by Chris Petit
Morgen shrugged. ‘I am sure you could do a deal with one of the taxis for the day.’
Schulze said no unauthorised civilian vehicles were permitted in the zone.
Morgen asked her where the best place was to hide a prisoner.
Schlegel asked where he could find a map of the area.
Schulze had her own in her drawer. Schlegel could see she was in two minds about lending it. She winced as he unfolded it carelessly. He could see he was meant to apologise.
The map was printed on cloth, stamped ‘confidential’ and showed the greater secret area. On the page Schlegel thought it rather resembled the outline of a bear, its snout the point where the two rivers split. By the southern boundary the distance between them was considerable.
Morgen asked Schulze where she thought Sybil might be.
She stood next to them, nervously twisting a strand of hair. Babitz, she said, pointing near the top. Plawy. The big fish farm at Harmensee. All had women’s camps. The landscape and gardening division at Rajsko, near the garrison village where Palitsch and Horn lived.
Morgen asked if she knew the region well.
She told them one of her first jobs had been with a civil engineer from Breslau, for a report on the potential for livestock and fish breeding. Now there was a poultry and rabbit farm at Harmensee. The rabbits had previously been housed near the garrison stables. She used to go up there some afternoons and missed them when they moved.
She recited these memories in a way that sounded rehearsed.
She told them how the commandant had stopped off to inspect when they were surveying Harmensee, how bitterly cold it was and he encouraged them to contemplate the toughness of their task with the hardness of exile.
She retreated back behind her desk and apropos of nothing said, ‘You hear the wildest stories that aren’t true. When Dr Wirths told us about the possibility of a new high-frequency delousing machine everyone said afterwards it was us that were going to be zapped.’
‘Why?’
‘That’s how everyone thinks.’
‘What else do they say?’ asked Morgen.
‘There was one about doctors using prisoners as guinea pigs for a hangover cure. Quite a lot of hope was invested in that! There was another about strange trains that stopped in special gassing tunnels somewhere in Russia and no one came out.’
‘What do you think?’ Schlegel asked.
‘What I think is not important. I am not paid to think.’
She avoided his eye. Schlegel felt he had insulted her.
Eventually she said, ‘You’re new.’
He could see how important it was not to appear gullible, hence the flippancy and cynicism.
‘ “Who makes this stuff up?” is what you learn to say,’ she said.
Schlegel asked if she had a bicycle he could borrow.
She said he would look funny on it even if she had, with his height. Hers had been stolen ages ago.
‘No one will lend you a car. You will find a horse easier to come by than a bicycle.’
It was her idea to telephone Juppe and ask him to request permission from the commandant to exercise a horse.
‘Horses are his soft spot.’
She volunteered, saying, ‘It’s easier if I ask.’
Not only did the answer come back positive, Schulze said she had been made to wait only a few minutes before Juppe said the commandant approved.
Schlegel started up in Babitz. Fields full of shapeless, bent-over figures in headscarves. The guards appeared lethally bored. He showed one Sybil’s picture, barely looked at before a shake of the head. Schlegel thought he would have more chance with the lottery.
Away in the distance came a wail of sirens, different from the usual.
He became used to riding again and relaxed. Saddle and horse felt substantial beneath him.
Further on, he grew aware of an unusual amount of activity. Vehicles racing back and forth. More sirens. Whistles. A distant armed patrol moved ahead of him through trees. He waited, aware of how isolated he was, anxious in that unspecified way which had become second nature.
The area was more than large enough to get lost in. Whole tracts passed where the fences and watchtowers went unseen, leaving a sun-coshed, tranquil landscape, and he understood something of the commandant’s dream. Cultivated arable, dykes and embankments, brooks, lakes, a sea of reeds, a huge sky. He crossed a wooden bascule bridge over a channel and from it could see the railway and a distant cluster of buildings he presumed was Budy. More women worked in fields. His spirits sank. Weeks of searching wouldn’t necessarily take him any nearer to finding Sybil.
He rode on for a long time until the fence appeared, marking the southern boundary. He followed its line until he reached an unmade-up road, which led to a small inn and houses where washing was drying in gardens that appeared better tended than the houses. The inn was shut. The road out of the village took him to a point where he could see a manned checkpoint on a bridge over the other river.
He passed through another deserted hamlet with a few dirty whitewashed buildings. None of the places was signed or named.
The peace was broken by the noise of an approaching motorbike and sidecar, trailing dust. He was able to make out two men hunched down, sinister in goggles and helmets, the one in the sidecar with a submachine gun. He moved off the road to let them pass. They drew up short and waved him over. Schlegel shouted for them to turn off their engine because it was frightening the horse. They ignored him so he dismounted, trusting the horse not to go off.
The man in the sidecar kept him covered. He realised what all the fuss was about. There had been an escape. He wondered what it would be like being hunted through such a landscape.
They told him they were clearing the area because the posse was coming.
‘Posse?’
‘Men on horseback. Hunters with dogs. Stay on the road. No sudden moves if anyone approaches.’
They roared off. The road took him to the camp’s sentry line and down a narrow course between the boundary fence and the river.
The horse heard them before he did. It stopped and pricked up its ears. The sound of galloping hooves seemed to go on for a long time before Schlegel saw them, on the other side of the fence, in tight formation, fifteen to twenty riders, fanning out until they resembled a cavalry charge. Many rode one-handed and brandished rifles. Yelping dogs ran with them.
Schlegel was sure he saw Baumgarten, the foreman of the butchers of Berlin. Perhaps trusted prisoners were permitted to ride with the posse. To a bystander it was an intimidating sight. The pounding receded and the whooping of the men grew thinner, and the only noise left was the irritating buzz of the returning motorbike.
Realising that the posse was sweeping south and there was still time, Schlegel turned back towards Rajsko. It was still light but getting dark.
The women’s camp was away from the village, bleak wooden huts, a security fence and the name of the camp spelled out in wrought iron above the gate. The surrounding fields were empty. This turned out to be because everyone had been confined to camp after the escape. Schlegel sent a female guard to fetch the prisoner supervisor. He sat on the step waiting, and stared at the parched bare square of dirt. Its inmates may have worked for the gardening department but no planting extended to their accommodation.
The female guard returned with an older weather-beaten woman. They looked like archetypes from a fable: the round young one with a slung rifle shadowing what could have been a thinner, older version. Schlegel was aware of being noted for his lack of uniform. He could of course be Gestapo, though one look at his face probably told her he wasn’t.
He showed Sybil’s image. It produced no reaction, not even a shake of the head.
The woman waited to be dismissed. Prisoners didn’t volunteer information, especially to strangers asking questions.
How many women worked there? he asked.
She grudgingly admitted about three hundred.
She handed him back the card.
That was that, thought Schlegel. He would repeat the action in all the other sub-camps and be told the same. He imagined everyone moving Sybil around to make sure he never found her and saw how easy it would be to develop a persecution complex. He rode away depressed.
Rajsko’s garrison quarters by contrast were nice little houses with pleasant gardens, surrounded by an abundance of what should have been green but struggled in the drought to retain its colour. A man was taking advantage of the late light to tend his garden. Older children still played in the street. Both cautiously greeted Schlegel as he passed. The pronounced homeliness was in such contrast to where he had come from he found it hardly worth noting.
Palitsch lived down a side road at the far end of the village. His house had crossed diagonal wooden fencing like the rest. He was no gardener. Schlegel supposed he was still out as no bike was around. The house was a two-up, two-down, detached, with a steep, pointed roof. It looked like a new build. The general cosiness suggested the sort of place where people didn’t need to lock up, despite all the pilfering. Palitsch’s door was open, presenting Schlegel with the dilemma of whether to enter. The garden ran round both sides. He went to the back where two apple trees stood with a slung hammock and a stack of empty beer bottles beneath.
Against the rear wall was a windowless lean-to, securely padlocked. Schlegel supposed the house was left open to stop break-ins and any valuables were put in the store. The kitchen door was unlocked. Schlegel pushed it open, calling out, trying to pretend he was behaving naturally.
Always the contrast, he thought, between what lay open and unrevealed.
The house’s tidiness he attributed to the housekeeper. He found nothing but essentials and empty bottles crated for return; not even a radio. He was taken aback by children’s beds upstairs. He wasn’t expecting that. No pictures on the walls, no personal photographs, no trace of a man’s life.
The main bed looked slept in since that morning. Schlegel stared at semen-stained sheets and reminded himself that Palitsch shot people for a job.
Schlegel heard someone coming up the path to the house. There was no point in hiding. Anyone could see his horse tethered. He made a show of strolling downstairs, expecting Palitsch. A woman’s voice called, ‘Gerhard!’ then more sharply to ask who he was.
She was natural-looking and attractive.
Schlegel said, ‘I thought he might be upstairs asleep.’
She looked suspicious.
‘Are you sure you should be here?’
‘As sure as I can be about anything,’ he said cheerfully as he walked out. She smelled of perfume.
Horn’s house stood in an orchard, its trees heavy with apples. It was now nearly dark and the mosquitoes were out. Schlegel left the horse tethered to a tree. No lights were on. He walked through the murmuring dusk, thinking: Beware the house in the woods.
He meant to leave it at that but was curious to know whether the same open-door arrangement applied.
It did.
He called out, waited, and hesitated before stepping inside. He wanted to know if Horn lived in the same featureless way as Palitsch. His eyes took time to adjust.
Horn clearly had no servant. The state of the place was more like what Schlegel expected from Palitsch: a pile of dirty washing-up in a sink of scummy water; a strong smell of cat and something more putrid; dozens of uncrated empties; some plates lay dirty on the table, covered with what looked like rat shit.
Schlegel again called Horn’s name and got nothing back. He asked himself what he was doing when he knew perfectly well. It was called foreboding.
At the back of his mind, he had known since riding out, which was why he had left it to last.
Anticipation played harder on his nerves than the moment, nasty as it was. Schlegel wondered whether mosquitoes fed on dead flesh. Maggots certainly did; he could see silvery traces where they had burrowed under the grey skin.
Horn lay sprawled in an armchair, a man-mountain made no prettier by death. Which the grubbier, thought Schlegel irreverently, the chair or the man. Horn wore a singlet, vomited down, and soiled pyjama bottoms. More than maggots had got to him. He had been chewed. Schlegel wondered about the cat.
From the number of empties lying around, Horn must have drunk himself to death, Schlegel supposed, knowing he hadn’t really. It took all his nerve to touch the cold flesh and pull the greasy singlet away, enough to see the telltale puncture mark over the heart.
He could think of no earthly reason to report the death because the knowledge of others would add nothing. Against his better judgement, he picked up the telephone.
He sat outside, waiting in the dark for the ambulance. He supposed Horn had been killed for the same reason as Bock: for knowing too much and being an inconvenience. It was no longer a matter of hunting individual murderers. Perhaps the same man had killed Bock and Horn, perhaps different men, but they were interchangeable. Horn, like Bock, had been killed by a system, their killers its servants. It wasn’t even psychopathic, just a fact of life, a form of tidying.
The ambulance came with Broad, who grumbled about having drawn the short straw, being on standby duty. A doctor came a few minutes later, driving his own car, and wasted no time pronouncing Horn dead. One of the ambulance men doubled as the photographer and the room lit up whenever the flashgun fired. Broad said he only knew Horn as the fat guy in the post office.
‘I heard he was a doper and a lush.’
No one seemed much concerned or bothered. Schlegel supposed Broad’s report would write itself, with the copiousness of empty bottles cited as evidence of an epic, fatal drinking session.
Schlegel decided not to point out the puncture mark. He doubted if the autopsy – if they even bothered – would either.
Broad organised the death scene with brisk, professional cynicism. They all had to give a hand with the stretcher because of Horn’s weight.
‘All breathe through your mouths, boys,’ said Broad with ghoulish relish. ‘One, two, three and lift!’
Horn’s weight left them staggering like drunks with the giggles.
‘Where’s a prisoner detachment when you need one?’ said the photographer.
After managing to slide Horn into the ambulance, Broad offered cigarettes and said, ‘I’m not going back in there.’
Always jovial, thought Schlegel.
As the ambulance prepared to leave, Schlegel said, ‘Your number is in Ingeborg Tanner’s book.’
Broad looked at the ground and up at him.
‘How come? I didn’t know her.’ He sounded plausible.
He walked away, unconcerned, calling back, ‘I expect my number is in a lot of people’s books.’
Later that night Schlegel said the same to Krick.
‘Whose book?’ asked Krick in apparent innocence.
‘The woman whose body you found.’
‘Is that her name? I have been away, only just back tonight.’
‘Anywhere interesting?’
‘Zurich, as a matter of fact. I have to go back.’
Schlegel wondered if Schulze had told Krick she was working for them.
He had run across Krick in the lobby while looking in the bar for Morgen, who wasn’t there. On Krick’s recommendation they adjourned to what he called the residents’ lounge, a quieter room with tables and chairs, about half full.
‘Why should I be in this woman’s book?’ he asked earnestly. ‘What can you tell me about her?’
Schlegel said she seemed to have had several lovers. Krick approved. He thought women in the garrison progressive and generally ahead of the times.
‘Instead of being shackled to that ghastly monogamy.’
Schlegel said Tanner had a wardrobe of clothes beyond her means.
‘Are you thinking I was one of her lovers?’
‘Are you telling me you were?’
Krick shook his head and continued to puzzle over being in Tanner’s book. After that they sat in sil
ence. Schlegel was trying to decide if it was companionable when Krick said, ‘What we have in common is people wonder why we are both here.’
He fiddled easily with his cigarette lighter, and asked, ‘Where is your colleague?’
As of that minute, Schlegel didn’t know. He said somewhere around.
Krick said, ‘I heard he has gone to Lublin.’
‘Not as far as I know,’ Schlegel said uncertainly.
He supposed it wasn’t out of the question and typical of Morgen not to say. Schlegel found Krick disconcerting.
‘Why are we all here?’ he asked, trying to steer the conversation back.
‘People fear we are part of a cleaning agency. Funny how a man such as the commandant, who has as much power as anyone could want, is so insecure.’
‘Only because he is worried about having it taken away.’
‘Is that what you think?’ Krick clicked his fingers and said, ‘I remember now.’
Schlegel expected to be reminded of where they had met before.
‘I would have to check my records but I think the Tanner woman telephoned my office to speak to me.’
‘What about?’
‘Her depression.’
‘Then you must have met.’
‘That’s the thing. She failed to turn up for her appointment and it was the last I heard.’
‘Why would she not?’
‘She must have found some quack to prescribe her antidepressants, or even better signed up as a guinea pig for one of the pharmaceutical testing programmes where they hand out trial pills like sweets.’
Already the office kettle had been stolen, despite the room being locked. There was no sign of Schulze. Schlegel sensed an anxious torpor to everything, beset by strange symbols and portents, as though a spell had been cast.
His anxiety over Morgen turned to worry. He had taken the man’s absence at breakfast for just that; nothing to worry about; typical even, except Morgen made a point of breakfast. Perhaps he was ill.
He went down to the telephone booth. Morgen wasn’t in his room. He hadn’t checked out either.
Schlegel returned gloomily upstairs. They hadn’t been getting on particularly. He put that down to strain and uncertainty. Morgen had said it was like trying to investigate in a thick fog. Now he wasn’t there Schlegel missed him and during the fretful course of another wasted afternoon he started to fear Morgen was in trouble. After Buchenwald he had many enemies, from the top down, starting with the commandant’s boss, Pohl, who – according to Broad – was aware of their presence. The wanted poster would have refuelled that animosity. Schlegel asked himself whether there was a persecution campaign and how far it would go.