The Devil's Playground (53 page)

The piercer started coughing, convulsing, then passed out.

‘Motherfucker!’

He was too late. Too fucking late.

Dominic must have told them where the films were.

He could hear the sirens of the approaching ambulance

and police crew. He didn’t feel like talking to them, explaining

what he was doing here. He left the basement and disappeared

back into the rain. He stood behind the Old Church

and called Jon.

She carefully threaded the film through the projector’s teeth.

Her hands were shaking and it took three attempts before it

slipped smoothly into the machine’s clasp.

‘They mind you borrowing that?’ Jon asked, surprised at

her resourcefulness.

‘They don’t know.’ She flicked her cigarette, missed the

ashtray and hit the floor. ‘Long as I have it back before

the museum opens, no one will be the wiser. There.’ She fed

the last bit through, her fingers slipping over the old, brittle

celluloid, careful not to crack it, to erase this most precious

of objects. ‘The reel from Beatrice’s room or Jake’s video?’

She looked at him, wondering how he could act so calmly at

a moment like mis when every bone in her body felt as if it

was shaking.

‘Beatrice’s reel,’ Jon replied, lighting what seemed to be

his fortieth cigarette that day.

The insect whirr and creak of the machine filled the room

like an old man’s breath as the far wall flickered and jumped

until an image rested upon it. Jon moved closer to Suze,

taking her hand, his breath shallow and irregular.

ŚWhat if there’s nothing on it?’ she said, voicing his worst

fears.

He didn’t answer. The film had started.

A courtyard. Was that barbed wire in the distance? Hard

to tell. A line of SS officers standing in the sun, smiling and

congratulating each other, a mood of conviviality settled

about their faces. Perhaps it is a Sunday afternoon. It has

that relaxed country feel. Another officer steps out of a black

car and starts going along the line, handing out medals,

commendations, handshakes and smiles. Each recipient

smiles back in close-up …

‘Jesus! Fuck!’

Suze was the first to see it. She got up, turned the switch

and the film rewound on the spool.

‘What?’ Jon asked, almost off his seat.

‘Wait,’ she said and switched the gears back into forward.

They watched in silence as his face came into the centre

of the frame. Dressed impeccably in his SS uniform, all those

straight angular lines, to-die-for collars, shiny leather boots,

the small death’s-heads on the jacket and yes, those eyes,

those same eyes.

‘Pause it,‘Jon said.

“I can’t. This isn’t video.’

‘It’s him, isn’t it?’ He watched the Doctor move forward,

shake hands with the officer, accept his commendation.

‘That son of a bitch!’ Suze screamed. She got up, hit a

switch on the machine, the film slowed down, stopped,

disappeared.

‘What the fuck is Kaplan doing in Nazi uniform?’ Jon

said.

Suze turned to him. ‘There is no Kaplan. There never

was. He was the Nazi doctor, not the prisoner. He was Dr

Werner and not his so-called assistant, Kaplan.’

‘It can’t be,’ he said, thinking of those long evenings the

two old men had sat opposite each other, Jake’s attachment,

the whole damn thing. ‘No.’

‘Jake must have found the film in the JHM. Must have

recognized Kaplan. You were right, the Doctor killed him

because of this. Because he’d discovered his true identity.’

Jon sat there, everything upside down. The world was

suddenly silent except for the faint hum of the machine, the

ebb and flow of their breath.

Kaplan was a Nazi doctor. All along. Had Jake known?

He couldn’t have. Unless that was the point. But no, he

wouldn’t have filmed him if he’d known. Jake must have

stumbled upon it, recognized the Doctor, confronted him.

‘We have to see Jake’s video.’ He got up, took the final

CD out of his pocket, walked over to her computer and

loaded it in the tray.

‘Oh, Jon,’ she said. She thought of the Doctor sitting in

on group meetings, his friendship with Dominic and Beatrice

and she wanted to scream.

She moved towards Jon, pulling up a chair beside the

computer. ‘Are you sure you want to watch this?’ she asked.

He replied by pressing Return. The machine sputtered

and groaned as it whirled the silver disc around, read its

secrets and then, in a flourish that alchemists would have

envied, transformed those simple numbers into a face, the

life of a man, his voice and only remaining presence in the

world. Even more wondrous than turning lead into gold, Jon

thought, as the old man, his old man, the tramp, Jake or

Jakob — whoever he was — lived and spoke again.

‘Jon. It seems very different now that I know to whom I

am addressing this.’ Jake looked older, his face as if it had been folded many times, his voice heavy with smoke. ‘It was better, I think, when I spoke to the camera. There was

something about that, the purity of it, that seemed to fit what

I had …’

The phone made them both jump.

They looked at each other and laughed, releasing some of

the tension that had built up. Jon paused the disc, the old

man for ever frozen, a mass of pixels flickering on as Suze

picked up the phone.

*Van Hijn,’ she said, passing it to Jon.

The detective didn’t waste time on greetings. ‘Dominic’s

dead,’ he said.

Jon took a deep breath.

‘He must have told them where the 49 reels are. It’s too

fucking late. We’ve lost them.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ Jon said, breathless, heart pounding hard. ‘I

know where he hid them. Meet me at the JHM. Fifteen

minutes. The films are there.’

The rain was terrible. But they got lucky. For the first time

since they had left Frankfurt, things went smoothly and

they arrived at the museum’s doors just as the old man was

locking up.

Karl emerged from the rain and grabbed Moshe from

behind, his arm slipping quietly to the old man’s neck. Greta

followed the two men back into the museum, taking Moshe’s

keys and locking the door behind them. Outside the rain

continued pounding the pavements. Inside, quiet had

descended.

‘What do you want?’ Moshe asked, though he already

knew.

Karl stared at him, smiling. ‘Don’t worry yourself, old

man. We’ll be through faster than you think. No harm will

come to you.’

Moshe had heard similar things before. He looked down

at the floor and noticed that the cleaner had missed a spot.

Mud lay caked on the tiles.

‘Room 435?’ Karl said, pointing his gun at the old man.

‘Find it yourself,’ Moshe said. In German.

Karl smiled. Took his gun, twisted it round and let the

handle slam into Moshe’s jaw sending the old man spilling

on to the dirty floor. ‘I won’t ask so politely again.’

Moshe pushed himself up. Wiped the blood from his chin.

‘That way.’ He pointed into the darkness of the main hall.

‘No, you’re coming with us,’ Karl said, lifting the old man

up, surprised at how little he weighed, like a small girl. ‘Make

sure he keeps up,’ he told Greta.

They were about to enter the main hall when they heard

the front door opening.

‘I thought you locked it,’ he said.

‘I did,’ Greta replied.

And he wanted to tell her that, yes, that was true, but a

sudden gust caught the limb of a nearby tree and sent it

crashing down into the roof of the car below, making them

both jump, scaring them out of the moment.

^You’ve got keys, right?’

Suze nodded. ‘What did the detective say?’

He looked at her, knowing that there was no way round

it, that he had to tell her. ‘Dominic’s dead. Van Hijn thinks

he told the killers where the films were.’

She put her hand to her mouth, but the scream she thought

would come, did not. Instead this blind, choking vacuum

filled her lungs. The floor seemed to float. The room to

shake. Jon moved to steady her but she turned away, not

wanting him to see her like this. She looked out of the

window and tried not to cry. She closed her eyes tight but

that didn’t help. She thought of the last time she’d seen

Dominic and how awful it all was, but that still didn’t make

things better. She’d never have guessed that his death would

move her so. She felt it instantly, as if the world had suddenly

sprung a leak, and out of this gap came her tears, only a pale

imitation of the rain outside, but endless, or so it seemed to

her.

She let him come and wrap his arms around her. She felt

him fold into her gaps, the places where her body gave way,

and put a hand to her face.

‘I’m sorry, Suze.’ He held her for as long as he could but

he knew that the detective would be waiting.

“I don’t mind going by myself,’ he said eventually.

She shook her head, turned but, still caught in his embrace,

said, ‘No. I can’t stay here. I’m the only one who knows the

layout of the place, you need me.’

Van Hijn watched as the police cars circled the parlour.

Through the rain, the red and blue lights took on an almost

hallucinatory feel, flicking and strobing, cutting through the

dense mist of the night. He saw Beeuwers walk towards the

entrance, slow, sinewy and muscular like a creature which

had skipped a couple of evolutionary stages. At least the

captain would make sure that nothing got fucked up, Van

Hijn thought. The captain would know when he saw the

little room that the killer had finally been found, or one of

them at least. Van Hijn’s phone call would have been

recorded, no way for Beeuwers to take the credit for himself.

But all these lights and cars? He was just an old man with a

bullet in his ankle, harmless now. But people wanted spectacle.

They wanted flash and glam. The bright halogen lights

of cameras and insect buzz of television. He could see the

various news crews approaching. The captain would have

tipped them off. Good publicity for him, good copy for

them. Nice how that worked.

The night illuminated and cordoned, Van Hijn turned and

walked away, hidden in the rain, his hair smeared over

his scalp, his clothes no longer resembling anything but

misshapen rags. He headed east towards the museum,

towards the real end of this thing, not the flash splatter

headlines that he’d left behind him but something that he

knew could be found only in the darkness of the past.

He got there first. The museum doors were closed, the

place locked up for the night. He walked around the perimeter,

noticing how the new modern buildings had been

so effortlessly joined to the older synagogues, a marvel of

architecture, something you could perhaps truly appreciate

only on such a wet night with things still ahead.

He hid behind some bushes. His favourite pastime lately

it seemed. Waited until he saw the two of them approaching

the main entrance.

They hadn’t talked much on the way. They’d decided to

forsake the tram for the privacy of the storm, the caterwaul

that would drown out anything but the loudest screams. Jon

watched her walking two steps ahead of him, and wondered

what Dominic had really meant to her. He quickly dismissed

the thought. That was her life, the parts of it that existed

without him, and he had no right to probe there. He could

never understand her true feelings, it was hard enough to get

a grip on his own.

He thought of Jake, the waste of his life, the pain and fear

that had grown up with him like errant siblings, always there

when he turned off the light. The slow spiralling descent that

he’d let himself tumble into. How had he felt watching that

reel of film, seeing his friend, his new friend, in that uniform?

Was there any way back from that?

Jon watched the canals roil and rumble, water swishing

over the sides of the boats as the rain pounded them. As he

walked, he saw the Doctor’s face on most of the men passing

through the District, each smiling at him, all melting into

other faces when he looked too closely. He wondered if it

changed anything, the Doctor being a Nazi and not a Jew. It

was a clever disguise, one that no one would question. But

it had occurred to Jake, somewhere along the line, and though

he’d denied it, he’d still gone on looking for the evidence.

And found it. That was why the Doctor had killed him. The

49 reels were only a distraction. It was the single reel that

had led to Jake’s death. Beatrice’s too. Killed, tortured terribly as the detective had said and yet she hadn’t told the old man

where the film was. And where did the others fit in, Jon

wondered, seven girls all gone? Were they just fodder for the

Doctor’s dreams?

‘The place is locked. No one here.’ The detective smiled at

the couple as he emerged from the bushes.

‘Suze has the keys,’ Jon said.

Van Hijn nodded, his expression oblique as alabaster, a