JF01 - Blood Eagle (34 page)

‘It’s a habit I picked up in prison,’ she said. There was a bitterness in her voice. ‘What can I do for you, Herr Fabel?’

A waiter arrived at their table before Fabel had a chance to answer. He ordered a Kännchen of tea and Menzel asked for a black coffee.

‘I wanted to ask you about your paintings,’ Fabel said, after the waiter had gone.

Menzel smiled. ‘An art-loving policeman? Or have I violated some civic ordinance relating to canvas size?’

Fabel told Menzel about the killings and how her canvases were strikingly redolent of the murder scenes. He asked her if she knew of Angelika Blüm’s death, which she did. She had read about it in the papers.

‘When was the last time you saw Frau Blüm?’

‘Not since before I was imprisoned. We used to work together on a magazine in the seventies. It was called
Zeitgeist
. We thought the name clever then, but it seems so predictable when you look back on it. Why do you ask? Am I a suspect because my paintings remind you of …’ Her brow furrowed as if she had realised the significance of what she had said. ‘Poor Angelika …’

‘No, Frau Menzel, you’re not a suspect,’ Fabel said, without revealing he had already had Maria check out where Menzel had been on the dates of the murders. She was still incarcerated when Ursula Kastner had been murdered and was at a gallery reception when Blüm was killed. ‘It’s just that there is a disturbing similarity between what you are painting and the death scenes. It’s probably purely coincidental, but there is a chance that the killer has seen your paintings and is emulating them. It is quite common for serial killers to “pose” their victims. In this case we might have a case of life imitating art.’

‘Or rather death imitating art.’ Menzel took another long pull on her cigarette. Fabel noticed the yellow-brown nicotine staining on her fingers. ‘How awful,’ she said.

The waiter arrived with the tea and coffee.

‘Have you received any … well,
odd
correspondence regarding your work? Particularly e-mails?’ Fabel asked.

Menzel shrugged. ‘Just what you’d expect. A lot of letters telling me that I should still be in prison, that I’ll burn in hell for my crimes, that it’s obscene to try to define myself as a creator of something rather than a destroyer. That sort of thing. Sentiments you probably have some sympathy with, Herr Hauptkommissar.’

Fabel ignored the bait. ‘But nothing you would describe as a strange, or even an inappropriate response to the images?’

Menzel thought for a moment. ‘No, not really. Although there was an unpleasant scene at the gallery a few weeks back. Wolfgang Eitel turned up with a full press and TV crowd in tow and started to rant about me having no right to exhibit work, calling me a murderer and a criminal and condemning my use of the colours of the national flag. Nazi swine.’

Fabel absorbed the information. Another mention of Eitel. ‘Were you present when this happened?’

‘No. I think that kind of undermined his plan. I think he had it in mind to go toe to toe with me in front of the cameras.’

Fabel sipped his tea. Menzel turned her head towards the light and looked out of the window. Fabel noticed that the candour of daylight revealed a greyish tinge to her skin.

‘Why did you do what you did? Why did you follow Svensson?’

The question surprised Fabel almost as much as it did Menzel. She looked at him curiously, as if trying to establish whether there was any malice behind the question. Then she shrugged.

‘It was a different time and a different place. We believed in something and we believed in someone. Karl-Heinz Svensson was an incredibly powerful presence. He was also highly manipulative.’

‘Is that why you followed him with such … well, fanaticism?’

‘Fanaticism!’ Menzel gave a low, bitter laugh. ‘Yes, you’re right. We were fanatical. We would have died for him. And most of us did.’

‘For him? Not for your beliefs?’

‘Oh, in those days we convinced ourselves that we were bringing the world socialist revolution to Germany; that we were soldiers fighting the capitalist inheritors of the Nazi mantle.’ She took another long draw on her cigarette. ‘The fact is we were all in Karl-Heinz’s thrall. Did you never think about how many of our group were women? Young women? After the trials the press called us “Svensson’s Harem”. The fact is that we had all slept with him. We were all in love with him.’

‘A lot of people died for the sake of schoolgirl crushes.’ Fabel couldn’t keep the bitterness from his voice. He thought of twenty-five-year-old Franz Webern, married, the father of an eighteen-month-old baby, lying dead on the street. He thought too of Gisela Frohm sinking slowly down through the murky waters of the Elbe.

‘Christ, don’t you think I know that?’ retorted Menzel. ‘I’ve had fifteen long years sitting in a cell in Stuttgart-Stammheim to think it over. What you have to understand is the
power
he had over us. He demanded total commitment. That meant cutting ourselves off from our families, from our friends, from every sane and rational influence. His voice was the only one we heard. He was mother, father, brother, comrade, lover … everything to us.’ The passion seemed partially to rekindle in her and then died. ‘He was a manipulative bastard.’

Menzel lit a fresh cigarette from the stub of the last. Fabel noticed again the yellow staining on her fingertips.

‘Was Gisela as fanatical as the rest of you?’

Menzel’s smile was laden with sadness. ‘More than anyone. Karl-Heinz was her first lover. She was besotted with him. What you said earlier was right. You had no choice other than to shoot her. Karl-Heinz had conditioned her to kill. You were only the instrument of her death: he was the engineer.’

‘What I can’t understand is why.’ Fabel’s puzzlement was genuine. ‘Why did Svensson – why did you – feel the need to do what you did? What was so terrible about our society that you had to declare war on it?’

Menzel paused before answering. ‘It’s the German disease. A lack of history. A lack of a clear identity. Trying to work out who the hell we are. It’s what led us into Nazism. It’s what made us become ersatz Americans after the war: like an errant child trying to make up by imitating its parent. It was that ultra-capitalist, popcorn banality that we despised. We declared war on mediocrity –’ she gave a sardonic smile – ‘and mediocrity won.’

Fabel sat staring into his tea. He knew what his next question had to be. He already knew the answer, but he had to ask it anyway.

‘Is Svensson really dead?’

Svensson was supposed to have died during a fire-fight at the scene of an attempted assassination of the then Erste Bürgermeister of Hamburg. A police bullet had hit the fuel tank of Svensson’s car, which had burst into flames. Svensson had burned to death. The police had not been able to trace the dental records essential to establishing his identity. Svensson, the consummate terrorist, had spent years erasing his existence from official files.

Marlies Menzel didn’t answer for a moment. Instead she leaned back and drew on her cigarette, examining Fabel as if appraising him.

‘Yes, Herr Fabel. Karl-Heinz died in that car. I can assure you of that.’

Fabel believed her. ‘I’d better get back to Hamburg,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry I disturbed you.’

‘Or are you simply sorry you disturbed the past? That’s where I belong: in your past. That’s where Gisela belongs as well.’ She paused. ‘Have you got what you came for, Herr Fabel?’

Fabel smiled as he stood up. ‘I don’t even know what it was I came for. I hope your exhibition goes well.’

‘An act of creation. Some kind of atonement for the acts of destruction I was involved in. A fitting end, I think. You see, Herr Fabel, it will be my debut and my finale.’ Menzel flicked some more ash into the ashtray on the table.

‘I’m sorry?’ Fabel’s face signalled confusion.

Marlies Menzel held up her cigarette and studied it carefully. ‘I have cancer, Herr Fabel.’ She smiled bitterly. ‘Terminal. That’s partly why I was released early. If you came here looking for some kind of justice, that’s about all I can offer you.’

‘I am sorry,’ answered Fabel. ‘Goodbye, Frau Menzel.’

‘Goodbye, Herr Kriminalhauptkommissar.’

Thursday 19 June, 6.00 p.m. Pöseldorf, Hamburg
.

On the way back from Bremen, Fabel phoned in to the Mordkommission. He asked Maria to compile all the information she could on Wolfgang Eitel. There was nothing new to report from the Kommission, so Fabel told her he would not come in until the morning. He hung up and redialled, asking to be put through to Brauner, who told him that Schreiber’s fingerprints matched the second set found in Blüm’s apartment. For once, the presence of fingerprints exculpated rather than incriminated a suspect. If Schreiber had been the killer, he would have done everything he could to wipe all traces of his presence from the apartment. And Son of Sven had left them nothing at any other scene to go on.

Fabel had a reserved space in an underground parking garage along the street from his apartment. It had just turned eight when he pulled into his space. When he got out of the car he placed his hands in the small of his back and arched his spine, trying to stretch some of the stiffness and tiredness out of it. It was then that he became aware of the presence of two huge men behind him. He spun around and instinctively placed his hand on his gun. Both men smiled and held up their hands in a pacifying gesture. Each was black-haired, one with thick curls, the other with straight hair sleeked back against his scalp. Curly also sported an unfeasibly large and thick moustache. They were clearly Turkish. It was Curly who spoke.

‘Please, Herr Fabel … we want no trouble and we didn’t mean to startle you. Herr Yilmaz has sent us. He would like to talk to you. Now, if it’s convenient.’

‘And if it isn’t?’

Curly shrugged. ‘Of course, that is entirely up to you. But Herr Yilmaz told us to tell you that he has something for you that may be of importance to your investigation.’

‘Where is he?’

‘We are to take you to him …’ Curly’s smile broadened in a way that didn’t make Fabel feel any more secure – ‘if that is convenient to you.’

Fabel smiled and shook his head. ‘I’ll take my car and follow you.’

The two heavies had a Polo waiting outside and Fabel followed them as they made their way through the city. They led Fabel into the Harburg area. Fabel called the Mordkommission and told Werner that he was being taken to a meeting with an informant, but didn’t tell Werner it was Yilmaz. Werner was all for sending out a full back-up team but Fabel told him to hold off and that he would ring him back when he knew where the meeting was to take place.

The Turks’ VW pulled into a small estate of unimaginatively designed industrial and commercial buildings. They parked in front of a wide, low-rise warehouse. It had been built at some point in the seventies or eighties and the bright red paint was flaking off the exterior metal pipes that had been the only concession to the architectural fashions of the period. As the two Turks were getting out of their car, Fabel called Werner back and gave him his location.

‘Take care, Jan,’ Werner said.

‘I’ll be fine. But if I don’t check in in half an hour, send the cavalry.’

Fabel flipped his cell phone shut and got out of his BMW. Curly beamed a searchlight smile from underneath his dense moustache and held open a door which was in as much need of a paint job as the pipework. Fabel indicated that it was okay; the two Turks could precede him.

The warehouse was small but packed with crates of foodstuffs, all of which were labelled in a language that Fabel assumed to be Turkish. A partition wall, as much wire-reinforced glass window as plasterboard, ran along one side of the building: the aspect looking out onto the car park. This division separated the main warehouse from the offices. Through the glass of the main office, Fabel could see Yilmaz sitting with two men. One was a tough-looking Turk; the second was a small, dirty-looking man in a filthy military-style coat. He had the jaundiced skin tone and sunken eyes of a habitual drug user.

Curly held open the door for Fabel, still grinning, but didn’t follow Fabel into the office. Yilmaz stood up and smiled, genuinely, and extended a hand which Fabel took.

‘Thank you for coming, Herr Fabel. I’m sorry we couldn’t conduct our business in more conducive surroundings, but I thought it best not to be too conspicuous. I have … or rather my friend here has some important information for you. I have kept my promise, you see, Herr Hauptkommissar.’

Fabel scrutinised the small whippet-like man. Like most users, he was ageless. Fabel knew he might have been in only his late twenties. Equally, he could have been in his late fifties. Fabel noticed that one of the high cheekbones was swollen and even more discoloured than the skin around it. There was a crust of dried blood around one nostril.

‘Are you okay?’ asked Fabel.

‘I fell down some stairs,’ the small man replied in a high, throaty voice, giving the tough-looking Turk a resentful look.

‘This …
gentleman
… is Hansi Kraus,’ said Yilmaz. ‘He has some information … indeed some evidence … he wishes to share with you.’ Yilmaz nodded to the Turk who had been leaning against one of the desks. The Turk reached behind him and picked up a bundle of soiled rags. He carefully unfolded the corners to reveal a glittering gold-coloured nine-millimetre automatic. The flanks of the gun were ornately tooled and the word
in Cyrillic was engraved into them. Beneath, in the Latin alphabet, were the words MADE IN UKRAINE.