A Song of Shadows

You want to know what’s on the other side?’ Walsh eyed the detective carefully, as if gauging the seriousness of the question. ‘Is it seventy-two virgins, like the Muslims believe?’ ‘That’s the good news. The bad news is that they’re all guys. It’s like being at a boarding school.’ ‘I knew there had to be a catch.

In any given situation, the most difficult step is to reach a decision. Once a decision is made, control can be asserted.

Nazism was, at heart, a criminal enterprise, a product of which was the Holocaust. The Nazis were gangsters and thugs. As much as they were ideologically driven, they were also greedy. Pure ideologues don't pull gold teeth from the mouths of the dead.

Look at you,” he said. “A fractured man, a broken thing. I asked for money to kill you, but none would give it. Now I understand why. There is no value to you. You’re nothing, and therefore nothing is what your life is worth. But I will kill you anyway, out of pity.

Being shot at for years by men of a particular nationality will tend to impact negatively upon one’s view of them.

Faith is belief based on spiritual conviction instead of proof. You could say that the nature of my convictions has changed recently.

TATTOOED NUMBERS, AS BLOOM had already established, were used to identify prisoners at just one concentration camp—the Auschwitz complex in Upper Silesia—and then just from 1941 onward. Only prisoners selected for work received a serial number, Epstein explained. Those who were sent directly to the gas chambers—including the elderly, the weak, and children—were not tattooed, although in the early days of the camp those who were in the infirmary or marked for execution were also tattooed on the chest using a metal stamp made up of interchangeable centimeter-long needles that allowed the tattoo to be created using a single blow, after which ink was rubbed into the wound. The digits were generally tattooed on the outer side of the left forearm, although some prisoners from transports in 1943 received tattoos on the inner forearm. The numbering sequences used varied over time, according to intake and the nature of the prisoners involved. An AU series denoted a Soviet prisoner, a Z series a Gypsy. A and B sequences up to 20,000 were used to identify male and female prisoners arriving at the camp after 1944, although an administrative error resulted in the B series exceeding 20,000. The Nazis’ original intention was to get as far as the final letter of the alphabet if required.

more than that, but sometimes such moments are all that we are given, and they are enough to fuel us, and give us hope that, somewhere down the line, another might be gifted.

it had been a small consecration, a minor epiphany, and no more

I’m Episcopalian. I believe in everything.

chased by the shadows of clouds.

People who believe in buried gods,’ said Louis. ‘Do you believe in buried gods, Detective Walsh?’ ‘I’m Episcopalian. I believe in everything.