HS01 - Critique of Criminal Reason Read Online Free

speak.
    The good humour I had decided on dissolved in an instant.
    ‘Do you mean to tell me that you have kept something from my sight, Herr Koch?’
    ‘I’m only doing as I was instructed, sir,’ he said as he pulled a sheaf of papers from his leather bag.’ I was told to hand these documents to you once we’d reached the Königsberg highway.’
    As if in response to his words, the coach swung left at the Elbing crossroads.
    So, that’s your game, I thought. I have been flattered into accepting an unpleasant commission and now that it’s too late to pull out, I’m to be told all the nasty details that would have convinced me to refuse it.
    ‘The authorities must guarantee the peace,’ Koch continued blithely. ‘All those involved in the investigation have been sworn to secrecy.’
    ‘Does that include you?’ I asked sharply. ‘You must have given your wife some reason for leaving her alone so early this morning.’
    I felt mounting anger at the thought of this graceless messenger concealing information from me. ‘You hold back facts, Koch, unveiling them whenever the need arises, or it suits your mood.’
    The suspicion was growing on me that Sergeant Koch was not simply taking me anywhere; he was observing me, judging me, mentally preparing critical notes to be written up for the eyes of his superiors. That was the normal procedure in the Prussian civil service. To spy on others was the surest way to step up a rung on the uncertain bureaucratic ladder.
    ‘I have nothing to hide from you, sir,’ Sergeant Koch replied through clenched teeth, his handkerchief out again. ‘I am a clerk. I have played no active part in the investigation. This morning, like any other, I took myself to work at five-thirty and I was instructed to do what I have done. I had no need to tell my wife, or anyone else, of my doings. I live alone.’
    Koch and I had got off to a bad start.
    ‘You claim to know so little of this affair, Herr Koch. I find it odd that you should be charged to illuminate a person who knows absolutely nothing. A case of the blind leading the blind, is it?’
    ‘Those documents should answer your questions, sir. Obviously, I was told not to let you see them until you had accepted the task.’
    ‘Do you mean to say that I could have refused?’ I said, and snatched the papers from his hand.
    He looked out of the window, but he did not reply.
    With a bad grace I turned my attention to the documents. The first murder had been committed more than a year before. Jan Konnen, a middle-aged blacksmith, had been found dead in Merrestrasse on the morning of 3 January 1803. Police enquiries revealed that he had spent the previous evening at a dockside tavern not far from the spot where his corpse was found. The innkeeper did not recall ever having seen Herr Konnen before and denied that he had seen him gaming in the company of foreign sailors. He believed that the man was a foreigner, he said. A Lithuanian sailing ship had docked that day and the tavern had been particularly crowded until the early hours of the morning. Konnen had left the tavern shortly after ten o’clock that evening, but no one had noticed him outside. It was very cold that night and the streets were empty of casual passers-by. His corpse had been found at dawn by a midwife on her way to assist at a birth. Hurrying through the fog, which was exceptionally thick that morning, she had almost fallen over Konnen, who was kneeling up against a wall. The midwife thought that he was ill, but on drawing closer she saw that he was dead. The report had been signed by two officers of His Royal Majesty’s night-watch, Anton Lublinsky and Rudolph Kopka. Penned in passable German, it was dated six months after the murder. I glanced up, noting that heavy sleet had now begun to lash the windows of the coach, determined to ask Koch for an explanation. He was a bureaucrat, he was from Königsberg: he must know what the standard procedure was in such matters. But