Brother Grimm

by Craig Russell

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Weiss’s vast shoulders moved dismissively in something too small to be called a shrug. ‘You have an interesting name, Herr Kriminalhauptkommissar. Fabel. Quite appropriate to my line of work – fables, as it were.’

  ‘I believe it’s Danish in origin. It’s more common in Hamburg than in any other German city, although I’m Frisian originally.’

  ‘Fascinating. What can I do for you, Herr Fabel?’ Weiss stressed Fabel’s name, as if still playing with it.

  Fabel explained to Weiss about the murders he was investigating, and how they clearly had a ‘Grimm Fairy Tale’ theme. And that, perhaps, they were inspired by Weiss’s novel, Die Märchenstrasse. There was a moment’s pause when he had finished, and in that moment, Fabel suspected there was the merest hint of satisfaction in Weiss’s expression.

  ‘It is also clear that we are dealing with a serial offender,’ Fabel concluded.

  ‘Or offenders …’ said Weiss. ‘Has it never crossed your mind that you are perhaps dealing with two people? If these killings are united by a Grimm-related theme, then it’s worth remembering that there were, after all, two Brothers Grimm.’

  ‘Obviously, we hadn’t ruled that out.’ The truth was that Fabel had not fully considered that it might be a team. It certainly wasn’t unknown for two killers to work together, as he knew only too well from a recent investigation where there had been. It could also explain why Olsen had a motive for the Naturpark murders but not for the others. Fabel changed tack.

  ‘Have you had any, well, odd correspondence recently, Herr Weiss? It could be that our killer – or killers – has sought to make contact with you.’

  Weiss laughed. ‘Odd correspondence?’ He stood up, looming high in the room, and went across to a wooden escritoire that sat against the only wall free of bookshelves. Above the escritoire the wall was covered with framed, old-fashioned illustrations. Weiss picked up a fat file, carried it over and thumped it on to the desk before sitting back down. ‘That’s only the last three or four months. If you were to find anything in that that wasn’t “odd”, I’d be very much surprised.’ He made a ‘help yourself’ gesture.

  Fabel flicked open the folder. There were dozens of letters, some with photographs, some with cuttings that the sender thought would be helpful to Weiss. Most seemed to relate to Weiss’s Wahlwelten fantasy novels: people with sad, empty lives sought the solace of living out an alternate, literary existence by having Weiss incorporate them into one of his stories. There was a sexually very explicit letter from a woman asking Weiss to be her ‘big, bad wolf’. It was accompanied by a photograph of the correspondent, naked except for a red hood and cape. She was an over-weight woman of about fifty, whose body had obviously submitted some time ago to an unequal battle with gravity.

  ‘And that pile is tiny compared with what comes in electronically to my personal and my publisher’s websites,’ explained Weiss.

  ‘Do you reply to these?’

  ‘Not now, no. I used to. Or at least to those that were reasonably sane or decent. But now I just don’t have the time. That’s why I started to charge set fees to include people as characters in my Wahlwelten novels.’

  Fabel gave a small laugh. ‘So how much would you charge me to have a part in one of your novels?’

  ‘Herr Fabel, one of the main lessons of the fairy tale is to be very careful what you wish for. I might include you in one of my works just because I find you an interesting character, with an unusual name. Unlike the people who pay for inclusion, you have met me. I have an idea of you. And once you are in one of my stories, I have total control over you. I and I alone decide your fate. Whether you live or die.’ Weiss paused and the black eyes sparkled beneath the heavy bridge of his brow. The werewolf sculpture remained frozen in its snarl. A car passed by on the street outside. ‘But normally I charge five thousand Euros for a half-page mention.’ Weiss smiled.

  Fabel shook his head. ‘The price of fame.’ He tapped the file on the desk. ‘May I take these away with me?’

  Weiss shrugged. ‘If you think they’ll help.’

  ‘Thanks. I’m reading Die Märchenstrasse at the moment, by the way.’

  ‘Are you enjoying it?’

  ‘I’m finding it interesting, let’s put it that way,’ said Fabel. ‘I’m too focused on any possible connection to these murders to assess its literary merits. And I do think it’s possible that there is a connection.’

  Weiss leaned back in his chair and locked his fingers together, stretching the two index fingers against each other and tapping his chin. It was an overdone gesture of thoughtfulness. ‘It would sadden me greatly if that were so, Herr Kriminalhauptkommissar. But the main theme of all my work is that art imitates life and life imitates art. I cannot inspire someone to commit murder through my writing. They’re already killers or potential killers. They may seek to imitate a method or a setting … or even a theme, but they would murder anyway, whether they read my books or not. Ultimately, I do not inspire them. They inspire me. Just as they have always inspired writers.’ Weiss allowed his fingers to rest gently on the leather-bound volume of fairy tales that sat on his desk.

  ‘Like the Grimm Brothers?’

  Weiss smiled and again something sparkled darkly in his eyes. ‘The Grimm Brothers were academics. They sought absolute knowledge – the origins of our language and our culture. Like all men of science of their time, a time when science was emerging as the new religion of Western Europe, they sought to lay our past under a microscope and dissect it. But there is no absolute truth. There is no definitive past. It’s a tense, not a place. What the Grimm Brothers discovered was the same world that they themselves lived in; the same world we inhabit now. What the Grimms discovered was that it’s just the frames of reference that differed.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Weiss rose again from his leather chair and beckoned for Fabel to follow him across to the wall covered with pictures. They were all illustrations from nineteenth- and early twentieth-century books.

  ‘The fairy story has inspired more than literary interpretation,’ explained Weiss. ‘Some of the finest artists lent their talents to illustrating the tales. This is my collection – Gustave Doré, Hermann Vogel, Edmund Dulac, Arthur Rackham, Fernande Biegler, George Cruickshank, Eugen Neureuther – each with a subtly different interpretation.’ Weiss drew Fabel’s attention to one illustration in particular: a woman was stepping into a stone-flagged room; a key tumbled from her grasp in horror as she did so. A tree-stump chopping block and an axe sat in the foreground of the picture: both were covered in blood, as was the stone floor around it. The dead bodies of several women, all in nightgowns, were hung around the walls, as if from meat hooks.

  ‘I am guessing,’ said Weiss, ‘that this type of scene, perhaps not to such excess, is not unfamiliar to you, Herr Fabel. It is a murder scene. This poor woman here –’ he tapped on the glass that protected the illustration ‘– has clearly stumbled upon the lair of a serial killer.’

  Fabel found himself fixed to the image. It was in the familiar style of a nineteenth-century illustration, but it struck too many resonances with Fabel. ‘Where is this illustration from?’

  ‘It’s the work of Hermann Vogel. Late 1880s. It is, Herr Fabel, an illustration for Charles Perrault’s “La Barbe bleue” – “Bluebeard”. A French tale of a monstrous nobleman who punishes the curiosity of women by killing and mutilating them in a locked room in his castle. It is a story. A fable. But that does not stop it being a universal truth. When Perrault wrote his version down, the memories of real atrocities committed by noblemen were still very much alive in the French psyche. Gilles de Rais, Marshal of France and comrade-in-arms of Joan of Arc, for example, who sodomised and murdered hundreds of boys to feed his perverted, and unchecked, lusts. Or Cunmar the Accursed, who ruled Brittany in the sixth century. Cunmar – or Conomor, if you prefer – is perhaps the closest historical reference for Bluebeard. He decapitated each of his wive
s, finally cutting off the head of the beautiful, pious and heavily pregnant Triphine. Incidentally, the tale exists throughout Europe: the Grimm brothers recorded it as “Fitcher’s Bird”, the Italians call it “Silvernose” and the English Bluebeard is called “Mr Fox”. All of them relate to feminine curiosity leading to the discovery of a hidden, bloody chamber. A murder room.’

  Weiss paused, as if appreciating the illustration anew. ‘Hermann Vogel, the artist of this piece, was German. Even although he was illustrating a French fable, he couldn’t help introducing something of his own cultural background … the chopping block and the axe is borrowed from the Grimms’ “Fitcher’s Bird” tale. The fact is that this tale is told across Europe and the details are always broadly the same. There must have been real events, whether they were the deeds of Cunmar the Accursed or not, to inspire them. My point is this: these cautionary tales for children, these ancient fables and legends – they all prove that the serial rapist or killer or child-abductor is not a modern phenomenon. The big, bad wolf has nothing to do with wolves.’ Weiss laughed. ‘Funnily enough, the curse that earned Cunmar the epithet “Accursed” was supposed to have been that he was turned into a werewolf for his sins … Eventually all history blurs into myth and legend.’

  Weiss took a novel from the bookshelf before him. Unlike the others, it was new: a modern hardback in a glossy dust jacket. Fabel could see that it was written by another author. He did not recognise the name, but it was English or American rather than German. Weiss dropped it on top of his correspondence file. ‘Today we continuously reinvent these tales. The same stories, new characters. This is a bestseller – a story about the hunt for a serial killer who ritually dismembers his victims. These are our fairy tales today. These are our fables, our Märchen. Instead of elves and kobolds and hungry wolves lurking in the dark corners of the woods, we have cannibals and dissectors and abductors lurking in the dark corners of our cities. It is in our nature to guise our evil as something extraordinary or something different: books and films about aliens, sharks, vampires, ghosts, witches. The fact of the matter is that there is one beast that is more dangerous, more predatory, than any other in the history of nature. Us. The human being is not only the planet’s top predator, it is the only creature that kills for the sheer pleasure of it, for sexual satisfaction or as organised groups to satisfy abstract concepts of religious, political or social dogma. There is nothing more deadly or menacing than the ordinary man or woman in the street. But that is something, of course, you know only too well through your work. All the rest. All the horror stories and the fables and the belief in greater malevolence – it’s all a veil drawn over the mirror we have to look in every day.’

  Weiss sat down again and indicated that Fabel should do the same. ‘The thing we need fear most is our neighbour, our parent, the woman or man next to us on the U-Bahn … ourselves. And the most difficult thing we can do is to face up to the monstrous banality of that fact.’ Weiss turned the heavy sculpture on his desk slightly so that the snarling jaws faced Fabel. ‘This is what lies within us, Herr Kriminalhauptkommissar. We are the big, bad wolves.’

  Fabel sat and stared at the sculpture, drawn to its hideous beauty. He knew that what Weiss was saying was right. He did, as Weiss had said, see the evidence of it in his work. The monstrous creativity of which the human mind was capable when it came to tormenting others. To killing others.

  ‘So you’re saying that the serial killer isn’t a modern phenomenon – it’s just that we didn’t have that name for them?’

  ‘Exactly. We are all born arrogant, Herr Fabel. We each believe we reinvent the world anew when we are born into it. The sad truth is that we are merely variations on a theme … or at least on a common experience. The good and the evil there is in the world came into it with the very first man. It evolved with us. That is why we have these ancient folk tales and myths. The Grimm Brothers recorded, they didn’t create. None of their fairy tales were their invention, but ancient folk tales they gathered as part of their linguistic research. The existence of these tales and the warning implicit in each one to “never wander far from home” and to “beware of strangers” proves that the serial killer is no mere side effect of modern life, he has been with us throughout our history. And they must have been inspired by real events. The true origins of these fairy tales must lie in actual abductions and murders. Just as the truth of lycanthropy, the myth of the werewolf, lies in the inability of previous generations to recognise, define or understand psychopathy. The fact is, Herr Fabel, everyone accepts that we frequently make fiction out of fact. What I assert is that we also make fact out of fiction.’

  Fabel watched Weiss as he spoke. He tried to work out what kindled the dark fire, the passion, in his eyes. ‘So, when you write about Jacob Grimm being a child-murderer, do you believe that your act of fictive creation translates into some kind of truth?’

  ‘What is the truth?’ Weiss’s knowing smile had a patronising edge to it, as if Fabel could not possibly possess the intellectual resources to deal with the question.

  ‘The truth,’ replied Fabel, ‘is an absolute, incontrovertible fact. I deal with the truth, absolute truth, every day. I understand what you’re trying to say – that sometimes truth is abstract or subjective. Jacob Grimm was not a murderer. The person I am seeking is a murderer: that is an incontrovertible fact. The truth. What I need to establish is how far, if at all, your book has inspired them.’

  Weiss made a submissive gesture with his hands. Big, powerful hands. ‘Ask your questions, Herr Kriminalhauptkommissar …’

  The interview lasted a further twenty minutes. Weiss’s knowledge of myth and fable was encyclopaedic and Fabel found himself taking notes as the author spoke. But there was something about Weiss that Fabel did not like. There was a menace about him, not just in his size – he didn’t convey the same sense of pent-up violence that Olsen had – it was something in the coal-black eyes. Something almost inhuman.

  Finally, Fabel asked: ‘But these are all, when it comes down to it, just fairy tales. You can’t believe that they were inspired by real events?’

  ‘Weren’t they?’ said Weiss. ‘Take the Russian tale of Baba Yaga’s hut, where all the furniture is made out of bones. You’ve heard of Ed Gien, of course – the American serial killer who inspired the book and film Psycho as well as The Silence of the Lambs. When the police raided his farmhouse they found chairs and stools made out of human bones, as well as an almost complete body-suit made from the skins of dead women. Like I say, no one is unique. There will have been countless Ed Giens before. It is entirely likely that some early Russian version inspired the fable of Baba Yaga. And please bear in mind, Herr Fabel, that many of these fairy tales have been sanitised. Take your “Sleeping Beauty” victim. The original “Sleeping Beauty” tale didn’t have her awoken with a chaste kiss – it was a tale of rape, incest and cannibalism.’

  When Fabel was back out on Ernst-Mantius-Strasse, Weiss’s correspondence file under his arm, he felt the need to pull a deep, cleansing breath into his body. He couldn’t work out why, but he had the feeling of having escaped a lair; that Weiss’s study, with its burnished, dark wood, had been closing in on him. The sun had broken through and bathed the pristine villas with a warm light. Fabel gazed at each as he walked back to his car; how many hidden rooms, how many dark secrets, lay behind the elegant façades? He flipped open his cell phone.

  ‘Maria? It’s Fabel. I want you to get me a full background on Gerhard Weiss. Everything you can find …’

  33.

  8.00 p.m., Tuesday, 30 March: Krankenhaus Mariahilf, Heimfeld, Hamburg

  ‘I’m sorry, Mutti, I can’t stay as long tonight. I’ve got so many preparations to make. I’m a busy, busy boy these days, let me tell you.’ He nudged his chair even closer to the bed, glancing around conspiratorially, before whispering into her ear. ‘I did another one. I made another story come to life. She was so sad, this one. I saw it in her beautiful, beautiful face when she l
et me into that great big empty villa of hers. A princess in an ivory tower. I did her a great favour, Mutti. I really didn’t want this one to suffer. And now, of course, I have to prepare for you coming home. I’ve been busy with that, too.’

  He paused and stroked the old woman’s hair. ‘But you will suffer terribly. I guarantee that.’ There were sounds outside the room: clog-soled footsteps as a duty nurse headed down the hall. He sat back in his chair and listened to them fade. ‘It’s a wondrous thing that I do, mother. I return them to being children again. In those precious moments I share with them – before they die, I mean – everything that they have become is lost … years of adult life wiped away, and they are once more small, frightened children. Lost little souls terrified by how little they understand what is happening to them.’ He fell quiet for a moment and the room was silent other than the distant sound of a laughter-punctuated conversation that was taking place a little down the hall, and in another universe. After a while he continued. ‘The police came to see me, Mutti. They’re very, very stupid people, you know. They think they have all the answers and they have nothing. They have no idea of who they’re dealing with at all. What they are dealing with. They’ll never catch me.’ He gave a small laugh. ‘At least they won’t catch me until you and I have our fun together. What frightens you more, mother, the fact that you’re going to die, or the fact that you won’t die quickly enough? Does the pain frighten you? The idea of it? It will be great. That I can tell you: your pain will be very great indeed. And it’s nearly time, Mutti … nearly time …’

  34.

  2.45 a.m., Sunday, 11 April: Pöseldorf, Hamburg

  Fabel lay, listening to Susanne’s even, deep breathing. More and more he found her presence comforting: the dreams did not seem to come so often when she was beside him. It was as if her being there consoled him into a deeper, better sleep. But tonight his mind raced. There was so much to do. This case was growing, spreading, like a dark malignancy and was squeezing into the few spaces that Fabel had left for a private life. So many things on his mental ‘to do’ list remained unchecked. His mother was ageing. His daughter was growing up. Neither was getting the time they deserved; the time Fabel wanted to give them. His relationship with Susanne was good, but it wasn’t taking the definite form that it should by this stage and he knew he wasn’t giving it the attention it needed. He was surprised by the sharp pang of panic in his chest at the thought of maybe losing her.