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a few deep breaths and felt the sweet sense of power gather within him.
    “You will help us, Piontek, with all the strength at your command. You’ll set every last grey cell to work. If needs be, you’ll study in the library … And do you know why? Because it is not your chief who’s asking for this, or Criminal Director Mühlhaus, or even I myself … You are being implored by the delightful eleven-year-old hussy, Ilsa Doblin, whom you raped in your car, paying her drunken mother generously; you are being asked by Agnes Härting, that chatterbox with bunches whom you embraced in Madame le Goef’s boudoirs. You even came out quite well on the photographs then.”
    Piontek’s broad grin never wavered.
    “Give me a few days,” he said.
    “Of course. Please contact no-one but me. It is, after all, Counsellor Mock in charge of the investigation.”

II
    BRESLAU, SUNDAY, MAY 14TH, 1933
TEN O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING
    Baron Wilhelm von Köpperlingk occupied the two top floors of the beautiful, art-nouveau, corner building on Uferzeile 9, not far from the Engineering College. In the doorway stood a young butler with gentle eyes and studied manners.
    “The Baron is awaiting you in the games room. Please follow me.”
    Mock introduced himself and his assistant. The Baron was a slender and very tall man of about forty, with the slim, long fingers of a pianist. The hairdresser and the female manicurist had only just taken their leave. The Baron tried to draw the Counsellor’s attention to the results of their labours by performing numerous gestures with his hands – but in vain. Because Mock was not watching the Baron’s hands. He was looking around with interest at the enormous room. His attention was drawn to various details of the décor in which he could not make out any sense, detect any central idea, any predominant feature, not to mention style. Nearly every piece of furniture contradicted the purpose of its existence: the wobbly gold chair, the armchair from which grew a huge steel fist, the table with embossed Arabian ornaments rendering it impossible to stand even a glass on it. The Counsellor did not know much about art, but hewas sure that the enormous paintings depicting the Lord’s Passion, the danse macabre and orgiastic cavortings were not the work of a person in their right mind.
    Forstner’s attention, on the other hand, was drawn to three terrariums full of spiders and myriapods. They stood on metre-high legs by the French windows leading to a balcony. A fourth terrarium next to the blue-tiled stove was empty. It was home, usually, to a young python.
    The Baron finally managed to attract the policemen’s attention to his manicured hands. They noticed, with surprise, that he was using them to lovingly caress that very python, which was now wrapped around his shoulder. The servant with beautiful eyes set out the tea and shortbread on an art-nouveau plate with a stand in the shape of a ram’s horns. Von Köpperlingk indicated some soft, Moorish cushions scattered on the floor to the policemen. They sat down, cross-legged. Forstner and the servant exchanged quick glances, which did not escape either Mock’s or the Baron’s attention.
    “You have an interesting collection in the terrariums, dear Baron,” Mock panted as he got up again from the floor to inspect the specimens. “I never thought myriapods could be so large.”
    “That’s a Scolopendra gigantea ,” the Baron said with a smile. “My Sarah is thirty centimetres long and comes from Jamaica.”
    “It’s the first time I’ve seen a scolopendra .” With relish, Mock inhaled the Egyptian cigarette handed to him by the butler. “How did you bring this specimen in?”
    “There’s a middle-man in Breslau who – to order – imports various, all sorts of …”
    “Vermin,” Mock cut in. “Who is it?”
    On a sheet of letter-paper decorated with his family crest, von Köpperlingk wrote a name and address: Isidor Friedländer,