The Valkyrie Song jf-5

by Craig Russell

  ‘How are you?’ Knabbe asked in his usual manner that suggested he did not really give a damn how the hell she or anyone else was. He sat down on the edge of her desk.

  ‘What can I do for you, Herr Knabbe?’ Sylvie smiled with the same level of sincerity.

  ‘I’ve just seen the piece you’ve done for tonight. The woman-trafficking stuff.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And it was very good. Very…’ Knabbe made a show of struggling for the right word, searching for it somewhere on her office ceiling. ‘Very worthy. But you know…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘To be honest it was, well, depressing.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Sylvie’s smile had become a rictus grin. ‘You’re probably right that I underplayed the comedy element of fourteen-year-old East European and Asian girls being sold into sex slavery.’

  ‘Quite.’ Sylvie Achtenhagen’s irony passed cleanly over Knabbe’s expensively barbered head. ‘I just think it isn’t our kind of thing. I think stories like that have more of a natural home on ARD or ZDF. What we need is something with a bit of zing to it. You know, like this Angel thing in St Pauli. Now that really was-’

  ‘Yes, I know — you’ve already made it clear you think that was my shining hour. I am following that up, you know. It’s just I have to get other stuff out as well.’

  ‘Maybe, Sylvie — and this is just an idea — but maybe we should let someone else have a run with this particular ball…’

  Sylvie Achtenhagen stood up so suddenly that Knabbe was taken aback. She leaned forward, her face close to his, forcing him off the edge of her desk. ‘Don’t you dare take that story from me. I told you I’ve been working on it. And I’m making progress. When that story breaks it’ll be me who breaks it. Big time. And if you put anyone else near it I’ll quit and take it to another broadcaster. Am I clear on that, Andreas?’

  Knabbe stared at her for a moment. Shocked. Alarmed by something he had seen in her face. ‘There’s no need to get heated,’ he said at last. ‘I was just thinking what would be best.’

  ‘What’s best is for me to finish the job I started.’ She was calm again, but something smouldered after the flash fire. ‘I guarantee you it will be a killer of a story.’

  ‘Okay,’ Knabbe said, some of his composure restored. ‘But if this story doesn’t break…’

  ‘It will. I promise you that.’

  There was an awkward silence for a moment.

  ‘Anyway, speaking of the Angel case, there’s something you can perhaps help me with,’ Sylvie said eventually.

  ‘Oh?’ Knabbe’s voice was laden with suspicion. ‘What?’

  ‘Your business partner. The lovely Frau Bronsted. Or more specifically her corporation, the NeuHansa Group.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Well, the latest victim of the St Pauli killer…’

  ‘The Angel?’

  ‘Well, yes, for the moment let’s say it is the same killer as before. This latest victim of the Angel worked for a company called Norivon Environmental. Apparently it’s a subsidiary of the NeuHansa Group.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ The suspicion hadn’t left Knabbe’s tone.

  ‘Fix up an appointment for me with the CEO of Norivon. And maybe even with Gina Bronsted. But don’t say it’s about Lensch’s murder.’

  ‘They’ll probably work that out for themselves. I don’t know if Frau Bronsted will give you an interview. And I don’t know if I like where you’re going with this. The NeuHansa Group is my main business partner, Sylvie. And whether you like it or not, we’re in the business of television.’

  ‘Trust me, Andreas. I’m not after a scoop on NeuHansa or Gina Bronsted. I just need some background information. And, trust me, when I break this story for you, it will be big. Very big.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll see what I can do.’

  After Knabbe had left, Sylvie sat and stared out of her office window, not seeing the city that lay dark under a slate sky. The phone ringing interrupted her equally gloomy thoughts. The call was on her direct number and had not come through reception.

  ‘Hello, Frau Achtenhagen.’ It was a man’s voice and it broke off to cough. ‘Excuse me. I believe you are looking into the killings in St Pauli?’

  ‘Yes — who is this?’

  ‘If you don’t mind, I’d rather not give my name. Not at the moment, anyway.’ More coughing.

  ‘You know something about the killings?’ Sylvie Achtenhagen tried to keep the irritation and the boredom out of her voice. There was always someone confessing to the Angel killings, or who knew someone who knew somebody who had said something suspicious; cranks who were receiving messages through their fillings from the spirit world, or who were convinced their husband-slash-boss-slash-pet was the perpetrator.

  ‘Yes. I know a lot about the killings. I know a lot about a lot of things. And what I know is something you will be willing to pay for.’

  ‘Yes, yes — I’ve heard that all before.’

  ‘No, trust me, Frau Achtenhagen. I have something you have to see. Something really big.’

  ‘Now I definitely have heard that all before and it always ends in disappointment. Can we cut the crap and you tell me exactly what it is that you’re trying to sell me?’

  ‘Something that you won’t want me to sell to anyone else, that’s for sure. You see, I have a pretty good idea who is behind those killings in St Pauli.’

  ‘The Angel?’

  ‘Now, Frau Achtenhagen, we both know it’s not the Angel — not the original Angel, anyway. I have a pretty good idea who killed those two men last month and it certainly wasn’t the original Angel. But that does bring me to my second point. The most important one and I know you will pay big time to stop me selling it elsewhere. I know the identity of the original Angel. I know her name, where she lives, what she does. I even know why she killed all those men in the nineties.’

  ‘Really? And how do you know that?’ Sylvie Achtenhagen scrabbled through the shooting schedules and report notes on her desk until she found a pad and pencil.

  ‘It used to be my job to know things. About people. I worked for the Ministry for State Security in the German Democratic Republic.’

  ‘You’re ex-Stasi? Why the hell should I pay some ex-Stasi scum for information about murders in Hamburg?’

  ‘Because I’m a forward-thinking kind of guy. Always have been. I was based in the Ministry’s headquarters, in Berlin-Lichtenberg. I was there right up until the fifteenth of January nineteen ninety. There was a mob outside the gates ready to burst in and everyone was busy shredding files. When the shredders couldn’t cope, they started to rip them up by hand. It was futile. So many files. Too many.’

  ‘Is there a point to this, Herr…? Listen, what is your name? If you want me to pay you for your story, then I need to know your name.’

  ‘No, you don’t. I’m not naive. You people pay anonymous sources all the time. And we both know that you won’t be paying me through the usual channels. However, if it makes you feel better about it you can call me Siegfried. It has a nice Wagnerian ring to it, doesn’t it?’ He started to laugh, but his laughter fractured into a crackling, bubbling bout of coughing. That’s more than a cold or flu, thought Sylvie. ‘Just listen to what I have to say,’ he continued breathlessly when his coughing had subsided. ‘Like I said, when everyone else was shredding I was thinking ahead. I took a file. It doesn’t look like much: there’s not a lot of information in it other than a list of names of people on a training programme. A very special training programme. And the file also named the top three students. The ones who made the grade.’

  ‘Fascinating though this all is,’ said Sylvie, ‘what the hell has any of it got to do with the Angel killings?’

  ‘Everything. One of these names is the name of the original Angel, and it is my guess that the current St Pauli killer is one of the others. This is a file that I know you must have. And I will sell you the file.’ He paused. ‘For two hundred and fift
y thousand euros.’

  Sylvie laughed loudly. ‘You have got to be joking. No story is worth that to the station. And certainly not some file on Stasi snoops that I still don’t see having any relevance to these murders. This is old news. No one is interested in the Stasi and the HVA any more.’

  There was silence on the other end of the line.

  ‘Hello?’ said Achtenhagen.

  ‘If you thought I was joking — or if you thought this was all nonsense — then you would have hung up by now. But you didn’t because you know that it’s the truth. I want two hundred and fifty thousand euros. If I don’t get it I will pass this information on to another broadcaster or the press. And the police. You built your career on the Angel killings, Frau Achtenhagen. Are you really going to let someone else take that all away from you? I will call back in a couple of days. In the meantime I’ll give you something on account. Check your email.’

  The phone went dead.

  Sylvie Achtenhagen hung up the phone and stared at it as if it would give up some answers. On her desktop computer she opened up her office email. There were several messages for her but all of them were either internal or work-related. None was from an anonymous source. She waited ten minutes and tried again: still nothing. The idea struck her that perhaps he had sent it to her personal email account, but she dismissed the thought almost immediately: only a few friends and colleagues had her private email address. But there was no harm in checking.

  It was there. A message from Siegfried.

  There were ways of tracing emails, sourcing ISP addresses, but Sylvie knew that if Siegfried was an ex-Stasi operative then he would have covered his tracks. The free account could have been set up anywhere and the email sent from a cyber-cafe or WiFi hotspot. Achtenhagen opened it. There was no message, just a single name: Georg Drescher. She saw there was an attachment and she opened it. Three colour photographs, scanned in side by side. No names. Each photo was a head-and-shoulders shot of a different girl, aged, Achtenhagen guessed, between fifteen and twenty. The photographs were formal shots for a state ID card or passport. The hairstyle of one indicated they were of twenty-odd years’ vintage. Two of the girls were blonde, the third a brunette, although she had striking blue eyes. There was something disturbing about their faces: a frightening void. It went beyond the usual lack of personality projected from an official-pass portrait. The eyes were dead. Emotionless. Particularly the girl in the middle. As Sylvie stared at her image, something twisted at her gut.

  ‘Siegfried’ had told her that one of these girls was the Angel of St Pauli. And as her eyes passed from one blank face to the next, she knew that he had told her the truth.

  11

  Emily would be here soon. Then everything in his life would start to make sense again. Peter Claasens had never understood women. He had never really tried, simply because it seemed like too much work.

  He had been married for fifteen years and had three children, two of them daughters, but the female world remained a dark continent for Claasens. His wife, in particular, was still a mystery to him. She had turned from the pretty, quiet, unassuming girl he had unintentionally got pregnant to a shrew who nagged him about every evening he spent away from the family home, whether it was business or otherwise. Claasens had to admit, if grudgingly, that his wife had some grounds for her behaviour. Throughout his fifteen years of marriage he had been consistently unfaithful. He had taken great pride, however, in being discreet. Tactful. If his wife had suspicions, then that was what they had remained. He had never been careless enough to furnish her with substantiating evidence. But, there again, his looks were grounds enough for suspicion.

  The concept of looks had always puzzled Claasens: why were some people more appealing to look at than others? More desirable? Claasens was a bright man. A very bright man. He had a sharp intellect and was a natural businessman. A commercial predator. Yet people found it difficult to see past his appearance. In the workplace men either resented him or wanted to be seen with him, female colleagues were either awkward around him or flirtatious. And when he didn’t respond to the flirting, they became resentful too. But he had responded. Often.

  It was true, of course, that his appearance had been helpful: he had supplemented his income while an accountancy student by working as a photographic model. He had been offered every job he’d ever been interviewed for. And, of course, even if he hadn’t made a lot of money he had become involved with a trendy set from Blankenese. And Blankenese girls usually had money to burn. Peter Claasens had learned that fortune truly favours the fair.

  But his looks had also insulated him from real emotion. Isolated him.

  And now he stood on the top floor of the nearly complete ScanMedia building and contemplated a career of seduction and adultery. He looked out over Hamburg’s darkening skyline and thought about all of the women he had been with when he should have been with his wife. And, at that moment, he felt genuinely, completely remorseful. The reason he stood and contemplated all of the women he had known and felt sympathy for his wife was that all of that was now behind him. Something unexpected had happened to Peter Claasens: he had, at forty-two, fallen in love. From the start it had not been like his other affairs: Emily had not responded to his usual set of manoeuvres and tricks; she had not fallen into bed with him. She had talked to him. She had listened to him. It was as if Emily was blind to how he looked and this gift allowed her to truly see him. And now Claasens found the periods in between seeing her were like being forced to hold your breath until your lungs screamed for air.

  Emily was English, with fire-red hair and green eyes. She spoke German fluently but with the sweetest accent and she had clearly never recognised the importance of gender or grammatical case in the language. Emily was also delightfully uncoordinated and clumsy: he had literally bumped into her outside his offices. She had fallen badly and he had helped her to her feet, insisting that she come into his office for a seat. Emily had smiled sweetly and said it was her fault and she was fine, had gathered up her stuff and hurried on. Claasens had just been about to go back into his office when an impulse had prompted him to run after her. He had insisted that the least he could do was buy her a coffee. She had accepted. It had begun.

  That had been two months ago. In that short time, this dizzy English redhead had turned his world upside down. She had resisted becoming involved with a married man but he had insisted his marriage had been in terminal decline for some years. When she had announced that she was going back to England, Claasens had told her he couldn’t live without her, that he would leave his wife and they could set up home together here in Hamburg. Yet Emily had insisted that no one should be hurt more than necessary: he should tell his wife that he had to leave, that their marriage had run its course, but not mention that he was involved with anyone else. It would be better for his wife, for the kids. It would be better for Emily and Claasens. She had even asked to see the letter he intended to send his wife and had made changes, just so that no one was hurt more than they had to be. Emily was a good person. She was much, much better than he was and when she was around him he became someone better. Someone he could like.

  Now he stood at the top of one of the biggest building projects in Hamburg outside the HafenCity and contemplated the past he was putting behind him.

  ‘Hello, Peter.’

  He turned to see her there. The dark woollen overcoat and the beret she wore emphasised the red in her hair and the green in her eyes.

  ‘Hello, Emily.’ He smiled and leaned forward to kiss her but she put her gloved fingertips to his mouth.

  ‘Have you brought it?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, I’ve brought it. And I changed it just as you asked. It’s so like you to worry about other people. I’ve made no mention that I’m involved with anybody. I made the other changes you suggested too. I still think it would have been better if I told her face to face. A letter… I just don’t know…’

  ‘May I see?’

  He handed her th
e letter and she read through it. As Emily had suggested, Claasens told his wife that he could not go on with the way things were, that work had added to the stress, that he was so sorry for the hurt he knew his actions would cause her and the children.

  ‘Perfect,’ said Emily, folding the letter with her gloved fingers. She leaned against the metal railing that had temporarily been put up for safety reasons while the top floor of the building was completed. Claasens grabbed her elbow and pulled her back.

  ‘You have to be careful, Emily,’ he said paternally.

  ‘This really is a beautiful building,’ she said, looking down ten floors into the central atrium.

  ‘It’s meant to be a modern interpretation of an old Hamburg Kontorhaus — you know, the red-brick jobs with a huge atrium or courtyard in the middle.’

  ‘Such a strange name,’ she said in her accented German. ‘What does it mean — Kontorhaus?’

  ‘It goes back to the days of the Hanseatic League. There would be a Kontorhaus in almost every Hanseatic city in Europe: Hamburg, Bremen, Rostock, Danzig, St Petersburg. There was even a Kontor in London. Bremen and Hamburg are the only cities that are still officially Hanseatic cities.’

  ‘And this building is meant to be like those old Hanseatic Kontor buildings?’ Emily leaned and looked over the railing again.