The Perfect Corpse

by Giles Milton

  ‘Shit.’

  She pushed back her chair and stood up slowly, tying up her hair with an elastic band and glancing momentarily in the reflective glass. Then she wandered over to Nikolaus, still clutching the sheet of paper. She showed him what it said.

  ‘Yes, this is quite possible. Our records here are far from complete.’

  ‘But what’s the likelihood they’ll still be there? At the castle, I mean. This was written in – ’ she looked again at the date – ‘in sixty-three.’

  He swung his chair around to the computer, as if it held the answer to everything. ‘After the war most of the Nazi records were moved to local archives,’ he said. ‘In this case -’ he typed Schloss Hohenstein in order to check where it was situated – ‘yes, they’d almost certainly have gone to Murnau. Some of the records came to us in the nineteen-fifties, but by no means all. We still have many missing gaps. One day it’ll all be on line. But it’s money, money.’

  He paused, thinking for a moment.

  ‘You should contact the castle. And also the Murnau archives.’

  He punched at his keyboard and then wrote an email address on a scrap of paper. ‘Here,’ he said, handing it to her. ‘That’s for Murnau.’

  Karin returned to her desk and untied the string that sealed the final envelope, half-expecting it to be empty. But no, there were more than a dozen photographs inside, tied into two batches. She laid the first lot out on the table. Two of them depicted the farmhouse and barn in Blagny-sur-Ternoise. There was also an out-of-focus picture of a group of homesteads, built of wood and almost certainly Russian. The ground was covered in thick snow.

  The second batch was more promising: portraits of the men serving in the SS Totenkopf. One of the head-shots depicted a commander in full SS regalia: clipped cap, death’s head badge and eyes that pierced, even in black-and-white. She turned it over. Obergruppenführer Oskar Weitzel, the one executed for war crimes.

  There was a group picture of six men standing in sunshine, naked from the waist up. One was holding a leather football above his head. Karin looked more closely and instinctively clicked her fingers. Here was something for Jack. The man had a small tattoo, clearly visible, under his left arm.

  All six men were remarkably good looking: blond or blondish, physically fit, well-toned. In another life they’d have made body-perfect male models. But in Nazi Germany, they’d chosen to become murderers.

  She looked at their faces. They had that well brought up look that’s hard to fake: good schooling, good manners. But which one was the ice man? From Jack’s description of the frozen corpse, any one of them could have been him.

  She flipped the photo over. ‘SS Totenkopf, Schloss Hohenstein, Bayern, 1942.’ There was a list of their names: Emil Lorenz, Ludolf Gebhardt, Kurt Becker, Hans Dietrich, Joachim Ulrich, Otto Streckenbach. Unfortunately, there was no clue as to who was who.

  Two pictures showed soldiers in deep snow. Another depicted them sitting astride a captured Soviet tank. Karin searched through the rest of the photographs until she found what she’d been hoping to find all along: individual portraits of the soldiers. They were from the 1942 intake, head-shots and formal poses, almost certainly copies of the ones used for their identity papers. When she turned them over, she found their names written on the back.

  She studied each one in turn. Emil Lorenz had straw-blond hair and languid eyes. He was giving a strange half smile to the camera and didn’t look like a killer. In fact, he looked the sort of diligent young lad who played the organ in his local church.

  Ludolf Gebhardt was also fair-haired, but he had lips so curiously thin that it was as if he didn’t have any at all. He had obviously blue eyes, even in black-and-white, and looked every inch the Nazified Aryan.

  Kurt Becker was darker and had a dimple on his right cheek. His expression was a mix of jollity and bemusement, as if he was suppressing a laugh.

  Hans Dietrich was the best looking of the group, roman nosed, well chiseled. He had the air of having hailed from a long dynasty of landowners. Strange how some people could look effortlessly distinguished.

  At first glance, the last two, Joachim Ulrich and Otto Streckenbach, resembled each other so closely that Karin wondered if they were related. But when she studied their faces more closely she realised their physiognomy was actually quite different. Joachim had high cheek-bones, Otto’s eyes were slightly misaligned.

  She laid each picture out on the desk and photographed them in turn. If Jack’s assumptions were correct, one of these six had been brought back to life and was now wandering around Hanford with blood on his hands.

  She checked the images on her camera to make sure they were all in focus. Then she put all the papers and photos back into their envelopes.

  ‘All good?’ Nikolaus looked concerned as she handed everything back to him. ‘Find what you wanted?’

  ‘Think so.’

  ‘Not a good band of men, those.’

  ‘Not at all. Any idea what happened to them? At the end of the war, I mean?’

  Nikolaus shook his head. ‘So many simply disappeared. Some went to South America. Others managed to cover up what they’d done. And quite a few had no shame at all. Have you heard of Fritz Simon? He joined the Berlin Philharmonic in the fifties and played the violin till his death. The only one who paid the price was Weitzel.’

  ‘I saw that in the file.’

  ‘Still, they’re all dead now. Or if they’re still alive they must be in their nineties.’

  Karin thanked him for his help.

  ‘You’re welcome. Any time.’

  She made her way downstairs, pausing for a moment at the main door before stepping outside into the hot sunshine. She looked at the time on her phone. 12.16. She was surprised it was so late. She’d been in the archives more than two hours. Just enough time to get changed and call Jack before heading off for the shoot.

  *

  Jack answered his phone immediately. She knew she’d woken him.

  ‘Find anything?’ he said in a sleepy voice.

  ‘You haven’t checked your emails?’

  He looked at his watch. ‘No. Jesus, it’s not yet five. Hold on.’

  She could hear him opening his laptop, waiting for it to connect to the internet.

  ‘Here we go. Here’s your message. Seven attachments. Downloading them right now.’

  While he waited, he asked about the archives.

  ‘I’ve got you names. And photos. They all look like they work for Models One. But I don’t know which one’s your ice man.’

  He opened the files individually, hoping that one of them would match the ice man. It wasn’t Emil Lorenz, he could tell that immediately. The eyes were far too big. Nor was it Kurt Becker. His nose was bulbous at the tip and completely the wrong shape.

  ‘So - ?’

  ‘Hang on.’

  He looked at Joachim Ulrich and Otto Streckenbach. Neither of them fitted his face. But when the fifth picture came up on screen, yes, when the fifth picture came up on screen -

  ‘That’s him. That - is - him. Unmistakably. That’s the ice man.’

  ‘Which one? Which are you looking at?’

  He looked down at the caption.

  ‘Hans Dietrich. The ice man is Hans bloody Dietrich. Without any doubt.’

  He clapped his hands together then switched on the bedside light.

  ‘Shit - shit -’ He could hear the alarm in Karin’s voice.

  ‘What? What is it?’

  ‘Hans Dietrich -’ she said, speaking very deliberately. ‘He’s the only one to have been in Totenkopf from the beginning.

  ‘Oh - ? What d’you know?’

  ‘Only this. He was at the massacre in France. He was at Dyatkova and that other place. And he was one of the few who survived the Demjansk Pocket.’

  Jack was listening carefully.

  ‘Ninety-seven killed in Blagny-sur-Ternoise. Two-hundred-and-fourteen killed in Russia. Christ, Jack, he’s already been involved in t
he deaths of -’ she counted it up in her head - ‘of more than three hundred people. And they’re only the ones we know about. And now there’s Kingston, of course.’

  Jack nodded to himself. He was wondering how long it would be before he killed again.

  TWENTY

  What am I supposed to say?’ said Jack, throwing his hands into the air. ‘What the hell d’you want me to say?’

  He was seated in Tammy’s office on the first afternoon after the murder. ‘That I’m sorry about Kingston? Of course I’m fucking sorry.’

  ‘Sorry - !’ she scoffed. ‘Too late to be sorry. Kingston’s dead, butchered, murdered, and nothing’s ever going to bring him back.’

  Jack leaned backwards in his chair. The way she was speaking, Christ, she sounded like Karin on her last night.

  ‘Kingston was the kindest person on earth. He was my friend. He was the only honest person in this place. And now he’s dead.’

  ‘Tammy,’ he said, looking directly at her. ‘I could not be more sorry. I was wrong. I admit it. Wrong about everything. But I had my reasons. And it wasn’t exactly all my doing. You’re dumping it all on me. What about Tom, Hunter, Gonzales? This would have happened even if I hadn’t been here.’

  ‘I blame myself,’ she said with a sigh. Her expression was caught somewhere between anger and sorrow. ‘Should have listened to the voice in my own head.’

  *

  The weather had once again turned stormy, with a battalion of thunder clouds stacked up on the western flank of the sky. When Jack had driven into Hanford at lunchtime, a few splats of rain had hit the windscreen like flak then vaporized into the heat. The rolling hills of the scrubland had taken on a tinge of diluted green, like they’d been washed with watercolour.

  It was just after five o’clock when they gathered once again in the conference room. Tom Lawyer addressed them first: he had very little to say. There had been no sightings, no one in Hanford Gap had noticed anything untoward. The ice man had simply disappeared.

  ‘Jon and I agree that Jack should stay on.’

  Jack smiled to himself. In the hours since Kingston’s murder he’d seen a subtle change in Tom’s behaviour. Outright hostility had turned to grudging acceptance. All talk of plane tickets to London had been dropped. And now he was being invited to join the team. Tom was no longer working from a position of strength.

  Jack had noticed another change, one he’d first detected on his first full day at ZAKRON. Tom’s new target was Gonzales. He’d been selected as the one to carry the can.

  ‘Jack, anything to add?’

  Jim Bartholomew was nodding, as if in agreement with Tom’s question.

  ‘Yes,’ said Jack. ‘Brace yourself. We’re dealing with someone who’s committed dozens of atrocities, summary executions, that sort of thing. He fought in northern France and Soviet Russia. Served in special operations. And I’ve got a name for you.’

  Their heads turned sharply towards him.

  ‘Hans Dietrich.’

  He handed round the photo that he had printed off his laptop. The quality was not great, but good enough for everyone to see the striking resemblance. The ice man and SS-Hauptsturmführer Hans Dietrich were visibly one and the same.

  Jack watched their reaction with interest. They all flinched when he said the name, as an abstract was suddenly turned to concrete. Hans Dietrich. The name transformed him into a real person.

  ‘What more?’

  ‘It seems as if six men went on a mission to Greenland. Emil Lorenz, Ludolf Gebhardt, Kurt Becker, Joachim Ulrich, Otto Streckenbach and, of course, Hans Dietrich.’

  Sergeant Perez was nodding to himself.

  ‘I don’t know what they were doing there. I can’t tell you why these six were chosen. But you don’t send your most elite soldiers to Greenland unless they have something pretty important to accomplish.’

  He paused for a moment, then told them about the information he had received from USMOD, Ferris Clark’s organization.

  ‘Ferris Clark!’ Tom snapped out his name as if he was an intruder in the room. ‘What in hell’s name has he got to do with it?’

  Jack swung his chair round towards Hunter.

  ‘It’s you, Hunter, I should thank. You got me back on the trail of Ferris Clark.’

  Hunter looked at him blankly.

  ‘Remember what you said? Yesterday. Ferris Clark, Ferris Clark, Ferris Clark. You told us not to give up on Ferris Clark. Well I haven’t.’

  There was a long silence. Jack could see from their faces that they didn’t get it at all.

  ‘Could you enlighten us?’ said Tom, his voice leaden with sarcasm. ‘Is the ice man Hans Dietrich or is he Ferris Clark?’

  Jack tapped his pen on the table.

  ‘It’s just as I’ve told you, the ice man is Hans Dietrich of the SS Totenkopf. But Ferris Clark – here - look -’

  He clicked on his iPad, brought up a picture on screen.

  ‘Take a look at this -’

  He held it up and showed it round. ‘Can you all see?’

  They nodded.

  ‘This is Ferris Clark. Always good to put a name to a face.’

  The picture looked as if it had been taken when Ferris was still a student, eighteen or nineteen. Round glasses, baby face and a neatly combed fringe, like mum had spruced him up for the camera. He was wearing a suit, tie, collared shirt, and appeared to be seated in a laboratory, hands folded neatly under the table. The pose said it all. A diligent student, one who knew the chemical elements by heart. Shy with college boys, blushed with college girls. The air of a loner.

  Ferris Clark was probably boring as fuck. That’s what Hunter had said. But Jack now knew that this was very wide of the mark. The USMOD information suggested that Ferris Clark was brilliantly gifted and possessed of a formidable intellect. Perhaps even a genius.

  ‘Hold on - hold on -’

  Tom raised his hands into the air, not understanding a thing. His face had taken on a peculiar hue, grey with tiredness yet also flushed with stress. Jack noticed that his eyes were bloodshot; he hadn’t found time to change his contact lenses.

  ‘Can we hit rewind? One minute you’re telling us it’s not Ferris Clark, the next you’re showing us shots of Ferris Clark.’ He looked round the room. ‘Is it just me or is everyone lost? I’m somewhere down on the Mexican border.’

  Jack began to explain.

  ‘Ferris Clark. Studied here in Hanford till twelfth grade. We don’t know much about his time at high school, except that he seems to have been exceptionally gifted. Aged seventeen or thereabouts he’s snapped up by North Carolina State University. It’s in Raleigh, as I’m sure you know. Best place for meteorology, least it was in those days. And he was their most brilliant student.’

  Jim Bartholomew reached out across the table and clutched his hand around the neck of a bottle of carbonated water. He pulled it towards him and unscrewed the cap with his plump fingers, breaking the metal fastening with a clack and letting it drop onto the table. The water fizzed and sent a fine spray across the table. He wiped it with his handkerchief then turned back to listen to Jack.

  ‘Ferris Clark was a brilliant student. One of the best. And before long he was in correspondence with all the great weathermen of the time. Bergeron, Douglas, Pettersen, Harding. Seems to have known them personally. He wrote several key papers on the development of showers and thunderstorms. And also wrote key papers on -’

  He turned his iPad round so that he could read from the screen.

  ‘Wrote key papers on the creation and movement of weather fronts. He believed these could be found in the horizontal movements of air that are associated with large depressions and anticyclones.’

  Ryan gave a deliberate yawn. ‘Is this relevant?’

  Jack stared hard.

  ‘Absolutely crucial. Doesn’t matter if you don’t understand the detail. Just listen.’

  He told them how Ferris Clark had pioneered the use of aneroid balloons, getting data from
higher in the atmosphere than ever before. He’d noticed a discrepancy between the surface winds and upper winds and realised you could produce highly accurate forecasts if you had accurate readings of these different sets of winds.

  Tom drummed his fingers on the table.

  ‘And then he developed a system of prognostic charting. In laymen’s terms, he was using previous weather patterns to predict future ones. All very primitive compared to today’s forecasting, but a work of genius for the nineteen forties.’

  He paused.

  ‘One other thing I learned from the Washington stuff. Ferris Clark had a photographic memory. Had more than a decade’s forecasts stored in his head. Memory. Prodigious skill. And brilliance.’

  Jack ticked them off like they were on a list.

  Jim B swept his hand around the room.

  ‘Please. I’m lost.’

  ‘Remember,’ said Jack. ‘The Nazi weather stations in Greenland have been destroyed by this point in the war. And not knowing the North Atlantic weather forecast spells potential disaster for Hitler. So he sends a team of his most brilliant SS officers, including Hans Dietrich, to rectify this.’

  Tom butted in, shaking his head from side to side.

  ‘Nope. Still don’t get it.’ You could hear the frustration in his voice. ‘You’re saying Hans Dietrich killed Ferris Clark? Or Ferris Clark killed Hans Dietrich?’

  Jack shrugged.

  ‘A lot doesn’t add up.’

  All the while he’d been talking, Tammy had been toying with her cell phone, flicking from Twitter to Facebook and then back to Twitter. Now, as she scrolled down the screen, she gulped loudly.

  ‘No!’

  She froze.

  ‘What - ? What is it - ?’

  ‘What’s happened - ?’

  ‘Oh my God. Breaking news. On Twitter. There’s been a murder.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  Tom drove at speed through the commercial district of Hanford, swinging the Buick left into Sapphire Way, then left again into Rio Vista Drive. The huge sun hung like a ball on the horizon, so close you could reach out and snatch it away. The surrounding sky was slicked pinkish-blue.