Craig Russell - The Valkyrie Song

‘Really?’ said Margarethe. ‘Then you know that I will be kept in an institution, probably for the rest of my life.’

‘I don’t think you can ever be reintegrated into society, no. Or cured of your problems. Maybe the psychosis, with drug therapy. But no, you will be confined for the rest of your life.’

‘Although I disagree with your diagnosis, Frau Doctor Eckhardt, I agree with your vision of my future. I will never be at liberty. And if I am a psychopath, then I have absolutely no sense of accountability or responsibility. And punishment is meaningless to me. So could you explain to Herr Fabel that there is absolutely no point in me lying to him about which murders I did or did not commit?’

‘There are other reasons for lying,’ said Fabel. ‘To protect others. Maybe you weren’t working alone. Perhaps you decided to have a class reunion with your fellow ex-Valkyries. That would explain all the money and resources you have at your disposal. Maybe it was one of your sisters who killed Jespersen.’

‘Maybe it was,’ said Margarethe. ‘But I know nothing about it. And even if I did, I owe them no loyalty. They left me behind. Only my sister stayed by me. Promised to make it right.’

There, thought Fabel. There I saw something. For the first time in the interview he saw an opening. Hardly a crack, but something that could be worked at. Pried open.

‘Yes, Margarethe,’ he said sympathetically. ‘They did leave you behind. Betrayed you. They went on to become true Valkyries while you were thrown aside and rejected. After all that horror, all that pain, all those horrible, horrible things they put into your head. Is that the real reason you tortured and killed Drescher? To achieve some kind of fulfilment? Do you have any idea of the kind of money they will have made out of their meetings? Oh yes, when the Wall came down, Drescher and his girls embraced capitalism with real enthusiasm. They have been killing for private enterprise as a private enterprise.’

‘She…’ said Margarethe.

‘What?’

‘She. Not they. Georg Drescher had a favourite. He works with only one woman. The other Valkyrie has no part of it. She has another life.’

There was a short, electric pause. Fabel felt his pulse pick up a beat. He was aware that Anna and Susanne were staying very still and quiet.

‘Names, Margarethe,’ he said. ‘What are their names? The woman Drescher worked with, the professional killer. What is she called?’

‘We were friends,’ said Margarethe. Now there was emotion. Not much, just a hint of wistfulness. ‘As much as we could be friends. All three of us were loners — part of what they needed from us. But, in our own way, we were friends.’

‘They left you behind, Margarethe. You owe them nothing.’

‘You don’t have to tell me that. You don’t need to manage me. I will tell you what I want to tell you. Not what you think you can make me tell you.’ She paused. ‘It was a rule that we didn’t know each other’s names. They were very strict about that. We knew each other as One, Two and Three. I was Two.’

Fabel felt the hope slip from him. He sighed.

‘We got on well,’ said Margarethe. ‘We were supervised most of the time. Watched and monitored. Our sleeping quarters were kept separate. But we were trained together for most things.’

‘Did the other girls tell you anything that gave a clue to their true identities?’ asked Fabel.

‘They thought they could control us completely. Make us like machines. But they couldn’t.’ Margarethe smiled. Not a fake smile. Not something she had been trained to use at appropriate moments. Her smile. And it terrified Fabel. ‘Liane Kayser. Anke Wollner. It was our rebellion. Our way of keeping a little of ourselves outside their control. We told each other our real names.’

Fabel kept his gaze on Margarethe, but to his left he heard Anna Wolff scribbling the names into her notebook before rushing out of the interview room.

‘There was something else. We knew that we would be sent to different places. That we maybe wouldn’t see each other again. So we worked out a plan. A place we would meet.’

‘Where?’ Fabel tried to keep his tone dispassionate.

‘You have to remember, we were all living in the East. We didn’t know then that the Wall would come down. We didn’t know that one or more of us might be sent into the West, into deep cover. So we picked somewhere we all knew. Halberstadt.’

‘In Saxony-Anhalt?’

Margarethe nodded. ‘One of the girls, Liane, came from Halberstadt. She said that if we needed each other we would meet at the cathedral in Halberstadt.’

‘How would you know to come?’

‘Two newspapers, one in the GDR, one in West Germany. We would run an announcement. It would be a quote from Njal’s Saga: “The heavens are stained with the blood of men, as the Valkyries sing their song.” If we saw the announcement we would know to meet up in Halberstadt at eight a.m. on the first Monday of the month following the announcement.’

Fabel leaned forward. ‘So, if we ran this announcement in the appropriate newspapers, we could bring the other two Valkyries to Halberstadt?’

Margarethe shook her head. ‘It was compromised. They caught us talking about it. We were stupid: we were being trained by the Stasi and didn’t think that they would have bugged us.’

‘So you don’t think the others would respond to the announcement?’ asked Fabel.

‘No. And we didn’t arrange another code. After that we were separated. We didn’t see each other again.’

‘And you’ve had no contact since then? With any of the other Valkyries?’

‘None.’

‘You said Drescher had a favourite. This is the woman you think he’s been operating with. Which one, Margarethe? Who was his favourite — Liane Kayser or Anke Wollner?’

‘Anke Wollner. Liane… well, Liane was different. She didn’t respond as well to discipline. She wanted things her own way. It was Anke who was Drescher’s little protegee.’

Anna Wolff came back into the room and retook her place. She responded to Fabel’s inquiring look with a sharp shake of her head.

‘I’ll ask you again…’ Fabel turned back to Margarethe. ‘If it wasn’t one of the other Valkyries, who set you up with everything you needed to kill Drescher?’

The blank mask fell again.

‘Was it someone else from the Stasi? Maybe someone who worked with Drescher and saw him as a threat.’

Nothing.

‘Does the name Thomas Maas mean anything to you? Ulrich Adebach?’ Fabel ran through the other names he had obtained from the BStU Federal Commissioner’s office. It was clear that they had come to a dead end. It was almost as if Margarethe had realised that she had opened up too much and was now shutting down. No, thought Fabel, she was too much in control for that. Any information she had given had been released in a controlled manner.

Fabel terminated the interview and Margarethe was taken back to her cell under heavy guard. Fabel ordered that she be placed in a video-surveillance cell.

‘So nothing on these names?’ Fabel asked Anna as soon as they were in the corridor.

‘Nothing. But that’s hardly surprising, Chef. If these girls were chosen by the Stasi, especially if they were orphans or from broken homes, then I would guess that the first thing the Stasi would do would be to wipe all trace of their real identities from the public record. An easy thing to do if you’re in charge of that selfsame public record.’

‘I want you to get back on to the BStU Federal Commissioner’s office in Berlin.’ Fabel leaned against the wall. ‘Give them these names and see what comes up. The Stasi thought they were invulnerable — maybe they thought any mention of the girls’ real identities within the context of a Stasi HQ file was relatively safe.’