46.
1.15 p.m., Monday, 19 April: Ottensen, Hamburg
Fabel had given Maria the task of interviewing the wife of the latest victim, Bernd Ungerer. And she would still be his wife, not his widow. Maria knew she was about to meet with someone whose grief was as raw as burned flesh; someone who would be struggling to come to terms with a new, absurd, but permanent reality.
Ingrid Ungerer’s eyes were inflamed with the tears that she had shed before Maria had arrived. But there was something more there. A bitterness. She conducted Maria into the sitting room, where they were alone, but Maria could hear subdued voices from an upstairs room.
‘My sister,’ Ingrid explained. ‘She’s helping me with the kids. Please … sit down.’
A pine shelving unit lined one wall. It was filled with the usual careless mix of books, CDs, ornaments and photographs that typify a family home. Maria noticed that most of the photographs were of Ingrid and a man whom Maria took to be her husband, Bernd, although his hair looked lighter, more grey, than it had on the dead man found in the park. And, of course, unlike the body in the park, the man in the picture had eyes with which to look at the camera. In all the photographs there were two boys, both of whom shared their mother’s dark hair and eyes. As families always do in these photographs, they all looked happy. Ingrid’s smile looked natural and relaxed, but, as Maria looked at the woman before her, she realised that happiness was now a permanently alien concept to Ingrid Ungerer; and Maria had the feeling that it had been so for some time. Bernd Ungerer’s face also beamed a smile at the camera. Again the smile looked genuinely happy. Contented.
‘When will I be able to see the body?’ Ingrid Ungerer’s expression was one of a forced, spiritless composure.
‘Frau Ungerer …’ Maria leaned forward in the chair. ‘I have to warn you that your husband sustained certain … injuries … that could be distressing for you to see. I think it would be best –’
‘What type of injuries?’ Ingrid cut Maria off. ‘How was he killed?’
‘As far as we can tell, your husband was stabbed.’ Maria paused. ‘Listen, Frau Ungerer, the person who killed your husband is clearly a deranged individual. I’m afraid to say that he removed your husband’s eyes. I really am very sorry.’
Ingrid Ungerer’s expression remained composed, but Maria noticed that she trembled as she spoke.
‘Was it someone’s husband? Or a boyfriend?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t understand, Frau Ungerer.’
‘Was my husband caught with another woman? Or was it a jealous husband who caught up with him? Then I could understand the thing with the eyes. He was always staring at other women. Always.’
Maria looked hard at Ingrid Ungerer. She was unremarkably attractive, of medium height and build, with short chestnut hair. A pleasant face, but not one you would notice; but if you did, you would see that a sadness continually lurked behind her expression. Maria could see that it was an established sadness; a melancholy that had made temporary house-room for Ingrid’s new grief, but whose own tenancy was of a much longer, and now permanent, standing.
‘Your husband saw other women?’ Maria asked.
Ingrid gave a bitter laugh. ‘Do you like sex?’ She asked the question as if she were asking the time. Maria, naturally, looked stunned, but the question bit deeper than Frau Ungerer had intended. Fortunately, she didn’t wait for Maria to answer. ‘I used to. I’m a very physical person. But you know what it’s like, after you’ve been married for a while, the way the passion fades, the way kids exhaust you and kill your sex drive …’
‘Sorry, I don’t. I’m not married.’
‘But you have a boyfriend?’
‘Not at the moment.’ Maria kept her tone even. It was an area of her life that she did not feel like discussing with a stranger, even if it was a bereaved woman.
‘Things cooled down a bit after Bernd and I got married. As they do. A bit too cool for me, if I’m honest, but Bernd had a demanding job and was often dead tired when he got home. But he was a wonderful husband, Frau Klee. Faithful, supportive, caring, and a great father.’ Ingrid stood up, taking a set of keys from her handbag. ‘I’d like to show you something.’ She led Maria out into the hall, through an archway and down some stairs. Once in the basement she switched on the lights. There was the usual collection of items that found no place in the main dwelling of a family home: bicycles, storage boxes, winter boots. Ingrid stopped in front of a large chest, resting her hand on it but making no effort to open it.
‘It started about six months ago. Bernd became more … attentive, shall we say. I was happy to begin with, but we seemed to go from one extreme to the other. We made love every night. Sometimes twice in one night. It became more and more … urgent, I suppose. Then it stopped being like we were making love. He would do it to me and it was like I wasn’t there. And then, one night when I said I wasn’t in the mood …’ Ingrid stopped. She looked down at the set of keys and fumbled through them, as if they were a rosary. ‘It was that night that he made it very clear that he didn’t care whether I was in the mood or not.’
Maria placed her hand on Ingrid’s arm but felt her pull slightly away. ‘It was about then that I started to find out about the other women. He was working for a different company then. He’d been with them for years, and he suddenly had to make a move to the firm he’s with now …’ She shook her head as if annoyed with herself and corrected her statement. ‘I mean, the company he was working for until now. It wasn’t until recently that I found out a couple of the women at his old company had made complaints about him.’
‘I’m sorry, Frau Ungerer. So that’s why you think it might have been a jealous husband? I don’t think that’s the case. We have reason to believe that your husband’s murder was committed by someone who has killed a number of unconnected people before.’
Ingrid Ungerer stared blankly at Maria, then continued as if she hadn’t heard what she had said. ‘There were half a dozen women that I know about over the last six months. And countless more who rejected him. He had no shame. It didn’t seem to matter to him that he was embarrassing himself … or me and the children, for that matter.’ She laughed her small, bitter laugh once more. ‘And it wasn’t as if he left me alone. All the time he was with other women I still had to perform for him. He became insatiable.’
She took the keys she had taken from her bag and unlocked the chest, swinging the lid up to reveal its contents. It was packed with pornography. Hard-core pornography: magazines, videos, DVDs. ‘He told me never to come down here. Never to open this chest, if I knew what was good for me.’ She looked at Maria beseechingly. ‘Why did he do that? Why did he threaten me? He’d never threatened me before.’ She nodded at the contents of the chest. ‘There’s more on his computer upstairs. Do you understand it? Why would he change like that? Why would a caring, loving man turn into a beast? So suddenly? Everyone knew about it. That’s what made me so sad. Neighbours and friends would smile and chat to me and I could see they either felt sorry for me or were trying to find out more dirty details. Not that we had many friends left. Any couple we knew fell out with us because Bernd was always trying to get into the woman’s pants. Even the people at his work joked about it … had a nickname for him. His customers too, apparently. I’m telling you, Frau Klee, I can’t believe his murder hasn’t got anything to do with the way he’s been behaving recently.’
Ingrid shut and locked the chest and they went back up to the lounge. Maria tried to concentrate on getting details from Ingrid about her husband’s movements over the previous week. But the more Maria tried to focus on his movements, the more the locked chest in the basement, the secret life bothered her. In any case, it was a difficult and thankless task because, alongside his sudden lasciviousness, it appeared that Ungerer had become increasingly secretive and defensive. He had gone out more in the evenings to ‘see clients socially’, and that was where he’d said he had been going the night he was killed. When he had not ret
urned that night, Ingrid had not been concerned. Upset, but not concerned: it was quite common for Bernd to stay out all night. There had been credit-card slips hidden, which Ingrid had found, but she had put them back where she had found them, without comment. They had all been made out to escort agencies, clubs and saunas in St Pauli.
‘It was clear that there was something wrong with Bernd,’ Ingrid explained. ‘He became a different person. There were other strange things about him. Sometimes he would come home and complain that the house smelled dirty. It never did, but I would have to clean the house from top to bottom, even if I’d already done it that day, just to keep him happy. Then I would get my “reward”, as he put it. I thought he was having some kind of breakdown, so I suggested that we went to see our family doctor, but Bernd wouldn’t have any of it.’
‘So you never got any kind of professional opinion on his behaviour?’
‘Yes. Yes, I did. I went to see Herr Doktor Gärten myself. I told him what was happening. He said that there is a condition called “satyriasis” – it’s the male form of nymphomania. He said that he was very concerned about Bernd and wanted him to come in to see him, but when I told Bernd that I’d been to see the doctor without him, behind his back, as he put it … well, things started to get even more unpleasant.’
The two women sat in silence for a moment. Then Maria started to explain the kind of help that was available to Ingrid, and went through the procedures that would be followed over the coming days and weeks. Then Maria got up to go. She was almost at the door when she turned to say goodbye to Ingrid Ungerer, and repeated her condolences.
‘May I ask you one last question, Frau Ungerer?’
Ingrid nodded lifelessly.
‘You said his colleagues and customers had a nickname for him. What was it?’
Ingrid Ungerer’s eyes welled with tears. ‘Bluebeard. That’s what they called my husband … Bluebeard.’
47.
3.00 p.m., Monday, 19 April: Krankenhaus Mariahilf, Heimfeld, Hamburg
The nurses were delighted. Such a lovely thought – to have brought in a huge box of the most delicious pastries for them to have with their coffee. It was a small ‘thank you’, he had explained, to the Oberschwester and all of her staff for the wonderful care they had taken of his mother. So nice. So considerate.
He had been in with the Chefarzt, Herr Doktor Schell, for almost half an hour. Doktor Schell was going over, once more, the essentials of his mother’s care once she was home with him. Schell had the report that the social services had provided on the apartment the son had prepared to share with his sick mother. According to the report it had been equipped to the highest standard and the chief doctor complimented him on his commitment to providing his mother with the best possible care.
When he came out of the Doktor’s office, the big man beamed a smile at the nurse’s station. He was so obviously delighted to be taking his mother home. Again the chief nurse found herself doubting that any of her ungrateful brood would make a quarter as much effort for her in her old age.
He sat again by the old woman’s bed, pulling his chair in tight, drawing in to their confined, exclusive, poisonous universe.
‘Do you know what, Mutti? At the end of this week we will be together. Alone. Isn’t that wonderful? All I’ll have to worry about is the odd visit we’ll be getting from a District Nurse, to see how we’re getting on. But I can work around that. No, it won’t be a problem at all when the Gemeindeschwester comes to call. You see, I’ve got this wonderful little apartment all fitted out with stuff that we’ll never use – because we’ll hardly ever be there, will we, Mutti? I know that you’d much rather be in our old house, wouldn’t you?’
The old woman lay, as ever, motionless, helpless.
‘Do you know what I found the other day, mother? Your old costume from the Speeldeel. Remember how important that was for you? German traditions of dance and song? I do believe I might find a use for it.’ He paused. ‘Do you want me to read to you, Mutti? Do you want me to read the Grimm stories to you? I will when we get home. All the time. Like before. Do you remember how the only books you would allow in the house were the Bible and the Brothers Grimm fairy tales? God and Germany. That’s all we needed in our household …’ He paused. Then his voice fell to a low, conspiratorial whisper. ‘You hurt me so much, Mutti. You hurt me so much that sometimes I thought I was going to die. You beat me so hard and you told me all the time that I was worthless. A nobody. You never stopped. When I was a teenager and then a grown man, you told me I was useless. Unworthy of anyone else’s love. You said that was why I could never form a lasting relationship.’ The whisper became a hiss. ‘Well, you were wrong, you old bitch. You thought we were always alone when you beat the crap out of me. Well, we weren’t. He was always there. My Märchenbruder. Invisible. He didn’t speak for such a long, long time. Then I heard him. I heard him; you couldn’t. He saved me from your beatings. He gave me the words for the stories. He opened up a new world. A wonderful, shining world. A truthful world. And then I found my true art, with his help. Three years ago, remember? The girl. The girl you had to help me bury because you were terrified of the scandal, the disgrace of having a son go to prison. You thought you could control me. But he was stronger … is stronger than you can ever imagine.’
He leaned back in his chair and scanned her body, from head to toe. When he spoke, his voice was no longer a whisper, but flat, cold, menacing.
‘You will be my masterpiece, mother. My masterwork. It will be for you, more than anything else I have done, that I will be remembered.’
48.
Noon, Tuesday, 20 April: Polizeipräsidium, Hamburg
The dressing on the side of Werner’s head was small and the side of his face was no longer swollen, but there was still a smudge of bruising around the area of the wound. Fabel had only agreed to let him back if he stayed in the Mordkommission and helped with the processing and collation of the evidence that the active team gathered. And then only if he restricted his hours. Werner’s methodical approach was ideally suited for sifting through the oddball correspondence and e-mails that Weiss’s theories had attracted. So far, wading through this junk had tied up Hans Rödger and Petra Maas. And, because of its very nature, it had turned up a pile of crackpots who needed to be checked out, and there was a mounting backlog of interviews to be done.
The truth was, Fabel was as glad to see Werner return to the team as he had been to see Anna back. He did, however, feel irresponsible at having allowed two injured officers to return to duty prematurely. Fabel decided to make it up to them by negotiating some extra paid leave for Werner and Anna after this case was over.
He took Werner through the inquiry board. Running through the progress, or lack of it, of the case so far was a frustrating experience. Fabel had been forced to turn the media spotlight generated by Laura von Klosterstadt’s murder to his own advantage: Olsen’s picture now appeared on news bulletins and in papers as the person to whom the Polizei Hamburg wanted to speak in connection with the murders. He had put Anna and Henk Hermann on to interviewing Leo Kranz, the photographer who had been involved ten years ago with Laura von Klosterstadt: but Kranz was on assignment, covering the Anglo-American occupation of Iraq. His office had been able to confirm that he had been in the Middle East throughout the time when the murders had been committed. Fabel went through his meeting with Weiss, which Werner had prompted, and explained that Fendrich remained on the edge of the investigation.
‘The thing that bothers me most about Fendrich,’ said Fabel, ‘is that his mother died six months ago. In her psycho-profile of the killer, Susanne reckoned that the gap between the first and the second killings could indicate that some kind of restraint was exerted on the killer by a dominant figure, a wife or a mother, who may have since died.’
‘I don’t know, Jan.’ Werner turned a chair from a nearby desk to face the inquiry board, then eased himself into it. His face looked grey, tired. For the first time, Fabel b
ecame aware that Werner was getting older. ‘Fendrich has been put through the mill at least twice. He just doesn’t fit. I don’t like the sound of this guy Weiss, though. You reckon we’ve got another high priest and acolyte? Weiss pulling the strings and Olsen doing the killing? We’ve been there before, after all.’
‘Could be.’ Fabel gazed at the inquiry board, with all the pictures and time-lines laid out on it. ‘But does Olsen strike you as someone who would be inspired by fairy tales, or Weiss’s half-assed literary theories?’
Werner laughed. ‘Maybe we’re trying too hard. Maybe we should just be looking for someone who lives in a gingerbread house.’
Fabel smiled grimly, but something snagged in his brain. A gingerbread house. He shrugged. ‘You could be right. About trying too hard, I mean. Maybe Olsen is our guy. Let’s just hope we close in on him soon.’
It was about three p.m. when Fabel’s wish was answered. A SchuPo unit reported that someone matching Olsen’s description had been seen entering a squat in a disused block overlooking the harbour. The uniformed officers had had the good sense to hold back and call up a plain-clothes Mobiles Einsatz Kommando to keep the building under surveillance. The report hit the Mordkommission like a missile. Fabel had to calm everyone down before giving them their orders.
‘Listen, people. This is our capture. I’ve already told the MEK commander that we’re making the arrest. We take him. No one else.’ He looked across to Maria; as usual, her expression was hard to read, but she gave a decisive nod. ‘When we get there we’ll work out a game plan. I want Olsen alive and in a condition to talk. Is that clear? Okay, let’s go.’
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