by Lars Schutz
Despite his curt manner, he deliberately shook hands with all of them. When he reached Rabea, she felt the pressure of his hand even through the thick combat glove.
‘We spoke on the phone,’ said Stüter. ‘Sorry the journalists are here. Somebody must have talked.’
‘Nothing to be done now,’ said Eller with a wave of his hand. ‘As long as they keep their distance, I don’t care. Were you able to obtain a plan of the target’s house?’
The SWAT team leader was like an oasis of calm in their agitated little group.
Stüter shook his head. ‘The council didn’t respond quickly enough to our request. This is the sticks, remember.’
‘No need to be so contemptuous about your home town,’ replied Eller casually, before getting back to the topic at hand. ‘We’ll have to go in blind, then. There’s a back entrance, correct?’
‘Erm, yes—’ replied Stüter, still on the back foot.
‘Good, that’s all we need for now. One more thing: your people only enter the target’s property once access is obtained and the area secured, understood?’ His penetrating blue eyes swept across them.
They nodded mutely.
‘Right, then—’ murmured Eller, putting his helmet back on. He sounded drained – an exhausted warrior who’d already seen too much.
While Köllner and his colleague stopped the camera teams switching on their floodlights, the six members of the SWAT team made their move.
Zanetti’s house was set back slightly, almost on the edge of the river Nister. The jagged, deep-black silhouettes of the fir trees huddled along the far edge like a stage set.
The once white façade was covered with crumbling plaster. Faded rugs and sheets hung in the windows, blocking the view inside. There was nothing but dead remnants in the two flowerpots either side of the front door.
As they reached the house, the SWAT team split up. Four of them continued towards the front door, while the other two darted around the building.
Rabea could no longer distinguish Eller from the others.
One of the four at the front held a battering ram; the others readied their HK MP7s.
Only the rustling of the pines filled the night. Rabea swallowed drily.
‘Attack!’ Eller’s voice rang out.
The battering ram slammed home with a crash, and the door flew open.
The SWAT team stormed inside.
‘Police!’
‘On the ground!’
The torches mounted on their weapons cast grotesque shadows.
The sudden noise and garish light must have totally confused Zanetti – precisely as the officers wanted.
For a few seemingly endless moments, all they could see were the torch beams through the veiled windows. Rabea was so nervous she wanted to shut her eyes and stick her fingers in her ears.
Shouts of ‘Clear!’ echoed from various parts of the house, until one of the officers yelled, ‘Eller, over here!’ Unlike the others, the note of detachment was utterly gone from his voice. ‘We found him.’
No shots, no shouts. Nothing but a bald statement. Rabea threw a sidelong glance at Jan, who was rubbing the bridge of his nose thoughtfully with his thumb and index finger.
A shadow emerged from the house.
Everybody started. Köllner’s hand twitched instantly to his holster.
At a second glance, however, it turned out to be one of the SWAT team. Tearing the helmet off his head, he collapsed to his knees and vomited into the grass. His coughing and retching were the only sounds to be heard above the excited chatter of the TV reporters behind them.
‘What did he see in there?’ murmured Jan behind her, although his question was addressed to no one.
A light came on in the room to the right of the front door, and moments later one of the officers ripped away the sheet.
The walkie-talkie on Stüter’s belt crackled. Eller’s voice: ‘Come inside and bring the analysts. Zanetti isn’t the killer. He’s one of the victims.’
C
‘Since we Germans, like the Greeks and the Slavs, express the tenuis of the guttural with the letter “K”, the letter “C”, taken from the Latin alphabet, is entirely superfluous; hence also why it is absent from the Gothic and Old Norse script. The Slavs use it for “S”, the Poles and Bohemians for “Z”.’
The Grimms’ Dictionary
17
The house stank of loneliness.
Of unemptied litter boxes, cold cigarette smoke and spoiled food.
Rabea pulled the collar of her shirt over her nose. Ichigawa, Jan and Stüter followed her down the dim corridor.
Newspapers and magazines were piled either side – the earliest Rabea saw dated from 2007. Beside them were rows of shopping bags filled to the brim with empty containers from microwave meals.
Evidently, Zanetti had been unable to throw anything away.
She frowned. A fear of loss, perhaps originating from his divorce? Or was she jumping to conclusions again?
They entered the living room; or rather, the space that had once been a living room. It no longer held any trace of comfort.
‘If this is any reflection of his mental state, then I’m guessing the guy had more than a few bats in the belfry,’ whispered Stüter.
The only item of furniture was a sagging leather sofa covered with cigarette butts and burn marks. Piles of books towered like stalagmites from every surface. Rabea saw titles like The History of Kabbala, The Primeval Alphabet and The Lexicon of Numerology, as well as countless copies of Letters of Death.
‘What’s numerology?’ she asked Jan.
‘The symbolism of numbers,’ he replied. ‘It’s an attempt to reinterpret the letters of the alphabet as numbers in order to decode a hidden message. In the Torah, for example. Searching for God’s secret code. Aleph, i.e. “A”, is one, Beta – “B” – is two and so on.’
A jumble of letters and numerals were scrawled on the wallpaper with felt-tip pen. Torn-out pages from books were pinned to the wall among them.
The SWAT team officer who had secured the room gestured curtly towards the door on their right. ‘He’s in there.’
As they got closer, another, far more threatening, stench overpowered the smell of dilapidation.
Rabea recognised it from an autopsy she’d attended shortly after university. Back then she’d rubbed peppermint oil under her nostrils, which had taken the edge off the smell of the body.
Her stomach knotted. She gave a choked cough.
‘All right?’ asked Jan, who was ashen-faced.
The room, which had once been Zanetti’s study, looked like a slaughterhouse.
On the chaise longue lay something more reminiscent of an abattoir’s waste than a human body. It was impossible to tell the original colour of the upholstery; it was too soaked with blood.
Rabea managed only a brief look before she had to avert her eyes.
Her legs shook so much that she felt as if she was on stilts.
It wasn’t until she’d freed herself from the spell of the bloodthirsty sight that she noticed the walls. The letter ‘C’ stared back at her, repeated dozens of times.
In blood.
Jan crouched down in front of the chaise longue. ‘Overkill. He’s been completely disembowelled. This was frenzied.’
‘Look!’ Ichigawa, pulling on a latex glove, picked up a note from the side table.
‘Another quotation?’ Rabea took a step closer.
Ichigawa nodded, handing her the scrap of paper.
It took her a moment to decipher the tiny lettering: When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from unquiet dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.
She knew the line only too well. It was a book she’d had to read at school. ‘Kafka. The first line of The Metamor-phosis.’
‘It’s a fitting sentiment, if a macabre one,’ said Stüter. ‘Our killer certainly transformed Zanetti into something inhuman.’
‘This murder represents a turning
point,’ groaned Jan, creaking to his feet. His face was twisted, warped with pain and concentration.
‘You can say that again,’ agreed Stüter sarcastically. ‘The point where the shittiness of the situation turns from crap to absolute bull.’
‘That’s not what I was driving at, although you do put it very poetically,’ replied Jan.
‘Then please, enlighten me.’
Jan held up his index finger. ‘Okay, first observation: he’s playing with us. He knew we’d think Zanetti was the killer and that we’d come storming into his house. Probably his way of expressing superiority. Showing us he’s one step ahead. Or it’s about much more than that, which leads me to my second observation.’
He lifted another finger. ‘The killer’s motive comes from Zanetti’s perspective on the world: the symbolism of letters. “A”, “B”, “C” and so on. The question is, did he only do so to throw suspicion on Zanetti, or is he genuinely interested?’
Jan raised a third finger. ‘Now we come to my final observation: the killer enjoyed this murder.’
‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ said Stüter derisively.
‘I will if you let me talk,’ continued Jan. ‘With the first two victims, the act of killing was simply a means to an end. He was probably as afraid as his victims. This, however – this he really enjoyed. As I said, it sent him into a frenzy.’
‘So, we can assume Zanetti is the third victim, time-wise.’
Jan nodded. ‘I think the autopsy will confirm that.’
‘Well, it’s something to be getting on with, I suppose.’
As Rabea forced herself to look back at the corpse, she noticed something on the wrists.
Stepping closer, she took out her phone and switched on the torch.
Yes, she’d been right.
Both wrists were crossed with red lines – pressure marks.
‘Zanetti was bound. The house is fairly remote. The killer could easily have kept him here for several days.’
‘Makes sense,’ remarked Ichigawa. ‘That way he could have killed them in the right order and also made sure Zanetti didn’t throw a spanner in the works while he was committing the first two murders.’
The Chief Superintendent nodded, visibly impressed for the first time.
Jan gave her a wink, adding, ‘Our killer has a plan. I think he already knows who his victims will be. From A to Z, if you want to put it like that. And under no circumstances will he deviate from that plan.’
‘That’ll make him predictable – might help us.’ For the first time, Stüter was eyeing them with a trace of approval.
His phone rang, rearranging his face into its normal, grim expression. ‘Our media liaison officer.’ He answered. ‘Yes, what is it? We’re holding a press conference in an hour?’
‘Impossible! We need more time at the scene,’ said Jan distractedly. He turned on his heel and began to search the room.
‘After the conference you can spend as much time here as you like,’ replied Stüter, who’d already hung up. His voice sounded husky. ‘We’re all in this mess together.’
Instead of a lead, all they had to show at the press conference was a fresh piece of bad news. And they were no closer than before to catching the killer.
18
A flurry of flash bulbs. Jan shielded his eyes with his hand as he stepped onto the podium, pausing for a moment in confusion.
‘Over here!’ Anita was waving him over with one hand and pointing at a folding chair on her right with the other.
Gratefully, Jan threw her a weak smile. He edged behind the long table and took his seat.
‘Welcome to Hell,’ whispered Stüter, who was sitting on the other side of him.
Jan sipped at the water bottle in front of him. He realised he hadn’t eaten or drunk anything for hours – possibly another reason for his pounding headache.
His gaze swept across the mob of news people. The photographers in the front row were busy taking pictures, while the cameramen were still assembling their equipment. Those in the back were writing diligently in their notepads or typing into their iPads.
Jan’s heart began to race. He wasn’t unaccustomed to speaking in front of crowds. He’d given lectures at university, he’d led seminars – he had that down pat.
This, however, was an altogether different challenge.
Anything he said here could easily end up on the evening news. Not to mention that the unwanted camera team outside Zanetti’s house had caught their failure on tape.
They’d been pushed into a corner.
Another Body in Westerwald – Investigators Still Groping in the Dark was the headline already up on one major news website.
Who’d called the TV crew?
Other than the investigation team, Frau Ziehner and Marek Lünner’s girlfriend, nobody had known a thing about it.
Although – that wasn’t quite true.
The killer had known.
Had he tipped off the camera crew?
At that moment a piercing whistle signalled that the microphones had been switched on. The whispers in the wood-panelled meeting room in Bad Marienberg died down.
The red-haired media liaison officer leant forwards onto her elbows and raised her voice. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to welcome you to this press conference with Investigation Team Alphabet Killer. Frau Ichigawa will update you on the most recent turn of events. Afterwards you’ll have the opportunity to ask questions.’
Anita summarised the situation. Today she didn’t seem to be enjoying the spotlight at all. The strain was obviously taking its toll.
Then came the hail of questions.
The first, addressed to Anita: ‘Is this case too much for you?’
The look she gave the bald journalist made Jan momentarily afraid she was going to leap over the table and throttle him.
‘The first body was only found this morning,’ intervened Stüter before she could reply. ‘Did you seriously think we were going to find the killer by now? We have several good leads and places to start, but you’ve got to understand that this is solid police work here – it’s not CSI.’
At that moment Jan was grateful for Stüter’s gruff manner.
‘Was sending a SWAT team into the third victim’s apartment too hasty?’ A journalist in the front row jumped in.
Stüter’s face was gradually turning as red as his tie, which he’d put on hurriedly before the press conference. ‘As I already said,’ he growled, ‘this is solid, decent police work we’re doing here, and we would only take such a step if the evidence was convincing, and—’
He got no further.
A loud female voice that Jan now knew all too well cut him short: ‘I’ve been informed by reliable sources that there are deep divisions within the investigation team, especially between the behavioural analysts and the detectives.’
Nora Schneill – the editor of the Wäller Zeitung, who had given her card to Jan only that morning – stood up triumphantly from her chair. ‘How can that be, after so short a time? Herr Stüter, Herr Grall – would one of you like to comment?’
An excited murmur ran through the room. More camera flashes.
Jan threw a sidelong glance at the Chief Superintendent; he could almost hear the cogs whirring. His jaw was gritted, his narrowed eyes fixed on the journalist.
‘That’s — I—’ he growled.
Before Stüter’s reply could end in an outburst of rage, Jan spoke up. ‘There is absolutely no basis for those insinuations.’
He took a gulp of water. At that moment, Stüter sprang to his feet.
‘You know what, Nora?’ he bellowed, pointing at her. ‘You’re no better than the nutter running around out there, slaughtering people letter by letter. You and your sensationalism, you’re just as blood-thirsty and—’
Anita grabbed him by the shoulders and dragged him back down into his chair. ‘Be quiet!’ she hissed. ‘Do you even listen to yourself?’
The babble of voices in the ro
om was growing louder. The photographers were snapping picture after picture.
For a moment the media liaison officer buried her face in her hands, then said tonelessly into the microphone, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the press conference is over.’
Jan went to help Anita manhandle the still furious Stüter off the podium – no mean feat with such a hulking giant. Once they’d finally grabbed hold of both his upper arms, they dragged him into the adjoining green room, which was furnished with a corner sofa and a table full of snacks and drinks.
‘All right, all right. Let go of me!’ The Chief Superintendent tore himself free and slumped onto the sofa.
Anita stared at him, shaking her head. ‘If you’d only let me do my job.’
As she and Rabea paced the room, Jan put his legs up on the sofa and rested his head against the window. Occasionally he sipped from his bottle of mineral water.
Sleet was sweeping across Büchtingstrasse, driving the reporters and their camera teams into their vans. Particles of ice struck the windows, melting and running down in faltering channels.
‘Whoever blabbed to that Schneill woman was definitely a man,’ growled Stüter. ‘And I can imagine exactly what she offered in return. She’s always known how to wrap men round her little finger.’ He crossed his arms. ‘If I find out who the guy is, he’s going to wish he’d never joined the police.’
Rabea rolled her eyes.
‘The problem wasn’t the informant, it was that you can’t control yourself,’ said Anita. ‘Now you’ve managed to put the entire Westerwald police force in a bad light. Congratulations.’
It was enough to silence Stüter for a moment. He sat there brooding darkly.
‘What if the informant wasn’t on the team at all?’ suggested Jan.
‘Who else would have known about the cr—’ Rabea asked, but immediately answered her own question. ‘Of course, the killer.’
‘He couldn’t know about your differences of opinion, though,’ objected Anita.
Jan shrugged. ‘Perhaps he’s bugging the office.’
‘That’s unthinkable!’
‘Just because something’s unthinkable, doesn’t mean it’s impossible.’
