Craig Russell - The Valkyrie Song

‘Is it significant?’

‘Not significant. Coincidental. The most recent victim of the St Pauli Angel also worked for a NeuHansa Group company. But that’s not unusual — so do a lot of people.’

‘Funny things, coincidences,’ said Vestergaard. ‘I tend not to believe in them.’ As they were about to get back into his car, she handed Fabel the note Luttig had given her with Sparwald’s home address on it.

‘Nor do I,’ said Fabel.

When they got back from SkK Biotech, Fabel found a thick legal envelope on his desk. He had just picked it up when Werner came in. Karin Vestergaard diplomatically excused herself and left the two men alone.

‘She’s becoming your shadow,’ said Werner. ‘Doesn’t it get on your nerves?’

‘As a matter of fact it doesn’t. I would be every bit as hands-on if you got yourself killed in Copenhagen and I went up to find out what happened.’

‘What can I say?’ Werner grinned. ‘I’m touched.’ He nodded towards the envelope. ‘That arrived half an hour ago and I just left it on your desk. It’s the details of Westland’s investments, correspondence, that sort of thing. Westland’s widow sent them over like you asked.’

‘Thanks. I’ll look at it later. Anything else new?’

‘Yes, there is, as a matter of fact.’ Werner swung open the door and called through to Dirk Hechtner, who came in carrying an evidence bag, which he placed on Fabel’s desk. The bag contained a curved blade attached to a leather device that looked halfway between a wrist-strap and a glove.

‘Things have just got even more interesting,’ said Dirk Hechtner. ‘This is one of the things we found in Margarethe Paulus’s apartment. We did get positive traces of blood from the leather… unfortunately they were too small and too degraded to get a match. However, we did manage to get a sample of dried blood from around the base of the blade. Or at least Astrid Bremer did. But we still weren’t able to get a match.’

‘A match with whom?’ asked Fabel. ‘There’s no sign that this was used in Drescher’s murder.’

‘No, not Drescher. I did some digging… tried to find out what the hell this thing is. I got a name for it. It’s called a srbosjek. I thought this might be the weapon used to kill Goran Vuja i c in Copenhagen. You know, the Serbian gangster.’

‘Vuja i c?’ Fabel frowned. ‘What made you make the connection to Vuja i c?’

Hechtner nodded towards the object in the evidence bag. ‘This is a particularly horrible device with only one purpose: to murder. It was designed for the Usta e, the fascists who ran Croatia during the Second World War. The Usta e believed in an ethnically cleansed Croatia, free of Serbs, Gypsies, Jews… They set up their own concentration camp, Jasenovac, where they murdered a million or more. They were very hands-on about it all: they clubbed, stabbed or hacked their victims to death, all of which was very labour-intensive. So they came up with the srbosjek. It was used to cut throats with maximum speed and minimum effort. That’s why I made the connection with Vuja i c — srbosjek is Croat for “Serb Cutter”. It struck me that maybe someone was being poetic.’

‘More like they’re trying to tell us something.’ Fabel picked up the evidence bag. The srbosjek was an ugly, vicious-looking thing, even if you didn’t know its history. ‘But this definitely wasn’t the weapon used to kill Vuja i c. His throat wasn’t cut: the blade used to kill him was more like a thin stiletto or a needle file, pushed into the heart from under the sternum. But good work, Dirk. You may be on to something.’

Fabel met Susanne in the Presidium canteen for lunch. She had spent an hour on the phone with Kopke, the Mecklenburg State Hospital Chief Psychiatrist. Karin Vestergaard had phoned Fabel and explained that she needed to catch up on a few things with her office. There had been something about her manner on the phone that made him feel that she was not being entirely straightforward with him. But he dismissed the thought: Vestergaard knew that if she withheld anything from Fabel he would shut her out of the investigation into Jespersen’s death.

‘You look tired,’ said Fabel as they picked up their trays and inched along in a queue of blue uniforms. Susanne had a large thick leather-bound notebook tucked under her arm. Fabel could see Post-it notes sprouting like foliage from its edges and he noticed that she had jammed various other folded sheets between its pages.

‘I’ve had a lot to take in,’ she said wearily. ‘You say you’ve spoken with Kopke?’

‘I’ve had that pleasure,’ said Fabel, with a wry smile.

‘I don’t think I’ve been talked at like that since I was a first-year student,’ said Susanne. She broke off to place her order with the canteen assistant. ‘He’s not the most patient of people, is he? In fact, for a psychiatrist, he doesn’t seem much of a people person.’

‘If you mean he’s an arsehole,’ said Fabel, ‘then I would agree with your professional assessment. I thought you southerners were direct and outspoken.’

‘I’m acclimatising. Another year or two up here and I’ll be locking up all that emotion deep inside till it rots away at me, just like the rest of you. Anyway, arsehole or not, I had to take a hell of a lot of notes while I spoke to him. He was well prepared. And he thinks we should be too, before we talk to Margarethe Paulus again.’

‘He has a point,’ said Fabel.

‘How is the head?’ asked Susanne.

‘It’s fine — it really wasn’t too bad. It’s my pride that’s taken the bruising.’

‘What, because you were beaten up by a woman?’ They found a place over by the window and reasonably distant from the majority of occupied tables.

‘Because I mishandled the whole situation. What have you got?’

Susanne dropped her notebook with a thud onto the canteen table. She looped a stray lock of raven hair behind her ear, slipped on her glasses and started to flick through her notes.

‘She’s a psychopath. That’s for sure. But, whatever else has been going on, she’s not a serial killer. Kopke insists that she could not be responsible for any of the other killings.’

‘That’s not right — she had escaped from the hospital before Jake Westland and Armin Lensch were killed. And Jespersen, too. She could well have committed those murders. The only thing she’s in the clear for is the original Angel killings.’

‘No, no — that’s not what Kopke means. Margarethe may well have been available to commit those other murders, but Kopke is certain that she was focused exclusively on killing Drescher. She would have no compunction about killing others, but she saw herself as being on a mission. The only other people she would have murdered would have been anyone who stood in the way of her killing Drescher.’

‘Maybe she found out that Jespersen was on Drescher’s trail,’ said Fabel between mouthfuls.

‘Isn’t that pretty unlikely? Anyway, let me summarise what Kopke told me: Margarethe Paulus is a psychopath, but it’s difficult to decide whether she’s a primary or a secondary psychopath. Primaries tend to be born that way or are genetically predisposed to psychopathy, whereas secondaries are made that way by experience, environment or as the result of drug abuse, et cetera. Margarethe clearly went through a neurological trauma as part of her childhood brain surgery. Maybe her psychopathy is iatrogenic, the adverse side effect of medical intervention. But it’s hard to tell — psychopathy only really begins to manifest itself in adolescence. We’re all egocentric as kids: it goes with the territory. But whereas we mature and get an idea of ourselves as social beings, psychopaths don’t. The scary thing is that there’s a good chance that one in every hundred of the population are psychopaths.’