by Bragelonne
‘Oh, I’m sorry … My son is right … I always talk about the war as if everyone knew my story … It was in October 1944. I was six years old at the time. I had just arrived in Buchenwald with twenty other French children or so. After the sanitary inspection, an SS officer led us outside, all still naked. The wind was as cold as ice and one of the kids, who was already in bad health, fainted on the spot. The officer approached him and shot him in the head. Then, he said in French, “You’re in luck, one of you has just volunteered. I only have three left to select.” Then he had us stand side by side and selected the three smallest in our group, of which I was one. He asked us to take a step forward. He informed us that the purpose of the game was to remain standing, on both legs. If we fell, we would never see our parents again. If we managed to stay upright, he would reward us with a hot meal. He began with the child who was standing at the end of the row. He hit him repeatedly with his truncheon until he was dead. He then moved to the next of us, who was on my left.’ His voice broke. He stifled a cough.
‘I don’t know what was worse, the screams or the sound of the truncheon hitting their bodies…’
Alexis closed her eyes, as if the sound of the brute’s weapon resonated inside her mind. She knew that the cruelty of the SS was more than simply a matter of following orders.
‘Then it came to my turn. I collapsed on the ground after the second blow, pretending I was dead. The SS officer was exhausted by then, so he stopped hitting me. He shouted out in German and, after a confusion of noises and absolutely terrifying sounds, I was thrown onto a hard, cold surface with the bodies of my three other companions on top of me.
‘I was being shaken from left to right for a good ten minutes, the shattered skull of my companion almost choking me. Then I felt as if I was being thrown over someone’s shoulder and after that carefully laid out on something like a straw mattress. I don’t know how long I was left there to wait, but I forced myself to keep my eyes closed, to control my fear, not to tremble or cry…
‘I think I finally became unconscious because some time later I was woken up by a stern male voice. I heard metallic sounds and smelled sickening odours. This went on for a few hours, I would say – or, at any rate, that’s how I remember it; it felt endless.
‘Finally a set of hands touched my body. This shocked me, and I opened my eyes. Two men were staring at me. It felt as if the Grim Reaper himself had sent along two of his minions. One was tall and thin, wearing a white overall, his face sort of aristocratic, with large blue eyes. This was Horst Fleischer. The other man was naked, his hands dripping with blood: that was Erich Ebner. Fear gripped my guts. But Ebner smiled at me tenderly; he spoke to me in a low voice, in German, and then in English. I didn’t know either language when I arrived at the camp, but, believe me, I was forced to learn them fast. Ebner then spoke to Fleischer, begging him. Fleischer was silent. I remember seeing something like amusement in his cold eyes. He was examining Ebner, wallowing in the feeling of superiority my presence had conferred on him: he could have me killed on the spot, you see, just by pointing his thumb towards the ground – like Caesar. Even though I didn’t understand what was being said, I knew that my fate was in the balance. Then Fleischer cried out “Hans!” and an SS officer came to the door and clicked his heels. Fleischer gave him a series of orders, and he nodded at the end of each sentence.
‘All of a sudden, Fleischer took me in his arms and set me down on my feet. I was petrified. I was expecting to be shot in the head or beaten to death, thinking that my turn had finally come. I remember thinking of my mother right then. My mother. The beauty spot on her neck that I enjoyed caressing with the tip of my forefinger while I sucked my thumb. I was holding my breath, so I wouldn’t smell the cloud of rot and human waste that surrounded me, so I wouldn’t taste the odour of detergent in the room. I only smelled my mother’s orange-blossom perfume.’
Alexis noticed that both Bergström and Olofsson were giving her strange looks. So as not to interrupt Langman’s story, she gave them the thumbs up, indicating all was well, a gesture which she immediately realised was far from appropriate, in view of the prisoner’s tale.
‘The SS called Hans made me run back towards the main camp, hitting me with his truncheon all the way. He left me in one of the blocks, and I remained there until the camp was liberated, on the 11th of April 1945. For seven months, my job was to take Fleischer and Ebner their dinners. It was at 18.00 precisely, every single day, until the final evening came, on the 10th of April 1945, the eve of the Liberation. Stan, another prisoner, took care of their lunch.’
Alexis thought about the hell Langman and the other child prisoners had endured in the concentration camps. She’d heard the stories of the ‘boy-dolls’ of Buchenwald, those children persecuted by the paedophile members of the SS and the kapos – the privileged camp inmates. As if the trauma of being separated from their mothers and families, the inhuman living conditions and the cruelty of their gaolers, weren’t enough…
‘Every evening, when I walked in, they laid down their surgical instruments, next to the body they were working on. Fleischer sat at the large wooden table in his study and worked through his feast while browsing through his mail. As for Ebner, he had to resort to sipping his soup right next to the putrefying bodies.’
Alexis vigorously blew through her nose as if to chase away the terrible smells the story was evoking.
‘Over seven months, I witnessed the relationship between Ebner and Fleischer gradually change. But I was only six at the time so it wasn’t until later that I came to understand it better. The way Ebner looked at him began to alter. That compassion he’d shown me on the day we met was draining away and … slowly he … how can I put it? … his humanity dried up. At first there was just silence between Fleischer and Ebner, but gradually, gradually, it was replaced by polite and then longer, more animated conversations.
‘Then, one evening when I was entering the block carrying the basket of food, which was almost as heavy as me, I caught them laughing, both peering down at one of the dead bodies. They put down their instruments beside the cadaver, as they normally did. But, this time, I saw Fleischer place his hand approvingly on Ebner’s back, almost as if he were proud of him. And then they both sat together and shared Fleischer’s dinner. Their mood was so joyful, it seemed almost obscene to me: my saviour had been seduced by his torturer.’
Linda Steiner’s home, Kungsbacka
Friday, 24 January 2014, 17.00
LINDA STEINER STUDIED every photo with particular attention, blinking on each occasion before she moved on to the next.
She handed the set back to Emily and shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, none of these men looks at all like him.’
Emily put the photos of Linnéa’s friends back into her rucksack.
Linda set her cup of coffee down on the kitchen table and rose from her chair.
‘I haven’t had a chance to go up to the attic yet. It might take some time,’ she explained as she passed in front of Emily to climb the set of stairs that led to the next floor. ‘I never did get round to sorting things out up there. I really don’t know where the photos of Adam might be.’
With Emily behind her, she walked into the laundry room and caught hold of a rope dangling from a trapdoor set into the ceiling. A narrow staircase unfolded. She began to climb the narrow steps, and, once she had reached the attic, extended her fingers into the darkness, searching for the light switch. Emily followed her up.
‘We’ll begin over there,’ she decided, indicating with her finger a pile of boxes scattered under a yellow glass skylight at the other end of the room.
Emily helped her take one of the boxes from the top of the pile and they set it down on the floor. Linda opened it and quickly began delving inside it. Emily noticed two rag dolls and some plastic figures, the spine of a book. Her host closed the flaps of the box and, with a heavy sigh, moved on to the next one. She pushed the contents of the next box around with her foot but was clearly no
more successful.
Emily’s phone rang and she took the call, watching Linda continue her unsentimental and systematic inspection.
Alexis’ voice at the other end of the line struggled against a cacophony of background noise.
‘I was contacted by a Buchenwald deportee who knew Ebner in the camp,’ she said. ‘Ebner worked with a Horst Fleischer, a Nazi doctor or scientist who was engaged in medical experiments.’
‘Was he doing so of his own free will?’
‘No, no, he had no choice in the matter, at first. But he explained to me how the two men grew closer over the months. It’s an almost perfect illustration of Stockholm syndrome. Are you at Linda Steiner’s?’
‘Yes.’
‘Has she found the photos?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Once you do find them, scan them as fast as you can manage. I’m not sure if they will prove useful, but who knows?’
‘What are you thinking we should look for?’
Alexis explained to Emily what she thought might be of interest. Emily nodded, although she was surprised, and hung up.
Linda was squatting down now, trying to pull another shoe box from the pile, and setting it down on the floor, with all the delicacy of an archaeologist on a dig. She took the lid off, so lost in her own thoughts, she jumped when Emily approached her; it was as if she had completely forgotten the profiler was there. She pushed the box over towards the profiler without saying a word, her face a mask. Emily kneeled and took a paper folder out of the box. Inside was a set of photographs.
The images of Falkenberg in summer were like a window into another, Eden-like world. The sun shone confidently in an azure sky, its luminous rays stretching out over the shining sea. Linda must have hidden herself in one of the fields to spy on Adam: the photos were taken through a curtain of wild grass.
In the first photo, clearly taken at dawn, you could recognise Karl Svensson’s house in the background, then painted blue, and a barechested man walking along the beach. Emily quickly moved on to the other images in the folder, but they were of no interest. They’d all been taken from too far away.
Linda brusquely brushed her hair away from her neck. ‘I just don’t know why these photos make me feel so ill at ease … It’s been almost thirty years, after all,’ she said in a hushed voice, watching Emily leaf through her past.
‘Maybe because he was the boy you gave your virginity to. Your memory has unconsciously erased the tender recollection of your first time together and replaced it with something more powerful and dark – the trauma of discovering that the boy you loved was in fact a sadist.’
Linda watched the profiler as she began to leaf through a second batch of photos, then her head nodded abruptly, agreeing with Emily, her jaw quivering.
Emily came to a halt, one particular photo in her hand. She had found what Alexis had requested.
She scanned the image onto her phone and immediately forwarded it.
London
November 2013
‘WHEN A MAN IS TIRED of London, he is tired of life.’
Adam had only recently adopted Samuel Johnson’s maxim. When he had first come to the capital to study, the tentacular city had seemed to swarm all over him. As if it was affixing a label to the back of his head: he was German, Swedish, English, and now a Londoner. And, despite Father’s advice, he had found it hard to adapt. To identify who he was here.
Adam leaned against the parapet of the Millennium Bridge. The churning sky was spitting out an unpleasant drizzle carried along by a sharp wind. But things like this no longer spoiled his enjoyment of the place. Following awkward beginnings, the city had become his haven. As much as Sweden had been. He could never admit this to Father, who would have considered it a betrayal. But the city had tamed him, seduced him. He’d grown roots and now enjoyed the anonymity it offered. He’d built himself a life, far away from his mother’s influence. And away from Father. In London, he could choose to do whatever pleased him or didn’t. It had become his territory, and his alone. And he liked it.
But tonight, for the first time, he felt constrained by London. Tomas Nilsson awaited him in Sweden, and he couldn’t cope with this fact.
Adam had always organised his timetable around the imperatives of the hunt and the kidnapping process. On the other hand, he was always reluctant to proceed with the usual ritual of transformation. It was too fastidious and unpleasant. Father didn’t appear to realise this. That was why they complemented each other so perfectly: Father craved the hours spent in his laboratory, while Adam much preferred to hunt and capture the victims.
At first, he had panicked at the thought of deviating from Father’s strict plans. For three whole decades, he had followed his instructions to a tee. But now … now, Father was dead. He was no longer there to plan things or show Adam the way. And Adam was no longer obliged to be the silent partner. Because the partnership no longer existed.
He turned his head and gazed at the magnificence of St Paul’s Cathedral. The elegant construction, rising to one hundred and ten metres, had been built to dominate the city. But hundreds of years later, it looked small next to the more recent buildings, all those giant towers with their heads in the clouds.
A cold shiver rose up the back of his neck and travelled through the length of his body, bristling his hair, as if he had just undressed and stood naked under the autumn drizzle.
London would make a wonderful hunting ground.
He quickly lowered his eyes, ashamed of this sudden surge of desire of which his father would surely have disapproved.
He turned his back on St Paul’s, crossed the Millennium Bridge and arrived at the foot of the old, once abandoned, electric power station, now Tate Modern.
‘Father, Father, Father,’ he chanted quietly as he walked along the banks of the Thames. The word flayed the inside of his mouth. He was bursting with the images and memories that scarred his mind. Father’s death had left him disabled. Father had been his ‘other me’. The ‘other self’. But, strangely, the pain caused by Father’s absence…
He squinted, his eyes just a thin line, as if he had heard a suspicious noise.
His head leaned to one side. ‘The Other self … the Other … the Other.’ Yes, it was better this way. Best now to call him the ‘Other’. A word that flowed, no longer scorched his skin.
…And, strangely, the pain caused by the absence of the Other changed into a feeling of intense excitement, a sensation both sexual and sensory.
While he was waiting to be reunited with Tomas Nilsson in Sweden, surely he could find a victim or two here in London, no?
Oh yes … London would make one hell of a hunting ground…
He licked the raindrops lingering on his lips and hurried along.
Falkenberg police station
Friday, 24 January 2014, 17.30
OLOFSSON WAS PLAYING with his pen, balancing it between his extended fingers like a majorette’s stick. Alexis had just told them Langman’s story. She’d swallowed hard at the end of every sentence, as if something was catching in her throat.
Langman must be something of a superman, Olofsson thought. At six years of age, most kids would have wet themselves and swiftly caught a bullet to the back of the head as they attempted to escape.
Olofsson had to admit that the only thing he knew about the camps was from seeing Schindler’s List. He could still recall the balcony scene with Ralph Fiennes. The character played by Fiennes had really existed. A crazy guy who shot prisoners as if they were rabbits while enjoying his cigarette; it was unbelievable. Hitler had invited every psychopath in the country to eliminate all non-Aryans, the way you trod on spiders. They were seriously crazy guys those SS. Squadrons of serial killers who’d been given the go-ahead to kill at leisure. All Hitler’s work. A dirty chapter in history.
‘Where have we got to?’ Bergström’s voice interrupted Olofsson’s thoughts, like a nail scratching a window pane.
He brought his pen to his mouth. ‘I
have fifty-two Adams born in 1970 and 1971.’
‘How many in the Bohuslän and Halland regions?’
‘Eleven.’
‘Start with them.’
Did Bergström think he was retarded?
‘That’s what I’ve done, Kommissionar.’
Bergström ignored Olofsson’s sarcastic tone of voice. ‘So?’
‘So, that’s why I’m clicking away like a madman with my mouse. Refreshing my inbox. I’m expecting some news any minute now. Two are deceased, that’s all I know.’
At that moment, his phone rang. Bergström indicated he should take the call and returned to his office.
Olofsson answered unenthusiastically, his eyes still on his computer screen. But he immediately straightened his posture. Elena, from the census office, whose voice was as sweet as a hand delving down into his pants, had some new information. She said she preferred to communicate it over the phone rather than forwarding it by e-mail. Good choice.
‘Well, if we eliminate the two dead ones, we are left with three Adams who moved overseas,’ said Elena. ‘The first one has been in Australia since 1997, the second in Cyprus since 2007 and the third in Iceland since 2000.’
‘Let’s set them aside for now,’ replied Olofsson, ‘although I’ll look into the Icelandic one later.’
‘So, there are six left. Two live in Stockholm.’
‘Tell me about them.’
‘Adam Johansson – married, four children; works for an insurance company. Adam Westerberg – married, two children; a hairdresser.’
‘Hmm. Neither sounds quite right, but forward me their details anyway.’
The tapping of fingers on the keyboard replaced Elena’s erotic voice.
‘Done. I’ll continue. Adam Clarkson – lives in Malmö, owns a delicatessen; married, three children. Adam Wallen – lives in Västervik; an electrician; married, five children.’
‘Bloody hell, shitting kids – our national sport…’