Craig Russell - The Valkyrie Song

‘So you think she’s still in Blankenese?’ asked van Heiden.

‘If she dumped the car and came here on foot, then she has a purpose.’ Fabel went over to the uniformed Commissar who had arrived with the alarm engineer. ‘You’re from PK26 in Osdorf?’

‘Yes, Herr Principal Chief Commissar.’

‘Can you get on to the Commissariat and tell them we need as many bodies as possible down here right now? We’re searching for a woman called Anke Wollner who lived in this house under the name Jana Eigen.’

Something akin to shock crossed the young Commissar’s face. ‘My God — you mean the person who killed those cops in the city centre? You think she’s here?’

‘Just get on to Osdorf and get people out here.’

Fabel turned back to Vestergaard and van Heiden. ‘Why would she come back? I know I’m repeating myself but it doesn’t make sense. We can assume that she has several alternative identities up her sleeve and we failed to contain her at the crime scene. She could, presumably, disappear into thin air. She must have worked out by now that something’s happened to Georg Drescher.’

Fabel froze.

‘They gave him up…’

‘What?’ asked van Heiden.

‘Hold on.’ Fabel used his cellphone to call the Presidium and asked to speak to Hans Gessler.

‘He’s left for the evening,’ said the duty officer on the other end.

‘Then patch me through to his cellphone.’

There was a pause. Fabel covered the mouthpiece and spoke to van Heiden and Vestergaard. ‘They gave Drescher up. It was Gina Bronsted who hired the Valkyrie all these years. Drescher had enough on Bronsted to send her away for life. It would be his pension policy. When Bronsted was tidying up the loose ends of Westland, Claasens and Lensch, she had already planned to tidy up Frolov and Drescher too. She used the other Valkyrie, mad Margarethe Paulus, to do her dirty work. It was Bronsted who provided Margarethe with all of the cash and resources she needed. But she never did anything directly…’ He held up his hand and turned his attention back to his cellphone.

‘Hi, Hans? It’s Fabel — where did you say Svend Langstrup lived?’

‘What? Oh… Blankenese.’

‘Do you have the address?’

‘I think it’s somewhere just behind Strandweg. Hold on…’ After a few moments, Gessler came back with the address.

‘She’s here to kill Svend Langstrup,’ said Fabel once he’d hung up. ‘And then, if I’m right, she’ll go after Gina Bronsted.’

Langstrup brought the wine through to the lounge. Anke sat on the rug in front of the fire and watched the flames. The fire’s glow accentuated the perfect sweep of her cheek and jawline, and added gold to her pale blonde hair.

‘Warmer?’

‘Mmm, I am now,’ she murmured contentedly, despite the persistent nagging of her leg wound. Anke looked around the room. She took a full mouthful of wine. Her eyes fell on a silver-framed photograph on a side table. In it Langstrup and an attractive woman with strawberry-blonde hair stood together in a garden. They both faced the camera and Langstrup embraced her, his arms wrapped around her shoulders. They both wore smiles: his one of complete contentment. Joy. The woman’s was different. As if she wasn’t really there behind the smile. It was something that Anke recognised.

‘Your wife?’

He nodded, but did not look at the photograph. ‘Yes. That’s Silke.’

‘She’s very pretty.’

‘Yes.’

‘Where is she tonight? I don’t think she’d approve of you bringing strange women in from the beach and plying them with drink…’

‘Silke had problems. Mental-health issues.’ He stared into his wine glass. ‘Depression. She committed suicide.’

‘Oh God — I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have asked…’

‘You weren’t to know. It was a natural enough question,’ Langstrup said and took a long sip of white wine. ‘It was two years ago. The police said it was unclear whether it was accidental death or suicide. She didn’t leave a note, you see.’

‘Is that why you were down by the water?’

‘I don’t know. Yes, maybe.’

Anke looked at the photograph again; at the mask of a smile pulled over a void.

‘I really am so sorry,’ said Anke and she stood up. ‘I know what it’s like to lose someone like that.’

‘Do you? I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘My uncle.’ She took another sip of wine and gazed at the fire. ‘I know it doesn’t sound much, but he was more than my uncle. More like a father. My parents… well, my parents weren’t around and he brought me up. Taught me everything I know. All that I am I owe to him.’

‘He died recently?’

‘Yes.’ She placed the wine glass down on the coffee table and turned to face him square on. Langstrup looked up at her quizzically. ‘Is everything all right?’

The doorbell rang.

‘Excuse me,’ he said. He stood up and shrugged apologetically. ‘I don’t get many visitors, but tonight…’

The ringing of the doorbell became insistent. Then banging on the door. Langstrup frowned and made towards the hall.

As soon as Langstrup turned his back to her, Anke leapt forward. The black polycarbide knife arced round and caught him in the side of the neck. She locked his head with the other arm and used her weight to drag him down onto the floor, but he was strong and skilled. His elbow slammed into her ribs and they crashed into the coffee table. The knife was still in his neck but she had misjudged it and obviously had missed the carotid. She could hear the front door being kicked in. She let go of Langstrup and leapt to her feet, slightly off balance because of the wound in her calf.

The front door flew open and banged against the hall wall. She snapped the Beretta from the waistband of her skirt. Langstrup rolled over, clutching the hilt of the knife rammed into his neck, his small, hard eyes now wild and full of terror. The way she had wanted it.

The three police officers burst into the living room and aimed their weapons at her. Screaming at her to drop the gun. She recognised one of them as Jan Fabel, who had headed the operation in the Alsterpark. She knew the woman was Karin Vestergaard, the boss and former lover of Jens Jespersen, whom Anke had killed in his hotel room. Anke had a choice, she knew that: take them on or finish Langstrup. She looked at the two men and a woman at the door. Their faces were tight and anxious. She smiled at them. It’s not so bad, she wanted to tell them. Don’t be scared, killing really isn’t so bad.

The adrenalin in her system slowed everything down. She felt, for a moment, outside time. She thought about Liane and Margarethe. She thought again about Uncle Georg. She thought about all the meetings she had had, all the last moments she had shared.

Anke Wollner made her decision. She fired four shots into Langstrup, all of them into his head, before the police opened fire.

Outside, afterwards, Fabel, Vestergaard and van Heiden sat together in the back of a police bus with blacked-out windows. It was an oasis of quiet while outside a maelstrom of police, forensics and press swirled around them.

‘Are you okay?’ Fabel asked them both, but his question was aimed more at van Heiden who sat grim-faced, his elbows resting on his knees and his gaze fixed at some spot on the floor of the bus.

‘Why do I get the feeling that we’ve just participated in an assisted suicide?’ asked van Heiden.

‘We did what we had to do,’ said Vestergaard. ‘We would have been next.’

‘I guess that ties up the Valkyrie case,’ said van Heiden to Fabel.

‘Yes, I suppose it does,’ said Fabel. ‘Other than nailing the person who instigated and paid for all of this mayhem. Gina Bronsted.’