Craig Russell - The Carnival Master

‘It’s nothing to do with roses, you know,’ Scholz had told him. ‘The Rose in Rose Monday comes from the Old Low German Rasen – to rave or run around madly.’ Now Fabel stood on the corner of a Cologne street on Rose Monday and watched as the city’s population turned the world on its head. A giant papier-mache model of the American President George Bush, his bare buttocks being spanked by an enraged Arab, drifted by. It was followed by another depicting the new German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, dressed as a Rhine Maiden. A group of German TV personalities were depicted on the next float, stuffing their pockets with cash. Everyone was cheering and scrabbling to catch the candies thrown by the costumed members of each float.

The procession slowed and came to a temporary standstill, as it did periodically to maintain the regulation distance between floats. Undaunted, the crowd continued to cheer. Fabel scanned the faces around him: clowns, oversized floppy hats in stridently jolly colours, face-painted children hoisted on the shoulders of parents. Then he saw him: the same gold mask and black outfit, standing four or five rows back. Fabel edged through the crowd towards the figure, then became aware of another gold mask. Then another. And another. There were five

… no, six of them scattered throughout the crowd. All the gold masks were watching Fabel, not the procession. He stopped and tried to weigh up which was Vitrenko. Two of the figures made their way over to him. Fabel and the two gold-masked men stood, an island in an unseeing sea of revellers.

‘I said I’d only hand this over to Vitrenko,’ said Fabel. Neither masked man moved but Fabel heard Vitrenko’s voice.

‘And I said I wouldn’t walk so easily into a trap.’

Fabel spun around and came face to face with another identical gold mask. The other two men closed in behind him.

‘You have it?’

‘I have photocopied pages from the original. Where’s Maria?’ said Fabel. The crowd around him cheered another passing float.

‘Safe. She’ll be released when I return with the dossier.’

‘No, she won’t. That wasn’t our deal. You said we would exchange here. If I let you walk away with the dossier you’ll kill her. Or she’s dead already.’ A shower of candies rained down on them, thrown by a passing float with the ritual Kolsch cry of ‘ Alaaf… Helau! ’. The crowd responded with ‘ Kolle Alaaf! ’

‘You’re right, Herr Fabel, I don’t have her to exchange any more. But that doesn’t matter, because you’ve brought the dossier. Thank you. And goodbye, Fabel.’

Vitrenko seized Fabel by the shoulder and pulled him close to the expressionless gold Venetian mask. One of the others snatched the carrier bag from his grasp. Vitrenko’s other hand thrust a knife upwards and into Fabel’s abdomen. Fabel doubled over, gasping for breath.

At that moment a flood of police officers burst out from under the curtain of the Cologne police float. Benni Scholz, who had been riding on top, leapt from the float, still dressed in his comedy police costume. The crowd cheered enthusiastically, thinking it was all part of the act until the officers barged into the crowds. Vitrenko looked down at Fabel, then at the knife in his gloved hand. He dropped it and ran, disappearing into the crowd.

‘Get after them!’ Scholz screamed at his men. He pushed through the crowd to where Fabel had fallen.

Scholz put his arm around Fabel’s shoulders and gently eased him up.

‘You okay?’

Fabel looked down at his punctured coat and jacket. ‘Just winded.’

‘It’s a good job you were right about his weapon of choice. If he’d brought a gun that stab-vest wouldn’t have helped much.’

‘Let’s go,’ said Fabel.

The uniformed officers had already grabbed two of the masked men and pulled their masks from their faces. Fabel, Scholz and half a dozen uniformed officers pushed on through the crowd which thinned out the further they moved away from the procession.

‘There!’ shouted one of the uniforms and pointed to where a dark figure had cleared the crowd and ran off in the direction of the Rhine.

‘No… wait,’ shouted Scholz. ‘There’s another one.’ He pointed to a second figure, heading off towards the railway station. ‘And another

…’ A third gold mask flashed in the winter sunlight as it turned in their direction before running towards the back of the cathedral.

‘We’ll have to split up and go after them all,’ shouted Fabel. ‘But a minimum of three men on each. These are dangerous bastards. Benni, we’ll take the cathedral guy. You armed?’

Benni reached deep into his oversized outfit and produced his SIG-Sauer automatic. He ordered one of the uniforms to come with him and Fabel and they sprinted off in the direction taken by the third masked man. They came round to the south side of the cathedral and suddenly they were alone. The cheering of the crowd was still loud but seemed to Fabel to belong to another universe. They stopped and caught their breath.

‘He can’t have got round the rear,’ said the uniformed cop. ‘He didn’t have time.’

Fabel strained his neck to look up at the immense looming mass of the cathedral. They were on the south side and a row of massive flying buttresses, each tipped with a spire, flanked the cathedral’s nave like a rank of soldiers. His eyes fell to street level and caught sight of a side door.

‘Is the cathedral open today?’ he asked.

‘Not to the public,’ said Scholz. ‘But there’s a special Fastenpredigt pre-Lent Mass later. They’re probably preparing for that.’

‘He’s gone inside,’ said Fabel. ‘The cathedral is like a crossroads itself. He’s trying to lose us and come out on another side. Come on!’

The heavy door yielded, then slammed echoingly behind them. There was a man lying on the flagstones immediately inside the door. His white hair was dishevelled and was stained red with blood on one temple.

‘Are you all right?’ Scholz bent over the elderly security man.

‘I… I tried to stop him. Told him the cathedral was closed. He hit me…’

‘You – stay with him,’ Scholz ordered the uniform. ‘Radio in. I want men at each portal of the cathedral. Jan, you stick with me. Chances are this is one of Vitrenko’s decoys, but it’s better to be safe.’

Fabel unholstered the automatic that Scholz had issued him with before the meet with Vitrenko. They walked down the centre of the aisle, past the window where Fabel had discussed rhinoceroses with a Mexican writer.

‘This place is the size of a football stadium,’ he said to Scholz. ‘The bastard could be anywhere.’

‘You check along the pews on the left, I’ll take the right.’

They worked their way up the aisle, the sounds of Karneval outside now even more remote. They reached the crossing of the transept and Fabel found himself looking through the retrochoir to where the Shrine of the Three Kings, a huge golden reliquary, gleamed behind its glass. There was a sound to his left.

‘Over there, behind that screen…’ he hissed to Scholz and swung his gun around. Scholz put a restraining hand on Fabel’s arm.

‘For Christ’s sake don’t shoot. That screen, as you call it, is the Klaren Altar. It’s priceless.’

‘So’s my life.’ Fabel nodded past the triptych screen. ‘You go that way.’

Fabel kept his aim locked on the screen and moved towards it, taking slow steps and ready to fire. He checked that Scholz was in position. Fabel swung around the edge of the screen. Something slammed hard into him and he toppled sideways. He heard his gun clatter across the flagstones and felt cold steel pressed against his cheek. He looked up at a gold mask.