Sinclair had offered his verdict to the assistant commissioner after Bennett had summoned him to his office, along with Chief Superintendent Holly, so that he could inform them of the contents of a letter which he’d received from Berlin.
‘It’s full of assurances… inquiries proceeding, and so forth
… but nothing beyond what they’ve already told us. “Many difficulties have arisen in the course of this investigation and the full truth may never be known.” I think Nebe’s warning us not to hold our breath.’
Bennett passed the letter across his desk to Sinclair who studied it for a moment.
‘Reichskriminaldirektor.’ The syllables tripped lightly off the chief inspector’s tongue. ‘There’s a mouthful for you, Arthur.’ He handed the letter on to the chief super, who was sitting beside him. ‘It seems at least one of our Berlin brethren knows which side his bread is buttered. No surprise there, by the way, sir.’ He addressed himself to Bennett. ‘There’s a good reason why they won’t pursue this matter. I’ve received a letter myself on the same subject. I’ll get to it in a moment. But first, let me sum up what we’ve gathered in the way of information. It’s been accumulating somewhat in my absence.’
The chief inspector had only recently returned from Manchester where he’d been engaged for some time in a complicated case of company fraud.
‘The Swiss police have delved a little deeper into Lang’s background and come up with one rather chilling detail. It certainly made my hair stand on end when I read it.’ Sinclair grimaced. ‘You’ll recall what we learned from them earlier. That he was born a bastard. His mother was a domestic servant in a village not far from Geneva and if she knew who the father of her child was she never said. In any event, she died soon after he was born and Lang was taken in by the village pastor and his wife who gave him their name and raised him as a son along with their own baby daughter.’
‘Yes, I remember.’ Bennett sipped at a cup of tea. He’d had a tray sent in. ‘But later they dispatched him to an orphanage. We wondered why.’
Holly rumbled in accord. ‘They were still making inquiries, as I recall.’
‘Yes, the problem was they’d lost track of the pastor. Lang, of course, his name was. His wife had died and he’d disappeared from the village. More than that: it turned out he was no longer a churchman; he’d left the ministry.’
‘What about his daughter?’ Holly frowned. ‘She must have known something.’
The chief inspector grunted. He was staring into the cup of tea which he held balanced on his knee.
‘That’s part of what I have to tell you.’ He looked up. ‘It’s what the Swiss police learned after they’d tracked down Lang. The pastor, I mean. He was living in another part of Switzerland, in a village in the mountains, near Davos. He’d become a recluse, and at first was unwilling to respond to their questions. In particular, he didn’t wish to hear any mention of the boy: of the child he and his wife had raised.’ Sinclair shrugged. ‘However, by degrees they broke down his resistance and in the end he told them the story.’
The chief inspector paused. He appeared to be choosing his words.
‘It seems clear to me, reading between the lines, that they didn’t understand what it was they had burdened themselves with. The pastor and his wife, I mean. What affliction they had brought into their lives. As the boy grew older they realized he was not like others: that he had neither the desire nor the capacity to make those connections necessary in human society: that he was quite alone in the world and content to be so. But the picture was darker than that. Quite early on they detected a strain of deliberate cruelty in him. He had to be kept away from domestic pets, which he was prone to torture, and also had to be watched when in the company of other small children.’
Sinclair shook his head. ‘This is a theme we’re familiar with. It crops up time and again in cases involving violent offenders, particularly sexual criminals. Childhood experience is sometimes held to account for this sort of extreme anti-social behaviour. But it’s by no means the rule, and would seem to have been absent in this case, where the boy was shown nothing but kindness by his foster parents. Did something happen to him earlier, you may ask – during the months he was with his mother?’ The chief inspector shrugged. ‘I’ve no answer to that. In fact, I’ve no explanation to offer beyond the somewhat chilling observation that as a species we seem to possess a capacity for savagery that defies reason. That these seeds must lie in all of us. And that it’s a lesson history teaches us over and over, and which we never seem to learn.’
The chief inspector coughed to cover up his embarrassment. He wasn’t sure why he’d said what he’d just said, except that in some way it was related to the talk he had had with Franz Weiss at Highfield, and beyond that to some broader comprehension of which he had not, until that moment, been aware.
‘Forgive me. I’m digressing. To return to the earlier point, the pattern of behaviour I’ve described continued throughout the boy’s childhood, which was marked, in particular, by a growing hostility towards his stepsister. There seemed no reason for this, other than the fact that they were thrown together, and not surprisingly, the girl came in time to return the sentiment, and as she grew older made common cause with the other village children, who seem to have been united in their dislike of the boy. He himself, while still quite young, began to pursue a solitary pattern of life, and having developed an interest in birds took to wandering in the countryside, spending long hours away from home.’
The chief inspector sighed. He eyed his two listeners.
‘One can only pity the parents in their attempts to deal with this catastrophe that had befallen them. No doubt things would have been different these days. They might have been able to seek help from competent medical authorities. But they lived a simple rural existence and Pastor Lang was apparently of a disposition to treat whatever trials came his way as an expression of God’s will; a test of his faith. It seems he was determined to do right by the child. However, a point was reached where the situation became untenable. The boy was twelve and increasingly difficult to control. Perhaps he sensed weakness in his foster parent; a lack of resolution. At all events the Langs decided he would have to go and the pastor arranged for him to be taken in by a church-run institution, an orphanage of sorts, in Geneva. He informed the boy accordingly.
‘“He looked at me with his pale eyes and said nothing.” ’
The change in the chief inspector’s tone caught his listeners off guard.
‘It’s a line from the report the Swiss police sent us. I find it sticks in the memory.’ Sinclair glanced at them both. ‘His departure was set for two weeks hence. He was assured he would return home for holidays at regular intervals. Still he had shown no reaction. A few days before he was due to go his stepsister went missing. A search was organized and her body was found in a gully not far away. It seemed she’d had a fall and broken her neck. There was some damage to her face: her nose had been broken and her features disfigured.’
‘Good God!’ Holly was dumbstruck. ‘And the boy did it? Is that what you’re saying? But why, man, why?’
‘For spite? For pleasure?’ Sinclair shrugged. ‘No one can answer that question, Arthur. No one but Lang. And he took his secrets with him.’
Bennett stared at the blotter on his desk. ‘Was the boy questioned about it?’ he asked. ‘Was he a suspect?’
‘Apparently not. He’d wandered off as he often did earlier and returned to be told the news. Or so he made out. Although the police were called in they concluded it was an accident. The girl appeared to have fallen from a height and to have rolled down the gully. There was no evidence of an assault, sexual or otherwise, and no reports of any strangers being seen in the vicinity.’
‘But his stepfather, this pastor, thought the boy was responsible?’
‘He indicated as much to the police when they tracked him down. Though whether he thought so at the time, I can’t say. Perhaps the realization came to him later. In any case there was no proof. Suffice to say, neither he nor his wife ever saw their stepson again. She died a year later and he left the church soon afterwards. He told the detectives who interviewed him that he’d lost his faith and explained why. He said the boy had been born beyond the reach of God’s mercy and that since such a thing could not be, or not in the world he’d believed in, he could no longer continue with his ministry. He had ceased to pray, except for death.’
Bennett rose and went to the window. The day was showery and he examined the cloud-covered sky outside.
‘What happened to Lang? To the boy, I mean?’
‘He was sent to the orphanage, as planned. Interestingly enough, his record there was unexceptional. He gave no trouble and was marked down as intelligent, but unresponsive. Again, he made no friends, and shortly before his sixteenth birthday he absconded. He walked out of the place and was never seen again. We’ve no way of knowing how he spent the next few years, though it’s likely he lived by his wits. Equally, there’s no clue as to what
