Pilgrim Soul by Gordon Ferris

Author:Gordon Ferris [Ferris, Gordon]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: Corvus
Published: 2010-02-24T05:00:00+00:00

THIRTY-TWO

The court met on Monday 3 February to deliver its sentences. It hardly seemed possible, but the numbers of spectators in the Curiohaus appeared to have doubled. The air was steamy, the tension palpable. One by one the defendants were made to stand and the verdict and sentence read out.

Schwarzhuber, Ramdohr and Binz were sentenced to death by hanging, as were three fine members of the medical profession: Rosenthal, Schiedlausky, and Treite. A fourth wasn’t around to hear his fate. Dr Adolf Winkelmann had decided to skip his rendezvous with Albert Pierrepoint by dying the previous Saturday. His sixty-year-old heart had given out under the pressure of the trial. I wish I could say it was due to the guilt of knowing he’d sent some 4,500 women to the gas chambers, but he’d never shown remorse. Five others including Greta Bösel got the same judgment and sentence. All eleven would be taken to Hameln for execution, two by two on the gallows. Very economical.

Martin Hellinger, the dentist, was sentenced to fifteen years in jail. He looked up at me as the verdict was read out and gave me the barest nod. I handed Günter Hoffmann over to our Military Police. They could do what they liked with him. The platoon I’d sent to Cuxhaven had come back without Erlichmann the schoolmaster; he’d vanished. Of the fourteen grumbling fishermen they rounded up, none admitted to trawling further north than the Dogger Bank, far less excursions to Leith.

That night, Iain, Sam and I met for a celebration drink. It felt more like a wake. Which of course it was. A pre-emptive one for the condemned and a belated one for Will Collins. I found when I was writing to his father that I’d got out of the habit. All I could do was assure him that his son’s death hadn’t been in vain. Had it?

There should have been some sense of triumph or at least relief that justice had been served. But remembering the ashen faces of the women with the numbers on their chests as they were told – one by one – that they would hang brought only despondency. As if we were compounding their inhumanity with our own.

Late in the evening I found myself telling Scrymgeour that he wasn’t as much of a prick as I’d expected. He put his arm round my shoulder and told me neither was I. Sam smiled on us like a fond aunt.

It wasn’t quite the end for Sam, Iain and me. There was no sense of exultation or even release. The legal team had a colossal amount of paperwork to finalise and cross-reference to help with the next trial. I was trying to make sense of what I’d wrung out of Günter.

I sent a confidential message to Sillitoe at MI5 telling him of my breakthrough and asking him to watch Leith. But I could give him no details. The Firth of Forth offered a long shoreline, north and south. The escapees could have landed anywhere.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.