‘Does Maria have an alarm system?’
‘I don’t know …’ Fabel looked uncertain for a moment, then nodded decisively.
Anna shrugged and pushed open the door. There was a loud electronic beeping from the alarm keypad inside in the hall.
‘Bollocks …’ she said. Fabel brushed past her and typed in a sequence of numbers. The display flashed ERROR CODE and continued to beep. He hit the clear button and typed in a new sequence. The beeping stopped.
‘Her date of birth?’ Anna sighed.
‘The date she joined the Polizei Hamburg. I checked both in her file.’
‘What would you have done if neither had worked?’
‘Arrested you for housebreaking,’ said Fabel and headed along the hall.
‘You probably would …’
They stood in the living room of Maria’s flat. It was, exactly as they had expected, pristine, ordered and furnished with immaculate taste. The walls were painted white but were hung with brightly colourful paintings. Oils, and originals. He guessed they would be by up-and-coming artists on the cusp of saleability. Maria was the kind of person to temper her art appreciation with acumen.
‘I always envied Maria, you know,’ said Anna.
‘In what way?’
‘Wanted to be like her. You know … Elegant, cool, together.’
‘She’s not together now.’
‘Do you never feel that way?’ Anna asked Fabel as she examined Maria’s CD collection. ‘You know, wish that you could be someone else? Even for a little while?’
‘I don’t give myself as much to philosophical musings as you do,’ he lied, with a smile.
‘I always thought of myself as too impulsive. Chaotic. Maria was always so disciplined and organised. Having said that …’ Anna indicated the CD collection. ‘This is bordering on the anally retentive. Look at these CDs … all ordered by genre and then alphabetically. Life’s too short …’
Fabel laughed, mainly to disguise the unease he felt at seeing how similar Maria’s taste and way of living were to his. They went through to the flat, checking each room. Fabel found what he was looking for, but had hoped not to find, in the smallest of the three bedrooms.
‘Shit …’ Anna gave a low whistle. ‘This is not good. Not good at all. This is obsessive.’
‘Anna …’
‘I mean, this is the kind of thing we’ve come across with serials …’
‘Anna – that’s not helping.’
Fabel took in the small room. The walls were covered with photographs, press cuttings and a map of Europe with location pins and notes attached. There wasn’t a square centimetre of clear wall space. But this was no chaos. Fabel could see four defined areas of research: one related to Ukraine, one to Vitrenko’s personal history, one to people smuggling, one to organised crime in Cologne.
‘Maria hasn’t been spending her time recuperating,’ said Anna. ‘She’s been working. On her own.’
‘You’re wrong. This isn’t work. This is vendetta. Maria’s planning her revenge on Vitrenko.’
Anna turned to Fabel. ‘What do we do,
Chef
?’
‘You take the desk. I’ll go through the filing cabinet. And Anna … this stays between us. Okay?’
‘You’re the boss.’
Fabel and Anna spent two hours going through Maria’s files and notes. They were full of contacts with whom she had spoken, probably using her position as a Polizei Hamburg officer to gain access to otherwise confidential information: the Anti-Trafficking Centre in Belgrade, Human Rights Watch, a people-smuggling expert at Interpol. There were notes on all aspects of current people-trafficking in Europe, a full dossier on Ukrainian Spetsnaz units and a file of even more cuttings that hadn’t made it to the wall display. Among them were articles about a fire in a container truck in which several illegal immigrants heading for the West had been burned to death; about a model in Berlin who had been murdered with acid; about a bloody underworld feud
in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia; about a Ukrainian-Jewish crime Godfather who had been found murdered in his luxury apartment in Israel.
‘What have you got?’ he asked Anna.
‘A list of hotels in Cologne. Nothing to say which one she’s going to use, but I’d say it was a short-list. She’s been corresponding with someone in the Interior Ministry of Ukraine. Sasha Andruzky.’
Fabel nodded. What they had been looking at was detailed but peripheral. The solid core of Maria’s research had gone with her to Cologne. He scanned the small bedroom-office for a bag or holdall. ‘Help me pack up some of these files. Then I’ve got a few calls to make.’
Fabel broke the four-hour journey to Cologne under a slate sky at a
Raststätte
on the A1 and filled up his BMW. A few unconvinced fluffs of snow drifted into his face as he did so. Instead of going into the service-station restaurant, Fabel bought a coffee and a salami roll to take out. He sat in the car with the heater on and consumed his lunch without tasting it, reading through the notes he had made on the information that Scholz had supplied. For Fabel, this process was not unlike reading a novel. It took him to a different time, a different place and a different life. He had all the details of the night when the first victim had died, two years ago. The strange thing was that Fabel found it difficult to place himself in the context of Karneval. The Cologners seemed obsessed with its forced jollity and irreverence. He read about the first victim’s movements on the night she had died. Sabine Jordanski had not officially been working that day, but had spent
most of it doing exactly the same kind of thing that she would have done if she had been at work. As it was Women’s Karneval Night she and a group of female friends had planned to take part in a procession through the city before hitting a few of the bars where exuberant
Kölsch
bands would be playing. Sabine had spent the day colouring first her friends’ hair, then her own. The dyes differed from the ones she normally used: vivid pinks, reds, electric blues and yellows, and often more than one colour was used on a single head. There seemed to be an element of becoming someone else at Karneval, a belief that true release from everyday order only came with a mask, a costume or a radical change of look.
Sabine Jordanski seemed to be a typical Cologner: exuberant, friendly, fun-loving. She was twenty-six and had been working at the salon for four years. There was no boyfriend at the time of her death, or at least no permanent boyfriend who could be traced, but it would have appeared that this was a strictly temporary situation. Sabine had enjoyed the attentions of several young men. On the night of her death she had been seen talking earlier to three men, all of whom had been traced and eliminated from the police’s inquiries. The group of six girls had visited four bars that night. All had been drinking but none was drunk. The girls had walked together to Sabine’s apartment in Gereonswall at about two in the morning and had said goodnight to her outside. There had been several people milling around, but no one whom the girls particularly noticed. No one had seen Sabine go into her apartment, but all had assumed that was what she had done.
She was found the next morning in an alley only two hundred metres from her apartment building.
She had been strangled with a red tie which had been left at the scene, partially stripped and 0.468 kilos of flesh had been removed from her right buttock. Time of death had been estimated at around the time her friends had said goodnight to her. Someone had been waiting for her, or had been following the group around the city, stalking them like a lion waiting for a straggler to become separated from the herd.
Sabine Jordanski had been a cheerful, uncomplicated girl who had not demanded much from life. Fabel bit into the salami roll and looked at the scene-of-crime photographs again. Sabine’s heavy, white buttocks lay exposed. The excised trench in the right buttock stood out with violent vividness against the paleness of the skin. Scholz had been right: the killer had executed his butchery with a swift precision. There was no raggedness, no tentative first cuts. This guy had known what he was doing. Fabel suddenly realised that he was chewing a mouthful of salami while looking at images of a mutilated corpse. In that moment the reasons he had sought escape from the Murder Commission crystallised. What had he become?
Fabel closed the file, finished his hurried lunch and headed back out onto the autobahn towards Cologne.
Ansgar’s expression was one of anguish. He sat, knowing what he was going to do but trying to persuade himself that he was not going to do it. He knew he had times of weakness. Times like this, when he had half an hour to spare before he started his shift at the restaurant.
As he had sat down in front of the computer, Ansgar had told himself that he wouldn’t visit the
website again. He had promised himself that the last time he had been on it. And the time before that. But his computer’s screen glowed malevolently, opening up a window on another reality for Ansgar. A way into abandonment and chaos.
Ansgar let his fingers hover above the keyboard. He could still walk away. He could switch off the computer. He struggled so hard to keep the chaos within himself contained. Karneval was coming. And during Karneval … well, everybody let themselves go. But this little screen was dangerous: it allowed the chaos within to connect with a greater, wider chaos. Ansgar realised that this didn’t satisfy his hunger. It sharpened it. Turned it ravenous.
His fingers trembled with delicious anticipation, disgust, fear. He typed in the website address and gave an anguished cry as the images opened out before him. The women. The flesh.
The biting teeth.
The first thing that struck Fabel about Criminal Commissar Benni Scholz’s office was how untidy and disordered it was. The second thing was the large dummy head that sat in the corner. Fabel found himself looking at it involuntarily, as he tried to work out exactly what it was. He decided it was some kind of moose.
‘I cannot tell you how pleased I am that you could come,’ said Scholz, beaming as they shook hands. Scholz was about ten years younger than him, Fabel reckoned, and about ten centimetres shorter. But what Scholz lacked in height he made up for with a stocky, muscular frame. ‘I see you were admiring
the bullhead for our Karneval outfit. I’m organising it this year.’
‘Oh …’ said Fabel, suddenly enlightened. ‘It’s a bull! I thought it was a moose …’
Scholz scowled at the dummy head and muttered something that Fabel couldn’t hear but thought might have been ‘Fuck.’ Scholz let his scowl go. ‘Please, Principal Chief Commissar, take a seat.’
‘Call me Jan,’ said Fabel. ‘We are colleagues.’ There was something about the ebullient Scholz that Fabel found immensely likeable. Fabel also resented him a little, in the same way that he resented his brother Lex for being so at ease with strangers, for being so laid back about life. It was then that it clicked what it was he liked about Scholz: he reminded him of a younger Lex.
‘Okay … Jan,’ said Scholz. ‘I’m Benni. Have you eaten?’
‘On the way down.’ Fabel’s expression commented on the quality of his repast.
‘Oh … okay. I thought I’d take you out to a typical Cologne restaurant tonight, if you’re up for it?’
‘Sure …’ said Fabel. ‘But maybe we should see how we get on going over this case …’
‘Oh, we’ll have time …’ Scholz made an expansive gesture. ‘It helps me to think. Eating, I mean. Can’t think on an empty stomach, I always say.’
Fabel smiled.
‘Talking of which,’ continued Scholz, ‘I’ve been thinking about what you said about our guy being a cannibal. You know something … I think maybe you’re right. It was something that was suggested before. To be honest, we’ve tried to play down the angle, just in case the press get hold of it.’
‘I’m pretty certain I am right,’ said Fabel. ‘I also
think you have a very valid point about the killer having experience of cutting flesh. A surgeon, or a butcher or slaughterman …’
‘He doesn’t muck about, does he? Knows what he’s doing.’ Benni leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk. ‘Is it true you’re English? You don’t have an English accent. Someone told me they call you
the English Commissar
…’
‘I’m half-Scottish,’ said Fabel. ‘Half-Frisian.’
‘My God,’ laughed Benni. ‘That’s a thrifty combination. Bet you don’t get your round in too often!’
Fabel smiled. ‘Did you have any strong suspects? The file seemed devoid of anyone you particularly had your eye on.’
‘Nope. It was a real bugger. Women’s Karneval Night is mad. Like so much of Karneval. People running about demented, little bastards being conceived all over the place. Anonymity is part of the whole thing. You can lose your identity and do things that you otherwise wouldn’t do. It’s the perfect environment for topping somebody.’
‘I see.’
‘But that’s a theory I have about this case. About anonymity and doing things that you wouldn’t normally do. I told you on the phone that I’m pretty sure that this guy is a local. Well, I also think that he may be Joe Normal the rest of the year. Karneval is all about letting go. We always say that we Cologners are more sane than everyone else the rest of the year because we go mad during Karneval. Maybe our chum has got this pervy thing going on that he keeps wrapped up in his pants all year, and he needs Karneval to let it loose.’
‘That’s actually pretty good psychological
profiling,’ Fabel laughed. ‘Although again I would normally couch it in more technical terms.’
‘Anyway,’ continued Benni. ‘Even the divorce courts take a lenient view of Karneval behaviour. Adultery on Rosenmontag is considered to be excusable … that you’re not really guilty of it the same way you would be the rest of the year. And, of course, there’s the Nubbelverbrennung … the fire of atonement at the end of Karneval in which all the sins committed during the Crazy Days are burned. What if our guy believes he has an excuse for doing what he does just because it’s Karneval?’
‘More than that, I think there is a deeply misogynistic element to these murders. He hates women.’
‘You don’t say …’ Scholz smiled wryly.
‘Okay … you worked that out. Both victims were reasonably slim, but had a tendency to be heavier around the hips and backside. I think that may be his selection criterion. Particularly given the fact that he removes flesh from that part of the body.’