Anke released her grip on the hostage and sprinted in the direction of the car. As she did so, she turned and shot the hostage once, in the stomach. He fell down onto the road, vomiting blood onto the wet street. Then he started screaming. They would have to deal with him. As Anke ran towards the car she heard automatic fire. Something slapped the back of her calf and she was surrounded by the angry hornet zipping of bullets around her, but she kept running. They had to control their fire. There were houses to the left of her and a stray bullet could take out a civilian. That was their number-one disadvantage. She didn’t care who died or was injured: they had to.
A uniformed officer to her left turned and reached for his side arm. She kept running, her Beretta stretched out in her rod-steady arm. She fired twice and hit the uniformed cop — who she knew would not be body-armoured — twice in the chest. The driver of the car sat gawp-mouthed. Anke ripped open the driver door and pulled the driver, a young woman, from the VW Polo. Anke then shot her in the legs: another casualty to slow things up. She slammed the Polo into gear and reversed at high speed up Harvestehuder Weg. There were more shots and the windscreen shattered, but Anke didn’t turn. If they were going to hit her, they would. Her only chance was to get away as fast as possible. She spun the car into a 180-degree skid on the wet street and floored the accelerator again. She could see blue lights in her rear-view mirror.
They were chasing her.
‘The one thing about a police chase,’ Uncle Georg had told her, ‘is that the police will almost always win. Make them think they’re in a vehicle pursuit and then get out of the vehicle as quickly as possible.’
She took the corner at Poseldorfer Weg at high speed, tyres screeching. Turning sharp right into a side street, a cul-de-sac, she pulled into the kerb, reversing to park normally behind another car. She saw the blue lights flash past the road end. A second police car slowed down almost to a halt at the end of the cul-de-sac, obviously checking it out, before taking off after the first car.
Anke got out of the car as quickly as she could, but found her leg was stiffening up. She could feel the wet in her shoe and inside her trouser leg. She couldn’t look now. She needed to get away. Put as much distance as possible, as quickly as possible, between herself and the car.
She still had her shoulder bag strapped across her chest. She released the empty magazine from the Beretta’s grip and slammed in a full one. She walked without limping along the quiet street and took a sudden left turn through the gate of one of the houses. She could see it was a substantial villa that had been converted into apartments. She walked up to the main door as if she had done so every day in her life and checked the names on the buzzer board. There was an apartment with two different surnames. It was by no means guaranteed, but she guessed it was lived in by an unmarried couple without kids, probably a younger couple. They would probably be out at work. She pressed the buzzer. No answer, which was what she wanted. She then proceeded to press every buzzer until she got an answer. An older woman’s voice.
‘Delivery,’ said Anke.
The door lock was buzzed open. Anke pushed open the door and shoved the toe of her boot in to stop it closing completely. She pressed the old woman’s buzzer again.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Wrong address. I thought this was Poseldorfer Weg.’ After listening to the old woman’s complaints, Anke let herself in and eased the door quietly shut behind her. She stood for a moment and caught her breath, listening out for the sounds of a suspicious old woman on the stairwell. When she was convinced she was alone, she climbed the stairs to the first floor. She found the flat she was looking for and picked the lock.
Once inside, she checked every room to make sure that the flat was really empty. She looked down at the wooden floor. She had left bloody footprints all along the hall. That meant there was a trail all the way up the stairs and probably from the car. Even if it wasn’t visible, it would be very easy for a police sniffer dog to follow. She would have to be quick. Going through to the bedroom, she checked out the woman’s wardrobe. She was a size bigger than Anke, but that didn’t matter: a size smaller would have been useless. Anke laid out a range of trousers, jumpers and jackets on the bed and made a quick selection from them. She also found a shoulder bag to replace her own: smaller, but it would do.
The bathroom was small, and Anke had to lean against the wall as she eased out of her shoes, trousers and tights, leaving a pool of blood on the tiled floor. She turned her calf to examine the wound: the bullet had not lodged in her leg but had carved its passage by gouging out a chunk of flesh. There was no bath, but Anke was able to take down the shower head and run hot water over the wound before wrapping a towel tight around her calf. She found the bathroom cabinet and tipped everything out into the basin. She took a second towel and doused it with antiseptic. There was a bandage still in its wrapper but no other dressings. She went into the bedroom again and went through the drawers until she found a packet of sanitary pads which she took back through to the bathroom.
Anke removed the towel from her leg and pushed the antiseptic-soaked pad into the wound. The pain exploded hot and sharp and she suppressed a scream into an inhuman sound caged behind her tightly clenched teeth. Applying two sanitary pads to the wound, she bound them in place with the bandage. When she was finished, she washed her hands and the sweat from her face. There was a photograph on the dresser, presumably of the couple who lived in the flat. The woman was tall and slim like Anke and didn’t look a full size bigger, but she had dark hair and an olive tone to her skin. Anke reckoned her make-up would be heavier and darker than that which Anke normally used, and she spent five minutes in front of the mirror completely changing her face with a few strokes of the woman’s make-up brush. She then changed into the clothes she’d laid out, putting on a pair of knee-length boots under her trousers. It was a struggle to get the left boot zipped up over the wound, but Anke reckoned the boot would help keep the dressing tight and in place.
Once she had put on the change of clothes, including an ankle-length coat and a beret-style hat, Anke looked at herself in the mirror. A different woman with a different style, a different history, a different life.
Before leaving the flat, Anke tried to work out what to do with her discarded clothes. Her DNA would be all over them. But there again, she thought, her DNA was now all over half of Hamburg. There was no forensic distance this time.
It was over. She knew that. Uncle Georg was dead. Or captured. She had to get out of Hamburg. She had identities she could use, she had enough money to live on for the rest of her life. Maybe this could be a new beginning. The next twenty-four hours would tell.
She put the Beretta, the magazines, her polycarbide knife and the box of sanitary pads into her shoulder bag. She went over to the window and checked out the street below. It seemed quiet, but she could hear the sound of sirens in the streets all around. She was going to have to walk through it all and out of Poseldorf.
And then she would be free.
2
Fabel had watched it all. He had stood and watched as Anna had been gunned down. He had seen the flashes, then Anna crumple to the ground. He should have stayed where he was, but, without thinking, he found himself running down the stairs and out onto the street, screaming into the radio for an ambulance.
By the time he got to Anna there were already two MEK officers tending to her, applying first-aid-kit pressure pads to the wounds in her legs. Werner was there too, brushing the hair away from her face. Fabel felt sick as he saw the crimson bloom on the white gauze of the pressure pads.
‘Anna…’ He dropped to his knees beside her. ‘Anna… I’m so sorry.’
Her face was pale, almost grey. Her breathing was shallow and short, but she shook her head and smiled weakly. ‘Not your fault. Mine. I’m ready for that anger-management course now…’
The ambulance arrived and the paramedics set to work on her, ordering Werner and Fabel to stand back. Dietz, the MEK commander, approached them.
‘What the hell were you doing?’ Fabel screamed in his face. ‘How the fuck did you allow this to happen? I brought you into this because this is exactly what I didn’t want to happen.’ He pointed in the direction of the paramedics working on Anna.
‘Before you start shooting your mouth off, Fabel, I’d remind you that two of my men are dead, two more critical from burns. This isn’t my fuck-up — it’s yours. Why the hell didn’t you give us the say-so to take her down before she got to the road? She knew that we would have to choose our shots if she got between us and occupied buildings. There…’ He jabbed a gloved finger in the direction of the park. ‘That’s where our chances were best.’
Werner, now without his wig, placed his considerable bulk between them. ‘Pack it in, for God’s sake. This isn’t helping. Jan, we’ve got three more down — the hostage is critical, shot in the gut. We’ve got a dead uniform and another wounded civilian. It’s a mess, all right.’
‘Have we found the car yet?’
‘No. It can’t be that hard — the windscreen’s shot out.’
‘This bitch isn’t going to be scared into a panicked flight,’ said Fabel. ‘My guess is she’s dumped the car very close and stolen another. I want the control room at the Presidium to alert us to any stolen cars in a five-kilometre radius. Or a damaged Polo being abandoned. In the meantime, get every mobile unit to check alleyways, side streets, disused sites — anywhere she might have dumped it. But I’m pretty sure we’ll find it close by. And have every woman walking alone stopped and questioned. Minimum two officers. And extreme caution.’
‘There’s something else,’ said Dietz. ‘I’m pretty sure I hit her. There’s some blood on the road further up where she ran. I think I got her in the leg.’
‘She’ll have tried to find somewhere to get fixed up. She’s still here, Werner. We’ve got to find her.’
3
Poseldorf was one of Hamburg’s trendiest addresses. The property was expensive and the shops and restaurants exclusive. But Poseldorf had started off as Hamburg’s poor quarter and the layout was a tangle of cobbled streets.
Anke used as many alleys and access lanes as possible, even clambering over walls to avoid using the main streets. She found herself on Hallerstrasse, near the TV studio and the Rotherbaum tennis stadium. The street was lined with cars, but most were expensive newer models with complicated immobiliser and alarm systems. She walked on. She would have to walk back to where she had left her own car. She needed to get it out of the area before it was treated as an abandoned vehicle, giving the police a positive ID and address for her. But she had parked far enough away from the Alsterpark to feel relatively secure. It was a decision that she regretted now with every step she took. Her calf throbbed and her entire leg began to ache, a result of the sudden and severe muscular contraction after the bullet had hit. It would not have been too long a walk if she had been able to continue straight along Mittelweg, but she knew that the police would, by now, be stopping almost every woman walking alone, so she was forced to take the most circuitous route, more than tripling the distance she had to cover.
Anke felt an enormous relief when she turned the corner and saw her Lexus saloon parked where she had left it. She sank into the leather seat and stretched her injured leg out straight, allowing herself a moment to rest. She eased her hand up the back of her boot and felt the wet leather. When she got back to the apartment she was going to have to stitch the wound, which, given its position, would not be easy.
Leaning her head back against the seat, Anke closed her eyes for a moment. She turned suddenly when she heard someone knocking on the side window.
Anke smiled and slid the window open. She assessed the situation: young policewoman — very young — alone, foot patrol, inexperienced. Every one else hunting the killer from the Alsterpark.
‘Is this your vehicle?’
‘Yes, it is. Is there a problem?’
‘You’ve been parked here too long. I’ll have to give you a ticket. What’s your name, please?’
You’re checking my name against the database, thought Anke. You’ve already radioed in the index number. It’ll be flagged up later. Her identity, her address, all compromised.
‘Jana Eigen.’ She gave the name she’d been living under for the last ten years. A name that had become as real to her as Anke Wollner. Now it was lost.
‘May I see your ID card and driver’s licence?’ The young policewoman was trying hard to project authority. Anke estimated she was no older than twenty-three; pretty, with dark hair under the police cap. Her blue police jacket was a size too big for her, giving her an almost childlike appearance.
‘Sure,’ said Anke, reaching into the shoulder bag sitting next to her on the passenger seat. ‘Here it is.’
Anke’s first shot hit the policewoman in the throat. She dropped beside the car. Anke swung the door open but it jammed against the policewoman’s body and she had to squeeze out, hurting her leg as she did so. The young policewoman was face down, the oversized blue waterproof jacket bunched up like a turtle’s carapace with the word POLIZEI emblazoned on it in white. A sickeningly wet gurgling sound issued from her and she was trying to crawl away. Anke fired a second round into the back of the policewoman’s head and she lay still. There were screams from onlookers and Anke knew that she’d have to move fast. The policewoman’s body obstructed the car so Anke had to drag it out into the road. Then she jumped back in the car and sped off.
She would have to dump the car. She would have to find a safe place.
4
It was pretty much what Fabel had expected. Van Heiden had not been angry, nor had he lectured Fabel, but he had communicated, more by silences than words, that things could not be worse and, if the axe fell, then it would fall squarely on Fabel’s neck.
What hadn’t helped had been the media attention. Accounts of the shootings on Harvestehuder Weg were repeated on every news bulletin, on every channel, and not just in Hamburg. The Presidium was like a medieval castle under siege, with satellite-dish-topped vans parked outside and TV crews pointing their cameras at the building. Fabel even got a message that Sylvie Achtenhagen had been trying to get in touch with him.
‘She said it’s very urgent,’ the cop at reception had told him.
‘I bet she did,’ said Fabel, scrunching up the note, leaning over the reception desk and dropping it into the wastebasket.
After leaving van Heiden, Fabel phoned Werner at the hospital.
‘How’s Anna?’
‘Still in theatre,’ said Werner. ‘I’ll phone as soon as she comes out and I hear anything. Try not to worry, Jan. She’s tougher than either of us.’
After Fabel hung up, there was a knock on the door and Dirk Hechtner came in.
‘You okay, Chef? I mean-’
‘I know what you mean. I’m okay. Thanks for asking. What have you got?’
‘The gun recovered from Margarethe Paulus’s apartment — we’ve traced it. It used to be owned by a Zlatko Ljubi i c, a Croatian. And listen to this: Ljubi i c was arrested during the same sting as Goran Vuja i c. He was Vuja i c ’s bodyguard.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘I’m chasing that up,’ said Hechtner. ‘The Danish police had to let him go: it’s not illegal to be a gangster’s bodyguard unless you can be nailed for doing something illegal yourself. He worked in Copenhagen as a security guard for a while. After that, I don’t know yet. But it’s a hell of a coincidence that there’s a Vuja i c connection after all.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Yeah — I checked out Svend Langstrup, Gina Bronsted’s head of security; no form. But he’s a former officer in the J?gerkorpset, that’s the Danish special forces. He has dual nationality: Danish and German. Langstrup ran his own security company for a while — and yes, I’m way ahead of you, I’m checking with the Danish police to see if it was his company that Zlatko Ljubi i c worked with. From what I can see he’s on a huge salary. He lives out in Blankenese.
’
‘Okay, keep on it. I’m heading down to the Ops Room.’
The Operations Room was more crowded than usual and Fabel’s heart sank when he saw both van Heiden and Police President Steinbach amongst the other officers. For Fabel, having his superiors present when he was trying to run an inquiry was like having a teacher peer over your shoulder while you did your homework.
But he could tell by van Heiden’s face that his bad-news day had just got worse.
‘We’ve lost another one,’ said van Heiden. ‘The bitch has killed another police officer.’
‘Who?’
‘A young female officer called Annika Busing. She was twenty-four, Jan.’
‘Where?’
‘Rotherbaum.’ Henk Hermann joined them. His long, thin, freckled face pale and grim beneath a mop of red hair. He checked his notebook. ‘The car was a black Lexus GS450h saloon. Six months old. The owner is a Jana Eigen. She lives in Blankenese.’
‘Wealthy.’
‘Looks like it. And not at home.’
‘Okay, Henk, you and Dirk take the Rotherbaum murder. I’ll head over to the address we’ve got for Frau Eigen.’ He turned to van Heiden. ‘I’ve got all of my team committed. I could do with someone to come to Blankenese with me.’
The Valkyrie Song jf-5 Page 37
