Huber's Tattoo

by Quentin Smith

  A rehabilitated smoker, Henry surmised.

  He was unexpectedly struck by the many familiar sights as they drove – a strange form of nostalgia, as there were no memories of warm, loving people, or family, just kind and thoughtful teachers. He remembered walks down by the river with a bunch of his school friends, feeding the mallards in between Framwellgate and Prebends bridges; he recalled licking ice creams in the rowing boats; a sign to Wharton Park elicited a flood of memories of an open hilltop playground overlooking the tiny mediaeval city, nestled in its protective curve of river, like an arm around someone’s shoulders. He could almost hear the screeches of young children’s laughter and excitement.

  He shuddered: were these his most cherished boyhood memories? He tried to remember coming to Durham as a small prep- school boy; when, how, why? But he drew a blank, as if he had woken one day in Durham and that’s where his childhood memories were forged.

  Stepping out of the taxi, he felt the gentle warmth of a northern summer sun on his face, softened by a light but distinctly fresh breeze blowing across the cold North Sea as it stretched away to Norway and the Arctic Circle beyond that.

  The science block and laboratories occupied a large square of land opposite a school at which he suddenly recalled playing cricket and rugby. He craned his neck to look through the trees, searching the expanse of sports fields in front of the large, red brick school building, instantly remembering both the ecstasy of his successes with the cricket bat and the emptiness of having no one with whom to share them; no one standing on the side of the field cheering him on like his friends; no one to hug him at the end and say how proud they were of him. No mother. No father.

  Why did he not have parents in his childhood memories? He sighed as a pang of painful disappointment, almost like grief, twisted his stomach before entering the vastness of the science building. In his hand he held a small white styrofoam container marked Human Tissue.

  Though it was summer vacation at the university a surprising number of people walked the corridors, both students and staff alike. A centre of scientific excellence and experimentation never rested.

  “Professor Guinney?” Henry said tentatively, as he entered an office bearing the scientist’s name on the door.

  “Yes?” A tall man with a full head of curly, almost wiry, silver hair looked up cautiously from some papers on top of a steel filing cabinet.

  Guinney was at least sixty, with gaunt, lined facial features, bright blue eyes. He was wearing a white shirt, green bow tie and a long white laboratory coat.

  “DCI Henry Webber from Scotland Yard, Professor. I called yesterday in connection with some skin samples you’ve been analysing for Dr Longstaff at King’s College.”

  Henry stepped forward, flashing his identity badge and extending his hand. Guinney’s eyes lit up suddenly.

  “Ah, yes, I remember now. I was analysing the pigments used in skin tattoos for him. Sit down, sit down. Coffee?”

  “Thank you. I’ve spent the last three hours on a train.”

  “Been to Durham before?”

  “As a boy. I went to school here.”

  “Like coming home for you, then?” Guinney said.

  Henry turned this over in his mind. Yes, it should feel like home: boyhood school, family, parents, a house to call home. But it did not. Almost every one of the essential components was absent. Guinney busied himself boiling water in a white plastic kettle on a tray in the corner while clumsily removing the coffee tin lid, which clattered to the hard floor.

  “Sorry, my secretary is on her summer holiday. Which school did you attend?”

  Henry’s jaw muscles tensed as he ground his teeth together.

  “I remember it was on a steep hill in a large house near to the park, that’s all.”

  “Ah.” Guinney frowned. “Your parents are not from Durham, then?”

  “Er, no.”

  The coffee was very hot and too weak and Henry burnt his tongue and palate with the first mouthful, withdrawing sharply as the pain shot through his mouth.

  “What have you got there?” Guinney asked, pointing at the styrofoam box cradled in Henry’s lap.

  “I have another skin sample with the same tattoo marking for you to analyse, please, Professor.”

  “Ah.” Guinney sipped noisily at his coffee. “Please call me Haxton, everybody here does.”

  Henry placed the box on Guinney’s desk.

  “Did you find anything of interest in the tattoos?” he asked.

  Guinney bent down and began to leaf through papers in one of the filing cabinet drawers, eventually extracting a brown folder.

  “I’ve never analysed whole skin, trying to extract the ink impregnated deep into the dermis. Gas chromatography and mass spectrometry have been used for surface contaminants on skin before, but never quite like this.”

  Guinney handed the folder to Henry as he sat down behind his untidy desk, moving the styrofoam box to one side.

  “Were you successful, Haxton?”

  “Oh yes. Tattoo ink comprises a carrier, usually alcohol, water or glycol, something like that, and then the pigment base, which can be almost anything, depending on the preferred effect. Typically though, pigments are metals which vary according to the colour desired; mercury, lead, nickel, cobalt, et cetera. Older tattoo inks are much simpler, using basic ingredients like iron oxides, or rust, and carbon, which is simply soot.”

  “Didn’t the Ancient Romans have a special recipe for tattoo ink?” Henry asked.

  Guinney chuckled throatily as he stood up.

  “That they did; corroded bronze, vinegar, insect eggs or something like that. Come with me.”

  They walked out of his small office, around the corner and into a large laboratory with windows lining one wall that overlooked the ancient cityscape. Long wooden work benches interspersed periodically with sunken round basins, taps and Bunsen burners crossed the room from one side to another. The whole place smelled of chemicals that curled Henry’s nose and reminded him of school.

  “Even modern commercial tattoo inks contain mostly predictable constituents and tiny traces of impurities, various chemicals that have been identified as skin irritants, some possibly even carcinogenic.” Guinney had gone into lecturer mode. “These impurities can be used to tell inks apart. Now, older inks are far less consistent in composition, containing greater quantities of organic compounds and impurities, making a match all the more significant. The inks used in the specimens Dr Longstaff sent to me were about sixty to seventy years old.”

  “How can you tell that?” Henry asked.

  Guinney walked past an array of twisted glass tubes, flasks and beakers connected together in an elaborate arrangement that resembled an old-style rollercoaster, before stopping in front of a large square machine with an attached console, keypad and screen, looking not unlike a desktop refrigerator. “This is the GC-MS, I mean gas chromatograph mass spectrometer assembly. It produces a printout that looks like this.” He picked up a long sheet of paper that had curled out of the machine, resembling a till receipt. On it tall peaks rose up from the graph’s baseline at intervals, a little like teeth of irregular height on a comb.

  “We can identify the exact composition of the ink used in tattoos, down to the tiniest impurity, even with the minute quantities that we were able to extract from those skin specimens. Look at the printouts in the folder.”

  Henry opened the brown folder and leafed through it, pulling out two strips of paper similar to the one Guinney was holding.

  “The ink used in those tattoos was made using a considerable amount of organic material, in other words soot, quite typical of that time.”

  “What time?”

  “Pre-war, 1930s.”

  “1930s?” Henry repeated. “Can you be certain of that? These tattoos come from victims who were in their late forties.” Just like me, he thought, pondering the styrofoam box and its contents sitting on Guinney’s desk.

  Guinney nodded.

&nbs
p; “Tattooing with black inks requires considerable injection of phenols and hydrocarbons called PAHs into the skin. These substances generate singlet oxygen in the dermis of the skin when exposed to sunlight. We can determine from the quantity of singlet oxygen present exactly how long the tattoo ink has been in the skin. The composition of the ink is definitely pre-war, but I would estimate that the ink itself has been in those skin specimens for between forty to fifty years, just as you say.”

  A chill ran down Henry’s spine as he recalled Longstaff’s words; that he thought the tattoos on Jeremy Haysbrook and Vera Schmidt were quite likely made in infancy. Did the same apply to David Barnabus and to Francois Pequignot? Did it apply to him, Henry Webber?

  “And the ink in each of our specimens is identical?” Henry asked, staring at the two printouts as he compared them side by side.

  “You can see for yourself, Henry. That degree of correlation cannot, in my opinion, be coincidental for organic compounds such as the tattoo ink that would have been used.”

  Henry felt his mouth drying.

  “So both tattoos were performed when these two individuals were very young, possibly babies, using the same ink.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Can you tell where the ink comes from?”

  Guinney chuckled.

  “No, I’m afraid not. But I could compare it with a reference sample, if you brought one to me.”

  Without thinking, Henry scratched the back of his head. When he withdrew his hand it had blood on.

  “You’re bleeding, Henry. Let me look.”

  Henry smiled, embarrassed at revealing the fresh wound at the back of his skull. Guinney fussed over him and dabbed at the area with a hand towel, curious about the fresh stitches.

  “I had something removed yesterday, nothing serious.”

  “I have some dressings in my office, in case of chemical spills in the lab, that sort of thing,” Guinney offered.

  “I’m OK, thanks, Haxton. When will you be able to tell me if the ink in the new specimen I brought matches the other two?”

  “You want it compared with the other two?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Give me a few days. Dr Longstaff will have it by the end of the week.” Guinney smiled as they walked back towards his office.

  “Actually, would you mind calling me directly with the result? Don’t bother Dr Longstaff with it. I’ll leave you my number, day or night.”

  *

  Henry decided to wander around Durham for a while before returning to London. He wanted to try and find his old school, where he had lived out most of his formative years in the care and custody of strangers. Around almost every quaint, cobbled corner yet another faded memory would leap out at him from the forgotten recesses of his mind, like a journey back in time. Every now and then he would inadvertently touch the stitches on his head, a reminder that the voyage into his dim and seemingly empty past was gathering momentum.

  He was afraid of what Guinney would find when he analysed his skin specimen. No, it simply could not be true; surely it would not match the others. This terrifying thought drove Henry to walk the quiet pathways and vennels of old Durham for hours, reliving familiar smells and sounds, amazed at how they had remained encapsulated in his brain since those early childhood experiences, waiting to be unlocked with the appropriate key.

  He thought about Natasha, wondering what she was doing in London. Her words echoed around his head: you could be in danger. Was he in danger? Was he a target like Haysbrook, Schmidt, Barnabus and Pequignot? He had the same tattoo, he was also a member of Mensa, he did not appear to have parents, or a past; did he, too, have an abnormally large brain? Who could he ask?

  He recalled his motive theory shared with Natasha: that all the victims had a vice, a weakness or deviance. Did he have one, too? Was it Natasha? Eventually his brain began to ache, a forceful, throbbing ache that threatened to split open his skull. Now he needed Natasha, but all he had was a box of ibuprofen.

  He paused beneath Elvet Bridge, listening to the tranquillity and soaking up the soothing benefit of gently moving water beside his feet. His mind emptied as his eyes closed briefly and transported him back to when he was ten years old, holding an ice cream cone, about to get into a rowing boat with the only people he knew in the world: his class mates and teachers. Suddenly, the ringtone of his mobile disturbed his reminiscences. It was George. Her news was deeply unsettling to him when it should not have been: she was coming home.

  Thirty-Three

  Steinhöring

  Huber had expected the secret facility behind Heim Hochland to make a greater initial impression on him than it did, especially after the protracted anticipation. It was not an extensive building, but it certainly did exhibit coldly inhospitable and clandestine features: reinforced concrete outer walls punctuated by small, frosted windows behind forged steel bars.

  A uniformed SS soldier stood guard beside the Panzer-grey steel door at the unmarked front entrance. He snapped to attention and saluted as Bauer approached, even though both Bauer and Huber were wearing buttoned white coats over unassuming brown civilian clothing. Inside the single-storey building, demure viridescent interior walls curved down to meet white tiled floors leading to small sequestered offices behind dark, wooden doors.

  From within the austere buildings, exuding the pungent smell of bleach and air freshener, came the unmistakeable and surprising sound of babies crying, while the smell of soured breast milk wafted past Huber’s nose on subtle movements of air.

  “This is but the first of its kind, Rolph. By the beginning of 1938 Himmler will have opened a further three Lebensborn homes; Heim Frisland in Hohenhorst, Klosterheide in Brandenburg and the first expansion outside of the Reich into Austria… at Wienerwald.”

  “All with Top Secret facilities like this one, Professor?” Huber asked, trying to keep up with Bauer’s lengthy strides, the crisp sound of their patent leather shoes on the tiled floors echoing down the passageway.

  “Not yet. This is the only one of its kind for now.” He stopped and turned to face Huber. “Naturally, if we are successful, I have no doubt both Himmler and the Führer will wish to see facilities like this one expanded throughout the Reich.” His arms opened wide in a broad gesture.

  Huber could feel his anticipation stretched beyond human limits, almost to breaking point. When would Bauer confide in him about what it was that he was supposed to do?

  The two men passed a small ward containing six white, steel-framed beds, immaculately made up, military style, with starched sheets and green blankets. It was home to a small cluster of pregnant women wearing dark protective glasses and waddling around beneath extremely bright artificial lighting. Huber squinted, blinded by the intense light.

  “What is that about, Professor?” he asked, pausing and craning his head to view the contents of the room whilst rubbing his painful, teary eyes.

  “All in good time, Rolph. Come, my office first.”

  They passed a room marked ‘Operating Theatre’ within which Huber caught a brief glimpse of pea-green walls tiled to the ceiling, glass and chrome cabinets lining one wall and a dominant round theatre lamp, suspended from the ceiling above a single gleaming stainless steel operating table.

  Bauer’s office was large in comparison to many of the rooms they had passed. A lonely frosted window, high up on one wall, provided only meagre natural lighting and Bauer flipped the light switch at the door as they entered.

  “Sit,” Bauer said as he squeezed in behind his desk and switched on the brass banker’s lamp, adjusting the emerald shade to keep the glare off both of their faces.

  Huber sat down and adjusted his white coat, undoing some of the buttons for comfort. Adorning one wall to his right was a timeline of human evolution along a graphic display, from ten million years ago to the present day.

  “An interest of yours, Professor?” Huber asked, standing up to admire the chart from close range.

  Bauer watched in sile
nce as Huber studied the pictures of hominid skulls as they had evolved through the ages. Starting on the left the skulls had large jaws and small cranial vaults, like chimpanzees, progressing to the right with increasing cranial vault sizes up to present day humans, in whom the cranial vault proportions dwarfed the size of the face and jaws.

  “Imagine if you could influence human evolution, Rolph. Homo sapiens has not evolved any further for nearly twenty thousand years. Our brains are as big today as they were at the last Ice Age.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Bauer looked up to the ceiling.

  “Imagine if, using the greatest medical and scientific knowledge at our disposal, we were able to progress human brain evolution beyond its current static position, Rolph.”

  “I don’t understand.” Huber looked away, confused, trying to rack his brains about the work he had undertaken at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin. “Professor Vogt and I worked on human intelligence, understanding how it works, how to advance it, how to perfect it.”

  Bauer stood up and joined Huber in front of the chart.

  “Exactly, Rolph. We are just going to take it a few steps further. In fact, we have already started, thanks in part to the groundwork of people like Vogt and others at the KWI.”

  “We?” Huber said, unsure about what was going to be asked of him.

  Bauer paused without taking his eyes off Huber’s face.

  “You could join us, become my deputy here at Heim Hochland.”

  Huber frowned and removed his round spectacles to polish them on the cuff of his white coat. He needed time to think, time to understand what Bauer was proposing. Bauer moved to a cabinet in the corner and returned with two skulls clutched between his arms and torso like rugby balls.

  “We start off down here, about five million years ago, Rolph, with Australopithecus africanus, one of our earliest known human ancestors.” Bauer pointed to the left side of the chart. “His brain was only around 400 cubic centimetres in size. Then he evolved over the next two million years to Homo habilis, whose brain was about 600 cubic centimetres, followed by Homo erectus one million years later, with a brain of around 900 cubic centimetres in size.”