by Lars Schutz
The ranger, who was standing with his back to them, spread his arms wide and said something soothing.
Jan’s heart dropped into the pit of his stomach like a lead weight.
‘Enno Buck?’ asked Stüter.
The man closest to him turned around. Over his checked shirt he wore dirty dark-blue dungarees. Jan estimated his age at around fifty-five. His hair was streaked with grey, and his weather-beaten face was a fine tangle of creases. The broad brim of his leather hat threw a shadow across his face that reached to the tip of his nose. Intelligent eyes flashed from the semi-darkness beneath.
‘Gentlemen, lady. What’s up?’ His Westerwald accent sounded slightly nasal.
‘Stüter, Chief Superintendent. An officer asked you to wait for me. These are my colleagues Grall and – and –’ He clicked his fingers, trying to recall Rabea’s name.
‘Wyler,’ she prompted.
‘Right, Wyler – we’d like to ask you a few questions. Herr Grall, if you would?’
Stüter evidently wanted to test him, but a routine interview didn’t offer much opportunity to use psychology. Instead, Jan turned to the classics. ‘When did you find the body?’
Buck shrugged. ‘This morning. Round half seven. My colleague Mirco checked the enclosure and noticed the bison were very disturbed. Means something had upset them. They’re actually a pretty calm lot. So, we went straight in to take a look and found the body.’
‘Did you notice anything strange this morning? Did you see anyone? Try to remember even insignificant details.’
‘Nope, nope!’ He shook his head. ‘Everything as per usual. Actually—’ he cocked his head. ‘Hang on, I do remember something. But that was two, three weeks ago.’
Jan pricked up his ears.
‘In the fallow deer enclosure – a young animal, lying a little apart, hidden under leaves and branches. Somebody’d cut its throat. And tattooed a circle on its belly.’
Jan exchanged a glance with Rabea. The same killer. They were dealing with someone unpractised with death. He’d tried it out on animals first.
‘Who has access to the enclosures apart from the keepers?’ Stüter had a characteristic way of lifting the right corner of his mouth after he’d asked a question.
‘Anybody, basically. At night, the park is only protected by one guard. And he didn’t notice anything. You don’t exactly have to be an athlete to climb over the fences.’
Jan could attest to that. Awkwardly, he thought back to the night when he and a couple of school friends had drunkenly climbed over the fences and ridden a poor goat as though they were in a rodeo. ‘Did you document the animal’s body at all?’ Stüter took a notepad out of his inside pocket. At least he hadn’t switched to using a tablet, like Rabea.
‘We took photos. We’d have let you lot know if it happened again.’
‘You don’t seem that upset,’ remarked Rabea suddenly.
There was no note of accusation in her voice, but Buck’s face reddened. ‘What do you think we do here all day? We work with animals. Of course, I was shocked – but it’s not the first time I’ve seen blood and death.’
Rabea nodded and murmured an apology but added another question: ‘Deer are quite shy. How could the killer have managed to get close enough to one? Unless—’
‘—unless it knew him?’ Buck finished the sentence for her. His face was glowing a deep scarlet. ‘You really want to throw suspicion on the keepers, eh? Well, let me tell you something. This place makes most of its money from selling boxes of food that visitors can use to coax the animals towards them.’
‘So, it could have been anybody,’ said Jan.
6
They left the enclosure and stepped back onto the path, where the group of onlookers was growing. A man with a crewcut was even carrying his young daughter on his shoulders so that she could see better.
As they elbowed a path through the crowd, a woman wearing black trousers and a denim jacket came towards them. A digital camera hung around her neck.
‘That’s all we need,’ sighed Stüter. ‘Nora Schneill from the local rag.’
The reporter was making a beeline for the Chief Superintendent, her phone out and recording. ‘Rolf, can you tell me anything about the discovery of the body’?’
‘No, I can’t,’ snapped Stüter, barging past her and through the throng. ‘There’ll be a press conference this evening, and you can ask questions then. Now, if you’ll excuse me – I’ve got an investigation to attend to!’
Nora Schneill pouted, making her pretty, oval face even more attractive. Before Jan had time to wonder why she and Stüter were on first-name terms, she was holding the phone under his nose. ‘Are you and your colleague the behavioural investigative advisors from Mainz?’
‘I can answer that question with a yes, but your next one – whether I can tell you anything about the body – with a no, and I’d also like to ask you how you knew we were here.’
This time she didn’t pout; her eyes widened. Jan grinned. He liked piling as many clauses as possible into his answers, leaving his interlocutor temporarily speechless.
‘Well, still – if you change your mind, this is how to reach me.’ She flashed a business card and pressed it into his hand, again with a broad smile.
‘I’ll take you up on that,’ he said, tucking the card into his pocket. Then he re-joined Stüter, who was clearing a path through the gawpers like a berserker.
‘I’m surprised Lünner from the Marienberg paper hasn’t shown up yet,’ grunted the Chief Superintendent when they finally emerged from the crowd. ‘He’s normally first to hear about this stuff. And he’s even more unbearable than Schneill.’
‘I thought she was very nice,’ confessed Jan.
A uniformed officer approached them. ‘Shall we go to the next site?’ he asked, his walrus moustache bobbing. ‘It’s only a ten-minute walk to Basalt Park, but hardly anybody wants to risk going down in snow like this. Probably why the body wasn’t discovered sooner.’
They crossed the car park, where the coroner’s vehicle was just pulling up, and walked down Kurallee. On the right-hand side loomed a spindly steel tower, which caught Rabea’s eye. ‘What’s that? A watchtower?’
Stüter gave a hoarse laugh. ‘No, just an observation deck. The Hedwig Tower. Can’t see much in this fog, though.’
A lot had changed since Jan had left. ‘When did they put that up?’ he asked.
‘Five, six years ago,’ answered Stüter. ‘You’ve been gone a while, eh?’
‘Time doesn’t stand still anywhere,’ remarked Jan laconically.
*
It seemed to him that the fog had settled not just in the Westerwald peaks but in his mind. Too many memories, too many feelings came pelting down; he couldn’t think straight.
Hypersensitivity. A blessing and a curse. A constant source of stress in his life. He urgently needed peace and quiet.
Thankfully Rabea interrupted his thoughts. ‘We know a few things already.’
‘Yeah? What’ve we got so far?’ Stüter’s lips vibrated as he exhaled. ‘A slaughtered animal in the wildlife park and an unidentified body!’
‘We’ve got more than that,’ Rabea objected. ‘Everything our killer does betrays something more about him. Then we can use those pieces to form a picture.’
‘Really?’ Stüter had rolled down his overalls to his hips, buttoned up his jacket and was strolling beside her, his hands in his trouser pockets. ‘Do tell me about these puzzle pieces!’
‘He’s no tattoo artist. Or he wouldn’t have had to practise on animals.’
‘We’ll still have to ask a tattooist,’ said Stüter. ‘Expertise, you see. We’ve got to find out whether you can tell from a tattoo what kind of implement was used. Maybe we can find out where the killer bought it. What else have you got?’
They dodged a delivery van driving up to the hotel. Coughing the exhaust fumes out of her lungs, Rabea continued. ‘Most likely he comes from an unobtrusive and stable
environment. He’s not accustomed to violence – hence the rehearsal with the animals. Maybe there was a trigger in his recent past that awoke his propensity for murder. That made him plan all this.’
There’s a beast inside every human being, thought Jan. Only difference, some of them get woken up.
‘That’s a lot of “maybes” and “likelys”,’ replied Stüter.
Rolling his eyes, Jan said, ‘We’re not reading coffee grounds – this is professional police work. We try to understand why a killer might act in a particular way. If we can identify what motivates them, what they need, then we can identify their background, their age, their sex, their level of education.’
Kurallee led to Westendstrasse, on the other side of which was the expanse of Basalt Park.
‘The north entrance is a bit overgrown,’ said Stüter. ‘Watch out, it’s steep.’
They walked down the slope. The former basalt quarry yawned like a meteorite crater in the middle of the spruce forest. A lake, now covered in a fragile layer of ice, had formed inside the pit over the decades. A spiral path, sprinkled with white snow, led down to the bank. Barrier tape was stretched between two pines at the entrance to the path. A gangly policeman leant against the right trunk, glued to his smartphone.
Stüter grunted. ‘Think the path’s going to watch itself, Inspector Köllner?’
The young man jumped and put the phone away. His freckles and tousled, pitch-black curls gave him the air of an absent-minded philosophy student.
‘Oh sorry, just looking something up.’
Stüter seemed to have something against the Inspector.
Jan turned to his freckled colleague. ‘Could you tell us something about where the body was found? Where was it lying?’
‘You’re already off the mark. It wasn’t lying anywhere. It was hanging.’
B
‘ “B” assumes its important position behind “A” in all the alphabets derived from Phoenician Greek. It is of great significance that immediately following “A”, the basis of all vowels, are the three media as the basis and foundation of all mute consonants.’
The Grimms’ Dictionary
7
3rd December, late afternoon
A person’s reaction to finding a body depends on two factors: their psychological state and the state of the body.
There are people with stable personalities who collapse when they see someone peacefully lying as though asleep, and there are unstable bundles of nerves who can look at a waterlogged corpse without any issues.
Jan had always been among the hardier type, but when he saw the man’s body hanging from a beam in the building on the edge of the lake, he swallowed.
The man was smeared all over with blood and it was only on a second glance that Jan realised he was naked. It took a third look before he saw the ‘B’ tattooed on the corpse’s chest.
The body swayed gently to and fro in the wind, its white, rolled-back eyes gazing down watchfully at the activity beneath it.
Investigators, the soles of their shoes covered in plastic wrap, were walking around. Underneath the body, a woman was kneeling and taking photographs with a digital camera.
Stüter stopped abruptly, staring at the dead man open-mouthed. ‘Now we know why Lünner from the Marienberg paper didn’t show up,’ he said. His voice sounded like breaking ice. ‘He can’t.’
‘That’s the journalist?’ asked Rabea. She eyed the body. ‘Then at least we’ve identified one victim,’ she sighed.
The editor of a regional newspaper and an unknown man in the wildlife park. Jan buried his hands in the pockets of his coat. Probably not a sexually motivated crime, then. According to all the typologies he knew, men were rarely the victims of sex crimes. What was the connection between the two men? Had they known the murderer? Had they been in touch with him? Possibly the connection existed solely in the killer’s mind. The FBI talked about unspecific motive killings – murders that only held significance for the murderer. A serial killer could latch onto the tiniest details: the same background, the same style of clothing, the same eye colour. They’d have to check everything.
The woman with the camera had come up to them. A Doctor Who T-shirt peeked out around the collar of her pristine white coveralls. Small R2D2 earrings dangled from her earlobes, and her mahogany-red curls were tied back into a ponytail.
Her serious expression didn’t seem to fit with the dimples next to her mouth. ‘Dr Diana Harreiter, medical examiner,’ she introduced herself. ‘You’re the behavioural investigative advisors, right?’
She was the first one to call them that without a trace of contempt – she was already gathering brownie points.
‘Right, Jan Grall. Are you able to—’
Stüter cut him off. ‘Just so we’re clear, you’re here to advise. That means you only jump in when you think you know something about the killer’s mental state.’
‘Of course.’ He preferred not to retort, knowing that a tussle with the Chief Superintendent would get him nowhere.
‘Right,’ grunted Stüter, visibly content once more with himself and the world, ‘are you able to tell us anything yet? Where did all this blood come from?’
Harreiter shook her head. ‘To determine time of death I’ll have to examine rigor mortis and livor mortis. For that we’ll have to get him down, but first the crime-scene technicians have got to finish. And the advisors have to see the site in its original state.’
‘Does it help you at all to leave the poor man swinging up there?’ Stüter turned to them both.
‘Naked and strung up,’ said Rabea. ‘More like an execution than a murder. A public humiliation. Especially if the cause of death wasn’t strangulation.’
‘I have nothing to add to that. It’s true of the site at the enclosure, too. The deceased had been trampled by animals. A similarly humiliating end,’ said Jan. ‘Cut the rope.’
Stüter nodded to one of the technicians, who fetched a ladder. Two others spread a white body sheet underneath the hanged man.
The technician climbed the ladder, took out a pocket knife and sawed away at the thick hemp rope.
Jan hopped from one leg to the other to keep himself warm. Didn’t they have professional equipment for this sort of thing? Endless minutes passed while the man worked, using his small knife.
‘What do you know about Herr Lünner?’ Rabea asked the Chief Superintendent. ‘As an editor, he must have made enemies.’
Stüter cocked his head and observed the dead man. ‘He was a paragon of an investigative journalist. As dedicated as it’s possible to be, but somehow he never made it out of the provinces.’
‘What exactly do you mean by investigative? Did he find out the beer was being watered down at the village fete?’
Jan threw his assistant a reproving glance, although he had to stifle a laugh.
‘Enough joking around there, Heidi.’ Stüter’s mouth twisted like a wolf’s. So, he’d noticed Rabea’s accent. ‘A few weeks ago, Lünner printed a series of articles about how several town councillors were siphoning money meant for the new bypass into their own pockets.’
Jan looked up at the dead man and clicked his tongue. The technician had nearly cut through the rope. A few more threads tore with a groan and the corpse was hanging from the last one.
‘He’d have made a lot of people very angry. Maybe—’
Rabea was about to continue, but Jan put a hand on her shoulder and shook his head. He knew exactly what she was going to say: that somebody had decided to do away with the journalist and only committed the other murder to lay a false trail. It was best she kept that hypothesis to herself for a while.
Understanding, she bit her lip. The red-haired medical examiner looked from one face to another, quietly grinning, until somebody behind them cried, ‘Herr Stüter! You need to see this!’
A technician in white overalls stepped out through the doorway of the building, holding a crumpled piece of paper the size of a poster in his gloved fing
ers.
‘Where’d you find that?’ Stüter took it gingerly. Köllner, Rabea and Jan drew in around him. There was something on the paper. A few printed letters in various fonts; judging by the colours of the paper, they’d been cut from several different books. They were so small Jan couldn’t make them out.
‘What does it say?’ asked Stüter. ‘Couldn’t he have used letters from the newspaper? At least we wouldn’t need a magnifying glass for that.’
Köllner read aloud: ‘Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’
‘Sounds like a quote from a book of poetry.’ Stüter scratched his chin.
‘I recognise it!’ said Köllner triumphantly. ‘It’s the first line of Anna Karenina, by Tolstoy. One of the most famous openings in world literature.’
‘I’m too busy for that sort of nonsense,’ retorted Stüter. He turned to the blonde technician who’d brought over the piece of paper. ‘Where did you find this?’
‘It was nailed to the wall on the left when we went inside,’ said the man, with a high voice that didn’t seem to fit his burly exterior. ‘Take a look at the paper. It’s not yellowed, and there are no sizeable water stains or patches of dirt. I’d say it’s only been there a few hours.’
‘Then it was probably left by the killer,’ concluded Stüter. He turned to Jan again. ‘An educated serial killer, then. Should be able to make something of that, eh?’
‘We’ll have to check whether he left a similar message at the other dump site. Then maybe we could deduce a pattern.’
Since writing his thesis on what motivated killers like Jeffrey Dahmer or Harold Shipman, who’d killed at least 218 people, Jan had absorbed the profiles of hundreds of serial killers, regardless of nationality or era. As he ran through this archive in his head, he found nothing comparable to this interest in literary symbolism.
Many serial killers came from low-education environments, with exceptions like the co-ed killer, Ed Kemper, who had an IQ of 145. Still, that didn’t necessarily mean anything – and it wasn’t even clear they were dealing with a serial killer. Perhaps this was simply a double murderer who’d chosen two different dump sites. But then, why the letters?
