The Killing Of Emma Gross

by Damien Seaman

  The man elbowed me and said, 'You look like you need help, friend. You want to borrow mine?'

  He shoved his woman at me, if woman was the right name for such a sack of bones. The floozy spat out champagne and slapped the man's shoulder and then the couple left for the street.

  I wiped champagne from my cheek and flung the droplets at Frau Holz, who flinched. The maid busied herself, reaching up to put key number twelve back in its pigeon hole. She stretched so far that her blouse came untucked. I resisted the urge to tuck it in for her.

  Following my shave, the cut in my cheek was exposed to the air. It itched like crazy, but the barber had managed to shave around it without opening it up again, something I doubted I'd have been able to do.

  'Okay,' Holz shrugged, 'so we do allow guests to have rooms by the hour, but we do not encourage...sexual congress.'

  'So what do they do up there? Hold séances?'

  'We offer discretion. What our guests choose to spend their time doing is of no concern to us. A view backed up by your vice squad boys, by the way, officer.' Her hand moved toward a cash register behind the desk. She raised an eyebrow.

  I waved away the implication. 'Save your money. I'm not vice. Was Emma Gross a regular here?'

  'No.'

  The maid swallowed and squinted and flitted into the back room. The door clicked shut behind her.

  'Is there anyone here who knew her? Who spoke to her, maybe?'

  'I'd hardly encourage that, officer. Why, if I'd known she was a whore I'd have kicked her out.'

  I looked back into the lobby at the blonde with the dark roots. She wriggled in her florid gentleman's lap and played with his neck tie. In the trade the girls called their marks 'suitors' with ironic formality. She'd got herself an easy one here: guy was turning beet already, and he still had all his clothes on.

  I turned back. 'Did you see the man she came in with that night?'

  'Who?'

  'Emma Gross.'

  'When, the twenty-eighth?'

  'Yes, the twenty-eighth.'

  'No.'

  'Was there anybody working here that night who might've?'

  'I was the only one working the desk that night.'

  'You're sure about that?'

  'I answered enough questions at the time, officer, to be sure. Yes.'

  'There's no way your maid might have walked in on her in the room?'

  She put her eyeglasses back on her nose so she could glare through them at me. 'If Marta was in the habit of doing such things I am sure she would not still be working for me.'

  'She was there that night too?'

  'No.'

  'Mind if I ask her?' I flipped up the hinged top in the check-in desk and reached for the door to the back room.

  Frau Holz put out a hand to stop me. 'That is to say, she was not on the desk or cleaning the rooms or the hallways that night, officer. She was in the kitchen, helping chef.'

  'And may I speak with the chef?'

  She beamed at me. 'Chef is regrettably no longer in my employ, officer.'

  'And your husband. Is he around to speak to?'

  'He passed away.'

  I read through my notes again. 'And you're sure you don't remember which room Gross was killed in that night?'

  'That's right.'

  'Make any difference if I ask your guests?' I turned and nodded at the florid men in the chairs, taking a couple of steps away from the desk.

  'Room thirty-seven,' Holz said. 'But it's occupied right now.'

  I checked the ledger. No record of any occupants of room thirty-seven for the whole day, or the night before.

  'Holding a séance, are they?'

  Now Holz' reticence made more sense. I grinned to myself as I went up the stairs. Thirty-seven was a short walk down the hall on the third floor. I pressed my ear to the door. Groans, grunts and squeaking bed springs issued forth and that grin I'd been wearing bloomed into a full-grown smile.

  I tried the handle. The door was locked, of course. I knocked.

  'No thank you!' called a man's voice. He sounded out of puff.

  I knocked again.

  'We're busy in here, thanks!'

  I knocked again.

  'Look, bugger off will you!'

  I kicked at the lock. The screws keeping the lock in place separated from the wood of the doorjamb and the door swung open. The man and woman copulating within ran with sweat. She was on all fours and he was schtupping her from behind.

  That's when I got my first surprise.

  The man and woman were copulating on a divan across from the door, not the double bed against the right wall. It was the divan that was squeaking, not the bed.

  And that's when I got my second surprise.

  That was the same divan Gross had been lying on when they found her. I recognised it from the crime scene photographs.

  The man on the divan heaved his deflating hard-on from inside his squeeze – a corpulent brunette – and got to his feet. This one wasn't florid. He had tan lines above and below his groin, and a heavy gut beneath a toned chest and muscular arms. The hair cresting his head was thick and blond, and fine blond hairs over his body caught the light coming from the window behind the divan. The Depression didn't seem to be touching him at all.

  The corpulent woman bent to pick up some clothing lying on the floor by the divan but the man pushed her down. 'Stay there,' he commanded. He sniffed a line of white powder from the dip in her back above her buttocks. He straightened, rubbing at his nostrils with his right thumb.

  The man approached me, his penis shrivelling. 'Do you know who I am?' he said. He swept loose hair back on his head and curled his hands into fists.

  My knee connected with his groin. He groaned and sank to his knees. I pulled his head back by his hair so he could get an eyeful of my ID. 'Do you want me to know who you are?' I said.

  He shook his head as far as my fist would let it shake.

  'Get on the bed.' I looked up at the whore. 'You too.' They both of them did as I said. The man crouched in a foetal position. 'Now, answer my questions honestly and I won't have to take your names. Do either of you know the name Emma Gross?'

  'Do I?' the man said, voice halfway between a choke and a sob. 'We paid extra for this room on the understanding that it was the room. That that is the divan. It's triple the price, you know.'

  Footsteps echoed in the uncarpeted hallway. I pulled my Luger and trained it on the door as Frau Holz burst in with a wartime carbine in her hands. The barrel tipped down towards the floor and Holz' glasses tumbled from her nose at the sight of my gun.

  'I heard...th-there w-was trouble,' she said. Behind her, the maid's dark head bobbed up and down.

  'There will be.' I pulled the carbine from her hands and removed the magazine. I pulled back the turn-down bolt and ejected the cartridge from the breech. 'Charging extra for the murder room, Frau Holz?'

  The woman ignored me and addressed the man. 'I'm sorry, Herr – '

  He waved his hands in the air. 'No, for God's sake woman, don't tell him who I am.'

  'Go downstairs and wait for me,' I told Frau Holz. 'We'll discuss your gun permit presently.' I pointed at the door. She didn't budge. 'Move!' I yelled. My trench voice. She jumped, as well she might.

  She left, but not without mumbling, '...right to defend myself on my own property...'

  I shut the door. I conjured the crime scene photos in my mind, ignoring the sweat-slicked couple as I approached the divan and pictured Gross' slack body lying in the broken-doll posture in which they found her. But in which who had found her? I wasn't sure the file had mentioned that. But then, since Ritter had extorted or conned a confession to the Gross murder from Stausberg, just how valuable did I expect the information in the file to be?

  'Did either of you know Emma Gross?' I asked, looking at the woman. She shook her head.

  'Look, detective,' the blond man said, grimacing, 'I think you might have got the wrong idea. This woman here is my...lover, you underst
and? She's not a chonté or anything like that. There's very little reason why she would have known a chonté like Gross. And I've never slept with one. We've only used this room a couple of times. Only used this hotel a couple of times before that. We weren't...seeing each other last year, so neither of us came here then. Does that answer your question?'

  'I'd say so.' The long seat of the divan was upholstered in blue, studs holding the fabric to the dark wood. That was a lot of space for fingerprints to show up, but only one had. Did that mean someone had tried to wipe it down after the killing? Or was it more routine than that – that there'd been hundreds of smudges but only one clear, usable print? Why the hell hadn't I picked this up from the file when I had the chance? And then again, how much of this had made the file?

  The naked man appeared at my shoulder. He stood a little taller than me, though the pain in his balls caused him to stoop.

  'This is where she died, right?' he said. His eyes shone, though whether with simple ghoulishness or with the cocaine he'd sniffed off the corpulent woman's back, who could say.

  'What do you know about it?' I said.

  He held up his hands. 'What I read in the papers. That's all, detective, I swear. I heard that Johann Stausberg strangled her and then stabbed her. Funny though,' he patted at the fabric of the seat, 'no blood. I mean, did they wash it?'

  'No, they didn't wash it.'

  'So is this a different divan or what?'

  'You know, you can go ahead and get dressed any time you like,' I said.

  He looked at me with a puzzled expression. 'I'm hot,' he said finally. 'Aren't you, darling?' He turned to the corpulent woman. She was scrabbling amongst the clothes on the bed. If she was looking for her underthings she wouldn't find them there: panties and bra lay twisted at my feet. I bent down, scooped them up and passed them to her. As she smiled, a tear tracked mascara down one of her cheeks. She looked older than the man. I did wonder then about them, about the nature of their relationship, who they were married to. Two wedding rings lay beneath the divan next to a man's wrist watch.

  'Okay folks, I'm sorry for the intrusion,' I said. 'I needed to...get a look at the room.'

  'Why?' the man said. 'What's so important about all this now?'

  'You've read about the arrest of the Ripper?'

  His pupils, already dilated, widened so that they consumed his irises entirely. 'I see,' he said. 'Wow. Come on, darling.' He took one of the half-dressed brunette's hands in his, kissed the bridge of her flat nose and smoothed her hair.

  'Can we go now Fritzie?' she said.

  I tried to look as though I hadn't heard anything as I left the room and went downstairs, a heavy feeling in my stomach. Okay, so I'd seen the murder room, but what had that got me? One thing I was fairly sure of, Frau Holz had altered nothing since Gross' murder, so at least everything was still as it had been back on the 28th February 1929. That confirmed what I'd picked up from the crime scene photographs, confirmed beyond any doubts I might still have had that Kürten had not killed Gross. It just hadn't given me any evidence to prove Stausberg's innocence. For that I'd still need him or his mother to change their statement. And nor had the room given me anything pointing to the real killer.

  My two coal cellar prisoners came to mind. Maybe now was the time to find out who the green man was and whether he had any involvement with the Gross case. But what Du Pont might do once I was forced to let him go, that worried me, gave me all the incentive I needed to drag my feet over going back.

  I approached the check-in desk with the carbine slung over my arm. Frau Holz stood upright, stiff as a board. Marta was there too, sitting on a stool behind the desk and munching on a bread roll. I needed to talk to her alone.

  'Frau Holz,' I said, 'perhaps you'd be so good as to fetch me your permit.'

  The older woman reached for the carbine and I pulled it out of her reach.

  'The permit?' I said.

  'I've lost it.'

  'Unfortunate.'

  'Well, it might be in the office somewhere,' she said.

  'That's the spirit. I'll wait.'

  'Marta,' Frau Holz said, 'I'll need your help, dear.'

  I put a restraining hand on the maid's arm. 'I need to talk to Marta, Frau Holz. Now, off you go. We'll still be here when you find it.'

  Holz went into the office, giving me a frosty look as she went. Once the door clicked shut, I beckoned Marta closer. She put down what was left of her bread.

  'You knew Emma Gross, didn't you Marta?'

  She nodded. I didn't say anything, and after another short while she stopped nodding and said, 'Yes.'

  'Was she a regular guest here?'

  'Yes.'

  'Did you speak to her often?'

  'Just sometimes.' She smiled. 'She would give me chocolates sometimes. Sometimes spare change. She was nice, I liked her. After she had noisy...suitors...' Those liquid black eyes appealed to me not to judge her for slipping into hooker slang. I smiled and leaned closer to encourage her to go on. 'They were bad sometimes. They hit her I think, though she'd never say so. After those times she'd give me money or sweets or fruit. She was nice.'

  'Are you sad she's dead, Marta?'

  'Murder is a terrible thing isn't it, detective?' Her words spilled out as though she'd been waiting a long time for someone to say them to.

  'Did you see or hear anything that happened that night?'

  'No...' Her tone suggested she had more to say, only she couldn't find a way of saying it. I needed to hit upon the right question to open her up. My eyes flicked to the back room door.

  'Who discovered Emma's body that night?'

  'Her friend.'

  'Friend?'

  'Yes, another...night worker, like Emma was.'

  'A girl in the same business, you mean?'

  She nodded.

  'What's her name?'

  'Trudi something. Something with an 'S' I think.'

  'She a regular too?'

  'She was.'

  'But not now?'

  'No, not now.' Marta's frown went deep.

  'Would you know where I can find Trudi?'

  Marta smiled, showing me her small front teeth. She ducked beneath the check-in desk and came up with a match book, which she gave to me. A name was printed on it: Willi's. Beneath that was an address.

  'It's a bar,' Marta whispered.

  'Thank you, Marta.' I wanted to give her some spare change or some chocolate too, but I couldn't. If this lead went somewhere and it came out that she'd had money or sweets from me then a defence lawyer could call bribery. I'd seen a few cases laid low that way. Instead, I patted the back of Marta's hand and she beamed at me.

  I checked my pockets to make sure I still had Holz' magazine, then I knocked on the door to the back office and opened it without waiting for the woman's response. It was time to have a little fun on the subject of her gun permit.

  19

  Düsseldorf bars didn't get going much before eleven pm, so I waited until midnight before dropping by. I missed the front door the first two times I walked past. The third time I noticed the 'sign', a small imperial flag with the word Willi's stitched into the fabric. The flag jutted into the street at an angle.

  I pulled open the door, got a blast of warmth and humidity and harsh jazz music and a smell that was probably stale beer laced with tobacco. Or sweat laced with tobacco. Or maybe all three. Willi's was a step-down bar, the stairs winding deeper even than the coal cellar that morning. Jesus, had it been only that morning?

  I descended the steps. At the bottom, I brushed through a black and white curtain into a low-ceilinged room filled with round tables. A bar lined the left wall and the music was louder here. A piano tinkled atop a foundation of drum and double bass, with some brass or woodwind or something on the side.

  The band sat at the back of a small stage at the far end of the room, the lights thickening the tobacco smoke so that the band members looked like bow-tied genies on the lam from their Baghdad oil lamp intern
ments. A woman danced on the stage in front of the band. She was naked but for the spiked imperial army helmet and – I kid you not – false Kaiser Bill 'tache she wore. Her dancing was uncoordinated but that didn't matter much because the crowd at the tables wasn't really looking.

  Waitresses bustled through the room with trays of drinks, this Trudi somewhere among them. They wore the same whole lot of fake-moustachioed, spikey-helmeted nothing as the girl on the stage. It was a distinctive look, there was that going for it.

  The barman noticed me as I approached the bar. I sat on a stool and met his gaze. He smoothed his waxed moustache with meaty fingers. His clean-shaven head reflected light from the kerosene lanterns on every table.

  I nodded at his face fur. 'Yours fake too?'

  'What do you want here, detective?'

  'How about a drink?'

  'Aren't you on duty?'

  'What do you care?'

  He thought about this, rubbing the stubble on his jutting chin. He pulled a small beer from the tap and set it down in front of me.

  'Now,' he said, 'what do you want?'

  'I'm looking for a woman who works here. She's called Trudi.'

  'This Trudi have a last name?'

  'Does she need one? How many Trudis do you have?'

  'I just don't want any trouble from a dumb bull like you.' He leaned on the bar. His baggy linen shirt did little to conceal the web of green tattoos covering his taut triceps or his thick chest.

  'The only way we're going to have any trouble here is if you keep talking to me that way.'

  The barman lit himself a cigarette. 'She'll be getting changed about now.' He moved down the bar and left me with my beer.

  I sipped it. It tasted sour.

  A girl wandered over to the bar. She had long blonde hair under her spiked helmet and her moustache was full and thick and black.