JF02 - Brother Grimm (39 page)

He had arrived bang on time, and now he waited for her in the bedroom, while she squeezed into the outfit he had brought. It had clearly been meant to fit someone a size or two smaller than Lina. The things a girl had to do to make a living. Lina had forgotten just how big her customer was. Big, but quiet. Almost shy. He wouldn’t give her any trouble.

Lina walked into the bedroom and twirled around. ‘You like?’ She stopped mid-twirl as she saw him. ‘Oh … I see you’ve got a special costume too …’

He was standing by the bed. He had switched off all but the small bedside lamp behind him and he stood in half-silhouette. Everything in the room seemed dwarfed by his dark bulk. He was wearing a small rubber mask, like a child’s mask, in the shape of a wolf’s face. The wolf’s features were distorted as the tiny mask had been stretched across the too-big face. Then Lina realised that he wasn’t wearing some kind of skintight costume, as she had first thought, but that his entire body, from his ankles to his throat and down his arms to his wrists, was covered with tattoos. All words. All in the old pre-war script. He stood massive and silent, with that stupid mask and his tattoo-covered body, the light behind him. Lina realised that she was, now, afraid. Then he spoke.

‘I’ve brought you a present, Gretel,’ he said, his voice muffled by the rubber mask.

‘Gretel?’ Lina looked down at her costume; the one he had asked for. ‘This isn’t a Gretel outfit. Have I got it wrong?’

The head behind the too-small rubber wolf mask shook slowly. He stretched out his hand, holding a bright blue box tied with a yellow ribbon.

‘I’ve brought you a present, Gretel,’ he repeated.

‘Oh … oh, thank you. I like presents.’ Lina performed what she considered a coquettish curtsey and took the box. She did her best to conceal that her fingers trembled as she undid the ribbon. ‘Now … what have we here?’ she said as she lifted the lid from the box and looked in.

By the time Lina’s scream hit the air, he had already crossed the room to her.

Fabel stood facing the inquiry board, leaning on the table in front of it. He was looking at the board but wasn’t seeing what he wanted, what he needed to see there. Werner was the only other person in the office and sat on the corner of the table. His wide shoulders were slumped and his face was pale, exaggerating the vividness of the bruising on his head.

‘I think you should call it a day,’ said Fabel. ‘First day back and all that.’

‘I’m okay,’ said Werner, but without much conviction.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’ Fabel watched Werner leave and then turned back to the inquiry board. The killer had referred to Jacob Grimm gaining folkloric wisdom from Dorothea Viehmann. That he had had a similar experience. With whom? Who had passed on the tales to him?

Fabel scanned the images of Weiss, Olsen and Fendrich he had placed on the board. Old women. Mothers. Weiss had an influential Italian mother. He didn’t know anything about Olsen’s parentage, but Fendrich clearly had had a close relationship with his mother until she had died. And she had
died shortly before the killings took place. Weiss and Olsen now seemed to be out of range of Fabel’s suspicion, so all that left was Fendrich. But as soon as you took a closer look at him, it didn’t make any sense. Fabel looked at the three men. Three men as different from each other as it was possible to be. And it looked like none was the right man. Fabel became aware that Anna Wolff was now by his side.

‘Hi, Anna. You finished with Olsen?’ he asked. Anna shook her head impatiently. She held up the photograph of the latest victim, the eyeless Bernd Ungerer.

‘There’s a link,’ Anna’s voice was tensed with controlled excitement. ‘Olsen recognised Ungerer. He knows him.’

Olsen was still sitting at the table in the interview room but his demeanour, his whole body language had changed. It was eager, almost aggressive. His lawyer, however, looked much less chipper. After all, they had been cooped up with tenacious little Anna Wolff for nearly four hours.

‘You realise, Herr Kriminalhauptkommissar, that in trying to help you with your inquiry my client is risking incriminating himself further.’

Fabel nodded impatiently. ‘Let’s just hear what Herr Olsen has to say about his relationship with Herr Ungerer.’

‘I didn’t have no relationship with Ungerer,’ said Olsen. ‘I only saw him a couple of times. He was a salesman. A smarmy prick.’

‘Where did you see him?’ asked Anna.

‘The Backstube Albertus. He sold this really fancy Italian bakery equipment. State-of-the-art shit. He had been hanging around Markus Schiller for
months, trying to persuade him to buy new ovens. He and Schiller got on really well – two smarmy bastards together. Ungerer was always taking Schiller out for expenses-paid lunches and that sort of thing. He was barking up the wrong tree, though. It was Schiller’s wife that had all the say, all the cash and, from what I can gather, all the balls.’

‘Exactly where and when did you say you saw him?’

‘I just saw him a couple of times when I was picking Hanna up from the bakery.’

‘You seem to have picked up a great deal of information about him, considering you only saw him in passing.’

‘Hanna told me all about him. He was always making eyes at her. Every time he came into the place. He was married and everything but he had a reputation for chasing skirt. A sleazeball, was how Hanna described him.’

‘You never spoke to him directly?’

‘No. I would have … had a quiet word, if you know what I mean. But Hanna told me to leave it be. She’d already complained to her boss about Ungerer, anyway.’

‘But Hanna had nothing to do with him, in or outside work?’

‘No. She said he gave her the creeps, the way his eyes were never off her. Mind you, I can’t for the life of me see the difference between Ungerer and Markus Schiller. Both slimy creeps. But Hanna saw something, I guess.’

Fabel, who had let Anna do all the talking so far, leaned forward in his chair. ‘Peter, you are the link between three out of five murder victims …’ He sifted through the photographs on the table and
placed the images of Paula Ehlers, Martha Schmidt and Laura von Klosterstadt in front of him. ‘Do any of these people mean anything to you?’ He put names and locations to the faces.

‘The model. I know her. I mean, I know
about
her, her being famous and everything. But no. I don’t know any of them other than that.’

Fabel watched Olsen as he spoke. He was either telling the truth or he was a clever liar. And Olsen wasn’t that skilled. Fabel thanked Olsen and his lawyer and had Olsen returned to the holding cells.

Fabel remained in the interview room with Anna. They had a link. At last there was a line they could follow. The frustration lay in not being able to find a further link: that next connection which would take them closer to their quarry.

Fabel phoned his mother. After talking to her for a minute he asked to speak to Susanne. He explained that he had sent a copy of the letter over to the Institut für Rechtsmedizin, but he took her through it on the phone, stressing the Dorothea Viehmann mention and the Märchenbruder signature, explaining what Weiss had told him about both.

‘There is a possibility, I suppose,’ said Susanne. ‘It could be that a mother or some other older woman is or was a dominant part of the killer’s background. But, equally, the Märchenbruder reference could suggest that a brother has played a big part of his life and he’s now transferring this on to Weiss. I’ll have a proper look at the letter when I get back on Wednesday, but I don’t think I’ll get much more out of it.’ She paused. ‘Are you okay? You sound tired.’

‘It’s just the drive and too little sleep catching up on me,’ he said. ‘Are you having a good time?’

‘Your mother’s great. And Gabi and I are really getting to know each other. But I miss you.’

Fabel smiled. It was nice to be missed. ‘I miss you too, Susanne. I’ll see you on Wednesday,’ he said.

After Fabel hung up he turned back to Anna, who was grinning in a way that said ‘Aw … sweet.’ Fabel ignored her smile.

‘Anna …’ His tone was contemplative, as if the question was only half-formed as he began to speak. ‘You know how Fendrich’s mother is dead?’

‘Yep.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Well … because he told me. I didn’t check officially – I mean, why would he lie?’ Anna paused, as if processing the thought. Then something sharp glinted through the tiredness in her eyes. ‘I’ll check it out,
Chef
.’

Fabel had been late home from the Präsidium the night before. He had been tired: that irritable, restless overtiredness that takes you beyond the point where you can sleep. He had stayed up late and watched television, something he very rarely did. He had watched Ludger Abeln deliver news reports in fluent Plattdeutsch on the Low German version of ‘
Hallo Niedersachsen
’, part of broadcaster Norddeutscher Rundfunk’s promotion of the ancient language. Abeln’s Emsländer voice had soothed Fabel: it reminded him of his home, of his family, of the voices he had grown up with. He thought back to how he had protested to Susanne that Hamburg was now his Heimat; that this was where he belonged. Yet now, dispirited and tired beyond sleeping, the language and accent of his birthplace wrapped itself around him like a comfort blanket.

After the report was over, Fabel had flicked aimlessly through the channels. 3-SAT was showing
Nosferatu
, F.W. Murnau’s silent expressionist horror classic. Fabel had sat and watched as the flickering black and white of the screen fingered its light across the walls of his apartment and Max Schreck’s vampire, Orlok, advanced menacingly towards him. Another
fable. Another scary story of Good and Evil that had been elevated to a German masterpiece. Fabel remembered that this, too, was a borrowed tale that Germans had made their own: Murnau had shamelessly plagiarised the story from an Irish author, Bram Stoker. Stoker’s tale had been entitled
Dracula
, and Stoker’s widow had succeeded in getting an injunction against Murnau. All copies of the film had been destroyed as ordered. All except one print. And a classic had endured. As he watched the sinister Orlok infect an entire North German city with his vampire plague, Fabel recalled the lyrics of the Rammstein song he had read in Olsen’s apartment. Grimm, Murnau, Rammstein: different generations, the same fables.

Weiss was right. Everything stayed the same. We still needed fairy tales to frighten us, imagined horrors and real fears. And we always had.

Fabel had gone to bed about two.

He was aware that he had dreamt throughout his fitful night. As Susanne had said, his constant dreaming was a sign of stress, of his mind’s frantic struggles to resolve problems and issues in both his personal and professional life. But what Fabel hated most was when he knew he had dreamt but couldn’t remember the dream. And the night’s dreams had veiled themselves the instant he awoke to answer Anna Wolff’s call at five-thirty.

‘Good morning,
Chef
. I’d skip breakfast if I were you. The bastard’s done another one already.’ Anna had spoken with her usual directness that often bordered on the disrespectful. ‘By the way, I think I’ve found Bernd Ungerer’s missing eyes. Oh – and I’ve got a spare pair, just in case …’

More than half of Hamburg’s Ohlsdorf area is devoted to a park. A park that is the largest green area in Hamburg: more than four hundred hectares dense with trees, lovingly tended gardens and magnificent examples of the sculptor’s art. A place where many Hamburg residents and visitors come to soak up its verdant tranquillity. But the Friedhof Ohlsdorf is a park with a very specific function. It is the largest cemetery in the world. The Friedhof Ohlsdorf’s beautifully crafted sculptures are there to adorn the mausolea, tombs and headstones of Hamburg’s dead. Nearly half a million graves mean that almost every Hamburg family has a member interred in the vast Friedhof.

The brightening sky was reasonably clear of cloud and was already streaked by the red fingers of the approaching morning by the time Fabel arrived at the scene. An Ohlsdorfer SchuPo unit led Fabel along the Cordesallee, the main thoroughfare that cuts through the massive Friedhof and past the Wasserturm to a large area that seemed to have its own integrity, as if it was a graveyard in its own right. It was fringed with broad-leaved trees that had already almost completely filled out with their spring foliage. White marble, bronze and red granite figures stood silent watch over the graves as Fabel made his way across to where the body had been discovered. Anna was already there, as were Holger Brauner and his forensics team who had secured the locus. Everyone exchanged grim, early-morning murder-scene greetings as Fabel approached.

A woman lay on her back as if asleep, her hands folded across her breast. At her head a vast sculpture of a female angel looked down with one hand extended, as if regarding the dead woman and
reaching out to her. Fabel looked around. All of the sculptures were female, as were the names on all the headstones.

‘This is the Garten der Frauen,’ Anna explained. A graveyard exclusively for women. Fabel knew that the killer was trying to tell them something even in his choice of venue. He looked back to the dead woman. Her pose was almost identical to that of Laura von Klosterstadt. The differences were that this woman was darker-haired and did not possess Laura’s beauty. And she wasn’t naked.