Craig Russell - The Valkyrie Song

‘Lead on…’ said Vestergaard grimly.

The penthouse had been finished to the same quality and in the same style as the apartment below. It was slightly larger and better use had been made of the space available, but the main difference was the furnishings. Like its downstairs neighbour, the flat was ultra-modern and bright, but much of the furniture was traditional. Some looked like genuine antiques. Fabel thought of the man who had occupied this space and somehow couldn’t connect it with the mass of bloody tissue lying on the kitchen counter downstairs.

‘He’s got some nice furniture,’ said Vestergaard in an unusually conversational tone. ‘Walnut, most of it. Some maple. I’ve seen this kind of stuff before. It’s Hungarian art deco, a lot of it. Made in the nineteen-thirties. Some of the other pieces are French.’

Fabel looked at her questioningly.

‘Hobby…’ she said and he nodded. They walked slowly through the apartment. There was a lounge, a study, a bedroom and an open-plan kitchen and dining room. They stopped for a moment in the study.

‘No sign of a struggle,’ said Fabel. ‘It doesn’t look like he even had company recently. The whole party must have taken place downstairs. But I’ll have Holger’s forensics boys give the place a thorough going-over.’

Vestergaard picked up a sketch pad that had been lying on the desk. Fabel noticed that it was the same brand and size as the ones he used for laying out his thoughts during an investigation. Vestergaard flipped through it and gave a couple of small laughs. In response to Fabel’s questioning look, she turned the open pad towards him.

‘Whatever else he did,’ said Vestergaard, ‘he had a talent for caricatures. That’s meant to be your illustrious Chancellor, Angela Merkel, isn’t it?’

‘Yes — you’re right, he wasn’t half bad.’ Fabel grinned. ‘I know Frau Merkel is keen to promote good international relationships, but I really don’t think she would do that with Monsieur Sarkozy. And I don’t think he’s really quite that small.’

‘I have to say he had expensive tastes…’ Vestergaard put the drawing pad back down and examined a deco bronze on the desk: a stylised eagle perched on a walnut base. ‘For a retired school teacher from Flensburg.’

‘Exactly what I was thinking,’ said Fabel. ‘I think we should start here in the study. You take the desk, I’ll go through the filing cabinets and the bookshelves.’

Three-quarters of an hour later they had examined every piece of correspondence, every bill, the victim’s notebook and his desk diary.

‘Either he had a very limited social life or a very secret one,’ said Vestergaard. ‘Even with official and household correspondence — there’s nothing here other than the barest minimum of paperwork. No personal computer. This is either a life only half lived, or a cover. And from the look of the furniture and the quality of the selection in his wine rack, he was not a man of an ascetic disposition.’

Fabel wandered through to the lounge and looked around. ‘So, Major Drescher, this is where you hid yourself.’ He turned back to Vestergaard. ‘I got on to the Federal Commissioner’s office in Berlin to dig up his files. Nothing. Only the odd mention here and there. He did a good job of hiding himself and I thought we’d never find him. Now he’s dropped right into our laps.’

‘He’s still hiding from us, Jan,’ said Vestergaard, looking around the study.

Before heading back to the Presidium, Fabel asked Holger Brauner if his team could seal off the penthouse apartment and give it a good going-over once they were finished with the primary locus.

As he and Karin Vestergaard headed out of the apartment building and towards his BMW, Fabel noticed that the street had a completely different look to it in the daylight, even the winter daylight. He took a few deep breaths of the cold air. Over the years Fabel had found that after visiting a murder scene there was one aspect, one image, that haunted you for weeks afterwards. This time, every time he closed his eyes, it was the lidless stare of Drescher’s corpse.

‘You okay?’ asked Vestergaard.

‘Yeah… I’m fine.’ Fabel sighed. ‘Just another day in the meat factory.’

When they arrived at the Presidium, Fabel fetched coffee for them both and they sat in his office drinking it.

‘We should take a break before questioning Cranz,’ said Fabel. ‘It’s going to be a long haul.’

There was a knock on the door and Werner came in. Something about his face told Fabel that relaxation time was over.

‘This is all seriously messed up, Jan,’ he said, not bothering to switch to English for Vestergaard’s sake.

‘What is?’

‘The woman we’ve got in custody rented the apartment under the name of Ute Cranz. But she claims her real name is Ute Paulus, and that she is the sister of Margarethe Paulus-’

‘Hold on,’ said Fabel, the weariness swept from his expression. ‘The woman who escaped from the secure hospital in Mecklenburg?’

‘The very same.’

‘So Ute Paulus has taken up her sister’s trade of knackering male victims? It would certainly explain why Margarethe has been able to stay out of sight, if she has had outside help.’

‘Ah, well… that’s where it all gets very complicated.’ Werner gave a wry smile and rubbed the stubble on his scalp. ‘I’ve been in touch with the state hospital in Mecklenburg and I spoke to the chief psychiatrist there who’s responsible for Margarethe Paulus’s case. It’s a Dr Kopke. According to Kopke, there is no Ute Paulus. No sister. Just Margarethe.’

Werner placed a printout of a file photograph on Fabel’s desk. ‘That is Margarethe Paulus, taken a year before her escape. I’ve had a look at the woman in custody. The hair colour is different, but apart from that, if she’s a sister she would have to be a twin.’

‘ Shit.’ Fabel turned to Vestergaard and explained everything that Werner had just said. ‘What else did Kopke say?’ he asked, turning back to Werner.

‘Two things. First, he needs to talk to you urgently. He needs to know the identity of the victim and how he died. Dr Kopke says that he might have information that will be indispensable to us. He would also like to talk to any criminal psychiatrist or psychologist who sits in on or monitors the interview — which he strongly recommends we do.’

‘And the second?’

‘That we use maximum security when dealing with Margarethe Paulus. He said that she is probably the most dangerous individual that he has ever dealt with.’

On the way down to the interview room, Karin Vestergaard took a call on her cellphone. After a brief exchange in Danish she paused to make a few notes in her notebook. Fabel waited for her.

‘That was my office in Copenhagen,’ she said as they continued along the corridor. ‘The NCID in Norway have been doing some more digging into Jorgen Halvorsen’s affairs. They have found a contact he had here in Hamburg. We can talk about it after you’ve interviewed this woman. Do you think she’s the one who killed Jens?’

‘I don’t know. There seems to be a hell of a lot of coincidences going on and she fits perfectly as someone we should be looking at for all these killings, if it weren’t for the simple fact that we know absolutely for certain that she was locked up in an asylum. There’s no way she can be either our Angel or our Valkyrie.’

‘But she was out when Jens was killed,’ said Vestergaard.

‘True. She’s well worth a look for it. I’ll establish her whereabouts at the time — if I can.’ Fabel stopped their progress along the corridor by turning to her. ‘Listen, Karin, this will just be our initial interview to establish basics. It won’t take long. I’d like us to talk the whole thing through afterwards. There’s another couple of deaths that have cropped up that are not, strictly speaking, being treated as murder. I just think there’s so much going on that there’s a chance we’ll miss something.’