‘I’ll do it,’ said van Heiden.
‘Do you have a service weapon?’
‘Of course I do…’ said van Heiden. Then, less indignantly: ‘But it’s in my locker. I’ll go get it.’
‘If you don’t mind, I’d like to take Karin Vestergaard along with us. I’ve sent a car to pick her up. She has a vested interest in seeing this concluded. We’re not the only ones to have lost colleagues.’
Fabel was aware of another figure at his shoulder. He turned to see Hans Gessler of the corporate crime division.
‘I heard about Anna, Jan,’ he said. ‘I’m really sorry. How is she?’
‘I’m waiting for word.’
‘I just wanted to let you know that I’ve been through Frolov’s information on Gina Bronsted and NeuHansa. We’ve got enough there to nail her — but not for these murders. There’s no direct evidential link. But she’s toast as far as tax evasion, falsification of permits and fraud are concerned.’
‘I want her. There’s got to be something that ties her in with ordering these Valkyrie hits.’
‘Not from her end. Maybe if we could find Drescher’s bank accounts
… I’ll look into it, but it could be a numbered account in Switzerland.’
‘See what you can do, Hans. Give me something. Anything.’
5
It wasn’t the ideal day for a walk by the beach.
The water of the Elbe frothed and snapped at the bitter wind that whipped at it and the dull steel-grey fog that smothered it. He had his fists rammed deep into his coat pockets and a woollen hat pulled tight over his ears, but he walked unbowed, his wet and chilled face full into the wind. He had walked here two summers ago with his wife. They had talked then about the future. About how maybe the time was right to have kids.
He stopped and watched the fog-fudged outline of a freighter slide by, further out in the Elbe, in the deep channel just beyond Ness-sand, the nature-reserve island. The freighter was dark and massive in the gloom and as it passed it sounded its horn, a low, plaintive dinosaur cry in the fog.
He had just turned back into the wind to continue his walk when he saw a figure ahead of him. Another shadow in the grey gloom. The figure was standing still, staring out at the ship. Or at nothing. He drew close. He saw the profile now and the wisps of blonde hair from under the woollen hat. A woman.
‘Hello.’
The woman gave a start and turned to face him. Her hands snapped out of her pockets and she held them at her side. For a moment he thought she was going to attack him.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’
‘Walking,’ she said. ‘I was just walking.’
‘Are you all right?’
She gazed at him blankly and, for a moment, he was struck by how terribly empty her expression was. Then she smiled.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Yes, you did startle me. Not your fault. The fog.’
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ The concern in his voice was genuine.
She shrugged self-deprecatingly. ‘Truth is, I’ve got a bit lost. I parked the car somewhere…’ She waved her gloved hand vaguely along Strandweg in the direction of the ferry pier. ‘I needed some fresh air. A walk. I didn’t account for the fog being so thick.’
‘It’s not a night for walking on the beach,’ he said.
‘Then what are you doing?’ She smiled at him again. He noticed for the first time how pretty she was. Totally different from Silke, his wife, but very pretty.
‘I live near here. I know where I’m walking.’
She looked up to where Blankenese loomed in the fog, a dark mass punctuated by yellow lights. ‘You live here?’
‘Yes… just over there.’ He pointed.
‘Could you walk me back to the path then, please?’ she asked. ‘I’ve actually lost where I came through the wall onto the beach.’
‘Certainly,’ he said. He held out his hand. ‘My name’s Svend Langstrup.’
‘I’m Birta. Birta Henningsen.’
6
They had just parked outside the villa in Blankenese when they got the message that Jana Eigen’s car had been discovered in woods south of Sulldorf.
‘My God,’ said Fabel. ‘That’s just north of here. Walking distance.’
‘Jana Eigen is Anke Wollner?’ asked Vestergaard.
‘And Anke Wollner is the Valkyrie.’ He pulled his automatic from its holster and checked the magazine. ‘ Shit — she’s come back. There’s something in the house that she needs.’ He turned to van Heiden. ‘Horst, we’ve got to make sure she’s not in here. We could wait until reinforcements arrive.’
‘They didn’t do much good in the Alsterpark. Let’s go.’
Fabel gestured for van Heiden to wait and reached into the glove compartment. He took out a SIG-Sauer automatic, in a holster and wrapped in a shoulder harness. He held the weapon out to Karin Vestergaard but did not release it when she took it. Instead he turned again to van Heiden.
‘What the hell,’ said van Heiden, with a shrug.
Vestergaard took the gun, took off her coat and slipped on the holster before snapping back the carriage on the automatic and reholstering it.
By Blankenese standards, it was quite a modest property. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a dining room, kitchen and lounge. All of which were unoccupied. Their sweep of the house was made even more stressful by the urgent shrieking of the alarm that Fabel had set off when he had forced the door. Once they were satisfied that Anke Wollner was not at home, Fabel phoned the Presidium and asked that a forensic team be sent out to check out the house.
‘And for God’s sake get on to Commissariat twenty-six in Osdorf and let them know that it’s a false alarm,’ Fabel said. ‘And get them to send someone out to switch the damned thing off.’
They searched the house. Every drawer, every wardrobe, every cupboard. Fabel pulled down the extendable ladder and checked out the attic. At first sight there was nothing: no arms cache, no briefcase full of currency and passports, none of the accoutrements of a professional killer. Like Georg Drescher’s flat, this house felt unlived-in. Everything in the house was expensive and tasteful, yet there was no sense of permanent habitation about the place: as if it were an extended hotel room rather than a home.
‘That’s a Hans Jorgen Wegner Ox chair,’ said Vestergaard.
‘Danish?’
‘Very Danish. Even more expensive.’
‘It’s not here.’ Fabel spoke loudly to be heard over the din of the house alarm. ‘Whatever it is she came back for, it’s not here, not in this house. I don’t get it at all.’
‘A change of car, maybe?’ suggested Vestergaard. The alarm shut off and they reholstered their guns.
‘Could be, I suppose,’ said Fabel. ‘In which case she’s moved on already. But she knows this address is compromised. I don’t think she would risk coming back here for a car that would also be registered to this place.’
He heard the sound of vehicles pulling up outside. Three uniformed officers arrived with a man in overalls. Fabel told them to make sure nothing was disturbed more than it had already been by their search, and informed them that the forensics team was on its way.
‘So you think she’s still in Blankenese?’ asked van Heiden.
‘If she dumped the car and came here on foot, then she has a purpose.’ Fabel went over to the uniformed Commissar who had arrived with the alarm engineer. ‘You’re from PK26 in Osdorf?’
‘Yes, Herr Principal Chief Commissar.’
‘Can you get on to the Commissariat and tell them we need as many bodies as possible down here right now? We’re searching for a woman called Anke Wollner who lived in this house under the name Jana Eigen.’
Something akin to shock crossed the young Commissar’s face. ‘My God — you mean the person who killed those cops in the city centre? You think she’s here?’
‘Just get on to Osdorf and get people out here.’
Fabel turned
back to Vestergaard and van Heiden. ‘Why would she come back? I know I’m repeating myself but it doesn’t make sense. We can assume that she has several alternative identities up her sleeve and we failed to contain her at the crime scene. She could, presumably, disappear into thin air. She must have worked out by now that something’s happened to Georg Drescher.’
Fabel froze.
‘They gave him up…’
‘What?’ asked van Heiden.
‘Hold on.’ Fabel used his cellphone to call the Presidium and asked to speak to Hans Gessler.
‘He’s left for the evening,’ said the duty officer on the other end.
‘Then patch me through to his cellphone.’
There was a pause. Fabel covered the mouthpiece and spoke to van Heiden and Vestergaard. ‘They gave Drescher up. It was Gina Bronsted who hired the Valkyrie all these years. Drescher had enough on Bronsted to send her away for life. It would be his pension policy. When Bronsted was tidying up the loose ends of Westland, Claasens and Lensch, she had already planned to tidy up Frolov and Drescher too. She used the other Valkyrie, mad Margarethe Paulus, to do her dirty work. It was Bronsted who provided Margarethe with all of the cash and resources she needed. But she never did anything directly…’ He held up his hand and turned his attention back to his cellphone.
‘Hi, Hans? It’s Fabel — where did you say Svend Langstrup lived?’
‘What? Oh… Blankenese.’
‘Do you have the address?’
‘I think it’s somewhere just behind Strandweg. Hold on…’ After a few moments, Gessler came back with the address.
‘She’s here to kill Svend Langstrup,’ said Fabel once he’d hung up. ‘And then, if I’m right, she’ll go after Gina Bronsted.’
7
Langstrup brought the wine through to the lounge. Anke sat on the rug in front of the fire and watched the flames. The fire’s glow accentuated the perfect sweep of her cheek and jawline, and added gold to her pale blonde hair.
‘Warmer?’
‘Mmm, I am now,’ she murmured contentedly, despite the persistent nagging of her leg wound. Anke looked around the room. She took a full mouthful of wine. Her eyes fell on a silver-framed photograph on a side table. In it Langstrup and an attractive woman with strawberry-blonde hair stood together in a garden. They both faced the camera and Langstrup embraced her, his arms wrapped around her shoulders. They both wore smiles: his one of complete contentment. Joy. The woman’s was different. As if she wasn’t really there behind the smile. It was something that Anke recognised.
‘Your wife?’
He nodded, but did not look at the photograph. ‘Yes. That’s Silke.’
‘She’s very pretty.’
‘Yes.’
‘Where is she tonight? I don’t think she’d approve of you bringing strange women in from the beach and plying them with drink…’
‘Silke had problems. Mental-health issues.’ He stared into his wine glass. ‘Depression. She committed suicide.’
‘Oh God — I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have asked…’
‘You weren’t to know. It was a natural enough question,’ Langstrup said and took a long sip of white wine. ‘It was two years ago. The police said it was unclear whether it was accidental death or suicide. She didn’t leave a note, you see.’
‘Is that why you were down by the water?’
‘I don’t know. Yes, maybe.’
Anke looked at the photograph again; at the mask of a smile pulled over a void.
‘I really am so sorry,’ said Anke and she stood up. ‘I know what it’s like to lose someone like that.’
‘Do you? I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘My uncle.’ She took another sip of wine and gazed at the fire. ‘I know it doesn’t sound much, but he was more than my uncle. More like a father. My parents… well, my parents weren’t around and he brought me up. Taught me everything I know. All that I am I owe to him.’
‘He died recently?’
‘Yes.’ She placed the wine glass down on the coffee table and turned to face him square on. Langstrup looked up at her quizzically. ‘Is everything all right?’
The doorbell rang.
‘Excuse me,’ he said. He stood up and shrugged apologetically. ‘I don’t get many visitors, but tonight…’
The ringing of the doorbell became insistent. Then banging on the door. Langstrup frowned and made towards the hall.
As soon as Langstrup turned his back to her, Anke leapt forward. The black polycarbide knife arced round and caught him in the side of the neck. She locked his head with the other arm and used her weight to drag him down onto the floor, but he was strong and skilled. His elbow slammed into her ribs and they crashed into the coffee table. The knife was still in his neck but she had misjudged it and obviously had missed the carotid. She could hear the front door being kicked in. She let go of Langstrup and leapt to her feet, slightly off balance because of the wound in her calf.
The front door flew open and banged against the hall wall. She snapped the Beretta from the waistband of her skirt. Langstrup rolled over, clutching the hilt of the knife rammed into his neck, his small, hard eyes now wild and full of terror. The way she had wanted it.
The three police officers burst into the living room and aimed their weapons at her. Screaming at her to drop the gun. She recognised one of them as Jan Fabel, who had headed the operation in the Alsterpark. She knew the woman was Karin Vestergaard, the boss and former lover of Jens Jespersen, whom Anke had killed in his hotel room. Anke had a choice, she knew that: take them on or finish Langstrup. She looked at the two men and a woman at the door. Their faces were tight and anxious. She smiled at them. It’s not so bad, she wanted to tell them. Don’t be scared, killing really isn’t so bad.
The adrenalin in her system slowed everything down. She felt, for a moment, outside time. She thought about Liane and Margarethe. She thought again about Uncle Georg. She thought about all the meetings she had had, all the last moments she had shared.
Anke Wollner made her decision. She fired four shots into Langstrup, all of them into his head, before the police opened fire.
8
Outside, afterwards, Fabel, Vestergaard and van Heiden sat together in the back of a police bus with blacked-out windows. It was an oasis of quiet while outside a maelstrom of police, forensics and press swirled around them.
‘Are you okay?’ Fabel asked them both, but his question was aimed more at van Heiden who sat grim-faced, his elbows resting on his knees and his gaze fixed at some spot on the floor of the bus.
‘Why do I get the feeling that we’ve just participated in an assisted suicide?’ asked van Heiden.
‘We did what we had to do,’ said Vestergaard. ‘We would have been next.’
‘I guess that ties up the Valkyrie case,’ said van Heiden to Fabel.
‘Yes, I suppose it does,’ said Fabel. ‘Other than nailing the person who instigated and paid for all of this mayhem. Gina Bronsted.’
‘But…?’ Vestergaard read the doubt in Fabel’s face.
‘Anke Wollner killed Halvorsen in Norway, probably Vuja i c in Copenhagen, Westland, Lensch, Claasens and Sparwald here in Hamburg. I know why and for whom she killed.’ Fabel frowned. ‘But we still don’t know who the original Angel of St Pauli was. It doesn’t make sense that it was Wollner. And, as I know only too well from the house call she made on me, there’s a third Valkyrie out there. Liane Kayser.’
‘Who is clearly leading a normal life and has nothing to do with all this,’ said van Heiden.
‘Maybe so… but she made it very clear to me that she is more than willing to kill to protect that life.’ Fabel shrugged and stood up. ‘Anyway, I have a hospital visit to make.’
‘Anna Wolff?’ asked van Heiden.
‘Anna Wolff,’ said Fabel. ‘I need to talk to her about her future.’
Epilogue
I
It stung. It stung like hell, but Fabel knew that he had to let it go. But o
ne day, he swore, he would get enough on her to put her away for good. He glared at the television monitor in the Murder Commission’s main office. He glared at two faces he knew.
‘Isn’t this an embarrassment for the NeuHansa Group?’ asked Sylvie Achtenhagen. ‘And an indictment of you personally that you employed and trusted a man who turned out to be a criminal? Someone who ordered and paid for the murders of so many people?’
‘The first thing I want to make clear is this,’ said Gina Bronsted, with a smile that suggested she was talking to children. ‘The corporate crime division of the Polizei Hamburg has placed me and all of my business dealings under the very closest scrutiny and there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that I knew anything about Svend Langstrup’s criminal activities. He was obviously running his own covert empire within the NeuHansa Group. It is true that he got away with this for some time, but there was no way…’
Werner switched off the TV with the remote.
‘Don’t eat yourself up over that bitch, Jan,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to let it go. She’ll be caught out sooner or later. I believe the guys at corporate crime are as determined to nail her as you are.’
‘And OLAF,’ said Fabel grimly. ‘And Okokrim in Norway. And the Danish National Police. Gina Bronsted is going to have to tread very carefully from now on.’
‘What about this first-Monday-of-the-month deal? You know, the message in Muliebritas? That’s Monday coming: are we going to stake it out?’
‘No point,’ said Fabel. ‘Three Valkyries: one dead, one back in a mental institution, and the third will do anything other than attract attention to herself.’
‘True…’ Werner chuckled maliciously. ‘Anyway, she comes round to yours if she wants a chat.’
Fabel shot him a look and Werner gathered up some papers from his desk and left the office. Once Werner was gone, Fabel picked up the phone and punched in a number.
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