Huber's Tattoo

by Quentin Smith

  Henry looked around at the concentration on the faces staring at him. There was nothing like a potential mass murderer on the prowl to focus the minds of everyone in the CID.

  “Common factor one: all three victims had a small tattoo on the base of their skull, beneath the hairline, in aged black ink. The tattoos on Haysbrook and Schmidt read ‘G3’, while David Barnabus had ‘G4’ on his neck. Expert opinion at this stage has it that these tattoos may be very old, I mean very old – quite possibly dating back to infancy.”

  A murmur of disquiet broke the silence in the briefing room, a murmur that suggested widespread shock at such a notion. Why on earth, indeed, would an infant be tattooed and – perhaps worse to contemplate – who would do such a thing?

  “We have no idea what the tattoos signify,” Henry said, his voice trailing off.

  “Common factor two: all three victims were British citizens but were born in Germany and had their births registered in a town called Steinhöring, near Munich. Common factor three: all three victims appear not to have any traceable family and were raised in England from an early age, seemingly as orphans or fostered children.”

  Henry squirmed inwardly at the uncanny irony of these common factors, for it seemed to him as though he was describing himself. For a brief moment it felt as if the assembled eyes concentrated on him were not listening to him, but undressing him, staring deep into his soul, revealing his secrets, exposing his flaws, as if they knew. He could not meet Natasha’s intense gaze, fearing that she, being the one person in the room with whom he had spent a great deal of time on this enquiry, might be reading his mind.

  Several officers scribbled down salient points on pads, some shaking their heads slightly as they assimilated the information.

  “Common factor four: all three victims had abnormally large heads and above average intelligence.” Henry paused as he sensed an aura of disbelief descending upon the officers. “And finally, common factor five: all three victims were members of Mensa.”

  Henry glanced down at Natasha. Did she sense what he felt? Did she see what he was beginning to fear?

  “What is Mensa, Inspector?” a voice called out from the back of the room.

  “Mensa is an organisation for people with above average IQs. It’s a club, if you like.”

  He did not expound as very few of his colleagues knew that he, too, was a member of Mensa. Natasha and Steven Bruce were the only ones he could think of who knew, though he wondered how long it might be before his membership of this elite society would become common knowledge in the station.

  “So it’s possible that Mensa could be a point for recruiting victims?” said another voice in the audience.

  Henry nodded solemnly.

  “Absolutely. I want someone to contact Mensa and visit their offices. They have an informal club here in London,” Henry said, trying to sound detached.

  “I want an officer to check out the membership status of the three victims and…” Bruce began to say.

  “But there will surely be thousands of members across the country, not to mention worldwide, sir,” Natasha said.

  Bruce nodded and inclined his head slightly. She had a fair point.

  “Just interview the Club officials looking for… anything… unusual, I suppose.”

  “What about HOLMES?” Henry asked, sitting down again beside Natasha. “There may be more cases.”

  “Absolutely!” Bruce agreed. “I will nominate an officer to collate all relevant information that may be stored on HOLMES, looking specifically for any other cases that possibly match our victims’ profiles.”

  “HOLMES is the Home Office Large and Major Enquiry System. It’s a database shared by all police forces nationwide,” Henry whispered into Natasha’s ear.

  “Thank you, sir,” she said quietly.

  “As all of the victims were born in Germany, what about contacting Interpol?” a voice suggested from the audience.

  Henry raised his index finger in an affirmative gesture.

  “Definitely,” he said, glancing at Steven Bruce. “That must be a priority.”

  Bruce made a note.

  “What do you mean by ‘abnormal heads’, Inspector?” a voice to one side said.

  “It is not anatomically or pathologically correct terminology, I know,” Henry replied, looking towards the direction of the voice. “All three victims had skulls and brains well above the upper limit of normality for humans. In isolation, this might well be insignificant or simply overlooked, but all three in conjunction makes it seem less likely to be merely coincidence, though of course, it may still be.” He shrugged. “We just don’t know, yet.”

  An uneasy silence enveloped the officers. There were indeed more questions than answers in this investigation.

  “Now it’s important that this remains under wraps, ladies and gentlemen. We are not yet authorising press releases and there is to be no media coverage. At this point we are not certain what we are dealing with and it is somewhat fortuitous that we even know about all three victims. So remember, mum’s the word. We are not talking ‘serial killer’ at this stage, understood?” Bruce said, clasping the podium with both hands and leaning into the audience for added effect.

  “What is in Steinhorn, sir?” a female officer in the front row asked.

  “Steinhöring,” Bruce corrected, enunciating slowly. “We don’t know. Henry?”

  Henry looked up in surprise as he realised everyone was staring at him.

  “It’s a very small, insignificant town in Bavaria, as far as I’m aware.”

  A brief silence ensued.

  “Right that’s all. Off to work,” Bruce said, clapping his hands sharply, stepping away from the podium and approaching Henry.

  “I really do think you should send us to Steinhöring, boss.” Henry said, pushing his hands deep into his baggy trouser pockets.

  Bruce removed his black cap and looked from Henry to Natasha, who had come to join them.

  “A small insignificant town in Bavaria – what on earth would you hope to find there?” Bruce said, quoting Henry sarcastically.

  Henry looked down at his brogues, unpolished and scuffed. He could feel his nerve dissolving and was afraid he might inadvertently reveal body language that could betray his personal interest.

  “It is a long shot, I know, but all three of our victims come from the same place. Can we afford to dismiss this as coincidence?” he said, trying not to plead.

  Bruce sighed and shook his head.

  “That was decades ago, Henry, merely an entry in a register. The likelihood of relevance to our murder enquiry so many years later, in another country, across three constabularies, must be slimmer than a fashion model on a diet.”

  Merely an entry in a register: the words echoed in Henry’s head. That was all he knew with certainty about his past – his entry in a birth register – yet to his Superintendent this snippet of information was no more than an administrative irrelevancy.

  “I hope you’re right, boss.” Henry said, turning to leave.

  “It’s my job to be right. One more thing, Henry.”

  “What’s that, sir?”

  “You look terrible.”

  “Thank you, sir. I didn’t sleep well last night.”

  “Mmmmh,” Bruce mumbled. “I think a haircut may also help, Henry. It’s not exactly… regulation, is it?”

  Henry sighed, looking uneasily at Natasha as Bruce left the incident room.

  “Pretty soon everyone will know about my little personal idiosyncrasies,” he said.

  “It’s not a crime to be a member of Mensa, you know,” Natasha replied, pushing hair out of her face.

  No, thought Henry, it was not, yet his clandestine associations with the common factors of these cases were becoming increasingly uncomfortable to him.

  How long could he feasibly withhold the privacy of his background from this investigation, he wondered. Eventually the facts were bound to emerge and when they did, they would, at best,
embarrass him profoundly. At worst, he began to fear where the advancing investigation might lead him personally; in other words, how deep was the rabbit hole? How far down it would he discover himself and his true identity?

  Most frightening of all – Henry began to wonder just who he might turn out to be.

  Nineteen

  George turned her head and tried to shield the mobile phone from the noise of the crowds – several hundred thousand protestors gathered around Tahir Square in central Cairo. It was very late, close to midnight, and the streets were angrily illuminated by the lights of cars, fires and flares.

  Cairo was busy, tense, with daily stand-offs between the military and protestors. George simply wanted to speak to Henry, to make peace, to apologise for her foolishly jealous behaviour, for leaving without saying goodbye.

  Finally, she could hear the phone ringing in his apartment. She pictured him moving around in it as he cooked his meal, listening in the background to either Katie Melua or perhaps Corelli, his favourite Baroque composer.

  But he did not answer the phone. George began to frown, checking her watch and wondering where he could be at this time of the evening.

  Suddenly the crack of several shots being fired in the still night air made her head spin back to the surging crowds, her journalistic instincts sharpened once more, her desire to find Henry ebbing, replaced by both self-preservation and insatiable curiosity.

  Twenty

  Henry knew that one false move would spell instant death and ignominious defeat at the hands of Professor Harold Spencer. It was Tuesday and he had both felt the need to lose himself in the company of Mensa Club members, as well as eagerly anticipated the opportunity to interrogate Professor Spencer, head of Anthropology at London’s Natural History Museum.

  “I think it’s game over, Henry,” said Spencer through a bushy grey beard that matched the curly hair on his head. His alert eyes scanned the room, a fragment of forgotten scrambled egg dangling stupidly in his beard.

  Henry rubbed his temples thoughtfully. He and Spencer were closely matched on the chessboard, but tonight he had to admit distraction, significant mental distraction, and this had cost him the first match in under fifty moves and put him into a parlous position in their second.

  “I’m not conceding, if that’s what you’re suggesting,” Henry replied resolutely.

  “You cannot win with a Queen, a Rook and a handful of Pawns, dear chap, not from this position.”

  Spencer was about sixty and sharp as a tack. Even his skin looked youthful and were it not for the bushy grey hair and dated dress sense he could have passed for a much younger man.

  “Is it possible for human brains and skulls to get larger over time?” Henry asked as he nonchalantly moved his Rook.

  “You’re asking me about the evolution of intelligence, are you?”

  Henry nodded, his eyes never leaving the chessboard that separated the two men on a square wooden table in the Mensa Club Library. The room contained several such tables and each was occupied by at least one, if not a pair, of studious- looking members, either reading or engaged in a similar pursuit to Henry and Spencer, surrounded by floor to ceiling shelves crammed with books. The room smelled of leather and mothballs.

  “In a sense,” Henry said.

  “Human skull size is a compromise and it could only really get bigger, over time, if we returned to walking on all-fours.”

  Spencer’s right hand hovered over the board, ready to pounce on one of his chess pieces.

  “Explain,” Henry said.

  “You see, the price we Homo sapiens paid for walking on two legs and thereby nimbly being able to escape our enemies, was an inevitable restriction on brain size. The human pelvis cannot be engineered both for walking erect and allowing the passage of a large foetal head at birth. Evidence, if ever there was, of Darwin’s theory of natural selection.”

  “So human evolution has in fact dictated to us a smaller head than we might have been destined to have?” Henry suggested, watching Spencer move his Queen.

  “Destined to have only if we had never evolved to walking on our hind legs,” Spencer said, studying the board carefully.

  Henry grunted.

  “I don’t understand why you’re playing so sloppily tonight, Henry.” Spencer was shaking his head, threatening to dislodge the fragment of scrambled egg.

  Henry smiled wryly as he watched Spencer’s unguarded move.

  “Neanderthal man had a larger brain than we do today. But such a big foetal head in modern humans would certainly kill both mother and baby in childbirth. So the compromise for our mobility, and agility, has been to evolve with smaller heads.” Spencer’s eyes sparkled as he leaned back and folded his arms, satisfied with the progress of the game in front of him. Henry leaned in and quickly despatched Spencer’s Rook. Spencer’s face fell like a house of cards blown down by an unexpected draught through the window.

  “So millions of years of brain evolution came to an abrupt halt when we learned to walk upright on our legs?” Henry said.

  Spencer nodded, frowning at the catastrophe unfolding on the board before him.

  “Human brain size has not increased at all in the past seventy to a hundred thousand years.”

  “But how then did humans evolve to have superior intelligence?” Henry said.

  Spencer unfolded his arms and rested his elbows on his knees, leaning in to study the board closely, his nose just inches from its surface.

  “Humans needed a larger brain to exploit the evolutionary advantage of using tools, absolutely. But because a larger skull posed too many problems for the female pelvis we evolved to give birth prematurely, compared to most animal species, in other words before the foetal brain is fully grown. That of course imposed other limitations on humans as our offspring need to be intensively nursed for years before they become independent.”

  Spencer spoke with the authoritative familiarity of years of dedicated study.

  “So we cannot simply develop larger heads and brains over time?” Henry said.

  Spencer looked up and frowned at Henry, before lowering his gaze and moving his Knight confidently.

  “You’re outgunned here, Henry, admit defeat.”

  “I’m fighting to the death, Harry,” Henry replied with a wry grin.

  “What exactly do you mean by ‘bigger brains’?” Spencer said.

  “Well, say… cranial capacities in excess of 2000 cc’s.”

  Spencer leaned back and chuckled, shaking his head, though this was short-lived as Henry produced another risky move, cornering his opponent’s Bishop.

  “You’re full of surprises tonight, Henry,” Spencer said, narrowing his eyes.

  “Is it possible, Harry?” Henry repeated.

  “What?”

  “Cranial capacities over 2000 cc’s?”

  “Oh yes, er, no, I very much doubt it, old chap. There’s a limit to how much post-natal brain growth one can expect. An increase of, what… fifty per cent or more on the current average, no, I would say that is not possible.”

  Henry said nothing as Spencer moved his attack into position for the final onslaught on his King.

  “So natural selection favoured premature birth as a solution to giving humans a brain size that enabled us to adapt to our changing world? That’s a high risk evolutionary step, isn’t it?” Henry said.

  “Absolutely, but it’s the price humans pay for being top of the primate intelligence pyramid – top of Darwin’s food chain.”

  Henry leaned forward and snapped up Spencer’s Queen.

  “Check!” he said.

  Spencer was speechless, his mouth agape as he stared at the board.

  “How did you do that? I had you on the ropes.”

  Henry chuckled with satisfaction.

  “Do you remember 1963 – ‘Evans-Reshevsky’?” he said, unable to repress a satisfied smile.

  Spencer looked up from the board in disbelief.

  “You’ve swindled me, you snake!�
�

  Henry shrugged unrepentantly.

  “Marshall’s Book of Chess Swindles – one of my favourite bed- time reads,” he replied, still chuckling.

  Spencer began to smile, despite having suffered defeat in the very throes of victory. He leaned forward and flicked his King over on its side.

  “You deserve it, old chap, you swindled me good and proper.”

  The two men shared a quiet smile as they reflected on the game. The library fell silent again, only the gentle and reassuring ticking of a clock on the wall to remind the members of the passage of time.

  “So if you wanted to increase human brain size, Harry, how would you accomplish that?” Henry said finally.

  Spencer leaned back and let his arms dangle over the back of his leather armchair as he stretched his shoulders.

  “Is this one of your murder investigations, Inspector?”

  Henry made a face. “It could be.”

  Spencer sighed deeply.

  “Two million years of evolution did not happen by accident. If you wanted to change the natural order of things, if you were determined to defy Darwinism, then you would have to significantly tamper with the Laws of Nature.”

  “So humans with large heads and brains could, in your opinion, only develop with human intervention?” Henry said.

  Spencer nodded.

  “Absolutely. Determined human intervention.”

  “Is it really possible to do such a thing?”

  Spencer sighed, his eyes searching the bookshelves that lined the walls of the room.

  “I’d be inclined to say no, but mankind has cloned life, genetically manipulated both plant and animal species, extended human reproduction well beyond our intended years, transplanted just about every organ in the human body…” He paused. “It would be naive of me to suggest that artificially manipulating human brain size and intelligence was not, on some level, possible.”

  Henry pondered this for a moment.

  “For me the question would be…”

  “Exactly,” Spencer interrupted. “Why?”

  Henry stared at the fallen chess pieces on the board between them.