The Valkyrie Song

by Craig Russell

  The woman who waited for them in the interview room looked nothing like a killer. Professional or serial. The forensics department had taken all her clothes for examination and she was now dressed in a shapeless disposable white overall. She was of slim build and was, Fabel couldn’t help noticing, very attractive. She looked up at him with empty disinterest as he entered, as if she had no stake in what was happening and his presence had nothing to do with her. Fabel recognised her from the photograph sent from the Mecklenburg hospital. He went into the interview without Vestergaard, leaving her to join Werner and Anna in the adjoining room from where they could watch the interview on the monitor.

  Fabel nodded to the uniformed officer who had been watching over the prisoner, sat down opposite Paulus, laid his papers out on the metal desk and informed her of her rights.

  ‘I want you to understand something, Margarethe,’ he said. ‘I will be interviewing you again later, with another officer, and we will have a psychologist in the room as well as a lawyer to represent your interests. We can talk about things in more detail then. In the meantime, I want you to simply confirm your name for me.’

  ‘I am Ute Paulus. You called me Margarethe; I am not Margarethe Paulus. She is my sister.’

  ‘But that’s simply not true, Margarethe. There is no Ute Paulus. You have no sister. It’s a matter of record.’

  She laughed coldly. ‘Records are falsified all the time. In the East people’s records were changed or falsified all of the time. I am not Margarethe. I am Ute.’

  ‘Who is this?’ Fabel asked and slid a copy of the hospital photograph across the table to her.

  ‘That is Margarethe.’

  ‘That is you. Listen, there’s no point in denying it. We have samples of your fingerprints and they match those of this patient.’ He jabbed a forefinger at the picture on the table. ‘Margarethe Paulus, thirty-eight years old, born in Zarrentin, north-west Mecklenburg. You have no sister, no brother and both your parents are dead. This is you. And you were committed to the Mecklenburg state secure hospital in May nineteen ninety-four.’

  Paulus said nothing. Fabel drew a long breath.

  ‘Why did you do what you did to Robert Gerdes?’

  ‘His name wasn’t Gerdes.’ There was no anger in her voice. There was nothing in her voice. Or in her eyes as she spoke. ‘His name was Georg Drescher and he was a major in the Stasi.’

  ‘Why did you do what you did to him?’

  ‘I thought you said we would only talk about this later,’ she said. She placed her hands on the metal surface. Her fingers were long and slim. He noticed how clean her fingernails were, and then remembered that Brauner’s forensics team would have scraped beneath them for trace evidence. Fabel found it difficult to imagine those fingers committing the horrors he had witnessed in her flat.

  ‘I want to go back,’ she said.

  ‘Go back where? To the apartment?’

  ‘To the hospital.’

  ‘How can you go back to the hospital if you’re not a patient there?’ asked Fabel. He pointed again to the photograph. ‘This is the patient. Margarethe is the patient. You say you’re not Margarethe.’

  ‘That’s where I see my sister. Where I talk to her. I visit her. Now I can visit her all the time.’

  Fabel sighed and gathered up the papers. ‘I think we really should wait until later.’

  ‘I want to go back now,’ she repeated, but there was no insistence in her voice. ‘To the hospital.’

  ‘I’m afraid you won’t be going back for some time. You’re going to have to stay with us for a while.’ Fabel stood up.

  ‘I want to go back. To the hospital.’ Margarethe stood up too. Fabel held his hand out to stop her. ‘You have to remain sitting, Margarethe. Stay here. The officer will take you back to your cell.’

  Margarethe’s hand seized Fabel’s wrist and he was amazed at the strength in the slender fingers. He moved his other hand to free himself but was stunned by the blow she delivered to his forehead with the heel of her free hand. He heard the uniformed officer rush forward. Margarethe grabbed Fabel by the hair and rammed his face into the metal table as she used him for leverage and swung a high kick at the other policeman’s head. Fabel heard the uniformed cop slam into the interview-room wall and gasp for breath. He felt her fingers probe under his arm to find his service SIG-Sauer automatic but the anti-snatch holster resisted her tugging. He thrust his weight against her and she fell onto the floor. Despite the adrenalin surging through his system, he noticed how gracefully she fell, rolled and sprang back to her feet. The other cop was pulling himself to his feet and he launched himself from the wall at her. It was a clumsy move and she dodged him easily, slashing him across the throat with the flat of her hand. Fabel made to draw his weapon and she leaped across the table at him, hitting him at chest height with her knee. His head slammed painfully against the wall and he heard his automatic clatter on the floor. The door next to him suddenly burst open and Werner, Anna and two uniformed officers rushed into the room.

  ‘Get my gun!’ yelled Fabel.

  He pulled himself to his feet in time to see Margarethe slam a fist into Werner’s face. Anna Wolff got behind her and wrapped an arm around her throat in a tight grip. Margarethe slammed her elbow into Anna’s ribs but Anna didn’t let go. Instead, she let herself drop, her weight pulling Margarethe to the floor. Werner and the other officers threw themselves onto her and, after a few seconds of desperate struggling, Margarethe was handcuffed.

  ‘Yours, I believe …’ Fabel looked up to see Karin Vestergaard staring down on him, his service automatic in her extended hand.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Fabel and allowed her to help him up. ‘That went well, I thought …’ He felt something trickle down his forehead and when he gingerly reached up to touch it, his fingertips were wet with blood.

  Werner, Anna and the others hoisted Margarethe to her feet. She looked directly at Fabel and the look chilled him. There was no rage, no hatred, just the same emptiness in the eyes that he had noticed when he’d first entered the interview room. It was as if the intense violence that had just exploded there had simply never happened.

  ‘Get her back to her cell,’ said Fabel. ‘And keep her restrained.’ The uniforms ushered Margarethe, who didn’t even seem to be breathing hard, from the room. Anna and Werner stayed behind. There was a trickle of blood from Werner’s nostril.

  ‘You should get that looked at,’ said Vestergaard, nodding towards Fabel’s head.

  ‘I think I should …’ said Fabel, taking the folded handkerchief that Vestergaard handed him and holding it to his head. ‘You did well, Anna. She took some taking down.’

  ‘A woman’s touch. I thought it looked like you and Grandad here needed help.’ Anna grinned knowingly at Werner. ‘What with you having your asses kicked by a girl.’

  ‘How’s the uniform?’ asked Fabel.

  ‘He’ll be fine,’ said Werner, dabbing the bleeding nostril with the back of his hand. ‘He’s going to have one hell of a sore throat, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Get him to the hospital,’ said Fabel. ‘Any blow to the airway can be very dangerous and she knew what she was doing.’ He leaned against the interview-room wall and drew a deep breath. ‘Shit … she knew what she was doing.’

  ‘I gather that’s what Dr Köpke, the Chief Doctor from the Mecklenburg state hospital, wanted to tell you. He was on the phone again … when you were in there with psycho-girl.’

  ‘I’ll phone him,’ said Fabel. ‘But first, could someone get me some codeine and a plaster for my head …’

  4.

  ‘Where have you got her now?’ The voice on the other end of the connection sounded genuinely anxious.

  ‘Safely back in her cell, Herr Doctor,’ said Fabel. ‘Where she can do no harm.’

  ‘I wouldn’t count on it,’ said Köpke. He had a deep voice. A little scratchy. Fabel heard a metallic click and a crackle over the connection. A cigarette being lit. A medical man should know
better, thought Fabel. ‘I really did want to warn you before you tried to interview her.’

  ‘I didn’t get the message—’ Fabel started to say, but Köpke cut him off.

  ‘She’s killed again?’

  ‘Yes. A male victim. And she castrated him.’

  ‘What was his name?’ Köpke’s tone was more demand than question.

  ‘I can’t—’

  ‘Was the victim called Georg Drescher? Or did Margarethe claim he was Georg Drescher?’

  ‘I can’t confirm or deny the identity of the victim, you should know that.’

  ‘Look, Herr Principal Commissar, you and I can play games and more people can die, or we can be straight with each other and maybe save a few lives. What will it be?’

  ‘What is it you have to tell me, Dr Köpke?’

  ‘First of all, you need to make sure that Margarethe is confined with maximum security.’ There was the sound of a blown-out breath and Fabel imagined the cigarette smoke billowing around the unseen psychiatrist. ‘You should have her watched by no fewer than two, ideally three, guards. Secondly, do what you can to make your demands sound like requests. She will respond with maximum hostility to any suggestion that you are commanding her to follow your will. And, trust me, Herr Chief Commissar, that hostility will be very professionally directed.’

  ‘I’ve already got the picture,’ said Fabel, involuntarily touching the gauze taped to his forehead.

  ‘Ah …’ Again there was the sound of a cigarette being drawn upon, followed by a hasty exhalation. ‘I thought you might. I also need you to get a court order over to me as soon as possible so that I can legally transfer the records of Margarethe Paulus’s treatment to you. I have tapes and video of my sessions with her and, trust me, you will want to hear all of them.’

  ‘In the meantime,’ said Fabel, ‘how about a little unofficial summary?’

  ‘Margarethe Paulus was a child of the GDR,’ said Köpke. ‘Her parents, from what I could gather, were bohemian, freethinker types who fell foul of the authorities. They ended up in prison and both died of cancer before reunification. Margarethe was taken into care by the state. It’s what she says happened to her afterwards that should interest you. Before I go any further, I have to tell you a little about her medical history. When she was still in the care of the state orphanage she started to have severe headaches. She would have been about eight at the time. Margarethe was admitted to hospital and it was suspected that she was suffering from a brain tumour. The operation revealed a growth in her brain which was subsequently declared benign, but the nature of the tumour is in some doubt – it was a reasonably large teratoma that could have been interpreted as fetus in fetu.’

  ‘I’m sorry …’ Fabel sounded more irritated than apologetic. ‘You’re going to have to explain.’

  ‘A teratoma is a tumour that is composed of all kinds of tissue. There can be hair, teeth, eye tissue in it. Sometimes it can have limbs – a hand or a foot, for example. In rare examples, a child is born with what appears to be a twin inside it. Fetus in fetu. Medical opinion is divided on whether these are actual foetuses that have formed within their twin, instead of alongside it, or if they are simply a more complex form of teratoma. Whatever they are, they are incapable of independent life. What was removed from Margarethe’s brain had the appearance of a rudimentary foetus. Somehow, maybe later after reading up on the subject, she decided that she had had a sister living inside her.’

  ‘And she still believes that?’

  ‘We learned to handle Margarethe and – with appropriate medication and management – she was able to live amongst the general hospital population. I’ll come back to why the medication and handling were so important, although I think you’ve experienced the reason first-hand. Anyway, Margarethe would sit over by the window for hours on end, talking to no one except her own reflection.’

  ‘Her sister,’ Fabel sighed.

  ‘That’s what we established in therapy, yes. But this is where I get to the most important bit. The tumour that was removed was benign, but it was large. When you take something like that out of someone’s brain things change. The chemistry changes; intracranial pressure alters and parts of the brain that have been constricted are relieved and have room to expand, particularly if the patient is a child. In Margarethe’s case, her personality changed. She had been a normal, emotional child of average ability. After the operation, she became distant, remote. But her academic and sporting ability improved radically. And that brings me back to the claims she has made.’

  ‘Which were?’

  ‘You have to remember that here in the East our post-war experience was very different. There are things that went on here that you couldn’t imagine. That we still have problems accepting. But what Margarethe told us was so incredible, so fantastic, that we put it down to schizoid paranoia. But then, as time went on, I began to have doubts. I mean, some patients have the most detailed and elaborate paranoias, but this was just too elaborate. Part of my job is to try to expose the falsehood of a paranoid delusion, to find a crack and use logic to lever it open so that the patient themselves, with the aid of the right medication, can see their fantasy for what it is.’

  ‘But there were no cracks in Margarethe’s story.’

  ‘None. I did a little research, too. At the Federal Commission for Stasi files. I discovered that many of the names she had given me were indeed real former Stasi people. But she had first given me this information at a time when the files were still being collated and reassembled.’

  ‘So if she was telling the truth …’

  ‘It still didn’t change the fact that she was very seriously disturbed. Or that she had murdered someone. The other thing was that there was this massive rage and hunger for revenge burning deep inside her. And most of it was directed at Georg Drescher. You see, Herr Fabel, Margarethe claims she was one of three young women selected by the Stasi and trained by Major Georg Drescher.’

  ‘Trained as what?’

  ‘Assassins. She claimed that she and her friends were trained to use a whole variety of methods to take human life, as well as concealment, espionage techniques – even how to seduce their victims. She said they were given code names. They were called the Valkyries.’

  Walking into the Murder Commission incident room, Fabel felt like he was an unprepared act walking into the spotlight, centre stage. There were always times like this during an investigation – a development, a breakthrough, or another murder – when suddenly there was an electric tension in the air and the entire team looked on him expectantly. The truth was his head hurt, he was tired and felt sick, and he was struggling to deal with the enormity of what he had just heard from Margarethe’s psychiatrist.

  Anna handed him a coffee and a couple of codeine. ‘You realise the mistake you made,’ she said in a low voice.

  ‘I’m sure you’re about to tell me.’ Fabel flipped the tablets from his palm into his mouth and washed them down with too-hot coffee.

  ‘You made a sexist judgement,’ said Anna. ‘And don’t go off on one – I’m not saying you’re a sexist. But what happened in there happened because you treated her differently because she was a female. You saw what she did to that guy in her apartment. If she had been a male suspect she would have been handcuffed to the restraint on the table.’

  ‘I’ll bear it in mind in the future,’ Fabel said and turned his attention to the rest of the room. ‘You’ve all heard that we have had a breakthrough. Well, I don’t know how much of a breakthrough we’ve had. Another man is dead. Tortured and killed as an act of revenge. It may well be that Margarethe Paulus is also responsible for the murders in the St Pauli district, as well as that of the Danish detective, Jens Jespersen.’ Fabel took another sip of coffee and sat on the corner of the desk nearest the front. ‘We retrieved a single blonde hair from the Westland murder scene, which we had good reason to believe belonged to the killer. I have to tell you before we go any further that we don’t have a DNA match with t
he woman we have in custody.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean it wasn’t her,’ said Werner. ‘It could equally prove that the hair didn’t belong to the killer.’

  ‘Could be,’ said Fabel. He was distracted by the arrival of Dirk Hechtner and Henk Hermann ‘I didn’t expect to see you back so quickly,’ said Fabel. ‘I told you to bag all the suspect’s stuff.’

  ‘We did,’ said Hechtner. ‘There wasn’t much to bag. She had three changes of clothes, one dressy, one businessy, one casual. We’ve handed what looks like a surgical kit over to forensics. From what we could see she had taken the tools she needed from the kit through to the kitchen.’

  ‘What else did you find?’ asked Fabel.

  ‘Four thousand euros in cash,’ said Henk Hermann. ‘A gun—’

  ‘What kind of gun?’ asked Fabel.

  ‘Nothing that I’ve seen before,’ said Henk Hermann. ‘It looked a bit like an old PPK, but it was clearly not that old and it had “Made in Croatia” stamped on the side. So we ran it through the computer. Apparently it’s …’ Henk referred to his notebook ‘… a PHP MV-9. It was developed by the Croatians in the early nineties, during the Independence War. Apparently, amongst gun freaks it’s a bit of a collector’s item. A rarity. There was also this really weird glove-knife thing … really odd. It was a leather strap that fastened around your hand and wrist, with a hidden metal plate that fitted in your palm and a short curved blade that stuck out of the bottom. We’re guessing it was some kind of weapon rather than a tool.’

  ‘Where is it now?’ asked Fabel.

  ‘We gave it to forensics for testing,’ said Dirk Hechtner. ‘If that blade has been used as a weapon, then I’ll bet a week’s pay we’ll get blood out of the leather bit.’