Craig Russell - The Valkyrie Song

The woman who waited for them in the interview room looked nothing like a killer. Professional or serial. The forensics department had taken all her clothes for examination and she was now dressed in a shapeless disposable white overall. She was of slim build and was, Fabel couldn’t help noticing, very attractive. She looked up at him with empty disinterest as he entered, as if she had no stake in what was happening and his presence had nothing to do with her. Fabel recognised her from the photograph sent from the Mecklenburg hospital. He went into the interview without Vestergaard, leaving her to join Werner and Anna in the adjoining room from where they could watch the interview on the monitor.

Fabel nodded to the uniformed officer who had been watching over the prisoner, sat down opposite Paulus, laid his papers out on the metal desk and informed her of her rights.

‘I want you to understand something, Margarethe,’ he said. ‘I will be interviewing you again later, with another officer, and we will have a psychologist in the room as well as a lawyer to represent your interests. We can talk about things in more detail then. In the meantime, I want you to simply confirm your name for me.’

‘I am Ute Paulus. You called me Margarethe; I am not Margarethe Paulus. She is my sister.’

‘But that’s simply not true, Margarethe. There is no Ute Paulus. You have no sister. It’s a matter of record.’

She laughed coldly. ‘Records are falsified all the time. In the East people’s records were changed or falsified all of the time. I am not Margarethe. I am Ute.’

‘Who is this?’ Fabel asked and slid a copy of the hospital photograph across the table to her.

‘That is Margarethe.’

‘That is you. Listen, there’s no point in denying it. We have samples of your fingerprints and they match those of this patient.’ He jabbed a forefinger at the picture on the table. ‘Margarethe Paulus, thirty-eight years old, born in Zarrentin, north-west Mecklenburg. You have no sister, no brother and both your parents are dead. This is you. And you were committed to the Mecklenburg state secure hospital in May nineteen ninety-four.’

Paulus said nothing. Fabel drew a long breath.

‘Why did you do what you did to Robert Gerdes?’

‘His name wasn’t Gerdes.’ There was no anger in her voice. There was nothing in her voice. Or in her eyes as she spoke. ‘His name was Georg Drescher and he was a major in the Stasi.’

‘Why did you do what you did to him?’

‘I thought you said we would only talk about this later,’ she said. She placed her hands on the metal surface. Her fingers were long and slim. He noticed how clean her fingernails were, and then remembered that Brauner’s forensics team would have scraped beneath them for trace evidence. Fabel found it difficult to imagine those fingers committing the horrors he had witnessed in her flat.

‘I want to go back,’ she said.

‘Go back where? To the apartment?’

‘To the hospital.’

‘How can you go back to the hospital if you’re not a patient there?’ asked Fabel. He pointed again to the photograph. ‘This is the patient. Margarethe is the patient. You say you’re not Margarethe.’

‘That’s where I see my sister. Where I talk to her. I visit her. Now I can visit her all the time.’

Fabel sighed and gathered up the papers. ‘I think we really should wait until later.’

‘I want to go back now,’ she repeated, but there was no insistence in her voice. ‘To the hospital.’

‘I’m afraid you won’t be going back for some time. You’re going to have to stay with us for a while.’ Fabel stood up.

‘I want to go back. To the hospital.’ Margarethe stood up too. Fabel held his hand out to stop her. ‘You have to remain sitting, Margarethe. Stay here. The officer will take you back to your cell.’

Margarethe’s hand seized Fabel’s wrist and he was amazed at the strength in the slender fingers. He moved his other hand to free himself but was stunned by the blow she delivered to his forehead with the heel of her free hand. He heard the uniformed officer rush forward. Margarethe grabbed Fabel by the hair and rammed his face into the metal table as she used him for leverage and swung a high kick at the other policeman’s head. Fabel heard the uniformed cop slam into the interview-room wall and gasp for breath. He felt her fingers probe under his arm to find his service SIG-Sauer automatic but the anti-snatch holster resisted her tugging. He thrust his weight against her and she fell onto the floor. Despite the adrenalin surging through his system, he noticed how gracefully she fell, rolled and sprang back to her feet. The other cop was pulling himself to his feet and he launched himself from the wall at her. It was a clumsy move and she dodged him easily, slashing him across the throat with the flat of her hand. Fabel made to draw his weapon and she leaped across the table at him, hitting him at chest height with her knee. His head slammed painfully against the wall and he heard his automatic clatter on the floor. The door next to him suddenly burst open and Werner, Anna and two uniformed officers rushed into the room.

‘Get my gun!’ yelled Fabel.

He pulled himself to his feet in time to see Margarethe slam a fist into Werner’s face. Anna Wolff got behind her and wrapped an arm around her throat in a tight grip. Margarethe slammed her elbow into Anna’s ribs but Anna didn’t let go. Instead, she let herself drop, her weight pulling Margarethe to the floor. Werner and the other officers threw themselves onto her and, after a few seconds of desperate struggling, Margarethe was handcuffed.

‘Yours, I believe…’ Fabel looked up to see Karin Vestergaard staring down on him, his service automatic in her extended hand.

‘Thanks,’ said Fabel and allowed her to help him up. ‘That went well, I thought…’ He felt something trickle down his forehead and when he gingerly reached up to touch it, his fingertips were wet with blood.

Werner, Anna and the others hoisted Margarethe to her feet. She looked directly at Fabel and the look chilled him. There was no rage, no hatred, just the same emptiness in the eyes that he had noticed when he’d first entered the interview room. It was as if the intense violence that had just exploded there had simply never happened.

‘Get her back to her cell,’ said Fabel. ‘And keep her restrained.’ The uniforms ushered Margarethe, who didn’t even seem to be breathing hard, from the room. Anna and Werner stayed behind. There was a trickle of blood from Werner’s nostril.

‘You should get that looked at,’ said Vestergaard, nodding towards Fabel’s head.

‘I think I should…’ said Fabel, taking the folded handkerchief that Vestergaard handed him and holding it to his head. ‘You did well, Anna. She took some taking down.’

‘A woman’s touch. I thought it looked like you and Grandad here needed help.’ Anna grinned knowingly at Werner. ‘What with you having your asses kicked by a girl.’

‘How’s the uniform?’ asked Fabel.

‘He’ll be fine,’ said Werner, dabbing the bleeding nostril with the back of his hand. ‘He’s going to have one hell of a sore throat, that’s for sure.’

‘Get him to the hospital,’ said Fabel. ‘Any blow to the airway can be very dangerous and she knew what she was doing.’ He leaned against the interview-room wall and drew a deep breath. ‘Shit… she knew what she was doing.’

‘I gather that’s what Dr Kopke, the Chief Doctor from the Mecklenburg state hospital, wanted to tell you. He was on the phone again… when you were in there with psycho-girl.’

‘I’ll phone him,’ said Fabel. ‘But first, could someone get me some codeine and a plaster for my head…’