JF04 - The Carnival Master (11 page)

After lunch they headed to Otto Jensen’s bookshop in the Arkaden, just a short walk from the Alsterhaus. Otto had invited them to come along to an afternoon book launch. Otto Jensen had been Fabel’s closest friend since university. He was tall, skinny
and one of the clumsiest individuals that Fabel had ever known, yet behind the clumsiness lay a razor-sharp intellect. Otto loved books, and his bookshop was probably the most successful independent in the city. But Fabel had often thought that his friend could have achieved a great deal in some other field.

Otto greeted them cheerfully but muttered under his breath that the book that was being launched was incredibly dull.

‘Couldn’t tell you that before,’ explained Otto, ‘or you wouldn’t have come. Sorry … but I need you to pad out the crowd.’

‘What are friends for?’ said Fabel.

‘Listen, the wine’s not bad at all this time. You’re half-Scottish, half-Frisian … I thought you’d do anything for a free drink.’

Otto had arranged a small reception after the event for the author and some of the guests. People stood in clusters, sipping wine and chatting. Susanne and Otto’s wife Else had become close friends and were deep in a conversation about somebody that Fabel didn’t know when Otto took him by the elbow and steered him away.

‘There’s someone I’d like you to meet,’ Otto said.

‘Not the author, please …’ pleaded Fabel. He had found the event, and the author, as tedious as Otto had promised.

‘No. Not at all. This is someone
infinitely
more interesting.’

Otto guided Fabel across to a shortish man of about fifty who was dressed in a beige linen suit that looked as if it had been worn every day for a week without making the passing acquaintance of an iron.

‘This is Kurt Lessing,’ explained Otto. The man in the crumpled suit extended a hand. He had an intelligent face that hid a certain handsomeness behind too-big spectacles that needed to be wiped clean. ‘I should warn you that Kurt is quite mad. But really interesting to talk to.’

‘Thanks for the introduction,’ said Lessing. He smiled at Fabel. But his attention focused immediately on Susanne who had joined them. He gave a half-bow and raised her hand to his lips. ‘It is my pleasure,’ he said and grinned wolfishly at her. Fabel laughed at the deliberately conspicuous display of attraction. ‘You are an extraordinarily beautiful woman, Frau Doctor Eckhardt.’

‘Thank you,’ said Susanne.

‘I have to point out,’ said Otto, ‘that despite seeming to state the obvious, Susanne, it is actually an enormous honour for Kurt to say such a thing. You see, he is one of the world’s experts on female beauty.’

‘Really?’ Susanne regarded Lessing sceptically.

‘Indeed I am,’ said Lessing, with another small bow. ‘I have written the definitive work on female beauty over the centuries and across cultures. It is my speciality.’

‘You’re an author?’ asked Fabel.

‘I’m an anthropologist,’ said Lessing, without taking his eyes from Susanne. ‘And, to a lesser extent, an art critic. I have combined the two fields.’ At last he turned to Fabel. ‘I study the anthropology of art and aesthetics. I have written a book about the female form over the centuries. About how our ideal of beauty has transformed so radically over time.’

‘Has it changed so much?’ asked Susanne. ‘This is something that interests me. I am a psychologist.’

‘Beauty
and
intelligence. Now that has been universally attractive throughout the human experience. But to answer your question, yes, it really has undergone radical variations. What is particularly interesting is that our ideal of female beauty has changed more rapidly over the last century than at any time in human history. There is no doubt that mass media has played a key part. All you have to do is to compare the screen sirens of the forties and fifties with the stick-thin fashion models of today. What I find particularly amazing is the way that, within a given time, one will find different ideals of beauty running concurrently within the same culture.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Susanne.

‘No man finds the stick-thin catwalk model attractive. It is a woman’s definition of female beauty. This imperative to be thin is a strange tyranny exerted on women by women. It is what differentiates us as genders that make us attractive to each other. Men like curves, women like angles.’

‘But that contradicts what you said before,’ said Fabel. A joke was a joke, but he was beginning to get fed up with the small man’s preoccupation with Susanne. ‘You said that the “ideal” of feminine beauty has changed throughout the centuries.’

‘True, but within set parameters. If you look at the classical ideal of beauty as set out in Greek or Roman sculpture, it is pretty consistent with, say, the nineteen-fifties ideal. Then came a preoccupation with a large bust. However, if you look at Renaissance art, breasts were always small and firm. In those days, the big bust was associated with the wet-nurse: the lower-class woman who nursed babies for wealthier mothers determined to maintain their
figures. There have been radical swings in fashion, the most extreme being the near-obese Titian model. But, generally speaking, there have been limits.’

Fabel thought about the murdered women in Cologne. About how they seemed to have fuller hips and bottoms.

‘What about bottoms?’ he asked. ‘Have there been fashions in bums?’

‘Obviously in the eighteen-hundreds there was a real fixation with them. The bustle exaggerated the bottom to an extreme and physically impossible degree. But generally the function of the hips and bottom has been to accentuate the narrowness of the waist. And that certainly was the intention with the bustle. It isn’t a single body part that is important: it is its relationship with other parts. All fat women have full bottoms but obesity is unattractive. Men who are attracted to larger bottoms tend to look for the contrast with a narrow waist. It’s part of our most primitive psychology. We assess the figure of another to judge their fitness and suitability as a sexual partner.’

After they left the event Fabel and Susanne took a taxi back to her apartment.

‘I rather think he fancied me,’ she said laughingly.

‘Mmm.’

‘What’s wrong?’ Susanne looped her arm through Fabel’s. ‘You jealous? He really wasn’t my type …’

Fabel smiled. But his mind was still elsewhere, putting together an image of a woman in his mind. He knew exactly the type. The type the Cologne cannibal would target next, unless Scholz was able to get to him first.

The couple in the corner kept distracting Andrea from her calculations. Every time she totalled the takings for the previous month a raised male voice would make her lose her place. Last month had not been as good as she had hoped. The café did good but simple food and she had put on a basic Christmas menu of traditional favourites and had decorated the place, but the café was just that little bit too far out from the city centre to attract the masses of tourists that came for Cologne’s Christmas Market. Even the bank of flat-monitored computers that she had installed along the high counter at the back of the café had failed to pay for themselves. She was struggling to break even and it annoyed her that she needed her ‘extra’ income to supplement what she made from the café.

Andrea gave up on her calculations and checked her cellphone. There was a text message from the agency: two bookings. The one for tomorrow night was annoying because of the ridiculously short notice, but it was the second booking that froze Andrea’s attention. A special date.
Weiberfastnacht
. Why would someone want to book Women’s Karneval Night? Why did it have to be that date of all dates? She texted back to the agency saying she could make the booking tonight if they sent her details. The other one … The other one she would have to think about.

The sound of raised voices snapped her attention back to the café.

The couple had been building up to it. Or rather the man had been building up to it. They had only ordered coffee and the scene had all the hallmarks of them having sought out the café as nothing more
than a place for them to sit and carry on the one-sided argument they had clearly been having outside. Andrea studied them: he was a loathsome little toad; she was surprisingly pretty to be with the likes of him. But soft. Andrea had begun by occasionally glancing in their direction; listening to the odd exchange as she had worked the tables. But as their argument became louder, it became impossible to ignore. And it was beginning to disturb the other customers. With a sigh, Andrea closed her accounts and crossed the café.

‘Is there a problem?’ Resting her red-fingernailed hands on the table, Andrea leaned in close and spoke in a calm, quiet tone. The couple had been so engrossed in their heated exchange that they had not noticed Andrea approach. The young man turned his acne towards her. His eyes traced the contours of her body. Andrea was wearing a tight black T-shirt with the café’s logo on it. Her biceps bulged beneath the short sleeves, and her breasts were pulled into small, tight buns on her wide, taut pectoral muscles. There was a trace of a smirk on the man’s lips.

‘What’s it to you?’ The smirk ripened into a sneer.

‘You’re beginning to disturb the other customers.’ Andrea kept her voice calm and low. ‘That’s what it is to me. I think you should leave. Now.’

‘What about our coffees?’ asked the man. The girl had her head down, letting her hair fall like a curtain to hide her face from the other customers in the café.

‘You’ve drunk most of them,’ said Andrea. ‘Leave the rest. It’s on the house.’

‘Just what the fuck are you?’ The young man with the acne now seemed aware he had an audience. He leaned back as if appraising her: the mane of platinum
hair tied back in a ponytail, the heavy make-up, the deep red lipstick, the power-lifter shoulders. ‘I mean, we were just trying to work that out – what you were born as. Male or female. Fuck knows I can’t tell now. You a shemale?’

Andrea straightened up. ‘Leave. Now.’

‘What makes you think you can work here among
normal
people? I mean, they sell food in here, for fuck’s sake. People
eat
here. You’re enough to turn anyone’s stomach.’

Still his female partner sat still and silent behind her curtain of hair.

‘You’ve got two seconds to leave,’ said Andrea, her calm tone belying the furnace of hate and anger that burned in her belly. ‘Or I’ll call the cops.’

The man got up and tugged at the girl’s sleeve. She rose quickly, slid out from behind the table and slipped swiftly out of the café without making eye contact with anyone. The ugly young man eyed Andrea hatefully. He tried to push her out of the way but Andrea’s body wouldn’t yield.

‘Fucking freak …’ He laughed derisively as he was forced to squeeze past her sideways. Andrea watched them as they left the café and walked past the window, the man laughing through the glass at her, his companion still trying to be unnoticed. When they were out of sight Andrea took a deep breath and turned to the other customers with a broad smile of red lips and strong white teeth.

‘Sorry about that,’ she said. There were a few regulars amongst the customers and one of them said: ‘Well done – that’s the way to deal with trash like that.’

Andrea kept her smile in place. ‘Could you spell me for a while, Britta?’ she asked the other waitress
and strode into the kitchen. Andrea swiftly exited through the back door onto the alley. She sprinted along the narrow lane to where a side street ran at right angles to Eintrachtstrasse, then up to the junction with Cordulastrasse. They were there. The girl still had her head bowed while the little shit berated her loudly about something. Their body language, his aggressive, hers submissive, expressed to the world the whole dynamic of their relationship; and Andrea could see that violence played a part in it. There were hardly any other pedestrians and only a few cars passed along the slushy-wet road, with the sound of waves on a shore. Andrea ducked back around the corner. The cold air turned the skin of her salon-tanned naked arms into gooseflesh. But inside the rage still burned.

The man was too busy shouting abuse at the girl to notice Andrea blocking his way. He looked startled as she grabbed the front of his coat and dragged him into the side street.

‘What did you call me?’ Her face hardened into sinew under the make-up. He didn’t answer and she slammed him hard against the brickwork. ‘I said: what the
fuck
did you call me?’

‘I … I …’ The little shit’s expression betrayed his fear and confusion.

Andrea looked at his pasty, acne-covered face. Deep inside her, someone opened the door of the blast furnace of her hate. It surged up in her, white-hot. Her forehead slammed into his face and she felt his nose break. She let him go and he stared at her wildly, his face covered in blood. Andrea took advantage of his shock and slammed a boot hard into his groin. Gasping and retching, he sunk to his knees, clutching his crushed testicles. Andrea turned
to the girl. She was staring, horrified, at her boyfriend as he keeled over and lay on his side on the pavement. Mouth open, a strangled scream in her throat, her eyes filled with tears.

‘You’re worse than him,’ Andrea spoke to the girl in a disgusted tone. ‘You’re worse for playing the victim. For putting up with it. I despise you. I despise all women like you. Why do you let him treat you like that … in
public
? Have you no self-respect?’

The girl was still staring at her boyfriend. Shock and fear on her face. Andrea snorted, turned on her heel and strode back towards the café. As she did so, the girl’s shrill screaming rang in her ears: ‘You freak! You sick fucking FREAK!’

Maria sat on the edge of the hotel bed and assessed her plan: she knew that the only way to conquer chaos was to have a plan.

The idea had come to her when Liese had phoned her just after all the trouble with Frank. Liese was an old school friend from Hanover with whom Maria had kept in touch. She knew all about Maria’s problems and had always been supportive. Liese had offered Maria a chance to get away from it all: to come and spend a few days with her in Cologne. Maria had thanked her but had said no. She would need more than a short break in Cologne for what she had planned. Then it had all come together: Liese had phoned Maria and told her that work meant that she had to go to Japan for three months. The opportunity had come up unexpectedly and had caught Liese somewhat on the hop and she was worried about her flat lying empty. Maria would be
doing her a favour if she stayed in the flat. Liese knew that Maria needed a change of scene, so the arrangement seemed ideal. But Liese had found it a little strange when Maria asked her to tell only her immediate neighbours about the arrangement, and even then only to give them Maria’s first name.