The Killing Of Emma Gross

by Damien Seaman

  The sun had brought them all out, these people, and brought all their noise out with them. I looked at the windows above the pharmacy as though looking would help me hear any commotion up there. Of course, I heard nothing.

  I shut my eyes and leaned against the door. I held my breath until I could hold it no longer. The air burst out of me, smothering what sounded like a cry from upstairs. Or was that cry just in my head? It seemed more likely I'd imagined it.

  I rang the bell again. This time I leant on it without pause and a minute or two later someone did come, dragging aside the heavy curtain; a man with no hair on his head and a white coat that was losing its shape. The coat hung over the shelf of the bald man's protruding belly.

  He waved me away.

  I knocked on the door.

  He waved me off again, but this time he flipped up the hinged counter top and approached the door. 'We're closed,' he said, his voice muffled. 'Please go away.'

  I pressed my ID to the glass and his eyes widened. I pressed my Luger to the glass with my other hand, shielding it from the street with my body.

  'Open the door,' I said, 'or I'll break it in.'

  The man's eyes popped. He ran back to the counter, shouting at me over his shoulder. He opened the cash register and withdrew a set of keys. He came back to the door and opened it, glancing up and down the street as he beckoned me inside.

  'What do you want?' he said. I don't think he realised he was whispering.

  I put away the gun and showed him my photo of Brandt. He took a deep breath, shuddering when he let it out. I pointed up at the ceiling and he nodded.

  'Now?' I mouthed.

  He nodded again.

  'Stefan?' came a voice from behind the curtain. A woman's voice. There was some urgency in it. 'Who was it, Stefan?'

  The man ran for the hinged counter top and the curtain beyond it. I couldn't have him warning Brandt so I snagged his leg with my foot. He hurtled into the counter. His head smacked against it and he slid loose-limbed to the floor.

  I went after him and turned him over. His eyes were closed. Blood dribbled from a gash in his forehead and his breathing came out heavy, close to a snore. He didn't move, even when I slapped his cheeks.

  'Stefan?' That woman's voice again, but louder this time, and with more of an edge.

  I grabbed the front of Stefan's coat and dragged him behind the counter. I knelt and rooted through his pockets for the door keys. I found a selection of keys and returned to the door, trying two keys that didn't fit before the correct one slid home in the lock. I turned the key and pulled down the roll blind that hung on the inside of the glass portion of the door.

  I ran back through the gap in the counter, hoping Brandt hadn't panicked and left via some back way. I didn't pay attention to what I was doing and I caught my hip on the counter's edge. I cried out.

  'Stefan? Have they gone? I need help up here, damn it!'

  I flung back the curtain. Behind it lay a short, dingy hallway that ended in a set of lamp-lit stairs going up. A dark shadow fell on the stairs. The middle-aged woman casting the shadow ran a hand over her drawn face and through her greying hair. The face matched my photo of Brandt.

  'Who are you?' she said. 'Where's Stefan?' Then, 'Oh, hell with it, you'll do.'

  She gripped my jacket sleeve and pulled me up the stairs behind her. The stairs turned back on themselves, pitching us into a wider hallway that was filled with sunlight from the two large rooms at the far end. A window at my elbow gave onto a fire escape. But it was the open door to our left that Brandt dragged me through.

  This room was west facing, so it wouldn't have got any light anyway at that time of day, but to add to the natural gloom the curtains were shut tight. A girl lay on a single bed against the wall. Her dress was rolled up to her midriff so that she was naked below the waist. At the sight of me she sat up like a shot of electricity had just passed through her.

  Brandt crossed to the girl and pushed her back down. Then the midwife turned to look at me over her white-coated shoulder. 'Shut the door.'

  I shut the door.

  'You ever been present at an abortion before?' Brandt asked.

  Oh, Jesus God, yes. I rubbed my belly scar, my guts hot as molten lead and twice as heavy. She looked puzzled for a moment, then came and shoved me towards the head of the bed, where the girl's long hair was tangled in the brass bars.

  'Hold her shoulders,' Brandt barked.

  'I can't,' I said, backing to the door.

  The midwife stepped close and whispered, 'I don't know what you've done with Stefan but this is a two-person job. Without a steadying pair of hands this girl could injure herself. Do you want that to happen?'

  She took my wrists and dragged me back to the girl. She pressed my hands to the girl's shoulders. The nurse's expression told me not to pull away or make a fuss that might upset her patient. I kept my hands in place and the girl went still. Her eyes blazed up at me, and in that dim light they could've been any colour. Just so long as they weren't brown, like Gisela's.

  'And for God's sake don't stare at her. She's worked up enough as it is.'

  Brandt parted the girl's legs. The girl kicked out and Brandt veered back. I pressed harder on the girl's shoulders as the midwife waggled a finger at her.

  'Let's have no more of that, missy, otherwise we'll be strapping you down.'

  The girl stopped moving and allowed the midwife to part her legs. Brandt leaned over the girl and held her with a look.

  'Be still. This will be over soon.'

  She crossed to a wooden table and hefted a rubber balloon that had a curved glass nozzle attached to one end. The balloon bulged with liquid. Brandt made soothing, shushing noises and inserted the nozzle between the girl's legs.

  The girl looked into my face again. Sweat rolled down my back and I shut my eyes.

  The girl tensed and gave a whimper. That meant Brandt had pressed on the balloon and injected the liquid.

  I found I was making shushing noises too, still keeping my eyes shut.

  'Almost there now, missy,' Brandt was saying.

  Then the girl groaned. My eyes flicked open. She was trying to curl up. I pushed at her hip to keep her still, got my hand caught in her dress. Brandt had been refilling the balloon syringe. She put it down on the table and hurried over, shushing and soothing again.

  'It hurts!' the girl said, and the childish edge to her voice slapped me cold. Just how young was she?

  'It will hurt, dear. But it'll be over quick, I promise. Just one more.' Then Brandt turned her eyes on me. 'Hold her still.'

  She went back to the table and picked up the balloon syringe. I moved my hand from the tangle of fabric at the girl's hip and leaned harder on her shoulders.

  'Help me,' the girl whispered.

  I screwed my eyes shut. The girl groaned again as the soap water – or glycerine, or lysol, or carbolic acid, or whatever the hell kind of liquid Brandt preferred – ate up the baby inside, cleansed it of life. Then the girl stiffened – the nozzle going in again. But I wasn't thinking of the girl beneath me. I was thinking of Gisela, the spare room of her house – she hadn't wanted to move to do it, which set me back a fortune with the doctor I'd got hold of – and the same groans of pain. The begging for help, the tears, the grinding, curling, reflexive hurt of the whole thing, burned into my memory.

  It hurt. Of course it hurt. It was murder, it had to hurt.

  A cry. A sharp, wailing call. Leaning down harder. The eyes, scorching me with their accusations, their slow-burn hatred. Eyes chocolate brown beneath bottle-blonde hair, fanned out across the thin pillow, the one with the blood stain in the corner she'd never been able to wash out, not all the way, not completely. The doctor in black, like death, Gisela in her black slip, face pale and lined, the room dark, a darkness that never left us.

  Leaning.

  Leaning harder.

  Stop her moving.

  Stop the pain, damn it!

  A scratching on my left wrist �
�� Gisela's nails raking the soft skin in her agony.

  'Let go, man!' Someone pulled at me, at my jacket collar. I opened my eyes. It was Brandt pulling at me. She punched me and snapped my head back.

  I released the girl, and she curled her legs into her belly and turned onto her side and vomited over the edge of the bed. The vomit spattered my shoes.

  27

  Brandt took me down the stairs to a dark bathroom whose tiny, open window had a view of the brick wall of the next building. She left me there with a command to clean myself up.

  My reflection in the bathroom mirror told me I was crying. Had been for some time, from the redness and swelling around my pinhole eyes. I ran cold water into the sink until my fingers had gone numb.

  Splashing my face brought on more tears. My guts ground themselves up. I lurched for the toilet and collapsed to my knees. Then I threw up too, and kept on throwing up until there was nothing left in my gut and I was hurling up thin strings of stomach acid, and kept on crying until I reared up and smashed my fist into the wall.

  I thought of my darling Lilli, all alone in purgatory – or was it hell? Or was I the one going to hell for it? I sat on the floor in the corner of the room beneath the sink and hung my head on my knees.

  They burned them after. The foetuses, that is. After the procedure they were burned.

  I flushed my puke away, then I took off my shoes and washed them in the sink.

  The door opened as I was sitting on the toilet putting my shoes back on. Brandt stuck her head into the room. I tried to speak, my voice coming out scratched and branded as I coughed hot acid streaks into my mouth. I stood and drank water from the cold tap, gargling and spitting to try and get rid of the taste.

  'How is she?' I managed.

  'Doing fine. She'll be up there for another hour, but the danger's passed.'

  'And how's...what's his name?'

  'Stefan. He's groggy, but otherwise okay. It's you I'm worried about.'

  'Don't be.' I finished tying my shoelaces, got to my feet and pulled Brandt into the room with me. 'You helped out Emma Gross didn't you?'

  'Yes, why?' She rubbed at her left eyelid to calm the twitch that had broken out there.

  'When was this?'

  'Last year. Why – '

  I cut her off. 'When last year?'

  'February.'

  'Why did she come to you?'

  She lowered the toilet seat, sat on it and crossed her arms. Her eyelid was still twitching. 'What is all this?' Surprise had unlocked her mouth for those first few questions but her brain had caught up to the idea that gabbing about her activities might not be clever. Especially not to a policeman. Stefan had to've let slip who I was by then. What I was, at any rate.

  The thought of Stefan gave me an idea. I bellowed his name and he clambered down the hallway from the direction of the shop. He tried to get a look inside the bathroom but I blocked his view with my bulk.

  'Fetch some morphine, Stefan. Then go and look after the girl upstairs.' He stretched his neck in another effort to look past me. I showed him the Luger and flashed my teeth at him. 'You like being a pharmacist, Stefan? Like helping people?'

  He nodded, eyes rooted to the barrel of the pistol.

  'You want to keep on being a pharmacist?'

  'Are you okay in there, Frieda?' Stefan shouted.

  'Not exactly, Stefan, no,' Brandt called back.

  I wiggled the gun and Stefan skulked away. I shut the door and turned back to Brandt.

  'You do know Emma Gross is dead?' I said. That didn't have the impact I'd expected. She squared her shoulders and faced me down.

  'I do read the papers, yes. You don't want to bust me, do you?'

  'That's very astute of you. But it doesn't strike you as significant that she died in the same month she came to see you?'

  'Pregnancy is an occupational hazard for beinls. Violence, too. Believe me, I've seen it enough times to know.' She shivered.

  'You don't care that the child's father might have been her killer?' I said.

  'I thought you caught the killer last year? Johann Stausberg wasn't – ?'

  Brandt clutched at her belly and doubled over. She stifled a groan. Stefan knocked on the door. I opened it, took a phial of morphine and a glass syringe fitted with a hypodermic needle and shut the door again. I arranged the items on the side of the sink.

  Stefan knocked on the door again. I flicked the bolt across and ignored him until the knocking stopped. Brandt had closed her eyes. When she opened them again they were threaded with swollen blood vessels.

  'How long has it been since your last shot?' I said, tapping the morphine phial.

  'What are you,' she broke off, grimacing, 'what are you jawing about?' She threw me a weak smile.

  I reached over and pulled up her left sleeve, then her right, in the crook of which I got the tell-tale needle scars and scabs.

  'I spoke to Dr Flensburger. He told me about your addiction, the reason you do all this.'

  Brandt slid off the toilet and pawed at the seat. I stretched to help her and she jabbed an elbow at my groin, so I grabbed her hair, pulled her head back. She retched and I let go of her. She pitched forward onto her hands and knees and spilled her guts over the floor.

  When she'd finished, a tremor shook through her and she raised herself up and into the bathtub away from the spreading pool of vomit.

  'You got a cigarette?' she said.

  'This is what you need,' I said, holding up the phial. 'Tell me about Emma and you can have some.'

  There was a knock on the door, louder this time. Stefan's voice: 'Frieda?'

  'She's sick,' I called back.

  'What are you doing in there?'

  'Helping. I told you, she's sick.'

  'Are you okay, Frieda?' Stefan said.

  Brandt laughed. 'Go away, Stefan,' she called out.

  'Are you okay?'

  'Go away Stefan, damn it!' The effort of shouting doubled her up again. She flopped her head over the side of the bathtub and heaved some more. Not much came out, but her body shook with the effort.

  'Stausberg didn't kill her, Frieda,' I said. 'But maybe the father of her child did. I need to find him. I need to know, so talk to me.'

  'You're sure it wasn't Stausberg?'

  'Uh-huh.'

  'Well, that fits. He said he'd kill me if I talked. How do you like that?'

  'Who did?'

  'This...guy. This man. The father you're looking for. You want to know why she wanted my help? I'd say it was a bigger mystery why she'd agreed to bear his child in the first place.'

  'Who?'

  'He never told me his name, and neither did she. I just know she was scared of him. She wanted to keep the foetus afterwards to show him, so she could say it was a miscarriage, can you believe that?'

  'What did he look like?' I said. 'Did he wear a green fedora?'

  She shook her head.

  'Did he have a jagged scar on his throat?'

  She shook her head. 'He was slim and dark, and he had buck teeth.'

  Christ, that sounded like Ritter. She mimed the teeth, like that kid had done back when I'd been looking for Frau Stausberg's place a couple of days earlier.

  'He was a cop?' I said.

  'How should I know?' she said.

  'Does the name Michael Ritter mean anything to you?'

  She shook her head, vomit-slicked strands of her hair whipping about her face in time to the movement. I'd got as much from her as I was likely to. She looked too weak to inject herself, so I took off my belt and rolled her right sleeve so it would stay up. Then I tightened my belt around her upper arm.

  'Raise a vein,' I told her.

  She nodded and I crossed to the sink and opened the phial. I dipped the syringe needle into the liquid morphine and drew some out. When I turned around she'd tightened the belt still further and a fat vein was popping in the crook of her arm. I waved the syringe in front of her face.

  'Too much?' I asked.

&n
bsp; 'Huh?'

  'Is this too much morphine? I want to bring you round, not kill you.'

  She started laughing. More giggling, really. She was too far gone to be of any use. I jabbed in the needle and pressed the plunger once I was sure I'd pierced the skin. I pulled the plunger back until some of her blood clouded the clear syringe contents, then I shot half of the pinkening mixture into her vein and pulled out the needle.

  She winced, then she groaned. The groan stretched and altered in tone from sharp complaint to languid pleasure, the sound of waking up on a Sunday morning. I dumped the syringe into the sink, then I cupped my hands and ran some water into them. I went back to the woman and splashed the water on her face. She gasped and opened her eyes wide.

  'This man who threatened you,' I said. 'When did he come to see you?'

  'I don't remember now,' she said. 'A week or so after I'd done the procedure on Emma.'

  'And what did he say to you exactly?'

  'He said to forget all about Emma Gross and what I'd done for her. Otherwise he'd kill me.'

  'That didn't make you suspicious when she died?'

  She latched onto the sides of the bathtub and clawed her way upright. 'Mister, I make my living by breaking the law so I can get my daily fix. If I don't come across something suspicious on an average day, I know I'm going to get the sweats all night. Now will you leave me alone?'

  'Gladly.'

  'Just promise me something will you?' Her voice sounded sleepy.

  'What?'

  She clasped my hand and squeezed. 'Promise me you'll get the bastard, okay?'

  I squeezed back. I retrieved my belt and left the pharmacy. There was no point hanging around, and my mind was boiling with the idea that maybe Ritter had killed Emma Gross because she'd aborted his baby. But why agree to have a baby with a streetwalker? It still didn't make sense.

  Then a thought hit me. Those kids at the playground near Frau Stausberg's place, they'd spoken to Ritter when Ritter had asked them about Johann Stausberg. According to the file, Ritter had interviewed Frau Stausberg only at headquarters, not at her home. And Ritter had interrogated Johann Stausberg only at headquarters, not at his home. Once Ritter got the case he'd conducted it all from Mühlenstrasse.