‘Dead. All dead,’ she raved. ‘Killed for the sake of amber. Those sands out there, sir, didn’t you feel the crunch of bones beneath your feet?’ She did not wait for my reply, nor seem to expect one. ‘Every one of them lost their lives in the search for amber. That is the Baltic, sir. Dry bones, dead bodies.’
Her madness was a litany. She filled the air with hate and dark despair. As she spoke, the corpse of Kati Rodendahl seemed to rear up before me. Kati had lived by amber, died by amber. And what about the wrecked corpse in the corner? Had amber killed her, too? How many more would have to die before the French replaced them with machines?
‘Do not try to touch that corpse, do you hear me? Close the sty. Lock the door, Frau Ansbach. That body might infect the farm and every soul that breathes here. Animal or human.’
Even as I spoke, I felt ashamed of myself. I would have said anything to shut her mouth, and I knew that I had chosen the argument correctly. The pigsty would be an inviolable shrine, where the corpse of Ilse Bruen would rest in peace.
At least for that night.
As I went out through the door, the night air was like nectar.
Pastoris came hard on my heels, while Adam Ansbach closed and barred the pigsty wicket. More to keep the evil spirits in, I thought, than to prevent any person from entering. As the son worked feverishly, the mother mumbled darkly, uttering I know not what lugubrious comforts.
‘What now, Herr Procurator?’ Pastoris asked. ‘That corpse is the opportunity that the French have been looking for. A dead prussian discovered by Prussians in a Prussian pigsty.’
I understood his fear. More: I shared it.
Before I went to bed, I would be obliged to tell les Halles what he longed to hear.
‘I’ll have to tell them what has happened,’ I said.
Pastoris stared at me in silence. Pain was there at first, but then his look hardened, and was as sharp as the blade he used to scrape encrusted amber.
As I returned to the coast that night, the ride seemed endless.
The fog had lifted, but the oppressive silence of the dunes persisted. There were no stars in the sky, the clouds were dark grey, low. No wind at all. My mind was filled with omens. The corpse of Ilse Bruen, the tears of Adam Ansbach, the fears of Pastoris, the dark prophecies of Magda Ansbach.
One thing alone was capable of shifting a little of the weight from off my heavy heart. A song that Helena often sang to the children sometimes. It came into my mind without my bidding, and would not go away.
I started to sing, softly at first, then louder. I was warding off my own fears.
Here comes the sun, here comes the light.
Where is the dark? Where is the night?
Locked in the cupboard, mother. Locked in the cupboard . . .
15
THE OPEN DOOR cast a rhomboid of light on the ground.
Stripped to his vest and braces, Colonel les Halles was alone in the cabin.
A bulbous storm-lantern threw ample light onto a large sheet of paper spread out before him. Covered with intricate sketches, this paper absorbed all of his attention. Nothing seemed more important. Not even a spate of murders. The wooden models, which he had been so proud of the night before, were pushed aside like a boy’s tin soldiers after the battle.
‘Back already, Stiffeniis?’ he said, looking up as I knocked on the door-post.
He waved for me to enter, but he did not invite me to sit down. Would I be obliged to stand before him like a schoolboy, I wondered, and recite the lesson? I stole a glance at the drawings, and instruments: set-square, compass, dividers. He was reshaping the extending arm of the coq du mer, the machine with which he intended to suck up the blaue Erde, and the amber that was embedded in it.
‘Well, what did you find?’ he asked impatiently.
I told him what I had seen at the farm, described the ravaged state of the corpse, mentioned the pigs. I was unable to tell him how the victim had died, of course, but I was relieved to tell him that I had seen no evident signs of mutilation.
‘No missing pieces?’
‘No, monsieur.’
‘Was she carry ing amber?’ he snorted. ‘Amber the killer may have missed . . .’
‘I cannot tell you,’ I admitted. ‘So long as the body remains half buried beneath a sea of sewage, it’s impossible to say. I’ll go back at daybreak, and make a more thorough examination of the corpse and the sty.’
He continued sketching while I spoke, making minor adjustments to the outlines on the paper. Suddenly, he looked up, his eyes sparkling brightly.
‘Sewage, Stiffeniis?’
‘The sludge left by pigs,’ I said. ‘The place has not been cleaned . . .’
‘Of what consistency?’ he snapped, as if it were the only detail in my report that truly interested him. ‘Was this pig-shit runny, semi-solid, solid?’
‘A sort of dense liquid mud,’ I replied uncertainly.
He raised his forefinger, as if the question appealed to him. ‘How deep exactly?’
I made a rapid calculation. Indeed, I took advantage of the expertise I had recently acquired in Lotingen. ‘Twenty centimetres of liquid slime, more solid stuff packed hard beneath it.’
‘So very deep?’ he asked.
‘That sty could be a hundred years old. I do not understand your interest . . .’
‘It was a grave mistake to let you go alone,’ he interrupted, eyes half-closed, his brow creased with deep furrows.
Was he put out because he had made an error of judgement? Or was the necessity of admitting it to a Prussian what humiliated him more? I knew that I would long savour the memory, though I did not understand the nature of the omission. Not then, at any rate.
‘A couple of fellows would have been enough,’ he murmured.
I thought I knew what he had in mind. ‘The people at the farm will help me dig out the body in the morning. I’ll question them again more carefully. I hurried straight back here tonight to tell you what I had found.’
It was a lie, but it seemed to please him.
‘Did you bring the horse with you?’
‘Both of them,’ I said.
He smiled for the first time. ‘Good. Without horses they can’t go far. If anyone attempts to reach Nordcopp on foot, he’ll be arrested. I have informed the garrison there. They’ll keep a close watch tonight. If any man does try to escape, it will be an admission of guilt.’
‘There’s no good reason to suspect the people in Nordbarn,’ I opposed.
‘Is there not?’ he challenged. ‘We have a body. We have the man who found it. What more do you need?’
Was it all as simple as he suggested?
‘I need more time, and better evidence,’ I insisted. ‘If a Prussian is accused, you know what the consequences might be. Better to have a definite proof before arraigning any man.’
‘Which you have not got!’
‘Which I have not yet got,’ I corrected him.
He groaned with annoyance.
‘Very well, sir, you are the magistrate,’ he conceded. ‘I expect your report tomorrow evening when your enquiries are fully concluded. They will be concluded to my satisfaction, I dare to hope. What was the boy’s name again?’
It was an order. He wanted me to arrest Adam Ansbach for the murder of Ilse Bruen.
‘Twenty centimetres of liquid slime,’ he murmured, his head bent closely over his papers once again. ‘You’ll need proper footwear for such conditions. That perfume you are wearing cannot hide the stink of your shoes.’
As I began to thank him for his unexpected concern, he cut me off.
‘Good night, Herr Stiffeniis.’
Shortly afterwards, I fell down on my cot and tried to sleep.
It was the second time that I had gone to bed fully clothed. The night air clung to my flesh like a cold sweat, and I was seized by a fit of shivering. I folded myself like an unborn child, knees pushed into my stomach, hands beneath my armpits, head bent into my chest. Dorika, the
peasant girl who nursed me, alarmed my mother once, telling her how frightened I had been by a nightmare, describing my reaction to it: I curled up like a foetus, eyes closed, hardly breathing, refusing all attempts to comfort me. If I could not see, and did not breathe, I reasoned, then I did not exist. Thus, danger could not harm me.
Would such childish thinking work for me that night?
I hoped that pitch blackness would swallow me whole. I prayed that the things I had seen in the pigsty would not come back to haunt my dreams. I would need a clear head next morning. Les Halles was convinced that I would have no other choice but to arrest Adam Ansbach, take him to Nordcopp, and lock him in the town gaol.
Sleep was slow in coming.
No sooner did my head touch the pillow than the cold tail of my hair insinuated itself like a slithering snake inside my collar. With a grunt, I turned on my side, shook it free. But my hair had a life of its own. The ribbon came loose, and hair fell free across my cheek. I twisted back again, and like a nest of serpents, long hair wriggled between my cheek and the pillow.
I sat up, tied my hair tight, then tried to sleep once more.
It was out of the question. My mind lurched from one possibility to the next. I had prevented les Halles from taking the matter into his own hands for the moment, but how long could I hold him off? Would Adam Ansbach be able to prove his innocence? And if he could not, would General Malaport bend beneath the onslaught of les Halles? For one instant, I was tempted to hope that the colonel was right. If the solution to the killings lay in Nordbarn, and if the murderer were Adam, I would be going home, and sooner than I had thought. Malaport would have to honour his promise. Claudet would be obliged to do what his general told him. The streets of Lotingen would be clean. And I would be at Helena’s side when the child was born.
Adam Ansbach’s face flashed before my eyes.
He was crying as his mother helped him close the pigsty.
Her words burned in my brain like vitriol.
She hated amber, she hated the women who handled it. Her influence over her son could not be doubted. But how persuasive was she? The boy was young and strong. The mutilated girls who worked for Pastoris might convince him that amber was a curse, that his mother was correct. But what about the ones who passed through Nordbarn from the coast, carry ing stolen amber to Nordcopp? They were young, too. Whole and strong. Just as Magda Ansbach had described her son. Would a mother’s threats and menaces quash the natural instincts of a young man? Or might he find—or have found, indeed—the sensual attractions of the girls a more convincing argument?
I turned on my other flank.
Was that why Kati Rodendahl’s corpse was naked? Did the undiscovered piece of amber suggest what had really happened? Had Adam tried to rape her, and failed? Was that why he had killed her? And had he tried again tonight?
Then again, I countered, would Adam rush to make false declarations about a body in his own pigsty if he had actually put it there? If he and his mother had said nothing, who else would ever have discovered the corpse? They could have left it there for the pigs to feast on. To fatten the bacon that the French would feed on afterwards.
I turned to face the wall.
I knew how les Halles would answer me.
‘My men would have searched for her,’ he’d say. ‘They would have checked the farm and sty before the pigs consumed the body. By coming to us, that boy is playing the innocent. He is attempting to lay a trail which leads away from himself.’
I turned again, but could not rest.
The possibilities seemed to multiply endlessly in my mind. Unlike les Halles, I did not even have a working hypothesis. And how could I establish facts and interpret clues, when every witness added his own dose of fear and hate to the equation?
Was Magda Ansbach right when she said that amber corrupted everyone who came into contact with it? I had been on the coast for two nights only, but I had already been seduced by the beauty of it, fascinated by its legends and its mysteries. My head was a jumble of confused thoughts, and unwanted images. I was unable to concentrate on what was essential, incapable of putting aside what was not.
Helena and the children came to visit me, then.
I crushed the image immediately.
I had no desire for sweet distracting thoughts. It was not my family that I ought to be thinking of, but the woman whose body had been thrown to the pigs, abandoned in the slime and the filth. Her ravaged body had become an integral part of the mess. I could smell the vileness on my hands, clothes and hair. Even so, I realised, I had been prepared for it in a way. The same revolting sights and smells were everywhere in Lotingen.
Only the clouds of flies were missing . . .
And yet, there were flies hovering around the body. Despite the salty humidity of the sea air, which ought to have driven them off. In Lotingen that corpse would have attracted flies more quickly than a jar of honey. How many days would it take three flies to consume that human body?
I turned over, facing the wall for the hundredth time, but still I saw the corpse. The dark islands of congealed blood, the holes the ravenous swine had torn in her breasts and stomach, the cruel ripping of the flesh from her face, the bones which gleamed in the lantern light . . .
God give me peace!
I prayed, but I did not ask for the balm of sleep. I begged for the black void of unconsciousness. When the investigation was completed, I would find rest. When the killer had a name. When I had written my final report for Colonel les Halles. For Colonel Claudet. For General Malaport. For Napoleon himself . . .
Revered Emperor, the missive began to write itself in my brain, your interests in the amber from the Baltic Sea are now entirely safe. In payment for this ser vice, I beg you, sire, to order that the streets of Lotingen be cleaned, the mountains of filth removed, and, with them, the flies which plague our lives, bringing nuisance and epidemics. Do it, sire, as I have done your business, removing with my own hands the stolen French amber hidden in the secret parts of the human corpses which infested the northernmost shores of your vast Baltic . . .
Our Baltic Sea. Our Baltic amber.
Somehow, the tail of my hair had worked its way around my throat like a rope that was intent on strangling me. I pulled my right hand from my left armpit and was about to shift it away—
My wrist was suddenly crushed against my larynx.
Strong fingers pressed flat against my mouth, preventing me from crying out.
I felt hot breath on my ear.
‘Do not shout, Herr Magistrate, or they’ll find themselves another corpse!’
A shadow hovered over me. Darker than the gloom which reigned in the cabin. Those cold fingers hampered my breathing; that strong wrist was capable of snapping my neck.
‘Will you speak quietly? Nod once, and I’ll let you up.’
I pushed my head up off the straw mattress.
The pressure began to relax. The fingers slid away from my lips, resting lightly against my cheek. The shadow shifted, as I gasped for air. A little harder, I would have been dead.
‘How did Ilse die?’
Had I ever heard such pain in so few words?
‘Please, let me sit,’ I hissed.
The shadow made no attempt to stop me, and I caught my first glimpse of the assailant. Moonlight or mist had turned the window a dull grey. Perfectly framed by this pale screen, the shadow took on the shape of a human profile skilfully cut with scissors from black paper. It was not the length of her hair, nor the curve of the shoulder, that told me that my attacker was a woman. It was the way in which she retreated as I levered myself onto my elbows. A graceful retreat as I advanced, making room for my legs to slide down from the cot and touch the floor.
‘Who are you?’ I asked.
The reply was so low, I could hardly hear the words.
‘One of those that the killer is hunting. Just tell me what he did this time.’
A great weight seemed to slide from my shoulders as I tried to paint a
picture of the revolting compound of human blood and animal filth that I had seen in Nordbarn earlier that night. Indeed, I felt strangely soothed as I shared the horror with another person.
The shadow did not say a word until I had finished.
‘But the pigs did not kill her,’ she said at last, as if stunned by what I had told her.
‘No, it was not the pigs.’
Again, she was silent for some moments.
‘Do you know who did it?’ she asked.
‘I have no idea.’
Time stretched out in heavy silence. On the shore down below, I heard the waves break gently on the pebbles, the slow rattling as the brine drained back to meet the next onslaught. When she spoke again, her voice seemed gentler. A child would be soothed by such a voice as it spun the web of tales intended to hasten sleep. I might have been lulled, were it not for the things that she said.
‘What did he rip out this time?’
‘I . . . I cannot say,’ I whispered helplessly.
‘There isn’t much you seem to know, sir. How are you going to stop him chopping up the rest of us?’
‘What is your name?’ I asked.
‘Do you want to tell les Halles?’
‘God, no! It is only that . . . well, you know who I am.’
‘Do you have a candle?’ she asked me. ‘I want to see your face.’
I remembered the taper that I had stubbed out before coming to bed, and dropped down on my knees, feeling about on the floor with my hands. I brushed against her foot, then found what I was looking for, together with the flint-box.
‘If the colonel is up, he may see . . .’
‘Light it, sir,’ she chided. ‘He went to bed as soon as you left him. He’s been working like the Dev il to night. His little engine won’t do what he wants.’
I heard her giggling in the dark.
How many emotions had swept over her since she entered my cabin? Violence, certainly. I had felt the strength in her arms and fingers, convinced that she was going to smother me. Anxious concern, as she quizzed me about the fate of her friend. Great calm, as she listened to what I had to tell her. Irony, as she revealed that she knew too well the dangers faced by herself and the other women on Nordcopp shore. Now, mirth. The coq du mer was playing up.
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