The Pale House (A Gregor Reinhardt Novel)

by Luke McCallin

  “Pretty awful place,” Benfeld said, quietly. The bodies might have agreed, thought Reinhardt, immediately hating the thought. Morgues did that to you. Made you think inane things, like imparting thoughts and feelings to the dead. He walked over to the bodies, looking at them in proper light for the first time. The bone-pale pallor of their skin made their wounds stand out so much more. The mutilations to the faces were awful to look at, matted red and slivered with white where teeth and bone showed.

  “Where are the clothes?” Benfeld pointed to a heap on a table. “Anything?”

  Benfeld shook his head as he walked over to them and pulled a threadbare cardigan off the top of the pile. “Only this. There’s half a name tag on it. Looks like ‘Kapet . . .’ something-or-other. Rest of the name’s gone. The rest of the clothing gives us nothing, except it’s pretty obvious none of it was theirs.”

  The door banged open and a doctor walked in, a young-looking man in a white coat spotted and smeared with blood, and a stethoscope around his neck. He glowered at Benfeld, then turned bloodshot eyes on Reinhardt.

  “You’re the captain?” Reinhardt nodded. “You know your lieutenant here was making an absolute bloody nuisance of himself all morning? Well, it’s bloody outrageous. We’ve enough trouble keeping the living alive without worrying about what might or might not have happened to the dead.”

  Reinhardt offered the man a cigarette. He looked desperately tired, his eyes circled in gray.

  “Did the lieutenant tell you what happened? That three of my men were murdered last night close to where these bodies—those five there—were found?”

  “And I should care about those three men why?”

  “No particular reason,” said Reinhardt, leaning forward to light the man’s cigarette. “But this investigation is important, Doctor.”

  “Important enough to pull me away from other duties?”

  “The longer you argue, the longer you’ll be away,” said Reinhardt, not unsympathetically. He recognized the man’s protests for the form they were, and knowing the doctor needed to protest he was happy enough to give him the time to get it off his chest.

  The doctor walked over to the body on the table, then ran a cursory eye over those on the floor. He pursed his lips as he looked up at Reinhardt. “You really needed an examination of these men? It’s pretty bloody obvious what killed them.”

  “I know what killed them, Doctor. Dr. . . . ?”

  “Henke,” said the doctor.

  “I know they were shot first, then mutilated, Dr. Henke. I want the best idea of who they were.”

  “Who they were?” Reinhardt nodded. “Were they even soldiers?”

  Reinhardt shrugged. “I don’t know. My guess—”

  “Well, if they weren’t soldiers it’s not my business,” interrupted Henke. He sucked his cigarette red, then stubbed it out in a jar. “Why the hell didn’t you have them taken up to the city hospital?”

  “Doctor, please. I have my reasons.”

  “Next time, give them to someone who gives a shit, Captain. Preferably to someone who has had more than two hours’ sleep in three days.”

  “Doctor . . .”

  “Not to someone who may need to operate at any moment, and can’t afford a mistake no matter how tired he may be.”

  “I understand, Doctor.”

  “I wonder.”

  “I needed this done by someone I could trust. That good enough?”

  “Flattery, Captain?” asked Henke. He blinked slowly, as if he could push his exhaustion down and away, then nodded. “Very well,” he said. “Give me another cigarette, and we’ll see what we can see.”

  Squinting around the smoke spiraling up into his eye, Henke picked up a clipboard and ran a finger down a page of scrawled notes. “Very well,” he breathed out around a long puff of smoke, looking at the bodies and back to his notes. “Much of a muchness, really. Five men, all between the ages of thirty-five and forty years of age, I’d say. Average height. Except for him,” Henke said, pointing at the tallest of the corpses. “Six foot three inches, that one. Weight. More or less average for estimated age and height, although none of them would have tipped any scales. Not exactly malnourished, but they weren’t high on the hog when they were alive. They were in generally acceptable health. Acceptable for this time and place, of course. Signs of vitamin deficiency on the nails. Lack of calcium. Teeth in generally poor shape. A couple of them had some dentistry done at some point. Prewar stuff. Quite good work.

  “The bodies themselves . . . Fairly nondescript. No tattoos or any distinguishing marks of that sort. No birthmarks. A couple of scars. This one”—Henke pointed with his foot—“has what looks like shrapnel wounds on his back.” Reinhardt motioned, and Benfeld turned the body over to reveal a cluster of ridged little scars. “Hands show signs of extensive manual labor of some sort, with a fair bit of scarring and callusing. Marked difference in color between faces and torsos, between hands and arms. They were probably men who spent a lot of time outdoors.”

  “Anything conclusive from the shoulders, or the right hands?”

  “Such as?” yawned Henke.

  Reinhardt demonstrated. “If they were soldiers, they were likely riflemen, and likely right-handed as are most people. So, their right shoulders might show callusing, or bruising, from the recoil and weight of a rifle. And their right hands”—he demonstrated—“might show callusing on the forefinger, from the trigger, and the gap between thumb and forefinger, from the stock.”

  Henke nodded, yawning, again. “Yes. I see. No, nothing like that. Or if it’s there, it’s inconclusive. Moving on. Ligature marks on all their wrists. Tied up before death. Bruising to their knees. They were all quite extensively manhandled after they were killed. A lot of postmortem bruising and scrapes, consistent with a body being dragged around. Picked up, rolled over, that sort of thing.”

  “That would fit with what they were wearing, and where they were found,” murmured Reinhardt.

  “Indeed. Now, the cause of death. Single gunshot to the back of the head. Right at the nape. Exit wound through the forehead. Some bruising in the scalps would indicate their heads were forced forward by someone’s hand in their hair to expose the nape.” The doctor paused, and Reinhardt knew all three of them were imagining that, their minds conjuring up images of the particular hell those men had gone through in the last minutes of their lives.

  “What about the mutilations?”

  “Postmortem as well. Quite some time afterward, in fact. Done by a blunt object wielded with tremendous force. There’s only a few blows—in most cases, two or three—on each man. It takes someone with a lot of strength, or a lot of skill, or both, to inflict those wounds.” Henke yawned, looked up and down his notes. “And that’s about it, Captain.”

  “Lividity?”

  “Inconclusive. The bodies were obviously shifted around a lot.”

  “Time of death?”

  “Rigor mortis is gone. I’d say they were killed about a day and a half ago. No more.”

  “An autopsy will tell us more,” said Reinhardt, knowing how little the doctor would want to hear that.

  “An autopsy? Are you serious?”

  “Very.”

  “What the hell would you know, and want to know, anyway?” snapped Henke, tossing his clipboard down and walking around the table.

  Reinhardt put a hand on the doctor’s chest as he made to walk past. The man felt light, almost weightless. “I used to be a policeman. I know something of how these things work. I have an idea of who they were, but I need an autopsy to confirm it.”

  “Like what?”

  “What they ate, and when they ate it.”

  “Oh for God’s sake, Captain,” sighed Henke. “They’ll have eaten the same shit as the rest of us in this dump.”

  “Maybe. Please, Doctor. It’s important.”


  “So you keep bloody saying.”

  “If I have to, I will invoke Feldjaegerkorps authority.”

  “Look,” Henke said, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his palms, “even if I’d agree to do it, I’m not doing it now. I’m no good to anyone. I need some sleep before I go on duty at midday, seeing as I didn’t get much last night,” he said, glowering at Benfeld. “I’ll see what I can do tonight. If it’s a slow night.”

  “Doctor . . .”

  “It’s the best I can do, Captain,” interrupted Henke. “And don’t even think about bothering any others. They’ll give you shorter shrift than I did.”

  Reinhardt saw there would be no budging him. He offered him the packet of cigarettes. “The least I could do for your troubles.”

  “Indeed,” the doctor said under raised eyebrows, but there was a hint of a smile in his tired eyes. “Check in with me tonight. You or your charming lieutenant. No promises, mind,” he said, another cigarette waggling between his lips as he talked. Reinhardt lit it, and Henke nodded his thanks as he walked out. “Lights out as you leave,” he called.

  Reinhardt and Benfeld followed the doctor back upstairs more slowly. As they climbed the steps, the noise of the hospital crept steadily back in until, as they opened the door at the top of the staircase, it swept around them. Reinhardt felt the ghosts of the past, suddenly, wanting, needing, to be out of there, and he walked faster than he would otherwise have liked, back outside into the chill morning. He paused at the bottom of the steps, trying to relax, before turning to look back up at the hospital.

  Reinhardt clenched his jaw against the pain in his knee, and against the rage that surged not far behind it. In the bed opposite, the Austrian with the bandages over his eyes was weeping again, dry sobs, and Reinhardt stifled the urge to limp across and throttle the moaning bastard.

  He reached into the drawer on the little table next to him and pulled out the watch. He held it by its chain, watching it spiral first left, then right, then left again, the light flowing up and over it and catching on the inscription on the back. With his thumb he stroked the cursive letters, then pulled the bedclothes up and threw an arm across his face. The fire in his knee began to subside, and he breathed easier, his thumb stroking the watch, thinking, remembering, and he did not struggle his mind to understand the contradiction of how the memory of that British trench could calm him like it did.

  “It’ll fall off if you keep playing with it.”

  Reinhardt jumped. It was that nurse, again. The one who was always needling him, about the war, about politics, about everything. “I wasn’t . . .” he said, flushing red. He brought his hand out from under the covers, showing her the watch. She smiled, and it was something bright and vivacious.

  “Much better,” she said. “You should do that more often.”

  “Play with the watch?”

  “Smile.”

  He had not realized he had smiled at all.

  “Hopefully you’ll have a lot more to smile about soon enough.”

  “What?”

  “The war. It’s over. It’s finished,” she said as she bustled around. He liked watching her, the economy of her movements. Nothing wasted. She filled his water jug, then began straightening the sheets, then stopped and looked at him. “No one told you? This morning, in fact. An armistice, they’re calling it. Fighting stopped at eleven o’clock, today, this eleventh of November. And I’m sure someone somewhere was still fighting at five to eleven.”

  “Someone’s got to be the last to die,” muttered Reinhardt, but his heart was not in it. He stared at the ceiling, at the spiderweb tracery of cracks in the plaster. Over . . . ?

  “Spoken like a true stormtrooper,” the nurse said, sardonically. “Open wide.” She stuck a thermometer in his mouth.

  “It’s really over?” Reinhardt mumbled.

  “That’s what they’re saying. Lift up your head.” She plumped the pillow none too gently, and he lowered himself back down. She paused, one hand on her hip, the other smoothing her hair back over her ears. Her eyes were gray, very bright and piercing as she looked down on him.

  “What?” said Reinhardt, almost spitting out the thermometer.

  “Just thinking. What’s to become of someone like you, now?”

  “Someone like me?”

  “A soldier. Not just any soldier.”

  “A wounded soldier.”

  “Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” she said, plucking the thermometer out of his mouth. “Things could be worse, for you. But they’ll be better soon.”

  “Oh God,” he sighed, “not your bloody manifesto again.”

  “Yes, my manifesto again.” Her color rose, her eyes sparking. “You can laugh, or sneer, my friend. But someone like you ought to know that we can’t go back to the way things were. Look where that got you.”

  Reinhardt had no reply to that. He just watched her put away her things, and as she turned to go, he felt as if he teetered on a high edge.

  “What’s your name?” She turned, her arms straight on the little trolley she pushed, her fingers spread wide and strong. “All this time, you’ve said everything else to me, but not your name.”

  The trolley rattled quietly into motion, and she looked over her shoulder, the sun catching on the curve of one cheek as she smiled.

  “Carolin,” she said.

  “What next, sir?” asked Benfeld.

  Reinhardt blinked, Benfeld’s words snapping him back from that favorite memory, that first time the woman who was to be his wife had told him her name. His eyes settled on the steps where the orderlies had been talking and smoking. In his mind’s eye he could still see that man who had seemed familiar to him, but who and where kept slipping sideways and would not come. Reinhardt blew out a long breath through puffed cheeks. “Breakfast? Then a think.”

  And then Reinhardt remembered. He remembered where he had seen him before.

  On Square, outside the little shop where Reinhardt would have his coffee. He was pretty sure it had been Simo, the Partisan who had led him on that winding route through Bentbaša to meet Doctor .

  “Who would be missing five men, Frenchie?”

  It was the same question from last night, and there was still no answer. Benfeld looked back at Reinhardt over the rim of his mug of what passed for coffee, here in the barracks mess.

  “Five men,” Reinhardt continued. “From what I hear of what’s happening in this city, five bodies is not an unusual number to find. So why all this effort to hide them? Who were they being hidden from? Who would be missing five men?”

  “The Ustaše?” Benfeld ventured.

  Reinhardt nodded, his tongue stroking that gap. “The army?” he countered.

  “The Partisans?” said Benfeld, eyebrows raised and lips pursed upward as if he expected a rebuke, but Reinhardt just motioned him to go on. “In Russia, it would sometimes happen with the Partisans there, or in the cities. Infighting. Fallings-out. Or some group not in line with whatever directive was the flavor of the month. Maybe . . . someone in the Partisans needed to get rid of someone. More than one person. Some faction taking over? But they can’t afford to be seen to be divided? I don’t know. Just a thought.”

  “Not a bad one.” Reinhardt nodded. “But short of walking up to a Partisan and asking him, I don’t know how we’d prove it.”

  “No, sir,” said Benfeld, looking downcast into his coffee. Reinhardt watched him, glancing down at the Knight’s Cross hanging around Benfeld’s neck and wondering where this hero of Kursk lurked at times like these when it took so little to set him back.

  “So let’s look where we can, Frenchie. I want you to start going through after-action reports. Go back to the beginning of the week. The condition of the bodies would not indicate they were killed any later than that. Have a look as well on any lists of deserters. Men missing in action. Men t
aken prisoner. Things like that.”

  “Yes, sir.” Benfeld nodded. “What about our duties, though?”

  “It’s cleared with the colonel. We can work on this, but not full-time.” Captain Lainer had been the one to push on that, when Scheller had come up to the site earlier that morning. The big captain had still been fuming at the deaths of his men as Triendl, the third Feldjaeger, the one who had survived the shootings up in Logavina, had passed away. Lainer had pushed Scheller to release Reinhardt full time to investigating it, but it just would not have been possible. They all knew it. There was too much to do. Besides which, Neuffer was insisting on the Feldgendarmerie’s view that the deaths could be left to the Ustaše to investigate, that German resources were best spent elsewhere.

  “What makes you sure it wasn’t just Partisans, Reinhardt?” Scheller had asked.

  Reinhardt had felt Lainer’s eyes hot on him. “You can’t rule it out, sir, but this is what I see. I see three Feldjaeger with first-class equipment. Three StGs. Valuable weapons. Several hundred rounds of ammunition. Pistols. A good knife. A better compass. Money and identity papers. Medals.”

  “Your point?” the colonel had asked.

  “None of it was taken. The bodies weren’t even touched. Whoever did this was in too much of a hurry. Or couldn’t take the risk that the equipment would be found and come back to haunt them. But I’ve never heard of a Partisan who didn’t take the time to strip a dead German of at least his weapon.”

  That had seemed to seal the matter. The Feldjaeger would investigate the deaths of their own, Scheller had told a scowling Neuffer, and any assistance requested would be rendered.

  Reinhardt swirled what was left of his coffee around in the mug. “You are on shift at the train station tonight,” he said to Benfeld. “So try to get some rest before then.”