Death Row

‘You telling me that doctors take tattoos on the back of the head as a legitimate indicator of blood type, so that in emergencies they can just go ahead without testing and whack in a pint of B-minus as required?’

‘Well, not any more.’

‘Not any more? You’re telling me they used to?’ Bennett was genuinely taken aback.

Kate picked up some pages from her desk and handed them to him. ‘I printed off some material from the internet.’

Bennett took the papers. ‘Why don’t you summarise?’

‘You ever heard the word Lebensborn?’

‘Nope.’

‘It translates as “fount of life” in Old German. Set up by Heinrich Himmler originally in Germany, as part of their programme to create a master race.’

‘Aryans?’

‘Exactly. Tall, muscular, blue-eyed, fair-haired men and women.’

‘Which is odd when you consider that Hitler was a short, dark-haired, brown-eyed man.’

‘Anyway, it started off as a sort of orphanage setup but when the war was in its full stride it took on a more sinister note.’

‘Like?’

‘They set up a Lebensborn operation in Norway because they wanted to mingle German blood with the pure Aryan bloodstock that they believed came from Scandinavia.’

‘I heard something about that.’

‘Some claim there were brothels – Norwegian women forced to breed with SS officers. There is a lot of controversy on the issue to this day. Anyway, remember that the Henson surname is an anglicised version of the Scandinavian name Hansen.’

‘Yeah, Henson senior seemed to be quite proud of his heritage.’

‘A lot of the children born in that era suffered dreadfully.’

‘At Nazi hands, you mean?’

‘No. After the war. From their own people. The women who consorted with the SS officers were vilified, their heads shaved, drummed out of town. There have been claims of the children born being used in child prostitution. The worthy and the good lining up in the street to abuse and rape them.’

‘But no proof?’

Kate sighed. ‘Many of the children were sent to lunatic asylums, where they were tortured or raped. They were officially called rats. Even today, as elderly adults, some still get spat at on the streets. Witnesses say that the Norwegian military experimented on them, making them take LSD and mescaline among other drugs.’

‘Are you saying the Hensons are tied up in this somehow?’

‘They’re too young. Maybe Henson senior’s father might have been one of the children sent overseas. The Norwegian government tried to send eight thousand to Australia.’

‘Really?’

‘Oh yeah – last year a group of Lebensborn brought an action in the European Court of Human Rights, seeking compensation from the Norwegian government of up to two hundred thousand pounds apiece.’

‘And did they get it?’

Kate snorted derisively. ‘No. They were offered a two-thousand-pound token settlement. And do you know another thing …?’

‘Go on.’

‘Priests in the country recommended that the Norwegian Lebensborn should be sterilised so that they couldn’t father any future Nazi children.’

Bennett shook his head. ‘Sounds like they were as bad as the Nazis themselves.’

‘Exactly.’

‘I still don’t see what this has to do with Matt Henson, though. The family are neo-Nazi skinheads themselves.’

‘Exactly! That’s what the B-negative tattoo is all about. The Nazis thought that that was the purest blood group. SS officers had their blood group tattooed onto them. The B-negative tattoo was highly prized. Encouraged in the breeding programme with blonde-haired blue-eyed German and Norwegian women particularly.’

‘I didn’t know about the blood-group thing. I know they wanted to create a master race.’

‘The thing is, they got it wrong again, apparently. Most Nordic people are type A. I remember coming across a book in the Bodleian that was banned by the Nazis. It was a study into Aryanism written by a German and it concluded that the British and Nordic peoples were more Aryan than the Germans, who had too many Slavic genes.’

‘So the upshot is that Matt Henson is a neo-Nazi, maybe a descendant of the offspring of a German SS officer and a Norwegian woman.’

‘Possibly.’