A Visible Darkness Part 11

'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 sh.o.r.e?' 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 p.r.o.nounced 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, c.o.c.king 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.

I could hear her breathing, but I could not see her in the dark. I did not like the situation. That creature knew her way around those tunnels. I did not. If she could shake me off, I'd have trouble finding my way out. If that bit of amber was so valuable, I might have trouble finding her again. She struggled, but I felt her warm musty breath on my face. The air was tainted by the salty smell of her sweat.

'The dead girl owned it, didn't she?'

Her voice sounded heavy and sad in the gloom.

'Was she bringing it to you?' I asked her, easing my grip on her arm.

She let out a loud sigh. 'No one in their right mind would come down here with a piece like this, sir. But I know . . . There are people in Nordcopp who'd do anything to get their hands on it.'

'Who?'

No answer came from the dark.

Suddenly, she breathed in sharply. 'You think that she was killed because of this jewel, don't you, sir?' she said.

'It is very likely.'

'You are wrong.'

'What do you . . .'

She did not let me finish. 'He'd have known where to find it,' she said. 'He wasn't interested in amber. He'd have turned her inside out for a gem like this one.'

Her argument struck home. The killer had had the opportunity to rip the corpse apart in search of what he was looking for. But then again, I thought, if he did not want the amber, what did he want from Kati Rodendahl?

'How much might this be worth?' I asked her. 'And who would buy it?'

I saw a gleam in the dark, stretched out my hand, and plucked the amber nugget away from her.

I might as well have uncaged a bear.

Erika let out a howl and leapt on me like a fury. Her hands were everywhere. On my shirt, clinging to my jacket. Her boots dug into my knees, and sc.r.a.ped my bones. She scrambled after that piece of amber, climbing all over me like a beggar's monkey, though I held it out beyond her reach, trying to fend her off with the other arm. Her nails clawed at my eyes, raked my cheek, ripped at my mouth.

'Give it here!' she screeched.

I twisted and turned, throwing her off, kicking out as she tried to attack me again, holding her at bay as I edged back, following the tunnel upwards, never stopping until I reached the derelict house, the pigs, the hole in the wall, the street, and safety.

As I rejoined the throng, her screams and swearing followed me. There were scratches on the back of my hands, and I felt the dribble of blood on my neck and throat. On the corner at the end of the street, there was a public water-pump. While washing my wounds and cleaning my face, drying myself off again with my pocket handkerchief, I cursed that little demon. The moment I did so, I realised the folly of it.

Could I invoke anything worse than the affliction G.o.d had given to Erika Linder in the instant that she came into the world?

12.

I DID NOT know the doctor's name or his address.

Grillet had told me that he could be found in Nordcopp.

'It shouldn't be hard to find him, sir,' he had said. 'The settlement is small. And there's no one else.'

The obvious place to start my search was in the French guard-post.

I made my way back to the main gate and the watch-tower.

There were three soldiers in the guard-room, which contained enough air to sustain one life alone. One of them was blowing clouds of blue smoke from a long clay pipe. Another man was gnawing on a black-pudding sausage, while the third, a sergeant, was fast asleep behind a desk, his large feet resting on the table-top.

The man with the pipe was the soldier who had spoken to me as I entered the town an hour before.

'Been robbed already?' he asked. 'Been fighting, have you?'

Erika's nails had evidently left their mark.

'Two of us were sc.r.a.pping over the same bit of amber.' I nodded. 'They told me there's a doctor here in Nordcopp. Do you know where I can find him?'

He did not know. Nor did the man with the sausage. And neither of them seemed inclined to wake their sleeping sergeant.

'This doctor attends to the workers out on the coast,' I insisted.

The man who was eating tore off another piece of sausage. 'There's a doctor's sign down that way,' he growled, swallowing pork and words, pointing out of the door with what remained of the sausage.

On a map the town of Nordcopp looks no bigger than a spot of filth that a fly might leave behind. In reality, it is a swarming, seething labyrinth of narrow lanes that twist and turn like wriggling worms in a fisherman's bucket. It is like a living organism: small and compact on the outside, crammed to bursting with intestines, arteries and veins, each smaller and narrower than the one before.

Outside the door, I turned to the left, then followed a dark, winding, surprisingly empty alley to the very end, where it opened into a cramped and irregular little square.

This s.p.a.ce was dominated by the crumbling facade of a very old church.

Had I been a Roman Catholic, I might have cried miracle. The name of the temple was cut into the lintel, CHRIST THE SAVIOUR. Next door, I saw the signboard hanging over a house that must once have belonged to the priest. Carved of wood, nailed together in the form of a star were two small arms and legs. When new, they might have been flesh-pink, but rain and damp had leached out all the colour. Those dangling limbs were pale ash-grey, except for more resistant spots of bright red paint which clearly signified blood.

I went across and pulled on a bell-rope.

What was a French doctor doing in Nordcopp, I asked myself. Did his presence there signify the dawn of a career which would eventually flourish on the streets of Paris, or was this the twilight of a military hack-bones who had been despatched to the farthest northern reach of the empire?

A vision in white opened the door. A stout old woman with long white hair and very large bosoms filled the doorway. Her face was extremely pale, her eyes bright blue. She was wearing a long white ap.r.o.n and matching linen bonnet.

'May I speak to the doctor?' I asked in exploratory German, wondering whether the French doctor had found himself a local housekeeper.

'Doctor's busy,' she replied in the uncouth dialect of the north coast.

'I'll wait for him, if I may,' I replied.

'Who shall I tell him's calling?'

'Procurator Stiffeniis of Lotingen,' I announced.

A resonating German voice called out: 'Herr Magistrate, come through.'

At the sound of the voice, the woman stepped aside like a stronghold door swinging partially open. I was obliged to squeeze through the narrow gap between the doorpost and her forbidding chest. The doctor was Prussian. I could not have been more relieved. And if I was eager to speak with him, it seemed that he was equally keen to talk with me. Had the wind changed in my favour?

It shifted again as I followed the matron into his room.

'Herr Procurator,' he greeted me, his hand closed tightly on the carved horn-handle of a surgical knife. 'What can I do for you, sir?'

I gaped in reply.

A young man was tied to the table-top by his hands and ankles. A farm labourer, I judged, from the filthy state of his shorn head and his collarless grey shirt. He looked to be no more than thirty years of age, and his trousers had been cut away. His lower left leg was the colour of the sugared swizzle-sticks that I sometimes buy for the children. The calf was fiery red, the foot bright purple, the toes a plump row of rotten black plums. Below the knee, the limb had swollen up to the size of a fisherman's over-boot.

'I . . . I had some trouble finding you,' I began to explain.

The doctor jabbed hard, and jerked downwards.

'I'll be with you in a moment,' he said.

A terrible stench engulfed the room, together with a scream that was barely human. Blood gushed, surprisingly rich and red in colour. Oily green pus came oozing out of the wound, thick and dripping, like warm lard.

The screaming died away in a dead faint.

Immediately, I felt the fish in my stomach begin to swim upwards.

But none of it made the least impression on the surgeon. To the sight, the smell and the sounds, he was apparently immune. He worked the knife in deeper, parallel with the shin-bone, filleting quickly, peeling away the dead skin and the rotten flesh, releasing the inner contents of a limb that looked for all the world like the leg of a statue that had been carved from yellow-veined basalt.

'Flat sc.r.a.per number one, Frau Hummel,' he ordered briskly, without looking up.

The lady stepped over, picked an instrument up by the blade and laid the bone handle in his outstretched left palm with a mild slap. His thin white fingers closed around it, while his right hand held the other knife steady in the patient's leg. He slid the larger, wider blade inside the wound, then changed hands, extracting the smaller scalpel, which he gave over to the care of the lady. Then he went back the way he had come, working up from the ankle to the knee, opening and widening the incision.

'What were you saying, sir?' he muttered through his teeth, as more blood and pus came spurting out. The lady deftly dropped the used knife into a gla.s.s jar, then held up a large sponge of torn rags to absorb the noxious fluxes.

The stench was now intolerable.