HS03 - A Visible Darkness (37 page)

‘It is the list of a watchman,’ General Malaport explained.

We had spoken French all the while. Did he know German, too? Had he read the papers for himself, or had some more qualified person told him what the documents contained?

21st April 1808

19.00. Started out checking workshops in the Königstrasse district.

20.30 Robbery reported in the butcher’s shop in Zeebruggestrasse. Two sides of beef and several strings of sausages removed. Proprietor to make a statement tomorrow.

22.50. Three persons stopped on the Grünen Brücke bridge–two women and a man. Rowdy behaviour. The women were shouting
drunk. The man was not. The women’s papers were in order, as were his. Sent them on their way, telling them to make less noise. The man sneered something as he turned away. I took his name and gave him a further warning. Flighty fellow. Gave his name as Herr Vulpius . . .

‘Vulpius,’ I said out loud. ‘This is the first name that we have come across.’

As my eyes fell upon the smoke-darkened page once more, a most surprising fact caught and held my attention. When questioned by the officer, Vulpius had described himself in a way that was at once bland, yet terribly disconcerting. Bland in the opinion of a humble policeman who was probably uneducated beyond being able to read and write, and who appeared to make nothing of the declaration uttered for his benefit.

Vulpius’s description was most disconcerting to myself, however.

My eyes seemed to burn another hole in the page as I studied the line in question.

Herr Vulpius describes himself as a scholar,
a follower of Manual Cant.

Had the name of Herr Professor Immanuel Kant, once so famous throughout the world, dwindled so quickly into the twilight of the past? Evidently, the name meant nothing to the officer who had written it down and made two crass mistakes in just as many words.

Was Vulpius studying at the university in Königsberg? And what exactly did he mean when he spoke so determinedly of himself as a follower of Kant?

‘Herr Stiffeniis?’

I heard my name called out again.

Looking up, I saw the puzzled frown on the general’s rugged face.

‘Is something troubling you?’ he asked.

‘I was simply wondering whether anyone has managed to speak to this man.’

Malaport shrugged his narrow shoulders. ‘I was short of soldiers when I came here. Not a day passes, but I lose some more. The Königsberg garrison is being cut back to a bare skeleton. The war in the Peninsula, as you know, is taking its toll on our resources. You’ll have to find him for yourself, I’m afraid.’

General Malaport settled more comfortably into his chair.

Resting his elbow on the desk, he stroked his narrow chin and stared at me.

‘So, tell me, Stiffeniis. How do you intend to proceed?’

M
Y MEMORIES OF
Königsberg were stark.

The images fixed most clearly in my mind were black and white.

Four years earlier, late one afternoon in February 1804, I had taken the same route in a coach with Sergeant Amadeus Koch. As we were driven along the quay towards the Baltic Whaler inn, snow was falling heavily. Gale-force winds rocked the vehicle on its leather springs like a flurry of hard punches. Solid ice imprisoned every barge and lighter, every fishing-boat and three-master confined within the narrow harbour. No ship entered Königsberg, or left it. Nothing moved on the quay, apart from our coach. No man worked on ship, or on shore. The ware houses were all locked and barred. The city was suffering the worst winter in over a century.

Everything had changed for the better.

I could not deny it: the French had wrought the change. My eyes, ears and nose confirmed the opinion. The quay was as busy as an ant-hill. Dock labourers bounded up and down the wooden gang-planks to the moored ships. They charged in and out of holds and storerooms, heaving boxes, barrels and sacks on their backs—not a man was idle. The sky was a bright cerulean blue; harmless pink clouds sat on the rim of the horizon like billiard-balls against
the bottom cushion. The sea was also blue, though of a darker, altogether greener hue, its surface crisped and crinkled by a gentle breeze that promised wind-filled sails and swift navigation.

No contrast with the past could have been sharper.

The French demanded industry and efficiency. The Baltic Sea provided them.

Wherever I looked, I saw what was expected. Ships coming and going, as the companies required, as the merchants requested, as the captains who sailed those vessels with their bulging holds held dear. It was as if every individual action was well thought out, full of purpose and utility, promising a handsome profit to the commonwealth.

A similar sense of purpose possessed me, though I was not so sure that I would reach the destination I had set for myself. I had asked General Malaport about the amber trade before I left him. What interested me more than anything else was the means by which Prussian amber was transported to France.

He regarded me with surprise for a moment, but then he replied, as if such avid curiosity on my part were entirely natural. ‘Nothing has changed very much,’ he said with an open-armed gesture. ‘Prus sia used the sea, and so do we. At least, within the Baltic basin. The British are blockading the straits of Denmark, but that is hardly my concern. The amber reaches Königsberg—from Nordcopp, let us say—and having been worked to the required standard, it is loaded onto a schooner which will carry it along the coast to Danzig. From there, land transport to Paris, though slower and more costly, is the safest way.’

Suddenly, his eyes narrowed with suspicion.

‘What does the movement of amber have to do with anything?’

I groped for an answer that might make sense to him.

‘I was wondering about the commercial ties that exist between Nordcopp and Königsberg, Herr General,’ I replied. ‘We know for certain that Prussian women have been murdered in both places. Those killed in Königsberg may have been involved in the amber business here. As was the case in Nordcopp. That’s what I was thinking. Is it the amber industry which ties the crimes together?’

I chose the word ‘industry’ with care, then I asked another question, as if it were a logical consequence of the first.

‘Does amber of par tic u lar interest arrive in Königsberg as well?’

‘What d’you mean by that?’ he enquired, looking like a hungry infant who had just lost sight of the spoon and his pap.

‘Pieces which contain things provoking curiosity,’ I said. ‘Small creatures, tiny insects, plant fragments, and so forth. They have fallen out of favour with the jewellers, it seems, though scientists throughout Eu rope show no sign of waning enthusiasm. Where would such unusual pieces go, sir, before being sent to Paris? I mean to say, they must be separated out from the general commerce somewhere.’

I did not mention the convention drawn up between Berlin and Paris.

Nor did he.

Indeed, I wondered whether he knew of its existence.

His large head wobbled on his shrivelled neck. ‘Procurator Stiffeniis! Is a general of the high command supposed to know every detail involved in the transportation and the commerce of amber? I see that you are disappointed. I cannot say what happens to it. Frankly, I do not care. I know that amber arrives from the various sorting-stations, and that it is distributed to the local workshops which we rigidly control. We don’t receive as much as
we
—by which I mean myself and Col o nel les Halles—would like, but measures are being taken on that account, as you know. Amber arrives each day, and a few days later—a week at the most–it is ready to be shipped. Then, like any other commodity, it is taken to the port. We run a regular ferrying ser vice aboard armed gunboats. I can tell you nothing more precise than that.’

He stared at me again in that disconcerting manner that he had. Then, a sudden smile erupted on his toad-like face. ‘Come sir, this apparently innocuous question about the transportation of amber—special pieces, and so on, and so forth–that’s not what you really wished to ask. There is a different “merchandise” down at the port which needs to be “transported,” so to speak. Am I not correct, Herr Procurator Stiffeniis?’

I had no idea what he was talking about.

He shrugged. ‘I suppose that you Prussians have your own secret sources of information. You are a magistrate, after all. We watch you, but you watch us, as well.’ He breathed out noisily through his nostrils. ‘Very well, then. The murder suspects that les Halles sent up from Nordcopp are being held at the port, as you correctly surmised. They will be transported aboard the next available convict ship. They are destined for the labour camps.’ He sat back, and waved his hand dismissively in the air. ‘I will not condemn them to death without more substantial proof of guilt. The discovery of the file relating to those corpses here in Königsberg counsels prudence. The boy has been spared an imminent meeting with the hangman, but only on that account.’

As he spoke, he slid open a drawer in his desk.

‘Adam Ansbach’s file is still open,’ he said, waving it at me. ‘I cannot ignore the fact that a mutilated body was found in his pigsty in Nordcopp. Nor can I forget that other human bones were buried in the same ground. If he should prove to be the guilty party, I will not hesitate to do my duty.’

I sat up straight.

‘Colonel les Halles sent those people here to you, sir, without waiting to hear what an expert witness would make of the bones,’ I protested. ‘Dr Heinrich, the surgeon in Nordcopp, assures me that they are ancient. No living member of the Ansbach family had been born at the time the bones were buried.’

‘But they were living on the farm when the corpse was discovered. Is that not correct, Herr Procurator Stiffeniis?’

I mumbled something to the effect that his statement of the facts was accurate, though I had grave doubts about the identity of the murderer.

‘Can you offer me a more likely candidate for the noose?’

‘I cannot,’ I admitted. ‘For the moment, anyway.’

‘Furthermore,’ he said, looking over the papers in the file, ‘I am bound to act on the consequence of what has happened since. Magda Ansbach,’ he specified, reading out the name, ‘bit off the ear
of one of the guards while under custody. Her son then attacked the guard in defence of his mother.’

He blew out noisily, vibrating his lips at the immensity of the crime.

‘What else can I do? Forced labour is letting them off lightly.’

‘I suppose you have no choice in the matter,’ I conceded.

‘None.’

‘And if I wished to speak to them?’

‘You would not be allowed within a mile of them,’ General Malaport continued. ‘Still, I did appoint you to conduct this investigation, Stiffeniis, so I must forget that you are a Prussian, and tell you what I would be reluctant to tell my own men. You want to know where they are being held, I suppose?’

‘I know where deported convicts are collected,’ I replied, unable to suppress a smile. ‘It is a secret to no one in Königsberg.’ I was thinking of the ruined warehouse in the outlying district of Pillau, which I had visited four years before. I had gone there to speak to a murderer who was about to be deported to the wastes of Siberia. The cold, the squalor and the violence of that night could still provoke an involuntary shiver.

General Malaport returned my smile, but shook his head.

‘Do not assume that we are careless, sir,’ he warned me. ‘Nothing here is as it was. We must be on our guard against those nationalists who continue to plague our efforts. The news from Spain is fanning the Prussian rebels’ flame ever higher. Those condemned to labour camps are dry straw added to a fire. It could blow up into a raging inferno, unless we douse it quickly.’ He beat his fist three times on the table as if to extinguish a spark. ‘I will allow you access to the area where the deportees are kept. I can do no more for you. Whatever else you wish to do, whatever else you hope to learn there, Herr Procurator, you must do it on your own initiative. Silence and discretion are the key words.’

Half an hour later, I found it easier to enter the military section of the harbour than General Malaport had led me to expect. A soldier standing guard at the gates seemed far more interested in
the bread and sardines that a pretty wench was offering him from a covered basket than he was in the
laissez-passer
that I surrendered up for his scrutiny.

‘Berodstein’s ware house?’ I asked.

‘Down by the harbour light,’ he mumbled, his eyes half on his lunch, half on the woman.

I folded up the general’s note and began to walk along the quay.

According to the information that I had gleaned from Malaport, three ships would be sailing out of Königsberg that day. A sleek black cutter had just cast off from the sea-wall. It was being manoeuvred out into midstream with the assistance of two long-boats, each manned by six men working the oars. It was a warship of some sort, armed with cannon fore and aft, a line of grappling hooks hanging over the rail. A huge
tricouleur
waved defiantly from the stern-pole, making it impossible for me to spy out the name of the vessel.

I walked on, making careful observation of what was going on beside the ships which were still being loaded. The larger of the two,
L’Eugenie
, was a square-sailed brigantine, while the smaller vessel—her large triangular sails flapping idly in the breeze—was an armed schooner of the type that General Malaport had mentioned. I was unable to read her name or port of origin. The name-plates on the prow and stern had been tarred over. A sizeable cargo of Prussian amber was destined to be carried off that day by the French, it seemed, and all in the name of war-reparation.

I stopped to let a cart pass, stepping carefully around another wagon which the labourers were unloading. Wooden packing-cases slid down a plank onto the cobbles for the waiting hands which would carry them aboard the ships once the teller had counted off the number against his bill of lading. Glancing at the boxes piled up on the quay, I saw that many bore addresses in Paris, most of them in the area around Place Vendôme. I had been to Paris, I knew that this was where the great majority of the Parisian jewellers had their workshops. I did not see a single crate for the Academy of the Sciences, the Society for the Encouragement of Industry, nor any other scientific institution inside or outside the French capital.