88 Killer

He had only meant to trail her. He had been trailing Becky Glass for a while. He knew she had two children. They were even there with her at the interview, but they’d run off before she made it back down to the reception area. She was searching for the children. That’s why she went into the alleyway, to look for them, and that’s why he had acted. He hadn’t planned to kill her so soon, but it just overcame him and he couldn’t resist. He didn’t even bother to check to see if the children were in the alley. He had been foolish. The urge was too strong; the pressure of the press and the cops was getting to him.

He knew that Becky was a single mother. She had told him as much as he placed the gun at her head. He had listened to her pleading on behalf of her children as he dragged the clothes from her body. He hadn’t imagined for a moment that her children were watching, but, thinking logically, where would they go?

He recalled the scene. She had polished his boots. It had made him feel better. He had said he was pleased. He remembered her anxious gaze around the alley.

It was obvious and he wanted to kick himself for being so stupid. He had presumed that she was looking for help. But she had been terrified about her children witnessing the scene rather than what was happening to her. Witnesses. The children had seen him kill her. He leaned back against the garage. The children would be able to identify him. That couldn’t be allowed. That would put an end to his plans.

Chapter Sixty-Five

Museum of Tolerance, Brooklyn

March 12, 4.42 p.m.

Denise sat in the large glass atrium of the museum waiting for Aaron Goldenberg to appear. She had already scented the 88 Killer and thought she understood the way his mind worked — from the clinical bullet-hole to the forehead to the brutally angry use of barbed wire. One mind, twisted beyond normal limits, a man with a need for control — surgical control — and a deep, deep pain that needed to be screamed from the housetops. But he was losing that control. Which would make him even more dangerous.

She looked down at her notebook and took up her pen. She kept seeing the number that Ruth Glass had written on the page. She wrote the words across the top. Profile of the 88 Killer.

Denise was in the process of unpicking the killer’s mind. Like an expert unpicking a lock, she would press each lever in turn, teasing and testing until it fell in line and suddenly the whole row would be along the shear line and the lock would open. That was all she was after — the killer’s shear line.

So far, she had written: He’s male, early- to mid-thirties, gifted, but a failure in something, single, unable to form strong relationships, with a background in security or military-type work. A man without siblings, a lone child, probably with a normal-looking family, a family he felt never knew what he was, never accepted him. Possibly adopted.

She looked at the words and felt the give of the first lever of the lock. She continued to write. He’s used to being alone, it’s not a problem for him to be alone. He’s been alone his whole life, he can take it. But he needs to be understood and that’s confusing him. He feels a dual push to keep hidden but to be understood. His latest kills show an increased stress level. He is getting more extreme, his attacks becoming regular, necessary. He is not a neo-Nazi with Nazi sympathies, it is stronger, the identification almost exact. He is a Nazi.

Just then, Aaron Goldenberg appeared, holding a sheaf of papers and folders. He looked at Denise’s notebook.

‘It should say Profile of Josef Sturbe,’ he said.

Denise turned. ‘Aaron. How are you?’

‘Better now. It has been so many days with nothing to do. Now I can work.’

‘So what did you find? Is Josef Sturbe a real identity or an assumed one?’

‘I will let you know what I found out,’ said Aaron. ‘But how did Harper get on?’

‘Detective Harper has tried every database that he can find and there’s nobody coming up with that name. The Feds have nothing on him either. They think it’s a name Martin Heming uses. A pseudonym.’

‘Then they’d be wrong,’ said Dr Goldenberg. ‘Very wrong.’

Denise raised both eyebrows. ‘He’s real?’

‘Yes, Josef Sturbe is real, all right.’

‘How the hell did you find a man when the combined forces of the NYPD and FBI couldn’t?’

‘They weren’t looking in the right places.’

‘Then what are the right places? Where can we find him?’

‘We can’t find him, but we know who he is. Josef Bernard Sturbe was born in Bavaria in 1923. We don’t have any records of him until 1943 when he turns up in the Warsaw Ghetto.’

‘He was an actual Nazi?’

‘Yes. A member of the SS. Of the feared Totenkopf — Death’s Head Division. According to reports, he believed he was fighting only for the Fuhrer. He was fascinated by Hitler’s Mein Kampf — obsessed by eighty-eight words from its text. “88” is not just a code for Heil Hitler,’ said Aaron. ‘It also refers to the following passage. Let me read it to you: What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and reproduction of our race and our people, the sustenance of our children and the purity of our blood, the freedom and independence of the Fatherland, so that our people may mature for the fulfillment of the mission allotted it by the Creator of the Universe. Every thought and every idea, every doctrine and all knowledge, must serve this purpose. And everything must be examined from this point of view and used or rejected according to its utility.’

‘He was into eugenics? What was he?’

‘A curious case. After the war, they could not find Josef Sturbe. The Nazi Hunters had him on their wanted list but he didn’t turn up. Many Nazis, members of the SS, went to South America after the war. There was a Network, ODESSA. It helped members of the SS to escape. They think Sturbe went to Argentina and ended up in America.’

‘Was he ever found?’

‘No. Never.’

‘What was he famed for?’

‘He was a murderer. Very vicious. A serial killer in the ghetto. A man who was so desperate to prove his loyalty to the Fuhrer that he hunted in the ghetto after dark. He kept a record of how many he had killed. He conducted experiments, trying to emulate men like Dr Joseph Mengele. But he was an amateur. In SS circles, he was mocked. Sturbe had a secret, though.’ Aaron paused. ‘He was a Jew.’

‘What!’

‘The son of a young Jewish girl who had got herself into trouble, he was adopted by a German family. The Sturbes pretended the baby was theirs. His papers proved he was a German, but he looked Jewish. All through the 1930s he was bullied and mocked. He joined the Hitler Youth, but they could see he was no Aryan. He tried to change his appearance. He bleached his hair, but it made them ridicule him more. He joined the SS when they only allowed pure Aryans. He was obviously not, but they accepted him based on the ancestry of the Sturbes. It was on the eve of his acceptance into the SS that his father told him the truth.’

‘What did he do?’

‘He never spoke to his father again. But this knowledge was like a canker inside him. It was as if he could never outstrip his own identity. He hated the Jews even more than the other officers did. He started to murder in the Warsaw Ghetto. He was insatiable, proving his hatred every day.’

‘And no one knows what happened to him?’

‘No. The SS all had their blood group tattooed on the inside of their upper arm. After the war, the Nazi Hunters found a man in Boston who they claimed was Josef Sturbe. He was recognized by someone who lived in the ghetto. But he had no mark under his arm, so they let him go. Fifteen years ago, the Sturbe myth surfaced. Someone found Sturbe’s notes and in it, he stated that he never allowed them to tattoo him, because he feared that they would be able to detect his Jewish ancestry in his blood.’

‘He was insane?’