by James Hazel
He slipped his shoes off so he could move silently across the kitchen floor. Shoes would have made a lot of noise, even if he was careful. The door to the living room was ajar. Priest got a view of a slice of the room but not enough of an angle to see the desk. There was no way of knowing if the intruder was still sitting there. He listened hard again but heard nothing.
The door didn’t squeak as he slowly opened it outwards, using the end of the baton. A little more of the room was revealed. Red leather reclining sofa curving around a glass coffee table. A fifty-two-inch plasma TV hung on the wall over a fake hearth. Bookshelves spanning the whole of one wall, filled from floor to ceiling with various books. Crime thrillers, horrors, classics. Academic texts on psychology and hypnosis, the art of war. Biographies of great leaders, the odd graphic novel. A diverse and seemingly arbitrary collection.
The only light came from a constellation of spotlights over the sofa and the fish tank – designed for mood, not for illumination. Opposite the bookshelves, the other wall was entirely glass. The curtains were drawn, veiling the cityscape behind. There were doors that led off to the other rooms. Two bedrooms, a cloakroom, a study and set of stairs that accessed a private roof garden overlooking Covent Garden. Fake Copper could be anywhere.
Priest pushed the door a little wider. He was tense, every muscle in his body coiled like a spring, ready to run the baton right through the bastard’s head. Every heartbeat felt like the noise of an army, crunching in unison over the hardened earth. It wasn’t the only noise. Nine storeys up, even the reinforced glass couldn’t block out the hum of the crowds below, the people weaving in and out of department stores and coffee houses, the rumble of traffic and street musicians striking up their discordant tune. At night, Priest would sit in the roof garden and listen to the consorting sounds, like the purring of some giant machine turning over endlessly in the street below.
The desk was unmanned. The computer was untouched. The room was completely still. For a few seconds, Priest felt as though he was caught in a vacuum. He took a couple of steps forward into the room, the T-baton held out to shield him from an attack. The doors were all shut. Priest straightened. It had been a long time since he had walked the beat in uniform but the transitions he had undertaken from policeman to detective and then to lawyer hadn’t diminished him physically. He was still a natural athlete, broad-shouldered and lean. But right now, he was concussed and carrying an arm so wracked with pain that he was struggling to keep a solid grip on the T-bat. Perhaps it was not totally unexpected, then, that not for the first time that evening, he reacted just a fraction of a second too late.
He lifted the baton to protect his face but he was knocked sideways as the fake copper leapt on to his back and slipped a cord around his neck. He gasped for breath but found with horror that his windpipe was being crushed. Panic washed through him as the oxygen was turned off. He choked. His gag reflex kicked in. It didn’t help but made it worse. Much worse. The two men pirouetted in a violent embrace as Priest tried to throw his attacker off. They hit the bookshelf. Priest rammed his aggressor into it, but he held on tightly, increasing the intensity of the chokehold.
Priest felt hot breath on his neck, the grunt of triumph in his ear. He saw flashes in front of his eyes as his brain, fatigued and starved of air, started to shut down. His struggling lessened as one by one his muscles began to surrender. He thought about his father for a moment. His brilliant smile and deep blue eyes. Blue eyes like his. Defiantly staring at him, calling to him. Telling him he was not to give in. Never retreat. Never submit. Never let them push you around, Charlie. No matter what.
He thrust the T-bat’s butt into his assailant’s ribs. Felt the metal penetrate the tissue and the fake copper’s momentary loss of grip on the cord. It was enough to give him a gulp of air. He struck again, harder this time, in the same spot. This time the man yelped with pain. He jolted sideways, hung on, but Priest had leverage; enough to force the baton hard into the intruder’s side. Finally he heard the satisfying crack of bone.
In one movement, Priest managed to turn, leading with his right arm, and lever the fake copper’s arms down using the T-bat, leaving his head exposed. Then he punched with his left as hard as he’d ever punched a man. Priest flipped the baton up and caught it neatly again so he was holding just the butt. No need for subtlety now. He hovered over the man for a moment. He was bleeding – it looked like the baton had taken a chunk of his face away. It would have been easy enough to finish him off, to ram the bat across his head so it split open like a watermelon. He raised the bat, but something stopped him. He wavered.
Enough, Charlie, his father said. You’re not your brother.
Priest let his arm drop. You’re not your brother, Charlie. William Priest wouldn’t have hesitated – William would have opened up the intruder’s head to see what was inside.
That was why William would never get out of Fen Marsh Secure Hospital.
‘Who are you?’ Priest asked.
‘What does it matter?’
‘I lied to you. I don’t have any flash drive belonging to you.’
‘Fuck!’ The intruder coughed up a ball of red-stained saliva. ‘He said it was here.’
‘Who’s he?’
When the fake copper didn’t answer, Priest took a step towards him. He intended to pick him up and stick him against the wall to get some answers. But it didn’t work out like that; the intruder still had some fight left in him. As he stepped forward again, the intruder lunged and took hold of Priest’s leg, sinking his teeth into Priest’s ankle. For a moment, Priest thought he’d bitten right through it as a shockwave of pain rippled up his leg. It was enough to unbalance him. As he hit the floor, the intruder took off back through the kitchen and, moments later Priest heard the sound of the front door bursting open. Outside, the street musicians were still piping out their bluesy melody.
5
24th March, 1946
A remote farm in middle England
They sat the Nazi butcher down across the table from Ruck. Two Tommies, Lewis guns hung over their shoulders, pressed him firmly into the wooden chair. They cuffed his hands behind his back and whipped the bag off his head. Then they retreated, as though their captive was diseased.
Ruck watched his guest appraise his surroundings – a twenty-five foot barn, void of the ploughs and machinery that once would have been stored there. A sterile, empty space, save for the table at which Ruck and his prisoner sat and the chains that hung from the rafters, swaying eerily in the breeze blowing through the cracks in the walls.
Ruck swept his hair from his eyes. It was cut immaculately, although a few loose blond strands still fell across his face. His suit was pristine, Savile Row, bespoke. In the shabby barn, partially illuminated by blades of light cutting across the floor, he looked utterly out of place.
The Nazi wore the rags of a POW, more of a sack than a garment, but he sat bolt upright, head up, as dignified as anyone could be in his situation, staring Ruck straight in the eyes. Ruck wondered how many people had looked into those blue eyes, pleading for mercy. He knew what that kind of desperation looked like – he’d seen it before.
Kurt Schneider was taller than Ruck, but desperately thin. He didn’t resemble the skeletal wreckages they had emancipated from the concentration camp, but Ruck had deprived him of sleep and food for several weeks and the strain was seeping out of his etiolated skin. That said, it seemed Schneider wasn’t done yet. The deep crevices running down his face and the wisps of silvery hair that started well above his creased forehead had aged him, but not in a way that nature ordinarily permitted. One piercing eye looked at Ruck defiantly while the other wandered to the side. Ruck lit a cigarette. I am looking at madness. He avoided prolonged eye contact – it made him look as though he was concerned about breaking it. He offered the packet to Schneider then looked at the doctor’s constrained hands. Ruck shrugged his shoulders and withdrew the offer. He’d sit and wait a short while to see if Schneider would speak fi
rst. He suspected he wouldn’t.
No, not madness. Evil.
As it happened, he was wrong. Schneider moved suddenly, lifting his whole body up out of the chair before sitting back down heavily. Not an attempt to escape. Frustration. Anger. A sign of protest perhaps. Ruck raised an eyebrow.
‘You think bringing me to a barn intimidates me, pig?’ Schneider demanded. His English was as good as Ruck had expected, but his accent was unmistakable.
The coarse tone of the master race. The Devil’s tongue.
Ruck let the silence that followed linger.
‘Where are we?’ Schneider asked.
‘On a farm. A long way from London. A very long way from Berlin.’
‘I never had any particular liking for either city.’
‘Good. Both are crippled beyond recognition, anyway. Although one burns a little brighter than the other.’ Ruck picked up on Schneider’s look of interest. ‘Didn’t you know, Doctor? The war is over. Hitler is dead. Russia remains a communist backwater state.’
‘That is of little consequence. If you are lying, then unless an invasion happens very shortly, I will be killed. If you are telling the truth, I will be killed also.’
Ruck had noted the tiny flicker of Schneider’s wandering eye when he had said Hitler was dead. He wondered if the German had somehow managed to train his eye to look the other way. He was certainly responsible for stranger perversions.
‘Why didn’t you follow the exodus from Buchenwald when you had the chance, Dr Schneider? You knew the Americans were coming days before Ainsworth and his boys showed up. Why not . . . save yourself?’
‘If I had, then I would not have had the pleasure of meeting you.’ He was still staring at Ruck. He seemed to have trained that bloody eye not to blink either.
Ruck sat back, took another drag. For two years, he had worked in the secluded detention centre in Kensington known as the Cage, a secret prison where Nazi POWs had been tortured for information. He’d reported directly to the head of the Prisoner of War Interrogation Section, a division of the Directorate of Military Intelligence that, as far as the public were concerned, did not exist. Ruck had been a specialist in the extraction of information in the shortest conceivable time. Now the war was over, his talents had been passed to MI5 to see what useful knowledge could be salvaged from the ravaged continent. To see if there were any gemstones hidden in the ashes of war.
‘My name is Ruck. I work for the British government, Military Intelligence, Section Five. My rank is Colonel, although I rarely use it. I am a specialist in interrogation, covert intelligence gathering and espionage. There will be no record that this discussion ever took place other than a report I will prepare for the eyes of a very select number of people and which will be destroyed as soon as it has been read. If during your trial, or at any other stage, you should mention our meetings, it will be denied. Do you understand?’
Schneider paused for a while and thought about it. ‘You have my full attention, Herr Ruck. For now, at least.’
The barn door opened behind Schneider. Light streamed in. Ruck watched as a woman was ushered in by two soldiers. Another two men carried a small desk and chair. They set this up near the barn door, ten yards away from Ruck’s table. On the desk, they placed a stenograph machine. The woman sat down. Throughout the whole thing, Schneider hadn’t moved.
‘Perfume,’ the doctor said, inhaling deeply and closing his eyes. ‘Something French.’ He opened his eyes and looked at Ruck with excitement. ‘Our personal record keeper. To write up your report, Herr Ruck! I am right, no?’
Ruck said nothing. The woman looked up. She was far younger than Ruck had expected – no more than twenty. He had wanted her to be inconspicuous but he found himself glancing back to check that his first impression had been fair. In seconds, he had taken everything in. Shimmering brown hair and glasses with thick, black frames. A petite, heart-shaped face. Pretty. Pearls dangling from her neck. Straight skirt. Completely ill-prepared, like everyone else they’d sent him. She looked as though she should be strutting down Oxford Street to a bank, not transcribing interrogation in a barn.
Ruck nodded at her and she began to type.
‘What were you assigned to do at Buchenwald, Dr Schneider?’
‘I was a house doctor at the hospital there.’
‘Hospital? Is that what you call it?’
Schneider was silent.
‘They have assembled a court, Dr Schneider. At Nuremberg. They’re calling it the first true international military tribunal. In October this year an indictment will be published. It will bear your name. How do you feel about that?’
‘Nuremberg? Have you seen Nuremberg, Herr Ruck? It is a scrapyard. Churchill’s war engines have destroyed it.’
‘It has been rebuilt by the Americans. You should see the Palace of Justice now.’
Schneider scoffed. ‘I have committed no crimes. I have nothing to fear.’
‘Your membership of the SS will be sufficient to earn you the death penalty.’
‘I was never a member of the SS.’
‘Suit yourself, Doctor. Your political affiliation is of little consequence to me, anyway. They’ve declared the SS an illegal organisation, by the way. Perhaps you are wise to deny your connection to it, although it won’t take the Americans long to tie a few pieces of paper together and build a case.’
Schneider was thoughtful for a moment, or perhaps he was letting the typist catch up. Either way, the only noise for the next few moments was the sound of her fingers on the keys. Then he looked at Ruck with fresh interest.
‘If you’re looking at a dead man, Herr Ruck, then why do you not grant him a final request and let him know what it is you actually want?’
Ruck nodded and allowed a smile to play at the corners of his mouth. The Nazi was unsettled. That was good enough for a morning’s work. He produced a set of papers from a bag and placed them on the table.
‘Although you say, Dr Schneider, that you were a house doctor at the hospital, we both know that you engaged in various forms of human experimentation. Do you disagree?’
‘Not at all.’
‘Good.’
Ruck lined up photographs neatly in front of Schneider. They showed a black-and-white room from different angles. A metal operating table in the centre. Leather straps hung at the sides. Instruments scattered everywhere. The room was a mess. Dark stains covered the floor.
‘This was your surgery. Do you disagree?’
‘No.’
‘These are the Hell Rooms. So the Americans call them, anyway. A good name, I think. None of your victims gave their consent to the torture you subjected them to. What are you going to tell the Nuremberg court, by the way? That your work was for the good of mankind?’
‘Will they let me have a lawyer, Herr Ruck, do you think? And what evidence do you think they will consider at this trial of yours?’
‘You destroyed the paper records of your experiments before the exodus from Buchenwald, Doctor. You personally stayed behind, on Himmler’s orders, to destroy the paperwork. I think that’s why you were still there when the camp was liberated. Am I right?’
The air outside whipped up, causing the barn doors to shudder. Ruck noticed the typist pull her jacket tighter around her shoulders. There was something about her he could not place his finger on. Perhaps it was the way she was sitting, or the look of concentration on her face. Whatever it was, she made him uncomfortable.
‘There were three Hell Rooms,’ Ruck continued. Schneider remained impassive. ‘In the first two, we found evidence of surgical operations carried out on camp inmates – primarily by you, but by others under your stewardship as well. You removed limbs, although for what purpose I have never ascertained. There were other experiments with mustard gas and various poisons. In one case, we found evidence of a woman being shot in the thigh at point-blank range so you could observe the efficacy of different treatments for bullet wounds. Most people who were led into those rooms neve
r came out.’
‘You’re beginning to bore me, Herr Ruck.’
‘You’re anxious not to talk about your work, Doctor? An unusual trait for such a pioneer, wouldn’t you say?’
Schneider waved Ruck away as though he were swatting a fly.
‘You asked me to indulge you, Herr Ruck. Why should I? The Americans will try me and condemn me to death. But what I have achieved will live on for centuries. I don’t know what history will remember me as. A murderer? A scientist? A revolutionist? I suppose it depends who writes the textbook you’re reading. But history will remember me. And my work. What more important thing is there? I wonder how history will remember you, Herr Ruck. As a name? A number? A rank? Or as nothing at all. Just a speck of dust on the pages belonging to me. Nothing more. So have your say while you can. Have your moment. Make it last. Take me through every procedure I carried out. Go through them one by one, if you will. I don’t care. And in a few years from now, neither will anyone else.’
There was a moment’s silence, except for the stenograph machine. Ruck stroked his chin thoughtfully. ‘As I said, Doctor, there were three Hell Rooms.’
Schneider opened his mouth, but aborted whatever it was he had planned to say.
Ruck noticed the Nazi’s change in posture.
‘You know something, Herr Ruck?’ Schneider leant forward, as far as the restraints wrapped around his wrists would allow him. ‘I recall one day I scanned the lines of newcomers. They thought I didn’t care. That I thought they weren’t human. That’s not true, or fair. I looked at each one with a pedant’s eye. Looked at every scar, every mole, every curve. I was meticulous about the patients I picked. Loving even, in the way I went about it. They knew who I was, of course. I allowed rumours of my work to ripple through the camp, like a stone thrown into a pond. They’d shrink at the very sight of me sweeping up the line, selecting the chosen few.’
Ruck tapped the ash from his cigarette and took a heavy drag. He noticed the typist had slowed down, the keys pressed with absolute precision. Ruck wondered what was going through her mind. Was that what troubled Ruck about her? Yes, there it was. The thing that was out of place: she isn’t scared. Not nearly enough.