JF02 - Brother Grimm (42 page)

Before touching anything, Fabel took a pair of forensic gloves from his jacket pocket and snapped them on. Like the window, the walls were lined with sample tattoo patterns and photographs of satisfied customers. It would take an age to sort through all these images to see if any of them matched the tattoos on the dead man. A large poster, showing a vista of mountain and sea, captioned in large capitals NEW ZEALAND, was one of only two non-tattoo-related wall decorations. The other was a notice, handwritten in felt pen, which laid out the rules of the studio: no smoking, no kids, no drink or drugs, no disrespect.

Fabel examined the photographs more closely. They were not all close-up flash images of vivid new tattoos: some showed two or more people grinning at the camera, turning a shoulder or a hip towards the lens to display their bodies’ artworks. One person featured in all of the pictures: a thin man with dark hair, going grey, tied back in a ponytail. His face was pinched and the cheeks sunken and he had the look of a drinker. Fabel focused on one picture in particular. It was summer and the man with the ponytail wore a black vest as he was photographed with a fat woman who had obviously just had a floral motif tattooed on the fleshy breast she exposed
for the photograph. Fabel could see that the man in the picture was, himself, covered in tattoos. But they weren’t as colourful as those of his customers. And they consisted of designs and patterns.

‘Werner …’ Fabel called him over, without taking his eyes from the picture. ‘I think we may have found our guy. Not a customer; the tattooist himself.’

There was a doorway from the studio. The door had been removed, obviously to maximise the meagre space, and had been replaced with a curtain of multicoloured plastic strips. Werner continued checking the studio while Fabel explored the rest of the premises. He parted the plastic strips and stepped into a tiny square hall. To the right was a cupboard-sized room that contained a toilet and hand washbasin. Directly ahead of Fabel was a steep stairwell that snapped sharply right, then right again, taking him to the upstairs level. There were three tiny rooms. One combined a kitchen and sitting room and was furnished with a sofa and a leather armchair. The armchair matched those in the studio, but was in much better condition. There was also an ancient-looking TV and a stereo system. The second room was the bedroom. It was so small that the only furniture was the bed, a bookcase along one wall, and a lamp that sat on the floor next to the bed.

The tiny flat depressed Fabel. It was dingy but clean, and Bartmann had obviously kept it tidy. But it was the kind of functional, soulless space of a man living alone. Fabel thought about his own apartment, with its smart furnishings, beechwood floors and stunning views over the Alster. It was in a different league. But there was something about this space that had encapsulated Bartmann’s life that was depressingly similar. As he stood there, in a dead
man’s dead apartment, Jan Fabel made a decision about his own life.

Fabel checked beneath the bed and found a large, flat portfolio case. He pulled it out and laid it on the bed before opening it. It contained pen-and-ink drawings, charcoal sketches and a couple of paintings. They were of uninspiring subjects – trees, buildings, still lifes – and were clearly studies set to test and stretch the technical abilities rather than the imagination of the artist. Fabel recognised that the artist’s craftsmanship was excellent. Each study was initialled ‘M.B.’

Fabel left the portfolio on the bed and moved over to examine the bookcase. This was clearly Bartmann’s library of all things relating to the tattooist’s craft. There were scholarly texts on the history of body art, books on semi-pornographic ‘fantasy’ art, and manuals for tattooing equipment. But there were three books that didn’t fit. And one of them caused Fabel to feel a small current of excitement tingle across his scalp.
Gebrüder Grimm: Gesammelte Märchen
.
The Collected Tales of the Brothers Grimm
. Next to the fairy tales, Fabel found two books on the old German Gothic scripts: Fraktur, Kupferstich and Sütterlin.

Old German type and script; a copy of Grimms’ fairy tales. It wasn’t what you would expect in a tattooist’s apartment. Another murder with a Grimm connection and another body, but one they had not been meant to find.

Fabel removed the three books from the shelves and put them to one side to be placed in evidence bags later. He stood in the dingy bedroom for a moment and gazed down at the books. He knew he was still to unravel their exact significance; he also
knew he had just taken a large step closer to his killer. He snapped open his cell phone and hit a pre-set dial button.

‘Anna – it’s Fabel. I have a strange request. I want you to phone Fendrich and ask him if he has any tattoos …’

Weiss had been polite and cooperative on the phone when Fabel had called him at home, but had managed to squeeze the tiniest hint of tested patience into his tone. He explained that he was tied up most of the following day doing book signings and some research for a new book he was writing. He was going to be in the Neustadt area and Weiss suggested that they meet there, about eleven-thirty.

‘As long as you don’t mind doing your interrogation alfresco,’ Weiss had said.

Fabel arrived, as usual ten minutes early, and sat on a bench in the pedestrianised Peterstrasse. The sky had wiped the last smudges of cloud from its face and presented itself in a flawless bright blue and Fabel cursed having worn his heavier Jaeger jacket. Being dressed appropriately for the ever-changing weather was a problem Fabel shared with the rest of Hamburg’s population. He couldn’t slip his jacket off because his service automatic was clipped to his belt, so he chose a bench shaded by a rank of trees that punctuated the cobbled street. Peterstrasse was flanked by five- and six-storey Baroque town houses, their façades crowded with windows and rising to Dutch-style gables.

Slightly after eleven-thirty, Weiss’s huge frame emerged from the imposing doorway of number thirty-six, which sat on the corner of Peterstrasse and Hütten. Fabel knew the building: as a student he had visited it frequently. He stood up as Weiss approached and the two men shook hands. Weiss’s gesture suggested that they should sit down on the bench.

‘I take it your new book follows a similar traditional literary theme?’ said Fabel.

Weiss raised one of his heavy brows questioningly and Fabel indicated the building from which Weiss had just come. ‘The Niederdeutsche Bibliothek – I take it you’ve been researching older Low German literature. I used to spend quite some time in there myself …’

‘What can I help you with, Herr Kriminalhauptkommissar?’ Weiss’s intonation still nursed a hint of impatient indulgence. It rankled with Fabel, but he let it go.

‘There are more coincidences in this case than I’m comfortable with, Herr Weiss,’ said Fabel. ‘I suspect that the murderer has read your book and that it is influencing his actions.’

‘Or it could be that your killer and I simply use the same source material, if in a radically different way. By which I mean the original Grimms’
Children’s and Household Tales
.’

‘I have no doubt that is the case, but I also feel that there is a …’ Fabel struggled for the best form of words ‘… well, a
freestyle
element to both. An interpretative element, if you like.’

‘By which I take it that you mean he doesn’t stick strictly to the book?’

‘Yes.’ Fabel paused. An elderly woman walked past with a dog on a lead. ‘Why didn’t you tell me
that the sculptor was your brother? That he created the wolf sculpture in your study?’

‘Because I didn’t think it was any of your business. Or that it had anything to do with what we were talking about. Which leads me to ask why you feel that it
is
your business. Am I a suspect, Herr Fabel? Do you want a full accounting of my whereabouts?’ Weiss’s eyes narrowed and the heavy brows shaded the first sparks of a dark fire. ‘Oh, I see your logic. Maybe madness runs in the family.’ He leaned his massive head towards Fabel. ‘Maybe I am moon-mad too.’

Fabel resisted the temptation to back away and held Weiss’s gaze. ‘All right, let’s say that I have grounds for suspicion. Your book comes out and all of a sudden we have a series of murders that follow the same specific themes as your novel. Added to that, these murders are placing you in the public spotlight, increasing interest in – and sales of – your book. That, at least, legitimises my interest in you.’

‘I see … So I’m in the police searchlight as well as the public spotlight?’ The smile that stretched Weiss’s lips lacked any form of warmth. ‘If you could provide me with a list of dates and times you want me to account for, I’ll supply the information you need.’

‘I’ve already prepared that.’ Fabel took a folded sheet of paper from his inside pocket. ‘The times and dates are all there. And, wherever possible, it would be useful if you could give details of anyone who can corroborate your whereabouts.’

Weiss took the paper and placed it in his jacket pocket without looking at it. ‘I’ll attend to it. Is that all?’

Fabel bent forward, leaning his elbows on his
knees. He watched the woman and her dog as they turned the corner into Hütten. ‘Listen, Herr Weiss, you are clearly a very intelligent man. The coincidences between your book and these murders are not the main reason I’m here. I suppose you’re the nearest thing I’ve got to an expert on what drives this killer. I need to understand him. I need to understand what it is he thinks he sees in these tales.’

Weiss eased back on the bench and spread his large hands on his knees. He looked at the cobbles at his feet for a moment, as if contemplating what Fabel had said.

‘Okay. But I don’t know what I can do to help. I can’t claim to have any special insight into what motivates him. It’s his reality; not mine. But, if you ask my opinion, it has nothing to do with
Grimm’s Fairy Tales
. What he’s doing is his own invention. Like my book …
Die Märchenstrasse
has nothing to do with Jacob Grimm, really. Nor
Grimm’s Fairy Tales
. It’s just, well, a
background
to that which I have freely invented.’ Weiss paused. He indicated the Baroque Bürgerhäuser before them. ‘Look at this. We’re sitting here surrounded by history. In high season Peterstrasse – and Hütten and Neanderstrasse around the corner – is filled with tourists, particularly Americans, soaking up the late-medieval splendour of these buildings. But, as I’m sure you know only too well, it’s all a lie. These splendid Baroque town houses were built in the late 1960s and early 1970s. There were never buildings like these here. They’re not even reconstructions – they’re inventions, fabrications. Admittedly they were built according to genuine historical plans for such buildings, but they don’t belong here, in this place, in this time. At any time.’

‘What’s your point, Herr Weiss?’

‘Just that you and I and anyone who knows about Hamburg history are aware of that. But the majority of people don’t have a clue. They come here, and sit on these benches, just as we are now, and soak up a sense of their history, of German history. And that is what they experience. What they feel. It is their reality, because they believe it. They don’t see a sham because there is none to see.’

Weiss rubbed the heels of his hands on his knees, frustratedly, as if he was struggling still to give form to his thoughts. ‘You asked about my brother. The reason I didn’t mention that he was the sculptor of that piece in my study was because it is all still too real for me. Too raw. I was glad when Daniel killed himself, and I still find that difficult to deal with. He was so tortured towards the end that I was relieved when he ended it. I explained how Daniel believed himself to be a lycanthrope, a werewolf. The fact is that he really did believe it: it was an absolute, unquestionable, hideous reality to him. He was my older brother and I loved him dearly. He was everything I wanted to be. Then, when I was about twelve and he was seventeen, he started to have these episodes. I saw it, Herr Hauptkommissar. I witnessed my brother in the grip of some invisible force that tore at him. It wasn’t just mental anguish that made him scream and howl, it was intense physical agony. What we watched was a teenage boy having a seizure. But what Daniel experienced, what he truly felt physically, was every sinew twist and stretch, his bones bend, his body racked with unbelievable pain as he changed shape. My point is that he felt it all. It was all real to him. Even if it wasn’t to us.’ Weiss broke off the intense gaze with which
he had locked Fabel. ‘That’s where I got the idea for my
Wahlwelten
novels. I wrote about Daniel in the very first one. I made him a wolf. Not a werewolf, but a wolf-king who was master of all the world’s wolf packs. I made him happy and free – free from pain – in my story. And that became my reality for him.’ Again Weiss paused. Fabel could see pain in the dark eyes. ‘That’s why you’re wrong to say that your killer isn’t sticking to the book, to the authentic tales. He is … because it’s his book. It’s his reality.’

‘But the Grimm fairy tales, and maybe even your book, are his inspiration?’

‘Obviously. But it’s
how
he interprets them that is hard to second guess. Listen – do you remember I showed you my collection of illustrations?’

Fabel nodded.

‘Well, think how many highly individual artistic interpretations of the Grimms’ tales they represented. And they are only a fraction of the paintings, drawings, book illustrations and sculptures that the tales have inspired. Take the Humperdinck opera … the Sandman comes along and sprinkles magic dust in Hänsel’s and Gretel’s eyes to make them sleep. Something that has nothing to do with the original tale at all. Your killer’s interpretation – because he clearly sees himself as an artist – is as subjective and personal as these others. And such interpretations can be twisted. The Nazis appropriated
Grimm’s Fairy Tales
just as they did anything else in our culture that they could twist and corrupt to suit their own purposes. There is a particularly nasty, notorious book illustration of a very “Aryan” Gretel pushing the old witch into the oven. And the old witch has stereotypical Jewish features. It is a repulsive piece of work
and, when you think about it, a pretty chilling presage of the horrors that were to come.’