The Valkyrie Song jf-5

by Craig Russell

  10

  Turning the shower-tap selector to cold, she let the chill water run over skin that protested by bristling into goose bumps. Sylvie Achtenhagen stood in the shower, arms braced against the wall, palms flat against the wet porcelain tiles. Her body was firm and youthful, and she knew it would remain so for some time to come, but, at thirty-nine, she was also aware that time was slowly and insidiously turning up the pressure on her. Where would she be in ten years’ time? By then, she would be competing with younger women. She would always be looking over her shoulder. Watching for someone taking away everything that she had worked so hard to build. Someone like her.

  Someone who would make the news to find it.

  When she could no longer bear the cold and she felt fully alert, Sylvie switched off the shower, wrapped the hotel bathrobe around her, went through to her hotel bedroom and twisted the top off a gin from the minibar. She was staying in one of the older Berlin hotels. It had a worn and weary grandness and the rooms had the old double doors: the inner door opening into the room, the outer opening into the hall. The windows too were the old, robust type. It all gave the hotel a feeling of belonging to an earlier age. And of being more than a little institutional.

  After adding tonic to the gin Sylvie flopped down onto the vast bed and started to go through the information she had got from Wengert, the star-struck clerk at the BStU commission for Stasi files. Once she had eliminated the people who had died in the intervening period, she was left with a list of a dozen names, all connected in some way to Drescher. But, as Wengert had said, the connections could be coincidental. Drescher, or someone else with an interest, had made sure the main files were not to be found. Yet Sylvie knew that, somewhere among these dozen names, was the lead she was looking for. And, just maybe, one of them was Siegfried, the ex-Stasi scum who had sent her the photographs and Drescher’s name. She took out her notebook and transferred the four most likely names to it. She had addresses for two, a partial address for another and just a town for the fourth. She would see how easy it would be to track them down. The easier they were to find, the less likely it would be that they were Siegfried.

  She had just taken out her Baedeker to check some of the addresses when her cellphone rang.

  ‘Hi, it’s Ivonne. I’ve got more information on Norivon, the company the latest St Pauli victim worked for.’

  ‘Anything interesting?’

  ‘Not really. It couldn’t be more boring, in fact. Norivon is an environmental waste-management company. They help companies comply with federal and EU regulations regarding waste. They make it go away, basically. But I got some new info through the contact I have in NeuHansa. She said that Armin Lensch, the guy who got wasted, was a grade-one arsehole and universally despised. Ambitious bastard, apparently, and didn’t mind treading on toes to get ahead. He was responsible for dealing with companies within the NeuHansa Group and had a reputation as an ass-kisser when it came to management.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Oh yes — this is the good bit. His little excursion into the Reeperbahn was a regular occurrence. He would go in with a bunch of others from work — none of whom could stand him, by the way — and get completely pissed and even more obnoxious than usual. Anyway, the night he was killed, he had a run-in with the law. Two plain-clothes cops were arresting a woman in Silbersacktwiete and Lensch started to get lippy. So one of the cops kneed him in the balls. A woman cop.’

  ‘Who were they arresting?’

  ‘That I don’t know, but they were Murder Commission.’

  ‘What did the female cop look like? Shortish, pretty, dark hair?’

  ‘That I don’t know, either.’

  ‘Anna Wolff…’ said Sylvie, more to herself than to Ivonne.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Good work, Ivonne. I’ve got some names and partial addresses for you. Can you see if you can locate them and get as much info as possible?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Ivonne. Sylvie ran through the information Wengert had given her.

  ‘We’re looking for a male Stasi officer, probably administrative staff stationed at the Lichtenberg headquarters.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Ivonne. ‘There was something else I meant to tell you

  … nope, it’s gone.’

  ‘Phone back if you remember.’

  Sylvie hung up and was tidying the file on the bed when her cellphone rang again.

  ‘That was quick,’ said Sylvie. ‘You remembered what it was?’

  ‘I hope you’re settled into your hotel, Sylvie.’ As soon as she heard the breathless voice she knew it was Siegfried.

  ‘What makes you think I’m in a hotel?’ she asked.

  ‘Now you’re just being stupid. And you’re not a stupid woman. Still on the trail of the big story? I suppose you think that you have my name now… that you can track me down and get what you want without paying? Oh yes, I know all about your chat with Herr Wengert.’

  ‘You Stasi scum really still have your tentacles everywhere, don’t you?’

  ‘There is no Stasi any more, Sylvie. And I resent being called scum. We did what we did because we believed in it. We believed in equality and freedom from poverty and exploitation. And because of that we’re now compared with the Nazis. So yes, some of us work together for self-protection.’ He had a sudden fit of coughing. ‘Anyway, I’m not interested in justifying myself to you. Especially to you. Have you got my money?’

  ‘Do you think I can just conjure up quarter of a million euros based on three photographs and the name of somebody who doesn’t exist?’

  ‘Who doesn’t seem to exist… Drescher and these girls were involved in an operation so secret and so ambitious that every effort was made to keep it hidden even from some of the command structure inside the MfS. Anyway, I thought I’d give you a little more, on account. Simply to prove that I really do have the information I say I have. Take a look under your pillow.’

  Sylvie reached under the pillows, sliding her arm along until her hand found something. It was a large brown envelope.

  ‘How did you…?’

  ‘Now, Sylvie,’ the husky voice interrupted her. ‘Don’t be so naive. We were trained to get in and out of private spaces without detection. I’ll be in touch.’

  The line went dead. Sylvie checked her phone to try to retrieve the number, but it had been withheld.

  She opened the envelope. Inside was a magazine and four sheets of copy paper. Examining the magazine first, Sylvie saw it was called Muliebritas, and from what she could see was some kind of feminist title. She flicked through it quickly to see if there was anything stuffed into it, or if Siegfried had made any markings on the pages. Nothing. She would have to take time later to study it carefully. In the meantime, the only thing that was of interest to her was that Muliebritas was published by Bronsted Publishing, part of the NeuHansa Group.

  She turned her attention to the four sheets of paper. Three of them each had one of the images that Siegfried had sent her in the email. Except, this time, there was a name beneath each face: Margarethe Paulus, Liane Kayser, Anke Wollner. The fourth sheet again had the name Georg Drescher, but this time it too was accompanied by an image: a man of about forty to forty-five. He had a strong, handsome face, with deep furrows in his cheeks and creases at his eyes, as if his had been a face accustomed to smiling. His amiable countenance was at odds with the uniform lapel flashes that indicated he was an officer of the MfS. Unlike the other photographs, his picture was in black and white and it was difficult to tell whether his hair was blond or greying. Given that twenty years had elapsed since anyone had worn a Stasi uniform, Sylvie tried to age him in her mind.

  She looked at the pictures of the young women again. They were all pretty but gazed blankly and emotionlessly at the camera. Sylvie was again drawn to the girl with the so terribly empty eyes.

  Liane Kayser. Her name was Liane Kayser.

  11

  Ute Cranz dragged Drescher further into the k
itchen. He saw her hover over him, a scalpel in her hand. He felt sick and suddenly thought what a relief it would be to throw up. He guessed the muscle relaxant had eliminated his gag reflex and he would die choking on his own vomit. Without coughing. Without a struggle. At least it would be better than whatever Ute Cranz had planned for him. She pulled at his clothes and he saw the scalpel slice downwards. But he didn’t feel its contact: she was cutting through his clothes, tugging the remnants clear of his body. He was naked now and felt cold, probably more from fear than from the temperature of her apartment.

  She lifted up the plastic sheeting and slid something behind his head and shoulders so that he was in a semi-sitting position. She sat a bed table across his leaden legs and placed a large laptop computer on it, the screen facing him and almost completely filling his field of vision. She hit a key and the screen filled with a photograph: lurid colours. Blood everywhere. A woman’s body lay naked, the head and face hidden from view, jammed between a gore-sodden bed and a blood-streaked wall.

  ‘This is what men do to women. Look at this. Do you see?’ Ute pressed the key again. Another scene: this time a dead woman lay semi-clothed in some bushes, a ligature around her neck. ‘Do you see?’ Another scene-of-crime photograph. ‘Do you see?’

  She clicked on a command and the screen automatically switched from one scene to the next. Sickening images of murder. Rape. Violent pornographic images of women being abused. Female faces twisted in fear.

  ‘This is what men do to women. What men have always done to women. Men like you.’ Ute let the images run for a few more seconds, then she closed the lid and lifted the computer and tray away. Then she squatted beside Drescher and whispered into his ear. ‘Women are forced to live in fear. All over the world. Every day. Real fear. Real fear like the fear you’re feeling right now. I know you are afraid, Drescher. I know you’re very afraid. But still you’re asking yourself “Why? Why is she doing this?”’ She held a photograph up for him to see. ‘Do you know who that is? It’s my sister. Margarethe. She’s dead. She killed herself. When you had finished with her she went mad and they locked her up. Then she killed herself. The staff at the hospital she was in thought they had taken every precaution to prevent her committing suicide, but when you’ve been trained to kill others, to kill in so many ways, then it’s easy for you to kill yourself. You don’t need much in the way of means or opportunity.’

  Drescher stared at the photograph and listened, because there was nothing else he could do except stare and listen. The face in the photograph. He knew it. He remembered it. And what terrified him was that Ute Cranz didn’t seem to realise whose face, without the make-up, without the change of hair colour, it really was. And all the time his heart pounded within the cage of his locked body.

  ‘I’ve hunted you for fourteen years. Fourteen years of preparing for this moment. I promised my sister, promised Margarethe, that I would make it right. Well, I will. And I will take my time. Enjoy every moment. Do you remember when you taught your girls about blood supply? How you could use it to quicken or delay death? Remember how you told them about execution by saw in the Middle Ages? The victim was hung upside down and sawn in half, from the groin to the neck. Because they were hanging upside down, the brain stayed supplied with blood and the victim was conscious through the whole thing.’ She stood up and kicked away whatever had been supporting his head and neck. His head thudded against the floor and pain stabbed through it. She stood astride his body now and looked down at him. ‘You drove my sister insane. You drove her to her death. I am going to drive you mad. You are going to die, but before you die you will be in so much pain that you will lose your mind.’

  He looked up at her and thought how beautiful she was. How terribly beautiful.

  Chapter Five

  1

  It had been a long time since Fabel had had a dream like it. He had been plagued by nightmares throughout his life as a murder detective: the dead would visit him in the night. The victims whose murders he had not been able to solve would glare accusingly at him, holding their wounds out for him to see. The dreams had been one of the reasons he had seriously, a year and a half before, considered leaving the police for good. Then, after he’d made his decision to stay on in the Murder Commission, the dreams had stopped.

  But this dream was different from the others.

  He stood at the centre of a vast yard enclosed by barbed-wire fences and with a row of low wooden huts at one distant end. He didn’t need a sign or a motto above the gates to know where he was. He was German: the symbolism was burned deep into his consciousness. There was no one else in the yard. There were no sounds from the huts. Some dust was stirred from the brushed earth by a soundless wind. He turned slowly: a full 360 degrees.

  She was there, standing in front of him.

  ‘You are looking for me?’ asked Irma Grese. She was young — only nineteen or twenty — short and stocky, dressed in a shapeless grey dress. She wore the jackboots he had read she habitually wore when tormenting prisoners. She had hard, broad, almost masculine features and a thin-lipped mouth turned down at the corners. Her blonde hair was brushed back from a face that seemed to be half forehead.

  ‘No,’ said Fabel, distracted by the rope burn on her throat and neck. ‘I’m not looking for you. I’m looking for someone like you.’

  ‘If she is like me,’ said Grese, ‘then someone made her like me. Do you understand that?’ The broad brow furrowed. It was clearly important to her that he understood. ‘Someone made her like me.’

  ‘I understand,’ he said.

  Grese looked Fabel up and down. ‘Are you frightened of me?’

  ‘No, I’m not frightened of you. I despise you,’ he said. ‘I hate everything about you and everything you did. I loathe you most of all because you make me glad they hanged you.’

  ‘No, you are frightened of me. Deep down, all men are frightened of women. You fear me because you fear all women. You are afraid that something like me burns deep inside every woman.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ said Fabel. ‘Your gender has nothing to do with it. You and all the others like you were freaks. Ordinary, dull, nobodies. But freaks. You were waiting for someone to open your cages and let your freakishness escape.’

  ‘We come out of our cages for you, Jan. Don’t we?’ For a moment Fabel thought he was looking at Christa Eisel, then Viola Dahlke, the housewife they had arrested in St Pauli, but she became Irma Grese again. ‘We’ve been your life for twenty years.’

  Suddenly, without moving, without taking a step, Grese was nearer. Her face close to his, looking up at him. She screamed, shrill and inhuman, her eyes wild and her dark eyebrows arching on the too big forehead under the blonde hair. She was, at the one time, terrifying and comical. Her right arm shot up above them and Fabel saw the cellophane whip flash in the pale sunlight.

  He woke up.

  Fabel turned to make sure Susanne was still asleep. He didn’t want her to know he had had another bad dream. It had been so long since the last. Susanne was his lover and as such she had begged him to leave the police to make the dreams stop; but she was also a psychologist, and her concern had always been professionally informed. It wasn’t the dreams themselves that worried her, she had explained, it was the hidden turmoil that had caused them. Renate had never worried about the dreams. Renate had never really worried about him.

  He got up, went through to the kitchen and made himself a cup of tea. It still took him a while to find things in the new apartment: in his head, especially in the small hours of the morning, he was still living in his Poseldorf flat.

  The phone rang. Looking at his watch, Fabel saw it was five-forty in the morning.

  ‘This had better be good,’ he said into the phone.

  ‘It is…’ It was Glasmacher, one of the Murder Commission team. ‘I’m just around the corner from you in Altona. We’ve got her, Chef — we’ve got the Angel.’

  2

  The apartment block had been sealed off a
nd barriers set up in the street fifty metres on either side of the entrance, but the media throng had yet to materialise. There hadn’t been time for word to get out. It only took Fabel ten minutes to get to the scene from his own flat and he parked at the barrier, showing his ID to the uniformed officers guarding the location.

  A tall pale-complexioned blond man of about thirty, wearing a brown leather jacket and a muffler at his throat, stood waiting for Fabel at the entrance to the apartment block. He sniffed as Fabel approached and Fabel noticed his nose was tinted red-pink.

  ‘You should be in bed, Thomas,’ Fabel said.

  ‘I wish I had called in sick. If I hadn’t been on call I wouldn’t have seen this.’ Glasmacher indicated the apartment building with a nod of his head.’

  ‘Bad?’

  ‘Oh yeah… One of the worst I’ve seen. The victim’s been tortured for hours. By the way, I’ve called in a few extra bodies. Dirk Hechtner’s on his way over, too.’

  ‘You said we’ve got the Angel?’

  ‘The m.o. has similarities to both the recent killings and the older ones. Whatever this woman’s mission was, it’s clearly over. When she was finished, she dialled 110 and said she’d killed this guy and she wanted to “come in”.’

  ‘Who’s the vic?’

  Glasmacher pulled his notebook out of the pocket of his leather jacket, and with it a bundle of used paper tissues. ‘Sorry, Chef… Robert Gerdes, sixty-three, a retired teacher from Flensburg, in Schleswig-Holstein. He’s been living in Hamburg for fifteen years. His apartment is the penthouse and he was murdered in the flat below, rented by the woman who claims to have done it.’