Read Online The Killing of Emma Gross by Damien Seaman - Free Book Online Page B

'Tell me, do you still have any of those cigars?'
    I ignored him and dug into the loam. The grass roots knotted the wet soil into lumps and made it hard to break through.
    'Can you pass me my handkerchief then?' he said, pointing to the scrap of material I still had in my hand. 'I need to blow my nose.'
    I still didn't answer.
    'Give me my handkerchief or I'll walk away,' he shouted.
    'Go ahead,' I told him. I nodded at the Schupo . 'See how far you get before they riddle you with bullets.'
    He smiled. Giggled, even. 'They wouldn't.'
    'And why not?' I said. 'We've found Albermann. You've given us more than enough now to be sure of who you are. The public would just love to read of your violent death.' I pointed at the blue coats surrounding us. 'And they'd just love to be the cause of it.'
    The breeze picked up. It had a cold edge to it. The clouds hovered fat and dark overhead. If we were going to find something I wanted it to be before the weather broke.
    Kürten wiped his nose on his shirt cuffs. He watched me slam the shovel into the earth a couple of times. Voices drifted to me on the wind and I looked back in the direction of the factory. Ritter and Vogel had come up to the Schupo cordon and were talking to the squad sergeant.
    How much of this was on Ritter? Would Gertrude still be alive if he hadn't got in the way?
    'You don't like him, do you?' Kürten said. He nodded at Ritter.
    I shovelled more clay earth out of the hole. This far down, it was more tightly packed.
    'Come on,' Kürten said, 'you can tell me. I'm a good listener.'
    'Yeah, I'll bet.' I kept shovelling, trying to ignore the fact I felt closer to this bastard than to any of my so-called colleagues. After all, Kürten was responsible for my return to police headquarters. He didn't care about suspected Communist sympathies and more importantly, he didn't like Ritter either. I had to keep telling myself that he'd killed the girl, not Ritter; Ritter had just made it easier for him, he hadn't done the deed.
    'Did you love your cousin?'
    'What?' I didn't pause in my work. My back ached with every stroke now. I didn't want to stop for fear I might not have the will to start again.
    'She died beautifully, you know.'
    I was grunting, sweat running down my back and making my shirt stick.
    'Aren't you going to ask me why I did it?' Kürten said.
    'Did what?'
    'All these...things I did. The murders. The rapes. You know...'
    With that, I did pause. I stabbed the shovel into the earth and leaned on it. My arms shook, my shock trooper days feeling a long way off. Didn't I want to ask why? Didn't I want to know? The man in handcuffs wiped his running nose on his jacket sleeves and I knew there was nothing to know.
    'There's no answer you can give me that I would understand,' I said.
    I hefted the shovel, sending a hot wave of pain down my spine. I pushed down into the loam. The blade struck something hard and slid off.
    Good Christ, had I hit bone? Searing stomach acid rose to the back of my throat. I choked it down.
    I shook creases out of the handkerchief I was holding and smoothed it between my palms. I got down on my knees. I pushed soil away from the misshapen lump, dug beneath it with my hand and pulled upwards. The bone came loose and I fell backwards.
    The bone turned out not to be a bone at all, but a large flat rock.
    'This the rock you were talking about, Peter?' I asked him.
    He grinned as he nodded.
    'So we're close now, yes?'
    The nearest Schupo crept forward. A shout from Vogel brought them up, but they didn't retreat. Kürten didn't notice their approach, or affected not to. The hole in the ground transfixed him.
    I went at the ground with the shovel once more. The adrenaline in my blood from the digging was beginning to ease the back pain. I dug out two more spadefuls before the shovel hit another rock.
    ' Gott in Himmel , Peter,' I said, 'there's a lot of rocks in this meadow. No wonder they don't plough it.'
    With bare fingers I gripped the rock and