Craig Russell - The Valkyrie Song

There was the sound of approaching sirens and two unmarked cars pulled up at the barrier, behind Fabel’s BMW. Fabel made a frantic gesture with his hand across his throat and the sirens were killed. Anna Wolff and Werner Meyer emerged from one car while Dirk Hechtner and Henk Hermann got out of the other.

‘For God’s sake,’ said Fabel as they approached. ‘We’ve got no press here yet. Let’s keep this as low-key as blocking a street off in the middle of the night can be.’

‘Sorry, Chef,’ said Anna. ‘To be honest, it was one of the main attractions of the job for me. If I don’t get to toot my siren I’d just as well be a taxi driver.’

‘No one would take your cab with all that farting,’ muttered Werner.

‘Listen, Dick und Doof,’ said Fabel, unsmiling. ‘When you’ve quite finished the comedy act, I’d like to go in and view the locus.’

‘Sorry, Chef,’ said Anna as unrepentantly as she could manage.

‘There’s something else you should know,’ said Glasmacher. ‘The perpetrator was making wild claims about the victim. She’s clearly as mad as a hatter. She said he was living under a false name and an invented backstory and that he was really one of the Stasi’s top people. She claims he ruined her sister’s life.’

‘Stasi?’ Fabel felt as if someone had passed a faint electric current through his spine. ‘She said he was ex-Stasi? Did she say what his real name was?’

Again Glasmacher checked his notebook. ‘Yeah… she said he was an HVA major called Georg Drescher.’

Someone turned up the current in Fabel’s spine.

‘Anna, Werner — you come with me,’ he said determinedly. ‘Thomas, you get back to the Presidium and write up your report. Then get off home and rest up. I’m going to need you fit over the next few days. Dirk, Henk — I want you to phone Politidirektor Karin Vestergaard and tell her you’re on your way to her hotel to pick her up and bring her into the Presidium. No, wait — bring her here.’

As Fabel moved towards the door, Glasmacher placed his gloved hand on Fabel’s arm to check him.

‘Brace yourself, Chef — I mean it about this one. When you see what she’s done to this guy…’

Holger Brauner asked Fabel and his team to wait a few minutes before entering the scene. He also insisted that instead of just the usual overshoes and latex gloves, they should all don full forensic suits and masks.

‘There’s a lot of body fluids in there,’ he explained. ‘We’ve got a lot of processing to do. I know you are all experienced murder detectives and so on, but I have to request that if you think you’re going to throw up you get out of the flat as soon as possible.’

‘That bad?’ asked Fabel.

‘It’s that bad, Jan,’ said Brauner.

Fabel couldn’t help noticing how stylish and spacious the apartment was. The lounge and dining room were open-plan, with a large sliding window that opened out onto a small terrace. The furniture was expensive-looking and Fabel guessed this had been a furnished let. One of Brauner’s bunny-suited team was taking photographs of the dining table: it had been set for two and there were still used plates and wine glasses on it. A numbered tent card sat on the floor beside the sofa, next to where a brandy glass had shattered, spilling its contents on the polished beechwood.

Fabel took Glasmacher’s advice and braced himself emotionally as he and the others entered the kitchen.

He found that he could not tear his eyes away from it. It was as if his brain was trying to make sense of what it was he was looking at; or more as if his brain was trying to deny what he was looking at had been human. It lay on heavy-duty blue plastic sheeting over the kitchen worktop. The head had been propped up and the round white orbs of the lidless eyes stared at Fabel. The sheeting extended across the floor and sheets of it had been duct-taped to the wall. There were splashes of blood everywhere, but around the body and on the floor immediately next to the worktop the blood was mop-smeared. She had cleaned up as she had worked.

Behind him, Fabel could hear Anna breathing heavily through her forensic mask. Werner muttered something obscene. Holger Brauner eased past the statues of Anna and Werner and stood next to Fabel.

‘I’ve never seen anything like it, Jan,’ he said. ‘She has an amazing knowledge of human anatomy. See the tourniquets around the upper thighs? She used those to restrict blood flow while she worked on the legs. And as you can see from the exposed bone, she has cut through muscle tissue while avoiding the femoral artery. Similarly she used a surgical clamp on his groin to stop him bleeding out from the castration.’

Fabel heard Anna’s heavy breathing turn to gasps and she rushed out of the kitchen.

‘There is absolutely no doubt whatsoever about premeditation, Jan,’ said Brauner. ‘She laid everything out in advance, sheeted up the room, immobilised the victim somehow… She even had a saline solution for his eyes, once she had removed his eyelids. It’s obvious it was important to her that he saw her working on him. Poor bastard.’

‘How long do you think it would have taken him to die?’

‘The truth? I honestly don’t know. Herr Doctor Moller will be able to give you an indication after the autopsy. But my guess is that he was maybe alive for up to an hour of this abuse. How much of that he was conscious for is anyone’s guess…’ Brauner pointed to a metal tray next to the body. ‘That’s full of broken phials. From the smell I’d say they were capsules of ammonia carbonate. She obviously broke them under his nose to rouse him when he passed out from the pain.’

Anna came back into the kitchen, keeping her head down and not looking up from the floor. ‘Dirk and Henk are back, Chef. They’ve got the Dane with them.’

‘Okay.’ Fabel placed an arm around her shoulder and turned her away from the body. He looked into her face: above the surgical mask and framed by the elasticated hood of the forensics suit, she was very pale, her eyes red-rimmed. ‘Are you all right, Anna?’

‘As you know, not my strong point. But hey, never mind — you’ll have me issuing parking tickets soon.’

‘That’s enough, Anna,’ said Fabel, but without anger. He could see she was in a state. ‘You head back to the Commission and go through what Thomas has got before he heads home. Werner — you go with her. I’m going to have a look upstairs at the victim’s apartment.’

On the way out of the apartment Fabel dumped his forensic suit and mask at the door, but he retained the gloves and overshoes. He had just gone out onto the landing when he saw Karin Vestergaard coming up the stairwell with Dirk Hechtner and Henk Hermann.

‘Your colleagues told me this might have something to do with Jens’s death,’ she said without preliminaries. Fabel saw the grim determination on her face and was reminded that Jespersen had been more than a colleague to her.

‘Truth is I don’t know yet, Karin. The killer called it in herself and we’ve got her down at the Presidium. She definitely could be our St Pauli killer. But the thing that is most interesting is the tale she’s been spinning. We’ve got a male victim, sixty-three years old, a retired teacher from Flensburg called Robert Gerdes. But — and wait for this — the woman who tortured and killed him says that he is really a former high-ranking Stasi officer and that his name is Georg Drescher.’

For a moment, Vestergaard looked stunned. ‘Can I see this victim?’

‘Trust me, it’s best not to. She really did a number on him and anyway you’d have to get all suited up. I sent for you because I’m going to have a look through the victim’s apartment. He lived upstairs. I thought you might like to help. Maybe you’ll pick up on something relevant to Jespersen.’ Fabel turned to Hechtner and Hermann. ‘I want you two to go through the killer’s apartment — everything except the murder scene in the kitchen. Bag everything.’ He turned back to Vestergaard. ‘After we’re through upstairs, I’d like you to listen in on my questioning of the suspect.’