The Second Rider

by Alex Beer

  Winter reached into his pockets and turned them inside out to show that he really had no money.

  “The First Horseman brought conquest, the Second war, the Third famine, and if you don’t give me something, the Fourth will soon come.”

  “For me alone?” Emmerich laughed.

  “Indeed. Fear, decline, and . . . ” She paused dramatically.

  “And?”

  “ . . . death.” She touched Emmerich’s stomach with the tips of her fingers. “You will die.” The look on her face was so convincing that his laughter fell away. “Or someone close to you will lose his life.”

  A shiver went through Emmerich’s limbs. This old lady was crazy. But he couldn’t help thinking of Luise’s foreboding and the fact that women often seemed to have a sixth sense.

  “Here,” he said, quickly pressing a cigar into her hand. “That’s all that I can give you.” His gut told him it was better not to get into it with the witch.

  The woman held the thick brown cheroot up to her nose, sniffed it, and gave him a toothless smile. “Beware the Fourth Horseman! Beware the pale horse!” she shouted and disappeared back into the hedges.

  “My god is she scary,” whispered Winter, and Emmerich didn’t contradict him. They continued on and arrived at a star-shaped plaza with an ornate fountain in the middle—the Western Najadenbecken.

  “Let’s not stop at this one.” Winter walked more quickly. “Don’t want another nut jumping out at us.”

  When the entrance to the zoo finally came into view, Winter couldn’t suppress a broad smile.

  “Someone’s excited.”

  “When I was little, my nanny brought me here often, and I was allowed to feed the animals bread crumbs. I loved it.” He looked around, and his happiness gave way to skepticism. “Strange that nobody’s here. Back then you had to wait in line to see the most exciting animals.”

  I hope you know how much a nice childhood is worth, thought Emmerich, and he thought without meaning to about the fact that he would never be able to marvel at the animals with Luise’s children. He quickly swallowed his sadness and rage.

  “Probably just the bad weather.” He pulled his cap further down over his face.

  Winter was visibly upset as he walked around the circular grounds, arranged around the Kaiser pavilion. Thirteen sections fanned out from the pavilion to house various sorts of animals, and some of them seemed completely uninhabited.

  “The bears were here, and the lions over here.” He pointed to two generous enclosures where gaping emptiness reigned. “And where are the giraffes?”

  “Gone,” said a passing man whose uniform and the fact that he was carrying a broom left little doubt that he was a zookeeper.

  “Gone?” Winter followed him angrily. “What does that mean?”

  “Just gone. Sold, given away, fed to other animals, or starved. We ate a few of them ourselves. I mean, didn’t you know?”

  Winter looked like a child who’d just been told Santa Claus didn’t really exist. “You can’t be serious, right?”

  “Do I look like I’m joking to you?” The keeper ran his hand over his beard. “The critters didn’t have anything to eat, what else could you do? We tried everything. Come on, don’t look so sad. There’re still a few animals left.”

  “What happened to Lori, Greti, Mizzi, and Pepi, the elephants?”

  “I’m sorry. They died. They were all so fussy—except for Mizzi, she’s holding on bravely. Luckily the kangaroos aren’t so delicate, and there’s still a rhesus monkey and a macaque in the ape building. The reptiles are still here.”

  Winter shook his head in disbelief. “I heard that a soldier tried to shoot a polar bear last year, but I didn’t know things had gotten so bad. What’s the story with the birds?”

  “We sold the exotic birds and let the native ones go. It was beautiful, I’ll tell you,” the man tried to cheer up Winter. He pointed his broom into the sky. “The birds were overjoyed to finally be free and able to fly.”

  “The people whose stewpots they landed in must have been pleased, too.” Emmerich tipped his cap to the zookeeper.

  “I didn’t say that,” said the keeper as Winter blanched.

  “We’re with the police and need some information about a former staff member,” Emmerich changed the topic to the actual reason for their visit. “Dietrich Jost. He worked here before the war.”

  “Ja, I know who you mean. He was responsible for the lions, the useless bastard. When that trembler realized his kittens were hungry, he went knocking on Herr Director Kraus’s door to ask if he could feed them my kangaroos. Sacrificing the weak for the well-being of the strong. What an asshole. Thank god the director told him to piss off. Those lazy beasts would never have caught my hoppers anyway. But they ate the horses and the antelopes. I’d rather have let them go.” He put out his hand, which had droplets of water on it, and looked up at the sky. “It’s about to pour.”

  Emmerich didn’t care. “Could you perhaps answer a few questions about Jost for me?”

  “I barely knew him. I’ve only been here since last year. But you should talk to Josef Krenn. He and Jost worked together before the war.”

  “And where would we find Herr Krenn?”

  “With the big cats.” He gestured to an enclosure that Winter had already noticed was ominously empty. “Go on in. Don’t worry. The kitties won’t hurt anyone anymore. Who’s so big and scary now, eh?” He took a bow, ducked his head, and hurried off. “Good day, gentlemen.”

  “Please don’t . . . ” mumbled Winter as they approached the entrance to the predators’ enclosure.

  They climbed over a barricade, opened a door, and found themselves in a completely deserted enclosure. Both the area for visitors and the area for animals were deserted.

  “Herr Krenn?” Emmerich peered through the cage bars. “Are you here somewhere?”

  There was no answer and he searched for another door, which he quickly found. Surprisingly, it was unlocked, and Emmerich and Winter found themselves in the open again, between giant boulders and an extensive pond. The sky had gotten darker, and thick raindrops splattered down.

  “Please don’t, please don’t . . . ” Winter mumbled again.

  “Please don’t what?”

  “Please don’t let the big cats be dead.”

  “I was thinking the opposite.”

  Emmerich had realized where they were—in the lion’s den, in the most literal sense. They were standing in the middle of the outdoor enclosure of the predators, where normally tigers, leopards, and other dangerous beasts played. “If they haven’t starved to death they’ll gorge themselves on us,” he whispered and crept back toward the door.

  “Say, have you completely lost your minds? What are you doing here?”

  Emmerich and Winter froze in fear.

  “Police. Are you Josef Krenn?” Emmerich was the first to regain his wits.

  “Yes, what do you want?” asked the man, blowing his nose on a dirty handkerchief.

  “We need information about Dietrich Jost. Your colleague from the kangaroos said you knew him.” Emmerich saw that the man’s eyes were red.

  “What happened to Dietrich?”

  Emmerich didn’t answer and instead looked around. “We were told we didn’t need to be afraid of any predators. Is that true?”

  Krenn nodded, and his eyes filled with tears. “Let’s go inside. It’s uncomfortable out here,” he said as a cold wind picked up. Emmerich and Winter followed him through a green metal door into a tiled room. “We used to prepare the food for the animals in here,” Krenn explained. “But now . . . ,” his voice trailed off and he pointed to a lion sprawled lifelessly on the ground not looking even slightly regal anymore.

  “Oh no.” Winter kneeled next to the cadaver and reached cautiously into the animal’s mane. “Is this Kato? I love
d him as a kid.” He looked at Krenn. “What happened?”

  “They didn’t get any decent food for months, only rotten horsemeat if anything at all. At first they howled from hunger, but at some point they got too weak for that.” He squatted down next to Winter and petted the shrunken lion, under whose dull fur every rib was visible. He rubbed the dead animal’s snout tenderly and caressed his paws. “Kato held out the longest.”

  “Brave soul.” Winter, too, was fighting back tears.

  Emmerich cleared his throat. He struggled to hold back a caustic remark. When Death had started swinging his scythe in 1914, dying became a part of daily life.

  “I’d like to ask my questions now,” he said.

  “Of course.” Krenn stood up and wiped his hands on his pants. “You have to understand. I took care of the lions for years. They were like children to me. Do you have children?”

  Emmerich offered Krenn a cigar. He didn’t want to answer his question.

  “Oh, a good one. That’s something.” The keeper took one, let Emmerich light it, and puffed thick white rings of smoke into the air. The quality tobacco lifted his spirits, and suddenly he didn’t seem so downtrodden.

  “Did Jost have any special knowledge of animals that he could have put to use in competitions?” Emmerich got straight to the point. “Would he have been able to manipulate horse races or dogfights, for instance?”

  “Where would you come up with something like that?”

  “Please just answer the question.”

  “Dietrich was an animal caretaker for big cats, just like me. He didn’t know anything about horses or dogs. And anyway, you can’t manipulate animals to win or lose. Unless maybe you gave them some sort of drug.”

  “Would he have had access to that sort of thing?”

  “Definitely not. I don’t even have access, and I’m higher in rank. Our veterinarian is very scrupulous.”

  “Perhaps the vet wanted to help Jost?”

  “Herr Hofrat is very proper. He would never do anything that might harm an animal. Not to mention that I don’t think he was terribly fond of Dietrich. Not after the letters.”

  “What letters?”

  “When Dietrich was on the front, he regularly asked about his animals, and I reported everything to him. The food shortages, the hunger, and the illnesses. That the animals weren’t doing well. At first he was just sad and worried, then he started to send aggressive letters in which he demanded that other animals be sacrificed for the good of the lions. I was surprised. I’d always known him to be a nice, calm man, but war brings out the worst in people.”

  That’s true, thought Emmerich, but not always. Sometimes the opposite happens. He’d seen it happen to himself. But he didn’t utter his thoughts and motioned for Krenn to continue.

  “The antelopes, the tapirs, zebras, and kangaroos . . . he would have delivered them all to the slaughter to save his beloved lions. He turned a lot of his fellow zookeepers against him.”

  “Were some animals actually fed to the lions?”

  “Only those that had died already. Herr Director was very strict. He said no living creature is more valuable than any other.”

  “And Jost? How did he react to that?”

  “He was irate. Continued to send letters, and after his discharge he came by a few times. At first he wanted his job back, then he tried to tell the Herr Director how he should run the zoo.”

  “Did he get violent? Were there any incidents?”

  Krenn said no. “Dietrich was done for. Physically and mentally. Everyone felt bad for him. That’s why we collected a bit of money for him—not a lot, of course, we barely have enough to live ourselves, after all—and sent him away.”

  “And he didn’t return after that.”

  “It wasn’t good for him to be here. Too many memories. Too many losses. We’ve lost two-thirds of our animals, and we lose more every day.” He looked at poor Kato, lying stiff on the ground. “The king of the animals had to abdicate just like the Kaiser. These are hard times for monarchs.”

  Hard times for murder investigations, too, thought Emmerich. The theory about bet rigging had fallen flat. Jost must have found another means to make money. But what was it?

  “Perhaps we should wait until the rain lets up,” suggested Winter after they’d thanked the zookeeper for the information and made their way outside, where it was raining buckets.

  “Why? You want to pet some more dead animals?”

  Winter stood under a small awning. “I just don’t want to catch a cold, that’s all. And if you’re honest, you have to admit that the story of the zoo animals is sad.”

  “They’re animals. You know what’s sad? There are three dead men and we don’t have any leads.”

  “Maybe we’ve been focusing too much on Jost.” Winter watched the raindrops smack the asphalt and burst. “What if someone else was pulling the strings and he was just a stooge?”

  “Keep talking.”

  “When we asked Farkas how someone could make a quick buck in this town, he also mentioned extortion.” Winter turned aside as a gust of wind blew rain into his face. “Zeiner did and saw things in the booths of the Chatham Bar that had better not be made public. Who knows what went on in there . . . ”

  “In all honesty, I’d rather not know, but we’ve got no other choice than to find out.” Emmerich clapped his assistant on the shoulder. “Good job.” Another ice-cold gust of wind made him cringe, and he felt the throbbing in his leg getting stronger. He put his hand in his pocket and remembered that he had just two tablets left and desperately needed to get to his supply. Emmerich looked at his assistant. “If we’re going to tack on a night shift at the Chatham Bar, we should take a rest and dry out our things. Can we do that at your place?”

  “Of course. My grandmother’s been unusually calm since yesterday. Maybe she’s finally mellowing with age. There’s a good chance she’ll leave you alone.”

  Emmerich crushed the heroin in the palm of his hand and snorted the white powder when Winter looked away. And the effect was indeed faster and more intense, and a wave of calm confidence washed over him.

  When the sky finally started to clear up and there was just a trace of rain still in the air, the two policemen headed for Währing.

  “That’s the way it is in wartime,” said Emmerich as Winter cast a last wistful glance back at the zoo. “War stops at nothing.”

  “Not even for childhood memories.”

  “At least you have nice ones.”

  Not for the first time today Emmerich thought about his past and about the present in which Luise’s children would have to grow up, and he thanked the pharmaceutical industry for the sense of elation he felt despite it all.

  25.

  Something was different about today, or perhaps more to the point, Winter’s grandmother was different. She was notably friendlier than on Emmerich’s previous visit, didn’t make any derogatory remarks about his rumpled clothes, didn’t curse the proletariat, and when Winter told her that Emmerich would be occupying her dressing room for a few hours, she greeted the news with a shrug.

  “Just keep your fingers off my sausage. I’m saving that for dinner,” was all she said before she disappeared again.

  There’s something fishy here, thought Emmerich instinctively, because he—unlike Winter—found her behavior more odd than pleasant. “Has the Kaiser returned or something?” he asked.

  Winter shook his head. “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “Maybe we should have a look at the paper later and catch up on the latest political developments.” Emmerich nodded to his assistant and closed the door—a moment to rest and recover was just what he needed. That . . . and heroin.

  He opened the bottom drawer of the little dresser—and found it empty. Emmerich could have sworn that he’d left the bottles there. Shaking his head he opened t
he next drawer up, which also proved to be empty.

  He looked through drawer after drawer, rummaged through hairpins, handheld mirrors, and powder puffs, but his tablets were nowhere to be found. Where the hell had the pills gone? He knew that memory could play tricks on you, and that the last few days had been confusing, to say the least. So it was certainly possible that he’d mixed something up or misplaced . . . something occurred to him and he went out to the hall.

  “I left something here the last time I visited. You wouldn’t happen to have found it and put it somewhere, would you?” he asked Winter’s grandmother after he tracked her down in the living room drinking tea and embroidering.

  “What did you leave? And no, I didn’t move anything.”

  “Are you sure? Please think for a moment. It was a couple of small glass bottles,” he tried to jog her memory. “I’d put them in your little dresser.”

  She looked off into the distance and pursed her lips. “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

  Emmerich looked her directly in the eyes. Her expression didn’t change as she held his gaze with her eyebrows raised. There was no proof that she wasn’t telling the truth, but Emmerich knew better. Lying was an art form that he’d become proficient in even as a child. Feigning and bluffing—two essential survival skills in an orphanage. He was a master of deception, and he recognized someone of his own kind.

  “My dear Frau Winter, I’m genuinely grateful for your hospitality,” he began, “but I need those bottles and would be much obliged if you would return them to me.”

  She calmly continued to work at her embroidery, which depicted a coat of arms. Emmerich wondered whether she was pretending to be hard of hearing or forgetful, or if perhaps she was just unbelievably cold.

  “The bottles contain drugs. My leg was wounded on the front. At the battle of Vittorio Veneto. Where I was fighting for God, for Kaiser, and for Vaterland,” he attempted to appeal to her patriotism.

  She smiled and offered him a tea. “Very heroic of you.”

  Emmerich slowly realized what was going on. She hadn’t accidentally misplaced the heroin—she had taken it. And worse still: she had consumed it. He smacked his forehead with the palm of his hand. He should have realized it immediately. Her inexplicable cheerfulness and calm manner weren’t the result of her suddenly mellowing with age, they were chemically induced.