The Alphabet Murders

by Lars Schutz

  Tamara went on. ‘They’ve probably got Maik by now. I knew that would happen. After Jan’s assistant nearly caught us, it was only a question of time. It’s just the way Maik wanted it: he’s facing Jan once again. The man who stole the alphabet from him.’

  Something lying on the passenger seat caught Tamara’s attention.

  ‘Speaking of Jan, he’s calling again,’ she said, reaching for Miriam’s phone. ‘Time to put him out of his misery.’

  Z

  ‘ “Z”, the last letter in our alphabet, designated zed [. . .]. As a single sound within the German language, “Z” is limited to High German, excluding borrowings.’

  The Grimms’ Dictionary

  81

  ‘ “Z”. You are going to be our “Z”.’

  Tamara’s voice. For a moment Jan put down the phone and focused on calming his breathing. His fears had been proved right.

  ‘Please tell me you haven’t done anything to Miriam,’ he replied.

  Keep repeating the name of the kidnapping victim. Try to create a personal connection, to exude concern.

  ‘Is it her?’ whispered Anita, sitting at the wheel of her Audi.

  Jan gave her a quick nod.

  They were halfway between Jan’s home town and Hachenburg, hurtling down a road that cut like an aisle through the snow-covered pines. When they’d called at the station and learned that Miriam hadn’t come back from the town centre, they’d immediately been alarmed. An unintelligible groan came from the mobile. Then Tamara’s voice again: ‘Did you hear that? It’s her. Don’t worry, she’s fine. She’s just a little dazed.’

  ‘Sorry, but that could be anybody,’ said Jan. ‘I’ve got to be sure!’

  ‘You’re not in any position to make demands, Jan,’ she said coldly. ‘You’re back in Westerwald, hmm? And you have Maik.’

  Jan swallowed. Did she know Maik was dead? What would happen if he told her? Would she kill Miriam?

  Soon all the major media outlets would be reporting his death. Better she heard it from him than on the news. At least that way he could monitor her response.

  ‘Maik is dead. He was shot during arrest. I tried to stop them.’

  Anita stared at him sidelong. Her eyes said clearly that she thought telling Tamara was anything but a good idea.

  Silence. Had she hung up?

  No. He could still hear her breathing; he heard it quickening.

  ‘Please, Miriam hasn’t done anything!’

  She ignored him. ‘You’ve got your brother on your conscience. And now his son, too.’

  ‘I—’

  ‘The alphabet will be completed, Jan. Even without Maik.’ Were her lips trembling? Jan couldn’t say for sure. ‘I want you to be at Gero’s favourite place in two hours. If he ever really meant anything to you, you’ll know where that is. Get there too late, and Miriam will be a letter. Bring the police, and Miriam will be a letter. I only want you, Jan — you’re “Z”.’

  He gripped the phone tighter. ‘Tamara, wait! Don’t hang up!’

  A monotone beep. She’d ended the call. Jan flung the mobile onto the dashboard and buried his face in his hands. ‘Fucking shit!’

  ‘Does she have the girl?’ asked Stüter from the back seat.

  ‘Yes, and she’s using her as leverage. She wants to meet me in two hours. Alone, without police. Otherwise she’ll kill Miriam.’

  ‘You can’t do that,’ said Anita. ‘It’s a trap.’

  Jan rubbed his chin. ‘I know. She wants to make me “Z”. But what choice do I have?’

  First Rabea, now Miriam too. He never should have brought her here. How did Tamara even know about her? Had she been following him for months, even years, watching him? She wanted to take everything of any meaning from him.

  ‘Where does she want to meet, anyway?’ asked Anita.

  ‘That’s the other problem. I don’t know.’

  Ichigawa paused.

  ‘She said my brother’s favourite place,’ he continued. ‘But I’ve no idea where that could be.’

  ‘Then start racking those grey cells,’ growled Stüter. ‘I’ve just set a stopwatch going. We have until four twenty. That’s another hour and fifty-five minutes.’

  ‘I’m thinking!’ Fingers pressed to his temples, he dug deep into his memory.

  Gero’s favourite place. Where could it be? He and his brother had been close, true, but Gero had never shared all his secrets – a lesson Jan had learned the most painful way of all.

  Wolfstein? The village hall in Langenbach, where Gero had had his first kiss? Kirmesplatz in Bochum? How had he even let it get to this point? As hard as he tried to concentrate, questions of guilt were still hammering against his skull and interrupting his thoughts.

  ‘Pull up on the right!’ he said to Anita. ‘Please!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I can’t concentrate. Please, just do it!’

  She rolled her eyes but did as he asked and pulled up outside a field. Jan leapt out of the Audi, his hand already buried in the inside pocket of his coat. He needed it now, no matter what the others thought.

  Fingers shaking, he fumbled the joint out of the plastic baggie and flicked his lighter. But the wind instantly blew out the tiny flame.

  ‘Anita, can you give me a hand?’

  Seeing the bag, she groaned. ‘Are you serious, right now?’

  ‘It helps me think. Otherwise I can’t calm down.’

  ‘I always thought it was a phase,’ she said, cupping a hand around his Zippo. ‘A stupid little thing you’d eventually grow out of.’

  Finally, the joint caught light, and Jan thanked her with a nod. He inhaled the marijuana smoke deep into his lungs. ‘Some stupid little things have more staying power than others. But you’ve never had space in your life for stuff like that.’

  ‘This really isn’t the moment to get petty,’ she replied, leaning against the rusty gate that opened onto the field. ‘We’ve got to find the girl.’

  Stüter walked up to them, eyes wide. ‘Are you completely off your trolley? We’ve got less than two hours to find a young girl and you’re getting high!’

  ‘I’m trying to think!’ said Jan, justifying himself for the second time. ‘Do you think I don’t realise how serious this situation is?’

  ‘Then we’d better leave our genius to think in peace,’ grunted Stüter, reaching for his phone. ‘I’ll call the team. I want to have SWAT and a hostage negotiator on standby.’

  ‘Don’t do that!’ Jan leapt up, almost dropping his joint. ‘Nobody can know except us. If we call in back-up, we increase the risk that Tamara will find out and make good on her threat.’

  ‘You actually think the three of us can stop her by ourselves?’ persisted Stüter, his bald pate now completely red. ‘Do you have any clue how many rules we’d be breaking? Going in alone could cost us our jobs!’

  ‘Then do what you have to!’ Jan blew out smoke. ‘But I just want you to be aware that you’re putting Miriam’s life on the line!’

  Stüter lowered his eyes remorsefully, his free hand clenched. ‘What’s your take, Ichigawa?’ he asked.

  She stood up from the fence. ‘I’m in.’

  ‘Okay, fine,’ sighed the Chief Superintendent. ‘She’s got my friend’s son on her conscience. Let’s play cops and robbers with her.’

  Jan rolled the joint between his fingers and shut his eyes, feeling himself become weightless. Cops and robbers. Something in him had shaken loose. He often used to play it with Gero and his friends. But where? In his mind’s eye he saw a rock face, vast and steep. Where? His brother, a hunter and nature-lover, had gone there many times. Got drunk there with mates. Taken his girlfriends there. Including Tamara?

  ‘Stüter, I need your help! Where exactly is the Bacher Lay Nature Reserve?’

  ‘Between Bad Marienberg and Fehl-Ritzhausen. You think that could be the place?’

  ‘I’m almost one hundred percent sure.’ He stubbed out the glowing end of the joint and put
it back into the baggie.

  ‘Strange place to choose for an exchange,’ remarked Stüter. ‘There’ll still be a few people out walking this time of day. Risky for Tamara.’

  ‘For her it’s all about the symbolism,’ said Jan.

  82

  Still twenty-five minutes.

  ‘I’m on my way now,’ said Jan over the headset.

  Stüter’s reply was prompt. ‘Understood. Ichigawa and I are approaching from the south.’

  Anita had dropped Jan off by the evangelical church in the heart of Bad Marienberg. From there he’d walked down to Marienquelle, a small grotto with a statue of the Virgin Mary and an oaken balustrade that was the oldest part of the park. It was a tradition to take a short break there, but he had no time for that now.

  Anita had insisted Jan be armed, giving him a Walther P99 from the armoury at Hachenburg Police Station. It had cost them half an hour.

  Now he felt the pistol, which was in his inside coat pocket, digging into his chest with every step.

  He climbed deeper into the woods. Any other time he would have found the snowy treetops and white paths crossed with only a few footprints romantic. But now this winter wonderland was his own personal icy hell.

  The path led east, along the half-frozen bed of the Schwarze Nister.

  At last he saw a sign that read Bacher Lay Nature Reserve. In the silent quarry, the basalt mining had led to grotesque rock formations and steep slopes, home to rare animals and plants. There were countless hiding places, but only one that suited Tamara’s flair for the dramatic.

  He crossed the Schwarze Nister over a narrow wooden bridge. The walls of rock either side were becoming increasingly bluff, covered with icicles that glinted in the vanishing evening light.

  He glanced at his watch. Twelve minutes. Time was running through his fingers like newly fallen snow.

  At last he reached a broad clearing, at one end of which was the most imposing basalt wall in the whole reserve. It was parted in the middle by a frozen waterfall, like a blade of pure ice.

  Leaving the path, he entered the clearing. As he did so, he noticed a dozen stones in the centre of it. The rectangular stones, approximately the size of a human head, had not got there by natural means. He went closer – and realised they had been arranged in the shape of a “Z”.

  He swallowed drily. Activating his radio, he said softly, ‘I’m here. It’s the place I mentioned.’

  Had Tamara brought the stones here by herself, or had Maik helped her? It didn’t matter anymore. He was here on time – that was the only thing that mattered.

  ‘You made it.’ Tamara’s voice, echoing off dozens of rock faces. ‘Maybe you loved your brother after all.’

  Jan looked up. Two silhouettes at the top of the basalt wall, black against the red evening sky. The taller one, Tamara, was gripping Miriam’s arm; she was staggering, as though stunned. The Alphabet Killer was holding a gun to Miriam’s head.

  ‘Of course I loved him,’ he replied, his head craned back.

  ‘Then why did you kill him?’ Tamara’s voice cracked. ‘You never really knew him! I was the only one who understood him! Who loved him for what he was!’

  ‘You were fifteen! Of course you did!’ replied Jan. ‘He was a paedophile. You were never more than a toy to him. He used you to lure other children in front of the camera.’

  ‘Don’t talk about him like that!’ she screamed, before softening her voice once more. ‘He loved me!’

  Jan had to change tack. It didn’t matter what he said about his brother; she’d never change her mind. ‘Tell me about Sapkowski.’

  ‘I enjoyed going to a therapist like him. Telling him about my fantasies, about my world. About you. He found me fascinating. Maybe that was why I slept with him. But his fascination ended a few days ago, when he realised what was going on here. So, I had to silence him.’

  Very good, just keep talking, thought Jan. Every second brought Stüter and Ichigawa closer. He had to make sure her stream of words didn’t dry up.

  ‘Why Maik? What did you see in him?’

  ‘Maik – he was so similar to his father, yet so different. This world betrayed him. People who can’t read are excluded. So, I helped him create his own alphabet. An alphabet out of everybody who despised and degraded him. Zanetti, one of the authors I knew through a manuscript he sent in. Ziehner wanted me to translate it for him so he could make even more money. Zanetti raped the language, that so-called publisher was actually helping him. Tugba Ekiz got off on helping others. Dr Ehrberger wrote hypocritical religious stuff. Gero’s friend, that Timo guy, was supposed to take the fall for that. He got too close to me, poking around like that. What gives them more right to language than Maik?’

  Profound paranoia, clearly indicative of a schizophrenic psychosis.

  ‘Maik was the body, I was the spirit. He would have done anything for me. I helped him create his alphabet – like I helped his father.’

  ‘What alphabet? What are you talking about?’

  ‘Your brother told me a lot about you both. You were never on top of anything in your life, while he was always in control. Like the names of the films and photos on his computer, in strict alphabetical order. I still remember them today. Alyosha. Andra. Bogdana. Cedrin. Cosmin – I’ve been fascinated ever since by sorting the world that way. Putting it in alphabetical order.’

  ‘What about the woman I met in the restaurant? Where’s that part of you?’ asked Jan, trying one last time to find a trace of sanity.

  ‘She never existed. Losing Gero made one thing clear to me: the only language that matters is the language of death. Everything else – the billions of words spoken every day, the billions of printed pages – is meaningless. The world should speak my language. Learn my alphabet. The alphabet of Gero and Maik.’

  ‘I’m afraid the world hasn’t quite deciphered your alphabet.’

  ‘It will, believe me.’ Tamara dragged Miriam closer. ‘Once you’re my “Z”. I want you to do it. Like you killed your brother – now you’re going to kill yourself. I know you’ve got a gun. Put it to your head and pull the trigger. Colour the snow around you red.’ Her voice was becoming a roar, astonishingly deep for a woman. ‘But first: tell me how it happened. And no lies.’

  Jan’s whole body trembled. He breathed jerkily, panting a Morse code of clouds into the cold. He had to buy time for Ichigawa and Stüter to arrive.

  ‘In the accident report it says I lost control of the car because I was drunk. But maybe I wanted to lose control. I confronted Gero about what he was doing – and all he said was: Who’s going to believe you? It floored me. The way he simply shrugged it off. We went hurtling into that sycamore, right into the passenger’s side. Petrol started leaking, and it caught fire. I got away with a leg injury and a slight concussion, and I was able to escape the wreck. But Gero – Gero couldn’t get out by himself. He was too badly injured.’

  Jan felt like a rhetorical bomb disposal officer. One false word or peculiar emphasis might make Tamara explode. He had to tell her the truth, but he couldn’t trigger her rage.

  ‘He begged me. But I simply stood there. I couldn’t move. I kept seeing those children’s eyes – I’m your brother! Your brother! Please! Those were his last words, before the smoke took his voice. I just stood there. I literally just stood there.’

  He gasped for breath. He had to concentrate. This was about Miriam. Not about his brother, not about Tamara. Only about Miriam. He had to save her, at least.

  Tamara didn’t scream or get violent. She became totally calm, which worried Jan far more. ‘I was at the sycamore the very next day. They’d already taken the car away. That fucking tree. The endpoint of Gero’s life. So, I made it the endpoint of the alphabet too. A “Z”. I always knew you must have sensed something. That it wasn’t an accident – and that at some point you’d stand in front of that tree and regret it.’ She motioned to Jan with the gun. ‘Do it or she dies!’

  His fingers shaking, he took the
P99 out of his inside pocket and removed the holster. He’d known it would come to this. Ichigawa and Stüter would never get here in time to save him, but at least Miriam would be safe.

  He pointed the barrel at his temple and took the safety catch off.

  ‘Jan, don’t do it! Please!’ howled Miriam.

  He could see Tamara smack her with the butt of the revolver.

  ‘I’ve been waiting years for this moment, Jan. Years!’ she shouted.

  At least he could leave in the certainty that this madness was about to end. Everything in his head was thudding. His veins pulsed.

  He dropped to his knees and shut his eyes.

  Here in Westerwald he’d been born. Here he was going to die.

  He pulled the trigger.

  83

  Click.

  Jan opened his eyes. His chest felt tight. Oh God. The gun wasn’t loaded. It couldn’t be.

  ‘What’s going on, Jan?’ yelled Tamara.

  ‘Empty. No ammo.’ He raised both hands. ‘Let’s talk, Tamara. I’ll do anything you want!’

  ‘Don’t try to play games with me! I always knew you were a coward.’

  She pointed the gun at him. He held out his arms, waiting for the final shot.

  With a scream, Miriam threw her whole bodyweight against Tamara. She staggered and the gun fired, but she didn’t lose her balance.

  Jan leapt up. ‘Miriam, no!’

  ‘We can see them! We’re nearly there!’ came Ichigawa’s tense voice through the radio. ‘Too dangerous to shoot. We might hit the girl.’

  Tamara and Miriam were locked together, Miriam trying to wrench the gun from Tamara’s hand as they kicked and lurched. They swayed back and forth, whirling around – until Tamara stumbled.

  For a heartbeat time seemed to stand still. Jan saw the ice and rock underneath Tamara give way.

  Saw her grab Miriam’s jacket, screaming.

  Dragging her over the edge.

  The bursting sound of their bodies falling into the thicket at the base of the rock wall made Jan’s stomach twist. Instantly he sprinted over.