‘I’ve done too much overtime already. This can just as easily be a private conversation.’
Rammoser switched off the flame and turned a few valves. ‘Come on, let’s go next door. Erna can make us a little something for supper. We can have a drink while we wait.’ He went over to the naughty corner and picked out a bottle from the line of corks.
Moments later they sat in the cosy lounge of the teacher’s apartment, a bottle and two glasses arranged in front of them on the table. Rammoser hadn’t been exaggerating. The pear schnapps was unbelievably mild, imbuing Rath’s body with a pleasant warmth.
‘You need it sometimes,’ Rammoser said. ‘The winters here are long. This is the coldest region in Germany.’
‘Didn’t feel that way today.’
‘It isn’t always so humid. There’s a storm brewing. When it breaks, things will be cooler again, but you didn’t come here to discuss the weather.’
‘I came to discuss Artur Radlewski. Apparently, he’s from here?’
Rammoser shot him a glance that held surprise and suspicion in equal measure. ‘What’s Artur got to do with all this?’
‘It could be related to the death of his mother. Did you know him?’
‘My father taught him, actually, before the war. Highly intelligent, but very reserved.’
‘No wonder, given his family history,’ Rath said. ‘Mother an alcoholic…’
‘His mother wasn’t the issue,’ Rammoser interrupted. ‘I don’t know what you’ve heard, but back when Artur still lived with her, she never touched a drop. It was her husband who drank. Not only that. Friedrich Radlewski was a brutal bastard who beat his wife black and blue whenever the mood took him. Who knows what else he did in front of the child, or how often the boy tried to help his mother and took a beating for his troubles.’
Rammoser took a sip of schnapps.
‘From time to time,’ he went on, ‘my father would appeal to Radlewski senior’s conscience but, next day, little Artur either failed to attend school, or had apparently fallen from the hayloft. As time went on, he grew more reserved, and sought refuge in books about Indians. It was all he cared about, and my father supplied him with what titles he could, starting with Karl May, but soon enough Artur wanted to read other things, travelogues, the truth about the North American Indians.’
‘Even back then he wanted to be an Indian…’
‘He needed an escape, and my father helped him find it. I still remember how he once went all the way to Königsberg to source books for him. Since he couldn’t get him away from his father he wanted at least to encourage him. Perhaps he thought little Artur was planning to emigrate to America. I don’t know.’ Rammoser paused to top up their glasses. ‘Do you have any cigarettes?’
Rath laid his case on the table. ‘Help yourself.’ Rammoser lit an Overstolz, and Rath did likewise.
‘Anyway,’ Rammoser continued, ‘the day came when Father cursed himself for having supplied the boy with so many books: the day they found a bare-skulled, bloodied Friedrich Radlewski dead outside his shanty. Someone had scalped him while he was still alive. His wife lay unconscious inside, covered in bruises. At first, they thought that Martha was dead too, but she was still breathing. There was no sign of Artur. Neither of him, nor his books. He must have been fourteen or fifteen at the time.’
‘My God, what a tragic story.’
‘No one mourned Fritz Radlewski. Most people were glad the bastard was in the ground.’ Rammoser looked at Rath. ‘Old Radlewski was rotten to the core. Some people are pure evil.’
‘You don’t have to tell a police officer that.’
‘As a teacher, you have a duty to see the good in people but, if I’ve learned one thing in all these years, it is this. Most people are capable of good and evil, but there are some who are evil through and through. It doesn’t matter if they’re ten, fifty or a hundred years old.’
Rath nodded pensively. ‘Perhaps you’re right, but you can’t lock people up for being evil through and through.’
‘Friedrich Radlewski beat his wife half to death,’ Rammoser continued. ‘She couldn’t even leave the hospital for his funeral. She needed months to get back on her feet.’
‘And Artur? He became the Kaubuk?’
‘You’ve heard his nickname? I think it’s a poor fit.’ Rammoser took a drag on his cigarette. ‘Artur remained missing. He was under suspicion, and the Landgendarmerie spent several days looking for him in vain. At some point, a travelling salesman claimed to have seen a figure in the forest behind Markowsken, flitting through the trees at supernatural speed. Suddenly other people started describing strange encounters in the forest, over by the border.’
‘Which is where he lives to this day, terrifying women and children?’
‘He doesn’t terrify anyone, he avoids people.’ Rammoser topped them up again. ‘In the beginning, he must’ve slipped into the villages fairly regularly to stock up on essentials. A goose would go missing in Urbanken, the grocer’s in Willkassen might report a paraffin lamp stolen; an entire toolbox vanished from the sawmill. In Markowsken, Kowalski senior had five rabbits pinched from his sheds. The most anyone ever saw was a shadow. That this elusive being could only be a spirit, could only be the Kaubuk, was a given for most people.’
‘Turns out it was no more than a common thief.’
‘Or someone trying to survive in the wilds.’ Evidently Rammoser felt obliged to defend Radlewski. ‘Most people thought as you did. When the thefts continued they threatened the Landgendarmerie, saying if the police couldn’t find him, they’d start looking themselves, but then war broke out, the Russians rolled in and people had other things to worry about. At some point, the thefts ceased.’
‘Perhaps Radlewski didn’t survive the war?’
‘The thefts might have ceased, but there were other mysterious goings-on in the forest. On one occasion a cow elk carcass was found with its hide missing, along with the best bits of meat. And there were any number of traps; primitive certainly, but immaculate in their design.’
‘Radlewski’s handiwork?’
‘No one knows for sure, but there are fewer and fewer who remember the old stories. The last sighting was years ago, and for most people he has become a kind of mythical figure, a ghost. Others claim Radlewski has long since died or emigrated.’
‘You don’t think he’s dead. I can see it in your eyes. You think he’s still out there in the forest.’
Rammoser smiled for the first time since he’d started telling Artur Radlewski’s story. ‘There are no flies on you, Herr Rath.’ He poured another glass of moonshine, and Rath realised he was becoming drunk. A pleasant feeling, it somehow brought him closer to this foreign world. He felt at one with himself, suddenly at home in Masuria, as if he had spent his whole life here.
‘You’re right,’ Rammoser continued. ‘I don’t think Artur is dead. I think he’s become so skilled at concealing himself and covering his tracks that no one’s quick enough to see him.’
‘Like an Indian.’
‘Precisely.’
‘What makes you so sure?’
‘Let me tell you a different story…’ Rammoser lifted his glass. ‘Here in Treuburg we have a lending library, and every couple of months a few books inexplicably vanish. No one’s ever discovered how, but the fact is they do. Every so often three or four titles will just go missing from the catalogue, as if by magic. Even more strangely, on the same morning these books are marked absent, the librarian will find a different pile on her desk, containing titles stolen in the previous weeks. Books about Indians, every last one.’
Rath couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Well, it is a lending library. You think a person who has withdrawn from civilisation is capable of reading so many books?’