Craig Russell - The Carnival Master

But visiting the site had served its purpose. An hors d’oeuvre. An electronic appetiser to sharpen his hunger for the main course. The real thing.

Tomorrow night. He had arranged everything for Friday evening. Maybe this was an agency he could deal with again. After all, the company’s name seemed like a positive omen. What could be more fitting than an escort agency called A la Carte?

What struck Fabel right away was that the file wasn’t just about murders that had already occurred: it was also about a murder that was expected. That was of course true of any suspected serial killer, but in this case the Cologne police were not just expecting another murder, they even had a pretty clear idea about the day when it would take place.

Cologne’s big thing was Karneval, the riotous celebration that took place before Lent every year. As a Protestant North German, Fabel found Karneval alien. He was aware of it, obviously, but he had never experienced it other than through the coverage he had seen on television. Even Cologne was a relatively unknown quantity to him: he had been there only a couple of times and never for very long. As he sank deeper into the case in the file, he found himself lost in an environment of unfamiliar landmarks. It struck him how difficult it would be for a unit such as the one proposed by van Heiden and Wagner to function effectively across the whole of Germany. One land, a score of different cultures. And if you considered East and West, two different histories.

Cologne’s Karneval was unique. Further south there were the more traditional forms of Fasching and Fastnacht. In Dusseldorf, Cologne’s great rival, or in Mainz, Karneval took a similar form but never quite matched the anarchic exuberance of the Cologne event. And Karneval in Cologne was much more than a date in the diary: it was part of the Cologne psyche. It defined what it meant to be to be a Cologner.

Fabel had already known about the case. Like all killings of their type, the two murders had all the ingredients of a good and lurid headline. The killer that the Cologne police were hunting struck only during Karneval. There had only been two victims: one the previous year, the first the year before that. But the investigating officer – Senior Commissar Benni Scholz – had recognised the modus of the killer as soon as he had arrived at the second murder scene. He had warned his superiors that another homicide could follow within the same Karneval season, fearing that the killer’s serial offending might escalate. There hadn’t been another murder, but Fabel agreed with the faceless Commissar behind the report that the killer would strike again. This year, during the coming Karneval.

Fabel laid the case files out on the coffee table. Both victims had been in their late twenties, female, single. Their backgrounds showed little commonality. Sabine Jordanski had been a hairdresser. Melissa Schenker had worked from home: some kind of software designer. Where Jordanski had been the life and soul of the party, Schenker had been quiet, reserved and almost reclusive. Jordanski had been native Kolsch, born and bred in the city; Schenker had been an outsider from Kassel who had settled in Cologne three years before. The investigation had revealed no shared friends or acquaintances. No links. Other than the way they had met their deaths.

Both women had been strangled. There was evidence of manual strangulation and then the use of a ligature: the male neckties that had been left around their throats as a signature by the killer. Scholz had explained the possible significance of this signature: Weiberfastnacht was a key date in the Cologne Karneval calendar. Always held on the last Thursday before Lent, Weiberfastnacht was Women’s Karneval Day, when women ruled. Every woman in Cologne had, on Women’s Karneval Day, the right to demand a kiss from any man. It was also a custom that women had the right, if they saw a man wearing a necktie, to cut it in half. It was intended as a symbol of overturning the traditional authority of men over women. In a more enlightened and equal cultural environment, the custom had become a bit of fun and nothing more. But Commissar Scholz expressed his belief that it meant a great deal more to the killer. He suspected that the killer was motivated either by a psychotic misogyny or a sexually motivated resentment of women. Scholz clearly felt that this view explained the post-mortem disfigurement of the bodies: approximately half a kilo of flesh had been excised from the right buttock of both victims. Fabel could see the Cologne officer’s logic, but thought it premature. He suspected that there was more to this killer than met the eye.

Fabel had lost track of time and realised he had been sitting going through the file for a couple of hours by the time Susanne came through, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

‘I woke up and you were gone,’ she said, yawning. ‘What’s wrong? Another one of your bad dreams?’

‘No… no,’ he lied. ‘Just couldn’t sleep, that’s all.’

Susanne saw the file open on the coffee table. The pictures spread out. Dead faces. Forensic reports. ‘Oh… I see. What’s this?’ There was more than a hint of suspicion in her voice.

‘I’ve been asked to look at a case in Cologne. Just to offer an opinion.’

Susanne’s face clouded. ‘You cannot afford to get involved with another case, Jan. Roland Bartz has been more patient than anyone could reasonably expect. He’s not going to wait around for ever. But there again, maybe that’s what you’re hoping for.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You know damned well. You’ve dithered and fluttered about like some reluctant virgin. I don’t think you can go through with it. I think that’s what all this is about. You can’t commit to leaving the police.’

‘That’s crap, Susanne. I have committed to it. I’ve resigned. I even turned down an offer from van Heiden and the BKA today.’

‘What offer?’

Fabel stared at Susanne for a moment. Her dark eyes burned in the soft light. He already regretted mentioning it.

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘What offer?’

‘They want to create a new unit. A sort of Federal Murder Commission. A unit based here in Hamburg that could take on complex cases elsewhere in Germany. They asked me to set it up and head it.’

Susanne laughed bitterly. ‘Great. Absolutely marvellous. I spend all my time worrying about your state of mind because of the crap you have to deal with here and you’re off discussing how to increase your workload by seeking out cases across Germany.’

‘I told you, I said no.’ Fabel had raised his voice. He took a breath and lowered it. ‘I said no.’

‘What’s the matter, Jan? Did you nearly lose your temper? Did you nearly lose control there?’

‘Susanne…’

‘Don’t you realise that that is your problem? You’re so buttoned up. You were never meant to be a policeman, don’t you see that? If it hadn’t been for the sainted Hanna Dorn being murdered it would never have occurred to you to become one. For the life of me I don’t know why you felt you owed it to her to throw away your future and choose a job that otherwise you would never have considered. Everybody goes on about what a great detective you are. About all the cases you’ve cleared up. But it’s screwed you up. I hear it, Jan. Every other night. The dreams. The nightmares. Don’t you see that you’re as bad as Maria Klee? You witness all of that horror and the crap that people inflict on each other and you screw it down deep inside. And if you don’t stop, you’re going to crack up. Big time.’

‘You see the same things. You delve into their minds, for God’s sake.’

‘But don’t you see that’s different? I chose to be a criminal psychologist. I trained for it. Prepared for it. I took every step towards my career deliberately. I chose it because it was the direction in which my interests and skills took me. Not because I was diverted into it by some northern bloody Lutheran sense of crusade.’ Susanne paused. ‘The difference between you and me is that I can deal with it. I can keep it out of my private life.’