Cut: The international bestselling serial killer thriller

by Marc Raabe

  The commissioner looks at him in anticipation as an ugly smirk forms across his lips. ‘So, were you at Conradshöhe?’

  ‘Yes,’ Gabriel admits, ‘but how the hell do you know that? It’s . . .’

  ‘What? Illegal?’ Grell raises an eyebrow. ‘If I’m not mistaken, then you just told me yourself. I was just wondering if you would deny it . . .’ He grins smugly.

  Gabriel stares at him furiously. ‘Conradshöhe has nothing to do with this here. Absolutely nothing! I just want to find Liz Anders. That’s all.’

  ‘Certainly. Liz Anders.’ Grell nods and his smile freezes. ‘If it’s true, all the better. But I think you’ll understand if I need to take a bit of time to review everything under these circumstances.’

  Gabriel feels Schuster’s giant paw close around his right upper arm. Jansen steps up to him from the left and pulls a pair of handcuffs from his belt. A wave of panic and rage washes over Gabriel.

  Here we go again, Luke, the voice whispers. You see? I told you. Here we go again.

  Gabriel’s eyelids twitch ever so slightly. Then his right forearm quickly swings up like a taut spring and his fist crashes into the middle of Schuster’s face. The officer immediately lets go of him, staggers backwards and holds his nose. Blood wells up between his fingers.

  Gabriel swings his left arm in a sudden windmill motion and twists out of Jansen’s grip. At lightning speed, Gabriel closes in with a blow from the edge of his left hand and–

  ‘Stop!’ A sharp voice shouts.

  Gabriel freezes. Grell is standing at a safe distance several metres away with his shiny black service weapon at the ready. ‘Give me one reason to pull the trigger, you lunatic, just one!’

  Gabriel slowly lowers his hands. A paralysing despair descends upon him. For a fraction of a second, he sees wide leather straps around his body.

  Just don’t lose control now, Luke. You know what happens then.

  Haven’t I already? he thinks desperately. I’ve already lost control.

  The handcuffs that are put on him burn on his skin. Not being able to move his arms scares him. Nausea rises in him like a reflex and he tries to convince himself that no one here will stick electrodes to his head and flip a switch. But his body doesn’t believe him; his body has its own memory.

  All of a sudden, he thinks of David, of his little brother’s firm hugs, and the feeling of having to cry and laugh at the same time. The longing comes over him like a fever, a longing for everything to finally be OK, for it not to happen this time, and for there to be only one reason that he can’t remember this awful night: that it never existed and that everything is completely normal. That he can simply ring his brother, just like anyone else who has a brother. Please, please let that be the case.

  But nothing is normal. For nearly thirty years, nothing has been normal. Since he can’t just suddenly ring, out of the blue, and say: here I am again.

  Even if there were no one else that would help.

  Chapter 11

  Berlin – 2 September, 10.05 a.m.

  David Naumann brushes the chin-length blond hair from his face and reluctantly enters the outer office of Dr Robert Bug, the news director of TV2, as if it were the gateway to another world.

  ‘You’ll have to wait a moment. Von Braunsfeld is still in with him,’ Karla Wiegand greets him. Her eyes drift across David’s slender figure, his jeans, his dark blue sports jacket, the creased white shirt hanging casually over his trousers. ‘Coffee?’

  David nods. ‘Victor von Braunsfeld? With Bug? What’s he doing here? He usually only cares about the big deals.’

  Karla Wiegand makes a serious face, but shrugs at the same time. The grinder in the coffee machine roars and the machine spits espresso and milk out into a cup. Wiegand is blonde and in her late forties, so a good ten years older than David. Her hairline is already beginning to grey and her face, which is actually attractive, has clear wrinkles around the corners of her mouth like brackets, framing her latent discontent.

  The recently relaunched station logo for TV2 is displayed above her like a sword of Damocles, in burgundy, the ‘2’ in fresh, bright orange. David knows that she probably does a good job, otherwise Bug would have replaced her long ago with a younger model. ‘Do you know what he wants from me?’

  ‘No idea,’ Klara Wiegand says. David can feel her avoiding his gaze. So, he has something to complain about, David thinks. Well, so what? It’s nothing new for Bug to exceed his authority and move into the entertainment sector. Best case scenario, it’s about a bit of cross-promotion for a new newscaster or presenter to be introduced before some show. It’s just a question of why Bug didn’t address David’s boss, the head of entertainment, directly.

  ‘Oh, by the way,’ Wiegand says quietly and hands David the coffee, ‘there was a call for you just now, a Mr Schirk from Commerce Bank . . .’ David nods with deliberate indifference. Crap. He’s already calling me at the station. He can feel the slight redness spreading across his face, which is probably even visible through his stubble.

  At that moment, the door to Bug’s office opens. ‘Thanks again,’ his dark voice purrs from somewhere inside. Only his hand is visible, as he eagerly shakes with Victor von Braunsfeld, a wiry man of over seventy with a snowy-white but full head of hair, wearing a tailored steel-grey suit.

  ‘Very well,’ von Braunsfeld mutters with light condescension. ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘before I forget. There will be a new episode of Carpe Noctem on the first.’

  ‘It’s been noted,’ Bug says.

  Carpe Noctem? David thinks. During what time slot? Has he missed something?

  Von Braunsfeld nods to Bug and energetically steps past Klara Wiegand’s desk. In passing, his eyes land on David. Their eyes meet and von Braunsfeld stops short.

  ‘Do we know each other?’ von Braunsfeld asks, his light brown eyes fixed on him in a penetrating gaze.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ David smiles uncertainly, as he always does when he is around people who exude so much power. He automatically switches the coffee cup to his left hand in order to shake von Braunsfeld’s hand. ‘I work for you. In the entertainment department at TV2. Development and production of shows and reality formats.’

  ‘I see,’ von Braunsfeld nods. He smiles. A peculiar straight smile in which the teeth are not visible and the eyes are not smiling either. His handshake is cool and firm, though his fingers seem thin and knotty. ‘And your name is?’

  ‘Naumann,’ David replies quickly. ‘David Naumann.’

  Von Braunsfeld pulls his hand back quickly, a touch too quickly, David thinks, as if he had touched on a sore spot.

  ‘Naumann? Ah, yes, the whole Treasure Castle story,’ he says. ‘Any relation to Wolf Naumann, the cameraman?’

  David looks at him, stunned, then nods. ‘I’m his son. Did you know him?’

  Von Braunsfeld puts his hands up in a defensive gesture. His signet ring flashes for a moment. ‘Not really. But it was indeed a bad story back then, it was all over the press.’

  ‘Yes,’ David says with reserve. He can feel Karla Wiegand’s curious gaze on his back and prepares for the unavoidable questions. The questions that he hates so much and that are still asked over and over again, even today. There were times that he wished he just had ‘I don’t know either!’ tattooed onto his forehead. After all, the whole nightmare happened while he was locked in his room.

  ‘Well, then, keep at it,’ von Braunsfeld says vacantly, nods to him and quickly walks out the door.

  Relieved and surprised at the same time, David watches him go. Next to him, Karla Wiegand clears her throat and then gestures at the open double doors to Bug’s office with her thumb. ‘Mr News is waiting . . .’

  David nods and his train of thought changes directions. He walks towards Bug’s office, but hesitates. ‘Oh, Karla, do you know what that was all about just then? A new episode of Carpe Noctem?’

  Karla Wiegand shrugs. ‘No idea. Some new format probably.’

&n
bsp; ‘But not with us, right?’

  ‘I don’t think so, but von Braunsfeld does always seem to have his fingers in all the pies.’

  ‘Well, then,’ David mutters and enters the news director’s office. A few drops of coffee spill over the edge of his cup and sink into the grey carpet.

  Dr Robert Bug is standing at the window of his office and staring like a disgruntled grizzly out into the drizzling rain. He has the massive physique of a man in his fifties bursting at the seams, a square head with a powerful chin and thick brown hair. ‘I didn’t know that your father was a cameraman,’ Bug says in place of a greeting.

  ‘Were we talking that loudly?’

  ‘In the news, you need good ears,’ Bug replies without turning around.

  ‘What was that “bad story” that Victor was just talking about?’

  Not you, too, David thinks. ‘Well, it was thirty years ago. Surely not something for the news.’

  Bug turns around and looks at David. His dark, slightly bulging eyes sparkle. ‘Seems mighty embarrassing for you and your family.’

  I have no family, David thinks. He opens his mouth to give Bug a suitable answer, but his mobile vibrates at that very moment. The bank! is his first thought. He reaches into the inner pocket of his sports jacket and squints at the display on the off-chance that it’s someone else. Some Berlin number, a landline. He hesitates because he thinks he recognises the first digits, but can’t quite place them.

  ‘Come on,’ Bug says. ‘I’ll find out sooner or later anyway.’

  David puts his mobile away again and looks over at Bug witheringly. ‘Tell me, is it silly season or is there some other reason you’re poking around in other people’s private lives? Why did you actually ask me to come here?’

  ‘Oh, screw it.’ In mock despair, Bug throws up his paws and grins. ‘It’s an occupational disease. When I hear “bad story”, I immediately think: good story. And the last good story was that Kristen thing that ran July.’

  ‘Kristen? That model who went missing? Is there something new on that?’

  Bug shakes his head. ‘She is and remains missing without a trace. Along with all that haute couture la-di-da. No sign of life, no body, nothing.’

  ‘Unbelievable,’ David mutters.

  ‘Yeah. That was a story. Something you could really grind out for six weeks across the media.’ Bug sighs and envisions the headline. ‘Supermodel Ciara Kristen missing from set without a trace. Along with a dozen haute couture dresses . . . actually, it’s fortunate that she wasn’t found, so we could speculate as to what happened to her. In a way, we should be grateful to the bastard.’

  ‘You think someone kidnapped her?’

  Bug snorts. ‘My imagination occasionally runs wild, but I am much more of a realist. Kristen is dead and lying neatly buried somewhere in some forest. The woman earned one or two million a year – you don’t just give that up to run off with a couple of unsellable haute couture dresses.’

  ‘So, some kind of sex offender?’

  ‘Sure,’ says Bug. ‘And I hope he doesn’t let too much time pass before the next one.’

  ‘Maybe you should try politics in the meantime,’ David says drily.

  ‘Politics!’ Bug practically spits the word out on the desk. ‘Yuck. We’re a private station. Politics is for public broadcasters. No one wants that from us. Too complicated, too negative. We’re more sensational. It’s more personal! It’s not about what a politician does. At most it’s about how he does it, how often and with whom.’

  David rolls his eyes. Bug’s bad mood is obvious – it’s just hard to figure out the reason for it. The mobile vibrates in the inner pocket of his jacket again. He automatically reaches for it. The same number as before. He tries to figure out how he recognises it. Some production company? The tax office? Some other government office? Suddenly, it occurs to him: the police! The first four digits are the number for the Berlin police. But why in the world would they want anything from him?

  Bug uses the pause and takes a few steps through the open double doors into the waiting room of his office where he parks his wide bottom on his secretary’s desk. ‘Any calls, Karla?’

  Karla Wiegand shakes her head. ‘Just the usual . . .’

  ‘What about Miss McNeal?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Wiegand replies.

  David is still standing, mobile in hand, staring at the screen with a puzzled expression. The vibrating has stopped.

  ‘Nothing? What is that supposed to mean, nothing?’ Bug mimics his secretary. ‘No time? No response?’

  ‘No idea,’ Karla Wiegand says. ‘Maybe also no interest.’

  Bug acknowledges the verbal jab with a shrug. ‘And the Fire Alarm?’

  ‘You mean Liz Anders, about the documentary? I still have no answer there. She has probably gone into seclusion doing research again.’

  ‘Nonsense. I bumped into her at the Linus last night. She was still able to answer her phone then.’ Bug rummages through his trouser pocket with his right hand and scratches his crotch. Deep wrinkles form on his forehead as he raises his eyebrows and turns back to David. ‘What’s happening with your Jaguar?’

  David purses his lips and puts the phone away again. ‘Can we get to the point? I’m sure my car isn’t the reason you’ve summoned me here.’

  ‘My goodness,’ Bug grins. ‘You’re still not over the Treasure Castle settlement?’

  ‘Spare me the gloating.’

  ‘Boy, you’re sensitive.’ His eyes drift appraisingly across David’s face, the narrow, slightly curved hook nose, the green-grey eyes. ‘You stole the idea and were caught. Whatever. Put an end to it and –’

  ‘I didn’t steal anything, damn it!’

  Bug shrugs. ‘Well, then forget it. In entertainment, the ideas are all already out there. You just have to open you eyes and bam!’ He snaps his fingers.

  David doesn’t respond.

  ‘No ideas at the moment?’

  ‘Nothing concrete,’ David wavers. And if I did, like hell would I discuss them with you. He takes a sip of coffee and can feel his hand trembling with the cup. Goddamn it. He always lets Bug get to him.

  The news director looks at him with narrowed eyes. ‘Basically, I envy you,’ Bug then sighs. ‘If I want to have a good news story, then I have to kidnap a celebrity . . .’ He stuffs his hands back into the already worn pockets of his expensive suit. ‘Maybe that’s it. “Mad news director kidnaps supermodel.” Crime always has a draw. Look at Kristen. Why don’t we just do something with crime in show business? The ratings would go through the roof. Guaranteed.’

  ‘Because we know where the line is,’ David replies. ‘Crime and show just don’t go together.’

  ‘You and your bullshit political correctness. I wonder how someone like you could even come up with an idea like Treasure Castle.’

  ‘Treasure Castle dances around the line. Crime blows it up.’ David tries to defend his recent TV show concept.

  ‘Dancing around it. Blowing it up.’ Bug shakes his head theatrically. ‘You’re just splitting hairs. As far as I’m concerned, your version stays behind the line when it works for you. But don’t be so fussy.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘It means that I am asking you to think about a crime show.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ David’s jaw drops. ‘Have I understood correctly? You want to give me an assignment?’

  ‘Think of it as an opportunity. You should be grateful.’

  David turns on his heel and heads towards the door. ‘If you need a sparring partner, then speak with our esteemed programme director. I am sure he will be thrilled . . . then he can pass the job on to me. Then at least it will have been assigned in the official way. Was that all?’

  ‘I’ve already spoken with him,’ Bug says impassively. His lips curl into a smirk.

  David stops short. ‘You what?’

  ‘Since this morning, or to be more specific, since Vico von Braunsfeld was here, I
am not only the news director, but also the programme director.’

  David stiffens. He turns around in disbelief. He needs a moment for the full meaning of Bug’s words to sink in.

  ‘I see.’ Bug grins widely. ‘I’ve succeeded in surprising you. You are, in fact, the first to know. Please hold on to any congratulatory remarks until tomorrow when it’s official. You know, he’s old-fashioned that way.’

  ‘Von Braunsfeld personally named you programme director?’

  ‘He did so himself. And now I have his word and have to deliver.’

  David opens his mouth, but no sound comes out. His stomach is in knots. Dr Robert Bug stands there like a nightmare in the flesh.

  ‘So, if you want to keep your job, then you would be well advised to take my requests seriously.’

  David looks at him, dumbfounded. He is incapable of responding.

  Bug’s BlackBerry shrieks and tears a hole in the silence. The grizzly pulls out his mobile. ‘The editors,’ he mutters. ‘That’s all, my dear. Let me know when you have something . . . and shut the door.’ He waves his free hand as if to shoo a fly.

  David flees out the door without closing it. The phone in his jacket begins vibrating a third time. Again, the same number. Again, the police.

  Chapter 12

  Berlin – 2 September, 10.24 a.m.

  Gabriel stares blankly at the wall of holding cell 05 at the police station and presses the handset of the cordless phone to his ear. Pick up, damn it!

  He won’t pick up, Luke.

  He will pick up. Maybe he wouldn’t pick up if he knew it was me. But he doesn’t.

  And then? What will you say? Hi, it’s me? The last time you heard from me was twenty years ago and everything was a bit ugly, but now I need help . . .

  Rrriiinng . . . Rrriinnng . . .

  How many times do I have to tell you? He won’t pick up . . . and he also won’t help you.

  He will! He is still my brother.

  Oh yeah? I believe that you might still be his brother, but is he yours? I can’t remember . . .