The Pale House (14 page)

“The bodies themselves . . . Fairly nondescript. No tattoos or any distinguishing marks of that sort. No birthmarks. A couple of scars. This one”—Henke pointed with his foot—“has what looks like shrapnel wounds on his back.” Reinhardt motioned, and Benfeld turned the body over to reveal a cluster of ridged little scars. “Hands show signs of extensive manual labor of some sort, with a fair bit of scarring and callusing. Marked difference in color between faces and torsos, between hands and arms. They were probably men who spent a lot of time outdoors.”

“Anything conclusive from the shoulders, or the right hands?”

“Such as?” yawned Henke.

Reinhardt demonstrated. “If they were soldiers, they were likely riflemen, and likely right-handed as are most people. So, their right shoulders might show callusing, or bruising, from the recoil and weight of a rifle. And their right hands”—he demonstrated—“might show callusing on the forefinger, from the trigger, and the gap between thumb and forefinger, from the stock.”

Henke nodded, yawning, again. “Yes. I see. No, nothing like that. Or if it's there, it's inconclusive. Moving on. Ligature marks on all their wrists. Tied up before death. Bruising to their knees. They were all quite extensively manhandled after they were killed. A lot of postmortem bruising and scrapes, consistent with a body being dragged around. Picked up, rolled over, that sort of thing.”

“That would fit with what they were wearing, and where they were found,” murmured Reinhardt.

“Indeed. Now, the cause of death. Single gunshot to the back of the head. Right at the nape. Exit wound through the forehead. Some bruising in the scalps would indicate their heads were forced forward by someone's hand in their hair to expose the nape.” The doctor paused, and Reinhardt knew all three of them were imagining that, their minds conjuring up images of the particular hell those men had gone through in the last minutes of their lives.

“What about the mutilations?”

“Postmortem as well. Quite some time afterward, in fact. Done by a blunt object wielded with tremendous force. There's only a few blows—in most cases, two or three—on each man. It takes someone with a lot of strength, or a lot of skill, or both, to inflict those wounds.” Henke yawned, looked up and down his notes. “And that's about it, Captain.”

“Lividity?”

“Inconclusive. The bodies were obviously shifted around a lot.”

“Time of death?”

“Rigor mortis is gone. I'd say they were killed about a day and a half ago. No more.”

“An autopsy will tell us more,” said Reinhardt, knowing how little the doctor would want to hear that.

“An
autopsy
? Are you serious?”

“Very.”

“What the hell would you know, and want to know, anyway?” snapped Henke, tossing his clipboard down and walking around the table.

Reinhardt put a hand on the doctor's chest as he made to walk past. The man felt light, almost weightless. “I used to be a policeman. I know something of how these things work. I have an idea of who they were, but I need an autopsy to confirm it.”

“Like
what
?”

“What they ate, and when they ate it.”

“Oh for God's sake, Captain,” sighed Henke. “They'll have eaten the same shit as the rest of us in this dump.”

“Maybe. Please, Doctor. It's important.”

“So you keep bloody saying.”

“If I have to, I will invoke Feldjaegerkorps authority.”

“Look,” Henke said, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his palms, “even if I'd agree to do it, I'm not doing it now. I'm no good to anyone. I need some sleep before I go on duty at midday, seeing as I didn't get much last night,” he said, glowering at Benfeld. “I'll see what I can do tonight. If it's a slow night.”

“Doctor . . .”

“It's the best I can do, Captain,” interrupted Henke. “And don't even
think
about bothering any others. They'll give you shorter shrift than I did.”

Reinhardt saw there would be no budging him. He offered him the packet of cigarettes. “The least I could do for your troubles.”

“Indeed,” the doctor said under raised eyebrows, but there was a hint of a smile in his tired eyes. “Check in with me tonight. You or your charming lieutenant. No promises, mind,” he said, another cigarette waggling between his lips as he talked. Reinhardt lit it, and Henke nodded his thanks as he walked out. “Lights out as you leave,” he called.

Reinhardt and Benfeld followed the doctor back upstairs more slowly. As they climbed the steps, the noise of the hospital crept steadily back in until, as they opened the door at the top of the staircase, it swept around them. Reinhardt felt the ghosts of the past, suddenly, wanting, needing, to be out of there, and he walked faster than he would otherwise have liked, back outside into the chill morning. He paused at the bottom of the steps, trying to relax, before turning to look back up at the hospital.

Reinhardt clenched his jaw against the pain in his knee, and against the rage that surged not far behind it. In the bed opposite, the Austrian with the bandages over his eyes was weeping again, dry sobs, and Reinhardt stifled the urge to limp across and throttle the moaning bastard.

He reached into the drawer on the little table next to him and pulled out the watch. He held it by its chain, watching it spiral first left, then right, then left again, the light flowing up and over it and catching on the inscription on the back. With his thumb he stroked the cursive letters, then pulled the bedclothes up and threw an arm across his face. The fire in his knee began to subside, and he breathed easier, his thumb stroking the watch, thinking, remembering, and he did not struggle his mind to understand the contradiction of how the memory of that British trench could calm him like it did.

“It'll fall off if you keep playing with it.”

Reinhardt jumped. It was that nurse, again. The one who was always needling him, about the war, about politics, about everything. “I wasn't . . .” he said, flushing red. He brought his hand out from under the covers, showing her the watch. She smiled, and it was something bright and vivacious.

“Much better,” she said. “You should do that more often.”

“Play with the watch?”

“Smile.”

He had not realized he had smiled at all.

“Hopefully you'll have a lot more to smile about soon enough.”

“What?”

“The war. It's over. It's finished,” she said as she bustled around. He liked watching her, the economy of her movements. Nothing wasted. She filled his water jug, then began straightening the sheets, then stopped and looked at him. “No one told you? This morning, in fact. An armistice, they're calling it. Fighting stopped at eleven o'clock, today, this eleventh of November. And I'm sure someone somewhere was still fighting at five to eleven.”

“Someone's got to be the last to die,” muttered Reinhardt, but his heart was not in it. He stared at the ceiling, at the spiderweb tracery of cracks in the plaster. Over . . . ?

“Spoken like a true stormtrooper,” the nurse said, sardonically. “Open wide.” She stuck a thermometer in his mouth.

“It's really over?” Reinhardt mumbled.

“That's what they're saying. Lift up your head.” She plumped the pillow none too gently, and he lowered himself back down. She paused, one hand on her hip, the other smoothing her hair back over her ears. Her eyes were gray, very bright and piercing as she looked down on him.

“What?” said Reinhardt, almost spitting out the thermometer.

“Just thinking. What's to become of someone like you, now?”

“Someone like me?”

“A soldier. Not just any soldier.”

“A wounded soldier.”

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” she said, plucking the thermometer out of his mouth. “Things could be worse, for you. But they'll be better soon.”

“Oh God,” he sighed, “not your bloody manifesto again.”

“Yes, my manifesto again.” Her color rose, her eyes sparking. “You can laugh, or sneer, my friend. But someone like you ought to know that we can't go back to the way things were. Look where that got you.”

Reinhardt had no reply to that. He just watched her put away her things, and as she turned to go, he felt as if he teetered on a high edge.

“What's your name?” She turned, her arms straight on the little trolley she pushed, her fingers spread wide and strong. “All this time, you've said everything else to me, but not your name.”

The trolley rattled quietly into motion, and she looked over her shoulder, the sun catching on the curve of one cheek as she smiled.

“Carolin,” she said.

“What next, sir?” asked Benfeld.

Reinhardt blinked, Benfeld's words snapping him back from that favorite memory, that first time the woman who was to be his wife had told him her name. His eyes settled on the steps where the orderlies had been talking and smoking. In his mind's eye he could still see that man who had seemed familiar to him, but who and where kept slipping sideways and would not come. Reinhardt blew out a long breath through puffed cheeks. “Breakfast? Then a think.”

And then Reinhardt remembered. He remembered where he had seen him before.

On
Square, outside the little shop where Reinhardt would have his coffee. He was pretty sure it had been Simo, the Partisan who had led him on that winding route through Bentbaša to meet Doctor
.

“W
ho would be missing five men, Frenchie?”

It was the same question from last night, and there was still no answer. Benfeld looked back at Reinhardt over the rim of his mug of what passed for coffee, here in the barracks mess.

“Five men,” Reinhardt continued. “From what I hear of what's happening in this city, five bodies is not an unusual number to find. So why all this effort to hide them? Who were they being hidden from? Who would be missing five men?”

“The UstaÅ¡e?” Benfeld ventured.

Reinhardt nodded, his tongue stroking that gap. “The army?” he countered.

“The Partisans?” said Benfeld, eyebrows raised and lips pursed upward as if he expected a rebuke, but Reinhardt just motioned him to go on. “In Russia, it would sometimes happen with the Partisans there, or in the cities. Infighting. Fallings-out. Or some group not in line with whatever directive was the flavor of the month. Maybe . . . someone in the Partisans needed to get rid of someone. More than one person. Some faction taking over? But they can't afford to be seen to be divided? I don't know. Just a thought.”

“Not a bad one.” Reinhardt nodded. “But short of walking up to a Partisan and asking him, I don't know how we'd prove it.”

“No, sir,” said Benfeld, looking downcast into his coffee. Reinhardt watched him, glancing down at the Knight's Cross hanging around Benfeld's neck and wondering where this hero of Kursk lurked at times like these when it took so little to set him back.

“So let's look where we can, Frenchie. I want you to start going through after-action reports. Go back to the beginning of the week. The condition of the bodies would not indicate they were killed any later than that. Have a look as well on any lists of deserters. Men missing in action. Men taken prisoner. Things like that.”

“Yes, sir.” Benfeld nodded. “What about our duties, though?”

“It's cleared with the colonel. We can work on this, but not full-time.” Captain Lainer had been the one to push on that, when Scheller had come up to the site earlier that morning. The big captain had still been fuming at the deaths of his men as Triendl, the third Feldjaeger, the one who had survived the shootings up in Logavina, had passed away. Lainer had pushed Scheller to release Reinhardt full time to investigating it, but it just would not have been possible. They all knew it. There was too much to do. Besides which, Neuffer was insisting on the Feldgendarmerie's view that the deaths could be left to the UstaÅ¡e to investigate, that German resources were best spent elsewhere.

“What makes you sure it wasn't just Partisans, Reinhardt?” Scheller had asked.

Reinhardt had felt Lainer's eyes hot on him. “You can't rule it out, sir, but this is what I see. I see three Feldjaeger with first-class equipment. Three StGs. Valuable weapons. Several hundred rounds of ammunition. Pistols. A good knife. A better compass. Money and identity papers. Medals.”

“Your point?” the colonel had asked.

“None of it was taken. The bodies weren't even touched. Whoever did this was in too much of a hurry. Or couldn't take the risk that the equipment would be found and come back to haunt them. But I've never heard of a Partisan who didn't take the time to strip a dead German of at least his weapon.”

That had seemed to seal the matter. The Feldjaeger would investigate the deaths of their own, Scheller had told a scowling Neuffer, and any assistance requested would be rendered.

Reinhardt swirled what was left of his coffee around in the mug. “You are on shift at the train station tonight,” he said to Benfeld. “So try to get some rest before then.”

“What about you, sir?” asked Benfeld, leaning back on the bench to pull his cigarettes out of his pocket, offering one to Reinhardt.

“I'm going to go and have a look at the 999th
Field Punishment Battalion. Seeing as it's on their patch of ground we found the bodies. Something the matter, Frenchie?”

“Sir?”

“You squirmed when I mentioned the penal battalion, and not for the first time. I noticed it last night, as well.”

“My brother is in a penal battalion. In Russia.”

“I'm sorry to hear it, Benfeld.”

The lieutenant's mouth twisted. “Ahh,” he said, drawing deep on his cigarette. His hand shook where he held his fingers up to his mouth, and then it was as if a dam had broken, and words began to tumble out. “He was . . . he was always the silent one. Me, I could talk the back legs off a donkey. Except, he had this god-awful knack of opening his mouth at the wrong moment. He never learned to shut it when it mattered. At school. In bars. At work. He was always getting into trouble, or fights. That's why I'm here, you know,” he said, taking another deep drag. “We're from Alsace, but we were never French, and after the first war the French never let us forget it. Heinz fell for all that . . . talk . . . about Germany, and the Germans, and he joined up. My father made me join up too. ‘He's your younger brother, Max,' he said. ‘You bring him home safe and sound. Keep an eye on him.' And I did, for as long as I could, and then he went and said something or other to some officer, and they had him in a penal battalion before you knew it. I couldn't do anything to get him out.”

“You have news of him.”

“None, sir. But I know his unit was in a sector of the front that was overrun at Kursk.”

Reinhardt finished his own cigarette, dropping it into the dregs of his coffee, feeling for the younger man's pain, but unable to make that small leap, to reach out beyond himself. “I am sorry to hear that, Frenchie,” he said, feeling how inadequate such words were but unable to offer more, unsure even if Benfeld would accept anything from him.

“No, sir. It's me. It's nothing. Let's be getting on with it, shall we?”

—

Reinhardt took a car and driver and ordered him up to the old Ottoman fortress atop Vratnik hill. It was a steep drive, up through the wreaths of a light mist, and the car lurched up slowly, wheels skidding on the cobbles. They swung past the squat bulk of the old Visegrad Gate and followed the old city walls down to the Vratnik fortress, right at the end of a flat ridge of rock. There were Feldgendarmerie on duty at the gates, gorgets shining brightly in the wintery light on top of long, leather greatcoats. They waved the car forward, and a sergeant ran hard eyes across Reinhardt and his driver as he scanned their identity papers.

“Feldjaegerkorps? Your business here, sir?”

“To see the commanding officer or the chief of staff. I'm not expected.”

“Chief of staff'd be best,” said the sergeant, and then he cracked a morbid smile. “You'll have to wait a moment, though. He's inducting a new batch of recruits. In the courtyard.”

There were two groups of soldiers standing at attention in front of the battalion's command post. One group was obviously of officers. He could see it in their bearing, the cut of their uniforms, and in the disbelieving air several of them had, as if they expected to wake at any moment from a bad dream. From somewhere deep inside he pitied them, but just at that moment the door to the command post crashed open and a major of the Feldgendarmerie stomped out in front of the two groups of soldiers, his gorget bright at his throat.

It was the same major from down at the checkpoint, the one who had spoken to Bunda, who had made the Ustaša back down. His name was Erwin Jansky, Dreyer had said. At the checkpoint, Reinhardt had noted the man's bearing and demeanor, the barely concealed edge of contempt. Up here, the man was in his element and no niceties bound him. There was a manic gleam in his eyes as he paraded back and forth in front of them, drawing the suspense out, feet pecking the ground as much as walking on it. From the command post a second officer stepped out, a colonel, looking old and sick, and a third officer that Reinhardt quickly realized was General Herzog. The general and colonel conferred quietly a moment, and then the general made a solicitous gesture and the old colonel nodded, stepped back.

“Soldiers,” the general all but bellowed, his voice raw and harsh. He ran his sharp little eyes across the two groups. “I have only a simple message for you. You were all found guilty of offenses against the military code of conduct. You have all been sentenced. But your services are once again required by the Fatherland. You are being given a second chance. A chance to redeem yourselves. I suggest you take it.” His eyes stabbed across them, back and forth, looking through them. “Take this chance to wash your names clean. Take this chance to do great deeds again in defense of the Fatherland, and in defense of our great cause.” He nodded, stepped back. “Report as your names are called out.”

Jansky slid up from behind him, standing before those Reinhardt had identified as officers.

“Well, look what a bunch of fucking retarded traitors the good Lord has seen fit to dish up to me today,” he barked, baring his teeth in what passed for a smile. The manic gleam in his eyes flickered brighter as he read from a clipboard. “Commies. Pinkies. Half-breeds. Politicos. Head cases.
Shell shock?
” he screeched. “For the love of God, isn't there an honest deserter, thief, or rapist in among the lot of you? Or are they all over there?” he sneered, jerking his head at the other group. His eyes suddenly hooked on Reinhardt's and he smiled, as if drawing him into some secret joke. Eyes in the two groups flicked between them.

“Well, what heaven sends we must endure. Who said that, Reinhardt?” Jansky snapped, swiveling in his direction. The general's eyes followed, lingered for a moment.

“Goethe,” replied a startled Reinhardt.

“Goethe,
sir
,” repeated the major, seemingly absurdly pleased. “Now, greater minds than mine have decided you are to be stood up in uniforms, again. Me, personally? I'd have just done what the Russkies do, and shoved a pair of grenades into your cells.” He stalked up and down as he spoke, his eyes stabbing over the ranks. “But instead, they've given you to me. Me would be Major Jansky. And I would be the chief of staff of this battalion.”

His eyes flayed across them, and for a moment his grin slipped, twisted. Jansky's face went still, then shuddered back to life. “So, boys, here you are. Soldiers again, they say. We have infantry. We have engineers. We have tankers,” he said, winking at a man in the black uniform of the Panzers. “But whatever you were, whatever uniform you wore, old or new, now you'll all have one of these.” He held up a red triangle. Just a red triangle, about the size of his palm. Reinhardt knew what it meant. Most of them did, here, there, men leaning back, recoiling from it, but others in the ranks were not so sure. “You know what this means, boys, right?
Right?
You!” He jabbed a finger at an overweight officer in the front rank. “Fatso. You know what this means?”

“How dare you refer to me in that manner!” the officer spluttered. “You will respect my rank and—”

The man was floored by a blow to the jaw. He sprawled on the cobbles, looking dazed. “I'll call you whatever the fuck I want. Fatso. 'Cause you're mine now. Get up.
UP!
So,” Jansky seethed, his face leering into the officer's. “Do you know what this means?”

“No, sir.”

“He doesn't
know
! Poor fat fucker. Reinhardt!” he cackled, his arm stabbing out. “Come closer, Reinhardt. Come. You know. You're a Feldjaeger. This, boys,” he said, standing to one side, presenting Reinhardt with his arms as if he were a tailor's dummy, “this is a
Feldjaeger
. Something quite special. You'll learn. Anyway, Reinhardt, tell him. Go on.”

“It is the badge for a penal unit.”

“That's
right
! A
penal
unit. It means, boys, you belong to the 999th
Field Punishment Battalion. Means you belong to me. Means whatever you were, whatever rank you had, you can forget. Means if you thought things were bad, boys, you're in for a surprise 'cause you're really in the shit now. You'll dig shit. Sleep in it. Walk through it. Eat it if you have to, and ask for seconds.”

The smile froze on Jansky's face again, and then he looked down at his clipboard. “When I call your name, step forward.
Amelung, Peter
,” he snapped. A prisoner stepped forward, coming to attention before Jansky, who looked him up and down before looking back down at his papers. “Get yourself to A Company.
Audendorf, Conrad
.”

On it went, Jansky calling out the names, reeling off the assignments. The men in the ranks dwindled to either side, chivvied and herded by sergeants and a pair of lieutenants until they were all gone, and Jansky was needling those eyes of his at Reinhardt.

“Something I can help you with, Reinhardt?”

“I want to talk about the murders of three Feldjaeger. Last night.”

“Yes, I heard about it. What of it?”

“It happened at a construction site being worked on by your battalion.”