The Boy Who Saw: A gripping thriller that will keep you hooked

by Simon Toyne

  He stood for a moment, trying to work out which way was east so he could pray to Mecca. He took off his boots and knelt on the painted concrete floor to say the Salah. When he was done, he lay down on the narrow bed, adding an extra prayer that tomorrow would bring better fortune. He fell asleep whispering his words of hope.

  84

  Solomon followed Renan down a road that curved away through thick trees to quickly hide the gates and walls. After half a minute’s walk, the road straightened again and he saw buildings ahead, a collection of modern, single-storey blocks arranged around a market square. The houses were plain and neat, their shutters painted a variety of bright, cheerful colours as if children had designed them using crayons. They drew nearer and Solomon could see stalls in the market selling bread and cheese and vegetables. It looked like market day in any village in France, except the stall-holders wore black overalls and there was one old man who was diligently inspecting the aubergines and putting every one into a basket that already overflowed with them.

  ‘Monsieur Lanois,’ Renan whispered. ‘Made a fortune as a commodities trader.’

  ‘Old instincts die hard,’ Solomon murmured.

  They entered the market square and a thin elegant woman appeared from the door of a house, dancing to some unheard tune. She floated up to Solomon, smiled and spun away, moving to the tune in her head.

  ‘Madame Chambord,’ Renan whispered. ‘One of the heirs to a great fashion house. Started as a model and ended up running the whole of the European division. She has dined with kings and presidents, lived a life most of us can only dream about, and now she remembers none of it.’

  Solomon watched her dance around the stalls, the other shoppers smiling at her as if it was perfectly normal, while the men in black overalls maintained a cold scrutiny. ‘There’s a lot of security here,’ he observed.

  ‘It’s to protect the residents. We ignore abnormal behaviour as far as we can, but sometimes it gets out of hand, or one of the other residents gets angry or upset and we have to step in. Take Monsieur Lanois and his aubergines; if he were doing this in a normal market, he would be stared at, whispered about, probably challenged and questioned, which would make him feel confused and vulnerable. Here, we let him fill his bag as if it’s perfectly normal. We let them do what they’re comfortable doing, no matter how crazy, as long as they’re not harming anyone else. You’ll see what I mean at Monsieur Adelstein’s house. It’s the one with the pale-blue shutters.’

  The house was set apart from the rest with no other houses beyond, only green fields and more trees hiding the distant perimeter wall. Solomon heard a steady rattling sound coming from the back of the house and felt suddenly nervous at the prospect of finally meeting someone who might know him. They reached the door and Renan turned to him. ‘The moment he gets upset, we leave, OK?’

  Solomon nodded and Renan knocked once before opening the door. ‘Monsieur Adelstein,’ he said. ‘You have a visitor.’

  Solomon followed him into a room that was like something from a fairy tale. Lengths of striped cloth were draped over every surface and pooled on to the floor, and at the centre of it all stood an old loom, clattering away like a wooden spider, with the weaver hunched over it. He was old, his body crooked from long years bent over the loom, and his skin loose and leathery. He had large brown liver spots on his bald head and a long white beard that trailed down into the warp, as if he was weaving himself into the cloth. But his eyes were sharp and his legs moved on the treadles with the fluid grace of a dancer, and his fingers were nimble too, constantly plucking and separating the threads, spacing them out, tamping the weft down as the transports moved up and down in time with his footwork and the shuttle flew back and forth. He seemed radiantly happy, as if a light was shining out of him, and Solomon wondered what Léo would have made of him had he been here.

  ‘Monsieur Adelstein,’ Renan repeated, stepping further into the room and placing his hand gently on the weaver’s shoulder. ‘Your visitor.’

  The old man blinked like he was waking from a dream and the machine slowed to a halt. He turned and looked up at Solomon with a look of pleasant surprise that froze the moment he saw him. ‘You!’ he said, rising from his stool, eyes wide. ‘Der bleiche Mann. Je pensais que je vous rêvé. I thought I dreamed you.’ The different languages tripped over each other, revealing the shifting currents in the old man’s mind. ‘Are you a dream? Am I dreaming now?’

  Solomon looked down at the old man, barely taller now than when he’d been seated. He had hoped he might recognize Otto, but the man standing before him was a stranger. ‘I’m here,’ he said, extending his hand. The weaver flinched. ‘Take my hand,’ Solomon said. ‘You cannot take hold of a dream.’

  Otto Adelstein looked at Solomon’s hand for a long while before slowly reaching out and taking it. A smile spread across his face. ‘You are here,’ he said, running his fingers over Solomon’s hand and the surface of his jacket. ‘I thought you were only in my mind, and my mind is slippery. Things come, things go. Dreams and memory, they all seem the same to me.’ His smile faded and he let go of Solomon’s hand. ‘Why are you here?’ He looked around the room. ‘Where is this place?’

  ‘This is your atelier, Monsieur Adelstein,’ Renan stepped forward, smiling. ‘This man has come to see you. He’s come to see your work.’

  The old man looked around at the swathes of striped cloth. ‘My work. Yes. Of course.’ He moved over to a pile of the material and picked up an armful. ‘I kept my promise to you,’ he said, studying the irregular stripes as if reading. ‘The names are all here, like you asked.’ He let the cloth run through his arms and down to the floor. Then he looked around in confusion before his eyes found Solomon again. ‘I know you, monsieur. I know you.’

  Solomon smiled at him, his heart hammering in his chest. ‘Who am I?’

  ‘You are der bleiche Mann,’ Otto said. ‘The pale man. You came back. You said you would and here you are.’

  ‘What else did I say? How do you know me?’

  The weaver frowned. ‘The camp. You were there at the camp, Die Schneider Lager, you were there at the end. You came when we thought we were lost. You said there was a way out, that if we gave you our names, you could save us. You told us to write our names down somewhere they could be seen but where they were also hidden, and that this was how we could be saved, by being visible and invisible at the same time. He said we had to keep the list of names with us always. We were frightened and didn’t understand, but nothing made sense in that place. It was Max who figured it out. He said we should speak to the Golem and make you a suit. And that’s what we did. I spoke our names to the Golem, the ones you took from us and the ones you gave us back, and the Golem whispered them back in the language of threads.’ He held up the cloth. ‘The cloth remembers. The cloth is the list of the saved, and also of the damned.’ He pointed at Solomon’s suit. ‘You took the jacket and we kept the rest – the waistcoat, the lining and the trousers. But you have the waistcoat, which means Josef is dead.’ Tears began to run down the creases of his face into the white cloud of his beard. ‘I’m frightened of you, pale man. I’m afraid of why you are here.’

  ‘I’m here because I have forgotten who I am,’ Solomon said. ‘I was hoping you might help me remember. I came looking for Josef Engel, but I was too late. He left a note that led me to you. That’s why I’m here, asking you if you can help me. Can you tell me who I am?’

  ‘You are he,’ Otto said, backing away from Solomon, his voice cracking with fear. ‘You are the dark fire in the night, the stealer of souls.’ He bumped up against the wall and slid to the floor. ‘I don’t want to die. I kept my promise. I kept the names.’ He buried his face in the striped material to muffle his broken sobs.

  ‘Time to go,’ Renan said, grabbing Solomon’s arm and pulling him towards the door.

  ‘Who am I?’ Solomon said. ‘What’s the Golem? Who’s Max – is he the other survivor?’

  ‘Please don’t take me,�
� the weaver sobbed. ‘I don’t want to go where you might take me.’

  ‘Monsieur!’ Renan pulled Solomon backwards out of the door.

  ‘Who’s Max?’ Solomon repeated, but Renan closed the door before the old man could answer.

  ‘He’ll be fine in a second,’ Renan said. ‘The residents often get really upset or confused, but they forget all about it in seconds. They’re a lot like children.’

  Solomon stood outside the door listening to Otto Adelstein weeping and begging for pity and pleading. The encounter had left him frustrated and confused; he was convinced that the weaver knew more, much more. He wanted to kick the door down and shake it out of him, but the brand on his arm flared in pain and he closed his eyes and focused on that instead to help him calm down. Inside the house, the loom started up again, the shuttling sound mingling with the old man’s sobs.

  ‘Can we go back in?’ Solomon asked.

  Renan shook his head. ‘I’m not risking it. He still sounds pretty upset. If he sees you again, he might get worse. I let you in, you’ve seen him, now you have to leave again – that was the deal.’

  ‘Can we wait a little longer, to see if he calms down?’

  ‘No, we can’t.’ Renan started walking away and the burn in Solomon’s arm flared in pain as he thought about how easy it would be to break his neck, hide him in the bushes and slip back inside the house to force the old weaver to tell him more. He gripped his shoulder and sucked air against the pain. The old man had been afraid of him, terrified, and Solomon was afraid too. He was afraid of who he might have been, and who he might become again. He didn’t need to terrorize the old man to find out who he was because if he took that path he would already have his answer. Instead he walked away from the door, the heat of his pain steadily fading to nothing as he followed Renan back through the calm green of the dappled woods.

  85

  The Renault Scenic was parked outside when Solomon emerged from the loading bay and he saw the look of relief on Marie-Claude’s face when she spotted him. He got into the passenger seat and smiled at Léo. ‘How long was I in there?’

  ‘Just under an hour.’ Marie-Claude handed him a cheese baguette and a bottle of Badoit. ‘We’ve been having a fun time walking slowly round a supermarket.’

  ‘It was boring,’ Léo said from the back.

  ‘It was safe,’ Marie-Claude replied, ‘nice and boring and safe.’ She pulled away while Solomon was strapping himself in and winding his window down. ‘Well? Did you talk to him?’

  Solomon nodded and twisted the cap off the bottle of water. ‘He was very confused. Spoke in fragments and riddles. He seemed to recognize me, but I couldn’t remember him. He had a loom in his house where he spends all his time weaving a striped cloth with irregular lines on it, the same pattern over and over. He said the cloth was the list and the names were written in it.’

  ‘Oh my God. Did you get a sample of it, a picture?’

  ‘I didn’t need to.’ Solomon unbuttoned his waistcoat. ‘You said when you asked your grandfather for the names of the other survivors he gave you this.’ He opened the flap and showed her the striped lining. ‘This is the pattern Otto Adelstein spends all his time weaving. So he did give you the names.’

  Marie-Claude stared at the waistcoat, shook her head and turned back to the road. ‘No, he didn’t. He must have known what kind of place Monsieur Adelstein was living in and that I’d probably not get to see him. I think all he wanted was to get that waistcoat to him and I was his best option. He never wanted to help me. This is just another one of his rejections.’

  Solomon thought back through his meeting with Otto, replaying their conversation word-by-word. ‘I think you’re wrong. Your relationship with your grandfather was obviously difficult, but that note he left you drips with emotion and pain. I think he was annoyed and perplexed by your determination to learn about his past, but impressed by it too. His note suggests to me that he dearly wanted to tell you but was worried for you and was also bound by his sense of honour and responsibility to the other survivors. Don’t forget, his secret was Otto’s secret too. You’re right, he would have known what kind of facility Otto was kept in, but that also means he must have known about Otto’s fragile memory. I think he knew that sending you here with this waistcoat would trigger his memory and he would tell you what he could. And he did. He revealed what the list is.’

  ‘Yes, but what good is it if it’s in code?’

  ‘Otto also mentioned someone called Max. He said he and the survivors had to write down their names and keep them hidden in plain sight, that’s how they would be saved, and it was Max who figured out how to do it. He said he whispered the names to the Golem and it spoke them back in the language of threads. Does any of that mean anything to you?’

  Marie-Claude frowned. ‘I came across plenty of Maxes in my research, but I’d have to go back through them all to start narrowing it down. It’s a start, I suppose. As for the Golem, I’ve never heard of it before, not in relation to the camp, at least.’

  ‘The Golem is one of Nick Fury’s Howling Commando Monsters,’ Léo suggested.

  ‘It’s also a figure from Jewish folklore,’ Marie-Claude said. ‘An inanimate object in the shape of a man, brought to life and controlled by a master. A kind of monster really. There were plenty of monsters in the camp, most of them of the human variety. Maybe the Golem was one of those.’

  Solomon nodded as fresh information flooded his brain. ‘The most famous Golem story is about the Golem of Prague, built in the sixteenth century to protect the Jews from anti-Semitic attacks. Golem stories are always about Jews under attack, so the narrative is consistent with the Nazis’ reign of terror. Maybe Otto was speaking symbolically when he said he whispered the names to the Golem and it spoke the names back. Or maybe there was something in the camp, something the inmates used to keep secrets from the guards.’

  Marie-Claude nodded. ‘If you’re right, I know who we can ask.’

  ‘Who?’ Solomon asked.

  ‘John Hamilton, the man who found the survivors. He retired to Mulhouse and is writing a book about the camp. He works at the museum part-time as a guide. We’ve swapped notes a few times and he’s helped me with my research. Before you went, you said I should call someone I trusted if you didn’t come back and he was the person I thought of. He’s as passionate about telling the true story of the camp as I am and if anyone would know about any Golem legend inside Die Schneider Lager it would be him. Mulhouse is only a couple of hours’ drive from here. If we don’t hit any traffic we can be there before dark.’

  86

  The jet landed at the Basel Freiburg EuroAirport in a plume of spray from the recent rain and taxied to a stop by another black Range Rover with tinted windows.

  ‘Is this some kind of OCD thing you have going on?’ Amand said as he followed Magellan down the steps to the waiting car.

  ‘It’s the same hire company every time,’ Magellan said. ‘I guess they have a fleet of these things. They probably come bullet-proof as well, if you wanted.’

  Amand nodded and wondered again exactly who Magellan was working for. He turned on his phone and checked for messages. He had five missed calls – four from Henri and one from Parra – as well as three voicemail messages. He got into the Range Rover and listened to them as they drove out of the airport. Henri’s messages were all the same – no more news about Marie-Claude and questions about Amand’s whereabouts and when he would be back in the office. Parra wanted to know where he was too. He thought about calling Parra back and asking about the case. He wanted to find out if the bloody cane had been found and sent to the labs in Albi, and if it had, whether Madjid Lellouche remained in custody. In the end, he decided to leave it. He wasn’t on the case any more and he liked the idea of being off the grid. It made him feel freer and more secure and, strangely, less stressed. He switched the phone off and took the battery out as an added precaution.

  ‘Feeling paranoid?’ Magellan asked, nodding at th
e phone.

  ‘Maybe. What’s that saying? Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. I shouldn’t be here and I know how easy it is to track phone signals, so … paranoid is fine for now. How far is it to Mulhouse?’

  ‘Thirty kilometres. What’s your plan when we get there?’

  ‘My plan is to wait.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘Until someone shows up or we get news that someone else has found them.’

  ‘And how are you going to get any news with your phone switched off?’

  Amand looked down at his phone. ‘I’ll figure that out while we’re waiting.’

  87

  Madjid Lellouche woke suddenly in his cell and it took him a few moments to remember where he was. He had been dreaming of fields where the vines were all healthy and the grapes heavy and plump. It had been a good dream, but something had woken him from it. A sound.

  His hip was numb from lying on the thin mattress and he wondered how late it was. The lights were off but they’d been on when he’d fallen asleep. The street lights cast a long rectangle of yellow on the ceiling, the shadow of the window bars clearly defined. He looked up at the high window. There was some light in the sky, so it couldn’t be that late. There was also a thin slash of white light coming from somewhere else and Madjid glanced at the door, wondering if the jailer had brought him some food after all and left the hatch open, but it was shut. It was the door that was open.

  Madjid sat up in bed, remembering the buzz of the unlocking door and realizing it was this that had dragged him from sleep. He listened for more sounds outside in the corridor but everything was still: no noise, no movement.