HS03 - A Visible Darkness

by Michael Gregorio

  Instead, he raised his hands to his mouth and let out a long, loud whoop.

  Gleaming lights appeared like pinpoints in the swirling white opaqueness, waving gently as the lanterns signalled the direction for us to take. Voices sounded faintly in the distance, whooping back like a pack of ululating wolves.

  Some minutes later, we pulled up before a tumbledown house. Ignoring the large woman who wrested the reins from my hands, I stepped directly over to Adam Ansbach.

  ‘Where is she?’ I asked.

  While riding there, I had examined the matter from a hundred different angles, and met with a thousand doubts. If the French had reinforced their guard after the murder three days before, how had this woman managed to leave the compound and reach that place in the fog at night? She must have known that Kati Rodendahl had been murdered, but that had not stopped her. Was she going on purpose to meet the killer, believing that he was something else, perhaps? And if so, how had he won her trust? Posing as a sweet-heart, a smuggler, a soldier? I shrank from the thought of having to rummage heartlessly through the secret places of another female corpse in search of hidden amber. Yet, everyone seemed determined to help me do it without delay.

  ‘Follow me, sir.’

  The young man turned away from the house.

  I strode off beside him.

  A group of women fell in behind us, holding up lanterns.

  Then a man stepped into the light. His goitre seemed to swell and gleam with all the colours of the rainbow. ‘May I join you, sir?’ he rasped, as if he were a talking toad.

  ‘Herr Pastoris.’ I nodded.

  ‘Magistrate Stiffeniis,’ he wheezed. ‘If only I could say how glad I am to see you here, sir. You’ll forgive me if I don’t.’

  I forgave him without saying a word, and turned back to Adam Ansbach.

  ‘You mentioned a pigsty,’ I said.

  ‘It’s over this way, sir.’

  We had not gone thirty yards before we reached the scrawny, stunted wood of wind-bent trees that I had noticed on my way to Nordcopp that morning. At the time, it had seemed to promise salvation from the desert wastes. I had wondered then what secrets it contained. My nose was quick to identify one of them.

  ‘What smell is that?’ I asked.

  Adam moved a few yards to the right, then stopped, holding up the lantern.

  ‘The shitting-stile,’ he answered bluntly. ‘As I told you, sir, the pigs clean it out. But not tonight. Tonight they would not leave the sty.’

  It was a simple construction. An open trench, two uprights and a cross-beam made of stout branches. No need to crouch over the filth, no compression of the bowels, no risk of soiling one’s boots, or ruining one’s trousers, no chance of slipping backwards into the mire. When the latrine is full, they fill in the old trench, dig an other one nearby, and reposition the stile. Sometimes such constructions are hidden by a wicket enclosure, sometimes they cover them with a lean to roof. This drain was open to the night sky, and it was full of excrement. It reminded me unpleasantly of the streets of Lotingen in recent weeks.

  ‘Is the trench old?’ I asked him, glancing into it.

  ‘We never fill it in, sir,’ Adam said. ‘We let the pigs do the dirty work.’

  ‘This is where your family . . .’ I hesitated.

  ‘Me and my mother, sir,’ he said, ‘and the lad who comes from Nordcopp every day to help us. Sometimes women drift across from the Sheds. We never turn them away when their latrine is full. Our pigs make short work of it.’

  ‘These pigs,’ I hazarded. ‘Do you eat them?’

  Adam Ansbach held up his lamp. There was a lopsided grin on his face. ‘The pigs go to the French. We sell them bacon, eggs, and vegetables, as well.’

  I had not eaten in the French kitchen that morning. No pork bacon had touched my lips, nor would it do so while I remained on Nordcopp shore.

  ‘Very good, we’ve seen your toilet,’ I said shortly. ‘I want to see the body.’

  I was quivering with tense anticipation.

  Adam pointed beyond the stile. ‘The pigsty’s over there, sir.’

  I followed him in a wide half-circle around the stile. Pastoris and his flock of women came hard on my heels. The smell of pigs soon took the place of the fetid latrine, clutching at my throat like a strangling hand. Ancient filth and fresh filth all jumbled up together. I searched in my pocket for a handkerchief. Not finding one, I pinched my nose closed with fingers, and opened my mouth wide.

  ‘’Tis worse if you swallow it,’ Pastoris warned me. ‘You’ll taste it on your tongue every time you eat for a week. Breathe in through your nose, Herr Magistrate. You’ll get used to it quick enough.’

  I did as he said, and let that hateful smell invade every fibre of my body.

  The pigsty was a long, low wicker barn in the lantern light.

  ‘How many pigs do you keep in there?’ I asked the boy.

  ‘Seven,’ Adam Ansbach replied. ‘But it’s empty now, sir. We closed the pigs in the goat-pen over yonder. When I first went in and I saw what they was doing, I tried to pull them off . . .’ He hesitated for an instant. ‘They would not leave her, sir. ’Twas like they had all gone mad.’

  I looked down at the ground.

  The lamplight revealed a great deal of movement, the mulch freshly marked by animal trotters and the slithering of boots.

  ‘But you were able to move them out eventually,’ I said.

  ‘I had to call for help, sir. My mother first, then the girls from Nordbarn.’

  However many people had been inside to chase the pigs out, they had certainly obliterated any sign that the killer might have left behind him. There was little use in attempting to draw what I could see on the ground.

  ‘Let’s go in, then,’ I ordered.

  Though the door was open wide, the stench was like a physical barrier. Suddenly, I realised that there were five or six people gathered in the gloom inside. One woman was holding up a night-light. All of them were peering into the darkest corner. In the middle of the group, I recognised the woman that I had seen at the sheds that morning. Hilde Bruckner was clutching a scarf to her mouth and damaged face.

  My heart sank even further.

  So much for Professor Kant’s scientific approach to the collection of data. Isolate the scene of the crime, he insisted. Allow no one in. Record everything, no matter how unimportant it may at first appear.

  I turned sharply on Pastoris.

  ‘Why are your women here?’

  The small man stepped closer, wheezed loudly, bent his head and looked in through the low door. ‘Adam came by the sheds,’ he said, ‘thinking that she might be one of my lot. But the girls are all accounted for. I told him where to look for you, Herr Magistrate. I tried to keep my girls away, but it was a dead loss. Two or three came over to help move the pigs. The rest came shortly afterwards. Word got out that one of their old companions from the shore was . . . well. It was difficult to keep them away, sir.’

  ‘Get them out,’ I hissed.

  Pastoris went in. The dark interior seemed to swallow him whole. The only thing that issued from the sty was the stench. I heard the buzz of voices. Some of them were raised in anger, others were crying bitterly. It was clear to me that Pastoris could do little to control the situation.

  I took a deep breath, bent low, then dashed inside. Adam Ansbach followed me. The women were huddled tightly together in the corner like frightened sheep, making a low wailing noise. Were they praying? Pastoris was standing in the centre of the group, murmuring alongside the others.

  ‘Everybody out of here!’ I roared through clenched teeth.

  The women bobbed their heads and fled. One of them slipped and fell as she turned away. Pastoris pulled the woman to her feet, then shoved her out through the doorway. I could not fathom his power over them. Was he their sheep-dog, or was he the wolf that threatened to tear them to shreds?

  ‘Stay here, Pastoris.’ I caught Adam Ansbach by the arm. ‘You, too,’ I said.


  The liquid bath of excremental filth was as deep as my ankles.

  ‘Hold up those lamps,’ I ordered.

  Buzzing sounded close to my ears. Something touched my eye-lids, settled on my face. It was there, it was gone. Then, it was back again. Flies. I waved my hand in front of my face, then covered my nose and mouth, disregarding the advice that Pastoris had given me. Those flies had been feeding on the body. Like the pigs, I thought. Even more voraciously, according to Linnaeus.

  The floor was a sea of dark green slime. A dull red sheen glistened on the surface of the puddles near the body like the pattern of an oriental carpet. The victim was in a sitting position in the corner. Slumped against the wall, her head pitched forward, long dark hair bunched and tied at the back, strands dangling free, arms hanging loose, her legs bent at the knees. She might have chosen that unlikely spot to fall asleep, were it not for the fact that her skin no longer looked like human flesh. Nor did her rags resemble the clothing a decent woman might wear. The body and her clothes had been torn to shreds.

  Blood and slime, dark red, dark green, clotting to black.

  I might have liked to run the way the women had gone, but I took the lantern from the hand of Pastoris, and stepped closer.

  Ears, nose, cheeks, lips. All torn off. Not cut, but ripped and shredded. Exposed bone gleamed dull grey between the islands of coagulating blood and the lurid strips of dangling flesh. Her cheeks had been ravished by the pigs. Her teeth and jaws were harshly gritted in a bizarre grin.

  Nothing appeared to have been taken away.

  The tattered dress exposed her breasts. Two blood-dark circles. Nothing remained. Below was a large blood-encrusted cavern. Intestines and guts had spilled out over her lifeless hands. Her ribs jutted out like the bare struts of a whalebone corset. The legs seemed intact, folded at the knee, apparently demurely covered. I flicked the skirt away with my finger. Slivers of skin and strips of muscle dangled from the left thigh and calf. Her feet were planted squarely in the filth. The shoe had gone from her right foot. And with it, the toes. Below the right knee, there was nothing left but bone.

  I found myself communicating silently with that formless mass.

  What business brought you here? Whom did you intend to meet? And what did he take away with him before he left the rest to the pigs?

  Without thinking, I drew my notebook from my bag, uncapped the graphite-case. Though my hand shook, I tried to record exactly what I saw. It was the most hideous sketch that I had ever made. And as I worked, I spoke over my shoulder.

  ‘Was she like this when you found her, Adam?’

  I heard a fearful rattle in the boy’s throat. ‘I had a hard time shifting the pigs, sir. Like I said. They’d had a taste of flesh and blood . . . Mother and me, we had to prod them with a pitchfork. Chased them out one at a time, more or less.’

  ‘Did you touch the body?’

  I heard him shudder.

  ‘Did you move anything?’

  ‘I would not touch her, sir. What good would it do?’

  I envisaged the pigs fighting over their unexpected supper, and felt more ill than before. Yet, I had to persist. ‘Did you know the girl, Adam? Had she been here on her own before?’

  ‘Herr Pastoris said she wasn’t one of his . . .’

  Anger erupted from me. ‘I am asking you!’ I growled.

  ‘I’d never met her, sir. Leastways, not as far as I can tell. Now, I mean.’

  His reasonableness provoked me. He was calm as the sea on a summer’s night. It must have been a horrifying moment, even for a peasant boy who was used to the sights and the smells of the farmyard: slaughtering animals, gutting the carcasses, dead meat, the daily round of maggots and flies, rot and rancid putrefaction. He must have realised that he would be suspected.

  ‘Did you hear that woman scream?’

  ‘I did not hear a thing, sir.’

  ‘Tell me now,’ I pressed him. ‘The French won’t ask you twice, remember. They’ll have the answer out of you in no time.’

  Rumours were rife that the French tortured prisoners. I hoped that he believed those tales, that he would fear being handed over to them even more than he feared me.

  ‘I heard the row the pigs was making. Didn’t think nothing of it, sir. But when they wouldn’t come out, I went in to chase them out.’

  ‘You have nothing else to tell me?’ I said sternly.

  ‘We’ve nought to hide,’ Pastoris protested. ‘This is a catastrophe for us. I hope you understand the danger, sir. The French won’t leave us in peace. Wasn’t this just what they wanted?’

  ‘The body was found here, Pastoris,’ I insisted. ‘On this farm. Someone brought her here, or she came of her own free will.’ I paused, adding weight to what I wished to say. ‘She may have come to meet the man who killed her.’

  I expected a reaction, but it surprised me. Adam Ansbach’s shoulders began to jerk violently. Loud, gasping sobs burst from his mouth.

  Pastoris laid his hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘Tell Herr Magistrate that you did not bring her here, Adam. Tell him that you did not plan to meet her. And that you did not even know her.’

  ‘It’s true, sir.’ He was sobbing like a child.

  ‘I have your word alone,’ I said.

  ‘You have mine!’

  As I turned to meet that angry voice, I raised my lantern. The flames glistened on the boy’s wet cheeks, then lit the figure of a woman who was straightening up, having passed with difficulty beneath the low paddock door.

  ‘My son would never mix with them!’ she said, stepping up as if to strike me.

  The woman was tall, bulky, larger than me. She wore a long black shift, and a black shawl covering her head.

  ‘Who are you?’ I asked.

  ‘Magda Ansbach,’ the woman replied. ‘His mother. This farm is mine.’

  At last, I consoled myself sardonically, a credible witness.

  ‘Have you been watching this shed all day?’ I challenged her. ‘And for no better reason than to swear that no member of your family came in here carrying the corpse of a woman?’

  ‘Not all the day,’ she replied with dignity. ‘I’ve been busy round and about the farm since dawn. There are the goats and hens to feed, vegetables growing over yonder. I know everything that happens in this place. No one came. At least, that is, I saw no one . . .’

  ‘You must tell a more convincing tale,’ I said. ‘The evidence here is obvious. An amber-gatherer from the coast is dead in your sty. And with the teeth-marks of your pigs upon her.’

  ‘Who says that she was murdered?’ the woman vehemently replied. ‘Who says she wasn’t drunk? She could have crept in there to sleep it off.’

  The woman seemed to crowd in upon me as she continued speaking. She swelled up in front of me like a bantam cock, her broad face seeming to grow ever larger. Before she had had her say, I could see nothing and no one beyond her scowling face. Her wide-set eyes locked into mine as if she never meant to let me go again.

  ‘Those girls are cursed!’ she shrieked. ‘They spread corruption wherever they go. They pass it round like a disease. You’ve seen the lot who work for Pastoris here. Not one of them is whole, sir. This one got what was coming to her, I’ll be bound.’

  ‘Which disease are you talking of, Frau Ansbach?’

  The woman was ugly and aggressive. Her jaw was large and square. When she scrunched her face up into a grimace, the effect was hideous. It was like speaking to a gargoyle.

  ‘Amber,’ she snarled, her eyes glinting. ‘They gather amber. They know the greed and violence that it unleashes. Just like the horrid insects trapped inside it. The creatures can’t break loose, and neither can those girls. It suffocates and crushes them in the end. I know what amber is!’

  She was so close. Her breath was fouler than the pigsty.

  ‘I worked on the shore when I was young. I’ve held a piece of amber in my hands. This size!’ She held her closed fist in front of my nose. ‘Twenty-seven ye
ars ago, it was. We didn’t have no Frenchies then, we couldn’t scrape by with just the farm. I’d go out searching on the shore, and found that lump of amber in the sea.’ She stopped and her eyes peered bleakly into mine. ‘There was a bug inside of it, the most peculiar thing I ever saw. Nine months later, I gave birth to a . . . to a monster, sir! God was merciful, that poor creature died, but I ain’t been down to the sea again. Not once! The Lord gave me Adam four years after. Whole and strong.’

  What was she ranting about? Was she trying to tell me that the creature trapped inside the stone had influenced the child inside her womb? Did she believe that physical deformity could be explained away in such a manner?

  And yet, she believed it. As if it were an undeniable truth. And I was tempted to believe it, too. I had seen the horrors on that coast. The torn and twisted bodies in the sheds of Nordbarn, the avidity of the men who traded in the amber-market of Nordcopp. Erika Linder. Was it possible that amber, like some cruel witch’s potion, could provoke both physical devastation and spiritual deformity?

  Suddenly, I thought of Kati Rodendahl. She had hidden amber in her body, and she had been murdered. Had Magda Ansbach done the same , and had her child been deformed as a result of doing so?

  I turned away, and faced the corpse of Ilse Bruen.

  I was glad that it was night. I was grateful that the pigs had done such damage to the corpse. I was overjoyed that I would not be obliged to search the body, as I knew I must. Tomorrow, I would organise a squad of soldiers, and have the body taken from the sty, together with any clues that the killer might have left behind him.

  ‘I always thought that amber was a gift from God,’ I replied. ‘For this region, and for the whole of Prus sia. Generations of our people have survived and thrived . . .’

  ‘All dead,’ she said plaintively. ‘All gone.’

  At my back I heard the renewed sobs of Adam Ansbach. I was tempted to add my own comforts to those of Pastoris. I wanted to tell the boy that what his mother said in crushing apocalyptic tones was untrue. I heard Pastoris urging him to look up, but Adam was clearly terrified by every word that issued from his mother’s mouth. Was his distress the proof of innocence that I sought? If Magda Ansbach could frighten me, she could certainly frighten him. If she told him to avoid those women, would he dare to disobey her?