“I am supposed to salute you, Hauptsturmführer,” Huber said, slightly stiffly.
“Don’t be silly, Rolph, we’re all just doctors in the SS Medical Corps. What are you doing here, anyway?”
“I decided to sign up to Section Five. It sounded exciting, good pay, new challenges.” Huber shrugged his shoulders. “I have just completed my training at Party Leadership School in Alt Rhese. These are my first orders.”
Rolph Huber was shorter than Oskar, with darker hair and a leaner physique. Both men, however, had square, well-defined faces and light blue-grey eyes, even though Huber’s were often masked by light reflecting off his round, brass-framed spectacles. The men began to climb the stone steps together and entered the hospital.
“You were working at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, weren’t you?” Oskar said as they walked along the corridor.
“Yes, that’s where the SS recruited me from. I was employed by Professor Vogt.”
“The famous Professor Vogt?” Oskar said, raising his eyebrows expectantly. “The man who examined Lenin’s brain?”
“The very same man,” Huber said proudly as they strode into the vast foyer of the building. “He is brilliant, Oskar, the finest neurologist in Germany. I worked with him at the Institute for Brain Research that he founded.”
They walked on, their footsteps echoing on the polished tiled floor of the immense atrium.
“I heard you got married,” Oskar said, punching Huber playfully on the shoulder.
Huber’s eyes drifted downwards and he slowed his pace slightly.
“Yes, to Liesel. Do you remember her?”
“Oh yes! Congratulations. Is she here in Hadamar with you?”
Huber stopped walking and turned to face Oskar. He removed his cap and spectacles and smoothed his eyebrows, first the one, then the other.
“She died very suddenly, soon after St Nicholas’ Day. Scarlet Fever, it was,” Huber paused in silent reverence. “There was nothing anyone could do.”
Oskar’s face softened.
“I am so terribly sorry, Rolph.”
A silence enveloped the two men in the great echoing chamber of the foyer. Ahead of them a dark and imposing wooden staircase wound its way upwards and down it came the unhurried, clipping sound of a pair of shiny but well worn SS boots. Huber replaced his cap and spectacles, feeling like a schoolboy when the headmaster approaches.
“Are you gentlemen here for the briefing?” said the senior officer as he passed them.
Huber and Oskar snapped to attention, clicking their heels and raising their right arms in traditional salute.
“Yes, Standartenführer!” they said in unison.
“Follow me then.”
*
The room seated about twenty-five officers, all wearing black Shutzstaffel tunics, breeches, and caps. Most were of the same rank as Huber – Obersturmführer – with a handful of Hauptsturmführers like Oskar, who had presumably been in service longer. The men sat on uncomfortable wooden chairs arranged in neat rows on a herring-bone patterned, mahogany floor, the smell of linseed oil pervading the atmosphere. On the bare cream walls hung a large black on white swastika and a heavily framed portrait of Obergruppenführer Heinrich Himmler.
At the front of the room, the man who had greeted Huber and Oskar in the foyer stood before a blackboard with his gloved knuckles pressed on to a simple wooden table, studying the sea of eager faces in front of him. The gentle but echoing murmurs from the room quickly died away and all eyes turned attentively to the front.
“I welcome you all, gentlemen, doctors, to the Hadamar Institute, the nerve centre of our great leader Heinrich Himmler’s master plan. You have all been chosen, as professionals from the top of your respective fields, to work in the prestigious SS Medical Corps, to further the worthy ambitions of the German peoples to advance the Aryan race. My name is Standartenführer Weitkamp and I answer directly to Obergruppenführer Himmler himself.”
Weitkamp straightened and walked away from the desk to one corner of the room before turning and walking the other way. He was a little older than the new recruits seated in the room, perhaps mid-forties, with greying temples, blond hair and a spreading waistline.
“You are amongst the privileged elite now and you will all have a Schütze, who will act as your batman, assigned to you. Those of you who are bringing family to your new placements will have houses made available to you and good schooling for your children. You will also all have a Stabswagen and a driver for your personal use. Please remember, even though this is a hospital, you are required, as SS Officers, to carry your side arm at all times,” he said, patting the holstered Luger P08 above his left hip.
He stopped again, looking at the concentrated faces of those before him. Huber was exhilarated by the man’s enthusiasm, by his energy and his authority. A man who knew Himmler himself, who had in all probability been in his company, shaken his hand, must be of some considerable importance. Huber turned to Oskar, who winked back at him.
“So, you are asking yourselves, what am I doing at the Hadamar Institute? It is a psychiatric hospital after all and most of you, I know, are not psychiatrists.” Weitkamp laughed briefly at his own observation, prompting the rest to join in nervously. “But then, I myself am not even a doctor!” He laughed even louder.
“Your medical senior officer here,” he continued, clearing his throat, “is Standartenführer Viktor Brack, whom I’m sure you will have heard about at Alt Rhese and who will address you further.”
A soft murmur spread across the room as heads turned to each other and nodded. Weitkamp walked briskly to a side door and opened it, ushering in an insignificant-looking, narrow-shouldered man, balding, with round gold-rimmed spectacles pushed far up his nose. He wore a woven brown jacket and collared tan shirt buttoned to the top without a tie. The men seated in the audience all stood up en masse, but he waved them down with the slightest of hand gestures.
“Here at Hadamar we are busy paving the way for a stronger and better German society. It is a fact that Charles Darwin has made the world aware of the science of evolution, of survival of the fittest and the strongest, something the world now calls eugenics, but which we prefer to call ‘Social Darwinism’. It is a fact that Aryans have larger brain capacities than not just the Jews but indeed many other inferior races. It is the Nazi belief that we should racially cleanse our society and that means starting with the weakest, the physically disabled and the mentally deficient. Aryan bloodlines cannot be permitted to be tainted with such inferior genes and they must be eradicated from our communities, removed from our breeding pool.”
He paused to clear his throat, coughing uncontrollably for a few moments into a balled handkerchief that he clenched in one hand.
“In the same way, gentlemen, that our Führer saw fit to prevent all Jewish doctors from practising medicine, thereby creating more jobs for pure, home-grown and educated German doctors, like yourselves, it is now our duty to build up the character and substance of the rest of our nation, insofar as we can. It is the ideology of our Führer – Adolf Hitler – and Obergruppenführer Heinrich Himmler, as head of the SS, to promote those worthy of reproduction and to eliminate those… who are not.”
Huber felt a chill run down his spine as he realized that he had in all likelihood been recruited by the party elite to execute their master plan. He turned surreptitiously to Oskar and whispered in his ear.
“How do they intend accomplishing that?”
Oskar just stared back at him, his eyes active but no other facial muscles even twitching. Huber winced, fearing the answer he might hear.
“Sterilization, gentlemen, that is the key. First, we identify those individuals, men, women and children, whose genes are not suitable for the future Aryan Master Race and then we sterilize them, thereby preventing the propagation of their tainting influence,” Brack said, as if he had heard Huber’s question.
“What did you think he meant?” Oskar whispered back to Hube
r.
His penetrating gaze made Huber distinctly uncomfortable. He shrugged and turned to the front again. Brack picked up the top sheaf of clipped papers off a pile and held it aloft as his small, watery eyes, looked from one eager face to another.
“This is the Law on the Prevention of Hereditarily Ill Progeny of 1933. You must all read it carefully and know it well, for it will be your Bible for the foreseeable future.”
Brack smacked the sheaf down on the desk and leaned on his knuckles.
“We will be screening patients brought to this institution, looking for hereditary blindness and deafness, congenital or moral feeble-mindedness, schizophrenia, depression, epilepsy, inherited physical disabilities. It is your duty to assist both in the selection for and the execution of sterilization, according to these new laws.”
Brack straightened and pressed back his sloping shoulders, as though easing a cramp between his shoulder blades.
“You will be busy, gentlemen. We process several hundred people every week. Are there any questions at this stage?”
Huber looked up at the flaking paint on the ceiling high above them. It felt good to have a positive assignment to further the ambitions of his compatriots and countrymen. But he had to admit that it was not what he had expected and he wondered how, with his specific background, he would personally contribute to this programme at the Hadamar Institute.
There were no questions from anyone, though many heads conferred in pairs and nodded excitedly.
“Thank you, gentlemen, you are dismissed,” Standartenführer Weitkamp stepped forward once again, turning to Brack and smiling affirmatively. “Lunch will be served in the Officers’ Mess across the courtyard. Follow the smell of garlic.”
Chairs were scraped noisily across the floor as officers stood up and began to file out of the room amidst a low buzz of excited conversation. Weitkamp stood beside Brack as the two men studied a list of typescript on a sheet of paper. Huber smiled at Oskar, apprehensively perhaps, seeking acknowledgement that everything was as he had expected.
“It will be exciting and challenging, being part of shaping our new society,” Oskar said, moving towards the exit.
Huber extracted a pack of cigarettes from his tunic, tapping out a cigarette and offering it to Oskar.
“Fancy a cigarette?”
Oskar placed a hand over the packet and pushed Huber’s hand down as he glanced over his shoulder towards Weitkamp.
“What are you doing? SS Officers are expected not to smoke, Rolph. The Führer and Himmler forbid it.”
Huber laughed nervously.
“You are joking.”
Oskar shook his head and Huber felt his hand close around the packet, crushing the protruding cigarette.
“I am not. We are in the business of racial re-engineering, my friend. Smoking is strictly against Nazi Reproductive Policies. It reduces fertility and increases miscarriages. It poisons good men.” Oskar spoke determinedly, his eyes alive with conviction.
Huber shrugged, bemused.
“Have you not read the work on fertility by Agnes Blühm when you were at Alt Rhese?” Oskar continued, glancing uncomfortably towards Weitkamp and Brack.
Huber shook his head.
“I am not a gynaecologist like you, Oskar.”
“But you are SS,” Oskar said, enunciating the verb clearly.
“Obersturmführer Rolph Huber?” Weitkamp called from the front of the room, looking around for a sign of acknowledgement from somebody.
Oskar froze and stared at Huber, who quickly pocketed the cigarettes, feeling again like a schoolboy caught out in some misdemeanour. Some of the officers turned back to see who was being addressed, looking with curiosity at Huber as he raised his hand in acknowledgement. He felt his pulse quicken as he approached the front of the room, clipping his heels to attention and saluting the senior officers in front of the table.
“Doctor Huber,” Brack said without smiling, shaking Huber’s hand in his own limp and damp grasp, while maintaining close eye contact through his small, misty grey eyes, as though evaluating him. “Please follow me to my office. I have something special in mind for your talents.”
Nine
London, 2011
The mortuary in Romford was entered through a dilapidated Portakabin behind the District General Hospital. It looked as if it had been constructed soon after the war and never replaced.
Natasha stood beside Henry and peered around at the bleak surroundings.
“What a place to end your journey,” Henry remarked as they approached the peeling and faded light blue door to the mortuary.
The autopsy room was deceptively larger than the prefabricated building suggested, but the creaking floor was exactly as one might expect.
“Dr Pelton?”
An old man, with wisps of grey hair reaching haphazardly in every direction from his shiny head, turned to face them. He pulled off a pair of thick, black-rimmed spectacles revealing a large, knobbly nose. He cautiously approached Henry and Natasha.
“I am DCI Webber and this is DS Keeler from the London Met,” Henry said, holding up his identity badge for Pelton to inspect.
Pelton replaced his spectacles and squinted at the badge.
“Ah, yes, you called about the woman found on the marshes.”
Dr Pelton appeared not to have his dentures in and his speech was lispy and lacked definition from within his loose lips.
“Vera Schmidt, that’s correct,” Henry said. “Did you perform the autopsy?”
Pelton chuckled throatily as he turned away and shuffled off towards a bank of white square doors mounted on the wall, two deep and six across.
“There isn’t anyone else around here. Wanna see her?”
Natasha looked apprehensively at Henry, her distaste for mortuaries reflected in her developing pallor.
“Yes, please, Doctor. Were there any striking findings?” Henry said. A body submerged in water for a period of time would look and smell pretty awful.
“What did you have for lunch again?” he said softly to Natasha.
“Piss off, sir,” she hissed back.
Pelton drummed his fingers across doors number one and three before stopping on five. He grabbed the chromed handle, like an old Frigidaire, and pulled hard. The effort almost unsteadied his ageing frame and he seemed to cling to the door momentarily before sliding out the steel gurney bearing a shrouded corpse.
The discoloured feet, splayed like a ‘V’ beyond the dignity of the shroud, bore a cream-coloured card tied to the macerated big toe on which was written in bold lettering: Vera Schmidt. Skin peeled off her feet in their advanced state of submerged putrefaction.
“If memory serves me correctly, single gunshot to the head,” Pelton said as he drew back the shroud to reveal a badly decomposed and fetid-smelling sight.
Henrik felt his stomach turn. The sight before him brought back no memories. He stared at what was left of the head, which had been blown open at the rear by the force of the exiting bullet.
“Did you find anything unusual about her head?” Henry asked.
“Excuse me,” Natasha said suddenly and rushed from the room.
Henry and Pelton watched her leave.
“New, is she?” Pelton said, removing his spectacles and turning to a grey steel filing cabinet in the corner. Rifling through the dividers he withdrew a folder and handed it to Henry.
Henry began to page through the reports, pausing to look at black and white photographs taken on the marsh where she was discovered, face-down in a puddle, with the large hole in the back of her head open to the sky and the elements. He began searching for details about her cranial examination.
“Brain mass you recorded as 1300 grams. That’s almost normal.”
Pelton shrugged.
“Female brains are slightly smaller than male.”
“But a considerable amount of her brain was surely blown out of her head and lost in the Thames,” Henry said.
Pelton replaced his s
pectacles and shuffled closer to Henry, peering into the notes.
“What’s your point?”
“Did you estimate cranial capacity, Doctor?”
Pelton stared at him oddly.
“Would you not agree that the victim has an unusually large head, Doctor?”
Pelton turned to the body and adjusted his glasses on his knobbly nose. He stepped back again and removed his glasses.
“Yes, I suppose she has.”
“Her brain would normally have weighed considerably more than you have recorded at autopsy, perhaps fifty per cent more, say around 1900 to 2000 grams.”
“That’s impossible.”
Pelton took a defensive step back, and Henry realized that he was in the presence of a small town, old school pathologist. He gazed towards the body of Vera Schmidt and considered her head. It was certainly bigger than normal, though grotesquely disfigured and hard to ascertain objectively. Jagged skin edges hung around the margins of the gaping skull wound. He wondered why in life her head had never impressed him much. All he remembered about her was the incessant smoking, and her fondness for George.
“Do you have a magnifying lens and some gloves I can use, please, Doctor?”
“What on earth…?”
“I want to look for a skin tattoo on the back of her head.”
Pelton stared at Henry as though he was ordering beer at a wine tasting.
“I’ve had a similar case in London. Indulge me, please.”
Pelton inhaled deeply. He was too old to get huffy and perhaps he was just a tiny bit intrigued, something to punctuate the provincial idyll. Protected by a layer of latex and armed with a large magnifying lens, Henry began to examine the scalp at the back of Vera’s shattered head. The smell up close was unbearable and Henry retched as Vera’s scalp slid greasily between his fingers.
“I’ve got some air freshener here, Inspector.”
Pelton sprayed liberally from a white can and the instant smell of lavender and menthol helped to assuage the vapours of putrefaction clinging to Henry’s nostrils.
“Thank you.”
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