Critique Of Criminal Reason Part 32

'None at all, just her, sir,' Stadtschen confirmed.

I glanced towards the coffin. I had not intended to abandon my vigil so soon. But my most immediate duty was to the living. Who, better than Koch, could understand my motives? He would not feel abandoned in the Fortress chapel, surrounded by munitions, maps and firearms. He would hear the trumpet sounding as the guard was changed that night, the measured crash of heavy boots on the cobbled square-ground, the rea.s.suring shout of orders, the rush to obey. His life had been lived among such things. I had brought him home, for he had no other home to go to.

Five minutes later, Stadtschen and I were walking quickly through a dingy honeycomb of towering stone walls and cluttered paved courtyards. We were in the medieval core of the Fortress, which seemed to accommodate all the trades and the services that make a barracks function. Each separate courtyard seemed to proclaim its trade by the odour it gave off: horses here, kitchens there, stinking of boiling meat; leather shops and bootmakers; bakers' furnaces; the foundry full of smoke and steam and coal-dust where shot and cannonb.a.l.l.s were forged. It was a world within itself, it seemed to grow darker and become more odoriferous the further in we went, stinking of open latrines, vile excrement, and finally, total abandonment. In the darkest shadows, grey rats skipped squeaking from beneath our feet.

'Good work, Stadtschen,' I commented, as we stopped before a rotting door which had not seen paint since the coronation day of King Frederick the Great, or perhaps even before.

'This is the place, sir,' he confided, pounding at the flimsy wooden panels with force enough to smash them to matchwood.

A wizened old woman appeared almost immediately, peeping out, eyeing the white double-sash and the chevron stripes on Stadtschen's uniform. She might have been ninety years of age, or a hundred years older. There was so little light, it was impossible to tell, her complexion black with ingrained dirt, wrinkles engraved in her dewlapped cheeks and forehead like those of a stone gargoyle. Her ragged clothing seemed to cling to her like a skin. Ancient brown sacking for a dress, her bonnet of the same rough material, all stiff with grime. No doubt, she stank to high heaven, but the stench that issued from her dwelling was strong enough to overmatch the filthiest of ancient s.l.u.ts.

'I was expecting His Excellency,' she said, peering up at Stadtschen.

'We've other business on our hands, mother,' he replied. The tone of his voice surprised me greatly. This giant had been entrusted with the watch, he was responsible for Section D of the prison with murderers, cannibals, thieves and forgers under his command. He ruled them all with an iron fist, yet his voice was soft, even deferential, when he addressed himself to this old hag.

'Three times I done it. Three! Allus comes out the same,' she muttered, her voice fading away to nothing. She looked up suddenly and said fiercely to no one: 'It will not be Konigsberg, I'll tell ye that again. He'll not strike here, soldier, ye can rest a.s.sured of that!'

I glanced at the ancient, then back at Officer Stadtschen. Neither said a word, their eyes locked in silent communion, as if they understood each other perfectly well.

'What is she talking of, Stadtschen?' I asked.

I repeated the question more loudly when neither answered, and a terrific noise exploded in the farthest, deepest, darkest corner of the room. The flurried beating of wings, the cries of birds, many birds, a whole flock of them, chattering away excitedly like hungry starlings gathering in a wood as the winter comes on, before migrating in a swirling black ma.s.s. But what were these birds doing in the Fortress?

The woman pointed a gnarled and twisted finger into Stadtschen's face.

'Tell that b.o.o.by not to scare my babes!' she screeched. 'His Excellency won't stand for it!'

Suddenly, she waddled away into the room, moving through the darkness like a fish through water, the door swinging open on its hinges.

'Come in,' she called over her shoulder. 'See for yourself, soldier. You can tell the General from me.'

Stadtschen stepped forward eagerly, like a hunting-dog that had spotted a falling grouse.

'What's going on?' I said, catching at him, holding him back by the sleeve. 'Let's waste no time. I intend to trace Roland Lutbatz tonight.'

Stadtschen snapped to attention, as if he had awakened from a trance.

'Her name is Margreta Lungrenek, sir,' he confided. 'She knows the man you're after, sir. I'd swear it...'

'Tell him what I do!' the woman shouted from the darkness of the room. Old she might have been, but her hearing was not impaired. 'I'll not invite ye in again!'

'Five minutes, no more,' I snapped, stepping into the room, holding up my lantern. 'Lutbatz, or we leave. I hold you responsible.'

In the receding gloom, I could just make out a pile of wicker cages stacked one above the other against the far wall. There were dozens of these cages, each one stuffed full of birds of all colours, shapes and sizes. I recognised sparrows, blue t.i.ts, pigeons, ravens, starlings, blackbirds, but there were more, far more, a hooded barn owl among them.

'Herr General loves 'em,' the woman clucked, waving her hand in a sweeping gesture towards the cages. 'He knows plain truth when it's laid out before his eyes.'

'She'd fallen on hard times, sir,' Stadtschen whispered. 'Her eyesight's failing. Can't hardly hold a needle no more. Then, the General heard about her talents. He gave her shelter in the Fort...'

'General Katowice?' I asked, astounded. What had he to do with this old woman and her winged menagerie? I had taken Mistress Lungrenek's references to the garrison commander as nothing more than the ragings of folly.

'She sees the future,' Stadtschen continued. 'His Excellency won't make a single move these days without consulting her. He's obsessed with the thought of Napoleon invading the city. Since these killings started, he's convinced himself that it's the work of French infiltrators. The General is a great admirer of Julius Caesar, sir. He swears them Romans never went to war without consulting people like her.'

'Aruspices,' I murmured. 'That was the name for them.'

Stadtschen stared at me wide-eyed. 'It's true, then?' he murmured.

The notion of Katowice trusting in omens and believing oracles was disconcerting in the extreme. If the commander of the Fortress and defender of the city placed his undivided trust in divination, all was lost. I recalled the energetic figure, the determination of speech, the directness of manner, which had seemed so rea.s.suring on my own arrival at the Fortress. Was his ebullient state of mind induced by knowing that his forces were strong, his strategy secure? Or was it all bl.u.s.ter, based on the visions of a mad old woman?

'Look here!' she snapped, moving away from the cages, stooping over a small, round table in the darkest corner. A large, black bird, a dead carrion crow, had been laid out on the wooden surface. Its curving sabre of a beak hung loose, its plumage glistened red with blood, and the table had been strewn with its guts. The carca.s.s had been arranged inside a circle of letters chalked apparently at random on the wooden surface. The innards had been ripped from the bird's breast, and arranged all around the body. The beak pointed one way, the rigid wings stretched out on either side. For all the world, it looked as if the bird had been crucified.

'Note the beak,' the ancient whispered, placing her hands on the table, leaning close and breathing in the stench. 'It points to this letter here. The wings indicate these two vowels. An' see the claws! That's the place, there, sirs! Jena! It's far from Konigsberg. That's where General Katowice should be. Not here, messin' about!'

She peered short-sightedly at Stadtschen, a thin knowing smile on her lips.

I realised that I ought to have been chasing hot on the heels of Herr Lutbatz and the killer of Koch, but that woman's claim to read the future in the entrails of birds p.r.i.c.ked my new-gained curiosity. If I had learnt anything from Immanuel Kant regarding my experience with Vigilantius, it was to pursue the light, even if it were nothing more than a pinpoint glimmer at the end of a long, dark tunnel.

'I'll tell him, mother,' Stadtschen said, his voice quick, nervous. 'I promise you, I'll tell him straight. But Procurator Stiffeniis has a question for you. Just answer him, then we'll be on our way.'

'Do you know a man named Roland Lutbatz?' I asked.

'Aye, sir, I do,' she replied quickly. 'I'd be lost without him. I know him like I know my birds. I saw him yesterday.'

'And where was that?'

'The Blue Unicorn, sir. That's where he stays when he's in Konigsberg.'

'That tavern's near the Ferkel bridge,' Stadtschen explained. 'On foot, it's five minutes from here, sir.'

'I know far cheaper, if you want their names,' Margreta Lungrenek offered, as I thrust a thaler into her hand and made to leave.

'G.o.d curse you, sir!' the woman screeched, throwing the coin to the ground and rubbing her hand as if she had just been scorched. 'There's a presence hovering over you!'

'Now, mother,' Stadtschen warned her, his courage coming back as we prepared to leave. 'Watch that tongue of yours!'

'The Devil knows his own,' she hissed back, gathering her clenched fists close to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, as if to fight the malignant presence off. 'I knows a troubled soul when I sees one. Don't I just!'

'A troubled soul?' I echoed, despite my wiser instincts.

My heart thrashed in my chest and rose up into my throat in a choaking, suffocating ball as the ageless one fixed me with her bright unseeing eyes.

'Your father's dead,' she said slowly. 'Dead and buried, but not at rest. He rises from the tomb by light o' moon, but he'll rest soon,' she chanted in a strange singsong voice.

I turned to Stadtschen quickly.

'This wise dame has told us all we need to know. Let's go.'

Outside in the courtyard, the cold, damp air was almost fresh enough to be invigorating after the suffocating pestilence inside that fetid hovel. We turned away and began to retrace our steps through the dark alleys of the Fortress in the general direction of the main gate.

'May I ask you something, sir?' Stadtschen enquired after he had walked in silence for some minutes at my side. 'General Katowice uses that old crone to see into the future, sir. And he believes her, too. One time, I asked her to read my own future life. She killed and gutted a bird, and told me lots of things that I would rather not believe, sir.'

'Such as?' I asked, glancing up at him. His face was dark, perplexed and puzzled.

'She strewed those guts on the table, like the one we just saw...'

He halted suddenly, and I was forced to stop.

'What did she see?' I asked him.

'She spoke just now of your father, sir. Is it true? Did she see the truth?'

Fear shone brightly in the soldier's eyes. He seemed to be affected by the sort of innocent fright that I had seen often enough in the eyes of my children when Lotte told them ghoulish bedtime tales of goblins and fairies, wolves and captured princesses lost in the woods. Lotte was a storyteller of awesome power, enough to frighten a child out of its wits if she chose. I had often taken her to task for the wildness of her imagination and the freeness of her tongue.

'What did you ask her, Stadtschen?'

'Oh, you know, sir!' he said, smiling with embarra.s.sment. 'The things all soldiers want to know. I asked her what would be my fate if Napoleon ever came to Prussia...'

'My father is not dead,' I cut in, carefully measuring my words. 'Nor will he be for a long time yet, I hope most sincerely. Margreta Lungrenek was wrong about my father. Totally wrong. She has no idea at all what she's talking of. Curse her ignorance! I wonder that Herr General Katowice should take such nonsense seriously.'

His face lit up like the sun bursting forth from a dark cloud, though that same cloud still hung menacingly over me.

Shortly afterwards, we left the Fortress, turned left and dived into the town. And Stadtschen was correct in his estimates. Minutes later, we emerged from the maze of alleyways near an ancient stone bridge, one of the many that crossed the River Pregel as it wound back and forth upon itself within the confines of the city. We stopped by a quay lined with heavy barges, watching the sailors smoking their pipes and chatting quietly, taking a moment to catch our breaths, then we turned towards an inn sign fanning in the wind. A blue-painted mythical creature galloped across a field of silver clouds with golden sparks flying from its hooves.

'The Blue Unicorn, sir,' he announced.

Chapter 29.

As Officer Stadtschen hauled on a bell-rope, all the church bells in the city of Konigsberg seemed to clang and chime together. Before they fell silent again, a window creaked open high above the Unicorn sign, and a pale round face peered down at us in the street.

'D'you know what time o' night it is?'

'Police,' Stadtschen yelled. 'Open up, and quick about it!'

The same fat, frightened man unbolted his door some moments later and waved us into the bar. He seemed unduly concerned to be discovered in his nightgown and bedcap. All was dark in the low-ceilinged room except for a pale glow in the chimney-place from the dying embers in the grate.

'I was asleep, sir,' the innkeeper whined, wringing his hands and looking as thoroughly guilty as I have ever seen a man who might reasonably be supposed to have done nothing criminal.

Then, Stadtschen alarmed him all the more.

'Bring the register for Herr Procurator Stiffeniis to see,' he barked.

A large leather-bound ledger was quickly laid flat on the table in front of me. I sat down and began to turn the pages, all of which were blank.

'Is this some sort of joke?' I asked, looking up. 'Is no one staying here?'

Stadtschen leaned threateningly over the shoulder of the man and hissed into his ear. 'Withholding names from the police, landlord?'

The fat man's fears became ever more visible. 'I would not dare, sir! The beadles search the town so frequently in the present situation.' He bent over the book, saying, 'With your permission, sir?'

He licked the tip of his finger and fumbled his way through the pages. 'We've had so few guests, sir. Especially in the last month. Who'd come to town to be murdered? But here we are, sir.'

He pulled back and showed me what he had found. One name was written on the page, together with a date.

'Herr Lutbatz, sir. A merchant,' he murmured. 'There's no one else staying here tonight. He's a travelling gentleman, highly respected in his trade, I'm told. A touch eccentric in his way of er...doing, and...er, dressing, but I ain't got nothing against that, sir, 'ave I?'

There was something decidedly shifty about the landlord. He seemed to be dropping hints of some sort, and I believed I had a good idea of what he might be hinting at. 'Does anyone visit him?' I asked, leaning closer.

'Well, sir,' he began nervously, 'you know how it is, sir. When a man is travelling all alone, like he is, he...well, how can I put it? He sometimes falls into company, sir. That's what I would call it. Company...There's not a great deal I can do about it. His visitors come, then they go. We have so few guests to stay these days, I tends to close a blind eye. He is alone tonight, I do know that. Said he was feeling like junk for the knacker's yard when I gave him his dinner...'

He stuttered to a halt, looking at me with a sort of pleading grimace of helplessness.

I leaned back in my chair. Women! I thought. I had been hoping that the landlord might have something to say about the customers who had recently been to visit Lutbatz.

'Do any of his customers call on him here?'

'Not this trip, sir. Times is hard in Konigsberg. For all of us.'

'I wish to have a word with this man,' I said.

'Shall I tell him to come down here, sir?'

'No,' I replied. 'I'd prefer to speak to him in the privacy of his chamber. Would you step up and tell him that I am here?'

The innkeeper wiped his damp brow with the back of his hand and let out a sigh of evident relief. Another man's trouble was no trouble at all, so long as he himself was not involved in it, it appeared. He scuttled away up the stairs, returning a minute later to say that Herr Lutbatz was waiting for me in his room.

'Shall I come up with you, Herr Procurator?' Stadtschen asked.

'I do not need a nursemaid,' I replied sharply. The truth was that I did not intend to risk making public the name that Roland Lutbatz had inscribed on his list for Sergeant Koch. 'Return to the Fortress, if you will, Stadtschen. And remind Mullen to find a priest for the funeral.'

He saluted and left, while I began to climb the stairs to the second floor, where Roland Lutbatz was hovering by his bedroom door. I saw immediately what the innkeeper had meant when he used the word 'eccentric' to describe the man. Had I stumbled by accident into a house of ill repute, the wh.o.r.es would not have been half so extravagantly dressed for bed as Herr Lutbatz was. He emerged coyly into the corridor, and smiled anxiously in welcome. His peccadillo had little to do with women, I realised. The lemon-coloured turban on his head might have been bobbing on the surface of a tropical sea. His nightgown was a rich emerald-green damask with chevron patterns in a darker weave, the silky material shimmering and undulating in the candlelight.

'Herr Procurator?' he asked, stepping nimbly to one side and bowing me into his boudoir, the air of which was richly perfumed.

'What a fright I got when the landlord knocked!' he exclaimed, pushing a chair close to the fire for me. He threw a log onto the embers, which flared up in a bright explosion of sparks, and adjusted the lemon-coloured turban on his head. 'Now, what can I do for you, sir?'

'I need to ask you some questions, Herr Lutbatz.'

The man sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace, pursed his red lips in a most exaggerated and feminine expression of alarm and began to pat himself lightly on the chest, as if to calm the rapid palpitations of his troubled heart.

'Oh, do! Please do, sir,' he replied, spreading his hands on his knees as if to brace himself. His nails were carefully cut and buffed, except for those of the little finger on each hand which curled like an eagle's talons.