by Bragelonne
He now has to summon all his courage and inform the Other that it’s now his turn to make the rules of the game. His chest swells. His ribs stand out against his shirt. Yes, this is it. It’s his turn now, his alone, to make the rules. He will tell him tonight. Tonight.
He moves even nearer until his lips are grazing the tiny earlobe.
‘He’s not going to be happy about it, but I’ve decided I’m not going to bathe you either.’
With the tip of his nose, he traces an imaginary line from the corner of one eye all the way down to the boy’s chin.
‘I’ll just prepare you and then … then we’ll allow nature to take its course. What do you say?’
He slips off the pyjamas and the dirty pants and slides them down the skinny legs, unveiling the white skin, speckled with blue stains.
Then his whole body freezes with apprehension. It’s always at this particular point that he hears them. They all moan in unison. As if they’d simultaneously agreed to form a whole choir of supplicants. They’re not sobbing; no, they’re screaming.
With the back of his hand, he caresses the sole of the foot. It’s soft, still supple to the touch, its curve a sheer delight. Maybe this one will stay quiet? Maybe he will understand why…
Suddenly, his features distort in pain.
The child’s screams pierce his mind, strident, unbearable. His plaints, like steel claws, are tearing at his eardrums. They are lacerating, slashing away, eviscerating him.
And now, all the others have joined in.
Ritz Patisserie, Falkenberg
Wednesday, 15 January 2014, 12.00
ALTHOUGH SHE WASN’T REALLY HUNGRY, Alexis kept on eating, if only to dull her stomach’s complaints and repel the persistent migraine she was suffering from. She’d just swallowed a cinnamonflavoured pain au raisin and was now biting into some other treat, with an unpronounceable name. It was difficult to rival the good old made-in-France butter croissants, but these delicate Swedish morsels weren’t bad either, she reckoned.
Between sips of tea, she had agreed to go with Emily to see Karl Svensson, Linnéa’s ex-husband. The profiler was to meet her at the patisserie.
The day had not begun well. She’d woken at dawn, feeling nauseous, a knot of sadness lodged at the back of her throat. How could she have collapsed into such a heap of tears the day before? At least Emily’s reassuring presence and solid strength had proven helpful. Maybe that was the very reason she had allowed herself to be submerged in the pain, knowing Emily was present and there to assist.
A scalding shower had brought her back to life and she had then taken a cab to Linnéa’s to complete the sorting out. Four hours later, she had finished, her stomach hollow and her head about to burst open. She had decided it would be best to catch a bite in town before returning to her room.
After she’d spoken to Emily, her phone had rung again. Alexis swiped her grease-covered screen and readied herself for the call.
‘Alexis, I’ve told him you were the one to call, OK?’ her mother whispered. ‘Bert, BERT! It’s your daughter! She’s calling you to wish you a happy birthday! See!’
Alexis had totally forgotten her father’s birthday.
‘Hello, my baby girl!’
‘Happy birthday, Dad,’ she said, trying to sound happy.
‘Thanks, my baby girl. How are you? How’s it going there…?’
Her mother took the phone away from him. ‘Where are you? It’s noisy. Are you with someone?’
‘I’m at the Ritz, a—’
‘You’re at the Ritz? At the hotel? Why aren’t you at home?’
‘Mum—’
‘I’ve told you, I always want to know when you’re travelling, or I begin to worry. So you’re in London? When did you get back?’
‘Mum—’
‘Have they found out who did it? It’s all a terrible story; truly terrible. You know it’s even all over the newspapers back here.’
‘Mum, I’m not at THE Ritz. I’m at the Ritz Patisserie. I’m still in Sweden. I’m having breakfast.’
‘A patisserie? In Sweden! Wow, you’re adventurous: Swedish cakes must be so heavy on the stomach! At least it means you’re eating, darling. That’s not a bad thing.’
Her mother fell silent for a moment. In the background, Alexis could hear her niece’s squeaky little voice asking to speak to her auntie. Alexis smiled. Her lips parted wide.
‘Auntie?’
‘Hello, little chick.’
She closed her eyes, listening to her delightful niece tell her all about her day so far. She could imagine her, phone stuck to her mouth, manically pulling her skirt in all directions or attempting to undo the ribbon her mother was always trying to keep her hair tidy with. The child explained that she had decided to become a boy so she could pee standing up, like her brother did, but the problem was that it would mean she could no longer wear dresses, as boys were not allowed to. Sometimes they wore skirts, like the ‘Scotties’, but they had to be checked and she only liked flower patterns. And heart shapes. And polka dots too. But not green ones. Definitely not green dots. They looked like green peas. And she hated green peas.
For ten serene minutes, Alexis wallowed inside her niece’s universe, and then her nephew’s – a soft, comforting world full of warm kisses.
She finally hung up, having promised them she would come back with some authentic Swedish snow.
Buchenwald concentration camp, Germany
October 1944
ERICH PULLED HIS SHIRT COLLAR up as he passed the dying oak tree.
The Nazis had deforested the Ettersberg and chosen the slope where the wind blew strongest to build Buchenwald. The only tree to survive had been this one, retained in homage to Goethe and the many visits he had made to this particular hill. What a strange idea it was to have surrounded this symbol of German culture with barbed wire … A striking and ironic image, which had certainly not occurred to the camp’s architects.
On the 24th of August, the oak tree had partly burned away during the bombing. Its forlorn silhouette now echoed those of the inmates inhabiting the alleys of Buchenwald.
‘Schweinehund!’ an SS officer suddenly began screaming at a prisoner crossing his path.
Erich increased his pace. Hitler had poisoned everything. Erich’s own mother language now offended him – so full of barbarity.
Silently, he began to recite to himself verses by Theodor Storm. He tried to remember parts of Immensee, Die Stadt and Der Schimmelreiter, lines his memory had preserved; his tongue savoured every word, like gourmet food.
He reached the latrines, his head now bursting with the most refined music. Andreas, Jonas and Wilhelm were waiting for him, conversing next to a bunch of haggard prisoners who seemed to be on their last legs.
Greeting his comrades, he couldn’t help noticing the frozen, pain-ravaged eyes of one of the poor guys. His backside still soiled following his visit to the latrines, his bones sharply visible beneath his grey skin, he wandered barefoot through the disgusting mud – a mix of faecal matter and urine – that bordered the sanitary pits.
Erich had met Andreas, Jonas and Wilhelm, three Norwegians who, like him, had been medical students, one Sunday afternoon in August, during the course of the only weekly break they were allowed.
They had chosen this abominable place for their Sunday gettogethers, as the SS never set foot here.
As usual, they jested with Erich about his lack of progress in learning Norwegian, before the conversation resumed in English.
‘You should have chosen any other language than ours, mate. The Swedes would understand you, but they’ll laugh in your face!’ Andreas joked, winking at him. ‘Do you really want to settle in Sweden after you get out of here?’
‘If I ever get out of here…’
‘Of course we’ll get out, old man! But instead of exiling yourself, would it not be better to stay and help rebuild your own country?’
‘My country is rotten to the core, Andreas. How do you expla
in the existence of this camp? This hell on earth? Designed so that the ceilings in the cellars are high enough to hang men up as if they were slabs of meat. With ovens constructed to accommodate and burn three bodies at a time. This mad project of expanding the realm of the Aryan race isn’t Hitler’s alone; many, many other Germans follow him and contribute to all this.’
‘But there are still Germans like you, mate. Germans who had the guts to say no to the Nazis and Hitler’s delirium. Many have died because of what they said. And others, like you, are locked up here or in other camps, all waiting to become the artisans of the renewal, when things finally change.’
Erich failed to answer, his thoughts wandering well beyond the barbed wire.
‘You’ll freeze your arse off in Scandinavia, anyway,’ Wilhelm added. ‘Your Weimar winters are a joke compared to ours.’
‘Where exactly was your mother from?’ Jonas intervened, pulling on his shirt sleeve.
Sorrow passed like a veil in front of Erich’s eyes. His parents had both died during the journey to Buchenwald. He swallowed hard to fight back the sadness gripping his throat.
‘From Jönköping, in the south.’
‘And your father also had a Swedish background?’
‘No, he was German. Born in the Brandenburg region, in Falkenberg.’
‘Falkenberg? That’s a hell of a coincidence! Did you know there’s a town on the west coast of Sweden that’s also called Falkenberg?’
Erich rubbed his hands together. ‘That, guys, is a sign from fate!’
But Andreas’ features had frozen.
A surge of terrible pain washed over Erich, then he fell unconscious.
A web of atrocious, radiating agony, paralysed him from his shoulders all the way down to the tips of his fingers. With difficulty, Erich opened his eyes. Two SS officers were dragging him along the gravelled ground like a dead animal.
He slowly turned his head to the left, fighting the involuntary spasms that ran through his neck like an electric current. They were approaching a series of huts. He recognised them in a flash: the Revier. The camp infirmary. The soldiers must have taken a path inmates were not allowed to use.
Two metres from the entrance, they dropped him into the mud.
‘Take your shoes off, you pig!’
Erich looked down at his bloodied feet. He wasn’t wearing any shoes.
The soldiers mimed disappointment. ‘Oh, what a damned pity!’ said one. He knew how difficult it would be for Erich to obtain another pair. ‘The Doktor is waiting for you, arsehole,’ he went on. ‘Tell him Hauptscharführer Hess is delivering the parcel on behalf of Sturmbannführer Fleischer.’
Hess lit a cigarette and his companion shoved Erich inside, hurrying him along with his cosh.
Like every Sunday, the infirmary was jam-packed. A nauseating smell rose to the ceiling; he felt as if his heart was about to retch.
Erich provided his registration number and passed on Hess’s message to a thin man whose neck appeared to float inside his yellowing smock. The nurse, no doubt an inmate too, in view of his meek response and lack of insults, asked him to remain where he was, sitting on the floor, facing a bed that was occupied by a man enveloped in wet sheets.
The Doktor arrived three hours later. Erich was awakened by the cries of the suffering inmates, kicked aside by the medic’s boots as he made his way as if through a tunnel of cordless puppets.
The man stopped in front of the bed opposite Erich and unswaddled the poor inhabitant, whose teeth were chattering loudly and repeatedly, in between his piercing screams. His shin displayed a lengthy, open gash full of pus. The Doktor instructed the thin-necked nurse to clean the wound, and then he began digging into the opening with a scalpel.
The patient began to scream but then quickly fell silent. The poor guy had probably fainted with the pain. The Doktor continued to forage inside his skin for several minutes, then left it to the nurse to close up the wound.
‘20076!’ he barked as he washed his hands.
Erich rose. The Doktor gestured with two of his fingers, instructing him to undress.
Shedding his garments, Erich realised how servile the constant threat of terror had made him. He hadn’t even thought to ask why he was here.
The surgeon’s cold hands examined him in the same detached and brutal way the nameless overseer had inspected him on his arrival at Buchenwald. But it felt different now. The daily routine of the camp had eliminated any possible sense of privacy. Within the barbed wire, there was no way you could be shy or hold anything back; you were too busy trying to survive.
Following his summary inspection, the medic jotted down a few notes on a sheet of paper which he then handed over to Erich, ordering him to deliver it to Hauptscharführer Hess.
Erich warily slipped on his clothes again. They were still wet and covered in excrement following his earlier fall in front of the latrines.
He left the Revier and passed the paper over to the SS officer, who had been waiting outside all along, following orders; Erich hadn’t dared unfold or read it.
‘Come on, arsehole, time for us to go back. Now that you’re awake again, we’ll have to take the path reserved for pigs. And, do you know what, arsehole? You’re going to do the journey on all fours, and I want to listen to you oinking all the way, like the pig you truly are.’
The officer burst out laughing. His companion did the same.
Erich knew the path threaded between the infirmary and the camp. It was a field of mud, a gutter of muck, traversed by knotted roots and dead tree trunks.
He got down on all fours and began the painful journey, accompanied by the strikes of the cosh and his own, animal sounds.
When they finally emerged from the woods, the soldier ordered Erich to stand. Covered in mud, overcome by cold and fear, Erich continued along the path, shivering uncontrollably, his back, the palms of his hands and the length of his legs bruised and full of cuts, his throat on fire.
The two SS officers took him past the roll-call area and stopped in front of the large box standing at its centre. Cries of agony echoed inside. Behind the small opening, barred with sharp wire, Erich could see a man curled up on his haunches. Long nails emerging from the wooden walls dug into his skin with every movement he attempted.
A stream of urine pearled down Erich’s leg. What sort of fate did his tormentors have in wait for him? Was he to take the place of the man in the box?
The two soldiers gave the box a few kicks and insulted its occupier before moving on. The prisoner’s terrible cries wouldn’t leave Erich’s mind until the soldiers finally came to a halt in front of another building.
Noting the number on the door, fear gripped his guts. They were facing Block 46.
Block 46, the antechamber to death.
Karl Svensson’s home, Skrea beach, Falkenberg
Wednesday, 15 January 2014, 14.00
EMILY PARKED ON THE WIDE, paved driveway that led to the grand, typically Swedish, yellow-wood villa.
The previous day, Karl Svensson had refused to open his door to Olofsson. Emily had had to visit a sour-faced judge to get the right to interview Linnéa’s ex-husband. So he was now aware of her visit and had had time to prepare, which Emily didn’t appreciate in the slightest. However, she had no choice in the matter.
When he opened the door, Alexis found it difficult to conceal her surprise: she had assumed he would be youthful and good-looking – not the quiet and conservative man who stood before them.
They followed him into the house. Inside, it was as modern as its exterior was traditional, and even had a winter garden that overlooked the endless sandy beach.
Karl settled himself in a sleekly designed armchair.
The two women sat down opposite him on a deep-seated settee on which three large leather cushions were scattered.
‘So?’ he asked curtly.
‘We’d like to offer you our condolences, sir,’ Emily responded.
Karl’s features remained impassive.
‘Thank you,’ he whispered, with total insincerity.
Emily paused before continuing.
‘Could you tell us about Linnéa, Mr Svensson?’
‘Do you think I’m the right person for that?’ he asked, curling his lips.
‘You have known Linnéa since she was young. You were her artistic mentor, in a manner of speaking. You—’
‘Oh, I wasn’t only that. Did you know she originally wanted to be an air hostess? Of all things…’
He’s a snob, thought Alexis, on top of everything else.
‘It’s true I inspired her. I uncovered her innate talent.’
He stood up, served himself some water from a thin glass decanter and sat himself down on the seat’s arm-rest, stiff like an ‘i’, looking down on his female guests, as if in an attempt to dominate them.
‘She was fascinated by my mother’s jewellery. She was always making pencil drawings of it. So I suggested she should try and create some, not just copy the pieces, and that’s how it all began. We went to London to study at St Martin’s – both financed by my father – and we were about to return to Sweden when she was offered a job at Anselme, the jewellers. My sculpture studio awaited me in Stockholm – I already had a fair few commissions. We did get married, although our relationship was already under strain. I came back here; she stayed there. You know the rest.’
A pretentious snob and an idiot, thought Emily. All she had to do was flatter his ego and he had presented her with what she needed on a platter.
‘Did you know she had acquired a house in Falkenberg?’
‘Of course. But that’s not the reason I came to live here. I would say it was more her who wanted to be close to me. She was aware that my father was paying an annuity on this villa and that it wouldn’t be long before he could get his hands on it. In fact, the old guy who sold it to my father finally passed away last year. He still lived here, you see, even though my father owned it.’
Alexis had to bite her tongue to avoid speaking.