by Lars Schutz
Jan’s pulse, having been abruptly dragged out of sleep minutes earlier, was racing. His veins were pulsing so fiercely it made him dizzy.
He dashed out of the room, glancing up at the ceiling in the corridor. Fuck, no cameras! No matter – perhaps they could still catch the killer inside the hotel.
The door of the neighbouring suite opened.
Jan jumped. But it was only a plump woman in her mid-sixties, sticking out her head.
‘Wha– what’s going on here? It’s three in the morning!’ she asked, blinking at him.
‘Didn’t you notice anything?’ snapped Jan. ‘The woman next door has been kidnapped!’
‘Oh God!’ Her hand flew to her mouth. ‘I did hear some banging and thudding, but I didn’t think anything of it, could just have been a bit of hanky panky – until she called for help.’
‘Fine.’ Jan waved a dismissive hand. He’d already wasted enough time.
He hurtled down the corridor towards the lifts and staircase.
If the killer had carried Tamara’s lifeless body out of here or forced her to leave, he would most likely have taken the lift. But to which floor?
As he ran down the stairs, taking the steps two at a time, Jan thought feverishly. He certainly couldn’t have just waltzed past reception, so that ruled out the ground floor.
He nearly tripped over his own feet but caught himself on the banister.
What other exits were there?
‘Give Yourself a Break: Spa on LG’ he read out of the corner of his eye. Of course! By the swimming pool there was a door that led onto the terrace. At this time of night, it would be deserted.
He took the final steps to the lower-ground floor in a single bound, swallowing drily. As an analyst, he didn’t carry a gun.
It would be wisest to wait for the police at reception. But it was sure to be another fifteen minutes before Stüter and his colleagues arrived, and by then Tamara and the killer would be long gone.
Taking a deep breath, he pulled open the glass door that led to the spa. The pleasant scent of massage oil and saunas hung in the air, macabrely out of place with the current situation.
Jan crept past the massage room and the sauna towards the pool.
All his life he’d sat opposite killers, seen blood-soaked crime scenes – but it had only ever made him shudder. It had disgusted him.
But this. This was something else entirely. Now, for the first time, he was in mortal danger.
The sharp reek of chlorine reached his nose. The light of the sickle moon flooded through the panoramic windows, breaking against the water in the pool and throwing diffuse, bluish shimmers on the ceiling. Other than the gurgling pumps, all was silent.
Cautiously he began to put one foot in front of the other, moving across the slippery tiles. Wobbling briefly, he glanced down at his bare feet and saw several dark flecks right in front of him.
He dropped to his knees and squinted. Blood. Tamara had to be injured. The trail of blood continued unevenly, leading towards one of the glass doors to the terrace.
Perhaps he would have noticed the trail in the hotel corridor, if he’d been more perceptive.
Jan pushed his way through a few deckchairs towards the door. Ajar. Again, his heart skipped a beat.
An icy wind whistled through the chink, slipping underneath his T-shirt; but his blood was already running cold.
He couldn’t let him escape. Couldn’t let Tamara fall into his hands. Not another person.
But what could he do all by himself?
There was no time to hesitate. Compressing his lips, he pushed the door open.
Beyond the terrace was an empty slope. If you turned right, you ended up in the hotel car park.
The Alphabet Killer was somewhere in the darkness.
‘Hey! Stay where you are!’ he suddenly heard a male voice.
He knew it from somewhere.
An ear-splitting bang. In the gloom outside the window there was a flash of light. Jan jumped.
His brain needed a few seconds to draw the right conclusion. A shot. That was a shot.
A second bang. The window to his left burst in an explosion of shards.
Jan staggered backwards. Cover – he needed to find cover! His bare feet felt the edge, and then he lost his balance. Helplessly flailing his arms, he toppled into the pool.
Instantly, he started swallowing water. His eyes began to dim. Jan kicked his legs madly, trying in vain to reach the surface.
Suddenly, a tug. Someone had grabbed his T-shirt and was pulling him upwards. His head broke through the water. He gasped for air.
‘Jan! Jan, it’s me, it’s all fine,’ Rabea was saying. She looked exactly like he felt: her face ashen, her eyes wide with fear, her short blonde hair dishevelled. Panting, they left the pool.
At least she’d managed in her haste to throw on a pair of jeans and a black pullover. Even in his agitated state, he noticed that. He was only wearing boxers and a T-shirt.
‘Hey, put this on!’ She handed him a hotel bathrobe that somebody had abandoned on a deckchair.
‘Did you hear the shots?’ he asked.
‘Hard not to.’
‘I heard somebody scream. Somebody tried to stop him.’
‘Then probably the bullets weren’t meant for you.’
‘When is Stüter getting here? What about Anita?’
‘Ichigawa was still at the station. She and Stüter will be about ten minutes, I think. But he told me somebody was already on the scene.’
Jan paused. ‘Who?’
‘Not a clue.’ Rabea narrowed her eyes and peered into the darkness. ‘Should we go outside? Or do you think he’s still there?’
‘Those shots were meant to buy time. He’s gone.’ The sight of Rabea – and, oddly, the dunk in the pool – had done him good. He could think clearly again.
His assistant pursed her lips. ‘Great.’
Crouching, they moved stealthily out through the door. The night wind whipped through Jan’s wet hair and underneath his bathrobe. He was shivering but pulled himself together.
‘What were you thinking, chasing that guy all by yourself? Were you trying to scare him into submission with your chicken legs?’ whispered Rabea.
He only grunted. How could she make jokes at a time like this?
Jan trod quietly through the snow. He was so cold his teeth were chattering.
Rabea was getting further ahead of him.
‘Here!’ she cried breathlessly. ‘There’s someone lying here.’
‘Who is it?’
‘Oh no,’ was Rabea’s only answer. ‘Oh no, no, no—’
37
The young Inspector lay on his back, his eyes fixed on the starry sky – which in Westerwald really lived up to its name. A gorgeous sea of lights.
The pool of blood lay around his head like a red pillow, melting the snow. The entry wound sliced across his neck. The bullet had completely severed his carotid artery – he must have been dead in seconds.
‘What was he doing here?’ Jan crouched down on his haunches.
The day before yesterday he’d been giving the young man advice about his future. Yesterday he’d been telling Jan about his children.
Köllner still had his Walther P99 in his hand. It hadn’t even been fired.
The tall policeman’s chest attracted Jan’s attention. His leather jacket was open, his shirt torn. On his hairy sternum the killer had scrawled a messy red ‘D’. The same ink as in the hotel corridor.
‘He doesn’t want to deviate from his pattern,’ murmured Jan.
In the distance they heard the howl of sirens, which were getting louder. Two patrol cars and Stüter’s Mercedes were streaking down the narrow hotel driveway, spectral apparitions in the flickering blue light.
‘The cavalry has got here too late, I’m afraid,’ said Rabea tonelessly, stroking Köllner’s hair.
With a squeal of tyres, the column of vehicles pulled up in the car park. Slamming doors were followed by
frantic yells. Six people came storming down the slope, pistols at the ready. Stüter was at the head, closely followed by Anita Ichigawa.
Jan waved at them. ‘Relax, relax! Danger’s over!’
The officers lowered their weapons. One of them was even carrying a machine gun. When Stüter saw the body, he quickened his pace, skidding in the knee-deep snow.
‘Is it – is it him?’ he called out breathlessly.
Jan dropped his gaze. ‘Köllner tried to stop him.’
An inarticulate cry forced itself from Stüter’s throat, something between a howl and a wail. Flinging his weapon aside, he collapsed.
‘Rolf!’ It was the first time anybody had addressed him by his first name. Anita made to put her hand on his shoulder.
‘No! No!’ Stüter shoved her away, crawling through the snow towards Köllner’s corpse.
Jan was paralysed. All of Stüter’s abrasiveness had fallen away. No more higher reasoning to filter his emotions. He consisted only of furious sorrow. Nothing but a twitching muscle.
Reaching Köllner, he hugged the man tightly, pressing him close. It didn’t seem to occur to him he might be destroying evidence.
‘What have you done, lad?’ he sobbed. ‘My boy, my boy—’
Threads of saliva flew out of his mouth. His tears were already freezing on his skin, making his cheeks gleam.
He was weeping for Daniel Köllner as though he’d been not merely the son of an old friend but his own blood.
‘Did you see which way the killer went?’ asked Anita, turning to Jan.
‘Towards the car park. He had a woman with him, so he’ll have escaped by car.’
‘Got it.’ Anita pointed at one of the officers. ‘Dahlmann, radio HQ. I want checkpoints on all major roads within a thirty-kilometre radius. He’s not slipping through our fingers. And while you’re at it, tell the crime-scene lot and the medical examiner to get out here.’
Dahlmann, an angular man with a machine gun, paused. ‘Shouldn’t that be Chief Superintendent Stüter’s decision?’
‘I don’t think he’s in any state to make decisions at the moment.’ Anita’s gaze swept across Stüter, who was crying over his dead protégé as though he’d lost all control of his senses.
Dahlmann nodded agreement.
‘Could you give me a description of the woman?’ Anita asked Jan.
‘Tamara Weiss, red hair, slim, grey eyes, late thirties. Translator from Frankfurt. Has a distinctive heart-shaped birthmark on her right temple.’
‘That’s – very comprehensive,’ she said, after Dahlmann had noted everything down.
‘We got to know each other a bit – but that doesn’t matter now. Why was Köllner here alone?’
‘He was still at HQ in Hachenburg when the call from Frau Wyler came in. He set off immediately, without waiting for the rest of the team. We – we didn’t have the chance to stop him.’
Anita lowered her eyes. For a heartbeat they simply stood there in silence. ‘You should put on some clothes or you’ll catch your death,’ she said at last.
‘I’m fine,’ he answered dismissively.
‘He’s taking increasingly big risks,’ said Anita. ‘I mean, Köllner nearly got him, you nearly saw him.’
‘He’s realised how much better his fantasies are in reality.’
‘What do you mean?’
Rabea, who’d been trying to calm Stüter down, walked up to them. ‘With a lot of serial killers, they’re trying to make their fantasies a reality. They follow the guidelines of their imagination to the letter. Afterwards they relive the act over and over, which satisfies them for a while.’ Rabea swallowed and hugged her arms around her body. ‘But memories fade, as everybody knows. The ecstasy of the murder ebbs away. He has to repeat the act in order to get back that feeling. That’s what leads to serial violence.’
‘But there are also killers,’ said Jan, picking up the thread with chattering teeth, ‘whose fantasies involve more than one murder. Killers whose fantasies aren’t satisfied until they’ve committed a whole series of murders.’
In his mind’s eye he caught a flicker of the letter painted on the wall in the hotel corridor.
‘Z’.
The letter meant for him. Why? Why was he the one who completed the alphabet?
Anita nodded. ‘Understood. From “A” to “Z”,’ she said. ‘Come on, let’s go back to the hotel before you get me frozen to death.’
They trudged up the rest of the slope and sat down on the deckchairs by the pool. Jan wrapped towels around his calves and feet, rubbed his hands and used the mug of tea brought to him by hotel staff as a temporary source of warmth.
Rabea continued the conversation, her eyes lowered. ‘I’m afraid our killer won’t be satisfied until he’s got through the whole alphabet. Individual acts mean nothing to him.’
‘At first I thought the insane frequency of the murders was a kind of frenzy,’ said Jan. ‘But then he wouldn’t deviate from his pattern. No, he’s realising a story he’s told himself a thousand times. Now he really wants to complete it. That’s why he’s moving so quickly.’
Anita made another jerky movement of her head. ‘You mean, if we don’t stop him, we’ll have another twenty-two dead people on our hands. Including Ekiz and Weiss.’
Jan and Rabea nodded mutely.
And he was one of them too.
‘Good Lord—’
‘The fact that he painted a “D” on Daniel Köllner also indicates he wants to finish this,’ said Jan. ‘After the Zanetti disaster I was sure he had his victims picked out and a clear order for the killings. That’s why he simply abducted Tamara, not killed her. Just like Tugba. I believe he’s got something planned for them later. Normally Köllner wouldn’t be in the running as a victim – he wouldn’t be worthy of a letter. He wouldn’t deserve it.’
‘Don’t talk about him like that!’ Anita’s eyebrows knitted.
Jan raised his hands soothingly. ‘I’m only speaking from the killer’s perspective. His victim profile focuses exclusively on people who have something to do with writing or reading. That’s why Tamara also fits perfectly. She’s a translator.’ He sighed and ran his fingers through his wet hair, still dotted with crystals of ice. ‘But how I fit in, I’m not sure.’
Rabea’s eyes widened. ‘Jan, what are you talking about?’
‘He painted a giant blood-red “Z” on the wall opposite my hotel room. You could call it various things: a threat, a clue, a warning. The message remains clear. I’m his last victim.’
Stroking his shoulder, Rabea gazed at him in concern. ‘But why? What does he want from you?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Jan.
Fragments of that night rushed through the pathways of his brain. Tamara’s screams. The ‘Z’. The chase through the hotel. The hammering shots. They were still booming in his skull. Booming. Booming.
Slowly, slowly. He couldn’t forget it was his job to ask why.
Suddenly he realised he’d tipped onto his side, his head resting on his upper arm. His whole body trembled.
Everything was spinning.
38
‘You can pick a lock with almost anything. Main thing is, it’s got to be thin and metal.’
Benny had been Tugba’s first boyfriend. Their relationship had lasted precisely the first six months of Year Nine, until he’d dropped her for a girl from another class. At first his bad-boy attitude had made her – a nerdy bookworm – curious. Quickly, it had also made her hate him. She could count her good memories of him on the fingers of one hand.
But now he might be about to save her life.
Benny’s parents had been unemployed, so he’d financed his designer clothes by stealing bikes. One time he’d taken Tugba with him and showed her his technique. She’d felt bad for weeks afterwards.
As she wriggled the clip of the pen back into the padlock, she tried to remember the sequence of movements. She bent it even more so that it fitted better. This wasn’t a cheap bike lo
ck – but surely it had to function the same way.
She’d been making attempts for hours, constantly in fear of discovery. But her tormentor hadn’t come back since the morning, when he’d brought her more thin porridge.
She kept levering the clip around, sometimes gently, sometimes with more force. Nothing happened.
‘Fucking shit!’ Exhausted, she sank back and drew out the piece of metal. All her muscles hurt.
She’d never be his letter. Never. But then, she didn’t have to be. She rolled the clip between her thumb and forefinger.
It was going to hurt. But anything was better than giving up.
She twisted her arm, reaching backwards with the metal clip.
Towards the tattooed, still inflamed letter ‘G’.
She took a deep breath. Closed her eyes. Then she scratched it across the tattoo with as much pressure as she could. The pain bit into her flesh. Reflexively she arched her back and gritted her teeth, feeling a mixture of blood and half-dried scabs running down her skin.
She had to persevere. It might not make the tattoo disappear completely, but at least it would spoil his photograph.
Resistance. Resistance by any means.
She kept going, raking the clip across her back. Inhaling sharply.
There was a violent thud above her.
Tugba jumped. The piece of metal slipped out of her hand and landed on the floor with what sounded to her like an unbelievably loud clatter.
He was back.
She listened, scarcely breathing.
From upstairs there came a barely perceptible whimper – a woman in despair.
He wasn’t alone. Another letter? Another abduction? The clank of heavy metal, and the whimpering grew louder.
What was happening up there?
Tugba hid the pen clip under her mattress. She cowered.
Then came the first screams. First shrill, then increasingly choked.
Tugba couldn’t explain how, but the tortured sounds of the second woman made the situation even more real. More palpable.
They were both in the same prison of screams and pain. Tugba dropped her head onto her knees. Only now, after all this time in the dark, came the tears.
39
6th December, morning
