HS02 - Days of Atonement

by Michael Gregorio

  ‘I’ll do what I can,’ I said, though I could not imagine what argument might be used to deflect Lavedrine if he had already made up his mind to go to Kamenetz.

  ‘You must do better. Swear to me on the heads of your children.’

  He broke into a sudden fit of coughing as Lavedrine left Mutiez alone and turned in our direction.

  ‘If you’ve finished telling the Count what we saw in the woods,’ the Frenchman said, ‘we should interrogate the prisoner.’ His gaze shifted to Dittersdorf, then drifted back to me. He half-closed his eyes, and smiled uncertainly. ‘Unless you have both been inventing plots to frustrate the French oppressor? Was that the subject of your hushed conversation?’

  Fearing that the pallor of Count Aldebrand’s face might give the game away, I searched desperately for some distraction. ‘We were just talking about Kamenetz, and the dangers of travel,’ I said. ‘The East is swarming with Prussian rebels. From a diplomatic point of view, it would be most embarrassing if an accident were to happen to a French officer on such a mission, don’t you agree?’

  A cloud seemed to darken Lavedrine’s features.

  ‘How long will the journey take?’ he asked.

  ‘Two days, if the roads are clear. Maybe more. Out there in the frozen wastes, monsieur, the difficulties are rife,’ Count Dittersdorf replied vaguely, waving his hands in a gesture of helplessness to suggest the unseen dangers.

  ‘He must be sent for!’ Lavedrine exclaimed.

  ‘Brought,’ Count Dittersdorf insisted. ‘Someone must go and fetch him. You cannot think to entrust such news to a messenger?’

  I addressed myself to the Count, affecting an air of thoughtful concern for the Frenchman’s benefit. ‘If Durskeitner tells us nothing, what option do we have?’

  No one spoke for some moments.

  ‘I don’t know how you’ll take this, Stiffeniis,’ Lavedrine began slowly, ‘but you are Prussian. You’ll be able to move more easily through Prussian-controlled territory than I could ever hope to do.’

  Though his voice was flat and toneless, I detected a trace of a smile on his lips. Dittersdorf wanted me to go, and Lavedrine, for reasons of his own, was clearly of the same opinion.

  ‘There may be advantages to the arrangement,’ he added smoothly. ‘The father will have to pass two days with you in the coach. With nothing else to talk about, he may suggest a motive, or provide a clue which will assist the investigation. If we sent a note, and the man arrived exhausted after riding all the day and half the night, anxious to find his wife and bury his children, we’d have to wait an age before he could be questioned.’

  Lavedrine rested his hand very lightly on my arm.

  ‘Would you mind going, Herr Procurator? I’ll continue the investigation here, and we may confront our findings when you return. If luck is on my side, I will have found Frau Gottewald before then.’

  ‘An ideal solution!’ Dittersdorf exclaimed with a burst of enthusiasm. ‘It clearly demonstrates Prussian willingness to cooperate with the French determination to clear the matter up. Stiffeniis, what do you say to that?’

  ‘Whatever I discover in your absence,’ Lavedrine assured me, ‘will be attributed in the final report to the result of our joint efforts.’

  ‘That’s all very well,’ I answered, my reluctance both real and pretended.

  I was hoping that Durskeitner would tell us what we wanted to know, and that there would be no need for anyone to go to Kamenetz.

  But Dittersdorf clapped his hands together.

  ‘Your travel papers will be ready within the hour,’ he announced.

  ‘What about my wife and children?’ I protested, as the enormity of the proposal sank in. ‘A murderer is loose in Lotingen. Until he’s taken, no one’s safe.’

  ‘I’ll set a guard on the house,’ Lavedrine suggested swiftly. ‘Night and day.’

  ‘Excellent!’ the Count declared, his face flushing bright red, as if the blood in his veins had begun to circulate freely again. ‘That’s settled, then. I’ll be waiting for you in my office, Stiffeniis.’

  As Dittersdorf hurried away, Lavedrine, Mutiez and I cantered down the stairs to the basement. If everything above the ground was as splendid as a small provincial town hall would allow, the lower floor of Bitternau was a truer reflection of Lotingen after the invasion. Mutiez led us on down a long, narrow corridor which was dimly lit by candles. Though the walls had been whitewashed, they were scuffed and filthy. Six or seven closed doors of rudimentary manufacture on either side were marked with chalk. Palais Royale, Saint Sulpice, Bastille, I read. All the finest monuments in Paris. At the far end, a sergeant was sitting on a chair reading a letter. Another man was playing with a bayonet, dropping it from shoulder-height, attempting to hit a small rust-brown spot on the wooden floor. Prussian blood, I had no doubt. Splatter marks on the walls indicated what went on down there. In that small arena every man would hear the cries when a prisoner screamed out in vain for mercy as his interrogation took place.

  At the sight of Mutiez, the men drew themselves up smartly.

  ‘At ease,’ he said. ‘Is he still in there?’

  The sergeant nodded to a door marked Versailles.

  ‘You lead the questioning, Stiffeniis,’ Lavedrine murmured. ‘Be stern, unbending. Cruel, if necessary. Durskeitner is a Prussian, after all. You know the old trick, friend and foe? Hammer him until he breaks.’

  This suggestion took me by surprise. ‘I’d have thought that I was the obvious friend,’ I said.

  He shook his head. ‘That’s what he’ll expect. We must throw him off his guard. If one of his countrymen shows no pity, he’ll believe there’s no escaping the responsibility for his crime.’

  ‘If he has committed one,’ I countered. ‘Our aim is to find the woman.’

  ‘Tell him that you know he has taken her,’ Lavedrine insisted. ‘Don’t ask him, tell him. We want to know whether she is alive or dead, and where he has hidden her. Speak German. If he attempts to answer in dialect, stop him. I want to understand every word he says. Do you wish Mutiez to stay?’

  Mutiez was convinced that Durskeitner was guilty. As we examined the hunter’s lodge, he had almost persuaded me to share his belief.

  ‘You and I alone,’ I said.

  ‘As you prefer, Hanno.’

  His voice lingered thoughtfully as he spoke my name. He seemed to imply that we were friends, equals. Not invader and invaded, victor and loser. Certainly, not enemies. You and I will question this man together and discover whether he is guilty, he seemed to be saying.

  ‘No one else.’ I nodded.

  Lavedrine called Mutiez and whispered something in his ear. A vivid expression appeared on the lieutenant’s face. ‘I’ll prepare the laissez-passer for Monsieur Stiffeniis at once. Come to my office when you’ve finished here,’ he said, as he turned the key and pushed hard against the prison door with the sole of his boot.

  The heavy door crashed back on its hinges, heralding our entry into the cell. A three-legged stool lay on its side in a putrid puddle of liquid, like an island in the middle of a stinking lake. A tiny table had been pushed back against the wall to the left, a glass-stoppered bottle of yellow liquid resting on it. Franz Durskeitner lay on the flagstones, curled up on his left flank, facing the stone wall in the darkest corner of the room. He was naked, the flesh of his back bruised and black, his arms and buttocks streaked with blood. Mutiez and the soldiers had questioned him during the night. The French Revolution had altered nothing, I observed. They still tortured suspects. The same fate would be in store for any Prussian who crossed them.

  ‘Get up,’ I ordered, standing over the prisoner.

  As he rolled away, then raised himself to his full height, I realised that although Lavedrine had been correct in general terms, Franz Durskeitner was strictly speaking not a dwarf. His head and upper body were as normal as my own, but his legs were short, his feet as small as those of a child of four or five years old. The man was a lusus naturae,
one of Nature’s cruel tricks. The unequal halves of two different bodies seemed to have been joined together to form him. Durskeitner stood in profile, warily taking us in through half-closed eyes, his hands hanging down to cover his private parts. His face was cruelly handsome, his nose long and straight, though it was encrusted with blood; his eyes as black as coal, piercingly direct, though all around was bruised and puffy. His chest was muscular, his arms thick and powerful.

  ‘Sit on that stool!’ I barked, playing the role assigned to me, while the creature shied away, raising his arms to protect his face, fearing another blow. As he dodged and feinted, his virile member swayed and shook between his tiny legs. It was entirely normal both in length and appearance, the pink-brown colour of an earthworm. Indeed, it was somewhat larger than the norm. As he sat down, it lay on his shrunken white thigh like a preposterous snake.

  ‘What is your name?’

  Durskeitner did not answer. He stared at me in a surly fashion, then glanced at the bottle on the table. He seemed to expect nothing but pain, and more pain to follow. His broad chest was a mat of sizzled hair, burnt and corrugated skin, open wounds. They had sprinkled him with acid, and a stick or knife had been used to probe the folds of his weeping flesh. In the coming days he would suffer the torments of hell whenever anything, even the slightest current of air, caressed his skin.

  ‘You are suspected of murder,’ I said in German. ‘You are going to hang from a tree very shortly. But before you die, you are going to confess.’

  Durskeitner looked up sharply, but did not say a word.

  ‘Do you understand me?’ I said, raising my voice. ‘The only way to end your suffering will be to tell the truth. Then, we will put you out of your misery.’

  The prisoner looked down at the floor, but he did not flinch.

  Suddenly, Lavedrine stepped forward, shrugged off his shawl, and held it out to Durskeitner. ‘I do believe the man is as shy as a mouse,’ he said to me in French.

  At first, the prisoner appeared to think that this unexpected act of humanity was a heartless ruse. Durskeitner turned away and retreated to the corner of the cell, where he hid his face against the wall. Lavedrine followed him like a solicitous lover, muttering reassuring words, gently settling that long woollen wrap on the man’s shoulders, helping him to cover his body with the heavy material. And all the while, sounds of distress came from the prisoner’s mouth as the rough wool rubbed and caught against his injured flesh. Despite his pain, he turned to the Frenchman and uttered his first words.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ he said.

  As he returned to his place, Lavedrine nodded at me to continue the attack.

  ‘Why did you slaughter those children?’ I demanded.

  Durskeitner hunched forward, and his eyes locked into mine. The veins stood out on his neck like thick ropes. ‘I’d never touch the little ones,’ he cried.

  ‘You did more than that. You slit their throats. You mutilated two of them. Then you carried off their mother,’ I said in a stern, expressionless tone of voice. ‘You will die for these crimes.’

  Like Mutiez, I dared to hope that this was the beast that we were looking for.

  ‘You have nothing to fear from us, I promise you,’ Lavedrine interposed.

  Durskeitner raised his eyes as the Frenchman edged closer. He seemed to tower above the suspect, though there was nothing menacing in his stance.

  ‘We are only interested in the truth. Just tell us why you killed those children. And where you’ve hidden the woman. Then you can go back home to the forest,’ he said, a note of complicity in his voice. ‘You can go on as you always have, Durskeitner. I promise you that nothing will change.’

  The prisoner’s mouth sagged open, as if he were unable to believe what Lavedrine had said. Everything would be as before? On condition that he told us what he had done with the woman? Something in his expression altered: I could see that he believed those lies. Weren’t the French in charge? If one of them told you that nothing would happen, it might just be so. These thoughts raced madly through my own head, and I saw the effect that they had had on Durskeitner. He believed them. He began to sob, his eyes fixed on Lavedrine.

  ‘Where is she?’ Lavedrine asked gently. ‘Where have you hidden her?’

  Would he tell Lavedrine what he had done, believing himself safe in the hands of the enemy? Immune from the authority that I represented? A wave of anger swept over me. I would give him a better reason to speak.

  ‘We’ve seen your abode,’ I snapped. ‘The animals in cages.’

  I leaned closer, staring into his face.

  ‘We’ll kill them. Every single one of them. We’ll cut their heads off, and impale them all on sticks. Or burn them alive. That’s what we’ll do, Durskeitner. Unless you tell us the truth.’

  I saw the horrified stare that appeared on his face.

  ‘Can you imagine that, Franz?’ I hissed. ‘Can you see them sizzling? Can you hear them? They are babies. They’ll scream as their fur catches fire. They’ll howl as their flesh begins to shrivel in the roaring flames!’

  That was the power I wanted him to feel. Fear of Prussian might, not the ambiguous hope of a French pardon. I heard Lavedrine clear his throat, and realised that he was looking incredulously at me.

  Durskeitner opened his mouth and let out a roar. He hugged himself tightly inside the cloak. Every fibre of his body seemed to rebel against my threats. Despite his size, the man’s strength was clearly immense.

  ‘I did not touch them!’ he shouted. ‘I heard the shutters banging in the wind. I went to see, but they were dead. They were all dead.’ He began to sob in wrenching cries. ‘But I did not kill them!’

  ‘You know how they died,’ I insisted. ‘You saw the bodies. After slitting their throats, you hacked off the sex of those two boys. That’s what you do to animals, is it not?’

  Durskeitner’s face was a mask of incomprehension. I might have been talking French to him.

  ‘Why did you mutilate the children?’ I pressed.

  ‘I did not!’

  ‘We have seen those skeletons hanging in your hut,’ I said. ‘The meat outside. You can’t deny the truth. You enjoy cutting flesh.’

  The man’s brow was a furrowed field. He mumbled incoherently, stuttered helplessly, searching for words that would never come, words that would prove his innocence of every accusation.

  I glanced at Lavedrine, but he stood like a marble statue.

  ‘Press him for intimate knowledge of the woman,’ he hissed in French from the corner of his mouth.

  ‘Did you sell Frau Gottewald meat?’ I asked.

  ‘A rabbit, a hare,’ he said. ‘But I never asked for money. I left them hanging on the door. As a gift for the children.’

  ‘What was the woman like? Was she tall, or short? Blonde, or dark?’

  Sweat and blood trickled off his brow, running down his face and neck in rivulets, but he did not heed my question.

  ‘Well, Durskeitner?’ I needled. ‘What was she like?’

  ‘Small,’ he murmured at last. ‘Small and black.’

  It seemed to cost him a great deal, for he fell silent again.

  ‘Black?’ I echoed sarcastically. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Are you talking of the woman’s hair, or her complexion?’ Lavedrine intervened. Just as quickly, he qualified the question. ‘Her skin, I mean.’

  Durskeitner raised his eyes as if to thank Lavedrine. ‘The hair,’ he said.

  ‘Describe Frau Gottewald’s face,’ I pressed on. ‘Was she pretty?’

  ‘Pretty?’ he echoed, as if the concept was unknown to him.

  I groaned with impatience. If the woman had been left alone in the forest, anything might happen to her. But suddenly, without any prompting, the prisoner spoke up.

  ‘She was a good woman, that mother. Good to them babies.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Lavedrine asked quietly. ‘Did she keep her little ones safe?’

  Durskeitner nodded vig
orously.

  ‘Who was she protecting them from?’ Lavedrine coaxed. ‘Was someone trying to hurt them? Can you tell us that? If you help us, we will try to help you.’

  There it was again. That wheedling complicity grated on my nerves, as much as the reticence of the only witness we had. A witness, I reminded myself, who might well be the killer.

  ‘That house was empty,’ the prisoner said, staring up at Lavedrine with wide, unblinking eyes. ‘Then, a family came. A soldier, a woman, three little babies.’

  ‘Did anyone visit them?’ I snapped. ‘A stranger, or someone that you knew?’

  ‘No one,’ he muttered. ‘Only them . . .’

  He did not look at me. His eyes never shifted from Lavedrine.

  ‘But the man went away, sir,’ he continued. ‘That mother was alone. There was no one to hunt for her. It isn’t easy to feed so many cubs. That’s why I left meat on the doorstep. But I never spoke to her. Not once! I’d creep up late at night, or very early in the morning, and leave a quail, or a cut of venison. She kept those babies safe from harm. She was a good mother.’

  I let out a loud sigh at this prattling idiocy. The Gottewald family had been living in that cottage for months. The husband, too, until he was posted to Kamenetz. The woman had remained alone with the children after he left. Yet all that Durskeitner could decribe of this domestic scene was a mother feeding her young. She might have been a swallow carrying grubs to the chicks in her nest.

  ‘So, you took it upon yourself to give them food,’ I summarised.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he replied, as if it were a fact requiring no explanation.

  Silence followed, broken only by the irregular rasps of Durskeitner’s breathing.

  Throughout the interrogation, he had been seized by fits of shivering. There were pools of blood and water on the floor. Probably the soldiers had stripped him off, then thrown buckets of water on him. To wash him off, perhaps, or stop the bleeding. But also to intensify his suffering. The air was icy cold.

  ‘You have hidden her somewhere, haven’t you?’ I said sternly.