Brother Grimm

by Craig Russell

  21.

  2.10 p.m., Tuesday, 23 March: Bostelbek, Heimfeld, South Hamburg

  The weather had taken a turn for the worse. The previous week’s promise of spring, which had stretched into the bright morning, now faded in the cheerless, blustery sky that crowded down on North Germany. Fabel wasn’t sure why – perhaps because he knew it was a long-standing family business and because he always associated bakeries with a traditional craft – but he was surprised to find that the Backstube Albertus was a large industrial unit situated close to the A7 autobahn. ‘For ease of distribution …’ Vera Schiller had explained, as she conducted Fabel and Werner into her office. ‘We deliver to Konditoreien, cafés and restaurants throughout northern and central Germany. We have built up excellent relationships with our customers and often have senior staff deliver important items personally. Of course, we have our own delivery department – we have three vans almost continuously on the road.’ Fabel could tell that they were being treated to the standard speech that Vera Schiller would make to any visitors to the premises. It was clearly tailored more for potential customers than for murder detectives.

  Her office was large, but functional rather than plush: a very different environment from the classical elegance of the Schiller villa. As Frau Schiller took her place and invited Fabel and Werner to sit down, Werner gave his boss a covert nudge with his elbow and cast his gaze towards a second desk, at the far side of the office. No one sat at the desk but it was piled with papers and brochures. A wall planner behind it laid out dates and places. Fabel was a sliver of a second too slow in turning back to face Vera Schiller.

  ‘Yes, Herr Kriminalhauptkommissar,’ she said, ‘that is Markus’s desk. Please feel free to …’ she considered the word for a moment ‘… to examine anything. I’ll also take you down to meet Herr Biedermeyer, our Chief Baker. He can tell you more about the other victim.’

  ‘Thank you, Frau Schiller. We appreciate your cooperation.’ Fabel was about to say again that it must all be very distressing for her, but somehow he felt it was redundant. No, not redundant, inappropriate. This wasn’t distressing for her: it was inconvenient. He examined her face. There was no hint of anything underlying the superficial calm. There was no suggestion of recently shed tears nor of lack of sleep. And there had been no malice in her reference to Hanna Grünn as ‘the other victim’. It was simply an appropriate description. Vera Schiller’s coldness was more than a surface frost: it was a thoroughgoing sterility that bound her heart in ice. Fabel had met her twice: once in the home she had shared with her husband and now in the office she had shared with her husband. Yet, less than forty-eight hours after she had found out that her spouse was dead, there was no sense of the ‘incompleteness’ Anna Wolff had described when talking about visiting a victim’s home.

  It took a lot to unnerve Fabel, but Vera Schiller was one of the scariest people he had ever encountered.

  ‘Is there anyone you can think of who would have wished your husband harm, Frau Schiller?’

  She laughed and the immaculately lipsticked lips drew back from the perfect teeth in something that couldn’t be described as a smile. ‘Not specifically, Herr Kriminalhauptkommissar. Not anyone to whom I could put a name, but in the abstract, yes. There must be a dozen cuckolded husbands and boyfriends out there who would have wished Markus harm.’

  ‘Did Hanna Grünn have a boyfriend?’ asked Werner. Frau Schiller turned to him. The smile that wasn’t a smile faded.

  ‘I’m not familiar with the personal lives of my employees, Herr Kriminaloberkommissar Meyer.’ She stood up and, as with all her movements, she did so brusquely. ‘I’ll take you down to the bakery floor. As I explained before, Herr Biedermeyer will be able to furnish you with more specific details about the girl who was killed.’

  The main hall of the bakery was divided into what looked like small conveyor-belt systems upon which different products were being assembled or prepared. The air itself seemed doughy, thick with the fragrances of flour and baking. Both walls were lined with huge brushed-steel ovens and the staff were dressed in white coats and protective caps and hairnets. If it hadn’t been for the nearly edible air, it could have been a semiconductor factory or some 1960s movie vision of a futuristic mission control. Again the reality jarred with Fabel’s image of a traditional German bakery.

  Vera Schiller led the way down to the factory floor and took them to a very tall powerfully built man whom she introduced as Franz Biedermeyer, the Chief Baker. She turned on her heel before Fabel had had a chance to thank her. There was a moment of embarrassed silence before Biedermeyer smiled amiably and said, ‘Please excuse Frau Schiller. I suspect she is finding this very difficult.’

  ‘She seems to be coping rather well,’ said Fabel, trying to keep any hint of sarcasm from his voice.

  ‘It is her manner, Herr Fabel. She is a good employer and treats her staff very well indeed. And I cannot imagine that she is taking her loss anything other than really badly. Herr and Frau Schiller were a very effective, even formidable partnership. In business, at any rate.’

  ‘And personally?’ asked Werner.

  Again the Chief Baker smiled amiably, this time shrugging. There was something about the wrinkles around Biedermeyer’s eyes that suggested that he smiled a great deal. It reminded Fabel of his own brother, Lex, whose mischievous personality always revealed itself in and around his eyes. ‘I really don’t know anything of their personal relationship. But they were a good working team. Frau Schiller is an astute businesswoman and knows all about commercial strategy. She has kept this bakery highly profitable during what has been a bad time for German business generally. And Herr Schiller was a very, very good salesman. He had a great way with the customers.’

  ‘I gather he had a great way with women, as well,’ added Fabel.

  ‘There were rumours … I can’t deny that. But, as I said, it’s not my place to speculate on such things and your guess is as good as mine as to how much Frau Schiller was aware of and how it affected their marriage – excuse me …’ As they had approached him, Biedermeyer had been decorating a cake and was holding a small, intricate icing detail between his massive forefinger and thumb, and he now turned to lay it down carefully on the burnished stainless-steel counter. Fabel noticed that, obviously to meet hygiene regulations, Biedermeyer wore white latex gloves which were coated with a fine dusting of flour. His hands looked too big and the fingers too clumsy for Fabel to imagine the Chief Baker carrying out any delicate cake decoration or fancy pastry work.

  ‘And his relationship with Hanna Grünn?’ asked Werner. ‘Were you aware of that?’

  ‘No. But it doesn’t surprise me. I knew that Hanna was – how can I put this – a little indiscreet in her choice of boyfriends. Again, there were all kinds of rumours. A lot of them were malicious, of course. But I don’t remember anyone suggesting that anything was going on between Hanna and Herr Schiller.’

  ‘Malicious? You said a lot of the rumours were malicious.’

  ‘Hanna was a very attractive young lady. You know how bitchy women can be about things like that. But Hanna didn’t do herself any favours. She made it more than clear that she looked down her nose at this job and, particularly, at the other women on the production floor.’

  ‘Did she have any particular enemies here?’ Fabel indicated the production floor with a nod of his head.

  ‘Who would hate her enough to murder her?’ Biedermeyer laughed and shook his head. ‘No one would have given her enough thought. She was disliked, not hated.’

  ‘What did you think of her?’ asked Fabel.

  Biedermeyer’s habitual smile was tinged with sadness. ‘I was her supervisor. Her work was never really up to par and I would have to talk to her from time to time. But I felt sorry for her.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She was lost. I suppose that’s how you would describe it. She hated working here. Being here. I think she was ambitious, but had no way of fulfilling her ambitions.’

 
; ‘What about other boyfriends?’ asked Werner. A young apprentice came past, pushing a two-metre-high trolley rack; each tray was covered with swirls of unbaked dough. The three men moved out of the way before Biedermeyer answered.

  ‘Yes. I think there was one. I don’t know anything about him, other than he used to pick her up sometimes on his motorbike. He looked a bad sort.’ Biedermeyer paused. ‘Is it true that they were found together. Herr Schiller and Fräulein Grünn, I mean?’

  Fabel smiled. ‘Thank you for your time, Herr Biedermeyer.’

  They were out in the car park before Fabel turned to Werner and said what they had both been thinking.

  ‘A motorbike. I think we’d better chase up forensics for a type and make for the tracks we found in the Naturpark.’

  22.

  6.30 p.m., Tuesday, 23 March: Hauptbahnhof-Nord U-Bahn station, Hamburg

  Ingrid Wallenstein hated taking the U-Bahn these days. The world had changed beyond her understanding and there were so many undesirable people about. Young people. Dangerous people. Mad people. Like the ‘S-Bahn Schubser’: the maniac who had been pushing people under the S-Bahn trains. The police had been looking for him for months. What kind of person would do a thing like that? And why had things changed so much in the last fifty years? God knew Frau Wallenstein and her generation had lived through enough to drive them into madness, but it hadn’t. All that the post-war generations had to deal with was having everything they wanted, when they wanted it. That was why she had little time for young people: they hadn’t had to experience everything Frau Wallenstein’s generation had had to go through, yet they were discontented. They had become rude, careless, disrespectful. If only they had had to endure what she had endured as a child and as a young woman. The war, and the terror and destruction it had brought. Then, afterwards, the hunger, the want; everyone having to work together to rebuild, repair, to put things right again. Not today: today young people threw everything away. Nothing held any value for them. They appreciated nothing.

  Since she had first heard of the ‘S-Bahn Schubser’, Frau Wallenstein always made sure she either sat down or stood with her back to the platform wall while she waited for a train.

  Her knee hurt and she leaned heavily against her walking stick as she scanned the platform and surveyed her fellow travellers. There was only a handful of people on the U-Bahn platform, a couple of whom had those tiny headphones in their ears, with the dangly wires coming from them. Frau Wallenstein hated those things. If you sat next to one of them on the bus or the train and they were listening to that awful music of theirs, it was like having a wasp buzzing ill-temperedly next to you. Why did they do that? What was so terrible about hearing the world around you and, God forbid, actually having a conversation with someone?

  She looked further up the platform. There was a youngish woman, sitting on a bench. At least she was dressed in a decent-enough-looking suit. The pain in Frau Wallenstein’s knee always got worse if she stood for any period of time, so, silently cursing her arthritic joint, she sat next to the woman, and said: ‘Guten Tag.’ The young woman smiled back at her. Such a sad smile. Frau Wallenstein noticed that she was perhaps not as clean as she had first thought, and had a pale face with dark shadows beneath her eyes. She began to wonder if she’d made a mistake in sitting next to her.

  ‘Are you all right, dear?’ asked Frau Wallenstein. ‘You don’t look well.’

  ‘I’m fine, thank you,’ said the younger woman. ‘I’ve not been well, for a long time, but it’s all right now. I’ll be fine now.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Frau Wallenstein, unsure what to say next and a little regretful that she had started the conversation. The young woman looked so strange. Maybe it was drugs. Frau Wallenstein was an avid viewer of Adelheid und ihre Mörder and Grossstadtrevier. They always showed people who used drugs as looking like that. But maybe the poor woman had simply been ill.

  ‘I’ve been to see my little girl.’ The younger woman’s smile was faltering, as if it struggled to cling to the lips. ‘I’ve been to see my little girl today.’

  ‘Oh, that’s lovely. How old is she?’

  ‘She’s sixteen, now. Yes, sixteen.’ The younger woman searched her pockets and Frau Wallenstein noticed that the blouse beneath the jacket was faded and worn, and that she didn’t seem to have a handbag of any kind. The woman produced a creased, dog-eared photograph. She held it out to Frau Wallenstein: it showed a small, unremarkable toddler with the same kind of lustreless blonde hair as its mother.

  ‘Yes,’ said the pale woman. ‘My little Martha. My little baby. She was always such an energetic little thing. A scamp. That’s what I used to call her when she was a toddler: my little scamp …’

  Frau Wallenstein was now decidedly uneasy, but she was worried about the young woman. She looked so forlorn. Frau Wallenstein was relieved to hear the rumble of the U-Bahn train approaching. The young woman stood up and looked down the tunnel towards the sound of the arriving train. She seemed suddenly alert. Frau Wallenstein stood up too, but more slowly, leaning heavily on her stick.

  ‘So where is your little girl now?’ she asked, more to fill the final few moments of their acquaintance until the train arrived than anything else. The young woman turned to her.

  ‘That’s where I’m going now … to be with my little Martha. I’m going to be a good mother now …’ The young woman’s face was animated; suddenly happy. The U-Bahn train emerged from the tunnel, still travelling fast. The younger woman smiled at Frau Wallenstein. ‘Goodbye, it was so nice talking to you.’

  ‘Goodbye dear,’ said Frau Wallenstein and was about to say something else, but the younger woman had stepped forward to the edge of the platform. And she didn’t stop. Frau Wallenstein stared at the space on the platform where the woman should have been standing, but she was gone.

  There was a sickening, reverberating thud as the train hit the body. Then the screams of others on the platform echoed in the U-Bahn station.

  Frau Wallenstein stood still, leaning on her walking stick to ease her aching arthritic knee and stared at where a young woman with whom she had been talking just a minute before had been standing.

  She had thrown herself in front of the train. Why on earth had she done that? What kind of world had this become?

  23.

  1.10 p.m., Wednesday, 24 March: Buxtehude, Lower Saxony

  It took just over half an hour for Fabel and Werner to drive out to Buxtehude. The sky had brightened and now bathed the small town in a stark light, but an angry wind still snapped and tugged at Fabel’s raincoat as he and Werner made their way from the car to a small restaurant on Westfleth, in Buxtehude’s Altstadt. Buxtehude looked as if it were a small Dutch town that had, somehow, been shunted east until it had almost collided with Hamburg. The River Este split into the Ostviver and Westviver as it flowed through the town’s Altstadt, where it was channelled into canals and spanned by a half a dozen Dutch-style bridges. Even the building the restaurant was in seemed to have shrugged up its shoulders to squeeze in between its neighbours, and Fabel guessed that it had looked out over the canals and bridges for at least two centuries.

  As they had driven into the town, something else about Buxtehude had resonated with Fabel: even the street names Gebrüder-Grimm-Weg, Rotkäppchenweg and Dornröschenweg – Brothers Grimm Way, Red Riding Hood Way and Sleeping Beauty Way – seemed to conspire to remind Fabel of the dark tones that lurked in the shadows of this investigation. Every time Fabel heard mention of the Brothers Grimm, he envisaged Jacob Grimm as the fictionalised character in Weiss’s book: the respected and influential historical figure was being displaced by Weiss’s pedantic monster. Weiss’s theories seemed to be working.

  They sat by the window and looked out over the Fleth Haven canal, edged by trees and white fences, and across to the Ostfleth. A small, nineteenth-century river-sail freighter was moored on display and its multicoloured pennants flapped and snapped restlessly in the stiff breeze. Fabel glanced at the menu and ord
ered a tuna salad and a mineral water; Werner, on the other hand, studied the entire menu before asking for the Schweineschnitzel and a pot of coffee. Fabel smiled as he thought of how, in that small act of thoroughness, Werner had so clearly illustrated the difference between them. As policemen. As people. As friends.

  ‘I’ve been reading this book,’ Fabel spoke to Werner but kept his gaze focused out of the window, watching the wind tease the old sailboat with memories of its Ewer fleet days, carrying tea, flour, wood along North German waterways. ‘By a guy called Gerhard Weiss. It’s called the Märchenstrasse. It’s all about Jacob Grimm – well, it’s not actually – but it’s all about murders being based on Grimm Fairy Tales.’

  ‘Shit. There’s a connection?’

  Fabel turned from the window. ‘I don’t know. It’s a bit too close for comfort, though, isn’t it?’

  ‘I would say so.’ Werner put his coffee cup down and frowned. ‘Why didn’t you mention this earlier?’

  ‘I only started reading it last night. And I only found out about the book by pure chance. It was away on the edge of this whole thing, but now that I’ve started reading it …’

  Werner’s face suggested Fabel had dropped an easy ball. ‘It needs to be looked into, if you ask me. For all we know, our killer may be working his way through this book instead of the Grimm Fairy Tales, Deutsche Sagen and all the other stuff the Grimms put together.’