head had been wrenched away; as if someone had sawn halfway through her neck, then given up in anger, impatience — or blood lust. David tried not to imagine the scene: the terrorist pulling at the living head, until the neckbone split and the ligaments snapped.
And that was not all. Someone — Miguel — surely Miguel — had also cut off the hands: the old woman's wrists were bleeding stumps, trailing veins and muscles. Puddles of blood extended from the stumps like flattened red gloves.
And then the hands had been nailed to the door. Several more photos showed the hands, impaled.
Two decomposing hands. Nailed. On the kitchen door.
Amy was hiding her face behind her fingers.
'Horrible. Horrible horrible horrible…'
Sarria murmured, 'I know. I am sorry. And there is more.'
David swore. 'How can there be more? How much worse can it be?'
The officer opened the envelope again, and pulled out a final photo. It was a close-up of one of the severed hands. He pointed to the left of the photo, with his pen.
David squinted, and scrutinized. There seemed to be…an arc of marks on the flesh. Faint, but definitely there. A curved row of small indentations in the pale flesh.
'Is that…' He fought his own revulsion. 'Is that…what I think it is?'
'Oui. A human bite. A bite mark. It looks a little experimental…as if someone has just, impulsively, tried to bite the human flesh. To see what it tastes like.'
Silence ensued. The waves were lullaby rhythms on the beach. And then the other policeman leaned in. And spoke for the very first time.
'Allez. Go. Anywhere. Before he finds you.'
29
The house was suitably quiet. The bored, yawning police constable — their guard and protector — was lying on the bed in the spare room, reading Goal. Suzie was working at the hospital: she'd refused to give up her work but allowed herself to be escorted on her commute. The au pair had fled back to Slovenia, two days ago, unnerved by the blood on the floor; Suzie's mother had come to stay, to help look after Conor.
And Simon was reading about Eugen Fischer.
The online biography of the German scientist was stark:
'Eugen Fischer (July 5, 1874 — July 9, 1967) was a German professor of medicine, anthropology and eugenics. He was a key proponent of Nazi scientific theories of racial hygiene that legitimized the extermination of Jews, sent an estimated half a million gypsies to their deaths, and led to the compulsory sterilization of hundreds of thousands of other victims.'
Simon sat ten inches from his screen, a metal savour of distaste in his mouth. Three intriguing aspects stood out in Fischer's extended life story. The first was Fischer's strong links with Africa.
'In 1908 Eugen Fischer conducted field research in German Southwest Africa, now Namibia. He studied the offspring of 'Aryan' men who had fathered children by native women. He concluded that the offspring of such unions — so-called 'mischlinge' — should be eradicated after their usefulness had ended.'
Eradicated? Usefulness? Concluded?? The words were all the more powerful for being so dry and antiseptic.
Simon breathed in, and breathed out. And momentarily closed his eyes. Immediately, an image of Tomasky's surging anger filled his mental gaze, and he snapped open his eyes once again. He could hear Conor playing in the room next door, vroom vrooming his favourite toy car into its toy garage.
Listening now to his son's chatter, the boy talking to himself, Simon felt the fierce undertow of parental love: the painful protectiveness. Protect Conor. Protect him from all the evil in the world.
But the best way of doing that was by staying focussed. He returned to work.
'Hitler was an avowed admirer of Eugen Fischer, especially the professor's magnum opus Menschliche Erblichkeitslehre und Rassenhygiene (Human Heredity and Racial Hygiene). On his accession to power in 1933, Hitler appointed Fischer rector of Berlin University.
'The Nazi conquest of Europe (1939–1942) gave Fischer, with the ardent encouragement of Adolf Hitler, the opportunity to extend his racial research, which he had begun decades before in Namibia. In the concentration camp of Gurs, in Nazi-occupied southwest France, Fischer commenced a series of detailed studies of various European races: Basques, gypsies, Jews, etc.'
Simon was scribbling urgently now. Eyes on the screen, eyes on the pad in front of him. And more:
'The Nazi regime poured money into the 'medical division' at Gurs. Rumours at the time spoke of significant discoveries achieved by the so-called Fischer experiments. However, the data recovered by Fischer at Gurs was lost in the chaos of the Allied invasion of Europe and the destruction of the Nazi regime (1944–1945). It has never been conclusively proved whether the Fischer experiments yielded scientifically valuable results. The consesnsus, today, is that the rumours of 'racial discoveries' were Nazi propaganda in themselves, and that Fischer revealed nothing of importance.'
The final section on Fischer's life was tantalizing, yet even more mystifying.
'Many people were scandalized when, following the Allied defeat of the Third Reich, Eugen Fischer escaped serious punishment for his connections to, and research for, the Nazis. Indeed, he later became Professor Emeritus at Freiburg University, and in 1952 he was appointed as honorary president of the newly-founded German Anthropological Society.
'This extraordinary indulgence of a scientist seen as a founder and mentor of Nazi racial politics was by no means unique. Many of Fischer's colleagues at Gurs and elsewhere also escaped punishment, or endured at most a few weeks of 'deNazification' in prison. For example, Professor Doctor Fritz Lenz, the head of eugenics at Berlin Dahlem, and a coauthor of key works on Nazi racial theory, returned to work immediately after the war, and was offered the chair in human heredity at the University of Gottingen.'
These last assertions were so bizarre Simon read the whole passage twice. Then he read it again. Then he checked it on another website, which repeated the statement word for word.
Word for word? Simon began to wonder if the remarkable claim was simply a lie, perpetuated by the lazy scholastic standards of the internet.
He got up, opened the door, and walked into the living room. Conor was playing on the carpet with his toys, transfixed by the adventures of Derek the Diesel Engine.
There — the bookshelves. High up on the highest shelf, gathering dust these ten years, was his father's old Encyclopedia Britannica. Simon pulled down the volume, paged quickly to Lenz, Fritz.
It was true. This beast, this horrible man, this expounder of eugenics, this friend of Mengele, this thinker behind Nazism, had calmly returned to work in 1946. He hadn't even gone to jail. The Allies didn't even put him in jail.
Why were all these doctors just…let off?
He tousled his son's blond hair, then returned to his study and shut the door. Again. He was excited. The mystery was coming alive, but it was coiled upon itself, like a snake, a cobra, hissing. Concealing what lay within.
His afternoon was nearly done. He went over the facts by writing down the words in an email to himself — one of his favourite ways of resolving a puzzle. Like an artist turning his own drawing upside down, to see it afresh, to spot the flaws, assess the quality.
Simon sat back from the computer, and sighed. His thoughts were incoherent, they were drivel, they were utter nonsense. Money, Nazis, Cagots, possible collaboration, so what? He had no overarching explanation for the murders: which now seemed almost random.
He felt his momentary excitement subside. He was almost back to where he started. He needed to speak to David and Amy. He needed to speak to David. Where were they? What was happening down there in southern France?
He remembered Tomasky's sister. What she had said. A monastery in France.
