The Carnival Master

by Craig Russell

  The blow didn’t connect. There was a sharp pain on the inside of his forearm where she had blocked the blow, followed by an agonising explosion in his groin as her knee slammed into it. The rage changed to confusion and then to fear as he realised that she had twisted his arm round behind him and slammed him against the wall. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t see much either, with his cheek pushed hard into the wall. There were other noises. Crashes. Shouting. The room filled with dark figures. They had guns. There were other hands on him now. Handcuffs. Suzi spun him around. She pushed the thick copper coils of hair from her face.

  ‘Now, Hans … now I’ll tell you my real name. Just like I promised. It’s Tansu Bakrac. Criminal Commissar Tansu Bakrac. And you, you perverted piece of shit, are under arrest.’

  As they led him out of the flat, Oliver noticed that the doors off the hall were now open. Empty rooms. No furniture. That was where all the other police had been waiting; that was why she had led him directly into the bedroom: it was all a masquerade. They had probably recorded every word he had exchanged with ‘Suzi’ since they met in the hotel.

  There were two other plain-clothes police officers waiting in the hall. Of course, Oliver knew the shorter dark-haired one who now looked at him in shock. ‘Suzi’ turned to the taller, blond-haired officer whom Oliver had not seen before and grinned.

  ‘That was some favour you asked …’

  5.

  ‘What’s up with you, Benni?’ Fabel asked as the uniformed officers led ‘Hans’ out to the waiting police cars. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  ‘Shit …’ said Scholz, his expression still one of shock. ‘Bloody hell …’

  ‘What’s up?’ Tansu’s triumphant grin gave way to a frown.

  ‘Don’t you know who that is? You’ve just arrested Herr Dr Oliver Lüdeke.’

  ‘The forensic pathologist?’

  ‘One and the same. Now the crap is really going to hit the fan.’

  ‘A forensic pathologist …’ said Fabel. ‘Someone who would be an expert at excising an exact quantity of human flesh.’

  Scholz had led the questioning but had asked Fabel to partner him. Not that it had done any good. Fabel’s dislike of Oliver Lüdeke had been instant and intense. He knew that he would have felt the same disdain for Lüdeke if he had met him at a cocktail party instead of as the chief suspect in an inquiry into two, and potentially three, horrific and brutal murders. Lüdeke had refused to answer any questions at all and had only been vocal in complaining about his unjustified detention.

  ‘I don’t need a weatherman to tell me that there’s a shitstorm heading our way,’ said Scholz to Fabel after they had terminated the interview. ‘He’s already been in touch with his lawyer – and you can bet the first calls his lawyer’s made have been to the State Prosecutor and the Police President. We’ve got to nail him quick.’

  ‘So you’re convinced he’s our man? Even though you know him personally?’

  Scholz snorted. ‘Especially because I know him personally.’

  ‘You don’t like him?’ asked Fabel.

  ‘Oliver Lüdeke is good-looking, charming, rich, clearly highly intelligent, has a highly paid, prestigious job and is regularly seen in the company of a string of beautiful women. Of course I hate the bastard. But putting that aside, there are a whole lot of other reasons why I’ve never liked Herr Dr Lüdeke. He’s an arrogant son of a bitch. No – more than that. He has this way about him … I don’t know, it’s difficult to explain. He doesn’t fit in Cologne. I know that doesn’t make sense but class means nothing here. Karl Marx was from Cologne, but he said he could never start the international revolution here … it would never catch on in a city where the labourer and the factory manager drink in the same pub. Take the other state forensic pathologists: great guys to work with. Great guys to get pissed with. But Lüdeke looks down his nose at you every time you speak to him.’

  ‘So you’re saying he’s a good suspect because he’s a snob?’

  ‘Snobbery doesn’t come close, Jan. With Lüdeke it’s more like we are all lower forms of life. It doesn’t take a stretch for me to see him as someone who believes others have been put on this Earth to provide him with what he wants out of life. And that would fit with a sexual predator who doesn’t give a damn about inflicting pain on those he uses to fulfil his needs. Or even killing them.’

  ‘He’s certainly the strongest suspect we’ve got so far. But if he’s as connected as you say he is, then we’re going to have to move quick to prevent him walking. What’s the situation with a warrant to get a DNA sample?’

  ‘Tansu’s chasing the State Prosecutor’s office,’ said Scholz. ‘We should get one in a couple of hours or so.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Fabel. ‘Let’s have another go at chummy.’

  ‘Oh shit …’ said Scholz, looking over Fabel’s shoulder. Fabel turned to see a heavy-set man in his fifties coming along the corridor towards them. Fabel recognised the attitude of authority about him. When he reached them Scholz introduced Fabel to Cologne’s Police President, Udo Kettner.

  ‘This is an awkward situation, Benni,’ said Kettner. ‘Potentially very embarrassing. You don’t seem to have a lot to go on.’

  ‘He was about to attack Tansu,’ said Scholz.

  ‘You’ll find that difficult to prove.’

  ‘We have it on tape,’ said Fabel.

  ‘What you’ve got on tape, Herr Fabel, could be construed as entirely consistent with the nature of the advertisement he placed. He’s going to argue that the manner of his arrest amounts to entrapment. Added to which, he can claim that he did nothing wrong other than, as an unmarried man, meeting a young woman to explore a mutually consensual sexual encounter.’

  ‘I smell lawyer talk,’ said Scholz.

  ‘They’re on the way in …’ Police President Kettner said wearily. ‘I got a call within thirty minutes of Lüdeke being arrested. They’re going to challenge the legitimacy of the arrest and the set-up behind it.’

  ‘So what do we do?’ asked Scholz.

  Kettner grinned. ‘Lüdeke’s lawyers aren’t the only ones who can use a phone.’ He handed Scholz a document. ‘I thought a little leaning on the State Prosecutor’s office might speed things up. Here’s your warrant to obtain DNA. But for Christ’s sake, Benni, make sure you do everything by the book.’

  Fabel, Tansu and Scholz sat in Scholz’s office. The latest ‘bull’ head watched them from the corner. Scholz contemplated it dourly.

  ‘We have only eight days until Women’s Karneval Night,’ he said. ‘I hope to God Lüdeke is our guy. If that DNA doesn’t check out then we’re screwed.’

  ‘Even if it does,’ said Fabel, ‘it only ties him into the rape and battery of Vera Reinartz. He’s clearly a sexual sadist with a cannibalism fixation, but without a confession or other corroborating evidence we’ll never get him for the murders. And given Lüdeke’s arrogance and the hourly rate he’s paying his lawyers, we’re never going to get a confession.’

  ‘Forensics have turned up nothing. His office and apartment are both clean,’ said Scholz glumly. ‘The annoying thing is that the very weapon he’s used to slice chunks out of his victims may well be right under our noses. I’ve never had a suspect whose job it’s been to cut up human beings. It’s a forensic nightmare. If only Vera Reinartz or Andrea Sandow or whatever she wants to call herself had kept just one of those bloody letters.’

  ‘Even then that would only tie him directly in with the attack on her,’ said Fabel. ‘All we’ve got to link him to the murders is the similarity of m.o: the necktie around the victims’ necks and the biting. Circumstantial. Listen, Benni, we may never nail him for the killings, but if we get him for the Reinartz rape and assault, we can at least be content that we’ve taken him off the street for Women’s Karneval Night. We get a conviction and it’ll be a few Karnevals before he sees the light of day again. Only, of course, if we get a DNA match.’

  The thought was interrupted by the p
ale schoolboy face of Kris Feilke appearing around the door.

  ‘We’ve got the bastard, Benni!’ Kris beamed. ‘We’ve got a perfect match. Oliver Lüdeke is the man who raped Vera Reinartz.’

  6.

  Andrea opened the door of her apartment to Tansu and Fabel. She was dressed in a short skirt and loose black blouse. There was also a cluster of heavy costume jewellery at each wrist and her face was even more made up than the last time Fabel had seen her. She could not have presented herself more femininely, yet the sheer stockings only served to accentuate the heavy musculature of her thighs, the blouse the breadth of her shoulders and the make-up the masculine angularity of her features. What was it about Andrea Sandow, thought Fabel, that provoked such hostility within him?

  ‘I was just about to go out,’ she explained.

  ‘This won’t take long,’ said Fabel and made to enter the apartment. Andrea did not move.

  ‘I have an appointment. I can’t be late.’

  ‘We’ve got him, Andrea,’ said Tansu. ‘The man who attacked you eight years ago.’

  ‘You sure it’s him?’ Whatever Andrea was thinking, it didn’t penetrate the mask.

  ‘Positive,’ said Fabel. ‘We’ve got a perfect DNA match. It’s a man called Oliver Lüdeke.’

  The mask shattered. Andrea gazed at Fabel in disbelief. ‘Oliver Lüdeke?’

  ‘You know him?’

  Andrea stood to one side. ‘You’d better come in. I have to make a call – see if I can put back my appointment …’

  7.

  Again, Maria found herself anchorless in time. She had no idea how long she had been asleep or unconscious. It could have been a few minutes or a few days. Her first awareness on awakening was pain: in her ribs, in her face, and a hot, sharp tingling on her rasped skin. Maria grabbed onto the pain. It was the lesson that Vitrenko had taught her: that pain meant life.

  She awoke to find herself lying on a mattress on top of a metal camp bed. They had dressed her again and her clothes smelled musty and dirty. There were several blankets over her and she saw that she was still in the cold-meat store. No, not still; she realised that they must have taken her out of the store to warm her up and stop her terminal decline into a hypothermic death. That would have taken time and skill. Maria rolled up the sleeves of her coat and jumper. She found what she was looking for on her left arm: a fresh puncture wound into a vein. Her brain was still running sluggishly and her head pounded but she knew what this meant: they would have administered a warm dextrose and saline drip to increase her core body temperature, and they would probably have put a mask on her to administer warm, humidified oxygen.

  Maria knew that she was already a dead woman. And before she died there would be a lot of pain: both for Vitrenko’s enjoyment and to extract whatever information he could from her. But Maria was aware that what she knew was not enough for him to keep her alive. He was going to use her somehow to gain access to the dossier he was obsessed with. She had to escape: it was the only way for her to survive. And to stop Vitrenko from winning.

  Maria still felt chilled to the core. She sat up on the edge of the bed and gathered the musty blankets around her. She removed her glove and waved her naked hand through the air. The temperature in the cold store was tolerable. It would have taken a long time to remove the chill from the air. There were no heaters in sight but she surmised that they must have been used. Maria’s guess was that she had been taken out, treated for hypothermia and kept sedated somewhere until the temperature in the store had risen sufficiently. This was no longer a torture chamber, merely a place of confinement. For the moment.

  Maria tried to stand but an electric shock of pain from her cracked ribs jolted her. She allowed her fingers to explore gingerly beneath her jumper. Her ribs had been strapped. She eased back on the camp bed and thought about Buslenko, someone who had existed for her only through Vitrenko’s masquerade. She lay still, looking up at the ceiling with its bleak, relentless neon light and mourned a man she didn’t know.

  The door opened and a tall heavy-set man came in, carrying a bowl. Maria didn’t recognise him but he had a distinctly Russian or Ukrainian look. His hair was cropped short and his nose showed signs of an ancient break. He placed the bowl next to her bed and left the cold store without speaking. So there were others now. For all she knew, Vitrenko had left and was going about his more important business. Maria made a mental picture of the guard who had delivered the food. I’ll call him The Nose, she thought. She ate the stew. It was so hot that it burned her mouth but she didn’t care. She relished the scalding heat in her chest and belly and consumed every morsel.

  She had been surprised to find a metal spoon in the bowl. When she finished the stew she licked it clean and rubbed it against the stone floor next to the camp bed. After a minute or two she ran her thumb along the edge of the spoon: yes, she could sharpen it; create a weapon. She picked at the stitching of the mattress and concealed the spoon inside. She pulled the blanket over her eyes as a shield against the perpetual light from the neon strip. She couldn’t sleep. Her head buzzed as she conceived, elaborated and then rejected one plan of escape after another. She might not be fed again that day, but that was the only opportunity for escape. Even when she was fully fit she would have been no match for The Nose. She would have to take him by surprise and kill him quickly. If she worked at sharpening the edge of that spoon, she could maybe have a go at slashing the artery in his neck. She would have only one chance.

  The door opened. Maria feigned sleep beneath the blanket. She heard the sound of heavy boots approaching. There would be no surprise attack now. It would need at least another day of preparation, of sharpening the spoon into a killing edge. The blanket was ripped from her head. She turned, blinking, to look up at The Nose who had collected her food bowl. He held out his hand, moving his fingers in a ‘give me’ gesture. Maria frowned as if confused. He repeated the gesture and she shrugged. The Nose sighed wearily, put the bowl back down and unholstered his heavy automatic. He snapped back the carriage, clicked off the safety and rammed the barrel of the gun into Maria’s cheek. He then repeated the ‘give me’ gesture with his free hand. Maria reached into the pocket she had fashioned in the mattress and removed the spoon. She handed it to The Nose with a cynical grin, which he returned, simultaneously slashing her across the forehead with the barrel of his automatic.

  Maria glared defiant hate at The Nose, focusing on staying conscious and feeling the blood from the gash on her forehead trickle down the side of her face. Neither of them were in any doubt that she wanted to kill him, but The Nose simply gazed back at her impassively before turning and leaving with the bowl and the spoon. After he left, the light went out. Maria remembered there was a switch just outside the door. She was grateful for the sudden total darkness. She could sleep without cowering beneath the stinking blanket. She lay back in the pitch black and vowed not to touch the wound on her head.

  Something was happening to her. It was as if the pain was shaping her resolve, sharpening her mind. She felt new clarity, a new purity of thought. Mortification of the flesh, they called it. The pain became like a background noise: the further she placed herself from it the more dislocated from her physical being she would become. Maria focused all her energy on her thoughts. There had to be a way out of this.

  8.

  ‘You know Oliver Lüdeke?’

  ‘Yes …’ Andrea looked into the air as if seeing into the past. She shook her head. ‘I can’t believe it. Lüdeke. You’re sure?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tansu. ‘There’s no doubt about it. How did you know him?’

  ‘We were medical students together.’ Andrea crossed her legs and the hem of her skirt rode up a little. Fabel noticed that a few centimetres of the top of her thigh were exposed above her stocking, the skin tanned dark over a ripple of muscle.

  ‘Where are you going tonight?’ he asked. ‘I mean, if it’s an important appointment, then we could come back later, or even tomorrow.’ Fabel used
the word ‘appointment’ just as she had. Not ‘date’. Not ‘meeting with friends’.

  ‘No, it’s fine. I’ve explained that I’ll be delayed.’ She turned back to Tansu. ‘When I say we were medical students together, I mean he was a couple of years ahead of me. But we all knew him. He was a bit of a heart-throb for a few of the female students.’

  ‘You too?’ asked Fabel.

  Andrea fixed him with her hard, masculine stare. ‘I suppose. I was like that back then. Soft. But he never seemed to notice me. I can’t believe that he …’ Her expression hardened even more. ‘The bastard. Leave me alone with him for half an hour and I’ll save you all a lot of time and trouble. Why? Why did he do that to me?’

  ‘It would appear that Lüdeke is a very sick individual,’ said Fabel. ‘You’re probably not his only victim, and some of the others didn’t survive. But it looks like we’re going to have some difficulty proving that.’

  ‘But if we can convict him of the attack on you,’ said Tansu, ‘then we’ll be able to put him away for a long time. Hopefully long enough to build a case against him for the murders.’

  ‘Are you prepared to give evidence against him?’ asked Fabel.

  ‘Of course I am.’

  ‘It’s just that it may be an ordeal for you. In court, I mean.’

  Andrea laughed bitterly. ‘Do you think that that shit can scare me now? I’ll look forward to facing him across a courtroom and telling everybody exactly what he did to me.’

  ‘Good …’ Fabel paused for a moment. ‘You say you knew him by sight. As a student, I mean.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you didn’t recognise him that night?’

  ‘No – he was all made up. As a clown.’

  ‘I have to ask this,’ said Fabel. ‘There’s no way Lüdeke is going to be able to claim consensual sex, is there? I mean, if you knew him and had a thing for him.’