Free Death in Breslau by Marek Krajewski Page A

cups of strong tea over the phone.
    “Apparently, it’s excellent for quenching thirst when it’s so hot. We’ll see …”
    He passed Anwaldt a box of cigars. Unhurriedly and methodically, he cut the tip of one with a small pair of tweezers. Mock’s assistant, Dietmar Krank, laid a jug and some cups on the desk.
    “Where would you like to start, Anwaldt?”
    “Criminal Director, I have a suggestion …”
    “Forget the formal address. We’re not as ceremonious as the Baron.”
    “Of course, as you wish. I spent last night reading the case files. I’d like to know what you think of the following reasoning: somebody made a scapegoat of Friedländer, ergo somebody wants to hide the real perpetrator. Perhaps it’s precisely that somebody who is the murderer. I have to find the person or persons who framed Friedländer, meaning – in other words – those who planted him for you to devour. So I’ll start with Baron von Köpperlingk because he pointed you to Friedländer.” Anwaldt smiledsurreptitiously. “But, by the way, how could you have believed that a sixty-year-old – within half an hour – managed to kill a railway man, then have intercourse twice, which – one may surmise – the victims did not make easy. Then kill both women, write some squiggles on the wall, thereafter jump out of the window and dissolve into the mist. Show me a twenty-year-old who could perform such a feat.”
    “My dear man,” Mock laughed. He liked Anwaldt’s naïve enthusiasm. “Exceptional, superhuman powers can occur quite often in epileptics, after a fit, too. All such behaviour is the result of mysterious hormones, which Friedländer’s physician, Doctor Weinsberg, elaborated to me in detail. I’ve no reason not to trust him.”
    “Exactly so. You trust him. But I do not trust anyone. I have to see that doctor. Perhaps somebody told him to tell you about the extraordinary gifts of epileptics, dervishes’ trances and other such …” Anwaldt could not find the word, “other such nonsense.”
    Mock slowly drank his tea.
    “You’re very categorical, young man.”
    Anwaldt drank half a cup in one go. He wanted, at all costs, to show the Director how confident he felt in matters such as these. And it was precisely self-confidence that he lacked. He was behaving, right now, like a little boy who has wet his bed in the night and, on waking in the morning, does not know what to do with himself. (I was chosen. I am the chosen one. I will earn masses of money.) He finished what remained of his tea.
    “I’d like a transcript of Friedländer’s interrogation, please,” he tried to give his voice a hard edge.
    “What do you need a transcript for?” Mock’s tone was no longer playful. “You’ve been working in the police for years and you know that sometimes the person being interrogated needs to be appropriately pressurized. The transcript has been touched up. It’s better that I tell you whathappened. I’m the one who questioned him after all.” He looked out of the window and started to invent fluently. “I asked about an alibi. He didn’t have one. I had to strike him. (The man from the Gestapo, Konrad, forced him to talk in short order, no doubt. He has his methods.) When I asked about the strange writing with which he filled thick notebooks, he laughed that it was a message to his brothers who were going to avenge him. (I have heard that Konrad slashes through tendons with a razor.) I had to be far more persuasive. I told them to fetch his daughter. That did the trick. He calmed down immediately and confessed he was guilty. That’s all. (Poor girl … What to do? I had no choice but to hand her over to Piontek … He got her addicted to morphine and packed her into bed with various high-ranking types.) ”
    “And you believed a madman?” Anwaldt’s eyes opened wide in astonishment. “Whom you subjected to blackmail like that?”
    Mock was sincerely amused. He assumed Mühlhaus’ attitude in face