Pale Horse Riding

by Chris Petit

  He considered another alternative, more personal. Given Schulze’s absence, Schlegel was left wondering if she and Morgen had something going. Normally, such a thought would not have occurred but given the nature of the place . . . However absurd the idea, it kept returning.

  He sought out Ilse, ostensibly to ask about Sybil when he knew it was about feeling sorry for himself. They ended up in the canteen where they talked about this and that, inconsequential stuff and pleasant for it. She sensed he was having problems and asked. He spoke of his frustration dealing with the endless red tape and the constant blurring of information and gossip, and how most of what they were told turned out to be not true.

  She said for the most part everyone made it up as they went along.

  As they parted she said she wasn’t sure whether to mention one story she had heard, given what he had just told her, because its source was unreliable.

  ‘Now I am bound to ask,’ he said, enjoying her company.

  She told him the seamstress was supposed to be in one of the smaller, more remote penal colonies, but comfortably ensconced, which suggested she was still protected.

  ‘Do you want me to see what I can find out?’

  Schlegel could see no reason not to, even if it turned out to be a wild-goose chase.

  ‘It will probably cost,’ Ilse said.

  He hadn’t expected anything else.

  When the situation duplicated itself with Schulze, Schlegel wondered if he wasn’t being steered, perhaps even with the two women working together.

  Schulze was back in the office, her return as mysterious as her disappearance. He didn’t ask where she had been.

  Like Ilse, Schulze suggested the way forward was through purchasing information. One of Tanner’s dormitory companions was prepared to talk to her.

  ‘Are you all right with paying?’

  Schlegel shrugged. ‘If she’s worth it.’

  He was trying to sound tough and could tell she saw through that.

  ‘Are you all right with her talking to me?’

  ‘Why won’t she talk to me?’ he asked, knowing the answer.

  Schulze confirmed there was an unofficial embargo surrounding Tanner.

  In the case of Ilse’s lead the price was a wristwatch while Tanner’s dormitory companion wanted a bar of French soap.

  In retrospect, the narrative attached to the incident of the wristwatch floated away, leaving only a few salient details whose meaning became detached from the episode surrounding it. Schlegel spoke to a rugged, impassive female supervisor, who, in exchange for his watch, left him feeling he was being taken for a ride. What he remembered afterwards was how the woman beckoned for him to hold out his wrist with the watch. He didn’t care. It was the cheapest of watches, of no sentimental value. Why he didn’t just take it off and hand it over he had no idea. He did as she asked, feeling strangely powerless and in thrall to her dexterous fingers. She held his eye, hers dark pools that reflected nothing living, until he felt transported beyond authority and ritual into a primitive, exposed space. The anxiousness of the occasion lingered long after the rest was forgotten.

  A car had come about a week before in the middle of the night, she said, and referred to the female passenger as the commandant’s ride, a remark that left Schlegel sagging at the knees. They were warned off touching her. The description of the driver matched no one Schlegel knew. It turned out he was a prisoner, a detail omitted at first. When he expressed surprise at prisoners being allowed to drive around at night he could see he was regarded as a hopeless novice.

  A couple of days later the same man came back and took the woman away in the same car. That it was a car not a lorry was significant. A car was equated with privilege. The car was an Opel.

  The garrison motor pool turned out to have several Opels, one of which could be driven by a prisoner as it was used by the commandant’s household and known as Frau Hoess’s shopping car.

  The driver in question, hired as a gardener, told Schlegel he hadn’t taken the car that night and had no idea who had.

  Faced with another dead end, Schlegel’s brief elation curdled. He had a proper lead, he kept telling himself; the reality was much more like chasing phantoms.

  Schulze said she was willing to get the soap and settle with him afterwards, but Schlegel insisted he went; for the experience, he supposed.

  She gave him directions and the name of a man from Canada. First he had to go to the camp bank to withdraw cash.

  The man operated not out of the big Canada shed but a small outpost in an obscure part of the garrison, down a cobbled alley. His door was split like a stable’s, with the open upper half protected by a wire mesh. Schulze gave Schlegel a numbered ticket like a cloakroom one. The only difference from what she had told him was the price. He was informed there was a 10 per cent handling fee. Schlegel suspected he was being fleeced but was too listless to argue; Dr Wirths’ booster shot induced long periods of drowsiness, as promised.

  Schlegel gave the soap to Schulze and later that day she related to him what she had been told.

  Again he experienced the sensation of being transported into another realm and could not shake the impression it was her own story Schulze was relating, at a remove, as a form of confession. He didn’t believe that but it excited him in a shameful way to think of her being part of that world. Was it in fact her secret body parts that would smell of perfumed French soap?

  Schulze told him that the year before, in the summer of 1942, there had been a lot of dressing up and wild parties, with Palitsch’s given over to orgies. Tanner was supposed to have taken part in these but Schulze wasn’t so sure because the woman trailed a lot of stories in her wake. The party scene had lasted only a few weeks, until female prisoners became the next vogue, which meant the garrison women in effect got dumped.

  Schulze recited all this in a matter-of-fact way in the plainest language.

  The most specific angle on Tanner was that one of the men she was having sex with was a colleague in the motor pool, a mechanic, Fritz, who was two-timing her with a female prisoner he impregnated. Tanner in a fit of pique reported the illegal relationship to the security police, after which Fritz received a punitive transfer.

  Schulze said, ‘Fritz arranged to have her killed after he left because she had snitched on him.’

  Fritz could demand this because he had been a major organiser, widely regarded as performing valuable services.

  So, a motive, thought Schlegel. Murder by proxy. Where was Fritz now, was the obvious question.

  Fritz turned out to have barely survived Tanner and may even have predeceased her. He was supposed to have been killed in a quarrel over gambling debts.

  Another dead end, but Schulze had more. She had found the man who had taken the photographs of the abused women. He was a medical orderly named Haas. He was prepared to talk.

  ‘How did you find him?’

  ‘There’s a photographer’s studio but no one there knew of any medical pictures. There is a prisoner who takes police photographs as required.’

  Schlegel supposed he was the one who had recorded Horn in all his departing glory. He was reminded of how far off the case he was. He had been so distracted by Horn’s death and the fact of Broad being in Tanner’s book that he never thought to ask if the photographer knew about the pictures of the beaten-up women.

  Schulze had gone to the popular garrison photography club and asked if any members worked for medical departments. Three did. Haas, she said, usually specialised in taking pet animal pictures.

  Haas was a nasty shock, being the sinister musclebound man who had turned up in the basement of Block 10 following Bock’s death. He gave no show of remembering Schlegel.

  Unlike Palitsch, who wore his depravity lightly, Haas displayed elements of the psychopath, in his insistence on shaking hands as a way of intruding on Schlegel’s private space and pretending to engage by not quite looking him in the eye.

  Haas’s office was in one of t
he medical blocks at the top end of the camp. His work seemed to consist of a desk with nothing on it, a telephone and a coat stand, next to a washbasin. Through an arch Schlegel could see a consulting room, with a table and chairs, a folding screen and a couch.

  What was it about the garrison? Everyone had an opinion or a story. Schlegel was reminded of a pageant. Theatrical role-playing, dramatic intrigue and a sense of image were not dissimilar to life there; both were highly artificial, with sexual scheming forming another level.

  In normal investigations people were forthcoming, not forthcoming, helpful, ignorant or clued-up, devious and deceptive, but in the garrison, beneath the overarching mood of threat, everyone seemed to have their account ready, more like you would find once a case had gone to trial.

  Haas was the same. While he talked, he surreptitiously flexed his muscles and admired them. Any surprise Schlegel had hoped to gain by producing the photographs failed.

  Haas looked without picking them up.

  Whether it was mental agility or robotic programming, within minutes he was talking about the excellent garrison facilities for adult education and how he had learned his photography through the society, which was then run by the camp ornithologist.

  Schlegel presumed ornithology was another hobby, but Haas corrected him; it was a garrison appointment.

  ‘What happened to him?’ Schlegel knew he was being distracted; it was almost easier.

  The ornithologist was gone, along with most of the birdlife, which had migrated and mysteriously not returned, apart from carrion.

  They were interrupted by an orderly assisting a shuffling, stick-thin patient into the next room and telling Haas they were ready. Haas asked Schlegel to excuse him for a moment, stood and drew a curtain across the arch after him.

  What Schlegel heard told him clearly enough what was going on: a sigh of protest that became a quick squeak, a thud and a brief thrashing, the sound of a limb erratically beating the table, followed by a silence more profound than the preceding one because of the three parties one was now obviously dead.

  Haas returned, again drawing the curtain. Schlegel heard the body being removed on a trolley with squeaky wheels. Haas rejoined Schlegel after washing his hands. He didn’t say anything, clearly confident of his professional rights.

  Schlegel said laboriously, ‘Someone attacked the women you photographed. Did any say who their attackers were?’

  Haas said he had been there only as a technician.

  ‘There were similar cases before last August, but the photographs only started then.’

  Haas glanced down and inspected his arm. Schlegel thought he might as well be speaking to himself.

  Haas said his speciality was rabbits and cats. He had a line in novelty pictures, which he insisted on showing. They were twee beyond belief; scarily so.

  ‘Good for kiddies. Do you have children?’

  He insisted Schlegel bought a set anyway.

  The next time Haas left the curtain open. Schlegel instinctively tensed as the needle was poised, with Haas flicking and slapping the area around the heart. He had put on rubber gloves and a medical apron. He drove the needle in and pushed hard on the plunger. The man, almost identical to his predecessor, froze for a second then went into spasm. His back arched and the orderly rushed forward and held him down.

  Haas came back and said, ‘It’s no life for them by the end. A relief, you could say. It’s better they don’t struggle. They go more easily.’

  He sat, as if to say: I have nothing to hide and all is above board and whatever you prove there is nothing you can do about it.

  Schlegel persisted with his questioning, despite a growing helplessness.

  ‘At least two cases I have come across recently happened off the books. Bock and Horn from the post office.

  ‘Not what I am hearing.’

  ‘Can you explain your proximity to the first incident?’

  ‘In the same building, no crime in that.’

  Stories seemed to float into place, and stick, as though by osmosis. Haas’s version was that Wirths’ prisoner doctor had left Bock unsupervised. Schlegel’s counter was that Bock as a garrison member was supposed to have been looked after by a staff doctor.

  ‘In theory. On paper. It doesn’t happen like that. Anyway, the doctor is Wirths’ pet so he is protecting her.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘She was negligent. She should go.’

  ‘Where?’

  Haas smirked. ‘Wherever they get sent. Another camp probably. It’s a merry-go-round.’

  Schlegel sensed with the next exchange they were close to the centre, when Haas suggested he stop wasting his time and talk to the security police – inference, don’t be bothering me and fuck off – because that department had the authority to exercise its own initiative.

  ‘Not according to the book.’

  ‘The book stopped making sense years ago.’

  ‘Yes, but anyone looking at the problem must ask: If it isn’t allowed, why is it still going on?’

  ‘That person has his head in the clouds. Like it or not, the programme is one of radical housekeeping. It’s not our fault Dr Wirths can’t keep his books in order.’

  Another patient was produced. Haas used it as an excuse to dismiss Schlegel. Schlegel felt almost as though he wasn’t watching anything of consequence, because any sense of the individual had long been removed, leaving only the husk, and a repeating mechanical action, almost like watching the striking of a cuckoo clock.

  Haas, whether through thoughtlessness or calculated cruelty, prolonged the wretch’s life for an inconsequential minute or two, by pausing to return as Schlegel was leaving to say it was possible the deaths of Bock and Horn were ordered, as a way of closing the case.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the commandant doesn’t want it known what is going on under his watch.’

  ‘Are you saying he is collaborating with Grabner on this?’

  Haas enjoyed the confusion he sewed. That was the point, Schlegel realised: this constant derailing.

  ‘When they are sworn enemies?’ Schlegel insisted.

  ‘Just because they are basically against each other doesn’t mean they are all the time. Needs must when the devil drives.’

  Schlegel ate early in the canteen, depressed by his indifference to what he had seen. Wirths had warned of the corrosive nature of the place. The canteen was crowded and the only free table was by the food counter. Meatballs or schnitzel. He spotted Ilse in the queue and waved her over. She seemed pleased to see him, which was by no means usual, Schlegel had found. He said to take the meatballs. ‘This tastes like old tyre.’

  She joined him and asked what he was doing. Not much, he said, thinking she might tell him what Schulze would not about fancy dresses and Tanner’s lifestyle. They agreed they both felt like getting smashed.

  ‘For a change,’ said Ilse.

  He said he had seen stuff that day he would rather not have. Her sympathetic look said it wasn’t necessary to elaborate.

  She took him to a crowded, smoky bar where records were played with dancing. They got companionably drunk, listening to the music, not needing to say much. She asked him to dance. He pulled a face and said he didn’t really. She laughed and said, ‘Just push and I’ll pull.’

  On the crowded floor he managed a passable slow shuffle, aware of her hand on his neck.

  When it was time to leave she took his arm to help her walk straight. Outside she stopped and said, ‘Kiss me,’ so he did. She tasted sweet and of alcohol. How could everything feel so out of kilter and yet so normal? he wondered, as she pressed against him.

  They walked on and she said, ‘I am not so drunk.’ Schlegel wondered what he was getting into then decided to go along with whatever the night might bring.

  ‘I want to go to Canada,’ he said.

  The request seemed to excite her.

  ‘For the dare, then,’ she said, slurring her words attractively. ‘No
t such a dare, actually. It’s pretty much a free-for-all.’

  Security amounted to two sleepy guards reading comic books who paid no attention, beyond acknowledging Ilse, who cheerfully said, ‘Tour of inspection.’

  She told him this was the original Canada. There was a much bigger depot now in the new camp where goods were pre-sorted – clothes, leather, banknotes, coins, photographs, drink and so on – before being sent over.

  She said, ‘The new camp is a dump and no one goes there if they can possibly avoid it.’

  Schlegel thought about whether he was compromising himself. They passed the main storage area, which was fenced off, with goods stacked in aisles, on shelves reaching to the ceiling. A wire door was open and people could wander freely inside.

  She took him up back stairs to a gallery which overlooked the warehouse floor. She seemed not drunk now and in thrall to all the possessions arrayed below. Despite the lateness of the hour people were still in. Schlegel saw Groenke standing with the commandant’s wife inspecting rails of women’s clothes. He pointed her out to Ilse who said, ‘She’s always in, top shopper.’

  ‘When did this start?’ he asked.

  ‘Last summer. Everyone was amazed how much turned up. It lay around for days. On the long evenings if it was known a train was coming people used to get drunk and go down and see what they could pick up. No one had expected anything like it.’

  She could see he wanted to know if she had. ‘Not told, don’t ask.’

  Then people were banned from showing up.

  ‘That was Dr Wirths, who complained things weren’t being done properly.’

  Her mood softened. She presented her face to be kissed, her hand gripping the back of his head. She smiled afterwards and said lightly, ‘We skate on the thinnest of ice.’