“A bare-bosomed slave girl,” said Lina, having followed his gaze. “Horrible. She was being sold to some old letch, or something like that. We hated it.” Lina closed the door. She saw Hoffner reaching for his cigarettes. “Not in the room, please,” she said. Hoffner found the request charming. Or perhaps Lina was more concerned with Fichte’s highly developed sense of smell. Hoffner returned the pack to his pocket.
She moved past him and over to an icebox that he had failed to see until now. She opened it and pulled out a plate of various goodies: crackers and pastes and cheeses, and something that looked like chocolate. Hoffner knew otherwise; Lina could never have afforded the real thing. She placed the plate on a small side table by the bed. Two glasses and a bottle of kmmel already stood at the ready.
Hoffner said, “I wasn’t expecting all of this.”
Lina continued to organize the treats. “So you were thinking it would be off with your pants and into bed,” she said with a smile as she pulled open a drawer and retrieved a few more crackers. She placed them along the rim of the plate. “I thought you’d be hungry.” She licked at a bit of paste that had grazed one of her fingers. “I also thought you’d be here a bit earlier. The paste’s too cold now. Oh, well.” She smoothed out the blanket on her bed and sat. She motioned for Hoffner to join her.
Hoffner took off his coat.
“Just there on the chair,” she said, pointing across the room.
Hoffner laid his coat across the chair and then joined her on the bed. He sat with his hands on his thighs. He said nothing. Lina reached over and poured out two glasses of the liqueur. A bit dripped on her hand, and again she quickly lapped it up. She handed Hoffner his, and they toasted. Lina then placed hers back on the table before bringing the plate to the bed and setting it between them.
“The other bed,” he said. “I’m assuming that one belongs to Frulein Elise.”
Lina handed him a cracker with a thin slice of cheese. “She knows not to come home before two. We’ve plenty of time.”
Hoffner was unsure how to react to the precision of the night’s planning. He took a bite; the cheese had no taste, at all. He said, “She’s used to this sort of thing, your Elise? Does it on a regular basis?”
Lina looked up. The implication was obvious. She smiled disingenuously. “She’s at the White Mouse most nights.” She took a cracker for herself. “And she does it only for Hans. There haven’t been any others.”
“I didn’t imagine there were,” he said.
Lina chewed as she stared at him. Her smile softened. “So,” she said. “Do you like my little place?”
Hoffner took another quick scan. “Very nice.” He reached for a piece of the faux chocolate. To his amazement, it was real.
“Not expecting that, either, were you?”
“No,” he said. “Not that, either.”
He was enjoying the chocolate’s sweetness when, very gently, she reached over and started to undo his tie. No less gently, Hoffner reached up and took hold of her arm. He held it there. Lina peered at him, unsure why he had stopped her. For a moment she looked almost fragile.
“Why?” he said calmly. There was nothing uncertain in his question, no need for affirmation. He simply wanted to know. “Why me?”
She brought her hand back to her lap. It was something she had never considered. It took her a moment to answer. “Does it matter?” she said.
Hoffner held her gaze. “Yes. It does. Why?”
Again she waited. “Don’t look at me that way,” she said. Hoffner said nothing; he continued to stare. “With your eyes like that.” Her smile grew uncomfortable. “It’s too much . . . looking.”
Hoffner waited, then dropped his eyes to the plate. He took another wedge of cheese. “Better?”
“Much.”
He brought the cracker to his mouth. “So . . . how much do you pay for this place, you and your Elise?”
Lina once again had her glass. “Are you planning on helping out?” she said with a coy smile. She took a sip.
Hoffner laughed quietly. “I don’t imagine that’s the way this is going to work.”
“The way what’s going to work?” she said with mock innocence. “Oh, this. No, I don’t imagine it will.”
“You split it?”
Lina said, “You’re awfully concerned with how I’m getting on. At tea today, wondering whether the flowers were enough, now my rent.”
“Sorry,” said Hoffner. “I won’t ask anymore.”
“No. It’s nice.”
“Good.” Hoffner finished off his cracker. “You still haven’t answered my question.”
She casually placed her glass back on the table. “Forty. Yes. We split it. Twenty each.”
Hoffner watched as her neck twisted with the movement. It was almost a perfect neck. “That’s not the question I meant.”
She turned back. “I know. I haven’t come up with an answer for that one, yet.” Without waiting for him, she reached over and took his glass. She set it on the table, then did the same with the plate. Hoffner knew exactly what was coming, yet he did nothing. He sat there as she moved closer, as she untied her dressing gown and let it drop off her shoulders. It spilled into a pool of silk by her thighs. She was wearing a nightgown beneath, pale white and thin, with two ribbon straps over her shoulders. Her small breasts were almost lost, save for the deep crimson of her nipples that puckered at the cloth.
Hoffner could smell the tangy sweetness of the rosewater in her hair. Her neck arced slightly, and he could see a thin ridge of powder that had gone unsmoothed by her chin. He felt a distant weakness in his arms and legs.
She slowly took his hand and placed it on her waist. “How many do I make, Nikolai?” she said. Hoffner felt a heat below the gown, the suppleness of her skin. “Girls like me,” she said. “The ones that mattered. How many?”
Hoffner followed the moisture of her lips. Without warning, he pulled her into him. He saw her eyes widen as she let out a sudden breath. She showed no vulnerability, no guile. He could taste the saltiness of her breath.
“How many?” she said.
“Six,” he answered without having to consider the number for even a moment.
Lina’s smile returned. The total was irrelevant. All she had wanted was an answer. She placed her hand on his cheek and brought him into her.
Twenty minutes later, Hoffner was asleep, his naked backside still glistening from the exertion. Lina pulled the blanket over him. She liked the weight of his arms and chest on her, the thick flesh of his back as his breathing grew heavier. He had taken her without reserve, and had left her spent. She had never felt such hunger in a partner. She could still feel him inside her, a deep vacancy where he had been. She imagined what it would be like to be loved by this man. She felt no less empty.
At one o’clock she woke him. Hoffner roused himself slowly. He had been dreaming, something to do with wild dogs and Georgi. He felt as if he had been running for hours. He dressed quietly and finished off his glass. Lina sat and watched him from the bed; she was relieved that there would be no need for a repeat performance. She held the blanket around her naked shoulders as she brought him to the door.
“You don’t ask any questions about Hans,” she said.
Hoffner half smiled and shook his head. “No.”
She ran her hand along his chest. “That’s good.” She kissed him.
An hour later, Hoffner dropped his pants and shirt at the foot of his bed and crawled in next to Martha; she hardly seemed to breathe. With the scent of Lina still fresh on him, Hoffner placed his arm around Martha’s back and was asleep within minutes. No dreams. Instead, for the first time in weeks, he slept through the night.
POINT TUDE
On his third time through the notes, Hoffner wrote: “No pleasure or purpose in it; no imperative; kills because he can.” Fichte was on his knees at the foot of the desk, busy with one more stack of papers that he had just pulled from his valise. He had come directly from the train and had been pleas
antly surprised to find Hoffner in an almost buoyant mood. There was nothing to apologize for; van Acker had been right: best to get it all here as quickly as possible. Fichte had decided not to question his good fortune. For Hoffner, though, the clear evidence of van Acker’s hand in the choice of documents had been far more important than the speed. As far as he could tell, the Belgian had sent along everything they might need. Unfortunately, it would be another hour before Fichte would have the papers in any kind of presentable order, but at least they were here.
Unwilling to wait, Hoffner had started in on what looked to be the most self-contained and thus coherent of the packets. It was the transcript of van Acker’s first interview with Wouters, dated October 7, 1916, two days after Wouters had been taken into custody. Not surprisingly, it was making for some rather interesting, if disturbing, reading:
* * *
REPORT CASE #: 00935
SUSPECT: WOUTERS
INTERROGATOR: ACKERS
7 OCTOBER 1916
CI van Acker: So you killed your grandmother. Anne Wouters.
M. Wouters: Yes.
CI van Acker: Because of the way she treated you.
M. Wouters: Because I had the bristle.
CI van Acker: So you deserved the beatings?
M. Wouters: (Pause) I don’t know. I don’t think so.
CI van Acker: And you were pleased to kill her. As you said, to “watch the blood flow down her neck.”
M. Wouters: (Pause) I don’t think I understand.
CI van Acker: You liked watching her die.
M. Wouters: No. Why should I like watching her die?
CI van Acker: Because she had been beating you. Because of the scars on your back.
M. Wouters: I don’t think so. I don’t know. (Pause) Would it be better if that was why?
CI van Acker: If what was why, Mr. Wouters?
M. Wouters: Would it be better if it was because of the scars on my back? Would that be right?
CI van Acker: (Pause) Are you sorry your grandmother is dead?
M. Wouters: You’re asking the same question again.
CI van Acker: No, I haven’t asked that question.
M. Wouters: Yes. Yes, you did.
CI van Acker: I can assure you, I didn’t.
M. Wouters: Yes. You asked if I was pleased to kill her. “To watch the blood flow down her neck.” You see.
CI van Acker: (Pause) And you buried her outside the city.
M. Wouters: Yes.
CI van Acker: “In the soft earth near the Shripte factory.”
M. Wouters: Yes. The dirt smelled like coal, there.
CI van Acker: Like coal. I see. (Pause) So if there was nothing wrong with what you did, Mr. Wouters, why not tell the police when they asked you about her disappearance?
M. Wouters: Tell them? (Pause) They didn’t find the blood. I cleaned that. With a brush.
* * *
Hoffner reread the last line, then sat back and peered across at the map. He continued to think. “Kills because he can.” It was the same conclusion van Acker had drawn two years ago; Hoffner saw no reason to question it now. For Wouters, brutality carried no moral weight, no meaning beyond the act itself. His answers made that abundantly clear: there was no remorse, no pride, no delight in the killing. And yet, strangely enough, Wouters was neither cold nor detached in his responses. Van Acker’s notes said as much. It was as if Wouters had been genuinely confused by van Acker’s horror and disbelief.
* * *
CI van Acker: And, after that, you lived on the streets and in the almshouses.
M. Wouters: Yes. I moved about.
CI van Acker: Until the day you decided to kill another woman.
M. Wouters: Yes.
CI van Acker: You waited nine years, and then just went out to kill another woman.
M. Wouters: Yes. Nine. If you say it was nine.
CI van Acker: Nine years, and then three more women.
M. Wouters: Yes. Three more. One, two, three.
CI van Acker: And you decided to carve out these designs on their backs.
M. Wouters: Yes.
CI van Acker: I see. (Pause) Why so long, Mr. Wouters? And why so many at once?
M. Wouters: (Pause) It took time to find the ideal.
CI van Acker: To find the what?
M. Wouters: (Pause) It seemed the right thing to do.
* * *
It was that last answer the Belgian doctors had fallen in love with. To them, it had made everything crystal clear. Here was the created madman.
Hoffner was not so convinced. He had never cottoned to the theory that every beaten boy was destined for violence, or that every act of violence was traceable back to a beaten boy. People did what they did because they chose to. The motivations were ultimately irrelevant, inevitability merely an excuse. And yet, even in Berlin, the proceedings at the Reichstadt Court were beginning to sound more like medical seminars than legal prosecutions. In the hands of a clever attorney, the predilections for stealing, maiming, and raping were no longer criminally inspired; instead, they were all symptoms of some hidden disease. That disease, as far as Hoffner could make out, was called childhood. Luckily, most of the judges were, as yet, unwilling to accept the sins of the father as a legitimate defense: they still believed in the culpability of the individual.
Except, of course, when it came to a deeper depravity, that special brand of horror that tore at the very cloth of humane society. Then the judges, whether German or Belgian, were told to step aside so that the doctors could explain away the birth of psychosis. Hoffner imagined that it made them all feel so much safer to think that men such as Wouters could not simply be brought into this world; that, instead, they had to be malformed by it. Hoffner was not sure which painted the world in a more feeble light: the fact that it could not defend itself against a pure evil, or that it alone was responsible for every act of corruption.
Either way, it made no difference. The act itself was all that concerned him. That Wouters had killed Mary Koop—a young Mary Koop—clearly threw the doctors’ theories out the window. Wouters was not reenacting his grandmother’s murder. He was simply weak. And as the weak do, he preyed on the weak. There was nothing more profound to it than that. That he had found most of his victims in older, solitary women; that he had chosen to etch his markings onto the area where he himself had been beaten—naturally there was a link, but those elements could in no way mitigate Wouters’s decision to embrace his own infamy.
What they did provide, however, was a view into the logic of the killings. Wouters might not have had access to the rational world, but that did not mean that he had not constructed one for himself.
A few points were obvious: the drag marks at each of the murder sites made it clear that the placement of the bodies was essential; otherwise, why go to the trouble of bringing them out into the open? Wouters had buried his grandmother in the “soft earth.” He had meant for her to remain hidden. Not so with these women. Hoffner was hoping that van Acker could shed some light on the placement issue with some more information on the three victims he had discovered in Bruges.
More than that, Hoffner was now reasonably certain—ever since the discovery of the gloves—that the diameter-cut design was some kind of lace mesh itself. Wouters’s eight years cooped up in an attic room, working a needle and thread, confirmed it. The trouble was, the more Hoffner stared at the design, the less it seemed to jibe with the pins sticking out from his map. He knew there had to be another piece, something that could make sense of the design in the context of the city’s layout.
“He’s remarkably small,” said Fichte. He was still on his knees, staring at a single sheet. “Just over a meter and a half.” He looked over. “Weren’t some of the women taller than that?”
Hoffner kept his eyes on the map. “All of them.” He was fixated on one of the pins; it had begun to sag. “Tell me,” said Hoffner. “How does he move them, a man that small? How does he move a healthy-sized woman?
”
“A trunk. Something like that. Isn’t that what the marks showed?”
Hoffner nodded distractedly as he stood and moved over to the map. “But how does such a little man maneuver a trunk? Up and down stairs? A ramp? A ladder?” Hoffner readjusted the pin. He could still smell the formaldehyde on his fingers from this morning’s session with victim number six. She had been of little help. As of now, they still had no name for her. “How does he do that without drawing attention? In fact”—Hoffner was now straightening each of the pins—“how does he do it at all without breaking his own back?”
Fichte thought for a moment. “The second carver.” Fichte knew he had gotten it right.
Hoffner looked over at him. His eyes widened as he nodded. “Not the way he worked in Bruges, was it?” Fichte shook his head. “You haven’t been at the pins, have you, Hans?” Another shake of the head. Hoffner turned back to the map. “No, I didn’t think so.”
Still preoccupied with the growing piles of paper, Fichte said, “Mueller knows how to have a good time.”
The comment caught Hoffner off-guard. He turned. “Does he?” Fichte’s smile was answer enough. “Yes . . . our Toby’s not one to let an opportunity slip by.”
“I never knew a man who could drink that much and still—” Fichte stopped himself with a little laugh.
Hoffner had felt a mild discomfort at Fichte’s arrival this afternoon: another consequence to be considered. Now, hearing of Toby’s exploits, he felt a similarly mild dose of relief. “So you had company?” he said. Fichte looked up. He was sporting a fifteen-year-old’s grin. Hoffner returned the smile. “Toby never disappoints on that score.” For a moment, Hoffner wondered if that was the reason he had sent Fichte off with Mueller in the first place; Hoffner, however, had never considered himself quite that clever, if, in fact, “clever” was the right word.
Fichte began to busy himself with the papers. Trying just too hard at nonchalance, he said, “He was telling me about some of your goings-on.”
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