Craig Russell - The Valkyrie Song

Fabel tried to speak, but the garrotte had stifled his voice. He nodded his head.

‘Do you know who I am?’

He nodded again. He felt the light-headedness ease with the loosening of the ligature. His mind raced and he thought about struggling, fighting for his life. But he knew that she would strangle him as soon as he moved.

‘I am a Valkyrie.’ Her voice was soft and warm in his ear. Still her hand worked on him. ‘But I am not the one you are looking for. Do you understand that?’

Fabel was confused. He moved his hand up to his throat. She gave the garrotte another twist. Fabel felt the throb of his pulse in his neck below the ligature, but not above it. Just pins and needles. The dark world of his bedroom becoming darker. Red-black darker.

‘I said: do you understand that?’

He nodded.

‘I was — am — Liane Kayser. I am not Anke Wollner. Anke is the one you want, not me. I did not work for Georg Drescher. Since the Wall came down I have lived my own life. I have done my own thing. I am not a professional killer. Or, at least, I am not a professional killer any more. And anything I might have been involved with is not your concern. But I want you to understand that I still have all of the skills they taught me. I could finish you right now — you do understand that, don’t you, Jan?’

Fabel nodded again.

‘I’m going to ease the garrotte so you can talk. If you do anything stupid I will tighten it again, but this time all the way. It has an inertia slide on it. That means I can tighten it fully and walk away: the ligature will be fastened tight and you won’t be able to do anything to stop yourself strangling to death. Even I won’t be able to release it if I tighten it fully. Do you understand?’

Once more, Fabel nodded. Feeling the ligature ease again, he gasped for breath. She was still touching him below. Stroking him.

‘Take your hand off me!’ His voice was urgent and raspy.

‘Why?’ she said. ‘You seem to be enjoying it.’

‘Take your hand off me now.’

She let her hand slip away after one last long, lingering stroke.

‘When you tell them… when you make your report — will you tell them about that? About how you were hard for me? About me touching you down there?’

Her hand was back on him and Fabel grabbed her wrist. She rewarded him by shutting off his air supply.

‘Let me go,’ she said. Again the ligature eased when he complied. ‘Will you tell them? They’ll ask you if you were hard. If you were enjoying it. They’ll ask you if you did anything to encourage me doing that. If you invited me into your bed, even if you didn’t know who I was. Then there’s your partner, Susanne… will you tell her? There will always be doubt. People will talk behind your back. There will always be a nagging doubt in the back of Susanne’s mind.’

She removed her hand.

‘That’s what it’s like for women. All the time. Every time a woman or a girl is raped or sexually assaulted.’

‘That’s crap.’ The ligature made Fabel’s voice high and tight. ‘I know the truth. I don’t need this half-assed demonstration. I’ve seen so much violence against women that I know what it’s really like.’

‘But did you enjoy it, Jan?’ She kept her voice a whisper. A seductive hiss in his ear. Did she think he’d recognise her voice? wondered Fabel. ‘A little hand relief? Did you know that in Victorian England society women would faint all the time? It wasn’t considered unusual. It was put down to “female hysteria”. It was a genuine phenomenon. And do you know what it was all about?’

Fabel didn’t answer. She jerked on the garrotte around his throat. ‘I asked you a question.’

‘No,’ said Fabel, his voice a rasp.

‘Sexual repression. Women in Victorian England were not allowed to enjoy sex. They were made to feel dirty if they did. So the phenomenon of “female hysteria” became an accepted medical fact. Do you know how they cured it? A doctor would perform a pelvic massage until the woman underwent what they called a hysterical paroxysm. In other words, the family doctor would offer hand relief. Can you believe that? And all the time Victorian Englishmen were using prostitutes on a scale that dwarfs anything going on today. We weren’t much better here in Northern Germany. At least they knew a bit more about sex in the south.’

‘You didn’t come here to talk about Victorian English or Wilhelmine German sexual kinks. What do you want?’

‘Lie on your belly. Do it.’ Fabel complied. She forced his head sideways, facing away from her. ‘If you see my face,’ she explained, ‘I’ll have to kill you. I came here about the notice in Muliebritas.’

‘What notice?’ said Fabel, his cheek buried in the pillow.

‘You know what notice.’ She twisted the ligature tight. Tighter than she had before. When she released it Fabel gasped for breath, his lungs screaming for the oxygen.

‘The quote from Njal’s Saga,’ he gasped. ‘Is that what you mean?’

‘Did you place it?’

‘No.’

The ligature tightened again.

‘Did you place it?’

Incapable of speaking, Fabel shook his head and again she turned his air supply back on.

‘If you didn’t place it, then who did?’

‘I don’t know…’ Fabel’s voice was still small and tight.

‘You said something about tomorrow. What is in Muliebritas that has to do with tomorrow?’

‘I can’t tell you. I won’t tell you. And anyway, you don’t want to know. It’s to do with Anke. About catching her. If I tell you, you become part of it all.’

‘All right,’ she said. ‘I won’t interfere. I want you to catch her. I want this all to be over so that I can get on with my life again.

‘Listen to me, Fabel…’ She still whispered in his ear, but this time there was nothing seductive in her tone, just a hiss of menace and threat. ‘You’re a policeman. You’ve seen so much over the years. You’ve seen so many women battered, raped, strangled, abused. So many girls and women whose last moments were spent in terror. And unimaginable horror. But you can imagine it, can’t you? You have to imagine it. You’ve looked at what other men can do to women and you’ve asked yourself that dark, dark question: am I capable of that? So much pain, so much fear. And there have been times you’ve been filled with that dark, dark fear: what if it happened to my daughter, to my partner, to my mother… Well, listen to me and remember what I tell you: the Valkyrie you’re looking for is Anke. Not me. Leave me alone. Don’t come looking for me. Don’t even start looking for me. If you do, I will target every woman close to you. Your lover, your daughter, your mother — I will make them victims. I will make them suffer before they die. Do you understand?’ She tightened the ligature again. ‘I can’t hurt them if I’m dead or in prison, so I’ll make sure I get to them before you get to me. If I get the slightest hint that you’re on my trail, I’ll come after them. Put your hands behind your head.’

Fabel did as he was told. He felt something sting his neck. Something cold in his veins. The darkness of the bedroom deepened. He left the world.

This time wakefulness came on him like an explosion. Sudden, complete, raw.

Fabel threw himself from the bed and slammed painfully onto the floor. He leaned against the wall and pulled himself up until he was standing on shaking, unsteady legs. He looked around the bedroom wildly, seeking out every shadow. Stumbling to the wall switch, he flooded the room with painfully bright light.

She was gone. He found his trousers and scrabbled through the pockets until he found the key for the secure cabinet where he kept his automatic. He took the safety off and snapped back the carriage before leaving the bedroom, going through the whole apartment, room by room, switching on the lights and sweeping each room with his gun. It was only when he was sure he was alone that he went into the bathroom and surrendered to the nausea that had churned in his gut since his first moment awake. Whatever she had injected into him had left him with a thundering headache and a sick feeling that didn’t clear even after he had vomited.