JF04 - The Carnival Master (32 page)

Maria watched with a cold, hard expression of violent hatred as Vasyl Vitrenko disappeared from view.

‘Now,’ she said in a voice not much louder than a whisper. ‘Now I’ve got you.’

The television flickered mutely in the corner of the hotel room. A row of
Funkenmariechen
dancing girls in red-and-white microskirted versions of eighteenth-century Prussian military uniforms, complete with tri-cornered hats, performed a clumpily synchronised chorus-line high kick to unheard music. In the background the
Elferrat
, the Karneval Council of Eleven, presided with forced jollity over the proceedings. Karneval was beginning to build up to its Rose Monday climax. Fabel lay on his hotel bed, gazed blankly at the screen and reflected on the fact that the Karneval Cannibal too was probably building up for showtime on Women’s Karneval Night. Fabel had just finished talking to Susanne on the phone; it hadn’t gone well. After he had been unable to give her a clear idea about when he’d be back in Hamburg, they had fallen into a silence. Susanne had ended it by saying she would talk to him whenever he got back and had then hung up.

He stared at the silent TV, not taking in the grinning dancing girls who sidestepped their way in unison off the stage and were replaced by a man dressed in a barrel who delivered a comic monologue.

Fabel switched on his bedside lamp and picked up the file on Vera Reinartz, the girl who had been beaten and raped on Women’s Karneval Night in 1999. There was a photograph of Vera, taken with a couple of fellow medical students. She was a smallish, mousy-haired girl but pretty. She stood
uncertainly at the edge of the group, clearly uncomfortable at having her photograph taken. The second photograph had been taken on a sunny day in a park or garden. Her light-coloured summer dress revealed her figure: slim but slightly pear-shaped with a fleshiness around the hips. Just like the Karneval Cannibal’s victims. Again, she had the look of someone who didn’t like to be the focus of attention.

Fabel went through Vera’s statement, doctors’ reports and the stark hospital photographs, the vividness of her bruises and the rawness of the abrasions and cuts on her face and neck emphasised by the severe lighting. Fabel couldn’t recognise the swollen mass of bruised flesh as the girl in the earlier photographs. There were images of the wounds on her body. Including bite marks. Bite marks were by no mean unusual in rape cases, but Fabel felt that Scholz had been far too dismissive of a potential link with the murders. Tansu Bakrac clearly struggled to assert herself in the shadow of Scholz’s seemingly relaxed but highly personal leadership.

Again Fabel reflected on the unknown city outside his hotel window, with its strange customs, its Karneval, its dancing girls and costumed clowns. Its killer stalking women on the one night of the year when they were supposed to be free of male tyranny. And Maria, putting herself in mortal danger by stumbling around in the dark. And that made him think about his appointment. The one he had made for the next day. The one Scholz mustn’t know about.

Tansu had added a lot of background information on Vera Reinartz. She had been bright; brighter than her peers and destined for a significant career
in medicine. She had the kind of intellect that tended to be steered into specialism or research. She had had boyfriends but the medical examination had confirmed her own statement that she had been a virgin. Where are you now, Vera? Fabel thought to himself as he read. How could you just disappear?

Fabel breakfasted well. He had muesli with fruit and yoghurt, a couple of bread rolls with Leberwurst and a soft-boiled egg with fruit juice and coffee. He left the hotel early but did not head for the Police Presidium. It was the first opportunity Fabel had had since he had arrived in Cologne: Scholz had to go to a Karneval police committee meeting that would go on all morning. To start with, Fabel had assumed it was a strategy meeting to discuss the massive but delicate task of policing Cologne’s Karneval.

‘No such luck,’ Scholz had said gloomily. ‘It’s about our Karneval float for Rose Monday. They’re after my head because the finishing of the float and costumes is so far behind schedule.’

Fabel walked into town from his hotel and climbed the cathedral steps above the Bahnhofsvorplatz, the main square that sat between Cologne Cathedral and the city’s central railway station. Ahead of him was the Collonaden shopping mall attached to the station. The winter sun was knife-sharp in the cold air and scarf-muffled crowds milled around the square. This was the heart of the city. It had been for nearly two thousand years and the concentric circles of Cologne’s main thoroughfares radiated from it like ripples in a pond. Maria was out there somewhere on some half-baked revenge mission. She was here to catch up with
Vitrenko. The chances were that she would. And that he would kill her.

He had only been waiting for ten minutes when a tall man with greying hair approached him. Fabel noticed that Ullrich Wagner was much more casually dressed than he had been the last time they had met, in van Heiden’s office in Hamburg.

‘I see you got my message,’ said Fabel. ‘I’m glad you could come.’

‘After what you told me on the phone the other day, I could hardly not come.’ Wagner looked up at the dark mass of the cathedral. One of the spires was encased in scaffolding that looked toothpick-fragile compared to the spire’s mass. ‘There’s always scaffolding somewhere on it … it took three hundred years to build and it looks like it’ll take an eternity to repair.’ He smiled. ‘I must say it’s very Graham Greene … meeting at the cathedral and everything.’

‘I didn’t want to meet at the Police Presidium. I’m working this Karneval case with Benni Scholz. I didn’t want, well … to
confuse
things. I didn’t have time to head out to BKA headquarters, and you said you would be in Cologne …’

‘Listen, it’s not a problem. By the way, I just wanted to ask you … your decision … you know, what you said on the phone. Is that your final decision?’

‘Yes …’ Fabel thought back to his phone call to Wagner from his office in Hamburg immediately after he had heard from Dr Minks about Maria’s absence.

‘I have to say, I agree that we have to get Frau Klee out of the picture. Not just because she’s compromising our operation again, but for the sake
of her well-being. But I have to be frank, Herr Fabel …’

‘Call me Jan …’ Cologne’s informality seemed to be affecting Fabel.

‘I have to be frank, Jan: I think Frau Klee is finished as a police officer.’

‘Let’s concentrate on saving her life first, then we’ll see about saving her career.’

Fabel had only been in the cathedral once before and as he and Wagner stepped through the double doors into the main body of the building he recalled his previous awe. It had to be one of the most impressive buildings ever built. The vast vaulted space that opened up before them seemed too huge to be sustained in the fabric of the building. For a moment the two men remained silent as they each took in the majesty of the cathedral and its enormous stained-glass windows. On the way in Fabel and Wagner passed a shortish, stocky man with thick sand-coloured hair and a dense bush of moustache. He appeared to be wearing several layers of woollens under his stockman coat. His spectacles were perched on the top of his head and he was peering up, frowning, at one of the detailed stained-glass panels. He had a pen and a thick notebook clutched in one hand and a guidebook in the other.

‘Excuse me …’ He turned and spoke to them in English as they passed. ‘Could you tell me … there is a coat of arms up there. You see …’

‘It probably signifies one of the wealthy merchant families in Cologne,’ said Fabel.

‘That is the strangest thing,’ said the man, perplexed but smiling. ‘That is quite definitely … absolutely definitely … a
rhinoceros
… But the guide states here that this panel dates back to the Middle Ages. I thought
in Germany you would not know of such things at this time …’

‘Are you Spanish?’ Fabel spoke his mother’s language like a native and had an ear for foreign accents in English.

‘I live in Spain, but I’m Mexican, actually. Paco is my name,’ said the tourist and smiled broadly. ‘I am a writer and such things interest me.’ He shook his head in awe. ‘And this is a most interesting city …’

‘I’m afraid I have no idea. I’m from Hamburg myself …’

‘Maybe it was a family who traded with Africa,’ said Wagner. ‘But Cologne started off as a Roman city and had contacts throughout the Empire. It’s always been a trading centre for the rest of Europe. For the world. But I’m afraid I can’t tell you what the significance of the rhinoceros is.’

‘Thank you, anyway,’ said the tourist.

They were about to walk away when Wagner checked himself. ‘Oh, there is one meaning it might have.’

‘Oh?’

‘There was a lot of symbolism borrowed from pagan times to represent the various aspects of Christ. They were big on bestiaries in the Middle Ages and used exotic animals as symbols for Christ or the resurrection. The Phoenician myth of the phoenix and the image of the pelican were both used to represent the resurrection.’

‘Why the pelican?’ asked Fabel.

‘Back then they thought pelicans ripped open their own chests to deliver their young.’

‘And the rhinoceros?’ asked the tourist.

‘The rhinoceros was a symbol of Christ’s wrath. Righteous vengeance.’

‘Most interesting …’ said the Mexican. ‘Thank you.’

Fabel and Wagner left the tourist still looking up at the stained-glass window, shaking his head in wonder.

‘Impressive …’ said Fabel, with a smile.

‘I was brought up in a very Catholic family,’ said Wagner wryly. ‘A lot of it sticks.’

Fabel and Wagner sat on a pew near where the immense stained-glass window soared high and wide, splashing the floor’s flagstones with puddles of red, green, blue.

‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ said Wagner. ‘Did you know that Cologne Cathedral was the world’s tallest man-made structure until the end of the nineteenth century? It was the Eiffel Tower that replaced it, I think. Or the Washington Monument.’

Fabel nodded. ‘So much stone. No wonder it took three hundred years to build.’

‘This isn’t simply a place of worship: it’s a physical statement. A big statement. Big God and little us.’

‘I take it that despite your Catholic upbringing you’re not the most religious person, Ullrich?’

‘After going through the Vitrenko Dossier it’s pretty easy to believe in the Devil, if not in God.’

‘I’d like a look at the dossier. Would that be possible?’

A cathedral guide in a monk’s habit, with a cash box and a guidebook dispenser strapped to his belt, walked past. The monk paused to ask an American tourist to remove his baseball cap.

‘This is still a place of worship,’ the monk-guide said in English.

‘It’s on strictly controlled release,’ said Wagner
after the American and the guide were out of earshot. ‘You have to sign a register to even look at it. But I’ll see what I can do, Jan. However, if you are getting involved in this, we need you to get involved professionally. One renegade Hamburg cop trampling all over this operation is enough.’

‘Fair enough. Were you able to run the checks I asked for?’

Wagner’s expression suggested it had not been an easy task. ‘Hotel Linden off the Konrad-Adenauer-Ufer. She checked in three weeks ago. The nineteenth of January. Stayed a week and checked out on the twenty-sixth. You do know that getting this information was not entirely legal?’

‘You’d make a good spy, Ullrich.’ Fabel smiled. He remembered that the Linden was on the list of hotels that he and Anna had found in Maria’s apartment. ‘Could I have a look at the Vitrenko file tonight?’

‘Tonight?’ Wagner pursed his lips. ‘I’ll see what I can do. I’m not supposed to take a hard copy out of the office … I’ll come by your hotel about eight.’

‘Thanks. I really appreciate it.’

‘That’s okay, Jan. Just remember what we agreed.’

‘I will,’ said Fabel. ‘See you tonight.’

He watched as Wagner walked towards the west door of the cathedral, past the Mexican tourist who still stood writing notes and studying the stained-glass window detail of a rhinoceros that should not have been there.

Olga Sarapenko spoke to Buslenko on her cellphone while Maria kept her gaze fixed on the
monitor screen, focused on the indistinct grainy image of the front door to Molokov’s villa, waiting for Vitrenko to re-emerge.

‘Taras says we’ve to stay put,’ Olga said after she hung up. ‘He’s going over to Lindenthal. It’ll take him at least twenty minutes to get in position. If Vitrenko doesn’t leave before he gets there, Taras will pick up the Lexus and tail it.’

‘Alone. Buslenko’s taking the same risk I did.’

‘Taras knows what he’s doing.’ Olga made an apologetic gesture. ‘Sorry, you know what I mean. He’s specially trained.’

‘So are the people he’s tracking.’ Maria spoke without shifting her attention from the screen.

Olga pulled up a chair next to Maria and they both sat watching the lack of activity. Two guards. One on the door, the other patrolling the house. It seemed an age before Olga’s cellphone rang. The exchange was brief.

‘He’s in position. We have to let him know which way the Lexus turns when it comes out of the gates.’

Fabel ate on the way back to his hotel. He sat in a corner booth on the ground floor café-bar of an old brewery close to the cathedral, drinking the traditional Cologne beer which, like the unique dialect of the city, was called
Kölsch
.
Kölsch
was always served in the small, narrow, tube-like glasses called
Stange
and Fabel noticed that as soon as he drained one another was brought without him ordering it. Then he remembered it was a Cologne custom that, unless you placed your drink mat on top of the glass, you would be continually supplied
with fresh
Kölsch
. The way he felt at that moment, Fabel found the arrangement more than satisfactory. He thought about how good it would be to sit in the cosy brewery café and get quietly drunk. But of course he wouldn’t. Fabel had never in his life been truly, falling-down drunk. To do so would mean losing control, allowing himself to become subject to the random, the chaotic. A waiter in a long apron appeared and said something completely unintelligible. Fabel stared at him uncomprehendingly then laughed, again remembering Cologne traditions. In a place like this the waiters were called
Köbes
and spoke in thick
Kölsch
, usually peppered with colourful phrases. The waiter grinned and repeated his question in High German and Fabel placed his order.