Craig Russell - The Carnival Master

Ankowitsch leaned over the counter and craned his neck to check there were no guests on the stairs. ‘Yes. Yes, she was. I’ve seen her before. We don’t encourage it but we do turn a bit of a blind eye. There are a lot of ships passing every night of the year here. So long as there is no trouble, and that it is contained and discreet, we don’t delve too deeply into whether the relationships between our guests are personal or professional.’

‘Who was with her?’ asked Fabel.

‘A man, about thirty-five… Well-dressed. Good-looking. I got the impression that they’d been somewhere, well, swankier than here beforehand. She was smartly dressed too.’ Ankowitsch gave a small laugh. ‘Although I must say I thought her choice of costume was a bit ill-advised.’

‘In what way?’ asked Scholz.

‘Well, she was wearing this figure-hugging skirt. Like a nineteen-fifties pencil skirt. It looked expensive, but it was really inappropriate for her.’

Scholz made an impatient face.

‘She had this enormous backside. Huge. She was a really attractive girl otherwise. But it was almost as if she was trying to attract attention to it. That’s why we thought it was so funny… you know, when she came running out later screaming that the guy had bitten it.’

‘Was she badly bitten?’

‘Oh yes… there was quite a lot of blood and one of our Polish girls here, Marta, had to help her. Marta said the bitten girl was Ukrainian, but she understood everything that Marta said to her in Polish. They can understand each other, apparently. Anyway, Marta said it was a really bad bite and told the girl that she would have to go to hospital, but she didn’t want to.’

‘Where was the man while all this was happening?’ asked Fabel.

‘As soon as the commotion started he must have grabbed his stuff and made a run for it. Down the stairs – he didn’t use the lift. I went straight up to the room with a porter but the guy was gone when we got there.’

‘And the room. Did he pay for it or did she?’

‘He did. Cash. He said he had left his credit-card wallet at home. We usually ask for a credit card so that we can charge anything taken from the mini-bar, but he gave us a hundred-Euro deposit instead.’

‘Let me guess: he didn’t pick up the deposit,’ said Fabel.

Ankowitsch reddened. ‘No.’ Fabel guessed that the deposit would have gone into the manager’s pocket.

‘We need to find this girl,’ said Scholz. ‘You say you have seen her before?’

Ankowitsch looked uneasy. ‘Yes. She’s been here once before. Maybe twice.’

‘And the man?’

‘No. I can’t say I ever saw him before that night.’

‘Do you have any idea where we could find this girl?’ asked Fabel.

Ankowitsch’s unease seemed to intensify. He got the phone directory from under the counter, flicked through it and noted down some details on a pad. He tore the sheet out and held it out to Fabel.

Scholz took it from his hand. ‘Thank you for your cooperation,’ he said.

‘I suspect Herr Ankowitsch has a liking for big bums himself,’ Scholz said to Fabel on the way back to the car. ‘He seemed to be pretty sure which escort agency she worked for.’

Fabel sat back in the passenger seat of Scholz’s VW and suddenly felt very tired. It had been a long day and he had probably had more Kolsch beer than he should have had earlier. He found himself grateful that Scholz was uncharacteristically taciturn as he drove through the city. Fabel watched Cologne go by as they drove, glittering in the blue-black night. Fabel began to realise that it was taking them longer to get back to his hotel and that he didn’t recognise the area they were in. All of a sudden they were down by the Rhine. There was a lot of building going on by the river and the superstructure of two vast buildings, shaped like oversized shipyard cranes, loomed above them. Scholz braked hard as he parked his VW on a concrete slipway and got out, slamming the door and walking to the water’s edge where he stood illuminated in the car headlights.

Fabel got out and stood beside Scholz. There was a moment’s silence as the two men watched a long barge drift by, a flag at the stern flapping in the dark.

‘Are you going to tell me what this is all about?’ Scholz said quietly, without taking his eyes off the barge. ‘I walk in on you and that guy from the BKA and you look as if I’ve caught you with your trousers around your ankles… Then I find out you’ve been carrying out private investigations in my city while I’m otherwise occupied. I’d like to know what the fuck is going on, sir.’

Fabel sighed. ‘When I told you that I’d crossed paths with Vasyl Vitrenko you said it was a dangerous path to cross. Well, it was. It ended up with two officers dead and one very seriously injured. She only just made it. Her name is Maria Klee and she was my top officer… in fact, she should have been in line to take over from me. But although the physical stuff healed she’s had mental problems. Maria’s on extended sick leave. She’s had a major breakdown and was supposed to be receiving treatment. The problem is that I think she’s down here trying to find Vitrenko single-handed.’

‘I see…’ Scholz turned to Fabel. ‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’

‘You have your own priorities.’

‘Yes. Yes, I do. And I am not fucking about here. I have a murderer to catch. This guy is going to kill again, in just over two weeks’ time, unless I can get to him first. I called on your expertise in good faith.’

‘I know that, Benni.’

‘But you’ve had this other agenda going on all the time. To be honest, I feel sorry for your officer, but it’s really not my problem. I thought I had your undivided attention on my case.’

‘Let’s get this straight, Commissar… I am here to give you all the support you need. But I am also concerned about my officer and I will continue to try to locate her. That doesn’t mean you’re only getting a half-hearted effort from me.’

‘Oh, wait a fucking minute…’ Scholz’s face became suddenly animated. ‘I get it now… this is my business, isn’t it? No wonder we couldn’t trace the female cop or immigration officer who was questioning Slavko Dmytruk before he got hacked to bits in the restaurant kitchen. That was her, wasn’t it?’

‘I think it might have been. That doesn’t mean it was.’

‘Right…’ Scholz turned and headed back to the car. ‘First thing tomorrow, you and I are going to have a chat with my boss.’

Scholz had said nothing on the five-minute drive back to Fabel’s hotel. Fabel paused before getting out of the car.

‘Listen, Benni,’ he said. ‘I meant what I said. I’ll help you nail this serial, and I can’t stop you going to your boss about Maria. But all that will do is hold up both cases.’

‘Your personal missing-person hunt isn’t a case. Mine is.’

‘Whatever way you want to put it. But we are beginning to make progress in this Karneval Cannibal case. Do you really want me to be tied up in some inquiry?’

‘What are you proposing?’

‘My priority here is just the same as yours – to catch this lunatic before he kills again. But your resources would make it much easier for me to track down Maria before she gets herself into serious trouble. But the deal is that we nail this son of a bitch first.’ Fabel grinned. ‘Come and have a drink at the bar and we can discuss it.’

Scholz stared ahead, his hands still resting on the steering wheel. ‘Okay… and you’re paying.’

As he had done every morning, Fabel took a taxi from his hotel across the Severinsbrucke bridge and into the Kalk area of the city where the Cologne Police Presidium was situated. It was a brighter morning and, as the taxi crossed the Rhine, Fabel was able to look along the river’s length to the ironwork arches of the Sudbrucke rail bridge. Several long barges drifted along the Rhine, some heading south into the heart of Europe, others north to Holland and the rest of the world. He tried to imagine a time before cars, high-speed trains or lorries: Scholz’s analogy of a medieval version of an autobahn was fitting. There was something timeless about this river, today’s barges carrying on a tradition that was almost as old as European civilisation.