by Simon Toyne
‘Like what?’
‘About the town. About the cell. How the door was locked. Who else was upstairs.’
‘And you told him?’
‘It didn’t occur to me not to. His voice was so reassuring. It’s hard to explain.’
‘What else did he ask?’
Parra stared at his hands. Turned them over again. ‘He mentioned a name. Asked if it meant anything to me.’
‘What name?’
‘Magellan. He asked me if there was anyone in town called Magellan.’
‘Anything else?’
Parra shook his head. ‘He just kept asking about Magellan, if I knew who he was. Said it was important. When I told him I didn’t know, it felt like I was letting him down. It was that voice, like it was inside my head, speaking my thoughts. It was almost like he was me. That’s why I didn’t hide anything from him. Why would I?’
‘Do you remember anything else he talked about?’
Parra took a sip of coffee. Shook his head. ‘Everything seems vague now. I do remember at one point he told me to place my hands on a wall and I looked down and there it was right in front of me where the next step should have been. He told me to put my hands on it and keep them there so I wouldn’t get lost in the mist while he stepped away for a moment. So I did. I placed my hands on the wall and waited for him to come back.’ He blinked and looked up at Amand. ‘Then I heard you calling my name, and I opened my eyes – and he was gone.’
He looked back down at his hands. Made fists. Opened them again. ‘I couldn’t take my hands off the table. It was like they were stuck in the dream, or whatever it was. I mean, I could see they were on the table, but I could also feel the wall.’ He looked up at Amand with hurt in his eyes. ‘I’m sorry. I let him get away.’
Amand smiled. ‘Don’t worry about it. Not your fault. I should have checked him out first. We’ll get him back, don’t worry. We’ll interview him together. Good cop, bad cop – old school. You can be bad cop, if you like.’ Parra attempted a smile but his eyes remained glazed, like he was still in the mist. ‘You want to go home,’ Amand said, ‘maybe get some rest? You’ve had a hell of a morning, no one would think bad of you if you wanted to take it easy for a few hours.’
‘No, I’m fine, honestly. Only …’ Parra shook his head and stared back down at the floor. ‘There’s something else he asked me about. Something I can’t quite remember …’
The desk phone rang, making everyone jump. Henri grabbed it. ‘Commissariat de Police. Sergeant Henri speaking.’ He frowned. ‘Who is this, please?’
He pressed a button to put the call on hold and looked over at Amand. ‘You’re not going to believe this,’ he said, holding out the phone.
Amand took it. ‘Commandant Amand?’
‘Do you still have the man known as Solomon Creed in custody?’ The voice was deep and the man’s French was perfect but accented, American maybe.
‘Who am I speaking with?’
‘I’m his doctor,’ the voice replied, ‘his psychiatrist. My name is Magellan. Doctor Cezar Magellan.’
21
Solomon moved down the ancient streets of Cordes, following the street map in his head, keeping to the passageways and the back roads. He was heading to the address he had dredged from his memory while waiting in the cell. The sergeant had confirmed its significance, as had the brand on his arm.
He stopped at a junction and listened ahead for the sound of footsteps or conversation. He needed to be cautious and make the best use of his liberty. They would discover he was missing sooner or later – sooner, most probably – and a stranger like him in a town like this could not hope to stay hidden for long.
The street ahead was silent. He passed into it for a sunlit moment before ducking into the shadows of a narrow alleyway and continuing on his way.
There was something here in this town, something that could help him unlock the mystery of himself. He was here for a reason, he felt certain of it, as certain as he knew that all the facts tumbling through his head were correct. It was tied up with everything that had brought him here: the tailor; the missing suit; the words written on the wall; and Magellan – always Magellan – the word burning in his mind like a red sun with questions spinning round it like planets.
What was Magellan?
Who was Magellan?
And was he trying to find him?
Or was he running away?
22
‘Do you have him in custody?’ Magellan repeated, his voice rumbling down the phone.
There was a background hiss, like tyres on tarmac that matched the white noise in Amand’s head as he tried to process everything he’d just heard.
Doctor Cezar Magellan … his psychiatrist … the man KNOWN as Solomon Creed.
‘Who is he then?’ Amand said out loud. ‘If not Solomon Creed, then who?’
‘I’d rather not go into that. He’s very artful, very persuasive. He can extract information from people without them realizing he’s doing it, therefore the less you know about him the better.’ Amand glanced at Parra opening and closing his hands. ‘Anything I do tell you might be accidentally communicated to him, which could be very dangerous. It could trigger his psychosis. You should keep him in isolation until I get there.’
Amand let out a heavy sigh. ‘We don’t have him.’
‘What?’
‘He escaped.’
A sigh whispered down the line, mingling with the background hiss. ‘How long ago?’
‘Not long. Fifteen minutes maybe. He won’t have gone far. We’ll get him back. He was asking about you.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. He didn’t seem to know who you were. Kept asking if you lived here.’
‘Part of his therapy involves a form of memory control. My team and I have pioneered a technique that enables us to remove certain … toxic memories from the minds of particularly disturbed patients, similar to how surgeons remove cancerous cells to protect healthy ones and thereby save the patient. It’s a complex and delicate process, a combination of therapy and medication, and has to be conducted in a very controlled, clinical environment. Unfortunately, this particular patient absconded before his treatment was complete. We had managed to remove his old, damaged identity but had not yet reinstated a repaired version of it. Consequently there’s a gap in his memory where his sense of self should be, and that’s one of the reasons he’s so dangerous. Identity is the foundation of the human psyche and his natural instincts will be driving him to try to remember who he is. He’ll be feeling vulnerable and confused. He must be found as quickly as possible so I can finish his therapy before he regresses and does something both he and we will regret.’
Amand pictured Josef Engel’s broken body lying on the floor of his atelier. ‘We may already be too late.’
‘I disagree. He has an implant in his arm that releases a controlled dose of antipsychotic drugs designed to suppress the centres of the brain that control his more extreme urges. He is currently incapable of experiencing any of the more vivid emotions that are linked to violence – anger, love, jealousy. At the moment he will be incapable of harming anyone.’
Amand nodded and remembered how Solomon had clutched at his shoulder from time to time. ‘How long does this implant last?’
‘Twenty-eight days.’
‘And when did he escape from your facility?’
There was a pause. More background hiss. ‘He’s not dangerous, I assure y—’
‘How long?’
Another pause. ‘Twenty-five days. That’s why we must find him quickly. When the meds start to wear off, he’ll begin to remember who he is: what he is. That is when he will become dangerous, not only to himself but to anyone else around him.’
Amand thought of him now, walking the streets of his quiet little town, heading who knew where, capable of who knew what. ‘What kind of toxic memories did you remove?’
A crackle of static cut through the office before Magellan could answer and Pie
rre’s voice whispered through the radio instead.
– Vingt-sept to base.
Henri grabbed the dispatcher’s mic and pressed the button to respond. ‘This is base. What’s up?’
– I’m at Marie-Claude’s house. I rang the doorbell but no one answered so I came round the back and found the door wide open and the window broken.
Parra sat up in his chair, his eyes wide with alarm. ‘That’s it!’ He looked up at Amand. ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to remember. Solomon Creed asked me if Josef Engel had any relatives.’
‘Did you tell him?’
Parra shook his head. Confused. ‘I can’t remember. Maybe.’
– I’m going in to check it out, Pierre whispered.
‘No,’ Amand said, taking a step toward Henri and holding his hand up. ‘Tell him to wait. I’ll be there in five minutes.’
Henri raised the mic to speak but it was too late. They all heard it.
A shout cut short. A crunch like something heavy falling. Then the radio went dead.
IV
‘There are but three parts to make up a man: his shadow behind, the road ahead and the clothes on his back.’
Traditional
Extract from
DARK MATERIAL – THE DEVIL’S TAILOR: DEATH AND LIFE IN DIE SCHNEIDER LAGER
By Herman Lansky
My journey to the Hell that was Die Schneider Lager began at Radogast train station a little after dawn on a clear, summer morning in August. It was light enough to see and early enough that the good citizens of Łódź were spared the sight of us marching to the station carrying the single suitcases we had each been allowed. We had no idea where we were going. Many people wore winter coats in case it ended up being somewhere cold.
We were herded together on the platform in front of a line of foul-smelling cattle cars that had been hosed down and disinfected with calcium chloride powder. A sludge of shit and piss and vomit was packed between the boards and in the corners and a single bucket stood by the door, grimed with the filth of those who’d travelled before us.
We were told to leave our luggage on the platform and that we would be reunited with it at our destination. Many people refused. They had concealed gold and jewels in their bags, portable wealth they’d hidden from the Germans. One woman close by me struggled with a guard as he tried to take her leather bag. She was matronly, and elegantly dressed with a long feather swooping away from an expensive-looking grey felt hat. A German officer came forward, drawn by the struggle. I thought he was going to scold the guard for being too rough with such an obviously respectable woman. Instead he drew his Luger and shot the woman through the head.
I still remember the pure shock of that moment, staring down at the lady’s grey hat lying on the dusty platform with fresh, bright blood speckling the feather. We all gave up our suitcases after that. I doubt they even left Radogast station.
We were packed a hundred or more into stifling cars built to transport thirty cows. Those who had worn extra clothes now struggled to remove them and had to let them fall to the filthy floor, so scarce was the space available. But nobody complained. Everyone remembered that calm German officer and the blood-jewelled hat on the platform.
The train pulled out of Radogast station and I watched Łódź slip away through a small crack in the wooden wall of the carriage. The last time I had left there I had been in first class on my way to visit one of our larger stores in Warsaw, the morning paper in my hand and a fresh pot of coffee steaming on the table in front of me. This time I was standing and had barely enough air to breathe. Someone used the bucket before we’d even left the city, filling the car with the wet stench of shit and drawing indignant complaints from the rest of us. We had no idea that the bucket would overflow long before we reached our destination, or that, by the end, we would all be pissing and shitting where we stood, trying our hardest with the rocking of the train to get it on the floor instead of on ourselves or neighbours.
Four days we were on that train. Four days with no food, no rest and no water except for when we pulled into sidings and they occasionally sprayed the cars with fire hoses and we would crush each other in our desperation to catch whatever drops we could on our clothes and in open mouths. All we knew was that we were heading west, relentlessly west, through the Czech mountains, into Austria and Germany and across the border into France where we arrived at our destination as night fell.
Mulhouse is something of an orphan of a place, close to the Swiss–German border. It has been fought over and traded between Germany, Switzerland and France for centuries, like an unloved child in a messy divorce. As a result, it has that peculiar, mongrel quality many border towns possess, neither one thing or another, with a strange local dialect like stilted French with German inflections and words embedded in it. It is also a centre for cotton manufacture, which was why we had ended up there.
We were kept locked inside the cattle cars until dark, again to spare the good citizens of the town the unpleasant sight of us in all our ragged filth and squalor. Several people had died in our carriage on the journey and their bodies lay on the floor beneath our feet, spoiling fast in the trapped heat. Some of the people nearest the corpses were becoming hysterical, as if death was a virus that could be caught by proximity to it. Only when night had fallen were the doors finally unlocked.
We spilled out of those stinking carriages and lined up alongside the railway tracks, breathing our first breaths of clean air while the corpses were carted away. A German officer stood on a flatbed railway carriage looking down on the spectacle of us. Even in my exhaustion and wretchedness I noticed how beautifully his uniform was cut. This was the first time I ever saw Standartenführer Artur Samler, the newly appointed commandant of the work camp designated as ‘Mulhouse A’ but which came to be known as Die Schneider Lager – The Tailors’ Camp.
He was so elegant and civilized-looking that first time I saw him that I naively thought we were going to be all right, that perhaps this place would mark a new beginning away from the casual brutality we had experienced back in the Łódź ghetto. I didn’t realize that Artur Samler would turn out to be the most evil and sadistic man I have ever encountered before or since.
Only now, looking back, do I realize that Samler was not a man at all. He was something else, something that looked human but had no soul. A devil in a beautifully cut uniform.
23
The thin tyres of Amand’s old Citroën squealed and bumped down the narrow cobbled streets of Cordes, the underpowered engine whining in protest. Parra was in the passenger seat, bracing himself against the dashboard while Amand kept his foot down, going way too fast and not nearly fast enough. Marie-Claude lived on the far side of the hill, ten minutes’ walk from the Commissariat but only two minutes’ drive if you took the direct route and didn’t bother with the brakes too much.
‘Call Magellan back,’ Amand shouted, leaning on the horn as they thundered through a large stone arch to warn anyone to get out of the way. Parra dialled the number and put his phone on loudspeaker and held it towards Amand.
‘Tell me about Solomon Creed,’ Amand said the moment Magellan answered.
‘As I said before, I’d rather not go into detail.’ Magellan’s deep voice mingled with the high-pitched whine of the engine.
‘Listen to me,’ Amand said, trying to keep his voice calm. ‘I’m driving to a house right now with an officer down and possibly a woman and a young boy inside. I have strong reason to believe that your patient may be involved.’
‘As I said before his condition is controlled by …’
‘The magic implant, except he’s been missing for twenty-five days. How do you know he hasn’t cut it out?’
‘It’s intra-muscular and implanted fairly deep. It’s extremely unlikely he will have managed to remove it.’
‘But not impossible?’
‘No.’
‘OK, let’s say he has. What should we expect? What makes him so dangerous?’
The
y reached the top of the hill and the car lifted high on its suspension before bouncing heavily down as they entered the covered market square and flashed past the thick stone columns holding up the tiled roof. They rumbled past tables spilling out of cafés and on to the street and started to descend the other side of the hill.
‘He’s not ordinary. Quite the opposite, in fact. I have been working in the field of criminal psychology for over forty years, have had the chance to study some pure psychopaths, subjects so psychologically damaged they could barely be classed as human, and in all that time I have never come across anyone even remotely like him.’
Amand stamped on the brakes and threw the car to the right, sliding into a sharp turn past one of the old garrison towers, the wheels bouncing over uneven cobbles and struggling to grip. ‘But why is he dangerous?’ Amand shouted over the din of the engine. ‘We’re almost at the house.’
There was a pause and Amand wondered if they had been cut off, then Magellan’s voice answered.
‘The man you know as Solomon Creed is a high-functioning paranoid schizophrenic with a partially untreated underlying psychosis. He believes he is a fallen angel on a divine mission to save certain people’s souls in order to ultimately save his own. This is not an entirely original delusion but with him it is convincing. His IQ is off the charts and his mind is so powerful that not only does he believe it, he can make others believe it too. He is single-minded in his belief and has proved to be ruthless in its execution. He can out-think you, out-manoeuvre you and he can kill as easily as breathing. That’s why you should keep your distance and call in support. Do not approach him alone.’
‘Duly noted,’ Amand braked hard and threw the wheel to the left before stamping back on the accelerator to slide through the bend, hoping the road ahead was clear.
It wasn’t.
A wall of shocked faces stared up at the screaming car, a coachload of tourists lumbering up the hill and filling the narrow street with their soft bodies.