53.
7.30 a.m., Friday, 23 April: Ohlsdorf, Hamburg
Fabel had been late home from the Präsidium the night before. He had been tired: that irritable, restless overtiredness that takes you beyond the point where you can sleep. He had stayed up late and watched television, something he very rarely did. He had watched Ludger Abeln deliver news reports in fluent Plattdeutsch on the Low German version of ‘Hallo Niedersachsen’, part of broadcaster Norddeutscher Rundfunk’s promotion of the ancient language. Abeln’s Emsländer voice had soothed Fabel: it reminded him of his home, of his family, of the voices he had grown up with. He thought back to how he had protested to Susanne that Hamburg was now his Heimat; that this was where he belonged. Yet now, dispirited and tired beyond sleeping, the language and accent of his birthplace wrapped itself around him like a comfort blanket.
After the report was over, Fabel had flicked aimlessly through the channels. 3-SAT was showing Nosferatu, F.W. Murnau’s silent expressionist horror classic. Fabel had sat and watched as the flickering black and white of the screen fingered its light across the walls of his apartment and Max Schreck’s vampire, Orlok, advanced menacingly towards him. Another fable. Another scary story of Good and Evil that had been elevated to a German masterpiece. Fabel remembered that this, too, was a borrowed tale that Germans had made their own: Murnau had shamelessly plagiarised the story from an Irish author, Bram Stoker. Stoker’s tale had been entitled Dracula, and Stoker’s widow had succeeded in getting an injunction against Murnau. All copies of the film had been destroyed as ordered. All except one print. And a classic had endured. As he watched the sinister Orlok infect an entire North German city with his vampire plague, Fabel recalled the lyrics of the Rammstein song he had read in Olsen’s apartment. Grimm, Murnau, Rammstein: different generations, the same fables.
Weiss was right. Everything stayed the same. We still needed fairy tales to frighten us, imagined horrors and real fears. And we always had.
Fabel had gone to bed about two.
He was aware that he had dreamt throughout his fitful night. As Susanne had said, his constant dreaming was a sign of stress, of his mind’s frantic struggles to resolve problems and issues in both his personal and professional life. But what Fabel hated most was when he knew he had dreamt but couldn’t remember the dream. And the night’s dreams had veiled themselves the instant he awoke to answer Anna Wolff’s call at five-thirty.
‘Good morning, Chef. I’d skip breakfast if I were you. The bastard’s done another one already.’ Anna had spoken with her usual directness that often bordered on the disrespectful. ‘By the way, I think I’ve found Bernd Ungerer’s missing eyes. Oh – and I’ve got a spare pair, just in case …’
* * *
More than half of Hamburg’s Ohlsdorf area is devoted to a park. A park that is the largest green area in Hamburg: more than four hundred hectares dense with trees, lovingly tended gardens and magnificent examples of the sculptor’s art. A place where many Hamburg residents and visitors come to soak up its verdant tranquillity. But the Friedhof Ohlsdorf is a park with a very specific function. It is the largest cemetery in the world. The Friedhof Ohlsdorf’s beautifully crafted sculptures are there to adorn the mausolea, tombs and headstones of Hamburg’s dead. Nearly half a million graves mean that almost every Hamburg family has a member interred in the vast Friedhof.
The brightening sky was reasonably clear of cloud and was already streaked by the red fingers of the approaching morning by the time Fabel arrived at the scene. An Ohlsdorfer SchuPo unit led Fabel along the Cordesallee, the main thoroughfare that cuts through the massive Friedhof and past the Wasserturm to a large area that seemed to have its own integrity, as if it was a graveyard in its own right. It was fringed with broad-leaved trees that had already almost completely filled out with their spring foliage. White marble, bronze and red granite figures stood silent watch over the graves as Fabel made his way across to where the body had been discovered. Anna was already there, as were Holger Brauner and his forensics team who had secured the locus. Everyone exchanged grim, early-morning murder-scene greetings as Fabel approached.
A woman lay on her back as if asleep, her hands folded across her breast. At her head a vast sculpture of a female angel looked down with one hand extended, as if regarding the dead woman and reaching out to her. Fabel looked around. All of the sculptures were female, as were the names on all the headstones.
‘This is the Garten der Frauen,’ Anna explained. A graveyard exclusively for women. Fabel knew that the killer was trying to tell them something even in his choice of venue. He looked back to the dead woman. Her pose was almost identical to that of Laura von Klosterstadt. The differences were that this woman was darker-haired and did not possess Laura’s beauty. And she wasn’t naked.
‘What kind of outfit is that?’ asked Anna.
‘It’s a traditional Northern German woman’s costume. The kind of outfit worn by women in a Speeldeel,’ said Fabel, referring to the numerous Plattdeutsch folkloric dance societies in Hamburg. ‘You know, like the Finkwarder Speeldeel.’
Anna looked none the wiser. ‘And there are your eyes.’ She pointed to the woman’s chest, on which four masses of white and red tissue lay scattered. ‘We seem to have an embarrassment of riches here. Specifically, we have an extra pair of eyes.’
Fabel examined the body, working his way from the dead woman’s head to her feet. She wore a bright red traditional bonnet, trimmed in white lace and tied beneath her chin. There was a gaily coloured shawl over her shoulders and her wide-sleeved white blouse was gathered in by a black bodice decorated with gold and red threadwork. The bodice was stained with the viscous globs of the eyeballs. Her red ankle-length skirt was all but concealed beneath an embroidered white apron. She also wore thick white stockings and low-heeled black shoes. A small wicker basket had been laid beside her, in which sat a bloomer of bread.
‘It looks like the real deal,’ said Fabel. ‘These outfits tend to be made by Speeldeel society members, or passed down from mother to daughter. Do we have an identity?’
Anna shook her head.
‘Then I think we should circulate a photograph of her, as well as the details of the costume. Someone in a Speeldeel society will recognise her or it.’
‘You see the colour of the bonnet?’ Anna handed Fabel a transparent evidence bag. In it was another slip of yellow paper. Fabel peered at the tiny writing in the pale morning light: ‘Rotkäppchen.’
‘Shit – Little Red Riding Hood.’ Fabel thrust the bag back at Anna. ‘The bastard’s going to work his way through the whole collection if we don’t get him soon. The space between killings is getting shorter, but his little bloody tableaux aren’t getting any less elaborate. He’s had this whole thing planned out for some time.’
‘The eyes, Chef,’ said Anna. ‘What about the eyes? We have a pair we can’t account for. That means there’s another victim we don’t know about.’
‘Unless they’re Paula Ehlers’s eyes, and he’s kept them frozen or something.’
‘Nope, I don’t think so.’ Holger Brauner had joined them. ‘Two pairs of eyes. Both human, both removed by force, rather than surgically. As far as I can see, both pairs are in the process of desiccation, but one pair has dried out more than the other. It would suggest that they were taken some time before the second pair. But I see no signs of any attempt to preserve them, by pickling or freezing.’
‘So why haven’t we found another body?’ asked Anna.
Fabel snapped his fingers. ‘Clever Hans … dammit – that’s it: Clever Hans.’
Anna looked confused.
‘I’ve been poring over these bloody fairy tales for days,’ said Fabel. ‘There are so many of them that he could hit us with any one of a couple of hundred tales to base his killing on, but I remember Clever Hans. I don’t know if he’s meant to be the same person as in “Hänsel und Gretel” but the girl in the “Clever Hans” story is called Gretel. Anyway, Clever Hans is sent to Gre
tel by his mother several times, each time with a simple task to perform, basically to give Gretel a present. Each time he screws it up – he fails to give Gretel her present and ends up coming back with something that she has given him. On the final trip, his mother gives him the simplest of tasks. She says to him “Clever Hans, why don’t you cast friendly eyes on Gretel?” In other words, look at her kindly. Be nice to her. But Clever Hans takes his instruction literally: he goes into the field and into the barn and cuts out all the eyes from the cows and the sheep. Then he goes to Gretel and throws them on her.’
‘Shit …’ Anna looked at the body. ‘So that’s the link you were talking about. Just as he linked Sleeping Beauty to Rapunzel through von Klosterstadt, he’s linked Rapunzel to Clever Hans through Bernd Ungerer.’
‘Exactly. And now we have Little Red Riding Hood.’
Fabel gazed down at the dead woman’s face. It was heavily made-up. An unnatural look that clashed with the traditional costume. He turned to Brauner, the forensics chief. His tone was almost pleading. ‘Holger, anything. Please. Give me something that will give me an angle on this guy.’ He sighed. ‘Anna, I’ll head back to the Präsidium. Come to my office as soon as you get back from processing this.’
‘Okay, Chef.’
Fabel headed back towards the exit on to the Cordesallee. The birds were now singing full tilt. He remembered reading somewhere that the Friedhof Ohlsdorf had a stunning range of otherwise quite rare birds, as well as colonies of bats who used the mausolea as nesting places. In fact, the Friedhof was a protected nature zone. So much life in a place designed to receive the dead. The thought was shattered by Anna’s shout behind him.
‘Chef! Chef – come and see this …’ She beckoned vigorously for Fabel. He half-ran back to the body. They had eased it from where it had lain and into a body shell. The female angel still gazed and pointed downward, but no longer at a murdered women in traditional North German Tracht. Instead the angel’s extended finger indicated a white marble slab on which was inscribed a name.
Emelia Fendrich. 1930–2003.
54.
10.15 a.m., Friday, 23 April: Hamburg Hafen, Hamburg
Maria, Werner, Henk Hermann and the two officers seconded from the Sexual Crimes SoKo turned up about ten minutes after Fabel and Anna arrived at Dirk Stellamanns’s Schnell-Imbiss snack stand down by the docks. The sky had dulled and the air felt thick and heavy, as if in a mood that could only be relieved by the explosive temper of a storm. Around the immaculately kept snack cabin and its handful of parasol-sheltered tables, a forest of shipyard cranes loomed into the steel grey sky. Dirk, himself an ex-Hamburg SchuPo, was, like Fabel, a Frisian and the two chatted briefly in their native Frysk before Fabel ordered coffees for his team.
They stood huddled around a couple of the chest-high tables and briefly discussed the unpromising state of the sky and whether they would finish their coffees before the storm broke. Then Fabel got down to business.
‘What does this mean? We clock up another victim, killed in the same way. But we find her lying on the grave of the mother of one of our suspects – albeit a lukewarm suspect. I’d like some opinions.’
‘Well,’ said Anna. ‘At least he’s saved me from chasing up the records office to check if Fendrich’s mother really is dead. The Friedhof authorities confirmed that Emelia Fendrich was, indeed, interred six months ago and the address listed for her is the same as her son’s, in Rahlstedt.’
Henk nodded. Rahlstedt was close to the Friedhof, bordering on Ohlsdorf. ‘So what do we do?’ he asked. ‘Do we bring Fendrich in for questioning about this latest killing?’
‘On what grounds?’ Anna made a face as she sipped the too-hot coffee. ‘That his mother really is dead and that he didn’t lie to us?’
Henk shrugged off Anna’s sarcasm. ‘Well, I suppose it could be a coincidence. But you do the arithmetic: two hundred and eighty thousand possible graves on which to dump the body, and it lands on one occupied by the mother of one of three suspects. And we know this guy is talking to us through every element he puts together in these scenes.’
‘We at least have to talk to Fendrich,’ said Maria. ‘We need to check out his whereabouts once we have ascertained the exact time of death.’
‘Holger Brauner squeezed an estimate out of our esteemed pathologist, Herr Doktor Möller, when he arrived on the scene,’ said Fabel. ‘Sometime between eight p.m. and midnight last night. And yes, we need to know where Fendrich was at that time. But we need to be extremely diplomatic about it. I don’t want him crying harassment again.’
‘I’ll deal with it,’ said Anna. Everyone stared at her. ‘What? I can be diplomatic.’
‘Okay,’ said Fabel, deliberately ladling uncertainty into his tone. ‘But don’t wind him up.’
‘Why not?’ asked Henk. ‘Fendrich’s got to be top of our list now. I mean, placing the body on his mother’s grave …’
‘Not necessarily,’ said Anna. ‘Paula Ehlers’s disappearance was widely reported. It was no secret that Fendrich was interviewed by police. We’ve got to remember that our killer more than likely abducted and killed Paula. So he’ll have followed developments after he took her. Anyway, I can tell you now, Fendrich won’t have an alibi.’
‘Why?’ asked Fabel.
‘Because he doesn’t know he needs one. And because he’s a loner.’
Fabel sipped his coffee and looked up at the sky. The sheet of steel grey was bruised with darker clouds. He could feel the pressure of the air, as he always could before a storm, manifest itself in a dull pain in his sinuses. ‘You really don’t think Fendrich did this, do you, Anna?’
‘I don’t think his relationship with Paula Ehlers was entirely straightforward. But no. He’s not our guy.’
Fabel massaged his sinuses with thumb and forefinger. ‘I think you’re right. I think we’re being deliberately diverted. Everything this guy is doing is connected. Each killing links one fairy tale with another. He’s dancing with us. But he’s taking the lead. There’s an order in what he’s doing. He’s as organised as he is creative, and he’s had this all worked out well in advance. I get the feeling we’re nearing the end. He started off with Paula Ehlers, where he gave us nothing but used her identity for his second murder, three years later. Then, with Martha Schmidt, the girl in Blankenese, all he gave us was the false identity. It was only after the Laura von Klosterstadt killing that we saw that he had placed Martha Schmidt “beneath” Laura. As he’s gone on he’s given us more and more. He wants us to guess what he’s going to do next, but he needs time to do it. That’s why he’s trying to point us towards Fendrich.’
‘What if you’re wrong, Chef?’ Werner leaned his elbows on the Schnell-Imbiss table. ‘What if Fendrich is our guy and he wants us to stop him? What if he’s telling us that he’s the killer?’
‘Then Anna will get the truth when she and Hermann question him.’
‘I’d rather go alone, Chef,’ said Anna. Henk Hermann didn’t look either surprised or annoyed.
‘No, Anna,’ said Fabel. ‘Fendrich is still a suspect and you’re not going into his house alone.’
‘Don’t worry, Frau Wolff,’ said Henk. ‘I’ll let you do all the talking.’
‘In the meantime,’ continued Fabel, ‘we need to analyse the messages this guy is sending us.’ The sky flashed behind the cloud, somewhere to the north. It took several seconds for the hard rumbling wave of thunder to roll over them. ‘I think we should get back to the Präsidium.’
The first thing that awaited Fabel on his return to the Präsidium was a summons to the office of Kriminaldirektor Horst van Heiden. It wasn’t unexpected. The media was now running headlines and lead stories about the ‘Fairy Tale Killer’ and Fabel knew that reporters and photographers were starting to circumvent the Presseabteilung and were harassing van Heiden directly. One TV crew had gone so far as to doorstep the Kriminaldirektor on his way from the Präsidium: something unthinkable even ten years before. The ‘Anglo-Saxon Mo
del’ seemed to be taking an ever greater hold on Germany, moving it away from its traditions of courtesy and respect. And, as always, the media was at the vanguard of the change. Van Heiden was unhappy and needed someone to blame. As he entered the Kriminaldirektor’s office, Fabel braced himself.
As it turned out, van Heiden was more desperate for a morsel of good news than he was angry. He reminded Fabel of himself at the last scene of crime, almost pleading Holger Brauner to turn up some clue. Van Heiden was not alone in his office when Fabel arrived. Innensenator Hugo Ganz was there, as was Leitender Oberstaatsanwalt Heiner Goetz, the state prosecutor for Hamburg. Goetz stood up and smiled warmly as Fabel came in and shook his hand. Fabel had crossed swords with Goetz on many occasions, mainly because Goetz was a tenacious and methodical prosecutor who refused to cut corners. Despite Fabel’s occasional frustration with Goetz they had between them secured a great many sound convictions and they had built up a strong mutual respect and something approaching friendship.
Ganz also shook Fabel’s hand, but with significantly less warmth. Aha, thought Fabel, the honeymoon is over. He guessed that his visit to Margarethe von Klosterstadt had ruffled aristocratic feathers and Ganz had received a call. He was right.
‘Herr Hauptkommissar,’ Ganz got in before even van Heiden could speak. ‘I believe you took it on yourself to re-interview Frau von Klosterstadt?’
Fabel didn’t answer but glanced questioningly at van Heiden, who didn’t respond.
‘I’m sure you appreciate,’ Ganz continued, ‘that this is a most distressing time for the von Klosterstadt family.’
‘It’s also a distressing time for the Schmidt and Ehlers families. I take it you don’t have a problem with me re-interviewing them?’
Ganz’s scrubbed pink face became pinker. ‘Now listen, Herr Fabel, I have already told you that I am a friend of the von Klosterstadt family of some standing –’
Brother Grimm Page 30