Blood Eagle

by Craig Russell

  ‘See where our chum has made a bit of a mistake?’ With his pen Möller followed the line of a deep serration that ran off at an angle from the main slash. ‘You can see the shape of the blade. It’s a broad blade of a heavy gauge: more like a short sword or a very heavy hunting knife. I’ll get some shots of it during the autopsy.’

  Fabel breathed in slowly before speaking. ‘Is that the only deviation from the main cuts?’

  Möller scratched his grizzled beard. ‘Yes … That’s the thing. This has been no frenzied attack. He took his time.’ He pointed to the back of the head of Angelika Blüm’s body. ‘Again the fatal or near-fatal trauma to the back of the skull; again with a very heavy instrument with some kind of ball-shaped impact; and again the dissections to access the lungs and achieve this … well, trademark, I suppose.’

  ‘A hell of a trademark,’ said Fabel.

  Möller didn’t reply immediately. He had been squatting down and now stood up with a groan. He gazed down at the body; it was as if he wasn’t seeing it, but looking beyond it. ‘This man’s physical strength must be considerable to say the least. Surgically, opening a body usually needs a sternal saw and mechanical rib-spreaders. This man slashes at his victims with amazing precision and then prises their ribs apart. He is very strong indeed.’

  Maria entered the room and beckoned to Fabel. ‘Chef?’

  He followed her into the living area. Holger Brauner was in the room with his team. ‘Look at this,’ he said to Fabel, indicating the coffee table with his gloved hand. ‘What do you see?’

  Fabel stared at a large rectangle of pale wood. It looked solid and expensive. He shrugged. ‘Apart from a coffee table, nothing.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Brauner. ‘No ornaments. No ashtrays, no ceramics, no books.’ He lifted one of the forensic team’s high-powered hand lamps. It flooded the table top with a cold, white, bleaching light. ‘Look here …’ Brauner leaned forward and drew a square on the tabletop. ‘There’s been something here. And here. His finger swept a circle at the other side of the table. Here too. He switched off the lamp and turned to the window, which was concealed behind closed blinds. ‘These windows are fantastic, don’t you think? I checked with a compass: this room faces as near as damn it due south. This room will be filled with the best of the day’s light. It makes for a bright, cheerful living environment.’

  ‘Are you changing careers and taking up real-estate agency, Holger?’ asked Fabel.

  Brauner laughed. ‘The pay would be a hell of a lot better, that’s for sure. But no … it’s just that light bleaches furnishings. Including wood. These slightly darker areas are where she’s had books or ornaments on the coffee table … items that were there almost all the time.’

  ‘But they’re not now.’

  ‘Exactly. And I don’t think our perpetrator cleared it.’ Brauner moved over to the stone plinth that surrounded the gas-flame fireplace. He lifted three books that sat stacked on top of each other and placed them on the table. The bottom book matched the slightly darker area he had indicated. From a high table behind Fabel he lifted a circular piece of contemporary ceramic. It too matched its shadow on the table. ‘Our guy is so thorough that he would make absolutely certain that he put everything back the way he found it. My guess is that Angelika Blüm cleared this table to spread stuff out on it. Papers or something. Whatever it was she had there, our killer has taken it away. And when he’d done so, he didn’t know what should go back onto the table.’

  ‘So you’re saying you think that he is stealing items for a trophy?’

  ‘No, Jan,’ Brauner’s voice was suddenly tighter. ‘I don’t think that this guy is a random psychopathic serial killer. Most serial-offending psychopaths take trophies, anything from a personal item to an internal organ. This guy’s trophies are all documentary. Remember you asked me if we had found a diary or appointment book in the second girl’s apartment? And the thing that really doesn’t fit is, why did he wipe all of her files from her computer? I’ll bet if we keep looking, we’ll find even less. She was a journalist, wasn’t she?’

  Fabel nodded.

  ‘She was freelance, right? And worked from the office in the next room?’

  ‘I guess so,’ said Fabel.

  ‘Then I suggest you go through her files. My guess is there’ll be stuff missing there as well.’

  Fabel looked from Brauner to Maria and then Werner, who had entered the room and had caught the main part of Brauner’s theory.

  ‘You’re saying that there is an ulterior, objective motive here? Surely this guy is a psycho …’

  Brauner shrugged. ‘That’s up to your criminal psychologist to determine, but yes, I agree, the killer is psychotic. However, that doesn’t mean he falls into the serial pattern. You’ve heard of Ivan the Terrible?’

  ‘Of course I have.’

  ‘Ivan the Terrible united Russia. He was the father of the nation. He turned it from a loose collection of feuding principalities and fiefdoms into a cohesive nation. That was his motive. But as well as being a monarch and general, Ivan fitted all the criteria of a psychotic murderer. In fact, in many ways, he fitted the profile of the classic serial offender – a shy, quiet, sensitive child who was abused from a very early age. As a result, while still a child, he tortured and killed small animals. Then he killed his first man when he was thirteen. After that he committed countless rapes, murders, acts of obscene torture … including frying, boiling, impaling or feeding his victims to wild animals. We’re talking thousands of rapes and hundreds of murders committed personally by Ivan.’ Brauner nodded in the direction of the next room. ‘He even had a similar taste for rituals. He had a personal bodyguard, the oprichniki. He formed them almost like a holy order with himself as the abbot. They raped, tortured and mutilated victims in parodies of the Russian Orthodox Mass.’

  ‘What’s your point, Holger?’

  ‘Just that Ivan was clearly a psychopath. A sociopath, in fact, totally devoid of any empathy with his victims. But he was also an extremely intelligent man and the worst of his crimes were committed within a structured context. He used his psychopathy as a tool to instil terror and to consolidate his control of state and people. My point is that Ivan’s sociopathic behaviour was not an end in itself, it was a means to an end. He channelled his psychopathy to further his strategies and achieve his objectives.’

  ‘And you think this guy is the same, but on a smaller scale?’ Fabel asked. Everything that Brauner was saying fitted with what he had started to believe after the second murder.

  ‘Yes, but what’s more I think your killer here is flaunting his psychopathy. He wants you to believe that these are random acts to conceal whatever it is he’s up to.’

  ‘So what is he up to?’ Maria was frowning at the coffee table’s surface as if to see that which was already gone. ‘He kills a journalist and, we think, steals some of her papers.’

  ‘Papers that relate to a story she was working on, if she had them laid out on the table to look over,’ Werner added.

  ‘Kill the journalist and kill the story?’ Maria looked up and towards Fabel.

  ‘Could be. But it doesn’t fit with the other killings. A prostitute and a civic lawyer.’

  ‘Maybe it does,’ said Werner, ‘but we just haven’t seen the connection yet. After all, we know next to nothing about the dead prostitute. Maybe she had something to do with Angelika Blüm’s story. A sex scandal, maybe?’

  ‘Angelika Blüm wasn’t a tabloid journalist, but if it were a sex scandal that involved politics or something else, then perhaps.’ Fabel rubbed his chin frustratedly, as if the action would stimulate brain activity. ‘We simply have to find out who Monique was. And we need to go back to the Kastner case. We have to take a closer look at her personal paperwork. And we didn’t get into her professional life because we thought it was a random killing. We’ve got to go back over it all again. Maria … could you start that? I know you’re looking into the second victim’s identity, but I’d like you to t
ake this on as well.’

  ‘Sure, Chef.’ Maria answered without much enthusiasm. Fabel had expected Werner to look relieved that he had not landed the job. He didn’t. Fabel knew that Werner resented Maria being given so much responsibility, but Fabel didn’t have time for good man-management practice just now.

  ‘Werner, I need you to follow up on Angelika Blüm’s professional contacts, see if you can find out what she was working on. In the meantime, let’s find out if anyone else here caught a glimpse of our mystery visitor.’

  Brauner spoke again. ‘By the way, Jan, we have picked up a second set of prints.’

  ‘Oh?’ Fabel raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Don’t get too excited. They’re all over the place, some new, some quite old and difficult to lift, but I reckon they’re the same person. Someone who has been, well, intimately acquainted with Frau Blüm’s apartment for some time. Unlikely to be our guy.’

  Fabel suddenly felt leaden and dull, as if the adrenalin had worn off and a sluggish tiredness had reclaimed him, body and mind. He made his way back through to Blüm’s home office.

  Fabel looked down at the devastated carcass that had once been Angelika Blüm. The pathology technicians had laid out a body bag and were preparing to move the corpse onto it. He watched as they zipped up the remains of a woman who had tried several times to get in touch with him. Calls he had deemed too unimportant to return because he had a major murder inquiry to conduct. Now she was a part of that inquiry. He knew the lead that sat in his chest was guilt. He spoke to a woman who was now beyond hearing him.

  ‘Well, Frau Blüm, I’d better find out just what the hell it was that you wanted to tell me.’

  Sunday 15 June, 9.45 a.m. Harburg, Hamburg.

  Hansi Kraus was more whippet than man: a small, jangling conjunction of bones held together by grey, leathery skin. His eyes, set deep in a pinched, rodential face, had been pale blue in childhood but had since been dulled to a lifeless bluish grey by fifteen years of absorbing prodigious amounts of heroin. Hansi lay on a stained mattress that fumed a stale, unclean odour into the bedroom of the squat; a smell that went unnoticed by Hansi, mainly because he carried it around with him all of the time. He lay with one arm hooked, the hand supporting his head, while the other hand held the cigarette to his thin lips.

  Hansi needed to get happy. And soon. He knew that the bud of an ache he felt in his meagre frame would soon bloom into a body-wracking gnaw. To get happy meant money, and Hansi didn’t have any. And, despite the volume and regularity of his custom, his suppliers were unlikely to extend Hansi any form of credit. Fucking Turks. But Hansi’s bargaining position had been given an unexpected boost. He swung his legs around and sat up on the edge of the bed. Screwing his eyes tight against the smoke from his cigarette, he reached under the bed with both hands. It was still there. He held this pose for a few seconds, listening, screw-eyed, to the sounds from elsewhere in the squat: a tubercular-sounding cough downstairs, a radio in the next bedroom. Hansi pulled out a small bundle wrapped in a couple of soiled rags and laid it on the mattress. Carefully folding back the cloth, he revealed a glittering nine-millimetre automatic pistol. Hansi didn’t know anything about guns but he could tell this one was special. It looked expensive. Its flank was ornately tooled with decorative motifs that looked as if they had been inlaid with gold. The maker’s mark was foreign; in Cyrillic capitals – Russian or some shit like that, thought Hansi – followed by the number twelve in numerals. Hansi folded the cloth back over, taking care not to touch the gun itself: there was no way he wanted to be tied into what had happened to that poor fuck in the swimming pool.

  It had been the night before last. Hansi had been buying some stuff from the Turk. The disused swimming pool was a regular venue for Hansi’s deals. Whenever he had enough cash he would buy a surplus of heroin and sell some of it on. The Turks didn’t mind so long as he didn’t trade widely or stray onto their patch. Hansi hadn’t had cash to spare on Friday and could only just afford to buy enough to keep himself going. The Turk had just left to resume his rounds when Hansi had felt the urgent need to defecate. He was used to the alternating bouts of gut-stabbing constipation and diarrhoea that went with a long-standing addiction. He had just finished emptying his bowels onto the floor when he heard the car pull up. There had been no warning sweep of headlights; the car had obviously driven up with its lights off. Years of street living had given Hansi a sixth sense about when to make himself invisible, and, hastily pulling his jeans up, he had dodged behind the door that at one time had led bathers to the changing area.

  His instinct had been right. Three men had entered the swimming pool: an older man, a young guy who looked like a bodybuilder and some poor bastard with a canvas bag over his head and his hands tied behind his back. At that moment Hansi knew that three men had come in, but only two would be going out. He had watched them through the semi-circular window of the surviving half of what had been double doors. The younger guy, a gun in one gloved hand and a flashlight in the other, had made his way over to the door. Hansi had only just made it, skipping back, carefully making sure he didn’t stumble or make a noise on the rubbish-strewn floor, and ducking into the remnants of a cubicle. The younger man swept the changing area with his flashlight, making sure it was clear. Hansi exhaled slowly. He heard the older guy talking and he made his way carefully back to the door. They had made the hooded guy kneel at the pool’s edge and Hansi heard him scream, ‘No!’ Then there had been a flash and a resonant thump from the gun. Hansi would have expected a brighter flash and a bigger noise, and had noticed the lengthened barrel of the gun. A silencer. There was the ringing tinkle as the discharged cartridge fell onto the cracked tiles.

  The two men had seemed in no hurry as they left. It was then that Hansi had seen them do the strangest thing. On the way out they had lifted the lid from an old waste bin by the door and the younger man had dropped the gun into it. They certainly had not been worried about the murder weapon being found. A few hundred metres away was a canal that had probably already served as the depository for dozens of pieces of evidence. Dumping the gun here was inviting it to be found. And, after they left, Hansi had been only too willing to oblige.

  Now Hansi had something to offer in lieu of cash. He knew the Turk’s cell phone number by heart and knew that this was the best time to catch him. Hansi stood up from the bed and donned the old ex-army coat that he wore rain or shine, summer or winter. He picked up the carefully rewrapped bundle and slipped it into one of the coat’s capacious pockets. He didn’t like the idea of carrying the gun around with him, but he knew that anything left lying around in the squat had the habit of vanishing.

  Hansi went out onto the landing, down the rickety stairs and out onto the street, trying to think where the nearest un-vandalised public phone would be.

  Monday 16 June, 10.05 a.m. Polizeipräsidium, Hamburg.

  Fabel stood at the conference room’s cherrywood table, waiting for the others to take their places. He turned round to the incident board behind him. The board was the physical presence of the inquiry – its shape – and now it was growing in substance. There was a map of Hamburg and surrounding area, on which flag pins marked the two primary murder scenes in Hamburg and the secondary scene where Ursula Kastner’s body had been found.

  The forensic photographs of Angelika Blüm’s devastated body now hung alongside those of the two previous victims. Photocopies of pages from academic books on Viking ritual were pasted next to copies of the e-mails from the killer. Fabel had written the names of the three victims, with the second identified as simply ‘Monique?’, in the centre of the whiteboard panel. Above the names he had written the name ‘Son of Sven’ and the words ‘Blood Eagle’. Over to the right, the name ‘Hans Klugmann’ was linked with an upward arrow to ‘Arno Hoffknecht’ which in turn had an arrow connecting it to ‘Ulugbay/Yilmaz’. Next to this, punctuated with a question mark, he had written ‘Ukrainians’. On the other side he had written the names of the two kn
own date-rape-drug abduction victims. This was linked to the words ‘Blood Eagle’ by a line broken by the words ‘Odinist cult?’

  On the table in front of Fabel sat the case file to which had been added his report of what Professor Dorn had told him and the preliminary forensic and pathology reports on the Blüm murder. They had recovered Klugmann’s cell phone from Sonia’s apartment and it now sat in a plastic evidence bag, on top of the file. The entire principal Mordkommission team, except Maria Klee, was now gathered around the cherrywood table: Fabel, Werner Meyer, Anna Wolff and Paul Lindemann. Fabel was annoyed that Maria wasn’t there.

  ‘She’s tying something up,’ explained Werner. ‘She said she won’t be long.’

  In addition to the core Mordkommission team, there were half a dozen other KriPo detectives who had been drafted in by Van Heiden to support Fabel’s inquiry. Fabel had phoned Susanne Eckhardt, and she had joined the meeting. At the end of the table, Van Heiden sat impassive, as Fabel outlined his conversation with Dorn. When Fabel finished, Susanne Eckhardt was the first to speak.

  ‘I can see that Herr Professor Dorn has been able to draw on his expertise as a historian, but why is he so involved in, well, to be frank, amateur psychology? He has identified the modus as being reminiscent of this sacrificial rite, but he seems to have extrapolated a profile of the killer as well.’

  ‘Professor Dorn has worked for many years with offenders,’ said Fabel.

  ‘But that hardly qualifies …’

  Fabel turned and locked eyes with Susanne. There was a cold steel edge to his voice. ‘Dorn was my European History tutor at university. His daughter, Hanna, was abducted, tortured, raped and murdered. About twenty years ago. She was twenty-two. I think Professor Dorn has a more …’ he sought the right word – ‘intimate understanding of murder than we do.’

  What Fabel omitted to say was that Hanna Dorn had been his girlfriend at the time. That he had gone out with her for only a couple of weeks. That they were only just on that threshold between awkwardness and intimacy when an unremarkable thirty-year-old hospital orderly called Lutger Voss snatched her from the street as she made her way home from a date with Fabel. The police had questioned Fabel as to why he hadn’t walked her home. He had asked himself the same question over and over again and having an assignment to complete had never seemed a substantial enough answer. Fabel had graduated before the trial. Immediately after the trial he had joined the Polizei Hamburg.