Blood Eagle

by Craig Russell

  MacSwain led them into a huge open-plan living area that was floored in highly polished beech. A few steps took them down into a sunken seating area where MacSwain dropped back elegantly onto one of the two huge hide couches. He indicated the other couch with a wave of his hand.

  ‘What can I do for you gentlemen?’ MacSwain’s German was perfect and almost totally unaccented.

  Fabel smiled and spoke in English. ‘I take it you are not German. You’re English? Or maybe American?’

  MacSwain looked surprised. ‘Actually I’m Scottish … your English is exceptional, Herr …’

  ‘Fabel. Kriminalhauptkommissar Fabel. Actually I am half Scottish myself. I was partly educated in England.’

  ‘Amazing.’ MacSwain’s green eyes seemed to search for something in Fabel. ‘What can I do for you, Herr Fabel?’

  ‘We are investigating a case – a murder case – that involves a highly ritualised form of killing. The ritual, we believe, may be related to Norse mythology, to Odinism or … As …’ Fabel searched for the name Otto had mentioned.

  MacSwain helped Fabel out. ‘Asatru. It means belief in the Aesir. Or, if you want to be truly correct and authentic, Forn Siar, which means the “Ancient Way”.’

  ‘Thank you, yes, Asatru. It came to our attention that you are something of an expert in this area, so we wondered if you could help us with some background to these beliefs.’

  MacSwain kept his green gaze on Fabel, silently, for a moment before answering. ‘Herr Fabel, I am an information-technology consultant, not an Odinist high priest.’

  ‘But you are interested in the subject?’

  ‘I’m interested in a lot of subjects. The occult is one of them. I am not a member of any Asatru group, or anything. Anyway, wouldn’t you be better getting your information from a more authoritative source. The medieval-history department of the university, for example.’

  ‘We are looking into that. In the meantime we need all the help we can get.’

  Werner gave a loud and artificial cough. Fabel got the message: the conversation had taken place entirely in English up until now.

  ‘I’m sorry –’ Fabel reverted to German, ‘I think we should speak German for Oberkommissar Meyer’s benefit.’

  ‘Of course. You say this is a murder inquiry?’

  ‘Yes. The victims have been murdered in a way that is almost identical to the Viking “Blood Eagle” ritual.’ Fabel watched MacSwain’s face. The only emotion that registered was interest.

  ‘Has he been tearing their lungs out, or carving the outline of an eagle on their backs?’

  ‘I didn’t realise there were two forms.’

  MacSwain stood up and walked over to a large floor-to-ceiling bookcase that was made out of the same beech as the floor, but unpolished. It acted as a sort of divider in the open-plan space. He removed two books: one was the book Fabel had seen in Otto’s shop. MacSwain was either playing it very cool or he had nothing to hide.

  MacSwain flicked through the other volume until he found what he was looking for. ‘Actually, there’s a possibility that neither form of ritual ever took place.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Some historians believe that the whole Blood Eagle story was negative propaganda invented by the victims of Viking raids. Examples are cited in the historical record, but they tend to conflict … some say the victim was eviscerated while others state that an eagle was cut out of the flesh of their backs. And just because they are there in the record doesn’t mean to say that the accounts are true.’

  ‘What about Asatru? I can’t imagine it has a big following.’

  MacSwain smiled a perfect smile. ‘Then you’d be wrong, Herr Fabel. Asatru is very popular these days. The Americans are big on it. Officially it’s classed as a neo-Paganist religion. It’s all very sanitised now, but Hitler incorporated a lot of its mythology and symbolism into Nazism. To be honest it’s been chucked into the New Age stew along with Buddhism, Native American Shamanism, Wicca and the rest.’

  ‘Do you know of any cults operating in Hamburg?’

  MacSwain rubbed his chin. ‘You suspect Asatru worshippers of these murders? They tend to be harmless New Age types who focus on Balder.’ MacSwain read Fabel’s questioning expression. ‘A Christ-like figure in the Aesir pantheon. A politically correct Viking deity. To answer your question: yes, I do. They call themselves the Temple of Asatru. They meet in an old warehouse in Billstedt, from what I’ve heard.’

  ‘Thanks for your help, Mr MacSwain,’ Fabel said in English and rose from the couch.

  Fabel gazed blankly at the doors of the elevator that took them back down to the lobby of MacSwain’s building.

  ‘There’s something about that guy that doesn’t smell right. He may not have anything to do with these killings, but he didn’t seem at all surprised to have the Hamburg KriPo knocking at his door.’

  ‘Sometimes I think half the population of Hamburg has something to hide,’ said Werner.

  ‘I want MacSwain watched. And I want a full background worked up on him.’

  ‘Can we justify the manpower to watch him round the clock? All you have is a hunch … Although I agree with it. He was too cool by half.’

  ‘Just organise it, Werner. I’ll clear it with Van Heiden.’

  Friday 13 June, 11.00 p.m. Hamburg-Harburg, Hamburg.

  The waterless swimming pool was illuminated by the bright disc of the moon which sat framed in the large roof window; the only window that, because of its inaccessibility, had not been smashed by vandals. The beam of the flashlight swept across the pool’s cracked tiles and along the walls. The swimming pool had not been used for years. What had been intended as a cheery mural, depicting bright blue dolphins and children with water wings splashing together in water, was only just discernible on the walls beneath the built-up grime and graffiti. All the windows along the far poolside had been broken and the basin of the pool itself, long emptied of water, was scattered with litter and filth. There were discarded syringes everywhere. Someone had even defecated in the corner.

  ‘This used to be a decent working-class neighbourhood.’ It was the man who stood at the far side of the pool, looking out through the broken glazing, who spoke. He shone a flashlight in the direction of a double doorway that now housed only one door. ‘Check there’s no one around …’

  The younger man of the two made his way over to the doorway and shone his light into what had once been changing rooms.

  ‘Nothing here.’

  The older man resumed his reverie. ‘I used to go out with a girl who lived just a block away. I even took her swimming here.’ As he spoke, it was as if he were reconstructing the past, trying to see everything as it had been, not how it was now. He pulled himself back into the present. He looked across to the younger man who was now holding the gun to the head, covered in a rough sack, of a figure who knelt at the edge of the pool with his hands bound behind his back. The older man took a deep breath. When he spoke, he did so without anger, without malice, without excitement: ‘Kill him.’

  The kneeling figure’s scream of ‘No!’ was extinguished in mid-flow by the thud of the silenced automatic. He toppled over and fell into the pool.

  ‘A decent neighbourhood …’ the older man said as he walked towards the door.

  Saturday 14 June, 11.00 a.m. Cuxhaven.

  It took nearly two hours to reach Cuxhaven, but the drive had been pleasant: it was a bright, gently warm day and the time in the car gave Fabel a chance to talk with Susanne, who had leapt at the chance of a change of scenery. It had also given him a chance to finalise their dinner date. They had become more relaxed in each other’s company and there was now an unspoken intimacy between them.

  Fabel made only one stop on the way, pulling over at the Aussendeich rest station about which Sülberg had given details over the phone. There was a dense wedge of trees screening the rest station from the road and from the wind that sliced across the flatlands all around. It was from these trees that the
dead girl had staggered out into the path of the truck. Fabel swept his gaze across the parking area. His BMW was the only car there, and he could imagine it was an even lonelier spot at night. The other girl had been dumped on the same road, but about twenty kilometres back in the direction of Hamburg.

  The seven-storey hospital building of the Stadtkrankenhaus Cuxhaven lay in a verdant square of grass and trees off the Altenwalder Chaussee. Fabel and Susanne were conducted to a bright waiting room with large windows that looked out onto immaculately arranged flower beds and a small square of lawn. They had been waiting about ten minutes when the door opened and a short, crumpled-looking SchuPo came in. His entire face seemed arranged around a broad, genuine smile.

  ‘Hauptkommissar Fabel? Frau Doktor Eckhardt? I’m Hauptkommissar Sülberg.’ Sülberg shook hands with them both and apologised that Dr Stern would not be available for another twenty minutes, so he suggested they went straight up to interview the girl.

  Michaela Palmer was tall and long-limbed. Fabel knew from the report he had received from Sülberg that she was twenty-three. Her hair was a buttery blonde that looked natural. She would have been beautiful had her nose not been a touch too long, disrupting the otherwise perfect balance of her features. Her skin was tanned golden; not, Fabel reckoned, by the north-German sun and not, from what he had gathered about her, from frequent trips to sunnier climes. It was a sun-salon tan that gave her an exaggerated look of health and contrasted with the pad of white gauze taped to her forehead. It was only beneath the blue eyes that the unnatural tan failed to hide the dark shadows of what had happened to her over the last forty-eight hours. Her room was on the third floor of the Stadtkrankenhaus Cuxhaven, and Fabel could not help thinking how lucky she was that she had not ended up in the basement. In the morgue.

  Fabel gestured towards the bed and made an expression that asked permission. Michaela nodded and moved across the bed slightly. Her white towelling bathrobe slipped to expose a bronzed plain of thigh. She re-covered it with a swift movement. Her actions, particularly the way she moved her eyes, seemed fox-like, hunted; as if she were on the edge of flight. Fabel smiled as reassuring a smile as he could muster.

  ‘I’m a Kriminalhauptkommissar of the Hamburg Polizei.’ Fabel was careful to omit that he was from the Mord-kommission for fear of blowing Michaela’s already fragile defences to pieces. He had to handle this questioning carefully, or his witness would simply implode. ‘And this is Dr Eckhardt. She is a psychologist who knows a lot about the type of drug you were given. I’d like to ask you a few questions. Is that okay?’

  Michaela nodded. ‘What do you want to know? I can’t remember much. That’s the thing …’ Her brow furrowed. ‘I can’t remember anything much at all. And it’s not just the kidnapping I can’t remember – there are chunks missing from the days before.’ She looked searchingly at Fabel and her bottom lip quivered. ‘Why is that? That was before I was drugged. Why can’t I remember what happened before?’

  Fabel turned to Susanne.

  ‘The type of drug you were given damages the memory centre of your brain,’ she explained. ‘You’ll find that there are a few things from before the drugging that seem to have been erased from your memory. Those things will generally come back to you, at least in part. But the things you can’t remember about what happened to you while you were drugged … they won’t come back. Which is probably a good thing.’ Susanne drew closer. ‘Listen, Michaela, I have to warn you that, unfortunately, you will get extremely vivid flashbacks of the things you do remember about the attack.’

  Michaela sucked back a sob. ‘I don’t want to remember anything.’ She looked directly into Fabel’s eyes. ‘Please don’t make me remember.’

  ‘No one can make you remember, Michaela,’ said Susanne, pushing back a stray tendril of Michaela’s blonde hair, as if comforting a child who had awoken from a nightmare. ‘What isn’t there isn’t there. But what you can remember may help us catch this monster.’

  ‘There was more than one.’ Michaela lowered her eyes and plucked at her towelling bathrobe. ‘There was more than one of them who did it to me. I thought at first there was just one, because the face was the same. But the bodies were different.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Michaela, I don’t understand,’ Fabel said. ‘What do you mean they had the same face but different bodies?’

  ‘Just that. I’m sorry, I know it doesn’t make sense, but I know that one of them was fat and older and one was young and slim. But they all had the same horrible face.’

  Shit, thought Fabel. Sorry as he felt for the girl, this had been a wasted trip: they would get nothing useful from her. ‘Can you describe the face you saw? The face you say they all had?’

  Michaela shuddered. ‘It was horrible. Expressionless. I couldn’t see it too clearly but I’m sure he had a beard … and he had only one eye.’

  ‘What?’

  Michaela shook her head as if trying to shake free of something. ‘Yes. Only one eye. It was like the other eye was just a socket … all black and …’ She broke down.

  ‘It’s okay, Michaela,’ said Fabel. ‘Just take it easy.’

  Susanne put an arm around the girl’s shaking shoulders. They sat in silence for a while until Michaela gathered her composure.

  ‘How many do you think there were?’ Fabel asked eventually.

  ‘I don’t know. I only remember flashes. I think three. At least three …’

  Fabel placed his hand on Michaela’s. She pulled away as if stung. Then she focused on Fabel’s retracted hand, frowning.

  ‘There was something. One of them had a scar on the back of his hand. Left hand. It was actually more like two scars running together. It made a wishbone shape.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked Fabel.

  Michaela gave a bitter laugh. ‘It’s one of the few things I remember clearly.’ She looked up pleadingly again. ‘It makes no sense. Why should I remember that?’

  ‘I don’t know, Michaela.’ Fabel smiled as reassuringly as he could. ‘But it could be useful. Very useful.’ He took out his notebook and laid it on the bed, placing his pen on top of it. ‘Could you draw what it looked like?’

  She picked up the pen and notebook, frowned for a moment, and then drew two swift, determined lines. It was indeed the shape of a wishbone, but with a slight distortion in each leg.

  ‘That’s it,’ she said resolutely.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Fabel and stood up. ‘I’m so sorry about what happened to you, Michaela. I promise you we’ll do everything we can to find out who did it.’

  Michaela nodded without looking up. Then she seemed to be gripped by something. Her eyes began darting again and her brow creased by the effort of intense concentration. ‘Wait … there’s something else … I was at a club … I … I can’t remember the name. There was a man. He gave me some water … it tasted salty …’

  ‘We know, Michaela, you already told Herr Sülberg. Can you describe him? Anything?’

  ‘His eyes … his eyes were green. Cold, bright. And they were green …’

  On the way out, Fabel and Susanne stopped off at Dr Stern’s office. Stern’s tall frame was bent over a desk covered in files, charts and yellow notelets that were strewn in layers like windfallen leaves. Fabel considered his own over-orderly nature; that everything had its place in his office, in his home, in his life. Whenever things stacked up he had to sort them all out or he would grind to a halt. Fabel recognised it as a weakness in himself: something that threw a fence around his otherwise intuitive nature. And it was more than a little anally retentive.

  Stern stood up and his strong, handsome face broke into a wide and genial smile. ‘Hauptkommissar Fabel? Frau Doktor Eckhardt?’

  Fabel extended his hand. ‘Herr Doktor Stern. Thanks for your time.’

  ‘No problem.’ Stern reached into the chaos on his desk and pulled out a file. ‘I made you a copy of the report I drew up for the local police.’ Stern nodded in the direction of Sülberg, who had entered the off
ice.

  ‘Thanks.’ Fabel took the file but did not examine it right away. ‘Would I be right in assuming that the girl was drugged with Rohypnol?’

  ‘Drugged, yes. Rohypnol, yes. But not on its own. As I’ve stated in the report there are only very faint traces of Rohypnol in her blood. Rohypnol metabolises slowly … it tends to hang around in the bloodstream for several hours after ingestion.’

  ‘Could it be that the dose was enough to daze her but light enough to have all but disappeared by now?’

  It was Susanne who answered. ‘No. Even after it has disappeared from the bloodstream it can be traced as a metabolite in urine for more than seventy-two hours.’ She turned to Stern. ‘I presume you checked urine samples?’

  Stern nodded. ‘We checked for seven-aminoflunitrazepam in her urine. Very faint residual traces. As Frau Doktor Eckhardt pointed out, if Michaela had been heavily drugged with Rohypnol within the last three days then we would have found more significant traces.’

  ‘But she was drugged?’ Fabel asked.

  ‘Absolutely. Michaela had faint chemical burns – and I mean very faint, more of a dermal inflammation in her mouth and throat. And when I asked her about the windows of clarity she had during her altered state, she talked about how unafraid she had felt.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Susanne. ‘Some kind of cocktail that included gammahydroxybutyrate?’

  ‘Probably …’ Stern shrugged. ‘But gammahydroxybutyrate metabolises so fast that I have no traces to prove it …’

  ‘Gamma what?’ The conversation was going too fast and getting too technical for Fabel.

  ‘Sorry.’ Stern made an apologetic gesture. ‘Gammahydroxybutyrate, GHB. Otherwise known as Gook or Zonked.’

  Again Susanne picked up the thread. ‘A particularly nasty central-nervous-system depressant. It does the same job as Rohypnol but is potentially much more dangerous. It was, believe it or not, sold until recently in health-food shops as a bodybuilding aid. It really has little medical application, so the majority of production takes place illegally.’