. Other than the faint smell of cigarette smoke that clung to the walls, there remained little sign of the mess made by the party. The Professor stood in the door to his study and bid him come in. He seemed nervous, was dressed in the elaborate type of hip-length dressing gown that the English called a smoking jacket; his stockinged feet were stuck in a pair of embroidered slippers. Sitting down behind his desk and picking a cigar from a wooden box, he struck Beer as out of place, a social remnant from a different era trying hard to cope with the new mores. His uniform, Beer noticed, was no longer hanging from its habitual hook on the back of the door.
‘Are you under the weather, Professor?’ Beer enquired politely as he took a seat in the chair indicated by his host. ‘Anything I can do for you?’
Speckstein stared at the doctor as though the answer to his question required a great act of thought. It took him a moment to locate the cigar cutter and remove the cigar’s tip, then light it with a match. When the cigar was fully lit, and he had puffed two or three plumes of aromatic blue smoke into the air above their heads, the Professor seemed to have collected himself sufficiently to speak. He started very quietly, his melodious Viennese strangely at odds with his words.
‘You loathe me,’ he said, not looking at Beer. ‘You think it should be beneath me, playing spy for the Party. Do you know what the common people call us, the Blockwarte and Zellenwarte of this world? Treppenterrier. Terriers of the stairwell. Always barking up some leg. And quite right they are. It is rather shameful. But what am I to do, Dr Beer? Accustom myself to my own obscurity? It chafes, let me tell you, and over the years, the heart breaks out in a rash. I can see you smirking. You do not approve of metaphors, it seems. Not from a man of science. Smirk away, Dr Beer. I know you have been smirking all along.
‘Do you know how I lost my position at the university? I suppose you were a student then. All I did was agree to a friendly request. There was to be a scientific observation of a so-called medium. Politicians, physicists, writers – half the city had already been invited and many a sceptic confessed himself impressed. I was asked to examine the girl and watch her as she changed into a specially prepared suit. She was fourteen, pubescent, pimples on her chin. They led me to a back room. I performed the examination, then watched her strip naked, climb into the suit. The girl, I remember, was unperturbed. She stripped off like a seasoned grisette; grinned at me while I stood at the sink washing my hands. She performed and conjured up, I don’t know how, the ghostly image of a bearded man that some held to be Rasputin and others identified as a murderer who was to be executed later that week. We had dinner, congratulated the girl’s parents on her talents, and discussed theories of how her trick might be achieved. I went home, had another drink, and went to bed.
‘Two days later a policeman showed up on my doorstep informing me that the girl’s father was charging me with rape and molestation. A medical report left little doubt that she had been violated. My defence counsel dared to suggest that the girl’s own father made a more likely suspect – he’d been a simple innkeeper before his daughter brought him fame, with a history of skirt-chasing – and the public rose in uproar. When the girl was called into the witness stand, she refused to speak but pointed to me repeatedly when asked to identify the perpetrator. Through some miracle I was acquitted, but my reputation was shot. I felt I had no choice but to resign. I even moved house, into this shabby building full of proles. And for ten years, everywhere I went, people pointed their fingers at me and called me a monster while addressing me as “Herr Professor” to my face.’
He paused, exhausted. As he spoke he had mangled his cigar between his fingers. He noticed it now, extinguished it, and threw it in the waste basket. Beer had listened without making a sound, acutely embarrassed by the whole situation.
‘But I can see by the look on your face that you don’t believe me, Dr Beer. I was acquitted, I resigned like a gentleman, and yet nobody has ever believed me.’
The Professor reached forward for another cigar, then abandoned the thought no sooner had he opened the wooden box. His eyes were pleading with Beer to break his silence. The doctor stood, began walking towards the door.
‘I’m very sorry, Professor. I really cannot see why you summoned me here. If you’ll excuse me.’
‘Dr Beer. I have been told you pushed the detective out the window after the party last night. There is a credible witness who says he saw you do it. I feel it is my duty to pass it on to the police.’
Beer stopped dead in his tracks.
‘Do you deny it?’
‘May I –’ he said. ‘Pardon me, Professor, but may I use your bathroom? I am feeling a little sick.’
He ran out of the room before Speckstein was able to grant him his request.
When Beer returned, he looked pale but composed. Frau Vesalius was there, pouring out two cups of tea. The Professor waited until she had left before he resumed their conversation.
‘I take it then,’ he said, ‘that you do not deny the charge.’
‘It’s more complicated than that,’ Beer told him simply, and sipped his tea.
‘Well, you can explain it to the police. I will call them first thing tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘Yes. It occurred to me that you might like the night to put your affairs in order.’
‘Thank you, Professor.’
‘Don’t mention it. It is a small courtesy. From one physician to another.’ He gave a quaint little bow. ‘Just one more thing, Dr Beer. Do you know who killed my dog?’
Beer thought for a long time before he answered.
‘Some hooligan,’ he said at last. ‘Because of your position, I suppose. It has no connection to the murders.’
The Professor nodded sadly, and turned his attention over to his tea. Beer was dismissed.
Before leaving the Professor’s flat, Beer stopped off in the kitchen, ostensibly to return the cup he was still holding. Vesalius was there. He could not tell how much of their conversation she had overheard. It did not matter either way.
‘Frau Vesalius,’ he said.
‘Herr Doktor?’
‘Could I ask you to tell Fräulein Speckstein that I’m in the house and would like to check on her health?’
‘Of course.’
The housekeeper walked out and returned momentarily.
‘I’m afraid she does not want to see you,’ she said.
The doctor nodded. His voice betrayed his impatience. ‘Tell her it’s about Lieschen.’
Vesalius shrugged, and went back to Zuzka’s room a second time. Again she returned shaking her head.
‘I am to tell you she does not care who it is about.’
Beer frowned, puffed out his cheeks, then marched out of the flat without another word. Vesalius looked after him for several moments. She had not been quite honest with the man. Zuzka had cried herself asleep hours ago. The housekeeper had not bothered her with either of the doctor’s queries. It was time, she had decided, that the girl climbed on a train and was on her way back home.
6
When Beer closed the Professor’s door behind himself, he did not climb the stairs back up to his own flat but instead headed downwards and out into the street. He had no destination in his mind: he simply wished for air, and to stretch his legs; avoid the scrutiny of the two cripples whom fate had stranded in his life. It was past ten at night, and the street was near deserted. Beer had no overcoat and soon began to shiver. For the first time that autumn he thought he could smell the impending winter. Perhaps it wo
uld snow.
For the length of a cigarette Beer paced the pavement in front of the building and found himself somehow peculiarly charmed by the changes of light as he stepped in and out of the lamp post’s yellow glare. With every step his shadow wavered, breathing an odd sense of animation into trees and trash cans, the broken bottles lolling in the gutter. Ever since he’d been a boy, Beer had thought that there was a strange sort of magic to the night, when the material things – dirty, ordinary things, the debris of the everyday – took on a significance at once sinister and beguiling. Every broken cobble turned into a sign. He reached for the wall to steady himself, then dug a fingernail into the muck that clung to its old plaster.
A cat called. There were puddles on the ground, muddy and shallow, their edges caked with rotting leaves and cigarette ends. He stepped in one, watched the water part around his sole, felt it soak into the leather. A cat called, the same or some other, announcing its availability for all to hear. Beer lit a new cigarette and followed her call. He found her at last, sitting on a blown-out tyre behind the metal gate that led to the Pollaks’ abandoned yard. She called again, hopped down, then sniffed the ground, an orange tabby, slight of frame. Perhaps she could smell the old dog’s blood. Her tail was raised along with her rump, the shoulders lowered into a submissive crouch. When she became aware of the doctor’s presence (he must have shifted in his stance, his head bent low before the grille that surrounded the gate’s lock), she shivered and leapt, was lost amongst the junk. Beer watched her disappear, then turned to his left and made his way into the building. More boldly than he had some weeks ago, not caring when his jacket elbow snagged on a broken nail, the doctor negotiated the soot-stained corridors and boarded-up doorway and carried on towards the workshop and yard. The smell of urine hit him as he stepped into the workshop’s little kitchen; its shelves had been robbed of their rows of penny cups. Outside, he stumbled amongst the heaps of trash until he thought he had found the place where Walter had lain and been discovered. He crouched and thought of Lieschen, throwing herself down amongst the dirt: the bend of her misshapen body, the little dress pushed up to reveal her knickers and her thighs. Not far from him, the cat called again, needy, driven, soliciting a tom. She fell silent when Beer straightened and headed back towards the building; he saw her swishing her red tail. For some yards she followed him, then leapt into the sink in the abandoned kitchen and sat there licking her own paws. The doctor smiled and bid her farewell.