Phantoms of Breslau Read Online Free PDF Page A

flicked his cigar stump into the thorn bushes beside the Oder. The cigar caught on one of the bushes and hung there, wet with spittle, torn from lips a moment earlier by fingers sullied by the touch of a corpse.
    Mock felt hair in his throat once more and squatted. Seeing his convulsions, the police officers moved away in disgust. Nobody held his sweating temples; nobody pressed his stomach to hasten its work. Today, the world was not looking after Mock.

BRESLAU, THAT SAME SEPTEMBER 1ST, 1919
NINE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING
    The large motorboat in which the six plain-clothes police officers sat had not seen a war; it came from Breslau’s river police surplus. Steering it was First Mate Martin Garbe, who studied the men from beneath the peak of his hat. When their broken conversation began to bore him, he looked out at the unfamiliar river banks overgrown with trees and lined with formidable buildings. Although he had lived in Breslau for a couple of years, he had only been working for the river police for a few weeks and the city as seen from the Oder fascinated him. Every now and then he leaned towardsthe police officer nearest to him, a slim man with Semitic features, to make sure he was correctly identifying the places they passed.
    “Is that the zoo?” he asked, pointing to a high wall behind which could be heard the roar of predators being fed their daily ration of mutton.
    The banks of the Oder passed slowly. Occasional anglers, mostly retired men, were returning home with nets full of perch. The trees dripped with foliage; nature was refusing to recognize the approach of autumn.
    “That’s the water tower, isn’t it?” Garbe whispered, pointing to a square brick building on their left. The police officer nodded and addressed a colleague sitting opposite him clutching a locked hold-all marked MATERIAL EVIDENCE:
    “Look how fast we’re going, Reinert. I told you we’d get there quicker by river.”
    “You’re always right, Kleinfeld,” muttered the other man. “Your Talmudic mind is never mistaken.”
    First Mate Garbe looked up at Kaiserbrücke spanning the river on its steel web and accelerated. The air was hot and muggy. The police officers on the motorboat fell silent. Garbe focussed his attention on the rivets in the bridge, and once they had cleared it, on the faces of his passengers. Four of them sported moustaches, one a beard, and another was clean-shaven. The bearded man blew smoke rings from his pipe which then trailed over the water, and talked in a whisper to the fair-haired moustachioed man sitting next to him. Both men were trying to make it clear with every word and gesture that it was they who gave the orders around here. Kleinfeld and Reinert wore small moustaches, and red whiskers bristled on the top lip of the stout and taciturn police officer. Next to him sat a stocky, clean-shaven, dark-haired man. He looked exhausted. He leaned over the water, breathing in the damp air, and then a cough would tear at his lungs, persistent and dry, as if something was irritating his throat. He rested his arm on the boat’s machine-gun and stared down at the water.First Mate Garbe soon tired of scrutinizing the six silent men and looked up at the underside of Lessingbrücke, which they were now approaching. From its girders dripped water or horse urine. Garbe navigated in such a way that not a single drop fell onto his motorboat. When they had passed under the bridge, Garbe caught a very interesting snippet of conversation:
    “I still do not understand, Excellency” – barely suppressed irritation could be heard in the dark-haired man’s voice – “why my man and I have been summoned to this crime. Would you, as my immediate superior, care to explain it to me? Has our duty remit been extended?”
    “Of course, Mock,” the fair-haired, moustachioed man said in a shrill voice. “But let us first get one thing straight. I don’t have to explain anything to you. Have you never heard of