The Valkyrie Song jf-5

by Craig Russell

  ‘Almost like she was targeting Lensch or someone like him,’ said Fabel.

  ‘But that doesn’t make sense,’ said Anna. ‘Her choice of victims so far has been pretty diverse. Westland was a celebrity, a foreigner and in his fifties. Lensch was a nobody, a German national and in his early thirties. The only thing that I can see they shared was that they were both male and they both happened to be in the Kiez.’

  ‘Maybe that’s all she needed. But the whole thing with the taxi is odd. No one has a car that colour, especially an E-class Merc, unless they’re in the taxi business. This is a highly organised killer. Why go to all of that trouble and then pick a victim at random?’ Fabel sighed. ‘What about CCTV — anything?’

  ‘Not so far. I’ve got that rather hunky uniform from Davidwache going through it.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Fabel. ‘Shouldn’t you do that yourself?’

  ‘Listen, I’m not dodging out of anything. It’s just that Wangler has been on that beat for four years. He knows every inch of it, including where each camera is. That Mercedes must have been picked up somewhere on the way in or out. If anyone can find it and find it quickly, then it’s Wangler.’

  ‘Okay, okay.’ Fabel held up his hands defensively. ‘Did you check out Jurgen Mann?’ he asked, referring to the witness who had approached Carstens Kaminski.

  ‘Yep,’ said Anna. ‘He checks out. One conviction for cannabis possession; nothing else. He’s a dying breed, apparently.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘According to Wangler-’

  ‘Your new best chum,’ interrupted Werner.

  ‘I wish…’ Anna sighed. ‘Anyway, according to Wangler, there are fewer and fewer creeps like Mann in the Kiez these days. With all the CCTV in the Reeperbahn, even if it is supposed to be strategically sited, no one wants to be seen going into or coming out of a brothel these days. It’s all call girls, online escort agencies, that kind of stuff. Wangler says that, compared to the past, street girls are struggling for custom these days. Added to which there is a steady supply of trafficked women being brought into the unregulated prostitution business elsewhere in the city.’

  ‘Against their will, for the most part,’ said Fabel.

  ‘Maybe so, but when you’re a sleazeball paying for sex,’ said Anna, ‘you’re not the kind of person who cares if your chicken is free-range or battery, if you know what I mean. Anyway, there are fewer punters on the street. Nowadays the Kiez is full of the Armin Lensches of this world, getting pissed and getting into trouble. For what it’s worth, I think Mann was on the level. I think he genuinely believes he came face to face with the Angel. But again we’ve got no CCTV to back up his claim.’

  ‘Okay…’ Fabel paused and leaned back in his chair. ‘Listen, we have a guest. A colleague from Denmark. I’ve asked her to come into the Presidium this afternoon. I’d like you to talk to her, Anna. You too, Werner.’

  ‘A PR job?’ asked Anna. ‘Of course I will. After all, we all know that I’m a natural diplomat.’

  ‘That’s not why I’m asking you to talk to her, Anna. Her name is Karin Vestergaard and she’s a senior officer in the Danish National Police. More senior in rank than me.’

  ‘Is this to do with the Dane who died from a heart attack?’ asked Werner.

  Anna exchanged a knowing glance with Fabel. ‘ Supposed to have died from a heart attack,’ she said.

  ‘ Politidirektor Vestergaard has exactly the same kind of suspicions that you did, Anna. And she has some evidence to base them on. I’d like you to talk to her because you picked up on the Jespersen death.’

  ‘So it was murder?’ asked Werner.

  ‘We’ll know by lunchtime, hopefully. If Moller does his job.’

  ‘Moller may be a wanker,’ said Werner. ‘But he’s one of the best pathologists I’ve ever worked with.’

  ‘Well, Frau Vestergaard was able to point us in a couple of specific directions. Listen, I don’t want to get into it all now but there’s all kinds of serious stuff going on in Jespersen’s background. And if the autopsy comes back with anything suspicious, then Jespersen’s death becomes an active case. If he was murdered, then it’s a major investigation with all kinds of implications. The main thing is, Anna, it was your catch — a good catch.’

  ‘So what’s she like?’ asked Werner. ‘This Danish cop, I mean?’

  ‘Wear your gloves when you shake hands with her,’ said Fabel. ‘Otherwise you’ll get frostbite…’

  5

  ‘You’re from the telly?’ The old woman smiled as she asked the question and Sylvie Achtenhagen wished that she hadn’t. Her ruined teeth looked as if they needed the attention of an archaeologist, rather than a dentist. ‘Is that what you said? You’re from the telly?’

  ‘That’s right… HanSat.’ Sylvie smiled sweetly, the way she’d learned to smile when she wanted information from someone. She cast her gaze beyond the broken-fence-edged square of waste ground. They were down by the harbour, on the southern edge of St Pauli. Across the Elbe, vast machines were hoisting containers from an armada of freight ships. The cold air rang with the rhythmic beeping of reversing cranes.

  ‘Never heard of it. Don’t have a telly.’ The old woman made a sweeping gesture with her arm — as sweeping a gesture as her countless layers of clothing would allow — taking in the broken paving, the smear of scrubby grass, the discarded bottles, a used condom. ‘I find it would ruin the ambience I’ve built up here.’ She chuckled at her own joke. ‘So you doin’ sommat about the Kiez? About them murders? This is where they found the last fella, y’know.’

  ‘Something like that. And yes, I know the latest victim was found here. That’s why I came to talk to you. Is this your usual spot?’

  ‘Coppers’ve asked me ’bout it already. They got a bee up their arses ’bout this ’un.’

  ‘Is this your usual spot?’ Sylvie repeated the question. Be patient. Smile. Offer money. ‘Listen, I can pay for information. Only if it’s good information, though. Is this your usual spot?’

  ‘This is my abode,’ the old woman announced grandly. ‘How much?’

  ‘That all depends. Do you sleep in a hostel?’

  ‘Sometimes. When it’s too cold. Sometimes I sleep here.’

  ‘There are better places than this, surely. I mean the State Social Office would help find you a place.’

  ‘Oh, I know…’ Another broken-toothed chuckle. ‘They offered me a villa in Blankenese, but I said it was too down-market for someone of my breeding.’

  Sylvie shrugged. ‘Okay, you said the police talked to you. What did they want to know?’

  ‘They asked me if I saw anything the other night, when that fella was killed. I said I didn’t. It was too cold so I dossed down in the Red Cross hostel. But I was here drinking until about eleven. But didn’t see nothing. Then they asked me if I seen a taxi in the area. Driven by a woman.’

  ‘A taxi?’

  ‘Yeah. They said it might not’ve had a sign on it, though.’

  ‘Did they say why they were looking for a taxi?’

  ‘Yeah — the police always tell me them kind of things. Discuss cases. I’m like a special consultant.’

  ‘Listen, you can get smart or you can get money. Not both.’

  The down-and-out shrugged her padded shoulders. ‘Just jokin’. No… they didn’t say why.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘They showed me this picture. I suppose it was the guy what got killed. I never seen him before and I told them so.’

  ‘Did they give you a name for the dead man?’

  ‘No — they did say he was about thirty and not too tall.’

  ‘Anyone else doss down around here?’

  ‘No, it’s too far out for them. I sleep here ’cause I’m a woman. It ain’t safe elsewhere.’

  Sylvie looked at the woman. She looked eighty but might only have been forty. A couple of years older than her. She wondered how a woman could end up in a situation like that; she imagined th
at the tramp had seen all kinds — experienced all kinds — of horrors. Sylvie handed the tramp a fifty-euro note.

  ‘Thanks…’ The tramp looked delighted with her bounty. Suddenly eager. ‘Listen, you come by tomorrow. I’ll ask some of the others if they’ve seen something.’

  ‘That would be good.’ Sylvie smiled. ‘You do that.’

  Sylvie drove back into the Reeperbahn and parked near the taxi rank at Spielbudenplatz. Unlike the female down-and-out, the drivers waiting for fares or taking a break at the snack stand knew exactly who Sylvie was. They were keen to help, especially when she hinted that if she got anything worthwhile she’d return with a camera crew to get their statements on tape. The fact was, however, that they had nothing much to offer, although one or two had been very open about what the police had said to them.

  From the scraps she had gathered, Sylvie was able to piece together that the guy who had been murdered had been picked up by an ivory-beige Mercedes E-class, but the police thought that it had probably been a fake taxi. That kind of planning, she thought to herself, was bordering on the professional. The drivers told her that they were all now looking out for the phoney cab and driver.

  While she was at Spielbudenplatz, Sylvie thought it was worthwhile calling into Davidwache. When she asked the uniformed female officer behind the counter if she could speak to Herr Kaminski, she was told he was unavailable. All day. Sylvie tried to wheedle some information from the desk officer but got nowhere.

  When she got back to her car, her cellphone rang. It was Ivonne, her assistant, calling to tell her that the police had released an identity for the latest victim: Armin Lensch, twenty-nine, had worked for the NeuHansa Group.

  ‘God — that’s a bit close to home,’ said Sylvie. The NeuHansa Group was the company owned by Gina Bronsted, the Hamburg senator who was running for First Mayor. Through NeuHansa, Gina Bronsted had a finger in every pie in Hamburg worth having your finger in. One of those pies was HanSat TV, Sylvie’s employer. The rumour was that Bronsted had financed Andreas Knabbe’s start-up of HanSat.

  ‘Yep,’ said Ivonne. ‘Apparently Lensch worked for a subsidiary, Norivon. It’s NeuHansa’s environmental technologies division.’

  ‘Now that’s interesting…’ Sylvie sat in the car staring out through the windscreen but seeing nothing; instead her mind raced through a dozen possible connections. As well as being a successful politician, Gina Bronsted was a millionairess several times over. She was running for the office of Hamburg’s Principal Mayor, basically on the platform that she could run the city like a business. Having an employee of one of her companies linked to these murders, even as a victim, was not the kind of publicity she would want. ‘Ivonne, get me everything you can on the NeuHansa Group and Gina Bronsted. Get me a few names inside the company and find out if the dead guy was of any importance in the group. Have whatever you can lay your hands on emailed to my personal address or couriered over to my flat tonight. I’ll be back home from about eight.’

  ‘I’m on it. By the way, Herr Knabbe has been looking for you.’

  Sylvie smiled to herself: Ivonne was a great assistant. More importantly, she hated their mutual boss as much as Sylvie did. Ivonne’s little rebellion was to reject his Americanised informality and never address or refer to him as Andreas.

  ‘What did you tell him?’ she asked.

  ‘That you were following up a hot lead. I also told him that the battery on your cellphone was low and you’d temporarily switched it off and I couldn’t reach you.’

  ‘Ivonne, you’re a star.’

  ‘So they tell me. Oh, there was another call for you. Some guy phoned saying he had to talk to you urgently but he wouldn’t leave a name. He said he would call back. He sounded a bit creepy, if you ask me.’

  Sylvie told Ivonne to let Knabbe know she’d be back in the office first thing tomorrow morning and not to worry about the anonymous caller. Probably some crank. She hung up, pulled out into the traffic on the Reeperbahn and headed back into the city.

  6

  Fabel got a phone call from Renate just as he was about to go up with Anna and Werner to the Presidium’s fifth floor to meet with van Heiden.

  ‘Have you spoken to Gabi yet?’ Renate asked without preliminaries.

  ‘Not yet. You know I haven’t. Why are you phoning me at work to ask me something you already know the answer to? I’m seeing Gabi on Thursday. I’ll talk to her then.’

  ‘You could have phoned her.’

  ‘This isn’t something I want to discuss with her over the phone. I choose the right time and place. You should try it, Renate. Anyway, Gabi’s choice of career is hardly pressing: she hasn’t even sat her Abitur yet.’

  ‘Trouble?’ asked Werner when Fabel came off the phone. Anna and Werner had been standing awkwardly during the exchange.

  ‘The worst kind. Renate. Gabi is thinking about a career in the police. I’m a bad influence, according to Renate.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have wanted one of my daughters doing this job,’ said Werner.

  ‘Oh yeah? So what if you had a son?’ asked Anna.

  ‘You know I don’t have a son, so I don’t know. It’s got nothing to do with gender politics, Anna.’

  Fabel took a deep breath. ‘Ready? Then let’s go and walk amongst the exalted…’

  They stood waiting outside van Heiden’s office for five minutes. But they weren’t invited in; instead van Heiden emerged from his office, putting on his suit jacket as he did so.

  ‘Follow me.’ As he spoke, van Heiden cast a disapproving eye over Anna’s jeans and T-shirt.

  Hamburg’s Police Presidium had been built in the form of a giant Police Star, the symbol of police forces throughout Germany. The entire Presidium was built around a central circular atrium open to the sky: all office suites, including the Murder Commission, radiated out as the arms of the star from its circular hallways. Fabel, Werner and Anna followed van Heiden along the sweep of the fifth-floor corridor until they came to doors of the Presidial Department. This was where Hugo Steinbach — Hamburg’s Police President — and his deputies had their offices.

  ‘Police President Steinbach has asked to be involved in this meeting,’ explained van Heiden. He paused for a moment and turned to Fabel. ‘Listen, Jan, I don’t like being caught on the back foot. What have you told Herr Steinbach?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Fabel. ‘I thought you-’

  Van Heiden shook his head. ‘Looks like we’re both on the back foot. I suppose we’d better find out.’

  When they arrived at the Presidial Department, they weren’t directed to Steinbach’s office but were told to go straight into the conference room. When they entered, Fabel was surprised to see Karin Vestergaard sitting at the conference table next to Hugo Steinbach. The Police President stood up and shook hands with van Heiden and then with Fabel. Steinbach was the opposite of van Heiden in many ways. Van Heiden could be nothing other than a policeman and somehow managed to wear his smartly tailored Hugo Boss suits as if they were uniforms. In complete contrast, Hugo Steinbach was softly spoken and had an avuncular, easygoing appearance. To look at Hamburg’s Police President, one would have taken him for a schoolteacher or some rural family doctor. The truth was Steinbach was highly unusual for an officer of his rank in Germany. He had not entered the police at senior level but had started out as a uniformed beat Polizeimeister and had worked his way up through every rank. Fabel knew that part of that journey had involved being head of the Polizei Berlin’s murder squad. Fabel respected Steinbach as an officer, but he also liked him as a person.

  ‘I know you wanted to talk to Criminal Director van Heiden about what Frau Vestergaard discussed with you yesterday, but I thought we should all have a chat about it. If you don’t mind, Jan.’

  ‘Hello, Frau Vestergaard,’ said Fabel in English. ‘I thought we were meeting later to discuss this. I had hoped to brief Herr van Heiden, as Herr Steinbach has suggested.’

  ‘I’m afraid events have moved on a litt
le from then,’ said Vestergaard without a hint of apology. ‘New information has come to light and I felt it would be appropriate to discuss it with Mr Steinbach.’

  ‘Why don’t we all sit down?’ said Steinbach in a clear attempt to ease the tension between Fabel and Vestergaard. ‘And perhaps you should update Herr van Heiden on what this is all about.’

  Once they were seated, Fabel outlined Vestergaard’s theory about the Hamburg-based contract killer and Jespersen’s death not being natural. Vestergaard sat silently throughout Fabel’s commentary in German, her expression as impossible to read as it had been the day before.

  ‘How sure are we that this so-called Valkyrie is based in Hamburg?’ asked Steinbach when Fabel was finished.

  ‘With the greatest respect to Frau Vestergaard and her deceased colleague, there is absolutely no proof that the Valkyrie even exists.’ Fabel looked again at the Danish policewoman. There was no sign that she understood what he was saying in German. But there again, he thought, she wouldn’t show it even if she did. ‘To be frank, Herr President, I feel that our foreign colleague here is not being as communicative as she might be.’

  ‘You think there’s more to this?’ asked Steinbach.

  ‘I don’t know. In fact, there may be less to her story than meets the eye. And I have to be honest, with this supposed resurrection of the Angel of St Pauli, I can well do without some wild-goose chase. But we’ll get the autopsy report on Jespersen this afternoon.’

  ‘I see,’ said Steinbach. ‘What do you think, Horst?’

  ‘I think we can’t afford to ignore the possibility. There are those in the international security community who feel we dropped the ball in not nailing the so-called “Hamburg Cell” before they launched the attack on the World Trade Center. It could be embarrassing if we were seen to have had advance warning of this assassin operating from Hamburg and then for something to happen. A political assassination abroad, for example.’ Van Heiden turned to Fabel. ‘Sorry, Jan… I understand you’re under pressure with this Angel case, but we have to treat this seriously.’