JF02 - Brother Grimm (13 page)

‘Funny,’ said Hermann. ‘It’s almost as if he was half-hearted about hiding the cars. He could even have burned them out.’

‘No …’ said Fabel. ‘He was just buying himself a little extra time. Putting that extra distance between us and him. He wanted us to see where he had killed them. It’s just that he wanted us to see it when it suited him.’

It was Holger Brauner who made the other discovery. He led Fabel back to the main car park and to the fringes of the forest. The undergrowth thinned out at one point and both men pushed back branches to reach a narrow pathway, not even wide enough to constitute a firebreak. This, at one time, had been a second way into to the clearing, but so narrow that it had obviously been intended solely for walkers or cyclists, or simply as an access. Fabel cursed as the tan shoes he had paid so much for in London sank into the peaty earth.

‘Here …’ Brauner indicated where he had placed several scene-of-crime tent cards on the ground. ‘These are fresh boot prints. Good ones, too. And from the size I would guess definitely male.’ He led Fabel further along the track, pointing to another boot print. ‘Just keep clear of that, Jan. I haven’t got a photograph or a cast of it yet.’

Fabel followed Brauner’s lead and struggled to make his way along the grassy edge of the track. Brauner stopped beside a row of tent-card markers. ‘And these are tyre tracks – again fresh.’

Fabel squatted down and examined the tracks. ‘Motorbike?’

‘Yep …’ Brauner indicated where the sweep of the track curved out of sight, consumed by the tangled darkness of the forest. ‘My guess is that if you get one of your guys to follow this path, they’ll end up coming out somewhere near the main road. Someone rode their motorcycle all the way up here until they were about 150 metres from the car park. If my interpretation of these tracks and boot marks is right, he killed the engine and pushed the bike the rest of the way.’ He pointed back to the original boot prints. ‘And those marks indicate that he stood just out of sight of the car park, probably observing it.’

‘Our killer?’

‘Could be.’ Brauner’s face broke into its usual good-natured grin. ‘Or perhaps simply a nature lover watching the nocturnal wildlife in the car park.’

Fabel returned Brauner’s smile, but an alarm bell was sounding somewhere in his mind. He moved back to re-examine the footprints, straddling them to avoid damaging them. The branches he had to push back to gain access to the path now shielded his body. In his mind he rewound a clock, making it night. You waited here, didn’t you? It was like you were invisible, part of the forest. You felt safe and hidden here while you watched and waited. You saw them arrive, more than likely separately. You kept a watch on one of them while he or she waited for the other to turn up. You knew them, somehow,
or at least their movements. You knew to wait for your second victim to arrive. Then you struck.

Fabel turned to Brauner. ‘I hope you get a good impression from this, Holger. This guy was no peeping Tom. He had a purpose here.’

By the time Fabel and Werner arrived, the local SchuPo uniformed police had informed Vera Schiller that a body had been found and the indications were that it was her husband. A search of the man’s pockets had produced a wallet and a Personalausweis identity card: Markus Schiller. Holger Brauner and his SpuSi forensics team had examined the two dumped vehicles and confirmed that the male victim had been murdered inside the Mercedes. There was a ‘shadow’ on the passenger seat where the passenger, the girl, had blocked the man’s arterial spray from soaking the leather upholstery. There were traces of blood in the sills of the car’s bonnet and Brauner had surmised that the girl had been taken out of the car and that her throat had been cut while she was held down on the bonnet. ‘As if it were a butcher’s block,’ had been how Brauner had described it. The SpuSi forensics team had retrieved the briefcase from the car. It had contained nothing more than a pile of fuel receipts, a receipt for an on-the-spot speeding penalty and some brochures on commercial baking equipment and products.

The Schiller residence was set in huge grounds that backed on to the wooded fringes of the Staatsforst. The drive up to the house led through a dense mass of trees that crowded broodingly on to and over it before opening out on to vast, manicured lawns. Fabel had the feeling of again entering a clearing in woodland. The house itself was a large nineteenth-century villa with a pale-cream painted exterior and large windows.

‘There’s obviously money in the bun business,’ muttered Werner as Fabel parked on the immaculate gravel drive.

Vera Schiller answered the door herself and conducted them through a marble-floored and pillared hall and into a spacious drawing room. At Frau Schiller’s invitation, the two policemen sat down on an antique sofa. Fabel’s tastes ran more to the contemporary, but he could recognise a valuable antique when he saw one. And it wasn’t the only one in the room. Vera Schiller sat opposite them and crossed her legs, resting her hands, palms down, on her lap. She was an attractive, dark-haired woman in her late thirties. Everything about her – her face, her posture, her polite half-smile when inviting them in – communicated an overdone composure.

‘First of all, Frau Schiller, I know this must be very distressing for you,’ began Fabel. ‘Obviously, we will need you to identify the body formally, but there is little doubt it is your husband. I want you to know how sorry we are for your loss.’ He shifted awkwardly: this sofa had been uncomfortable for the best part of two centuries.

‘Are you?’ There was no hostility in Vera Schiller’s voice. ‘You didn’t know Markus. You don’t know me.’

‘Nonetheless,’ said Fabel, ‘I am sorry, Frau Schiller. Really.’

Vera Schiller gave a brusque nod. Fabel couldn’t tell whether this was a dam she had hastily thrown up to hold back her grief, or whether she really was quite simply a cold fish. He produced a transparent evidence bag from his pocket. Markus Schiller’s photograph on his Personalausweis ID card was visible through the polythene. He handed it to her.

‘Is this your husband, Frau Schiller?’

She gave it a swift glance and then held Fabel’s eyes in a too-steady gaze. ‘Yes. That’s Markus.’

‘Have you any idea why Herr Schiller would be in the Naturpark so late in the evening?’ asked Werner.

She gave a bitter laugh. ‘I would have thought that was obvious. You found a woman as well, I believe?’

‘Yes,’ said Fabel. ‘A woman called Hanna Grünn, as far as we can ascertain at the moment. Does that name mean anything to you?’

For the first time there was something akin to pain in Vera Schiller’s eyes. She reined it back in and both her false laugh and her answer dripped acid.

‘Fidelity, to my husband, was a concept as abstract and difficult to understand as nuclear physics. It was something that simply lay beyond his capacity to comprehend. There were countless other women, but yes, I recognise the name. You know, Herr Hauptkommissar, what I find really so distasteful about all this isn’t that Markus was having a liaison with another woman – God knows I’ve grown accustomed to that – but that he didn’t have the
courtesy, or the imagination, or indeed the taste to raise his sights above our own factory floor.’

Fabel exchanged a quick glance with Werner. ‘This girl worked for you?’

‘Yes. Hanna Grünn has worked for us for about six months. She worked on the production line, under Herr Biedermeyer. He would be able to tell you more about her than I. But I remember her starting. Very pretty in an obvious, provincial sort of way. I recognised her immediately as Markus’s kind of meat. But I didn’t think he would have fucked the help.’

Fabel held her gaze. The obscenity didn’t sit comfortably with Vera Schiller’s dignity and composure. Which was, of course, why she had used it.

‘I’m sure you understand, Frau Schiller, that I have to ask where you were last night?’

Again a bitter laugh. ‘The enraged, cheated wife exacting revenge? No, Herr Fabel, I had no need to resort to violence. I didn’t know about Markus and Fräulein Grünn. And if I did I wouldn’t have cared. Markus knew there were limits beyond which he could not push me. You see, I own the Backstube Albertus company. It was my father’s business. Markus is …’ She paused and frowned, then shook her head, as if annoyed with her inability to adapt to a new reality. ‘Markus
was
merely an employee. I also own this house. I had no need to kill Markus. In one fell swoop I could render him incomeless and homeless. For someone with Markus’s expensive tastes, that was the ultimate threat.’

‘Your whereabouts last night?’ Werner repeated the question.

‘I was at a function in Hamburg, a catering-industry event, until about one a.m. I can give you full details.’

Fabel took in the room once more. There was real money here. Lots of it. With the right connections, you could buy anything in Hamburg if you had enough money. Including a killer. He rose from the expensive discomfort of the sofa.

‘Thanks for your time, Frau Schiller. If you don’t mind I would like to visit your business premises and talk to some of the staff. I understand that you will probably close the Backstube Albertus for a few days, but –’

Vera Schiller cut Fabel off. ‘We will be open tomorrow as usual. I will be in my office.’

‘You’re going to work tomorrow?’ If Werner was trying to hide his incredulity, he failed miserably.

Frau Schiller stood up. ‘You can advise me of the arrangements for a formal identification there.’

As they came out of the drive on to the main road, the crowding trees seemed to close behind them. Fabel tried to imagine Frau Schiller, now alone in the ornate drawing room, the sea-wall defence cracking, allowing her grief and her tears to come flooding through. But somehow he couldn’t.

When Fabel opened the door to his apartment, a classical CD was playing and he could hear noises from the galley kitchen. It filled him with an odd mix of feelings. It reassured him, comforted him, that he was returning to something more than an empty space. That someone waited for him. But, at the same time, he couldn’t help experiencing something of a sense of intrusion. He was glad that he and Susanne hadn’t yet made the decision to move in together, or, at least, he thought he was glad. Perhaps the time would be right soon. But not yet. And he suspected that she felt the same. But somehow deferring the decision worried Fabel: it was very much his role to be decisive in his professional life, but in his personal life he seemed incapable of making decisions – good ones, anyway, which was why he always tended to put them off. And he was only too well aware that his indecisiveness, his vagueness had, at least in part, led to the failure of his marriage to Renate.

He slipped off his Jaeger jacket and unclipped his gun and holster, laying both on the leather sofa. He moved through to the kitchen. Susanne was making an omelette to go with a salad she’d already prepared.
Some chilled Pinot Grigo was already frosting two wine glasses.

‘I thought you’d be hungry,’ she said as he came up behind her and slipped his arms around her waist. She had her long dark hair up and he kissed her exposed neck. The sensual smell of her filled his nostrils and he drank it in. It was the smell of life. Of vigour. It was itself like good wine after a day with the dead.

‘I am hungry,’ he said. ‘But I need to shower first …’

‘Gabi phoned earlier.’ Susanne called through to him as he stepped into the shower. ‘Nothing important. Just a chat. She spoke with your mother: she’s doing well.’

‘Good. I’ll call them both tomorrow.’ Fabel smiled. He had been worried that his daughter Gabi would be resentful of Susanne. She wasn’t: they had hit it off from the start. Susanne had warmed immediately to Gabi’s intelligence and sharp wit and Gabi had been impressed by Susanne’s beauty, style and ‘super-cool job’.

After they finished their meal, Fabel and Susanne sat and chatted about everything and anything but their work. The only reference Fabel made to the day’s events was to ask Susanne if she could attend his case conference the following afternoon. They went to bed and made love in a drowsy, lazy way before falling asleep.

He was bolt upright in bed when he awoke. He felt the prickle of sweat on his back.

‘You okay?’ Susanne sounded alert. He must have woken her. ‘Another dream?’

‘Yes … I don’t know …’ He frowned in the
darkness, peering out through the bedroom door and the picture windows, across the glitter of lights reflected on the water of the Aussenalster, as if to catch sight of his fleeing nightmare. ‘I think so.’

‘This is happening too much, Jan,’ she said, resting her hand on his arm. ‘These dreams are a sign that you’re not coping with … well, with the things you have to cope with.’

‘I’m fine.’ His voice was too cold and hard. He turned to her and softened the tone. ‘I’m fine. Honestly. Probably just that cheese omelette of yours …’ He laughed and lay back down. She was right: the dreams were getting worse. Every case now seemed to invade the landscape of his sleep. ‘I can’t even remember what it was about,’ he lied. Two faceless children, a boy and a girl, had sat in a clearing in the forest, eating a meagre picnic. Vera Schiller’s villa loomed through the trees. Nothing had happened in the dream, but there had been an overwhelming feeling of malevolence.