A Visible Darkness Part 28

Erika lifted her head to a German voice. Her long matted hair fell away from her face. She was filthy. Filthy and bruised, I corrected myself. Sweat had gathered in the wrinkled folds of her skin, then evaporated away in the sweltering heat of the dungeon, leaving a residue of grime in clinging black lines.

'Have you come to help me, sir?' she asked Gurten reached through the bars and took her hand. The gesture made her gasp. Then, tears trickled down her sooty cheeks, leaving channels of white skin which converged at the point of her chin. Her bloodshot eyes fixed on his like two tiny b.a.l.l.s of opaque gla.s.s. Her expression was a contorted mixture of hope and terror.

'What . . . what will happen to me?'

'They may decide to hang you,' he breathed in a soothing undertone.

His cruelty robbed me of breath. And yet, I realised what he was doing. Erika was a gift of Destiny. We had to use her fear of mortal punishment to our own advantage.

'You were carrying amber when they caught you,' I said, stepping close to the bars. 'The French will make an example of you to warn off the others. And yet,' I added, as if it were an afterthought, 'I may just be able to loose the hangman's rope from round your neck.'

No female has been hanged for illegal possession of amber since the days of Frederick the Great, though there are still gallows set at regular intervals along the coast, and the coast road, to remind potential thieves of the seriousness of the offence. The great King Frederick would have hanged a child. The French would not.

But Erika did not know that.

She looked up. A fountain of terror seemed to surge through her soul. She was unable to speak. A whimper, a shudder, a burst of silent tears-she was not capable of anything else.

'How much amber were you carry ing?' I asked, waiting for the storm to subside.

'Just a few bits,' she replied between sobs. Her eyes blazed suddenly into mine. 'Not so big as the piece that you had, sir!'

I reached into my pocket, pulled out Kati Rodendahl's piece of amber, and held it up to Erika. I remembered her frenzy in the tunnel, the first time that I met her. 'This one, you mean?'

The child's hand shot out between the bars and tried to grab it from me. Despite the fact that she was in a cage, that piece still had a strong power over her.

'Not so fast,' I said, pulling back, playing lightly with the amber, throwing it up and down, catching it in my palm. 'Now, if you were to tell me what I want to know . . .'

Who was crueller, Gurten, who had let her believe that the French would hang her, or myself, pretending to offer her what she was obsessed with?

She sobbed no more, waiting to hear what I would say.

'You told me that you knew Kati Rodendahl,' I began. 'What about Ilse Bruen? A girl named Annalise? Or Megrete? Did you know them, as well?'

'I knew the name of Kati. You told me she was dead,' the girl replied. 'I may well know them all, but I don't know names. I never ask them what they call themselves. They don't tell me neither. I just do business with them . . .'

She looked up, eyes wide with alarm. 'Are they all dead, sir?'

I ignored her question.

'Which business are you talking of?' I asked.

Despite being locked in a cage, the child had not lost her spirit.

'Don't play the innocent with me, sir,' she snapped. 'You know what those girls do. And what I do, too. I am always looking for girls who are strong and tall.'

'Why them?'

I tossed the nugget in the air again.

'They work far out from the sh.o.r.e, sir. That's where the best amber lies these days. The amber that I need . . .'

'What do you mean?' I interrupted.

'Large lumps of purest amber with big insects in them. Like that one in your hand.'

I held the amber up to the light, saying as matter-of-factly as I could, 'I asked you once. Now, I ask you again. Would those girls bring pieces like this one to you?'

'They might,' she said.

'Two girls stole relics from the Church of the Saviour,' I pressed on. 'Amber relics. The sort of amber you said you need. What can you tell me about that theft?'

The lines in her face seemed to harden, her eyes seemed to drift out of focus.

'Someone finally did it!' she exclaimed, but then the smile froze stiff on her lips. 'You are not accusing me, sir, are you? I know nothing about that robbery. I did not have a thing to do with it.'

'But you knew about the trea sure,' Gurten put in.

'Everyone in Nordcopp knows about Spener's amber. I have seen those pieces. Before the French came here. They are similar to that one, there,' she said and pointed to the amber in my hand. 'Full to bursting with big, fat insects. The sort of piece that everyone is looking for. Anyone could have stolen those relics. But I don't know the names, I swear it, sir!'

'Anyone?' I muttered to myself.

Ilse? Kati? Annalise? Megrete? Which two were the thieves? Had two women been killed, or were the victims four?

'Let's see how much you really know,' I said, shrugging my bag from my shoulder, unlatching the strap which held it closed, taking out my sketch-book. I flicked through the pages looking for a drawing I had made of Kati Rodendahl. Not the detailed sketch I had made of her mutilated face, but a fanciful reconstruction based on guessing at the shape and form of the skin and fat which might have overlain the bone structure of her face. I had learnt this skill from Aaron Jacob, a Jewish scholar living in Lotingen, who had helped me to rea.s.semble a crushed skeleton during the Gottewald investigation. This time, of course, I had based the drawing on my own unaided intuition.

I held the alb.u.m close to the bars.

'Have you ever seen this girl before?' I asked her.

Erika nodded twice. 'A familiar face,' she said. 'I've seen her in town any number of times. She sold amber. But not to me alone.'

I wondered what she would make of the gutted remains I had examined on the table in the company of Col o nel les Halles.

'I repeat. Have you ever heard her called by the name of Annalise or Megrete?'

Erika shook her head. 'You still don't believe me, sir? I don't know what she was called,' she said flatly. I had the feeling that she would have liked to help me. By helping me, she would be doing herself a favour, after all.

I turned some more leaves, skipping over the pages showing what the killer and the pigs had done to Ilse Bruen, then I held my alb.u.m up again. In this sketch, Ilse's face was relatively intact, though her throat was not. I was careful to cover the bottom third of the page with my hand before I showed it to Erika.

'What about this one?'

She nodded again.

'She brought me one or two good pieces.'

'No names, I imagine, while you were dealing with her?'

'I cannot help you,' the child replied. 'But tell me, sir,' she whispered excitedly, her eyes sparkling at the thought of such a heist. 'Did the thieves get all of Spener's collection?'

'Three pieces at the most,' I said.

'And they did not bring them to me,' she muttered. There was anger in her voice, as if those pieces should have been hers by right.

'If not you,' said Gurten, stepping forward, 'who would buy such items?'

'Someone who would cure me if I brought him amber of such quality . . .'

Her voice ran down like a clockwork automaton. Perhaps she saw the smile on my face, and realised that she had led me unwittingly where I wanted to go.

'Who is that person, Erika?' I asked.

Frau Hummel opened the front door at the second knock.

This time, she made no attempt to hinder my entrance. Instead, she glanced at Gurten enquiringly, as if to ask him who he was, or what he wanted. Obviously, she ought to have remembered me. And yet, it was to Gurten that she spoke. As if he were the magistrate, and I were his junior.

'What's your business with the doctor?' she asked.

'I have come to speak with him,' I said.

Frau Hummel continued to stare at Gurten. She might have been mutely asking his advice. Should she answer me, or not? I was not surprised by this att.i.tude. Hans Pastoris, Bylsma, and now the doctor's helper. All the Prussians in Nordcopp seemed to view me as a threat, while clearly Johannes Gurten was not. I was the one that they could not trust. If they could avoid speaking to me directly, they did so.

Dr Heinrich was not amputating legs that day.

He looked up from a large blue bowl in which his arms were fully immersed. A white linen handkerchief covered his nose, so that only his eyes were visible. The smell which issued from the jar was so very strong, it filled the whole house. I had felt it washing over me, the instant the house keeper opened the door, and I recalled it from my previous visit, though it had not been so pervasive on that occasion. Now, it stuck in my throat like a piece of bread that was too stale to swallow.

'I am making casts,' he growled, as Frau Hummel led us into the room.

Seeing that she was not alone, he stood up and immediately clamped the lid onto the bowl. He slipped the mask from his face, wiped his hands on his brown ap.r.o.n, and came to meet us. His behaviour, however, was the exact opposite of the lady's. Dr Heinrich spoke to me, and me alone, as if Johannes Gurten were suddenly invisible.

And Gurten, in his turn, ignored the doctor.

Drawn like a moth to a flame, my a.s.sistant fluttered to the wall at the far end of the room, where half a dozen plaster casts had been hung up to dry in the bright sunlight which entered from the rear garden.

'Do you cure your patients' ills with these?' he asked.

The tone of his voice was sharp and rude. I was even more surprised by it, I think, than Dr Heinrich was.

Heinrich turned in his direction, a bellicose expression on his face.

I stepped between them.

'The question to be answered is more precise, Dr Heinrich,' I said.

He stared at me for a moment.

'Which question is that?' he asked.

'I want to know the name of the illness for which you are treating Erika Linder.'

23.

'THE ITALIANS HAVE a name for what you have just described. They call them stravaganze,' Gurten sneered.

The two men had taken an instant dislike to one another, but I made no attempt to curb Gurten's rudeness. When fighting c.o.c.ks set to, they often show their true colours. If Gurten could do what I had failed to do, that is, draw blood, and provoke Dr Heinrich into speaking his mind, then I would benefit from the fracas.

What I could not understand was the reason for their animosity.

Heinrich seemed to be the only man in Nordcopp who found Johannes Gurten irritating. While the physician was attempting to explain what was wrong with Erika, Gurten interrupted him on several occasions.

His questions were rude, his tone impatient, but still I did not intervene.

'That is not a scientific definition,' Dr Heinrich replied. His voice was mild, but his meaning was not. 'Your words reek of travelling circuses, bears in chains, the public exhibition of what is rare or unusual in Nature. Certainly, Erika Linder would find employment in such a place, but as I am a doctor, I view her situation differently. I aim to study her. In medical circles, we speak of such beings as lusus naturae, from whom a great deal may be learnt.'

'What exactly are you talking of?' I asked him.

'Erika Linder is a rare medical phenomenon,' he explained, turning to face me, showing his back to Gurten. 'I have examined her many times. When she first appeared in Nordcopp, I could not believe my luck. She was ten years old at the time, but she had already stopped growing.' Heinrich looked me straight in the eye. 'That was all of twelve years ago.'

For an instant, I thought that he was joking at my expense.

'Not a child?' I murmured, glancing from the serious expression on Heinrich's face to Gurten's even sterner mask.

'A twenty-two-year-old child, if you like,' Dr Heinrich went on. 'That is her chronological age. Physically, she would be cla.s.sified as a dwarf, but that is not the end of her medical condition.' He sighed out loud, as if it caused him pain. 'Her skin, as you may have noticed, is folded and wrinkled. The bones of her spine and legs are bowed and brittle. Were it not for her undeveloped face and diminutive size, I'd have said that she was in her late sixties.'

He pa.s.sed his hand across his forehead, and looked away. His lack of reaction to the mutilation of the amber-gatherers had surprised me greatly; his pa.s.sionate disquietude when he spoke of Erika disturbed me even more.

'Her blood is thin, her complexion pale. It is as if a cold wind is blowing through her, day after day. It is drying her out, icing her up, stiffening her joints and cracking her bones. And as you know, Herr Stiffeniis, the aged die.'

I thought only of Erika's vitality. The fierce grasp of her hand on my shirt. Her childlike insistence that I take notice of her strength.

'Is there no cure?'

'Of course there isn't!' the doctor snapped.

'And yet,' I flung back at him, 'you promised that you would cure her.'

'Medicine is a cruel art,' the doctor stated flatly 'Paracelsus coined the phrase, I believe. We often say what we hope, rather than what we know, to be true. I encouraged her to come here, so that I might chart the progress of the disease. I even thought I might be able to help her. The science of teratology is slowly making progress . . .'

'What is that?' I asked.

'The study of monsters,' Gurten replied. 'Erika Linder is a perfect example, is she not, Herr Doctor?'

'Erika is one in a million,' Heinrich replied, his eyes sparkling with excitement. 'One in many millions, I believe. Certainly, she is unique in Prus sia. In the whole of Eu rope, too, perhaps. Could I ignore what Fate had casually thrown in my path? I am a scientist . . .'