The Carnival Master jf-4

by Craig Russell

  Maria ignored the question. ‘You said there were seven of you. Where are the others?’

  ‘Three dead. There were two traitors in the group. We met at an isolated hunting lodge in Ukraine. No one knew about it. By the time we worked out it was two of our own and not an attacking force, we were already exposed. Only three of us made it out of the woods, then Belotserkovsky took it in the back.’

  ‘My fault…’ The pain showed on Olga Sarapenko’s face. ‘I was injured and he was helping to get me out.’

  ‘I was supposed to be providing cover,’ said Buslenko. A silence fell between them and Maria could see that they were somewhere and sometime else. She knew what it was like to live and relive an experience like that.

  ‘So why didn’t you re-form a complete unit?’ she asked.

  ‘No time and no point,’ said Buslenko. ‘Time’s on Vitrenko’s side. We have to get to him before he gets to us. Hopefully, Vitrenko will have assumed that we have aborted the mission… that Captain Sarapenko and I are running scared. We couldn’t be sure that if we did rebuild a unit that we wouldn’t have infiltrators again. But we know we can trust each other. There’s only one other person we can rely on…’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You,’ Buslenko said, handing Maria back her handgun.

  6.

  The crowd went wild. Andrea stood before them, her body dark and sleek with fake tan and body oil, her hatred and anger hidden behind a searchlight-white smile that beamed across the expanse of the hall. The music Andrea had chosen thudded hard and harsh in the hall and all the time she thought about the stupid, soft little tart she had once been. This, now, for all to see, was the real Andrea Sandow. Andrea the Amazon. Each pose drew a roar of appreciation from the crowd. She improvised a final optional pose at the end of her routine: Overhead Victory. Her biceps, which were bigger than those of any of the other competitors, bunched high with a rippling topography of vein and sinew. The crowd cheered and many rose to their feet. She stood down to Relaxed Front and bowed low to the audience. She turned sideways with a bounce and moved quickly to the side of the stage where the other competitors waited. Maxine smiled a broad smile and nodded respectfully through her applause. And with that Andrea knew she had won. All the pain, all the anguish and sacrifice had led to this point. What no one in the auditorium knew was that it wasn’t just her competitors she had defeated.

  Maxine hugged her warmly and genuinely as soon as the judges announced their decision. Andrea felt like crying but, of course, the tears wouldn’t come. The other contestants congratulated her, but she could see that only Maxine was genuinely pleased for her. Andrea felt bad, knowing that if things had been the other way around she would not have been so generous.

  ‘We’ll get pissed tonight,’ Maxine said in English. ‘Competition’s over… a week of indulgence before getting back to the grind?’

  ‘The champagne is definitely on me,’ said Andrea and they entered the dressing room. Three people waited for them, one of whom she recognised as Herr Waldheim, a member of the competition’s organising committee.

  ‘This is Herr Dr Gabriel and his nurse, Frau Bosbach.’ Waldheim introduced the other two. ‘They are here on behalf of the bodybuilding association to do a random blood test, if you have no objections.’

  ‘Of course not,’ Andrea said and felt her jaws ache from the effort of keeping her smile in place.

  7.

  At Fabel’s suggestion they left the car parked and he and Scholz walked to St Ursula’s. The church sat in a small square, hemmed in by neighbouring buildings. There was a bar-restaurant at one end of the square and a parochial house jammed against the flank of the church.

  ‘Where was Sabine Jordanski found?’ Fabel asked.

  ‘Over there, behind the church.’

  Fabel and the others followed Scholz round the side of the church. As with the scene of Melissa Schenker’s murder, it was concealed from view. Another hidden death trap.

  ‘Where did she live?’

  ‘Her apartment was around the corner and over on Gereonswall.’ Scholz indicated the street that swept away from them.

  ‘Something doesn’t make sense…’ Fabel looked back in the direction of the city.

  ‘What?’ asked Scholz.

  ‘I’m convinced that the killer lies in wait for his victims. But the church is on the wrong side. She wouldn’t have passed by here.’

  Scholz smiled grimly and shook his head. ‘She was with friends when she came home. They split up here and headed off. Even if she had come this way, the killer couldn’t have grabbed her. She was with witnesses.’

  ‘Then he must have either persuaded or forced her to come up here.’

  ‘Must have.’

  ‘That could mean that this specific church does have a significance. There was no sign of sexual contact?’ Fabel asked although he knew the answer.

  ‘None,’ answered Tansu. ‘No semen, no evidence of sexual assault.’

  The four detectives stood looking at the ghost of a murder scene. The second they’d examined that day. Fabel was beginning to understand the dynamic of this small team: Scholz acted as if he wasn’t the boss, Kris and Tansu called him Benni and never Chef, but the truth was that he steered his team probably more strictly than Fabel did his. Kris was the apprentice: quietly gathering the gems of wisdom from Scholz’s feet. Tansu was strong-willed and intelligent, but still unsure of her feet and unwilling to challenge Scholz. It was clear that he had closed his mind to Tansu’s theory about the rape victim in ’ninety-nine. Fabel, on the other hand, could see her reasoning.

  ‘There’s something you’ve got to see.’ Scholz hunched up his shoulders against the cold and led Fabel towards the vast dark doors of St Ursula’s. Fabel followed him into the church, gazing up at the vaulted ceilings and the stained glass that burned dully against the winter light beyond.

  ‘Very nice.’

  ‘That’s not what I wanted to show you.’ Scholz guided Fabel to a vast reinforced door immediately to the right of the main entrance.

  ‘We’ll stay here,’ said Tansu. ‘It gives me the creeps down there.’

  Fabel and Scholz went down stone steps into the crypt of the church.

  ‘This is open to the public during the day, but it’s monitored constantly by CCTV. And that massive door you saw is shut tight and time-locked at night.’

  Fabel stopped in his tracks. The vaulted ceiling was whitewashed, with gilded details. Apart from that, it was as if the whole space had been lined with gold. But it was what the gold covered that fascinated Fabel.

  ‘The Golden Chamber…’ explained Scholz. ‘St Ursula’s is the second-oldest Romanesque church in Cologne. As you saw, the city has kind of encroached on its space, but there used to be an extensive graveyard outside dating back to Roman times.’

  Fabel stared all around the chamber. The details on the walls were of bones and skulls. Real bones and skulls, pressed into the mortar of the walls and arranged in geometric patterns. Hundreds of them. Thousands. All gilded. The art of death. There were small alcoves pressed into the walls of the vault. Each contained a plaster bust.

  ‘Do you know the legend of St Ursula?’ asked Scholz.

  Fabel shook his head. He was still taking in the detail of the chamber. So many dead. Gilded human remains used as ornament. It was awe-inspiring. And gross.

  ‘Ursula was a British princess who travelled here with eleven thousand virgins. Unfortunately, when they arrived Cologne was besieged by a horde of horny Huns from the East. Ursula and her virgins all died rather than lose their honour, or something like that.’ Scholz laughed. ‘You’d be pushed to find eleven thousand virgins in Cologne these days. Anyway, the story started out that there were eleven virgins with St Ursula, but you know what we’re like here in Cologne… we started off by bumping it up it up to eleven hundred, then eleven thousand. Anyway, there’s every reason to believe that there was some kind of martyrdom involving virgins around the fifth century. Story goe
s that they were buried in the graveyard here. When the graveyard was dug up, the Golden Chamber was built to house and display the remains. The truth is more likely to be that these bones date from across a couple of centuries. There are also dozens of ossuaries, and these plaster busts contain the remains of those wealthy enough to have a special place put aside for them.

  ‘It’s morbid…’ said Fabel.

  ‘It’s Catholicism.’ Scholz smiled. ‘We’re very big on memento mori. Have fun when you’re alive but remember that death and eternity is waiting for you. Like I said, it’s a concept we’ve refined and concentrated into Karneval.’

  ‘Why did you want me to see this?’ asked Fabel. ‘Do you think there’s some significance? The virgin legend and the Golden Chamber? According to Tansu, the rape victim seven years ago was attacked at the back of this church. And she was a virgin.’

  ‘I suppose it’s possible there’s a connection between that case and the killings. But I thought you’d want to see this. Both murders were in close proximity to St Ursula’s. Maybe all this,’ Scholz encompassed the Golden Chamber with a sweep of his hand, ‘has some special significance for the killer. Maybe he assumed that Melissa Schenker was a virgin. Certainly her lifestyle seemed to be pretty celibate. But Sabine Jordanski strikes me as someone who would have given up that status pretty enthusiastically some time ago.’

  Fabel nodded. ‘But there must be something that brought these girls to his attention. Not just the fact that they had his particular taste in body shape. He’s seen them before the night he killed them. Somehow and somewhere there is a commonality.’

  Fabel stared at one of the ossuary wall panels. It stared back at him from the dark sockets of a gilded skull. He turned from its hollow gaze and made his way to the steps out of the Golden Chamber. ‘When we get back to your office, I’d like to go over the files again. I know we’re missing it.’

  8.

  ‘What we are talking about is committing murder.’ Buslenko leaned on the table and held Maria in a searchlight gaze. She hated his eyes. Bright and hard like diamond-cut emeralds. So like Vitrenko’s eyes. ‘Let’s be clear on that. We’re here to break the very law that it is your duty to uphold. You are a Murder Commission detective, Maria… you should know more than anyone that there is nothing that legally justifies the homicide of Vasyl Vitrenko.’

  ‘It’s morally justifiable…’ she said.

  ‘That’s not the issue. If we’re caught, you’ll go to prison. I just want to make that clear. If you want to walk away from this, then you can do so now. But go back to Hamburg… I don’t want you getting in our way here.’

  ‘I know the stakes,’ said Maria. ‘I’ll do anything to nail that bastard. He finished me as a police officer so I don’t see why I should act like one when it comes to bringing him down.’

  ‘Okay…’ Buslenko rolled out a street map of Cologne. It was no ordinary driver’s city guide and Maria guessed it was the kind of map that every intelligence agency in the world would have of cities in every other country. There were a number of small red squares glued to the map. ‘These are the centres – or at least the ones we know about – from which the Vitrenko outfit operates. We have good intelligence on these, but we know these aren’t the key locations. We know nothing about those. And we can be pretty sure that Vitrenko has changed his appearance significantly. He could be right under our noses and we wouldn’t know it. But we do have intelligence on this piece of shit…’ Buslenko laid a photograph on the table. ‘This is Valeri Molokov, the Russian. In fact, in many ways Molokov is a Russian version of Vitrenko. The main difference is that Molokov is not quite as smart, not quite as deadly. And where Vitrenko sees himself as something other, something better, than a common criminal and still thinks he’s running a military operation, Molokov, despite having a police Spetsnaz background, is quite comfortable with his role as a common or garden mafia boss.’

  ‘Molokov was a police officer?’ asked Maria.

  ‘Again, not in the way you think of it. Molokov served with OMON, the Russian Special Purpose Police Squad, but was kicked out, ostensibly for corruption. With so many special-forces police on the take in Moscow, that takes some doing. Molokov did three years in Matrosskaya Tishina prison in Moscow for offences linked to people smuggling. Another difference from Vitrenko, who’s never been arrested, far less faced trial and imprisonment. The truth is that Molokov built his reputation as a contract killer. He’s now officially wanted for a whole range of crimes. Molokov hates Vitrenko but can’t do anything about the situation. He and Vitrenko were on a collision course and Molokov knew he’d come out worst. So Vitrenko was able to force Molokov into partnership with him, with Molokov very much the junior partner.’

  ‘Why hasn’t Molokov been extradited from Germany?’ asked Maria.

  ‘Molokov and Vitrenko are both living here under assumed names. The difference between them is that Vitrenko is better at it – living in someone else’s skin, as it were. But the German police still don’t know what identity Molokov’s using or where to find him. And that’s where we’re ahead of the game.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘We have a location for him. More by accident than by design. Our main interest in Molokov is that he’s the highest-ranking member of the Vitrenko organisation who we can observe. Unlike you chasing around after small fry like Kushnier, Molokov could really give us a fix on Vitrenko.’

  ‘It sounds like there’s no love lost between them.’

  ‘There isn’t, particularly on Molokov’s side. Vitrenko has the power to keep him in check, but Molokov is a deadly son of a bitch. But there is a specific stress-point in the Vitrenko-Molokov marriage. Your Federal Crime Bureau here in Germany has a source of information within the organisation. Our intelligence suggests that Vitrenko believes the leak is from Molokov’s side. I took part in a failed operation to nail Vitrenko back on Ukrainian soil. One of Molokov’s top men, a thug called Kotkin, ended up dead, as did a member of our team who was supposedly on the Vitrenko payroll.’

  Olga Sarapenko cut in. ‘What we need to know is if you are with us in this. Will you help us nail Vitrenko?’

  Maria sipped her water. She noticed her hand trembling as she did so. Her wrists still ached from the rope they’d been bound with.

  ‘What if we were to do this legally? Locate him and get the BKA to arrest him?’

  ‘You know that’s not an option, Maria,’ said Buslenko. ‘That would give him a chance to slip through our fingers. You for one should know how easy that is. Anyway, that is not our objective. We are here to put an end to Vitrenko. Literally.’

  Maria looked at the Ukrainian. He held her gaze, leaning forward in his chair, his elbows resting on his knees. This man claimed to be a policeman, knew that she was a police officer, yet was asking her to cooperate in a murder. There again, that had been the conclusion she had envisaged for herself. But how did she know that he was genuine? He could be anybody. He could be one of Vitrenko’s killers. But if that were the case, wouldn’t she be dead by now?.

  ‘Like I told you,’ she said. ‘I want to be there when Vitrenko is brought down. I’m in.’

  9.

  Ansgar, so unused to the ballet of courtship, fumbled clumsily for the right words. Ekatherina, like a city guide helping out a tourist who had found himself on the wrong side of town, had had to help him with his halting and mumbled proposal that she should come with him to the Karneval procession in a few weeks’ time. Ekatherina made it easier for him by suggesting that they go out for an evening first; to a Ukrainian restaurant she knew.

  Ansgar was no fool. He was, after all, at least fifteen years older than her and by no description a catch. And he knew that marriage to a German national would assure her permanent residency in the Federal Republic. However, he also believed that Ekatherina really did like him. But did she really know about his true nature? His secret desires?

  The Rhine divides Cologne in more than the geographical sense. Since the very fir
st settlements the river had represented first an ethnic and then a social and cultural border. The inhabitants of the left bank, of which Ansgar was one, had always thought of their side of the river as the true Cologne, as opposed to ‘over there’. The Ukrainian restaurant that Ekatherina had suggested was ‘over there’, in the Vingst area of the city. The food was authentically Ukrainian. Ansgar also guessed that a large proportion of the clientele, and probably the management, was authentically Ukrainian mafia. He noticed several huddles of large men in black Armani, the regulation uniform of Eastern European gangsterdom.

  The menu was in both Cyrillic and German but Ansgar allowed himself to be led in his choice by Ekatherina. As far as Ansgar could see, the Ukrainians had as many styles of Borsch as Eskimos had words for snow. Added to this was pechyva, pampushky, halushky, varenyky, bitky meatballs and a whole range of desserts. Ekatherina recommended that they should start with goose-breast zakuska followed by a starter portion of hetman borsch, then pork ribs stewed in beet kvas with halushky dumplings.

  ‘You can’t get more Ukrainian than that,’ she enthused and Ansgar could see that she was genuinely proud to introduce him to her culture and cuisine. When the waiter came over to take their drinks order, Ekatherina engaged in a lively exchange in Ukrainian with him. The waiter smiled and nodded.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind,’ she said. ‘This is something you’ve got to try…’

  The waiter returned with a chilled champagne-style bottle. He popped the cork and Ekatherina again took the lead and tasted it, nodding enthusiastically. After the waiter had filled his glass, Ansgar took a sip. His mouth filled with a fragrant effervescence.

  ‘This is beautiful,’ he said, and meant it. ‘Really beautiful.’

  ‘It’s Krimart,’ she said, gratified. ‘It’s from the Artyomovsk winery in the Donetsk region. It was founded by a German, you know. A Prussian. It was what Stalin and all the communist bosses liked to drink.’