She kissed him deeply on the mouth, but with every ring of the phone she could feel his lips hardening, his body less responsive. She slid out from his embrace and sank back into the armchair.
“You’d better get it,” she said.
Henry sighed, reached for and answered the phone.
“Henry?”
It was Natasha.
He checked his watch. Seven o’clock.
“Hi,” he replied, attempting to sound nonchalant.
“Incredible news, Henry. Bruce asked me to tell you immediately.”
“Uh-huh?”
He could feel George’s inquisitive eyes burning into his face, desperate to know who was on the phone.
“We have a ballistic match.”
“What?”
“The copper-jacketed 9mm bullet recovered from Luc Bezier’s head is a match to the one you found in the boathouse in Grasmere where David Barnabus’ body was discovered.”
“That is no coincidence,” Henry said, sitting up straight. “This increases the likelihood of a single killer substantially.”
“I absolutely agree, sir.” Natasha paused before adding, “Is George listening?”
“Yes, that would be right.”
George’s face deflated and her features resumed their stony demeanour.
“Is it Natasha?” she asked, quietly.
Henry held up a pleading hand, index finger extended, mouthing the words: one minute.
“This makes me more concerned for your safety, Henry. The bullets were both manufactured in Britain. We don’t yet have a weapon match, but it’s looking increasingly likely that we have a British-based killer on our hands.”
Henry tried to read George’s expression, aware that her mood had altered dramatically.
“Any news yet about Luc Bezier’s tattoo tests?” he asked.
“No, but I think Bruce is going to give the investigation to Steinhöring the green light anyway.”
“George, please wait, I’m almost done here,” Henrik said, lowering the phone as George stumbled to her feet and limped off to the bedroom.
“I’m going to bed, Henry. Good night.”
He watched her leave the room, their brief spark of intimate reconciliation extinguished by a tidal wave of condemnation.
“Everything all right, Henry?” Natasha said in a more subdued tone.
“Yeah, bloody great. I’ll see you tomorrow. Thanks for the call, that’s good news. It really is a breakthrough.”
He began to feel a throbbing cluster developing in his head and the flickering of a hundred coloured lights behind his eyes. It was developing rapidly and he knew from past experience that it would be severe. He also knew that he would suffer it alone that night, without any recourse to a soothing hand, or a sympathetic ear.
He closed his eyes and sighed, alone on the edge of the coffee table.
Forty-Two
Steinhöring
The entourage, comprising Magda on a wheeled gurney, three midwives in attentive tow, Oskar and Huber, made their way noisily down the tiled corridor to the operating theatre. As they passed each six-bedded ward the mothers within craned their necks to see what the commotion was all about, their faces creased with a mixture of apprehensive concern and fear.
“I will scrub, Rolph, while you get the patient under. One of the midwives must be ready to receive the baby when I deliver it.”
The stocky midwife stepped forward, pushing her chest out proudly.
“I am Klara and I will assist you, Doctor Huber, and Hilda will receive the newborn infant.”
Hilda, also buxom and squarely built, nodded compliantly.
Huber and the midwives helped Magda on to the stainless steel operating table with its black rubber mattress. Someone switched on the bright circular operating light and focused it on Magda’s protuberant belly. Magda wailed uncontrollably, unable to lie still.
“Give her some heroin, Rolph, before you administer the ether. Do you know how much?” Oskar rolled up his sleeves and moved to the trough-like scrub sink along one wall where he would wash his hands thoroughly before surgery.
“I’ll give one tenth of a grain of heroin,” Huber replied.
“Make it one twelfth, Rolph. We don’t want to risk losing her. And then drip the ether on to the mask.”
“Where is the Schimmelbusch mask?” Huber said, looking around as he seated himself beside Magda’s head at the top end of the theatre table.
“Here, Doctor, and the heroin as well.” A midwife rushed over from a tall glass and chrome cabinet in the corner.
She presented Huber with a steel mesh and wire-framed mask that resembled a large cupped hand when covered with thick cotton gauze and cloth. In her other hand she held a gleaming chrome and glass syringe containing a yellowish liquid the colour of urine.
“This will hurt a little, Magda,” Huber said as he injected the heroin into her arm.
Magda moaned in between deep visceral sobs that shook her entire body. After a few short minutes she began to calm as the soporific effects of the heroin extract dulled her senses. The tears dried on her cheeks and her eyes glazed over.
“Take slow deep breaths now, Magda,” Huber said reassuringly as he placed the mask over her nose and mouth.
He lifted a brown glass bottle in the other hand and dripped clear liquid ether on to the gauze. The pungent yet not unpleasant smell of ether formed an invisible cloud of headiness around both Magda and Huber. He counted her breathing and instructed his assisting midwife to keep a finger on her pulse.
“The pulse is fast, Doctor, but strong,” the midwife announced as she held Magda’s increasingly limp wrist aloft in both of her hands.
Huber checked Magda’s pupils repeatedly, intermittently dripping more ether on to the cloth covering the Schimmelbusch mask. Oskar, now scrubbed and wearing white linen surgical scrubs, hat and tightly bound face mask – leaving just his eyes visible – stepped up to the table opposite Klara who was similarly clad in stiff white surgical garments.
“Is she deep enough yet, Rolph?”
Huber checked her pupils again by retracting her upper eyelids with the index and middle fingers of his left hand.
“Almost stage three, Oskar. You may proceed and prep.”
Klara passed a steel kidney-shaped dish filled with brown iodine solution to Oskar and he sloshed it generously all over Magda’s belly, now rising and falling slowly and steadily under the narcotic influence of the heroin and the anaesthetic effect of the ether.
The room smelled sweet and medicinal as the ether vapours permeated through the air, mingling with the powerful stench of surgical spirits and iodine.
“Pulse is a little slower now, Doctor, and not as strong anymore,” the midwife monitoring Magda’s pulse announced.
Huber frowned and looked up to meet Oskar’s eyes.
“Don’t add any more ether, Rolph,” Oskar said.
“I think you should get the baby out, quickly.”
Oskar nodded and deftly covered Magda with four surgical drapes, forming a white square with her belly as the centrepiece, like a dormant fleshy volcano about to erupt.
“Scalpel!” he said, holding out his gloved right hand in anticipation.
Klara slapped the handle of a scalpel into his hand. Within seconds Oskar had made a six inch incision with Magda’s navel at the centre. Using scissors, he exposed her swollen and engorged uterus, concealing its precious cargo from the world.
“Ready!” he announced as he incised the upper segment of the uterus once, twice, three times, each time a little deeper.
Suddenly dark blood and clear amniotic fluid gushed from the uterus like a geyser and ran across the white surgical drapes, staining them a deep, dark shade of danger. Oskar’s fingers probed the hole made in the uterus, hooking and extracting first one and then another of the baby’s limbs.
“Pressure!” he said to Klara, who placed a heavy hand on the lower end of the uterus, effectively expelling the baby through
the incision as Oskar pulled it out by the legs. It was a boy.
With a little manoeuvring the head emerged and the baby slithered across the bloodied drapes, Magda’s belly now deflated and spent. The cord was clamped, cut and the baby passed to Hilda who waited with a warm towel. Huber watched, fascinated, looking away only when he checked on Magda’s breathing and her pupils.
“Pulse is getting stronger again, Doctor.”
A strangled cry emerged from the newborn baby in the corner, lifting Huber’s spirits immensely. It was alive, the baby he had nurtured and helped to thrive, beyond natural expectations, lived and breathed amongst them. Oskar glanced across at Huber with a glint in his eyes, his smile concealed by the white linen face mask.
“It worked, Oskar. It worked!” Huber said triumphantly.
Between them a tangible spark of mutual, conspiratorial delight fizzed. Each sensed that they were on the brink of something great, that together they might achieve more than either could alone.
“The baby is alive, Rolph, but the battle to save Magda is only just beginning.”
Forty-Three
“Superintendent Bruce wants to see you now, Inspector,” a young uniformed officer announced as Henry entered Scotland Yard.
Henry’s head was still dull from a bad headache and a poor night’s sleep on the sofa. He couldn’t face the stairs and, unusually, took the lift. The bell rang on his floor, the doors opened and he was met by Natasha’s pink and weepy-looking eyes.
“What is it?” he said, touching her elbow and guiding her away from the many faces and prying eyes gathered near the lift.
Natasha sniffed, her shoulders shuddering as she raised a balled tissue to her nose.
“I received a threatening letter.”
Her lips trembled and her eyes filled with moisture again.
“What?”
Henry leaned closer, wanting nothing more than to put his arms around her and squeeze the demons out of her, reassure her and feel reassured in return.
“Do you have it here?” he asked.
“Inspector, Sergeant, this way please!”
It was Bruce who had spotted them and ushered them to his office past the assembled masses. Natasha did her best to gather her composure as they approached Bruce’s office. He stood, smiling, holding the door open for them with one welcoming arm outstretched, as though pointing the way. As always, he was wearing his formal black tunic and insignia.
“Right, thank you for being so prompt,” Bruce said, settling into his chair.
Henry wasn’t sure if Bruce was being sarcastic.
“I presume you’ve heard about the ballistic match, Henry?” Bruce said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Good work that, Henry, finding that bullet in Grasmere. Matching it to the one recovered from Luc Bezier suddenly gives us a great sense of focus in this investigation.”
“Any ideas about a likely weapon yet?” Henry asked.
“Nothing definite, of course, without a weapon to test, but expert opinion does favour a Glock.”
“A Glock?” Henry frowned.
“That’s what the Met use,” Natasha said. Her eyes flicked between Bruce and Henry’s faces.
“Amongst others,” Bruce said. “Your contact in Durham, Professor Guinney, has come back with yet another tattoo ink match.”
“Luc Bezier?”
“Yes. He says that all five tissue samples confirm identical tattoo ink.”
Henry felt Bruce’s eyes upon him.
“Good. As I have said all along, sir, I believe the tattoos are the key to solving this investigation, together with the fact that every victim was born in Steinhöring.”
Bruce paused.
“I am only aware of four tattoo samples that we’ve sent to Professor Guinney, Henry: Vera Schmidt, Jeremy Haysbrook, Luc Bezier and the American suicide victim. Where does the fifth one come from?” Bruce clasped his hands together, elbows resting on the desk forming a triangle beneath his chin. He narrowed his eyes.
Henry felt his mouth drying, his heart gathering pace and his palms beginning to sweat. He was too close now for everything to be revealed and upset his plans. Out of the corner of his eye he glanced at Natasha.
“Are you sure he said five?” Henry said, trying to sound nonchalant.
“It’s in his report and invoice,” Bruce said, lifting a piece of A4 paper off his desk without taking his eyes off Henry.
“It might just be a mistake,” Natasha suggested.
Henry was relieved at Natasha’s intervention. If the wrong thing was said now he could so easily be pulled off this investigation, faster than a rabbit fleeing a wolf’s lair.
“He doesn’t strike me as the sort of person who makes such elementary mistakes,” Bruce replied curtly, letting the sheet of paper float back to the desk. “What are you not telling me, Inspector Webber?”
Henry hesitated a moment, calculating his gamble as well as trying to assess the extent of Bruce’s information. He decided that Bruce was fishing.
“I don’t know what you’re suggesting, sir, I have no idea.”
Bruce leaned back in his sumptuous recliner.
“No, of course you don’t.”
“What about Steinhöring, sir? All these tattoo matches at birth, all births pointing to the same place: surely we must go there next?”
Bruce studied Henry and Natasha silently.
“You’ll fly out tomorrow, on one condition.”
“What’s that, sir?” Henry asked.
“If you haven’t made significant progress by your return, I will have to call in the ACC to head the investigation.”
“But sir…”
Bruce raised his hand.
“This case is getting bigger and more extensive by the day. It probably needs more manpower.”
Henry sighed. At least he would get to Steinhöring. That had been his objective all along. They were dismissed soon after and emerged with mixed emotions: Natasha was still shaken by the threatening letter, while Henry was elated to be going to what he hoped would be a flood of answers in Steinhöring.
“Can you show me the letter now?” Henrik asked once they were clear of Bruce’s office.
“Outside,” Natasha said, leading the way down the fire escape.
Forty-Four
Steinhöring
Bauer paced up and down behind his desk, pausing in front of the ever-watchful skeleton, before turning on his heel and repeating the pattern. He was wearing his SS uniform, complete with Luger in its black leather holster.
“How could we have lost another one?”
Huber and Oskar, seated side by side in front of his desk and wearing white coats, exchanged a nervous glance without turning their heads even an inch.
“We cannot afford to keep losing mothers in this project. What will I tell Reichsführer Himmler? We need a plan, gentlemen.”
Bauer stopped pacing and faced Huber and Oskar squarely over his spotlessly empty desk, his hands gripping the back of his leather armchair.
“It is the puerperal fever, Standartenführer. There is no cure for it. It is very common after Caesarean section and we can expect to lose one in two patients from it,” Oskar explained.
“We cannot afford this. Why are you doing Caesarean sections on them?” Bauer asked sharply, recommencing his pacing.
The sharp click of his knee-length leather boots made Huber nervous. Dressed in Schutzstaffel black with his silver insignia and Luger, Bauer looked terribly officious and was behaving similarly.
“I will not be able to deliver all these project babies via the pelvis, Standartenführer,” Oskar said. “I have seen this over the past five years while performing a great many Caesarean sections because of rickets.”
“Rickets?”
“Yes, the widespread malnutrition in Germany has resulted in a plethora of rickets, which causes bony deformities of the pelvis, and in labour the baby cannot pass through it. It causes a kind of pelvic contracture.”
&nb
sp; “And?”
“Many of the women died, mostly from puerperal fever. We deliver babies who are destined to grow up without mothers to care for them, to breastfeed and nurture them.”
Bauer’s eyes narrowed and he began to flick his index finger across his stubbly chin.
“These women do not have rickets. They receive the finest nutrition in all of Germany, in all of Europe most likely.”
“I know, Standartenführer. It is not the pelvis that is the problem but the size of the babies’ heads. I could not deliver Magda’s baby with forceps, it was simply too big,” Oskar explained, a sweat beading his clean shaven upper lip.
Huber shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
“The babies’ heads will only get bigger, Professor. I think we will end up doing more Caesarean sections. Perhaps it will be the only way to deliver these project babies eventually.”
Bauer shook his head, his face deeply troubled. He picked up a sheaf of papers from the desk and shook them.
“Himmler will not accept such a low success rate. I cannot report this to him.” He let go of the papers, which scattered across his desk, like a Japanese fan.
An edgy silence hung over the room.
“A bacteriologist at St Mary’s Hospital in London has discovered a drug that kills bacteria,” Oskar said softly, almost wincing as he spoke lest he should incur Bauer’s wrath.
“Fleming,” Bauer said, nodding.
“Yes, Professor Fleming, that’s the man. Can we not get this drug to use here?”
Bauer shook his head.
“I have heard of this drug – penicillin – but I do not think it is purified yet, nor do I think the Reich will be able to get it from the English at this time.”
Bauer walked across to the skeleton, stopping with his back to Huber and Oskar. Gently, he rubbed the dome of the skeleton’s skull.
“There may be another way, though. A German scientist called Gerhard Damagk, working in Wuppertal, has produced a sulpha drug that could prove very useful.”
“Does it kill bacteria?” Huber asked.
“It does. They call it Prontosil, and I think I should approach Reichsführer Himmler and see if he can exert the right sort of pressure for us to receive a consignment. We are, of course, undertaking work of the utmost importance to the Reich here at Heim Hochland.”
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