The Boy Who Saw: A gripping thriller that will keep you hooked

by Simon Toyne

  He stood and felt the cold concrete beneath his bare feet as he made his way over to the door. He stopped. Listened again, ready to dash back to the cot if anyone was coming. He heard the muffled sound of distant voices from the entrance, but they didn’t seem to be getting any closer. He peered through the thin gap into the bright corridor beyond, then slowly opened the door, checking the door opposite and remembering the hate-filled eyes that had glared at him through the hatch. The door was open. All the doors were open.

  Madjid stood for a moment, frozen in doubt about what to do next. The burble of voices was louder with the door open but no one seemed to be coming. He wondered if he should go back to sleep. Surely they would discover the doors were unlocked sooner or later and as long as he was in his cell nothing would come of it. He looked at the cell door opposite again. But what if the owner of those hate-filled eyes woke first? What if he came into his cell? He moved into the corridor and headed towards the murmuring voices, deciding it would be best if he told the jailer what had happened.

  He felt exposed in the corridor but he noticed the cameras and realized it was too late to go back. He stepped round the corner and the burble of voices grew louder, two men talking to each other. He could see the reception area through the bars of the gate but it was empty, no sign of anyone except for a half-eaten sandwich on the booking desk and a small radio, tuned to a sports channel, the source of the voices. He reached the gate and pushed it. Locked, and no handle on the inside. He thought about banging on it to draw the jailer’s attention, but that risked drawing the attention of others, and he didn’t want that, so he waited, glancing back nervously down the corridor, waiting for him to come back. Except he didn’t. Time ticked on. The rugby match on the radio went to half-time. Still the jailer did not return. At one point he thought he heard something behind him, like something ripping, but the radio was too loud for him to hear it properly and he didn’t hear it again.

  He looked up at the camera, the cold black eye of its lens pointing right at him, and thought about what it would look like, him standing here all this time. He had left his cell intending only to inform the jailer that the doors were unlocked. He had not planned on standing out here all this time. It would look bad, him lingering by the door like this, like maybe he was trying to escape. After one last look at the empty reception area, he started back up the corridor, figuring he would listen out for the end of the game and come back when he heard the radio go off. He reached the turn and peered round to make sure the corridor was empty before hurrying back to his cell, anxious to return to the small, dark room. He reached his door, stepped inside, and breathed again.

  It was dark in the cell after the brightness of the corridor. He closed the door and the cell grew darker, apart from the slash of light leaking in through the gap. He wanted to put something against the door to make it close all the way and went to pick up one of his boots. That’s when he noticed the bed. It was shredded, the rubberized surface material torn away in long ragged strips, leaving tufts of grey stuffing sticking up. He took a step towards it and something looped over his head and bit hard into his neck. He grabbed at it with his hands but it was thin and tight and he couldn’t get his fingers behind it. He tried to turn and face his attacker but he was kicked hard behind his knee and his leg buckled and he crumpled to the concrete floor, his weight making the noose round his neck cinch tighter. He fought for breath but couldn’t breathe. Tried to shout but couldn’t summon a single sound. A hand grabbed his shirt from behind and dragged him across the floor to the high window, then the noose went tighter as he was hauled upwards.

  Madjid clawed at his neck, drawing blood with his nails as he fought to release the rope. He was standing on tiptoe now, his vision starting to tunnel as his brain became starved of oxygen. He was aware of a figure in the dark, leaning back on a length of knotted rope made from strips of the heavy-duty plastic cover from his bed. He looked around for something to grab hold of or use as a weapon and saw something written on the wall by his head, Arabic script scratched into the paint:

  I’m sorry, it said. I confess. I killed the Jew.

  Madjid kicked out at the man with the last of his strength when he realized what this was, not an opportunistic act of violence but a carefully orchestrated set-up. His vision was almost entirely dark now, only a small circle of light at the end of a long tunnel. He looked at his killer, his face lit by the yellow street lamp and framed in blackness, the single tattooed tear beneath an eye burning with hate.

  He wanted to plead with him and ask him why, but the noose was too tight and the tunnel was closing all around him, the light at the end of it getting smaller and smaller until it condensed to a single, bright point and everything went dark.

  88

  Marie-Claude drove into Mulhouse as night drained the last drops of colour from the day. Léo was asleep in the back, his head rocking with the movement of the car. Solomon breathed in the smell of the place through his open window, a mix of nature and man: sweat, yeast, earth, water, rot. But there was something else here, microscopic and almost lost, a smell like graveyards and ancient tombs, of bones become dust.

  ‘I’m going to have to turn my phone on,’ Marie-Claude said. ‘Hamilton’s number’s in my contacts.’

  ‘Not yet.’ Solomon pointed at a sign saying Musée de Guerre. ‘Let’s head there and get a feel for the place first.’ He watched the town slip by, the stain of war still evident in the street names and the squat houses that lined the road, not one more than seventy years old. ‘Ugly place,’ he murmured, looking up at the closed shutters that made the place feel deserted. ‘Makes you appreciate the wisdom of what they did in your town.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Capitulation. Non-violent surrender. All those pretty stone buildings left intact.’

  Marie-Claude bristled. ‘Not everybody capitulated.’

  ‘No, but the people who counted did: the community leaders, the police, the politicians. You’ve got to admire the pragmatism of that. Instead of destructive and bloody armed resistance against a superior military force, they simply waved the white flag, altered the menus a little to accommodate a more vinegary German palate and waited it out. And when the Allies drove the Germans away again, they simply changed the menus back and shaved the heads of all the women who’d shared the enemy’s beds in a token display of indignation. And your town survived intact. The land doesn’t care who lives on it or what language they speak or whether they’re kind to each other or not. The notion that people can betray a country is an emotional conceit as abstract as the notion of “country” itself. “Country” exists only in the minds of men, the land itself is indifferent.’

  ‘Not everyone surrendered,’ Marie-Claude said, as she followed the museum signs out of town. ‘Not everyone betrayed their country.’

  They continued in silence, leaving the town behind them until the signs for the museum pointed down a curved side road leading through a forest that hid whatever lay beyond it. Marie-Claude turned off the main road, her headlights sweeping through the darkness of the trees and lighting up an evening mist that was rising from the damp ground like hordes of spectres. The curved road straightened and emerged from the forest and Marie-Claude slammed on the brakes, bringing the car to a crunching halt that jerked Léo awake. He looked up through the windscreen at a distant cluster of dark buildings surrounded by barbed-wire fence. ‘Is this the bad camp?’ Léo whispered.

  Marie-Claude stared at it, tears brimming in her eyes and dripping down her cheeks.

  ‘Yes,’ Solomon answered. ‘This is where Grampy was during the war. This is Die Schneider Lager.’ He reached out to Marie-Claude and wiped a tear away with his thumb. ‘Don’t you want to go closer? Don’t you want to see it?’

  She blinked and shook her head. ‘I didn’t expect it would hit me like this. I’ve seen pictures of it before, but …’

  ‘Pictures can’t capture the soul of a place.’ Solomon looked at the camp lying at
the end of the road, the darkening sky making it seem shadowy and indistinct. There was a large cleared area in the centre of the compound with a couple of tanks on display, their guns angled up at the sky, and a large, grey marble monument beyond, carved into a huge curve like a solid wisp of smoke. The buildings were in darkness and the gate was secured with a chain and padlock.

  ‘It’s all locked up,’ Marie-Claude said, turning the car around in a hurry. ‘We can come back tomorrow. We should head back to town and find out where Hamilton lives.’

  ‘I think he lives up there,’ Solomon said, pointing above the treeline at a group of stone houses clinging to the valley on the far side of town.

  Marie-Claude stared at them. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Educated guess. Let’s drive up there. If I’m wrong, you can turn your phone on and call him.’

  Marie-Claude looked at him like he’d lost his mind, but she did as he suggested and took the main road back into town, glancing up at the old houses and trying to figure out what it was about them that made Solomon think Hamilton lived there. They had almost reached them when she finally gave up. ‘OK, what makes you think he lives in one of these houses?’

  ‘He’s a historian, so the age of these houses would appeal to him – they’re the oldest things around here apart from the church, and I doubt he lives there. Also, he’s English.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘Everything. I think he lives in that one –’ Solomon pointed at the first house.

  Marie-Claude pulled over and studied it. Warm orange light spilled from the windows, making it seem cosy and welcoming. There was a hand-painted sign by the front door showing that the house had rooms to rent, and a flagpole at the entrance to the driveway with a Tricolore flapping violently at the top. She turned to Solomon. ‘Why would an Englishman fly a French flag?’

  ‘With this view, why would he not?’ Solomon opened his door and stepped out into a cold wind. Marie-Claude and Léo followed him. She looked down at the town of Mulhouse spread out below them. She could see Die Schneider Lager too, like a dark stain on the landscape. ‘What has the view got to do with anything?’

  ‘You can see the whole town from here, which means the whole town can see us. If he flew a Union Jack, he’d never get fresh bread again. But it’s the windows that give it away. Let’s go and say hello.’ He started walking up the drive towards the front door.

  Marie-Claude followed, studying the orange glow coming through the windows, still none the wiser. A little hand curled into hers and tugged at her attention.

  ‘It’s the shutters,’ Léo’s tiny voice piped up. ‘They’re open.’

  Marie-Claude smiled as she realized he was right. No French person would leave the shutters open, especially when it was this cold out.

  ‘A German could live here,’ Marie-Claude said. ‘We’re pretty close to the border.’

  Solomon pointed at the painted board by the door saying: Cottage for Rent, Gîte à Louer, Haus zu Mieten. ‘A German wouldn’t write a sign in English first,’ he said as he knocked on the door. ‘Neither would a Frenchman.’

  Footsteps sounded beyond the door, locks rattled and it opened, spilling heat and orange light on to them. A solid-looking man stood before them, his bald head making him seem ageless and his toothbrush moustache as neat as the knotted tie peeping out from the V of his sweater.

  ‘John Hamilton?’ Solomon asked, extending his hand.

  ‘Indeed,’ the man replied, looking shocked but shaking the hand anyway. He stared at Solomon for a long moment then looked at the others, his eyes finally settling on Marie-Claude and widening in surprise. ‘I know you. But why are you—’ He seemed to collect himself and the surprise turned into a warm smile. ‘Come in,’ he stepped aside to let them enter, ‘we’re letting all the warm out here. Let’s go sit by the fire. I’ll open a bottle of wine and you can tell me exactly what brings you here.’

  89

  Hamilton’s home smelled of woodsmoke that leaked from a freshly lit fire in the living room that slowly overcame the evening chill. Léo curled up on the sofa in front of it and quickly fell asleep while Hamilton poured wine and listened as Marie-Claude told him everything – about her grandfather’s murder, about the note he had left that had led to Otto Adelstein, about how he’d woven the names of the others into cloth.

  ‘He said he whispered it to the Golem,’ Solomon said. ‘He spoke the names and the Golem whispered them back in the language of thread. Though Monsieur Adelstein also suffers from dementia, so maybe he was confused.’

  ‘No,’ Hamilton said, his face serious. ‘The Golem is real. Do you have the cloth?’

  Solomon took off his waistcoat and laid it on the floor. Hamilton knelt beside it almost in prayer and ran his fingers along the irregular lines. ‘The list of survivors,’ he whispered, the firelight dancing in his eyes. He took his phone and photographed it. ‘I never knew their names,’ he said. ‘They were transported from the camp before I had a chance to talk to them. After the war I tried to find them, but Europe was a mess. Finding anyone was almost impossible, especially if you didn’t even have a name to go on. So they disappeared, became something of a legend, almost as if they never existed. But I knew they did,’ he looked up at Marie-Claude. ‘And you did too.’ He grabbed the waistcoat and rose stiffly from the floor. ‘Come with me.’

  He headed across the hallway and into a small study with piles of paper and open books everywhere and lists of names covering walls dotted with photographs of skeletal men in striped uniforms. Hamilton laid the waistcoat on the desk and started flicking through the pages of a guidebook until he found what he was looking for and held it open at a page filled with photos of a large, antique textile loom. ‘This is one of the exhibits in the museum,’ he said, ‘an early programmable loom from the nineteenth century. The prisoners at Die Schneider Lager restored it in 1943 when the factory began producing striped material for all the death camps. Each camp had its own pattern, and they programmed the loom to weave different stripes using this control panel.’ He pointed to two rows of buttons along the front of the loom that looked like stops on an organ, each with a symbol next to it.

  ‘That’s Hebrew,’ Marie-Claude said. ‘Léo and I have been learning it.’

  Hamilton nodded. ‘The loom had twenty-two settings, the same as the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet, and they assigned each button a letter. Sometimes the programmes for different patterns formed words, and because they were bringing this huge inanimate thing to life using Hebrew, they named the loom after the old Jewish legend: the Golem.’

  Marie-Claude stared at the irregular lines on the waistcoat lining. ‘If we can work out what letters produced this pattern, we can recreate the list and find the name of the missing survivor.’ She turned to Hamilton. ‘Can you get us into the museum?’

  He nodded. ‘I can get the keys from Guillaume Carrièrre, a friend of mine, though we won’t be able to gain access until morning. The whole complex is on a timed alarm that can’t be overridden. They had to upgrade the security after too many break-ins.’

  ‘Who would want to break into a death camp museum?’

  ‘Oh, you’d be surprised. There’s been a huge resurgence of far-right politics, not only in France but also across the border in Germany. Some people see the Third Reich and Hitler’s ambitions as a missed opportunity. There is a particularly nasty cult surrounding the most infamous Nazis, Artur Samler being one of them. They break in and try to steal things that belonged to him – or they did until we ramped up security. There are also the treasure hunters. They used to break in too.’ He picked up a map from his desk and handed it to Marie-Claude. It showed the town and surrounding area and various trails with swastikas marked along them. ‘They stay in my gîte sometimes, convinced there are undiscovered hoards of looted Nazi treasure around here somewhere. I give them these maps, but I think they’re wasting their time. If there ever was any Nazi loot it will be long g
one; too many Nazis escaped justice after the war for it to remain here. There are rumours that it was Samler who came back to claim it. Since he was the senior officer here, he’d certainly have known where any loot was hidden, if he survived.’

  ‘Do you think he did?’ Solomon asked.

  ‘Well, his death was never properly confirmed, and I have discovered plenty of instances through the course of my research where people have claimed that he survived and changed his name and appearance so he could start a new life using gold stolen from the teeth of the people he murdered.’ He turned to Marie-Claude. ‘Maybe he was behind your grandfather’s death. He would be too old now to do it himself, but his son could have killed him, or someone else loyal to the Samlers – the cruel nature of the murder and the slogan on the wall certainly fits.’

  ‘Das zuende bringen was begonnen wurde,’ Solomon murmured. ‘Finishing what was begun. But why now? If it is Samler’s son, he’s had seventy years to track down the survivors and murder them.’

  Hamilton shrugged. ‘Maybe it’s the seventieth anniversary picking at old wounds. Or perhaps the killer only recently learned the identities of the survivors. The museum has only been open for the last ten years, and during that time it has brought to light all kinds of archival material that had been lost for decades. But whoever the killer is, and whatever their motives, we need to find the name of the last survivor and warn him of the danger he’s in before they do.’

  Solomon nodded. ‘What time can we get into the museum?’

  ‘The security system is deactivated at six in the morning. We can do nothing in the meantime, so I suggest the sleepy young fellow next door has the right idea and we should all get some rest. You can stay in the gîte, there’s no one there at the moment – there rarely is these days.’ Hamilton picked up a key and moved across the hall to a door by the main stairs. He unlocked it and switched lights on to reveal another set of stairs. ‘I separated off a section of the house to rent out and supplement my pension. Hasn’t been quite the success I’d hoped. Thank God for the deluded treasure hunters and war freaks, without them it would be empty all year round. Anyway, you’ll be quite private in there: the communicating doors to the main house have locks on with the keys on your side. There are two bedrooms with beds made up, so you can arrange your sleeping arrangements however you like. I’ll wake you before six and we can go to the museum and see what names the Golem may whisper to us.’