Blood Eagle

by Craig Russell

  ‘Yes. Once that we know about.’

  ‘And the previous victims had no association with the Ulugbay organisation?’

  ‘No. Not that we know of.’

  Buchholz shrugged and held his palms upwards. After a moment he pointed vaguely at the file in Fabel’s hand. ‘Do you have a copy of the file for us?’

  Fabel handed the copy he had brought to Buchholz. ‘This is for you, Herr Hauptkommissar.’

  Buchholz pointedly handed it on to Kolski. ‘We’ll keep in touch, Herr Fabel. And, naturally, we would appreciate being notified before you carry out any enquiries directly with anyone in the Ulugbay organisation.’

  ‘That’s why I’m here, Herr Hauptkommissar.’

  ‘And I appreciate it,’ said Buchholz. ‘Naturally we can’t ask to be directly involved with your inquiry, but we can avoid stepping on each other’s toes.’

  ‘I would hope that we could be of help to each other, Herr Buchholz.’

  Wednesday 4 June, 4.30 p.m. Pöseldorf, Hamburg.

  It was mid-afternoon before Fabel turned the key of the door to his apartment. He picked up his mail and sifted through it, using his elbow to slam the door behind him. Fabel tossed the mail and the files he had brought home with him down onto the coffee table and walked through to the kitchen area, a bright alcove of steel and marble off the main living space. He filled the coffee machine and switched it on, then went into the bathroom and stripped, stuffing his shirt and underwear into the washing machine that sat in a recess next to the bathroom. Fabel shaved before stepping into the shower. He stood motionless, simply tilting his head back to allow the high-pressure spray to dig into the flesh of his face and letting the water run in rivulets down his body. The water was slightly too hot, but he didn’t adjust it, letting it sting away the pollution of the night.

  Fabel thought over the last eleven hours. He tried to focus on the facts, on the picture he was piecing together in his mind, but he couldn’t erase the image that seared through his brain every few seconds: the image of the girl’s body. Christ, he had ripped out her lungs … what kind of monster would do that? If it was a sexual thing, what unspeakable mutation of human sexuality could derive gratification from such an act? Fabel thought about Klugmann, about how someone so corrupted by greed, drugs and violence had distanced himself with such clarity and ease from such an unspeakable deed. Fabel and Klugmann each represented everything the other was not. They were two extremes of humanity who had become united in the face of a barbarity that denied humanity in any form.

  Standing naked in the shower, enveloped in a sheath of too-hot water, Fabel still felt a chill deep in his being: a permafrost that bound his guts in an icy grasp. It was a chill that radiated out from a single fact he had locked deep inside: as sure as the sun would rise tomorrow, this killer would strike again.

  After his shower Fabel pulled on a black cashmere roll-neck, clipped his automatic to the black leather belt he had looped through his pale chinos, and slipped into his Jaeger sports jacket. He poured himself a black coffee and carried it over to the picture windows. Fabel’s apartment was in Pöseldorf, in the Rotherbaum district of the city. It was on the attic floor of a substantial turn-of-the-century building that sat in assured but austere confidence, as did its neighbours, one block from the Milchstrasse. The conversion of the building into apartments had included, in Fabel’s flat, the installation of almost floor-to-ceiling picture windows that looked over the roofs of Magdalenenstrasse and out onto the park-fringed Aussenalster. From his windows Fabel could watch the red and white ferries zigzag their way across the Alster, picking up passengers – tourists, commuters, lovers – from one shore and dropping them on the other; picking up, dropping, picking up, dropping, with a cheerful regularity that gave a rhythm to the city’s life. When the sun was at a certain angle, he could see the faint turquoise glitter of the Iranian mosque on the Schöne Aussicht across on the distant shore of the Alster. Every time Fabel devoured the view he blessed the unknown architect who had specified these windows.

  Fabel had been here for years. He loved it. His apartment lay where the student quarter – the university was within walking distance – collided with rich and trendy Pöseldorf. In one direction Fabel could browse through the countless book and record stores on the Grindelhof, or catch an obscure, late-night foreign film at the Abaton Kino; in the other direction he could sink into the chic affluence of the Milchstrasse, with its wine bars, jazz clubs, boutiques and restaurants.

  The clouds had finally surrendered the sky to the sun. Fabel stared blankly at the view; a dull nauseating anxiety gnawing at his gut. He looked out over the Aussenalster again, hungrily trying to absorb its calm. The scenic Hamburg that opened itself before the apartment’s picture windows seemed neither scenic nor open. Fabel scanned the horizon, then swept his gaze like a searchlight over the familiar view: the vast mirror of the Aussenalster reflecting a steely sky, the expanses of green that fringed it and punctuated the city, and the orderly residences and offices that sat like temperate, self-assured burghers supervising the progress of the day. Today the view did not calm Fabel. Today it was not ‘another’ Hamburg, removed from the city of his work. Today, as he scrutinised the view, he was aware of the fusion between the city he loved and the city he policed. Out there, somewhere, was something monstrous. Something evil. Something so violent and malevolent it was difficult to imagine it as being human.

  Fabel went back into the kitchen and refilled his coffee cup. He stabbed the replay button as he passed his answering machine. The sterile electronic voice announced that there were three messages. The first was from the Hamburger Morgenpost, asking for a comment on the latest killing. How the hell did these people get his home number? Anyway, they should know better; wait for the official statement. The last two messages were from another journalist, Angelika Blüm. The name Maria had mentioned earlier. Her tone was strange, insistent. Instead of asking Fabel for some kind of comment, she had said, in her last message: ‘It’s vital that we talk …’ A new approach. Ignore it.

  He drained the last of his coffee and made his way across to the phone. He made two calls. The first was to Werner at the office: he was on the other line and Fabel left a message that he was on his way back in. For the second call, Fabel hugged the handset between shoulder and ear while he flicked through his pocket diary for the number. The phone rang for a long time before it was answered.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Mahmoot? It’s Fabel. I want a meet …’

  ‘When?’

  ‘The Rundfahrt ferry. Seven-thirty …’

  ‘Okay.’

  Fabel replaced the receiver, slipped his diary back into his jacket pocket and reset his answering machine. He was about to leave the apartment when he turned back and played the messages once more. He listened to Angelika Blüm’s telephone number again; it began with 040: a Hamburg number. This time he noted it down on the pad that sat next to the phone. Just in case.

  Fabel’s footsteps in the echoing hall of the stairwell had hardly faded when the phone rang. After two rings the answering machine clicked on, delivering Fabel’s recorded instructions to leave a message after the tone. The voice was that of a woman who said ‘Scheisse!’ in genuine frustration and hung up.

  Wednesday 4 June, 4.30 p.m. Hotel Altona Krone, Hamburg.

  His arrival in the hotel reception was almost presidential. Centred in an envelope of burly, black-leather-jacketed bodyguards, a tall, lean man in his late seventies, dressed in a pale grey raincoat and darker grey business suit. His posture and movements were those of a man twenty years younger and his angular features, hooked nose and a plume of thick, ivory-coloured hair gave him an aristocratic, arrogant look.

  His entry into the reception hall had been heralded by a fusillade of camera flashes. Some photographers, seeking a closer vantage, had been bounced off the picket of muscle and leather; one had been sent sprawling on the marble floor.

  As it reached the reception desk, the env
elope opened, allowing the tall older man to approach the counter. The hotel desk clerk, who had seen it all before – rock groups, politicians, film stars, billionaires with egos to match their bank balances – did not look up from his desk until the group was immediately before the counter. Then, with a polite yet tired smile he asked:

  ‘Yes, mein Herr. May I help you?’

  ‘I have a reservation here …’ The tall man’s voice was resonant and authoritative. The desk clerk continued to project a monumental apathy.

  ‘And your name, sir?’ he asked, although he knew very well.

  The tall man jutted his jaw, tilting his head back and imperiously peering down his aquiline nose at the clerk, as if he were a morsel of prey.

  ‘Eitel,’ he answered, ‘Wolfgang Eitel.’

  A journalist pushed forward, an untidy man of about forty whose scalp gleamed through a web of carelessly combed strands of blond hair. ‘Herr Eitel, do you really thing that your son has any chance of becoming Bürgermeister? After all, Hamburg has a tradition of liberalism and social democracy …’

  Eitel’s eyes projected a laser of disdain and contempt.

  ‘It is what the people of Hamburg really think that matters – not what people like you tell them they should think.’ Eitel bent his face close to the reporter’s with a predatory swoop. ‘The people of Hamburg buy my son’s magazine … SCHAU MAL! has become the voice of the ordinary man on the street. The people of Hamburg want to be heard – they deserve to be heard. My son will make sure they are heard – through the pages of SCHAU MAL! and through him, as their Senator and ultimately their Erste Bürgermeister.’

  ‘And what message, exactly, will he bear on their behalf?’ A second journalist spoke: an attractive woman of about forty-five with short, styled auburn hair, expensively dressed in a black Chanel suit, the skirt of which was short enough to show off her still-firm and shapely legs. Extending an arm which held a Dictaphone, she leaned in past a bodyguard who placed a beefy restraining hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Lose the hand, Schätzchen, or I’ll have you for assault.’ Her husky voice held calm and menace in perfect equilibrium. The hand was removed. Eitel turned in her direction. Like him, she had a southern accent. He clicked his heels and made a brief, bowlike nod with his head.

  ‘Gnädige Frau … allow me to answer your question. The message my son bears – the message of the Hamburg people – is simple. It is that Hamburg has had enough; enough of mass immigration, enough of drug pushers poisoning our children, enough of burgeoning criminality, enough of foreigners taking our jobs, subverting our culture and turning Hamburg – and our other fine German cities – into cesspools of crime, prostitution and drugs.’

  ‘So you’re placing the blame on foreigners?’

  ‘What I am saying, gnädige Frau, is that the experiment in “multiculturalism” so vaunted by the Sozis’ – Eitel used the pejorative abbreviation of the Social Democratic Party – ‘has failed. Unfortunately we are now having to live with this failure.’ Eitel straightened his back and turned slightly into the reception, looking over the heads of his bodyguards and turning his answer into a semi-public address. ‘How much more of this unremitting assault on the lives of decent German people can we take? The whole fabric of our society is being unravelled. No one feels safe or secure …’

  Eitel turned back to the woman journalist and smiled. Beneath the thick sweep of her auburn hair was a powerfully carved face, large, penetrating green eyes, a wide mouth accentuated in vermilion lipstick and a strong jawline. She did not return his smile.

  ‘Herr Eitel, your son’s magazine SCHAU MAL! has a reputation for being sensationalist and, on several occasions – how can I put this – a little one-dimensional in its approach to complex political issues. Is that a good summation of the political perspective of the Bund Deutschland-für-Deutsche?’

  Each question crashed against the sea-wall of Eitel’s goodwill, eroding it swiftly and steadily. The smile remained, but the thin top lip tightened with something other than congeniality.

  ‘There are complex issues, and there are simple ones. The destruction of our society by extrinsic elements is a simple one. And there is a simple solution.’

  ‘By that you mean repatriation? Or by “simple” solution do you mean “final” solution?’ The other journalist leaned in to ask the question. Eitel ignored him, keeping his laser gaze on the woman.

  ‘A good question, Herr Eitel. Would you care to answer it?’ The woman journalist paused, but not long enough for him to answer. ‘Or would you prefer to explain why, when both you and your son feel so strongly about foreigners, the Eitel Group is negotiating property deals here in Hamburg with eastern-European interests?’

  Eitel looked taken aback for a sliver of one second. Then something dark and malevolent mustered behind the eyes.

  At that moment a second entourage entered. Smaller. More dignified. Less muscle and more business. Eitel turned in its direction without answering the question.

  ‘Papa!’ A stocky man, no taller than about one metre seventy-two, with a shock of thick dark hair and a handsome face creased by a broad smile, approached Eitel. He grasped his hand in an enthusiastic handshake, reaching up to place his other hand on the taller man’s shoulder.

  ‘And this, gnädige Frau, is my son. Norbert Eitel – the next Erste Bürgermeister of Hamburg!’ More camera flashes.

  The woman journalist smiled, more in amusement at the unlikely disparity of physical types between father and son than in greeting.

  ‘Of course, I know Norbert already …’ She smiled and extended a hand to the shorter, younger Eitel. He smiled and kissed her hand.

  The older Eitel spoke: ‘If you’ll excuse us, I’m afraid we have matters of great importance to discuss.’ Both men nodded a brief bow. The elder extended his hand.

  ‘You still haven’t answered my question, Herr Eitel,’ she responded, flatly.

  ‘Perhaps some other time. It has been a pleasure, gnädige Frau …’

  As she walked away, the woman journalist smiled. Gnädige Frau … it was an address she would reserve for some stern, aristocratic grandmother.

  As Eitel father and son watched her make her way across the reception towards the door, Wolfgang Eitel’s smile had been washed away by a more predatory expression. He spoke without turning to his son.

  ‘Who was that, Norbert?’

  ‘Her? Oh she’s a freelancer – well respected, done work for Der Spiegel and Stern …’

  ‘Her name …’ It was a command, not a question.

  ‘Blüm … that’s Angelika Blüm.’

  Wednesday 4 June, 6.45 p.m. B73, Hamburg–Cuxhaven.

  Fear ran through him like an electric current. A delicious fear that tingled his scalp and tightened his chest. This was his selected duty and he never resented being the one who had to take all the risks.

  He took his hands from the steering wheel, first one, then the other, and wiped the sweat from his palms and concentrated on the road. All it would take would be a routine police road check, or a minor accident, or a flat tyre and a helpful autobahn patrol. Then it would be all over. He angled the rear-view mirror so that he could see her. She was slumped in the back seat. Her sonorous breathing was deep but irregular, with a scratchy stridor. Fuck. Maybe he had used too much. ‘Just stay alive,’ he muttered, knowing she was far beyond hearing anything. ‘Just stay alive for a couple of hours more, you stupid bitch.’

  Wednesday 4 June, 7.40 p.m. Aussenalster, Hamburg.

  The 7.30 Rundfahrt ferry gleamed golden in the evening sun that had at last triumphed against the rain. Fabel stood on deck, leaning with his forearms resting on the rail. The ferry was not particularly busy and the only passengers on deck were an elderly couple, sitting together and in silence on one of the benches. They simply stared out over the Aussenalster, not speaking, not touching, not looking at each other. To Fabel it seemed that all they had left to share was solitude, and he reflected for a moment on how, since
his divorce, his solitude had been total. Indivisible and unshared. There had been more than a few women, yet with each new liaison came a deep ache that was something like guilt, and the relationships had never lasted. Fabel had sought something solid in each new involvement, something on which to anchor some sense of meaning, but he had never found it. He had grown up among the tight-knit, Lutheran communities of Ost-Friesland where people married for life. For better and, quite often, for worse. He had never considered that he would be anything other than a full-time, full-term husband and father. It was a constant in his life, an anchor point, like being a policeman. Then Renate, his wife, had removed the landmark of his marriage from his life and Fabel had been lost for a long, long time. And now, five years after his divorce, each time he shared the bed of another woman felt like a small adultery; an infidelity to a marriage that had died long ago.

  The ferry glided on. Fabel had boarded at the Fährdamm quay in the Alsterpark, and now they were moving out from the sweep of green and gold that seemed to glow in the evening sun. Fabel had just looked at his watch – 7.40 p.m. – when he became aware of a figure leaning on the rail next to him. He turned to face a tall Turk, about thirty-five, with a longish handsome face and a shock of black hair. The Turk grinned broadly and the smile lines that were already around his eyes deepened further.

  ‘Hi, Herr Kriminalhauptkommissar. How’s the fight against crime?’

  Fabel laughed. ‘What can I tell you? Just like your business, you’re always assured custom. How is the world of porn?’

  The Turk laughed so loudly that the elderly couple looked across momentarily, still expressionless, before simultaneously and wordlessly turning their blank gaze back to the horizon.

  ‘Don’t do that any more. Technology, you see – video, DVD and CD-ROMs are the thing now.’ He sighed with an exaggerated wistfulness. ‘No one wants the good old traditional dirty photograph any more. It’s enough to force you into a respectable business.’