‘
Exactement.
The Society has maybe asked for help in their search for you…from the wider church. Priests and nuns and ecclesiastical officials, are maybe identifying you as you move from place to place. Let us say the average priest does not even know why he has been asked to do this. But he will do it because he is obedient. Loyalty means much, in this part of the world.’
Amy spoke up: ‘And then the information would be passed to the Society? And then to Miguel?’
‘
Et voila‘.
But what else do we know? I do not have to explain one thing, do I? Miguel’s motivation.’ The policeman sipped his coffee, and flicked a glance towards the sea, then returned his attention to the table.
‘Garovillo
fils
must have been brought up a Basque radical. Violently proud of his Basque heritage. And then – then one
day, he discovers from his father that he is not Basque, but a Cagot, a despised
Cagot.
Miguel Garovillo would have been shattered, destroyed. And then he must have resolved.’ Sarria frowned. ‘Resolved that he would do anything to keep this secret hidden, kill anyone who threatened to reveal the humiliating truth about his father – and about Miguel himself. Along the way his wishes happily coincided with the wishes of the Society. Maybe they recruited him at that point, maybe the two Garovillo men were already members. So it all folded into place.’
David spoke up. ‘And on top of that his ETA status helped him. Right? He would have the guns and the bombs and the expertise. To kill.’
‘
Vraiment.
And one day, Miguel found out that
your
parents were in France, researching the Cagots, and staying near Gurs. Asking questions at the Brasserie d’Hagetmau. That would have scared Miguel, alerted him to danger. The Wolf took action.
Alors
.’
The frail laughter of a child carried on the coastal breeze. A brief glimpse of personal emotion, of sincere sadness, crossed Sarria’s face. He added:
‘But this, of course, is all too late for your family, Monsieur Martinez. I am sorry I could not do more. I tried. Please forgive me?’
David quietly nodded. But he didn’t really mean it: he didn’t want to forgive, he didn’t want contrition: he wanted answers. As many answers as possible. His determination was returning, he wanted vengeance for his mother and his father.
For his unborn sister.
But to do that he needed to see the whole picture. Before Miguel could destroy the evidence.
He spoke up: ‘But, Officer Sarria, the link with Gurs? What happened
there
?’
Sarria shrugged his ignorance. ‘That I cannot tell you –
because I simply do not know. No one seems to know. What I can say is this…’
He leaned to the centre of the table, his voice low and concerned: ‘I can only protect you so far. You are in danger. Very serious danger. The Society, and its powerful political sympathizers, they still want you dead. They
need
you dead.’
‘So what the hell do we do?’ Amy said. Her arms were crossed. ‘Where can we go? Britain’s too dangerous. Spain likewise. Where else?’
‘
Anywhere.
You do not know what danger you are in…’ Sarria glanced significantly at David and Amy. ‘Maybe this can assist. If you need motivating.’
He reached in a briefcase, and pulled out a large brown envelope. He opened the envelope and extracted a sheaf of photographs.
‘These are the photos from the Gurs murder. Eloise’s grandmother, Madame Bentayou. I was not sure whether to show them to you. But…but maybe you need to see them.’
David picked up a few of the glossy photos. Hesitantly. He was about to see what Eloise had seen through the window at the bungalow. What she could not, would not describe: the unspeakable murder of her grandmother.
He steeled himself, then looked at the biggest photo.
‘Oh Jesus.’
The photo showed the entire murder scene.
Madame Bentayou’s body was lying on the kitchen floor, a floor that was smeared with her own blood. Her body was identifiable from the clothes – and the tartan slippers; but there was no face to confirm this identification. Because her head had been cut off.
Not only had it been cut off, it seemed to have been
pulled
off. The jagged nature of the grotesque wound, the shredding and ribboning of the skin, the stretched elastic of the
tormented ligaments, they all implied that her head had been wrenched away; as if someone had sawn halfway through her neck, then given up in anger, impatience – or blood lust. David tried not to imagine the scene: the terrorist pulling at the living head, until the neckbone split and the ligaments snapped.
And that was not all. Someone – Miguel – surely Miguel – had also cut off the hands: the old woman’s wrists were bleeding stumps, trailing veins and muscles. Puddles of blood extended from the stumps like flattened red gloves.
And then the hands had been
nailed to the door.
Several more photos showed the hands, impaled.
Two decomposing hands. Nailed. On the kitchen door.
Amy was hiding her face behind her fingers.
‘Horrible. Horrible horrible horrible…’
Sarria murmured, ‘I know. I am sorry. And there is more.’
David swore. ‘How can there be more? How much worse can it be?’
The officer opened the envelope again, and pulled out a final photo. It was a close-up of one of the severed hands. He pointed to the left of the photo, with his pen.
David squinted, and scrutinized. There seemed to be…an arc of marks on the flesh. Faint, but definitely there. A curved row of small indentations in the pale flesh.
‘Is that…’ He fought his own revulsion. ‘Is that…what I think it is?’
‘
Oui.
A human bite. A bite mark. It looks a little experimental…as if someone has just, impulsively, tried to bite the human flesh. To see what it tastes like.’
Silence ensued. The waves were lullaby rhythms on the beach. And then the other policeman leaned in. And spoke for the very first time.
‘Allez.
Go. Anywhere. Before he finds you.’
The house was suitably quiet. The bored, yawning police constable – their guard and protector – was lying on the bed in the spare room, reading
Goal
. Suzie was working at the hospital: she’d refused to give up her work but allowed herself to be escorted on her commute. The au pair had fled back to Slovenia, two days ago, unnerved by the blood on the floor; Suzie’s mother had come to stay, to help look after Conor.
And Simon was reading about Eugen Fischer.
The online biography of the German scientist was stark:
‘Eugen Fischer (July 5, 1874 – July 9, 1967) was a German professor of medicine, anthropology and eugenics. He was a key proponent of Nazi scientific theories of racial hygiene that legitimized the extermination of Jews, sent an estimated half a million gypsies to their deaths, and led to the compulsory sterilization of hundreds of thousands of other victims.’
Simon sat ten inches from his screen, a metal savour of distaste in his mouth. Three intriguing aspects stood out in Fischer’s extended life story. The first was Fischer’s strong links with Africa.
‘In 1908 Eugen Fischer conducted field research in
German Southwest Africa, now Namibia. He studied the offspring of “Aryan” men who had fathered children by native women. He concluded that the offspring of such unions – so-called “mischlinge” – should be eradicated after their usefulness had ended.’
Eradicated? Usefulness? Concluded?? The words were all the more powerful for being so dry and antiseptic.
Simon breathed in, and breathed out. And momentarily closed his eyes. Immediately, an image of Tomasky’s surging anger filled his mental gaze, and he snapped open his eyes once again. He could hear Conor playing in the room next door, vroom vrooming his favourite toy car into its toy garage.
Listening now to his son’s chatter, the boy talking to himself, Simon felt the fierce undertow of parental love: the painful protectiveness. Protect Conor. Protect him from all the evil in the world.
But the best way of doing that was by
staying focussed
. He returned to work.
‘Hitler was an avowed admirer of Eugen Fischer, especially the professor’s magnum opus
Menschliche Erblichkeitslehre und Rassenhygiene
(Human Heredity and Racial Hygiene). On his accession to power in 1933, Hitler appointed Fischer rector of Berlin University.
‘The Nazi conquest of Europe (1939–1942) gave Fischer, with the ardent encouragement of Adolf Hitler, the opportunity to extend his racial research, which he had begun decades before in Namibia. In the concentration camp of Gurs, in Nazi-occupied southwest France, Fischer commenced a series of detailed studies of various European races: Basques, gypsies, Jews, etc.’
Simon was scribbling urgently now. Eyes on the screen, eyes on the pad in front of him. And more:
‘The Nazi regime poured money into the “medical division” at Gurs. Rumours at the time spoke of significant discoveries
achieved by the so-called Fischer experiments. However, the data recovered by Fischer at Gurs was lost in the chaos of the Allied invasion of Europe and the destruction of the Nazi regime (1944–1945). It has never been conclusively proved whether the Fischer experiments yielded scientifically valuable results. The consesnsus, today, is that the rumours of “racial discoveries” were Nazi propaganda in themselves, and that Fischer revealed nothing of importance.’
The final section on Fischer’s life was tantalizing, yet even more mystifying.
‘Many people were scandalized when, following the Allied defeat of the Third Reich, Eugen Fischer escaped serious punishment for his connections to, and research for, the Nazis. Indeed, he later became Professor Emeritus at Freiburg University, and in 1952 he was appointed as honorary president of the newly-founded German Anthropological Society.
‘This extraordinary indulgence of a scientist seen as a founder and mentor of Nazi racial politics was by no means unique. Many of Fischer’s colleagues at Gurs and elsewhere also escaped punishment, or endured at most a few weeks of “deNazification” in prison. For example, Professor Doctor Fritz Lenz, the head of eugenics at Berlin Dahlem, and a coauthor of key works on Nazi racial theory, returned to work immediately after the war, and was offered the chair in human heredity at the University of Gottingen.’
These last assertions were so bizarre Simon read the whole passage twice. Then he read it again. Then he checked it on another website, which repeated the statement word for word.
Word for word? Simon began to wonder if the remarkable claim was simply a lie, perpetuated by the lazy scholastic standards of the internet.
He got up, opened the door, and walked into the living
room. Conor was playing on the carpet with his toys, transfixed by the adventures of Derek the Diesel Engine.
There – the bookshelves. High up on the highest shelf, gathering dust these ten years, was his father’s old
Encyclopedia Britannica
. Simon pulled down the volume, paged quickly to Lenz, Fritz.
It was true. This beast, this horrible man, this expounder of eugenics, this friend of Mengele, this thinker behind Nazism, had calmly returned to work in 1946.
He hadn’t even gone to jail.
The Allies didn’t even put him in jail.
Why were all these doctors just…let off?
He tousled his son’s blond hair, then returned to his study and shut the door. Again. He was excited. The mystery was coming alive, but it was coiled upon itself, like a snake, a cobra, hissing. Concealing what lay within.
His afternoon was nearly done. He went over the facts by writing down the words in an email to himself – one of his favourite ways of resolving a puzzle. Like an artist turning his own drawing upside down, to see it afresh, to spot the flaws, assess the quality.
Simon sat back from the computer, and sighed. His thoughts were incoherent, they were drivel, they were utter nonsense. Money, Nazis, Cagots, possible collaboration, so what? He had no overarching explanation for the murders: which now seemed almost random.
He felt his momentary excitement subside. He was almost back to where he started. He needed to speak to David and Amy. He needed to speak to David. Where were they? What was happening down there in southern France?
He remembered Tomasky’s sister. What she had said. A monastery in France.
In France? A monastery called Tourette.
Hunched forward, Simon typed.
The screen returned his answer at once.
The monastery of La Tourette.
Built between 1953–1960, at the instigation of Reverend Father Couturier of the Dominican Order of Lyon. Architect Charles Edouard Jeanneret-Gris (known as Le Corbusier).
Simon paused.
The Dominican Order?
He remembered what Professor Winyard had told him. The Dominicans. The Dogs of God. The burners of witches. The hammer of witches. The
Malleus Malleficarum
.
Now his pulse quickened, dramatically. This monastery was apparently near Lyon.
Near Lyon?
David Martinez had told Simon about the map that had been owned by David’s father and handed on by David’s grandfather. On that map, as Simon recalled, was one curious outlier, one hand-drawn blue star that was way beyond the Basque region, way outside the purlieus of the Cagots. Wasn’t that near Lyon? Or was it Marseilles? It was Lyon, wasn’t it?
The mystery coiled and hissed.
He read on.
Le Corbusier, the websites told him, was the greatest architect of the last century. He was also renowned for his purity, his cleanliness of vision: utilizing the precept
form follows function
. Everything he did was deliberate. He was also known as an atheist, ‘therefore the commission to design this post-war monastery of La Tourette came as a surprise’.
But many things about this monastery were, it seemed, a surprise. Where the money came from – in impoverished post-war France. Why the Dominicans suddenly decided to construct a large priory when so many old and war-damaged buildings were in need of repair. Most of all, why the building had such a strange design
.
As one book phrased it: Le Corb’s idea was that living in this building, ‘La Tourette’, should be, in itself, a penance. The daunting nature of the structure, the difficulty of living
within it, should be part of the austerities of the monastic life.
These austerities, it seemed, were more than theoretical. The building was ‘largely finished’ in 1953. By 1955 ‘half the initial community of monks had mental disorders’. These included nervous breakdowns and major depressions, and they occurred precisely ‘because the building was so oppressive’. The jarring spaces and the brutalism of the design apparently tipped the denizens over the edge.
Another factor, one critic claimed, in the ‘outright unpleasantness’ of the building, was the acoustics. At night ‘every single sound in the building was amplified’. Every breath, every whisper, every snore. This was apparently ‘a function of the concrete fabric and the inherently echoic spaces’: in other words, the hostile nature of the building was a deliberate feature,
designed to disorientate
.
There was one more website. It was an architecture blog. A simple, humble blog, written by an architecture student from Brisbane. Who had apparently stayed at La Tourette a few summers back, after years of research on Le Corbusier.
The essay began with a short autobiographical note. And then launched into a blistering attack on the architect.
The basic allegation of the student was that Le Corbusier was a Nazi. During the war years, it seemed, Le Corbusier was very close to Pétain, the leader of the puppet French fascist regime of Vichy. Le Corbusier was also, the author alleged, a big fan of Hitler. The essay quoted one ‘notorious’ remark, when the architect said the Führer was ‘marvellous’.
The blog attempted a counterbalancing argument. Admitting that Le Corbusier was not alone, that many architects had fascist or Marxist sympathies: because architects are utopians.
Architects want to change society. It doesn’t necessarily make them Nazis or communists or killers…
The blogpost drew to a close with another barb. It made the
claim that Le Corbusier’s famous building in Marseilles, the
Unite d’Habitation,
was the most popular place to commit suicide in the South of France. And yet, the essay said, the monastery of La Tourette was even more oppressive – the only reason it didn’t see so many suicides was because visitors tended to flee after a few days. The monks had to stay, and suffered terribly, and yet their religious vocations prevented self murder.
And then the essayist asked the obvious question: Why? Why did the Dominicans mysteriously commission a man like Le Corbusier to build a mysterious structure like this?
Simon shut down the computer to listen to the silence in his study, and the major chord of logic in his mind.
The essay blog might have finished on a query. But the answer was obvious, to Simon.
Form follows function
: that was Le Corbusier’s lifelong belief. The function of this building was maybe to shelter facts, maybe appalling facts. The building was a subtly authentic statement of that sinister function. Herein lies evil. Do not come near. Like the vivid and offputting colouration of a poisonous insect.
He recalled Professor Winyard’s exact words about those vital documents: the materials relating to the blood tests of the Cagots and the burning of the Basque witches. The documents suppressed and hidden by the Papacy.
‘They were kept at the Angelicum, the Dominican University in Rome. For centuries they were safe. But then after the war, after the Nazis, they were felt to be less safe, too provocative. There are rumours that they were spirited away, to somewhere more secure. But no one knows where.’
No one knows where? Really? How about a strange Dominican monastery, built after the war, and associated with Vichy and the Nazis?
The mystery was now a nightflower, slowly opening beneath the moon. Scenting the midnight garden.
But he needed one more confirmation. He had to reach
David Martinez and confirm the star on the map. Had to reach him
now.
Simon tried to calm himself. He stood up, walked to the kitchen, and made himself a cup of camomile tea, as he had once heard that camomile tea was calming.
Fuck camomile tea. He hurled the tea in the sink, ran back to his study and pointlessly called Martinez’s phone number. The tone was dead. He tried again three seconds later, as if that would change something. The tone was dead. As he well knew, David had junked his phone: very sensibly.
So what now? Surely David Martinez would ring again at
some
point, from Biarritz, unless he was unable?
Simon paced his study, from one wall to the other. Fretting about David and Amy, trying not to remember the attack of Tomasky.
Walking from wall to wall took him three and a half seconds. Their house was so damnably tiny. It was way too small. Maybe if Simon cracked this remarkable story he could write that great book and buy a bigger house and…
Enough. Simon sat down at the computer and sent David Martinez an email. Then he exited his study, and joined his son on the sofa in the living room, and they watched, for the seventeenth time,
Monsters, Inc
.
Then they watched it again.
It was seven p.m. and Conor was in bed when his mobile rang – with a French number on the screen. Trying to convince himself that his heart wasn’t beating like a Burundi drum, Simon took the call.
‘Yes…hello?’
‘Simon?’
‘
David?
Thank God you called. Are you OK? Are you and Amy OK?’
‘Yes – we’re OK – we’re still in Biarritz, but we’re flying out. But what about y—’
‘Nothing. I’m fine, I mean
,
ah, there’s something I need to know.’ Simon felt guilty for cutting so brutally to the chase, but his anxiety allowed him no option. ‘David,
tell me
– do you have the map on you?’
‘Yeah, of course. Everyone wants to look at this map…’
‘
Please.
This is important. Get it out. You said there was
a star, marked near Lyon…’