by Alex Beer
“So there you are. I was worried you might try to skip out on your bill.” It was the waiter who’d served them. He gave them a wary look.
“Not at all, definitely not. It was just so loud inside and we needed to discuss something,” Emmerich played for time. “Don’t worry, we’re coming right back in.”
“I’d like to settle the bill anyway.”
Emmerich knew that there was no point in running, and they couldn’t beat up yet another person. “Might I be able to pay in kind?”
Winter’s eyes opened wide with shock, and the waiter grimaced in disgust. “Do I look like one of those perverts? I work in the front of the house, not in the booths in the back.” He spat at Emmerich’s feet and waved to the bouncer.
“Halt!” Emmerich held out the box of cigars. “I meant this.”
The waiter opened the container, took out a cigar, and sniffed it. Apparently he liked what he had in his hands, because he visibly relaxed. “Works for me,” he said finally. “But next time I want to see crowns or else you’ll be banned.”
Emmerich rolled his eyes and looked wistfully after his little box of treasure. “A terrible shame,” he mumbled.
26.
Everyone in the city knew the infamous guesthouse on Schimmelgasse that a journalist from the Worker’s Daily had recently called a family prison. More than a thousand people lived in the building’s two hundred tiny one-room apartments that got virtually no sunlight. Electricity was something people there had only heard about, and according to rumor there was only a single water faucet in the whole place. Nobody lived there willingly and those who did moved out at their first opportunity. The constant coming and going earned the building its name: the Beehive.
“It’s already late,” Winter said when Emmerich suggested they go visit the home of the dead man straightaway. “Most of the residents are probably asleep.”
“The timing couldn’t be better. Everyone’s home at this hour, and we can question as many people as we need to.”
Winter sighed quietly to himself realizing that resistance was pointless.
The façade of the dirty, four-story guesthouse had seen better days. Above the main entrance, which didn’t exactly look inviting, wind and weather had made illegible a written motto of some sort. Nobody had bothered to refurbish the letters.
“Ready?” Emmerich opened the unlocked door without waiting for an answer.
“It really does look like a prison,” Winter declared when he saw the long, dark hallway off which were scores of doors. “We visited one during police training. It was—” He didn’t manage to finish his sentence because the infernal stench of the place suddenly took his breath away. “God in heaven.” He pulled the sleeve of his jacket over his hand and covered his nose and mouth with it.
“It’s the toilets. They’re in the hallways, they have no windows, and if it’s true what they say, each one serves at least thirty people.”
“And a few rats,” added Winter as a particularly fat specimen shot across the floor ahead of them. He shivered with revulsion. “No wonder this place is rife with diseases. How can people live like this?”
“You wouldn’t believe what you can get used to.”
“Not this.”
“Let’s talk again in an hour.”
“An hour? In this disease factory?” Beads of sweat were forming on Winter’s forehead.
Emmerich ignored him and knocked on the nearest door. When nothing happened he knocked on the next one. The faster they got out of here the better, he agreed with that much.
“Yes?” A cockeyed boy opened the door. The overwhelming smell of onions escaping the apartment made Winter recoil.
“We’re looking for this man.” Emmerich held the image of Czernin up to the child. “He lives here, right?”
The boy grinned insolently. “Maybe,” he said, putting out his dirty little hand. “What do I get out of it?”
Emmerich, whose only possession was his last heroin tablet, looked to his assistant. “You have anything on you?”
Winter patted his pockets. “Here. It’s all I have.” From his coat pocket he pulled out something wrapped in shiny tinfoil. “The last piece of chocolate.”
“We should have taken more of that from Farkas’s office.” Emmerich handed the sweet to the boy.
The kid ripped it out of his hand. “Third floor, second-to-last apartment on the right-hand side,” he said and then slammed the door shut.
“Certainly is a strange generation coming up,” remarked Emmerich as he started up the well-worn steps. “It’s really going to be something in ten or twenty years.” Since Winter was conspicuously quiet, Emmerich turned around to look at him. As he suspected, his assistant was concentrating fully on not touching anything. Not the greasy handrail to his right or the scratched and smeared wall to his left. “What is it? You didn’t act like this in the homeless shelter or the sewers.”
“There was air in the sewers and at the shelter on Blattgasse there was a disinfection room they all had to pass through. But today . . . first Minna, who coughed on me and befouled my jacket, and now this.”
“It’ll be better the higher we go,” Emmerich lied, knowing full well that the conditions were equally awful on every floor.
When they arrived at Czernin’s door, Winter sniffed. “I don’t smell any difference up here.”
Emmerich ignored the observation that he knew was coming, and knocked with his fist on the thin wooden door.
“What?”
An emaciated woman with an infant on her arm threw open the door and stared at the strangers with hazy eyes. Her skin was pale and her hair dull. She had on a blue apron dress and brown wool stockings. It was difficult to guess her age—she could have been the mother or the grandmother of the child.
“I’m August Emmerich, and this is Ferdinand Winter. We’re police detectives. I hope we haven’t woken you.”
“Do I look like I can afford a luxury like sleep?”
Emmerich would have liked to tell her she looked good, but spared himself the lie. “Are you the wife of Anatol Czernin?” he said, getting straight to the point instead.
“What did he do?” she snapped. “Where is he?” She pressed the baby tightly to her sagging breast and narrowed her eyes.
“Could we possibly come in for a moment?”
“Did you . . . did you throw him in jail?” Her voice was trembling. “You can’t do that. We need his income. Who’s going to feed the children if he’s locked up?”
“Please calm down.” Emmerich took her by the arm and pushed her gently into the apartment.
As he had feared, inside they encountered the most miserable squalor. The dwelling—this form of lodging didn’t deserve the name home—was a dark hole with barely any air to breathe. Passing through the musty kitchen, its walls covered with mold, they entered a room that served as the living room, bedroom, and work space. It was perhaps four strides across, six strides long, and dimly lit by a flickering petroleum lamp. That was it. No other space.
Along each of the two side walls was a battered wooden bed with a tattered mattress. On the far wall, opposite the door, stood a warped dresser next to a small window onto the dark courtyard. The rest of the space was taken up by a shabby table covered with piles of shoes.
Winter cringed when suddenly a heart-rending cough rang out, followed by labored breathing. In one of the beds lay two girls who were so small and emaciated that their bodies barely made a bulge in the thin bedcover.
“One of them is always sick.” Czernin’s wife sat down at the table. “They take turns. But what can I do?” She put the baby in her lap, picked up a shoe, and began to sew beads onto the top. With deft fingers she attached one colorful bead after the next until a star-shaped ornament had taken shape.
“How many children do you have?” Emmerich sat down next to her.
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“This one here makes five.” She motioned to the infant, who didn’t make a sound.
Emmerich knew kids like these. They’d learned that screaming didn’t get you anything so you might as well save your energy.
“Nobody thought we’d manage with all of them,” she said strangely, almost apologetically.
“Where are the other two?”
“Working,” she said tersely, without elaborating on what sort of work they did.
One of the sick girls shook again with a fit of coughing, and Winter, who was now as pale as Frau Czernin, discreetly opened the window.
“What do the little ones have, anyway?” he asked.
Since Emmerich knew what had happened to Winter’s family, he didn’t protest his fear of germs.
“How should I know. Doctors are only for rich people. So spit it out already. Where’s Anatol?” She placed the embroidered shoe to the side but didn’t pick up a new one, instead lifting the baby and holding him in front of her like a shield.
“Unfortunately I have to inform you that your husband was murdered,” whispered Emmerich so the children wouldn’t hear.
He waited for a reaction, but nothing came. Czernin’s wife sat stock-still on the chair, holding the infant as if he were a burning log, never changing her facial expression.
“Dead? He’s . . . dead? And how’s it supposed to work for us now?” she asked after what seemed an eternity.
“There’s an array of charity groups. I can write down a few names for you.”
“Pfff,” she waved dismissively. “Me, kiss up to some condescending noblewoman as a supplicant? So she can look down on me when she gives me her old clothes? Not a chance. I might not have much, but I still have my pride.”
“Your pride won’t keep the children fed or healthy.”
“That’s not your problem.”
Emmerich had to admit she was right. “I need to ask you a few questions about your husband,” he said, getting back to the point of their visit. “May I? Do you feel up to giving me a few answers?”
Anatol Czernin’s widow looked at Emmerich with dark eyes. “What else can I do?” she replied.
Emmerich nodded. “Do the names Dietrich Jost and Harald Zeiner mean anything to you?”
“Never heard of them.”
“Can you tell me where your husband spent the past few nights?”
“Not here. I assumed he was at a bar, pissing away our money on booze.”
“Did your husband have any enemies?”
She shrugged, and Emmerich could tell he wouldn’t get far this way.
“If we find your husband’s murderer, you may be able to sue for compensation,” he said, trying to get her attention.
“I’ve really never heard those names, but my Anatol never told me much. He’s been strange since the war. Solitary. Quiet. Drank a lot and gallivanted about. It’s certainly possible he knew the two of them. And as far as enemies . . . a few people have claimed he robbed them. No idea whether it’s true.” She furrowed her brow and thought for a moment, but nothing more seemed to occur to her. “Is that enough?”
“Can I possibly have a look at your husband’s things?”
“Fine by me.” The woman laid the infant carelessly in a bed and pulled an old cardboard suitcase out from beneath it. “There’s not much, but if it will help, be my guest.”
Emmerich stood up, and the old familiar pain immediately shot through his leg. He gritted his teeth, hobbled over to the bed, and opened the suitcase. Cautiously, he examined the contents: old shoes, a shaving brush, suspenders, a pair of rusty cuff links, and a knife. Nothing that would help them.
“Anything else of Anatol’s in the apartment?”
Czernin’s widow thought. “Not that I know of,” she said finally, and Emmerich, disappointed, shoved the suitcase back in its place.
For the third time since they’d been in the apartment of the Czernin family, one of the sick girls suffered a coughing fit. Winter stuck his head out the window, and Emmerich nearly sent him out, letting it go in the end. What didn’t kill his assistant would make him stronger. Winter could use a bit of hardening up if he was going to make something of himself as a detective.
“What’s in the dresser?” asked Emmerich, hoping not to leave empty-handed.
Bedclothes, diapers, and the children’s clothes. Knock yourself out.”
The widow turned back to her work. With what she made in a month embroidering shoes she probably couldn’t afford a pair herself. Of course, she had more pressing needs.
Emmerich was pondering whether it made any sense to rummage through the dresser, or whether he should just leave the poor woman and her woeful children in peace, when there was suddenly a loud crack.
“I’m so sorry!” Winter jerked around. “I’ll repair it or pay for the damage. I promise.”
It took a minute for Emmerich to realize what had happened—his assistant had leaned against the dilapidated windowsill and it had broken. Now he was trying to figure out a makeshift way to reaffix the rotting piece of wood, but it wouldn’t stay in place.
“No! Nothing but trouble with the likes of you.” Frau Czernin examined the damage with a worried face. “As if life isn’t punishing me enough, you have to demolish my apartment on top of it all.” For the first time since Emmerich had delivered the bad news, tears welled in her eyes.
“Woodworms were into it.” Winter pointed to the edge of the breakage, which was riddled with little holes.
“You still have to take responsibility,” said the woman. “Otherwise I’ll get into big trouble with the landlord.”
Winter wasn’t listening to her. “Just a second,” he said, and bent over to painstakingly examine the damage, or at least that’s what Emmerich initially thought. But then he looked more closely. Winter had found something—a hollowed-out space that had been hidden beneath the windowsill.
“What do we have here?” asked Emmerich. His pulse quickened as he cautiously reached into the dark hole. “Did you know about this, Frau Czernin?” He pulled out a golden pocket watch with an engraving: In recognition of 25 years of loyal service to the district association of Josefstadt. Frau Czernin shook her head. “I don’t believe this belongs to you or your husband.” Emmerich handed it to Winter and reached into the hole again. Again and again he pulled things out, a silver lighter and a matching cigarette case, two rings, a brooch, a chain and pendant. Looking at the stolen goods made him think of his amulet again, and he felt rage toward the robber boiling up. “Someone is dearly missing each of these things,” he said brusquely.
“I swear that I didn’t know about it.” Frau Czernin looked at the jewelry incredulously. “We’re starving and freezing, and those things have been in there all along. Good that Anatol is already dead or I’d kill him myself.” She stomped her foot and looked so upset that Emmerich believed her.
He stuck his hand into the hole one more time and felt around. “I think that’s it,” he said, then paused. “Wait, there’s something else.” He carefully pulled out an object that was wrapped in a dirty handkerchief and tied up with string.
Emmerich sat down at the table, cut the cords with his pocketknife, and pulled the petroleum lamp closer. With Winter and Frau Czernin looking on expectantly, Emmerich pulled the kerchief aside.
To all of their surprise the bundle didn’t contain any valuables, but rather a photo that had been damaged by moisture. It took concentration to make out what was in the picture: ten men in Imperial and Royal army uniforms standing in a forest clearing. All of them had Steyr M95 rifles in their hands and looked at the viewer with serious but not unfriendly faces. On the back was the date July 28, 1915.
“That’s Anatol.” Frau Czernin pointed to a man in the middle. “He was still young and slender.” A touch of melancholy had slipped into her voice.
But another
face in the photo stood out to Emmerich, a face that seemed oddly familiar, a man standing to Czernin’s right. He was smoking a pipe. “Is that . . . ?” He covered the man’s mustache with his finger and looked at Winter, who stooped over the photo.
“Harald Zeiner. And that guy . . . ” Winter pointed to the man on the far left. “That could be Dietrich Jost.”
Emmerich nodded euphorically. They’d finally figured out the connection they’d been looking for. Sander would finally have to take them seriously. He held the photo close to his face and studied every last detail: the eyes of the men, their body language, and the place they were standing.
“Was this done on purpose, or do you think it’s from the way it was stored?” He pointed to a figure on the right side of the photo whose face had been scratched beyond recognition.
“Either is possible,” said Winter after examining the damage. “The picture must have been through a lot. Just like the soldiers.”
Emmerich agreed. “You recognize anyone else?” he asked, turning to the widow. “Did you husband ever talk about his comrades?”
Frau Czernin held the photo closer to the light and squinted. “I don’t recongize any of them, and Anatol never talked about the war. What’s done is done, he always said, and he didn’t want to think about those awful times.”
Emmerich nodded. Men often clammed up about their experiences. “Can you at least tell us where your husband was stationed?”
“On the eastern front. His company was moved several times. I don’t know any more than that.” She looked over at the two girls, who were coughing again.
Emmerich could tell there wasn’t any more information to be gained there. “Let’s go,” he said, putting the photo in his pocket.
The recovered goods were on the table. “This is for the children. Don’t get caught selling it, and don’t rip anybody off. Then go get medicine and something decent for them to eat.”
Frau Czernin quickly put the things in her apron pocket. “Thanks,” she whispered before closing the door behind them.