JF02 - Brother Grimm (31 page)

‘Piss off, you creep …’

Bernd rode the train until the next stop. His anticipation rose as he climbed the stairs from the station and exited out into the night. He took a deep breath and was aware that the odour was still there, not a strong smell this time, but insinuated between the damp evening air and the traffic fumes. And all around him, St Pauli glittered.

The S-Bahn station was at the extreme west end of Hamburg’s Sündige Meile – sinful mile. The Reeperbahn stretches long and wide through the heart of the St Pauli district. This was once Hamburger Berg, in the days before they had given the area the name of the local St Paul’s church. It had been a no man’s land between two neighbouring, competing cities: German Hamburg and Danish Altona. It was a low, sodden marshland into which both cities had dumped their waste. And their unwanted. The lepers were sent here to live, shunned by each municipality, down by the river, in the least hospitable part of an already inhospitable bog. Then those who were not permitted to be articled as tradesmen in Altona or Hamburg were told they could ply their trades here, including the ropemakers, who made Reep, as they called it in Low German,
and who gave the Reeperbahn, the Ropers’ Way, its name. All these tradesmen were free to follow their previously unlicensed occupations, and the area’s second most famous street took the name Grosse Freiheit: Great Freedom.

But other trades had been attracted by this great freedom and had found their way into the area, where they had flourished. And those had been the trades of the prostitute and the pornographer.

Now the Danes were long gone and Altona was part of Hamburg. But the area between remained a half-world of libidinousness and raucous vulgarity. In recent years, St Pauli had sought to cover her immodesty with trendy bars, nightclubs, discos and theatres, but in the narrow streets that radiated out from the Reeperbahn desire, flesh and money were still traded.

And this was where Bernd had found his own great freedom. Something had happened to him recently that he could not explain. A liberation. A cutting-free of all of the moral restraint that had been heaped upon him since childhood. Now he stalked the night and expressed every dark desire.

This was his favourite spot – his starting point – standing outside the mouth of the S-Bahn with the Reeperbahn stretched before him in one direction, and the Grosse Freiheit rascally flashing and twinkling invitations from across the street. This was more than a place. It was a time: the bright, delicious moment that lay between anticipation and fulfilment. But tonight, Bernd’s need was even more urgent than before and he had no time to savour the moment. The tingle of dark lust that had started on the U-Bahn had become, as it always did, an unpleasant discomfort, like a pressure needing to be released. A boil that needed to be lanced.

Bernd strode purposefully along the Reeperbahn, ignoring the windows filled with impossibly proportioned sex toys and brushing aside the importunate invitation of a ‘video lounge’ doorman. He turned into Hans-Albers-Platz. The pressure in his groin and the churning in his chest reached a new level of intensity, and he could have sworn he smelled that smell even more acutely, as if the two things were connected; as if the odour combined an aphrodisiac element with repulsion. He was nearly at his goal. He strode straight through the screen baffles that shield Herbertstrasse, the hundred-metre-long brothel street, from the rest of Hamburg.

Afterwards, Bernd crossed the Reeperbahn and made his way to the small pub in Hein-Hoyer-Strasse. It was a typical St Pauli Kneipe. Schlager pop music shouted from the jukebox and the walls were decked out with fishing nets, model ships, Prinz-Heinrich caps and the obligatory cluster of photographs of visitors of various degrees of celebrity. A picture of Jan Fedder, the St Pauli-born star of the long-running TV police series ‘
Grossstadtrevier
’ had been cut out of a magazine and stuck on the wall, next to a faded photograph of St Pauli’s most famous son, Hans Albers. Bernd shouldered his way through to the bar, ordered an Astra beer and leaned against the counter. The barmaid was overweight, with bad skin and hair that was an unconvincing blonde, yet he found himself considering what his chances would be. Again he thought he smelled that same smell.

It was then that Bernd became aware of the huge man who loomed beside him at the bar.

‘I really don’t know why you’re so down on this place.’ Susanne held her face up to the sun and to the breeze that played unimpeded by shadow or obstacle on the vast levels of Wattenmeer mudflats that stretched, unbroken, from horizon to horizon. They walked where the sandy beach began to smudge into the glossy black of the mudflats. The wet, muddy sand seeped between the toes of Susanne’s naked feet as she walked. ‘I think it’s wonderful.’

‘And it has so much to offer.’ Fabel’s smile and tone were mock-enthusiastic. ‘Maybe this afternoon we can all go to the tea museum, or to the “Ocean-Wave Wellenpark” for a swim.’

‘Well, both sound good to me,’ she protested. ‘There’s no need to be so sarcastic. I think, deep down, you don’t hate this place as much as you pretend.’

Another group of Wattwanderer passed them and there was an exchange of ‘Moin, Moin’ greetings. These were more serious mudflat explorers, led by a local guide, and they wore shorts above naked legs that were sleek and black with the rich mud of the Watt. Susanne looped her arm through Fabel’s
and drew him closer, resting her head on his shoulder as they walked.

‘No,’ answered Fabel. ‘I don’t hate it. It’s just the thing we all have about the place where we grew up, I suppose. A need to escape. Especially if it was provincial. I always felt that Norddeich was as provincial as you can get.’

Susanne laughed. ‘All of Germany is provincial, Jan. Everyone has their Norddeich. Everyone has their Heimat.’

Fabel shook his head and the stiff breeze ruffled his blond hair. He was barefoot too, dressed in an old denim shirt, a faded blue windcheater and chinos that he’d rolled up above his ankles. His pale blue eyes were shaded by a pair of sunglasses. Susanne had never seen Fabel dressed so casually. It made him look boyish. ‘Maybe that’s why fairy tales have endured in Germany longer than elsewhere – because we heeded the warnings never to wander far from the known and easy and comfortable … from our Heimat. But, anyway, this isn’t my Heimat, Susanne. That’s Hamburg. Hamburg is where I truly belong.’ He smiled and steered her gently around in a wide sweep until they faced the shore, where the colour of the sand changed from glossy brown to white-gold, and where the horizon was defined by the thin green ribbon of the dykes. ‘Let’s head back.’

They walked in contemplative silence for a while. Then Fabel pointed to the dyke ahead.

‘When I was a boy, I used to spend hours up there, looking out to sea. It’s amazing how much the sky and sea change here, and how quickly.’

‘I can imagine that. I see you as a very earnest little boy.’

‘You’ve been talking to my mother.’ Fabel laughed.
He had been anxious, for reasons he couldn’t define, about bringing Susanne here; about her meeting his mother. Especially as he had decided to combine it with his weekend with his daughter. But, like the evening with Otto and Else, Susanne’s beauty, easy manner and charm had been as winning as ever; even when Susanne had commented to his mother that she still had a hint of a charming British accent. Fabel had flinched inwardly: his mother liked to think that she spoke perfect, accentless German and, as kids, Fabel and his brother Lex had learned not to correct their schoolteacher mother when she got an article wrong. But, somehow, Susanne had managed to make his mother feel as if she’d received a compliment.

They had driven here together from Hamburg. Susanne and Gabi had spent most of the journey making good-natured jokes at Fabel’s expense. The journey, and the weekend here in Norddeich, had pleased and disturbed Fabel in equal measure: for the first time since his divorce from Renate he had experienced a sense of something like a family again.

That morning, Fabel had got up first, leaving Susanne to sleep on. Gabi had headed off early into Norden, Norddeich’s ‘parent’ town. He had made breakfast with his mother, watching her carry out the same kitchen routines that she had when he’d been a boy; but now, despite her fast and almost complete recovery, she moved more slowly, more deliberately. And she looked frailer. They had talked about Fabel’s dead father, about Lex, his brother and his family and then about Susanne. Resting her hand on Fabel’s forearm, she had said: ‘I just want you to be happy again, son.’ She had spoken to him in English, which, since his childhood, had been the
language of intimacy between himself and his mother. Almost as if it were their secret language.

Fabel turned to Susanne and confirmed her observation. ‘You’re right, I was an earnest little boy, I suppose … Too earnest. Too serious, as a boy and as a man. Last time I was here, my brother Lex said the very same thing: “always such a serious kid”. I used to sit up there on the dyke behind the house and look out across the sea, imagining the Angle and Saxon longships sail out towards the Celtic British coast. For me, that defined this place, this coast. I would face the sea and be aware of the vastness of Europe behind me and the open sea before me. I suppose having a British mother had something to do with it too. So much began here. England was born here. America. The whole Anglo-Saxon world from Canada to New Zealand. They gathered here, the Angles, the Jutes, the Saxons … all the Ingvaeones …’ He stopped, as if what he had said had taken him by surprise.

‘What is it?’ asked Susanne.

He gave a bitter laugh. ‘It’s just this case. This “Grimm” thing. I can’t seem to get away from it. Or, more precisely, I never seem to be far away from one or both of the Grimm brothers.’

‘I hope we’re not drifting into shop talk.’ Susanne exaggerated the warning tone in her voice.

‘It’s just what I was saying, about the Ingvaeones: “the people of the sea”, the children of Ing. I suddenly remembered where it was that I first read about them …
Teutonic Mythology
by Jacob Grimm. You scrape anywhere on the surface of German linguistics or history and you expose a Grimm connection.’

Fabel made an apologetic gesture. ‘I’m sorry. This
isn’t really shop talk. It was just that I was talking to the author, Gerhard Weiss. He says we all think we’re unique, but we’re all just variations on a theme; and that’s why fables and fairy tales have a constant resonance and relevance. But I can’t help feeling that the Grimm tales are so … so
German
. Even if some have origins and parallels outside Germany. Maybe it’s like the way the French and the Italians have an instinct for food. Maybe we have an instinct for myths and legends. The Nibelungenlied, the Grimm Brothers, Wagner and all that stuff.’

Susanne shrugged and they fell into silence again. Once on the wide swathe of white-gold sand and dunes, they made their way to the enclosed wicker Strandkorb double seat where they had left their towels and shoes. They sat down in the shelter from the breeze and kissed.

‘Well,’ said Susanne, ‘if you’re not going to take me to the wonderful water world of the Wellenpark, or to appreciate the cultural riches of the Teemuseum, then maybe we should go back and take your mother and Gabi out somewhere nice for lunch.’

Maria Klee leaned her back against the door of her apartment, as if adding her weight to the barrier between her inner space and the world beyond. The food had been great; the date had been a disaster. They had met for dinner at the Restaurant Eisenstein, a stylishly converted former ships’-propeller factory. It was one of Maria’s favourite places to eat and, being in Ottensen, it was handy for her. Her date had been Oskar, a lawyer she had met through mutual friends. Oskar had been intelligent, attentive, charming and attractive. In fact, as a prospective boyfriend he couldn’t have been better qualified.

But whenever she had felt that he was invading her personal space, she had recoiled. It had been like this every time since she had been stabbed. Every date. Every encounter with a man. Her boss, Fabel, did not have a clue about it; could not be allowed to know about it. She knew herself that there was a real danger that it could affect her effectiveness as a police officer. And whatever the bastard who stabbed her had taken away from her, he wasn’t going to take away her career. Now that Werner was on sick leave recovering from Olsen’s attack, Maria was
Fabel’s sole number two officer. And she wasn’t going to let him down. She
couldn’t
let him down.

But deep in her gut a dark fire of dread burned remorselessly: what would happen when it came to it? What would happen when she was again faced with a dangerous offender, which was almost certain to happen sooner or later? Would she ever be able to hack it again?

In the meantime, with each new date, Maria had to fight down the panic that any threat of intimacy with a man brought. Oskar had been polite right up to the end, when at last the time came when they could bring the evening to an end without it being obviously and embarrassingly premature. He had driven her home and dropped her at the door to her apartment building. They had kissed briefly as she said goodnight: she had not suggested he come in for coffee and he had clearly not expected it.

Maria slipped off her coat and threw her keys down into the wooden bowl next to the door. Absent-mindedly her hand fiddled with the shoulder strap of her dress before it found its way to her chest, just below the sternum, and her fingers rubbed against the silk of her dress. She could feel nothing through the fine silk but she knew it was there. Her scar. The mark he had made on her when he had sunk the blade into her abdomen.