All those required to be present had taken up their positions. Davenport nodded to Stuckford, who signaled to one of the warders. Orders were barked, keys were rattled, a cell door opened. Davenport waited.
The first to appear was Irma Grese. A fleeting sensation of surprise disturbed Davenport’s icy calm. How could this slight, blond twenty-two-year-old possibly have whipped prisoners to death at the Belsen concentration camp? She was hardly more than a child. But when her sentence had been passed, no one had been in any doubt. She looked him in the eye, then glanced up at the gallows. The warders led her up the steps. Davenport adjusted her feet so that they were immediately above the trapdoor, and placed the noose around her neck while checking to make sure MacManaman made no mistake with the leather strap he was fastening around her legs. Just before Davenport pulled the hood over her head he heard her utter one scarcely audible word: “Schnell!”
MacManaman took a step back and Davenport reached for the handle that operated the trapdoor. She fell down straight, and Davenport knew he’d calculated the length of the rope correctly. Long enough to break her neck, not so long that her head would be wrenched from her body. He and MacManaman went down under the scaffold on which the gallows were standing and, once the British Medical Officer had listened for her heartbeat and confirmed death, he released the body. The corpse was put onto a stretcher and carried away. Davenport knew that graves had been dug in the prison yard. He went back up onto the scaffold and checked in his papers the length of rope he should allow for the next woman. When he was ready he nodded to Stuckford again, and before long Elisabeth Volkenrath was standing in the doorway, her hands tied behind her back. She was dressed exactly the same as Irma Grese, in a gray smock that reached down below her knees.
Three minutes later she, too, was dead.
The executions took two hours and seven minutes. Davenport had estimated two and a quarter hours. MacManaman had done everything expected of him. All had gone according to plan. Twelve German war criminals had been put to death. Davenport packed the rope and the leather straps into his suitcase, and said goodbye to Sergeant MacManaman.
“Come and have a glass of brandy. You did a good job.”
“They deserved all they got,” MacManaman said. “I don’t need any brandy.”
Davenport left the prison with Major Stuckford. He wondered whether it might be possible to go back to England earlier than planned — he was the one who had recommended the return flight be in the evening, in case anything went wrong. Not even Davenport, England’s most experienced hangman, was in the habit of executing twelve people in one day. But in the end he decided to stick with the arrangements.
Stuckford took him to the hotel dining room and ordered lunch. They had a side room to themselves. Stuckford had a wound that caused him to limp with his left foot. Davenport approved of him, not least because he asked no unnecessary questions. There was nothing Davenport disliked more than people asking him what it had been like, hanging this or that criminal who’d become notorious after being written about in the newspapers. They exchanged pleasantries as they ate — about the weather, and whether the English would be awarded extra rations of tea or tobacco for Christmas, which was not far away now.
Only over a cup of tea afterwards did Stuckford refer to what had happened that morning.
“There’s one thing that worries me,” he said. “People forget it could just as easily have been the other way around.”
Davenport wasn’t sure what Stuckford meant, but he had no need to ask. Stuckford provided an explanation himself. “A German hangman flying to England to execute English war criminals. Young English women beating people to death in a concentration camp. We could just as easily have been overwhelmed by evil as the Germans were, in the form of Hitler and Nazism.”
Davenport didn’t respond. He was waiting for what came next.
“No people is inherently evil. On this occasion the Nazis happened to be Germans, but nobody is going to convince me that it couldn’t have happened just as easily in England. Or France. Or the United States, for that matter.”
“I understand your line of thought,” Davenport said. “I don’t know whether or not you’re right, though.”
Stuckford refilled their cups.
“We execute the worst of the criminals,” Stuckford went on. “The really monstrous war criminals. But we also know that lots of them are getting away with it. Like Josef Lehmann’s brother.”
Lehmann was the last to be hanged that morning. A little man who had met his death placidly, almost nonchalantly.
“He had a brutal brother,” Stuckford said. “But that brother succeeded exceptionally in making himself invisible. Maybe he’s slipped away via one of the Nazis’ escape routes. He could be in Argentina or South Africa, and we’ll never track him down there.”
They sat in silence. Outside the window rain was now falling.
“Waldemar Lehmann was an incredibly sadistic man,” Stuckford said. “It wasn’t just that he was ruthless with the prisoners; he also took a devilish delight in teaching his subordinates the art of torturing people. We should have hanged him, as we did his brother. But we haven’t caught him. Not yet, anyway.”
Davenport returned to the airfield at 5 P.M. He was cold, even though he was wearing his thick winter overcoat. The pilot was standing by the plane, waiting for him. Davenport wondered what he was thinking. He took his seat in the chilly fuselage and turned up his coat collar to shield him from the roar of the engines.
Garbett settled in the cockpit, the Lancaster gathered speed and flew into the clouds.
Davenport had completed his assignment. He had justified his reputation as England’s most accomplished hangman.
The airplane tossed and shuddered its way through some air pockets. Davenport reflected on what Stuckford had said about the ones who had gotten away. And he thought about Lehmann deriving pleasure from teaching people the most horrific forms of torture. He pulled his overcoat more tightly around him. The air pockets were behind them now. The Lancaster was on its way back home to England. The day had gone without a hitch. None of the prisoners had struggled while being led to the scaffold. Nobody’s neck had been severed. Davenport was content. He could look forward to three days off. His next job would be hanging a murderer in Manchester.
He dozed off in the uncomfortable seat, despite the roar of the engines, and Mike Garbett was still wondering about the identity of his passenger.
Part One
Härjedalen
October-November 1999
Chapter One
He woke in the night, besieged by shadows. It had started when he was twenty-two. Fifty-four years of sleepless nights, constantly besieged by shadows. He’d only managed to sleep after taking heavy doses of sleeping pills. He knew the shadows had been there when he woke up, even if he’d been unaware of them.
This night, now drawing to its close, was no exception. Nor did he have to wait for the shadows — or the visitors, as he sometimes called them — to put in an appearance. They generally showed up a few hours after darkness fell. Were there without warning, by his side, with silent white faces. He’d gotten used to their presence after all the years, but he knew he couldn’t trust them. One of these days they were bound to break loose. He didn’t know what would happen then. Would they attack him, or would they betray him? There had been times when he’d shouted at them, hit out in all directions to drive them off. He had kept them at bay for a while. Then they would return and stay until dawn. He’d fall asleep in the end, but usually for only a few hours because he needed to get up and go to work.