HS01 - Critique of Criminal Reason (28 page)

‘Nothing has been removed, I hope?’

‘No, sir. We were told to wait for you.’

This phrase was uttered between gritted teeth, as if the harshness of the cold and the length of time he had been required to wait had turned to harsh resentment against my person.

‘Let no one pass,’ I said sharply. ‘Except for Sergeant Koch, my assistant. He should be here soon.’

I had no idea where Koch’s hunt for Herr Lutbatz, the haberdasher, might have taken him, but I was certain that he would appear at the scene once he learnt what had happened. And I wished to have him there at my side. His experience, company and sound good sense would help me in the examination that I was about to undertake. My heart skipped a beat as I caught my first glimpse of the dark form huddled on the ground, and noticed at the same time the imprint of a man’s shoe frozen in the ice. It bore a distinctive cross-cut…

Since that day, I have oftentimes asked myself whether Emanuel Swedenborg somehow touched upon a truth when he described the secret language of the dead. Now, I know for a fact that it exists. But then, I was incapable of translating the cold, silent mouthings into words. That night, I clearly heard the murmurings of the mysterious energy that Swedenborg tells us every departed soul transmits to the living.

Moving closer to the corpse, half-stumbling in a state of mounting anxiety which suddenly seized upon me, I was unable to swallow.

The young gendarme saluted and took a step backwards.

‘Herr Procurator? I am glad you’ve come, sir,’ he said with evident relief. The lantern in his left hand cast a sparkling aureola of dancing light on the packed blue ice of the pavement.

‘Hold up your light,’ I said. ‘I wish to see the body.’

He closed the shutter with a sharp, metallic click, directing the narrow beam of yellow light against the high, brick wall which ran the length of the street. The dead man was kneeling on the ground, head bent forward on his chest, his right shoulder resting hard up against the wall. I stopped short, that question thudding in my head like a hammer beating heavily on an anvil.

‘Draw close!’ I cried sharply.

The soldier’s teeth were chattering loudly. Little more than a lad, he was frightened. How long had he been standing there alone, waiting for me to come, not daring to look at the dark shape pressed against the wall in case the murderer emerged from the shadows and struck again?

As I drew near, a traveller’s tale I had read flashed into my mind. It concerned the members of a mystic Asiatic sect, who believed that the souls of the dead lingered near the corpse until the moment of burial. I seemed to hover above the body kneeling there in the street wrapped in a glittering mantle, just like the one that…

Falling down on my knees on the frozen stones, I found myself staring hopelessly into the lifeless face of Amadeus Koch. His mouth gaped, as if he had attempted to shout for help, his eyes wide open in a startled flash of realisation. I knew there would be a tiny pinprick at the base of his skull. My thoughts began to rush in a maelstrom of guilt and regret, blood swooshing loudly in my ears and throbbing painfully at my temples.

Kant’s cloak. My cloak. The cloak I had loaned to Koch…

Whom had the killer intended to strike: Professor Immanuel Kant? Me? Or had he chanced upon Koch by accident? I had to lean against the wall for fear of fainting, paralysed with horror, the muscles in my arms and legs as stiff and rigid as they were bereft of strength. Had the murderer mistaken his man?

As the cold penetrated my knees, the words Professor Kant had spoken earlier returned to plague me: ‘Where is that cloak I gave you?’ Had he somehow foreseen what would come to pass? Had he abandoned the high ground of Logic for the murky paths of Divination? Had Science led Kant to a conclusion that I myself could never have imagined? Was this the cause of his indisposition?

I remained some time in this bewildered state, kneeling beside the lifeless corpse of my assistant. Koch’s eyes were twisted upwards and to the left, as if he had had an intuition an instant before the blow was struck. A film of ice had solidified the liquid surface of those sightless orbs. The lamplight flashed in a bewitching illusion of Life.

‘Are you all right, sir?’ a voice behind me asked.

The young soldier leaned forward with his torch, the light and shadows playing mercilessly across Koch’s face. The sergeant seemed to live and breathe again.

‘Herr Procurator,’ he said. ‘This man is holding something in his fist.’

With as much gentle care as I could summon, I introduced my forefinger inside Koch’s clenched palm and prised his frozen fingers back. A bronze ring dropped to the ground with a clink and rolled away. The bait. Koch had exposed his neck to the murderer in Sturtenstrasse while picking up a bauble. Muttering a prayer, I asked his forgiveness as I rifled through his pockets and extracted all the objects that a cautious man carries around with him. A fine linen handkerchief, a house key, a couple of thaler notes, and a piece of paper that had been carefully folded and folded upon itself until it formed a square no larger than a snuff-box. Equally carefully, for fear of tearing it, I unfolded the sheet of paper and held it close to the lamp.

In all that I have written so far, I have endeavoured to lay bare the facts alone, to avoid weighing one detail more heavily than any other. It seemed to be the most objective method of describing the slow progress that my investigation made, and it provides the true sequence of events by which the affair in Königsberg clarified itself to the point at which I can give a true account of the matter. But now, I must allow my heart to speak for once. I must, for my head had no part in it.

As I read what was written on that paper, something died inside me. For an infinity of frozen time, I held my breath, my heart battering and flailing painfully within the confines of my breast while I examined that note and saw the asterisk that only Sergeant Koch could have made, the rest written out in a hand not his.

The note reported the complete list of shops and private persons who had purchased fabrics and needles for knitting and embroidery. It must have been supplied by the man from whom Koch’s deceased wife had purchased such things. I write it out word for word as I read it there in the Sturtenstrasse:

The list went on, but I had stopped at a large asterisk imprinted halfway down the page like a royal seal. The item reported was the following: ‘6 whalebone needles, size 8, for the beading of oiled tapestry wool’. Next to it was written the name of the purchaser. It was the only male name on the list.

I read the item again and again, spelling out the letters one by one like a child learning the alphabet on his first unhappy day at dame school. Like the puzzled boy, I had to conclude that the letter ‘K’ was truly a K, that the letter ‘A’ followed it, an ‘N’ came next, and that the ‘T’ which ended the name was the vilest letter in the whole alphabet. I chained the letters together to form the name of the person who had purchased those lethal ivory needles from Herr Roland Lutbatz.

A biting easterly wind whistled up the hill from the nearby port and fish market, sweeping away the fog in rolling waves. High above my head, windowpanes rattled and shutters shook. Somewhere close by, a heavy metal gate groaned on its hinges, clanging shut, then opening again, with every fresh gust that came charging in from the Baltic Sea.

Alone in Sturtenstrasse with the lifeless body of Amadeus Koch, I started nervously at every sound. Frost formed crackling in my hair, my body seemed to be turning into stone, but only one thought possessed my mind: I would not desert him again. I had let Koch go his own way that afternoon, and his life had been stolen away. As I stared down with awe and nervous fright at the lifelorn body kneeling against the wall on the frozen pavement, I could only ask myself whether Sergeant Koch had understood what was happening as the needle bit home. Had he recognised the face of his killer?

‘Herr Stiffeniis?’

I spun around. In the wailing wind I had heard no one approach.

A man in uniform towered above me. Another soldier even taller than the first, a dark scarf wrapped around his face, came slithering up the hill, dragging a long, wooden box over the ice and snow as if it were a sled. I recognised those men in a flash. I stretched to my full height, but I was still dwarfed by Corporal Mullen and his Magyar companion, Walter.

‘What do you want?’ I asked.

‘That body’s for the cellar, sir. Orders of Doctor Vigilantius…’

I did not wait to hear the rest. A tidal wave of resentment swept over me.

‘He will not touch
this
body!’ My voice bounded back off the stone wall and echoed down the empty street. My stiff limbs quivered with violent emotion. A sort of desperate hysteria, a cocktail of hopelessness and guilt, possessed me. ‘There’ll be no more dismembering here. Vigilantius has gone from Königsberg. He’ll not be coming back! Koch must be buried whole. In Christian fashion. I want him taken to a church.’

The two giants exchanged glances.

‘There’s a chapel in the Fortress, sir,’ Corporal Mullen suggested. ‘Being as it’s the only dry room in the place, they use it…’

‘I don’t care what they use it for,’ I countered sharply. ‘If it’s been consecrated, I intend to see Koch’s body laid out there. I’ll pay for your trouble.’

Mullen’s dark eyes glistened. His companion grunted.

‘We’ll see what we can do,’ the Corporal replied. His tone suggested that my whim would cost God knew what effort to satisfy. ‘Now, let’s be getting the poor, unfortunate gentleman into the box, shall we, Walter?’

Rigor mortis and the freezing wind had fixed Koch’s body in the kneeling position in which he had been found. Ice had formed on that waterproof cloak, and the soldiers struggled without success to find a hand-hold on the glistening material, their clumsy fingers slipping and fumbling.

‘Strip that cloak from his back,’ I ordered.

I must have sounded wild and heartless, for Mullen let out an excited hoot.

‘Strip his cloak off? What for, sir? He’s stiff as a board already. It won’t come off that easy.’

The waxen fabric of Professor Kant’s cape – the cause of Koch’s murder, as I believed – encased the corpse like a gleaming winding-sheet. ‘I’ll not have Koch buried in that garment,’ I insisted peevishly. ‘Get – it –
off
– him!’

Mullen stared at me for a moment.

‘Here, give us your knife, Walter,’ he said with a groan. ‘We’ll need to lay him on his flank, sir. There’s no other way to go about the business.’

‘Do it!’ I snapped, watching as they obeyed my instructions.

The blade was short but sharp, and Mullen made a slicing laceration from the collar down to the hem. Then, having freed one side, they rolled the body over onto the other flank, and exerted themselves to release the sergeant’s arms from the sleeves. Kicking the ruined remnants of the cloak aside, the soldiers lifted up the heavy corpse with some difficulty by the stiff arms and bent legs.

‘Go gently,’ I urged, as they set him down on his back inside the box.

‘We’ll have to straighten him out,’ Mullen stated flatly, ‘or that lid won’t go on.’

‘What are you waiting for?’

They pressed down hard on his knees, first the left, then the right, and the joints gave way with a sharp crack. It was a heartrending sound, yet my spirits lifted a trifle, seeing Koch laid at rest, and in his own clothes. For one instant, I allowed myself to believe that life might return, that my faithful assistant would sit up, breathe and talk to me once more.

‘Can I close it, sir?’ Mullen asked.

I took one long last look, then nodded.

Walter put the lid on, covering Amadeus Koch for ever. Then Mullen slammed home half a dozen nails, and we prepared to march away through the dark, empty streets. News of the murder would keep the townspeople behind their doors more surely than any curfew. Mullen and Walter went first, pulling their heavy sled with vigour, swishing and bumping through the ice and the slush. I followed close behind them, the gendarmes who had discovered the body bringing up the rear.

Along the way, we were obliged to pass the entrance to the lane which ran alongside the rear of Professor Kant’s house. A feeble light glimmered behind the curtains of the window of his bedchamber on the first floor.

‘Go faster, Mullen,’ I urged, looking dead ahead, wishing to be far away from the sight of that window and that house as quickly as possible. The paper that I had found in the sergeant’s pocket weighed on my conscience like a ton of lead: ‘6 whalebone needles, size 8, for the beading of oiled tapestry wool – Herr Kant’.

A show of bustle was made, but the procession advanced no faster than it had gone before, and we reached our destination no sooner. As we came in sight of the Fortress, I strode on ahead and ordered the gate to be swung open to receive the party.

‘Corpse for Procurator Stiffeniis,’ Mullen snarled at the watch as he and Walter passed inside. The sentinels crossed themselves and looked shyly away. One man half-turned and touched his crotch superstitiously, the way soldiers do when they see a coffin.

‘Has he got a wife, sir?’ Mullen asked, drawing up with the box in front of a low building on the far side of the courtyard. ‘She’ll surely want to watch over him this night.’

‘I’ll keep the wake,’ I said. ‘There’s no one else.’

Mullen nodded to Walter, who muttered something back in that strange language of his, then they pushed open the chapel door, and began to haul the coffin inside. I followed them in. Then, a lamp was brought, and others hanging from the walls were lit from it. Inside the church, everything glistened. Pyramids of large silvery cannonballs and chain-shot had been built in orderly piles as tall as a man down the central aisle. Along one wall, artillery pieces were stacked one on top of another like glossy black cheroots in a tobacco shop. The far wall was blocked by gun carriages stacked end to end. An odour of rats, of rat poison and decaying vermin stifled the air. Large canvas maps covered the vast walls. A plain wooden crucifix hung by a long chain from the roof. There was no other religious symbol in the place.

‘This is the regimental chapel,’ Mullen confided in a whisper. ‘I tried to tell you before, sir. They keep the arms and explosives stored in here. The rest of the Fortress is as damp as a washerwoman’s mop. We can set the coffin in that space over there, sir. They shifted the altar out to make more room, but the place is holy. Will it do you, Herr Procurator?’

I did not trouble to answer. Searching in my pouch, I found a tenthaler note and handed it over. ‘Drink something strong tonight in memory of the man who lies here, Mullen. Bring a pastor at dawn. We’ll bury him then. Send Stadtschen to me on your way out.’

Corporal Mullen saluted, Walter clicked his heels, the door closed behind them, and I listened to the sound of their voices laughing and joking as they faded away in the distance. Alone in the chapel, I moved past the stacks of cannon and the heaps of munitions, and knelt down beside the coffin. I placed my hand on the cold wood, closed my eyes, and began to pray to God, imploring Him to welcome the soul of Amadeus Koch with open arms. Even more earnestly, I begged the Sergeant to forgive me. I had failed to understand the immediacy of the danger in which I had placed him. I have never forgiven myself for giving him that cloak. When my little ones kneel down beside their cots each night, join their tiny hands and say their simple prayers, they invoke the name of Amadeus Koch, as I have taught them to do in memory of the man who lost his life while innocently trying to help their father.

Behind me, the door-latch scraped and footsteps sounded sharply on the stone flags. I turned and composed myself as Stadtschen marched into the chapel. He glanced at the coffin for a moment, then looked at me, a puzzled expression on his broad red face.

‘Herr Procurator?’

‘It’s Koch,’ I said, and his name died on my tongue.

Stadtschen took off his cap and bowed his head towards the coffin.

‘I want you to find a person for me,’ I said, breaking in on his respectful silence. ‘The man’s name is Lutbatz. Roland Lutbatz. His testimony may be vital for the investigation.’

‘Where do you want me to start, sir?’

‘He must be staying somewhere. He’s not a local man. A cheap hotel, or a lodging-house, perhaps.’

‘I’ll send the watch out.’

‘Jump to it,’ I said. ‘He could leave town at any moment. Herr Lutbatz deals in haberdashery, supplying shops and emporia here in Königsberg.’

Stadtschen frowned. ‘Haber-
what
did you say, sir?’

‘Dashery, Stadtschen. Cotton, needles, thread, that sort of thing. People selling such items might know where he sleeps.’

‘I’ve got an idea where to start,’ the officer replied, to my surprise.

‘Your wife?’ I asked.

A light twinkled in Stadtschen’s eyes. I took it to be a sign of amusement, though I would soon be obliged to revise my opinion. ‘Not likely, sir! There’s an old biddy that lives here inside the Fortress. She does…well, she offers various services for the soldiers of the regiment.’

‘Services?’ I returned, unable to suppress the note of sarcasm in my voice.

‘Not what you are thinking, sir,’ Stadtschen replied. ‘She’s long past that! She washes, mends and sews for bachelors who need a helping hand. She might well know the man you’re looking for.’

‘Inside the Fortress, you say? There can’t be many women living here.’

‘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 reassuring 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 cannonballs 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 sluts.

‘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 Königsberg, I’ll tell ye that again. He’ll not strike here, soldier, ye can rest assured 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 mass. But what were these birds doing in the Fortress?