Brother Grimm

by Craig Russell

  ‘Then what is your name?’

  ‘Grimm …’ Biedermeyer laughed as if being forced to explain something dazzlingly obvious to a child. ‘I am Brother Grimm.’

  Fabel heard the sound of firearms being drawn from their holsters.

  ‘Franz Biedermeyer, I am placing you under arrest for the suspected murder of Paula Ehlers, Martha Schmidt, Hanna Grünn, Markus Schiller, Bernd Ungerer, Lina Ritter and Max Bartmann. Any statement you make may be used as evidence.’ Fabel reholstered his gun, first checking over his shoulder that Werner and Maria had Biedermeyer covered. He removed the pair of handcuffs from his belt pouch and grasped Biedermeyer’s wrist, turning him round to handcuff him. Taking hold of Biedermeyer made Fabel even more aware of his bulk and potential power. The wrists were thick and solid. But, to Fabel’s relief, Biedermeyer offered no resistance.

  As they took the Chief Baker out to the waiting cars, they passed Vera Schiller. Her dark gaze held Biedermeyer as he was led up the stairway and along the hall to the exit. He stopped, and Fabel and Werner became aware that they had hold of an immovable object. The smile faded from Biedermeyer’s face.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said to her in a quiet voice. She snorted, as if dismissing something contemptible. Biedermeyer moved on. Frau Schiller placed a hand on Fabel’s arm and he signalled for Henk and Anna to join Werner as Biedermeyer’s escort. When he turned to Vera Schiller, there was something like defiance in her eyes. Her voice was cold and sharp-edged.

  ‘I loved my husband, Herr Fabel. I loved Markus very, very much.’ Her expression remained hard, but a tear seeped from the corner of her eye and ran down her cheek. ‘I wanted you to know that.’

  They put Biedermeyer in the back of Fabel’s car. He was hunched over in the confines of the rear seat and looked as if he had been carelessly folded to fit into its inadequate space. Werner sat next to him and, despite his height, looked small in comparison to the baker.

  Before he started the engine, Fabel turned round to face Biedermeyer.

  ‘You said your work is finished. Why did you say that? I know you haven’t done all you planned. I’ve followed the links – the tales … you have at least one more to do …’

  Biedermeyer grinned and the wrinkles around his eyes again folded into creases. And again it reminded Fabel of the way his brother Lex smiled and the thought chilled him.

  ‘Be patient, Herr Kriminalhauptkommissar. Be patient.’

  59.

  1.30 p.m., Friday, 30 April: Polizeipräsidium Hamburg

  Fabel, Maria and Werner waited in the interview room. They had discussed their interrogation strategies before coming in and now sat in an unwilling silence. Each tried to think of something to say. A joke, even, to break the quiet. But none could. Instead Fabel and Werner sat at the table with the tape recorder and the microphone at its centre, while Maria leaned against the wall.

  And they waited for a monster to be brought into their midst.

  They heard footsteps approaching. Fabel knew that it was medically impossible but he could have sworn he felt his blood pressure rise. There was a tightness in his chest: excitement, dread and determination blended into an emotion without a name. The footsteps paused and then a SchuPo officer swung open the interview room door. Two more SchuPos led the handcuffed Biedermeyer into the room. They seemed insignificant next to his bulk.

  Biedermeyer sat down opposite Fabel. Alone. He had refused the right to a legal representative. The two SchuPos stood silent watch behind him, against the wall. Biedermeyer’s face still looked relaxed, amiable, pleasant. A face you would trust; someone you would chat to in a bar. He held out his hands, folding them back from his wrists to expose the handcuffs. He tilted his head slightly to one side.

  ‘Please, Herr Fabel. I think you know that I represent no danger to you or your colleagues. Nor do I have any desire to escape your custody.’

  Fabel signalled to one of the SchuPos, who stepped forward and unlocked and removed the cuffs before taking up his station by the wall again. Fabel switched on the tape machine.

  ‘Herr Biedermeyer, did you abduct and murder Paula Ehlers?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you abduct and murder Martha Schmidt?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you murder –’

  Biedermeyer held up his hand and smiled his disarming, good-natured smile. ‘Please. I think, to save time, it would be best if I made the following statement. I, Jacob Grimm, brother of Wilhelm Grimm, recorder of the tongue and soul of the German peoples, took the lives of Paula Ehlers, Martha Schmidt, Hanna Grünn, Markus Schiller, Bernd Ungerer, Laura von Klosterstadt, the whore Lina – I’m sorry, I never knew her surname – and the tattooist Max Bartmann. I killed them all. And I enjoyed each and every second of each and every death. I freely admit to killing them, but I am guilty of nothing. Their lives were inconsequential. The only significance each had lay in the manner of his or her death … and those universal, timeless truths that they expressed through their deaths. In life they were worthless. By killing them, I made them worthy.’

  ‘Herr Biedermeyer, for the record, we cannot accept a confession in any name other than your real one.’

  ‘But I have given you my real name. I have given you the name on my soul, not the fiction that exists on my Personalausweis.’ Biedermeyer sighed, then smiled, again as if he were indulging a child. ‘If it makes you happier: I, Brother Grimm, known to you by the name Franz Biedermeyer, admit to killing all of these people.’

  ‘Did you have any help in carrying out these murders?’

  ‘But of course I did! Naturally.’

  ‘From whom?’

  ‘From my brother … Who else?’

  ‘But you have no brother, Herr Biedermeyer,’ Maria said. ‘You were an only child.’

  ‘Of course I have a brother.’ For the first time the amiability of Biedermeyer’s expression dissolved and was replaced by something infinitely more menacing. Predatory. ‘Without my brother I am nothing. Without me he is nothing. We complete each other.’

  ‘Who is your brother?’

  Biedermeyer’s indulgent smile returned. ‘But you know him, of course. You’ve met him already.’

  Fabel’s gesture was one of incomprehension.

  ‘You know my brother, Wilhelm Grimm, by the name of Gerhard Weiss.’

  ‘Weiss?’ Maria spoke from behind Fabel. ‘You’re claiming that the author Gerhard Weiss committed these crimes with you?’

  ‘To begin with, these are not crimes. They are creative acts – there is nothing destructive about them. They are the embodiments of truths that stretch back generations. My brother and I are recorders of these truths. He committed nothing with me. He collaborated with me. Just as we did nearly two hundred years ago.’

  Fabel leaned back in his chair and regarded Biedermeyer: the amiable, smile-worn face that contrasted with the threat implicit in his huge frame. That’s why you wore the mask, Fabel thought. That’s why you hid your face. He imagined the terrifying figure that the masked Biedermeyer must have presented; the raw terror his victims must have experienced before they died. ‘But the truth is, is it not, Herr Biedermeyer, that Gerhard Weiss knows nothing of this. Apart from the letter you sent to his publishers, there has been no real, tangible contact between you.’

  Again Biedermeyer smiled. ‘No, you don’t understand, do you, Herr Kriminalhauptkommissar?’

  ‘Perhaps I don’t. I need you to help me understand. But first, I have an important question to ask you. Perhaps the most important I shall ask today. Where is Paula Ehlers’s body?’

  Biedermeyer leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. ‘You will get your answer, Herr Fabel. I promise you that. I shall tell you where to find Paula Ehlers’s body. And I shall tell you today … but not yet. First I will tell you how I came to find her and why I chose her. And I will help you to understand the special bond between my brother Wilhelm, whom you know as Gerhard Weiss, and myself.’ He paused. ‘May I have some water
?’

  Again Fabel nodded to one of the uniformed officers who filled a paper cup from the water dispenser, then placed it before Biedermeyer. He drank all the water down, and the sound of his swallowing was amplified in the otherwise silent interview room.

  ‘I delivered the cake to the Ehlers residence the day before her birthday party, two days before I took her. Her mother hurried away with with the cake because she wanted to hide it before Paula came home from school. I was just driving away when I saw Paula come around the corner and head towards her house. I thought to myself: “That was lucky! I delivered that cake just in time, she very nearly saw her surprise.” It was then that Wilhelm spoke to me. He told me that I had to take the girl and end her.’

  ‘Wilhelm was in the car with you?’ asked Werner.

  ‘Wilhelm is always with me, wherever I go. He had been silent for such a long, long time. Since I was a child. But I always knew he was there. Watching me. Planning and writing out my story, my destiny. But I was so glad to hear his voice again.’

  ‘What did Wilhelm say to you?’ asked Fabel.

  ‘He told me that Paula was pure. Innocent. She was yet unsullied by the corruption and filth of our world. Wilhelm told me that I could make sure that she stayed that way: that I could save her from corruption and ruin by putting her into a sleep that would last forever. He told me I had to end her story.’

  ‘Kill her, you mean?’ asked Fabel.

  Biedermeyer gave a shrug that made clear the semantics of murder were unimportant to him.

  ‘How did you kill her?’

  ‘Most days, I begin work very early in the morning. It is part of being a baker, Herr Fabel. For half my life I have watched the world around me slowly awake while I prepared bread, that most ancient and most central to life of foods, for the coming day. Even after all this time, I still love the combination of morning’s first light and the smell of freshly baked bread.’ Biedermeyer paused, temporarily lost in the magic of a recalled moment. ‘Anyway, depending on the shift I’m working, I often finish early and have much of the afternoon to myself. I made use of this freedom and studied Paula’s movements the next day, which were atypical, because it was her birthday and offered no chance for me to take her. But the following day was a school day, and I found that, during my watching of her, an opportunity presented itself suddenly as she crossed the main road from her school to her home. I had to make a decision. I was very afraid of being caught, but Wilhelm spoke to me. He said: “Take her now. It’s all right, you’ll be safe. Take her and end her story now.” I was afraid. I told Wilhelm I was afraid that what I was about to do was wrong and that I would be punished for it. But he said he would give me a sign. Something that would prove it was the right thing to do and that everything would be all right. And he did, Herr Fabel. He gave me a true sign that he was in control of my destiny, of her destiny, of us all. It was in her hand, you see. She held it in her hand as she walked: a copy of our first volume of fairy tales. So I did it. It was so quick. And so easy. I took her from the street, then I took her from the world and her story was ended.’ A wistful expression drifted across the huge features. He snapped back to the here and now. ‘I won’t go into unpleasant details, but Paula knew little about what happened. As I hope you know, Herr Fabel, I am no pervert. I ended her story because Wilhelm told me to. He told me to protect her from the evil of the world by taking her from it. And I did so as quickly and with as little pain as was possible. I suppose, even after all this time, the details will become clear to you when you recover the body. And I stand by my promise that I will tell you exactly where to find her. But not yet.’

  ‘Wilhelm’s voice. You said you hadn’t heard it for a long time. When had you heard it before? Have you killed before? Or hurt anyone before?’

  The smile faded again. This time a pained sadness filled Biedermeyer’s expression. ‘I loved my mother, Herr Fabel. She was beautiful and she was clever and she had rich, red-blonde hair. That’s about all I can remember of her. That and her voice when she sang to me as I lay in bed. Not speaking. I can’t remember her speaking voice, but I remember her singing. And her lovely long hair that smelled of apples. Then she stopped singing. I was too young to understand, but she became ill and I saw her less and less. She sang to me less and less. Then she was gone. She died of cancer when she was thirty and I was four.’

  He paused, as if waiting for comment, for commiseration, for understanding.

  ‘Go on,’ said Fabel.

  ‘You know the story, Herr Fabel. You must have read the tales while you pursued me. My father married again. A hard woman. A false mother. A cruel, evil woman that made me call her Mutti. My father did not marry out of love but for practicality. My father was a very practical man. He was a first officer on a merchant ship and spent months away from home, and he knew that he could not look after me alone. So I lost a beautiful mother and gained an evil stepmother. You see? You see already? It was my stepmother who brought me up, and as I grew so did her cruelty. Then, when Papi had a heart attack, I was left alone with her.’

  Fabel nodded, inviting Biedermeyer to continue. Already he was aware of the scale of Biedermeyer’s insanity. It was monumental. A vast yet intricate edifice of elaborately constructed psychosis. Sitting there, in the shadow of a huge man with a huge madness, Fabel felt something not far removed from awe.

  ‘She was a fearsome, terrible woman, Herr Fabel.’ Biedermeyer’s face too revealed something like awe. ‘God and Germany were all she cared for. Our religion and our nation. The only two books she allowed in the house were the Bible and Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Everything else was pollution. Pornography. She also took away all my toys. They made me idle, she said. But there was one I kept hidden: a present my father had bought me before he died … a mask. A play wolf-mask. That little mask became my only, secret rebellion. Then, one day, when I was about ten, a friend let me borrow a comic book to read. I sneaked it into the house and concealed it, but she found it. Thankfully it wasn’t in the same hiding place as my wolf-mask. But that was the beginning. It was then that she started. She said that if I wanted to read I would read. I would read something pure and noble and true. She gave me the volume of Grimm’s Fairy Tales that she had had since she was a girl. She told me to start by memorising “Hänsel und Gretel”. Then she made me recite it. I had to stand, with her next to me, and recite the whole thing, word-perfect.’ Biedermeyer looked pleadingly at Fabel and there was something of the child in his big face. ‘I was only a boy, Herr Fabel. Only a boy. I got things wrong. Of course I did. It was such a long story. Then she beat me. She beat me with a stick until I bled. Then, every week, I was given a new story to learn. And every week I took a beating. Sometimes it was so bad that I passed out. And, as well as the beatings, she would talk to me. Never shout, always quiet. She would tell me that I was no good. That I was a freak: that I was growing so big and so ugly because there was a big badness within me. I learned hate. I hated her. But much, much more than that, I hated myself.’ Biedermeyer paused. His face was sad. He held up his water cup questioningly. It was refilled and he took a sip before continuing.

  ‘But I started to learn from the tales. I began to understand them as I recited them. I learned a valuable trick to make memorising them easier … I looked beyond the words. I tried to understand the message within and to see that the characters weren’t really people, but that they were symbols, signs. Forces of good and evil. I saw that Snow White and Hänsel and Gretel were just like me, hopelessly trapped by the same evil that my own stepmother represented. It helped me remember the stories and I made fewer and fewer mistakes. It meant that my stepmother had fewer excuses to beat me. But what she lost in frequency, she made up for in severity …

  ‘Then, one day, I got something wrong. A single word. A sentence out of sequence. I still don’t know what it was, but she beat me and beat me. Then the whole world seemed to shake. It was like an earthquake in my head and everything shuddered from side to side. I remember thinki
ng that I was going to die. And I was glad. Can you imagine that, Herr Fabel? Eleven years old and happy to die. I fell to the floor and she stopped hitting me. She told me to get up, and I could tell she was afraid that she’d gone too far this time. But I tried to be a good boy. I really did. I wanted to do what I was told and I tried to get up, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I could taste blood. It was in my mouth and in my nose and I felt it hot in my ears. Now, I thought. Now I’m going to die.’ Biedermeyer leaned forward. His eyes were eager and intense. ‘It was then that I heard him. It was then that I first heard his voice. I was scared at first. I’m sure you can imagine. But his voice was strong and kind and gentle. He told me that he was Wilhelm Grimm and that he had written the stories with his brother. “You are not alone now,” he told me, “I am here. I am the storyteller and I will help you.” And he did, Herr Fabel. He helped me with the stories I had to recite to my Mutti as a punishment. After that, after the first time I heard him, I never got a single word wrong, because he would tell me what to say.’

  Biedermeyer gave a small laugh, as if he was privy to a joke that no one else in the room could ever understand.

  ‘I grew too big for Mutti to beat me. I think she might even have grown afraid of me. But her cruelty continued, except now she used words instead of the stick. Every day she told me how worthless I was. How no woman would ever have me, ever want me, because I was a big, ugly freak and because I was so bad. But all the time Wilhelm’s voice soothed me, helped me. For every insult she threw at me, he reassured me. Then he stopped. I knew he was there, but he simply stopped talking to me and I was left alone with my stepmother’s vicious, evil poison.’

  ‘And then he came back to tell you to kill Paula Ehlers?’ asked Fabel.

  ‘Yes … yes, exactly. And I knew that he would keep talking to me if I did what he told me. But she was too strong. My stepmother. She found out about Paula. She told me that they would lock me away. That she would have to live with the shame of it all. So she made me dispose of Paula before I could use her … before I could relive a story through her.’