'Where is it, Stadtschen? Where's the body?'

He stared at me, his face a theatre of alternating expressions: surprise, shock, fear, anxious submission to my authority.

'Body, sir?'

'The man in the woods near Belefest,' I snapped, waving his despatch in his face. 'Who gave you permission to tamper with it? Are you blind to what is going on in Konigsberg, Stadtschen? Someone is killing people. The only way to catch him is to search each murder scene for clues. But you decided to move the corpse! I suppose your men have trampled all over the place like a herd of cows.'

'Procurator Stiffeniis,' he interrupted, his voice trembling, 'there was no reason to think that he had been killed by any man.' He pointed his finger at the despatch in my hand. 'I reported the fact there, sir. Near the end. "Ravaged by wild animals." Wolves, most probably. They'd torn...'

'What makes you think the wolves killed him?' I shouted. 'The murderer could have chased this man through the woods. The victim may have been dead before the animals got to him.'

The possibility had never entered the numbskull's mind.

'But, sir!' he protested again. 'The murderer always strikes inside the city walls. That's why I thought...'

'You thought?'

I mimicked him sarcastically, but his desperate reasoning struck a spark of hope in my heart. He was right. Martin Lampe had never killed outside the town. Yet Belefest was where he lived. Was he hiding somewhere near his house, or in the woods behind it? I had seen his footprints in the snow on the path that led from the village to Konigsberg less than an hour before. His wife had verified them for me. Had Lampe killed someone else on his way home from town? Or had he himself been torn to pieces after murdering Sergeant Koch?

'Is the body still in the Fortress?'

'Indeed it is, sir.' Officer Stadtschen seemed to grow before my eyes as he replied. Unlike the ones that had gone before, this question had not been prompted by anger, nor tainted by accusation. His ma.s.sive chest swelled out, his back straightened, his puffy face relaxed once more, taking on its usual air of arrogant self-righteousness. 'We can go there now, sir. If you wish, that is, Herr Stiffeniis,' he added more cautiously.

'Lead on,' I said.

On the ground floor, not far from the main gate, Stadtschen lifted a flaming torch from the wall and handed it to me. He took another one for himself, opened a narrow arched door, and we went spiralling down the staircase that led to the dungeons and maze of pa.s.sages lying beneath the Fortress. I had been there in the company of Sergeant Koch on the night of my arrival in Konigsberg. On that occasion, we had met a necromancer, and heard his animated conversation with the lifeless sh.e.l.l of a murdered man.

This time, I intended the inspection of the body to be strictly factual.

At the bottom, we turned right and entered a narrow tunnel which had been hacked out of the solid rock at some time in the distant past. The rough walls were slick with damp, dark green with moss. Piles of broken chairs, tables, beds and stinking mattresses had been abandoned there to mould and decay. Stacks of ancient breastplates stamped with a double-headed eagle lay rusting and forgotten in a heap. Old-fashioned powder-muskets with blunderbuss barrels were ranged along the walls like fossilised flowers. Each object seemed malignly intent on tripping us up, blocking the way, or falling down and burying us alive. The flickering torchlight saved us from the dangers, but there was little the flames could do against the cold.

As Stadtschen said in utter seriousness: 'We are in the impenetrable bowels of the Earth, sir. Long before Konigsberg existed, before men made houses, this is where they used to dwell.'

It was hard to imagine any human being surviving there for very long. The cold was penetrating, it seemed to filter through my skin and take possession of my bones. The heavy woollen garments that had kept me warm despite the freezing fog and icy winds that had lashed Konigsberg since my arrival were useless in that dismal cave. I might have been naked for all the good they did me. I am not averse to cold weather. A crisp winter's morning, frost fresh on the gra.s.s, sparkling sun, clean air, is one of Nature's delights, but the desolate chill of the cold earth has an unpleasant effect on my spirits. I was terrified by the odour of damp and organic decay while still a child. Every year on the anniversary of my grandfather's death, Father would unlock the door and lead the family and servants down to the crypt to pray for the souls of our ancestors. I knew the smell of the tomb from a tender age. Indeed, I often asked myself in gaping terror whether the dead souls of my forebears would be condemned to breathe that musty stench for Eternity.

With a swoosh of his torch, Officer Stadtschen spun round to face me.

'Here we are, sir,' he said, indicating a heavy iron door. He seemed to have regained his mettle. Perhaps he hoped the visual evidence of his good work would convince me to revise my opinion of him. 'Cold it may be, Herr Procurator, but a corpse will not last long down here. It's the damp that does it. Rot sets in, then there's the rats...'

'I can imagine!' I cut in sharply. I did not need a catalogue of horrors to compound my discomfort.

'I only meant to say, sir, that bodies are kept in the charnel house as short a time as possible. Most of them have been exposed above ground to all sorts of horrible mis'

'How long has this corpse been here?' I asked more forcefully, drowning out his evident delight in the mechanics of human decomposition.

'I'd hardly call it a corpse...'

'How long?' I insisted.

'Four hours, sir,' he said. 'Bills are being posted up around the town. I gave the word myself.' He stopped, uncertain of my reaction. 'Do you want me to stop them from being put up, sir?'

'Let them be,' I replied. 'Someone may come forward with news of the man.'

'I tried to tell you what I was about, sir,' he went on. 'But when I knocked at your door, you did not answer. They told me in the guard-room that you'd left the Fortress in the company of a lady. I wrote that note before I went to bed, and told them to deliver it the minute you came back. I'd been on duty all night, sir.'

I heard him, but I was not listening. I was doing my sums. If the body had been deposited in the charnel house four hours before, then it had probably been found two, three, or even four hours earlier. That is, the man had died at the very least eight, ten, or even more hours before. I glanced at my watch, and noted that it was twenty past nine. Midnight, then, was the likely hour of his demise, though it was possible he had died some hours before. Physical examination would give me a better idea of the state of preservation and the rigidity of the corpse, but the timing did suggest that this might be the body of Martin Lampe. If so, I calculated, some hours after killing Sergeant Koch, he had been ravaged by wolves while returning home along the forest path. Of course, he could have died at any time after three o'clock the day before (the hour at which Koch's body had been discovered in Sturtenstra.s.se), but if, as I believed, midnight proved to be the more likely hour, where had he been hiding? What had he been doing in the interval?

Then again, I reasoned, if the corpse were not Lampe's, but that of another of his victims that is, having killed Sergeant Koch, he had chosen to attack someone else as he made his way to Belefest then I was seriously in trouble. Had Lampe abandoned his chosen modus operandi and favourite weapon, and given himself up to casual slaughter? Two murders in one day. Was his homicidal fury growing? Was his l.u.s.t for blood urging him to kill with greater frequency?

As Stadtschen pulled back the rusty bolt to the charnel house, the iron door grated noisily on the rough stone floor, covering the words of invocation that escaped from my lips. I prayed to G.o.d that the corpse of Martin Lampe would be waiting for me. Certain knowledge that he was dead would end the terror that had taken possession of Konigsberg, and cancel the murderous obsession that had taken root in my own mind.

'Cover your mouth, sir,' Stadtschen advised, blocking the way, and holding me in check.

'One of our lads was carried off this morning with choleric fever. Spewing his guts up when he wasn't busy on the latrine. Day and night for almost a week. What a way to go!'

Stadtschen raised his hand to his mouth and nose, while I turned my head to the side and used my jacket collar for the same purpose. The stink as we entered the room was hideous and sweet. The walls had been washed with lime, and the flickering light from our torches rebounded off the walls in a blinding flash. The s.p.a.ce was empty and bare, except for a large tin bath placed against the far wall. I stepped across, glanced into it, then looked away. The naked corpse of a man had been laid flat on its back, eyes popping, broad chest sunken, skin wrinkled and yellow, the stomach swollen almost to bursting. Though I struggled not to think of it, I realised it would not be long before the nauseous gases exploded out of him.

I struggled to concentrate my mind on the task at hand. I did not have Professor Kant to help or direct me, as he had done when he took me to visit his Wunderkammer for the first time, proudly showing me the severed heads of the victims suspended in distilled wine.

'Over there, sir,' Stadtschen replied, waving his torch towards the far corner.

The man found in the wood had been laid on a mat of rough hessian. Stadtschen was right, I admitted. 'Corpse' was not the correct word. I fought the rising tide of revulsion in my gullet, and heard Stadtschen clear his throat and spit behind my back.

'I hope he was dead when they stripped him clean,' he murmured, as I fixed my torch in a ring on the wall.

Resolving to do as Professor Kant had taught me, I knelt down to examine attentively what was left of the body. I noted ribs and bones, sections of vertebrae which had been broken in at least three places, skeletal remains of the arms and the legs, everything tinged pale orange or dark brown where the muscles and flesh had been torn away. Shreds of transparent tendon, sc.r.a.ps of gristle and elastic cartilage still clung to the joints, though hardly a trace of soft tissue remained. It was impossible to determine the state of rigor mortis. So, there was no way of guessing how long ago the man might have been dead.

'Jesus, they were hungry, sir!'

Stadtschen's words were blunt and crude, but I admitted to myself that his observation was apt enough. Searching through my pockets, I drew out the long key that opened the door to my office. With some difficulty, I used it to turn the glistening skull towards me. In that instant, the true significance of the memento mori with which we love to decorate our Prussian churches struck me with a force that I had never felt before. Indeed, it took me a moment to pluck up the courage to look more carefully at the skeletal face, and the detached lower jaw. The skin was gone entirely, the ears and flesh of the cheeks and chin having been devoured. On the crown of the head, a tuft of hair had escaped being pulled away from the scalp in the frenzy of feeding. Though the strands were soaked in blood, the tips were clean. And they were white. A man of a certain age, I decided, or one who had aged prematurely. Might his hair have blanched as the attack took place? I dismissed this fanciful notion, my thoughts turning instinctively to Martin Lampe, Kant's valet, the secretary who had transcribed his master's work at dead of night, the servant I had never ever seen. Lampe was almost seventy years old. His hair could well have been white.

'They started with the juicier bits, sir. Cheeks and lips, muscles and fat, the flesh on his arms and legs and whatever was attached to that thing there.'

Stadtschen was standing close behind me, leaning forward, peering eagerly over my shoulder. I would have preferred him to stand further off and let me get on with my work in peace, but his finger stretched forward and touched the skull, which lolled and rolled onto its side, then came to rest like a soup bowl, giving an extra twist to the gristly tubes of the trachea and oesophagus, which had somehow survived the onslaught.

'They ripped his head off, sir. It's plain to me, this case bears no relation to the corpse of that man of yours that was stabbed to death yesterday afternoon.'

I paused for a moment, remembering Amadeus Koch, whose body was safely housed in the Fortress chapel. At least, I reflected morosely, his death had been more sudden, and I had preserved him from the horror of the charnel house.

'Begging your pardon, sir. You an' him was close, I know.'

Once more, I tried to ignore this gushing babble as I sifted through the corporeal wreckage looking for some clue to the ident.i.ty of the unknown man. The ribcage, pelvis, hips, and a ma.s.s of tangled bones lay in the centre of a horrid, b.l.o.o.d.y mash, which was all that remained of the internal organs. The larger bones bore marks of deep indentations made by pointed teeth, or fangs, as I suppose they ought more correctly to be called. Having caught up with their prey, the beasts had evidently dragged him to the ground by his arms and legs. Then, they had set to work. Blood-soaked sc.r.a.ps of clothing were tied up inextricably in the mess, and I made no effort to shift them. What purpose would it serve? Any colour they might have had was irremediably fouled and stained by the blood and the gore.

'No clothes to help us,' I said. 'No shoes.'

'I bet they ate 'em, sir,' Stadtschen answered, blandly unaware of the importance the discovery of those shoes with the distinctive cross-cut on the soles might have made. 'A hungry wolf'll dine on anything, sir. Got a digestion like a French grenadier. They eat their young, I've heard tell. The wolves, I mean.'

I bent even lower, as much to escape Stadtschen as to gain a better view of the skull. The upper teeth were unevenly ranged with broken points and tips, badly consumed with age and use, as if the dead man had chewed long and hard before he swallowed his meat. I peered more closely at the oral cavity, telling Stadtschen to lower his light. The tongue had been ripped out during the a.s.sault, blood had caked the gums and everything else, with the exception of a white strip of bone or naked cartilage which stood out like a jagged slit on the roof of his mouth. A fang had evidently penetrated the palate as the beasts tussled with the head of the man.

Could any death be more terrible?

I let out a sigh of helplessness, looking into the blood-rimmed cavities of the skull, the dark empty s.p.a.ces where the eyes had once nestled. What did you see in the final instant of your life? I wondered. Who were you? Some drunken wretch wandering alone at night through the forest? Another hapless victim of the killer? The murderer himself?

There was nothing in that hideous mess of mute humanity to tell me what I wanted so desperately to know. If this were truly Martin Lampe, his ident.i.ty had disappeared for ever.

'The medical officer will be coming to inspect them later this morning,' Stadtschen rambled on at my back. 'The innards of this one have begun to putrefy already. That other fellow doesn't look too good, either. The quicker they're in the ground, the better, sir, in my opinion. I should report this to the doctor.'

I could have ordered snow and ice to be carried down there, as Professor Kant had done in his effort to preserve Lawyer Tifferch for Doctor Vigilantius and myself to see, but the corpse was too far gone for physical recognition.

'Before you speak to the doctor,' I said, 'you can do yourself a favour.'

'Sir?'

'You acted out of order, you know that, don't you, Stadtschen?'

He held his breath, waiting for me to continue.

'I ought to mention your impulsive decision to move the remains in my report to the King,' I said, watching him. 'But I may yet be persuaded to change my mind. Find Frau Lampe quickly, and bring her here. The woman lives in Belefest village. She came to see me this morning, saying that her husband had disappeared. I doubt she'll be able to tell us anything, but duty requires it before these men are finally laid to rest. Make sure...'

Make sure she recognises him.

That is what I would have liked to say, but I didn't.

'You can count on me,' Stadschen replied with an ingratiating smile and a smart salute.

My torch had nearly burnt itself out. The prospect of remaining there without a light prompted me to remove myself quickly. With Stadtschen following hard on my heels, we soon arrived at the main gate. I dismissed him, and was gratified to see him running off in the direction of Belefest.

But the ident.i.ty of the bones in the charnel house was not my only concern. Nor was the question of finding Martin Lampe, if he were still alive. The King and his report would have to wait until I returned.

'Take me to Magisterstra.s.se,' I shouted to the driver as I jumped aboard the waiting coach. As fast as you can go.'

Chapter 33.

I had been so busily engaged the previous afternoon and night that I had hardly given a further thought to Professor Kant. Indeed, I did not realise just how long it had been since I had seen him, nor how tired I was, until I leaned my head back against the comfortable bench of the coach and gave myself up to the swaying rhythm of the vehicle, soon drifting into what must have been a sound sleep.

I sat up with a start as the vehicle drew up before the house in Magisterstra.s.se. And another alarm bell began to ring in my head when I glanced out of the window. The young Italian doctor that I had met the previous day was running up the garden path towards the door, and he was clutching a large brown medicine bottle in his hands.

I leapt down from the carriage, and hurried to reach the porch before Johannes Odum could close the door.

'What's the matter?' I panted.

'It's my master, sir,' the servant cried, the tears starting from his red-rimmed eyes. 'He's barely conscious. Doctor's been to fetch a cordial.'

I pushed past him, and flew up the stairs to Kant's bedchamber.

As soon as I entered the room, I saw that I had come too late. The tiny, shrivelled creature lying on the bed had already set one foot in the next world. Immanuel Kant's once-delicate face seemed to have turned in upon itself, his cheeks were two great, gaunt hollows, his closed and sunken eyes resting inside deep dark pits. His narrow shoulders protruded through the cotton sheet, like wings flanking his ears. His breathing was loud and regular, but he did not look like a man who was taking his rest. It was the beginning of a sleep from which he would never wake.

Herr Jachmann stood with bowed head on the far side of the room, while Doctor Gioacchini ministered to Professor Kant, gently prising his lips apart and spooning a dark green liquid into his mouth. I took a step closer to the foot of the narow bed. The doctor glanced over his shoulder and nodded quickly to me, then he turned back, concentrating all his attention once again on his patient.

Some minutes pa.s.sed in silence, then a cry escaped from the physician's lips.

'Herr Professor!'

Kant had opened his eyes. He was staring fixedly at me.

The doctor dropped his head to the philosopher's breast, and listened to the feeble beating of the patient's heart. Moving his ear closer to Kant's gaping mouth, he suddenly looked up at me with a bewildered expression on his face.

'Professor Kant wishes to speak to you,' he whispered, raising his watch, counting off the seconds as he measured the dying man's pulse. 'Be quick, sir,' he urged. 'His strength is ebbing fast.'

I drew near and bent over the bed. Fright swept through me in an awful spasm. I had to struggle to control my emotions as the philosopher's eyes closed once again like shutters. He seemed to me to be drifting beyond the realm of physical communication.

'It is I, sir, Hanno Stiffeniis,' I breathed into his ear.

Kant's eyelids did not so much as flicker, his face was a mask of deathly antic.i.p.ation, a film of perspiration glistening on his broad forehead.

'How long has he been in this state?' I whispered.

'Too long,' the doctor answered.

I turned to the bed once more. Kant's respiration was more regular, though his pale pinched face seemed to have retreated even more deeply into the hollow cavity between his shoulders.

'Professor Kant,' I called, more loudly than before.

Kant's blue eyes opened suddenly wide, and swivelled to look at me. The closeness of death made the orbs appear more pale and transparent than ever. His lips gaped open, then closed again.

'Call him back,' Doctor Gioacchini urged at my shoulder.

'Professor Kant, speak to me,' I implored, lowering my ear so close to his pursed lips that my being was filled with the sweet, rotting odour of approaching death. I did not draw back from it. I breathed it in as if it were the purest mountain air. A wild, mystical ecstasy stirred within my craving soul. Immanuel Kant was in his death throes, and his last desire on Earth was to confide in me.

My ear grazed his lips. I felt them quiver at my touch.

'Too late...' he said in a hushed, strangled expulsion of breath.

'Sir?' I whispered, swallowing hard, my mouth parched and dry.

He sank back on the pillow, the merest trace of a smile on his lips, like a wisp of cloud in a blue summer sky.

'The killer has not been caught yet,' I began to say, then instantly regretted it.

With a display of strength I could hardly believe possible in that weak state, Kant shook his head slowly from side to side, his eyes staring fixedly into my own.