HS01 - Critique of Criminal Reason

by Michael Gregorio

  The door creaked open almost at once and the dark figure of a woman appeared in silhouette, her hair a fuzzy halo about her face, which was hidden in the shadow.

  ‘You, Lublinsky? Here again?’ a husky voice purred.

  I stepped from behind the officer’s bulk and the words froze on the woman’s lips. Her eyes sparkled with fright, flashing from me to Lublinsky and back again.

  ‘Who’s this?’ she hissed.

  Koch appeared on the other side of Lublinsky and the woman let out a stifled scream.

  ‘What do you want?’ she snarled. ‘I’m not working tonight.’

  I pushed Lublinsky forward and we followed him into the cottage, the woman backing away in front of us, bumping into a low table before she stopped in the centre of the room. She picked up a candle and waved it in our faces like a shepherd trying to scare off wolves with a firebrand. She was tall, shapely, her dress a faded red, low-cut, revealing a deep, dark chasm between her breasts. By the quickness of her movements and the sharpness of her voice, I guessed her age to be around thirty. In the candlelight her glistening skin was so pale as to seem transparent, her eyes of the same ghoulish hue. Silvery-white hair cascaded over her shoulders in a bewildering mass of curls and ringlets. Meeting her in the street at night, one would have thought she had been sculpted from a solid block of ice. I had never seen an albino before. There was a riveting beauty about her doll-like face, her lips pursed in a distrustful bow of firm white flesh, cold eyes as wide and penetrating as an Oriental cat’s above strongly defined cheekbones.

  ‘I’m resting tonight,’ she said, a coy smile on her lips. ‘Unless you gentlemen want to make it worth my while, of course.’

  ‘We are not your usual clients,’ I said. ‘I am investigating the murders in Königsberg.’

  The smile faded. ‘What do you want from me, then?’

  ‘Bring a chair. You have much to tell me.’

  With a resentful flash of white-lashed eyes, the woman went to drag a rickety stool with a frayed wickerwork seat out of a dark and dusty corner to the centre of the room. I looked around by the light of the candle. We might have been inside a pagan temple, or the tent of one of those indigenous medicine men described by travellers in the Americas. The walls were hung with animal skulls, whalebones, objects cast up on the shore, and stranger things whose nature and use were hard to comprehend. On one smoke-blackened wall, graffiti etched with a blade in the plaster showed matchstick men and women coupling in a variety of beastly postures. As I shifted the candle, the figures seemed to thrust and jerk together in wanton lust. I turned away quickly, my face burning with I know not what emotion, until the stool was brought.

  The woman gestured to me to be seated.

  ‘It is for you,’ I replied. ‘Sit down, Anna Rostova. That is your name, is it not?’

  She sat herself down, though she did not bother to answer my question.

  ‘A year ago, you discovered a body,’ I pressed on. ‘Jan Konnen, the blacksmith, was the first of four victims of a still unidentified murderer. Officer Lublinsky tells me that you found something at the scene of the crime, something important, and that you carried it away with you. You have shown him this object, I believe, on more than one occasion since.’

  ‘You know what this means?’ she spat like a venomous snake at Lublinsky, who looked away sheepishly.

  ‘Address yourself to me,’ I snapped, ‘and to no one else.’

  ‘No wench will ever look at you again, soldier,’ she went on, heedless. ‘They’ll throw up in your filthy face!’

  ‘What did you find on the body of Jan Konnen?’

  ‘Mothers will scold their babes,’ she intoned, her glistening, transparent eyes fixed on Lublinsky. ‘That monster with the face of shit will kiss you if you don’t go straight to sleep, they’ll say. He’ll come…’

  I raised my hand and slapped her hard on the cheek.

  ‘Shut your mouth!’ I shouted. I don’t know what provoked me, but there was something so barefaced, wild and intimidating about the creature.

  Her eyes locked into mine, she touched her face, caressing the inflamed flesh as if she took great pleasure in the pain. ‘Hmmm, that was nice,’ she cooed with a smile. ‘You like to hurt a girl, don’t you, sir?’ A wet, pink tongue snaked swiftly over her lips, then retreated to its lair again. ‘Have me whipped, is that your plan? Enjoy yourself at my expense?’ she sneered. ‘They gave me thirty lashes last time. You should have seen the lumps in their trousers! Got all excited when my white flesh started bleeding, they did. Is that what you like to see, sir?’ She laughed aloud. ‘Prussia, homeland of the whip and the cane!’

  The woman’s glassy eyes never left my own for an instant. I had to look away, and I caught the glance of Koch as I did so. I saw puzzlement written on his face, too. By then, Lublinsky had retreated to the far wall and there he huddled, head bent low, shaking as if a violent fever had taken possession of him as the woman spoke.

  ‘What did you steal from the body?’ I insisted, struggling to master the tremor in my voice.

  The woman stared defiantly up at me, a shaft of light gleaming triumphantly in her dilated grey pupils, as if the situation amused her. ‘If that idiot already told you, what need have I to repeat it?’

  ‘I have the power to make you talk, Anna Rostova.’

  She giggled then. The sound started deep down in her throat and gurgled out in a crescendo of ridicule. ‘Oooh, you are a rough young one, sir! I can see that. Does your missis like it?’ The expression on her face was lustful, smiling, evil. ‘Stroke your oar with the Devil’s claw? Is that what you want? D’you fancy it, sir? Its touch killed that man on the dock, and other men too, but there are far pleasanter ways to die…’

  Her cat-like eyes shone brightly, the pupils needle-sharp points of light. I had never been so intimately involved with a woman of that sort. She was so different from my wife. So distant from any woman who moved in Helena’s sphere. Lechery seemed to crackle and spark from her pores like electricity. I ought to have been disgusted. But I was not.

  ‘You have naught to fear if you tell the truth,’ I lied, struggling to control my emotional confusion.

  She laughed again shrilly. ‘The truth, sir? Well, let me see now. That night, I was dossing down in Lobenicht.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A hellhole,’ Koch clarified. ‘A slum down near the city port, Herr Procurator. It’s ten minutes from The Baltic Whaler.’

  Having seen The Pillau, I could only shudder at the thought of Lobenicht.

  ‘A woman in Wassermanstrasse was going into labour, but her time had not yet come, so I went to see this friend of mine that lived close by. I stayed with her some hours, then I left to finish off the business.’

  ‘What time did you leave your friend’s house?’

  ‘It was after three. I’d drunk to fortify myself. It was cold that night. Like a tipple of something strong yourself, do you, sir?’ Before I could reply, she went on: ‘I knew what was waiting for me. A screaming hag, a half-cut husband, a blood-soaked, wailing wean, if the Lord saw fit. I was praying for success as I hurried down the road.’

  ‘Praying?’

  The word sounded like an obscenity on her lips.

  ‘I pray to God,’ she smiled. ‘And to the Devil too. There’s a tussle ‘twixt ’em two when a child is born. Sometimes one wins, sometimes t’other. But first, I pray to God. Things don’t go well for me when He loses. If a baby dies, I have no work for a long while after. It wouldn’t be the first time that I have suffered on the Devil’s count. I’ve seen hard times. In this trade, reputation’s everything.’

  ‘What did you see as you walked through the streets?’ I cut her short.

  She held my gaze for some moments. ‘There was no one, sir, not even a drunk, nor the gendarmes on their rounds. I saw no living soul ’til I came to the port. The lights along the quay were almost all blown out by the wind. There, I saw a man on his bended knees. At first, I thought he
must be praying like I was doing. Still, it was a funny time and place to go down on your knees and say your prayers. First light was breaking, that’s the coldest time of night. As I drew close, I saw that something wasn’t right. Then, I smelt the evil.’

  She wrinkled her nose and bared a perfect set of pearl-white teeth.

  ‘What do you mean? What did you smell?’

  ‘Brimstone, burning. The Devil’s stink…’

  She stopped abruptly, twitched her nose, and looked around the room, as if she had caught the first whiff of that infernal stench again. She was acting and she was good at it. The harlot was more than capable of entrapping a fool as desperate as Lublinsky.

  ‘Don’t waste my time,’ I warned her. ‘Just tell me what you saw.’

  ‘The man was dead, sir.’

  ‘You smelt evil. The man was dead, yet you approached the corpse. Why didn’t you call for help first?’

  She stared at me for some moments.

  ‘The dead are special, sir,’ she murmured at last, and she seemed in awe of them as she said it. At the same time, she seemed to be strangely intent on reading my own mind. ‘But you know that, sir. Don’t you? The dead…you’ve seen a corpse. Their bodies here in this world, their souls wandering in another place. You’ve got the knowledge, I can tell…’

  ‘One minute, a dramatist; the next, a poet,’ I said, cutting her short. More roughly, I added: ‘Tell me what you stole from the body.’

  She twisted in her seat to Lublinsky. ‘Damn your soul!’ she cursed.

  I grabbed at her hair, and twisted her face around towards my own. ‘I will shut you up in a cell if you persist,’ I shouted.

  ‘You’ll do it anyway,’ she replied with a shriek, ‘but he will roast in hellfire. That bastard! I’ll ask Satan…’

  ‘Forget Satan!’ I shouted, twisting her hair until she screamed. ‘What did you take from the body of the corpse?’

  She clenched her teeth, looked up at me and hissed. ‘It was sticking out of the back of his head. A poniard quivering in the air. Or so I thought. Then I saw what it was.’

  ‘Go on,’ I urged.

  ‘Let me be! Let go of me!’ she screeched, her hands locked around my wrists as she tried to free her hair. ‘I’ll tell you all, sir. Honest…’

  She looked at me directly as I released her, the fierce anger she had directed at Lublinsky gone. As if possessed of some unbridled terror, the woman seemed to physically shrink in size. ‘The most powerful of charms,’ she whispered. ‘That man was dead, stone-cold, the weapon jutting out of him, but there wasn’t a single drop of blood. Not one, sir. No blood was spilt. Who could have done that, if not the Devil? I’d been invoking God a minute before; the Evil One was answering. It was an omen. Satan wanted me to find that body, to show me His power over Life and Death. If a babe was to be born that night, a life had to be taken. The wheel comes round. It was a symbol of the Devil’s power. A gift from Satan, so I took it.’

  ‘You didn’t inform the police?’ I insisted.

  The woman shrugged, then shifted the cascading mass of silvery curls from one shoulder to the other, flashing her sparkling eyes at me. ‘The Devil’s claw was meant for me,’ she said. ‘Others would find what was meant for them.’

  ‘But the murders continued,’ I countered. ‘You knew that the police were searching for the weapon.’

  She glanced at Lublinsky. ‘I had other fish to fry.’

  ‘You informed him,’ I said. ‘You used the power you claimed the Devil’s claw gave you to divert Lublinsky from his duty. You promised to cure his face. Am I correct?’

  Anna Rostova returned my challenge with a derisive laugh. ‘His own good looks were more important than Justice. I told him what I had found. He chose not to make it public. That’s for him to square with his conscience.’

  ‘Show me this object, Anna Rostova.’

  She stared at me uncertainly. ‘Believe me, sir…’

  ‘Bring it here,’ I said sharply.

  As I stood over her, a strange transformation took place. The subdued expression gave way to one of seductive compliance. Her fingers lightly brushed the bare white flesh of her breasts, she flashed another dazzling glance into my face, and a cunning smile lit her lips.

  She stood up, leaned towards me. ‘With your permission,’ she whispered in my ear. Her hair brushed my cheek and seemed to give off a sudden jolt of energy. Then, withdrawing to the darkest corner of the room, she disappeared behind a tawdry curtain. Koch and I exchanged glances. We could heard her rummaging about, cursing to herself. A few moments later, she came back into the pale circle of light, carrying something in her hands. Like a vestal priestess, she bowed and placed the bundle in my hands. If the material had ever had any distinct colour, it was now entirely washed out. Mould had penetrated and stained the fibre.

  Fumbling to unwrap the strings, I was obliged to remove my gloves. The inner folds of the cloth were spotted with ugly-looking, rusty brown stains. As I unfurled the wrapping, a nerve pulsed frantically in my cheek. And then, I held it in my hands. Twenty centimetres long, the colour of bone, straight and slender, like no weapon I had ever seen before. I passed it to Koch, who held it up to the light as if it were a specimen of some exotic beast.

  ‘A needle, sir,’ he said, down-to-earth and practical as always, before he handed it back to me. ‘There is no eye. And the point has gone.’

  I turned the thing in my fingers. Here was the weapon that had terrorised a city. The fragment in Professor Kant’s possession was the broken tip of the same object, there could be little doubt of it. In a woman’s workbox you would hardly have noticed it. Sticking from a dead man’s neck, it possessed an awesome power.

  ‘That night, my charge gave birth to a pretty little boy,’ Anna Rostova murmured with satisfaction. ‘While she was in her labour, I pricked her with it, three times on the face, three more on her belly. That babe survived, though he was choking on her cord when he came into the world. Satan saved him. That soul was worth the winning. I used the power of the claw to cure all sorts of ills that doctors wouldn’t touch. Wenches came flocking to me when they had a baby coming…’

  A moan escaped from Lublinsky.

  ‘You knew it would do me no good,’ he cried, his back to the wall like a cornered beast. Suddenly, he sprang at Anna Rostova.

  ‘Beware, Lublinsky! You are an officer of His Majesty,’ I warned, stepping forward to block him, laying my hands on his chest and pushing him away.

  ‘She’d only help me if I kept my mouth shut,’ he howled like a frenzied beast. ‘She milked them dry. Pregnant women, old men that couldn’t get it up, crippled babes. The White Witch, they call her. Look in that back room of hers, Herr Procurator. It’ll turn your stomach. See for yourself what Anna Rostova does for money!’

  I placed the needle on the table, grabbed up the candle, crossed the room, and threw back the curtain that served as a door. Dust flew into the air, and an abominable stench assailed me. Some reeking beast might have been closed in there since the dawn of Time. Covering my nose with my cloak, I raised the flickering flame above a kitchen table pressed against the wall. It was caked with dirt, spotted with the unmistakable dark, rusty stains of dried blood. Knives of different lengths were laid out in order of size on the table as if for a surgical experiment. Blood had dried on the blades in a dull, orange film. In the candlelight the metal gleamed and sparkled, despite the filth. On a narrow shelf above the table stood a row of filthy pots and pans. Brass glistened dully. A kitchen to all appearances, but not the sort of kitchen any decent housewife would keep.

  I took down one of those pots and glanced inside. It contained something that looked like a large mangled radish, or some strange algae, and it gave off a dreadful smell of putrefying sweetness. I had never seen anything similar before. A large fat maggot, perhaps, congealed beneath a layer of gelatine, a worm with sprouting protuberances, a pale white worm. I swung the lantern close and almost dropped the pot. It was no algae, no ra
dish decomposing in its fetid broth. It was a barely developed foetus, the tiny arms stretching out, the unformed head larger than all the rest, curving in towards the chest. I did not need to open the other dishes, nor ask myself what happened in that house.

  I closed my eyes with disgust, and backed out of the place.

  Lublinsky greeted me eagerly, the light playing on one side of his face, the rest in darkness. ‘Abortion, sir! That’s her trade. Got a pie in the pot, girls? The Devil’s claw will solve your problem! That’s what she says. That’s how she lives. Ask the whores out on the Haaf! They come here snivelling when Nature plays them a foul hand…’

  ‘You lying prick!’ the woman screeched, leaping at Lublinsky, her clenched fist tracing a wide arc in the air. ‘You’ll carry the plague to Hell along with that rotten, stinking face of yours!’

  Lublinsky screamed like a pig being butchered. Then the squeal choked in full pitch, and he fell back on the floor, his hands clasped tightly to his face, the Devil’s claw protruding like a massive sting from between his clenched fingers. Blood flowed in rivulets over his hands, cheeks and neck.

  Koch dropped to his knees beside Lublinsky, who lay flat on his back, crashing his heels hard on the floor against the pain. With a determined grunt, Sergeant Koch leaned over and jerked the needle out. A red fountain of blood spurted upwards, drenching his face and hands. Lublinsky spluttered and spasmed, then his body went limp. Koch called wildly for the coachman to come in, and between them, they carried the injured officer out of the house at a run. Like Lot’s wife staring back at the ruins of Gomorrah, I watched them go, unable to move a muscle.

  When I awoke from this trance, Anna Rostova was nowhere to be seen. Alone in the room, I seemed to breathe freely once more. But outside in the street, Koch was calling frantically to me to run and open the carriage door.

  ‘We need a surgeon, sir!’ he urged. ‘He’ll bleed to death without help.’

  We tumbled aboard the vehicle and galloped back along the dark road to town, lurching and bouncing over the ruts and the potholes. As the first lights of Königsberg began to appear, Lublinsky lay motionless on the bench seat, his face covered by his cloak.