The Perfect Corpse

by Giles Milton

  He looked at Jack. ‘So what the fuck do we do now?’

  *

  ‘Look, look. He’s coming. Mom – ’

  Jack could hear them long before he reached the car. Fran had clambered into the front seat and was waving excitedly. Elsie was all legs and feet.

  ‘Sorry it took so long.’

  Tammy brushed her hand through the air.

  ‘So,’ she said when he was back in the passenger seat. She shot a glance towards the kids, warning him not to say too much.

  ‘Same as ever,’ he said, taking the hint. ‘All fits the same pattern.’

  ‘So what the hell do we do now? How long’s it going to take to catch him for Chrissakes? Jack, I can’t take much more of this. I just want to wake up in my bed and find it’s all been a nightmare and it didn’t really happen at all.’

  THIRTY

  Karin looked at her watch. Nearly nine o’clock. She reached for the remote control and switched on the TV, flicking through the German channels and then going through the English language ones. Sky’s headline news was just starting.

  ‘Good morning. And today’s top story. Another couple found murdered in the town of Hanford Gap, Nevada. This now brings the total to five and police are still no closer to finding the identity of the killer.’

  ‘Six,’ said Karin under her breath. ‘If you include Kingston.’

  ‘One of America’s largest manhunts is now underway, with hundreds of police drafted in from neighbouring states.’

  The camera turned from the reporter to the house where the couple had been murdered. Karin’s heart skipped a beat. There was Jack! In the background and standing in shadow. But it was Jack.

  She turned up the volume on the television but her phone rang right at that moment so she turned it down again. Unknown number.

  ‘Hello – am I speaking to Karin Hofmann?’

  She recognized the voice immediately.

  ‘Herr Fischer here. From Schloss Hohenstein.’

  ‘Good to hear you.’

  He explained how her unexpected visit had sent him back to the archives. He’d been sorting through all the miscellaneous papers.

  ‘To be honest I was hoping to find more about lebensborn. I’d like to put up a display. Maybe even record an interview. But -’

  ‘But - ?’ She could almost hear him shrug.

  ‘Nothing more on lebensborn. I’m guessing all the records have been destroyed. Or moved to Berlin.’

  Karin told him it was possible. There were files in Berlin she hadn’t had time to look at.

  ‘But that’s not why you called?’

  ‘No. You see I started to look through the unsorted files. Should have done it years ago to be honest. But there’s dozens of them, all the stuff that’s never been given a proper home. And I found a little more about the Totenkopf. Not a lot, mind. Don’t want to get you excited. But it might just.’

  Karin looked at her watch.

  ‘I could come right away. I can be there within the hour. Is that okay?’

  She showered, dressed quickly then set off in the hire car, tracing the now-familiar road through the high alpine valleys.

  It was her third visit in forty-eight hours but the scenery unfolded differently each time. Yesterday’s rain had cleared but the road was still awash with scree and shingle. She gazed upwards, to the high peaks above the castle. Her eyes did a double take. The curved top of the Zugspitz was dusted with snow, blown into the gulleys and dips in the dark rock. It gave a dappled effect of black and white.

  Snow. She wanted to come back in winter, just her and Jack.

  *

  The castle library was caught in a twilight gloom, as if daylight was fading before it had even got started. The sky had darkened with cloud. When Karin looked up to the high windows she noticed that it was starting to rain.

  Herr Fischer was seated at the far end, as before, and lit by the warm glow of the anglepoise. She wondered if he ever left his desk. He looked up when he heard the creak of the parquet, smiled briefly, and then began to frown.

  ‘Hope I haven’t brought you here under false pretences. There’s really not very much and it’s all a jumble. But you seemed interested in the Totenkopf.’

  ‘Very,’ said Karin. ‘Anything’s better than nothing.’

  Herr Fischer picked up a slender folder perched atop a pile of envelopes. All were marked ‘Miscellaneous.’

  ‘Here, this is all I’ve found so far. But I have to confess it’s got me intrigued. It seems quite – ’ He searched for the right word, then articulated it very deliberately. ‘Curious.’

  Karin opened the folder. The first sheet was covered in a jumble of letters and numbers, interspersed with miscellaneous words that didn’t add up to anything. The only recognizable feature was the seal of the Totenkopf, stamped in red at the top of the paper. A black swastika was printed on both sides.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘My thought exactly,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t work it out at first. Un mystère, as they say in France.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Spent the better part of an hour trying to fathom it. And it’s still not completely clear. But these numbers here – ’

  He pointed towards the top of the page.

  ‘They’re coordinates. Grid references. Latitude and longitude.’

  Karin studied them more closely.

  ‘You’re never going to believe this,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘Couldn’t think where they’d lead me to. So I looked them up on a map. And they took me to – hold on a moment – ’

  He reached across to the shelf on his right, still sniggering, and took hold of a large atlas bound in stiff maroon card. He flicked through the pages until he reached Greenland.

  ‘Your Totenkopf seem to have gone here -’

  He slid his finger across the map until it came to a halt on a little headland that jutted out into the Greenland Sea.

  ‘And this is the middle of nowhere. This isn’t remote, it’s the end of the world.’

  He peered more closely at the map, as if in hope of finding a clue in the whiteness.

  ‘What they were doing there is anybody’s guess. But – ’

  He looked at her with an expression of genuine amusement. ‘I mean, what a place to be sent.’

  Karin’s eyes switched back to the map of Greenland. Then she turned to the sheet of paper that lay there in the glow of the lamplight. She leaned forwards and took it in her hands.

  ‘But what does it mean?’

  There was another row of figures and a corresponding row of letters.

  ‘It’s most interesting,’ said Herr Fischer, ‘though it only tells half a story. It’s that very man you kept mentioning when Frau What’s-her-name was here.’

  ‘Hans Dietrich?’

  ‘Exactly. Look, here. SS-Hauptsturmführer Hans Dietrich.’

  He laid the sheet on the table and drew up a chair, patting it lightly as if to encourage a cat to sit down.

  ‘I’ve worked out most of it. At least I think I have. These – ’ He pointed back to the numbers – ‘these indicate the location. Greenland. And this here is the date.’

  Karin looked to where his finger was pointing. 05.06.44

  ‘The fifth of June.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘This is the time.’

  ‘Six minutes past four in the morning.’

  ‘Exactly. And all this business here – ’ he pointed to the bottom of the page – ‘is the message.’

  Karin looked at the words. There were no sentences. It was a series of individual words. Pressure low. Stop. Falling. Stop. Predicted Channel wind speed, Force Six. Stop. Visibility, poor. Stop. Cloud level: 100m or less. Stop. Storm conditions expected. Stop.

  ‘It’s a forecast.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Herr Fischer, nodding vigorously. ‘It’s a forecast.’

  ‘And it was sent to - ?’

  ‘That bit’s down here.’

  He pointed to the lines
at the very bottom.

  ‘It was sent from Greenland, from the spot I showed you on the map. It was sent by wireless. This is a wireless transmission sent from Greenland to the Tirpitz.’

  ‘A ship?’

  ‘Yes. Tirpitz was a ship. German. Operating in the North Atlantic.’

  Here was something for Jack.

  ‘Look at the final line. Forward to Third Army High Command. Stop. Forward to Field-Marshal Rommel. Stop. Forward to station command, Normandy. Stop.’

  She looked up and her eyes caught the forest of antlers at the farthest end of the library. Hans Dietrich had sent the wireless transmission from exactly the spot where Ferris Clark was living on the night between the fourth and fifth of June.

  A loud flapping sound came from one of the high windows.

  ‘Aach, pigeons, pigeons,’ said Herr Fischer, glancing up. ‘The hawks get them in the end.’

  ‘Is here anything else?’

  ‘Not a great deal.’ He leaned back in his chair, sending a creak through the back and arms. Then he shifted himself forwards again and adjusted the angle of his lamp.

  ‘The only other thing is this.’

  He handed her another sheet of paper. There were a few lines of writing, punctuated with the words Blohm and Voss P900.’

  ‘Blohm and Voss?’

  ‘Aircraft manufacturers. During the war. Still exist of course.’

  He lifted himself out of the chair and walked over to a huge computer terminal that stood on a heavy table. Karin followed him and watched as he typed on the keyboard, noisy and inaccurate. She could see his mistakes before they appeared on screen.

  ‘Blohm and Voss. P900. Here we go. Some sort of miniature flying boat. Prototype. Designed to land on ice and water. But it was never developed. According to this, only three were ever built.’

  ‘Land on ice and water?’

  ‘Yes. It had these strange inflatable skis.’

  Karin looked over Herr Fischer’s shoulder. Then she leaned inwards and rested her elbows on the desk.

  ‘May I?’ she said, pointing to the keyboard.

  ‘All yours.’

  He pushed back his chair, scraping the legs on the wooden floor. Then he struggled up with fake effort and moved back to his desk.

  ‘She’s slow this morning,’ he said, pointing to the computer. ‘But she gets there in the end.’

  ‘Just one thing to check,’ said Karin, half-talking to herself.

  She pulled the keyboard towards her, typed Hanford Gap and then clicked on Google maps. The screen filled with a plan of the downtown area. She zoomed out, once, twice, and then a third time. Now, she had a picture of the countryside around Hanford. And there it was.

  Less than six miles from Hanford was a lake, four miles long and two-and-a-half miles wide. Big enough to land a Blohm and Voss P900.

  She strummed her fingers on the worktop. It was beginning to make sense. Hans Dietrich had landed in Greenland and killed Ferris Clark. Then he’d got ready for stage two of his mission, a trip to Nevada. But somehow, before he’d set off, he’d managed to get himself killed and frozen.

  Herr Fischer glanced up from his desk. ‘Finding what you want?’

  Karin nodded vaguely. ‘Sort of. To be honest I need Jack.’

  ‘Jack?’ he said. ‘Who’s Jack?’

  THIRTY-ONE

  Tammy left the children in the kitchen and went through to the family room.

  ‘Another day playing the waiting game,’ she said when Fran and Elsie were out of earshot. ‘Shit Jack, we’re just waiting for him to strike. Who’s next on his list? Another one like Ashton Brookner, who never hurt a fly? Maybe he hasn’t even decided yet? That’s what’s so freaky. He’s running rings round us. Why can’t Perez, Rayno, come up with answers? They’re the goddam detectives. That’s what they’re paid to do.’

  Jack glanced at the boxes they’d not yet sorted through. ‘There’s got to be something.’

  ‘You will stay again, won’t you? Just being on my own in the kitchen scares the shit out of me. I’ve got this feeling he’s going to spring out.’

  ‘Course I’ll stay.’

  He clicked onto his laptop and checked his emails. At last there was one from Karin. He read down to the bottom then sat back in his chair. And then he read it a second time. He couldn’t believe it. Yet it was true and it changed everything.

  ‘Tammy?’

  ‘Yeah?’ She looked up. ‘What?’

  ‘Here – ’

  He was still staring at the screen when she came into the room.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘The email I got from Exeter. From the Met Office.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Remember what it said?’

  ‘Course. Won’t forget that in a hurry. It said Ferris Clark forecast the weather for D Day.’

  ‘Yes. But it’s not that simple.’

  She sat down with a puzzled expression. ‘What’ve you discovered now?’

  ‘Ferris Clark,’ he said, looking at her. ‘His last contact with the weathermen in England was at eight o’clock in the evening.’

  ‘That’s what you said.’

  ‘Yes. At eight o’clock on the fourth of June, Ferris Clark sent his final report to England. He told them the weather was set to improve. The storms would pass.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘And on that basis, Eisenhower launched D Day two days later.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘And that was the last contact they ever had with Ferris Clark.’

  ‘So?’ She was tapping one of her cowboy boots on the carpet. ‘I don’t get where this is leading?’

  ‘According to what Karin’s just sent me, that was not the last time his wireless transmitter was used.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Fully eight hours later, which would have made it about four in the morning, a second message was transmitted.’

  ‘To England?’

  ‘No.’ He looked at her, eyes flashing. ‘That’s precisely the point. Not to England. To the Tirpitz. A German battleship in the mid-Atlantic.’

  Tammy was silent for a moment.

  ‘Sorry for being dumb but I’m not sure I get it.’

  ‘The Tirpitz picks up a weather forecast that comes from Ferris Clark’s transmitter. But it wasn’t sent by him. It was sent by Hans Dietrich.’

  ‘What did it say? The same forecast that was sent to Dunstable?’

  ‘No. That’s exactly the point. It predicted storms. A Force Eight gale. Low cloud. And five days of extreme low pressure. And it was sent from the Tirpitz to German Army Command.’

  Tammy looked blank. ‘Still don’t get it.’

  Jack stared at her.

  ‘How much d’you know about D Day?’

  She threw up her hands. ‘Only the stuff everyone knows. The stuff you learn at high school.’

  Jack began speaking slowly, as if he was still clarifying it in his head.

  ‘On the day before the Allied landings Field Marshal Rommel was handed a weather forecast. This weather forecast, to be precise. He read it, saw the warnings of gales and knew for certain that the Allies couldn’t land for at least a week. And because of that, he flew off to Germany for his wife’s birthday.’

  ‘The six generals on the ground, the ones in charge of coastal defence, they also received this forecast. They’d been on high alert for weeks. They were exhausted. And when they read this – ’ he tapped his laptop – ‘they all left their posts. Took themselves off to a party at some chateau, miles from the landing beaches.’

  He paused for a second. ‘Don’t you see? It meant that when Allied forces landed on the sixth of June there was no Rommel, no German generals, no one who was able to lead the counter-attack.’

  Silence.

  ‘You’re saying that Ferris Clark tricked Hans Dietrich.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Gave him the wrong forecast?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And – ’<
br />
  They both began smiling at exactly the same moment. ‘And managed to fool the entire German army,’ said Jack. ‘The last thing he did before he died was to play the biggest bloody trick in history. And they fell for it.’

  THIRTY-TWO

  It’s mine – ’

  ‘No, it’s mine,’ said Fran, tugging the book from Elsie’s hands.

  ‘Oh please, can’t you two just shut up,’ said Tammy. She turned to Jack. ‘It’s cos they’ve been inside so much.’

  She went over the kitchen cupboard. ‘I’ll cook something in a sec, but first I need to get these two doing something.’

  ‘Know what - ?’ said Jack suddenly. ‘Why don’t I cook? Why don’t I cook with these two?’

  Tammy looked at him in astonishment. Then she turned her gaze to Fran and Elsie.

  ‘Well that’s an offer I find hard to refuse. Fran – Elsie – want to cook with Jack?’

  They rushed over and playfully beat his legs.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, laughing. ‘I need eggs, flour, milk – if you’ve got enough – and salt and pepper.’

  ‘What are we making?’ asked Fran.

  ‘We’re going to make spätzle. Noodles. It’s German. And delicious.’

  ‘But how d’you know it?’ he said. ‘Are you making it up?’

  ‘No, I was taught.’

  ‘By who?’

  ‘By Karin.’

  ‘Who’s Karin?’

  ‘A friend. She’s German. It’s a German dish. She taught me how to make it. And it’s the best thing you’ll ever eat.’

  Karin. Tammy went upstairs to take a shower.

  Jack got Elsie stirring the flour and Fran beating the eggs.

  ‘It’s like batter, really.’

  He put water to boil then helped them mix everything together.

  ‘This is the fun bit,’ he said when the water was hot. ‘You have to squeeze it through the colander into the water. Then you wait for the bits to float to the surface. When they’re done you scoop them out and they go in the oven to dry off.’

  ‘Can I do some?’ asked Elsie.

  ‘You can. You’re a born chef, you are.’