The Killing of Emma Gross (15 page)

'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.

She nodded as if she understood, her eyes giving nothing away while her smile verged on the smug, a hint of
okay, whatever you say, 'detective'
. That was how it was with those head doctors, all that Freudian hocus pocus. You couldn't win. A regular doctor says you're ill then you're ill, no argument from me. But a head doctor? They say you're ill and you disagree then you're still ill, but now you're in denial too. What chance does a normal man stand against that kind of
arsch
-about-face logic?

She turned to go back into the room and I got a look at her other ear. This lobe was torn, as though an earring had been pulled out through the skin some time before. I followed her into the room. Men and women dressed in everyday clothes were twirling across the grey carpet. A few couples danced arm-in-arm. Most danced in splendid isolation, bumping and bashing into others. Still others danced or writhed or wriggled on the spot.

'Occupational therapy,' Glauser whispered. She checked my hands for rubbing. I'd anticipated the move and put my hands in my pockets. Damned if I was going to have her size me up as another of her pet projects.

A long trestle table lined the nearest wall, heaped with plates, slices of different breads and pots and jars of various spreads, along with slices of cheese and cold cooked hams. No cutlery anywhere in sight though, so maybe these folks weren't quite so placid after all.

Between the trestle table and the door, a small bald man in a faded suit and high collar hovered above the phonograph. Now I was close to the machine, the music had a rushed quality to it, as though the handle had been over-wound. I shuddered.

Beneath the electric chandelier in the centre of the ceiling, I thought I spotted Stausberg dancing, his long arms held stiff at his sides. Straight blond hair covered his forehead and eyes, though it wasn't long enough to cover the hare lip mentioned in his file, or to disguise his girlish peaches-and-cream complexion. There were twenty inmates in the room, all told. None of the other nineteen matched Stausberg's description. None of the others was tall enough or broad enough, either. The wriggling man had to be him.

'What's he doing?' I asked Glauser, pointing at Stausberg.

She wrenched my finger down.

'Don't point, please,' she said. 'Many of the patients find it intimidating.'

Patients? Like it was a normal hospital or something. But no, the windows to this room had bars on the outside. These were inmates, all right, whatever the good doctor wanted to think.

'He's letting out his feelings for the day, is what he's doing,' the doctor said. 'We let them express their dreams or their fears, or whatever it might be. It's good exercise, and sometimes it helps with treatment.'

The record on the phonograph spun itself out. The man hunching over the machine removed the needle arm with a scratch and the inmates stopped dancing. That is, most of them did. Some kept on going, dancing no doubt to the tunes in their heads; Stausberg was one of those.

Glauser strode further into the room and clapped her hands.

'Okay,' she said, 'therapy time is over. I will catch up with you all later.'

The inmates didn't seem thrilled at the prospect and I didn't blame them. More men in white coats came to life from positions dotted about the room, going and laying guiding hands on the more intransigent dancers.

Glauser approached Stausberg and took his hand. She said something to him. I was too far away to hear what it was, but he smiled and came along with her. When he saw me his blue eyes widened and he covered his mouth with his free hand. It wasn't enough to cover the wisps of blond hair on his baby-smooth chin.

'Hello Johann,' I said.

He mumbled something in return, and we all trundled back the way I'd come, back through the three sets of doors and across the entrance hall to the doctor's study, the hairy man locking each door behind us.

The study was small but high-ceilinged, and hot from the blazing fire in the grate. The doctor led Stausberg to one of two low armchairs facing her desk. He curled into it, shrinking as he pressed into its red leather skin.

Stausberg whimpered when Glauser went to shut the door so she left it open. She came back and perched on the arm of Stausberg's chair, gesturing for me to take the other. I pulled out my notebook and pencil and tried to make myself comfortable. I was sweating already, even with the door open.

'Please loosen your collar if you wish,' Glauser said. 'We don't stand on ceremony here.'

I didn't fancy being accused of sexual repression or similar, so I loosened my neck tie and undid my top shirt button. I also opened the top two buttons on my waistcoat for good measure. Clocks ticked in endless succession. I turned. On the mantle piece above the fire stood six or seven clocks of differing manufacture. Each clock face showed a different time. I wondered how it was they didn't warp with the heat.

I leaned forward, wanted to get done and get out of there.

'Doctor,' I said, 'you telephoned Karl Berg yesterday. When was this?'

Glauser hesitated. 'Around four-thirty in the afternoon.'

I made a note. 'You had interesting news for him, he said. Something exciting.'

She shuffled on her perch. 'That's true. Something from Johann.'

She patted the man-boy's hand and nodded at me.

Stausberg took a deep breath. 'He told me.' He slurred his words as a drunk might, taking time and trouble over the consonants.

'Told you what?' I said. 'That you'd killed Emma Gross? Or what to say to pretend that you did?'

Stausberg crossed his arms and harrumphed up at the doctor. He slid deeper into the armchair.

'Now, Johann, Detective Klein is only trying to help. But you have to tell him. You know I can't.'

Johann took another breath. 'Those women!'

'The women told you?' I said.

He blew a raspberry. His tight hare lip didn't move. For a guy who didn't like people looking, he seemed to be doing his best to draw it to my attention.

'Johann!' Glauser tapped the man-boy's elbow.

He sat up and uncrossed his arms.

'Johann,' I said. His eyes met mine. Great, empty pools, they were. 'Are you talking about Rosa Ohliger and Rudolph Scheer and Emma Gross?' I'd spoken as slowly as I could, the way I'd done once to some French captives during the war. Stausberg nodded. 'I need you to tell me the names,' I said.

'Just those women,' he sighed. He was fidgeting, his face getting redder with every word.

I softened my voice. 'Do you remember Emma Gross?'

'He told me,' Stausberg repeated.

'Told you what?'

'What to say!' he shouted. 'He told me what to say!'

'Do you mean your confessions?'

He was trembling now.

I rolled my eyes and threw Dr Glauser a look. Sweat ran in greasy rivulets down my neck. More sweat beaded in my eyebrows and threatened to run down my face.

'Johann,' I began again, 'do you remember telling the police where you picked up Emma Gross?'

He grunted and shook his head.
Gott in Himmel
, was he capable of remembering anything? Names, times, places?

'Do you remember when she died? Or where?'

'I told you!' he cried.

'Did you kill Emma Gross?'

His head jerked to the left, hair spilling over his face as he lurched out of his chair and fell onto my lap, teeth chattering, body shaking, throat groaning.

'Oh no,' Glauser said. Then, shouting: 'Heinemann!'

'Did you kill her?' I shouted. 'Did you kill Emma Gross?'

I was too late. Stausberg was too far gone in his seizure. My crotch was getting damp from the drool spilling from his contorted lips. The skin on the back of his neck was fever-hot, but maybe that was down to the temperature of the room. His teeth chattered and clacked together. I tried to push my pencil between them to stop him biting my fingers – or anything more vital for that matter – but his mouth wasn't opening wide enough.

Glauser rose from the arm rest as the hairy man rushed into the room and reached for Stausberg's shirt front. Stausberg shouted and squirmed and his eyes rolled back. The shaking racked up several notches, became seismic. He slipped out of the hairy man's arms. The hairy man leaned down, took hold of Stausberg under the armpits and dragged him from the room.

Glauser helped me to my feet and then crossed to the door.

'Take him to the baths!' she called. 'And for God's sake be careful! I'll be checking for bruises.'

I sat back down in my armchair, the pulse high in my throat. I had a muscle spasm in my left thigh and I couldn't shake off the urge to jiggle my feet, so I got up and paced. I also hoped the walk in the warm room would dry my crotch that bit quicker. I didn't fancy spending the rest of the morning looking like I'd wet myself.

Stausberg wasn't capable of the murder confessions he'd signed back in April '29, much less the murders themselves. Another point to Du Pont. According to the file, no one but Ritter had interviewed Stausberg over the murders. Who else but Ritter could have told the cretin what to say? Who else could have got fake confessions out of him? And why do it? Public pressure to solve the murders? Laziness? Incompetence? I was plumping for some combination of all three.

Glauser's face had flushed. She went and sat in her desk chair and fanned herself with one hand while she used the other to scratch at her ruined ear lobe.

'Who told him what to say, doctor?' I said.

'I can't...' What she couldn't do was finish her sentence. She switched to a different one. 'I'm sorry, detective. Clearly it was too soon for this. I should have seen it. So stupid of me.'

I leaned on the desk, trying to intimidate her.

'Doctor, do you know who told him what to say in his confessions?' It had to be Ritter. It had to be him.
Just confirm it, damn you
.

She paused. It was a long pause. 'No.'

I slammed the desk, Gennat-style. 'Come on, woman!'

'Detective, I am the director of this asylum. Stausberg is my patient and I am his doctor. I cannot reveal what he tells me in confidence without his express permission.'

'You can. You just won't, is all.'

'All right then, I won't. Betraying his confidence would be detrimental to his therapy.'

'Stausberg's a paragraph fifty-one. He's spending the rest of his life here if he has to. I don't think the extent of his therapy is of great concern to the public.'

Glauser stood and removed a ledger from the top drawer of her desk.

'Could you sign this?' she said, not meeting my eye.

She dipped a fountain pen in a pot of ink set into the desk, and handed me the pen. She opened the ledger on a blank page: columns for names, addresses, times in and out. A visitors' book. I flicked back a few pages too far and the name
Frau Stausberg
caught my eye. I turned the pages one at a time to get to the one I needed to sign, looking for how many more times the name came up. Glauser intervened and turned the pages for me. Then she kept her hand there to stop me flicking back. She was too late though. I'd found what I wanted. I signed my name and glanced at the clocks on the mantelpiece.

'Do you have the correct time?'

'Ten thirty am,' she said, without hesitation.

I wrote it down. My left shirt cuff was frayed where I rested it on the page. 'Look, doctor, please, if there's anything...'

'I'm sorry, detective. I...'

'You don't think it would help Johann for the truth to come out? He's here because of confessing under duress to crimes he didn't do. I know he didn't murder Rosa Ohliger or Rudolph Scheer, because we just caught the man who did. And I don't think Johann killed Emma Gross either. Don't you want to help him?'

She shut the ledger and laid it on the desk before escorting me to the front door. I'd taken no more than a couple of paces outside when the door locked behind me. I could hear it even above the wind and the hacking crows and the restless songbirds.

Still, the grit in my eye had gone. And now I had another reason to interview Stausberg's mother. Not only had she corroborated his phoney confession, but the flipped pages in the visitors' book had gone back two or three weeks and her signature had appeared each week. That is, someone called Frau Stausberg had signed in each week, and Stausberg's file said he'd never married. When a boy is ready to confess, who does he tell his secrets to if not his mother?