Craig Russell - The Carnival Master

‘About Ansgar? The porn was all wrong. There are two types of vorarephile – the ones who fantasise about eating another human being and the ones who fantasise about being eaten. Those are much more common. All the DVDs we seized from Hoeffer’s place were about women eating men. And now we have the connection between the rape and the murders. Not a link. Cause and effect. I just hope we get there in time…’

Tansu punched and kicked at her attacker, but she knew that her strength was failing. She focused all her concentration, all her effort into one decisive action. She jabbed the straightened fingers of her free hand into the Clown’s eye. He clutched his eye and the pressure around her throat eased. She swung her foot and hit the clown in the belly. He staggered back and Tansu aimed a kick at his groin but caught the top of his thigh. She tore the ligature from her neck. A man’s tie, just as she’d expected. She threw herself along the hall’s floor and reached for where her gun had fallen. Suddenly she felt as if the building had collapsed on her and realised that the Clown had thrown himself onto her back, winding her for a second time. He spun her round and clasped his hands around her throat. But he didn’t squeeze. Instead he yielded to the pressure of the muzzle of Tansu’s service automatic, jammed into the flesh beneath his jaw.

‘Just give me a fucking excuse,’ Tansu said through tight-clenched teeth. ‘After what you’ve done to all those women. Where’s Andrea?’

There was the sound of boots running up the stairs and the door of the apartment flew open. Uniformed officers poured into the cramped hall and grabbed the Clown, forcing him to the floor and handcuffing his hands behind his back.

Tansu stood up and composed herself. ‘I asked you, where is Andrea?’

‘That is Andrea…’ Tansu turned to see Fabel and Scholz in the hall. She looked down at the Clown. The male physique. The hard-set jaw.

‘I don’t believe it…’

‘It’s true,’ said Scholz. ‘That’s why we didn’t find any semen at the murder scenes.’

‘She killed all those women?’

‘All of them. But the first woman she killed was herself. Vera Reinartz.’

They stood back as the uniformed officers hauled Andrea to her feet. She stared at them with empty eyes, the only expression her painted smile. The officers led her out of the flat.

‘That was the connection between the rape and the murders. Like I said to Benni: cause and effect. Ludeke raped Andrea and subjected her to his perversion, biting her repeatedly. She hated herself, or rather herself as Vera, and she mimicked Ludeke’s attack on her. Except she took it further. She took flesh from each victim and ate it. A little extra twist she picked up after her encounter with Ansgar Hoeffer.’

‘It was Jan who figured it out,’ said Scholz. ‘We came rushing to your rescue, but from what I hear you didn’t need rescuing.’

‘It was a close call,’ said Tansu, rubbing her throat.

‘You need to see a doctor?’ asked Fabel.

‘No – I need to see a barman. But I suppose we’ll have to get some paperwork sorted out first.’

The bar was small, bustling and noisy. It was exactly what Fabel needed. It was three in the morning and the party was still in full swing. Scholz, Fabel and Tansu had to lean forward and shout to be heard above the noise.

Andrea had been processed and was in the cells. Scholz had arranged for a psychiatric assessment to be done as soon as possible. Which wasn’t going to be the following day. Even psychiatrists took time off to go insane during Karneval, apparently. Fabel and Scholz explained to Tansu about the wound to Ansgar’s buttock and his sexual compulsion to be eaten; how A la Carte, with its reputation for catering for clients’ more unusual needs had recruited Andrea and how Ansgar had become a client for one disfiguring night.

Now Andrea sat in her cell silent, answering no questions, responding to nothing. Fabel thought it was possible that maybe she didn’t even know what she had done. They had found a diary in her apartment: the usual egomaniacal ravings, but they suggested that the Clown saw himself as male, and as totally distinct from Andrea’s personality. Just as Andrea had forced her third-person, past-tense existence as Vera Reinartz from her identity.

‘What, multiple personality?’ asked Tansu. ‘I thought that was all fake.’

‘Dissociative Identity Disorder is the proper name for it,’ said Fabel. ‘And the Americans are great believers in it. But you’re right, it’s not accepted to the same extent by psychiatrists outside the US. My guess is, though, that Andrea is going to try to use it as a defence to avoid prison. Maybe the dumb act in the cells is exactly that, an act.’

They sat at a corner of the bar and Fabel found his Stange glass filled regularly with Kolsch beer without being asked. He grinned at the raucous songs in a dialect he didn’t understand and he realised, joyfully, that he was very probably drunk. Tansu was next to him at the bar and every time she leaned into him to make herself heard he could feel the warmth of her body.

‘Benni said you had Andrea sussed,’ said Tansu. ‘How?’

‘A combination of things. Like what you said about the Kolsch Virgin being a man,’ said Fabel. ‘Karneval is all about becoming someone else, about letting out what you’ve locked up inside. There was something about Andrea that bothered me from the start. I was in the cathedral and a tourist asked me why there was a rhinoceros in one of the stained-glass windows. Amongst all those metaphors of resurrection, a symbol of strength and righteous wrath. That’s what Andrea built herself to be. Andrea murdered those women because they reminded her of herself, as Vera. She killed Vera as an identity legally, then proceeded to kill her over and over again in the flesh. Oh, and the last clue was the very large slice of backside that Ansgar Hoeffer was missing. You didn’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to work it out from there.’

They stopped discussing the case and Fabel felt himself slide further into a pleasant state of drunkenness. It was difficult to hear over the noise in the pub and their conversation became limited. Another group from the Police Presidium joined them and the consensus was that they should all move on somewhere else. Fabel spotted Scholz disappearing through the pub door with a pretty young woman dressed as a nun.

‘Simone Schilling,’ explained Tansu. ‘Our forensics chief…’

Fabel allowed himself to be carried out of the pub and into the street by the current of bodies. The streets were thronging with partygoers and Fabel suddenly realised he had become separated from the police group and was cast adrift in an ocean of revellers. The night air made him feel even more drunk and he felt some of his old anxiety about losing control.

‘I thought we’d lost you…’ He turned to see Tansu beside him. ‘I think we’d better find somewhere quieter. But first, there is a Women’s Karneval Night custom that I insist on – I demand a kiss…’

‘Well,’ said Fabel grinning, ‘if it’s the law…’ He leaned forward to give Tansu a chaste kiss on the cheek, but she held his face between her hands and pulled him towards her. He felt her tongue in his mouth.

24-28 February

The light was on and Maria woke up cold and sore. The chills and aches in her body combined like a string section playing a continuous glissando, but then the still not fully-healed wound on her head from The Nose’s pistol-whipping took centre stage. For a moment she thought that they had switched the refrigeration back on, then she realised it was just her body’s reaction to the abuse it had suffered. For Maria the cold no longer meant death; it meant she could still feel. It meant life.