Craig Russell - The Valkyrie Song

Yes, everything was ready.

Ute stood listening to the soup simmering on the hob and the low whirr of the oven’s fan, while all around her the floor, the work surfaces, even the walls to shoulder height, were covered in thick blue plastic sheeting.

To catch any splashes of his blood.

Fabel could tell there was something on Susanne’s mind as soon as he came through the door of their apartment. He had become attuned to her moods since they had been together: he knew when something was troubling her, but, like most men, he was capable only of reading the big signs and not the small print.

‘How did your talk with Gabi go?’ Susanne smiled but still looked preoccupied.

‘Fine. You know Gabi, she’s a smart kid. Smart enough to make up her own mind about things.’ Fabel kissed Susanne. ‘What’s up?’ he asked.

‘I’ve been through the files you gave me on the Westland and Lensch murders.’ There was an impatient energy in the way Susanne spoke.

‘Okay…’ Fabel followed Susanne through to the lounge and they sat on the sofa, the files spread out in front of them on the coffee table. ‘What about your rule of not talking shop at home?’

‘I thought it was our rule… anyway, I’ll let it go this once. There’s something not right here. There is no pattern. In terms of victim profile or chronology.’

‘But we haven’t had enough victims for any true pattern to emerge.’

‘You did with the original murders in the nineties. But this time

… I don’t know.’ She frowned as she flicked through the notes. ‘You’re putting your money on a copycat, right?’

‘Yes. At least for the moment.’

‘Okay, let’s say it is a copycat,’ said Susanne. ‘What kind of killer or killers are we looking at? God knows you’re almost as much an expert in the psychology of multiple murderers as I am, so you know that there are four broad groups that female serial killers fall into.’

‘Yep,’ Fabel said, leaning back in the sofa and placing his hands behind his head. ‘Angels of Death, Black Widows, Revenge Killers and Insanity Killers.’

‘Right, said Susanne. She got up, went through to the kitchen and came back with a chilled bottle of wine and two glasses. She poured them both a glass.

‘Very nice,’ he said, sipping the wine. ‘You can’t beat a nice crisp Chardonnay and a chat about dismembered bodies.’

‘Do you want to hear this or not?’ Susanne said impatiently.

‘Okay. The four groups. And you’re trying to pick where our girl belongs?’

‘Trying is right. Take the Angels of Death — women who are usually nurses or other medical professionals, who kill the vulnerable, and usually for profit or because they feel they are doing the victim a favour, when all the time they’re really getting off on the power trip of having life or death in their hands. She’s not one of them.’

‘Agreed.’ Fabel took another sip of his wine.

‘Then there are Black Widows. Black Widows in turn fall into two categories: the profit-motivated and the sexual predator or psychosexually motivated. Their victims tend to be known to them. Intimate. They kill their sexual partners or men they pick up.’

‘I’m sleeping on the couch tonight.’ Fabel grinned, then wiped the grin from his face in response to Susanne’s frown. ‘Okay, maybe our girl falls into that category. She does make sexual overtures and plays the part of a prostitute.’

‘But she doesn’t gain from the killings financially.’

‘She did take Westland’s phone, diary and wallet.’

Susanne shook her head. ‘That’s not the kind of score a Black Widow kills for. And I don’t see her deriving a sexual benefit from the killings — unless she orgasms because of the act of killing, the violence itself.’

‘But that would be extremely rare in a female killer, wouldn’t it?’ asked Fabel.

‘Yep…’ said Susanne. ‘It’s very common in male serial-killing behaviour, but extremely rare in female killers.’

‘But not totally unknown?’

‘You’ve heard of Irma Grese?’

‘The Bitch of Belsen?’ said Fabel, frowning. ‘Yes, of course I’ve heard of her.’

‘Grese had only turned twenty-three when she was hanged for crimes against humanity, meaning that she began committing those crimes from the age of about nineteen or twenty. She was a small, plain, not too bright and totally unexceptional girl who came from a basically anti-Nazi family; yet she developed a taste — a hunger — for exceptional cruelty. Both psychological and physical. She had a whip woven out of cellophane which would cut prisoners as she whipped them. She shot and beat prisoners to death, and it was clear she derived gratification from it. Everything points to her being a sexual sadist. As a psychological case, she serves as a warning about how female sexual drive can be channelled into political or religious hysteria. The thing about Grese was that she was an absolutely fanatical member of the League of German Girls. She was obsessed with it. These girls were indoctrinated with Nazi ideology at their most impressionable age, and at a key stage in their sexual development. Almost all of the female guards in concentration camps were recruited from the ranks of the League and Grese’s sexual maturation coincided with her being in a position of power where she could physically abuse prisoners. It was an exceptional context and an exceptional point in history.’

‘And Grese’s sexual sadism was exceptional…’ Fabel concluded the thought.

‘With both sets of murders I find the violence — the expert violence — totally atypical of what I would expect. This is behaviour that would normally take a long, long time to mature.’

‘So you think it could be the same killer?’ Fabel was confused.

She was younger than many of the women he had been with of late. Younger and more attractive.

He had a naturally suspicious nature and found himself wondering why she had made the running. It was not unusual, though, he told himself. Younger women were known to go for more mature men. Particularly those they felt were intellectually or economically superior. Hypergamy, they called it. He laughed at the thought.

‘Do you have family, Herr Gerdes?’ Ute Cranz asked as she came in to serve the soup.

‘Not of my own.’ He smiled. ‘I have three nieces, of whom I am very fond. What about you, Frau Cranz? Do you have family?’

‘No.’ She smiled sadly. ‘Just my late husband. I do have a sister, but she became very ill. She’s in hospital. Permanently.’

‘Oh… I am sorry to hear that,’ said Gerdes.

‘Please, call me Ute. May I offer you more wine?’

‘Then you must call me Robert. Yes, please. Aren’t you going to join me yet?’

‘Perhaps later. I very seldom drink, Robert. I find it muddles me, even a little. But please, I want you to enjoy some.’

Gerdes took a long sip. ‘It really is very good.’

Gerdes sat and ate and drank and listened to Ute Cranz. She had that strange ability that women seemed to have: to talk a lot but say nothing. But he smiled and nodded and said the right things at the right time. She certainly was an attractive woman: she had large, dark eyes and her chestnut hair was cut short. She had an appealing figure, too: slim, but with a hint of voluptuousness through the sheen of her dress. Yet there was something about her that troubled him: he was certain they had met somewhere before.

‘Have you lived in Hamburg all your life?’ she asked.

‘Long enough for me to consider myself a native Hamburger,’ he said, taking another sip of his wine. ‘What about you, Ute?’

‘Oh no. I moved here from the East. Mecklenburg. A town called Zarrentin. It’s small, but very pretty. It’s on a lake. The Schaalsee. Before the Wall came down it was right on the border with the West. We had an ugly border checkpoint and fences and stuff. But that’s long gone now.’