‘Tansu also says she’s been unable to speak to Vera Reinartz, or whatever she calls herself now, but she’s got both a business and home address for her. Tansu’s asked if we can meet her about four this afternoon. But first I think we should visit this Internet company. The hotel this hooker is in is on our way.’
The hotel was one of the more luxurious kind that line the right bank of the Rhine. Fabel and Scholz waited, as agreed, near the entrance. The entire front of the reception area was glass-walled and Fabel marvelled at the panorama of the Hohenzollernbrücke bridge and, on the far bank, the Altstadt and the tower of St Martin’s. Of course, dominating it all was the looming presence of Cologne Cathedral.
‘Spectacular,’ said Fabel.
‘Yeah,’ said Scholz uninterestedly as he looked around the reception area. ‘This looks like our girl.’
A young woman approached them with an
expression on her face somewhere between apprehension and suspicion. She was dressed more soberly than Fabel would have expected but, when he thought about it, this hotel was not the kind of place to encourage her type of enterprise. As she approached Fabel noticed her shape: slim except for the pronounced swell of her hips. Exactly like the Karneval Cannibal’s victims.
‘Are you Lyudmila Blyzniuk?’ Scholz struggled over the surname.
‘Yes. But I never use my full first name. I’m known as Mila. What have I done? My papers are all in order.’
‘But you also go by the professional name “Anastasia”?’
‘Yes. I never give clients my real name. What’s this about?’
‘Let me see your identity papers.’ Scholz held out his hand.
‘What? Here?’ She glanced nervously at the reception desk. Scholz made an impatient gesture and Mila took her identity card and a couple of immigration papers from her handbag.
‘Maybe we should sit down somewhere a little more private …’ Fabel suggested, indicating a group of low sofas by the window.
‘Mila, we want to talk to you about the incident with the client a few weeks ago. The man who bit you.’ Fabel tried to sound less confrontational than Scholz. ‘This is nothing to do with you or what you do for a living. We think the man who bit you is dangerous.’
‘You don’t need to tell me that,’ said Mila, her expression still hard and resistant. ‘Everybody thought it was a big laugh. Me getting bitten on
the … I forgotten the German word for it … on my
sraka
…’
‘Arse,’ said Scholz.
‘Yeah, big joke. I have a big arse and he bites me on it. Very funny. But he is a very bad man. Dangerous man. I had to have stitches. He was like an animal, not a human being. I saw his face afterwards, covered in blood.’
‘Let’s take this one step at a time, Mila,’ said Fabel. ‘Describe this man to us.’
‘He was about thirty to thirty-five, a little less than two metres tall. Medium build … he looked fit, like he worked out a lot. Dark hair, blue eyes. He was good-looking. Not the usual sort of client.’
‘What type of person was he? I mean rich, poor, educated or not?’
‘He was definitely educated and had money. I mean from the way he was dressed.’
‘He paid cash?’ asked Scholz.
‘Yes. And he gave me a little extra. I knew he had special requirements. The agency told me.’
‘That he liked to bite?’
‘That he liked big bottoms. Like mine.’
‘What happened? I mean at the hotel.’
‘We went up to the room and he asked me to take off my clothes. Then he started to touch my bottom.’ Mila talked as if she was describing an everyday occurrence, without the slightest hint of embarrassment. ‘Then he took his clothes off and I thought that would be it, that we would have normal sex. But then he pushed me onto the bed, very rough. I started to get worried, but he talked all calm and asked if he could bite me on the bottom. I thought he meant pretend bites. But then he attacked me, like he was an animal. He bit me really
hard. I swear he was trying to take a chunk out of me …’
Fabel and Scholz exchanged a look. ‘Go on, Mila,’ said Fabel.
‘I started to scream and he stopped, but only to hit me. I pushed him away and screamed more. He had locked the door but I got it open and ran down the hall. Then the Polish girl and others from the hotel came to help. When we go back to the room he was already gone.’
‘Why didn’t you tell the police any of this when they were called to the hotel?’ asked Fabel.
‘The manager in the hotel said he didn’t want no trouble. And the agency phoned me and said I was to say nothing. They didn’t want you, I mean the police, making trouble for them.’
‘So you went along with it,’ said Scholz.
‘I had to. But I didn’t want to.’ Mila looked out of the window across the Rhine to Cologne Cathedral, dark against the sky. When she turned back there was an earnestness in her expression. ‘Everyone thought it was nothing. That he just got – how do you say it? – that he got a little carried away. But they didn’t see him. They didn’t see his face or his eyes after he bite me. He was not human no more. He was become a … I don’t know what you say in German. We call such beasts
vovkuláka
in Ukrainian. You know … a man who become a wolf.’
‘A werewolf,’ said Fabel and looked at Scholz.
Ansgar knew where she worked. He had followed her back from the wholesalers on Monday.
He had sat in his car in the car park and waited
for her. It hadn’t been as if he had had a plan: pure instinct had impelled him along a destinationless course. Maybe he really could have a normal relationship with Ekatherina. Maybe he could keep order in his daily life by allowing himself this little piece of chaos. After all, he had done
that
with this woman before. It was like a sign that he had happened across her again, after all this time. She obviously worked in the restaurant or hotel trade. It was a thought that had never occurred to him, that he might at some time encounter this woman again because she was in the same business as him. Ansgar had shadowed her as she pushed her low bed-cart stacked with purchases across the tarmac to where her small van was parked. Then he had followed her through the city to her café on the north-west fringe of the Altstadt.
And today he had come back. The café had the anonymously trendy look of almost every coffee shop and the name
AMAZONIA CYBER-CAFÉ
was emblazoned above the large picture window. Ansgar smiled at the choice of name. He thought about going into the café: the chances were that she would not recognise him, but he couldn’t take the risk. Instead he watched from across the street.
Ansgar looked at his watch. His shift started in two hours.
He had until then.
‘Those papers looked pretty genuine,’ said Scholz as they drove across the bridge to Cologne’s Left Bank. ‘But I’d bet you anything you like that they’re fakes.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Fabel. Mila had insisted that she was in Germany of her own free will and that she chose to do what she did for a living. She certainly hadn’t looked oppressed, but of course it was difficult to tell. Prostitution, legal or otherwise, was seldom a profession of completely free choice. And Mila’s reluctance to be seen talking to two policemen had to do with something more than the business she was in. Scholz had treated her with nothing less than contempt. Fabel liked Scholz, his laid-back manner and his friendliness, but the Cologne officer’s attitude towards women troubled him. Fabel had always had female officers in his team, but he had never had to make a conscious effort to do so. Everyone was picked on their merits. It bothered Fabel to see how Scholz was almost dismissive of Tansu, who was clearly a capable officer. And there was something about his manner with Mila that bothered him.
The MediaPark on the northern fringe of the Neustadt area was a reasonably new element in Cologne’s landscape.
‘The Cologne Tower has only been open for about four years. There’s still quite a bit of office space to fill,’ explained Scholz as they circled through the streets looking for somewhere to park. Eventually they used an underground car park and walked through the chill drizzle to the bright glass and steel of the Cologne Tower. InterSperse Media was on the fifth floor.
There was no reception as such and most of the people milling about the open-plan office space or working at workstations were in their twenties or early thirties. Everyone was dressed in casual sweat-tops or T-shirts and jeans. In environments
like this, Fabel always felt he belonged to another era. Despite considering himself to be liberal-minded, he often found such situations provoked the reactionary in him: the northern Lutheran who believed that people should still dress smartly for work; that the only men who should wear earrings were pirates; that tattoos on women were uncomely.
‘Cool place …’ said Scholz, clearly untouched by the same conservatism. A fat young woman came over to them. Despite her near-obesity, she wore jeans and a top that left her too-ample midriff exposed. Predictably she had a piercing, a ring through her nostril.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked in a tone that suggested she would rather do anything else but help. Scholz showed her his police ID and her cloudy expression dimmed further.
‘We want to see David Littger.’
‘You’ll have to wait – he’s in a meeting.’
Scholz smiled indulgently, as if she were a child who had said something cutely naive. ‘No, no … you see, we don’t have to wait. This is a murder inquiry so get him now or we’ll walk into his meeting. Clear?’
The young woman stormed off, presenting the policemen with her bustling rotund figure from the rear.
‘She should be more willing to help,’ said Scholz. ‘Christ knows what our guy would do if he ever saw that arse. That would keep him in stew for six months.’
Fabel laughed despite himself. The girl returned after a minute and sulkily showed them into the only meeting room, a glass box in the centre of the office.
There was a large conference table with an impossibly thin computer-display screen in the centre, a cordless keyboard and mouse. Three media types stood up and left as Fabel and Scholz entered. Scholz spoke to the remaining man.
‘You David Littger?’ Scholz asked and sat down at the table uninvited. Fabel remained standing by the door. Littger nodded, eyeing both policemen suspiciously. He was in his early thirties, with cropped-short sand-coloured hair and stubble grown to disguise a weak jaw. ‘I’m Commissar Scholz, this is Principal Chief Commissar Fabel. We’re here to talk about one of the websites you host and did the design for.’
‘I’m afraid I will not divulge any such information. InterSperse Media is bound by strict commercial-confidentiality rules—’
‘Listen, pencil-dick,’ said Scholz, still smiling as if conducting a perfectly pleasant conversation with an acquaintance. ‘I am not here to fuck about. This is a multiple-murder inquiry and in my pocket I have a warrant from the Staatsanwalt’s office. If you force me to exercise this warrant, your offices will be closed to your staff, all of your files seized and your operation will be shut down for as long as it takes us to find the information we need. Now, you don’t want that and I don’t want that, because if I have to do that it will take me much longer to find the sick pervs who run the site. I will also take it as read that you have obstructed us for some reason. Maybe you’re into this scene as well and are more “hands-on” than you want to admit. In which case you and I will be seeing a great deal of each other over the next twenty-four hours. And it’ll be at my place, not yours.’
‘What’s the name of the website?’ asked Littger in a flat tone. If he was shaken, he didn’t show it. Scholz handed him a sheet of paper.
‘They call themselves the
Anthropophagi
,’ explained Scholz. He referred to his notebook. ‘It is, as they describe it, “an online meeting place for individuals and groups interested in the exchange of information on
hard vore
and cannibalism.” In other words, Sick Fucks Reunited. And your hip and trendy techno company put this shit on the web for them and designed their website.’
Littger remained unperturbed. ‘I remember it. We uploaded them on our server about six months ago. We do no maintenance on the site – we supplied a general design and a template for them to update. As for its content … we’re not responsible for that. We simply supply the door, the access to the web. But there is no regulation out there. The Internet is the Wild West. Anarchy. We can’t check up on every single site we host.’
‘And if someone puts up pictures of kids being raped?’ asked Fabel.
‘We have a zero-tolerance policy towards that kind of thing,’ said Littger. ‘But we need to know it’s going on before we can pull the plug and call you guys in.’ He sighed. ‘Listen, I’ll give you the name and address, but you’re going to have to serve your warrant. I’ll have all kind of shit from clients to contend with if you don’t. But I’m willing to cooperate, so I’d appreciate it if you don’t disrupt my business the way you said. I’ll point you to all the right information. I just need to be legally obliged to hand over the information.’
‘Ah, well … it’s not as easy as that, Herr Littger.’ Scholz made an
I’d like to help but
… face. ‘You
see, if I do this through the proper channels and you blab to your clients, or even if the press get a hint that your company is part of this investigation, then God knows who’s going to find out about it before we’re ready. I am prepared to give you my word that no one will know where the information came from.’
‘You know something, Herr Scholz?’ said Littger. ‘I don’t believe you have a warrant.’
Scholz’s smile disappeared and his expression clouded. ‘You want to put me to the test?’
‘No one finds out about this?’
‘Not unless Tons-of-Fun out there or any of your other employees blab. But they don’t need to know that we have had this discussion.’
Littger leaned over the table and typed something on the cordless keyboard.
‘This is it,’ he said. ‘Peter Schnaus is the guy’s name. That’s his address. It’s in Buschbell, a part of Frechen.’
‘Okay,’ said Fabel. ‘I think we’ll pay Herr Schnaus a call. I take it we can rely on your discretion? I’d be most annoyed if Herr Schnaus knew in advance of our visit. In the meantime, could you put up the
Anthropophagi
site for us? There are a few questions I’d like to ask.’