Blood Eagle

by Craig Russell

  As Fabel spoke, the old woman leaned forward and creased her brow over her owl eyes, as if concentrating hard on his words. ‘It’s all right, the noise doesn’t bother me … I’m a bit deaf, you know.’

  ‘I see,’ said Fabel, raising his voice slightly. ‘So you won’t have heard anything last night?’

  Frau Steiner suddenly looked deeply sad. ‘That’s the thing, I probably did … I probably heard something but didn’t realise it.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Fabel.

  ‘Tinnitus. I’m afraid it goes along with my deafness. I take my hearing aid out when I sleep … every night I hear sounds … bumps, high-pitched whines … even sounds like screams. But it’s just my tinnitus. Or rather, I never know whether it’s my tinnitus or not.’

  ‘I see, I’m sorry. That must be unpleasant.’

  ‘You have to shut it out. Otherwise you’d go mad.’ She shook her small, bird-like head slowly, as if too sudden a movement might damage it. ‘I’ve had it a long, long time, young man. Since July 1943, to be exact.’

  ‘The British bombing?’

  ‘I’m glad you know your history. I’m afraid I have to live with mine. Or at least the echoes of it. I was caught outside when the first wave came over. Both eardrums shattered, you see. And this …’ She pulled up a black woollen sleeve to reveal an impossibly thin arm. The skin was puckered and mottled pink and white. ‘Burns on thirty per cent of my body. But it’s the tinnitus that has marked me most.’ She paused for a moment; a sadness seemed to well in the owl eyes. ‘I cannot stand the thought of that poor girl crying out for help and me not hearing it.’

  Fabel looked past the woman’s head and took in the collection of old black-and-white photographs on the dresser behind her: her as a child and as a young woman, even then with owl eyes; her with a man with a shock of black hair; another photograph of the same man wearing what Fabel thought at first was a Wehrmacht uniform, then he recognised it as that of a wartime Police Reserve Battalion. No children. No photographs less than fifty years old.

  ‘Did you see her much?’

  ‘No. In fact I only spoke to her once. I was brushing the landing when she passed on her way up.’

  ‘Did you talk to her?’

  ‘Not really. She said hello and something about the weather and went on up. I would have asked her in for a cup of coffee, but she seemed in a hurry. She looked like a businesswoman or something … very smartly dressed. Expensive shoes, as I remember. Beautiful shoes. Foreign. Other than that day, I only heard her on the stairs occasionally. I thought she probably went away on business a lot or something.’

  ‘Did she have lots of visitors. Men, specifically?’

  Her face creased in concentration again. ‘No … no, I can’t say that I saw much of anybody.’

  ‘I know this is a very unpleasant matter, but I have to ask you, Frau Steiner – was there anything that made you think she may have been a prostitute?’

  Impossibly, the owl eyes widened. ‘No. Certainly not. Is that what she was?’

  ‘We don’t know. If she were, I would have expected you to see more men coming and going.’

  ‘No, I can honestly say I was only aware of two or three visitors to the flat. But now you mention it they were all men, I never saw another woman.’

  ‘Can you describe them?’

  ‘No, not really,’ she shook her head again, slowly. ‘I can’t even be sure if there were more than, say, two men visiting. I maybe saw the same person more than once.’ She pointed past Fabel, down the hall, to the semiopaque bronze-glass panel in her apartment door. ‘I just saw shapes through the door – figures more than anything.’

  ‘So you wouldn’t be able to recognise any of them?’

  ‘Only the young man who sub-let the apartment to her …’

  ‘That would be Klugmann, sir,’ interjected Beller. ‘He was the one who discovered the body and called us.’

  ‘Did he come around often?’ Fabel asked.

  The old woman gave a shrug of her insubstantial shoulders. ‘I only saw him a couple of times. Like I say, he could have been one of the figures I saw go up and down, or he was maybe only here the couple of times I saw him.’ She looked towards the glass panel in the door at the end of the short hall. ‘That’s what it means to become old, young man. Your world shrinks and shrinks until it’s reduced to just shadows passing your door.’

  ‘When was Herr Klugmann’s most recent visit, that you know about?’

  ‘Last week … or maybe the week before. I’m sorry, I didn’t really pay much heed.’

  ‘That’s all right, Frau Steiner. Thank you for your time.’ Fabel rose from the armchair.

  ‘Herr Hauptkommissar?’ The watery owl eyes blinked.

  ‘Yes, Frau Steiner?’

  ‘Did she suffer terribly?’

  There was no point in lying. It would soon be all over the papers. ‘I’m afraid she did. But she’s at peace now. Goodbye, Frau Steiner. If there is anything you need, please ask one of the officers.’

  The words didn’t seem to have sunk in, the old woman simply sat shaking her head. ‘Tragic. So tragic.’

  As they left the flat Fabel turned to Beller. ‘You said you were first on the scene?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And there was no one hanging around?’

  ‘No, sir. Just the guy who phoned us … and by that time the young couple from the downstairs flat.’

  ‘You didn’t see an older man hanging around?’

  Beller shook his head thoughtfully.

  ‘Even later, when the ghouls began to gather? A short, thickset man in his late sixties? He looks foreign … Slavic … maybe Russian.’

  ‘No sir … sorry. Is it important?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Fabel. ‘Probably not.’

  Wednesday 4 June, 7.30 a.m. St Pauli, Hamburg.

  The interview room in the Davidwache police station was a study in efficient minimalism. The starkness of the whitewashed walls was broken only by the door and a single window which would have looked out onto Davidstrasse, had its glass not been thick and cloudy, like a sheet of frozen milk, against which the daylight that was dawning outside was reduced to a vague bloom. One end of the interview table was pushed up against the wall, and four tubular metal chairs were arranged, two on either side, at the table. A black interview-recording cassette unit sat at the end of the table. Above it, on the wall, was a notice advising of exits and procedures in case of fire. Above that a sign forbidding smoking.

  Fabel and Werner sat on one side of the table. Opposite Fabel was a man of about thirty-five with thick, greasy black hair combed back in glistening strands that continually slipped over his forehead. He was tall and powerfully built, his shoulders straining against the cheap black leather of his too-tight jacket. He had the look of a former athlete gone to seed: an incipient corpulence gelling around the waistline, the eyes shadowed, the skin pale against the black hair and two-day stubble; a face still square and strong, but beginning to show signs of sagging.

  ‘You are Hans Klugmann?’ Fabel asked without looking up from the report.

  ‘Yes …’ Klugmann leaned forward, hunching his shoulders, placing his wrists on the edge of the table and picking at the skin on one thumb with the nail of the other. A pose almost like prayer, but for its nervous intensity.

  ‘You found the girl …’ Fabel flipped over a few pages. ‘“Monique”.’

  ‘Yes …’ The thumbnail dug deeper. One leg, resting on the ball of the foot, started to bounce in an unconscious twitch under the table. The action made the hands shake rhythmically.

  ‘It must have been a shock … very unpleasant for you …’

  There was genuine pain in Klugmann’s eyes. ‘You could say that …’

  ‘Monique was a friend?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yet you claim you don’t know her surname?’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Look, Herr Klugmann, I have to admit I really n
eed your help here. I’m a very confused man and I’m relying on you to help me clear up my confusion. So far I have the body of an anonymous girl lying dismembered in an apartment where there’s no trace of personal belongings other than a single set of clothes found in a wardrobe … no purse, no papers … for that matter there isn’t even any food other than a litre of milk in the fridge. We also find some of the trappings you would expect in an apartment used for prostitution. And the apartment is located conveniently near, but not in, the red-light district. Yet there is no evidence of a lot of male visitors. See why I am confused?’

  Klugmann shrugged.

  ‘And on top of all that we discover that the apartment is officially rented out to a former police special-forces officer who claims not to know his sub-tenant’s full name.’ Fabel waited for the words to sink in. Klugmann sat impassive, staring at his hands. ‘So why don’t you stop jerking us around, Herr Klugmann? You and I both know that the apartment was used for the purposes of prostitution, but in some kind of highly selective way, and that this girl Monique didn’t live there. Listen, I’m not interested in your arrangement with this girl other than in the information you can give me about her. Do I make myself clear?’

  Klugmann nodded but did not lift his gaze from his hands.

  ‘So what was her name?’

  ‘I told you, I don’t know … I swear that’s the truth. All I ever called her – all she ever called herself – was Monique.’

  ‘But she was a prostitute?’

  ‘Okay, maybe … I don’t know … she might have been … maybe part time. Nothing to do with me. She never seemed short of money, so yeah, maybe.’

  ‘How long have you known her?’

  ‘Only about three or four months.’

  ‘If you don’t know her name,’ Werner said, ‘then there must be others who do. Who did she hang out with?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You never met any of her friends?’ Fabel asked without disguising his incredulity.

  ‘No.’

  Fabel pushed a photograph of the first victim, Ursula Kastner, across the desk. ‘Recognise her?’

  ‘No. Well … yeah … but only from the papers. Isn’t she the lawyer that got murdered? Was she done the same way?’

  Fabel ignored the question and left the photograph sitting there. Klugmann didn’t look at it again. Fabel had a feeling that he was deliberately avoiding looking at Kastner’s face. An instinct, somewhere deep inside Fabel’s gut, began to stir.

  ‘What about Monique’s address before she moved into the flat?’

  Klugmann shrugged.

  ‘This is getting ridiculous.’ Werner leaned forward. His bulk and the brutality of his features gave his movements a menace that often wasn’t intended. In response Klugmann straightened himself in his chair and angled his head back defiantly. ‘You are trying to tell us that this girl moved into your life and into your apartment without you knowing her full name, or anything else about her?’

  ‘You have to admit, Herr Klugmann,’ said Fabel, ‘I mean, as a former policeman, that it does all seem a bit strange.’

  Klugmann relaxed his pose. ‘Yeah. I suppose it does. But I’m telling you the truth. Listen, it’s a different world out there. Monique just, well, sort of appeared one night at the place I work and we got talking …’

  ‘She was on her own?’

  ‘Yes. That’s why I got talking to her. Arno, my boss, thought she was an expensive hooker trawling our club and told me to send her on her way. We got talking and she seemed a good kid. She asked me if I knew somewhere she could rent a room or an apartment and I told her about my flat.’

  ‘Why did you offer her your flat? Why don’t you live there yourself?’

  ‘I’m … well, sort of involved with one of the girls from the Tanzbar … Sonja. I was staying over most nights at her place because it was so close to the Tanzbar. After I leased the new place I moved in with Sonja while it was being decorated. Then I meet Monique, and she says she’s willing to pay well, and in advance, for a decent place to stay. She also said it would only be for maybe six to nine months. So I thought it was a good way to make a few extra euros …’

  ‘And you were to keep out of the way?’ asked Werner.

  ‘That was the deal …’

  ‘So what were you doing up there at that time of the night?’

  ‘I called up to see her. I did that now and again to check everything was okay. We got on …’

  ‘You were making a social call at two-thirty in the morning?’ Fabel asked.

  ‘Neither of us worked normal hours.’

  ‘What, exactly, is your job, Herr Klugmann?’

  ‘Like I told you, I work in a nightclub … a Tanzbar. I’m an assistant manager.’

  Fabel consulted the file again. ‘Ah yes, the Paradies-Tanzbar off the Grosse Freiheit … that the one?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So you work for … ?’

  ‘You know who I work for …’ Klugmann looked down at the thumbnail he was now excavating with the other.

  Fabel pulled a second file out from under the first. He flipped it open and scanned the first page. Klugmann saw his own photograph at the top right-hand corner. His hunched shoulders sagged. ‘Yes …’ Fabel leaned back in his chair and eyed Klugmann contemplatively. ‘Your current employer is Ersin Ulugbay … not exactly Hamburg citizen of the month, is he?’

  ‘S’pose not.’

  ‘It’s an odd career move,’ said Werner, ‘from an elite police unit to the Turkish Mafia.’

  ‘I didn’t have much choice about my retirement from the police.’ Klugmann smiled cynically. ‘As you probably already know. Anyway, I don’t work for any “Mafia”. I know what Ulugbay’s into, but I’m not into it. Ulugbay may own the bar, but my boss is Arno Hoffknecht, the manager. It’s not much, I’m supposed to be an assistant manager but I’m really nothing more than a glorified bouncer. But I keep my nose clean.’

  ‘Really?’ said Werner. ‘Interesting choice of expression. I don’t know if your nose is really that clean.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘When was your last line?’

  The sinews on Klugmann’s thick neck tautened. ‘Fuck you, Arschloch.’

  Werner’s eyes blazed and his huge frame seemed primed to explode into violence. Fabel took the initiative. ‘I hope you’re not going to prove uncooperative, Herr Klugmann. That could make things look worse for you.’

  ‘What do you mean “worse for me”? This has fuck-all to do with me. And you’ve got no proof otherwise …’

  ‘You’re holding something back.’

  ‘For instance?’

  ‘For instance, where is Monique’s appointment book?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Or the video camera that you had hidden behind the mirror? What was that about? Blackmail or just making porn?’

  For an instant Klugmann seemed taken aback. ‘Look, I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. No fuckin’ idea at all.’

  Fabel leaned back. Werner recognised the tag and leaned his bristle-haired bullet head forward, smiling. ‘I don’t like you, Klugmann …’

  ‘Oh really?’ Klugmann feigned hurt surprise. ‘And I was thinking maybe we had some kind of future together …’

  ‘I don’t like you because you’re a traitor and a crook. You crapped on this police service when you started selling your mouth to Ulugbay.’ Werner leaned back and twisted his face in contempt. ‘You stink. You smell of the fucking gutter, you live with a whore …’

  Klugmann tensed and made a sudden movement forward.

  Fabel held up his hand. ‘Easy …’

  Werner continued, unfazed. ‘You live with a whore, you rented your home out to another whore so that she could be ripped apart by some fucking maniac, and you work in a cesspit for a Turkish godfather. What’s it like, Klugmann … what’s it like when you look in the mirror in the morning? For Christ’
s sake you were a policeman – and, from what we can see of your record, a good one. You must have had ambition once. And now you’re …’ Werner gestured towards Klugmann, extending his arms as if he were holding something noxious at bay – ‘you’re this.’ He pushed his face even closer to Klugmann’s. ‘You are vermin, Klugmann. I don’t for one second think you’re beyond doing what was done to that girl. And I don’t for one second believe any of this line of crap you’re feeding us about not knowing anything about her except her first name.’

  Werner came to an abrupt halt. There was silence in the room. A balanced, calculated silence. Klugmann slumped back in his chair, one leg sprawled, the other still doing its little nervous dance. Fabel scanned Klugmann’s face. There was the expected mask of disinterest: a studied boredom worn by countless others who had sat across the interview desk from Fabel over the years: an expression intended to convey a lack of concern, but Fabel could invariably see through it. As he regarded Klugmann, he realised that, in this case, he couldn’t penetrate the mask.

  Werner continued. ‘You weren’t a friend, and you weren’t a customer … you weren’t up there for a sly four-hundred-euro fuck, were you? From what we can tell about “Monique”, she was way out of your class – and your price bracket.’

  Klugmann didn’t answer and stared at the edge of the table.

  ‘And I don’t believe that you are simply the unfortunate landlord of an anonymous girl who just happens to be butchered in the property you rent. So where does that leave us?’ Werner persisted: ‘Not a friend. Not a customer. That leaves … well, that leaves either you slicing her up, or that you’re an enforcer for Ulugbay … that you were her pimp. I think you were up there to collect – and I mean more than the rent – and if she got out of line you’d give her a little slap. Isn’t that about the size of it?’

  Silence.

  ‘Maybe you like your work. Maybe you get a hard-on when you knock these girls about a bit. Maybe last night was you having some special fun …’

  Klugmann exploded. ‘Don’t be fuckin’ stupid … You saw the state of that room … if it hadda been me I’d be covered in blood …’