Ring of Fire IV Read online

“Because…”

  At that moment, the figure behind Agricola resolved into Patrolman Kierstede as he sprang forward and wrapped his arms around the pastor, getting both his hands on Agricola’s knife hand and pulling it away from the woman.

  Byron and Gotthilf joined the struggle an instant later. Byron broke Agricola’s grip on the girl by main force; from the sound of it, he may have broken some of Agricola’s fingers as well. Gotthilf caught the girl as she was spun away from the knot of struggling men. He steadied her on her feet, then passed her to Archidiakon Schönfeldt as he moved forward.

  “Watch over her, please. I’ve got to help Byron.”

  It took all three of them, detectives and patrolman, to wrestle Agricola to the ground and get him restrained. Gotthilf secured his wrists with his handcuffs.

  “Cuff his ankles,” Byron directed Kierstede. “He’s so skinny, your cuffs should go around them. At this point, I don’t care if he gets a little bruised. I don’t want him capable of running.”

  Gotthilf ended up sitting on the backs of Agricola’s thighs and pressing down on the backs of his calves with all his weight in order for the patrolman to secure cuffs around the pastor’s ankles. Once that was done, he jumped up and away from the bound form.

  Agricola writhed on the ground for a few moments, grunting and whining. Then he collapsed on his face and began weeping.

  Schönfeldt drew close. “Is it over?”

  “No,” Byron said in a hoarse voice. “We’ve caught him. That just ends the pursuit. The hard part starts now.”

  Kierstede had sounded on his patrolman’s whistle, calling in the local patrol sergeant and nearby patrolmen to secure the area. Their wagon had been sent off to collect the police photographer and bring him back. Gotthilf turned to the young woman, who was still standing, wide-eyed and shaking, beside Archidiakon Schönfeldt. “Excuse me, Fräulein,” he said as he pulled his notebook out to make notes, “what is your name?”

  “El…Elsbeth Vollenweilder,” she stammered, clutching her hands together.

  “Fräulein Vollenweilder,” Gotthilf noted, “did you know Pastor Agricola well?”

  “No,” she said, staring at the man on the ground. “No, I just met him. Would he really have hurt me?”

  Gotthilf looked at her; her eyes were dark brown. “Probably not, but we’ve made sure of it now.”

  He asked her more questions, calming her down in the process. She really had nothing to tell. She was new to the Magdeburg area, and tonight had been her first encounter with Agricola. Brown eyes or not, Gotthilf mused as he put the notebook away, she was fortunate that it wasn’t her last encounter.

  The photographer had arrived and begun his work while Gotthilf was interviewing the young woman. Head down, Gotthilf followed behind him, quartering the area, examining the ground with care.

  “What are you doing?” Byron called at him from where he stood by Agricola.

  “Looking for the knife, or whatever it was he was threatening Fräulein Vollenweilder with.”

  “I think it went that direction,” Kierstede said, waving toward the near side of the church.

  Gotthilf headed that direction, and before long found something glinting in the last of the light of day that really rocked him back on his heels. It wasn’t a knife—it was a spoon. “Nathan,” he called out, “come shoot this.” The photographer obliged, taking two pictures of the spoon where it lay. Then Gotthilf put his gloves back on, bent over and picked it up, after which Nathan took three more photographs.

  A spoon; but not just any spoon. This was an up-time spoon, made of thin stamped metal of the kind called stainless steel. Gotthilf had seen its like before in the case involving Harold Baxter. But was this really what Agricola had been holding at Fräulein Vollenweilder’s neck? And if so, why?

  He carried it back over to where his partner was standing. “Byron, do you have your flashlight with you?”

  “Yep.” The up-timer pulled the small flashlight out of his pocket and flicked it on. The bright white light illuminated the bowl of the spoon.

  “The edge of the spoon bowl is sharpened,” Gotthilf said in surprise. “Why would anyone sharpen a…Oh.”

  Gotthilf and Byron adopted identical expressions of disgust. Byron flicked the light off and put it away. Gotthilf pulled a waxed paper envelope out of a jacket pocket, enfolded the spoon in it, and tucked it back into a pocket. An outside pocket, this time.

  Kierstede looked at them both, perplexed.

  Gotthilf lifted a fist to eye-height, then made a digging and rotating motion with it. It took a moment to sink in that the spoon had been what Agricola had used to cut the victims’ eyeballs from their heads. Kierstede paled in the light of the lamps held by a couple of the patrolmen.

  Another wagon pulled up behind theirs, and Captain Reilly descended from it and headed their way. Byron and Gotthilf pulled their tired bodies up straight, echoed by the patrolmen standing around the area.

  “Who is that?” the captain asked, pointing at the manacled body on the ground.

  “That,” Byron said with a sigh, “is our serial killer.”

  “Doesn’t look like much,” Reilly replied. “Who is he?”

  “Pastor Timotheus Agricola,” Gotthilf said. He jerked a thumb behind them. “He was serving here at St. Jacob’s Church.”

  Reilly frowned. “You guys sure about this?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Byron said.

  “We found the missing eyes in his residence,” Gotthilf added, “apparently preserved in gin or something as some kind of trophy.”

  Reilly looked like he wanted to curse, but restrained himself after he looked at Archidiakon Schönfeldt out of the corner of his eye. “You have anything more on him than that?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Byron repeated. “He confessed.”

  “He what?” Reilly was flabbergasted.

  “He confessed in public to our Archidiakon Schönfeldt there—who, by the way, could be the hostage negotiator on my team any time. The short version is he thought he was fighting cases of demon possession.”

  “Uh-huh. And the real case?”

  Byron looked sad and sour at the same time. “We probably won’t be able to prove it until we have an autopsy done at some point, but from his own admission he has syphilis. I think we’ve got a bad case of tertiary stage syphilis shredding his mind.”

  “Al Capone crazy, huh?” Reilly said.

  “Worse, I think,” Byron said.

  Something else to talk to Byron about, Gotthilf made a mental note.

  “Gotthilf’s got lots of notes,” Byron said. Gotthilf patted his jacket pocket. “We’ll write up our reports tomorrow.”

  “Good.” Reilly looked around. “I’ll take him back to the station and we’ll lock him in a holding cell for tonight. He’ll be Mayor Gericke’s problem tomorrow.”

  It took a few minutes to get Agricola loaded onto one of the wagons. Reilly rode with him, along with a couple of patrolmen. The rest of the patrolmen returned to their patrols. The patrol sergeant put Fräulein Vollenweilder up on his horse and took her home. That left the two detectives, Kierstede and Archidiakon Schönfeldt staring at each other. They were joined by Archidiakon Demcker, who stepped out of the shadows to join them.

  “How long have you been there?” Gotthilf asked.

  “Long enough to figure out what happened. So Timotheus really did it?”

  Byron sighed. “I need a beer if we’re going to go over this. C’mon.”

  They all trooped to The Green Horse, where they collected mugs of beer and settled around a table. They let Archidiakon Schönfeldt explain the evening’s happenings to Archidiakon Demcker. That worthy had nothing to say when the accounting was concluded. All he could do was shake his head and mutter a prayer.

  “The really interesting thing, in a ghoulish sort of way,” Byron concluded, “is how this is going to play out in the courts. In the up-time, the American legal system held that someone who is insane could not be severely punishe
d or executed for acts committed while insane. I don’t know what the Magdeburg law will hold.”

  “If the judge is merciful,” Demcker said softly, “he’ll get the ax. Otherwise he’ll be broken on the wheel. The law about murder is severe.”

  There was a moment of silence, then Byron said, “Some Jena law student may get a thesis out of this case.”

  Gotthilf snorted. “More than one student, and more than one thesis, I suspect.”

  Byron gave a tired chuckle. “You’re probably right.” His gaze swiveled to Kierstede. “Daniel, my man, if you can’t hold your stomach any better than you have in this case, being a cop just may not be the job for you.”

  “It’s the eyes,” Kierstede said hollowly. “I can handle anything else, but this stuff with scooping out women’s eyes just got to me. I’ll deal with it.”

  “You’d better,” Gotthilf said. “You’ll see worse than this if you stay with this job.”

  Kierstede said nothing; just gave a determined nod.

  Byron’s eyes came back to Gotthilf. “And you, partner, have a tough job tomorrow.”

  “What? Writing the reports?”

  “Nope.”

  Gotthilf racked his brain, came up with nothing. “What?”

  A sinister smile slowly appeared on Byron’s face. “You have a date.”

  Now Gotthilf was really confused.

  Byron’s smile grew larger. “With an old widow-woman.”

  Gotthilf’s confusion compounded.

  “To tell Frau Maria Backfennin what happened.”

  Gotthilf put a hand to his eyes and groaned as everyone at the table laughed.

  “You promised.”

  The Blauwe Duif

  Kerryn Offord

  July 1634, the Øresund, near Helsingør,

  30 miles north of Copenhagen

  Pieter Kervel stood at the tiller of the Blauwe Duif as she sailed down the narrow strait between Seeland and Skåne that was the main sailing route connecting the North Sea to the Baltic. They had loaded a cargo of salt at Setubal, in the Low Countries, and were heading for Danzig, the largest port on the Polish coast. This was their first passage through the Øresund since the New Year. In a normal year they would have made their first passage of the year at the end of winter, but the last few months had been anything but normal. First there had been the invasion of the United Provinces, which had closed Setubal and Amsterdam to normal trade, and then there had been the conflict in the Baltic, which had forced up insurance premiums, making the route less profitable than the alternatives. The recent Peace of Copenhagen had changed all that, and he’d finally considered it time to make the passage. Today the sea was calm, the wind was steady, and the sun was shining. Pieter wasn’t expecting any problems as he headed for the toll station at Helsingør.

  KAABOOOM!

  The Blauwe Duif heeled violently as the blast sent water into the air. Pieter barely kept his hold on the tiller as it was nearly whipped out of his hands. Then the ship righted herself. Pieter realized there had been an explosion, and his immediate thought was some of his cargo had exploded. But, that wasn’t possible. They were only carrying salt on this trip and salt didn’t explode. He turned then to his next concern, the safety of his ship and crew. A quick visual inspection revealed all the sails still set, and all the lines still in place. Whatever the damage, and he could feel through his feet that there had been some damage, it wasn’t topside. He spotted a couple of crewmen getting back to their feet. “Man the pumps!” he called.

  The first mate appeared from below decks and signaled that all was not well as he hurried up to Pieter. “We’ve been holed,” Dirck Arentsz said. “The hull’s staved in forward of the main mast. We’re taking in water fast, and some of the cargo has broken free.”

  That was what Pieter had feared. He glanced landward. Beaching the Blauwe Duif was his only hope of saving her. He swung to starboard. “See what you can do about slowing the inrush of water and securing the cargo. I intend trying to beach her.”

  “I’ll do what I can, Pieter.” Dirck took one step away before stopping and looking back over his shoulder. “Lucas was in the hold.”

  Pieter winced. With loose cargo that couldn’t be good. “Is he hurt?”

  “We haven’t found him yet.”

  Pieter couldn’t help but picture Lucas trapped under a couple of casks of salt while the water rushed in. But now wasn’t the time to worry about a single seaman. He had a ship to save. “Keep an eye out for him, but stemming the inflow of water is more important.”

  The battle to save the Blauwe Duif had been lost from the moment the explosion breached the hull. The crew wasn’t big enough, nor was it well trained enough in damage control to stem the flow. All they managed to do was slow it enough for them to get everyone above deck and an injured Lucas safely into the ship’s boat. He was the worst of the injuries, with a broken arm and a leg that had been crushed when a cask of salt had rolled over it. The rest of the crew sported a selection of cuts and bruises with a sprinkling of sprains, broken noses, and lost teeth.

  As the Blauwe Duif sank beneath the waves Pieter was left wondering what had sunk his ship.

  Copenhagen, a couple of days later

  Morgens Kaas af Sparre held a very important, and lucrative, position in King Christian’s Øresund Tolls Commission, but right now he would have given anything not to be Superintendent of Tolls for the Øresund. He sighed and concentrated on what Pieter Kervel’s lawyer was saying. Also listening attentively were the representatives for the insurers of the Blauwe Duif and her cargo.

  Jan Dircksen paused his oration while he carefully polished his spectacles. Putting them back on, he continued. “Therefore, the loss of the Blauwe Duif is clearly the result of the Kingdom of Denmark’s failure in its duty to ensure that the passage for which it charges a toll was safe from abnormal hazards to navigation.”

  Morgens winced at the choice of words. You couldn’t get a more abnormal hazard than a minefield. He had foreseen that the minefield would interfere with trade when it was first proposed as a way of protecting Copenhagen from the USE Navy, and had pleaded the case that a safe channel be left mine free when it was initially laid. Either his pleading had been listened to, or more likely, the relatively small numbers of mines available had dictated that there had to be some areas with few if any mines. Either way, there had been a narrow channel, right under the guns of Kronborg Castle near the port of Helsingør, where there were no mines. Obviously, they hadn’t advertised the existence of the safe channel during the war, but upon the cessation of hostilities the channel should have been marked, and there should have been commission vessels in the Øresund to warn incoming vessels to use the safe channel. Unfortunately, one of his subordinates had failed to carry out his instructions. The Blauwe Duif had not been warned about the presence of the minefield and had sailed right into it. Not only did she hit a mine, but she also managed to sink in the middle of the safe channel.

  His brother-in-law, Christian Friis af Haraldskær, counsel for the Øresund Tolls Commission, leaned over and whispered into his ear. “They have a strong case. We may have to settle.”

  Morgens flicked Christian a scathing look. Four years studying the arts and five years of civil law and that was the best he could do? Morgens had already realized that they were going to have to settle. It was now a matter of how much it was going to cost.

  “…It is my considered opinion that the Kingdom of Denmark owes my client compensation for the loss of a contract worth seven hundred and thirty-six rigsdaler to deliver a cargo of salt to Danzig.” Jan lowered his papers and dropped his head in a minimal bow before sitting down.

  Morgens mentally compared that with the usual freight rate for salt from Setubal to Danzig. It was significantly higher than normal, but for one of the first ships to pass through what had until recently been a warzone, it was within acceptable limits. He turned to the lawyer for the underwriters of the voyage. “Do you have anything you wish to s
ay?”

  “Yes.” Melchior Borchgreving grabbed a handful of papers and stood. “My clients, the underwriters of the last voyage of the Blauwe Duif, intend claiming for the total loss of the ship and her cargo.” He started to read from the papers in his hand. “Item, one ship: a fluyt of one hundred and sixty scheepslast burden, valued at nine thousand two hundred and ninety-five rigsdaler…”

  “Hold it!” Christian held up his hand to silence the lawyer. “That’s the price of a new fluyt of a hundred and sixty scheepslast. You aren’t going to tell me your clients underwrote a vessel of the Blauwe Duif’s age for her full replacement value, are you?”

  Morgens was in full agreement with his brother-in-law. No underwriter in their right mind would insure a vessel of the Blauwe Duif’s age for her full replacement value. Such an action would only encourage ship-owners to insure their old and worn out vessels and then wreck them for the insurance. He started checking his book of tables, found the entry he was looking for, did some quick calculations on his abacus, and announced the pertinent numbers. “The Diminished Value of the Blauwe Duif, a fluyt of one hundred and sixty scheepslast on the Baltic Trade for seventeen years, is one thousand, five hundred and fifty rigsdaler. We may be willing to compensate your client up to that amount.”

  Melchior continued as if Christian and Morgens hadn’t spoken. “Next, there is the matter of the cargo the Blauwe Duif was carrying when she sank—a hundred and sixty scheepslast of salt destined for Danzig.”

  Morgens checked his paperwork to find the current price the Sounds Toll Commission was prepared to pay for salt, and winced. Total compensation for the loss of the Blauwe Duif could cost as much as thirty-eight thousand rigsdaler, or nearly a sixth of the total value of tolls collected in the last full year of collection—1632. However, there was a light at the end of the tunnel. “Surely the salt is being transported in casks, if so, it could be salvaged.”

  “It was my understanding that the commission did not intend salvaging the Blauwe Duif or her cargo,” Melchior said.