Death in Breslau Read Free

find me here?” asked the Counsellor, carefully observing the walls of the Communal Cemetery flitting past on their right. The triangular roof of the crematorium was clearly silhouetted against the sky.
    “The Criminal Director Doctor Mühlhaus suggested where you might be, sir.” Forstner shrugged as if he would have preferred to say: “Everyone knows where Mock is on a Friday.”
    “Don’t permit yourself any such liberties, Forstner.” Mock looked at him intently. “You are still only my assistant.”
    This sounded threatening, but it did not make the slightest impression on Forstner. Mock did not lower his gaze from the broad face (“small, fat, red-haired scoundrel,” he was thinking) and for the n th time resolved, against his better judgment, to destroy his insolent subordinate. This was not going to be easy since Forstner had been received into the Criminal Department when the new President of Police, the fanatical Nazi, Obergruppenführer S.A. Edmund Heines, had taken over command. Mock had learned that his assistant was not only Heines’ protégé but boasted of having good relations with the new Supreme President of Silesia, Helmuth Brückner, who had been imposed upon them by the Nazis shortly after they had won the elections to the Reichstag. But the counsellor had worked in the police for nearly a quarter of a century and knew that anyone could be destroyed. While he had the authority, while the Chief of the Criminal Department was the old Freemason and liberal Heinrich Mühlhaus, he could keep Forstner away from serious cases and transfer him, for example, to booking prostitutes outside the Savoy Hotel on Tauentzienplatz or checking the credentials of homosexuals beneaththe statue of Empress Auguste on the promenade by the School of Fine Arts. What most irritated Mock was that he did not know any of Forstner’s weaknesses – his files were clean and day to day observation prompted only one, concise description: “a dumb stickler”. The close bond with Heines, who was well known to be a homosexual, did provide Mock with murky suspicions, but that was not enough to bend this “mole”, Gestapo agent Forstner, to his will.
    They approached Sonnenplatz. The city pulsated with subcutaneous life. A tram carrying workers from the second shift at the Linke, Hofmann & Lauchhammer factory grated on the corner, gas lamps flickered. They turned right into Gartenstrasse: carts delivering potatoes and cabbages crowded by the covered market, the caretaker of the art-nouveau tenement on the corner of Theaterstrasse was repairing a lamp and cursing, two drunks were trying to accost prostitutes proudly strolling in front of the Concert House with their parasols. They passed the Kotschenreuther and Waldschmidt Car Showroom, the Silesian Landtag building and several hotels. The night sky dispersed a light, misty rain.
    The Adler drew up on the far side of Main Station, on Teichäckerstrasse, opposite the public baths. They got out. Their coats and hats were soon covered with watery dust. Drizzle settled on Mock’s dark stubble and Forstner’s clean-shaven cheeks. Tripping over the rails, they made their way to a side track. Uniformed policemen and railwaymen stood all around, talking in raised voices. The police photographer, Helmut Ehlers, with his trademark limp, was just approaching the scene.
    The old policeman, who was always sent to the most macabre crimes, came up to Mock carrying a paraffin lamp.
    “Criminal Sergeant Emil Koblischke reporting,” he introduced himself unnecessarily; as usual, the Counsellor knew his subordinates well. Koblischke hid his cigarette in his cupped hand and looked gravely at Mock.
    “Where you and I, sir, are both to be found, things must be bad.” With his eyes, he indicated a saloon carriage with the sign “ BERLIN–BRESLAU ”. “And things in there are very bad indeed.”
    All three carefully stepped over the body of the prostrate rail worker in the carriage corridor.