by Val McDermid
“I’ve got better than codeine,” he said. “I know where Marlene’s kid is.” He stood there grinning, an overgrown child who knew he’d done the one thing that his mother would approve of.
Petra couldn’t stop her mouth falling open. “You’re kidding,” she said.
The Shark was literally bouncing on the balls of his feet. “No way, Petra. I’m telling you, I’ve found Tanja.”
“Jesus, Shark, that’s amazing.”
“It was your idea,” he said, his words tumbling over each other. “You remember? You set me looking for Krasic’s contacts? Well, I eventually found this cousin, he’s got a pig farm on the outskirts of Oranienburg, his son Rado is one of Krasic’s gophers, apparently. So I went over there to check it out. Lo and behold, they’ve got the girl!”
“You didn’t go near the house, did you?” Petra felt a moment’s panic. He wasn’t that much of a liability, was he?
“No, of course I didn’t. I was going to go out there last night, then I thought it’d make more sense to wait till morning. Daylight, you know? Anyway, I got up before dawn, put on my oldest clothes and went across the fields. I found a place where I could see the back of the house and I crawled under a hedge and staked it out. God, it was horrible. Cold and muddy, and I had no idea how much pigs fart. The bastards seemed to know I was there, kept walking right up to me and farting in my face.”
“Never mind the fucking pigs, Shark. What did you see?”
“Well, it’s a lovely day, right? Perfect spring weather? Anyway, around seven, this middle-aged guy built like a brick shithouse comes out on a little quad bike and feeds the pigs. Nothing much happens for a while, then the back door opens and a woman comes out. Looks like she’s in her late forties. She walks around the yard, taking a good look around her. There’s a lane runs along the side of the yard and she sticks her head over the fence, like she’s checking if it’s all clear. Then she goes back in the house and comes out with this little girl. I had my binoculars with me, and I could see straight off it was Marlene’s kid. I couldn’t believe my luck. Anyway, the woman is holding Tanja by the hand, then she lets her go, and I can see she’s got a rope tied round the little girl’s waist. The kid tries to run off, but she gets yanked off her feet before she’s gone a dozen yards. The woman walks her round the yard for ten minutes like a dog on a lead, then picks her up and carries her back indoors.”
“You’re sure this was Tanja?”
The Shark nodded like a man with palsy. “I’m telling you, Petra, no mistaking her. I had her photo with me, just to be on the safe side. It was Tanja. No messing.” He gave her an eager grin.
Petra shook her head, hardly able to believe that the bone she’d thrown to keep him quiet had given them so much to chew on. Much as she had come to respect Carol Jordan and the quality of the work she was doing, she still wanted to nail Radecki herself. And it looked as if she might finally have her hand on the lever that would deliver him to her. “That’s terrific, Sharkster.”
“So what do we do now?” he demanded.
“We go and see Plesch and decide how we’re going to liberate the kid and take care of Marlene so Krasic and Radecki can’t reach out for her. Well done, kid. I’m impressed.”
It was all he wanted to hear. A grin split his face from ear to ear. “It was your idea, Petra.”
“Maybe. But it was your hard work that made it happen. Come on, Shark. Let’s make Plesch’s day.”
When Tadeusz had told her his was a small office, he hadn’t been joking, Carol thought. There was barely enough room for the table and four chairs in the room above the amusement arcade. However, in spite of the scruffy stairway that led upstairs, the office itself was as plush as she would have expected. It reeked of stale cigar smoke, but the furnishings were expensive leather executive desk chairs and the table was a solid piece of limed oak. A bottle of marc de champagne and one of Jack Daniels sat on a small side table beside four crystal tumblers, and the ashtrays were four pieces of hand-crafted glass. The walls and ceiling were lined with sound-absorbing tiles so that none of the electronic cacophony from below penetrated this quiet sanctum.
“Very choice,” Carol said, spinning one of the chairs on its swivel. “I see you like to impress those you do business with.”
Tadeusz shrugged. “Why be uncomfortable?” He glanced at his watch. “Make yourself at home. Darko will be here any time now. Would you like a drink?”
She shook her head. “A bit early in the day for me to hit the brandy.” She settled down in the chair facing the door.
Tadeusz raised his eyebrows. “The bodyguard’s seat, huh?”
“What?”
“Bodyguards always sit where they can see the door.”
Carol laughed. “And women over thirty always sit with their backs to the window, Tadzio.”
“Not something you have to worry about, Caroline.”
Before she could respond to the compliment, the door opened. Fuck me, it’s a Centurion tank with legs, Carol thought.
Krasic stood on the threshold, shoulders almost as broad as the doorway itself. His eyes were shadowed under frowning brows as he took in the scene. Turn on the charm, Carol, she told herself, jumping to her feet. She crossed the short distance between them, hand extended, smile masking the deep unease this man’s physical presence provoked in her. “You must be Darko,” she said cheerfully. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
He took her hand in a surprisingly gentle grip. “Mine is pleasure,” he said in heavily accented English, his brooding stare giving the lie to his words. He looked over her shoulder and said something in rapid German.
Tadeusz snorted with laughter. “He says you’re every bit as beautiful as I said. Darko, you are such a smooth-talking bastard with the ladies. Come on, sit down, have a drink.”
Krasic pulled out a chair for Carol, poured himself a Jack Daniels and sat down opposite her, his eyes fixed on her face. “So, you are to answer our English problem?” he said, his voice a challenge.
“I think we can be of mutual assistance, yes.”
“Caroline needs workers and she has a source of paperwork that’s far better than anything Colin Osborne ever came up with. All we need to do now is to arrange a schedule for delivery and payment,” Tadeusz said, his manner businesslike as he sat down and lit a cigar.
“Tadeusz has shown me how your operation works. I’m impressed with how well organized the system is.” She gave Krasic an encouraging smile. “I only work with people once I’m satisfied they can deliver what they promise, and I’ve seen enough now to know that’s true of you guys.”
“We also work only with trust,” Krasic said. “Do we trust you?”
“Come on, Darko, stop being such a hard-nosed bastard. We’ve checked Caroline’s credentials, we know she’s one of us. Now, how soon can we deliver her first load?”
Krasic shrugged. “Three week?”
“It’s going to take that long?” Carol asked. “I thought you had a pretty streamlined operation going.”
“Things are difficult after Osborne has died,” Krasic said.
“What about the ones we’re warehousing in Rotterdam?” Tadeusz butted in. “Can’t we move some of them into England sooner than that?”
Krasic frowned. “I suppose so. You are in hurry?”
“I’ll take delivery whenever you can arrange it. But if you’ve been warehousing the goods, I want to check them for myself before they leave. I don’t want a container-load of corpses on my hands.”
Krasic darted a look at his boss. Tadeusz spread his hands. “Of course, Caroline. Darko, why don’t you set up a trip for the beginning of next week. Caroline and I will meet you in Rotterdam at the weekend before you load, and she can check it out for herself.”
Krasic stared at Tadeusz in disbelief, then spoke in German. Carol wished she knew the language better. Her verbal memory only worked in English; there was no way she could reproduce conversation in a foreign language. Tadeusz replied in a
tone of rebuke, then returned to English. “I apologize, we shouldn’t exclude you from our discussion, but Darko’s English isn’t as good as mine. He’s simply being over-protective. He’s always anxious when I step out of my administrative role and get involved in the action. But sometimes I like to see things for myself. So, are you able to come to Rotterdam at the weekend to inspect your goods?”
She nodded. “I’d like that. And that gives me enough time to have things in place at my end. I need to make sure my people have everything ready.”
“How many can you take?” Tadeusz asked.
“Thirty, to begin with,” she said. It was a figure she’d agreed with Morgan. Not too many for safe passage in a container, not so few that it wouldn’t be worth Tadeusz’s while. “Then, after that, twenty a month.”
“That’s not so many,” Krasic objected. “We can supply many more.”
“Maybe so, but that’s all I need. If this goes as well as I expect, it’s entirely possible that I will expand my operation. A lot depends on my source for the paperwork. I’m getting top-class documentation, and I don’t want to risk that by taking the pitcher to the well too often. So, for now, it’s twenty bodies a month. Take it or leave it, Mr. Krasic.” Carol had no difficulty in sounding tough. She’d spent enough hours in interview rooms with hard cases to have honed her skills in that area. She accompanied her words with a level gaze and unsmiling expression.
“Those numbers will be fine,” Tadeusz said. “Thirty in the first shipment followed by twenty a month. Yes, we could use an outlet for more than that, but frankly I’d rather ship twenty knowing it wasn’t going to backfire than send sixty with no certainties. Now all we have to settle is the financial arrangements.”
Carol smiled. She’d done it. And in record time. She wished she could see Morgan’s face when he got her next e-mail. Everything was in place. This weekend in Rotterdam they would finally nab Tadeusz Radecki and bring his empire crashing down around his ears. “Yes,” she said cheerfully. “Let’s talk money.”
Tony had encountered plenty of clinical psychologists—and cops too—who had built walls between themselves and the distressing experiences their work exposed them to. He couldn’t find it in his heart to blame them for imposing that distance. No sane person would seek out the sights they had to see, the verbal torrents of pain and anger they had to hear, the fractured remnants of human beings they had to deal with. However he had promised himself at the start of his clinical career that he would never shy away from empathy, whatever the cost. If the price became too high, he could always do something else for a living. But to lose the capacity to comprehend the pain of others, perpetrators as well as victims, was a kind of dishonesty, he believed.
The sheaf of papers he had brought back from Schloss Hochenstein stretched that credo almost to breaking point. The dispassionate lists of names, diagnoses and so-called treatments conjured up such a vision of hell that he found himself wishing he could assimilate the material with calm scientific objectivity. Instead, he felt harrowed to his very core. Simply being in possession of this information was enough to steal sleep from his nights for a long time to come, he knew only too well.
Dr. Wertheimer had been right about the obsessive record keeping of the Nazi medical establishment. There were hundreds of names, spread out across the whole country. Every child had its accompanying set of vital statistics—name, age, address, names and occupations of parents. The reason for their hospitalization came next. Most common was “mental retardation,” closely followed by “physical handicap.” But some of the explanations for removing children from their families were profoundly chilling. “Congenital laziness.” “Anti-social behaviour.” “Racially contaminated.”
What must it have been like for the parents of such children, having to stand by while their offspring were dragged from them, knowing that to protest would be to bring retribution crashing down on their own heads without any prospect of saving their child? They must, he thought, have entered a state of denial that would have destroyed them emotionally and psychologically. No wonder post-war generations of Germans didn’t want to be confronted with what had been done to their own children with their apparent consent.
At least the profoundly handicapped among the children would have been spared any real understanding of what was happening to them. But for the others, watching as their fellow inmates perished around them, daily life must have shrunk to the pinprick of relief when another day dawned and their eyes were open to see it.
The fate of many of the children was listed very simply. “Treated with injections of experimental drugs. Failed to respond.” Followed by the date and time of death. It was code for euthanasia, that much was obvious. This was a rare example of a point where the arrogance of the regime had faltered. Even though they were convinced they would never be called to account for what had been done to these children in the name of Aryan purity, they’d felt the need for euphemism here.
That didn’t mean there was much residual respect for the innocence of their victims, however. The destiny of other children was catalogued in brief terms that left Tony feeling ashamed to belong to the medical profession. Some had died in agony after being injected in the eyes in a series of experiments relating to eye colour. Others had been subjected to research into sleep cycles that had driven them mad. The list went on, sometimes with references to scientific papers where the results could be seen.
And no one had been punished for this. Worse, there were cases where a tacit deal had been done between the Allies and the defeated Nazis. Research conclusions would become the property of the victors in return for the silence of the perpetrators.
If Geronimo had paid some terrible personal price for what had been done in the name of science sixty years before, it didn’t surprise Tony that he would be consumed by rage and bitterness. All those victims, and not a single person called to account. He was a rational man, and it enraged him. How much worse would it feel to be a second or third generation victim of such viciousness?
Geronimo was going for the wrong targets, it was true. He might deplore its end result, but Tony couldn’t find it in his heart to condemn unequivocally the desire for vengeance that fuelled him.
…P: you’re right, the case notes are very chilling. are there any forensic traces on the file?
M: Too early to say. It’s with the document examiner now. And I had an idea myself this afternoon. So many of our major traffic intersections are covered by CCTV now, I’ve asked for all the tapes from the day of de Groot’s murder and I’m going to get my team to go through them all to see if they can spot a dark-coloured VW Golf with German plates.
P: great idea.
M: Maybe. It will really only be any use if we can crossmatch it with one of the other lists. It’s going to take ages to get anything comprehensive about the boats.
P: tony’s been pursuing the idea of victims of psychological torture. today he picked up lists of child victims of the nazis. he’s spending this evening scanning in all the names on to a master list, so he’ll be able to let you have that as well. another possible list for cross-matching of names.
M: It’s hard to feel that we’re moving forward, all the same.
P: the stories in the papers this morning haven’t helped either.
M: At least they don’t seem to have picked up on the connection to our case, so we’re being left in peace. Has it provoked more co-operation among the German forces?
P: i don’t really know. i’m too far out of the loop. you’ll probably hear before i will. but the tv news this evening ran a piece about university lecturers living in fear of a serial killer. i’m afraid he’s going to go to ground.
M: Either that or take more risks. If he can’t rely on his usual method of setting up his victims, he’ll find some other way. It’s all very depressing. Cheer me up. How are things with your other undercover operation?
P: it looks like we’ve located marlene krebs’ daughter. what we’re going to d
o is simultaneously raid the place where the daughter is being kept AND put marlene in protective custody out of radecki’s reach. once we have him behind bars, we’ll get everything else we need. clever, no?
M: As long as you don’t compromise Jordan in the process.
P: trust me, it’s all sorted. or it will be, anyway. i’m thinking we can organize it all for the same time. the sting goes off with jordan and we do our stuff, so nobody compromises anybody else.
M: Congratulations! I know how hard you’ve worked for this!
P: i think we need to celebrate in person, marijke. will you come to berlin?
M: I’d love to. But right now I’m too wrapped up in this case. Why don’t you take some days leave after you take Radecki down and come to Leiden?
P: i don’t know, it’ll be crazy here after we nail him. let’s just leave it that we’ll crack open the champagne in one city or other once we’ve both got our cases out of the way.
M: OK. But I want you to know that I feel confident about meeting face to face at last.
P: me too. scared, but confident too.
M: I need to go now, I’m actually still at work and there is more stuff I need to do.
P: ok. the harder you work, the sooner the case will be solved and we can plan getting together.
M: You think so?
P: i know it.
32
Under different circumstances, Carol would have found it hard to fault the evening. An attentive, handsome host, gourmet food, an array of remarkable wines, and surroundings that would have been the envy of the production editor of any interior design magazine. Not to mention conversation that had ranged across politics, music and foreign travel before taking roost in the more intimate territory of past relationships.