March 10, 5.05 p.m.
The door was yanked open and he stood in a rectangle of moonlight. The darkness of the garage made him pause for a moment. The smell of mold on clay bricks, the human smell somewhere in the background. His hand moved out and flicked an old plastic switch. Lights flickered dimly in the gloom below.
The killer stepped into the garage. He moved sideways past piles of bricks and scaffolding poles. At the side of the room stood an old desk facing a mirror. An old-fashioned reel-to-reel tape recorder sat on the desk with a small square-headed microphone attached.
The killer put his notebook beside the tape recorder and stared into the mirror. His hair was slicked flat to his skull, and he was wearing a uniform, a full uniform, with the blue eagle on the arm. The uniform made him feel stronger.
He stood in front of the mirror and tried not to look at his face. His uniform couldn’t disguise his features. He was no Aryan, but in the low light he could believe it more than usual. There had never been, to his knowledge, a connection between the expression on his face and the feelings and thoughts beneath.
His whole life he had played a calm game, smiling and getting by, but everything was conditional, nothing was absolute. Perhaps it was just like that with some people. Even as a child he experimented with faces, hiding the feelings below with a mask. With the uniform and the formality of the army, it was different. You were what you appeared to be.
He appeared to be an SS officer because he was an SS officer. He could kill when he liked. When Jews were in the ghetto, when they were out of the ghetto, during the day, during the night. If they broke the rules by being out after curfew or by wearing fur coats or gold rings. All of this was illegal. He could dismiss a Jew with a ragged bullet-hole in an instant. Feeling was action. The manifold between the two worlds had never been complete until now.
He loved this new life he had created. His reanimated life. The life of the past, of past certainties, of past glories, of power, hunger and the Third Reich.
He sat, awake and alive from watching himself in the mirror. He had a small and simple Anglepoise lamp on his desk. This too was an authentic 1940s build. He opened his notebook and looked ahead.
One night, many, many nights ago, he had run away from a persecution of sorts. A beating by some other boys who were supposed to be his friends, who thought beating a Jew was all the more fun for its sudden and unexpected nature. But he wasn’t a Jew, they were mistaken. He had taken on the suffering of a race of which he was no part. He had felt the blows, he had heard the insults. ‘I am not a Jew!’ he shouted.
He ran from them that night. By the time he turned for home, he found he was lost. What happened that night in the dark, alone and terrified? Did the anger and frustration pass into his bloodstream then, at the height of fear? Did the man who now made him feel warm and safe find him in the dark wood? A boy, alone at night, shivering and terrified by every insect and breath of wind. The Jew who shouted out aloud that he was not a Jew.
Out of his pocket he took a scrunched-up piece of white cotton and placed it on the oak table-top. Then he produced a small square of paper. There was a paragraph of writing on it. He pressed the cotton to his nose as he read it. There were 88 words on the piece of paper. He read them as if he needed their power.
He reached down to the right-hand drawer; it pulled easily on its old worn runners. The desk was made in 1933, the year Hitler became Chancellor. He fumbled around inside for a bottle. He lifted it out and looked at it under the light. He peered through the bottle, three quarters empty. He put it on his desk and stared ahead. His fingers were grubby and oily. He continued to stare as he unscrewed the top of the bottle. He removed the cotton from his nose, swigged and then stroked the cotton. He then pushed it from his desk on to the bare ground.
Somewhere behind him, there was a moaning sound. He listened, then walked across the ground and switched on another light. A brick cupboard with a wooden door was suddenly illuminated from the inside. The light shone out through gaps around the door. Inside was a girl. He leaned against the wall and felt the stirring of desire. She was the most beautiful of all. He had to destroy her, day by day, to watch her body turn to gray sacking, to watch her teeth fall out. He wanted only to find her disgusting.
His hand pressed flat on the wooden door. He picked up a chart from the wall. Looked at it. ‘144002. No food at all. You are still alive. You are strong.’
He opened the door and looked down. The body was lying on its side, barely moving.
‘You will not last more than another week or so. You are the lucky one.’
She groaned. Over the past few days, he had conducted several experiments on her. He had noted down all the results.
He knelt down and put his hand on her skin. He still felt the desire. ‘I shouldn’t feel like this, you know?’ he said. ‘It burns inside me. I must fight it.’ He stroked her arm and then pulled back. He felt the disgust at himself rise and merge with a strong sense of guilt and failure. ‘The flesh of a Jewess. It is base. It is vile to want you but, Jewess, my whole body yearns for it.’ He grabbed her head and pressed his lips hard against her mouth. Then he pulled back and spat at her. ‘Your sickening seduction must end.’
He moved back across to his desk, took out a cigarette and lit it. ‘You’re a filthy whore, Abby, you understand? A filthy whore!’
Desire was hard to control. Desire needed to be destroyed. He sat down in his seat and looked over his shoulder towards the dark corner of the room where he could hear the faintest shuffle. Then he turned back, opened another drawer and took out an apple. He peeled it and ate it slowly. He clicked the tape recorder, moved the old tape round and clicked it again.
The spool ran, caught up with itself and slowed. He rewound, then pressed another lever and spooled by hand to a small chalk mark. He stopped. He breathed, and then clicked the recorder. He watched the whole mechanism move and the tape start to run on the rollers through the pick-up.
He raised his head again and cleared his throat.
‘Josef Sturbe reporting for duty. I have conducted the third day of the survey. I have much to report. Marisa Cohen is dead. She was found out after curfew. I conducted a rudimentary experiment on her, which is all in my written report. The woman Rebecca Glass is next on my list.’
He turned the page of his notebook; continued with his list of details from the tours. He coughed then turned another page. He leaned to one side and picked up the cotton underwear from the floor. He flattened it on his desk, smoothing it back into shape. It was stained all over with the dirt from his boots. They all cleaned his boots with their own underwear. Destroy desire. Belittle it. But it excited him. He shot them because he must not desire the thing he hated. He knew that things must happen more quickly now. The desire was destroying him, but he had to win and he could only win by destroying desire once and for all. He turned back to his report.
‘New York City, I saw four complaining Jews this week. One target is still outstanding. She will be punished, but today the opportunity did not arise.’ He paused. ‘The powers are rising in opposition. They are all here. It is as I have read and all on our streets. The filthy disease-carrying parasites, the greedy, lazy perverts worshipping their God and money with trickery and deceit. Deviants, rats – spreading their Jewish secrets. The Jew is the parasite of humanity. A demon in flesh. We must start to consider a more devastating solution. A bigger solution.’ His face strained. The light clicked off. He felt her underwear again. He was embarrassed. He desired her and despised himself for it. He turned to the door in the corner. He knew the pamphlet word for word. He pressed his face to the wooden door and whispered through the cracks: ‘“Jewry undermines every people and every state that it infiltrates. It feeds as a parasite and a culture-killing worm in those lost people. It grows and grows like weeds in the state, the community and the family, and infects the blood of humanity everywhere.
‘“It is the pestilential nature of Jewry against which every people, every state, every nation must and should want to defend itself if it does not want to be a victim of their bloody plague.” Do you hear me, Abby?’