The car passed through one of the twelve arches forming the towering railway viaduct built in 1857 to cross boggy Flass Vale, before sweeping to the right beside the imposing sandstone and red brick landmark.
“My school was up that way,” Henry said to Natasha, pointing back along the road that ran beneath the viaduct and up a steep hill. His eyes lingered. “It’s a boutique hotel now.”
“Luc Bezier is the victim,” Stanbridge said. “Incidentally also of French origin. He was a contemporary musician and somewhat unorthodox in his teaching methods. He was fascinated by fusion music, especially African and Latin music, apparently.”
They were passing the lavishly appointed grounds of Durham School on which children in sparkling whites could be seen assembled on a velvet green oval, playing cricket. Outside the air was rich with the heady scent of mowed grass.
“How did they find the tattoo?” Henry asked.
Stanbridge shrugged and creased his great jowls.
“Everyone could see it. He kept his head clean-shaven.”
“When exactly did this happen?”
“No more than four days ago. His body was found the morning after he was killed.”
“Do you have any leads, witnesses, or motives?” Natasha asked.
Stanbridge shook his head. Perspiration was beginning to trickle down his fleshy cheeks, a sure sign on such a mild, northern summer’s day, of being overweight.
“Nowt,” he replied.
They parked up beneath towering beech and oak trees that populated the riverbanks beneath Durham School, making their way along a footpath that snaked between the flanking undergrowth until the eighteenth century solid stone structure of Prebends Bridge came into view ahead of them. Cyclists ambled by, walkers and joggers crunched past on the gravelled paths, while around them the tranquil silence was broken only by the heavenly cascading harmonies of the Cathedral bells.
“We think he may have been shot on the bridge and then pushed over into the undergrowth beneath,” Stanbridge said, pulling a handkerchief from a straining trouser pocket and dabbing his forehead and neck.
Henry stopped beside the stone balustrade on Prebends Bridge and peered first over the edge to the riverbank below, then craned his head up and looked through the trees towards the highest point on the riverbank above them, demarcated by a crumbling sandstone wall covered in ivy. He could smell the bewitching floral spice of Natasha’s perfume beside him.
“Could he not have been pushed off somewhere up there?” Henry said, pointing to the elevated stone wall, “and then rolled down past the bridge to the riverbank below. It’s pretty steep, isn’t it?”
Stanbridge and Natasha both looked up at the stone wall and traced the imaginary path of a rolling body down through the tangled undergrowth of the steep riverbank.
“Aye, I suppose it’s possible,” Stanbridge said.
“I would get your forensic officers into the undergrowth to scour for trace evidence, perhaps blood or fibres off his clothing, along the potential path his body may have rolled,” Henry said, diplomatically phrasing his suggestions as a DCI from a visiting force.
Stanbridge squinted at the extent of the area they would need to cover and sighed, his great shoulders rising and then shuddering down on to his pendulous belly.
“Tell us about Luc Bezier,” Natasha said, pulling a notepad out from her brown leather bag.
“Luc Bezier was a lyricist, songwriter and widely known musician, often performing at the Gala Theatre. He recently became a lecturer at the University Music School.” “Which is where?” she interrupted.
“Right up there,” Stanbridge replied, pointing to some stone buildings beyond the stone wall, close to Durham Cathedral.
“He was from France, you said?” Henry said.
“Aye.”
“Married?” Natasha asked.
“No, single. We’ve not traced any family or next of kin as yet.”
“Homosexual?” Henry fixed Stanbridge with an inquisitive stare.
Beneath the bridge two rowing boats slid through the calm waters under the synchronised power of eight well practised oarsmen.
“I don’t know, not heard it said so far. He was covered in some weird tattoos, though.”
Nastasha scribbled in untidy shorthand on her notepad.
“Was he a member of Mensa?” Henry said, shooting a sharp glance towards Stanbridge.
“Aye, now that did come up, Chief Inspector, but I have to admit that I had never heard of it. What is it?” Stanbridge said, his brow wrinkling in puzzlement.
“It’s a club… for very intelligent people,” Henry replied, glancing at Natasha.
“OK. Well, I believe he was a member of Menser anyhow,” Stanbridge said.
“Mensa.” Natasha corrected, emphasising the final syllable.
“Any unusual findings at post mortem?” Henry asked.
“Aye.” Stanbridge leant on the parapet of the bridge overlooking the weir at Fulling Mill, where the water cascaded over forming an oblique white line. “He had an abnormally large brain, doc said, and he was HIV positive.”
“Was he now?” Henry said. “That is interesting.”
“I’ll show you where he was found.” Stanbridge walked to the end of the bridge, from which point they descended a winding and precarious pathway between the tangled vegetation down to the flat, grassy riverbanks below. Picnickers on rugs and folding chairs were scattered around the pleasantly shaded spot, ripe with the healthy scent of wild garlic chives and rosemary. A group of children tossed a frisbee back and forth.
Stanbridge came to a halt amongst brambles and bracken almost directly beneath Prebends Bridge.
Henry examined the angles involved from the top of the stone wall further up the riverbank.
“What do you think?”
“What on earth is that?” Natasha said, her attention diverted to a large stone chair covered in gargoyles and horrific faces carved into the stone back. Children clambered all over it.
Stanbridge chuckled.
“The stone chair. That’s where the students like to… er… you know.” He blushed slightly as Natasha’s disarming gaze fell upon him.
“I’d like to speak to the pathologist who did the post mortem, if that’s possible,” Henry said, bending down and rubbing some garlic chives between his fingers.
*
Dr Chowdry was a meticulously presented man with tiny round spectacles, reminiscent of Ghandi himself. His light brown skin contrasted sharply with silver hair and a grey goatee beard. Even Natasha was taller than him and his slight frame was very much padded out by the generous white coat draped unevenly over his sloping shoulders.
The mortuary was typically cold and stark, Henry guessed Victorian in construction, with rectangular white tiles on the floor and walls that reminded him of many pedestrian underpasses in London.
“Yes, I recall that post mortem very well,” Chowdry said. “Single gunshot wound to the head, yet one of the strangest examinations I have undertaken in my entire career.” Chowdry shook his head when one expected he might nod it.
“In what way?” Henry asked.
“I’ll show you. His body is still here if you would like to see it.”
Chowdry spoke with suppressed animation, exuding an energy that did not show in his facial expression nor vocal modulation.
“Yes, please.” Henry’s eyes lit up. Natasha’s face, in contrast, drained of colour instantaneously.
Chowdry located the appropriate fridge and slid out the sheet-covered body of Luc Bezier, whose splayed feet bore a tag on one big toe that read: Luc Bezier (M) 35 years deceased 27.8.11.
“He was in generally good health with no indications of undiagnosed pathology, except for two… bizarre… findings.”
Henry’s eyes flicked from Chowdry’s deadpan face to the tattoo-covered, waxen corpse of Luc Bezier. The spiral skin markings closely resembled traditional Polynesian and Maori Tā Moko; grooved filigree patterns with flamboyant
swirls.
“Help me please, Max,” Chowdry said to a technician dressed in green surgical scrubs who was cleaning instruments on the far side of the room.
Together, Max, Stanbridge and Chowdry partly rolled the body on to its side.
“Look at the base of his neck,” Chowdry directed Henry.
The back of Bezier’s body was discoloured by lividity from pooled blood, staining the dependant tissues everywhere except where bony prominences pressed against the stainless steel: the shoulder blades, the hips and buttocks.
Henry stooped to inspect the neck more closely. Natasha stepped back and covered her nose and mouth. The smell of refrigerated death was impossible to disguise, even with industrial grade air freshener.
“I found the letter ‘G’ and the number ‘4’ tattooed on the skin of his nuchal fold, high up on the neck.”
Chowdry pointed his index finger at the tattoo. Henry’s heart jumped: Bezier was another one.
Chowdry must have detected Henry’s reaction. “Does this mean something to you?”
Henry inhaled sharply.
“We have found several victims with similar markings recently,” he acknowledged, self-consciously rubbing the crusting wound at the back of his own neck.
“What does it signify, Inspector?” Chowdry asked.
Henry pursed his lips.
“We don’t really know, Doctor.”
They all stood and stared at the tattoo for a moment before Chowdry suddenly began to speak again.
“Do you see how the new swirling Polynesian tattoos have been overlaid over that area, almost like…”
“An attempt to hide or disguise it,” Henry interrupted.
“Yes, exactly, that is what I also thought.” Chowdry smiled ever so slightly. “Okay, Max, slowly now… on to his back.”
They let the body return to its supine position. A great Y-shaped incision up the front of the trunk and across to each shoulder had been sutured with coarse surgical twine.
“The second thing was simply the size of his cranium and brain, Inspector.”
Henry studied Bezier’s shaven head, prominent parietal bones and bulbous occiput. Though deceptive without any hair, he still judged it to be larger than usual.
“Let me guess, Doctor, it was around 2000 grams, perhaps more, well above the normal upper limit for humans?”
For the first time Chowdry’s face displayed a reaction: astonishment.
“How did you know?”
“I’ve seen five of these now. We have uncovered a definite pattern, Doctor, but we have no motive, no suspects.”
“I recovered a bullet.” Chowdry said.
Henry looked up sharply.
“9mm?”
“I would say so. It’s gone for ballistic examination.”
“To NABIS?”
“Aye,” Stanbridge confirmed with a nod.
This was a significant lead, the first undisputed ballistic evidence that they had uncovered in this investigation. A sudden thought occurred to Henry: what if this bullet matched the one he’d found in the boat shed in Grasmere?
“Which NABIS laboratory did you send it to?” he asked Stanbridge.
“Manchester.”
Henry glanced across at Natasha, who raised a hand to indicate that she had taken note of this information.
“Do you know Professor Haxton Guinney at the University Science Laboratories, Dr Chowdry?” Henry said.
“Oh yes,” Chowdry replied, shaking his head animatedly from side to side.
“Would you please send the skin tattoo specimen to his laboratory for GC-MS examination. He has comparative analysis data on all our recovered tattoos to date.”
“Of course, no problem, Inspector. That sounds very interesting indeed,” Chowdry said. “I did not know that they could do that sort of analysis.”
“Haxton Guinney can,” Henry replied.
Chowdry slid the body back into the fridge and closed the door.
“DS Stanbridge mentioned something about Luc Bezier being HIV positive?” Henrik said.
“Yes, Inspector, he tested positive.”
“Homosexual?”
Chowdry shrugged.
“Perhaps. Or drugs, or even contamination from unscrupulous tattoo parlours – he’s spent enough time in them. I cannot say why he is positive.”
“Thank you,” Henry said. He walked over to Natasha and patted her on the shoulder.
“Come on, Sergeant, let’s get you some fresh air.”
He led her out with gentle pressure around her elbow. She was perspiring lightly and he knew how she disliked mortuaries and human cadavers. Once outside, she raised her face to the sky, closed her eyes and breathed slowly in and out for a few moments. Henry watched her, desiring nothing more than to place his hands on her sculpted shoulders.
“You were here in Durham only a few days ago, Henry,” Natasha remarked, eyes still shut. “About the same time that someone tracked down and murdered Luc Bezier.”
Henry looked around, as if to orientate himself.
“I was at the University’s Science Laboratories where Professor Guinney works, over… there I think.” He pointed over the elevated city, beyond the mass of trees that delineated a natural bend in the river’s passage upstream.
Opening her eyes, Natasha studied his face. He met her gaze and understood what she was thinking.
“Do you not see the danger you could have been in?” Natasha said. “I can’t help but imagine if it had not been Luc Bezier pushed down the river bank, but…”
Her chin wobbled and she bit her lip, embarrassed. Henry stepped closer and put his arms around her, as he had done that night in Carsac. It felt good, it felt natural, and she responded by resting her head against his shoulder.
“It’s OK, I’m big enough to look after myself. In any case, I don’t think I fit the victim profile.”
Natasha stiffened in his arms.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I may have a tattoo, but do I have a big head?”
Natasha looked up into his eyes, her expression fearful. She was not taking the bait of his humour.
“You do actually have a biggish head, Henry, though I never realised until you had your hair cut. You’re brilliant, you’re in Mensa. Yes, you are very like Luc Bezier.”
“But do I have a vice, or a deviance?”
Natasha lowered her eyes guiltily.
“Would they kill me because of you?” he said softly. “We haven’t done anything.”
Forty
Steinhöring, July 1938
Huber and Oskar sat around the desk in what had been Bauer’s office, but which Huber had appropriated for himself in the Professor’s absence. The skeleton was still hanging in the corner, motionless. The wall chart of hominid evolution was still there, the map of Europe with the Third Reich territory shaded in red, Reichsführer Himmler’s portrait as well, in fact everything of Bauer’s was still there, except the man himself.
“It is strange for me, Rolph, to have been at the very centre of the Hadamar programme to sterilize, to exterminate undesirable human reproduction, to prevent life, and yet now here I am in Heim Hochland with you, creating a blueprint to promote life at the very pinnacle of human existence,” Oskar said with a bemused look. He wiped the palm of one hand across his face, as though to prove he was not dreaming.
“As a neuroscientist, I am so excited by these possibilities, Oskar. But as a doctor they frighten me, especially the birthing challenges.” Huber removed his round glasses and polished them with a handkerchief.
“I cannot thank you enough for getting me out of Hadamar and back to what I do best – gynaecology and delivering babies.”
Oskar had been following Huber around like a puppy since his arrival, impressed by Huber’s position, second to Bauer, and overawed by the ambitions of the secretive Heim Hochland project. Huber replaced his spectacles and returned his attention to the papers in front of them.
“So, a newborn baby
’s brain is about three hundred to three hundred and fifty grams in weight, largely unmyelinated neurons,” Huber repeated to Oskar. “Only those nerves vital to survival are myelinated, which is why a baby cannot walk, or stand, or even lift its own head at first.”
“Right, and eighty per cent of the increase in brain weight is achieved by the end of the first four years of life,” Oskar said.
“Now, we’re aiming to increase the baby’s brain weight at birth by ten to twenty per cent, hoping that we can build on that exponentially with continued treatments as the baby grows,” Huber said.
“I do not understand these treatments.” Oskar said leaned back in the wooden chair.
Huber removed his glasses again and placed the end in his mouth.
“That is neuroscience, Oskar. Don’t worry, for that is the domain of Professor Bauer and myself. Your concern is to get these oversized babies out of the mothers in one piece, or we’ll be on Himmler’s black list.”
Oskar chuckled.
“So tell me about Gudrun Nauhaus,” Oskar said, clasping his hands behind his head.
Huber looked down, unable to keep a shy smile off his face.
“She’s wonderful, isn’t she?”
Oskar rocked on the back legs of his chair, fixing his friend with devilish eyes.
“She’s certainly a highly committed SS officer, Rolph. Does she demand such dedication to duty from you as well?”
There was a loud and urgent knock on the door that startled Oskar into unclasping his hands and sitting forward with a resounding clunk of his chair on the floor.
“Come!” Huber said.
The door creaked open and a midwife, dressed in a white nurses’ uniform stuck her perfectly starched bonnet around the corner.
“Sorry to disturb, Doctors, but we have an emergency in labour, a contracted pelvis and the baby cannot deliver!” she said in breathy gasps, her face flushed with excitement.
Oskar stood up immediately, as did Huber.
“Thank you, Sister, we’re coming,” Huber replied.
She closed the door with a little bow of her head.
“It’s not a contracted pelvis, is it?” Oskar said, fixing Huber with a stare from beneath his eyebrows.
“No. These women have all been carefully selected to have the very best physical characteristics – in every department.”
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