by Val McDermid
‘I’m on it already, boss.’ Krasic finished his drink and slid to the edge of the booth, gathering his coat as he went. ‘If she’s dodgy, we’ll nail her. Don’t you worry about it.’
Tadeusz nodded, satisfied. He watched Krasic leave, butting through the crowd like a bull with a destiny. Darko would sort it out. Either Caroline Jackson was up to something shady. Or else she was possibly, just possibly his salvation.
The Rhine was in spate. The skipper of the Wilhelmina Rosen stood on the massive steps of the Deutsches Eck monument at the confluence of the Rhine and the Mosel and glared at the racing brown flood tide, now closed to commercial traffic. If he was honest, he’d been expecting it. These days, it was a regular spring occurrence, not like in his youth. Global warming, he supposed. But it felt like another element in a giant conspiracy to thwart him.
He’d planned to get as far as Köln that afternoon and moor up in the basin just off the main river. Instead they were stuck here at Koblenz. For the first time in his life, he felt oppressed by living at close quarters with two other men. He’d suggested to Manfred and Gunther that they might as well go home for a few days, since the river showed no sign of falling and there was nothing useful for them to do on board. He’d even offered to pay them for the days they were gone. But neither had felt like taking him up on his proposal.
Gunther kept pointing out monotonously that it was a bloody long way from Koblenz to Hamburg and by the time they got there, it would be time to come back, and none of this would have happened if they’d been working the Oder and the Elbe, where they’d have practically been on their own doorstep.
Manfred didn’t want to go because he was enjoying himself too much. With so many boats marooned there, he was in his element. He could sit around in bars all day and half the night, swapping stories with other boatmen. His capacity for drink was legendary, and he didn’t often get the chance to indulge it like this, his wife being a woman who believed that when her man was in his home port, home was where he should be.
So he was stuck with the pair of them, driving him mad with their conversations as they compared notes about where they’d been, who they’d seen, what gossip they’d picked up and where they were going next. All he wanted was peace and quiet, the chance to restore his equilibrium after Bremen. He wanted to be alone so nobody would ask him why he was buying all the papers every day and scanning their columns for details of one story in particular. With Gunther and Manfred underfoot, the only way he could search the news to see if he’d been seen and described was to read the papers on-line. Once his crewmen had realized he wasn’t spending his time on the internet looking at porn, they’d lost all interest.
Even with this access to the news, he still worried. Sometimes stories didn’t make it into the on-line editions. Sometimes only an abbreviated version of the story was published electronically. And even if he was getting all that was available in the public domain, it didn’t mean that they weren’t looking for him. Only that they hadn’t made it public. They might be combing the country with his description. At the very least, they must know what car he was driving. He wondered if he should sell the Golf immediately, trade it in for another make and model. But if there was a search out for a black VW Golf with Hamburg plates, he would only be drawing attention to himself by getting rid of it.
He was in a dreadful state. He couldn’t sleep for more than half an hour at a time. Food stuck in his throat. The incident in Bremen had been petrifying, not least because he had never seriously considered the prospect of being caught. He had outsmarted those clever bastards with their degrees and diplomas, he had shown them he was master. He couldn’t believe he’d so nearly been snared.
He’d been so careful. Everything had been planned, right down to the last detail. After all, if his campaign were to be cut short, his message would be lost and it would all have been wasted. That stupid woman had almost destroyed everything because she hadn’t told her boyfriend to stay away. Stupid fucking bitch. Probably wanted to show off the fact that she could still get a man at her age. The cow had nearly ruined everything, and he had no idea whether he was in the clear or not.
In his good moments, he reassured himself that there was nothing the boyfriend could have told the police that would lead them to him. He was sure he hadn’t been seen, and there must be hundreds of thousands of black VW Golfs all over Germany, even supposing the boyfriend had remembered what kind of car had been sitting in the whore’s drive.
But in his bad moments, he lay on his bunk, his body secreting the rancid sweat of pure fear. It wasn’t prison he was afraid of. Nothing that could happen to him there could be worse than what had already happened to him.
What he was afraid of was the things failure would tell him about himself.
And so, in order to combat the terror that was eating him from the inside, he refused to allow himself to use the river as an excuse. He had made an appointment in the usual way with Dr Marie-Thérèse Calvet, flattering her in e-mail and stressing her importance to the reputation of his e-zine: Your work on the manipulation of memory using deep hypnotic suggestion is unrivalled in Europe. Your 1999 study on the alteration of recollection of early sexual experience was groundbreaking. I’d be fascinated to hear about your follow-up studies. It would make a terrific special feature for our launch edition. No, it hadn’t taken much persuasion to get her to agree to be interviewed. Like all of them, she was infested with narcissism, a trait he could use as a weapon against her.
But now he had to make a success of tonight’s business. Dr Marie-Thérèse Calvet had wanted to meet in a restaurant, perhaps because she was reluctant to allow a strange man into the privacy of her home, or perhaps because she just wanted to screw a free meal out of him, he thought cynically. They had compromised with an agreement to conduct the interview in her office at the university, thanks to his argument that she might want to be in a position to refer to her research materials. It wasn’t ideal, but at least in the evening there wouldn’t be many people around to notice him.
The one thing he was worried about was the water supply. The chances were that Dr Calvet wouldn’t have a sink in her office. And he couldn’t really wander through a university department with buckets of water. He knew from experience, however, that it took remarkably little to drown his victims. So he had packed four one-and-a-half-litre bottles of Spa in his holdall. It made it heavy to carry, but years of hard physical labour had made him strong. And he’d asked Dr Calvet about parking. She’d told him that at that time in the evening, he could easily park on either of the streets that flanked the Psychology Institute. It shouldn’t be too arduous.
The journey passed more quickly than he would have believed possible. Running over his plans always shrank time, he’d found that out in the past few months. The images of what he would do to Marie-Thérèse Calvet were better distraction by far than any kind of in-car entertainment. Before he knew it, he was on the outskirts of Köln, the main artery from Koblenz delivering him right to the inner ring road, a short distance from the university. He checked his street map and navigated his way to Robert Koch Strasse. From there, it took him only a couple of minutes to reach the institute building. Luckily, Calvet had been efficient with her directions, and he didn’t have to stop and ask anyone the way to her office.
The corridor wasn’t quite empty. A couple of students were walking towards him, deep in conversation. With the self-absorption of the young, they didn’t even glance at him as he passed, his head angled down and away from them to minimize the chances of them being able to describe him afterwards. After Bremen, even so casual an encounter was enough to set his pulse fluttering and quicken his breath.
He counted the doors. Fourth on the left, she’d said. He stopped outside the plain wooden door and read the nameplate: DR M-T CALVET. He took a deep breath and held it, trying to force his previous state of calm to return. He raised his hand and knocked once, firmly. ‘Come in,’ he heard, the high pitch of the voice slightly m
uffled.
He opened the door and led with his head, his smile stretched to breaking point. ‘Dr Calvet? I’m Hans Hochenstein.’ He continued into the room, fixing his eyes on the woman emerging from behind the desk. She was tiny. She couldn’t have been more than five feet tall, with a fine-boned gamine face. Her chestnut hair was cut close to her head, and she wore an outfit of smartly casual top and capri pants, which he recognized from the old movies Gunther loved to watch as an homage to Audrey Hepburn. Unfortunately, he thought, she didn’t have the eyes to carry it off. Dr Calvet’s dark eyes were small, set close against the narrow bridge of her nose, making her look slightly cross rather than carefree and vulnerable. She held out a slim, bony hand to him, and he took it gently, enveloping it in what suddenly felt like an excess of damp, sweaty flesh.
‘I’m pleased to meet you, Mr Hochenstein. Please, take a seat.’ She gestured towards a pair of armchairs on either side of a wall-mounted gas fire.
He would have to move fast because there was no knowing how long they would be left alone. In order to get behind her, he stepped to one side and gave a courteous bow. ‘After you, doctor.’
Her mouth and eyebrows quirked in an ironic smile and she passed in front of him. His hand flashed in and out of his jacket pocket, emerging with the heavy cosh. She must have registered some movement, for she half-turned as his arm descended in a swift arc towards her head. He had meant to hit her firmly on the back of the head, but caught her on the temple. She staggered and moaned, but didn’t go down. Instead, she stumbled towards him. Panicked, he raised the sap again and smashed it down on the crown of her head. This time, she crumpled in an awkward heap at his feet. He gasped in relief, his head swimming. After what had happened with Schilling, even the slightest glitch was enough to provoke the momentary clutch of terror in his chest. But it was fine, he told himself. Everything was fine.
He crossed to the door and flipped the catch, locking them in. Then he hurried to the desk and swept all the books and papers to the floor in an untidy heap. He turned to Dr Calvet and bent to pick her up. She was light as a child in his arms, which was a welcome change from his first three victims. He laid her on her back on the desk and took the cords from his holdall. It was the work of moments to fasten her wrists and ankles tightly to the metal feet. He flicked up an eyelid with his thumb. She was still out cold. No need to gag her. He was back in control.
He took his grandfather’s cut-throat razor from its case and painstakingly cut her clothes away. There was scarcely a scrap of flesh on her bones. If he’d felt inclined, he could have run his fingers over her ribs like the beads on an abacus. He stepped back for a moment, savouring her exposed defencelessness.
Suddenly he felt desire well up inside him, a richness in his blood that made him almost dizzy. Until now, he’d always refused to acknowledge that the surge of adrenaline-fuelled urgency that swept through him when confronted with his victims had anything to do with sex. There was no place for carnal desire here. Sex was for afterwards.
But perhaps he’d been wrong. He took a deep breath, noticing the citrus tang of her perfume overlaying the more human scent of her naked flesh. Why settle for low-life whores when he could take what he wanted from his victims? Didn’t they deserve that final humiliation, to be fucked over like they’d fucked over their own victims?
His hand crept to his fly, his fingers hesitant on the zip. Suddenly, his grandfather’s voice was loud in his head, his taunts blocking every other thought. ‘Call yourself a man? What’s keeping you, little boy? Scared of a woman who can’t even fight back? All you’re good for is dockside whores like your mother’ He bit back a sob. Now his desire was insistent, impossible to ignore. He’d show the old man. He reached inside his jacket and pulled out the packet of condoms he’d been saving for later. Eagerly, he ripped open the foil package. He smoothed the latex over his erection, his craving making him ham-fisted. Then he was on top of her, thrusting clumsily against her dryness.
She stirred. Her eyelids flickered, showing the whites of her eyes. It didn’t matter now. He was in control. There was nothing she could do. He gripped her by the throat, gasping as his climax approached more swiftly than he would have believed possible. He could see her oesophagus spasm as she fought for air, but he continued relentlessly.
Now her chest was heaving, the lungs fighting to snatch some oxygen to keep the heart pumping. Her eyes were bulging, tiny pinpricks of red blossoming in the whites. Her animal panic was wonderful to see, because it was all down to him. Suddenly her body went limp, and he came immediately, his spine arching in a violent spasm. The release was like a veil lifting from his mind.
What had he done? He’d blown it. He’d killed her already, and he hadn’t completed his task.
Furious with himself, he rolled off the table and stood leaning on his fists, his breathing ragged. What was he thinking of? He had a plan, a mission, and he’d failed. He’d killed her, but in the wrong way. A wave of despair washed through him. The old man had been right. He was a pathetic failure, a poor excuse for a man.
He stared down at her body, cursing himself for a fucking fool. Then he noticed a tiny flicker of movement in her throat. Was it a pulse? He reached out tentatively. His fingers felt the faint beat of blood. It was going to be all right.
Hastily, he reached into the holdall and raced through his final preparations. After he poured the third bottle down the funnel rammed into her throat, he checked her pulse points. No question about it. She had paid the price.
He picked up the razor again and considered his target area. She had a compact, dark bush, shot through with occasional coarse grey hairs. He’d never cut a woman before Margarethe Schilling and it had taken a little more thought. But now his was a practised hand. He made his first incision across the top, where the pale skin of her flat stomach disappeared under the hair. Then he made two further incisions at an angle down the side of the mound of Venus. Delicately, he teased the edge of the razor under the skin, gently peeling it back from the flesh below. It was easier every time, his movements more assured. Where her body began to curve downwards towards the labia, he made a straight cut across the skin and lifted the scalp on the blade of the razor, leaving a raw scarlet trapezoid oozing blood. He unscrewed the jar he’d brought with him and slid his trophy into the formalin, relishing the swirl of red fading to pink as the blood washed clear of the skin. He smiled beatifically, then fastened the jar. Then he began to clear up. The last act was to take out a handkerchief and rub down everything he had touched, including her skin. Finally, wrapping the handkerchief round his fingers, he took a slim folder from his bag and crossed to the filing cabinets. He slid the file into place under the letter C. His case notes on the bitch were safely in place.
The job was done. And done better than ever before. He was the master now, no question of that.
Case Notes
Name: Marie-Thérèse Calvet
Session Number: 1
Comments: The patient presents with a lack of respect for other human beings. Her self-importance blinds her to the needs and rights of others. She sees herself as the centre of her own universe to whom everyone else should defer. Other people exist purely for the furtherance of her own desires.
That she has attained her position in her chosen field is a tribute to her ruthless pursuit of her own desires to the detriment of others. She attempts to negate her femininity with an approach to her work that is aggressively masculine. She is reluctant to concede the contribution of others to her work, invariably claiming credit for herself. She lacks affect or empathy.
Therapeutic Action: Altered state therapy initiated.
25
Darko Krasic supposed he had better things to do than sit outside an apartment block off the Ku’damm waiting for a woman. On the other hand, time spent preventing his boss from making a fucking fool of himself had to be time well spent. It had been bad enough when Tadzio had wanted to show his face on the front line. Look where that had got them.
Krasic had to set up an assassination and childcare, and he knew which was harder of those two to manage.
While wanting to be involved at the sharp end of his own business was almost understandable, seeing mirages was the kind of thing that got a man a bad name, especially in their line of business. A little megalomania was fine, some degree of paranoia almost obligatory in the circles where Krasic and his boss made their money. But seeing the features of the dead on the face of a stranger definitely fell into the dangerously demented category. If Krasic didn’t nip this in the bud, before he knew it they’d be signing up for séances. They would become a laughing stock. Which he needed right now like he needed a hole in the head, what with those crazy Albanians wanting ground-to-air missiles and the Chinese Snakehead gangs agitating about shipments of illegal immigrants and heroin.
He shifted in the seat of the anonymous Opel he’d chosen for his surveillance. It wasn’t designed for anyone with shoulders, he thought. Fine for skinny intellectuals, but not for real men. Half past ten and no sign of anyone answering the description Tadzio had given him. He’d been there since half past seven, and nobody who looked remotely like Katerina had gone in or out.
Shame about Katerina, he thought. She’d been a bit special. Not a brainless bimbo by any means, but, equally, not one of those smart-mouthed tarts who thought it was clever to try to put a man like him in his place. Lovely looking girl, too. Best thing about her, though, was that she’d kept Tadzio happy. And Tadzio happy was Tadzio on the ball. But right now, the boss was very definitely neither happy nor on top of his game. Eventually, he’d have to accept that the accident had been nothing more than that. Until that happened, Krasic saw a lot more wasted time ahead of him.