The Second Rider

by Alex Beer

  “I wanted a coffee. My assistant and Constable Hörl can confirm that.”

  “You spent an hour getting a cup of coffee? You don’t really expect me to believe that, do you?”

  “Don’t you ever just go walking to clear your head? There’s so much going on right now. The smugglers Querner and Kolja . . . and then there are the murders that—”

  “Murders?” Something flashed in Horvat’s eyes, but Emmerich couldn’t read what it meant. “Murder isn’t within your purview.”

  “I know, but—”

  “No buts. I can see . . . that what I’ve heard about you is true.”

  “What? What have you heard?” Emmerich was on the verge of losing control. He’d always assumed Horvat was competent, not so ignorant. Where was his supposedly superior insight into human nature? Couldn’t he tell he was dealing with an innocent man?

  “I’m the one asking questions here.” Horvat looked at his watch again, which annoyed Emmerich. “Let’s go back to your walk. What route did you take?”

  Emmerich pressed his lips together. “I can’t remember . . . Margaretenstraße, Kettenbrückengasse . . . ” he said. His face suddenly lit up. “I just remembered . . . on Wienzeile a fortune-teller accosted me. She can confirm that I was there.”

  More tragedy coming . . . her words came back to him. Maybe he should learn to listen to women more, regardless of how crazy they seemed.

  “Are you serious? A fortune-teller?”

  “Go find her! She had a red kerchief on her head and spoke with a Bohemian accent.”

  “No, really, in all seriousness, Emmerich: a fortune-teller is supposed to be your alibi?” Horvat folded his hands.

  Emmerich couldn’t bear his counterpart’s airs of superiority any longer, and he was suddenly overcome with immeasurable rage. “At least try! I’m innocent, god damn it!” He banged on the table. “I don’t know Josephine Bauer. Never heard her name before. What is my motive supposed to have been?”

  Horvat didn’t show the slightest reaction. Was nobody in this building capable of human emotion?

  “Your motive? The oldest one in the world: money.”

  “Money?” Emmerich’s mouth was getting dryer as the situation became increasingly surreal.

  “You need money badly. Why else did you ask your superior for an advance on your wages? And your affinity for alcohol and prostitutes is an open secret.”

  “What?” Emmerich wondered how Horvat could have come up with something so absurd. “I enjoy a beer now and then at the end of the day, and as far as prostitutes are concerned . . . I am understanding about their predicament, but—”

  “And looking at you, it’s obvious that you’re also fighting a drug problem.” Horvat hadn’t listened to Emmerich. “Let me guess: morphine?” Emmerich stared at him with his mouth open. “Lying is pointless. I can see your withdrawal symptoms—unnaturally pale, trembling, sweating, trouble concentrating. A blood test would confirm my suspicions.”

  “I don’t shoot morphine,” Emmerich protested, laying his arms out on the table. “I only took a little heroin. Which is totally legal.”

  “Ach . . . ” This exclamation, which was actually harmless, sounded in Horvat’s mouth like a conviction with the force of law. “So the heroin was prescribed? Why do you need medicine anyway?”

  Emmerich took a deep breath and weighed all his options. He wasn’t going to get a position in Leib und Leben division anyway. Might as well stick with the truth, he thought.

  “Because of a war wound,” he confessed.

  “There’s nothing in your file about a wound.”

  Emmerich felt as if he were caught in a fatal downward spiral that was taking him further and further down by the minute. “I never revealed it because until recently it hadn’t been a problem. If someone had found out, I might have been transferred to desk work. And I didn’t want that. I needed the hardship pay for the children.”

  “Children? There’s nothing about children in your file either.”

  “They’re not mine. I already mentioned the woman I was living with, whose husband was supposedly killed in action . . . ” He stopped midsentence. The more he talked, the worse it got. “I know, it all looks a bit funny right now . . . ” He started to try to explain again.

  Horvat packed up his things and stood up. “It doesn’t look funny at all. On the contrary. As far as I’m concerned, it all adds up to a clear picture.”

  Shivers went up Emmerich’s spine. He wanted to justify himself, wanted to protect his name and show Horvat that he was a good man and an even better police officer. He struggled to find the words, but none came.

  “In order to finance your alcohol and drug habits and your visits to prostitutes, you attacked the widow Josephine Bauer in her garden plot this morning. But you hadn’t reckoned with the possibility that the brave woman would fight back.” He gestured to Emmerich’s arms, which were covered with scratches.

  “I had to crawl through the sewers and exchange blows with a scam artist. Obviously those sorts of things leave marks. And besides . . . Do you really think I’d be so stupid as to shoot someone with my own service weapon and leave it at the crime scene?”

  “Your nerves are shot. Heroin and alcohol affect your psychological makeup. Maybe you can plead reduced legal culpability. That way you won’t spend your whole life in the clink, only a part of it. A confession would help you.” Horvat shoved a piece of paper and a pen across the table.

  Emmerich finally lost his composure. He jumped up, sending his chair to the floor with a loud clatter, and banged so hard on the table with his still-cuffed hands that it shook.

  “I’m innocent!” he shouted. “I’m not going to let you frame me!”

  Horvat didn’t bat an eye during the outburst, he stood there expressionless. “Intemperate and short-fused. Not that it surprises me.” He tucked his briefcase under his arm. “Guard!” he called, at which point the door opened and he left the room. “Take him away.”

  Emmerich stood there dumbfounded. No matter how he tried to juggle things in his head, it all looked bad for him. Very bad.

  30.

  A court officer handed Emmerich a nightgown and a tin cup and led him through endless, light-green hallways to the prison wing where he’d been assigned. They passed hundreds of identical doors until they reached cell 398, which would be his new home until further notice. There were already five men on the wooden bunks that were arrayed against the sidewalls of the dark hole—there was no other way to describe the place.

  “Don’t make any trouble, inmate 420,” said the guard, taking off his cuffs and shoving him into the cell.

  Emmerich could no longer ignore reality once he stepped past the heavy iron door, and he had to muster all his remaining strength not to break down. How could he have sunk so low? A week earlier he’d been an up-and-coming detective and a happy man who thought he’d found the love of his life, whose children had found a home in his heart. And now . . .

  “Oh no, another one,” grunted a haggard man with a cleft lip. He was in the bottom of the triple bunk on the right. “As if it doesn’t already stink enough in here. You better not have crabs.” With these words he turned to the wall and mumbled something incomprehensible.

  “Forget that piece of trash” said a short man on the middle bunk on the left. “Welcome to Irongate Hotel, inmate 420. The facilities are shit, and the service even worse. But the place is always full anyway. How long will you be gracing us with your presence?”

  Emmerich climbed up to the top bunk on the right and flopped onto the filthy sack of straw that served as a mattress. His quarters stank, but he was too tired to care.

  “If it’s up to them, for life.”

  He let his eyes wander around the cell. Would he have to spend years here, or even decades? The toilet consisted of a stinking bucket behind a rotting wooden s
creen; next to that were a washing table and a shelf with six narrow compartments, and above the shelf were nails to hang clothes. To call the surroundings depressing would have been a euphemism. There was no word capable of describing the place.

  “What a bunch of shit.”

  The prisoners sighed and all agreed. “Dirty system . . . fucking judiciary . . . paragon of injustice . . . ” Whether they meant Emmerich’s situation or their own wasn’t clear.

  “To your first day.” The man on the bunk beneath Emmerich offered him a cigarette.

  Emmerich took it gratefully, lit it, and inhaled the smoke, which not only banished the horrible smell of the straw mattress but also calmed his nerves. Was this his future? Locked up in a cold, dark, smelly hole? Corralled with criminals? And with vermin, as he realized from a biting sensation in his crotch. A glance down at the bedcover confirmed what he feared. Bugs. The insolence with which they feasted on him left no doubt that these cells were their domain. He was no longer a man but a worthless object barely good enough to be sucked dry by bugs.

  Later, after a horrid dinner of peas and potatoes that was no better than the food in a homeless shelter, a guard made the rounds.

  “Curfew!” he yelled, banging on the cell doors. “Quiet down, you scum.”

  At the same time, a gas lamp on the ceiling went on. When the harsh light bore mercilessly through Emmerich’s eyelids he pulled the stinking pillow over his eyes.

  “Can someone turn that off?” he complained, shivering. “I feel sick and need to sleep.” The pain in his leg was worse than ever, and he would have given anything for a heroin tablet.

  “You can’t turn it off,” said one of the other men, laughing. “The night watchman wants to be able to see us at all times.” He pointed to the small window in the cell door. “But don’t worry. In three or four weeks you’ll get used to it.”

  “Can you ever get used to a night without darkness?”

  “Stop bitching,” cursed the ill-tempered man with the cleft lip.

  “You’ll have to get used to a lot of things. A life without freedom or women, to name a few,” said the small man before whistling a sad melody.

  “And without happiness,” said a quiet voice from the lower left bunk.

  “Curfew, god damn it!” the night watchman growled into the cell, and the men went silent.

  Emmerich had barely closed his eyes before day broke outside and the courthouse bells began to ring. “What time is it?” he asked as the men crawled out of their bunks, groaning.

  “Six thirty. The morning soup’ll be served soon.”

  As if this were a code word, the prisoners ripped open a hatch in the door they called a Judas hole and a worker handed in tin bowls filled with a soup made of watered-down roux.

  “You have to eat something,” said the little guy when Emmerich set his portion down on the floor with disgust. “Eating and drinking keep your body and your mind together. How do you expect to get through a trial and fight the system if you’re half-starved?”

  Emmerich nodded sadly. The man was right. What good would it do him to get weaker and weaker? He began to choke down the soup.

  “I need pain medication,” he said. “Is there any way to get something?”

  “I don’t want to be a killjoy, but you might as well save yourself the trouble of going to the doctor. The only thing he’ll give you is some gray powder.”

  “I don’t care what it is as long as it helps.”

  “You don’t get it.” The man handed Emmerich a piece of dry bread. “There’s no medicine. Not for us. I’ve been here many times. All prisoners here at the Landl get the same thing, no matter what they have. Headache, fever, or congestion. The powder is nothing but shit. Probably ground-up chalk or something like that. If you take it, you just count yourself lucky not to get even sicker.”

  Emmerich understood. The scum of society, they were nothing more than that. Parasites, living off the state. Nobody had any interest in making their lives any easier, or even saving their lives, for that matter.

  “420,” barked a guard through the hatch, and it took a moment before Emmerich realized that meant him. “420. Out.”

  “Get out of here,” sneered the man with the cleft lip. “Hopefully forever.”

  “If only it were that easy.” Emmerich went out into the hall, where he was handcuffed again.

  “I heard you were one of us,” said the guard, exposing two rows of rotting teeth as he smiled. “That made the rounds quick. A cop, doing time. There’s a few folks who are looking forward to seeing you.”

  Emmerich could only imagine. Most of the prison workers were men who had been rejected for service as police officers and were envious of members of the corps.

  “At least someone is looking forward to seeing me. Nobody could say the same about you.”

  The guard repaid Emmerich’s comment with a shot to his kidneys, causing him to fall to his knees.

  “You won’t be cracking jokes for long. Just wait until you’re out of pretrial detention and transferred to a long-term cell. You won’t be so quick to open your trap then. If you even can.” He smoothed out his uniform, hoisted Emmerich to his feet, and shoved him along to the courtyard, which ran alongside a wing of the building that fronted the street. The prisoners called that wing of the Landl Freedom Alley because it was the way out of the complex. A direction only a few of them would ever go.

  Freedom Alley was exceedingly crowded, full of witnesses, lawyers, journalists, and police officers all talking and arguing loudly. Emmerich sank his head—he didn’t want to be recognized and cause himself further humiliation.

  The guard took him to a dark brown wooden door with gold letters on it stating Regional Court Counsel Dr. Josef Schaupp.

  “Wait, the investigative judge? I’m not prepared and I don’t have a lawyer yet.”

  The guard punched him in the back of the neck. “Don’t piss your pants, 420. You have a visitor. Conversations always take place in the presence of a judge so you scum don’t try to set up any funny business.” He knocked at the door and shook his head. “And to think the likes of you managed to get accepted to the police corps.”

  “Yes?” came from behind the door.

  The guard opened it and pushed Emmerich into the office.

  Emmerich felt as if he’d landed in a parallel universe. Whereas just moments before he’d been surrounded by brutality and misery, now he was standing amid elegant furniture upholstered in warm colors. He smelled freshly brewed coffee, and a gramophone was playing classical music. Something soothing. Bach or Brahms.

  “Thanks,” said Judge Schaupp, an older gentleman with ample muttonchops. “You can go now,” he told the guard, who had positioned himself by the door.

  “But the prisoner is violent.”

  “First of all, he’s wearing handcuffs. Second, I’m armed. And third, the man doesn’t really look as if he poses a danger to me.”

  The guard grunted in response. “I’ll pick him up in fifteen minutes,” he said, going out and closing the door.

  How bad he must in fact look became clear to Emmerich when his visitor, none other than Winter, turned and looked at him so aghast that it was as if he’d just seen a ghost.

  “Heaven above!” Winter nearly jumped out of his chair.

  “Don’t worry about it.” Emmerich gestured for him to stay seated. “I’m fine.”

  “You look sick. Really sick. You must have caught something bad—from Minna or Czernin’s children.”

  “The prison doctor said I was good.” Emmerich greeted the judge and sat down next to Winter. “Still, I could do with some pain medicine.”

  Schaupp acted as though he wasn’t listening.

  “Are they at least treating you well?” Winter’s voice quavered.

  “I can’t complain.” Emmerich tried to put on a happy fa
ce for his assistant.

  “What happened?”

  “Somebody killed this Frau Bauer with my service weapon, and they want to pin it on me. I don’t know any more than that. I’d hoped that you might have found something out.”

  Judge Schaupp turned off the gramophone. “I’m just a neutral observer,” he said. “Act as if I’m not here.” He pointed to a clock. “And whatever you need to talk about, do it quickly. Fifteen minutes will be up before you know it.”

  “At first we thought we didn’t know this Josephine Bauer, but it turns out we do.” Winter spoke so fast that his words tumbled over each other. “She’s the waitress from Poldi Tant.”

  “Fini?” mumbled Emmerich. Now he was more mystified than ever.

  Winter nodded. “She had a bit of money, and they are saying she was attacked because of that. To . . . to pay for alcohol and . . . visits to prostitutes.” Winter’s voice cracked. “They say you had a bad childhood and developed bad character as a result. Obviously I said otherwise, but nobody listens to me.”

  Emmerich looked touched. “I can’t tell whether this is a series of unlucky coincidences or whether somebody is trying to frame me.”

  “But who? And why? Do you have such serious enemies?”

  Emmerich brooded. “It must have to do with the case . . . or with the second man who’s been following us, the man with the scar . . . or both,” he thought out loud. “Any news from the war archive?”

  “The files were sent over to me last night. I spent the night going through them to identify all the soldiers in the photo. Which I was able to do, with the exception of the one on the far right, whose face is scratched out.” Winter pulled out a nicely folded piece of paper from his chest pocket and began to read from it. “Aside from the three dead men—Jost, Zeiner, and Czernin—they are Peter Boos, Richard Teschner, and corporal Georg Oberwieser. The other three, Ladislaus Riml, Alois von Hohenrecht, and Jaroslav von Scheure, all died in action.”

  “And where were they serving?”

  “In eastern Galicia. Near Lemberg. They were part of the 13th Company, which was in turn part of the 11th Infantry Division.”