Payne put his hands up to protect himself, but the thing swung the rock it was clutching and struck Payne on the side of the head. He stumbled backwards, fell, and landed on his buttocks with a thud. His teeth rang with the impact of the rock and he tasted blood; his head swam and his vision blurred. The thing came at him now with a huge knife, slashing at the air, but Payne managed to kick out and catch it a painful blow on the shin. He heard a piercing scream of pain and then the creature was gone. Payne heard a key rattle and a door open and close. Footsteps sounded on the wooden stairs.
Payne’s head swam as he stumbled to the breach in the roof and shouted down.
‘Bill, get your rifle and go round to the front. He’s getting away.’
Payne tried to lift himself up through the hole in the roof, but his hands slipped on the jagged edge of the breach and he cried out as he cut a gash in the fleshy part of his palm. He heard three shots ring out and another of those terrible, high-pitched screams.
Then his head swam, his knees buckled and everything became dark . . .
12
BOOTH SPENT THE morning helping Professor Svoboda sort through the medical documents he had found at Wolffslust. At midday, he went to get some lunch. On the way back he stopped in on Tubbs Taylor.
‘Have you made any headway in ascertaining which unit overran Wolffslust prison, yet?’ Booth said. ‘Or who this benighted officer was that set everyone free?’
‘I’m still collating, actually, Jimmy.’
‘Well, I don’t want to press you, Tubbs, but I’m going to need something soon. Do you want me to give you a hand?’
‘No. I work better alone.’
It was the second time in as many days Booth had asked Tubbs about his progress and for the second time he went away with the impression that Tubbs was dragging his feet. Booth returned to his office and lit a cigarette as he considered the problem. He’d no evidence, of course, so there wasn’t really anything he could do about it. The last thing he wanted to do was to confront Tubbs about it. Still, it was a damned nuisance. If there was one thing Tubbs Taylor was good at in life, it was sorting through paperwork, and yet, after two days of ferreting, Tubbs still had nothing for him.
When Booth returned to Professor Svoboda the man’s face was clouded with worry.
‘I’ve had a chance to peruse some of these documents now, captain,’ he said. ‘They are absolutely fascinating. And highly incriminating of the medical staff involved.
‘As we feared, this medical project was indeed commissioned by the Ahnenerbe, under the auspices of a psychiatrist, one Doctor Hans Wiegand. The project began sometime in 1940 at the Institute of Racial Hygiene in Brunswick. However, as a result of the damage caused by the October 14th air attack on the city last year the project was then moved to the cellar of Wolffslust prison.’
Booth looked at the documents Svoboda handed him. ‘What was this Wiegand up to then?’
‘It seems the original thrust of his research was to determine where the psychological breaking points were in a sample of men, with a view to finding out how much strain combat troops could stand. I suppose the fundamental purpose was to discover how much horror a man could take before he ceased to function psychologically.
‘However, as the war progressed, the thrust of the research changed. It seems that from 1942 this Doctor Wiegand began to concentrate solely on SS men who had broken down as a result of their duties. That is why you found so many men who had belonged to the Einsatzgruppen or were concentration camp guards. It was these experiences that had caused them to break. And the SS hierarchy wanted to know whether this ‘weakness’ was due to hereditary or genetic factors. Could it be assessed and measured? Could it be isolated? Could it be stopped? That is why the genealogy of the patients was studied in such obsessive detail. After all, in their view, the Einsatzgruppen were only killing animals, Lebensunwertes Leben. Do you know what that means? Life unworthy of life. That is the classification that was applied to those deemed racially unsound by the Nazi regime.’
‘So, The Ahnenerbe wanted to know why their racial thoroughbreds had become so skittish?’
‘Precisely.’ Svoboda handed Booth another sheaf of paper. ‘As you can see, the patients’ breakdowns took a variety of forms. Some showed signs of hysteria – crying, nightmares, bed-wetting, insomnia – while others were deemed to have enjoyed the killing duties too much. They became, in the words of the report, ‘demi-human predators’ given to extremes of violence deemed unsuitable even by their SS overlords. We must not forget how prudish Herr Himmler was. By his own warped standards he considered himself a civilised man. His SS butchers were expected to spend their days killing but then return to their families in the evening as if nothing had happened.’
‘So what happened to these men?’
‘It seems Wiegand’s ‘patients’ were subjected to the most extreme forms of psychiatric stimuli: electric shocks, immersion in iced water, the film images that first alerted you that something was going on. Some were given lobotomies, others were sterilised via radium injections in the testicles. Their responses were then studied.’
‘But how could this Doctor Wiegand get away with it if these men all belonged to the SS?’
‘You mentioned you had discovered a discrepancy in the dates of the men’s deaths. These men, once brought into the project, were not to survive it. That is why the officially recorded dates of their deaths precede the dates on the medical records by a few days or weeks. They faked the actual death dates.’
‘Could they do that?’
‘You may have noticed that many of these documents were stamped by the SS und Polizeigericht zur besonderen Verwendung. The Extraordinary SS and Police Court was a secret tribunal convened to deal only with highly sensitive issues which were desired to be kept secret even from the SS itself. Basically, it could do whatever it wanted.’
Svoboda handed Booth the last of the files.
‘According to the records, the patients were liquidated once they were no longer useful to the programme. However, it seems Wiegand had between two and four subjects being tested at any one time and that his work continued right up until the end of April 1945.’
‘Which means one or more of these men could have been at Wolffslust when the British overran the prison?’
Svoboda nodded.
Booth blew air as he sorted through the paperwork, his eyes lingering on the words demi-human predators.
He needed to warn Ursula.
Svoboda began to speak again when both men became aware of shouting and a commotion outside. A jeep shot past Booth’s window, beeping its horn. He opened the window and called to a soldier.
‘What the devil is going on, Private?’
The soldier’s expression betrayed a mixture of excitement and anger.
‘Werewolves, sir. They’ve killed another one of our lads. Slit his throat by all accounts.’
PART THREE
1
LITTLE OTTO SNUCK in by the coal chute. Then he went upstairs to wait for Suttpen.
He had lost it all: the house, the clothes and jewellery, the suitcases, the travel documents: ten weeks of work gone, just like that. He touched his fingertips to the scratch on his face, to the place where the Mask of Many had been ripped away. That was the bitterest loss. The mask had required months of patient work, slicing and drying and stitching.
It had all happened so quickly. He’d killed the first blasphemer that had entered his sanctuary, high up in the rafters of the house. But when the second came Little Otto had known the game was up and fled down the stairs, out through the kitchen door and across the lawn.
How he had wailed when the edge of the mask caught on a branch and he felt it tear from his face. He’d been running so fast that he was several steps past it before he could stop and turn back. Then bullets had begun to snick the ground beside his feet and the a
ir had filled with the whipcrack report of rifle fire, forcing him to flee, wailing and screaming as he did so . . .
Little Otto had first killed as a young man, but it had been a noisy, messy affair that had given him no pleasure. He knew it was wrong but when the urge came, it gave him no rest until it was satisfied, so he preyed upon drunks and tramps and whores, the human refuse of Germany’s industrial cities. He had longed to spend time with them afterwards, to press his face to theirs and feel the heat slowly fade from them, but it was too risky. It was impossible to obtain the privacy he needed in order to enjoy the experience fully. The police were always sniffing around.
That was after the first war, when Germany had become a republic. When the Nazis arrived on the scene, he was initially dismissive of them. How could he not be? In the early days, they were nothing but brown-shirted thugs, brawling and breaking bones with their hobnail boots. But when Otto had first seen men from the SS on parade, resplendent in their ebony and silver plumage, he knew he had found his place within the new order.
When war came they had trained him as a medical orderly and sent him to the eastern front, but not to take part in the war. Little Otto was part of one of the special commands charged with cleansing the conquered territories of Jews. It had been a crude and ugly business, the spirit of Nazism made manifest. Like the other men, Little Otto had dulled himself with alcohol and got on with it as best he could, but the Jews always seemed to sense what awaited them and they filled the air with their crying and religious whimpers as they were made to dig the pits.
The experience had inflamed the unquiet voices in Little Otto’s head and when the urge to kill returned, it was a hundred times stronger. He could no more stop it now than he could stop himself from breathing . . .
Otto tensed when he heard the rumble of a vehicle approaching.
He could start a new mask by killing Suttpen, he thought, but then decided against it. Suttpen was big and strong. Otto would have to slice him quickly and he never liked working with bodies that were messy with blood.
No, killing Suttpen was a necessity, nothing more: the bastard could ruin everything. Suttpen had been out at the camp that morning, arguing with the Irishman. And he’d confronted Otto, hissing in his cheap pimp’s voice that he knew what Otto had been up to and that he wanted his cut.
No, Otto would not wear anything made from Suttpen. Besides, Seiler had more travellers for him. He would start his new mask with them. Then he would deal with the doctor and move on.
Headlights flashed across the window. A vehicle stopped outside. Otto wrapped his big fingers around the handle of his killing knife. So Suttpen wanted his cut, did he?
Otto would give the bastard that all right.
2
IT RAINED THAT night. Ilse hardly noticed. She was exhausted. The experience with the woman and her crippled son had drained her last reserves. She built the fire up when she came home, wrapped herself in blankets and drank tea and whisky, but she continued to tremble all over. It was one thing for the Tommies to despise her, but how could a German woman hate her so?
She drank far more whisky than she should have. Eventually, she slipped into unconsciousness and was released from her troubled thoughts.
At daybreak, she woke suddenly with her head swimming and her mouth filled with saliva. She rushed to the kitchen door, stumbled outside and vomited. That calmed her nausea, although her mouth was foul with the taste of whisky and tobacco. She leant against the wall.
People were moving on the road that passed the end of Ilse’s garden, some going eastwards, some towards the west. The grass sparkled as the sunlight picked out droplets of water. The wind smelt clean and fresh.
She laughed as a thought occurred to her: she would probably be better off if she set up a tent and slept in the garden. The air inside the farmhouse was thick with the cloying smell of mould and damp rubble. She turned and headed back towards the house.
That was when she saw that the muddy ground outside the kitchen door was covered with fresh footprints, the kind a man wearing boots would make.
She caught her breath in fear as she saw now that the trail of footprints led from the woodland straight up to the kitchen door and then back again. A half-remembered dream came to her of someone knocking at the door during the night. She shivered as she realised it wasn’t a dream.
Could it have been Booth? No, he had been on duty. Who was it, then?
It was probably only some refugee seeking shelter from the rain, she told herself. People saw the building and assumed no-one lived there. After all, it was a ruin. She examined the boot prints. It looked as if only one man had come. Still, that was bad enough. He might come back.
Ilse went inside and sharpened the largest of the kitchen knives. Then she checked that the locks on all the windows and doors were sound.
She was actually glad when the Polack arrived. He came earlier than usual, dragging a huge bundle of firewood behind him. He accepted Ilse’s greeting, then set to work stripping the branches of twigs, carefully collecting them in a wicker basket that Ilse gave him.
Later that morning, she found the Polack dragging a huge water butt round to the front of the house. She asked him what he was doing, but his response was incomprehensible. At the front of the property the house had collapsed in such a way that the rubble formed a steep slope that ran up to the undamaged portion of the roof. The Polack rolled the empty butt up this slope. Ilse noticed he had a length of rope coiled around his shoulder and a hammer and nails tucked into his belt. Once more she asked him what he was doing, but this time the Polack did not seem to hear her, so intent was he on trying to balance the water butt upon a ledge of relatively flat rubble.
She left him to it and went inside to make herself tea. The rest of the morning was filled with the sound of hammering and sawing and the crunch of the Polack’s boots on the rubble slope.
At midday, Ilse heard a new sound, the clanking of metal. She went outside and saw that the Polack had managed to secure the water butt close to the edge of the flattened ledge with lengths of shattered roof beam. He had also taken pieces of metal pipe from the house’s ruined plumbing and strapped them together. One end of the pipeline was attached to the water butt; the other ended in a shower nozzle.
The Polack had stripped to the waist and was carrying buckets of water from the stream at the bottom of the garden. When he saw Ilse staring at his contraption he became agitated and, even though Ilse could not understand a word he was saying, she got the distinct impression he was telling her she had spoiled a surprise.
For another hour, Piotr trudged back and forth, carrying brimming buckets from the stream, one in each hand. Finally, his mangled face appeared at the window and he beckoned for Ilse to come with him.
She went outside. Piotr was hopping from foot to foot in excitement. She saw that the final section of the pipe had a lever attached to it, close to the shower nozzle. He motioned for her to open the lever.
When she did, there was a faint gurgle – and then water began to spurt from the shower head.
It was a ramshackle contraption – water leaked from a dozen fissures along the length of pipe and the spray that emerged from the shower-head was little more than a trickle – but it worked. Ilse could not help smiling as she held her hand beneath the water, angling the shower-head back and forth.
Piotr made motions for her to undress.
‘You’re mad if you think I’m going to undress in front of you,’ she said, but her irritation faded when Piotr greeted her refusal with such a look of such wide-eyed bemusement she realised there had been nothing salacious about his suggestion. Even so, Ilse waited for the boy to leave before she began searching for the lump of scented soap she had brought with her from Berlin.
She started to undress next to the shower, but felt horribly exposed, so she waited until the sun had set and darkness had come before she went b
ack to it and stripped naked. The ground was warm beneath her bare feet and the moonlight shone silver on her pale skin as she opened the lever and stepped beneath the stream of water.
The water was freezing cold and emerged in a dribble – but that feeble jet of water seemed to Ilse a luxury the like of which she had not felt for an age. She allowed the water to play across her whole body, then shut off the tap and soaped herself, covering her skin in a wonderful lather of scented suds. She stood for a while enjoying the smell, then washed the soap off and wrapped herself in a bathrobe.
Clean, at last. How long had it been since she could say that? She’d forgotten what it felt like. She felt lighter somehow. Now Booth could say she was beautiful. She was a woman again.
The evening air was pleasantly warm, so Ilse smoked a cigarette outside, still wrapped only in a towel, watching clouds scud across the silver face of the moon. Then she dressed and walked barefoot back across the grass to the house.
And stopped.
The kitchen door was open.
Wide open.
She was sure she’d shut it before she went to shower. Her heart raced as she went closer and saw fresh boot prints in the earth by the kitchen step.
‘Who is it? Who’s there?’ she said, cursing her own stupidity.
‘Come in and you’ll find out, won’t you,’ a man said in German. Ilse felt her knees weaken as fear gripped her. She’d left the knife inside.
She heard a chair scrape and footsteps sounded on the kitchen floor. A man’s figure stepped into the doorway, a burly man in ill-fitting peasant clothing, silhouetted against the flickering light of the fire.
Ilse took two steps back and bent to pick up a rock. The man laughed. The sound stopped Ilse dead.
She recognised that sound.
‘Hello, my little Gräfin,’ Johannes Drechsler said. ‘Don’t you have a kiss for your own dear brother?’
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