The Devil's Playground (48 page)

the Doctor’s testimony seemed to show only the worst. The

arc of descent. He told her things he knew he couldn’t tell

Suze or the detective. Things he’d kept inside himself. How

he was beginning to think that he’d been sucked, or maybe

suckered, into this investigation. How Jake had laid certain

clues that only he would find, and he told her that he didn’t

understand why the old man had done it, what he’d been

trying to prove.

She nodded and refilled his cup, pushed the cake plate

across to him. They sat and talked until the light dropped

from the day.

‘I have something for you,’ she said as he was about to leave.

‘I cleaned up Beatrice’s room too. All her stuff. I couldn’t

stand being reminded any more, for all those clothes to have

no one to wear them, all those books with no one to read

them. I found it behind her bookcase. I called the nice

detective but they told me he was off the case. They didn’t

seem interested. I knew you would come back.’

She went into the main room. He heard every footstep

as it diminished and then amplified. Every beat of his

heart.

She took a small black object out of an envelope. He put

his hand out. She placed it in his palm.

It was cold and plastic. His palm was drenched in sweat.

He looked down.

It was a single reel of 8 mm film.

He got off the tram and entered the District, pulsing with

the night swarm of pedestrians and shoppers. The film

nestled in his inside jacket pocket, zipped up, constantly

touched and prodded to make sure it was still there. He

wondered if Suze had a projector. He thought that it would

be a good way to get to see her. Neutral ground.

He wanted to call her right away. To see what was on the

film. Holding it up to the light had just confirmed that it was

indeed war footage, or at least bore a close resemblance to

it. He would have to slip it through a projector, have it

beamed on a screen to see why Beatrice had hidden this

particular reel above all others.

The previous night had led him no closer to Jake, maybe

only further away. The films were real and Jake couldn’t be

considered as a snuff extra. But now he felt something rising,

a small sliver of hope that soon things would be answered,

that one way or another, soon, he would know.

Then he saw the man again. Smiling this time. He was

tired of being afraid, of always having to look over his

shoulder. But he remembered the detective’s words, the

devices the killer had used, the pleasure he’d taken. His

pursuer was too far away to make an identification, but

looking at him, he felt something familiar about the man,

a shudder of recognition. He turned, walked through the

night, quickening his step, trying to keep control, not break

into a full-out run, though a part of his brain was screaming

to do just that. Through the tourists and crack dealers and

the girls on their coffee breaks. He bounced like a pinball

from canal to canal until he finally looked behind him and

didn’t see anyone following. He felt excited, proud for a

moment that he’d finally eluded his pursuer. Felt the fear

slip and ebb.

It was getting late and the streets were thinning out. The

tourists had gone home and now only hardcore smokers and

whorefuckers remained, their faces equally determined by

their desires as they shuffled by him.

He walked past the Old Church, almost stumbling over a

couple making love in its shadow until he found himself in

front of the Skull & Roses tattoo parlour. He looked towards

the basement. The buzzer glowed nicotine yellow. A piercing

parlour, the detective had said. Jon moved nearer the steps.

He could hear movement down in the basement and he saw

the lights flickering and smelled the acrid tang of burnt

coke. He thought of Wouter, the previous night, the burnt

down flat.

He looked to his left and right. There was no one around.

He began descending the stairs, searching through his

pockets, taking out the mace. He tested his fingers against

the button. Stared at the door. He heard something creeping

in the darkness to his left but could see only two bins,

standing silent. A cat moved and he nearly maced it. He

caught his breath. Laughed. Felt a sharp shred of nerve and

fear pulse through him. He reached out his hand towards

the buzzer, thinking, I have to do this, I have to see what’s

there, when someone grabbed his wrist.

Trains. Long, rust-caked and articulated like snakes. Trains

rolling across the sleepy hills and empty towns. Trains, shuddering and packed, the tracks like black fingers uncoiling

from Berlin and heading across the Eastern European plain.

He sat and watched the documentary footage, scratchy

and pocked, as it narrated and speculated. Trains and timetables.

A skeleton infrastructure, stretched and spined across

the back of Europe. Like the nerves that twisted around

muscle and bone. A new network of capillaries, artery and

vein, shunting new kinds of things away from the fatherland,

cleansing as the heart beat faster and faster and the blood

sped its way across the plain.

Quirk lit a cigarette, coughed, wiped the spit off his lower

lip, dark and brown, speckled with blood, someday soon, he

knew. He watched the programme change but there really

was no change at all. Bormann stared at him. Bormann, whose skull became such a relic like the fingerbones of burnt saints. All the time now the TV was filled with images of

that era. He’d spent thirty years forgetting, or kidding himself

so. Living a small life, in small rooms, small cities, where the

density of your surroundings always hugs you and will never

let you fall. And then the programmes started. Every night.

Every channel sometimes it seemed. Endless footage, run

and rerun, black and white or, for novelty value, in colour.

He saw the place he’d spent his childhood in. The barbed

wire and dark forested blackness beyond. He didn’t feel pain

or loss or hate or any of those things. It was where he’d

grown up. He hadn’t known any different. It was nostalgic

in the way every street corner is where you once played and

joked and kissed girls. Though he’d never done that. Not

much of any of that at all. And afterwards those things just

didn’t seem important any more.

Quirk stubbed the cigarette and flipped the channel.

Another documentary. Another pit, out in the Russian

forests, smiling officers, handshakes, yes, yes, yes. Were

people so goddamn interested, he wondered. They must be.

Otherwise why show all this. Education? Well, what the fuck

could you learn from this? Death? Fear? A loss of belief? All

that and more. Well, let them watch, they would never

understand for to watch something is not to experience it

however much it may set itself up as a facsimile thereof.

Quirk had even heard of a ‘theme’ concentration camp down

in the Bavarian hills. You paid your money and were given a

pair of striped pyjamas that chafed and rubbed against your

skin. Not much food. A night at most. See how it was, the

adverts proclaimed. Understand. Feel. And so Germans,

overfilled with guilt and shame paid for these humiliations,

not understanding that choice was all. That in the morning

they would give back their rough clothing, rub cream over

their cracked and burnt skin, get back into their Volvos and

stationwagons, talk to the kids, sigh deeply, shake their heads

and then remember that tomorrow they’re back at work.

He flipped again. Into cableland. The refuge of the documentarian, the fake historian, the ghouls and fiends who got

a kick out of all this stuff. You could sit and watch torture

and death non-stop if you wanted to. Modern day and

medieval. All inclusive, one package. The new pornography.

He checked his watch. Karl should have reported back by

now. Probably fucked it all up. Ten years he feeds them

information and then when the big one finally comes around

they send him some insecure, drug-addled muscle. Christ.

Quality had definitely dropped. It had been so hard to part

with the address. So fucking hard. But he knew that this way

he’d get another chance at the 49 reels. The Germans needed

a place to work on the man, convince him of the films’

rightful place … and then perhaps his chance would come.

At least he’d get to see them again, those films, those days.

He lit another cigarette, coughed, not so bad this time and

tuned into some glasses-wearing geek explaining how the

Holocaust could not have happened, absolutely, definitively,

because if they really had gassed so many people then more

molecules of the chemical would have embedded themselves

in the surrounding ground. And since, this geek asserted,

there were only trace elements of those, then obviously the

Holocaust was a lie, a myth set up by the Zionists to perpetuate

their victimhood and consolidate their position as de facto rulers of the world.

The doorbell buzzed. Quirk flipped the channel on to the

outside cam, saw the German and his woman standing there,

flipped back to the programme and buzzed them in.

‘Shhh,’ he said, gesturing for them to sit. He watched the

geek display his facts and provenance.

‘Fucking Jew,’ Karl spat.

Quirk laughed.

‘Don’t see why you find it so funny, old man. Who do

you think these deniers are? Friends of the Reich? No. Jews. Set out to discredit the Fiihrer’s most palpable achievement.’

Quirk watched the woman. She hadn’t said anything. It

was the first time he’d seen her. Surprised, yes — he hadn’t

expected a woman, but he supposed times were changing.

She looked pissed off and he immediately felt that charge

that always fizzled and flashed between people who shared

a bed. Dieter must have been short, Quirk thought, to send

this lumphead and his fucking girlfriend. There was a sound

outside. Quirk looked towards the door. Locked. Just kids

playing. He wondered why he was so jumpy.

‘These fucking liars,’ Karl said, watching the TV flicker,

shovelling another mound on to his card. The woman looked

at him sharply but he ignored her, continued. ‘They defile

the Fiihrer’s glory. Every day trying to deny all we achieved

and doing it in our name. If the Holocaust didn’t happen

then why do these same people profess to admire Hitler so

much — because he conquered several countries for a few

years? Fuck, everyone’s done that at one time or another — Napoleon didn’t inspire groups or meetings or ideology.’

‘I know this,’ Quirk snapped, suddenly impatient, disgusted

with it all. ‘It’s done?’ he asked though he could smell

the tang of ash and flame that clung to Karl’s clothes like

cigarette smoke.

Karl nodded. ‘As you said, old man. All gone. The whole

floor, just to make sure.’ He stepped forward, took the

remote and flicked the set off. Quirk started to get up but

then realizing it would be easier this way, said nothing. He

was glad that they had at least achieved this small task. Now

there would be no connections, no betraying trails leading

back to here.

“You want to tell us why we had to burn that place?’

Quirk thought about it. ‘No.’

‘Well, what about the films?’ Karl was bored, pissed off — they’d almost been caught by the policeman, fucking Greta arguing again, them both so tired and almost didn’t notice.

But no matter, it was done. The place was ashes. The heat

had felt good.

‘You have to make sure he has the films, the originals,

before you do anything.’

Karl nodded. What did the old man know? Fucking

patronizing him like Dieter and the rest back in Frankfurt.

Had Dieter told the old man he was Czech? Fuck. He knew

he had to get these films, get them and store them somewhere

safe, somewhere even Greta wouldn’t know — these were his

bargaining chips into the new world and he was damn sure

not going to let them go. He moved towards the instrument

table to his right, picked up several needles, different shapes

and sizes, running his finger smoothly against the tips. ‘You

giving me this address suggests that you have already ascertained

that.’ Karl took two of the needles and slipped them

into the folds of his coat.

‘This is where the website comes from. The computer,

you see. So what, you kill him and then search his flat, find

he put the films in a safety deposit somewhere? How’s Dieter

going to like that?’

The old man had a point. Yes. The films were the most

important thing, couldn’t get carried away now, not when

they were so close.

After they’d left, Quirk switched the set off and locked

the basement door. He hoped they wouldn’t fuck up. They

looked as though they were more than capable of it, but

surely Dieter wouldn’t have left something this important in

an idiot’s hands. Shit, he should stop worrying. He’d owed