The Valkyrie Song

by Craig Russell

  Now he stood at the top of one of the biggest building projects in Hamburg outside the HafenCity and contemplated the past he was putting behind him.

  ‘Hello, Peter.’

  He turned to see her there. The dark woollen overcoat and the beret she wore emphasised the red in her hair and the green in her eyes.

  ‘Hello, Emily.’ He smiled and leaned forward to kiss her but she put her gloved fingertips to his mouth.

  ‘Have you brought it?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, I’ve brought it. And I changed it just as you asked. It’s so like you to worry about other people. I’ve made no mention that I’m involved with anybody. I made the other changes you suggested too. I still think it would have been better if I told her face to face. A letter … I just don’t know …’

  ‘May I see?’

  He handed her the letter and she read through it. As Emily had suggested, Claasens told his wife that he could not go on with the way things were, that work had added to the stress, that he was so sorry for the hurt he knew his actions would cause her and the children.

  ‘Perfect,’ said Emily, folding the letter with her gloved fingers. She leaned against the metal railing that had temporarily been put up for safety reasons while the top floor of the building was completed. Claasens grabbed her elbow and pulled her back.

  ‘You have to be careful, Emily,’ he said paternally.

  ‘This really is a beautiful building,’ she said, looking down ten floors into the central atrium.

  ‘It’s meant to be a modern interpretation of an old Hamburg Kontorhaus – you know, the red-brick jobs with a huge atrium or courtyard in the middle.’

  ‘Such a strange name,’ she said in her accented German. ‘What does it mean – Kontorhaus?’

  ‘It goes back to the days of the Hanseatic League. There would be a Kontorhaus in almost every Hanseatic city in Europe: Hamburg, Bremen, Rostock, Danzig, St Petersburg. There was even a Kontor in London. Bremen and Hamburg are the only cities that are still officially Hanseatic cities.’

  ‘And this building is meant to be like those old Hanseatic Kontor buildings?’ Emily leaned and looked over the railing again.

  ‘Yes,’ said Claasens, distracted. ‘Emily, stand back from the railing. This safety railing is just temporary …’ He smiled at her, pushing back a strand of red hair and tucking it behind her ear. ‘And you know you can be a little accident-prone. We’re not even supposed to be here.’

  ‘How high are we?’ she asked, leaning further over the railing. Claasens eased her back gently.

  ‘I don’t know – four hundred metres, I’d say.’

  ‘That’s a lot of forensic distance,’ she said absently.

  ‘What did you say, Emily?’

  She stood up and turned to him. ‘I said it’s a lot of forensic distance. It was one of the first things I learned: to place as much forensic distance between myself and the point and moment of death.’

  Claasens frowned in confusion. He didn’t understand what Emily was saying. And he couldn’t understand why her German grammar and accent were now perfect. Her gloved hand sliced up like a blade and smashed into the side of his neck, just below his jawline and behind his ear. The blow somehow made the world dimmer and he felt his legs weaken beneath him. Claasens could not work out what was happening but moved to grab her. She dodged him, moving with a speed and precision he thought her incapable of. The edge of her hand hit him again, on exactly the same spot, and this time his legs folded. Emily stepped to one side and expertly used Claasens’s own momentum to propel him over the safety railing.

  He didn’t even scream on the way down.

  She leaned over the railing and looked into the vast well of the atrium. Claasens lay broken on the flagstones nine storeys below, a crimson halo around his head. It looked to Emily as if he had landed on his handsome face.

  Emily took the letter he had handed her – the letter she had guided him to write – and threw it over the edge, allowing it to flutter down onto the atrium floor.

  Chapter Four

  1.

  He had only had a brief telephone conversation with her, but Fabel could tell that Sarah Westland’s grief had started to bite. She had been very businesslike and composed, but there had been an edginess, like a tight cord, pulled through her voice.

  Grief, however, had not seemed to diminish her need for luxury. Fabel had arranged to meet her in her hotel: one of Hamburg’s most exclusive, with a view out over the Inner Alster. Sarah Westland had a suite on the top floor and when he knocked on the door, he was surprised it was Martina Schilmann who answered.

  ‘Hello, handsome,’ she said, with a wicked smile. She stepped out into the hotel corridor and drew the door closed behind her. ‘You can’t keep away, can you?’

  ‘You’re minding Sarah Westland?’

  ‘Yes. There’s always the risk of the press pestering her.’

  ‘Yes, but …’

  ‘But we screwed up with her husband. Yes, I know. But it was she who arranged for us to provide security for his German tour. I got in touch with her and told her how sorry I was. She was great about it. She told me that the Polizei Hamburg had explained that Westland had deliberately given us the slip and she seems to have accepted that there was nothing we could do. Thanks for that. Obviously I’m providing her security for free. I also told her that we wouldn’t be submitting a bill for her husband’s cover. To be honest, it’s a bit of damage limitation.’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘She’s tough. But it has got to her, obviously. I don’t think she and Westland were soulmates or anything like that, and I get the impression she has no illusions about his fidelity, but they obviously had some kind of closeness, in their own way. Maybe that’s what having kids together does.’

  ‘Thanks, Martina. If you don’t mind I’d like to talk to her alone.’

  ‘Not a problem. I’ll tell her you’re here.’

  It was more like a grand Venetian apartment than a Hamburg hotel room and Fabel’s first impression was of Vivaldi colliding with Bang and Olufsen: a mix of lavish baroque decoration and grand, luxurious furniture with hi-tech electronics. It was the international vernacular of five-star luxury. There was something about it that Fabel found appealing and repellent at the same time: a gut reaction against ostentation. A Northern European Lutheran gut reaction.

  Jake Westland’s widow was a woman of careworn beauty: Fabel could see that at one time she must have been astounding, but time had frayed the edges of her looks and he guessed her recent bereavement had unravelled them a little more. She was sitting on the sofa under the huge windows that looked out across the water of the Inner Alster to Ballindamm on the far side. Sarah Westland was dressed very expensively but with what Fabel perceived as a vague lack of style. When she spoke to acknowledge his greeting he detected some kind of British regional accent, but he couldn’t work out quite where from. English was the only language in Europe that had ‘social’ accents as well as regional ones and, at one time, Fabel had had a knack of pinning down an Englishman’s origin and social class from his accent. But he had been away from the country and the culture for so long that he had lost much of his skill. Sarah Westland, however, seemed confused when Fabel introduced himself.

  ‘You’re English?’ she asked, frowning.

  ‘No, I’m German. But half-Scottish. I was brought up bilingual and spent a lot of time in Britain when I was a kid. I really am so sorry for your loss, Mrs Westland.’

  ‘Are you?’ The question seemed genuine. ‘I mean, in your line of work I would imagine that you are used to death. And to talking to the people left behind.’

  ‘You never get used to it,’ said Fabel. ‘And I am genuinely sorry.’

  ‘When can I take Jake – I mean his body – home?’

  ‘We’ve arranged the release papers. Sorry it took so long. I’m afraid we can be a little bureaucratic. I take it you’ve arranged carriage?’

  ‘Day after tomorrow. From H
amburg Airport.’

  ‘Mrs Westland, can I ask you a few questions about your husband?’

  ‘I imagined you would want to.’ She eased back in her chair, as if settling down for a longer conversation than she had anticipated. ‘If it helps find who killed Jake, then of course I want to help.’

  ‘Has there been any trouble with persistent fans, stalkers – that kind of thing?’

  ‘Just the usual. Nothing sinister. A few oddballs, but that’s it. If you’re asking if some mad stalker did this to Jake, then I’d have to say it’s not anyone we know about. Presumably it was a German who killed him. There’s nobody I know of from here who’s been pestering Jake or anything.’

  ‘No other disputes or grudges that you know of?’

  ‘Nothing that would lead someone to do that to Jake.’ Sarah Westland paused. Her eyes glazed a little.

  ‘You spoke to him on the phone the night of the concert. Did he say anything unusual? Anything that had happened or anyone he had met that caused him concern?’

  ‘No – we just talked about the concert. The kids. A few of the things we had to get organised after he got back.’ Sarah Westland’s answer was straightforward, but there was a hint of something in her expression. Fabel decided to come back to the call later.

  ‘What do you know about the charity Mr Westland was supporting?’ The Sabine Charity?’

  ‘Jake was involved in a lot of charities, Mr Fabel. I helped him with the management of his donations, et cetera. They covered a wide range of problems, but there were three that were especially close to his heart: a charity in the UK for the victims of sexual assault, one that provided counselling to the children of raped women in Bosnia. And, of course, he worked very closely with the Sabine organisers here in Hamburg.’

  ‘Petra Meissner?’ asked Fabel.

  Sarah Westland looked at him with a weary expression. ‘Yes, Petra Meissner. They worked together very closely. So closely that the press back home started to speculate about the relationship, which, I guess, is why you threw her name in. I am not naive, Mr Fabel – I am only too aware that there were other women, that Jake had affairs. But they were …’ she sought the right word ‘… insignificant. For all of his reputation as a ladies’ man, Jake never really understood women. He never really understood me. That meant that his relationships with women were pretty uncomplicated. He categorised women and Petra Meissner fell into the business-only category. Jake would never muck about with someone who was involved in something so important to him. And it was important: he was here for the Sabine Charity and nothing else – his whole German tour was organised to fund that one event in Hamburg.’

  ‘Why was that? I mean, why was it so important to Mr Westland?’

  ‘Do you have laws here about adopted children having the right to know their biological origin?’

  ‘Yes.’ Fabel frowned, confused by the sudden change of tack. ‘Yes, we do. Adopted children have that right in law.’

  ‘In Britain it’s different. You only get that right when you reach adulthood: when you’re sixteen. Did you know that Jake was adopted?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘He had a very close relationship with his adoptive parents, particularly with his mother. Jake felt that it would somehow be an insult to them to go looking for his biological parents, so he didn’t. Not until they were dead. His mother died three years ago and Jake suddenly devoted three months of his life to finding his biological mother. But when he did, he was told that she didn’t want to see him. She was a woman in her seventies, living in Manchester. Welsh background.’ Sarah Westland gave a small laugh. ‘Jake was amazed to find out that he was half-Welsh. He had always considered himself a hundred per cent English. Anyway, despite her making it clear she wanted nothing to do with him, Jake persisted. She wouldn’t speak to him on the telephone and she never replied to any of his letters. Jake told me that he understood: that he knew in the early nineteen-fifties illegitimacy carried a great stigma. But he was desperate to meet her, so he just walked up to her house and knocked on the door.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘She spat on him. This middle-class, smartly dressed seventy-year-old widow spat on him. Then she slammed the door in his face. I remember he told me how he stood there, in this meticulously neat suburban front garden with spit on his face. It really upset him. He hired a private investigator. When the detective got back to him, Jake was devastated. You see, he had built up this little scenario in his head: that he had been conceived through an act of forbidden love in a cruel and unforgiving time. He was right about the time being cruel and unforgiving. It turned out that he had been conceived by an act of rape. His biological mother had been attacked in a park by a stranger. She had been a teenager at the time. The police never got the man and, let’s face it, at that time the rape victim was as much a suspect as the rapist. And because abortion was not an option back then, she had had to go through with the pregnancy and give Jake up as soon as he was born.’

  ‘He never got to speak to his biological mother?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘And that’s why he was so supportive of anti-rape charities?’

  ‘Jake never got over it. To start with, the idea that he had been totally and irreconcilably rejected by his mother burned him up. Then, the more he thought about it, the more he became obsessed with the idea that at least half of his DNA was that of some pervert rapist. He realised that she had spat on him because she hadn’t seen her son standing there, but the son of the pervert who raped her. Jake started to identify with all of these unwanted kids in Bosnia who were the products of rape. And with rape victims. Jake seemed to feel connected to them. I always felt he identified each victim with his biological mother.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘It was something the press never managed to get hold of. Not that there was as much press interest as there used to be.’

  They were interrupted by a knock on the door. Martina Schilmann opened the door from outside and admitted a uniformed waitress who placed a tray with a coffee pot and cups on the low table.

  ‘What about your husband’s investments?’ asked Fabel when the waitress had left. He poured a cup of coffee for Sarah Westland and one for himself. ‘He seemed to do well out of them and he had some here, I believe.’

  ‘Yes, he had quite a few. Particularly here in Hamburg. Jake was funny that way, he could see things in people or places that others couldn’t. I guess that’s why his investments were all so successful.’

  ‘So why particularly Hamburg?’

  Sarah Westland gave a half-laugh. ‘Being in the music business, Hamburg was kind of like Mecca to Jake. The Beatles and all that. But I remember he’d been over here on business. A sort of reconnaissance trip, I suppose. He said that Hamburg was the place to put your money. He said that Hamburgers – do you call them “Hamburgers”? – he said that you were all natural entrepreneurs and business people. He kept going on about the something league …’

  ‘The Hanseatic League?’

  ‘Yeah – he said that you still had all that trading nous in you. It was all about the Far East, he said. China and India. He said that Hamburg was going to be the big European trading partner with the East. Is it true what he said about Hamburg people?’

  ‘Pretty much.’ Fabel smiled. ‘There’s a joke that the average German businessman would sell his mother, but a Hamburg politician would throw in free delivery.’

  ‘Mmm …’ Sarah Westland did not seem to get the joke. There again, it wasn’t really a time for humour.

  ‘Would it be possible for you to get details of your husband’s business dealings?’ asked Fabel. ‘Could you send them over to me at the Police Presidium? Or I can arrange to have them picked up.’

  ‘I can get someone to do that. But a lot of the information will have to be sent from England. It will probably take a day or two.’

  ‘Thank you for your time, Mrs Westland.’ Fabel stood up. She walked him to the door and shook
his hand.

  ‘Is there something else?’ she asked, reading his expression.

  ‘It’s just something about the night Mr Westland died. When I asked you if there was anything unusual about the phone conversation you had with him, you said there wasn’t. But you didn’t look too sure.’

  ‘There wasn’t anything unusual,’ she replied. ‘Or at least not in what he said … what we talked about. It’s just that he seemed … distracted. Distant. I asked him what was wrong and he said he was tired.’

  ‘That would fit with him turning down the after-concert party.’

  ‘Jake may not have understood me, but I understood him. He was never too tired for a bash. I knew Jake’s moods, but this one I couldn’t place. It bothered me.

  ‘There’s one more thing,’ said Sarah Westland as Fabel made for the door. ‘I know what people think, what the newspapers are saying about why Jake was in the Reeperbahn and how he met his death. Jake was no angel and, like I told you, I had no illusions about his fidelity. But there’s one thing I’m certain about: Jake did not go to that place for sex. He went there for a reason. To meet someone. I’m convinced of it.’

  2.

  ‘Am I being deported?’ asked Vestergaard with a cold smile when Fabel pulled up at the taxi rank outside the main terminal building of Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel Airport. A uniformed Federal Police officer walked purposefully over to the car but Fabel stopped him in his tracks by holding his bronze oval Criminal Police disc up to the glass of his window.