The Alphabet Murders

by Lars Schutz

  She unfolded the paper and read the exchange between Tamara and someone called Nisrin.

  ‘Who’s she talking to?’

  ‘Nisrin Dasheni. Just spoke with her on the phone. A friend of Frau Weiss’s from Frankfurt. Project manager at a marketing firm. Spent practically the whole conversation in tears. Have you read the whole thing?’

  Rabea’s eyes flicked to the end of the page. In Weiss’s penultimate text she mentioned Jan: ‘Just picked up a holiday fling, believe it or not. Interesting guy, but pssst, top secret, what he’s doing. Tell you the rest when I’m back in ff.’

  After that there were a few excited questions from Nisrin, all of which went unanswered. Tamara didn’t reply until a day later. The last text was dated yesterday at 5.21 p.m.:

  ‘Coming home early. Back tomorrow. Please pick me up at 4 at the station. So much to tell you. One detail can change everything you think about a person.’

  A whole volley of questions shot through Rabea’s head. ‘Why didn’t Frau Dasheni go to the police?’

  ‘Because she didn’t connect the text to the abduction. According to her statement, Tamara Weiss had been having a brief fling, but it must have gone sour. She thinks those words refer to your friend.’

  Rabea crumpled up the piece of paper and flung it into the shelf of spirits. ‘That’s the normal explanation. What else is there to read into it?’

  ‘Reading into things is supposed to be your area of expertise.’ Stüter sipped his beer. ‘Ask yourself a few questions: what upset Frau Weiss so much that she decided to leave early? Why didn’t she want to meet Jan on that last evening?’ He leant forwards. She felt his warm, beery breath on her skin. ‘She must have discovered something about Jan that shook her to the core.’

  ‘Supposition, nothing more!’ Rabea rubbed her temples, a cold prickle of rage running through her body. ‘Why would you assume Jan has something to do with all this? I fished him out of the pool myself when – when Köllner was shot. What about the “Z” painted on the wall outside his room?’

  ‘I never said he’s responsible for the kidnappings or the murders. But he has a past here in Westerwald. He has roots here. They could go deep. And far.’

  He paused a moment, leaning against the bar. ‘I’ve got no idea what Grall’s role in this case is. But with all these inconsistencies, I’ve no doubt it’s more than that of a detective.’

  Rabea gulped down the rest of her Coke, put down the glass and ran her index finger around the rim. Did she really know her boss?

  Was this really still a question of loyalty?

  She decided against it. ‘Let’s eliminate suspicion before it drives me even more crazy. Let me sleep on it.’

  Stüter emptied his beer. ‘I’ll try to keep the text exchange from Ichigawa as long as possible. Better we sort this out before Jan comes under a cloud. Speaking of Jan’s roots. Do you know what happened with his brother?’ asked Stüter.

  She nodded. ‘Jan told me. He died in a car accident.’

  ‘That’s all he said?’

  ‘Why?’

  Stüter placed a yellowed newspaper clipping from the local paper on the bar.

  The photograph showed a completely burnt-out wreck. When Rabea read the headline, she had to hold onto the bar.

  Fatal Accident: One Brother Dies, Other Survives, Minor Injuries

  Stüter snorted. ‘Jan told you his brother died in an accident. But not that he was sitting in the car with him.’

  47

  Ludovico Einaudi – Fuori Dal Mondo appeared on the playlist on Rabea’s phone. She turned up the volume, tilted back her head and listened to the piano chords.

  Shortly after eleven o’clock, the hotel lobby was deserted. Only the receptionist kept her company, throwing her the occasional glance that said: ‘Go back up to your damn suite and let me play solitaire in peace.’

  Rabea had ordered a white wine at the bar, made herself comfortable in one of the leather armchairs, put her feet up on the glass coffee table and tucked her earbuds into her ears. Luckily, she hadn’t seen Jan again that evening. She doubted she was capable of having a normal conversation with him.

  She didn’t want to go to her room. Not after last night. After the killer had simply waltzed in so easily. She knew that kind of behaviour was childish. That four police officers were now keeping the building under surveillance round the clock. She’d just seen one of them walking across the restaurant terrace.

  Even so, she couldn’t imagine anything worse than lying in her bed in the dark room. After what had happened to her sister, years ago, she hadn’t been able to stand it either. She’d spent many nights in her parents’ bed, or only able to sleep with a night light and a private zoo of stuffed animals.

  Her mother had been the director at the Konzerttheater Bern, introducing her early to piano and chamber pieces. Music in which she’d sought solace after the disappearance of her daughter.

  As a teenager, Rabea had listened not to Linkin Park or Britney Spears but to Bach, Chopin and Holst. Especially when she was going to sleep.

  Simply sitting here, with Einaudi in her ear and a chardonnay in front of her, was absolute relaxation. She was completely self-sufficient. Cut off from all her troubles.

  The Alphabet Murders, with their spider’s web of fear, unforeseeability and questions receded into the far distance, washed away by wine and music; as though it wasn’t an immediate part of her life but only an especially gruesome story on the eight o’clock news.

  Her smartphone’s ringtone cut through Einaudi’s composition, breaking into Rabea’s mental refuge. It was Asim, one of her flatmates. He was thirty-three, the bassist in an indie band who also worked as a projectionist at a small cinema.

  ‘Everything okay in Mainz?’

  ‘Can’t complain. But Ricarda and I are getting a bit worried about you.’

  ‘There’s no need,’ she replied confidently, and was surprised how easily the lie escaped her lips. ‘The hotel’s better guarded than Fort Knox.’

  ‘Still. Isn’t there somewhere else you could stay? A holiday cottage or something?’

  ‘And you think I’d be safer there? All alone in some isolated chalet?’

  ‘Well, when you put it like that—’

  She smiled briefly, then grew serious. She was still haunted by Ichigawa’s warning about Jan, and Tamara Weiss’s last, ambiguous text. She urgently needed a second opinion. ‘You’ve only met Jan once, right?’ she asked. ‘When he invited us and Ricarda over to his place.’

  ‘Yep. The guy with the big stereo system and the even bigger film collection.’

  ‘The only thing more incredible was the organisation of it all,’ added Rabea. Her boss was one of the most structured thinkers she knew, and he carried this quality into all areas of his life.

  ‘What’s up with him?’

  ‘Did anything strike you about him? Something that maybe made you feel uneasy?’

  He was silent a moment. ‘Well, he’s a bit laconic, and very serious. But I think that’s normal. Listening to you talk about him, he sounds like some kind of genius.’ She heard him scratch his curly head. ‘One thing did strike me. There were a crazy number of pain meds and psycho-pharmaceuticals in his bathroom cabinet. I’m no expert, but I think they were pretty strong medications.’

  Rabea sipped her white wine. Was it conceivable that someone as controlled as Jan was abusing prescription meds? Was weed perhaps not the only thing that dulled his hypersensitivity?’

  ‘What were you looking for in the cabinet?’

  ‘Dental floss,’ replied Asim awkwardly. ‘I hate it when I’ve got something stuck between my teeth.’ Now there was unease in his voice. ‘Why do you ask? Has something happened?’

  ‘No, no. Just something somebody said about him made me wonder.’ She preferred not to mention her conversation with Stüter. She didn’t want to worry her friend unnecessarily.

  ‘People talk about each other all the time, that’s just how it is. I’d
rather not know what Ricarda says about me.’

  He and the young philosophy student had fun needling each other. Rabea occasionally caught herself thinking the two of them were involved. ‘But you don’t think Jan’s dangerous?’

  ‘Babe, now you’re really making me nervous. You don’t think he’s your killer, do you?’ He laughed anxiously.

  ‘Don’t be silly. I shouldn’t have asked you in the first place,’ she said.

  He pretended to be huffy, as awkwardly as only he could. ‘Sorry!’

  ‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘I’m just slowly starting to wonder whether I know this person at all. If I know who Jan Grall really is.’

  E

  ‘. . . a non-original, therefore fluctuating, ill-defined vowel that has run rampant in our language and disrupted its harmony. [. . .] such monotony is barely possible in other tongues and was once alien to German too.’

  The Grimms’ Dictionary

  48

  7th December, early morning

  ‘Om bhur bhuvah svah, Tat savitur vareniyam,’ Jan sang to himself. He was sitting on the bed in his hotel bathrobe, in the lotus position. Briefly opening his eyes, he let his gaze sweep across the treetops in the wildlife park, half obscured in the morning mist.

  He repeated his mantra, concentrating fully on enunciating the syllables. Forming words whose meaning he didn’t even know – but meditation wasn’t about that.

  ‘The effect of such mantras is subversive,’ his Indian uni friend Vikram had explained once. ‘It arises through the rhythm, the constant repetition. What it means is irrelevant.’

  Vikram, a mechanical engineering student, had written the text of the mantra on a napkin during one of their nights in a Bochum bar.

  He’d recommended meditation when Jan told him that nothing helped combat his inner unrest – not ‘psych meds’, not a wide variety of calming teas, not breathing techniques.

  Yet meditation, astonishingly, had helped him find peace.

  To forget, for a brief moment. To forget that Tamara was out there somewhere. Skinned, weakened, vulnerable.

  Yesterday evening after his visit to the cemetery he’d joined the search some volunteers had organised. Alongside the leaders – a forest warden and a soldier on leave – he’d come up with a plan to scour the woods between Bad Marienberg and Rennerod. He still knew his way around the area as well as in his childhood days. That local knowledge, together with his analytical expertise, had proved extremely useful.

  Supported by several dozen helpers, they’d combed the woods deep into the night, until cold and darkness finally drove them back. He gave a racking cough. The effort of pursuing the Alphabet Killer the night before last had taken its toll. It was only a question of time until the tumble into the pool followed by all that standing around in the cold made itself felt.

  At the moment, getting sick simply wasn’t an option.

  He rose from the mattress. As he disconnected his phone from the charger, he saw six missed calls. All from Miriam in Mainz. His heart, still in stand-by mode, began to race. What was wrong? His fingers shaking, he misdialled twice before finally getting through.

  ‘Jan, they were here! They were here!’ she shrieked into the telephone, in floods of tears. ‘Somehow they must have found out I was at your place.’

  ‘Calm down, calm down. Who was there?’

  ‘Diver and his guys,’ she whimpered.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The ones I owe money to.’

  Jan sank onto the bed with a sigh, his hand pressed to his forehead. ‘Oh, fuck. Are you okay? Did they do anything to you?’

  ‘Luckily I wasn’t here when they came,’ she replied. ‘But they broke down your patio door and – and – smashed up your DVD collection.’

  Right then he couldn’t have cared about anything less than his furniture. All that mattered was Miriam’s safety. ‘Call the police, okay? I’ll come straight back. Do you know where this Diver lives?’

  ‘Yeah, but I’m not telling the police anything,’ she replied. ‘They don’t call him Diver for nothing.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound particularly dangerous,’ he said.

  She took a deep breath, sniffling. ‘There’s this abandoned swimming pool a little way out of the city. Empty. He’s known for making people jump off the three-metre diving board there. It doesn’t kill you, but you end up with at least a few broken bones.’

  ‘And you borrow money from guys like that. Dammit, what did you even use it for? How much was it?’

  ‘Fifteen hundred. It wasn’t for me, it was for my sister. For her class trip. Clothes. Some other stuff. Long story.’

  ‘Okay, tell me when I get there. I’ve got to tell them I’m leaving, then I’ll set off straight away.’

  ‘Jan—’

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  49

  Anita Ichigawa took the few final strokes to the steps. She climbed nimbly out of the pool, her dark eyes fixed on Jan.

  A glance at his watch had been enough to know he’d find her here. She ticked along as precisely as an atomic watch.

  He was astonished the hotel had already reopened the pool. The broken window was taped up with plastic film, the shards of glass swept away.

  ‘What’s up?’ Anita undid her plait and wrung out her damp hair.

  From seven to seven thirty she was always in the pool. She’d been that way for years. Her self-discipline was part of the reason why her body was still breath-taking, the skin as smooth and tight as her dark blue bikini, her musculature defined.

  He realised he’d let his eyes rest on her a fraction too long. The way his memory lingered a split second too long on the moments she’d pressed him down onto the bedsheets, sat astride him and got what she wanted from him.

  He felt like giving himself a clip round the ear. That was all ancient history. Better that way for both of them, he reminded himself – now wasn’t the time to get distracted.

  ‘I assume you’re not just here to relax.’ She wound a towel around her body. ‘I know that face. Something’s not right—’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go back to Mainz at once. Not long. Give me one day. But there’s something I need to sort out urgently.’

  ‘I’m not your boss. At most I can ask you to do something. I can’t give you instructions.’

  ‘Sure, but I’m not keen to get on your bad side.’

  She wound a second towel around her head like a turban. ‘Okay, then I’m asking this: stay, at least for the next few hours. I’m going to need you.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘There’s a new victim. “E”.’

  Jan froze. ‘Where?’

  ‘Marienstatt Abbey. Near Hachenburg.’

  ‘How long have you known?’

  ‘About an hour.’

  His eyes darted to the pool. ‘And you still went calmly for a swim?’

  ‘I don’t like to break my routine,’ she explained. ‘Anyway, being over-hasty never helps an investigation.’

  He shook his head barely perceptibly. There it was again. The enigma Anita had so often posed to him. ‘Sometimes I feel like I’ve never really understood you.’

  For a moment she seemed to give way to her sentimental side. She winked. ‘You’re the one who’s come closest, anyway.’ Then instantly her features hardened. ‘So, are you coming to the abbey?’

  He turned her down, telling her about Miriam, his drifter, who was in trouble. ‘You probably find the whole thing silly,’ he finished. ‘Me doing something so irrational.’

  ‘No,’ she said slowly, her head cocked. ‘It’s just who you are. An impulsive analyst. A cynical do-gooder. A paradox, plain and simple.’

  ‘Sounds almost poetic, the way you put it. I’ll stick to that – I’m going. Rabea can take charge in the meantime.’

  ‘I’ll keep you in the loop, Jan,’ she said. ‘And since we’re on the topic of Rabea, does she know what really happened to your brother?’


  His heart convulsed. ‘You’re still the only person who knows about that.’

  ‘All these years, and you’re still dragging that ballast around by yourself.’

  ‘If I hadn’t told you, we probably wouldn’t have split up,’ he replied, trying as best he could to keep all trace of wistfulness out of his voice.

  ‘That wasn’t the reason I ended it!’ The familiar vein began to pulse in her otherwise flawless brow. ‘But I can’t be with a man who’s capable of keeping such a secret. That’s what makes you so dangerous.’

  ‘You think I’m dangerous?’

  ‘There was a period when I thought you were a psychopath. But unfortunately, it takes a psychopath to understand other psychopaths.’

  ‘That’s a nice summary of my craft.’

  He was feeling so exposed that he couldn’t help taking refuge in sarcasm.

  ‘I’ve got to go. The team’s waiting,’ she said, instantly as emotionless as usual. As she left, she glanced over her shoulder. ‘You know, for a psychopath you’re not so bad.’

  50

  The moment had come. Rabea had feared it and longed for it ever since she’d entered the State Office of Criminal Investigations. She had to stand in for Jan. She had to prove herself as a solo analyst.

  Wiping her sweaty palms on her jeans, she leant her head against the window of Ichigawa’s Audi.

  They were following a road that led out of Hachenburg and into the Nister Valley. The snowploughs hadn’t reached this far yet. In some places along the windy road it was difficult to tell where the asphalt stopped and the earth began. Anita was concentrating hard, hunched over the wheel.

  The woods began to clear either side of the road. For the first time, Rabea had a clear view of the abbey. It was like looking through a window into the past. If it hadn’t been for the car park, the complex of buildings could have been straight out of the Middle Ages.

  ‘That might be Brother Timotheus up there,’ said Ichigawa. ‘He’s going to take us to the crime scene.’

  Her gaze was resting on a Cistercian brother in a white-and-black habit, who was herding a group of schoolchildren near the bus stop.