by Bragelonne
He turned round and stepped back brusquely towards the dissection table.
Emily spasmed and her whole body began to tremble. She had to calm herself down. She directed her thoughts to the deformed oak tree that rose on Hampstead Heath, close to Kenwood House, like a guard protecting its domain. To the inner strength, the serenity and solidity that stemmed from it. To its twisted roots burrowing into the ground, its unassailable majesty.
Peter’s face approached Emily’s, his forehead bumping against hers. ‘You’re lying! You’re lying! You’re lying!’
‘No, Peter,’ Emily whispered. ‘I’m not lying. I’m telling you the truth. I thought you knew. I’m sorry.’
He moved back, gazing into space, like a lost child. ‘No, no, no, no, no. It just isn’t possible.’
She had to slow him down. Slow time down. Establish some form of connection between the two of them.
‘You’re right, Peter. You’re right. Maybe I got it wrong. Your father couldn’t have hidden the truth from you. Neither would my own father have concealed any truth from me, but my mother…’
‘My mother left him … She found herself some aristocrat fool … And I could only see Father during the holidays … I lived for those moments, the times I spent with him … How can you prove what you’re saying?’
Of course. She needed some form of proof. She would tell him she had photographs.
‘Proof?’
‘Proof. About Ebner. Fleischer.’
‘I have photos, Peter.’
‘Stop. Stop calling me Peter!’ he shrieked, almost spitting at her.
Good, Emily thought. He’s reacting to the stimulus.
‘Sorry … Adam … It’s just that I thought you preferred to be called Peter…’
He gazed at her, with a look of incomprehension.
‘Adam was the one who caused man to become mortal when he ate the fruits of the tree of good and evil; Adam condemned mankind. On the other hand, Peter was the stone on which Jesus built his church and, you, you are the stone on which your father built his work…’
Peter closed and opened his eyes again, shaking his head from side to side, seemingly fighting off a terrible lassitude. ‘Where are they, those photos? And what’s in them?’
‘They’re photos of Erich Ebner, when he was a prisoner in Buchenwald,’ she lied. ‘He had a tattoo covering his right shoulder and arm. Verse written by a German poet, Theodor Storm. Did your father have a tattoo like that, Adam?’
‘A tattoo?’ Peter’s wide-open eyes stared unblinkingly at Emily. ‘Where are these photos? Have you got them with you?’
Emily wondered how long it had been since she had been captured. Ten minutes? Quarter of an hour? Half an hour? She could pretend the photographs were in her backpack but, when he failed to locate them, he might…
‘It’s the Buchenwald Foundation, in Germany, who own them … I’m sorry, Adam, I thought you knew…’
‘The Buchenwald Foundation in Germany. Yeah, yeah, I see. I’ll look them up.’ He nodded a few times and grabbed the scalpel.
‘Don’t struggle like you did earlier, otherwise I’ll start with your eyes.’ He leaned over Emily, holding her left breast with one hand and planting his scalpel beside her right areola.
An animal groan rose from Emily’s lips. Pain crucified her thoracic cage and began to spread downwards through her whole body.
She had run out of options. Of ways to fight back the monster. She had to distance herself. Move as far as she could from the pain. From her body. From this room.
The blade continued its journey across her breast.
She had to find a place where Templeton could no longer reach her. Her own personal Eden.
Drops of blood splattered across her face. He now held her nipple just in front of her right eye.
She closed her eyes.
Her own personal Eden … Next to her son … her little angel…
Emily felt his tiny mouth, delicate as a half-formed olive tree leaf, alight on her breast. A soft suction, no stronger than the beating of a butterfly’s wing. This breast against which he had fallen asleep forever just two months after he had been born. This poisoned breast. She had held him in the hollow of her arms until his small body had gone cold.
My son.
My son … He’s big, now. Dear God, how he resembles his father, with that everlasting smile on his lips. I run my hand through his hair. He tries to disengage himself, as teenagers do, embarrassed by this display of maternal affection, his lips curling gently just like his father’s. I lay my hand across his smooth cheek. He doesn’t flee the caress and speaks to me, with all that energy at the bottom of his eyes, that thirst for life. I watch his lips, the olive-leaf mouth shaping itself like a heart, growing ever more masculine as he grows in years. ‘Speak louder, my heart. Speak loud and high. I can’t hear you. There’s too much noise.’
‘Emily, it’s Bergström. It’s over, Emily. We’re here.’
‘I can’t hear you, Sebastian … Speak louder, my heart … Speak louder…’
‘It’s Lennart, Emily. It’s over. We’re taking you to the hospital. You’re safe.’
Kumla prison, Orebro County, Sweden
Friday, 31 January 2014, 11.00
EMILY LAID HER HAND on Alexis’. The trembling subsided, and then came to an end.
Peter was sitting facing them.
The rattling of the handcuffs against the metal table elicited a smile from him.
‘Pretty bracelets,’ she said.
Alexis gazed at the serene and relaxed features of this man she thought she knew. Seeking out the specific clue that should have acted as a warning, but that she hadn’t been able to detect, that she hadn’t been willing to see. But there was nothing obvious.
Peter ran his fingers through his beard and moustache. ‘Don’t you like it, Alexis? It’s the Adam Berg style. So I can resemble the photo in my Swedish passport, eh? It will take a bit longer before they grow long enough to imitate the false ones, but time is on my side, isn’t it, until the trial comes around?’
He paused, looking at Emily and Alexis in turn.
‘Do you know what is the most fun, girls? At least I managed to forever dirty the name of my mother’s husband: Templeton.’ His handcuffed hands traced evanescent patterns in front of his face. ‘It will forever be desecrated by the sheer weight of all those cadavers…’ He grimaced with feigned horror. ‘I’m sure the shares in his company will suffer badly…’
‘Your mother is in remarkable health, Adam,’ Emily interrupted him. ‘According to the media, she’s just signed a lucrative deal with a major British publisher to tell her side of the story. I guess it will be more about her than you.’
Peter’s eyes darkened momentarily, then focused on Emily’s chest.
‘How’s your arm, Emily?’ His head leaned sideways. ‘And your tit?’
Emily took her coat off and hung it over the back of the chair. ‘I’ve been leafing through your photo album, Adam.’
A crooked smile animated his lips. ‘Don’t belittle me, Emily. It’s a diary.’
‘Your diary.’
He nodded approvingly. ‘I must confess my presentation is a tad school-like. “Prior to the polymerisation”, “After”,’ he mimed mockingly. ‘Father would insist the dosages, the impregnation times, the drying process, etc, were all recorded meticulously … A Nazi sense of discipline, I guess.’
Alexis opened her eyes wide.
‘What? What do you want me to do? I can’t rewrite history. He was on the side of Evil. On the wrong side, full stop. At any rate, he died at the age of ninety-three, after living a very full life. Erich Ebner can’t boast the same.’
‘Erich Ebner is a hero.’
‘A hero? Why, Alexis? Because he was interned in Buchenwald?’ Peter burst out laughing.
Alexis was overcome with anger. ‘Erich Ebner is a hero because he was involved in the liberation of Buchenwald, Peter. His actions and those of the other prisoners
who formed a network of resistance that allowed the liberation of thousands of inmates on the 11th of April 1945 were heroic gestures. It was thanks to these brave men that information about the Nazi plans, the German army, the Allied advance, were communicated to the international resistance. At the risk of their own lives, they concealed a cache of weapons behind a false wall in the coal cellar of Block 50, forced the SS to retreat and freed Buchenwald. So yes, Peter, Erich Ebner is a hero.’
Peter looked up to the sky.
Emily lowered her forearm on the table, as if marking her territory. She could still feel the bad taste of her mistake in her mouth – assuming the nature of the relationship between Ebner and Fleischer was Stockholm syndrome. The reason Ebner had allied himself to his torturer was not due to a form of emotional indifference connecting them. No, there had never been any form of affection binding the prisoner to his gaoler. Never. The apparent submission had actually served to conceal a powerful sense of motivation.
The profiler leaned forward, as if ready to speak to Peter in confidence.
‘Erich Ebner was working on something magnificent inside Block 46 – but not the abominable experiments being practised by your father, Sturmbannführer Fleischer. For months he pretended to go along with the psychopathic actions of your father, knee-deep in blood, cutting open still-warm bodies, sleeping at night next to decomposing cadavers, but only one thing motivated Erich Ebner, and one thing alone: to survive, and help his friends in the resistance to prepare the liberation of Buchenwald, by convincing the monster your father was that he truly admired and worshipped him. Thanks to the testimony of Théodore Langman, an ex-prisoner, we’ve been able to identify a deportee called Stanislas Legendre, who carried Fleischer and Ebner’s lunch to the block every day at noon. And, every single day, Ebner would, amongst the meal’s leftovers, communicate little bits of information he’d obtained from your father about the organisation of the camp and about Nazi intelligence. Legendre would then pass on this information to the resistance network. Ebner was not your father’s victim, nor just a victim, of anyone Adam. On the contrary, Erich Ebner was one of the heroes who contributed to the liberation of Buchenwald.’
Peter’s features were impassive. He briefly lowered his chin, but quickly raised his face again, displaying a broad smile. A plastic smile that carried little emotion. Like any sociopath, Templeton’s emotional prism was impossible to decipher because, somewhere deep inside, he was not human.
Emily moved her face closer to his. ‘That’s why we came to visit you, Adam,’ she continued, her voice remote. ‘To give you the good news. We know you have no access to TV here and your close neighbours are not into history. Your father was tricked all along.’
Peter leaped towards Emily, his mouth wide open, carnivorous. Emily jumped back, pulling Alexis by the arm.
The two guards caught Peter in full flight and forced him back down into the chair.
Emily indicated to them that she hadn’t quite finished. She moved forward, laying her hands on the table.
‘Weren’t you the one who said you were the sentimental sort, Adam? Which is why you formed a relationship with Linnéa? We would never have found you if you hadn’t made the mistake of killing her. Never. Well, like father, like son; your father’s “sentimental” side allowed Erich Ebner to become an instrument of peace. Sentimental was your word, but in my view it’s inappropriate for describing a sociopath. Personally, I’d say that, just like you, your father was led by his cock.’
Peter shrieked like an animal in agony and the sound bounced off the four walls of the room.
Emily put her coat back on and guided Alexis to the exit.
Emily Roy’s home, Hampstead Village, London
Saturday, 1 February 2014, 16.00
STELLAN DROPPED THE SUITCASE in the entrance hall.
Emily thanked him with a weak smile. Her wounds were scarring fast, but the mental impact of the past weeks remained a heavy burden.
Alexis brushed a hand over her back, gazing at her with a look in which gratitude and worry somehow managed to coexist. Emily responded with a series of silent nods, and closed the door behind them as they left.
The two lovers stepped into the taxi taking them to Alexis’. Together, they would begin a new chapter. Despite all the compromises, the arguments and the wounds, some people were better off facing things together.
As soon as the door was closed, Emily rushed to the kitchen and walked out onto the terrace. She slipped her wellies on and stepped into the garden. Right at the end, close to the brick wall, was a patch of earth a square metre in area, bordered by stones.
She kneeled, dug inside the inner pocket of her parka and pulled out the little black box. She opened it and looked deep inside. There was nothing inside the box, but still it felt as if it was full. Full of too much heavy luggage. Images scorching her memories. Souvenirs and thoughts she must detach herself from before she could move on to the next case and not drown.
In her mind she could see the cadavers of Andy Meadowbanks, Cole Halliwell, Logan Mansfield, Tomas Nilsson and Linnéa Blix; the dozens of other bodies found in Fleischer’s and Templeton’s cellars; she saw the scars on her arm and breast.
She closed the box.
And then buried it alongside the forty-seven others.
Acknowledgments
During the course of the first year of our son, Maximilian, as I discovered for myself the job of being a parent, with its share of extreme joy and anguish – and its sleepless nights – I was also involved in another pregnancy, another birthing: that of Block 46. This book would never have seen the light of day without the amazing network of people who helped me on a daily basis: Mattias, my husband – a wonderful, supportive daddy; the grandparents: Odile, Jean-Louis and Britt; the aunts and uncles: Elsa, Cedric, Susan and Lionel; and our Maria. Thank you to all of them for having taken such good care of my darling, little guy. And thank you too, little guy, for being so adaptable, for your happy mood and the endless smiles, which you inherited from your dad.
Thank you, my dear Karen Sullivan, for your energy, your devotion and the passion with which you support your authors and their books. I am proud and honoured to become part of the formidable ‘Team Orenda’.
All my thanks to my translator, Maxim Jakubowski, who crossed paths with me on the writing road and put his talent at the service of Block 46, for which we now share a form of parenthood.
Without my French editor, my writing fairy, Block 46 wouldn’t be in your hands. Thanks, Lilas Seewald. On the occasion of a London dinner, while my belly was still round, you guided me towards the path where I met Emily, Alexis, Bergström, Stellan and the others.
Thank you, Stephane Marsan and the dynamic team at Bragelonne, for having welcomed me amongst you. Your enthusiasm gives me wings.
My most sincere thanks, for their patience and availability, to Behavioral Investigative Advisor, Lee Rainbow, to Crime Scene Investigator, Lars-Ake Nordh, to legal medical expert, Sonya Baylis, to profiler, Carl Sesely and sculptor, Pablo Posada Pernikoff, all experts I bombarded with my profane questions.
I thank my ‘dream team’: my parents and my sister, for their conscientious reads and re-reads at any time of day and night, and their constructive criticism. We often have a good laugh at family reunions at our tendency to discuss how to dispose of bodies or kill people. Long may it last! Thanks to my young sister Elsa and her keen, psychological eye; to my mother, for ferociously and constantly encouraging me and allowing me to become both a mother and a writer; to my father, the conscience of my words: this book is as much yours as it is mine. I realise this descent into the Buchenwald years and family history was a painful journey for you, more than anyone else; thanks for remaining at my side.
I thank my formidable grandmother, Ginette, for her inexhaustible imagination and her storytelling talents – sources of inspiration both; and my grandfather Lucien: you will always be at my shoulder (the left one, of course, Pappy!).
Tha
nks to Laetitia Milot: Block 46 is the continuation of a journey we began together.
Thanks also, from the depths of my heart, to Jan Andersson for his invaluable contacts in the Swedish police; to Eva Munoz, who spurred my curiosity when advising me about the links between Cartier and history; to Philipp Senge for his translations and information about German language and culture; to Charly Young from the Girls Network, for her formidable help in the making of this english edition; and to the team at Blossom & Co for the professional advice on life and the future of Block 46.
I also thank Martine Dupont-Girault, my very first and faithful reader, for her support and encouragement.
Finally, thank you to my husband, Mattias. I thank you for being here. Or rather, just for being. As Lamartine once said, without you, my world would be empty.
I would like to close this book by evoking the 11th of April 1945, the day of the liberation of Buchenwald concentration camp by a group of superhumans. Amongst them, my grandfather, Simon Lagunas.
I can’t outline here the details about the essential role played by the national and international resistance organisations inside Buchenwald. But let us not forget that, without them, the men who were part of them, not a single prisoner would have been found alive when the allied forces arrived.
In order not to forget, to assist the survivors and maintain the ties that bind them, the Association Française Buchenwald-Dora et Kommandos was founded in July 1945. After seventy years of existence, it continues to spread the indispensable memory across new generations. Let it be thanked here.
In Block 46, I have barely skimmed the surface of the tragic years of deportation, but if you wish to learn more, you can read L’Enfer Organisé (‘Organised Hell’) by Eugen Kogon and Les Francais à Buchenwald et à Dora (‘The French in Buchenwald and Dora’) by Pierre Durand.
I will end by saluting here the memory of the survivors of this hell, of the fifty-six thousand victims who died in Buchenwald as well as the millions of women, children and men who perished in the Nazi camps. NEVER AGAIN.