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interrogating police officer reached them from the next room: “Listen, you and your men have to try harder … What are we paying you for, you shits? We want to know everything that’s going on in your area, understand?” Drops of rain rapped against the windows. The officers sat in silence, frantically racking their brains for intelligent questions. Mock stretched his hands out in front of him and studied his knuckles which were lost in folds of skin.
    “One more question.” Mock lifted his hands, then dropped them on the table again. “You inspected the scene where the bodies were found very carefully, Doctor. Could that also be where the crime was committed?”
    “I found no traces of blood from the eye sockets on the ground or grass around the victims’ heads, which means that their eyes were gouged out elsewhere. The remaining injuries led only to internal haemorrhaging, and from those we can deduce nothing as to where the crime was committed. But I’ll still carry out an Uhlenhuth blood test, as a formality. Can I go now?” Lasarius got to his feet and made towards the exit without waiting for a response. “Some of us have work to do.”
    “Commissioner, sir,” Mock’s hands rose once more and fell with a slap on the table top. “The murderer wrote a message on a card for me. I’m to admit to some mistake, I’m supposed to believe in something, or we’re threatened with more murders. Let’s read it again. ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. Mock, admit your mistake, admit you have come to believe. If you do not want to see more gouged eyes, admit your mistake.’” Mock lit a cigarette and immediately regretted it when he realized that all those assembled had noticed his hands were shaking. “I assure you I don’t know what mistake he’s referring to, or what I am to admit to. But there is also this Biblical quotation. Let us pursue that. Unless I’m mistaken it refers to doubting Thomas, who came to believe only when he had seen the risen Christ with his own eyes.”
    Mock approached the revolving board in the corner of the briefing room, wedged it still and wrote in even, beautiful script: “doubting Thomas = Mock, Christ = murderer, murdered sailors = warning for Mock.”
    “The first two equations are clear,” Mock said, angrily shaking the chalk dust from his sleeve. “The murderer is a religious fanatic who has sent a message to an unbeliever – me. When I discover what ‘mistake’ I am being punished for, I’ll also discover the murderer and my ‘mistake’ will become evident to everyone. Because everyone is going to ask: ‘Why did that swine kill four young men?’ The answer is: because he wanted to punish Mock for something. ‘And what did Mock do?’ everyone is goingto ask. And I don’t know the response to that at this stage. Everyone will find out how Mock once harmed the murderer, everyone will find out what Mock has been punished for. And that’s what the murderer is aiming at. If that pig had killed some old woman, it would have blown over without a murmur. A week ago, in Morgenau, two old women were killed by P.O.W. soldiers freed by the Russians. They stole twelve marks from them. Imagine – the equivalent of two theatre tickets! Did that shake public opinion? Not in the least! Who cares about some murdered old women?”
    “I know what you’re saying,” interrupted Mühlhaus. “The murder has to be spectacular because only in this way will the murderer draw people’s attention to your alleged guilt. And what could be more spectacular than gouging out the eyes of four young men in leather underpants?”
    “You know,” Mock said slowly, “I’ve got a terrible feeling … I don’t know what I’m supposed to be admitting to so I can’t say anything … I’m not going to say anything and the world’s not going to find out a thing from me … And he …”
    “He’s going to get more and more frustrated,” said Lasarius, who