Craig Russell - The Valkyrie Song

She took the corner at Poseldorfer Weg at high speed, tyres screeching. Turning sharp right into a side street, a cul-de-sac, she pulled into the kerb, reversing to park normally behind another car. She saw the blue lights flash past the road end. A second police car slowed down almost to a halt at the end of the cul-de-sac, obviously checking it out, before taking off after the first car.

Anke got out of the car as quickly as she could, but found her leg was stiffening up. She could feel the wet in her shoe and inside her trouser leg. She couldn’t look now. She needed to get away. Put as much distance as possible, as quickly as possible, between herself and the car.

She still had her shoulder bag strapped across her chest. She released the empty magazine from the Beretta’s grip and slammed in a full one. She walked without limping along the quiet street and took a sudden left turn through the gate of one of the houses. She could see it was a substantial villa that had been converted into apartments. She walked up to the main door as if she had done so every day in her life and checked the names on the buzzer board. There was an apartment with two different surnames. It was by no means guaranteed, but she guessed it was lived in by an unmarried couple without kids, probably a younger couple. They would probably be out at work. She pressed the buzzer. No answer, which was what she wanted. She then proceeded to press every buzzer until she got an answer. An older woman’s voice.

‘Delivery,’ said Anke.

The door lock was buzzed open. Anke pushed open the door and shoved the toe of her boot in to stop it closing completely. She pressed the old woman’s buzzer again.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Wrong address. I thought this was Poseldorfer Weg.’ After listening to the old woman’s complaints, Anke let herself in and eased the door quietly shut behind her. She stood for a moment and caught her breath, listening out for the sounds of a suspicious old woman on the stairwell. When she was convinced she was alone, she climbed the stairs to the first floor. She found the flat she was looking for and picked the lock.

Once inside, she checked every room to make sure that the flat was really empty. She looked down at the wooden floor. She had left bloody footprints all along the hall. That meant there was a trail all the way up the stairs and probably from the car. Even if it wasn’t visible, it would be very easy for a police sniffer dog to follow. She would have to be quick. Going through to the bedroom, she checked out the woman’s wardrobe. She was a size bigger than Anke, but that didn’t matter: a size smaller would have been useless. Anke laid out a range of trousers, jumpers and jackets on the bed and made a quick selection from them. She also found a shoulder bag to replace her own: smaller, but it would do.

The bathroom was small, and Anke had to lean against the wall as she eased out of her shoes, trousers and tights, leaving a pool of blood on the tiled floor. She turned her calf to examine the wound: the bullet had not lodged in her leg but had carved its passage by gouging out a chunk of flesh. There was no bath, but Anke was able to take down the shower head and run hot water over the wound before wrapping a towel tight around her calf. She found the bathroom cabinet and tipped everything out into the basin. She took a second towel and doused it with antiseptic. There was a bandage still in its wrapper but no other dressings. She went into the bedroom again and went through the drawers until she found a packet of sanitary pads which she took back through to the bathroom.

Anke removed the towel from her leg and pushed the antiseptic-soaked pad into the wound. The pain exploded hot and sharp and she suppressed a scream into an inhuman sound caged behind her tightly clenched teeth. Applying two sanitary pads to the wound, she bound them in place with the bandage. When she was finished, she washed her hands and the sweat from her face. There was a photograph on the dresser, presumably of the couple who lived in the flat. The woman was tall and slim like Anke and didn’t look a full size bigger, but she had dark hair and an olive tone to her skin. Anke reckoned her make-up would be heavier and darker than that which Anke normally used, and she spent five minutes in front of the mirror completely changing her face with a few strokes of the woman’s make-up brush. She then changed into the clothes she’d laid out, putting on a pair of knee-length boots under her trousers. It was a struggle to get the left boot zipped up over the wound, but Anke reckoned the boot would help keep the dressing tight and in place.

Once she had put on the change of clothes, including an ankle-length coat and a beret-style hat, Anke looked at herself in the mirror. A different woman with a different style, a different history, a different life.

Before leaving the flat, Anke tried to work out what to do with her discarded clothes. Her DNA would be all over them. But there again, she thought, her DNA was now all over half of Hamburg. There was no forensic distance this time.

It was over. She knew that. Uncle Georg was dead. Or captured. She had to get out of Hamburg. She had identities she could use, she had enough money to live on for the rest of her life. Maybe this could be a new beginning. The next twenty-four hours would tell.

She put the Beretta, the magazines, her polycarbide knife and the box of sanitary pads into her shoulder bag. She went over to the window and checked out the street below. It seemed quiet, but she could hear the sound of sirens in the streets all around. She was going to have to walk through it all and out of Poseldorf.

And then she would be free.

Fabel had watched it all. He had stood and watched as Anna had been gunned down. He had seen the flashes, then Anna crumple to the ground. He should have stayed where he was, but, without thinking, he found himself running down the stairs and out onto the street, screaming into the radio for an ambulance.

By the time he got to Anna there were already two MEK officers tending to her, applying first-aid-kit pressure pads to the wounds in her legs. Werner was there too, brushing the hair away from her face. Fabel felt sick as he saw the crimson bloom on the white gauze of the pressure pads.

‘Anna…’ He dropped to his knees beside her. ‘Anna… I’m so sorry.’

Her face was pale, almost grey. Her breathing was shallow and short, but she shook her head and smiled weakly. ‘Not your fault. Mine. I’m ready for that anger-management course now…’

The ambulance arrived and the paramedics set to work on her, ordering Werner and Fabel to stand back. Dietz, the MEK commander, approached them.

‘What the hell were you doing?’ Fabel screamed in his face. ‘How the fuck did you allow this to happen? I brought you into this because this is exactly what I didn’t want to happen.’ He pointed in the direction of the paramedics working on Anna.

‘Before you start shooting your mouth off, Fabel, I’d remind you that two of my men are dead, two more critical from burns. This isn’t my fuck-up — it’s yours. Why the hell didn’t you give us the say-so to take her down before she got to the road? She knew that we would have to choose our shots if she got between us and occupied buildings. There…’ He jabbed a gloved finger in the direction of the park. ‘That’s where our chances were best.’

Werner, now without his wig, placed his considerable bulk between them. ‘Pack it in, for God’s sake. This isn’t helping. Jan, we’ve got three more down — the hostage is critical, shot in the gut. We’ve got a dead uniform and another wounded civilian. It’s a mess, all right.’

‘Have we found the car yet?’

‘No. It can’t be that hard — the windscreen’s shot out.’