‘Shit …’ Werner shook his head in disbelief. ‘Your stepmother knew about you abducting and murdering a schoolgirl?’
‘She even helped me hide the body … but, as I said, we’ll get back to that later. For the moment, I want you to understand that I had a calling, and she frustrated it. She stopped me following what Wilhelm told me to do. Then he stopped talking again. For nearly three years. Then my stepmother was silenced for good, about three months ago.’
‘She died?’ asked Fabel.
Biedermeyer shook his head. ‘A stroke. It shut the old bitch up. Shut her up and paralysed her and put her in hospital. It was over. She could no longer hurt me or insult me or stop me doing what I was meant to do. What I had to do.’
‘Let me guess,’ said Fabel. ‘The voice in your head came back and told you to kill again?’
‘No. Not then. Wilhelm stayed silent. Then I saw Gerhard Weiss’s book. As soon as I began to read it I knew that he was Wilhelm. That he didn’t need to talk to me in my head. It was all there, in the book. In the Märchenstrasse. It was the road we had travelled together a century and a half before. And it was the road we were to travel along again. And the very same night I began to read, Wilhelm’s soft, sweet voice came back to me, but through those beautiful pages. I knew what I had to do. But I also knew that I had to play the part I had played before: the voice of truth, of accuracy. Wilhelm, or Gerhard Weiss, if you will, was forced to alter things to suit the audience. But not I.’
‘So then you killed Martha. You ended her story,’ said Fabel.
‘I was free from my stepmother and I was reunited with my Märchenbruder, with Wilhelm. I knew it was time. I had my masterwork all planned: a sequence of tales leading up to fulfilling my destiny. To the happy end of my story. But other stories had to end first. And the girl from Kassel, Martha, was first. I was making a delivery there and I saw her. I thought that she was Paula – that she had been awoken from an enchanted sleep. Then I realised what she was. She was a sign from Wilhelm. Just like the copy of the tales that Paula had carried. It was a sign for me that she was to be ended and would play her part in the next tale.’
‘You kept her alive. You hid her for a couple of days before “ending her story”. Why?’
Biedermeyer looked disappointed in Fabel; as if he had asked an obvious question. ‘Because she was to be an Underground Person. She had to be kept beneath the ground. She was very afraid, but I told her that I wasn’t going to do anything to her. There was no point in her being afraid. She told me all about her parents. I felt sorry for her. She was like me. She was trapped in a tale of parents who had abandoned her in the darkness. In the woods. She didn’t know what love was like, so I ended her story by making her The Changeling and giving her to parents who would love her and care for her.’
Werner shook his still-bruised head. ‘You are mad. Insane. You do know that, don’t you? All those innocent people that you murdered. All that pain and fear you caused.’
Biedermeyer’s expression suddenly darkened and his face twisted with contempt. It was like a sudden, unpredicted storm gathering and Fabel glanced meaningfully across at the two SchuPos at the wall. They straightened themselves in readiness.
‘You just don’t get it, do you? You’re too stupid to understand.’ Biedermeyer’s voice was raised only very slightly, but it took on a deep, menacing resonance. ‘Why can’t you understand?’ He waved his hands about him, casting his gaze around to encompass his environment. ‘All this … all this … you don’t think it’s real, do you? It’s only a story, for God’s sake. Can’t you see that? It’s only a myth … a fairy tale … a fable.’ He gazed wildly at Fabel, Werner and Maria, his eyes frustratedly searching theirs for understanding. ‘We only believe it because we’re in it. Because we’re in the story … I didn’t really kill anyone. I realised everything was just a story when I was a child. No one could really be as unhappy as me. No one could be as sad and lonely. It’s ridiculous. That day, the day my stepmother was beating me, and my whole world started to shake, Wilhelm didn’t just help me remember the stories I had to recite – he explained that it wasn’t really happening to me. None of it. That it was all a story and he was making it up. Remember? He told me he was the storyteller? You see I am his brother because he wrote me into his story as his brother. This is all simply a Märchen.’
Biedermeyer nodded knowingly, as if everyone at the table should have felt monumentally enlightened. Fabel thought back to what Otto had said about the premise that the author Gerhard Weiss had laid out: the pseudo-scientific babble about fiction becoming reality across the universe’s dimensions. Crap. Utter crap, but this sad, pathetic monster of a man had believed every word of it. Had lived it out.
‘What about the others?’ Fabel asked. ‘Tell us about the other killings. Let’s start with Hanna Grünn and Markus Schiller.’
‘Just as Paula represented all that was good and wholesome in the world, like fresh-baked bread still warm from the oven, Hanna represented everything which has gone stale and foul … she was a loose, promiscuous, vain and venal woman.’ There was pride in Biedermeyer’s smile: the pride of a craftsman displaying his best work. ‘I saw that she hungered for something more. Always something more. A woman driven by lust and greed. She used her body as a tool to get what she wanted, yet complained to me about the salesman, Ungerer, leering at her and making lascivious remarks. I knew her story had to be ended, so I watched her. I followed her, just as I had Paula, but for longer, keeping an exact diary of her movements.’
‘And that’s how you found out about her relationship with Markus Schiller?’ asked Fabel.
Biedermeyer nodded. ‘I followed them to the woods on several occasions. Then it became so clear. I read Die Märchenstrasse again – as well as the original texts. Wilhelm had given me another sign, you see? The woods. They were to become Hänsel and Gretel …’
Fabel sat and listened as Biedermeyer outlined the rest of his crimes. He explained how he had planned to take the salesman, Ungerer, next, but there had been a mix-up over the Schnauber party cake and Biedermeyer had delivered it personally. It was then that he had seen Laura von Klosterstadt. He saw her haughty beauty and her long blonde hair. He knew he was looking at a princess. Not just any princess but Dornröschen – Sleeping Beauty. So he had put her to sleep for ever and taken her hair.
‘Then I ended Ungerer. He was a lecherous, filthy swine. He was always leering at Hanna and even at Vera Schiller. I followed him for a couple of days. I saw the filth and the whores he wallowed in. I engineered it so that I bumped into him in St Pauli. I laughed at his filthy, disgusting jokes and his lewd remarks. He wanted to go for a drink, but I didn’t want to be seen with him in public so I pretended to know of a couple of women whom we could visit. If the tales tell us anything, it’s how easy it is to tempt others from the path and into the darkness of the woods. He was easy. I took him to … well, I took him to a house that you will soon visit yourself, and I told him the women were there. Then I took a knife and I twisted it in his black, corrupt heart. He wasn’t expecting it and it was easy and all over in a second.’
‘And you took his eyes?’
‘Yes. I cast Ungerer as the king’s son in “Rapunzel”, and ripped out those leering, lecherous eyes.’
‘What about Max Bartmann, the tattooist?’ Fabel asked. ‘You killed him before you killed Ungerer and he played no part in any of your tales. And you tried to hide the body for good. Why did you kill him? Just for his eyes?’
‘In a way, yes. For what his eyes had seen. He knew who I was. I knew that now I had become free to start my work, he would see reports on the television or in the papers. Eventually he would have made the connection. So I had to end his story too.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Werner’s tone was impatient. ‘How did he know who you were?’
Biedermeyer moved so fast that none of the officers in the room had time to react. He shot to his feet, sending the chair he had been sitting
on flying backwards towards the wall and the two SchuPos behind him jumped sideways. His vast hands flew up and ripped at his vast chest. The buttons flew from his shirt and the cloth tore as he struggled to free himself from it. Then he stood, a colossus, his body huge and dense in the interview room. Fabel held up a hand and the SchuPos who had lunged forward held back. Werner and Fabel were both on their feet and Maria had rushed forward. All three stood in the shadow of Biedermeyer’s enormous frame. Everyone stared at the huge man’s body.
‘Holy fuck …’ Werner said in a low voice.
Biedermeyer’s torso was completely covered in words. Thousands of words. His body was black with them. Stories had been tattooed on to his skin in black Fraktur lettering, as small as the medium of human skin and the skill of the tattooist would allow. The titles were clear: ‘Dornröschen’, ‘Schneewittchen’, ‘Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten’ …
‘My God …’ Fabel couldn’t take his eyes from the tattoos. The words seemed to move, the sentences to writhe, with every single movement, with every breath Biedermeyer took. Fabel remembered the volumes in the tattooist’s tiny flat: the books on old German Gothic scripts, on Fraktur, and Kupferstich. Biedermeyer stood silently for a moment. Then, when he spoke, his voice had the same deep, menacing resonance that it had had before.
‘Now do you see? Now do you understand? I am Brother Grimm. I am the sum of the tales and the Märchen of our language, of our land, of our people. He had to die. He had looked upon this. Max Bartmann helped create this and had looked upon it. I couldn’t let him tell anyone. So I ended him and I took his eyes so that he could play a part in the next tale.’
Everyone remained standing, tense, waiting. ‘Now it’s time,’ said Fabel. ‘Now you must tell us where Paula Ehlers’s body is. It doesn’t fit. The only other body you hid was Max Bartmann’s, and that was because it wasn’t really part of your little tableaux. Why haven’t we found Paula’s body yet?’
‘Because we have come full circle. Paula is my Gretel. I am her Hänsel. She still has her part to play.’ His face broke into a smile. But it wasn’t like any smile Fabel had seen before on Biedermeyer’s normally amiable, friendly face. It was a smile of a terrible, bright coldness and it locked Fabel in its icy searchlight. ‘It was “Hänsel und Gretel” more than any other tale that my stepmother would make me recite. It was long and it was difficult and I would always get it wrong. And then she used to beat me. She used to hurt my body and my mind until I thought they were broken for ever. But Wilhelm saved me. Wilhelm brought me back into the light with his voice, with his signs and then with his new writings. He told me the very first time I heard him that one day I would be able to exact revenge on my evil witch of a stepmother, that I would be liberated from her grasp, just as Hänsel and Gretel took revenge on the old witch and freed themselves.’ Biedermeyer leaned his massive frame forward and the words stretched and warped on his skin. Fabel fought the instinct to draw back. ‘I baked Paula’s cake myself,’ Biedermeyer continued in a dark, cold, deep voice. ‘I baked and prepared Paula’s cake myself. I do some freelance work for smaller functions and parties, and I have a fully equipped bakery in the basement, including a professional oven. The oven is very, very big and it needs a concrete floor to support it.’
Fabel’s confusion showed on his face. They had sent a SchuPo unit to secure Biedermeyer’s home. It was a ground-floor apartment in Heimfeld-Nord and the uniformed officers had confirmed that it was empty and that there was nothing unusual about it, except that one of the two bedrooms looked like it had been converted to accommodate an elderly or disabled person.
‘I don’t understand,’ Fabel said. ‘There is no basement in your apartment.’
Biedermeyer’s cold grin broadened. ‘That’s not my home, you fool. That is merely the place I rented to convince the hospital authorities to release Mutti to my care. My real home is where I was brought up. The home I shared with that poisonous old bitch. Rilke Strasse, Heimfeld. It’s by the Autobahn. That’s where you’ll find her … That’s where you’ll find Paula Ehlers. In the floor, where Mutti and I buried her. Bring her out, Herr Fabel. Bring my Gretel out of the darkness and we will both be free.’
Fabel gestured to the SchuPos who grabbed the unresisting Biedermeyer’s arms and placed them behind his back, handcuffing them once more.
‘You’ll find her there …’ Biedermeyer called to Fabel as he and his team left the room. Then he laughed. ‘And while you’re there, could you turn off the oven? I left it on this morning.’
60.
4.20 p.m., Friday, 30 April: Heimfeld-Nord, Hamburg
The house sat on the fringe of the Staatsforst woodland, near where the A7 sliced through it. It was large and old and presented a depressing prospect. Fabel guessed that it had been built in the 1920s but it lacked any feeling of character. It was set in a large garden that had been left to grow wild. The house itself looked as if it had been unloved for some time: the exterior paint was dull, stained and flaking, as if its skin was diseased.
Something about it reminded Fabel of the villa in which Fendrich and his late mother had lived. This house, too, looked lost, displaced; as if it now sat in surroundings and in a time that no longer suited it. Even its position with the swathe of woodland to its rear and the Autobahn hard by its side seemed incongruous.
They had taken two cars, and a SchuPo unit accompanied them. Fabel, Werner and Maria went directly to the front door and rang the bell. Nothing. Anna and Henk Hermann were behind them and they beckoned to the SchuPos who brought a door-ram from the boot of their green and white Opel patrol car. The door was solid: made from oak that had stained almost black over the years. It took three swings of the ram before the wood splintered from the lock and the door slammed in against the vestibule wall.
Fabel and the others exchanged a look before they entered Biedermeyer’s home. They all knew they were on the threshold of an exceptional madness and each prepared him or herself for what lay within.
It started in the hall.
The house was dark and gloomy inside and a glass door separated the vestibule from the hall beyond. Fabel pushed the door open. He did so cautiously, even though no danger waited for him. Biedermeyer was now safely locked up in his cell: yet he wasn’t; his colossal presence was here, too. It was a large, narrow hall with a high ceiling, from which hung a pendant light with three bulbs. Fabel switched the lights on and the hall was filled with a bleak, jaundiced glow.
The walls were covered. It was a patchwork of pictures and printed and handwritten pages. Sheets of yellow paper had been pasted to the plaster; each was covered with tiny red-ink handwriting. Fabel examined them: all the Grimms’ fairy tales were here. All written out in the same, obsessive hand and all free of a single error. A perfect madness. Between the handwritten sheets there were printed pages from editions of the Grimm Brothers’ writings. And pictures. Hundreds of illustrations of the stories. Fabel recognised many of them from the originals that Gerhard Weiss had collected. And there were others, from the Nazi time, similar to those that the author had described. Fabel noticed that Anna Wolff had stopped to examine one: it was from the 1930s and the old witch was depicted with caricature Jewish features, bent-backed and stoking the fire beneath the oven while casting a greedy, short-sighted eye over the blond, Nordic Hänsel. Behind her an equally Nordic Gretel was poised to shove the witch into her own oven. It was one of the most nauseous images Fabel had ever seen. He couldn’t begin to imagine how it made Anna feel.
They moved down the hall. Several large rooms led off it and a staircase ran up one side. All the rooms were empty of furniture, but Biedermeyer’s insane collages had spilled into them and up the side of the staircase, spreading across the wall like damp or rot. There was a smell. Fabel couldn’t quite place what it was, but it lurked in the house, clinging to the walls, to the clothes of the police officers.
Fabel took the first room on the left and beckoned for Werner to take the one opposite. Maria headed along the
hall and Anna and Henk went up the stairs. Fabel examined the room he was in. The dark wooden floor was dusty and, like the other rooms, there was no furniture nor any sense of habitation.
‘Chef …’ Anna called. ‘Come and see this.’ Fabel climbed the stairs, followed by Werner. Anna stood by an open doorway which led into a bedroom. Unlike the other rooms, this one clearly had been occupied. The walls, like the ones in the hallway, were thick with handwritten pages, pictures and extracts from books. There was a camp bed in the middle of the room, along with a small side table. But none of these were the focus of Fabel’s attention. Two walls of the room had been lined with shelving. And the shelves were filled with books. Fabel stepped closer. No. Not books. A book.
Biedermeyer must have spent years, and practically all his money, buying editions of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Antiquarian copies sat alongside brand-new paperbacks; gold-embossed spines sat next to cheap editions; and next to the hundreds of German editions from nearly two hundred years of publication sat French, English and Italian copies. Titles in Cyrillic, Greek, Chinese and Japanese lettering were interspersed with those in the Roman alphabet.
Fabel, Werner, Anna and Henk stood speechless for a moment. Then Fabel said: ‘I think we had better find the basement.’
‘I think I’ve found it, or at least the way into it.’ Maria was behind them at the doorway. She led them back down the stairs and along the hallway. The room at its far end was, or had been, the kitchen of the house. It was a vast room with a cooking range against one wall. Its comparative cleanliness and the faint electric hum from the large, new-looking refrigerator suggested that, like the bedroom/library above, it was the only other functioning living space. There were two doors, side by side. One was open and led into a pantry. The other was padlocked.
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