The Ghosts of Altona

by Craig Russell

  ‘There’s something I need you to see.’

  *

  ‘Shit,’ said Anna. ‘That’s the picture, all right.’ She and Fabel were alone, back out in the main gallery area, at the heart of the maze of partition walls. The gallery lights were now also on and a pool of light illuminated the huge canvas. ‘My mind was on other things, it has to be said, but I remember it all right.’

  ‘I certainly remember it,’ said Fabel. ‘I thought it was the last thing I was going to see. But according to Anja Koetzing, it was impossible for Schalthoff to have a print of it.’

  ‘You mean Vampira?’ Anna snorted. ‘Whether she believes it or not, the print was there on Schalthoff’s wall.’

  ‘I don’t think she likes you either, by the way,’ said Fabel.

  ‘Well she likes you. I’d watch yourself there. She’ll have her fangs into you as soon as the sun goes down.’ Anna focused again on the painting. ‘Why did he sign this painting Charon?’

  ‘It’s not a signature, it’s the subject: the central figure in the painting is meant to be Charon, the boatman who conveyed the dead across the river Styx to Hades. As you can imagine, when I first saw it I thought there was a message in there for me. According to Frau Koetzing, Traxinger liked to experiment with different themes and styles and almost brand them differently.’

  He leaned closer and examined the painting. The sight of it still caused a churning in his gut, but he knew he had to get beyond that, to apply professional focus. He could see now that the draped figure was actually dressed in modern clothing: a hoodie with the hood pulled up to put all but the lower half of the face in shadow, a long leather coat over the top and reaching down to the ground. It was cleverly done, creating the impression from a distance of an almost monk-like cowl and habit. He again saw the fire behind the figure, represented in diamond facets of red, amber and yellow. But it was clearer now, seen close up and in full size.

  ‘It’s a riot . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The fire. The background. It’s a riot. That’s supposed to be Hamburg, you can see the spires of the Michel and the Nikolai. Look. And if you look into the shapes behind the figure you can see barricades amongst the flames. The hooded figure isn’t Charon, he’s a rioter. And the river isn’t the Styx, it’s the Elbe.’ Fabel shook his head in admiration.

  ‘You okay?’ asked Anna. ‘It must be a shock to see it again.’

  Fabel gave a small laugh. ‘More a surprise than a shock. It was just so bizarre to see it here.’ He examined the figure more closely. The eyes shone out from the shadow cast over the face by the cowl of the hood. Green eyes.

  He turned away from the painting. ‘We need to find out what connection, if any, there is between Detlev Traxinger and Jost Schalthoff.’

  ‘I’ll get onto it, Chef. Do you want me to bring Henk in?’

  ‘No, leave him to tie up the loose ends on the old people’s home case.’

  Walking away from the Charon painting, Fabel saw through the vast windows of the former machine hall the sun set over the Elbe. The colours in the sky were not unlike those in Detlev Traxinger’s habitual palette. It had been a good place for an artist’s studio.

  ‘Thom and Dirk are still here, in the studio, why don’t you update them on what we’ve got so far,’ Fabel told Anna. ‘In the meantime, I’ve some other paintings to look at.’

  Anna grinned and nodded to the sunset beyond the glazed wall. ‘Sun’s going down. If you’re going back in there with her, you should maybe get your hands on some garlic . . .’

  34

  Edgar Allan Poe sat across the writing desk from him. They were in a dark room that smelled of earth and damp. Behind Poe was a wall made up not from bricks, but mossy fragments of stone, inscribed with Hebrew. Werner had no idea how he had got there and for some reason didn’t feel the need to ask how the great man had come back to life. It surprised him, but only for a moment, when he noticed that Poe was a handsome man. The darkest hair above a broad, wide, pale brow; penetrating, crystal eyes. Werner, the Poe enthusiast, of course had known that before: that some of the later daguerreotypes of the author had been taken during his darkest period and were far from flattering, showing a sunken-eyed, hollow-cheeked wraith who fitted better with the type of fiction he had written. And, of course, there had been a malicious obituary and post-mortem biography written by Poe’s executor, who actually envied the dead man’s genius and painted him as a drunkard and wastrel.

  ‘Where am I, Mr Poe?’ Werner asked in English.

  ‘My name is Reynolds,’ said Poe.

  Werner shook his head. ‘No it’s not, sir. Reynolds was the name you were using on the night you died.’

  ‘My name is Reynolds.’ Poe coughed, twice, but his eyes remained unblinking. ‘I do believe that I may have the cholera spasms. I was travelling through Philadelphia and there was an outbreak . . .’

  ‘Please, Mr Poe . . . please tell me where I am.’ Werner again looked past Poe at the wall of gravestone fragments. ‘Are we under the cemetery in Altona?’

  ‘My name is Reynolds. This place knows no geography; it is a place of the inner, not outer, universe. You want to write tales such as mine,’ said Poe. ‘This is the place whence those tales come.’ He gave another unblinking cough and a dribble of blood, so dark as almost to be black, found its way out of the corner of his mouth and down his chin.

  ‘It feels like we are under the ground. Am I dead?’ asked Werner.

  ‘Not yet,’ said Poe. ‘Death and the mind construct great mansions. There are rooms in the mind we occupy before and during death. This is one such room. This is the room you must look into – your own words I believe – before you can write great dark fiction. But do not worry, you will be dead. Soon. And your name hereafter will be Edgar just as mine is Reynolds. There are some fictions that endure through death.’

  Werner wanted to protest, to ask more, but Poe began coughing again. Another shiny, black-red dribble came from the lips, but this time it defied gravity and began to writhe, to probe the air with its tip, and Werner realized it was a blood-slicked worm.

  Werner tried to scream, but suddenly felt his mouth sealed shut.

  *

  Werner Hensler left the drug-induced dream behind and regained consciousness. There was no Poe, no gravestone wall; there was nothing he could see in the darkness.

  Werner knew that he was now fully conscious but panicked at the thought that he had lost his sight: everything around him was the blackest dark; so completely lightless that there was no difference between having his eyes open or closed. He could see nothing but, when he thought it through, knew somehow he wasn’t blind, just as the total, stifling silence did not mean he was deaf.

  He was lying on his back. He tried to move but someone had tied him up so tightly as to rob him of even the smallest movement. His wrists had been bound with tape in front of him and his arms fastened tight to his body by rope. At least he guessed that it was rope from the way it dug into him when he struggled against it. His legs too had been pinioned by bonds that bit into his skin at the ankles, calves, knees and thighs.

  He was naked: he could feel the varnished hardness against his skin of the wooden table or bench they had placed him on, and every time he tried to move a centimetre, his abrasively tight bonds would bite directly into his flesh. Something chill ran through him at the idea of his abductor having stripped him as he had lain exposed, senseless, naked and vulnerable.

  He tried to call out but was stifled by the tape placed over his mouth. A powerful claustrophobia began to seize him: a primal instinct reacting against being robbed so totally of movement. It took a conscious effort not to lose himself to a blind panic and he concentrated on breathing through his nose slow and easy, trying not to think about his mouth being sealed. Think, he told himself, reason it out. He peered into the darkness. He thought he could sense a depth to it, imagined he perceived a distant corner, perhaps where walls and ceiling met. He was being kept in a da
rkened room. Lightproof and perhaps even soundproof. The air in his nose felt vaguely damp. The purpose of his confinement was a mystery; perhaps he had been kidnapped for money and, in another room, his abductors were negotiating a ransom with his publishers. A darker thought: perhaps his abduction had nothing to do with who he was, but was the random act of some madman. Maybe the door would swing open any moment, flooding the chamber with light and torment as his insane captor carried in his instruments of torture.

  Again he pushed back down the panic that had once more begun to rise. It was insane. It was all insane. Why was this happening to him? What had he ever done to deserve—

  Another black, cold thought took sudden shape in the dark. No, it couldn’t be that. After all this time, it couldn’t be that.

  But the thought stayed with him. The face he thought he had seen in the seconds before he lost consciousness came back into his recall. It couldn’t be that. How could it possibly be to do with what happened all those years ago?

  The panic bloomed in his chest. Detlev had been murdered. Monika’s body had been found and Detlev had been killed. Now it was Werner’s turn. He began to whimper behind his gag.

  Calm down, he told himself. Think this through. Whatever the reason, whoever was responsible, he had to get out. He had to free himself first from these bonds, as quietly but as quickly as he could – if he could – and then he would come up with a way to deal with whoever and whatever lay beyond his cell.

  He had written about things like this. The dark chamber, the bound man reduced to reaching out into his darkened environment with his senses. And, of course, he had read about them too. He tried to push the thought out of his mind that for him, of all the Gothic fiction he had read, Edgar Allan Poe had been supreme. And of all the Poe he had read, that one story had been supreme. Werner had read The Pit and the Pendulum both in German and the original English countless times since his thirteenth year and first encounter with the tale. Oh God no. Not that.

  The only movement he could manage was in his hands. He balled them into fists and twisted one up towards his head, the other towards his feet, as if there was a pivot through his wrists, then reversed the action: rocking motions that caused the edge of the tape to bite into his skin. The ropes that bound his arms severely restricted the movement of his hands but slowly, painfully, he managed to cause the tape to crinkle and fold back on his wrists, the arc of each rocking increasing slightly each time. The tape still bound his wrists together, but now he could move his fingers to where the rope fastened his upper arms. He couldn’t believe his luck when he felt the knot beneath his trembling fingertips. His captor had not been as thorough as he thought.

  Somehow he found the patience to work gradually and methodically. His fingers alone had to work joint-achingly slowly, probing, hooking and pulling at the knot of what felt like thick nylon cord that bound him. Twice he stopped and lay perfectly still: once because of something like a noise in a room beyond, the second time because he thought he saw a dim light fleet across the ceiling above him. Were they real sensations or was it his mind seeing and hearing what wasn’t there?

  Think. For God’s sake think it through. Reason.

  The room was lightproof and soundproof, he decided. Anything he thought he saw or heard was his mind desperate to fill in sensory gaps. The only thing he was certain of was the damp odour in the air. Perhaps he was being kept in a cellar like the one he had dreamt he had shared with Edgar Allan Poe.

  Time was another element that had been locked out of his confinement and he had no idea how long he’d been working at the knot, but he was aware that he now felt hot and was sweating, and his breathing hissed in his nostrils, which added to his feelings of claustrophobia. The knuckles and bones of his fingers ached with the effort and he felt as if his hands were swelling. And still the knot didn’t seem to be loosening.

  He decided to turn his attention to the gag.

  He wriggled and shrugged, working his shoulders and upper arms in an attempt to ease the ropes up his body, even a little. As he did so he craned his neck forward, bringing his chin towards his chest and trying to slide his bound hands upwards to his face. Whoever had tied him up had done so in a way that restricted all movement, in every direction. He rested, then recommenced his wriggling shrugs, grunting behind his tape gag.

  The rope nudged upward. Not much, but enough to allow him more movement. He strained forward but still could not reach the gag. More wriggling, more muffled grunting and sweating. The skin on his upper arms felt rubbed raw by the effort, but that in itself suggested movement in the rope.

  Another rest. This time, before starting, he let out as much of his breath as he could, forcing it through his nostrils and deflating his chest, making its circumference smaller. He wriggled again and the rope slipped up his body, further this time. Straining his head forward and his hands up, his aching fingers found the edge of the gag. He wanted to rip it off, but his restricted movements meant he could only ease it free.

  The tape was off his mouth.

  He let out a moan of relief and the still muffled sound of it surprised him. There was no depth to it, no resonance, as if dampened; he had been right, the room must be soundproof. He had thought about calling out for help, but had dismissed the idea: it would only draw the attention of his captor. But if this room was soundproof, he could be less careful about making noise as he struggled to free himself.

  Another cold, obsidian-black thought coalesced in the darkness. He was clearly dealing with a madman who had God knew what in store for him. What if his tormentor was sitting here, malevolent and silent in the impenetrable dark of this soundproof room? He lay still for a moment, straining through the black silence for any sounds. Nothing.

  Keep it together, he told himself, for God’s sake keep it together. There’s no one here. Just get on with it and get out.

  He turned his attention back to the knot, now moved higher up his body. He ignored the pain and went back to probing it with his aching fingers. Managing to work a finger into the cord, he felt the knot loosen. He now had it between finger and thumb and pulled frantically, hoping he was loosening, not tightening his restraint. It gave way.

  He was lathered in sweat. It slicked his entire body, seeped stingingly into his eyes and pooled stickily on the polished wood beneath his buttocks, shoulders and back. The room had become stiflingly hot and the air stale, but he worked on. The freedom afforded by the loosening of the first cord allowed him work on the second. This time the knot wasn’t accessible and he focused on easing the cord up over his sweat-sleeked chest and arms, pushing with his fingers and wriggling so he could shrug his shoulders free.

  It took him a long time to loosen then untie the second cord. He still could not reach down to untie his legs, but as soon as his upper body was free, that wouldn’t be a problem. Similarly, he would be able to work with his teeth on the tape that still bound his wrists together.

  After that, he would be able to move, to explore his cell and find where the door was. He went back to work, thinking about nothing beyond getting loose from his bonds. It took an age of gnawing at it with his teeth before he started a tear in the tape on his wrists. It was exhausting work and once he managed to get the tape off, he rested for a moment, but only a moment, before sitting up to untie the cords that bound his legs.

  He hit his head. Hard. So hard that he slumped back, dazed. He had tried to sit up and his head had hit something solid and immovable, right above him. Blood mingled with the sweat that trickled into his eyes.

  His consciousness had not even fully returned, his head had not fully cleared, when he worked out what it was he had hit his head on. He began to shake uncontrollably, and his fingers quivered in the lightless air as he reached them up. They found the smooth, hard surface above him. He reached out to the sides, first right, then left. A smooth, hard surface on every side.

  The thought exploded in his head, surged and seared through every fibre of his being. He wasn’t in a soun
dproof room after all.

  He was in a coffin.

  This wasn’t Poe’s The Pit and the Pendulum, this was his Premature Burial.

  Werner Hensler thrashed wildly, senselessly, hysterically. He was beyond logical thought and had become a creature of fear and instinct. His terror was total, primal, and he began screaming: inhuman, high-pitched, incessantly. It didn’t even occur to him that no one would hear him.

  That the sounds of his screams would be suffocated to silence by the dense, cold darkness of the earth around him.

  35

  There was one officer left guarding the scene at Traxinger’s studio, which would be kept under lock-down until forensics had completely finished their detailed processing of the whole building. Unlike the way it was portrayed in glossy American TV series, forensic recording of a scene was a boring, dull and tedious process, and one that took a lot of time. Until it was completed Fabel, and anyone else on site, had to wear latex gloves and overshoes. He had told Anja Koetzing that she didn’t need to stay and that the studio would be secured once he left. Armed with the keys and the alarm code for the studio and gallery, Fabel worked his way through the canvases in the storeroom, pulling each vertical tray out, examining the painting it held, then sliding it back.

  He wasn’t entirely sure why he was devoting so much time to the exercise, but suspected it was because the deeper into the storeroom he went, the deeper he travelled into Traxinger’s mind. It was an instinct to be followed, and Fabel had become much more a creature of instinct since the shooting.

  Some of the paintings were bizarre: horrific dungeon images of ravens pecking the eyes from chain-bound prisoners, or grotesque demons twisting and reaching out from their lairs. Others were ornate, almost pre-Raphaelite depictions of women, almost all either raven- or red-headed and pale-skinned.