Craig Russell - The Carnival Master

‘Listen, it’s a hobby more than anything else… I don’t do it for the money…’

‘Just for pleasure,’ Scholz sneered. Schnaus’s face reddened.

‘Listen, I can’t explain it. It’s just something…’ He let the thought die. ‘What is it you want to know?’

‘For a start you can tell us where you were on the evening of Friday the twentieth of January.’

Schnaus typed something into his computer. ‘I was in Frankfurt. At a conference.’

‘Can anyone confirm this?’

‘About a hundred people. I gave a talk there to introduce a new product.’

‘You stayed overnight?’

‘Yes. Three days in total.’

‘What kind of new product?’ asked Fabel. ‘I mean, what kind of software do you sell?’

‘We’re distributors for gaming software. Other stuff too, like interactive software for training, that kind of thing.’

‘Have you ever heard of a game designer called Melissa Schenker?’

‘No…’ If Schnaus was lying he was covering it up well. ‘I can’t say I have.’

‘What about a role-playing game called The Lords of Misrule?’

‘Oh yes… more than heard of it, we distribute it.’

‘Melissa Schenker designed Lords of Misrule,’ said Fabel.

‘Oh. I wouldn’t know that. It’s not part of the portfolio I represent. And anyway, I’m not always familiar with who designed or conceived the games.’

There was a pause.

‘Why do you do this, Herr Schnaus?’ asked Fabel. ‘I mean you have a good job, a family. Why do you feel the need to run a website like this?’

‘Inside each of us is a little chaos. Some have more than others. I have an orderly life here. I am a good husband and father and my wife knows nothing of my… well, the stranger side of my nature… If I kept that chaos completely bottled up then there’s a chance it would explode. Destroy all the order and stability in my life. So I run a harmless, non-pornographic website relating to vorarephilia and cannibalism.’

Fabel thought of another ordinary businessman with an ordered, stable life who had tried to keep the chaos within bottled up tight. Right up until he had blown his brains out in front of Fabel.

‘Where the hell do you get the idea that anything relating to cannibalism – particularly sexual cannibalism – is harmless?’ Fabel asked.

‘I don’t mean any harm…’ said Schnaus weakly.

‘I’ll tell you why we’re here, Herr Schnaus,’ said Scholz. ‘We have a complete nutter who is running about biting chunks out of women. He may also have murdered several. That, my friend, does not strike me as being a bit of harmless fun. I’ve looked at your website. I’m not surprised that you want to keep all of that filth away from your wife. My guess is that if she were to find out about your little hobby you wouldn’t see her or your kids for dust. Now I am quite prepared to get a warrant and turn this place upside down. It may be your home but your little website is run from here and that puts it right at the heart of a major murder investigation. I promise you that by tomorrow morning this place will be crawling with forensic technicians, uniformed police officers and, if anyone were indiscreet enough to tip them off, with members of the press.’

Schnaus looked as if he was about to be sick. ‘No… please, no… I’ll do anything you want. I’ll give you any information you need. And I promise I’ll shut down the site. Just tell me what you want me to do

… I just don’t want my wife and kids to know.’

‘Well, one thing we don’t want you to do, Herr Schnaus,’ said Fabel, ‘is to shut down the site. Not yet, anyway.’

13-14 February

Maria rolled onto her side and her body was racked by involuntary, empty retches. She eased herself up onto her knees and elbows, head still down, her shrunken gut still in spasm. She felt the dirt and grime beneath her skin and realised she was naked. It was then that the intense, freezing cold hit her like a glacial wave. A second wave collided with her, as chill and harsh as the cold: raw terror. Vitrenko. She couldn’t believe it: Buslenko had been a fiction. Taras Buslenko was Vasyl Vitrenko. She had been right about his eyes. It was the one thing he couldn’t change. Vitrenko had completely convinced her with his fiction of a Ukrainian government mission. He had been true to form: Vitrenko liked to get in close for the kill. He liked to mess with his victims’ minds. He had been playing with her all along. And now it was endgame.

Maria tried to work out how long she’d been unconscious. Shuddering with cold, she checked her arms and saw a number of puncture wounds. They’d kept her out for hours; or days; even weeks. She dragged herself up into a sitting position, drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. The spasms that convulsed her body went beyond any description of shivering. Great racking muscular convulsions. Her naked skin had puckered into gooseflesh and had lost all its pigmentation. It was now going past white and had started to look like frosted glass shot through with a cobalt bloom. So it was true, she thought bitterly, you really do go blue with cold. She looked around her confinement. Even the light was cold: a wire-caged neon strip flooded the space with a sterile and cheerless light. No window. No sound. Outside it could be any time of day or night. They had achieved the all-important first stage of interrogative torture: the complete disorientation of the subject.

They had put Maria in the cold-meat store and turned the refrigeration on. The cold-meat store that Buslenko… no, that Vitrenko had told her wasn’t working any more. Had he known, even then, that this was where he was going to kill her? She scanned the meat store for anything, any scrap or rag with which to cover her nakedness; to try to delay her death by slowing the rate at which her core body heat was being dissipated. There was nothing. She hugged herself even tighter. But this wasn’t Vitrenko’s style. Death in here would be too easy. True, she was experiencing agonising cold now, but she knew how hypothermia worked: very soon she would stop shivering; then, perversely, she would actually start to feel warm again, along with a gentle, sleepy euphoria as her brain flooded her body with endorphins. It would be at that peaceful point that she would quite contentedly fall into a sleep from which there would be no waking.

No. It didn’t fit with Vitrenko. There wouldn’t be enough pain. Enough horror. Enough fear.

Maria got her answer some time that she couldn’t measure later. There was a loud metallic clunk and the door of the cold store slid open. Vitrenko stood there with his new face but his old, cold, hard eyes. Next to him, armed with a handgun, was Olga Sarapenko. They both wore their outdoor coats. Vitrenko looked at Maria impassively.

‘If I talk to you, can you understand what I’m saying?’

Maria’s nod was almost lost in her convulsive shivering.

Vitrenko walked over and dragged her to her feet. She struggled to cover her nakedness and he slammed the back of his hand across her face. Again. And again. Maria felt her mouth fill with blood and was alarmed at how cool it was. Vitrenko pushed her away from him and she crashed onto the gritty, cold floor. The heat from the grazes on her skin was almost welcome.

‘If I talk to you, can you understand what I’m saying?’ he repeated.

‘Yes.’ Maria heard the quiver in her voice. She wanted to tell him it was because she was cold, not because she feared him.

‘You are alive only because I have some use for you. If you cease to be of use to me, I will kill you. Do you understand?’

Maria nodded again and Vitrenko’s heavy boot crashed into her ribs.