Part 47 (1/2)

'Very good, Stiffeniis,' he said. 'Now, let's conclude. What about the other one?'

I thought I had misheard him. There was a great deal of noise. The sea, of course. The thundering engines of the coq du mer. The rus.h.i.+ng water in the flume, the cras.h.i.+ng of the pebbles as they clattered into the metal tray, the shouts of the French soldiers as they urged the women to work without respite. The sounds of labour on the Baltic coast had been for ever amplified.

'I did not catch what you said,' I apologised.

He turned on me, his face a mask of angry impatience. 'You have said nothing of the third corpse in the house. Surely there were mutilations in that case?'

'Third corpse?' I repeated in surprise.

My legs turned to the consistency of the fine sand beneath my feet. Cold sweat erupted on my body, as if I had that very moment emerged from a nocturnal bathe in the Baltic Sea. This was the news that he had been expecting to hear. This was the part that interested him. Not the corpse of Frau Hummel. Nor the body of Johannes Gurten. There was another corpse, about which I knew nothing. A mutilated corpse.

One of the amber-girls . . .

'You reported to Malaport's office, did you not?'

'The minute I arrived in Konigsberg . . .'

'You did not go back to him, I take it?' He wiped the sweat from his upper lip with his thumb and forefinger. 'Before you left to come here, I mean.'

'I did not think . . .'

'If you had gone to Malaport, he would have informed you that another worker has gone missing. Shortly after you departed,' he hissed. 'Edviga Lornerssen. The girls who shared the hut with her reported her missing. They came to me like a bunch of frightened rabbits. They did not want to be killed as well, they said. They were preparing to leave.' He opened his arms in a gesture of helplessness. 'I let them go, but no dead body has been found so far . . .'

He did not finish, leaving me to draw my own conclusions.

I did so, but I could not find the strength to put them into words.

'I searched the house from top to bottom,' I said. 'I found two bodies only. Then, I went at once to seek out Tessier and tell him what I had discovered.'

Les Halles turned to me.

'Why kill those two people, Stiffeniis? Why would he murder your a.s.sistant, and his own housekeeper?'

My ideas were clear regarding Johannes Gurten.

'If he had tried to confront the doctor, or arrest him, Heinrich would have had no alternative but to kill him. Frau Hummel may have accidentally witnessed the slaying of my a.s.sistant,' I said. 'If that was the case, then she, too, had to be silenced.'

Les Halles shook his head.

'There must be another corpse hidden in the house or the garden,' he repeated stubbornly, a note of acidity in his voice, as if he did not trust me to search the house properly. I had thrown the name of the murderer at his feet, but that was not enough for Richard les Halles. There was a hitch, and it threatened to distract him from the work that was going on along the sh.o.r.eline.

'That house must be turned inside out,' he growled impatiently.

There was no corpse hidden in Heinrich's house. He had never bothered to hide the evidence of his crimes. He could have thrown Kati Rodendahl into the sea, but he had left her corpse on the sh.o.r.e where she was bound to be seen. He might easily have buried Ilse Bruen beneath the loose sand of the dunes. Instead, he had abandoned her body carelessly in the pigsty of the only farm in the district. He had left the corpses of Rickert, Gurten and Frau Hummel where he had slaughtered them. If he had ripped the child from Edviga's womb, he would have left the body for the world to see.

'You won't need me in Nordcopp,' I said. 'I want to look in Edviga's hut. She may have left some clue behind to tell us what has become of her.'

I wanted to be alone when I discovered what he had done with Edviga.

I wanted to be alone when I met Dr Heinrich again.

36.

EXCEPT FOR A single light, it was dark out on the water.

Moonlight cut black chasms between the wooden slats as I crossed the pontoon bridge and clattered up the ladder onto the platform. The huts were shrouded in darkness, and they appeared to be deserted.

An untrimmed lantern guttered in the centre of the s.p.a.ce, as if the women had been whisked away by some spirit even more malign than Colonel les Halles. I could make them out, labouring on the sh.o.r.e beneath the flaming braziers to turn the Frenchman's dream into reality.

The forgotten lantern gave off a slanting plume of trailing black smoke.

I raised the gla.s.s, adjusted the wick, then went forward, my footsteps beating on the wooden boards like a m.u.f.fled funeral drum, towards Edviga's hut. It was on the far side of the compound, looking over the sea; she had pointed it out to me the day les Halles had let me speak to her. The smell of the sea was strong, stagnant, almost rank. I might have been on a seaweed-covered rock at low tide. The wooden cabins reminded me of the lean-to huts where fishermen hang their fish to dry along the northern sh.o.r.e. They were very old-the ancient wood dark, cracked, warped-very different from the new huts where the French had installed themselves, where I myself had slept. Being so close to the sea and the spray, those huts had soaked up more water than the timbers of a sailing-s.h.i.+p.

I stopped outside her lodging, listening for any sound.

Waves were breaking gently in a s.h.i.+mmering silver line along the s.h.i.+ngle half a quarter-mile out from the sh.o.r.e. Further down the beach came the rude suckling of the coq du mer, the sharp exchange of orders being shouted, the muted murmuring of the women's voices as they worked together, learning the new task which would render them unemployed the instant they had mastered it.

The air was fresher than it had been for many a night. The first hint of summer's imminent end, I thought. The Arctic ice would soon invigorate the wind as autumn came. That gentle breeze would turn into a howling gale, racing down from the north, sweeping away the stale odours of the stagnant sea. It would soon disperse the fetid air of that long summer.

I pushed the door open, and entered the cabin.

The air was heavy with the odour of damp clothes, and with the acidic smell of the bodies that had worn them. The lantern lit up four trestle beds, the general clutter of the women who had been living there together. Clothes and clogs lay in great disorder on the floor, as if they had been hastily thrown aside. Earthenware cups, metal spoons and a covered pot set down in a circle in the centre of the room. The other women had run off, leaving everything as it was. Their cots were stripped bare to the bones of their latticed wooden frames. Only the cot in the farthest corner remained untouched, the covers thrown back, exposing crumpled bedding, as Edviga Lornerssen had left it.

I began to search the room more thoroughly, concentrating my attention on the area around that bed. Apart from the bedclothes, some traces of the girl's presence remained. A flimsy printed woodcut was fixed to the wall above the spot where her head must have lain. A female saint, I thought at first, wondering whether Edviga might have been a Catholic. I had never asked about her beliefs. And yet, religion of any sort seemed at odds with her desire to bury a piece of amber with Ilse Bruen, and with the superst.i.tious ritual she had performed over the corpse of Kati, covering her nudity with a blanket of fur, surrounding it with a scattering of amber fragments.

I held the lantern up, and looked more closely at the picture.

A pretty young woman dressed in a long dark cape with a hood. She might have been another one of the amber-gatherers. The image did not seem to have any religious significance. Nor did the nail on which it had been crudely impaled suggest any sign of reverence.

Not a saint, then. It was simply a decoration, like the strings of sea-sh.e.l.ls which dangled from the ceiling, and the misshapen tangles of driftwood which hung from the walls like stags' heads in a hunting-lodge.

Edviga's amber-gathering gear was draped over another rusty nail. Her stout jerkin and stiff leather trousers dangled in a careless twist, as if the uniform had been peeled off in one piece from her body. Like the sh.e.l.l stripped from a shrimp.

Beneath, neatly aligned, stood her heavy thigh-length boots.

As I lifted the lantern, I caught a glimpse of something peeping out from beneath the bed. It was dark and triangular. Bending down, I saw a medium-sized wooden box that was partially hidden in the shadows. I pushed the bed aside, and pulled it out. It was the sort of box that they use for packing roundels of cheese. Two large initial letters had been unevenly burnt with a red-hot iron on the lid.

E.L.

It was not locked, and I carefully opened the lid. My fingers hovered in the air for a moment, hardly daring to touch the contents. What did this mean? Were these the clothes that she had arrived in? Were they the clothes that she would have worn if she had left of her own free will? I lifted up a crushed green bonnet, which I set down on the floor. A dress had been carefully folded beneath it. Printed with a pattern of pink flowers, that poor faded frock had seen a good few summers. It was, indeed, little more than a rag. Had Edviga nothing better to show for her labour on the seash.o.r.e? I saw her in my mind's eye. Any other woman would have been demeaned by those poor garments.

Not Edviga.

I laid my fingers on the dress, s.h.i.+fted it aside, and examined the contents of the box. I was surprised by how little it contained. No bag, no shawl, no vest or stockings, no keepsake from home, no letters. There was nothing except for a pair of cracked leather pumps, one of which had lost a buckle. Having removed the contents, I turned the box over, wondering if something might be hidden under it. A tiny fragment of stone clattered onto the floor. I picked it up between my thumb and finger and held it to the light.

It was a dense, dark red. Very dark, indeed, but it was amber. A piece of no great value. Of all the valuable amber that had pa.s.sed through her hands, was this the only fragment she had kept for herself? Had she left it in the box, asking her friends to bury her and it together in the sea if anything should ever happen to her? I replaced the clothes, and the chip of amber, closed the lid, and made to slide the box back into its place beneath the bed.