JF02 - Brother Grimm (46 page)

‘But I started to learn from the tales. I began to understand them as I recited them. I learned a valuable trick to make memorising them easier … I looked beyond the words. I tried to understand the message within and to see that the characters weren’t really people, but that they were symbols, signs. Forces of good and evil. I saw that Snow White and Hänsel and Gretel were just like me, hopelessly trapped by the same evil that my own stepmother represented. It helped me remember the stories and I made fewer and fewer mistakes. It meant that my stepmother had fewer excuses to beat me. But what she lost in frequency, she made up for in severity …

‘Then, one day, I got something wrong. A single word. A sentence out of sequence. I still don’t know what it was, but she beat me and beat me. Then the whole world seemed to shake. It was like an earthquake in my head and everything shuddered from side to side. I remember thinking that I was going to die. And I was glad. Can you imagine that, Herr
Fabel? Eleven years old and happy to die. I fell to the floor and she stopped hitting me. She told me to get up, and I could tell she was afraid that she’d gone too far this time. But I tried to be a good boy. I really did. I wanted to do what I was told and I tried to get up, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I could taste blood. It was in my mouth and in my nose and I felt it hot in my ears. Now, I thought. Now I’m going to die.’ Biedermeyer leaned forward. His eyes were eager and intense. ‘It was then that I heard him. It was then that I first heard his voice. I was scared at first. I’m sure you can imagine. But his voice was strong and kind and gentle. He told me that he was Wilhelm Grimm and that he had written the stories with his brother. “You are not alone now,” he told me, “I am here. I am the storyteller and I will help you.” And he did, Herr Fabel. He helped me with the stories I had to recite to my
Mutti
as a punishment. After that, after the first time I heard him, I never got a single word wrong, because he would tell me what to say.’

Biedermeyer gave a small laugh, as if he was privy to a joke that no one else in the room could ever understand.

‘I grew too big for
Mutti
to beat me. I think she might even have grown afraid of me. But her cruelty continued, except now she used words instead of the stick. Every day she told me how worthless I was. How no woman would ever have me, ever want me, because I was a big, ugly freak and because I was so bad. But all the time Wilhelm’s voice soothed me, helped me. For every insult she threw at me, he reassured me. Then he stopped. I knew he was there, but he simply stopped talking to me and I was left alone with my stepmother’s vicious, evil poison.’

‘And then he came back to tell you to kill Paula Ehlers?’ asked Fabel.

‘Yes … yes, exactly. And I knew that he would keep talking to me if I did what he told me. But she was too strong. My stepmother. She found out about Paula. She told me that they would lock me away. That she would have to live with the shame of it all. So she made me dispose of Paula before I could use her … before I could relive a story through her.’

‘Shit …’ Werner shook his head in disbelief. ‘Your stepmother knew about you abducting and murdering a schoolgirl?’

‘She even helped me hide the body … but, as I said, we’ll get back to that later. For the moment, I want you to understand that I had a calling, and she frustrated it. She stopped me following what Wilhelm told me to do. Then he stopped talking again. For nearly three years. Then my stepmother was silenced for good, about three months ago.’

‘She died?’ asked Fabel.

Biedermeyer shook his head. ‘A stroke. It shut the old bitch up. Shut her up and paralysed her and put her in hospital. It was over. She could no longer hurt me or insult me or stop me doing what I was meant to do. What I had to do.’

‘Let me guess,’ said Fabel. ‘The voice in your head came back and told you to kill again?’

‘No. Not then. Wilhelm stayed silent. Then I saw Gerhard Weiss’s book. As soon as I began to read it I knew that he was Wilhelm. That he didn’t need to talk to me in my head. It was all there, in the book. In the
Märchenstrasse
. It was the road we had travelled together a century and a half before. And it was the road we were to travel along again. And the very same night I began to read, Wilhelm’s soft,
sweet voice came back to me, but through those beautiful pages. I knew what I had to do. But I also knew that I had to play the part I had played before: the voice of truth, of accuracy. Wilhelm, or Gerhard Weiss, if you will, was forced to alter things to suit the audience. But not I.’

‘So then you killed Martha. You ended her story,’ said Fabel.

‘I was free from my stepmother and I was reunited with my Märchenbruder, with Wilhelm. I knew it was time. I had my masterwork all planned: a sequence of tales leading up to fulfilling my destiny. To the happy end of my story. But other stories had to end first. And the girl from Kassel, Martha, was first. I was making a delivery there and I saw her. I thought that she was Paula – that she had been awoken from an enchanted sleep. Then I realised what she was. She was a sign from Wilhelm. Just like the copy of the tales that Paula had carried. It was a sign for me that she was to be ended and would play her part in the next tale.’

‘You kept her alive. You hid her for a couple of days before “ending her story”. Why?’

Biedermeyer looked disappointed in Fabel; as if he had asked an obvious question. ‘Because she was to be an Underground Person. She had to be kept beneath the ground. She was very afraid, but I told her that I wasn’t going to do anything to her. There was no point in her being afraid. She told me all about her parents. I felt sorry for her. She was like me. She was trapped in a tale of parents who had abandoned her in the darkness. In the woods. She didn’t know what love was like, so I ended her story by making her The Changeling and giving her to parents who would love her and care for her.’

Werner shook his still-bruised head. ‘You are mad. Insane. You do know that, don’t you? All those innocent people that you murdered. All that pain and fear you caused.’

Biedermeyer’s expression suddenly darkened and his face twisted with contempt. It was like a sudden, unpredicted storm gathering and Fabel glanced meaningfully across at the two SchuPos at the wall. They straightened themselves in readiness.

‘You just don’t get it, do you? You’re too stupid to understand.’ Biedermeyer’s voice was raised only very slightly, but it took on a deep, menacing resonance. ‘Why can’t you understand?’ He waved his hands about him, casting his gaze around to encompass his environment. ‘All this … all this … you don’t think it’s
real
, do you? It’s only a story, for God’s sake. Can’t you see that? It’s only a myth … a fairy tale … a fable.’ He gazed wildly at Fabel, Werner and Maria, his eyes frustratedly searching theirs for understanding. ‘We only believe it because we’re in it. Because we’re in the story … I didn’t really kill anyone. I realised everything was just a story when I was a child. No one could really be as unhappy as me. No one could be as sad and lonely. It’s ridiculous. That day, the day my stepmother was beating me, and my whole world started to shake, Wilhelm didn’t just help me remember the stories I had to recite – he explained that it wasn’t really happening to me. None of it. That it was all a story and he was making it up. Remember? He told me he was the storyteller? You see I am his brother because he wrote me into his story as his brother. This is all simply a
Märchen
.’

Biedermeyer nodded knowingly, as if everyone at the table should have felt monumentally enlightened.
Fabel thought back to what Otto had said about the premise that the author Gerhard Weiss had laid out: the pseudo-scientific babble about fiction becoming reality across the universe’s dimensions. Crap. Utter crap, but this sad, pathetic monster of a man had believed every word of it. Had lived it out.

‘What about the others?’ Fabel asked. ‘Tell us about the other killings. Let’s start with Hanna Grünn and Markus Schiller.’

‘Just as Paula represented all that was good and wholesome in the world, like fresh-baked bread still warm from the oven, Hanna represented everything which has gone stale and foul … she was a loose, promiscuous, vain and venal woman.’ There was pride in Biedermeyer’s smile: the pride of a craftsman displaying his best work. ‘I saw that she hungered for something more. Always something more. A woman driven by lust and greed. She used her body as a tool to get what she wanted, yet complained to me about the salesman, Ungerer, leering at her and making lascivious remarks. I knew her story had to be ended, so I watched her. I followed her, just as I had Paula, but for longer, keeping an exact diary of her movements.’

‘And that’s how you found out about her relationship with Markus Schiller?’ asked Fabel.

Biedermeyer nodded. ‘I followed them to the woods on several occasions. Then it became so clear. I read
Die Märchenstrasse
again – as well as the original texts. Wilhelm had given me another sign, you see? The woods. They were to become Hänsel and Gretel …’

Fabel sat and listened as Biedermeyer outlined the rest of his crimes. He explained how he had
planned to take the salesman, Ungerer, next, but there had been a mix-up over the Schnauber party cake and Biedermeyer had delivered it personally. It was then that he had seen Laura von Klosterstadt. He saw her haughty beauty and her long blonde hair. He knew he was looking at a princess. Not just any princess but Dornröschen – Sleeping Beauty. So he had put her to sleep for ever and taken her hair.

‘Then I ended Ungerer. He was a lecherous, filthy swine. He was always leering at Hanna and even at Vera Schiller. I followed him for a couple of days. I saw the filth and the whores he wallowed in. I engineered it so that I bumped into him in St Pauli. I laughed at his filthy, disgusting jokes and his lewd remarks. He wanted to go for a drink, but I didn’t want to be seen with him in public so I pretended to know of a couple of women whom we could visit. If the tales tell us anything, it’s how easy it is to tempt others from the path and into the darkness of the woods. He was easy. I took him to … well, I took him to a house that you will soon visit yourself, and I told him the women were there. Then I took a knife and I twisted it in his black, corrupt heart. He wasn’t expecting it and it was easy and all over in a second.’

‘And you took his eyes?’

‘Yes. I cast Ungerer as the king’s son in “Rapunzel”, and ripped out those leering, lecherous eyes.’

‘What about Max Bartmann, the tattooist?’ Fabel asked. ‘You killed him before you killed Ungerer and he played no part in any of your tales. And you tried to hide the body for good. Why did you kill him? Just for his eyes?’

‘In a way, yes. For what his eyes had seen. He knew who I was. I knew that now I had become free to start my work, he would see reports on the television or in the papers. Eventually he would have made the connection. So I had to end his story too.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Werner’s tone was impatient. ‘How did he know who you were?’

Biedermeyer moved so fast that none of the officers in the room had time to react. He shot to his feet, sending the chair he had been sitting on flying backwards towards the wall and the two SchuPos behind him jumped sideways. His vast hands flew up and ripped at his vast chest. The buttons flew from his shirt and the cloth tore as he struggled to free himself from it. Then he stood, a colossus, his body huge and dense in the interview room. Fabel held up a hand and the SchuPos who had lunged forward held back. Werner and Fabel were both on their feet and Maria had rushed forward. All three stood in the shadow of Biedermeyer’s enormous frame. Everyone stared at the huge man’s body.

‘Holy fuck …’ Werner said in a low voice.

Biedermeyer’s torso was completely covered in words. Thousands of words. His body was black with them. Stories had been tattooed on to his skin in black Fraktur lettering, as small as the medium of human skin and the skill of the tattooist would allow. The titles were clear: ‘Dornröschen’, ‘Schneewittchen’, ‘Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten’ …

‘My God …’ Fabel couldn’t take his eyes from the tattoos. The words seemed to move, the sentences to writhe, with every single movement, with every breath Biedermeyer took. Fabel remembered the volumes in the tattooist’s tiny flat: the books on old
German Gothic scripts, on Fraktur, and Kupferstich. Biedermeyer stood silently for a moment. Then, when he spoke, his voice had the same deep, menacing resonance that it had had before.

‘Now do you see? Now do you understand? I
am
Brother Grimm. I
am
the sum of the tales and the
Märchen
of our language, of our land, of our people. He had to die. He had looked upon this. Max Bartmann helped create this and had looked upon it. I couldn’t let him tell anyone. So I ended him and I took his eyes so that he could play a part in the next tale.’

Everyone remained standing, tense, waiting. ‘Now it’s time,’ said Fabel. ‘Now you must tell us where Paula Ehlers’s body is. It doesn’t fit. The only other body you hid was Max Bartmann’s, and that was because it wasn’t really part of your little tableaux. Why haven’t we found Paula’s body yet?’

‘Because we have come full circle. Paula is my Gretel. I am her Hänsel. She still has her part to play.’ His face broke into a smile. But it wasn’t like any smile Fabel had seen before on Biedermeyer’s normally amiable, friendly face. It was a smile of a terrible, bright coldness and it locked Fabel in its icy searchlight. ‘It was “Hänsel und Gretel” more than any other tale that my stepmother would make me recite. It was long and it was difficult and I would always get it wrong. And then she used to beat me. She used to hurt my body and my mind until I thought they were broken for ever. But Wilhelm saved me. Wilhelm brought me back into the light with his voice, with his signs and then with his new writings. He told me the very first time I heard him that one day I would be able to exact revenge on my evil witch of a stepmother, that I
would be liberated from her grasp, just as Hänsel and Gretel took revenge on the old witch and freed themselves.’ Biedermeyer leaned his massive frame forward and the words stretched and warped on his skin. Fabel fought the instinct to draw back. ‘I baked Paula’s cake myself,’ Biedermeyer continued in a dark, cold, deep voice. ‘I baked and prepared Paula’s cake myself. I do some freelance work for smaller functions and parties, and I have a fully equipped bakery in the basement, including a professional oven. The oven is very, very big and it needs a concrete floor to support it.’