Free HS03 - A Visible Darkness by Michael Gregorio

man with eyes? ‘This woman was killed by blows to the head. The lower half of her face has been ransacked by a maniac. This corpse can tell us nothing more.’
    ‘I know why she was killed,’ he snapped back. ‘I know who did it. I cannot put my finger on the man, but I can point you in the right direction. This body will confirm what I am about to say.’
    He raised his hand to hush me.
    ‘She was trafficking in stolen amber,’ he pressed on. ‘She was murdered for it. Instead of paying what she asked, the smuggler struck her down and took it for free. She spoke out of turn, perhaps. She may have threatened to give his name to me. He made an example of her. A warning to all the other amber-girls. Keep your mouths shut. That was the message. That is the path you must follow. The illegal trade in stolen amber. Prussian thieves and smugglers . . .’
    ‘General Malaport did not tell me you had solved the case,’ I interrupted. ‘Why did he bother to send for me?’
    Irony was alien to les Halles, it seemed.
    ‘I can tell you that, monsieur,’ he replied assuredly. ‘The coffers of the army are low. Now, Spain is stretching our resources. A drawn-out war in a poor country costs vast amounts of money. That’s where Prussian amber comes into the equation. Nordcopp will yield ten times as much to us as it ever did to you.’
    ‘I do not see your point,’ I objected.
    ‘There’s one small problem,’ he nodded at the corpse on the table. ‘A Prussian slut has been murdered, and diplomacy dictates that a Prussian magistrate should examine the case. We want nothing to do with the business.’
    ‘A Prussian slut?’ I repeated his phrase slowly, as if savouring the words. ‘So much for French diplomacy.’
    ‘Don’t bandy morals with me,’ he snarled. ‘I was not born a colonel in the emperor’s engineers. My words are rough, my thinking rougher. I know the tricks of the poor. They steal a silver thimble and swallow it, knowing that they’ll shit it out in a day or two. Amber is a jewel, and a stomach is a bank-vault. Open her up, Herr Procurator Stiffeniis, and see what’s in her entrails. And while you’re about it, stick your finger into every hole that you can think of. If I were you, I’d put my gloves back on.’
    That night, I perpetrated the final indignity on the corpse of Kati Rodendahl.
    The search did not prove fruitless.

 
     
8
     
     
    A NOISE DISTURBED my sleep.
    A dull blow repeated at regular intervals.
    A bludgeon beating me slowly into consciousness.
    I listened in the darkness of the empty hut.
    An echoing
thump
, the drawn-out rattle of chains, a brief pregnant pause, a teeth-clenching rasp of metal sliding on metal, then another resounding
thump.
I might have been in Paris once again, watching public executions from the foot of the guillotine in the Place de la Révolution, but no coarse cheers went up as another once-noble head fell into the waiting wicker basket. Instead, the chains began to jingle and clank, metal sheared once more, and that
thump
pounded out again.
    I sat up, felt around for my boots in the darkness. The leather was cold to my touch, slick with damp. A jolt of pain racked my shoulder as I stood up stiffly. I had not undressed the night before, but slept in the clothes I had worn all day. I did not need to drag myself from any warm cocoon; I was already wearing it.
    I unlatched the door and stepped outside.
    The sharp chill of the early morning was unexpected.
    A dense white fog rolled in off the sea.
    Instinctively, I slipped my hands into my pockets.
    My fingers closed around the piece of amber that I had removed from the mutilated corpse the night before. I held the nugget up, recalling last night’s labour in all its horror. Though diabolical, the colonel’s intuition had been correct. The dead girl
had
hidden a stolen piece of amber about her body. She had tucked it deep inside her sex. Larger than a plum, even I could see that the stone was valuable.