The Second Rider

by Alex Beer

  Emmerich nodded. You really had to worry about the next generation. And about the current one, too. These men seemed unaffected by their discovery. A life full of deprivation numbed people. “You notice anything unusual?”

  “He was wet,” said one of the men. He laughed and rolled his next coin down the board.

  “And cold,” said another.

  His coin landed so perfectly next to the stick that his buddies let fly a barrage of curses. Winter blushed.

  “Did you see him jump?” Emmerich gestured to Brigitta Bridge, which connected the 20th district to the 9th.

  The men said no and started another round of heller rolling. “We would have heard it. He must have jumped in further up.”

  Emmerich left the dockworkers to their game and went over to the bushes. Winter trudged reluctantly along behind him. “You have to get used to corpses!” said Emmerich. “They’re part of the job. And of life.”

  The first thing he noticed was that the body was naked except for underpants. “Didn’t he have anything on?” he called to the dockworkers, at which point they became oddly quiet.

  “Jesus! Stripping a corpse? Is nothing sacred anymore?” Winter held a handkerchief over his mouth and nose in disgust.

  “Decent clothes are hard to come by,” stated Emmerich, kneeling beside the cold, sallow corpse.

  The eyes were closed, the mouth slightly open. Death had contorted his face, but it was still unmistakably the corpse of Harald Zeiner.

  “Do you think he did it because of us? Because he was afraid he’d be arrested?” murmured Winter.

  “Be a man and put the handkerchief away,” grumbled Emmerich. “And as far as your question . . . If everyone in the city who was engaged in some illegal activity were to throw himself into the Danube, there’d be more bodies than fish in there.” He looked out over the water, flowing murky and gray.

  Winter hesitantly put his handkerchief back in his pocket. “Maybe it was an accident? Maybe he was drunk and fell in?”

  “You don’t just fall into the Danube canal. And besides . . . Doesn’t it seem odd to you? First the dubious suicide of Jost, and then his best friend just happens to fall into the Danube? The whole thing stinks.” Emmerich found two cuts on the back of the dead man’s head and pointed to them.

  “Couldn’t he have hit his head on rocks in the river?”

  The inspector ignored his junior partner and continued to examine the corpse. The body showed no signs of a struggle, though there were scars from the war and from a hard life of deprivation.

  “What’s with his mouth?” Winter took a tentative step closer. “Could that be from chewing tobacco?”

  “What?” Emmerich pushed the head to the side, and when he still couldn’t see anything he grabbed a small stick and pushed the jaws open. The dead man’s mouth was indeed stained yellow. “No, that would be more brown.” He went so close that the tip of his nose nearly touched Zeiner’s blue lips. “Everything’s yellow, strange. The medical examiner is going to have to look at it.”

  A group of curious children had gathered unnoticed and was watching the scene.

  “Eew, they’re going to kiss,” yelled a girl with a runny nose.

  “If you touch him, his ghost will come for you tonight and drown you,” said another.

  “Then you’d better take care.” Emmerich jumped up, raised his arms suddenly and gave a bloodcurdling scream.

  The children shot off like a school of startled fish—all except one little boy, about the same age as Emil. He just stood there and smiled. His clothes were shabby but clean, and there was a bulge on the side of his patched pants—part of a turnip peeked out.

  Emmerich had an idea. “Do you have any change with you?” he said, turning to Winter. “I forgot to throw some in my pocket.”

  Winter unenthusiastically pulled a few crowns out of his pants pocket and handed them to his boss, who in turn held them out in front of the boy.

  “Did you see them fish the body out?” The boy nodded solicitously. “Did you also see them undress him?” More nodding. “Did you see where they took the clothes?” The boy pointed to a barge at anchor behind the dockworkers. “If you bring me everything in the pockets of the clothing, you get a reward.” He turned back to Winter, who was staring at him with his mouth open. “It’s easier this way,” he said.

  The boy crept past the men like an old pro, climbed silently onto the barge, and disappeared. A moment later he was standing in front of Emmerich and handed him a lump of wet paper.

  “That’s everything,” he said.

  Emmerich handed him a crown along with a second coin. “Do you know where the nearest police station is?” The boy nodded as earnestly as a professional courier. “Go bring a patrolman here. Tell him—” The boy sprinted off even before he could finish the sentence.

  Emmerich examined the mushy lump in his hand and, disappointed, had to concede that he wouldn’t be able to reconstruct the letter or whatever it had been. Then he carefully picked apart the white lump. His face lit up.

  “Are you thirsty?” he called to Winter, who was standing idly by the corpse.

  “Thanks, but water is the last thing I feel like now.”

  “I’m not talking about water.”

  When the boy returned—he had two patrol officers in tow—Emmerich pressed another crown into his palm. The tot dashed off, beaming.

  The inspector ordered the officers to take the dead man to the medical examiner. “Let’s go,” he said to Winter and then he strutted as confidently as possible to Liechtensteinstraße. His wretched leg. If the pain didn’t let up soon, he would have to come up with some way to deal with it.

  “What’s the story with the smugglers at this point?” asked Winter, who, naturally, once again had no idea where his boss wanted to go.

  “They won’t get away from us. They’ll be plying their miserable trade as long as there is hardship in the city—and I fear that will be quite some time.”

  “So what are we going to do now?”

  Emmerich stopped at a tram shelter on the 36 line. “We’re going to ride out to Nußdorf and enjoy a glass of wine at Poldi Tant.”

  7.

  Incidentally, I don’t have any more money with me,” said Winter when they exited the tram at Nußdorfer Platz and headed toward a rustic tavern.

  Emmerich took in this information without reacting, opened the door, and stepped into the establishment. It was Frühschoppen hour, and the rustic wooden benches and chairs were full. A large green-tiled stove gave off cozy heat, and a Schrammel-music quartet was playing typical Viennese songs.

  Und wenn ich einmal sterben sollt’,

  so soll es dorten sein,

  wo auf den Bergen ringsherum

  wächst Österreicher Wein.

  Als Abschied singt mir ein Lied,

  vom deutschen Vaterland,

  dann senkt mich in ein kühles Grab

  am blauen Donaustrand.

  If someday I must die,

  let it be that place

  where on surrounding hills

  grow Austrian grapes.

  As goodbye sing me a song

  of the German Vaterland,

  then lower me into a cold grave

  on the blue Danube strand.

  The morbid, melancholy music did nothing to diminish the merry mood of the wine drinkers. Boisterous laughter and banter filled the room, toasts were offered, and guests happily raised their glasses.

  “Mahlzeit, gentlemen.” The two inspectors were greeted by a rosy-cheeked, buxom middle-aged waitress in a green dirndl. “Should be a couple spots opening up in the back in a moment. You can have a look at the menu in the meantime.”

  Sure enough, two old men with Kaiser Franz Josef-style sideburns soon stood up and staggered toward the exit.

  “We do
n’t have any money,” whispered Winter to Emmerich as he headed for the vacant seats.

  “What will it be, gentlemen?” The woman in the dirndl had followed them to their places and now waited expectantly with a pencil in her hand.

  Winter stared at his hands as Emmerich discreetly flashed his badge to her. “Food safety inspectors,” he said. “We got a complaint about the schnitzel and the Grüner Veltliner wine.”

  The woman’s face flushed. “Who lodged a complaint?”

  “Anonymous report. But we have to take it seriously, of course. Can’t risk any threats to the general health. If the hygiene standard isn’t up to scrub, you’ll have to shut down. Or at least pay a hefty fine.”

  She put her hands on her hips. “You are free to taste the schnitzel and wine. There are no grounds for any complaint.”

  Emmerich sighed. “Then bring us two orders.”

  The inspector could tell his young colleague was embarrassed. He was shifting uneasily in his chair. He certainly hadn’t imagined his new job this way. But he would learn.

  “Did we really come here to scam food?” whispered Winter.

  Emmerich placed a tattered pack of matches on the table. On it was an image of a man in a red doublet hoisting a large tankard to his lips. Above that were emblazoned the words “POLDI TANT. Nußdorfer Platz 4.”

  “Zeiner had it in his pocket, and the Danube canal starts two hundred meters from here. I think he must have been murdered around here somewhere and thrown into the water.”

  “Bitte schön! Two schnitzels and two glasses of Grüner Veltliner.” The waitress put down the food and drinks and stood in front of the two guests with her arms crossed.

  Emmerich sniffed his wine and held the glass up to the light. “Seems heavily sulfured,” he said, shoving a portrait of Zeiner toward the indignant woman. “Ever seen this guy?”

  While the woman studied the photo, he took a large swig and then began to dig into his schnitzel. Only now did he realize how hungry he was. Breakfast had been pitiful.

  “He was here yesterday with two other men. Just before closing time. They sat over there, the three of them.” She gestured to a table next to the tiled stove and then stared at Winter, who was sipping at his wine.

  “Seems . . . overly sulfured . . . it’s true,” he said quietly and looked up fearfully as if he were meeting the eyes of a dangerous predator.

  “Can you describe the other two?” Emmerich had already put away half his schnitzel and was working on the side dish—potatoes with parsley.

  The waitress shrugged her shoulders. “Nondescript faces. They had a heated argument. Didn’t hear what about.”

  “Anything else?”

  Who do I look like, Mata Hari? I’m just a simple waitress, not a spy. I make sure people get their food and don’t eat and run. That’s it.”

  “Could you possibly come to the Margareten commissariat and look at a few mug shots later?”

  The woman narrowed her eyes. “I thought you were food safety inspectors.”

  Winter slunk so far down in his chair that he nearly disappeared beneath the table.

  “We are,” said Emmerich, casually finishing his wine. “The two men violated the Health Code, paragraph 126, clause 10.”

  She seemed satisfied with that answer, since her facial expression loosened, she nodded, and she shifted her attention to other guests.

  “Are you not going to eat that?” Emmerich took Winter’s plate and started to inhale his portion.

  Winter didn’t object. “Have a look,” he said, gesturing to a woman at another table who was eating Kaiserschmarrn. “Her lips.”

  They were stained yellow.

  Emmerich called the waitress over again. “So that’s the way it is,” he said, pointing discreetly to the woman at the other table. “Charging exorbitant prices for dishes and then preparing them with some cheap substitute instead of real egg yolks. Boy, if I were to mention that to my bosses—”

  The woman went pale. “It’s nothing unhealthy, there was no other choice for years, and the taste is acceptable. They don’t notice the difference. Perhaps you’d like to try it?”

  Emmerich nodded. “If possible, with stewed plums or applesauce,” he called after her, then turned back to Winter. “We have to find out who those men were that Zeiner met last night. They could be important witnesses. Maybe one of them is even the murderer.”

  “So you’re sure it was a murder?”

  “There were two murders.” Emmerich finished Winter’s schnitzel, and the Kaiserschmarrn was served shortly thereafter. This, too, he consumed as ravenously as if he hadn’t eaten for weeks. When he was finished, he stuck out his tongue. “Yellow?”

  “Just like Zeiner’s.”

  “Most egg substitutes have coloring in them so that the dish at least looks the way it used to. The stuff can really stain your mouth.”

  “How long does it last?”

  “Depends on how often you brush your teeth.”

  Emmerich stood up and a stabbing pain shot through his leg again. He turned away so Winter wouldn’t see him grimace, reached for Winter’s wine, which was still sitting nearly untouched on the table, and gulped it down.

  “The schnitzel wasn’t veal, it was horse,” he said to the woman as he made his way out. “But at least it was fresh. And I’m willing to make an exception and turn a blind eye to the sulfur and egg substitute. Auf Wiedersehen.”

  “What’s that paragraph about that you mentioned from the Health Code?” asked Winter as they walked toward the Danube canal.

  Emmerich shrugged. “No idea. I don’t even know if there is a Health Code.”

  8.

  They’d searched the Danube Promenade, Josef von Schemmerl Bridge, and the Nußdorf weir system without finding any signs of a crime.

  Winter suggested they extend the search radius to include the Kuchelauer harbor, but Emmerich aborted the search. First, he was sure that the murder hadn’t been committed so far away. And second, every step meant an unspeakable ordeal for his leg. He needed pain medication. Desperately.

  “Let’s ride to the medical examiner’s,” he said in the hopes of not only learning more information about Jost and Zeiner, but also of getting hold of some medication. Even if they were primarily concerned with the dead there on Spitalgasse, doctors were doctors, after all, and they could issue prescriptions.

  The closer they got to the building—a three-winged structure behind which rose the hulking Fool’s Tower, a round, prison-like building where mental patients had once been shut away—the more nervous Winter became.

  “Corpses, corpses, always more corpses,” he mumbled, though Emmerich was able to hear him.

  “Don’t get so worked up,” he growled. “At least here they’ve been washed and nicely laid out. You should have seen the dead on the battlefield. Mangled and covered with blood.” The pain had left him short-tempered. When he noticed Winter’s shocked expression he regretted his outburst immediately. The youngster couldn’t help his inexperience. On the contrary, he was doing his best to be useful. “You’ll see,” he said, patting him on the shoulder. “The medical examiner’s office is nothing to worry about.”

  Winter forced a smile, which quickly faded again when a fetid smell reached his nose.

  “That’s not the bodies,” Emmerich attempted to calm him. “It’s from the Alserbach.” He pointed to a drainage canal where filthy, brown water flowed behind a low wall. “So here we are.”

  The Forensic Institute housed a morgue, where the deceased from the general hospital were laid out behind thick black curtains, and a room for safekeeping corpses undergoing court-ordered examinations. In addition, there was a chemistry lab, a little kitchen, and a conference room for the medical examiner’s commission. But the heart of the complex was the room where autopsies were performed—a sort of amphitheater, the roof
of which had skylight windows to provide as much light as possible on the subject of examination below.

  The dead man lying on the metal table in the middle of the room, pale blue, waxy, and completely naked, was none other than Harald Zeiner. Bending over him and prodding around in the opened corpse was a young man in his mid-twenties at the most.

  “There’s no lecture today,” he said without looking up. “Professor Hirschkron is at a conference, and Professor Meixner is out sick.”

  “And who are you?”

  Emmerich, who was ill at ease with the fact that an inexperienced little bastard was poking around in his corpse, regarded the coroner with eyes narrowed in suspicion.

  The young man looked up, surprised. “I am Aberlin Wiesegger, the new assistant. And you are?” Even close up he didn’t look a day over twenty-five.

  Emmerich looked him up and down. His white apron was splattered with reddish brown droplets, and in his hand he held something that looked like a large pair of tweezers.

  Apparently the view of the exposed organs, all glistening in various shades of red, was too much for Winter. Out of the corner of his eye, Emmerich saw Winter’s gaze bounce as casually as possible around the room before finally alighting on an enameled tub next to the dissection table. Emmerich himself, meanwhile, was focused on Wiesegger, who was eyeing him like a combative dog.

  “I am Inspector First Class August Emmerich,” he said a little too loudly while presenting his badge.

  “I see. So it’s you I have to blame for the two suicide victims.”

  Emmerich narrowed his eyes further still until they were just slits. What did this bloody—literally bloody—newbie know anyway? “You believe the cases to be suicide?”

  The youngster put his tool down on a side table. “The entrance and exit wounds on Herr Jost are typical of suicide. And this gentleman . . . ” he motioned to Zeiner, “ . . . shows no signs of a defensive struggle.”

  “And what about the wounds on the back of his head?”