The Journey: Illustrated Edition (An Anna Kronberg Thriller) (26 page)

Two days later, we climbed the stone steps to the Institute of Pathology. A white-clad assistant beckoned us in, raised his eyebrows at me, bent to Sherlock, and murmured, ‘Are you certain, Inspector?’

‘Would I bother you if I weren’t?’

Hearing Sherlock speak German needed some getting used to. ‘It’s not the first time,’ I informed the assistant, but that didn’t seem to appease the man at all. Only with effort could he keep his eyes from flitting to my abdomen and his upper lip from curling in distaste.

As we walked through the corridor, the sweet stench of death seeped into my clothes, hair, and nostrils. A large double-winged door screeched on its hinges, flapping back and forth, screeching again and again, until it finally came to a rest. Corpses were laid out, their stiff legs sticking into the narrow walkway between the rows of tables.

‘Thank you, Mr Kleinmaier,’ said Sherlock and waved the man away. He left, visibly irritated by the impolite gesture. The winged door squealed and we turned to work.

‘Pick one,’ I said. ‘Did you notice the two cats near the stone steps when we entered the premises?’

He hoisted up a medium-sized man and held him by the chest. Both of the corpse’s arms were pinned to the torso.
 

‘Lay him back down, please,’ I said. ‘One can always find two or more cats lingering on the Institute of Pathology’s lawn. The medical students have their own theory about this. They believe the pathologists feed the animals pieces of liver to test for toxins.’
 

I bent over the body and broke the
rigor mortis
at both shoulders. The stiff flesh sang under the strain. I thought that perhaps I should feel ashamed. I used to dissect the dead and had never felt the need to apologise when running the scalpel through cold skin, so where did the slight uneasiness suddenly come from?

‘Sounds plausible,’ said Sherlock.

I nodded at him and he picked up the corpse again. I stood facing the two and placed the corpse’s right hand on my shoulder. The stiffness in wrist and elbow forced the arm straight.

‘You know,’ I whispered, ‘this assistant represents the unscientific, pseudo-educated majority of medical staff as I came to know it during my years as a doctor. He believes that the child will be damaged when the mother looks at all these dead bodies. And
these
people, who put superstition above knowledge, aim to solve cases of unexplained death.’

I hit with both my hands, my right against the wrist, my left against the elbow. The joint was dislocated with a sickening
plop
. I switched hands and hit the other arm; it didn’t give as easily.

‘I want to try this two more times.’ I was glad my right hand didn’t hurt too much from the impact.

He laid the corpse aside and picked up a bulkier one. Perspiration was forming on his brow.

Dissecting room, 1894. (14)

— twenty-three —

W
e spent our days with research and with long and silent walks. Our progress was slow, occasional moments of understanding shining brightly in the semi-darkness of guesswork. What we had so far were only fragments of information. In August 1885, Pjotr was found dead in the Thames after arguing with a man who was suspected to have been Moran. Half a year later, Moran traveled to St Petersburg and spent more money in three weeks than I had earned in a year.

In December 1887, James lost his wife and newborn son to tetanus. According to Moran’s journals, only two weeks later, James paid him two hundred pounds and sent him through half of Europe. There were records of hotel costs in Paris, Brussels, Berlin, and again, St Petersburg. None of Moran’s notes hinted at the purpose of his trip.

In the evenings, Sherlock exercised shooting and punching with me. It felt more like a polishing of my ego than a real improvement of my chances when faced with Moran.

‘Exhale when you punch,’ he reminded me. ‘Focus on your hips, Anna.’

‘Dammit, Sherlock! Try to swing your hips with a stomach like this. If you want me to use my whole body for a punch, I have to do it the way a very pregnant woman does it and not the way a man does it.’

A soft grunt and a nod. Then he waved his hand at me, beckoning. We were mostly dancing, trying to foresee the other’s next step. He trained my eyes and reflexes, showed me how a heavy man like Moran would move, and what I had to expect. ‘The sharp mind wins, not the heavy fist,’ he kept telling me. I had yet to land a punch he couldn’t block.

My shooting — although without ammunition — had improved. I could use both hands to aim and pull the trigger; Moran wouldn’t expect this. But how much this short moment of surprise would help me in the end, I didn’t know.

We had received a message from Mycroft earlier in the morning. Sherlock was deciphering it.

‘Opium,’ he muttered.
 

I placed my cup down, stretched my bulging body, and waited for him to continue. Should he continue, that is. He often spoke to himself in moments of deep concentration, when his eyebrows were drawn low and his lips formed a thin line.

He whirled around, his eyes gleaming, a long index finger tapping the note. ‘Mycroft filled a gap for us. Moriarty had invested in cotton and opium trades. We know his meticulousness. He would have known everything worth knowing and controlled everything worth controlling.

‘Moran returned from St Petersburg with valuable information, which he reported directly to the War Office. He stated that Prince Nicholas of Russia planned a railway that would connect Russia with China — in effect, threatening Britain’s opium resources. The Russians were already moving the Central-Asian Railway towards our Indian colonies. The War Office dismissed Moran’s statement as unreliable.
 

‘We know that Moran entered employment with Moriarty just before Pjotr was found in the Thames.’ He pointed to Moran’s journals on my lap. ‘Then, in March 1890, the War Office dug up Moran’s report because it had proved correct. The future Tsar inaugurated the Far East segment of the Trans-Siberian Railroad.’

He placed the note on the coffee table with a slap, rubbed his brow, and said, ‘It’s not surprising that Moriarty founded his private espionage club. My brother keeps complaining that no one in London seems interested in an overarching organisation to put the Foreign Office, the Admiralty, and the War Office under one wing. The purpose of the Central-Asian Railway is almost exclusively military. Hum… Moriarty’s trading business wasn’t listed as part of his assets. I wonder…’ He began pacing the room, hands in his trouser pockets, shoulders drawn up.
 

‘I see no connection to James’s plans on using disease as a weapon. We need to talk to Walsh and Hooks,’ I said. ‘Now, one could speculate that he wished to spread disease to slow the building of railways and hence to protect Britain’s resources. After all, the railway workers live under dreadful conditions; cholera and typhus outbreaks are all too common.’
I rubbed my aching stomach and burning eyes. ‘I don’t know… We are missing crucial information, and all I can do is guess.’

‘I never guess,’ he said.

‘Well, I do! And I test my guesses against the data I have available. I try to prove my guesses and then disprove them. It’s like playing with a variety of realities.’

‘I’d call that theories and hypotheses.’

‘Oh well, that’s my working-class background.’ I smiled up at him. ‘Poor sods guess; ladies and gentlemen hypothesise.’ I bent my hip and cracked my lumbar region.
 

‘Lie down and rest. I can see how this tires you. Come.’

I took his offered hand and he pulled me up to my feet. ‘I must be twice as large now,’ I sighed. His eyes slid back to the notes.
 

I spread my heavy self out on the bed and watched his bent figure move over the scattered papers on the floor, his hands picking up a piece and placing it adjacent to another. The master of puzzles. I wondered what mysteries and excitements life could provide him once Moran and Parker were behind bars.
 

I watched him rereading the newspaper clippings. He frowned at the rather recent one from the
Standard
. It stated that Britain and Germany were
friends and allies of old standing
and that any threats to the peace in Europe would be met
by the union of England’s naval strengths with the military strength of Germany.

‘Sherlock?’

‘Hrmm.’ An irritated grunt. One that signalled
please don’t disturb
. I looked up at the ceiling, waiting and thinking my own thoughts until he was ready to leave our puzzle for a moment.

After an hour of no response, I rose, straightened my dress, packed the revolver into my purse, and made for the door. He didn’t seem to notice.

The horse tram, Berlin, 1894. (15)

I took a horse tram to the Museum for Natural History. My brain needed something else to think of; it was running in circles around the same useless theories, the same tiresome gaps of knowledge. I felt as though I had run on a muddy track over and over again, deepening the track to such a degree that leaving it would cost great effort.

We were hunting breadcrumbs. We tried to peek behind a veil James had created to conceal his plans and doings. Once in a while, messages from Mycroft arrived. More breadcrumbs yet. Hope to move aside the blinds. Sometimes we believed a picture was forming, only to be wiped off the slate with a new piece of information.

I sat down on a bench, a large beech tree providing shade, and then I let all I knew pass through my mind once more:
 

James had known about the Kaiser’s plans to enlarge the German Navy — clearly a threat to Britain. The timing, however, didn’t fit. The plans for enlarging naval and military forces were hatched after Bismarck was expelled, at least a year
after
we had found the first victim of James’s medical experiments. The day of my abduction, however, fit quite neatly.
 

Mycroft had informed us that the Russians appeared to fear that England — her rival in the Far East and Central Asia — would join forces with the now-powerful Germany and, by extension, with Austria-Hungary, Russia’s rival on the Balkan peninsula. England feared Germany’s secret plans to increase military and naval strength, but actual facts were so far lacking. In Foreign Offices across Europe, unsettling questions arose about the future of Germany’s foreign policy, since Bismarck was gone and rumours of the French welcoming Russian overtures had begun to spread. Should France and Russia sign a treaty, Mycroft wrote, it would result in a dangerous polarisation of powers in Europe. What looked like handshakes to the common man and woman appeared to government officials like arm wrestling. Whose perception was correct?