by Lars Schutz
Ichigawa frowned. ‘Then interview the journalist. You’ve been waiting ages for the opportunity to give her the third degree again, eh Stüter?’
The Chief Superintendent merely sank lower in his chair. ‘Enough of the insinuations,’ he said, barely audibly.
‘What insinuations?’ asked Rabea.
‘She’s my ex-wife.’ Evidently distracted by some fleeting memory, Stüter’s gaze grew distant for a split second. ‘But we got divorced two years ago.’
Jan wanted to laugh out loud. It all made sense: Stüter’s verbal sparring with the journalist, his outburst at the press conference, even the fragility he was trying to hide.
‘Repression is a normal psychological defence mechanism,’ said Rabea, ‘but such a regressive approach only works short-term.’
Stüter waved a dismissive hand. ‘Don’t give me Freud!’
19
The revolving restaurant on the roof of the wildlife park hotel managed only one revolution per hour, but Jan was still feeling sick.
Maybe it was the bodies he’d seen earlier; he still couldn’t forget the sight.
It certainly couldn’t be the meal. On his trip to the buffet he’d found more than enough vegan food – but he’d scarcely been able to take a bite.
He’d come to the restaurant by himself: Rabea had wanted to phone her family from her room.
Who could blame her?
He wanted to phone somebody too, somebody to talk through what had happened that day. But right now, he had nobody in his life like that.
Over the years he’d had several brief flings like the one with Anita, but none had lasted. On the one hand he liked not being tied down, but on the other he sometimes wished he had a constant in his life.
He swirled his glass of water, watching the reflections in the liquid. He’d stopped drinking alcohol when he left home, but the only effect it had had was to make his hypersensitivity worse.
He let his gaze wander across the restaurant. Other than him, its only occupants were two chattering old married couples, a red-haired woman about his age and a business traveller glued to his smartphone.
Outside, the night pressed in with such impenetrable darkness that it looked like somebody had hung the panoramic windows with black velvet. Even so, Jan needed only the points of the compass to tell him which villages lay beneath his feet.
To the west, the river Nister led past Unnau towards Hachenburg. To the south, after Hahn, Grossseifen and Höhn was Wiesensee Lake. Eastwards rose the Fuchskaute, the highest mountain in Westerwald. The villages of Niederrossbach and Fehl-Ritzhausen nestled in the shadows at its base. Finally, to the north, were Kirburg and Neunkhausen.
Every one of those names stirred memories inside him. Afternoons playing football with friends, the first shy kiss at a basement party, walking for hours with his father.
Absorbed in his thoughts, he didn’t even notice at first that someone had approached his table.
‘Bill, please,’ muttered Jan, assuming it was the waiter.
‘I don’t think I can help you there,’ replied a female voice.
Jan looked up in astonishment.
The woman who had been sitting alone at a table was smiling down at him.
He frowned. ‘Erm, what’s up?’
Her smile grew wider, which suited her fine-featured face very well. ‘You and I are the only ones sitting here alone. I don’t know about you, but I could do with a bit of company.’
Jan’s brain sprang instinctively into action. In a split second he was analysing the woman’s behaviour. A pathological need for attention?
Barely perceptibly he shook his head. Sometimes he tended to over-interpret even the most harmless everyday situations. A beautiful woman had simply come up to talk to him in a restaurant. It was the sort of thing that happened once in a blue moon, and he wasn’t about to let the behavioural analyst in him spoil that.
‘I’ve got nothing against company,’ he said with a smile, offering her a seat.
‘Tamara Weiss,’ she said, once she’d settled in her chair.
‘Jan Grall.’ He beckoned the waiter over. ‘What are you drinking?’
‘Gin and tonic, please,’ she ordered, then said to Jan, ‘I’m on holiday – I’m allowed the occasional treat. You’re sticking with water?’
Her torrent of rich red curls was pulled back into a braid. It disappeared into the collar of her black dress, which she’d paired with dark tights and knee-high leather boots. Her grey eyes twinkled alertly at Jan.
‘I don’t drink. I’ve already got enough addictions,’ he replied. ‘So, um, and what job are you on holiday from?’
‘I’m a freelance translator in Frankfurt. Mainly English and French literature.’
‘I’ve always had tremendous respect for creative types.’ Jan sipped his water. ‘My work is creative sometimes too, but in a completely different way. What genres do you translate?’
‘Romance, thrillers . . . mainly crime.’
‘Ah, then you’re in the right place at the right time.’ The corner of his mouth twisted humourlessly. ‘Since we’re on the subject: what made you choose this as a holiday destination? It’s not exactly the Maldives.’
‘You’ll laugh, but I’m afraid of flying. I’ve only ever got onto a plane once – and it was hell.’
Her G&T arrived, and she paused briefly. Jan had met very few people who spoke as articulately and clearly as she did. Who were so utterly in control of a situation. As though her life were a TV show and she was the host.
‘Anyway, I like the peace and quiet here,’ she continued. ‘You feel so far away from other people at this hotel. Nothing but nature around you.’
‘True,’ admitted Jan.
Feeling far away from everything. As a young man, that had been a reason why he wanted to get out of this place.
‘But I’m just prattling on about myself. What about you? You on holiday too?’
‘Work,’ said Jan. ‘Which brings us back to crime. I’m on the team investigating the alphabet murders.’
Her eyes widened, whether from curiosity or shock was impossible to tell. ‘Oh – you’re one of the inspectors?’
‘No, no. I’m from the Rheinland-Pfalz State Office of Criminal Investigations in Mainz. I put together psychological profiles.’
The professional inside him said he shouldn’t really be discussing the case. Yet the way Tamara’s monolith-grey eyes were sparkling at him had loosened his tongue.
‘Then you’re a profiler?’
He shook his head. It was the second time today he’d had to explain the difference between behavioural investigative advisors, or behavioural analysts, and profilers.
‘I couldn’t do that,’ she said. ‘All that madness. The violence. The only crimes I’m involved in are bad English manuscripts.’
‘Well, I couldn’t spend the whole day poring over—’ He fell silent. Something Rabea had said earlier had struck him.
The victims’ professions. Editor. Publisher. Author.
And now he was sitting opposite a translator.
She tilted her head. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Tamara – may I use your first name? – you ought to be very careful.’
‘Why?’
‘All the murder victims so far had jobs related to writing. Just like you. And that could be the killer’s pattern.’
‘I’m a big girl,’ she replied with a roguish smile. ‘I can look after myself.’
‘I don’t doubt that. Nonetheless, thank you. This conversation has helped me enormously.’
She laughed. ‘I haven’t done anything!’
‘Oh yes, you have – I’ve got to go through the files again right now. Sorry.’ He beckoned over the waiter.
Her eye caught his. ‘Shall we meet here again tomorrow evening? Same time?’
‘With pleasure,’ he responded promptly.
20
Rabea put down her iPad and took a deep breath.
If s
he really wanted to spoil her mood, all she needed to do was sift through the ViCLAS database.
She threw herself onto her bed.
ViCLAS stood for Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System. A sheet consisting of 168 questions aggregated all the missing persons cases and serious crimes involving murder, attempted murder or sexual violence. Sensibly organised and laid out.
It was indispensable for behavioural analysts, recording not only the details of the offences but also the perpetrator’s social behaviour and the characteristics of the victims.
All evening she’d been searching for patterns that resembled the Alphabet Killer’s. Literary quotations at the crime scenes. Tattooed letters. She’d found nothing, although she’d expanded the search to the last decade.
ViCLAS was more than a tool.
It was torture.
A database of family tragedies, lunacy and death. Every time she worked with it, she came away feeling dirty. To her they weren’t just numbers, text and images, but stories seared into her brain.
She looked at her phone. 2.11 a.m.
Her mother would have been in bed for ages by now. She’d have to call tomorrow instead. Maybe she should call her flatmates in Mainz. It was possible Asim or Ricarda might have just got home from a party and would still be awake.
But what would she talk to them about? The case was so engrossing that at the moment she couldn’t imagine talking about anything else.
She shook her head softly. No. Time she got some sleep. Getting up from the desk, she took off her blouse and dropped it carelessly on the floor then flung herself backwards onto the bedspread. She hadn’t even opened her suitcase. Apart from the laptop on the table, the room looked unoccupied.
She shut her eyes, but instantly realised that sleep was impossible. ViCLAS wouldn’t let her go. Somewhere in its depths was a record of her own tragedy.
The reason Jan had wanted to work with her.
She’d read the entry on the case so many times she knew it by heart. In the life of every person there comes a moment when they stop being a child. When they become aware that the world isn’t the sheltered and peaceful place their parents told them it was.
In Rabea’s life that moment had come twenty years earlier, when her father had walked into her room with a tear-stained face and hugged her so tightly she couldn’t breathe. ‘You’ve got to be strong now, little one—’
She realised her fingers were knotted around the bedclothes. She sat up, and for lack of alternatives she reached for the remote and switched on the flat-screen TV.
A talk show flickered onto the screen; an actor was trying to promote some film with a boring anecdote.
Everything seemed infinitely far away. As if from a parallel world that hadn’t been shattered by hatred and death. The actor with his crinkly scarf and perfectly studied smirk. Her flatmates with their parties and broken dreams. Snowy Lucerne, which she’d left only this morning.
She was freezing, although the heating was turned up to max. Sighing, she got up from the bed. It was no good. She unpacked her suitcase, cleaned her teeth and threw on the old basketball jersey, with 24 WYLER emblazoned on the back, that she always wore as pyjamas.
By the time she crawled under the bedspread, the actor had finished his segment. Now it was the lead singer of some band, pushing some new album.
Jan, Stüter, Ichigawa and she weren’t part of that world any more. She switched off the television. Since their arrival here, they’d belonged to the world of the dead. The world of letters and symbols.
The world of the Alphabet Killer.
And she wasn’t sure if he’d ever let her go.
21
‘Everything all right?’ The taxi driver was eyeing Jan in the rear-view mirror.
Jan was resting his head against the glass. The only source of light on the road back to Zanetti’s house came from the reflective bollards. Where they were missing, people had compensated by hanging CDs from wooden posts. An indecipherable, monotonous Morse code of light. A flood of signs.
‘You’ll get your tip – no need to bother with small talk,’ said Jan absently.
‘Just asking.’ The driver adjusted his cap.
Jan was already feeling overwhelmed by the interior of the taxi cab. The smell of cold cigarette smoke, of the dog he could tell the driver owned, of pungent aftershave. Then the rancid lambskin covers on the front seats. The driving licence with the decades-old picture and the name Hans-Werner Parigger. The passport-size photo of a small, chubby-cheeked boy on the dashboard, right next to a club pennant for TuS Koblenz.
One dip into the river of signs was enough to decode the driver’s entire life.
He’d been unable to sleep at the hotel, pacing ceaselessly around the room. He’d listened to music, and even tried to read something. It didn’t help. When he was on a case, his brain had no stand-by mode.
So, he’d called reception and got them to order him a taxi. He’d been planning to visit Zanetti’s house again anyway. Why not put his insomnia to good use?
‘What’s going on here, then?’ asked the driver as they pulled up outside Victim C’s house.
Mobile floodlights surrounded the detached house, bathing it in a dazzling, celestial light. Forensics vans and other police vehicles had parked on the field outside, leaving a muddle of tyre tracks in the fresh snow. Technicians in plastic overalls were flitting through the rooms like ghosts.
‘You’ll read all about it in the paper tomorrow,’ said Jan. ‘You can let me out here.’
‘Should I wait for you?’
‘Not necessary. I’ll probably be here a while.’ He pressed thirty euros into Parigger’s hand – a generous tip. ‘That’s fine.’
The stocky fifty-ish driver tipped his cap. ‘Look after yourself.’
‘I’ll do my best.’
Jan got out of the taxi. Instantly the wind blew particles of snow into his face. Now, at two in the morning, the winter was revealed in all its frosty mercilessness.
Wrapping his coat around his body as tightly as possible, Jan walked towards Zanetti’s house with rapid steps. He couldn’t remember the last time his teeth had literally chattered with cold.
The head of the forensics team was standing by the dilapidated front door, in discussion with his colleagues. Recognising Jan, he nodded. There was amazement in his deep-set eyes.
‘We weren’t expecting one of you to show up,’ he said. ‘If it’s results you’re after, you’re too early. We’re still in the middle of our examination.’
‘No worries. I’m not here to see you. I just wanted to spend time at the scene.’
‘Make yourself at home!’ He made an expansive gesture. ‘Just, please don’t disturb my people when they’re working.’
Jan stepped inside the crime scene. The place where the lives of the victim and killer had become one. A place full of signs and clues. Full of meaning.
It was Jan’s task to find that meaning – and if he didn’t, he had to invent it out of what he did know.
The crime scene was at the core of behavioural analysis. Jan could spend hours there. On one of the courses on operative case analysis, he had been taught lateral thinking using the techniques of Edward de Bono. It was about overcoming ingrained patterns of thought through associative leaps, switches in perspective and the search for deliberately unconventional solutions. In combination with his hypersensitive faculties, it was a highly effective weapon.
First, he climbed the spiral staircase to the first floor. The bedroom was much the same as the ground floor: mountains of junk. Scratched, worn-out furniture. Yellowing paper on one wall, unfinished brick on another. Although the technicians had opened all the windows, the musty stench of neglect still hung in the air.
Jan walked up to the king-size double bed. It was covered in unidentifiable blotches of various colours. He thought he could even see dried blood at the head. On the bedposts he noticed the remains of cable ties, which had been interlocked like the links of a chain.
On the bedside table lay tattooing needles flecked with ink and blood.
Had the Alphabet Killer brought the other victims here too? Killed them immediately then tattooed them here? They’d have to wait for the autopsy, but Jan was increasingly sure the tattoos had been done post mortem. Was this mutilation? Desecration of the bodies after death? In Germany that sort of thing happened only five or six times per year.
The killer had deliberately betrayed this hiding place. He must have somewhere else where he could keep and prepare his victims. What if he didn’t kill them straight away – what if he already had the next one in his power?
As he stepped out of the bedroom, he beckoned over one of the crime scene technicians. ‘I don’t want to disturb you, but please pay particular attention to the bed, okay?’
The man nodded, his brow furrowed.
Jan walked into the child’s bedroom opposite, the only room in the whole house that was still intact. Clown wallpaper, a white lacquer bed, building bricks on the floor, a spick and span changing table.
A stab ran through Jan. The sudden death of a child. The final trigger. The push that had finally sent Zanetti’s sanity tumbling into the abyss. He must already have had an inclination towards conspiracy theories, but the loss of his child must have abandoned him irretrievably to that world.
He leant against the window frame, closing his eyes for a moment and holding his face into the night wind. Laboriously he fished his phone out of his coat pocket and dialled Anita’s number.
She picked up after the first ring. ‘Jan?’
‘I thought you’d be asleep already.’
‘Were you just calling to wake me up? I was still racking my brains about those quotations – the technicians found another one in the bison enclosure. It was attached to one of the fenceposts.’
‘What was it this time?’
‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.’
‘Hmmm – George Orwell, 1984. Apart from the fact that all the quotations are first lines, I can’t see any connection between them. But I’m calling because I’m back at Zanetti’s house. He might have brought the other two victims and tattooed them here. Probably he set up another hiding place ages ago – and I’d bet he’s already got his next victim captive.’
