by Tanja Pleva
Harry carefully hung his shirts and a suit in the cupboard while Katarin looked around the spacious suite at the Empire Hotel George V. The receptionist had congratulated Harry for his noble choice and they were told that this room was homage to Napoleon and his wife Josephine.
The view of the Paris skyline and the Eiffel Tower was marvelous, but the furniture – in Katarin's eyes – plug-ugly. Neither the sculptures nor the green decorated seats, the velvet cushions nor the pieces of art on the walls were matching her taste. Too dark, too pathetic, she thought and threw herself on the bed.
'What would you like to do first, my angel?' Harry had finished unpacking and put his suitcase down beside the cupboard. He took off his jacket, loosened his tie and collar and turned to his beloved one.
She was already undressed down to the white lingerie, which he himself had bought her and she was lolling about on the bed like a wildcat. One hand was playing in her panties, the other one with her huge breasts.
Harry happily sighed. How lucky he was and this, at his age!
Katarin giggled and chortled. He would get divorced, this was his final clear thought before Katarin blindfolded herself and ordered him to tie her up.
1949
Argentina The woman cried in a high pitch and mumbled almost incomprehensible Spanish words. An obvious one was 'Hijo de puta', son of a bitch, which certainly referred to her husband and not to Heinrich, and 'Dios', God, whom she probably asked for forgiveness.
Heinrich applied leather straps to tie the woman's legs and arms to the couch, stuffed cloth between her teeth and disinfected thirteen and a half inch long screwing dilator.
Those damned farmers were fucking like rabbits! There she was on his table again and it was the second time within half a year that she was unintentionally pregnant.
He had settled down in this countryside only a year ago. From his savings and the money which his father had given him for this long journey, he had bought a hacienda and there he had opened his medical practice, naming the house Estancia 'El Destino'. Here he had hoped to find some peace at last.
He sat down before her spread legs and inserted the long stick that ended in four grooved tips, into the uterus. This device was dated 1890, and G. Marelli - Milano was engraved on it. Heinrich had purchased it and some other instruments for a few Lira at a flea market in Rome.
The woman bent back and screamed into the cloth, as he turned the screw and expanded the uterine orifice slowly.
This instrument was condemned in Germany because of frequent cervical ruptures provoking critical hemorrhage and had been replaced by more recent dilators. But who cared here in the mountains of Argentina? He was a German doctor; no one would doubt his medical knowledge and experience.
Using a curette, he began to evacuate the uterine cave.
The young woman stiffened again, sweat appeared on her forehead.
A flurry of excitement ran through his body. Any women who were so helplessly exposed aroused him so much that he started quivering. He tried to keep his hand calm and slowly began to turn the screw of the dilator back. Then he removed the instrument from the woman, who had started to whimper again. He unbuckled her, put the instruments in a bowl of disinfectant and went to the wash basin.
While washing his hands, he observed his daughter who rode a one-year-old brown stallion outside in the yard. He had accepted it as payment for an appendectomy.
She was his look-alike, having light blue eyes and blond hair, which she had tied up in a ponytail that bobbed up and down with each step that the horse made.
The patient laid a few pesos on the table, murmured her thanks and left the practice with a stooped back.
He hoped that she would not get an infection, because he could not afford to attract attention by causing too many casualties. Just the month before, a young girl had died after such an operation.
After a long and winding journey he had made his home here in Larousse because he was sure that nobody would ask for his past here. Heinrich had a look into the waiting room. It was empty.
He took ink, pen and a blank document from the drawer of his desk and began to set his name down on the first line in elegant handwriting. Below he wrote Doctor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Vienna, 1940, and illegibly signed as Prof. Wiesenthal. He puffed on the wet ink, waved the paper a few times, until the last bit was dry, and then placed it in a thin golden frame. When the document finally hung beside some others on the wall behind, there was a knock at the door.
Julietta, his employee, peeped around the door. Food was served. The 13-year-old girl had made eyes at him for some time already, pretending over and over again to suffer from some minor complaint.
The day before she had entered his practice and asked him, completely undressed, to thoroughly examine her, and that he had done.
She was pretty, had a pleasant shape and delightfully soft skin. At night he had visited her room and deflowered her. After months of abstinence, this had been an intoxicating feeling.
He turned again to the three documents on the wall. Doctor of Gynecology, of General Medicine and of Surgery. Nobody must ever find out that he had not studied medicine and derived his scanty knowledge only from books.
7.
Hamburg Sam was reading the post-mortem report for the third time, wondering into what psychic abyss he would have to immerse this time to understand what had been driving this perpetrator. He seemed to have surprised and overwhelmed Jasmin Rewe just after shopping, at half past two. While her husband had been off, having a lunch with a colleague, he had worked two and a half hours on Ms. Rewe.
She had been dropped over the edge of the bathtub, and her hands fastened with a bathrobe belt to a handle on the wall. Traces of acrylic emulsion on her cheek indicated that he had sealed her mouth with adhesive tape. Only then he had slowly undressed her, accessed the spine with a scalpel and laid it bare. The spine: the axis of the body that holds it all upright, provides mobility and protects the delicate spinal cord.
All this, the victim had witnessed with full consciousness, unless she had fainted from pain. Then he had begun to dissect the lower vertebrae with the bolt cutter.
Sam got the creeps again. He was a man who was sensitive to pain, and he refused to imagine what tortures this woman must have suffered.
Autopsy had revealed something else, which seemed to Sam like an odd piece of the picture. It suggested that the cause of death was not yet perfectly obvious.
Sam held the color copy at some distance, so that he could view more clearly those two hand-written red lines.
For whom all this research, this limitless grief
Donator, receiver, no time brings relief.
But Dr. Rewe was not engaged in any research. Who did these lines then address?
The assumption that this slip had been lying around there by chance had been quickly discarded, for in that case Jasmin Rewe's fingerprints should very likely have been all over it, or any other's. But it was not so. Only those of her husband's had been found on it, but he had repeatedly stated that he had touched it only briefly, because he thought it might have been a message from his wife.
Sam looked at his watch. The colleague who was expected to assist him was late. Tardiness was a quality that Sam hated and it already cast a first shadow on their co-operation.
He got up from his leather chair, which was standing in the corner of an office in this police station of Hamburg, and he was just going to get a coffee, when he bumped into somebody at the doorframe.
'There you are.'
Juri Pompeckij grabbed Sam at his arms and hugged him tightly and happily. 'Good Lord Sam, it has been a long time. I'm glad to see you again!'
'So there's no use in pretending to be dead, is it?'
Juri's face turned serious. 'Seems they didn't tell you anything.'
'Not a damn thing.' Sam smiled.
'Then it was supposed to be a surprise. I hope you don't mind that you got me again at your throat.'
>
'Not if you promise me one thing: no blind dates, no womanizing and …' Sam looked provocatively at his watch '… no delays.' Then he stretched out his hand.
Juri shook it with playful regret.
About one and a half years before, Sam and this young colleague from Hamburg had solved a rather tricky case together. And although they had lost contact since, Juri had remained as familiar as if they had last met a mere month ago.
Sam had been a lone player for many years, unless he had extended business in another town and needed a bit of help there, due to unfamiliarity with the local conditions. He was known as well for being at loggerheads with the Catholic Church and he never failed to defend his position with bluntness.
But this time it was different. For the first time he was glad to have this young man at his side. Juri had not been a member of Hamburg's criminal investigation department for very long yet, but he had already gained a reputation by his excellent nose - a quality that was part of his success. Sam silently thanked Peter Brenner and his infallible intuition.
Otherwise, Sam's once best friend had died of cancer, his sister had killed herself, he had buried his father already years ago, his lover had been murdered and two months ago he had also buried his mother after a long illness. Fate had mistreated him badly within the last few years. Juri was young, sometimes a little unconstrained, but he would bring a draught of fresh air into Sam's life.
'You are looking lousy, if I may say so.' Juri put his hand on Sam's shoulder and looked worried.
Sam acknowledged with a pessimistic smile. He shoved the files of the Jasmin Rewe case into Juri's hand to distract attention. 'Come on, let's go for a coffee. There you can get briefed as well.'
The canteen was empty at this early hour, so they had space to choose their seats freely.
Juri sat down in a corner with his back to the wall, stretched out his legs and started reading the post-mortem report. He spread the photos on the table without really looking at them.
Sam examined his former and recent partner across the coffee. Juri was still athletic and powerful, his skin slightly brownish. As before, he wore a shirt with rolled-up sleeves and faded jeans. His blond locks dropped wildly on his brow, while he browsed the images of the scene and the post-mortem report. This young officer was an open book for Sam. His expression left no doubt about what he just thought.
'Nice… this is … how to put it … a standard Sam O'Connor case? Last time you faced me with just as lurid reports.' Juri laughed, and Sam agreed.
'Tell me what's on your mind.'
Each crime scene spoke in its own language, especially that of Jasmin Rewe's murder. Sam was seriously curious whether Juri would share his views.
'He didn't rape her', said Juri.
'He didn't. No sexualized elements.'
'So what? Don't you think it was the husband? There is no gardener or butler available to blame.'
'That had been my first thought as well. Because that the killer had taken so much time to tear his victim apart. How did he know that he would not be disturbed?'
'One option: She phoned her husband and he eavesdropped. Or she sent a text message. Another option: He was most precisely informed about Dr. Rewe's schedule.'
'By whom?'
'By Ms. Rewe.Pity that we cannot ask her anymore.'
Juri pointed at a photo that showed the exposed spine. 'Don't such individuals compensate their sexual desires by sadistic deeds?'
'It happens. Yes.'
'Nice. There's not much more which I can tell, for now. Unless …' Sam raised his head attentively, '… there is one thing that I don't understand about this. That guy took so much effort with the spine and in the end he injected petroleum ether into her heart. How weird can a person get?' Juri asked in amazement.
Sam was forced to laugh about Juri's face, but he was glad that he was not the only one who had been struck by this fact.
'Sam, he made her even more dead than she had already been, if I may say so! Keeping all this stuff in mind – do you have any idea what kind of crackpot we are out to track down this time?'
'All I know is that if you split somebody's spine apart, then you deprive the whole of its mobility, that is what makes a human body, in other words. He demonstrated this way that he had absolute dominion over his victim. A sort of power play? An act of revenge maybe?' Sam mused.
'Meaning that he was closely familiar to his victim? Or he is taking revenge on a certain type of women. Which would again suggest … nice!' Juri did not go on, but just looked at Sam out of wide blue eyes. Apparently he had the same thought as Sam, but did not want to unroll this string any further.
'At least the System hasn't yielded anything to that extent yet.' Sam scoffed at himself for being a nerd who was dealing only with serial murderers. He hoped that this one would remain an isolated case.
'The most confusing aspect is this, though.' Sam pointed at the copy of the puzzling lines and pushed it across the table.
'Humph - written in red? Doesn't read to me like a love letter, to be honest.'
'Add to your notes that none of this family is connected to any kind of research. Moreover, this slip was written in German. Why did he kill Ms. Rewe, not here in Hamburg, but in Barcelona during a medical conference? By chance? I don't believe in chances, as you know. But then, maybe, he might have mistaken her for someone else and we are completely off the track.' Sam stroked his hair, laid back his head and sighed depressively.
'Her husband is leading a gynecological clinic. So he doesn't deal too closely with spines indeed', Juri dryly observed. 'But his alibi is a bit shaky, isn't it?'
'It is still getting checked.'
Juri looked at Sam hesitatingly. 'What's your plan then?'
The last time he had watched a video record of this kind, Lina had suddenly passed across the screen. Sam tried to focus on the many people who were passing through the lobby of the Barcelona Arts Hotel. The DVD had been kindly supplied by the reception early in the day, before his departure, together with the temporary post-mortem report.
Sam hit the Pause button. 'Here are Dr. Rewe and his wife.'
They watched Dr. and Ms. Rewe checking in, entering the elevator in the company of the porter and leaving one hour later again to go eating. Dr. Rewe had described to Sam the approximate time-plan after their arrival and for the following day. Everything agreed with the present information. On the day of the murder it was recorded how the couple was leaving the elevator in the morning, together with other guests and their parting in the lobby, after which Ms. Rewe headed to the exit.
'Rewind that another time, Juri.'
Twice they watched this scene, paying attention to a man well in his forties, who was sitting on a couch in the lobby. As soon as the Rewe couple left the elevator he bent quickly down to fiddle with his shoe, leaving Jasmin Rewe not a second out of his gaze. When she was heading for the exit he got up and followed her.
Juri reset the record file forward to 2:25 p.m. Jasmin Rewe entered the lobby at 2:27 p.m. precisely, carrying six shopping bags and just hurrying to the elevator, as Dr. Rewe appeared on-screen with another man. They exchanged a few words and then both men disappeared again from the screen.
Jasmin Rewe waited for fifteen seconds at the elevator, until its door opened. She went in and turned around to the row of buttons when some guy passed the revolving hotel door and hurried towards the elevator. As far as distance and image resolution allowed telling, Jasmin Rewe's face contorted. She looked furious before the doors shut behind the guy.
Juri and Sam exchanged a glance. 'Nice! Bull's eye, for what is worth!' Juri happily slashed his hands on the table.
'This was the same man who was sitting in the lobby before or is my eye deceiving me?'
'It doesn't, Sam, even if it may have turned a bit myopic.' Juri laughed. 'Same jacket, same jeans, same cap.'
'All right Shorty, I did forget my glasses. That's why you are watching for both of us.' Sam felt a little offended
and wondered how Juri had noticed his slight visual defect. 'I will request the record files from the elevators.'
'Hard to believe that this turned out well, so fast, if I remember last time!'
'Careful Shorty. This fellow went into the elevator with her. It's not proof that he killed her. But, so much at least is for sure: She knew him from somewhere.'
'Maybe a lover whom she wanted to meet while her husband was at the conference? If you go by her expression, she was rather irritated when this guy followed her to the hotel. But if he had been a stranger she would have called Security.'
'That is possible', said Sam slowly. The angry furrow between his eyes grew deeper. 'What if Dr. Rewe did kill his wife indeed? He caught them in flagranti and made it look as if …'
'You want to suggest that he knew about the lover and used the window of opportunity? A conference of meeting colleagues, casually killing her and blaming another. Faking evidence with this little slip of paper…, nice, maybe not without a certain cunningness.'
'We will find out.'
Sam had searched the Barcelona scene all over for the missing cuff link, because as yet, he did not trust Dr. Rewe completely. Without success, alas. He hoped that the Spanish colleagues would be more successful in searching for evidence.
He got up and turned the light on. It made his reflection appear in the dark window. He hardly recognized his image, stained by a 4-day-old beard and dark rings beneath his eyes. Moreover, he had worn for three days the same clothes.
'Come on Shorty, drive me back to the hotel. I shall need some redecoration.'
8.
Sandra Lempert, Jasmin Rewe's friend, was living in Hamburg's district of Wandsbek, in a traffic calm area behind the housing office. When the two officers left the elevator of the recent three-storied building, they found her already standing in the door of her penthouse, dressed all in black, arms crossed. Sam could not tell whether she wore black as a sign of grief or because it made her slimmer.