Craig Russell - The Valkyrie Song

He looked at his watch: four-fifty. Nothing irritated Fabel more than people being late.

He was the first to admit that he was too obsessive about punctuality. Ever since he had been a boy, the idea of being too late for something had tied knots in Fabel’s gut. It was one of those things, like his inability to get drunk, to push himself that one carefree drink too far, that characterised him. That made Jan Fabel who he was.

But this time, as he sat at his desk fuming, Fabel felt justified in his irritation: he had impressed on Jespersen that he was in the middle of launching a major murder inquiry. To be twenty minutes late was more than a lack of courtesy: it was unprofessional. Fabel picked up his phone and called the number he’d been given for Jespersen’s cellphone. It rang for a while and then switched to voicemail. Fabel left a message for Jespersen to call him as soon as possible.

Fabel’s desk phone rang almost instantly he hung up and he answered expecting it to be Jespersen. It wasn’t.

‘Hi, Chef,’ said Anna Wolff. ‘I’ve got something you’ve got to see.’

‘Where are you?’

‘I’m up in Butenfeld.’ Butenfeld was police shorthand for the morgue at the Institute for Judicial Medicine which was based on the Eppendorf street of that name. ‘You’re really going to want to see this.’

Fabel looked at his watch and thought about the Dane’s infuriating lack of punctuality. ‘Okay, I’ll come right up.’

‘How long has the apartment been vacant?’ Ute Cranz turned and smiled at the younger woman. They had spent half an hour viewing the attic apartment and the young female estate agent had done her best to project a maturity and experience that she was clearly years from possessing. She was dressed in a mannish dark blue trouser suit. Why was it, thought Ute, that so many women in business think that to compete with men they have to dress like them?

‘It’s only just become available for rental. We haven’t even advertised it — in fact, we were surprised when you enquired about it. How did you know it was vacant?’

‘I’ve been looking for a flat in this area. I heard that the previous tenant was moving out.’

‘I see,’ said the estate agent, although she didn’t sound entirely convinced. ‘You were right to move quickly. Properties of this quality in Altona don’t tend to hang around. We’ve just completed a full renovation of an apartment building around the corner in Schillerstrasse. We had the apartments filled before we had finished the work.’

‘How much?’ Ute Cranz walked across the lounge to the window, her high heels clicking on the hardwood floor.

‘Well, this is nearly two hundred square metres. And it has a balcony with views out across to Palmaille. The monthly rent is two thousand nine hundred euros. Excluding utilities. That’s pretty standard for this area.’

Ute looked out of the window at the street below. She saw a man approach the front door of the apartment building. He had grey-white hair but had broad shoulders and moved like a younger man. He was dressed in what she would have described as an ‘English-style’ heavy tweed jacket and corded trousers.

‘Is this one of the neighbours?’ she asked the estate agent, who came across to the window and looked down.

‘Yes — yes, it is,’ she said. ‘That’s Herr Gerdes. He has the apartment above. A very quiet neighbour, as are the rest of the people in the building. A nice class of resident, as it were.’

‘I’ll take it.’ Ute turned back to the agent and smiled. ‘But I’d like to see the kitchen again…’

‘What have you got?’ asked Fabel. Anna had been waiting for him at the reception of the Eppendorf mortuary.

‘Well, from the look of it, a middle-aged man and a heart attack,’ said Anna as she led him into the mortuary’s body store.

Fabel stopped in the hall. ‘A heart attack? So what’s that got to do with us?’

‘Not what,’ said Anna. ‘Who. The victim was found dead in his hotel bedroom this morning. On the face of it, the cause of death doesn’t seem suspicious: all the signs are that it was a heart attack but he’ll be given the full treatment, of course. But the victim is a Jens Jespersen, a Danish national.’

‘Shit,’ said Fabel. ‘The Danish police officer. I was supposed to be meeting with him.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Half an hour ago.’

‘Well, you better not keep him waiting any longer,’ said Anna, with a grin.

A mortuary attendant wheeled a trolley into the centre of the morgue and removed the covering sheet. The man on the trolley was tall; his short-cropped hair was blond and looked a sickly yellow against the grey pallor of his skin. His lips had a bluish tinge. The Danish passport Anna handed Fabel told him that Jens Jespersen was fifty-four years old, but the man on the trolley had the physique of a much younger man and Fabel guessed he was looking at someone who had been serious about keeping fit.

‘He doesn’t look like the usual heart-attack candidate,’ said Anna as if she’d been reading his mind. Fabel took the plastic bag containing the rest of Jespersen’s smaller personal belongings. The watch was a heavy-duty military type. Jespersen’s Danish National Police ID card identified him as a Chefpolitiinspektor, which Fabel guessed would be somewhere equivalent to his own rank. There was a notebook with general reminder notes scribbled in it, including the Hamburg Police Presidium number, but Fabel could see that this was a personal notebook, not one used for police work. On one page of the notebook was the name OLAF, written in block capitals and double underlined. He slipped the notebook back into the plastic evidence holder.

‘Is this it?’ He held up the bag and its contents.

‘That’s it,’ said Anna. ‘Oh, except he didn’t like to sleep alone.’ Anna arced an eyebrow and tossed a second evidence bag to Fabel. This one held a souvenir teddy-bear toy, dressed in nautical gear with a Prinz Heinrich peaked cap. Fabel took the bag from Anna and stared absently at the stuffed teddy.

‘Doesn’t it strike you that something’s missing?’

‘He doesn’t have Moin! Moin! embroidered on his little jumper?’ Anna smirked. ‘I know what you mean. Something is missing. Jespersen was here to talk to you about something, yet there’s no sign of his official notebook, no notes of any kind, no paperwork, except for his travel documents. And take a look at this…’

She tossed Fabel Jespersen’s cellphone. Fabel had to reach quickly to catch it and he scowled at Anna. Flipping the phone open, he searched through its memory.

‘Nothing.’

‘No recorded incoming or outgoing calls,’ said Anna. ‘No stored numbers. No registered service. My guess is someone’s switched SIM cards on him thinking that no one would think to examine his phone.’

‘Damn it,’ said Fabel. ‘Has forensics looked at any of this?’

‘No. The emergency-service doctor who came out to the hotel treated it as a heart attack. Obviously, as a sudden death, the body was sent up here and Moller and his team will have a look at it. I’ve suggested to Moller that he has a good look at it.’

‘What did he say?’

‘You know Moller. Top pathologist but world-leading asshole. He told me not to tell him his job, but you know he’ll give this one the full works. I’ve also told the hotel to seal off the room and alerted Holger Brauner that we may need his forensics boys over there, but I wanted to wait till you saw this. I didn’t want to overstep my authority…’

Fabel fired a warning look at Anna. She stared back, her face empty of expression. It was a trick she had.