The Black Sun

Viggiano and Bailey set off downhill through the trees as fast as they could, stumbling awkwardly as their legs disappeared into snow drifts or their feet snagged on camouflaged undergrowth. Eventually they emerged, breathless, on the far right-hand side of the compound. Leaving fresh tracks in the snow, they both clambered over the wooden fence and made their way to the front entrance, where they were met by one of Vasquez’s men, his mask and helmet discarded, his face blank.

‘This way, sir.’

He led them through an entrance hall piled high with sneakers and boots and old newspapers. Several pairs of antlers had been nailed to the wall, grimy baseball caps and odd socks hanging off them like makeshift Christmas decorations. Vasquez was waiting for them in the large kitchen. The long oak table was set for dinner, roaches scuttling across the worktops and over a joint of beef that had been left out, its sides bristling with fungus. The air was thick with flies and a heady smell that Bailey recognised only too well. The smell of rotting flesh.

Vasquez nodded towards a door.

‘We haven’t checked the basement yet.’

‘The basement?’ Viggiano frowned as he scrabbled to retrieve the plan of the compound from his jacket. He smoothed it out, borrowing tacks from an out-of-date NRA calendar to pin it to the wall. ‘Look – there is no basement.’

‘Then what do you call that?’ Vasquez threw open the door to reveal a narrow staircase leading down into the darkness below, a blast of warm, noxious air rushing up to meet them.

Guided by Vasquez’s flashlight, they negotiated the stairs. At the bottom was a narrow, unlit corridor. Vasquez lit their way with a series of green chemical flares that he cracked into life and threw to the ground at regular intervals.

Bailey felt himself beginning to sweat as they approached the end of the passage. The temperature was noticeably higher here than upstairs, the smell making his stomach turn. Vasquez signalled for them to wait as he entered a doorway. He re-emerged, grim-faced, a few seconds later.

‘I hope you guys skipped lunch.’

Viggiano and Bailey stepped inside. A massive oil-fired boiler hugged the far wall, the heat radiating off its sides. The stench was unbearable, the buzzing of the flies so loud it sounded like the revving of a small engine. The centre of the room was taken up by a large German Shepherd, its tongue lolling out of the side of its mouth, its brown fur matted with blood and rippling with maggots. Next to it were two blood-soaked pit bulls and a scraggy-looking mongrel whose head had been almost blown off.

‘Guess now we know why no one had seen the dogs,’ commented Vasquez drily.

He pointed his flashlight down at the floor near where they were standing. The grey concrete was peppered with brass shell casings, their shiny hides glinting like small eyes.

‘M16 casings. Couple of mags’ worth. They weren’t taking any chances.’

‘But where is everyone?’ Bailey asked. ‘Where have they gone?’

‘Sir?’ Another of Vasquez’s men appeared in the doorway behind them. ‘We got something else.’

They followed him back along the green flare-lit corridor into another, smaller room that was empty apart from a desk pushed up against one wall. Here the floor was covered not with dog carcases and shell casings but with small heaps of discarded paper. Bailey knelt to pick up a printout. It was a list of flight times to Washington DC.

He stood and made his way over to the far side of the room. Here, a large architectural drawing had been pinned to the wall, with various parts of the building circled in red. In the bottom left-hand corner was an inscription: National Cryptologic Museum – Plans; Structural Drawings; Heating/Ventilation System – 1993. He pointed it out to the others.

‘Looks like these were our guys.’

‘What’s through there?’ Viggiano pointed to a rusty metal door set into the facing wall.

Vasquez approached and shone his torch through a small glass inspection panel set into the door.

‘We got ‘em!’ he exclaimed. ‘They’re in here. This opens on to a second door which opens into another room. Jesus, they’re squashed in tight.’

‘Let me see.’ Viggiano peered in.

‘Are they still alive?’ Bailey asked.

‘Yeah. One of them has just seen me.’

He stepped back and Bailey took his turn at the window.

‘She’s waving her arms,’ he said with a frown. ‘Like she wants us to leave.’

‘Let’s get these doors open,’ Viggiano urged.

‘Are you sure?’ Bailey asked cautiously. ‘She sure doesn’t look like she wants it opened.’

‘Screw what she wants,’ Viggiano fired back.

‘Sir, I really think we should check it out first,’ Bailey insisted, sensing from the woman’s desperate expression that she was trying to warn him of something. ‘There must be a reason they’re signalling. Don’t you think we should at least make contact and see what the hell they’re doing in there?’

‘It’s pretty goddamned obvious what they’re doing in there, Bailey. Some fucker locked them in. And the sooner we get them out, the sooner we all get a hot shower. Vasquez?’

With a shrug, Vasquez unbolted the first door and pulled it open. But as he reached the door on the other side, a shout stopped him in his tracks.

‘Look!’ Bailey pointed his torch at the inspection window of the second door. It was almost entirely taken up by a scrap of white material on which a message had been hastily scrawled in what appeared to be black eyeliner.

You’ll kill us all.

‘What the hell…?’ Viggiano began, but he was interrupted as Vasquez began to cough loudly, his body doubling over with the effort.

‘Gas,’ he gasped. ‘Get out…gas.’

Bailey grabbed him by the shoulders and dragged him towards the exit, his last sight the woman’s face pressed to the inspection panel, her eyes large and round and red. As he watched, she collapsed out of sight.

‘Get everyone out of here,’ Bailey shouted, shoving a convulsing Viggiano back up the stairs, into the kitchen, out through the hall and back outside. The rest of the SWAT team spilled out on to the snow ahead of them.

‘What happened?’ Sheriff Hennessy came running up as they emerged, his sweaty face creased with alarm.

‘The place has been booby-trapped,’ Bailey panted, releasing Vasquez into the care of a team of paramedics, then bending to rest his hands on his knees as he caught his breath.

‘Booby-trapped?’ Hennessy looked in bewilderment at the farmhouse entrance. ‘How?’

‘Some sort of gas. It must have been rigged to the door. They’re all still inside. They’re dying.’

‘They can’t be,’ Hennessy cried out in an anguished voice, his desperate eyes wide with fear and confusion. ‘That was never the deal.’

Bailey looked up, his exhaustion and revulsion momentarily forgotten.

‘That was never what deal, Sheriff?’

SEVENTEEN

Forensic Science Service, Lambeth, London

6th January – 3.04 a.m.

The stump was bloody and raw, with strips of muscle, nerve fibre and severed blood vessels hanging loose like wires, and the tip of the ulna peeking out from under the loose skin with a white smile.

‘Well, the wounds are certainly consistent with the manner in which the victim’s arm was removed…’ Dr Derrick O’Neal rotated the limb, examining it under a high-powered magnifying lens, the glare of the overhead halogen lamps making it appear waxy and fake, like something wrenched from a shop mannequin. ‘But the DNA tests will confirm whether it’s his. We should have the results in a few hours.’

He yawned, clearly still missing the warmth of the bed from which Turnbull had summoned him.

‘It’s remarkably well preserved. Where did you find it?’ O’Neal asked, looking up. He had a large, misshapen nose speckled with odd hairs. A thick, wiry beard covered the lower half of his face, and his small green eyes sheltered behind a large pair of black-framed glasses that he kept balanced on his forehead, only to have them slip to the bridge of his nose whenever he leant forward.

‘In someone’s freezer.’

‘That makes sense.’ He yawned again. ‘Strange thing to hang on to, though. Who did you say you worked for again?’

‘I didn’t, and it’s better you don’t know,’ Turnbull replied. ‘What can you tell me about this?’ Turnbull pointed at the loose, pale flesh of the inner arm. A livid red rectangle showed where a patch of skin had been cut out.

O’Neal’s glasses slid down his faces again as he bent for a closer look. ‘What was there?’

‘A tattoo.’

‘Strange shape. What sort of tattoo?’

‘The sort you get in a concentration camp.’

‘Oh!’ Turnbull could see that this last piece of information had finally jolted O’Neal awake.

‘I need to know what it said.’

O’Neal sucked air through his teeth.

‘Oh, that could be tricky. Very tricky. You see, it depends on the depth of the incision.’

‘In what way?’

‘The skin is made up of several layers…’ O’Neal reached for a pen and a paper to illustrate his point. ‘The epidermis, dermis and hypodermis. Typically, the ink on a tattoo is injected under the epidermis into the top layer of the dermis. It’s actually quite a delicate and skilful operation. It has to be deep enough to be permanent, but not too deep to scar the sensitive layers below.’

‘You think this was done delicately?’ Turnbull asked with a hollow laugh.

‘No,’ O’Neal conceded. ‘As far as I know, the Nazis employed two methods for tattooing. The first involved a metal plate with interchangeable needles attached to it. The plate was impressed into the flesh on the left side of the prisoners’ chests and then dye was rubbed into the wound.’

‘And the second…?’

‘The second was even more crude. The tattoo was just carved into the flesh with pen and ink.’

‘So, hardly skilful?’

‘No,’ said O’Neal. ‘Which means that it will be deeper than usual. And, over time, the ink will have penetrated the deep dermis, maybe even the lymph cells, which could also assist us with recovery. But, even so, if the people who have done this have cut right down into the hypodermis, it’s unlikely we’ll find anything.’

‘And have they?’

O’Neal examined the wound more closely.

‘We might be lucky. Whoever’s done this has used some sort of scalpel, and he’s sliced the top layer clean off.’

‘So you might be able to get something back?’

‘It’s possible, yes. If the scarring is deep enough it will show up. But it’s going to take time.’

‘Time is one thing you haven’t got, Doctor. I was told you were the best forensic dermatologist in the country. I need you to work some magic on this one. Here’s my number – call me as soon as you get something.’

PART TWO

In war, truth is the first casualty.

Aeschylus

EIGHTEEN

Greenwich, London

6th January – 3.00 p.m.

A passing storm had left the sky bruised and the pavements slick and shiny. Turnbull was waiting for them outside number 52, a handsome Victorian red-brick house identical to all the others on the terrace. Standing up, he looked even fatter than he had the previous day, a situation not helped by a cavernous dark blue overcoat whose heavy folds hung off his stomach like the awning of a Berber tent.

‘Thanks for meeting me here,’ Turnbull said, holding out his hand. This time, Tom and Archie shook it, though Archie made no attempt to disguise his reluctance. Turnbull didn’t seem to mind. ‘And for helping.’

‘We’re not helping yet,’ said Tom firmly.

‘Well, for turning in the arm, at least. You could have just got rid of it. Others would.’ Tom noted that he glanced at Archie as he said this.

‘What are we doing here?’ Archie demanded impatiently.

‘Meeting Elena Weissman. The victim’s daughter.’

Turnbull opened the gate and they made their way up the path under the watchful gaze of the bearded face that had been carved into the keystone over the front door. There was no bell, just a solid brass knocker in the shape of a lion’s head. Turnbull gave it a loud rap, and they waited patiently until they heard the sound of approaching footsteps and saw a shadow through the rippled glass panels.

The door opened to reveal a striking woman with jet-black hair, secured in a chignon by two lacquered red chopsticks which matched her lipstick and nail varnish. Tom put her age at forty, or thereabouts. She was wearing foundation that gave her skin a bronzed, healthy glow, although it couldn’t fully disguise the dark circles under her sad green eyes that betrayed a lack of sleep. She was dressed very sharply though, a black cashmere cardigan worn over a white blouse and black silk trousers, her feet clad in what looked like a very expensive pair of Italian shoes.

‘Yes?’ She had an immediately arresting, even formidable presence, her voice strong, her manner ever so slightly superior. Tom found himself wondering what she did for a living.

‘Miss Weissman? My name is Detective Inspector Turnbull. I’m with the Metropolitan Police.’ Turnbull flashed a badge which, Tom noticed, was different from the one he had shown them yesterday. No doubt he had a drawer full of badges to choose from, depending on the situation. ‘It’s about your father…’

‘Oh?’ She looked surprised. ‘But I’ve already spoken to –’

‘These are two colleagues of mine, Mr Kirk and Mr Connolly,’ Turnbull continued, speaking over her. ‘Can we come in?’

She hesitated for a moment, then stepped aside.

‘Yes, of course.’

The house smelt of wood polish and lemon-scented floor cleaner. Faint squares on the walls showed where pictures had hung until recently, their outlines preserved where they had shielded the ageing wallpaper from London’s clogging pollution.

She showed them into what Tom assumed had once been the sitting room. It had been stripped, brass rings clinging forlornly to the curtain rail, a single naked lightbulb drooping from the yellowing ceiling. A sofa and two armchairs were covered in large white dustsheets and several cardboard boxes stood in the far left-hand corner, their lids taped down.

‘I apologise for the mess,’ she said, flicking the dustsheets on to the floor and indicating that they should sit. ‘But I’ve got to go back down to Bath. I run a property business down there, you see. I’m going to have to leave the place empty until all the legal and tax issues are sorted. I’m told it could be weeks before you even release the body.’ She flashed an accusing stare at Turnbull.

‘These matters are always very difficult,’ he said gently, settling on to the sofa beside her while Tom and Archie sat on the two armchairs opposite. ‘I understand how painful this must be, but we must balance the needs of the family with the need to find those responsible.’

‘Yes, yes of course.’ She nodded and swallowed hard.

Tom, with the benefit of a childhood spent in a country where the open display of human emotion was applauded, marvelled at her uniquely English struggle to balance grief with the need to maintain dignity and self-control in front of strangers. Just for a second, he thought she would succumb and cry, but she was clearly a proud woman and the moment passed. She looked up again, her eyes glistening and defiant.

‘What did you want to ask me?’

Turnbull took a deep breath.

‘Did your father ever talk about his time in Poland? In Auschwitz?’

She shook her head.

‘No. I tried to talk to him about it many times, to find out what happened, what it was like there. But he said that he had locked everything away in a dark corner of his mind that he couldn’t look into again. In a way, that told me all I needed to know.’

‘And the tattoo on his arm – his prisoner number – did he ever show you that?’

Again she shook her head.

‘I saw it, of course, now and again. But he seemed to be embarrassed by it and usually wore a long-sleeved shirt or pullover to cover it up. I’ve known other survivors who regarded their tattoos as a badge of suffering, something they were proud of showing, but my father wasn’t like that. He was a very private man. He lost his entire family in that place. I think he just wanted to forget.’

‘I see,’ said Turnbull. ‘Was he religious?’

She shook her head.

‘No. People tried to bring him back into the Jewish community here, but he had no time for God. The war destroyed his faith in any force for good. Mine, too, for that matter.’

‘And politics? Was he involved in any way? Jewish rights, for example?’

‘No, absolutely not. All he was ever interested in was railways and birds.’

There was a brief pause before Turnbull spoke again. ‘Miss Weissman, what I’m about to tell you may be difficult for you to hear.’

‘Oh?’

Turnbull, looking uncomfortable for the first time since Tom and Archie had met him, hesitated before speaking.

‘We have recovered your father’s arm.’ He snatched a glance at Tom as he said this.

‘Oh.’ Her reaction was one of relief, as if she’d been dreading a more traumatic revelation. ‘But that’s a good thing, isn’t it?’

‘Yes…Except that his tattoo, his concentration camp number, had been…removed.’

‘Removed?’ Now she did look shocked.

‘Sliced off.’

Her hand flew to her mouth in horror. Now that he was closer to her, Tom saw that her carefully painted nails were chipped and worn where she’d clearly been biting them.

‘Oh my God.’

‘However, by analysing the scar tissue and pigment discoloration in some of the deeper skin layers,’ Turnbull continued quickly, as if the technical language would help lessen the impact of what he was saying, ‘our forensic experts were able to reconstitute his camp number.’

He paused and she looked from him to Tom and Archie, then back at Turnbull.

‘And…?’

‘Are you familiar with the coding system employed at Auschwitz?’ She shook her head silently. He gave a weak smile. ‘Neither was I, until this morning. It seems Auschwitz was the only camp to tattoo its prisoners systematically. This was made necessary by the sheer size of the place. The numbering system was divided into the regular series, where simple consecutive numbers were employed, and the AU, Z, EH, A and B series, which used a combination of letters and sequential numbers. The letters indicated where the prisoners were from, or ethnic groupings. AU, for example, signified Soviet prisoners of war – the original inmates of Auschwitz. Z stood for Zigeuner, the German word for gypsies. The numbers on Jewish prisoners mostly followed the regular unlettered series, although in many cases this was preceded by a triangle, until the A and B series took over from May 1944.’

‘Why are you telling me all this?’ There was a slightly hysterical edge to her voice now. Tom sensed that this time she really was on the verge of breaking down.

‘Because the number on your father’s arm didn’t follow any of the known Auschwitz numbering series.’

‘What?’ Even her make-up couldn’t disguise how white she had gone.

‘It was a ten-digit number with no alphabetical or geometric prefix. Auschwitz numbers never rose to ten digits…’ He paused. ‘You see, Miss Weissman, it is possible that your father was never actually in a concentration camp.’

NINETEEN

3.16 p.m.

They sat there in embarrassed silence as she rocked gently in her seat, hands covering her face, shoulders shaking. Tom gently laid his hand on her arm.

‘Miss Weissman, I’m sorry.’

‘It’s okay,’ she said, her voice muffled by her fingers. ‘I’ve almost been expecting something like this.’

‘What do you mean?’ Turnbull leant forward, his brow creased in curiosity.

She lowered her hands and they could see now that, far from the tears they’d been expecting, her face shone with a dark and terrifying anger. With rage.

‘There’s something I have to show you –’

She got up and led them out into the hall, her heels clip-clipping on the tiles.

‘I haven’t touched anything since I found it.’ Her voice was strangled as she paused outside the next door down. ‘I think part of me was hoping that one day I would come in and it would all just be gone as if it had never been here.’

She opened the door and led them inside. Compared to the rest of the house, it was dark and smelt of pipe smoke and dust and dogs. Boxes of books were stacked in one corner of the room, their sides compressing and collapsing under the weight. At the other end, in front of the window, stood a desk, its empty drawers half-open and forming a small wooden staircase up to its stained and scratched surface.

She walked over to the window and pulled the curtain open. A thick cloud of dust billowed out from the heavy material and danced through the beams of sunlight that were forcing their way through the filthy panes.

‘Miss Weissman…’ Turnbull began. She ignored him.

‘I found it by accident.’

As she approached the bookcase, Tom saw that it was empty apart from one book. She pushed against the book’s spine. With a click, the middle section of the bookcase edged forward slightly.

Tom sensed Archie stiffen next to him.

She tugged on the bookcase and it swung open to reveal a flaking green door set into the wall. She stepped forward and then paused, her hand on the door handle, flashing them a weak smile over her shoulder.

‘It’s funny, isn’t it? You love someone all your life. You think you know them. And then you find out it’s all been a lie.’ Her voice was flat and unfeeling. ‘You never knew them at all. And it makes you wonder about yourself. About who you really are. About whether all this –’ she waved her arm around her – ‘is just some big joke.’

Tom had to stop himself from nodding in agreement, for she had described, far more coherently than he’d ever managed, the way he’d felt when he unmasked Renwick. It wasn’t just that he’d lost a friend and a mentor that day. He’d lost a good part of himself.

The door swung open and Tom gave a start as a featureless white face suddenly loomed out of the darkness. It took a moment for him to realise that it was a mannequin in full SS dress uniform. Behind it, on the far wall of what appeared to be a small chamber, a vast swastika flag had been pinned, the excess material fanning out across the floor like a sinister bridal train. The right-hand wall, meanwhile, was lined with metal shelving that groaned under the weight of a vast collection of guns, photographs, daggers, swords, identity cards, books, badges, leaflets and armbands.

Turnbull gave a low whistle and Tom immediately wished he hadn’t. The sound seemed strangely inappropriate.

‘You never knew about this?’ Tom asked.

She shook her head.

‘He would lock himself in his office for hours. I thought he was reading. But all the time he must have been in here.’

‘It’s possible this was some sort of post-traumatic reaction,’ Tom suggested. ‘A morbid fascination brought about by what happened to him. Stress, shock…they make people do strange things.’

‘That’s what I hoped and prayed too,’ she said. ‘Until I saw this –’

She reached past them and removed a photograph from the top shelf, then took it across to the window. Tom and Turnbull followed her. As she angled it to the light, the photo revealed three young men in SS uniform standing stiffly in front of a bookcase. They looked rather serious, even a little aloof.

‘I’ve no idea who the other two are, but the man in the middle…the man in the middle is…is my father.’ Her voice was completely expressionless now.