by Craig Russel
‘Who’s the hippie?’ Werner was now at Fabel’s shoulder.
‘Take a look at the date on the picture: eighteen ninety-nine. This guy was a hippie seventy years before anyone even thought of the concept. This’ – Fabel tapped the glass with his latex-sheathed finger – ‘is Gustav Nagel, patron saint of all German eco-warriors. A century ago he was trying to get Germany to reject industrialisation and militarism, embrace pacifism, become vegetarian and to get back to nature. Mind you, he also wanted us to stop using capital letters with nouns. I don’t know how that fits into a green agenda. Maybe less ink.’
Fabel returned Nagel’s clear-eyed, defiant stare for a moment, and then followed Grueber and the others to the corner of the hall.
The main focus of the forensic team’s attention was at the far end of the hall and in the bathroom itself.
‘We found a couple of plastic bin bags here,’ explained Grueber as they approached the bathroom door. ‘We’ve removed a couple of items separately but the bags are back at Butenfeld.’ Grueber used the shorthand for the forensics unit at the Institute for Legal Medicine, the same facility in which Susanne worked as a criminal psychologist. The Institute was part of the University Clinic at Butenfeld, to the north of the city. ‘One of our finds was this…’ Grueber beckoned to one of the technicians who handed him a large square transparent plastic forensics bag. The plastic was thick and semi-rigid: inside, spread flat, was a disc of thick skin and hair. A human scalp. Viscous puddles of blood had gathered in pockets between the bag’s plastic walls and in its corners.
Fabel examined the contents without taking the bag from Grueber. He ignored the nausea that churned in his gut and the disgusted muttering of Werner behind him. The hair was red. Too red. Grueber read Fabel’s mind.
‘The hair has been treated with dye. And there’s evidence of the dye fresh on the scalp and contiguous skin areas. I can’t tell yet whether the killer used hair dye or some other type of pigment. Whatever was used, my guess is that it was done immediately before the scalp was removed from the body.’
‘Speaking of which… where is it?’ Fabel snapped his attention away from the magnetic horror of the scalp. After all these years in the Murder Commission, after so many cases, he still often found himself left shocked and uncomprehending by the cruelty that human beings are capable of inflicting upon one another.
Grueber nodded. ‘This way – you can guess this isn’t going to be too pleasant to look at…’
Fabel could tell as soon as they set foot in the bathroom that Grueber really had not exaggerated the difficulty they faced forensically. There was absolutely nothing, other than the body-shaped package next to the bath, that would have given any hint that this was a murder scene. Even the air smelled bleach-rinsed and slightly lemony. Every surface gleamed.
‘Kristina Dreyer may be our murder suspect,’ said Werner grimly, ‘but I think I’ll find out what her hourly rate is… we could do with her over at my place.’
‘It’s funny you should say that,’ said Maria, without the slightest hint that she had picked up on Werner’s humour. ‘She really is a professional cleaner. She works for herself and had a carload of cleaning materials parked outside… Hence the efficiency with which she tidied this lot up.’
‘Okay,’ said Fabel. ‘Let’s have a look at what we’ve got.’
It was as if the forensic specialists had added another layer of bandages to a mummy. The killer had already wrapped the body in the shower curtain and bound it up with parcel tape. Now the forensic technicians had added individually numbered strips of Taser tape to every square centimetre of the outer shower curtain and parcel tape. The body had been photographed from every angle, and would now be moved back to the forensics lab at Butenfeld. Once there, the Taser would be removed strip by strip, and transferred to clear perspex sheets and any forensic traces would therefore be secured for analysis. If the body underneath the shower curtain was discovered to be wearing clothes, the process would be repeated to gather any fibre or other traces from the clothing.
Fabel gazed down at the man-shaped package. ‘Open up the face. I want to make sure this is Hauser.’
Grueber eased away the shower curtain. Underneath, the head and shoulders were encased in black plastic. Fabel gave an impatient nod and Grueber delicately cut through the parcel tape and exposed the face and head. Hans-Joachim Hauser gazed out at them with clouded-glass eyes beneath his frowning brow. Fabel had expected to feel another lurch in his gut, but instead he felt nothing as he looked down at the thing before him. And that was what it was: a thing. An effigy. There was something about the disfigurement of the head, about the exposed bone of the dead man’s cranium, about the blood-drained waxiness of the flesh on Hauser’s face, that robbed the corpse of its humanity.
Fabel had also expected to experience some form of recognition: Hans-Joachim Hauser had been very much involved in the radical movement of the 1970s and 1980s. Hauser had been photographed with the appropriate luminaries of the radical Left over the years – Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Petra Kelly, Joschka Fischer, Bertholdt Muller-Voigt – but, despite his best efforts, he had lingered somewhere between the centre and the fringes of the media spotlight. Fabel thought how people seemed trapped in a time: how some found it impossible to move on. The image of Hauser filed in Fabel’s memory was that of a slim, almost girlish young man with long, thick hair, berating the Hamburg Senate in the 1980s. Nothing in the grey, waxy and slightly puffy flesh of the dead face gave Fabel a point of reference from which to retrieve the earlier Hans-Joachim Hauser. Fabel even tried to imagine the corpse with hair. It didn’t help.
‘Nice,’ said Werner, as if there was a bad taste in his mouth. ‘Very nice. A cleaning lady who takes scalps. I don’t suppose she’s a Red Indian, by any chance.’
‘Scalping is an ancient European tradition,’ said Fabel. ‘We were at it millennia before the Native Americans. They probably learned it from European settlers.’
Grueber eased more of the shower-curtain wrapping from the body, exposing Hauser’s neck. ‘Take a look at this…’
There was a wide sweeping gash across the throat. The edge was clean and unbroken, almost surgical, and Fabel could see a stratum of marbled grey and white flesh beneath the skin. The cut was also bloodless: Kristina Dreyer had washed the body and what Fabel could see of it had the look of rinsed death that he associated with mortuary bodies.
Fabel turned to Maria and Werner. He was about to say something when he noticed that Maria was gazing fixedly at Hauser’s mutilated head and neck. It was not a horror-struck stare, nor was it her usual look of cool appraisal: it was more a blank, expressionless gaze, as if what was left of Hans-Joachim Hauser held her hypnotised.
‘Maria?’ Fabel frowned questioningly. Maria seemed to snap back from some distant place.
‘It must have been very sharp…’ she said, dully. ‘The blade, I mean. To cut so cleanly, it must have been razor sharp.’
‘Yes, it was,’ answered Grueber, still crouched at the body. Fabel noticed that although Grueber delivered a professional answer, there was a hint of personal concern in his expression as he looked up at Maria. ‘It might have been a surgical blade, or even an open razor.’
Fabel straightened up. He thought about the woman who had been taken into custody. About a face he vaguely remembered from more than a decade ago.
‘This is all so methodical,’ he said at last. He turned to Werner. ‘You sure the suspect, Kristina Dreyer, was actually caught cleaning this up? I mean, we know for sure that she did all this?’
‘No doubt about it,’ said Werner. ‘In fact, the uniform unit had to restrain her. She wouldn’t stop cleaning, even after they arrived.’
Fabel scanned the bathroom once more. It shone as sterile and as cold as an operating theatre. ‘It doesn’t make any sense,’ he said at last.
‘What doesn’t?’ asked Maria.
‘Why all of the mutilation? The scalping, the overdone cut to the throat. It all
seems significant… as if there’s a message in it.’
‘There usually is,’ said Grueber, who had now straightened his gangly frame and was standing beside the three detectives. They all gazed down, gathered in a semicircle, at the flesh-and-bone effigy of what had once been a human being. When they spoke, it was as if they addressed the corpse: a silent moderator through whom they could better transmit their thoughts. ‘And the whole point of scalping is that you take scalps. I don’t understand why your killer would scalp her victim and then put the scalp in a bin liner with the intention of dumping it.’
‘That’s my point,’ said Fabel. ‘This all points to some kind of message. Some kind of sick symbolism. But it’s almost always done so that others may bear witness to it. It’s hardly ever done especially for the victim, who’s usually dead before the mutilation.’
Maria nodded. ‘So why screw it all up? Why do all of that and then go to so much trouble to clean up the crime scene and hide the body? And why just dump your trophy?’
‘Exactly. I want us to get back to the Presidium. I need to talk to Kristina Dreyer. This just isn’t fitting together for me.’
Just then, one of the forensic technicians called over to Grueber. Fabel, Maria and Werner gathered behind Grueber as he crouched down to examine the area indicated by the forensic technician, on the seam between the tiled bath side and the floor. Whatever it was, Fabel couldn’t see it.
‘What are we looking at?’
The technician took out a pair of surgical tweezers, eased something free and held it up. It was a hair.
‘I don’t get it…’ said the technician. ‘I checked here before and completely missed this.’
‘Don’t worry about it. It’s easy to do,’ said Grueber. ‘I was over here earlier myself and didn’t see it either. The important thing is that you found it.’
Fabel strained to see the hair. ‘I’m surprised you discovered it at all.’
Grueber took the tweezers from the technician and held up the hair to the light. He flipped open a magnifying lens from its case and peered at the hair like a jeweller appraising a valuable diamond.
‘Funny…’
‘What is?’ asked Fabel.
‘This hair is red. Naturally red, not dyed like the scalp. Anyway, it’s too long to have been the victim’s. Does the suspect have red hair?’
‘No,’ answered Fabel, and Maria and Werner exchanged looks. Kristina Dreyer had been taken from the scene before Fabel had arrived.
3.15 p.m.: Police Presidium, Alsterdorf, Hamburg
When Fabel entered the interview room, Kristina Dreyer’s expression was almost one of relief. She sat, small and forlorn, dressed in the too-big white forensic coverall they had given her when they took her own clothes for analysis.
‘Hello, Kristina,’ said Fabel, and drew up a chair next to Werner and Maria. As he did so, he handed Werner a file.
‘Hello, Herr Fabel.’ Tears welled up in Kristina’s dull blue eyes and one escaped across the roughened terrain of her cheekbone. There was a stretched vibrato in her voice. ‘I hoped it would be you. I’ve got all messed up again, Herr Fabel. It’s all gone… crazy… again.’
‘Why did you do it, Kristina?’ asked Fabel.
‘I had to. I had to clear it all up. I couldn’t let it win again.’
‘Let what win?’ asked Maria.
‘The madness. The mess… all that blood.’
Werner, who had been flicking through the file, closed it and leaned back in his chair with an expression that suggested everything had suddenly fallen into place for him.
‘I’m sorry, Kristina,’ said Werner. ‘I didn’t recognise your name to start with. We’ve been here before, haven’t we?’
Kristina looked to Fabel with a beseeching terror in her eyes. Fabel noticed that, at the same time, she began to tremble, and her breathing became laboured and fast. Fabel had seen frightened suspects before, but there was something body-racking about the terror that seemed suddenly to seize Kristina, and an alarm sounded somewhere in Fabel’s mind.
‘Are you feeling all right, Kristina?’ he asked. She nodded.
‘This isn’t the same. This isn’t the same at all…’ she said to Werner. ‘The last time…’ Her voice trailed off and Fabel noticed that the trembling had become a pronounced shake.
‘Are you sure you’re feeling all right?’ he asked again.
It all happened so fast that Fabel didn’t have time to react. Kristina’s breathing took on an emphatic, urgent stridor; her face first flushed a bright, feverish red and then drained of all colour. She half-rose from her chair and grasped the edges of the table with a grip that turned her detergent-reddened knuckles yellow-white. Each inhalation became a long spasm that convulsed her body, yet her exhalations seemed short and insubstantial. She looked like someone trapped in a vacuum: desperately sucking at the void to fill her screaming lungs. Kristina lurched forward, jackknifing at the waist, her head coming down fast and hard towards the table top. Then, as if tugged at by an invisible rope, she lurched to the right and keeled over sideways. Fabel rushed forward to catch her.
Maria moved so fast that Fabel did not notice her send her chair crashing to the floor. Suddenly she had shouldered him out of the way and had grabbed Kristina firmly by the upper arms and eased her to the floor. She loosened the zip of Kristina’s coveralls at the neck.
‘A bag…’ Maria barked at Fabel and Werner, who stared down at her uncomprehendingly. ‘Get me a bag. A paper bag, a carrier bag – anything.’
Werner dashed from the room. Fabel kneeled down next to Maria. She took hold of Kristina’s face between her hands and locked stares with her.
‘Listen to me, Kristina, you’re going to be all right. You’re just having a panic attack. Try to control your breathing.’ Maria turned to Fabel. ‘She’s in a state of extreme panic. She’s over-oxygenating her bloodstream… Get a doctor.’
Werner burst back in the room, clutching a brown paper bag. Maria placed it over Kristina’s nose and mouth, clamping it tight. Each gasping breath crumpled the bag in on itself. Eventually something approaching a regular rhythm returned to Kristina’s breathing. Two paramedics came into the interview room and Maria stood up and moved back to let them work.
‘She’ll be all right now,’ she said. ‘But I think you’d better let Frau Doctor Eckhardt carry out her assessment before we re-interview her.
‘That was very impressive,’ said Werner. ‘How did you know what to do?’
Maria shrugged, unsmiling. ‘Basic first aid.’
But, for the second time in a day, there was something about Maria’s body language that gave Fabel a vague feeling of uneasiness.
Fabel, Maria and Werner sat in the Police Presidium canteen, drinking coffee at a table near the wide window that looked over and down to the Riot Squad barracks across the car park below.
‘So it was your case?’ asked Werner.
‘One of my first in the Murder Commission,’ said Fabel. ‘The Ernst Rauhe case. He was a serious sexual sadist – a serial rapist and murderer who chalked up six victims in the 1980s before he was nailed. He was judged to be criminally insane and they put him in the Krankenhaus Ochsenzoll high-security hospital wing. He’d already been there for several years before I came to the Murder Commission.’
‘He escaped?’ asked Maria.
‘He certainly did…’ It was Werner who answered. ‘I was in uniform at the time and got involved in the manhunt… a lowly grunt traipsing across the moors in search of a lunatic. But he had had help.’
‘Kristina?’
‘Yes.’ Fabel stared at his coffee, swirling its surface with a spoon, as if stirring his memories in the cup. ‘She was a nurse at the hospital. Ernst Rauhe was not particularly intelligent, but he was a consummate manipulator of people. And, as you can see, Kristina doesn’t have the most resilient of personalities. Rauhe persuaded Kristina that she was the love of his life, his salvation. She was absolutely won over by him and became t
otally convinced that he was innocent of all the charges against him. But, of course, because he had been committed to a mental hospital he would never be believed if he tried to prove it. Or so he claimed.’ Fabel paused and took a sip of his coffee. ‘It came out later that Kristina had wanted to campaign for his freedom. But he had convinced her it would be futile and that she needed to hide her support for him from the world, until they were ready to use it to its best advantage.’
‘And that was by helping him escape…’ said Werner. ‘If I remember correctly, she didn’t just help him escape, she hid him in her apartment.’
‘Oh God…’ said Maria. ‘I remember!’
Fabel nodded. ‘As Werner said, almost every uniform and detective unit in Greater Hamburg, Niedersachsen and Schleswig-Holstein searched for him. No one considered that he might have had inside help nor that he had been driven away in comfort from the secure wing. For nearly two weeks every barn, outbuilding and doss-house was turned over. It was over a month later that the hospital got in touch. They had been increasingly concerned about the well-being of one of their nurses. She had been losing weight and had turned up for work with bruises. Then she had failed to come into work at all for several days and hadn’t made any kind of contact. It was then that the hospital worked out that, although it had been limited, she had had some contact with Rauhe. In addition to the weight loss and bruises, colleagues had reported that this nurse’s behaviour had become increasingly strange and furtive in the weeks before her disappearance.’
‘And that nurse was Kristina Dreyer.’ Maria concluded the thought.
