Craig Russell - The Carnival Master

‘Is there a problem?’ Resting her red-fingernailed hands on the table, Andrea leaned in close and spoke in a calm, quiet tone. The couple had been so engrossed in their heated exchange that they had not noticed Andrea approach. The young man turned his acne towards her. His eyes traced the contours of her body. Andrea was wearing a tight black T-shirt with the cafe’s logo on it. Her biceps bulged beneath the short sleeves, and her breasts were pulled into small, tight buns on her wide, taut pectoral muscles. There was a trace of a smirk on the man’s lips.

‘What’s it to you?’ The smirk ripened into a sneer.

‘You’re beginning to disturb the other customers.’ Andrea kept her voice calm and low. ‘That’s what it is to me. I think you should leave. Now.’

‘What about our coffees?’ asked the man. The girl had her head down, letting her hair fall like a curtain to hide her face from the other customers in the cafe.

‘You’ve drunk most of them,’ said Andrea. ‘Leave the rest. It’s on the house.’

‘Just what the fuck are you?’ The young man with the acne now seemed aware he had an audience. He leaned back as if appraising her: the mane of platinum hair tied back in a ponytail, the heavy make-up, the deep red lipstick, the power-lifter shoulders. ‘I mean, we were just trying to work that out – what you were born as. Male or female. Fuck knows I can’t tell now. You a shemale?’

Andrea straightened up. ‘Leave. Now.’

‘What makes you think you can work here among normal people? I mean, they sell food in here, for fuck’s sake. People eat here. You’re enough to turn anyone’s stomach.’

Still his female partner sat still and silent behind her curtain of hair.

‘You’ve got two seconds to leave,’ said Andrea, her calm tone belying the furnace of hate and anger that burned in her belly. ‘Or I’ll call the cops.’

The man got up and tugged at the girl’s sleeve. She rose quickly, slid out from behind the table and slipped swiftly out of the cafe without making eye contact with anyone. The ugly young man eyed Andrea hatefully. He tried to push her out of the way but Andrea’s body wouldn’t yield.

‘Fucking freak…’ He laughed derisively as he was forced to squeeze past her sideways. Andrea watched them as they left the cafe and walked past the window, the man laughing through the glass at her, his companion still trying to be unnoticed. When they were out of sight Andrea took a deep breath and turned to the other customers with a broad smile of red lips and strong white teeth.

‘Sorry about that,’ she said. There were a few regulars amongst the customers and one of them said: ‘Well done – that’s the way to deal with trash like that.’

Andrea kept her smile in place. ‘Could you spell me for a while, Britta?’ she asked the other waitress and strode into the kitchen. Andrea swiftly exited through the back door onto the alley. She sprinted along the narrow lane to where a side street ran at right angles to Eintrachtstrasse, then up to the junction with Cordulastrasse. They were there. The girl still had her head bowed while the little shit berated her loudly about something. Their body language, his aggressive, hers submissive, expressed to the world the whole dynamic of their relationship; and Andrea could see that violence played a part in it. There were hardly any other pedestrians and only a few cars passed along the slushy-wet road, with the sound of waves on a shore. Andrea ducked back around the corner. The cold air turned the skin of her salon-tanned naked arms into gooseflesh. But inside the rage still burned.

The man was too busy shouting abuse at the girl to notice Andrea blocking his way. He looked startled as she grabbed the front of his coat and dragged him into the side street.

‘What did you call me?’ Her face hardened into sinew under the make-up. He didn’t answer and she slammed him hard against the brickwork. ‘I said: what the fuck did you call me?’

‘I… I…’ The little shit’s expression betrayed his fear and confusion.

Andrea looked at his pasty, acne-covered face. Deep inside her, someone opened the door of the blast furnace of her hate. It surged up in her, white-hot. Her forehead slammed into his face and she felt his nose break. She let him go and he stared at her wildly, his face covered in blood. Andrea took advantage of his shock and slammed a boot hard into his groin. Gasping and retching, he sunk to his knees, clutching his crushed testicles. Andrea turned to the girl. She was staring, horrified, at her boyfriend as he keeled over and lay on his side on the pavement. Mouth open, a strangled scream in her throat, her eyes filled with tears.

‘You’re worse than him,’ Andrea spoke to the girl in a disgusted tone. ‘You’re worse for playing the victim. For putting up with it. I despise you. I despise all women like you. Why do you let him treat you like that… in public? Have you no self-respect?’

The girl was still staring at her boyfriend. Shock and fear on her face. Andrea snorted, turned on her heel and strode back towards the cafe. As she did so, the girl’s shrill screaming rang in her ears: ‘You freak! You sick fucking FREAK!’

Maria sat on the edge of the hotel bed and assessed her plan: she knew that the only way to conquer chaos was to have a plan.

The idea had come to her when Liese had phoned her just after all the trouble with Frank. Liese was an old school friend from Hanover with whom Maria had kept in touch. She knew all about Maria’s problems and had always been supportive. Liese had offered Maria a chance to get away from it all: to come and spend a few days with her in Cologne. Maria had thanked her but had said no. She would need more than a short break in Cologne for what she had planned. Then it had all come together: Liese had phoned Maria and told her that work meant that she had to go to Japan for three months. The opportunity had come up unexpectedly and had caught Liese somewhat on the hop and she was worried about her flat lying empty. Maria would be doing her a favour if she stayed in the flat. Liese knew that Maria needed a change of scene, so the arrangement seemed ideal. But Liese had found it a little strange when Maria asked her to tell only her immediate neighbours about the arrangement, and even then only to give them Maria’s first name.

‘I need to be anonymous for a while,’ Maria had explained. The flat was in the Belgian Quarter near one of the gates that were remnants of Cologne’s old city wall. Liese had told Maria that the Dresslers, the only neighbours on the same floor, were a young professional couple without kids who were out at work all day and were also often out in the evening. There were a couple of families on the floor below and on the ground floor there was a younger man whom Liese never really ran into, as well as another young professional couple. It was perfect. But it would not be enough on its own: she would need more than one safe house. In any case, Liese would not be leaving until the end of the week. Maria had decided to check into the budget hotel for a few days. She might even keep the hotel room for a while after she moved into the flat.

She took her laptop from her briefcase.

Sitting on the bed, Maria opened up the files she had accessed from the BKA database before she took her sick leave. There had been a limit to what her clearance as a Hamburg Murder Commission detective had allowed her to access and the information was general, but there were enough pieces of the picture to give her a starting point. She had even endured a lunch appointment with a woman she had been at the Landespolizeischule academy with and who was now a hotshot with the BKA Federal Crime Bureau. Maria had noticed the look of alarm on her table companion’s face when she saw how changed Maria was. Maria had been able to establish the existence of a much more detailed dossier on Vitrenko, but then the BKA woman had become reluctant to discuss it further. Maria suspected that she had become concerned about Maria’s state of mind.