A Song of Shadows by John Connolly

exceptions make bad law. The rest, they just did what they did because they were told to do it and they couldn’t see much reason not to, or because there was money in gold teeth and rendered human fat. I guess some of them did it out of ideology, but I don’t have much time for ideologies either. They’re just flags of convenience.’
    The man’s voice was very soft, and slightly, sibilant, and held a note of regret that most of the world could not see itself as clearly as he did, and this was his cross to bear.
    ‘You hear that woman on the TV?’ he continued. ‘She’s talking about evil, but throwing around the word “evil” like it means something don’t help anyone. Evil is the avoidance of responsibility. It doesn’t explain. You might even say that it excuses. To see the real terror, the real darkness, you have to look at the actions of men, however awful they may appear, and call them human. When you can do that, then you’ll understand.’
    He coughed hard, spattering the milk with droplets of blood.
    ‘You didn’t answer my question from earlier,’ he said.
    ‘What question was that?’ said Lenny.
    ‘I just can’t figure out how they know that those two old men are the ones they were looking for. I seen the pictures of the ones they say did all those things, the photographs from way back, and then I see those two old farts and I couldn’t swear that it’s the same men sixty, seventy years later. Jesus, you could show me a picture of my own father as a young man, and I wouldn’t know him from the scarecrow he was when he died.’
    ‘I think there was a paper trail of some kind,’ said Lenny. To be honest, he didn’t know how Engel and Fuhrmann had been traced. He didn’t much care either. They had been found at last, and that was all that mattered. He just wanted this conversation to reach its end, but that was in the hands of the man at the bar. There was a purpose to his presence here, and all Lenny could do was wait for it to be revealed to him, and hope that he survived the adumbration.
    ‘I can’t even say that I’ve heard of the camps that they’re supposed to have done all that killing in,’ said the man. ‘I mean, I heard of Auschwitz, and Dachau, and Bergen-Belsen. I suppose I could name some others, if I put my mind to it, but what’s the place that Fuhrmann was at, or the one they claim is Fuhrmann? Ball Sack? Is that even a place?’
    ‘Belsec,’ said Lenny softly. ‘It’s called Belsec.’
    ‘And the other?’
    ‘Lubsko.’
    ‘Well, you have been paying attention, I’ll give you that. You had people there?’
    ‘No, not there.’
    ‘So it’s not personal, then.’
    Lenny had had enough. He killed the TV.
    ‘I don’t want you to mistake me,’ said the man, not even commenting upon the sudden absence of light and sound from the screen. ‘I got no problem with any race or creed: Jews, niggers, spics, white folk, they’re all the same to me. I do believe, though, that each race and creed ought to keep to itself. I don’t think any one is better than the other, but trouble only comes when they mix. The South Africans, they had it right with apartheid, except they didn’t have the common sense, the basic human fucking decency, to give every man the same privileges, the same rights. They thought white was superior to black, and that’s not the case. God made all of us, and he didn’t put one above another, no matter what some might say. Even your own folk, you’re no more chosen than anyone else.’
    Lenny made one final effort to save himself, to force this thing away. It was futile, but he had to try.
    ‘I’d like you to leave now,’ he said. ‘I’m all done for the night. Have the drinks on me.’
    But the man did not move. All this was only the prelude. The worst was yet to come. Lenny felt it. This creature had brought with him a miasma of darkness, of horror. Maybe a small chance still remained, a chink in the wall that was closing in around him,