by Bragelonne
Erich could no longer feel the lacerations the cosh had left on his backside; adrenalin was blotting out the pain. He had been tempted to hasten his own death by provoking the SS officer in some way: making the Nazi pull out his Luger and shoot him in the head. But, in Buchenwald, you never knew how you would die. If a soldier preferred to torture you for days rather than kill you on the spot, maybe being burned alive was one of the better alternatives on offer.
The potbellied SS guard abandoned him by the crematorium, handing him over to a scar-faced prisoner.
Following him inside, Erich found himself in a high-ceilinged room. Red-brick blocks, each two metres and a half tall, which housed the three incinerators, stood in the centre of the room.
‘I’ve just finished off what the cadaver conveyor, the Leichenträger as you would call him, brought me yesterday night, just prior to roll call,’ the man with the speckled face said in English; he had a faint French accent. ‘What’s your name?’
Fear formed a knot in Erich’s throat. He tried to swallow. It felt as if he had pins lodged down there.
‘Erich,’ he murmured.
‘I’m Alain. I don’t know what they’ve told you about the crematorium, but if I had a choice, I’d run back to the quarry. Anyway, I’ll quickly explain how everything works, then we can get on with it; the Leichenträger will return soon.’
Erich gave Alain a puzzled look. So the crematorium was to be his new assignment: he was to work here, not be thrown in alive! He began to sob, hands pulled up to his lips. Relief flooded his body and awakened the pain radiating through his thighs and midriff. He greeted it like an unexpected gift.
Alain slapped him amicably on the back.
‘It’ll be OK, mate; it’ll be OK. We’ll make our way out of here eventually … Come on, we’ll begin in the strangling cellar.’
Alain led Erich to the basement.
‘Today, all we have to do is retrieve bodies from the strangling cave. They’ve left nothing to collect from the torture chamber or the dissection room. Well, for now … Be careful where you step, young friend. And breathe through your mouth.’
The stairs ended in a rectangular hall. Erich froze when he reached the last step.
The narrow paths, the blocks, the latrines, the SS – wherever you looked, Buchenwald stank of death. But this room embodied the very essence of the camp’s horror, the final resting place towards which herds of men, women and starving and wounded children advanced, thinking all the way of just one further step, the minute beyond the present; any more and they would succumb to madness.
Facing Erich, scores of bodies, naked, or clad in meagre rags, were hanging on hooks fixed just a few centimetres from the ceiling, like slabs of meat. Their faces, twisted by fear and pain, still appeared alive.
‘We have to move them to the carts, then into the lift,’ Alain continued, seemingly unconcerned. ‘But it’s going to take a couple of journeys: the lift will only accommodate between twenty-five and thirty bodies. Normally, it’s only eighteen, but what with the camp’s general diet, we can fit many more…. Come on, give me a hand. I’ll grab this one by his legs and you, as you’re taller, you get hold of him from the top, under the armpits. No need to cut the rope off his neck.’
Erich stepped round the puddles of urine, excrement and blood, and unhooked the first man. The body’s weight came as a surprise, and he stumbled backwards, just about righting himself by spreading his legs. The cadaver fell against his chest, its head buried against his neck as if seeking to huddle into him. His stomach shuddered with disgust, more in reaction to the pestilential smell than this parody of an embrace.
‘Are you OK, young friend?’ Alain asked as he helped him straighten himself out. ‘They’re heavier than they first appear, aren’t they? Don’t let go of him. I’ll get the feet. OK? Ready?’
Erich nodded imperceptibly and they carried the body to the cart.
Once the forty-five bodies had been transported to the floor above, they piled them up by the oven. Alain opened the first incinerator’s heavy, half-moon-shaped door. A scorching heat was released. He took off his striped shirt. Erich copied him.
‘I’ll show you how to do it first,’ Alain said handing Erich a pair of long-handled anvil tongs. ‘You pull them along by their feet with the pincers, and then I’ll take hold of their necks and stuff them into the oven. OK? Then we’ll move on to the other ovens. We can’t waste any time.’
Erich’s gaze was lost within the mass of tangled bodies, his eyes resting a brief moment on a cyanotic face, its hanging, swollen tongue and eyes seemingly popping out of the bruised head.
‘Hey, German guy, step on it.’
Erich followed Alain’s instructions. Holding the heavy tongs, he seized the cadaver’s ankles and they threw him into the oven. Then they moved on to the next body. Just after they had dealt with the twelfth prisoner, a sharp shriek reached them from inside the oven.
Erich froze, his heart rising to his lips.
Alain closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. ‘It happens sometimes. Let’s just continue.’
‘Damn it, you still haven’t got rid of all of your cargo?’
The Leichenträger stood at the entrance to the room, his outline framed by the door. His stocky silhouette towered over them. He had addressed Alain in French.
‘You’re running late this morning, my Belgian friend! And with the new supplies I’ve brought you, you’ve still a lot on your plate. Who’s this with you, there? One of yours?’
‘No. He’s a Kraut.’
‘Hell. Poor guy.’
The Leichenträger continued in English: ‘How old are you, shorty?’
‘Twenty-four.’
‘That’s a hell of a tattoo, there,’ he said, pointing to Erich’s shoulder. ‘You know, if you’d arrived in Buchenwald a few years back, there’s a good chance you’d have ended up as a lampshade in Himmler’s drawing room.’
Erich gazed at him, not quite understanding what he had been told.
‘You’ve never heard of the Bitch? Kommandant Koch’s wife?’
Erich shook his head.
‘Hey, Alain, you’re going to have to educate the kid!’ The Leichenträger clapped his powerful hands together. ‘That Ilse Koch whore had every prisoner with fancy tattoos put down like a rabid dog. Then she used their skins to have lampshades made, or bindings for books, and canvases for the drawing rooms of her friends. End of lesson. Now, back to our cargo, it’s all outside. And these are just the bodies from Block 50, so you’ve a long day ahead of you.’
Alain and Erich followed him outside, each pushing a cart.
Erich gazed at the mountains of bodies piled up like logs by the entrance door. They looked like split-open rag dolls.
By the time Erich left the crematorium to attend the evening roll call, the smell of carbonised flesh was stuck to his skin.
The twenty thousand deportees arranged themselves in groups of one hundred to the sound of the music. Behind the slow procession of the orchestra, two prisoners were pulling a cart along on which stood a naked prisoner, his face cast down. The tired fingers of the musicians played J’attendrai, and, for a brief moment, Erich almost thought he heard the seductive voice of Rina Ketty.
Two SS soldiers escorted the deportee to the gallows that stood at the centre of the grounds.
The roll call began with the man’s body still jerking around like a puppet on the end of the rope.
For four full hours, an SS officer called out each registration number in turn. During this time, fifty-five men, who had come to the very end of their tethers, collapsed. They had to be held up by their nearest companions until the officer finally reached the end of his list.
Once Erich and his comrades made it to their block, Josef, the eldest prisoner, pulled a canvas bag onto the table. His ribs were almost peering through his thin skin, but his pale features looked triumphant.
The denizens of the block knew what he had brought back from the kitchens. They wer
e already salivating with impatience as they sat in front of their half-full plates of clear soup in which floated random, minuscule pieces of rotten potato.
Josef distributed a handful of peelings to all and sundry. Some dipped them into their soup, others kept them separate, next to their bread, alternating a spoonful of soup and a meagre bite of potato peel.
Michal, a Czech, waited until his comrades left the table before he began his harvest. Tonight, it was his turn: the breadcrumbs and whatever else had been left were his.
Erich joined Josef and the group of inmates sitting at the ends of their bunks.
‘Do you know, we didn’t expect to see you tonight, Erich?’ Josef said, with a tentative smile.
‘I’ve been transferred to the ovens.’
Josef grimaced.
‘I’m sure you’d rather be working with us at the quarry.’
The Pole with the chest covered in ulcers shook his head. ‘Well, I, for one, would happily swap places with you and work in the crematorium. Today there was a guy who just couldn’t stand up any more and they buried him alive.’
Erich thought back to the cries of agony of the man they had burned alive.
‘Do you know what’s happening in Block 50?’ he asked, his mind still haunted by the screams.
‘46 and 50 are the medical experiment units,’ the Pole explained. ‘Where we poor suckers are used as guinea pigs in order to prolong the life of the superior race. You must have noticed Block 50 when you wandered by on Sunday afternoon. It’s the one where the windows are all whitewashed. According to one of the guys who works there, they’re studying “exan-something typhus”.’
‘Exanthematous typhus,’ Erich corrected him.
‘Yeah, that’s it. There’s about sixty people working there, each stark naked and shaven down. They say it’s that other madman, SS Sturmbannführer Ding-Schuler who’s in charge. But Block 46, on the other hand – I have no idea what’s happening there, and neither does anyone else.’
‘Block 46 is the antechamber to death,’ Michal intervened, having just walked away from the table. ‘Anyone who walks in there never comes out.’
Linnéa Blix’s home, Olofsbo, Falkenberg
Tuesday, 14 January 2014, 08.00
ALEXIS WAS BURROWING through her bag, while moving from foot to foot in an attempt to combat the cold seeping through her jeans. Despite Olofsson’s reminders, she had left her passport at the hotel. She managed to find her driving licence and showed it to the policeman in charge at Linnéa’s house.
Silently, for a minute that seemed to go on forever, the young cop compared the young woman’s features with the identity photo, then checked her name against a list supplied by his superiors. He finally allowed her to pass. Alexis thanked him, drawing on all the politeness she had managed to absorb in her seven years living in London, and entered her friend’s home.
To be inside Linnéa’s place without her around felt bizarre, and unpleasant. Alexis was almost expecting her to come rushing down the stairs when a voice made her freeze.
‘Alexis!’
She turned around. Emily was looking out from the kitchen, at the other end of the hall.
‘Bergström told me you were planning to do an inventory of Linnéa’s house today. It’s a good thing, because I have some questions for you before I return to the police station,’ the profiler said, disappearing into the room.
Shaking her head, Alexis followed Emily into the kitchen. How could the woman be so devoid of tact and empathy; it was beyond belief, worrying even. She must have no social life, surely, to treat people in the way she did.
Emily stood behind the kitchen counter.
‘What sort of woman was Linnéa?’ she asked.
‘Can’t we do this somewhere else, Emily? Maybe at the police station?’
‘The faster I have answers to my questions, the more rapidly my investigation can move forward.’
Straight away, Emily was making Alexis feel guilty. All things considered, she was a crafty psychologist, Alexis thought. She stood in the centre of the kitchen, unwilling to sit or lean against anything.
‘Linnéa was dynamic. Obsessed by her work. Funny. An extrovert. She could talk all night, even to a wall.’
‘Did she often come to Falkenberg?’
‘Twice a year, maybe, for two or three weeks at a time.’
‘Did she come with anyone?’
‘Alone. Always…’
Emily seemed to frown.
‘And when she was staying here, she was never in touch much. Even with Peter. It was like a retreat for her.’
‘How long had she owned this house?’
‘She’d bought it two or three years ago, I think.’
‘Did she have any family in Sweden?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘So what exactly was Linnéa’s profession?’
‘She designed high-end jewellery for Cartier in London.’
‘How did she spend her days?’
‘She … she drew; sometimes she worked with the salespeople at the store, meeting clients who were interested in special creations.’
‘How long had she been in the job?’
‘Less than a year. It was a big step forward in her career. She was about to unveil her first collection three days ago, last Saturday,’ Alexis said, her voice filling with tears.
‘And what did she do before?’
Alexis cleared her throat. ‘She worked for another jeweller, but she wasn’t allowed to sign her creations.’
‘How long had she lived in London?’
‘Oh, a long time. She originally went there to study at Central St Martin’s.’
‘And before that?’
‘She lived in Sweden, but I’m not sure where.’
‘How long had she been with Peter Templeton?’
‘Two years.’
‘Did they live together?’
‘For the last four months.’
‘Was it an exclusive relationship?’
‘Yes, I think so…’ Alexis’ gaze was fixed on a spot in the distance, behind Emily. ‘As a matter of fact, she never said much about the relationship … She only really talked about her work.’
‘What were they like together?’
‘Peter was attentive, tender.’
‘And her?’
‘She…’ The trace of a smile moved across Alexis’ lips as the memories flowed back. ‘She appeared happy.’
‘Did she have any enemies? Had she recently met any unusual new people? Unsettling acquaintances? Anything out of the ordinary happened?’
Alexis shook her head in response to every question.
Then a thought occurred, and she began to frown.
‘Sorry. I almost forgot to mention it: Linnéa had an ex-husband. A Swede. He moved into this area just a few months ago.’
Falkenberg police station
Tuesday, 14 January 2014, 10.20
KRISTIAN OLOFSSON CLOSED the door to the conference room, still biting into his kanelbulle.
‘Miss Roy, Kommissionar.’
Bergström distractedly pinched the top of his nose and briefly closed his eyes. The detective was late for their morning meeting once again.
‘May I help myself to a cup of coffee?’
Emily’s face remained calm and collected.
Olofsson settled down next to the Kommissionar, setting down his breakfast on the table.
‘Who is this Svensson you’re talking about?’ he asked, brushing some specks of sugar from his shirt.
‘Linnéa Blix’s ex-husband,’ Bergström answered, his voice unemotional. ‘He’s been living in Falkenberg for the last few months.’
‘Never heard of him,’ Olofsson said, still sipping his coffee. ‘Falkenberg ain’t no Rörö*, Miss Roy. There are twenty thousand people living here; no way we could know every soul. And do you know how many Svenssons live in the whole of Sweden?’
‘Kristian,’ a tired-voiced Bergström intervened, ‘we�
��re referring to Karl Svensson, the sculptor.’
‘The one who lives in the big house on the beach and who earns a living assembling shards of broken bottles? Damn it, it’s a small world…’
‘So, as I was saying to Emily, we are indeed aware of Karl Svensson. He’s a well-known artist and…’
‘…a hell of a party animal, with a taste for drink and an eye for chicks a third of his age,’ Olofsson continued, swallowing the final bite of his pastry.
Emily, who had been silent since Olofsson’s arrival, looked over at Bergström.
‘Yes, that’s about it. He’s been arrested for driving under the influence. He’s been found several times with female minors…’
‘How old?’
‘Between thirteen and fifteen.’
‘Has he ever been arrested for sexually assaulting a minor, or for rape?’
‘The fucker’s always managed to slip through the net,’ Olofsson declared, holding his cup aloft, a dismissive smile curling his lips. Bergström shot him an angry gaze, which he didn’t even notice. ‘He’s never been arrested. And no one has lodged a complaint against him.’
‘And who is Stellan Eklund – aside from being Linnéa’s neighbour?’ Emily asked, her voice neutral.
‘That’s such a good question!’ said Kristian, with a hint of laughter, twisting in his chair.
‘För guds skull, Olofsson!’ the Kommissionar shouted.
Olofsson sank back in his chair. Emily had no need for a translation.
Bergström loudly sighed.
‘Do you want a coffee?’ he asked, now getting up.
The profiler shook her head.
Bergström served himself in a night-blue Hogänäs mug, adding a spot of milk.
‘Stellan was one of ours,’ he said as he sat back down. ‘He used to work for me, here in Falkenberg. Then he was moved to Gothenburg to investigate a trafficking affair. A few months later, his partner, his partner’s wife and their two daughters were all murdered by the East European mafia gang they were investigating. Right in front of Stellan.’
