HS03 - A Visible Darkness (21 page)

‘Is it so easy to escape?’ I asked.

‘It never used to be,’ she said. ‘When the French first came they were very strict. They wouldn’t let us out without a thorough search. But then . . . something changed . . .’

I could understand her prudence—she would speak, then clam up a moment later—though I found it frustrating. I could almost see the question racing though her mind. It had hampered the tongue of Pastoris, and every other Prussian that I had spoken with.

If I speak, am I putting myself in danger?

‘What changed, Edviga?’ I asked lightly.

‘The machines . . .’ she said quietly. ‘They said that they would
use machines to dig up amber. They said they’d have no further use for us. And now the machines are here. How long do you think we’ve got before they send us on our way, Herr Magistrate? Now, there is only one thing in our heads: find it while you can! Take the gift the Baltic gives. Keep those bits that are rare, or beautiful. Sell them to the highest bidder.’

‘Who offers the best prices?’ I asked.

She lowered her head, shook it slowly.

‘Don’t you want the killer to be caught, Edviga? He murdered Kati and Ilse. He’ll kill again, unless he can be stopped.’

She stared at me intently. Her eyes were mysterious liquid pools reflecting light. Her beauty was unmarred. Even by the scar on her cheek. In that instant, I would have said that such a scar was the sort of ornament every girl should have. I had seen a number of printed pictures of natives from the Pacific Ocean. It was tribal practice there, they said, to mark their women with ritual scarring to enhance their natural beauty.

‘Amber drives them out of their minds,’ she whispered. ‘Especially . . . especially when it contains something unusual. There are many buyers . . . Every man is looking for those pieces . . .’

Suddenly, she changed direction.

‘You asked me how we come and go,’ she said, and gently laughed. ‘You spoke of French patrols, French guards. They know we are smuggling amber out, and they pretend to control us, but they profit from it. The soldiers will let us through, if we pay the toll. If we smuggle, they hoard. We’re like hens outside the hen house, while wolves are waiting in Nordcopp. Now, one of them is killing.’

‘Are you saying that the killer is a Frenchman?’

‘I did not say that,’ she answered brusquely. ‘If the girls were killed inside the compound, any magistrate would know who to blame. There are only Frenchmen here, sir. But outside, it could be any man.’

While she was speaking, I was fingering the piece of amber in my pocket.

‘Kati Rodendahl had this,’ I said pulling it out, opening my hand, showing her. ‘It was found . . . hidden deep inside her body.’

Edviga took the nugget, turning it over and over. ‘Inside . . . herself?’

‘You know what I am saying,’ I said, sounding less patient than I intended.

She closed her fist around it, opened it, held the amber up to the light. ‘This is worth a fortune, sir. She must have considered herself very lucky when she found such a beauty,’ she said. She shook her head, then added: ‘Isn’t it sad? Instead of riches, she found death.’

‘Was she intending to sell it in Nordcopp, do you think?’

She sat in silence, gazing at the amber. ‘Maybe. Maybe not,’ she said after a while. ‘There could have been another reason why she had it in
that
place.’

‘What other reason could there be?’ I asked.

‘She may have learnt that she was carry ing a child,’ she said. ‘A child she did not want. She could have put this piece inside herself, hoping that the monster would eat the baby up.’

I felt a surge of revulsion. Since coming to the coast I had heard many disquieting and unpleasant things where amber was concerned. The borderline between humanity and bestiality was very fine. Often, the two worlds overlapped. Magda Ansbach had mentioned legends of the sort. Now, Edviga offered her own view. Could the women on the coast believe such horrendous tales?

‘I have a question to ask you, sir. And a favour, too. Can I?’

I nodded.

‘They say that you are married.’ Her voice was so soft, I could hardly hear it. ‘May I know the name of Frau Stiffeniis?’

This was the final impression Edviga Lornerssen left behind.

Shy, inquisitive, very vulnerable.

‘Helena,’ I said. But then, something prompted me to tell her more. ‘My wife is waiting for me at home. She is expecting a child very soon.’

‘Helena,’ she repeated, as if the name were, somehow, magical.

‘And what is this favour that you wish to ask?’

I
GAVE EDVIGA
plenty of time to escape.

Then, I followed her out into the pale grey light of dawn.

A pair of brown
Gaulisches
were standing on the top step of the hut.

My heart beat violently, my legs gave way, and I sat down heavily. Colonel les Halles had spoken of the overshoes the night before. Had he delivered them in person to my hut? Had he overheard me talking with Edviga? Had he seen her creeping from my room at dawn?

My discomfiture did not last long. Would les Halles-deny himself the pleasure of breaking in on such an intimate
tête-à-tête
? Of course he wouldn’t. Our secret was safe. I picked up the
Gaulisches
, slipped them on over my shoes, pulling the straps to tighten the leggings around my ankles and calves. Made of rough leather stitched to a thick wooden sole, they were generally worn by engineers engaged in siege warfare. They would save my shoes if I had to wade through the sewage of the pigsty, and I expected to spend the day in that unenviable condition.

I took a few trial clomping steps, and looked out to sea.

The air was a shimmering translucent haze, quite unlike the
dense fog of the day before. The vast banks of pebbles were dark and wet. The tide was at its lowest. The sea purled and lapped inside the
haf
like an old man over his pap. And floating on this tranquil pond, I caught my first glimpse of the
coq du mer
, of which les Halles was so proud. It was an exotic name for a flat-bottomed barge with a tall derrick reaching upwards. And in the smoke-like haze, I could just make out the figures of men who were working her. One of them was managing a long rudder; two more were manoeuvring a heavy anchor. As it fell with a splash, the noise echoed over the placid water.

Was les Halles himself out there?

At such a distance, it was hard to say. I strained to identify him, hoping that he was stranded in the middle of the sea. I had no wish to speak to him that morning. The colonel had already formed an opinion. A female corpse had been found in the Ansbach pigsty. Adam had murdered her. And if he had killed Ilse Bruen, he had murdered Kati Rodendahl, as well. Adam was a Prussian. It was all clear and simple, in his opinion.

A shrill trumpet sounded.

A procession was moving slowly along the beach.

I blinked, and peered harder in the weak morning light, remembering a picture in an ancient copy of Hartmann’s
Succini Prussici
in our family library. As a child, I had been puzzled by the bizarre illustrations in that book.

‘Can lobsters really walk on their tails, papa?’ I asked.

I knew what a lobster was. We had a Dutch still life of fish on the wall in the dining-room. Our lobster was a big, black creature with long, twitching feelers.

‘Those are people.’ My father laughed. ‘Though it might be better for them if they were lobsters. They work in the Baltic Sea, and the water is always cold—summer or winter. Lobsters love cold water.’

The ‘lobsters’ down on the beach below were tall, strong creatures. They strutted along the pebble shore in stiff leather uniforms which hampered their every movement. Leather breeches, thighhigh leather waders, a stout leather jerkin with a pouch in the front,
and a large leather cap. Some of them were armed with spears; others with nets attached to long poles.

At the second trumpet blast, they waded out into the water.

The ‘prodders’ began pricking at the sea-bed with their spears, the ‘catchers’ swept their nets in the waves, throwing away the weeds and rubbish, keeping any amber that they happened to find, storing it in the pouches of their waterproof clothing. Bubbles of air trapped inside the amber make it relatively buoyant in water, Hartmann wrote. The more air, he said, the better it floats. Yet the quantity of air is in inverse proportion to its commercial value. The finest-quality amber—denser material than the amber-gatherers would find—lies buried deep beneath the shingle.

Colonel les Halles intended to dig for it with his machines.

I glanced from the workers to the French barge.

Here it was, then, a vision of the industrial future in the form of the
coq du mer
; and material evidence of Prus sia’s disappearing past in the shape of the amber-girls. The amber-fishers described and drawn by Hartmann were mainly men, but in more recent times, it had become a job exclusively for women. They asked for, or accepted, less, I suppose. I watched them for some time, thinking now and then to catch a glimpse of Edviga Lornerssen. It was impossible to distinguish one girl from her neighbour. In their leather uniforms and sou’westers, any one of them could have been Edviga.

And any one of them could be the next victim.

I turned away, praying to the Lord to keep a watchful eye on those women, as I went to breakfast. To my surprise the officers’ mess was empty. Where were the French? Were they all down on the shore already? Les Halles had promised to work them hard, after all. I helped myself to a piece of bread, and a lukewarm cup of toasted corn. Five minutes later, I hurried to the gate, intending to requisition a horse and return to the Ansbach farm.

A French soldier was repairing a broken saddle beside an empty stall.

‘All gone,’ he grunted, forcing a stout needle into the leather. ‘Something important’s going on this morning. There’s not one left.’

His flat nose, the bridge collapsed, the nostrils wide and fuming, spoke all too clearly of some ravaging venereal illness.

I tied my heavy
Gaulisches
together by the laces, hung them around my neck, and began to walk along the path to Nordbarn. The weather was not so stiflingly hot as the previous day, thank God. I did not try to take the route that I had ridden the night before with Adam Ansbach as my guide. So long as I followed the rutted track, I knew that I would get there in one piece.

Eventually, I caught sight of Nordbarn.

The workshop of Pastoris was strangely silent. No whirring grindstones could be heard that morning. Had the bees abandoned the hive? As if in answer to my question, the door opened and Pastoris himself appeared on the threshold.

I stopped, waiting for him to come across and join me. If his people were up at the farm, I thought, surely he intended to join them there. He settled himself against the door-frame, instead, as if expecting me to go to him.

I raised my hand and waved.

He did not shift or reply. Even at that distance, his goitre rested on his chest like a second head. Remembering his cataracts, I wondered whether he had failed to recognise me. I took a step in his direction, intending to tell him that I would welcome his presence when the time came to interrogate Adam and Magda Ansbach. Surely, they would think of him as a reassuring old friend.

The ‘old friend’ withdrew inside his door.

I heard it slam, then the harsh rasp of metal bolts being drawn.

I recalled his protectiveness towards his employees the night before. Did he wish to shield the women from what was happening up at the farm? If he wanted to restore peace in his workshop, my presence would only remind them all of the body in the pigsty.

I turned back to the path, my mind racing ahead to the task which awaited me.

This morning, I would be obliged to make a thorough examination of the corpse. I would have to establish precisely how the girl had been murdered. And I would need to sift through the pig-slime
in search of the probable presence of a piece of amber, or some other clue.

If I did find amber, what would it signify? That both the girls were thieves? That both of them were pregnant and had attempted to rid themselves of an unwanted child by provoking a spontaneous evacuation of the foetus?

And what if I found nothing?

What if the pigs had swallowed the amber as greedily as human flesh?

I veered to the left and walked through the rough grass towards the stunted trees which marked the perimeter of the Ansbach farm. As I left the silence of the Pastoris workshop behind me, I began to distinguish a different noise, a noise that I recognised, though I was still a quarter of a mile from my destination.

Was someone doing the washing?

I might have been at home. Every Tuesday morning, Lotte piles the dirty linen into a large barrel in the kitchen by the water-pump. A layer of stockings and hose on the bottom, then a generous sprinkling of grey ashes and lye made from crushed cinders. A layer of undergarments after that, then more lye and ashes. Shirts, blouses, bed-sheets, each layer separated by ashes and lye. When the barrel is filled with water, Lotte presses down hard on a paddle that enters through a hole in the lid. Manni and Süzi often watch her as she labours. The harder she presses, the ruddier her large face grows. Which will burst first, Lotte’s cheeks or the ribs of the barrel? But what delights the children most is the sound the washing makes. Air gets trapped inside the sheets and the clothes. As she pushes downwards, it comes bursting out in an endless succession of rude noises. ‘Big farts,’ as Manni learnt to call them, from Lotte herself, who laughs out loud whenever she—that is, the washing-tub—produces them.

As I approached the Ansbach farm, the noise grew louder.

I passed the house, and marched towards the pigsty. The noise was coming from there.

While still at a distance, I saw a strange tableau before the door of the pig-sty. Colonel les Halles was not on board the
coq du mer.
He was there at the Ansbach farm, standing in the very centre of the group, directing operations of some sort. A man was seated nearby on a camp-stool, writing notes as les Halles dictated them. Soldiers in rolled-up shirt-sleeves were working the handles of a very large pump. Two men pressed down on one side, two more pulled up on the other side, and with a loud organic eruption the contents of the pigsty began to spout out in a shower from a pipe that a fifth man was obliged to hold in his hands, his face distorted by a grimace of revulsion. Beside him, another soldier was standing with a bucket in his hands.