Rosa (27 page)

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.”

“Was he?” said Hoffner coolly.

“He mentioned something about Austria. The Tyrol. ‘The pact,’ he called it.” Fichte looked up eagerly. “He said I should ask you.”

Hoffner let Fichte sit a moment longer before saying, “Nice big tits on your girl, were there, Hans?” Fichte’s face turned a deep crimson. “Toby always likes to give the big-tit girls to his guests. What would your Lina have to say, eh, Hans?”

Hoffner regretted having said it the moment it had passed his lips. Fichte’s sudden look of concern hardly helped: not enough to have taken Fichte’s girl, Hoffner needed to make the boy feel small for letting himself off the hook. Hoffner had forgotten just how much of himself he kept locked away. Now he was seeing how easily it all came back. “I’m just teasing you, Hans,” he said to placate. “You’re young. These things happen. She knows that as well as anyone. And if she doesn’t, well, then—she doesn’t have to.”

Fichte nodded. It was clear that he had been trying to convince himself of the same thing since Bruges. Still, hearing it from Hoffner probably helped.

An unfamiliar boy poked his head through the doorway. Hoffner had no idea how long the boy had been standing there. He quickly stepped over and took the boy out into the hall. He had no interest in allowing a set of little eyes to get a glimpse of the files on the floor. “What is it?” said Hoffner.

The boy was particularly small. “The men are waiting in the Press Room, Herr
Kriminal-Kommissar.
”

Hoffner had completely forgotten about the meeting he had promised. In fact, he had blocked out the entire morning of interruptions: every paper in town had wanted to know where Kvatsch had gotten his story on the “chisel murders.” Clever little title. Just right for Kvatsch. The telephone had started ringing at nine o’clock and had continued unabated until nearly ten-thirty. Hoffner had told them four o’clock. He checked his watch. For newsmen, they were remarkably prompt.

“I’ll be right down,” he said. The boy headed off, and Hoffner stepped back into the office. “Pack it up, Hans.” He angled his head toward the bit of mirror that was visible through the bookcase. “We’ll need to lock everything in the filing cabinet.” Hoffner ran a hand over his face. His beard was a bit rough. Made him look diligent, he thought. That was all right.

“Pack it up?” said Fichte. “Why? What did the boy want?”

Hoffner checked his teeth. “This should take about twenty minutes.” He smoothed back his hair. “That’s when they usually run out of questions.” He straightened his collar. “Or at least get tired of hearing the same answers.”

“Who? Who gets tired?”

Hoffner pointed to piles on the floor. “The papers, Hans.”

T
he Press Room was just off the front atrium. Präger had set it up during the last weeks of the war, when the flow of reporters into the Alex had gone from a trickle to a torrent. It had all started when the General Staff—unwilling to admit just how badly things were going—decided, in its infinite wisdom, to cease any further release of information: the less people knew, the better off they were. Newspapermen, however, never saw it that way: they had turned to the Kripo as their only alternative. Not that any of the detectives had known what was going on outside of Berlin, but there was always something nice and official about quotes that cited “Kripo sources.” Naturally, once the revolution kicked in—making for genuine news—the Press Room had become the single most important office in the city. Even the General Staff had been known to send over a junior officer incognito, now and then, for a little information.

It was all very busy and very infuriating, and Präger had reasoned that it was safer to herd the newsmen into a confined space than to have them roaming about the building on their own. The rules were simple: they could come and go as they pleased, as long as they waited patiently in the office for someone to come and get them. More often than not, that wait stretched on for hours. Interest invariably lost out to impatience: the longer they were made to sit, the less frequently they appeared. By all accounts—now that the National Assembly elections had restored a bit of order—the flow had returned to a manageable drip. Then again, the fact that a battle had been waged inside the Alex walls just over a week ago might also have had something to do with it.

Hoffner recognized most of the eleven faces in the room, although the men’s clothes were probably a better indication of which papers had sent them. Those still in long woolen overcoats had come from the likes of the
Lokalanzeiger
or the
Morgenpost
or the
Volkszeitung,
men with no time to waste: people were waiting for their copy. Removing a coat could send the wrong message. They paced defiantly at the back of the room. Others had been sent by the
8-Uhr Abendblatt
or the
Nacht-Ausgabe,
Mosse’s and Sherl’s knockoffs of the
BZ.
For years the two papers had been trying to compete with Ullstein’s gold mine, but neither had ever won the kind of following that the
BZ
continued to enjoy. The wrinkled suits and brown socks of these staff writers were proof enough of their second-class status. Sadly, these were men who were always getting scooped by Gottlob Kvatsch. For them, an appearance at the Alex was a kind of humiliation: they had missed it again. They stood off to the side, careful not to make eye contact with anyone else in the room. The final group was made up of men who looked more like stockbrokers than journalists. They were all very well put together—creases and all—and worked for papers such as the
Vossische Zeitung
or the
Berliner Tageblatt.
These were men who reported to the cultural elite, to the Westend highbrows. They sat aloof in the few chairs that were scattered about the room. Chances were, they would see the story for what it was: a bit of tabloid fodder. That, however, would not stop them from publishing it.

“Gentlemen,” said Hoffner as he continued to the rostrum at the front of the room. Those who were sitting stood. The rest bunched up across from him. “I’m Detective Inspector Hoffner—two effs. I understand you have questions about an article that appeared in this morning’s
BZ.
”

For exactly twenty-two minutes the men asked and Hoffner answered. Fichte stood at the back of the room, marveling at the effortlessness with which Hoffner deflected even the most detailed of questions. It was clear that his
Kriminal-Kommissar
understood the essential rule of the press conference: that journalists in crowds are never as effective as when alone, probably another reason why Präger had set up the room in the first place. In this game of cat and mouse, each of the men had to be careful not to ask anything too leading lest one of his rivals learn more from the question than from the answer. Hoffner was playing them off each other to perfection. They learned that there were victims—four or five, the number was unclear just yet. That there was knife work—again, there was too little of it to make it a signature piece of the case. And that, thus far, the victims were women—old, young, there was nothing to specify at this point.