Huber's Tattoo

by Quentin Smith

  “Why, indeed?”

  Twenty One

  Steinhöring, June 1937

  Huber’s train journey took him via Frankfurt, where it stopped for several hours to take on coal, water and fresh supplies, allowing him time to stretch his legs on the platform and rub shoulders with fellow Schutzstaffel officers travelling across the Reich. The journey then continued to Wurzburg and Nuremberg before swinging south towards Munich, stopping once more in Ingolstadt to refill the coal tender and water tank.

  The journey was extremely luxurious, however, as Huber was fortunate enough to be travelling on the Sonderzug ‘Steiermark’. His every need was attentively met in oak-panelled carriages finished with plush red carpeting and velvet curtains, reserved only for SS officers on board Himmler’s special train.

  When he wasn’t sleeping in his private double berth compartment he was playing cards and sipping champagne or cognac with his SS colleagues in the dining carriage.

  “What on earth is in Steinhöring?” was the typical response of many SS officers on the train when they heard about Huber’s destination.

  “I don’t know yet. Where are you posted then?” Huber said.

  “Dachau,” was a common reply.

  In Munich he was met by a driver who took him directly to Steinhöring in a Stabswagen, an uncomfortable and bumpy journey even though it was not even thirty miles.

  “It is very peaceful in Steinhöring, Hauptsturmführer,” the driver said as they rattled along. “You will surely enjoy your stay.”

  The countryside was beautiful, peppered with wild flowers and lowing cattle, grazing in lush green meadows. But Huber could feel the perspiration building beneath his heavy black Shutzstaffel tunic and breeches, the substantial leather boots like oven mittens on his feet.

  “How much further, driver?”

  “There is Heim Hochland, Haupsturmführer.”

  Huber followed the driver’s pointing finger and was surprised to see an unassuming, though large, four-storied Bavarian house with white painted walls and dark wooden balconies nestled behind a curtain of trees. It was surrounded by extensive gardens in which he could see white uniformed nurses moving, some tending what appeared to be prams.

  Huber narrowed his eyes as he contemplated what he saw, a scene of apparent peaceful tranquillity, embracing the precious offspring that would become tomorrow’s Germany, in notably stark contrast to his previous posting in Hadamar.

  He was met by a young woman wearing a spotless white nurse’s uniform, complete with starched bonnet. Pulled back tightly around her head, golden blonde hair framed eyes as turquoise as the glacial melt waters around Interlaken. Her brown leather shoes made almost no sound on the gravelled drive as she walked up to him beside the Stabswagen.

  “Good afternoon, Fraülein,” Huber said, nodding respectfully and clicking his heels. “I am Hauptsturmführer Rolph Huber reporting for duty.”

  She looked him up and down disapprovingly, her eyes lingering over his holstered Luger P08.

  “Good afternoon, Hauptsturmführer, I am Sturmbannführer Gudrun Nauhaus, the Matron in charge of Heim Hochland,” she said in an authoritative yet silky voice with only a small, polite smile.

  Huber clicked his heels and saluted his superior officer. She acknowledged his formality in a demure manner.

  “You are a medical doctor, I believe?” she said.

  Huber nodded.

  “Well, we are quite informal here, so may I call you Doctor instead of Hauptsturmführer?” she continued.

  “Of course. May I call you Matron, Sturmbannführer?”

  She turned and began to walk towards the impeccably trimmed lawn that flanked the gravel driveway.

  “You may call me Gudrun, Doctor. Let me show you around while your driver unloads your luggage.”

  The gardens were simple and yet well cared for, the lawns neatly mown, the flowerbeds edged and weeded, a perfect environment for the young women and babies that decorated the sprawling, botanical Shangri-La.

  “There are a great many women here at Heim Hochland: my nursing and midwifery staff, the pregnant women, mothers and babies. It is a place of hope and joy, so I do think you would look less intimidating without the Luger and black Shutzstaffel uniform. Please feel free to wear a white, doctor’s coat while you are here with us,” Gudrun said as they strolled, hands clasped behind their backs.

  Mothers acknowledged Gudrun and greeted her warmly as she passed them. Everyone looked tall, slender, with blonde or very fair hair and strong Nordic features.

  “If Standartenführer Brack approves I have no objection,” Huber replied.

  They strolled towards a larger than life stone sculpture of a woman nursing a baby in her arms.

  “Do you know what we are all about here, Doctor Huber?”

  She paused and studied the sculpture, her eyes following the strong lines, the exposed breasts, the helpless infant cradled in its mother’s arms. Huber grinned thinly and looked down at his boots.

  “My orders were not that specific.”

  “Our SS leader, Himmler, established this Lebensborn home in December 1935 to care for biologically and racially valuable pregnant women, German women of pure Aryan descent. We make no social judgements about any pregnancies and are here purely to fulfil Himmler’s vision of a superior Aryan people. We are starting at the very foundations, building a new generation of racially superior Germans who will spread their genes across the country. The German birth rate is very low and our country desperately needs populating – with the right people, of course.”

  “Of course.” Huber nodded.

  He felt Gudrun’s confident gaze upon him, studying his strong facial bones and clean-shaven features.

  “Have you brought your family with you, Doctor?”

  Huber met her piercing eyes and then looked into the distance.

  “My wife died.”

  “I am sorry,” Gudrun said. “Children?”

  He shook his head.

  She paused, slightly open-mouthed for a moment, before turning back towards the house. Then she pulled a folded sheet of paper from her apron pocket and tapped it against the palm of her open hand.

  “I believe you worked at the famous Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin,” she said as they walked side by side.

  “That is correct.”

  “Then you will probably be familiar with the science of anthropobiology, the creation and identification of racial stereotypes.”

  “I have just spent a year at the Hadamar Institute where we selected people purely on physical, mental, and anthropometric criteria for sterilization,” Huber said.

  She nodded and handed the folded paper to him.

  “Read this, Doctor. These are some of the criteria we have been tasked with assessing in selecting partners for our birthing program – in the interests, you understand, of assuring the highest possible racial purity.”

  Huber unfolded the sheet and scanned it, adjusting his round, gold-rimmed spectacles as he did so and squinting in the bright afternoon sunlight.

  Hair colour and shape

  Skin colour

  Eye colour

  Freckles

  Skull shape and capacity

  Facial characteristics

  Shape of the ear

  Form of the hand and handprints

  Fingerprints

  Heart size and shape

  Anterior pituitary

  “Is that what I am here to do – make assessments?” Huber asked.

  Gudrun appeared distracted, though, as her attention was drawn to a woman sitting on a bench beside a wicker basket in which a baby was crying while the woman looked the other way. The feint smell of tobacco smoke curled into Huber’s nostrils.

  “Marta!” Gudrun said firmly.

  The woman turned to face her, looking sheepish.

  “Yes, Matron,” Marta said submissively, her eyes downcast.

  “You know the rules, and I have told you before, have I not?”

>   “I am sorry, Matron.”

  “There is to be no smoking here at Heim Hochland, understood?” Gudrun said sharply, her piston-straight arms pushed firmly down at her sides, knuckles blanched.

  “Yes, Matron.”

  “You know how Reichsführer Himmler feels about smoking and you know it is bad for our health and our fertility. Do not let me catch you again.”

  Huber squeezed the packet of cigarettes into a ball in the pocket of his breeches, feeling prickly warm, like a truant schoolboy. He had hoped that here in the Bavarian countryside, away from the prying eyes of legions of Schutzstaffel officers at Hadamar, he might be able to indulge his habit now and then. But the exchange he had just witnessed banished such notions from his mind.

  Gudrun turned back to face him, the sunlight silhouetting her petite yet strong face and reflecting off her turquoise eyes as she smiled as though nothing had happened.

  “I’m sorry, Doctor, you were saying?”

  “What other duties will I have?”

  “Well, our task here at Heim Hochland is to select the best Aryan characteristics, promote fertility, and nurture the results in the spirit and embrace of Himmler’s vision. You may be familiar, for example, with the fact that Follicle Stimulating Hormone has been isolated at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, and it is proving very useful in enhancing fertility in our carefully selected mothers.”

  Huber breathed in sharply, trying to understand why Standartenführer Brack and even Himmler had been so keen for him to be transferred far away from the beating heart of Reich business to this provincial retreat.

  “You Doctor Huber, as a Schutzstaffel officer, are not only a fine example of everything that is desirable about our Aryan race,” she said, her eyes wandering over his face admiringly. “But you will also have had your pure Aryan ancestry verified back to 1750. As an SS officer, Himmler wishes you to exploit this exalted genetic heritage by fathering as many children as possible, even though I notice you are dependent on corrective eye glasses.”

  Huber was both flattered and taken aback, both surprised and affronted, and found himself self-consciously pushing his spectacles up the bridge of his nose as he tried to digest this sweeping dissection of his attributes.

  “Himmler wears glasses, too,” he said defensively.

  “But he is the Reichsführer.”

  Huber rocked irritably on his heels.

  “So am I simply here to spread my genetic inheritance?”

  Gudrun smiled at him.

  “You could do worse, Doctor. We ask the young women of Germany to ‘Give a baby to the Führer’ They cannot of course do it alone.”

  Huber shifted his weight uncomfortably, feeling the gravel crunch beneath his boots and the plainly unwelcome Luger digging into his hip.

  “I was led to believe that Himmler has a project ongoing here at Heim Hochland,” Huber said, looking up at the vast expanse of white Bavarian mothering home.

  “Reichsführer Himmler has a wing to himself and his scientists at the rear. It is Top Secret and we are not permitted access. I have no authorisation for that side of things and consequently have no knowledge of what they are doing,” Gudrun said.

  Huber felt certain that this must be the reason for his transfer and he nodded with some slight satisfaction that his considerable talents would be called upon soon.

  “Where will I stay?”

  Gudrun hesitated.

  “As you are here alone, Doctor, you can lodge on the top floor of the house with me and the rest of my staff. You should be more than adequately comfortable.”

  She smiled. It was a pleasing smile, pure, assured, and sincere. He felt completely disarmed by her natural beauty and sincerity, and found his eyes surreptitiously searching her fingers for evidence of a wedding band.

  “Let me show you around inside,” Gudrun said.

  Twenty-Two

  Natasha watched with discreet fascination as Henry manipulated the slice of toast with a knife and fork, both buttering and then spreading a thick layer of strawberry jam on it without ever touching the food with his fingers.

  “Why does the killer make no attempt to hide the bodies?” she said, resting her elbows on the table.

  Henry shrugged as he began to cut the toast, placing bite-size squares in his mouth with the fork. Natasha pretended not to notice. After all, it was not her place as a junior officer to question her senior’s eating habits.

  “The killer – you think it’s the same person?” Henry replied, chewing noisily.

  “Well, whoever,” Natasha shrugged, “he, she, or they, have made no attempt to conceal the murders.”

  “Vera was in the Thames.”

  Natasha pulled a face. “I suppose so.”

  Henry finished the toast quickly, eating voraciously. It was ten-thirty in the morning and they were seated in the station canteen which was empty, except for two tables some distance away where uniformed officers sat drinking morning coffee and laughing. The room smelled overpoweringly of food being deep fried for lunch.

  “I think of the deaths more as executions than murders,” Henry said, wiping his mouth on a small, square paper napkin.

  “Why do you think that?” Natasha frowned, her eyes fixed intently on Henry’s face.

  “For the same reason as you, and that they were all killed by single gunshots to the head, plus they are all curiously linked.”

  “Could it be a psycho?”

  “No.” Henry shook his head emphatically. “I don’t think they fit the profile of a homicidal maniac at all. These killings are cold, detached, discreet, but there is no cruelty, and no desire for self-glorification.”

  Footsteps approached rapidly.

  “Uh-oh, here comes trouble,” he muttered.

  “Why?” Natasha glanced over her shoulder.

  “I haven’t had my hair cut yet.”

  Superintendent Bruce scraped a chrome and melamine canteen chair across the floor, turned it around and sat down, resting his forearms on the backrest. He tossed a brown envelope on to the table.

  “When do we leave for Steinhöring?” Henry said, his eyes flicking from the brown envelope to Natasha’s face.

  Almost on cue, Henry thought, she drew back a frond of hair from her face and curled it behind a delicate left ear, simply adorned with a single pearl stud.

  “Developments,” Bruce said, removing his cap and placing it on the table beside the envelope. “And you’re not going to Steinhöring.”

  “Meaning, sir?” Natasha opened the envelope with the knife Henry had used to butter his toast.

  She recoiled in surprise as she viewed the contents of the envelope: Eurostar tickets. Bruce looked from Henry to Natasha, shifting his weight closer to them on the reversed chair.

  “Our Interpol database search has yielded something very interesting, quite unexpected.”

  Henry’s eyebrows lifted.

  “We have five international matches from autopsy reports that revealed patients with unusually large brains and tattoos at the back of their heads.”

  Henry felt his pulse quicken.

  “Three came from the USA, one in New York, one in Chicago, and one in Seattle,” Bruce continued.

  “All murdered?” Natasha said.

  “No, none murdered: one road accident, one fatal heart attack and one suicide. I have the details but there were no suspicious circumstances surrounding any of the deaths, only these unusual findings at autopsy. Naturally, being isolated cases, that’s all they ever amounted to – simply unusual findings. Until now, that is.”

  “What about the other two?” Henry asked.

  “One in Canada – skiing accident in Banff – and one in southern France,” Bruce said.

  “Let me guess,” Henry said, tapping the envelope containing the Eurostar tickets. “Not a French skiing accident.”

  Bruce nodded slowly.

  “A High Court Judge in Sarlat, Francois Pequignot, aged sixty- three years. Found washed up on the bank of the River
Dordogne with his throat cut.”

  “When?”

  “Last year, about… er… ten months ago.”

  This brief disclosure from Interpol’s extensive database had suddenly exploded the investigation beyond Henry’s wildest expectations.

  “What was the tattoo?” he asked, almost fearful of the answer.

  Bruce shifted his weight on the chair which emitted a bone-jangling sound as it scraped on the floor.

  “G2.”

  “That’s new,” Henry said, drumming his fingers on the table. “Any arrests, suspects, or leads?”

  “Nothing,” Bruce said. “I want you two down there in Sarlat by tonight. Eurostar to Paris, TGV to Brive, where you’ll be met by a gendarme from the local Commissariat of Police.”

  “OK.” Henry nodded.

  “What about the others?” Natasha said, again touching her hair.

  “I’ll be gathering as much information about them as I can for your return,” Bruce said.

  “Shouldn’t we pop across to Steinhöring while we’re so close?” Henry suggested, hopefully.

  Bruce hesitated, looking directly at Henry.

  “You haven’t had your haircut yet, Detective Chief Inspector. Before you board the train, please, no excuses.” He glanced at Natasha. “See to it, please, Sergeant.”

  Twenty-Three

  “His body was found over there, by the barrage,” said Lieutenant Marcel Lagarde, pointing across the vast expanse of brownish water that swirled without resting.

  The sun was unrelenting and felt as though it would burn the skin off their bodies as Henry and Natasha stood beside the wide river, easily a hundred and fifty feet from bank to bank. Behind them the quaint traditional village of Limeuil rose up against limestone cliffs, its beautifully imperfect stone houses divided by narrow cobbled streets that wound their way up the steep hillside.

  “Does the water slow down over there?” Henry asked, indicating the calm yet flowing waters approaching the barrage, visible where it connected the banks just downstream of Limeuil.

  “The canoes stop there… and small boats can be launched.” Lagarde was perspiring in his dark blue uniform and cap, his short black hair seemingly plaited by the moisture. Small, narrow-set brown eyes, separated only by a considerable Gallic nose, squinted in the bright sunshine of a Dordogne summer morning beneath unbroken blue skies.