HS03 - A Visible Darkness

by Michael Gregorio

  But then I sniffed a reassuring smell. Beyond the mouldy fetor of decay and physical corruption, something appetising flavoured the air.

  ‘Fish,’ I murmered. And as I spoke, my eyes began to make out a glow in the distance, a shimmer of light, which gave solidity and substance to the slick, damp walls of the tunnel. My ears strained too, catching the echoing rumble of far-off voices.

  A shriek from Erika froze the blood in my veins.

  Her high-pitched cry rose and fell like the wailing of a wolf.

  Was it a signal?

  If so, I was dead meat for any man who was armed and waiting to rob me.

  She pushed on faster, pulling harder at my hand. I could follow, it seemed, or she would leave me behind. I tried to resist, digging in my heels, sliding on the slippery floor, but I could not stop myself. We were running headlong down a slope, I realised, for we burst into a dimly lit chamber, and the floor reared up in front of my face like a wall.

  She turned to me, but did not say a word.

  My breath came back in gasps.

  We were in a stone vault, that had once been plastered. Now, it was stained dark green and ugly brown with mould and damp. Lanterns hung at intervals around the walls, reflecting light on the faces of the people who turned to stare suspiciously at me. They sat at tables piled with lumps of what looked like glistening honey.

  Or globules of blood which took in light, and gave off even more in a flashing, sparkling array.

  11

  THE AROMA OF boiled fish was inviting.

  A large copper cooking-pot dangled from a hook above a blazing fire. Another large pot stood by the side of the hearth. It was covered with a lid, as if it had just been removed from the flames.

  I congratulated myself on my good fortune.

  But what would a real amber merchant do to establish his credentials? Would I be able to persuade the people in that cellar to accept me as one of them, having failed to do so in the shops and streets of Nordcopp? And how might I steer the conversation towards the piece of amber that I had recovered from the corpse of Kati Rodendahl? How did a piece of amber find its way from the seashore to an underground cellar in Nordcopp where they also sold fish soup? That was what I wanted to know.

  Seven or eight men were seated at rough trestle tables. Each one had a plate of soup, a lighted candle, and a small pile of amber on the table-top. They might have been playing some mysterious glass-bead game together while they ate, but it didn’t take much to see that each man was locked in his own private world, scrutinising the pieces laid out before him in mystical concentration. No one said a word. The trick seemed to be to take a nugget, hold it up to the candle, peer at it intensely for a while, then set it down, and repeat the operation with the next piece. No man raised his spoon to his lips. Indeed, they did not seem to care if the fish went cold, or rotted on their plates. They were famished for amber and nothing else.

  ‘Have a seat, sir. I’ll only be a moment.’

  Despite her hampering leg, Erika skipped quickly across the room towards a tall woman dressed in a soiled white apron. She was wearing a large red turban on her head. Waving a large cooking-ladle in the air, this woman was clearly the high priestess of the place. With one hand firmly planted on her hip, she watched the vestal approach with a welcoming smile, and they began to whisper together, the child stretching up on her tiptoes, the older women bending low to meet her.

  I sat down at an empty table, and looked around me.

  The fellow at the next table called out: ‘Can I have some more?’

  Had I been mistaken? Were they there to eat, after all?

  ‘With you in a moment!’ the tall woman called back, turning to the fire.

  She lifted the lid of the pot that was cooling on the hearth, dipped her ladle inside, and began to stir it around. The sound that this action produced said nothing good about the contents. She might have been stirring a saucepan full of pebbles as she made another large sweep with her ladle.

  The customers looked up at the rattling sound.

  ‘I’ll have some, too,’ another man said.

  Were they crabs, cockles, oysters, clams? My stomach felt like an empty cavern, and the air was rich with the smell of fish. ‘Can I have some, as well?’ I called, and my voice was louder and more urgent than I had intended.

  Erika darted back with the easy grace of a maimed cat on the prowl, making a wide, lolloping sweep around the other tables before she reached mine, looking to see how each man was getting along.

  ‘I’ll take your order now,’ she said. ‘Then, Marta will dish up what you are hungering for.’

  There was a look of unconcealed excitement in her eyes. They were dark green with sparkling points of light. She was playing the part of a coquetting waitress, but that image of a hunting cat refused to go away. The feline was closing in for the kill, and I could not shake off the feeling that I was the mouse. ‘I told my mother what a fine gentleman you are,’ she added. ‘I said she’d better treat you well. So, you just tell me what you’d like to have, sir.’

  ‘Isn’t there a list?’ I asked.

  Erika smiled uncertainly. ‘Just tell me which colour you’d prefer.’

  I was silent for a moment.

  ‘I have . . . no particular preference,’ I said.

  This vague order sent the wrinkled child spinning away. She crossed the room and spoke again in whispers to the cook. A minute later, the woman in the bright red turban came over to my table carrying a bowl of fish soup. She set it down with a smile, then she sat herself down on the bench opposite me.

  ‘Welcome to Nordcopp, sir. I am Marta Linder. We’ve not seen you before. What are you looking for exactly? Erika couldn’t say for certain.’

  I spooned the broth into my mouth, and chewed on a piece of fish.

  She watched me attentively. ‘About the amber,’ she specified. ‘Is it the shape, the weight, or the colour that interests you the most? Just name it, and I’ll have the girl bring it over.’

  They were selling amber under the cover of serving fish.

  What had Pastoris said? The French were most particular about the weight. They weighed the amber when they brought it to his workshop, and weighed it again when they came to carry it off. So, weight was important. But was it the most important factor? The French took it to Pastoris to be cleaned and polished. Were shape and appearance more important, then? And how would one choose between two pieces of amber which were exactly the same weight and shape?

  ‘Colour,’ I decided, removing a fishbone from the tip of my tongue.

  The woman was past her prime, but she was still handsome. A row of black kiss-curls was stamped flat across her forehead by the weight of her red turban. She pursed her lips, her eyebrows arched as she studied my face.

  ‘Oh I see,’ she said. ‘You are a jeweller. I should have guessed. And from Königsberg, Erika tells me. So not a wholesale trader. Quality is what you’re after. Is that right?’

  I returned her smile, as if to confirm her deductions. At the same time, I had to say something. ‘The fish is very good,’ I commented, raising the spoon to my mouth again to put an end to the conversation, swallowing bits of haddock and eel, and the thin broth in which they were swimming.

  ‘I’ll show you something really tasty,’ the woman declared. ‘Ten pieces. All the same size. As smooth as pebbles from a fast-flowing stream. Oval in form and slightly smoky. A deep, dark red. That colour never is truly transparent, sir.’ She leaned closer, and peered into my eyes. ‘A great lady will want to wear them day and night. Can you imagine the beauty of a necklace made from those fine baubles?’ She kissed the tips of her fingers. ‘Dragon’s blood. The name they give to the finest rubies. But you know that, of course. These are a thousand times prettier than the purest Indian rubies. You’ll make something fit for a queen, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘There aren’t so many left,’ I joked, thinking of Marie Antoinette, and the horde of noblewomen who had lost their heads in Fr
ance. ‘Great ladies,’ I explained.

  She did not smile. Perhaps she hadn’t heard me. Someone in the room called for more, but she didn’t shift.

  ‘Erika!’ she shouted over her shoulder. Then, she turned to me again. ‘She’ll be very pleased with you, sir. She knows she’ll get her share. She did bring you down here, after all. And as it is your first time here, you can have her when you have done your trading. It won’t cost nothing extra.’

  Her words affected me like the shearing of a metal blade against a whetstone.

  ‘Is that the way to speak of your daughter?’ I managed to say.

  Marta Linder stared at me as if I were a branded fool.

  ‘Do you want to see my amber, or not?’ she asked me coldly.

  ‘It won’t change colour while we’re speaking, surely?’ I challenged her. ‘Tell me, Marta. What is wrong with the child?’

  ‘The child?’ she mimicked.

  I lost my patience. ‘Erika. Your little girl,’ I said.

  ‘Erika ceased to be a little girl a while back,’ she replied, and laughed. But then her expression softened, as if the artist who had drawn her face had rubbed it with a cloth, and instantly sketched in a more accommodating look. She lowered her head, and whispered across the table. ‘She’s mighty popular with the gents. You’d be surprised, sir. There’s many a man who’ll go with her.’

  I recalled the French soldier in the street above, and his allusive words to Erika.

  ‘Sex, is that what you are speaking of?’

  She stared at me for some moments, her black eyes twinkling. ‘What else, sir?’

  ‘Is that why the French soldiers don’t bother her? They think she’s bringing men down here for . . . for . . .’ I could not find a suitable word. ‘To cover up the fact that you are selling amber? They think instead in terms of fish. And flesh . . .’

  She seemed amused by what I had said.

  ‘Nothing in Nordcopp is what it seems, sir. Amber, fish, flesh; each man has his preferences. Especially regarding amber, sir. It must be big, or bright. It must be round, or flat. De gustibus,’ she said, surprising me with a Latin idiom she must have picked up from one of her clients.

  She laid her hands flat on the table, and leaned forward.

  ‘Do you want to see them, then? The red ones, I mean. Colour of blood . . .’

  I nodded. ‘Let’s start with the blood.’

  As she rose and turned away, I thought I heard her muttering, ‘Thank the Lord!’ under her breath. She went across the room, murmuring to Erika as she passed. The girl was stirring the pot of boiling fish, but she stepped aside quickly. Marta Linder glanced cautiously around the cellar, then stretched her hand behind a cupboard and retrieved a little packet from some secret hiding-place. As she came back to my table, she untied the strings that held this bundle closed. Sitting down again, she shook the contents out on the wooden surface.

  My appetite for fish dissolved as I stared at those stones.

  The colour was truly spectacular, as she had promised. She lifted the candle, shifting it across the table. The variegated colours—light and dark—seemed to ripple and flow like fresh blood spurting from a vein.

  ‘They are very beautiful,’ I said, whispering despite myself.

  ‘Just feel them, sir!’

  My hand stretched out mechanically. I took the nearest piece between my thumb and forefinger and held it up to the light. Like every man in that room, I had succumbed to the passion for amber in an instant. I must have looked as dazed, seduced and ravished as they did.

  ‘Smooth,’ I murmured. ‘And warm to the touch.’

  ‘A lover’s kiss on a slender neck.’

  ‘Have you been long in the trade, ma’am?’

  I held the piece of amber close to my eye, as I had seen the other customers do.

  ‘In this trade . . . no, sir,’ she murmured softly with a wilful smile.

  I did not need to ask what trade she had been in before.

  I picked up another piece of amber. A stream of golden bubbles deep inside the oval nugget caught the light. Each bead was somehow like, but quite unlike, the other pieces in the set. ‘This one would make a wonderful ring,’ I said for want of saying something.

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t split ’em up,’ she said quickly.

  I set the bead down on the table, and sat back, tapping my fingernail against my teeth, wondering how to bring the conversation to a head. Should I ask her directly if she had ever had any dealings with Kati Rodendahl?

  ‘Don’t you like the colour?’ she asked.

  ‘The colour is pleasing enough,’ I said, thinking of the startling colour of the piece of amber in my pocket, ‘but . . .’

  ‘But what, sir?’

  ‘I was looking for something brighter. Yellow, perhaps . . .’

  ‘The colour of piss? Or more like what a dying old lady coughs up?’

  She smiled no longer. She had seen through my pretence, and shrugged off ingratiation like an uncomfortable cloak. Her face seemed angular, her eyes sharper and more inquisitive. I thought I could see a marked resemblance to the daughter. Her hand reached out and slid the candle to one side. Then she sat forward, filling the space, her breath hot in my face.

  ‘One word from me,’ she said, ‘and these gentlemen here will rip you to bits. They don’t take risks. Your corpse will rot with the rats in that tunnel over there. Out with it! Who are you?’

  ‘I am a magistrate,’ I admitted, my voice barely audible. ‘And I’m investigating a murder. One of the girls who gather amber on the coast was . . .’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she hissed. ‘Shouldn’t you be out there looking for answers? What do you want from us?’

  ‘I need to know . . .’

  ‘Ask the French squaddies how she died,’ she seethed before I could finish.

  ‘You know something that the French do not,’ I pressed on quickly. ‘That is why I am here.’

  Her eyes glistened. ‘What do you want to know?’

  I picked up one of the fine amber beads that lay glistening and forgotten on the table, and held it in front of her nose. ‘Somebody sells you amber like this. Who brings it to you?’

  She pursed her lips, but she did not reply.

  ‘Does it come from the girls on Nordcopp shore?’ I asked.

  Her eyes flashed angrily. ‘Why don’t you ask them who they take it to?’

  Had she done business with those girls in the past? Was there some lingering insult, some outstanding debt that still rankled? She seemed to have neither time nor pity regarding them.

  ‘You have not answered my question,’ I said. ‘Who brings it here?’

  ‘I have my suppliers,’ she snapped, ‘and that’s the end of it!’

  Our huddled conversation made no impression on the other people in the room. Doubtless, when a deal was being struck, they all held huddled conversations of their own.

  ‘Someone in Nordcopp takes pleasure in chopping women into pieces,’ I said. ‘I want to stop him. The French do, too. Unless I catch him soon, they’ll come through here like a howling gale. Wouldn’t it be wiser if you talked to me?’

  She stared sullenly at me, but still she would not speak.

  I swept my hand slowly around the room.

  My eyes went with it, looking at the tables, the entrance to the tunnel, the seated men, the fireplace where her daughter tended the pots. ‘I could have brought the French here with me,’ I said as my eyes locked into hers. ‘I could have brought ten gendarmes. But that was not my plan. I don’t want them involved in this affair.’

  ‘A Prussian working for the French?’

  She pronounced each word as if it fouled her tongue. ‘A Prussian trying to save the lives of Prussian women,’ I corrected her.

  As I spoke, I reached into my pocket and closed my fist around Kati Rodendahl’s piece of amber. ‘Who would be interested in a piece like this one?’ I asked, unclenching my fingers slowly to reveal what was hidden in my palm.
>
  She stared for a moment, as if she could not quite believe what she was seeing.

  ‘Where did you get it?’ she whispered, stretching forward.

  I grabbed her hand, twisted hard at the wrist and pressed her skin into the flame of the candle. ‘It came from the body of a murdered girl. Now, tell me, ma’am. Who would she have tried to sell it to in Nordcopp? Would she have come to you?’

  I felt hot breath on the nape of my neck.

  ‘Let me see it.’

  The strange voice of Erika sounded in my ear. She darted forward and plucked the amber from my hand. She lifted it to her nose, sniffed it like a squirrel that has found a nut, then began to turn the piece in her fingers and examine it from different angles by the light of the flame.

  ‘This is not our usual trade,’ she said, cocking her head to one side, stepping back from the table. ‘But I know who handles stuff like this.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Follow me,’ she said, clasping the amber tightly in her fist.

  I stood up quickly, while Marta Linder caressed her burnt flesh and cursed me under her breath.

  ‘I’ll handle him,’ Erika whispered to her mother. She led me towards the tunnel entrance without a backward glance, still clasping Kati Rodendahl’s amber treasure as she darted forward into the pitch darkness.

  I reached out, caught hold of her slender arm, but the girl kicked out, and tried to shake herself free of me. ‘Why are you pulling at me?’ she screeched.

  ‘Give it back,’ I warned her, catching hold of her hand.

  ‘Just let me hold it for a bit,’ she whined, like a child who has taken possession of another’s doll, and doesn’t want to give it up.