Eternal jf-3

by Craig Russel

  ‘Maybe that’s his way of showing off his prowess. Scythian warriors used to wear the scalps of their enemies on the bridles of their horses, simply so that everyone could see them there. Your “Hairdresser” maybe feels that exhibiting them where he has killed the victim is the most effective way of displaying them.’

  ‘You say that scalping was a common practice. Here too? In this part of Europe?’ asked Fabel.

  ‘Certainly. There have been many examples discovered in Germany. Particularly in your neck of the woods – Ostfriesland, I mean. That’s not necessarily to say that your Frisian ancestors took more scalps than other cultures, it’s merely that the environmental conditions in Ostfriesland have ensured the preservation of so many bog bodies and artefacts. We talked about Red Franz the last time we spoke. Well, in Bentheim, near the Dutch border and not far from where Red Franz was found, they discovered scalped skulls, and some of the scalps themselves, at a Bronze Age site.’ Severts walked over to his bookshelves and selected a couple of textbooks, bringing them back to his desk. He searched in one of them for a moment. ‘Yes… here’s an example that’s really close to your home town. In the eighteen sixties five bog bodies were recovered from Tannenhausener Moor.’

  Fabel knew exactly where Severts was talking about. Tannenhausen was a village that lay in the northern suburbs of Aurich, Ostfriesland’s biggest town. It was a few kilometres south of Norden and Norddeich, where Fabel had grown up. It was an area of rich green moor, dark bogs, ponds and lakes. Tannenhausen sat between three heaths: Tannenhausener Moor, Kreihuttenmoor and Meerhusener Moor. As a boy, Fabel had cycled to the area often. It was a mystical place. And at the heart of the moor was a vast, ancient lake – the Ewiges Meer, the Eternal Sea. The name itself spoke of time immemorial; added to which was the fact that the moor around the lake had been found to be interlaced with wooden walkways that had been constructed four to five thousand years before.

  ‘All five Tannenhausen bodies had been scalped,’ Severts continued. ‘And similar examples have been found all over Europe, even as far away as Siberia. It seems that it was a very common custom in Bronze Age Europe, from the Urals to the Atlantic. In fact, the Scythians did it so much that the ancient Greek word for scalping was aposkythizein.’

  Fabel thought for a moment of the Scottish part of his ancestry. The Scots claimed that their original homeland had been Scythia, on the Steppes, and that they had passed through North Africa, pausing for generations in Spain and Ireland before conquering Scotland. He pictured someone maybe not unlike him and not too many generations before, who might have routinely committed the same act as the killer he was hunting.

  ‘And the significance of scalping was always triumphal?’ he asked. ‘Just to prove how many enemies a warrior had killed?’

  ‘Mainly, but perhaps not exclusively. There is evidence of scalps being taken from people, including children, who had died natural rather than violent deaths. It would seem to indicate that taking the scalp might have been a way of commemorating or remembering the dead. Of honouring ancestors.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s what is motivating this guy,’ said Fabel.

  Severts leaned back in his chair, the huge poster of the Beauty of Loulan as his backdrop. ‘If you want my opinion – personal rather than professional – then I would say that scalp-taking has been so common across all cultures that it is almost an instinct. I don’t know that much about psychology or about your line of work, but I do know that serial killers and psychos like to take trophies from their victims. I think that taking a scalp is the archetypal form of trophy-taking. Your killer could be doing it just because he feels it’s the thing to do, rather than making any clever cultural or historical reference.’

  Fabel stood up and smiled. ‘Maybe you’re right.’ He shook hands with Severts. ‘Many thanks for your time, Herr Doctor.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Severts. ‘May I ask one favour in return?’

  ‘Of course…’

  ‘Please let me know if you manage to track down the family of the mummified body down by HafenCity. It’s not often that I can put a real name and a real life to the human remains I find through my work.’

  ‘I’m afraid the reverse is true in my line of work,’ said Fabel. ‘But of course I shall.’

  Noon: Harvestehude, Hamburg

  Fabel had phoned in to the Presidium and asked Werner to tell Paul Scheibe’s deputy to expect him. The architectural practice was housed in a very modern-looking building, between the NDR radio studios and Innocentia-Park in Harvestehude. The clean lines and sweeping angles of Scheibe’s offices reminded Fabel of Bertholdt Muller-Voigt’s house in the Altes Land. Fabel wondered if Scheibe had been Muller-Voigt’s architect and was annoyed that he had not asked the politician such an obvious question.

  The midday sun had drawn a thin veil of cloud over her face, and Fabel took off his sunglasses and sat quietly in the car for a moment before going in. When he had phoned Werner he had also asked him to find out if there was anything that Technical Section could do to track down who had made the hoax call on his car phone. Fabel knew it was unlikely, but the call had disturbed him. The voice-changing electronics seemed very elaborate for a phone hoaxer and Fabel had the uneasy feeling that he might just have spoken to the so-called Hamburg Hairdresser. He watched as a pretty girl walked past the car, laughing as she chatted to someone on her cellphone: someone leading a normal life and having normal conversations.

  When Fabel entered through the vast glass doors of the Architekturburo Scheibe, he was greeted by a tall, thin man of about thirty-five with a shaven head. He introduced himself as Thomas Paulsen, the Deputy Director of the practice. His smile had something of an apology in it.

  ‘Thank you for coming, Herr Chief Commissar, but I am glad to say that our concerns about Herr Scheibe have been allayed. We heard from him just ten minutes ago.’

  ‘I’m not here to follow up a missing person,’ said Fabel. ‘I need to talk to Herr Scheibe about a case that I am investigating. Where is he?’

  ‘Oh… he didn’t say. He apologised for dropping out of sight, but said that a family emergency had come up and he had had to attend to it at very short notice. He had to go out of town immediately after the Rathaus luncheon on Monday, and that’s why we have not been able to get in touch with him since,’ Paulsen explained. ‘I can tell you, we’re all very relieved. The main public and press launch is to take place tonight down at the Speicherstadt. Herr Scheibe has assured us that he will be there to make the presentation.’

  ‘You spoke to him yourself?’

  ‘Well, no… not spoke. He sent an e-mail. But he has guaranteed that he’ll be there.’

  ‘Then so shall I,’ said Fabel. ‘If you hear from Herr Scheibe again, please tell him that he will have to make time to speak to me.’

  ‘Very well… but I know that he will be extremely busy. There will be-’

  ‘Trust me, Herr Paulsen: what I have to talk to Herr Scheibe about is much, much more important. I’ll see you – and him – this evening.’

  Fabel decided to have lunch at Dirk Stellamanns’s stand down by the harbour. The veil of cloud had shifted from the sun and the brightness became more vivid and sharp-edged, highlighting the bright tables and parasols ranged around Dirk’s cabin. It was busy when Fabel arrived but Dirk beamed over the heads of his customers when he saw his friend.

  Fabel felt hot and sticky and ordered a Jever beer and a mineral water, along with a cheese-and-sausage roll, and took them over to one of the few free chest-high tables. Once the rush died down, Dirk came over to him.

  ‘How’s your Apache hunt?’

  Fabel made a puzzled face.

  ‘The scalper – any closer to nailing him?’

  ‘Doesn’t feel like it.’ Fabel shrugged despondently. ‘I seem to have got bogged down in all kinds of crap. Genetic memories… terrorists… and I could write a book on scalping through the ages…’

  ‘You’ll get him, Jannick,’ said
Dirk. ‘You always do.’

  ‘Not always…’ Fabel thought of how Roland Bartz had called him Jannick. ‘I’m thinking of chucking it in, Dirk.’

  ‘The job? You’d never do that. It’s your life.’

  ‘I don’t know that it is,’ said Fabel. ‘Or if it ever should have been. I’ve been offered something else. A chance to become a civilian again.’

  ‘I can’t see it, Jan…’

  ‘ I can. I’m fed up with death. I see it around me all the time. I dunno. Maybe you’re right. This case is getting to me.’

  ‘What did you mean about genetic memory? What’s that got to do with these killings?’

  Fabel outlined as briefly and coherently as he could the work that the victim Gunter Griebel had been involved in.

  ‘You know something, Jan… I believe it. I think there’s something in it.’

  ‘You?’ Fabel grinned sceptically. ‘You’re joking…’

  ‘No…’ Dirk’s face was serious. ‘I really do. I remember, I’d only been in the force for a couple of years and we were called to a break-in. It was winter and it had been snowing. This guy had gone out through the back window in the middle of the night and had left his footprints in the snow. The only ones around. So all we had to do was to follow the footprints. We tracked him through the snow, moving fast to catch up with him. And we did, eventually.’

  ‘What’s your point?’ asked Fabel suspiciously, as if he was expecting a punchline.

  ‘It’s just that when we were doing it, when we were moving fast and at night, tracking down another human being, I got this really weird feeling. Not a nice feeling. I really felt that I had done it before. I felt it, but I couldn’t remember it.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you believe in reincarnation?’ asked Fabel.

  ‘No. No, it’s not that at all. But it was like a memory that wasn’t mine but had been passed down to me.’ Dirk laughed, suddenly self-conscious. ‘You know me… always had a mystical side. It was odd – that’s all.’

  3.00 p.m.: Schanzenviertel, Hamburg

  The building sat discreetly on a corner in the Schanzenviertel. Its architecture was Jugendstil and Fabel could see that behind the ugly graffiti the elegant stonework had been gracefully styled with Art Deco features. There was no door plate or any other notice on the wall to indicate the function of the offices within and, after he had shouted his name and the nature of his business through the entry system’s speakerphone, Fabel had to wait a few seconds before the buzz and clunk of the door indicated that he could enter.

  Ingrid Fischmann was waiting for him at the top of the short flight of stairs. She was in her mid-thirties and had long straight light brown hair. Her face could have been pretty, were it not for the heaviness of her features that made them almost masculine. The shoulder-length hair and the long and loose-fitting skirt and top she wore combined in a vaguely hippie look that seemed out of sync with her age.

  She smiled politely and extended her hand in greeting. ‘Herr Fabel, please come in.’

  There were two main rooms off the tiny reception hall. One was clearly used exclusively for file storage and reference materials, the other was Frau Fischmann’s office. Despite the clutter of filing cabinets and bookshelves, and the wall planner and noticeboard on the walls, it still had the feel of a converted living room.

  ‘My apartment is two streets away,’ explained Frau Fischmann as she sat down behind her desk. Fabel noticed a copy of the 1971 ‘wanted’ poster of the Baader-Meinhof gang on the wall over by the office’s only window. Nineteen black-and-white faces were ranged under the title Anarchistische Gewalttater – Baader/Meinhof-Bande. The poster had taken on an almost iconic status, symbolising a particular moment and mood in German history. ‘I rent these offices. I don’t know why, but I’ve always felt it necessary to separate my living and working environments. The other thing is I use this as an address for all my business correspondence. Given the sensitivity of some of the people I write about, it’s a good idea not to advertise where I live. Please, Herr Fabel, sit down.’

  ‘May I ask why you write what you write? I mean, most of it happened before your time, really.’

  Fischmann smiled, exposing slightly too-big teeth. ‘Do you know why I agreed to meet with you, Herr Fabel?’

  ‘To help me catch a psychotic killer, hopefully.’

  ‘Of course, there’s that. But I am a journalist, first and foremost. I smell a story in this, and I expect a little quid pro quo.’

  ‘I’m afraid I am not interested in horse-trading, Frau Fischmann. My only concern is to catch this murderer before more lives are lost. Lives are more important to me than newspaper stories.’

  ‘Please, Herr Fabel. I agreed to meet you because I have spent many years exposing the hypocrisy of those who dabbled or actively participated in domestic terrorism in the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties, and who now seek public office or commercial success. In all my studies I have yet to come across a single solid intelligent reason for these spoilt middle-class brats to have been playing at revolutionaries. What offends me more than anything is the way some figures on the left sought to intellectualise the murder and mutilation of innocent citizens.’ Fischmann paused. ‘As a Hamburg policeman, you will be aware that the Polizei Hamburg experienced its fair share of suffering at the hands of the Red Army Faction and its supporters. You know that the first German policeman to be murdered by the Faction was a Polizei Hamburg officer.’

  ‘Of course: Norbert Schmid, in nineteen seventy-one. He was only thirty-three.’

  ‘Followed by the May nineteen seventy-two gun battle between the Polizei Hamburg and the Red Army Faction in which Chief Commissar Hans Eckhardt was wounded and later died.’

  ‘Yes, I know about that, too.’

  ‘And then, of course, there was the shoot-out between Hamburg police officers and members of the breakaway gang, the Radical Action Group, following a botched bank raid in nineteen eighty-six. One policeman was killed and another very seriously wounded. The wounded officer was lucky to survive. He shot and killed Gisela Frohm, one of the terrorists. As soon as you said your name, I knew who you were, Herr Fabel. Your name came up in my research into Hendrik Svensson and the Radical Action Group. It was you who shot and killed Gisela Frohm, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Unfortunately it was. I had no choice.’

  ‘I know that, Herr Fabel. When I heard it was you who was investigating Hauser’s murder, I felt there was a story in it for me, as I have already admitted.’

  ‘These killings may have nothing to do with your research. It’s just that the two victims, Hauser and Griebel, were contemporaries and formerly involved, to differing degrees, with radical politics. I’ve looked into their backgrounds and can find no direct link between them. But their histories tend to be populated by the same figures. One of those figures is Bertholdt Muller-Voigt, Hamburg’s Environment Senator. I understand you have been researching Muller-Voigt’s history as an activist.’

  ‘His history as a terrorist.’ There was a bitterness in Fischmann’s voice. ‘Muller-Voigt has political ambitions that extend far beyond the Hamburg Senate. Big ambitions. He has already declared war on the person who was his closest political ally, First Mayor Hans Schreiber, simply because he sees Schreiber as a potential rival further down the road – a road that Muller-Voigt hopes will lead to Berlin. His ambition offends me because I have absolutely no doubt that he was the driver of the vehicle in which the industrialist Thorsten Wiedler was kidnapped and later murdered.’

  ‘I know of your claims about Senator Muller-Voigt. I also know that Hans Schreiber’s wife has been quoting you. But do you have proof?’

  ‘As for Frau Schreiber… I find her husband’s political ambitions only slightly less nauseating than Muller-Voigt’s. She is using me for her own ends, but she is generating a level of public awareness that I could not have achieved alone. But to answer your question… No, I have no proof that will stand up in court. But I’m working on it. I’m
sure you’ll know how difficult it is to work on an old case where the trail has long been cold.’

  ‘That I do.’ Fabel smiled bitterly. He thought of the many cold cases he had reopened during his career. He also thought about his neglected quest to find the family of the teenager who had lain in the dry sand of the harbour for sixty years.

  ‘Everything else I have done in my career up until now, all of those whose political past I have exposed… it’s all been a preparation for destroying Muller-Voigt’s career and hopefully getting him before a court for his crimes. Something we can perhaps work together to achieve, Herr Chief Commissar.’

  ‘But why Muller-Voigt? Why have you singled him out?’

  There was a cold, bitter determination in Ingrid Fischmann’s expression. She opened a desk drawer, took two photographs from it and handed them to Fabel. The first was of a large black Mercedes limousine of a model that dated back to the 1970s. It was parked outside a large office building and a black-uniformed chauffeur was holding the rear door open for a middle-aged man with thick black-rimmed spectacles.

  ‘Thorsten Wiedler?’ asked Fabel.

  Fischmann nodded. ‘And his chauffeur.’

  The second photograph was of the same car, but closer up and parked on a gravel drive. Fabel saw the same chauffeur, but this time without his cap or jacket. The Mercedes gleamed in the sunlight and a bucket and cloth sat next to the front wheel arch. Fabel looked at the photograph and understood everything. The chauffeur was taking a break from cleaning the car and had squatted down on his heels next to a small girl of about six or seven. His daughter.

  ‘And again,’ said Ingrid Fischmann, ‘Herr Wiedler’s chauffeur. Ralf Fischmann.’

  ‘I see,’ said Fabel. He handed the photographs back. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Thorsten Wiedler’s death made the headlines. My father was left paralysed by the attack and was worth nothing more than a passing mention. He died from his injuries, Herr Fabel, but it took more than five years. It was an experience that also destroyed my mother. I grew up in a home that knew no joy. All because a bunch of middle-class kids with half-baked borrowed ideas felt justified to destroy any life that happened to be on the fringes when they carried out one of their so-called missions.’