Kürten smiled at me. There was a gap in his upper right jaw where one of his molars should have been, a detail I noticed now only because that had been in his file too.
'Thomas!' he said. He got out of his chair and extended a hand. I hefted the file to show him why I couldn't shake it. He pulled the hand away and ran it through his hair, which had begun to lose its shape. He pulled out the chair next to him and bid me sit down before returning to his seat.
'Are they treating you all right, old chap?' he said.
The women I'd offended at the pavement café the day before came to mind. I wondered how they'd react if they knew that their fiendish vampire had such good manners. And if I'd wondered at how a man such as this might have convinced so many women and children to go off with him, here was the answer. Manners went a long way, especially with certain kinds of romance-novel reading domestics and ageing spinsters: the lonely, the unloved. When our morbidly polite society was full of such people all crying out for a little charm then a little charm was all it took.
'I'm your warm-up act.' I sat in the chair Kürten had prepped for me and pointed over my shoulder at Ritter.
Kürten frowned at him. Ritter ignored the last empty chair and loomed across the table. 'Where were you Friday evening, say between five pm and nine pm? You know, the time when you were abducting Gertrude Albermann? Around then.'
So much for my plan. Kürten half-shrugged, looked at me and rolled his eyes. The eyes were cornflower blue in the morning light. Prussian army blue. The blue of Queen Louise's mythical flight from Napoleon, of the lamented – or was that lamentable? – Kaiser Bill and his withered left arm. The blue of withered machismo.
Ritter squatted beside Kürten's chair. His lips brushed the prisoner's ear.
He bellowed: 'We have a witness who can place you with the girl! So where is she?'
'Who? The witness? I have no idea.' Kürten tittered, pleased with his joke. He kept those twinkling little cornflowers on me. 'Why is this man shouting? Why is he talking to me, even?' He addressed the stenographer. 'I believe I was quite specific. No one but Detective Klein.'
Ritter reached across the table and grabbed Kürten's tie. He pulled Kürten out of his chair and across the table, the points of the blond man's shoes scraping the table top.
'Where is Gertrude Albermann?' Ritter said.
Kürten's eyes went flat. His mouth twisted in a look of – what? Anger? Disgust? It wasn't fear. Though I despised him for what he might be – a killer of women and children – I admired his composure, his balls in opposing Ritter. The thought came to me out of nowhere and I tried to feel shocked about it. I tried really hard.
'Tell me where she is!' Ritter shouted.
Kürten stuck out his front teeth and gnashed at the air. Ritter threw Kürten at the nearest empty chair, the one Ritter had declined to use.
'Play us all you want,' Ritter said, heading for the door. 'But you'd better give us something soon so we know you are the Ripper.' He shot me a look, pulled his handkerchief and covered his lips with it. 'And not just another deluded old fool.'
He left, slamming the door shut behind him. The stenographer hadn't so much as raised an eyebrow at all the commotion.
'Did you get all of that okay?' I asked him.
'Yes sir, thank you.'
'Good, cause I don't know how I'm going to follow that bravura performance.'
'Sir? Did you want me to get that down as well?'
'Never mind.'
Ritter's questioning confirmed that no one had stumbled across Albermann's body yet, so she could still be alive. Probably his claim about a witness was so much horse shit, otherwise they'd have thrown a lot more at Kürten before bringing me in. Kürten's response told me that the direct approach wasn't going to work. Maybe Gennat had been right when he'd emphasised the need to get him talking first.
'Yeah you feel it now,' Kürten said, still squatting on the floor. He looked at the door as though Ritter were still there, or listening on the other side. Which, for all I knew, he was. 'You feel that?' Kürten cried. 'You feel the fear? You feel it now?'
He got to his feet. He pinched the seams of his trousers and tried to flick out the creases. He gave me a small, embarrassed kind of smile, picked up the chair he'd knocked over and sat so that now he faced the window.
I reached for the steno pad and tore off the top couple of sheets. I dropped Kürten's file on the table and jiggled at it to see which leg was the shorter. I folded the paper three times and jammed it under the errant leg. I leaned on the table. Still some give there, but that was as good as it was going to get.
The file said Kürten was born in 1883 but he didn't look forty-six years old, not to me. And from what I'd read none of the surviving victims had thought him any older than his mid-thirties. Murder kept you young, it seemed. If he was the Ripper, I reminded myself. That's what we still had to prove, he and I, if we were going to find that missing five-year-old.
'The fear?' I said.
'They treated me like a dog,' Kürten said.
'Who did?'
He didn't hear me. 'No, worse than a dog. With their fettering and their solitary and their work details.' He tapped a forefinger on the table, as though rehearsing his day in court. 'Well, you beat a dog often enough, eventually you get bitten.' He turned to the door. He yelled, 'Bitten! You feel it? You feel it now?'
This wasn't going anywhere. I rubbed my left eye, forgetting it was bruised. Pain flooded that side of my face and I had to blink back tears.
'You wanted to see me?' I said.
'I wanted to see you?' His face blanked. Then he smiled. 'Ah, Thomas. My friend. After all we've shared. Your eyes look terrible. You want to try a bit of meat on that. Raw meat, you know. Does wonders for a bad eye.'
'Why did you ask for me?'
'These people don't get it. But they haven't endured loss, not like us. They don't know what it's all about. Well maybe they know now.'
Like us? My thoughts flashed on Lilli. How could he know about that? I was stroking my belly scar. I pulled my hand away, realised he meant Christine Klein.
'How did it feel when your father raped your sister?' I wanted to snap him out of his thoughts, direct his rambling. Wanted to snap out of my thoughts of Lilli, too. Keep the focus, keep to the job. Keep on going. The file said Kürten senior had served seven sentences in his time for assault and the like. Also eighteen months for incest with Kürten's eldest sister in 1897.
He frowned at me. I repeated the question. He shrugged.
'Rape is a strong word, wouldn't you say?' he said.
'What would you call it?'
'What is one supposed to feel about it, anyway?' He waved his hands through the air.
'You were there, weren't you? When it happened? And all of what? Twelve? Thirteen years old? How did it feel to watch him do that to your sister?'
He blew air through loosened lips, like a horse. 'She was a whore.' He dismissed the sister with another wave at nothing in particular. 'Even tried to sleep with me once. More than once.'
'I need to ask you – '
He spoke over me. 'What, detective? What do you need to ask me? What they tell you to? Those fools out there who hadn't even the insight to put you on the case?'
I stared at him and played out the moves I could make next. I lit myself a cigar and offered one to Kürten. He shook his head. I was tempted to offer one to the stenographer, but that was just the sadist in me. Poor bugger looked ill enough already.
'How did you know that?' I said.
'How long have I been in here?' Kürten asked.
I pulled my watch from my waistcoat.
'No, don't answer that,' he said. 'It was rhetorical. I've been in this little box a long time now. Many hours. You're the man who brought me in, yet in all that time you haven't been back once. Why?'
He leaned back and crossed his arms, then he leaned forward and said, 'More than this, if I think back to yesterday afternoon, and you coming to bring me in
with no back-up...'
'What do you think all the blue coats outside were about?' I said.
'They weren't yours. You were surprised when they turned up. And they opened fire even though you were there, in the way. Why?' He held a finger in the air to forestall any idiot questions I might have asked. Staying seated, he reached across for the dressing on my cheek. I lurched to my feet before he could land a finger on me. My chair toppled.
'There is only one answer that makes sense.' Kürten stood and pointed at me. 'And now here you are, at my behest. Where you should be.'
I blushed. I'd allowed this man to derail my line of questioning and he'd driven me out of my chair with some words and a prying finger. I felt like a muschi, a goddamned rookie. I covered myself with a few puffs on the cigar, filling the space between us with smoke. The stenographer sat poised over his pad, pencil in hand ready to go on.
'Sit down,' I said, pointing to Kürten's chair.
Kürten laughed and did as I asked. I retook my seat, pulling it back from the table so he couldn't try his little trick again.
'You were raised a Catholic, Peter?'
'My dear Thomas, that's my file you have in your hand there?' He nodded at the paperwork I was holding.
I nodded back at him.
'Well then you know perfectly well that I wasn't raised at all.'
'So why a Catholic church?' I said.
'I'm sorry?'
'Why give yourself up in a Catholic church?'
'I thought it best to meet at a church so big even Düsseldorf Kripo could find it.'
I stood and crossed to the window. I patted the brick work and turned back so the light silhouetted me. In the corner, the mould was gone, replaced with a damp patch like someone had tried sponging the wall since the day before.
'Wasn't anything to do with your need to confess?'
'What need to confess?'
I tapped the wall again. 'You know what this place used to be before it became police headquarters?'
He shrugged.
'Jesuit monastery,' I said. 'You could say that confession, guilt, it kind of runs through the bricks and mortar. Suitable, wouldn't you say?'
'Suitable for what?'
'For a man like you with such a...need to get it all out in the open,' I said. He was shaking his head. His denial riled me and I felt the heat rise in my face. 'You told me about Christine Klein within two minutes of meeting me.'
He looked puzzled. 'Well of course I did.'
'You gave yourself up to us. Willingly.'
He waggled a finger at me. 'That's where you're wrong, Thomas. You turned up at my apartment with a woman I'd raped. What, I was supposed to go on the run? At my age? With a wife to support?' He snorted. 'No, it was only a matter of time before you locked me up. And with my record.' He shivered.
'So you thought you'd confess to being the Ripper? Peter, you could face the death sentence!'
'With this bunch in office? You really think so?'
I most certainly did. Granted, Social Democrat law and order policy tended towards pinko-liberal sludge, what with its anti-capital punishment bent. But not even the SPD state government would hesitate to cut public anger off at the knees by cutting the Ripper off at the neck.
'Even so,' I said, 'you'll get longer behind bars this way than for a rape, record or no. How does this support your wife?'
He straightened his tie, moving his chair to face me before leaning back and crossing his legs. 'There's a reward for information leading to my arrest, isn't there?'
'Conviction, yes.'
'So, who gave you the information that led to my arrest?'
Then I got it. Although his logic was so warped, I still wasn't sure. 'You mean, you got her to rat you out so she could get the reward money?'
He winked at me.
'You really think they'll pay her anything?' I said.
'Why not?' He sat forward. 'She's as good as any other informant. Better than most.'
He seemed to mean it, that was the weirdest part. All those women he'd killed, and he wanted his wife to profit from his downfall. Did that fit? Or was this guy still just a rapist looking to make the most of a bad situation? I felt my excitement slipping away. Maybe this wouldn't be the day I embarrassed Ritter. Maybe he was right to be sceptical.
'You know, my...Inspector Ritter had a point,' I said. 'How do we know you are who you say you are?'
'Why would I lie?'
'Financial motive, Peter. The reward money. You just admitted it.'
'How many people would have the audacity to claim to be me?'
'In person? Four hundred and thirteen at the last count.' I didn't know the exact figure, but the one I'd just given him wasn't far from the truth. 'More by letter. The anonymous ones.'
His mouth hung open for a second. I knew some of what he felt. It didn't say much about our city that so many of its inhabitants were willing to admit to mass murder. Or rather, it said an awful lot, none of it good.
Kürten closed his mouth and sat up straighter, folding his hands in his lap. I came back to the table and sat across from him.
'Oh yes,' I continued. 'You'd be surprised. You want to know the real reason they haven't brought me in to see you until now?'
He nodded. I blew cigar smoke in his face and his nostrils flared. A brief look of annoyance crossed his face. I tried not to smile at that as I leaned closer.
'It's because they think you're just another crazy. Just another unhinged cretin looking for a few thrills by claiming to be the Ripper.'
'No!' he breathed.
'I mean, look at you. That suit, the haircut. You're a quiet, respectable man, not a killer at all.'
'My file. What about my arrest file?'
'We both know that's not you. You've been abused, Peter, punished for things that weren't your fault.'
He gazed out of the window. God alone knew what patterns he was seeing in the brick wall out there.
I thought of a detail from the file, his longest prison term. 'Seven years for deserting the army, Peter? Seven years? Does that seem fair to you?'
He didn't answer. I hoped I hadn't laid the sympathy on too thick.
He turned away from the window.
'So you've got to see it how we see it, Peter,' I said. 'How do we know? How can we be sure?'
'Take me to Papendell.'
'What's there? I don't even know where that is.'
'Just take me there,' he snapped, turning back to the window. 'And bring a shovel.'
6
Kürten insisted on riding to Papendell with no one but me. That meant I had to drive one of the Schupo pool autos. It was an open-topped coupé, and thank God it was a newer model with no starter handle, as I stalled it twice on the way out of town. We drove east. Kürten directed. Ritter and his detectives followed along in a sedan. Two closed limousines packed with Schupo trailed them.
We passed Flingern Nord. We passed Grafenberg. All the while I thought of what we were likely to find in Papendell and tried not to think of Gertrude Albermann. The suburbs gave out to row upon row of allotments, then meadows and parkland. We took the road south east to Ekrath, then took a sharp turn north onto a narrow road signposted for Papendell. A road-side café came up on the left and Kürten told me to stop.
I indicated with my arm so Ritter and his goons wouldn't motor into the back of me. We pulled over just beyond the café. The engine coughed itself out. I turned to Kürten as I applied the handbrake and he pointed to the meadows across the road.
I cuffed Kürten's wrists together, Gennat's one stipulation. Then I picked up the shovel on the back seat. I went to put on my hat but the sweat smell on the band made my guts wobble, so I left it.
We got out of the car. Clouds huddled over us. The breeze was soft against my face and I closed my eyes for a moment to enjoy the brief feeling of normality. When I opened them, there was Kürten, also hatless, waiting for me. Behind him, Ritter's sedan and the two beetle-black limousines. The blue coats disem
barked. Ritter issued some orders to Vogel, back in shirtsleeves. Vogel relayed the order and four Schupomen peeled off to secure the café.
I caught Ritter's eye. 'Remember,' I said, 'no closer than fifty metres.' We'd agreed that with Kürten in exchange for his bringing us out here.
Ritter said nothing. Fine by me. I'd said it more for Kürten's benefit anyway.
We crossed the road and entered the flower-dotted meadow. Long, damp grass clung to my legs. Behind us came the distant clanking of semi-automatic weaponry. Kürten seemed to be leading me down the road to a cluster of low brick buildings encircled by a wall.
'I met her at about five o'clock,' Kürten said, out of nowhere. 'On the Ackerstrasse. I talked to her, asked her if she would come with me.'
'How'd you get her here?' That wasn't what I wanted to ask most. I wanted to ask who he was talking about, only I knew already and I wanted to put off hearing it from him for as long as I could.
'Walked, of course,' he said.
'All this way?'
How'd he kept a five-year-old quiet on a long walk like that? It must have taken us just shy of half an hour to drive here. What was that on foot? Two hours?
'She came willingly,' he said. 'She didn't cry, didn't complain. I strangled her when we got here.'
'Where?' I said.
Kürten pointed to the wall up ahead. He had to do it two-handed, thanks to the cuffs. A painted sign on the wall read 'Haniel & Lueg GmbH'. So, a business premises of some kind. A factory, judging by the brick smokestacks.
We stepped over weeds and loose bits of builder's rubble until we were close enough to touch the crumbling wall plaster and see the smoke.
'Where were you pointing?'
'Down there in the shadows.' He pointed again, and then I saw what he was pointing at. Any doubts I'd ever had about his being the Ripper, well, they evaporated pretty damn quickly.
The body lay atop a pile of bricks, hard up against the factory wall. A thick patch of nettles covered it and weeds clung to the wall. A soft spring breeze blew across the open meadows between the factory and the woods and tugged at the girl's green coat as though willing her to get up and live again. One of her buckled shoes had come loose but it was the smallness of her that got to me. My legs gave and I fell to my knees, the shovel I'd been carrying hanging heavy in my hand.
The Killing Of Emma Gross Page 5
