by Bragelonne
It was only last year that he had dared ask Father about the significance of the half section of the capital The usually drew.
‘It’s not half a T, Adam; it’s a branch of the Hakenkreuz. People call it a swastika. But Hakenkreuz is its correct name, as it’s formed by four capital gammas.’
‘But why do you draw a swastika, Father? I was under the impression you had fought against the Nazis?’ The words had escaped his mouth before he could hold them back.
‘In memory of Doktor Fleischer,’ Father had calmly stated, without getting angry.
There. He had completed his gamma. It was perfect.
With his shaven scalp, his paler-than-pale skin and his scarred arm, Oskar no longer even resembled Oskar.
Father allowed himself a modest smile. Adam straightened himself with pride.
‘Clean everything up, while I go and make breakfast.’
It was the first time Father had left him alone with one of their victims. But Adam knew he had earned it.
He placed the scalpel on the glittering tray.
When he turned round, Oskar was fixing him with wideopen, crazy eyes. Staring at him with the same look of panic he had displayed when Adam had put the plastic bag over his head. The child began to scream. The strident cry pierced Adam’s eardrums.
‘Shut up! Shut up! Close those fucking eyes! I don’t want to see them. Shut up, I said!’
He took Oskar by the throat and tightened his grip as hard as he could manage. But Oskar was not listening. He was still screaming like a pig having his throat cut.
Adam didn’t want Father to have to return and think he was not up to the task. He had to do something; something to keep Oskar quiet, for him to look away. It was vital the kid obey him.
Adam took hold of the scalpel again and held it against Oskar’s chin. He dug into the flesh and slashed vertically across the skin until he had reached the sternal notch. He then sectioned the trachea and set it down on the dissection table.
Sweating abundantly, he wiped his forehead with his sleeve and listened. All he could hear was his halting breath. The cries had faded.
Now it was just a matter of keeping those damned eyes closed.
Skrea beach, Falkenberg
Thursday, 23 January 2014, 11.00
EMILY PARKED IN FRONT of the imposing yellow-wood villa, finding space between a Porsche Cayenne and a Jaguar coupe. Three police vehicles and two SKL vans also occupied the vast private esplanade.
She walked to the back of the house and met up with Bergström and Olofsson in front of the old garage. Karl Svensson, Linnéa’s ex-husband, stood back, next to a serious-faced blonde who was shrieking into her phone. A nervous twitch animated Svensson’s lower lip and chin. Arms crossed over his chest, he stood with his back to the barn.
‘As you can see, we’re waiting,’ Bergström explained to Emily, his voice on edge.
‘That blonde bitch is beginning to get on my nerves,’ Olofsson spat out. ‘She’s already been on the phone with the prosecutor for half an hour, complaining non-stop. What the hell does she think – that the more she screams, the more likely the prosecutor will be to say, “It’s OK, if you insist, I’ll cancel the search warrant and Karl Svensson will no longer be a suspect”?’
Bergström reckoned Olofsson was saying aloud what everyone else was thinking. He would also have liked to be able to shout like the lawyer and complain like Olofsson. It must be nice to be capable of venting your anger – to scream until you’re out of breath!
He was under so much pressure. The prosecutor was calling him every single hour to check what point the investigation had reached. Linnéa’s ex-husband was a celebrity. If the search proved fruitless, the Kommissionar would find himself in hot water. Svensson’s lawyer might possibly take them to court and he could lose his job.
But still, he couldn’t help himself thinking of little Tomas Nilsson. He could picture the naked body in its envelope of frost, the black eyes unnaturally large and empty, his neck slit open like a zipper on an old pullover. Despite the severity of his wounds, Bergström had felt like taking the child in his arms, kissing his forehead, warming him up, reassuring him. He’d thought of his own sons. When they’d been Tomas’s age, they’d always strongly resisted taking baths. He and Lena always had to run after the two little monkeys as they dashed away naked, as fast as the wind, seeking improbable hiding places scattered around the house. His sons … if anyone had laid a hand on his sons … There was a question that was running through his mind to the point of giving him a migraine; it was simple, almost desperately trivial: how could anyone do this to a child?
He looked over at Emily. She was listening to Olofsson’s rant, impassive, serene. A form of quiet strength radiated from her that he wished he could share.
‘Where’s Alexis gone?’ Olofsson asked him, his voice a little calmer.
‘To the municipal library. She’s checking up on Ebner.’
Alexis’ presence at the search of Svensson’s house would have been a procedural mistake, so Emily had suggested she investigate Erich Ebner separately.
The lawyer hung up and nervously stepped towards them, her client on her heels.
‘You can go ahead,’ she conceded curtly.
‘Mr Svensson, if you could accompany me to the police station,’ Olofsson grinned.
‘You won’t find anything in my workshop!’
Bergström approached him and stood face to face. ‘Thank you for letting us know where to begin the search, Mr Svensson.’
Falkenberg Municipal Library
Thursday, 23 January 2014, 13.00
ALEXIS RUBBED HER EYES with the tip of her fingers. She had been browsing through the articles on the microfilm reader screen for two hours already, and her eyes were tiring. Erich Ebner’s name didn’t appear in any of the library’s databases. So she had had to consult all the local papers since the 11th of April 1945, the date of the liberation of the Buchenwald camp. As she couldn’t understand Swedish, all she did was look out for Erich Ebner’s name. If she were to come across a mention, she would have it printed out and take it to the station. She had seventy years of newspapers to wade through and still had a long way to go.
Thanks to the personnummer – the national identification number given to each citizen of Sweden – the police had access to some basic facts about Erich Ebner in their archives. He had been born in Munich, Germany, in 1920, had been naturalised Swedish and no longer possessed a German passport. He had practised as an embalmer with a funeral parlour from 1947 to 1993. In 1955, he had bought the house he had been renting in Falkenberg since 1947. In 1995, Jakob Svensson, Karl’s father, had purchased the property from Ebner on the annuity system while he was still alive. On the 5th of October 2013, Erich Ebner’s body had been found in his bed by firefighters called to a blaze nearby. The coroner had established it was a natural death, and was in no way suspicious, as he had been ninety-three. Everything pointed to Ebner having no immediate family, and no friends or neighbours that might have noticed his absence.
However, the personnummer system having only been introduced in Sweden in 1947, it was not possible to establish the precise date Ebner arrived in the country. Bergström assumed that the deported prisoner had settled in Falkenberg in 1947, the date of his first declared employment, but Alexis was less certain. And as she was unwilling to leave matters to chance, she had decided to widen the scope of her investigation by an extra two years.
Checking her phone for messages, she swallowed a mouthful of water.
Before leaving for the library, she had contacted the Buchenwald Memorial Foundation in Weimar, Germany. She had left her number on their answerphone, explaining it was an urgent request, and she had been waiting since for them to call her back.
Alexis changed the reel and began browsing again, wondering all the while why Ebner had decided to settle in a small coastal town in Sweden. She could understand why he had chosen to flee Germany, since his country, overtaken by the Nazis,
had betrayed him. There was no doubt Ebner would have resented his homeland, but this wasn’t enough of a reason to opt for Sweden. He must have had a link of some sort to the Halland region and the area around Falkenberg. Maybe he had family there, friends who lived in the area in the 1940s?
Alexis cast another glance at her phone. No sign of news from the Foundation. However, Stellan had sent her a short but explicit message: ‘Tonight?’
Sweet memories of the previous night bloomed in her mind like sudden flowers. She shook her head to disperse them before they faded, choked by her fears and anguish, like weeds she was unable to rid herself of. She wanted to see him again. Have Stellan make love to her, surrender to his embraces. Her mind empty, her body receptive. Her heart … her heart was irrelevant. All she wanted was to go on this journey again, revisit those feelings he had released.
Alexis texted ‘Yes’ in response and, after a few seconds of reflection, added a couple of exclamation marks.
She was about to set her phone down when the screen lit up again. She walked out into the corridor to take the call. Hilda Thorne, from the Buchenwald Memorial Foundation, was calling her back.
Alexis explained that she was seeking the Foundation’s assistance to track down the family of an erstwhile Buchenwald inmate named Erich Ebner, who had died in Sweden a few months earlier. She was enquiring informally rather than officially, hoping Mrs Thorne would be amenable.
‘Let me check on the name and see what I get. It will only take a few seconds.’
An impatient Alexis bit her lips.
‘OK…’ Hilda said after a moment, ‘Erich Ebner … German, born in Munich in 1920. Interned in Buchenwald on the 17th of July 1944. Communist, political prisoner. Medical student. He worked in the quarry, the gas ovens and the medical experiment block. It appears he never joined any of the ex-prisoners’ associations.’
‘Have you got a photograph?’
‘No.’
‘Any information about his parents?’
‘No. And, before you ask me to check for other Ebners, we do have a mass of them. If his parents had been interned in Buchenwald, it would be indicated on his identity record. That’s all I have in my records.’
‘Do you know who else might have been working at the gas ovens or in the experiment block at the same time as him? I reckon it’s not worth asking about the quarry, as the list would prove too long…’
‘We don’t hold that sort of information.’
‘Were there any Swedes in Buchenwald during the same period as Erich Ebner?’
‘No.’
Hilda was sympathetic, thought Alexis, but you had to extract every item of information as if by force.
‘Can you give me a minute, please, Hilda?’
Alexis closed her eyes and concentrated. She had to connect all the known facts, search for links. What elements dominated Ebner’s profile? German. Political inmate. Who’d made a new life for himself in Scandinavia. In Sweden.
An idea suddenly came to her.
Sweden and Norway were the two Nordic countries that had the most in common, culturally speaking. The two languages were so similar that Swedes and Norwegians understood each other with ease.
During the course of World War Two, the two countries had followed different paths: Sweden had opted for neutrality, whereas Norway, pressured into capitulating by Nazi Germany in 1940, had chosen the path of resistance, with Johan Nygaardsvold setting up a government in exile in London.
‘Were there any Norwegians incarcerated in Buchenwald?’ Alexis chanced her hand.
‘Norwegian students, yes. Three hundred and fifty, if my memory is correct, arriving in January 1944.’
Ebner had been deported to Buchenwald in July 1944.
‘Might there have been any medical students amongst them?’
‘Yes.’
‘So they might have been assigned to the medical experiment block, yes?’
‘Let me check … Yes, you’re right: the experiment block, the infirmary and the pathology block.’
Alexis felt electrified. Erich Ebner must surely have crossed paths with at least one of them.
‘Would it be possible to obtain a list of these Norwegian students and their current contact details, and if they’ve since died, the details of their families?’
‘I can indeed forward the list of the contacts we have, but I can only provide you with the e-mail addresses, not the telephone numbers.’
‘That would be perfect. Can you indicate which of them were medical students, please?’
‘Of course.’
‘I’m sorry to be putting such pressure on you, but do you think you could manage to do it today?’
‘It’s no problem: the lists are already available, you should be getting them in a few minutes.’
‘Hilda, I’m being terribly demanding, but is there also a chance you could contact all of this group of ex-prisoners and ask if any of them knew Erich Ebner? I could provide you with some copy. Maybe some of the survivors might have mentioned his name to their children … As we’re probably looking at tens of thousands of people, you could do it faster than me…’
‘I could send a group e-mail and leave a note on our website.’
‘Oh, Hilda, thank you so much. That would be fantastic.’
Alexis hung up and typed out the e-mail to be forwarded to all the erstwhile Norwegian students and their families. Then she would resume her trawl through the newspaper archives.
The wider she cast her nets, the more likely she was to catch some fish.
Home of Karl Svensson, Skrea beach, Falkenberg
Thursday, 23 January 2014, 14.00
BERGSTRÖM SCANNED THE BARN with a look of satisfaction dawning on his face. A throng of white suits were busy poring over Svensson’s workshop. The heavy silence was occasionally interrupted by the hushed passage of the protective shoe covers they were wearing or the hollow clink of the forensic team’s metal cases. A curious sort of mood reigned: somewhere between excitement and disgust, impatience and apprehension.
When the Kommissionar, Olofsson, Emily and the forensics team had walked into the barn and switched on the light, the whole group had frozen where they stood.
‘Fuck…’ Olofsson had shouted. But even he had been lost for words that could describe the brutality of the scene revealed by the crude, sharp lighting.
Facing them stood a cube made of red, soot-stained bricks, three metres high and two metres in length, its square edges reinforced with steel cleats. At its centre was a half-moon-shaped hole, fifty centimetres in height and seventy across, with a set of double metal doors, left open.
‘Am I crazy, or doesn’t this resemble a gas oven?’ one of the scene-of-crime guys asked.
A concert of sighs and throats being cleared was the only response. There was much to examine around the oven itself. Two metres to its right stood a tub a metre in diameter, next to a trestle table over which a series of surgical instruments were laid out, along with a pair of long blacksmith’s tongs. Close by, hanging on the wall, two overalls and two pairs of gloves full of holes could be seen.
Bergström gave the go-ahead for his troops to fan out and begin the search, and everyone set to work with the sad memories of little Tomas Nilsson fresh in their minds.
The Kommissionar approached one of the technicians, who happened to be leaning over the large, empty tub.
‘Can you tell what was inside?’
‘Hydrofluoric acid. Very corrosive.’
Bergström thought of all the boys who had disappeared since 1970 whose bodies had never been found.
‘Enough to dispose of a child’s body?’
‘If you add nitric acid and put a lid on the tub, it would do the job, yes.’
‘Can you confirm if it ever housed nitric acid?’
‘I’ll check and let you know.’
The Kommissionar’s eyes sought Emily out and caught sight of her just as she was walking back into the workshop. He hadn’t even noticed she
had gone out.
‘Is there a problem, Emily?’
‘The house is vast, isolated. This barn alone must be around a hundred square metres. But the garden is rocky and almost non-existent. I can’t see how he could have disposed of the bodies, unless…’
‘Dissolved them in a vat of acid?’
She looked back at him in surprise. ‘No. The bodies of the children must be under the house or the barn. We’ll have to scan the floor.’
‘Björn!’ the Kommissionar hailed a colleague over.
A technician who had been examining the contents of Svensson’s trestle table turned towards them.
‘Do you have a scanner that could analyse what’s under the floor anywhere in your van?’ the Kommissionar asked.
Björn Holm, who headed the forensics team, slid off the mask protecting his mouth, freeing his thick grey moustache. ‘The SKL van isn’t Mary Poppins’ handbag, Lennart. The radar was left back at headquarters. Do you need it right now?’
Bergström nodded.
Björn sighed heavily.
‘OK … I’ll have it brought over. It’ll be here in an hour and a half.’
Two hours later, Holm had completed the subterranean scan of the barn’s floor and nothing had been found. He set the geological radar aside and looked at Bergström and Emily, his face showing signs of exhaustion.
‘Are you really sure this must be the place, Lennart?’
Bergström nodded silently.
‘So, now we go over the house, do we?’
Bergström nodded again.
Followed by Bergström and Emily, Björn quickly crossed the few metres separating the barn from the main house, trying to get out of the glacial outside air as quickly as possible.
‘Where do we begin?’ he asked, having switched the radar on again.
‘The kitchen,’ Emily ordered.
Björn followed her instructions unquestioningly. Dragging the radar equipment behind him, like a dog on a leash, and his eyes fixed on the control screen, he began his inspection of the room. He systematically combed through the American-style kitchen then moved on to the store room.