The Last Temptation

by Val McDermid

  “Hello?”

  “It’s me, Rado. She’s leaving now. Looks like she’s heading back to the apartment.”

  “Thanks. I’ll talk to you soon.” Krasic stuffed his phone back into his pocket and closed the cabinet. Time to get out.

  Luckily, he didn’t have to fiddle about with his picks, for the door locked automatically when it was closed. He didn’t want to risk the lift, so he headed for the fire stairs at the end of the corridor. Within two minutes he was back outside, ducking into a bar on the other side of the street. He was halfway down a glass of pilsner when he saw her walk into the apartment building. Rado was a comfortable thirty yards or so behind her. Krasic glared through the window at Caroline Jackson’s retreating back. Even though he hadn’t found any reason not to, he still didn’t trust her.

  Emil Wolf looked as if he spent most of his life in dusty archives, Tony thought as he sat opposite him in the small café in Prenzlauer Berg. Thin as a whip, his untidy steel grey hair hung over a forehead the colour of parchment. His brown eyes behind oblong glasses were pink-rimmed, his cheeks pale. His mouth was a grim little line, his lips almost invisible until he opened his mouth to speak.

  “I appreciate you giving me some of your time,” Tony said.

  Wolf’s mouth turned down at one corner. “Petra can be very persuasive. Did she tell you I used to be married to her sister?”

  Tony shook his head. “No.”

  Wolf shrugged. “Petra thinks this still means we’re family. So I have to jump to her orders. So, how can I help you, Dr. Hill?”

  “I don’t know how much Petra has told you?”

  “I understand it is a confidential matter relating to a serious crime. And that you think it possible that the perpetrator or someone in his family has suffered abuse at the hands of the psychiatric profession?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’m presuming because you are talking to me and this my area of expertise that you think this may have happened at the hands of the Stasi?”

  “It crossed my mind, yes.”

  Wolf lit a cigarette and frowned. “In the West, people tend to lump the Stasi in with the Soviet Union when it comes to the abuse of psychiatry for political purposes. But really, the dynamic was very different in Germany. The Stasi had huge resources at their disposal, and they used them to build an unparalleled network of informers. It’s been estimated that one in fifty of the population was directly connected to the Stasi in this way.

  “They relied on what they called the ‘decomposition’ of people. Decomposition meant making people feel they had no power to act. They were paralysed as citizens because they were convinced that everything was controlled. One of my colleagues has called this ‘the relentless application of a quiet coercion leading to compliance.’

  “Stasi oppression was subtle; people were persuaded that a throwaway remark in a bar could ruin any chances of career advancement. Children were taught that any adolescent rebellion could deny them a university place. Co-operation, on the other hand, was the route to a better life. So you had the twin methods of bribery and blackmail.

  “The Stasi controllers targeted people they thought had a predisposition to collaborate then motivated them into believing they were doing something worthwhile. When you live in a culture where you have been conditioned to believe you have no power, it’s very seductive to be offered the chance to do something active. And, of course, because they believed they were doing the right thing, it’s very difficult to confront or punish them afterwards. The aftermath of the fall of communism has poisoned many people’s lives, because the opening up of their files has forced them to acknowledge how much they were betrayed by wives, husbands, children, parents, friends and teachers.

  “So you see, there was seldom any need for the state to abuse psychiatry. The population was cowed into submission already.”

  Tony looked sceptical. “But there was still dissidence. People were imprisoned and tortured. I’ve read that some activists were incarcerated in psychiatric units for short periods of time to prevent them taking part in planned actions against the state. It’s disingenuous to say that there was no abuse of the medical system, surely?”

  Wolf nodded. “Oh, you’re right. There were cases, but they were relatively rare. And most of them have been documented since. Some thirty psychiatrists have been discredited because they allowed themselves to be used for this purpose, but they were a small minority. And their names are known. If your criminal had an axe to grind from the Stasi years, he wouldn’t have to look too hard to find people to blame. Really, in the great scheme of things, their crimes were insignificant. You see, the Stasi had a unique way of dealing with dissidents. They sold them to the West.”

  “What?”

  “That’s right. Every year, the Federal Republic bought the freedom of East German citizens who were imprisoned for expressing views or taking action against the state. I’m not just talking about high-profile people like writers and artists. I’m talking about people from all levels of life. So there was no real need to exploit the possibilities of subverting the psychiatric profession.”

  This wasn’t what Tony had expected to hear from a West German historian. “You’re certainly undermining my prejudices here,” he said wryly.

  “You don’t have to take my word for it. There have been studies done both by academics and government institutes. They all say the same thing. A few isolated incidences of people having their spirit broken by psychological torture, but very little abuse of the process. If you want details of documented cases, I have a colleague who could probably supply them. Also, you should bear in mind that the medical profession in general was resistant to the controlling efforts of the Stasi. They had a very low percentage of internal informers, they did all they could to maintain the right of patient confidentiality, and the state really didn’t trust them to be reliable administrators of government policy.”

  Tony couldn’t help feeling disappointed at Wolf’s words. He’d been convinced he’d been right in his supposition. But it looked as if he’d been mistaken. Since the guilty practitioners from the old Communist regime had been publicly identified, if the killer believed his troubles had originated under the Stasi regime, those individuals would have been the obvious targets, not academics from the West.

  “You look depressed, Dr. Hill. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to tell you what you wanted to hear. But if you’re looking for serious and widespread abuse of psychiatry and psychology in this country, you’re going to have to go back to the Nazi era.”

  “That all seems very remote now,” Tony said.

  Wolf stubbed out his cigarette. “Not necessarily. Don’t forget, they destroyed many children’s lives with their eugenics policies. Some of those children survived. They would only be in their seventies now. That’s still well within living memory. It’s certainly possible they will have told their stories to their children and grandchildren. And, of course, the people responsible for what was done to them are long dead, so they’re not available as targets.”

  Tony perked up as the implications of what Wolf was saying sank in. “Are there records from that period of admissions to psychiatric units?”

  Wolf nodded. “The Nazis were obsessive record keepers. It’s one of the more depressing things about them, I’ve always thought. They had to find a justification for what they were doing that went beyond the service of Hitler’s desire to create a master race, so they convinced themselves that they were carrying out proper scientific research. There are records of admissions, records of deaths, and records of a lot of the experiments they conducted.”

  Tony felt a quickening of his pulse. “So where are these records held?”

  “There is a castle on the Rhine—Schloss Hochenstein. They called it the Institute of Developmental Psychology. The reality was that it was a euthanasia factory that also conducted radical psychological experiments. After the war, it became the record centre for the euthanasia programme. It ha
s also been turned into a tourist attraction, though they don’t mention that particular element of the castle’s history,” Wolf said, an ironic twist to his mouth. “Our reconciliation with our past only goes so far. We really don’t like to admit that we stood by and let our own children be slaughtered.”

  “No, I can see how that might be a bit hard for the national psyche to cope with,” Tony said. “So, is it possible for me to gain access to these records?”

  Wolf smiled, his thin lips spreading over yellowed teeth. “Normally, it would take time to obtain the necessary permissions. But I’m sure Petra can cut through all the red tape for you. She’s very good at getting her own way.”

  Tony pulled a face. “So I’ve discovered.” He pushed his half-drunk coffee away from him. “You’ve been a great help, Dr. Wolf.”

  The other man gave a self-deprecating shrug. “Any excuse to get away from campus for an hour.”

  “I know the feeling,” Tony said, realizing as he spoke that he had already mentally left that life far behind him. “I’ll tell Petra she owes you a drink.”

  Wolf snorted with laughter. “I won’t hold my breath. Good luck at the schloss.”

  Luck was exactly what Tony felt he had on his side. The tide was slowly turning, allowing him to replace vague notions with real possibilities. It wasn’t a moment too soon. Given the escalation into overt sexuality that was evident in the Köln case, they needed to stop this killer before he lost even more of his self-control. Tony could easily imagine him turning into a spree killer, cutting a swathe through a university campus with a machine gun before turning his gun on himself. It was time to put a stop to it. He could feel his blood rising in anticipation. I’m coming for you, Geronimo, he thought as he walked out of the café into the clean spring day.

  Carol tossed her gym bag through the bedroom door and walked on into the living room. Her nostrils twitched. She could swear she was picking up the faintest aroma of cigars. Either the occupant of the apartment below was puffing his way through an entire humidor of Havanas, or someone had been in here. She smiled. She’d expected them to search the place, just as she’d expected the tail she’d spotted this morning on the way to the gym. She’d have been more concerned if nothing like this had happened. That would have meant that while Radecki might be taking her seriously as a woman, he wasn’t taking her seriously as a possible business partner.

  What was interesting, though, was that the search had taken place now, while she was out at the gym. If she’d been responsible for organizing it, she would have chosen a very different time. While she was on the river with Radecki, for example. Then the searchers would have known they were sure of at least three hours in her empty apartment. The timing, coupled with the slight scent on the air, made her wonder if Radecki had been determined to do the search himself. If he had, it was indicative of how far he had succumbed to her charms. A man who was really smitten wouldn’t have wanted one of his minions nosing into her knicker drawer.

  Carol crossed to the bookshelf and took the radio down. She slid the panel open and smiled with satisfaction as the hard drive dropped into her hand. They’d never have left that behind if they’d found it. Better double-check, however. She plugged it into the laptop and turned it on. She opened the special security program that recorded all user sessions and noted happily that nobody had used the drive since she had last logged off. Then she launched the encryption program and sent e-mails to Morgan and Gandle, alerting them to the fact that she was being followed and telling them about the search. She read an e-mail from Morgan, congratulating her on her success so far and warning her that Krasic had been making inquiries into her background. He assured her that her cover was holding up well under the spotlight. Like you’d know if it wasn’t, she thought cynically.

  She wondered how Tony was faring. She knew that, whatever he was doing, it would take its toll. The one thing that had always moved Tony was the victims of violent criminals. The killers fascinated him, it was true. But profiling had never been an arid academic exercise with him. He cared about the dead; like her, he believed that the investigators were the living representatives of the murdered and mutilated. Their role was not to seek an Old Testament vengeance, but rather to give some kind of closure to those left behind. That, and to save the lives of the potential victims.

  Part of her wished she was out there in the field with him, but her own operation was sufficiently demanding and exciting to make that no more than a mild nag. For now, she was happy to leave him to his own devices, secure in the knowledge that when the decks were cleared, the world would be a different place for both of them.

  Marijke had escaped from the mountain of paperwork in the office and headed over to Pieter de Groot’s canalside house. She was responding to a call from Hartmut Karpf in Köln, whose search team had found something curious when they’d combed Marie-Thérèse Calvet’s filing cabinet. It didn’t actually take the investigation much further forward, but she had a feeling Tony would be very, very interested.

  It also had the advantage of getting her away from the glowering scowls of her team, whom she’d set the task of trying to establish every inland shipping vessel that had been within a fifty-kilometre radius of Leiden on the day of de Groot’s murder. She hoped her German colleagues were being as assiduous, so they could compare results. Otherwise, the exercise would be a complete waste of time. If they found any correlations, then the Germans could see if any of the bargees also owned a dark-coloured Golf. With a lot of luck and persistence, they might just come up with enough suspects for Tony’s profile to be genuinely useful.

  She’d also sent one of her detectives off to the university library to see if he could find any letters or articles critical of the work of Pieter de Groot and the other victims. She had even less confidence that this wild idea of Carol’s would produce a worthwhile result, but she was determined to leave no avenue unexplored, no theory unexamined.

  Marijke had to admit she felt disappointed with what they’d achieved so far. Sure, she knew profilers weren’t miracle workers, but she’d hoped for something more concrete than Tony had been able to give them. Maybe they’d been hoping for too much. It looked as if the only way these cases were ever going to be solved was by traditional, plodding police work. It wasn’t glamorous, but it sometimes got results.

  It felt strange to be back in Pieter de Groot’s study. There were few traces of what had happened there. Just a water-mark on the polished surface of the desk and a few traces of fingerprint powder where the technicians hadn’t cleared up properly after themselves. Maartens wouldn’t like that, she thought irrelevantly. He hated it when the SOCOs left a crime scene in a worse mess than they’d found it.

  Now a thin layer of dust lay on the room’s surfaces. She couldn’t imagine that the cleaner would be back any time soon. And, so far, there were no signs that the ex-wife had turned up to claim her children’s inheritance. She probably had little appetite for returning to the former family home in these circumstances.

  Marijke turned to the filing cabinet. She might as well try the obvious and look under de Groot first. She snapped on a pair of latex gloves and pulled open the relevant drawer, ticking through the files with her long fingers.

  And miraculously, there it was. Exactly as Karpf had predicted it would be. A standard suspension file, distinguishable from the others only because it was a paler shade of manila. There was no identifying tab on the top of the file, but an ordinary white adhesive label on the front was printed with “Pieter de Groot. Case notes.”

  Marijke gingerly lifted the file out of the drawer. She took it over to the window, the better to read the contents. First, she studied the outside of the file, noticing with a small surge of excitement that there was a faint smear of something dark that gleamed like oil along the bottom corner on the back. She sniffed, but caught nothing from it. Then she opened it. There was a single sheet of paper inside.

  * * *

  Case Notes

  Name:
Pieter de Groot

  Session Number: 1

  Comments: The patient’s lack of affect is notable. He is unwilling to engage and shows a disturbing level of passivity. Nevertheless, he has a high opinion of his own capabilities. The only subject on which he seems willing to discourse is his own intellectual superiority. His self-image is grandiose in the extreme.

  His demeanour is not justified by his achievement, which seems best described as mediocre. However, his view of his capacities has been bolstered by a nexus of colleagues who, for unspecified reasons, have demonstrated a lack of willingness to question his own valuation of himself….

  * * *

  Marijke read on with a growing sense of disbelief. It was a bizarre and distorted view of de Groot’s personality, if any credence was to be given to the evidence of his friends and colleagues. But the language was clearly an approximation of that used by therapists, justifying Tony’s conclusion that the killer had read and assimilated at least the basics of psychobabble.

  She couldn’t wait to let forensics loose on this. From the look of it, it had originated from a computer printer, but beyond that anonymity, there might be traces that could provide a positive lead. The smear on the jacket, for example. For the first time in days, Marijke felt she had a concrete piece of evidence in her hands.

  As she hurried down to the car, Marijke quietly cursed herself. She should have had the files searched before now. She’d had someone go through his personal papers, but because de Groot hadn’t been a practising therapist, it hadn’t occurred to her that his professional files would contain anything relevant to his murder. If this oversight proved anything, it was the value of sharing information.

  She couldn’t help wishing she’d made the discovery herself. But at least she’d finally found something that might give Tony a unique insight into the killer’s mind. It was, she supposed, better than nothing.