Craig Russell - The Valkyrie Song

‘That was before I knew about the farting.’

‘Look… over there…’ Anna rested her hand on Werner’s forearm and nodded towards the corner of the street. A tall woman with blonde hair, tied back into a ponytail, wearing a long black or dark blue coat, moved quickly along the street, keeping to the shadows as much as possible. She passed the bar on the corner and kept heading towards Silbersacktwiete. ‘This looks promising.’

There were six unmarked cars dotted around the Kiez, as there had been every night for the last week since Westland’s murder, all watching over unlit courtyards or, like Werner and Anna, the occasional piece of open ground, shadowy and dense with bushes and trees. The woman slowed her pace, looked up and down the street, then disappeared into the large triangle of waste ground.

‘I think we’re on,’ said Anna. She switched the interior light to the off position, so that the car would not light up when Werner got out.

‘I’ll head in the other direction, then cut back,’ he said, getting out of the Polo and easing the door closed behind him. In the dark, Anna unholstered her SIG-Sauer service automatic, checked the magazine and pushed back the safety with her thumb.

Werner passed the car on the far side of the street. He maintained an even pace and kept his gaze straight ahead, not giving away that he had seen the woman move, a shadow within a shadow, up ahead and off to the left. He was now only thirty metres away from where the woman had concealed herself. He guessed that Anna was now out of the car and shadowing him on the other side, crouching to keep concealed behind the other parked vehicles. He kept his shoulders hunched and his hands rammed into the pockets of his thick woollen pea coat, as if shunning the cold night, but his hand was closed around the automatic he had stuffed into his right pocket. Without indicating he knew where she was, Werner angled his course out from the wall that would soon give way to bushes and trees, and walked on the cobbled street. There was no one else around. If this was their woman, she would make her move soon.

He feigned surprise when she stepped out in front of him.

‘Hello,’ she said. Werner heard tension, almost nervousness, in her voice. ‘Are you looking for fun?’ The woman was tall, blonde and heavily made up. At first Werner thought she was in her early thirties, but when he took a step closer he could see that the make-up was thick to hide skin that had seen a lot of summers.

‘That depends,’ he said. ‘How much?’

‘I’m not greedy,’ she said. ‘I’m not supposed to be working here. I’ll make it cheap, but we have to do it in here, behind the tree.’ She began walking backwards into the shadows, crimson lips smiling.

‘Okay…’ Werner followed her without looking up or down the street, keeping her eyes held with his, in case she spotted Anna moving in.

‘How much?’ he asked again, making it look as if he were reaching for his wallet while using both hands to start easing his automatic from his coat pocket.

‘We’ll talk about that later,’ she said and held out her hand. ‘Come on.’

‘I thought you girls always like your money up front,’ said Werner. This was it.

She reached inside her coat.

Werner drew his automatic and aimed at her face. ‘Polizei Hamburg! Put both hands on your head! Do it. Now!’

He was aware of Anna moving in behind the prostitute. He didn’t know how, but she had managed to manoeuvre around to the back of the scruffy triangle of waste ground. The hooker stared at Werner, confused. Anna grabbed her by the coat collar.

‘On your knees. Now!’

The woman complied and Anna snapped a set of cuffs onto one wrist, pulled it down behind her back, then the other. Werner radioed in for a custody vehicle.

Further down Silbersackstrasse a group of young men came out of a bar. They were heading towards Hans-Albers-Platz, but the activity on the waste ground caught the eye of one, who called the others. The knot of men moved up the street, craning their necks to see what was going on.

‘Is everything all right?’ said one, with slurred suspicion as they drew near. ‘What the fuck y’doin’ to her?’

Anna held up her bronze oval Criminal Service disc. ‘Police. Nothing for you to worry yourself about.’

‘What the fuck’s going on?’ asked one of his friends. ‘What the fuck’s she done?’

‘Nothing,’ she said pleadingly, ‘I’ve done nothing. I’m just a working girl and they’ve arrested me.’

‘That’s not right,’ said the first drunk, shaking his head sombrely. ‘That’s just not fuckin’ right.’

‘Yeah — fucking pigs,’ one of his friends contributed.

‘Okay — take it easy,’ said Werner. He moved the handcuffed woman to place himself between her and the group of men, keeping hold of her elbow. He did a quick head count. Five. They were drunk and slurry but their casual clothes looked expensive. Rich boys out slumming it in St Pauli. Nevertheless, Werner wondered how long it would take for the uniformed unit to arrive. ‘This isn’t any of your concern.’

‘It’s just not fuckin’ right,’ repeated the other. They moved forward as a group.

‘Please don’t cause any trouble.’ Anna took a step towards them, placing herself in their way.

‘Or fuckin’ what?’ The first man pushed his sneering face into hers.

‘Or this,’ she said calmly. The drunk doubled up like a jackknife and keeled over onto the cobbles, clutching the testicles Anna had rammed her knee into. She snapped her service automatic out at arm’s length and scanned the group of youths with it, but at groin height.

‘Next one who gives me trouble gets their dick blown off,’ she said, smiling. ‘And trust me, I’m an expert shot, no matter how fucking small the target.’

They backed away, leaving their companion to moan and roll around on the slushy cobbles. At that moment, a silver and blue Polizei Hamburg personnel carrier pulled up and three uniformed officers jumped out. They took the handcuffed prostitute and placed her in the back.

‘What’s the story here?’ the uniformed commissar asked, pointing to the youth dragging himself to his feet, still clutching his bruised groin.

‘Nothing to report,’ said Werner. ‘Can you take her directly to the Presidium?’

‘All right. You sure he’s okay?’

‘I think his pride’s been hurt,’ said Anna and smiled sweetly at Werner. ‘I’ll get the car.’

Sylvie Achtenhagen took a break from the chaos of press cuttings and files that seemed to have exploded across the polished wood floor of her living room. She went to the French window and opened it, stepping out onto the balcony. The night air was ice-knife sharp and she welcomed its bite: she had been bent over the files for an hour and a half and her brain felt fogged and slow. Sylvie’s apartment was on the third floor of a block on Edgar-Ross-Strasse in Hamburg-Eppendorf. It was elegant and spacious, with its own balcony and set in a pastel-coloured apartment building with a fancy Art Deco facade. She had moved into the apartment when her career — and her income — had started to kick off seriously. She had originally had her eye on one of the Jugendstil villas on Nissenstrasse, one street back. But they had been too expensive. And they would stay too expensive if she didn’t deliver the goods for the station soon.

HanSat TV was jointly owned by the NeuHansa Group and Andreas Knabbe, who ran the station. Knabbe was a thirty-year-old who looked about twelve and had spent so much time in the US that he seemed more American than German; his management style was definitely more American than German. Knabbe had the habit of calling all his staff by their first names and frequently used the informal du form of address, even to the older and more respected members of staff. It was all meant to be shirtsleeves-informal and friendly and family atmosphere and crap like that. Truth was, though, that if Knabbe thought you weren’t worth your salary, or if you didn’t fit with his business model, then you were history. And Knabbe had often talked about Sylvie’s success with the Angel case back in the nineties: increasingly he talked about her career in the past tense.