The Killing Of Emma Gross

by Damien Seaman

  'That is precisely the point of requesting a handwriting expert, you imbecile!'

  Ritter purpled. 'We have experts here who can do the job,' he said.

  Gennat snorted and paced back to the paper-strewn desk where he deposited the letter. He clicked his fingers at me and pointed to the window. A look of pain crossed his face. I didn't know why he wanted it open, but I rushed to oblige. I flipped the catch and pushed at the window. The sudden breeze from outside rattled the blinds and teased loose papers off the table. We all watched them fall.

  Gennat let loose a massive belch. He pounded his gut and breathed deeply of the fresh morning air. Then, as though to prove the belch was a figment of everyone else's imagination, he went right on with the conversation: 'Scheikert's the best in the country and we don't have time to waste.'

  Vogel entered the room and handed Gennat a small piece of paper.

  'Wire?' Gennat said.

  'Yes sir.' Vogel scratched the wart on the side of his nose.

  Gennat read it through in one continuous sigh. Ritter winked at me. I wanted to smash his teeth in. The window blinds kept up their tap-tap-tapping, which didn't help my nerves any.

  Gennat handed the wire back and said, 'Soon as you can please, Vogel.'

  Vogel went. Gennat looked at each of us in turn. He settled on the blond man, who stopped fidgeting with his cigarette case. He opened it, selected a cigarette and lit it. He pocketed the case.

  'You've only done the Albermann autopsy?' Gennat asked.

  The blond man exhaled. He nodded. 'We're doing the second one this afternoon. If there are any further similarities I can take you through them.'

  Gennat rubbed his chin. The blond man smoked some more.

  'All right, Berg,' Gennat said. 'You say the scissors could be the murder weapon?'

  Ritter grunted.

  'Something to say, inspector?' Gennat glared through his spectacles again.

  Ritter leaned towards Berg. 'The link with the earlier killings is purely circumstantial, Karl. I grant you we have enough to link the scissors to the Albermann stab wounds, but to the others? That's a fourteen, fifteen month gap. Bit naïve to want to put all this down to a single killer, isn't it?'

  Wait a moment. Earlier killings? Did this mean Du Pont had been right?

  'Which killings are we talking about, sir?' I said to Gennat.

  Gennat ignored me, or else he hadn't heard. Berg was shaking his head at Ritter. He said, 'Stausberg's statements contained some serious gaps, Michael. I thought so at the time.'

  'Funny, Karl,' Ritter said, raising his voice, 'you didn't say so!'

  Berg shrugged and took another drag. 'Granted.'

  'Anyway,' Gennat said, 'that's where Thomas comes in.' He pointed at me.

  'Sir?' I tried. Still no one responded. It was like I wasn't there. The mention of Stausberg was making my palms sweat. This was all a bit much at eight-thirty on any morning, never mind the morning after finding the body of a five-year-old in the long grass.

  Gennat picked up the broken cup. He rested the remains on the desk blotter.

  'Ritter, give Thomas the relevant files. And fetch that other damned letter from the lab when they're done with it. The one those Volksstimme bastards couriered over this morning.'

  Ritter started to complain.

  'Just do it!' Gennat ordered. 'Now!'

  Ritter left the room.

  Gennat turned to me. 'Your goddamned pal Du Pont has stumbled onto something, Klein. Kürten's modus operandi matches the three murders Kripo pinned on Johann Stausberg last year. Before you got here Berg was telling us that Stausberg's confessions contained some...questionable vaguenesses that didn't fit the forensics.'

  He arched an eyebrow at Berg who nodded.

  Vogel bustled into the room.

  'Wire sent already?' Gennat asked.

  Vogel shook his head. 'Herr Albermann's downstairs, sir, says he wants to talk to someone in charge.'

  'Oh God, not that poor girl's father,' Gennat said.

  Berg cleared his throat. 'Would you like me to go and speak to him?'

  'I don't think the man came here for a lecture on stomach contents, Berg.' Gennat rolled his eyes in Vogel's direction.

  'What do you want me to do with him?' Vogel asked.

  Loud, angry voices approached from down the hall, then a door slammed somewhere out of sight.

  One of the voices was Ritter's: 'And I'm telling you, Herr Albermann, that shouting is not going to get you anywhere.'

  'That's easy for you to say,' the unseen man shouted, 'it wasn't your little girl he murdered.' The voice wavered. 'She'd still be alive today if you bastards hadn't gone and arrested the wrong man last year! You're the ones who left him free, free to roam, free to do those unspeakable things to my baby!'

  'Vogel,' Gennat hissed, breaking the spell in the room that had held us motionless, listening, 'go and calm that down, will you?'

  Vogel left. Gennat turned to me as the sounds of argument faded.

  'You're going to read those reports and familiarise yourself with them.' Gennat came and put a warm hand on my shoulder, pulling me back to our discussion. 'Then you're going to see if Kürten will confess to the murders. I want you to ask about the letter to the Volksstimme too, find out whether or not he was the one who posted it. How long do you need to digest the material?'

  'So you don't want to throw me off the department any more?'

  'Don't push it, Klein. I can still put my complaint in once you're finished with him. Meanwhile you do exactly as I say. Now, how long?'

  Full case files, including autopsies, incident reports, witness statements and all the rest? I didn't want to rush it. There again, Gennat's face was still red and full of thunder. I reckoned he'd have a pretty clear idea of how long he expected me to take.

  'About forty-five minutes?' I said.

  'Don't be such a damned fool, Thomas,' Gennat said. 'No one can digest all that in forty-five minutes.' He looked at the wall clock. He checked his watch. 'Herr Kürten has an ID parade to attend. You can have an hour and a half. And once you've talked to the man about these Stausberg killings, you are going to sit quietly with the stenographer and you are going to check every statement Kürten makes against the evidence we have. We cannot afford any more mistakes on these Stausberg murders. If Kürten did them, we file charges. If he didn't, then Stausberg did, and that's what we stick to.'

  'Sir, about this press conference tomorrow,' I said.

  'Forget about the press conference tomorrow. Focus on Kürten today, then focus on getting the paperwork in order tonight. I want everything tied up before we see the PP in the morning, okay?'

  Well what did that mean? Was I going to have to stand up in front of the press or wasn't I?

  A knock at the door. Dry Scalp was there. Beside him stood a young woman with long blonde hair and blue eyes that slanted like a Chinaman's. She recognised me and waved.

  'Fräulein Butlies, sir,' Dry Scalp said.

  'Hello Maria,' I said.

  Gennat looked from Butlies to me. Understanding lit his face and he smiled. 'But of course you two will have met. Silly of me to forget. Ready for the identity parade, my dear?'

  'How are you?' I asked her.

  She looked at Gennat. His smile froze as we waited for her to speak, then he gave her a nod and she turned back to me and said, 'I have some work lined up next month.' She stood on tiptoe with hands behind her back. She beamed. 'In a department store, even.' Her smile flitted away. Still, she had more colour in her face than she had the first time I'd interviewed her over Kürten's rape.

  'That's great,' I said. 'Really. I hope it works out for you, Maria.' I took her hand and shook it briefly. Her fingers were cold. This was the woman who'd led me to Kürten. A department store sales job didn't seem like sufficient reward, especially now her rape was likely to be relegated to a footnote in light of Kürten's greater crimes. Maybe at some point we could siphon off some of that reward money Kürten was so intent
on his wife getting her hands on.

  Gennat herded Butlies down the corridor, telling her there was nothing to worry about.

  Berg stood and smoothed the wrinkles out of his blue woollen trousers.

  'First time dealing with the wrath of der volle Ernst?' he said.

  'Have we met?' I asked him.

  'Oh, I should think so. I worked pretty closely with Kripo on the Stausberg case. For my sins.' He chuckled.

  'Tell me, what are these similarities you were talking about? Between the Albermann murder and the Stausberg killings?'

  He sighed. He'd disposed of his cigarette somewhere and now he removed his eyeglasses, folded them and tapped them against his teeth.

  'You'll see it in my autopsy reports. Basically the stab wounds are so similar they could've been made with the same blade. The scissors you found in Kürten's rooms are a match for Albermann's stab wounds. The dimensions are the same as for the wounds in the Ohliger and Scheer murders. It's enough to try for a confession at least, I would've thought.'

  'Could you confirm the cause of death?' I said. 'The Albermann case I mean.'

  'The stabbing,' he said, looking out of the window. 'Internal haemorrhage.' He put his glasses in his breast jacket pocket. 'She was likely out cold by then though, which is as much consolation as we can ask for in a case like this.' He shook his head.

  'And the time?' I said.

  'Oh, well that's interesting,' he said. He took out his case and lit another cigarette while talking. He didn't look at what he was doing. 'The reports said she was last seen at a quarter to seven in the evening, right?'

  'Right.'

  'For lunch she'd eaten sauerkraut between twelve and one pm. For tea at four she ate a butter brot with applekraut and around six pm she had some sweets and apples and such. In her stomach we found 300 grammes of chyme, give or take.' His hands mimed the stomach contents, conjuring them from the air. 'Sauerkraut is not easily digested, as I'm sure you know, while bread is digested like so.' He clicked his fingers.

  I cleared my throat. He focused on me and smiled, showing bright, even teeth. 'Well, there I go again. To cut a long story short, there was sauerkraut still in the stomach, but no bread. It takes three hours to digest a bread roll. If she ate her butter brot at four, then death occurred at least three hours later, but no more than six.'

  'Seven pm on the night she went missing,' I said. 'But no later than ten pm?' So she'd been dead sixteen hours before I'd even met Kürten, if not more. All the delays in the world would have made no difference. But Ritter charging the wrong man with murder? Letting the real killer go free? Damn right that would have made a difference. I had to know whether Du Pont's claims were true, and Gennat was giving me the chance to find out.

  Berg had another puff of his cigarette. Then he put on his hat and put out a hand. 'Well, I must be going,' he said. 'But before I forget. You found Albermann lying on her front with legs akimbo, correct?'

  I nodded, though I couldn't bring myself to say anything.

  'You thought Kürten raped her.' He smiled again. 'I'm happy to say he didn't.'

  'He didn't?' I got that nervous buzz deep in my gut, the kind you get when someone gives you good news you never thought you'd hear.

  'No, when I read your report and Michael's I assumed the same as you. But the microscopy shows no traces of semen, and my examination showed no signs of...forced entry. If you take my meaning?'

  Ritter stormed into the room. He deposited files on the desk.

  'Karl, a word,' he said, and they entered the hallway. I sat behind the desk. Ritter and Berg stood whispering for at least a minute as I tried to browse the reports. Files on Johann Stausberg, Rosa Ohliger, Rudolph Scheer and Emma Gross. Ninety minutes to digest all that?

  I couldn't decipher any of the whispers. Ritter sounded angry though. I kept my eyes on the paperwork, seeing none of it.

  The whispers petered out and Ritter came back.

  'I understand you'll be going through the transcripts with the stenographer afterwards,' he said.

  'Yes,' I said.

  'Good. I'm sure I can find somewhere suitable for you to do that.'

  He was trying not to show it but he was scared, it was there in his tone and his bluster and his need to keep scoring points off me. He had every right to be scared. I was out to get him, and Kürten was about to help me do it.

  10

  I entered the interview room and checked the time.

  'Nine fifty-two am, right?'

  The stenographer nodded and started writing on his pad. Kürten's letter to Volksstimme was in my hand. I threw it down on the table. Soften him up with it, then move on to the previous killings and see how he reacted, that was the plan.

  'What the hell is this?' I said.

  Kürten looked at the letter and back up at me. 'I'd forgotten all about that.'

  'No,' I said. 'No you didn't. I turned up at your Mettmannerstrasse apartment on Friday morning with Maria Butlies. You fled, went to see your wife and confessed to her. You say, so she could turn you in and claim the reward. At that point, lunchtime Friday, you'd decided to hand yourself over. It was just a matter of when and where.'

  Kürten steepled his fingers in front of his smiling lips and cocked his head to show how very amusing this all was.

  'A few hours after agreeing the details of your surrender with your wife, you abducted and killed Gertrude Albermann. You picked Albermann up at five pm, killed her shortly after seven. Volksstimme received this letter in the mail on Saturday. There is only one delivery on Saturdays, in the morning, and the last collection on Fridays is at six pm.'

  'So what?'

  'So you posted the letter before you killed Albermann but after you picked her up. Correct?'

  Kürten's grin exposed his now-infamous incisors. Vampiric indeed. There were specks of food between his teeth. I didn't suppose that vampires were comfortable around tooth picks: too much like mini wooden stakes.

  'How did you work that out?' he said.

  'The letter mentions the girl by name. Either you'd planned to kill her for some time or you wrote and mailed the letter after you'd picked her up. I don't see you as the long-term planning kind.'

  'I'm impressed, Thomas. No doubt you've also worked out it's my birthday today?'

  'Let's stick to the point, shall we?'

  'Well you are sour this morning. What's the matter, did my little practical joke yesterday upset you?' He mimed frantic retching and clutching at his belly. I clenched my fists. Hell of a talent for spotting weaknesses, this guy. No doubt another secret to his success with his victims.

  'Why did you do it? This was a last hurrah, a last chance to get your jollies, what?'

  'So now he wants to know why.' He shrugged. 'Why do anything?' He leaned forward in his seat. 'Seriously, I was about to be arrested. I needed something to help me say goodbye. You could even say that Albermann's death was your fault.'

  I sat back. 'All right, we'll come back to Albermann. Right now I want to ask you about some earlier killings.' I lit a cigar.

  'You know what Freud says about cigar smoking?' Kürten said.

  'No. What does he say about men who masturbate over the corpses of little girls?'

  'What are you talking about?'

  'Rosa Ohliger.'

  'Who?'

  'Rosa Ohliger. The eight-year-old girl you killed on the 8th February last year.'

  'Who says I masturbated over her?'

  'You don't deny murdering her?'

  'No, I...' He rubbed the back of his head. His hair was all over the place today, and his stubble was beginning to crowd out his pencil-line moustache. He sighed. 'Rosa. I remember Rosa. I didn't know her name until the papers reported it a couple of days later.'

  'She left her friend's house on Albertstrasse that evening. The family there were the last people to see her alive.'

  He nodded.

  'Tell me what happened, in your own words,' I said. 'Be as specific as you can.'

>   'It was just after six that night. I picked her up outside St. Vincent's Church. We got talking. She said she wanted to go home.'

  Okay, that fit the facts so far. 'Did she tell you where that was?'

  'Langerstrasse. I offered to take her, and I led her down the Kettwiger Strasse as far as a hoarding –'

  'She didn't notice you were leading her in the wrong direction?'

  He smiled. 'It took until we got to the hoarding for her to notice.'

  'Then what?'

  'I seized her by the throat and put her on her back,' he said. Berg's autopsy report on Ohliger was still fresh in my mind. One sentence leapt to the fore: Face bloated and livid, characteristic of forcible strangulation.

  'With my right hand I drew my scissors and stabbed the child in her left temple. And in the heart,' Kürten said. Berg again: One stab wound in left temple...Thirteen stab wounds to the upper torso made through clothing. Cause of death internal haemorrhage resulting from one or more of five distinct stab wounds to the heart.

  'She seemed to be dead. I went back to my apartment and searched myself for blood stains.'

  I held up a hand. 'Hold on, Peter. Ohliger was standing when you attacked her?'

  'Yes. Then she went limp in my arms.'

  'You stabbed her then?'

  'Yes.'

  'And you left her in the place where you stabbed her?'

  'Well, not exactly, no, or the body would've been found straight away. I dragged her back two or three metres to the hedge under the hoarding. I dragged her with both hands, around the neck, like this.' He mimed the action. 'Her feet dragged through the snow and I covered the tracks as best I could.'

  That tallied with the crime scene sketch and description Ritter had put in his incident report. One of Ohliger's shoes had slipped off and been trodden into the snow. Ritter's team had found it when searching the scene after the body had been found.

  'Okay,' I said. 'You went back to your apartment after stashing the body under the hedge. You were saying you searched yourself for blood stains.'

  He nodded. 'I also cleaned the scissors. There was no blood on my clothing so I went out to the movies.'