Three children are massacred in their beds. The crushed corpse of the mother is discovered in a dockside warehouse. Hanno Stiffeniis goes to investigate, intending to apply the 'philosophical method' he learnt four years earlier from Immanuel Kant. But then everything begins to unwind.
He jumped to his feet, red in the face, blocking out the meagre light that filtered in through the tiny window at his back. ‘How can you ask me that?’ he exploded. ‘Those children were Prussian, Hanno. They had no father to care for them. I could not leave the bodies one m...
Before they fell silent again, a window creaked open high above the Unicorn sign, and a pale round face peered down at us in the street. ‘D’you know what time o’ night it is?’ ‘Police,’ Stadtschen yelled. ‘Open up, and quick about it!’ The same fat, frightened man unbolted...
‘You have chosen well, Herr Procurator,’ he said. ‘This assistant of yours knows the area better than many of the local inhabitants. No one goes to the Round Fort very much these days.’ ‘I went there with my father several times for the fur-trading,’ Gurten explained. Byls...
Scarlet letters on a creamy ground: Frau Graube’s School of Stitches – tailoring to order. Here, Emma Rimmele had found Angela Enke. The girl’s mother had told me that her daughter often went to see Frau Graube in search of work, and that she sometimes slept at the homes o...