The Killing of Emma Gross (16 page)

I left the tram at Staufenplatz, walked the two minutes to the top of Grafenburger Allee and caught a bus down to Flingern South. There I paced the streets in search of Stausberg mater's address.

Some children were playing on a patch of mud next to the street. The mud contained some leftover spots of grass, two stunted trees missing a good many of their lower branches, and a merry-go-round that mewled in rusty protest at the children spinning on it. There were over a dozen children, a mix of boys and girls and a smattering of different ages, none of them older than ten or eleven.

I checked my watch. School didn't finish till lunchtime, so these kids were playing truant, though they seemed still to be wearing uniforms. The boys wore shorts and braces over dirty linen shirts. The girls wore dark skirts and white blouses with ribbons at their throats and in their hair.

I watched them play as I walked by. Most of the children sat on the merry-go-round while three or four others spun them around and around. A blond boy with skinny legs and mud on his face toyed with a length of rope fashioned into a lasso. The spinners let go of the merry-go-round and the children on it sent up a chorus of excited squeals. In every face I saw a potential victim for the likes of Kürten. For what were the chances of there being only one man with his perverse desires in a city this size? And what then of the country as a whole? It struck me how much the laughter of children was like screaming. So hard to tell the difference.

When the merry-go-round slowed enough, the children tumbled from it. The mud-smeared blond tyke began hurling his lasso. He hooked one of the girls and reeled her in. The girl struggled to free herself, but not in earnest, or she could have escaped with ease. Seemed to be all part of the game. The other children stopped their running and shouting and gathered around the struggling pair. They clapped their hands, beating out a basic rhythm. They began to chant, a nursery rhyme pattern:

'
Run run run away,

Or big bad Johann will have his wicked way,

Scream scream wriggle and squirm,

Or he'll have you buried down deep with the worms!
'

Seemed like Stausberg had made quite an impression on these tender minds.

I went over to them.

'Hey Winnetou,' I called. The blond boy turned to me. Funny how some things never go out of fashion. That book was a best seller back when I'd been this kid's age. I closed the gap and a couple of smaller boys ran around my legs.

'I'm looking for a Frau Stausberg, son. She lives somewhere round here. Can you point me in the right direction?'

The mud on the child's face was arranged in a pattern, two streaks per cheek Red Indian style. He narrowed his eyes at me. When he spoke his voice came out high and haughty.

'I've already got a dad,' he said. 'And he says I shouldn't talk to strangers. You could be the Ripper here to rape and butcher me!' The girls squeaked and ran between the trees.

I took out my ID and waved it at the blond boy.

'Shouldn't you be out catching the Ripper?' He hooked his thumbs into his braces like a Reichstag deputy.

'We caught him two days ago. Or doesn't your dad read the papers?'

'My dad says the average bull couldn't catch herpes off a ten pfennig whore.'

'Nice way with words, your dad. Tell me, you kiss your grandmother with that mouth?'

'My grandma's dead.' Said with a hint of triumph, like he'd killed her himself.

'Probably for the best,' I said. 'Say, shouldn't you kids be in school?'

'Shouldn't you be in a field somewhere keeping the crows away?'

I deepened my voice and raised it just short of a shout: 'So are you going to tell me where Frau Stausberg lives or not?'

'She's the mum of that cretin, right? The one we were singing about?' More high-pitched laughter. Never let anyone tell you that kids are innocent. Either they're lying to you or else they're idiots.

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

'He used to try to play with us, lassoing games and catch and all that. My dad said he was probably trying to touch us and do bad things. He told the cops on him but they didn't do bugger all about it, he said.'

'Did your dad teach you the word cretin?'

The boy laughed. 'No. That was another bull when he came round to speak to the cretin last year.' Then he stuck out his teeth and sucked in his cheeks. Despite myself, I laughed. I'd yet to see a better impression of Ritter.

'You remember this bull's name?'

The boy shook his head. 'He kept licking his rabbit teeth, like this.' And he proceeded to show me Ritter's nervous tooth-licking tic. I laughed again.

'Dark hair, yes?' I said.

The boy nodded.

'But you can't tell me where Stausberg's mother lives...?'

The boy went back to twirling his lasso. He'd had his fun and now I bored him. I straightened up and turned to leave when I felt a tug at my trouser leg. A small Jewish girl stood there with black eyes and long dark hair. She blushed when I looked at her and she pointed to the next turning.

I tugged at a curl in lieu of my homburg and walked to the next street. The Stausbergs had lived in a lodging house, I remembered that. In the middle of a street of apartment blocks, one building's front door swung on its hinges. Above the door, at least half of the windows facing the street were cracked and brown and grey net curtains twisted in the breeze. I'd have put money on this being the place.

I entered the hallway. The wall bore a bank of postboxes. I pulled the light cord and the bulb popped. No light, and no names on the boxes either. Perhaps the postmen round these parts moonlighted as psychics, or perhaps the boxes were just for show. Maybe no one in this building ever got any mail.

There was a faint sound of bubbling from up the hall. I walked through to a kitchen. Two people sat at a scarred wooden table tucked into a corner, unopened letters arranged in a pile between them. Beside this pile was a chopping board covered in cabbage scraps. Against the far wall, an assortment of pans dotted the wooden shelves while a huge copper pot bubbled away atop the stove. I went closer. Half a dozen glass jars stood sterilising in the water and a bowl of pickling cabbage dotted with black seeds sat in the sink next to the stove.

One of the people at the table, a youngish woman with deep bags under her eyes, put down the newspaper she'd been reading.

'Hungry, detective?' she said in a soft voice.

I turned to her with a smile. 'Is it that obvious?'

'The hunger? Or the profession?'

'Either. Both.' The woman wore a dress and an apron in contrasting shades of off-white. Both garments were too big for her. She had her dark hair tied back from a high forehead.

'Well, given the state of you, you had to be a bull or a boxer,' she said.

I pointed at the pot. 'How long's that been bubbling away?'

She went to the stove and turned off the gas. She smiled, the tip of her nose turning up. The newspaper she'd been reading was a copy of the
Volksstimme
. Her companion was a white-haired man who squinted up close at a boys' adventure comic that obscured his face below the eyebrows.

'Listen, I was hoping to speak to Frau Stausberg,' I said. 'About her son.' As though it was ever going to be about anything else.

The woman glanced down at her paper, weighing her options in her mind.

I went closer and handed her my ID. The old man flicked down the edge of his comic. He flicked it back up before I could get a good look at him. I got a flash of white stubble on sunken cheeks, but that was all. The woman handed my ID back and brushed the edges of her newspaper with her fingers. She chewed the inside of her cheek. Hard to tell if she'd recognised my heroic status from the paper or not. She'd have made a mean card player, this
hausfrau
.

I took a breath. 'Look, I'll make it easy for you. I know she lives in this building, so you wouldn't be giving anything away. You'll just be saving me a little time.' The woman's eyes reminded me of the little Jewess who'd pointed me in this direction. Perhaps this woman was the girl's mother.

The woman sighed. 'Apartment seven, third floor.' That seemed to be all I was going to get. I made for the stairs back in the foyer. Then she shouted after me. 'But she could be in the kitchen.'

I turned back and raised my eyebrows.

The woman got up from the table. She crossed her arms. 'There are kitchens on each floor.' She shrugged, turned away. Looked like that really was it this time.

I took the stairs to the third floor and knocked on door number seven.

The door opened a fraction. I held out my ID and the door opened all the way. A stooping woman in her mid-fifties beckoned me in.

'Is this about my son?' she said.

I took another look: the Stausberg file said she was forty. She was so thin I could count the tendons in her neck. How hard could I be on her when she looked so frail?

I crossed to the nearest window. A crack ran from the top to the bottom of the frame. I pushed aside the thin brown curtain. Some of the children who'd been playing were now standing across the street. They weren't playing any more, they were watching. Even as I stared at them and they saw me staring they kept on watching.

I turned back inside the room. A draught tugged at the loose sheets on an overstuffed bed in the corner. A second mattress was rolled and bound and stashed beneath the bedstead. A couple of easy chairs faced in from the windows. Both chairs bore a patchwork of stains and small tears through which the stuffing was fighting its way out. Several tears had been stitched up and had split again. It was the kind of stitching that would give if you sat down too vigorously.

'You getting any trouble from the neighbours, Frau Stausberg?'

She swallowed and hugged herself. She wore a wool-lined coat and was smiling the kind of smile that blows away in a stiff breeze.

'You didn't come here to ask about my neighbours,' she said, with another nervous swallow. 'Or my windows.'

There were all sorts of ways I could've responded, but what I did was cross to a padlocked door set in the wall opposite the bed. People were talking on the other side.

'I need to talk to you about the 28
^th
February and the 1
^st
March last year,' I said.

She hovered next to one of the easy chairs waiting for me to sit first, so I did. She sank down with a groan and the click of brittle knee joints.

'That's not your room?' I said, pointing to the padlocked door.

She shook her head, swallowed.

'In your statement to police at the time you said Johann came back late and washed his coat in the sink.'

'Yes, the sink in the kitchen, if you'd like to have a look.'

I was about to get up and humour her when I realised she was being sarcastic.

'Look.' The eyes that met mine were soft and watery. 'We know Johann did not kill Rosa Ohliger or Rudolph Scheer.'

She choked and fluid dripped down her cheeks. At first I thought she'd got something in her eyes, but no: she screwed her face up and started gasping – she was weeping. I wanted to ask if it was possible her son might've lied to her or been confused when he told her he'd killed Emma Gross, but Jesus, how far could I push this woman before she broke?

I leaned in and spoke softly. 'You understand why I need to check the details with you?'

She took my hands in hers. Hers were so cold I flinched. I hoped she didn't notice.

'You think he's innocent of the Gross girl's murder too?' she said. There was such emotion in her voice I didn't know how to respond. I didn't want to give her too much hope. Didn't want to snuff out what was there, either.

'Look, Frau Stausberg, I don't have the evidence yet, you understand? Did Johann really tell you he'd killed her?'

She tightened her grip and swallowed. 'Have you spoken to my son?'

'Yes.'

She stroked the bruising under my eyes with an icy finger. 'And what did he say?'

'He...that someone told him what to say in his confessions,' I said. 'His memory wasn't clear. He became...upset. That's why I've come to you. Dr Glauser believes Johann's making a lot of progress, opening up about all sorts of things. To do with the case. She said you'd been a big part of that process.'

Okay, so that last bit wasn't the God's honest, but I was trying to make her feel better about talking to me.

Frau Stausberg released me and pulled herself up. Her jawline tensed as she ground her teeth. 'That doctor should mind her own business.' When she turned to face me her eyes were still wet. 'It's so hard for him, my poor dear Johann,' she said, 'with his epilepsy.' She crossed to the door, opened it and wandered out. 'Did you want coffee?' she called back.

'No, Frau Stausberg, please don't trouble yourself.' I got up to follow her.

'No trouble.' She returned with a sealed tin and a coffee pot. 'Out on the kitchen window ledge,' she said, shaking the tin at me. 'Keeps it fresher.'