Brother Grimm

by Craig Russell

  Fabel nodded, as if he understood. Olsen was afraid of no man, but there was something more than human, or less than human, about the figure he described.

  ‘He had her by the throat.’ Olsen’s lower lip trembled as he spoke. ‘With one hand. She was crying and begging and begging him not to hurt her. Not to kill her. He just laughed at her. It was a horrible laugh. Cold and empty. Then he said, “I’m going to kill you now” – just like that – “I’m going to kill you now”, quietly, not like he was angry or like he hated her or nothing. He pushed her down on to the bonnet of the car, almost gently. Then he drew the blade across her throat. Real slow. Deliberate. Careful. After that he stood for a while, just looking at the bodies, again as if he was in no hurry, like he wasn’t afraid of someone coming along. He just stood and looked at them. Then he’d move a little to one side and look at them some more. After that, he dragged Schiller’s body away into the woods.’

  ‘Didn’t you go over to check if Hanna was alive?’ asked Anna.

  Olsen shook his head. ‘Too afraid. Anyway, I knew she was dead. I waited until the big man in black had gone into the woods with Schiller’s body. Then I crept back to where I’d hidden my motorbike. I pushed it down the track for a hundred metres or so. I didn’t want him to hear me start the engine. Then I sped off as fast as I could. I didn’t know what to do. I knew that none of you would believe my story, so I decided just to carry on like nothing had happened. Christ knows how, but I thought that was the best way of staying out of it. But on the way back I stopped at an Autobahn service station and made the call to the police. I thought there might be a chance you could catch him still there – he didn’t seem to be in any hurry. I thought that if you did catch him there, that would put me in the clear.’

  Anna placed a tape in the cassette player and pressed the play button. It was the recording from the call received by the Polizeieinsatzzentrale. The voice on the end of the line was stretched tight by shock, but it was clearly Olsen’s. It told the police where to find the bodies.

  ‘You confirm that’s your voice?’ she asked.

  Olsen nodded. He looked pleadingly at Fabel. ‘I didn’t do it. I swear I didn’t do it. What I’ve told you is the truth. But I don’t expect for a minute that you believe me.’

  ‘Maybe I do,’ said Fabel. ‘But you’ve got a lot more questions to answer, and we’ve still got charges against you.’ He looked across to Olsen’s mouse-like lawyer, who nodded. ‘Kriminalkommissarin Wolff will ask you about the other killings, where you were, what you know of the victims.’ Fabel stood up and leaned on the interview table. ‘You’re still in a great deal of trouble, Herr Olsen. You’re still the only person we can identify at the scene, and you have a motive. I suggest that you answer all Frau Wolff’s questions fully and truthfully.’

  As Fabel was leaving, Anna said, ‘Excuse me a moment …’ to Olsen’s lawyer and followed Fabel out into the corridor.

  ‘You believe him?’ she asked Fabel when they were alone in the corridor.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I do. There was always something about Olsen that didn’t gel. These killings weren’t crimes of passion. Someone is meticulously planning and living out these horrific psychotic fantasies.’

  ‘You really believe that Olsen would be scared of another man? He took Werner on, and Werner’s no lightweight.’

  ‘True. But, there again, I think Olsen has more to fear from Maria than Werner.’ There was a hint of disapproval in Fabel’s smile. ‘I hope she’s not been taking lessons from you, Anna.’

  Anna regarded Fabel with a blank expression, as if she hadn’t understood. It gave her, beneath the short, spiky black hair and the make-up, a schoolgirl innocence. Fabel had already cautioned her twice about her aggressive conduct. ‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘I’m not so sure that Olsen’s big-spooky-man story is enough to put him in the clear. We only have his word for it.’

  ‘I tend to believe him. He was afraid out there in the Naturpark – afraid for his life. Our killer is obsessed with Grimm’s Fairy Tales … well, that’s what Olsen was afraid of – not a man, not just another big-built bruiser with whom Olsen could slog it out. Olsen was alone, in the dark, in the woods, and he saw something come out of the darkness of the woods that didn’t look entirely human. That’s what he was scared of – the bogeyman, the ogre, the werewolf. I couldn’t work out why Olsen was too scared to act, but the truth is that, out there, he wasn’t the hulking thug we’ve got sitting in the interview room: he was a little boy having a bad dream after hearing a scary story. That’s what our killer wants. That’s why he succeeds: he turns his victims into frightened children.’ Fabel paused. He nodded his head in the direction of the closed interview door. ‘Anyway, we’ll find out soon enough if he’s telling the truth, Anna. In the meantime, just see what more you can get out of him.’

  Anna went back into the interview room and Fabel headed towards the Mordkommission office. There was something nagging at the back of his mind. It lay in some half-lit corner, just beyond his reach.

  He sat in his office. He stayed still and quiet, looking out of the window towards Winterhuder Park. Hamburg stretched herself low and wide across the horizon. Fabel tried to empty his mind of all the clutter of detail, of the thousands of words heard and read about this case, of inquiry boards and Tatort – scene-of-crime – photographs. He watched the blue-white silk sky slide over the city. Somewhere, he knew, there was a central truth waiting to be uncovered. Something simple. Something pure and crystalline and defined in sharp clear, edges.

  Fairy tales. It was all about fairy tales and two brothers who had collected them. Two brothers gathering philological research material and seeking ‘the true and original voice of the German-speaking peoples’. They had been driven by a love for the German language and a fervent desire to keep the oral tradition alive. But more than that, they were patriots, nationalists. They set out on their researches at a time when Germany was an idea, not a nation; when the Napoleonic overlords sought to extirpate local or regional cultures.

  But the Grimms had changed direction. When the first set of tales had been published, it hadn’t been German academia that had responded with overwhelming enthusiasm and bought the collection in vast quantities: it had been the ordinary folk. It had been the very people whose voice the brothers had sought to record. And, most of all, it had been children. Jacob, the seeker after philological truth, had acquiesced to Wilhelm’s wishes and they had sanitised the tales for the second edition, often embellishing them until they doubled in length.

  Gone was Hans Dumm, who could impregnate women simply by looking at them. No longer did the pregnant but naive Rapunzel ask why her clothes no longer fitted her. No longer was Dornröschen or Sleeping Beauty raped as she lay, unwakeable, in her bewitched slumber. And sweet Snow White, made queen at the end of the original story, would no longer order that her evil stepmother be forced into shoes of red-hot iron and made to dance to death.

  The truth. The Brothers Grimm had sought the true voice of the German people and had created their own quasi-fictions. And was it an authentic German voice anyway? As Weiss had pointed out, French, Italian, Scandinavian, Slavic and other tales all echoed in the stories and fables that the Grimms had collected. Was that what the killer was seeking? The truth? To make the fiction true, like Weiss’s fictitious Jacob Grimm?

  Fabel stood up, went over to the window and watched the clouds. He couldn’t get to it. The killer wasn’t just trying to talk to Fabel, he was screaming into his face. And Fabel couldn’t hear him.

  There was a knock and Werner came in, carrying a folder. Fabel noticed that he was wearing a pair of forensic latex gloves. Fabel looked at the file questioningly.

  ‘As well as the stuff you got from Weiss, I’ve been wading through sackfuls of fan mail from his publishers. The stuff they sent goes back nearly a year and I’ve worked my way back to about six months ago. I’ve been coming across more than a few nutcases who I’d like to have a chat with,’ Werner said.
He opened up the folder and carefully caught the edge of a single sheet between his gloved forefinger and thumb. ‘Then I found this …’ He pulled the single-sheet letter from the file, still holding it by one corner.

  Fabel stared at it. Hard. The letter Werner held up was written, in a tiny hand and in red ink, on a sheet of yellow paper.

  Holger Brauner had confirmed that the paper was exactly the same as the small strips, all cut from a single page, that had been found in the hands of each victim. Brauner had also stated that his initial hunch had been right and that the paper was from a generic mass-market brand that was sold in supermarkets, office supply and computer stores throughout the country. It was impossible to get any kind of trace on where and when it had been bought. The handwriting too was a match, and chemical analysis of the red ink was expected to hold no surprises. What had most excited Fabel about Werner’s find was that it was a letter. Fan mail. It wasn’t a leave-behind at a murder scene. And that might mean that the killer would not have taken so much care to avoid leaving forensic traces on it. But Fabel was to be disappointed: Brauner had confirmed that there were no DNA traces or fingerprints on the letter or anything else with which they could trace its writer.

  When he had written to Weiss, he had known he was going to kill. And he had also known that the police would eventually find this letter.

  Brauner had sent over four copies of a photograph of the letter, blown up to two and a half times the size of the original. One of these was now pinned to the incident board.

  Lieber Herr Weiss,

  I just wanted to contact you to say how delighted I am with your most recent book, Die Märchenstrasse. I looked forward, with very great eagerness, to reading it; and I was not to be disappointed. I feel that this is one of the greatest, most profound pieces of modern German literature.

  As I read your book, it became so clear to me that you speak with the authentic voice of Jacob Grimm, just as Jacob sought to speak with the authentic voice of Germany: our stories, our lives and our fears; our good and our evil. Did you know that W. H. Auden, the British poet, wrote, at a time when his country was locked in mortal combat with ours, that Grimm’s Fairy Tales, alongside the Bible, represent the foundations of Western culture? Such is their power, Herr Weiss. Such is the power of that true, clear voice of our people. I have heard that voice, so many, many times. I know that you understand this; I know you hear the voice as well.

  You have spoken much about how people can become parts of stories; do you believe that stories can become people? Or that we are all a story?

  I am, in my own way, a creator of tales. No, I arrogate my role: I am more a recorder of tales. I lay them out for others to read and understand their truth. We are brothers, you and I. We are Jacob and Wilhelm. But where you, like Wilhelm, edit, embellish and elaborate on the simplicity of these tales to appeal to your audience, I, like Jacob, seek to present their raw, bright verity. Imagine Jacob, concealed outside the woodland home of Dorothea Viehmann, listening to the tales she would tell only to children. Imagine the wonder of it: centuries-old, magical tales passed down through the generations. I have experienced something similar. That is what I will lay out before my public; and they will be in awe.

  With the love of one brother to another,

  Dein Märchenbruder

  Fabel reread the letter. It said nothing. It wouldn’t even have aroused Weiss’s suspicion or that of his publishers. It sounded like some loopy fan talking about their own writing, not like a killer laying out his plans to re-enact Grimm fairy tales with real corpses.

  ‘Who’s Dorothea Viehmann?’ Werner stood beside Fabel, looking up at the enlarged image of the letter.

  ‘She was an old woman whom the Grimms found – or, more correctly, whom Jacob found,’ answered Fabel. ‘She lived outside Kassel. She was a famed storyteller but refused to relate any of them to Jacob Grimm, so he sat outside a window and eavesdropped as she told the stories to the children of the village.’

  Werner made an impressed face. Fabel turned to him and smiled.

  ‘I’ve been improving my mind.’

  The rest of the team had, by now, assembled and there was a buzz of chatter as they gathered around the new piece of evidence. Fabel called for their attention.

  ‘This tells us nothing we don’t already know. The only additional information we will be able to get from this is whatever further psychological insight Frau Doktor Eckhardt can gain from its content.’ Susanne would not be back from Norddeich until the next day, but Fabel had already arranged to send a copy over to her at the Institut für Rechtsmedizin, and he planned to call her later at his mother’s to read the contents to her and get an initial reaction.

  Henk Hermann put his hand half up, as if in a classroom. Fabel smiled and nodded and Hermann self-consciously withdrew it. ‘He’s signed himself “Märchenbruder”,’ Hermann asked. ‘What does that mean: Fairy Tale Brother?’

  ‘He obviously feels strongly connected to Weiss. But there may be some other significance. And I know the ideal person to call to find out.’

  ‘The ideal person,’ said Werner, ‘would be the killer himself.’

  ‘And that,’ said Fabel grimly, ‘might just be exactly who I am going to ask.’

  Weiss answered the phone after two rings. Fabel assumed that he must have been in his study, working. Fabel explained how they’d discovered a letter sent to Weiss through his publishers, and that it had clearly come from the killer. Weiss had no recollection of having seen the letter and listened in silence as Fabel read its contents to him.

  ‘And you’re convinced he’s talking about these killings?’ Weiss asked when Fabel was finished.

  ‘I am. It’s the same person, all right. Is there anything in what he says that may be significant? The mention of Dorothea Viehmann, for example?’

  ‘Dorothea Viehmann!’ Weiss’s tone was cynical. ‘The font of German folkloric wisdom at whose feet Jacob Grimm worshipped. And so would your misguided psycho, obviously.’

  ‘And he shouldn’t?’

  ‘What is it about we Germans? We’re constantly searching for an identity, to find out who we are, and we invariably end up with the wrong bloody answer. The Grimms venerated Viehmann and took her versions of German fairy tales as gospel – almost literally. But Viehmann was her married name. Her maiden name was Pierson. French – Dorothea Viehmann’s parents were expelled from France for being Protestants, Huguenots. The stories she told were, she claimed, German stories she’d heard from travellers on the road to and from Kassel. The truth is that many of the stories she passed on to the Grimms were French in origin from her own familial background. The same stories that Charles Perrault recorded in France a century or more before. And she wasn’t the only one. There was the mysterious “Marie” who was credited with passing on “Snow White”, “Little Red Riding Hood” and “Sleeping Beauty”. Wilhelm’s son claimed that it was an old family servant woman. It turned out to be a wealthy young society lady called Marie Hassenpflug, also from a French family, who had been told the stories by her French nannies.’ Weiss laughed. ‘So the question is, Herr Fabel: is Sleeping Beauty Dornröschen or is she la belle au bois dormant? And is Red Riding Hood Rotkäppchen or is she le petit chaperon rouge? Like I say, we continually seek the truth about our identity and, without fail, we totally screw it up. And we usually end up relying on foreign observers to define who we are.’

  ‘I don’t think this psycho is going to split patriotic hairs over this.’ Fabel didn’t have time for another sermon from Weiss. ‘I just want to know if you think there is any significance in him mentioning Viehmann’s name.’

  There was a short silence at the other end of the phone. Fabel imagined the massive author in his study, with its rich, dark wood absorbing the light. ‘No. I don’t think there is. His victims have been of both sexes, right?’

  ‘Yes. He seems to be an equal-opportunity killer.’

  ‘The only significance I can see in him mentioning Dorothea
Viehmann is that the Grimms really did see her as an almost unique source of ancient wisdom. And they seemed to think that women were the flame-keepers of the Germanic oral tradition. If your killer was focusing on women, especially old women, then maybe I might have seen some connection.’ Again there was a short silence at the other end of the phone. ‘There is one thing about the letter that does bother me. Really bothers me. It’s the way he signed himself off.’