The Devil's Playground (52 page)

‘The films?’ he whispered. Dominic struggled but managed

to shake his head and even peel back his lips for

something approximating a smile. He could still see Bill

running and he knew that as long as the dog ran, he would

be okay.

Quirk grinned. He liked the tough ones, the ones that

took more to get them to break. Worthy vessels for his

undoubted talent. He took another needle, wider, curved;

showed it to Dominic. He rolled up Dominic’s sleeve,

pressed his cold fingers on the skin, feeling for the right

point. When he had it, he took the needle and slid it past the

membrane and into the nerve. Dominic screamed and lost

consciousness again.

When Dominic came out of the blackness he saw Quirk

holding another needle in his hand, long and thin like a

shark’s tooth, smiling, ready to strike. Bill was gone. The

field and the flowers were all gone. Only the pain existed. A

sweet, exquisite toothache pain that pulsed through his arm

and leg, throbbing in his veins. ‘No!’ he screamed. ‘No, I’ll

tell you where they are. No more! Please!’

Karl took a cigarette from his pack, lit it and placed it

gently in Dominic’s mouth, gesturing for Quirk to move

away. ‘Where?’ he asked Dominic, his tone solicitous and

smooth as a salesman closing a sweet deal.

‘They’re in the museum. The JHM. Room 435,’ he said,

trying to catch his breath. It seemed so hard to breathe

suddenly and his stomach felt extremely hot.

Karl smiled. He looked at Quirk. ‘Finish up with him. I

believe the man came here to get some piercings. Do it.’

LATE SEPTEMBER, 1943. VILLEFRANCHE/DRANCY/

POLAND

They will come for us.

Everyone else is gone from town and no one smiles any

more. The nights are filled with screams and the groaning of

their trucks taking more people away. I am here with my

new husband. Alex. It still feels strange to say that, but

there it is. We are hiding out in Ottilie’s villa. I do not know

of anywhere else to go. The soldiers are everywhere.

We got married in the late summer heat. We stood on the

steps of the hall and we kissed and I never imagined it would

be like this. I always thought that it would be me and Alfred

and music would be playing, the stars twinkling, the very

earth would heave and groan and the wild sky would break

apart. But instead it is filled-out forms, lazy handshakes,

wry smiles and this baby that is now five months inside of

me.

It is autumn and the sky is closing in. The last week of

August brought storms terrifying and unstoppable, wrenching

the water out of its nest, waves breaking against the

small sea-front hotels. Rain like I have never seen it. Not

Berlin rain but something else, denser, so that you almost

choke to death in its spray.

Someone gave us up.

I heard the truck approach, saw the men step out, their black

uniforms slick with rain, and I screamed.

Alex told me to hide but I couldn’t leave him. We stood

up together when the men entered our room. Two young

German men. In another life they could have been my suitors.

In this life, they were smiling. The officer took out a

whip and began beating Alex with it. I screamed again but

only heard them laughing. My dear Alex fell to the floor and

began to shake.

They told us to pack our things but there was nothing left

to take. All I still had were those awful things I had

drawn in Gurs. I do not know why but I took them, folded

them and placed them inside my shirt. They broke Alex’s

ankle with a stick and dragged him by the hair out to the

truck.

We arrived at the hotel. Alex could barely climb out of

the truck. I tried to help him but the officer began to beat

me until I couldn’t hold on any longer. They marched us

into the Excelsior. SS stood like dustbins every few yards.

A short, dark, hook-nosed man stood on the balcony smiling.

They took me to a room that I was to share with other

women. Alex was taken elsewhere. The women looked at me

as I made my way to the empty space in the corner. I fell on

to the floor and revelled in its cold, hard kiss.

Someone told me that today is 24 September. They said,

remember this day. I do not know why. Today I was reunited

with Alex. They lined us up with about thirty others.

Brunner screamed and shouted. He picked an old rabbi out

of the line, started beating him, ripping his clothes off. I

looked away just before I heard the shot.

We marched up the main street towards the railway

station. The French stood on the pavements and watched

us. Some cheered. Others, I could see, were trying to hold

back their tears. I managed to grab Alex, help him stand,

and no one saw us, our hands clasped, as we marched towards

the train.

The camp here at Drancy is much larger than the one at

Gurs. But there is a different feeling here. Everyone feels

that this is the worst, that once we are moved, things can

only get better. Yesterday, Brunner handed out postcards

that had been sent from other resettled Jews. The cards were

postmarked Oswiecim, and on the back they told of better

times. Of a place where they are left alone. Where there is

food and education for the children. They spoke of better

places. We each held on to the cards for as long as we could,

loath to pass them on, as if in their surfaces we too could

find such comfort.

We know that we are going to Poland. They took our

money on entering the camp and gave us receipts, vouchers

in zlotys which we would be able to cash once we arrived.

Everyone felt much better, knowing how the Germans liked

to keep things in meticulous order, everyone thinking we are

going to a place with shops, where things can be bought and

we all held on to those little slips as if our lives depended on

them.

I think it is October. I do not know any more. Today we are

leaving. They called our names this morning and we stood

for six hours out in the cold, still naked from sleep, until the

roll-call had been repeated to Brunner’s satisfaction. They

loaded us on to a bus. I lost track of Alex. The local kids

threw stones at the bus as we were marched in.

Alex is gone. Maybe he is on another bus. Maybe he

managed to get away. I hope so. Or I hope that I will see

him on the train. Or in Poland. Where we can live as a

couple, have this child, forget these awful days.

I cannot believe that they expect us to ride in these trains.

The compartment in front of me is filled. People are squirming

and crying and the stink is terrible. I stand in line. I have

seen many shot today. I will not do anything out of line. I

want to see my Alex in Poland. I will do as they tell me.

The compartment is filled. I hear the SS shouting out

‘Close transport 60’, and suddenly all the light disappears. I

do not know how many of us are in the car. There is a steady

undercurrent of tears. Nearly everyone is standing. My face

is almost pressed against the door. I was the last one in.

Some of the old people have managed to sit between other

people’s legs. I cannot see further than that. No one is

screaming. Not yet. But I can feel it in their throats and in

mine. This rising scream that threatens to unleash at any

minute.

There is shouting from outside. I cannot make out what

they are saying. Suddenly the door is opened and I nearly

fall out. Someone grabs me from behind and stops me. Air

drifts into the car and a few people sigh, thinking maybe it

was all a trick and now we were being let off. But I could

hear the soldiers shouting. They were talking in my language.

‘We’re full. The list has been completed. You know we

can’t add people who are not represented on the list. He will

have to go on the next transport tomorrow.’

‘No. It is imperative he goes now.’

‘What’s so special about this Jew?’

‘He is English. An English Jew, can you believe that? You

see, the quicker we dispatch him the better.’

‘Okay, but you will have to report this to the Obersturmfiihrer.

He does not like it when the numbers are wrong.’

I hear the crack of wood on bone and then they shove him

into the car. He is face-to-face with me. Blood is running

down his head and if it wasn’t so cramped in here he would

collapse.

The doors shut.

Darkness again. The train begins to move. People sway

and fall into each other. I hold the man in front of me. I can

hear the deep twists of his breath.

‘Do you speak English?’ he says.

I nod and then realize he can’t see me. ‘Yes, some I speak,’

I say, hoping that is right, trying to remember what I can. I

think he smiles but I am not sure, perhaps it is only the

moonlight leaking in through a crack in the door.

‘Hello,’ he says and his breath is warm against my cheek.

‘My name is Jon Reed and I don’t know what I’m doing

here.’

“I am Charlotte,’ I say. ‘And I don’t know what I’m doing

here either.’

He presses against me and puts his hand on my stomach.

I can feel my child kicking inside and I know that he feels it

too. We stand like that, stomachs pressed against each other,

in this terrible heat.

“I can feel it,’ he says.

‘Yes.’ ++++++++++++++++++

Van Hijn stood outside the piercing parlour and shook the

rain out of his hair. The light was on inside. No sounds, no

movement that he could discern. He tried the door. Locked.

He pulled out his gun and blew the lock, shielding himself

against the exploded fragments of wood and metal that spat

back at him. He looked behind him; the street was empty.

He shouldered the door and spilled into the room.

Dominic was laid out on the piercing chair, his head

drooping. Van Hijn had to look away, then forced himself

to look back.

A pool of blood had converged around the bottom of the

chair. Dominic was naked and it looked as if he’d been

pierced with fragments of a skyscraper. Or been caught in a

hurricane of shrapnel, white-hot and hissing. Bits of metal

protruded from his side, from where his liver was, curling in

strange shapes as they reentered his body lower down, one

in his thigh, the other through his genitals. His tongue hung

loose from his mouth and had been bisected by a sharp metal

rod that quivered with a faint blue electrical charge.

The detective checked his pulse, but it was just routine.

He looked away from the dead body, noticed the other door.

The gleaming padlock. He held his hand up to his face and

shot it off.

The light was so bright that it took him a couple of seconds

to focus on the shape of the piercer slipping across the room.

He fired one shot. Quirk went down. Van Hijn heard the

satisfying collision of metal and bone and watched as the

piercer’s ankle bloomed a sudden red.

He moved towards the man. Applied pressure to his

broken ankle. The piercer screamed.

‘Where are the films?’ Van Hijn shouted.

Quirk grimaced. Shook his head.

More pressure. The soft giving of flesh and cartilage.

Quirk shook his head.

Van Hijn handcuffed the old man to the radiator. He

called for back-up. Stood, caught his breath. Then explored

the room. It was tiled white. A strange, rotting smell sat

heavily in the detective’s nostrils. Once another piercing

room perhaps, before that a hiding place for Jews during the

war. In the centre of the room stood the Judas Cradle, solid

and monumental like a remnant of some forgotten empire

or a work of groundbreaking modernist art. In the corners,

other devices lay silent and occluded. Tongues of metal and

steel, leather and wood, spikes and clamps and shackles. He

walked across the floor, trying to breathe through his mouth,

saw the clogged drain, leaned down, felt his fingers slide

through the mulch, hair and skin and blood. He wiped his

hand on his trousers and looked up at the empty tripod, the

overhanging halogens.

He was drawn to the screen in the corner, like something

you’d find in a radiology unit. Gun-metal grey. He looked

behind and saw the video camera mounted on a tripod. His

heart boomed through his chest. But there was no tape

inside. Nothing at all. He felt the floor sliding away from

him as he stared through the camera’s eye at the centre of

the room, the Judas Cradle looming perfectly positioned and

focused in his field.

Van Hijn ran back into the room. Quirk was lying on the

floor, quietly moaning, holding his ankle.

‘Where did they go?’ Van Hijn shouted.

‘Go to hell,’ the piercer replied. His voice sounded as if

he was gargling stones.

Van Hijn walked up to him. Put his foot above the bullet

wound. ‘I’m not going to ask again.’

Quirk said nothing this time. Van Hijn applied pressure.