by Lars Schutz
She watched three boys playing basketball around a single net. The last time she’d held a basketball was more than six months ago. She’d had neither the time nor the opportunity since moving from Switzerland.
‘Lots of parents have kept their kids at home today, since they found out about Tugba’s disappearance,’ said Köllner, who was walking just behind them.
The Inspector had escorted them to Montabaur while the rest of the team went through the responses to their public appeal for witnesses.
Jan glared at a couple of teenagers who were imitating his jagged gait. ‘It’s all scaremongering.’
‘I can understand them. I’d do the same thing with my daughter.’
Rabea pricked up her ears. ‘You have a child?’
She was looking at the Inspector with fresh eyes.
The way Stüter picked on his subordinate sometimes made Köllner seem younger than he really was.
‘My girlfriend’s six months pregnant,’ he said. ‘Technically it wasn’t planned, but we’re taking it in our stride. We’re planning to marry before the birth.’
‘Will Stüter be invited to the party?’ Jan winked at him.
The Inspector merely smiled to himself.
‘Congratulations, anyway.’ Rabea patted him somewhat awkwardly on the back. ‘Enjoy your paternity leave, once all this is done and dusted.’
Having kids. Köllner was only a year or two older than her. It was an issue on her mind, too. But should you really bring children into this world? She thought of ViCLAS, the database of violent crimes. There would always be a danger that her child’s name might appear in there someday.
She surveyed the deserted school building. A weedy boy was sitting cross-legged outside one of the classrooms, scribbling in his notebook as if his life depended on it.
Doing homework just before class. The image brought a smile to Rabea’s face. She’d used the same tactic herself, and it had never made a difference to her grades. School had never been a challenge. Some of her classmates had even suspected she was studying in secret.
‘Do you still think Tugba knew her assailant?’ she asked Jan, as they walked towards the administrative offices.
‘Occam’s razor,’ he replied.
‘Could you be a little more cryptic?’
‘You know what it means, don’t you?’
Of course, she knew! She recited the scholarly principle: ‘When several theories explain the same facts, the simplest is always preferable.’
‘If we apply Occam’s razor to the Alphabet Killer case, the situation is quite clear,’ continued Jan.
‘He didn’t know the victims personally,’ said Rabea. ‘Too tangled. Makes the situation too complicated.’
Jan snapped his fingers on both hands. ‘Exactly.’
‘You’ve dismissed your hypothesis, then.’
‘Like I always say: never fall in love with an idea. You’ve got to be able to kill it as soon as you’ve created it.’
She’d always admired how dispassionately he could simply knock down even vast mental constructs that had been pieced together over hours. They marched towards the office. Köllner knocked on the door.
‘However, if she did know him, it was through work. There’s been nothing from her private life as yet. Hardly anything worth mentioning besides the meet-ups with her sister and a few female friends,’ said Rabea. ‘Maybe a chat with the headmistress will bring something to light.’
Jan’s mouth twisted. ‘You’ve got to be able to kill your hypothesis, but you can never bury them.’
His mood had markedly improved overnight – Rabea could imagine why. The woman from breakfast.
Occam’s razor.
The simplest explanation was usually correct.
33
Life was a masked ball.
The words shot again through Jan’s mind, as melodramatic as they sounded. Every person you met wore a mask. Gisela von Esch, headmistress of Mons Tabor High School, wore a mask of professionalism. The dark red of her short haircut seemed to have been carefully matched to her rouge and lipstick. She had squeezed her body into a marine-blue trouser suit that she must have bought some time ago, before she was carrying ten kilograms of extra weight.
‘Frau Ekiz is one of the pillars of this school. As qualified as she is humane,’ she said, giving her high voice the timbre of a eulogy. ‘She’s the kind of person you have to advise to switch off occasionally. I do hope we’ll see her back here safe and sound.’
On her desk, a delegation of hideously tasteless porcelain birds kept watch over the office.
While Köllner and Rabea sat opposite the headmistress in the visitors’ chairs, Jan paced the room, arms folded. He let his gaze sweep across files and class photos, coming to rest on calendars and framed awards. He wanted to get a feel for the school. To understand how Tugba had functioned in this system.
‘And you’re absolutely sure Frau Ekiz was kidnapped by this Alphabet Killer?’ asked von Esch.
‘That’s our understanding at this time, yes.’ Rabea shifted in her chair. ‘She fits his victim profile.’
‘Are – are the rest of our staff under threat?’
Jan had noticed initially that von Esch’s red-varnished fingernails were chewed to the quick, and her hand now flew to her mouth. Then she seemed to remember she wasn’t alone, and merely brushed her lips.
Köllner shook his head. ‘We don’t currently believe so. He’s targeting specific people who work with the German language. But he’s not focused on teachers.’
‘Understood.’ Von Esch leant back, her chair squeaking pitifully. ‘You’re here because you’re looking for clues, is that right?’
All three nodded. Rhetorical questions – was she speaking to them like she’d address a class of schoolkids?
‘You may already have discovered this in the course of your investigation, but there’s something in particular about Frau Ekiz that might have attracted this monster’s attention.’
Jan felt like telling her she didn’t have to keep them on tenterhooks. It wasn’t a lesson.
‘And that would be?’ Köllner expressed himself rather more diplomatically, of course.
‘Perhaps it’s too banal.’ Von Esch’s little finger slipped between her lips. ‘Frau Ekiz taught literacy classes. In cooperation with an organisation here in Montabaur. Mainly for children from Sinti and Roma families. On top of her work here with us.’
Jan stepped up behind Rabea and Köllner, gripping the backs of their chairs. ‘Did we know about this?’
Both said no.
‘Then you’ve been a tremendous help, Frau von Esch,’ he said. ‘We’ll need the name of the organisation and their contact details.’
He and Rabea exchanged an eloquent glance.
While the other two continued the discussion with von Esch, Jan inspected the photograph of 7D – her class. Unlike the other pictures, the children had draped their arms around each other’s shoulders, like a football team. Tugba wasn’t standing to one side like the other teachers, but in the middle of her pupils. People like her were few and far between. Tugba Ekiz’s friendliness and dedication were no mask – and that might have been her undoing.
34
5th December, afternoon
Back at Hachenburg police station, Jan and Rabea barricaded themselves into an empty office.
Turning the key twice in the lock, Jan leant against the door with a sigh. ‘Peace at last!’
Rabea, her fists resting on her hips, glanced around the room, every square metre of which was filled with filing cabinets and desks. ‘Let’s make ourselves at home!’
They pushed the furniture into one corner of the room. As they did so, Jan found a biscuit tin full of pennies, a pocket calendar from 1992 and a Gameboy with a scratched screen, which still had Tetris loaded. ‘Still works,’ cried Rabea, when she switched it on and heard the familiar tune. ‘I’m taking it, anyway. The odd bit of gaming helps me think.’
Jan chuckled.
‘I’ve rarely seen you so enthusiastic.’
‘Wait until I get the new high score.’
She put the Gameboy down and they began papering the walls of their refuge with documents and notes from the case.
Writing on the wall in thick felt-tip pen, Jan drew the letters ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’. Underneath each they gathered the information about the respective victims.
Jan settled cross-legged on the floor in the middle of the room, his joints responding achily. He groaned. ‘At least I can think straight in here. No Stüter, no Anita constantly breathing down our necks.’
Rabea remained standing near the area of the wall she’d dedicated to Tugba Ekiz. ‘Do you still think we’ll find our man on the literacy course?’
Copies of the list of participants were hanging immediately under the photograph of Tugba. They were exclusively Romanian adolescents and a few Syrian refugees.
‘This isn’t just about one murder – he’s staging something. It’s a very special kind of drama. None of the participants would have a reason to act like our killer.’
‘You’re making him sound almost like a director.’ Rabea, turning, sank onto a sagging grey sofa that had appeared during all the furniture-moving.
‘From his perspective, he is. Westerwald is his backdrop, the victims are his protagonists and we – well, so far, we’re nothing more than extras. That’s got to change.’
‘But isn’t it too soon to start putting together a profile?’
Jan tilted back his head, staring at the ceiling. ‘I know, I know. But time is a luxury we can’t afford right now.’ His eyes flitted to the photo of Tugba. ‘There’s too much at stake.’
Rabea leant back on the sofa and nestled her head against the armrest, as though she were visiting a shrink. ‘How do you want to proceed?’
‘Simple.’ Reaching into the inside pocket of his black blazer, he drew out a yellow, hole-picked foam ball. It was so worn from use that one eye of the smiley face printed on it was gone. A marketing toy from some conference. ‘We’ll tell each other stories.’
Jan chucked her the ball. Surprised, she jumped. It landed on her stomach, rolling off the sofa. She could just reach it. ‘What’s that supposed to accomplish?’
‘Do you remember the first assignment I ever gave you?’
‘Of course, how could I forget!’ She squeezed the ball, tossing it from hand to hand. ‘To write a short story. I felt like I was back in German class, not with the police.’
‘And do you remember the moral of the story?’
‘You’re sounding so didactic again.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘But yeah, it was about creativity.’
‘More than that. About telling stories. Coming up with narratives. Filling the gaps in our knowledge with hypotheses. That’s precisely what we’re going to do now. Toss the ball back and forth, quickly. There’s no right or wrong. Nothing’s off the table.’
‘You and your brainstorming methods!’
‘Stop bellyaching and get going! One or two keywords!’
She sighed and pressed the ball flat against her forehead. ‘Okay, we’re not dealing with one killer, we’re dealing with a group. That would explain the high frequency.’
‘Very good! There we go!’ Jan tore a leaf out of his notepad and wrote it down.
As he looked up, the ball smacked him on the nose.
‘Oh, sorry!’ cried Rabea, unable to hold back a giggle.
‘No harm done.’ He rubbed his face. ‘I’ll keep going. The killer sees himself as an artist. He wants to create a unique font, a unique typeface with his alphabet. Arial, Calibri, Times New Roman, the font of death.’
He chucked the ball back towards the sofa.
For the next two hours they continued inventing stories, until the floor around Jan was littered with scraps of paper. Stüter and Köllner kept coming to knock. At first, they shouted that they wanted to be left in peace; but at some point, they simply started ignoring their colleagues.
Of course, Jan knew ninety percent of the hypotheses he’d jotted down were groundless. But if only one of them led to a solid profile, then the brainstorming session had been worth it.
‘That’s enough,’ he said at last, as the ball became increasingly sluggish and their theories increasingly abstruse. ‘Tomorrow we’ll put all this together with the rest of our notes to create the profile.’
‘I can start writing it up tonight,’ offered Rabea.
He sat down next to her on the sofa, putting the ball away. ‘That would be a huge help. Thanks.’
‘I couldn’t help thinking just now about the first time we met.’ She shot him a sidelong glance.
‘Oh yeah?’ His mouth twisted. ‘You wanted to take the first train back to Switzerland, I bet.’
‘Can I just go through the facts again? You locked us in a room for four hours without food or drink, and you confronted me with the worst traumas of my life like we were having a cosy chat.’
‘You must have thought I was a psychopath.’
‘An arsehole, more like.’
‘It was a test. A highly unconventional one, I must admit. And you passed with flying colours. I have had candidates who simply broke down. You were upset, you wrestled with yourself, but you kept yourself under control.’
‘It was tough. Bloody tough.’ She swallowed audibly. ‘Especially when we got to my sister. The way she vanished. I understand why you did it, but I wouldn’t wish it on anyone else.’
He felt his guts twist. ‘I shouldn’t have gone that far. But I had to know whether you could deal with it. Always being at the limits of psychological resistance. It was for your own protection.’
She placed a hand gently on his forearm.
They said nothing. It felt good, thought Jan, not to speak for once. He closed his eyes, relaxing his eyelids. When he awoke with a start from his doze, he felt a weight on his shoulder. Rabea had fallen asleep too, her head resting against him.
For a moment he kept still, listening to her regular breathing. He stroked the hair back from her forehead.
She blinked.
Blood rushed to his cheeks. What was he doing?
‘Sorry,’ she said, wiping away some drool that had trickled onto his blazer. She moved away and stretched her limbs.
‘I think we should call a halt for today,’ he said. ‘And I’m sorry.’
‘For what?’
‘Our first meeting. Everything I did. And what I might still do.’
35
5th December, evening
Room 102.
It was the right room, no doubt.
Jan knocked a second time, but nobody answered. Tamara wasn’t there. He’d already looked in the revolving restaurant, the lobby and the spa, but she was nowhere to be found.
He shrugged and went back to his suite. Possibly she was in town or going for an evening stroll. In his room he tore out a page from his Moleskine notebook, grabbed a hotel biro and scribbled on the ivory-coloured paper: Just knock if you’re ever sick of solitude again. – Jan.
He folded the piece of paper in half, went back to her suite and slipped it under the door.
Back in his own room, he took his CD player and a stack of discs out of his bag. He needed music. Rabea had digitised her music collection ages ago and always carried it with her, on her iPhone. Probably she’d laugh at him if she saw him still lugging CDs around on his travels. But he liked the haptic element to listening to music. Putting on his headphones, he flung himself onto the freshly made bed and flicked through the CDs. Depeche Mode. Pink Floyd. Bruce Springsteen. There he stopped and put Born to Run in the CD player. As the first notes of Thunder Road sounded, he closed his eyes. On the journey back from the hotel, Anita had called again and asked what they’d been doing all that time in private.
She and Stüter needed results. The local administration and the public prosecutor were breathing down their necks. But there were no quick results in this case.
They had to stop playing their p
arts as panic-stricken, passive investigators so perfectly. If they only did what was expected of them, the killer would always stay one step ahead. They had to do something unexpected. Something even he couldn’t predict.
He was overlooking something. Something crucial. Right in front of him.
D
‘“D” conveys the thin and sharp sound “T” with the aspirated “TH”. It is positioned fourth in the Greek–Latin alphabet between “G” and “E” or “C” and “E”: in the old runic alphabet, which consists of only sixteen letters and has a very different arrangement, it doesn’t appear, as “Þ” and “T” suffice instead.’
The Grimms’ Dictionary
36
5th December, night
A long-drawn-out scream.
Jan woke with a start, tumbling out of bed with his CD player and duvet. Ignoring the pain in his back, he got up and tore off the headphones. Listened.
Had he been dreaming? An animal calling from the wildlife park?
‘Heeeelp!’
Again. A woman’s voice. This time further away.
He grabbed his mobile and dialled Rabea’s number, striding across the room. He flung open the door.
And froze.
He lowered the phone.
‘Jan? Jan, what’s wrong?’ came his assistant’s faraway voice down the line.
On the wall opposite his room was a red letter ‘Z’. Three slanting lines, the thickness of an arm. The ink was still wet – he hoped desperately it was ink, and not blood. Whoever had put it there, they had to be nearby.
He was ‘Z’. He was the final letter.
He held the phone to his ear. ‘Rabea, listen! The killer’s here, he’s here at the hotel! Call Stüter and Ichigawa and be extremely careful.’
When he hung up, he turned right.
The door to number 102 was wide open. Gingerly, he entered Tamara’s suite. Instantly all hope vanished. The mirror in the corridor was shattered, the desk swept clear, the armchair in front of him overturned, the bed rumpled. The white bedclothes were spattered with blood.
