A Man Without Breath

She tossed her cigarette onto the floor and searched her forensic wallet before producing a large curving needle that looked like it could have stitched a sail on the Kruzenstern. She threaded some suture through the eye of the needle with expert speed and held it aloft for my inspection.

‘Will this do?’

I nodded my approval.

She gathered herself over the table for a moment and then went to work, stitching Berruguete up again until he looked like an elongated football. It wasn’t the neatest work I’d seen, but at least they wouldn’t be using him for a display in the local butcher’s shop window.

‘You won’t ever work for a tailor,’ I said. ‘Not with stitching like that.’

She tutted loudly. ‘I never was very good at putting in sutures. Anyway, that’s the best I can do for him I’m afraid. It’s more than he did for his victims, I can tell you.’

‘So I heard.’ I lit a cigarette and watched as she rinsed her gloves again and then her instruments. ‘How did you get into this business anyway?’

‘Forensic medicine? I told you before, didn’t I? I haven’t got the patience for all the aches and pains and imaginary ills of the living patient. I much prefer working with the dead.’

‘That sounds suitably cynical,’ I said. ‘I mean, for this day and age. But really, what was it? I’d like to know.’

‘Would you now?’

She took the cigarette from my mouth, puffed it thoughtfully for a second and then patted my cheek.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘For what?’

‘For asking me. Because I’d almost forgotten the real reason why I started to work with the dead. And you’re right: it wasn’t for the reason I told you just now. That’s just a silly story I made up so that I could avoid telling people the truth. The thing is, I’ve repeated that lie so often I’ve almost started to believe it myself. Like a real Nazi you might say. Almost as if I was someone else entirely. And you may think what I’m going to tell you is pompous, even a little pretentious, but I mean it, every word.

‘The sole aim in forensic medicine is the pursuit of truth, and in case you hadn’t noticed, there’s precious little of that around in Germany these days. But especially in the medical profession, where what is true and what is right matter for very little besides what is German. Theory and opinion have no place beside the dissecting table however; no more do politics and crackpot ideas about biology and race. Forensic medicine requires only the quiet assembly of genuine scientific evidence and the construction of reasonable inferences based on honest observation, which means that it’s about the one facet of the practice of medicine that hasn’t been hijacked by the Nazis and by fascists like him.’ She flicked her ash at Berruguete’s corpse before returning the cigarette to my lips. ‘Does that answer your question?’

I nodded. ‘Did Dr Berruguete have something to do with your brother’s death, perhaps?’

‘What makes you say so?’

‘Nothing at all other than the fact you just used him as your ashtray.’

‘Maybe. I can’t be sure. Ulrich and about fifty Russian members of the international brigades were captured and imprisoned in the concentration camp at San Pedro de Cardena, a former monastery near the city of Burgos. I don’t think anyone who was not in Spain can have any real idea of the level of barbarism to which that country descended during the war. Of the cruelties that were inflicted by both sides, but more particularly by the fascists. My brother and his comrades were being used as slave labour when Berruguete – whose model incidentally was the Holy Inquisition, and who once wrote a paper arguing in favour of the castration of criminals – received permission from General Franco to pathologize left-wing ideas. Of course the military was delighted that science was being used to justify their opinion that all of the republicans were animals. So Berruguete was given a senior military rank and the prisoners, including my poor brother, were transferred to a clinic in Ciempozuelos, which was headed by another criminal called Antonio Vallejo Nagera. None of them were ever seen again, but it’s certain that’s where my brother died. And if Berruguete didn’t kill him, Vallejo did. By all accounts he was just as bad.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

She snatched the cigarette from my mouth again and this time she kept it.

‘So while I regret that the work of the international commission has been jeopardized, I’m not in the least bit sorry that Berruguete’s dead. There are plenty of good men and women in Spain who will cheer and give thanks to God when they hear that justice caught up with him at last. If anyone deserved a bullet in the head around here it was him.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘Fair enough.’