‘They developed the procedure gradually. From what we can tell, it started with simple pain experiments up in Buchenwald. The results were so promising that a separate annexe was established, probably under direct orders from Himmler himself. That was when the experimentation really took off. They came to realise that increased blood flow to the brain contributed to an enhancement of pain and started hanging their research subjects upside down as a result. The long wire was a development from that. They were clearly near to a breakthrough of some kind when the Americans reached Weimar. The archives stopped suddenly at the end of March. The Americans arrived in early April. They had probably heard rumours that the end was close, packed up and disappeared into thin air. No one has ever been brought to account for it. In actual fact, we had no idea the institution ever existed before we opened the doors. All other traces of it had been obliterated.’
‘Have the people responsible been identified?’ asked Kerstin Holm. She didn’t recognise her own voice.
‘Not entirely,’ said Ernst Herschel. ‘What we do know has been sent on to the Jewish Documentation Centre in Vienna. Simon Wiesenthal, you know.’
‘Yes,’ Kerstin replied in the same peculiar cawing voice. ‘And what do you know?’
‘That there were three officers as well as guard soldiers. All from the SS.’
‘Names?’
‘Only two of the three, I’m afraid.’
‘What are the names you have?’
‘Let me start by explaining the order of command. Two of the three were doctors. SS doctors, if you grasp the full extent of that term. These men were doctors and officers. The third wasn’t a doctor. He was the boss. The entire institution, the whole Pain Centre, they were his work. His name was Hans von Heilberg.
‘Naturally, he made sure to burn all documents relating to himself and his existence is otherwise only sporadically recorded in various war archives. After the war, there isn’t a trace of him. We wouldn’t have known he existed at all, wouldn’t have known that he was in charge of the institution, if he hadn’t been treated for a certain complaint by one of the doctors. He had a birthmark that had started bleeding and he was worried it was skin cancer. That was in August 1944. His worries were described by the doctor as “chronic hypochondria”.’
‘A birthmark?’
‘A birthmark on his throat. According to reports, it was shaped like a rhombus. That’s all we know about Hans von Heilberg’s appearance.’
‘And the doctors?’
‘We know very little about one of them. He made sure to get rid of all written evidence, but oddly enough he forgot a photograph, so we do at least have a picture of him. It’s actually the only picture we have of any of the three.’
‘And the other?’
‘I’ve been hesitating slightly, and I know you’ve noticed, Fräulein Holm. He represents a problem for you. For your entire neutral nation. The other SS doctor was Swedish.’
‘Swedish?’
‘We have the most information about him. He wasn’t as careful in getting rid of the evidence as the others. Perhaps he didn’t think he would survive. Perhaps he was indifferent to it all. His name was Anton Eriksson.’
‘Jesus,’ said Kerstin.
‘I know that your country has finally started to get to grips with its national legacy from the Second World War, Fräulein Holm. You’ve unearthed some cannon fodder in the Waffen SS and things like that – but an SS man of that rank isn’t something you’ve come across yet. That was another of the reasons behind my initial reluctance. I asked myself whether I shouldn’t put the question to someone higher up first. But now I’ve said it. Do as you wish with it.’
‘I will,’ said Kerstin Holm.
‘I’ll fax the material over,’ said Herschel.
They met in the corridor, in line with the thin wall that separated their offices. Each pointed at the other.
‘Weimar,’ they said in unison.
Paul Hjelm and Kerstin Holm went into her office. They quickly recapped their respective discoveries for one another. Then they glanced at a fax which had just arrived. It was about Anton Eriksson. Accompanying it was an extremely blurry, almost completely black photograph of the third man.
‘Three men,’ said Paul Hjelm. ‘Tormentor 3 seems to have been identified. “Cruel, sadistic, purple rhombus-shaped birthmark on throat.” Hans von Heilberg. The boss himself.’
‘This photo doesn’t give us much,’ said Kerstin Holm. ‘But your summary of tormentor 1 could easily be the Swede, Anton Eriksson. “Very blond, not German, sorrowful.” It seems most likely that the sorrowful one was the only man not to wipe out all traces of himself. He was probably being eaten up by his conscience even then.’
‘So should we assume that tormentor 2 – “ice-cold scientist” – is the unidentified man in the photograph? The fact that he wiped out all other traces of himself surely suggests a certain cool rationality?’
They sat there for a moment, each of them thinking. Still, their thoughts were as one. It was as though nothing, no bones and no cartilage, separated their two brains from one another.
‘So what are we looking at here?’ Paul Hjelm asked eventually. ‘How did the Erinyes find out about this method of execution? Why are they using it to kill off pimps? And where the hell does Leonard Sheinkman come into all of this? He should’ve been executed – he was at the top of the list. But he made it. How?’
Kerstin stepped in. ‘And why did he never tell anyone about any of this? If he had just told the world that this horrible place existed, all three of them could’ve been locked up. Or they could’ve started searching for them right after the war at least. But he kept it quiet for over fifty years instead.’
‘He turned a new page in his life,’ said Paul. ‘He obliterated his past. He didn’t want anything to do with it. He just removed it. Like a tumour.’
‘They must’ve found out about it from Herschel,’ said Kerstin, getting to her feet.
‘Who?’
‘The Erinyes can only have had one single source of information about the hanging upside down and the nail in the brain, and that’s the research group in Weimar.’
‘Ring him back and see who knew about it. Absolutely anyone involved. Who was the first to go into the building? Who did they tell? How did Herschel find out? What happened when he gathered his research group together? Who was involved? Were there any other staff? What happened when the building was completely renovated?’
‘You’re right,’ said Kerstin, picking up the receiver.
‘But not quite,’ said Paul. ‘There are other possible sources. If Sheinkman survived, maybe others did too. The guard soldiers in the Pain Centre, for example. And then at least three others.’
‘Three war criminals who went underground over fifty years ago,’ Kerstin nodded.
‘Ring anyway,’ said Paul.
Kerstin spoke with Ernst Herschel. He promised to try to put a list of all possible names together, including how and when the Erinyes might have found out about the method.
‘One more thing,’ Kerstin said into the handset. ‘Was there any kind of register of the research subjects?’
‘Yes,’ said Ernst Herschel. ‘Though they’re just combinations of letters. No names. No individuals. Just letters. It must’ve been simplest that way.’
‘Probably,’ said Kerstin Holm. ‘Thanks again for your help. Prepare yourselves for a visit.’
‘What?’ asked the professor.
‘We’re sending a man,’ said Kerstin, hanging up.
‘Arto?’ asked Paul.
‘Our well-travelled friend.’
And so they began – with a single pair of eyes and four interconnected cerebral hemispheres – to read through the Swedish SS doctor’s documents.