The only way to know for sure would be to talk to Johann Stausberg myself.
***
I pushed through a set of heavy double doors, wood sheathed in steel. Beneath an oversized anglepoise lamp, Berg had his forearms immersed in the open chest cavity of his autopsy subject. Beside him was a steel trolley for his instruments. Behind him, two bodies lay on steel racks stacked like bunk beds against the white tiled wall. White sheets covered the bodies. Another sheeted body lay on the dissection slab parallel to the one Berg was working on.
Berg looked up from the corpse on his slab. With a white rubber-gloved hand, he lifted his horn-rimmed glasses so he could see who I was.
'Just in time,' he said.
The chill of the room emphasised the hot pounding in my head. I had to get him to reveal what the asylum director had said if I could.
'Here, put some of these on and give me a hand,' Berg said, nodding at an airtight glass jar filled with more gloves. I approached the stainless steel slab, my shoulder brushing the bucket of the grocers' weighing scales that hung from the ceiling.
'Where is everybody?' I said.
'They've been working since six o'clock this morning.' He nodded over his shoulder at the bodies behind him as though they were sleeping morgue attendants. 'So I sent them home.'
'What about you?' I took some thin rubber gloves from the jar.
'Talc is on the shelves there,' Berg said. His glasses dropped back across the bridge of his nose as he leaned over the body. He took hold of a scalpel and dug back into the chest cavity.
I made some space for the Stausberg file on shelves crowded with coloured glass bottles and jars. I picked up the talcum powder, powdered a pair of the gloves and pulled them on.
'Here,' Berg said. 'Hold this.' He handed me a sac of rubbery flesh. 'Empty it into that.' He pointed to a steel bowl beneath the curved water tap at the slab's raised end. 'So, did you get anywhere with Kürten?'
I upended the sac over the bowl. A thick substance with the consistency of tar dripped out.
'No, you have to squeeze it.' Berg mimed something like milking a cow. 'Gently though.'
I held the top end with one hand and squeezed down the length of the sac with the other. Air rippled out with a flatulent rasp. Now I was glad of my blunted sense of smell. More liquid came out, along with a damp grey lump.
'Hmmn.' Berg prodded the lump with the blunt end of his scalpel. 'You mind taking a few notes for me on this?'
I didn't mind doing anything that would take me away from squeezing the crap out of human organs. 'How much do you remember of the Emma Gross murder?' I said.
'A great deal, given that I re-read my report this morning before going to see Gennat. Has Kürten told you when he killed this one?' He tapped the contents of the steel bowl. 'We're going to struggle with this.'
The corpse's skin bore a pale waxy sheen dotted with brown blotches. The head wasn't attached to the spine of course, thanks to me, and it seemed to loll on the table. Berg had removed the top of the skull and emptied the cavity and I took a sharp breath at the sight.
Berg chuckled. 'Don't worry about it, Thomas. I've seen officers of the law commit worse acts of disrespect than yours.'
'That wasn't...' I stopped myself from lashing out and changed tack: Berg was one of the few bigwigs who hadn't acted like I was a major ball ache. Probably best to keep him sweet, especially since I was there to get information out of him. 'Seems well preserved,' I said. 'Kürten said she'd been in the ground since last summer.'
'It's the loamy earth, mostly. Lack of air, lack of worms, slowed decomposition no end. Also, you see this wax-like texture to the skin?'
I nodded.
'Adipocere. It's an effect produced by certain bacteria that break down the tissue. Converts all the fatty acids to this.' He chuckled again. I wondered what he was laughing at, then decided it probably wouldn't help to know. 'Helps us by preserving the wounds as though they were made yesterday. Which reminds me: what's the good word on time of death?'
'Seven thirty pm on Sunday 11th August last year,' I said. 'Give or take ten minutes.'
'Hmmn.' He prodded the bowl contents some more. 'I should have said later than that. Oh well,' he put down his scalpel, 'the limits of science.'
He took the flaccid flesh sac from my unresisting fingers and laid it over the steel bowl. I took off my gloves and pulled out my notebook and pencil. I also let out the breath I hadn't realised I'd been holding.
'Now, as I've mentioned the wounds, let's start with them. Three stabs in the left temple. These penetrated the skull, here and here. The stab nearest the front here also pierced the brain.' He paused. 'Come on Thomas, move in closer or you won't see it all.'
'I can see fine from here thanks, doctor.'
He shook his head, then picked up his scalpel and pointed with it. 'The neck was trickier, given your enthusiasm with the spade. But, as far as I can reconstruct it, this group of seven stabs is pretty superficial. In the breast there are ten wounds. Two penetrated the heart, two the pleurae. You see, there in the lungs?'
I nodded and cleared my throat.
'I cannot, of course, prove throttling in this case, but these stab wounds and those of Albermann are alike. Stabs in the left temple in both cases. In the skull we see the same wedge-shaped forms showing a blade with a broad back. Or,' he looked up and smiled, 'as we know from your search of Kürten's apartment, a large pair of house scissors. These wounds are consistent with the stab patterns I noted in the Ohliger and Scheer cases. Did Kürten say anything about those?'
'He confessed, if that's what you mean. Gave us enough detail not to doubt his word.'
'Oh dear.' He straightened up into a slight stoop and scratched his chin with a gloved hand, smearing brown mucus on his jaw. He sniffed. 'So Stausberg was innocent after all.'
'Maybe not,' I said.
'What do you mean?'
'The Emma Gross murder. Kürten confessed to it, but he got several details wrong. Just stuff from the papers dressed up the way he thought we wanted it.'
If the asylum director had revealed anything about Stausberg's involvement in the Gross murder, Berg wasn't letting on. He took off his gloves and threw them into a waste bin. 'I need a cigarette. Coming?'
He ushered me out of the room. The warmth of the hallway after the autopsy room made me flush and I yawned. Berg leaned against the wall. He pulled cigarettes from a pocket hidden under his apron, used his lighter to get one going, then offered me the case. I shook my head.
'Please yourself,' he said. 'What about the fingerprint they found at the scene?'
'Fingerprint?'
'Yes,' Berg said, 'the one on the back of the divan. Didn't you compare it with Kürten's?'
What fingerprint? Damn it, that must have been in the part of the crime scene report I hadn't got around to reading. 'I, er, haven't done it yet,' I said.
'Well, you might want to proceed with that first. It didn't match Stausberg.' He shrugged. 'Of course, it's probably nothing. I mean, a hotel room, dozens of people in and out in the course of an average week, could have belonged to anyone, you understand? But it's got to be worth ruling out.'
He sniffed his hand, then examined his fingers. I pointed at his jaw. He wiped some of the brown mucus away and stared at his fingers with a furrowed brow before using a pocket handkerchief to clean himself off.
'You said on the phone that the asylum director called?' I prompted.
He shook his head. 'I called Dr Glauser. We've been friends since medical school. After realising Stausberg might have been innocent of a good few of the crimes laid at his door, I was curious to see how he was getting on. With his treatment, you see? Dr Glauser told me Stausberg was beginning to open up in the most extraordinary ways.' He was fidgeting with his cigarette case and lighter, just as he had in Gennat's office that morning.
'What about?'
One of the lights in the ceiling flickered and died. The door at the end of the hallway opened and an ov
erweight woman shuffled in with a mop and bucket. She adjusted something at bosom height and then slopped brown water over the tiled floor. I moved so I was standing facing Berg with my back to the woman. Berg folded his handkerchief.
'What about?' I said again.
Berg's eyes slid to the approaching woman.
'I can't tell you.'
'Gott in Himmel, Berg – '
'Because Dr Glauser wouldn't tell me.'
'So how do you know how important it is?'
'You don't know the director as I do. Glauser does not get excited. Not like that. It was extraordinary.' He exhaled a fug of smoke. 'The good doctor suggested that a detective interview Stausberg as soon as possible, was quite insistent on it being so soon, in fact. Said it would have a bearing on Stausberg's case. I took that to mean that it might also have some bearing on this Kürten business, but I can't say for sure. Patient-doctor confidentiality precludes the director revealing anything more without Stausberg's consent, but Glauser seems to think Stausberg has got to the point where he might also open up to a policeman given the right circumstances.'
'Can you get me in there?'
'Mmmn?'
'Instead of Ritter. Would you put in a word with the director for me?' If I was going to make this work for me I needed to find out from Stausberg whether Ritter had faked or forced the confession. Get it from the half-wit's mouth, so to speak.
'I don't know, Thomas. Michael handled the Stausberg case originally. Wouldn't it be better for him to deal with this?'
'You know how busy Ritter is with Kürten right now...'
The cleaning woman was humming a tune. She came by and mumbled a good evening in our direction. We mumbled it back at her. She saw Berg tap cigarette ash onto the floor. She mopped it, shaking her head and mumbling something we weren't meant to catch, and didn't. She shuffled a little further down the corridor.
Berg glanced at me. 'Look, I'll think about it, but I can't promise anything, okay?' He flicked more ash on the floor. 'On a lighter note, are you going to be performing at the press conference tomorrow?'
'Gennat didn't confirm it either way.' No thanks to you, I wanted to add. 'You going?'
He gestured back to the autopsy room and made a sad face.
'I'll tell you all about it if you let me speak to Dr Glauser,' I said.
Berg laughed. 'You don't give up easily do you? Do you promise I can trust you? I mean, this Red Front issue...'
'A misunderstanding.'
'You sure? After all the trouble with the newspaper this morning?'
I crossed my heart. 'Hope to die,' I said.
'Let's not tempt fate.'
Berg finished his cigarette, looked around and saw there wasn't anywhere he could put the butt without setting the cleaning woman off muttering some more. He pinched it out between thumb and forefinger. He nodded at the autopsy room again as he tucked the butt into his cigarette case.
'You going to help me finish up in there?'
'Why not?' I said, and followed him back in.
13
The wind had got up again. I had grit in my eye by the time I rolled up to the front door of Grafenberg Asylum. It was nine am, or near enough as made no odds. The cloud cover overhead was so thick the dawn hadn't broken through. A whole day of murk threatened. It was like a metaphor for something. My nagging headache, probably.
I'd spent all night worrying over what to do if Stausberg said he really had killed Gross. It wouldn't stop Ritter being to blame for the Albermann girl's murder, but it would weaken any case I tried to make against him with the brass. It had to be a forced confession – anything else was useless. And that was assuming Stausberg really was ready to talk.
The building itself was all clean lines and red brick, three storeys high – four if you counted the circular windows in the roof space. This wasn't the first madhouse I'd been to in the course of my duty – though it was my first time at this one – and yet I couldn't shake off my disappointment that it wasn't some creaking Gothic pile. Flocks of songbirds filled the sky, unable to find perches in the trembling wind-blown woods behind the building.
I walked up the small flight of stone steps that led to the front door. Then I knocked and settled in for a wait. I rubbed at the grit in my eye, agitating the bruising and causing tears to roll down my cheeks. The door opened immediately. It didn't creak open on rusty hinges and the man who opened it turned out not to be a stunted hunchback with a squint.
'Detective Klein?' the man said. His eyes were pale and startling beneath dark brows.
'How did you know that?' I said, extending my ID. I blinked and that grit was still there, lodged at the side of my eye.
He took the ID and looked at the picture, then at me, then back at the picture.
'Hmmn,' he said, stroking his recessed chin, a white space on his ring finger. Was he a widower? Or did the orderlies have to remove all such items for security reasons? 'You seem taller in your photo.'
I must've looked puzzled because he laughed.
'Just joking, detective. How could I get your height from a photo of just your head and shoulders?' And he laughed some more.
'No,' I said, 'quite.' I smiled. Dear God, perhaps this was an inmate run amok.
He reached for my left shoulder with a thick arm clad in starched white cotton. The sleeves were too short and dark arm hairs matted his wrists and the backs of his hands. He pulled me inside and shut the door. He released me and I blinked at the dark wooden staircase and hardwood flooring in the entrance hall. I jumped when the door locked behind me, turning as the man pulled a set of keys from the lock. The keys were attached to a large ring that hung from a short chain clipped to his belt. His trousers were made of starched white cotton too, and they billowed some way short of his ankles; his shoes of cracked leather and white socks completed the ensemble. I didn't think much of his tailor.
He returned my ID. 'I expect you'd like to see the director?'
I said yes and he led me off to the right, through a series of thick doors, each of which he unlocked with a separate, numbered iron key from the ring on his belt. The third door bore a sign consisting of a white-painted letter P on a black background.
'For the Placid Ward,' the hairy man told me as he held it open. He was wearing a name badge of some kind, but I couldn't make out the name on it. The letters were too small.
Music filled the hallway beyond. Disinfectant fought its way through my swollen sinuses and left a chemical tang at the back of my throat. Dust balls gathered in the joins between the floor and the papered walls. I pushed at the paper with my fingers. It was soft, thick and padded. A little further along, dark red splotches clung to the paper and glistened in the hallway light.
'Hmmn,' my companion said. He rubbed a forefinger through the nearest splotch and licked the end of his finger. 'Strawberry. Looks like they've finished breakfast.' He licked his lips. Now that he'd said that, one of the red marks resembled a human hand. I hoped I wasn't about to walk into a food fight.
We rounded a corner. Here the music was louder: a floating waltz-time ditty. Its gentle swell pulled a yawn out of me.
The tall man knocked at the nearest open door. I couldn't see past him to get a look at what was going on inside, but this was where the music was coming from. A short bespectacled nurse came out into the hallway. She was dressed in starched white cotton too. She smiled, exposing yellow teeth between deep red lips as she patted the bun of silver hair at the back of her head. She wore no earrings but the ear I could see had been pierced and allowed to heal over.
'Our visitor?' she said to the hairy man who nodded. The woman came and shook my hand. She wasn't wearing a name badge and she caught me looking at her bosom to ascertain that fact. I blushed. Her face wasn't lined, but the skin was dry and chipping off, like old paint. I found myself wondering what Berg and I would find in this woman's stomach should fate lead her to his dissection slab.
'You don't like what you see, detective?' she said.
&n
bsp; Shit, I must've been curling my lip. 'Oh God, no, it's not that,' I babbled. 'I, er, see you don't wear a name tag.'
'Oh, so that's what you were looking at. I wonder, detective, whether I should be relieved or offended?' Her lips retracted further, showing more of those even, stained teeth. The hairy man let loose with one of his laughs.
'Is Dr Glauser in there?' I nodded at the room the nurse had just left.
'Not at the moment.'
'Where is he?'
'He is standing right in front of you, detective,' the woman said. 'Or rather, she is. I'm sorry, it was Detective Klein, wasn't it?'
I wished she'd stop using the word 'detective' so much. Was she making fun of me?
'Oh yes,' the hairy man piped up, 'I've seen his ID and everything. He's shorter in real life.' Again with the laughter.
I closed my eyes and scrunched up my face. A hand rested on my arm and I opened my eyes again. The hand was Dr Glauser's and it was wearing a plain gold wedding band. The nails on the ends of her fingers were red to match her lips.
'Karl didn't mention that I was a woman, did he?' she said. The corners of her grey-blue eyes crinkled and softened her features.
I shook my head.
'That's Karl. Never changes. If it doesn't come out of the human gut he doesn't know what to do with it. We're nearly finished in here, then we'll all go to my study, all right? Is something troubling you, by the way?'
'It's nothing.' I'd been rubbing my belly – or rather, the patch of shirt that covered the scar on my belly – without noticing. 'Comes and goes.' Now that I took my hand away the hot needle began to return, though it was more of a background nagging for the moment.
The Killing Of Emma Gross Page 10