Ann Kathrin cleared her throat. ‘We do know a bit more than that, Rupert.’
‘Such as?’ Looking piqued, Rupert crossed his arms.
Ann Kathrin said, ‘He was presumably a cabbie or truck driver.’
Everyone looked at Ann Kathrin. Büscher shifted position. His body language indicated he was paying rapt attention.
Rupert felt Ann Kathrin was mocking him. How could she make such a statement? He tried to ridicule her remark. ‘Sure. And he loves butter-cream cake and reads Jerry Cotton paperbacks.’
As the fly buzzed around Rupert’s head, Ann Kathrin went on, undeterred: ‘His face was clearly tanned more on the left side than the right. The left side of his nose had traces of sunburn. At his hairline the skin damage indicates possible basal cell carcinoma, maybe already treated. People who drive a lot get much more sun on the left side, as is evident on his face and left forearm.’
Ann Kathrin’s explanation impressed almost everyone present. Rupert begrudged her the triumph and countered: ‘Then he can’t have been a cab driver in England, because they drive on the left, and the driver sits on the right.’
Büscher caught on quickly to which way the wind was blowing. The group dynamics were all too clear. The women united behind Ann Kathrin Klaasen to form the power centre. There was macho dictatorship here. Nothing could come between Sylvia Hoppe, Rieke Gersema and Ann Kathrin Klaasen, especially no man.
Weller acted almost as first officer to Klaasen, and was also accepted by the other two women. Rupert, on the other hand, found himself in an extremely awkward position, but he wasn’t nearly as foolish as everyone thought.
Sylvia Hoppe, who couldn’t stand Rupert because he reminded her of her first husband, rolled her eyes, as if to signal how exasperated she was by so much stupidity.
Ann Kathrin refused to take the bait. She said, ‘The perpetrator chose a return address in Hude and drove his SUV all the way to Norden to mail the package from that post office branch. He knew where Ubbo lived. Funny, it’s almost like he could be one of us.’
‘One of us East Frisians or one of us cops?’ Weller asked.
‘Either way he’s somewhere in our vicinity,’ said Ann Kathrin. ‘That’s one thing we can’t deny.’
Büscher’s mobile vibrated in his trouser pocket. He didn’t take the call. It vibrated a second time and he noted with irritation the message that appeared on the display.
Rupert was watching the fly that was buzzing near his face, as if it wanted to land on his nose. It was flying slowly, provocatively self-assured. Rupert’s right hand shot forward, not as a fist but open like a claw. He made a grab for the fly and believed he had caught it and crushed it, but when he opened his hand there was nothing but air. The fly was crawling around in the curls of his perm.
‘Damn,’ said Rupert, truly impressed by Ann Kathrin’s deductive reasoning. ‘Why do you always know more than we do when you look at a crime scene or a victim?’
She looked him straight in the eye. ‘Rupert, almost nobody is as good at ignoring the obvious as you are. You do it perfectly.’
Rupert wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or not. She always told him he was ‘so good at something’ or he ‘did something perfectly’.
Sylvia Hoppe gave Rupert a thumbs up and nodded, as if Ann Kathrin’s words had genuinely impressed her and Rupert could be proud of that.
Büscher asserted himself in a loud voice. ‘We have the body to go with the head. In Cuxhaven-Duhnen some kids dug up a male corpse. Everything is there but the head.’
Ann Kathrin stood up. Frank Weller and Sylvia Hoppe followed suit.
‘So, uh . . . are you going to take off for Cuxhaven?’ Büscher asked.
‘We’d all prefer to go to the Christmas market in Leer,’ Weller teased him, ‘but there’s not much going on there in June.’
Büscher wondered how fast Ann Kathrin Klaasen could requisition a helicopter. And whether she’d face any resistance. In Bremerhaven he would have had to wait so long to go through the proper channels that he could have made it to a crime scene faster by bus and train. Here in East Frisia the bureaucratic obstacles, at least for Ann Kathrin, didn’t seem to be as insurmountable. People knew each other, and things could be settled with a phone call.
He heard her say something on her mobile that set him wondering: ‘Thanks, Hauke. I owe you one.’
Büscher still hadn’t decided whether he should consider this a good thing or not. Although he really had nothing to do with the actual investigation, he flew out to the scene with them.
The police in Cuxhaven weren’t surprised when Ann Kathrin, Frank Weller, Sylvia Hoppe and Martin Büscher showed up. A few pleasantries were exchanged, and everyone agreed to cooperate. The two chiefs even winked complicitly to each other.
Ann Kathrin was insistent that they hurry. She wanted to see the headless corpse.
The corpse lay naked on the autopsy table and was already being examined by two pathologists. One of them looked like he’d interrupted his summer holiday. He was suntanned from sailing, while the other doctor looked far from healthy.
It was cold in the room, and Ann Kathrin was shivering.
There were clear marks of shackles on the wrists and ankles of the dead man. Sand filled his navel. An ant was crawling on his right knee.
‘We’ve found very little blood,’ said the elder pathologist with the potbelly, ‘so we don’t yet how he was killed. He’s been dead for a good seventy-two hours, perhaps longer.’
Ann Kathrin looked at Weller and said, ‘The man wasn’t killed here, only buried. What is the perpetrator trying to tell us? He used Hude for the return address on the package. Posted in Norden. Sent to Wangerooge.’
Weller pointed out the locations on an imaginary map in the air and drew lines to connect them. ‘Cuxhaven-Duhnen. Hude. Norden. Wangerooge.’
‘Decapitations,’ said Ann Kathrin, ‘are nothing new. There are decapitations in the Bible.’ She counted them off on her fingers. ‘John the Baptist was beheaded. Paul of Tarsus and Holofernes too. Even earlier, the Celts celebrated beheadings as mystical rituals. For them the head was the centre of the whole spiritual psyche. Just as today many people regard the heart as the location of the soul. The heads of the enemy were often embalmed and stored in treasure chests. In this way their evil power would be retained even in the hereafter. In some cases it was also thought that the power of a severed head would be transferred to whoever possessed it.’
Weller looked at Büscher and suspected the man was thinking: how does Ann Kathrin know all this stuff?
Weller knew the answer, of course, but asked the question for Büscher’s sake. When people got to know Ann Kathrin, her vast knowledge could have a disturbing effect on them.
‘How do you know all this, Ann?’ Weller asked.
‘It’s all part of our job,’ she said. ‘Anything that seems to be a manifestation of the modern era is usually quite old. The guillotine of the French Revolution, no matter how terrible it sounds, was actually a progressive mechanism for killing a person without subjecting him to lengthy torture and suffering.’
‘Thanks for that,’ Sylvia Hoppe grunted.
The officers from Cuxhaven listened to Ann Kathrin with interest. They considered it an honour to be in the presence of the famous detective. The shorter of the two looked as if he might throw up at any moment, and Weller would have bet a month’s pay that he would take sick leave within the next few hours.
‘Decapitations,’ Ann Kathrin continued, ‘were viewed as honourable deaths, as opposed to hanging. In the Middle Ages beheading was reserved for the nobility. Everyone else was strung up. I think the first beheading to be uploaded to the Internet for propaganda purposes was in 2004, in order to spread fear and terror.’
Büscher clutched at his head. ‘You mean that a video of this disgusting murder might already be online?’
Ann Kathrin rejected that idea. ‘This case is unfolding quite differently,’ she said. ‘The
perpetrator isn’t interested in scaring the general public. His specific target is Ubbo Heide, our chief.’
I’m the chief here, Büscher wanted to say, but decided against it because it seemed petty for him to insist on his authority at that moment.
‘And that means,’ Sylvia concluded, ‘that Ubbo knows the perpetrator.’
Weller didn’t agree. ‘Possibly, but in any event it means that the perpetrator knows Ubbo Heide.’
Ann Kathrin gave a curt nod.
Weller, the crime fiction fan, now quoted Sherlock Holmes from memory: ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’
It sounded as though he had come up with the quote on the spot, just to make a good impression on Büscher.
Ann Kathrin was looking at the left forearm of the corpse. ‘Hmm,’ she said, and this ‘Hmm’ was a clear sign to Weller that something was wrong. At the top of the scale, ‘Hmm’ might mean that something tasted good to her, and at the bottom, that it was inedible. But sometimes this murmured response meant: Not with me, or: I’ve long since figured this out.
‘He’s evenly tanned on one side and white as a sack of flour on the other. The weather here has been excellent over the last few days. Yet he has no sign of being sunburned.’
‘So, not a cab driver after all?’ Büscher asked.
‘Probably not,’ Ann Kathrin replied. She was standing at the foot of the autopsy table, touching the toes of the corpse. But she wasn’t examining them very closely.
Like most of those present, Büscher asked himself why.
Ann Kathrin took her time, which annoyed the younger pathologist. The older one remained calm. ‘Is something wrong?’ he wanted to know.
Ann Kathrin said pensively, ‘His toenails look like they’ve had a pedicure. And the calluses on his heels and the balls of his feet seem to have been carefully abraded. Even this corn here looks like it was treated recently.’
The officers from Cuxhaven glanced at each other and then at the pathologists. The younger one looked like he’d just been slapped. Now he seemed like a schoolboy.
‘If the man was on holiday in Cuxhaven, he may have had a pedicure appointment at a local hotel,’ Ann Kathrin went on. With an oblique look at the officers from Cuxhaven she added: ‘That should be possible to check out pretty quickly.’
They both nodded. The older one sucked in his stomach.
*
He was happy to be able to do everything differently now.
It was easier to decapitate people than to lock them up forever. Now he had the cell almost finished. After his parents died he had renovated one half of the duplex, then the other. That had been less work than building this prison.
Almost everything he needed he could buy at local DIY stores, but he couldn’t hire any construction help. He couldn’t afford to hire anyone even for the most difficult jobs. And he couldn’t trust anyone. Any witnesses would be dangerous.
Finally he finished the work. He used to claim he had two left hands. But now he was virtually an expert at any task. A real Renaissance man.
Being able to repair everything himself without relying on outside help made him feel good. There was something godlike about it. Omnipotence.
Yes, he was proud of this prison with the soundproof walls and the terrifying bars, intended to quash any thoughts of escape. He had polished them smooth. Now they shone like the chrome plating on his first motorcycle.
He had constructed two adjoining cells. He could control everything in here remotely. Turn the lights off and on and select the TV channel. There were two fully automatic fire alarms that would trigger the sprinkler system at the first sign of smoke.
The comfortable bed had a new interior-sprung mattress. There was a washbasin and a toilet. Three cameras monitored every movement of the prisoners inside the cells. Two more cameras were mounted outside, beyond the reach of any juvenile delinquents outside the bars.
Through a loudspeaker he could make announcements no matter where he was. He could monitor and control everything easily with his iPhone, even adjust the room temperature.
In the kitchen he had water and food supplies for at least two weeks. Beer, pizza and sirloin steaks for himself. Kale, beans, lentils and pea soup for the prisoners.
He drove to Emden and parked by the vocational college. He intended to snatch her before the day was out. It would be a shame to lose any more time. She attended classes at the college three times a week.
Pilates – Make Your Back Happy and Lose Ten Pounds in Five Weeks, Cooking for Sports with Nutrition Plans and a new one called Killer Ab Training.
He was also taking the Cooking for Sports class. That was the simplest way to get close to Svenja Moers.
He had to watch out for that girl Agneta Meyerhoff. She was after him like an animal, wanting a relationship or at least an affair. She kept touching him during class, as if by accident. This had actually turned out to be beneficial. Not only because it massaged his ego, but also because it prevented anyone from thinking he was taking the class because he was interested in Svenja Moers. To her he was above suspicion, and she paid no attention to him.
As always she had left her bike locked carelessly over near the bike racks. The luminous bright colours were like a beacon to bike thieves, and he seized the opportunity. He wouldn’t even need a lock pick to remove the lock from the spokes. The red spiral cable attached to the combination lock seemed almost like the ribbon on a gift for thieves.
It took him less than ten seconds. He’d learned how on YouTube, like so much else. But he did wonder why the government allowed lock-picking lessons to be posted on the Internet, along with all the other instructional videos for DIYers. We’re living in a crazy world, he thought.
He rode the bike around the corner, crossed the street, and rolled it into the Emden town ditch next to the city auditorium. Then he went back to the vocational college.
When the class is over, he thought, and she’s looking for her bike, I’ll offer, quite casually, to give her a lift home.
*
‘We’ve got a headless body in Cuxhaven and a decapitated head on Wangerooge,’ said Ann Kathrin. ‘But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the two belong together.’
Büscher drew himself up. ‘Now you’re really going too far, Ms. Klaasen. Surely you’re not implying that—’
She held up her hands as if to fend him off. The younger officer from Cuxhaven jotted something down. Ann Kathrin stepped back from the table on which the body lay. ‘I’m not implying anything. I just want to point out the facts of the case. We need to view the whole thing objectively.’ Then she moved closer to the autopsy table.
Büscher considered all this a waste of time, but he said nothing in order to avoid an argument.
A few seconds later the pathologist with the holiday tan announced that the dead man’s blood type was O negative.
Büscher smiled. ‘You must be mistaken. The blood type is A positive.’
The doctor didn’t look like he was used to being contradicted. He jutted out his chin and pursed his lips in an arrogant expression. ‘Most definitely not, Inspector. A positive is a very common blood type, but this poor individual is O negative.’
Sylvia Hoppe seemed shocked.
‘Why would he drive the body so far away, or send the head?’ Weller asked.
‘He mailed the head from Norden. On the way he might have had an accident or run into a police checkpoint. No one would dare drive for very long with body parts in the boot.’
‘That means,’ said Ann Kathrin, ‘that somewhere there’s another head and another body, which—’
Electrified by his own musings, Weller shouted: ‘I bet he buried the second body in Norddeich!’
Sylvia Hoppe flinched and said, ‘How on earth did you come up with that? Why specifically in Norddeich?’
‘Well, the beach is similar to the one here. And it’s not far from the car park for an SUV.’ Weller raised hi
s index finger and launched into a lecture: ‘Criminals are creatures of habit. We have to understand that.’
Ann Kathrin put her hand on his right arm. ‘All right, Frank. That’s enough.’
‘We should be getting back,’ Büscher suggested with a glance at the clock, then added quietly but firmly: ‘All leave is cancelled. We need every man on this.’
Sylvia Hoppe asked pointedly, ‘And the women are free to take a quick trip to the Caribbean? Is that how we’re supposed to interpret what you’ve just said?’
‘No, of course not,’ Büscher said with a groan, realising he had to watch out for her.
‘So, are we supposed to go dig up the beach in Norddeich or what?’ Weller asked on his way out.
The younger detective from Cuxhaven followed them out, trying to get Ann Kathrin’s attention. ‘Does this mean that the body doesn’t belong to your stiff, and that there must be another head around here somewhere?’
Ann Kathrin kept walking. Weller turned to the officer and smiled at him. ‘That’s exactly what she was trying to say.’
*
During class he kept his distance from Svenja Moers. He’d smiled at her in a friendly way only twice, once in greeting and another time when she lost control of her paring knife and it accidentally flew out of her hand straight at him like a throwing knife. It struck his upper arm, not with the point but the handle. He handed it back to her with a smile, and she apologised profusely.
He paid no attention to her for the rest of the evening. Instead he let Agneta Meyerhoff flirt with him. For the third time she told him that her husband was away installing equipment, and sometimes she got so bored at home. She’d always been such a lively girl and was always looking for fun things to do.
Agneta left the classroom twice to have a smoke. Each time she invited him to come along, and if he wasn’t mistaken, she even gave him a wink. But maybe she just had something in her eye; although she deliberately left the door open for him.
I can’t be seen with Svenja Moers if she goes outside, he thought. I’ll have to be gone by then, and when she’s looking for her bike I’ll come back and offer my assistance. Later the cops will try to reconstruct her last steps. Naturally they’ll ask all the people taking the class, because they were probably the last to see her.
The Oath Page 3
