Eternal jf-3

by Craig Russel

  His scalp had been removed. It lay at his feet, spread out and dyed, like those of the other victims, unnaturally red. The gore-streaked dome of his skull glistened under the lights. His throat had been slashed.

  Fabel was suddenly aware that he was running. He pushed members of the stunned audience out of his way as he rushed forward and they gave way unprotestingly, as if he were charging through a storeroom of shop-window mannequins. He sensed Anna, Henk and Werner in his wake.

  One of the press photographers lifted his camera and it flashed in the auditorium. Anna shouldered her way through to the photographer, grabbed his camera with one hand and shoved him backwards with the other. The photographer started to protest and demanded his camera back.

  ‘It’s not your camera any more. It’s police evidence.’ She scanned the rest of the press photographers with her laser gaze. ‘And that goes for the rest of you. This is a murder scene and I’ll seize any camera used here.’

  By now Fabel had reached the front and grabbed hold of Paulsen, who still stood gazing blankly at the display.

  ‘Get your people out into the corridor! Now!’ he shouted into Paulsen’s face. He turned to his officers. ‘Anna, Henk… get the audience out into the corridor too. Werner… secure the main door and make sure that no one leaves the building.’ He snapped open his cellphone and hit the pre-set button for the Murder Commission. He gave orders that the forensics team were to be dispatched and that he needed uniformed units to secure the scene immediately. He also arranged for extra plain-clothes officers to attend to take statements from every member of the audience. As soon as he hung up from talking to the Murder Commission he hit another button.

  Van Heiden made no protest at being disturbed at home: he knew that for Fabel to call it must be urgent. Fabel heard himself describing the scene to van Heiden in a dead, toneless voice. Van Heiden seemed to react more to the very public context in which the body had been found than to the fact that someone else had lost their life.

  After he ended his call to van Heiden, Fabel found himself alone in the auditorium. Alone except for that which had once been Paul Scheibe. Scheibe had had something to tell Fabel. Something valuable, maybe something that would not be told willingly. Now Scheibe sat elevated on his throne of smashed balsa and card, scalped, naked and dead: a crownless, silent king looking out over his empty kingdom.

  11.45 p.m.: Grindelviertel, Hamburg

  Leonard Schuler had had too much to drink. It was not uncommon for him to do so. And, after all, it had been a hard week. He was still haunted by that face – that cold, pale, emotionless face at the window of Hauser’s apartment – but it came to his mind less and less as the days went by. More than ever, he was convinced that he had done the right thing in not giving a complete description of the killer to the police. Leonard Schuler, who did not believe in any thing much any more and was not one for deep thought, had found himself thinking back to that night, to the man in the window, and wondering if there really was such a thing as the devil.

  But it was time to forget about it. To put it where it belonged, in the past.

  Schuler had felt like celebrating and had met up with friends in the bar on the corner two blocks away from his flat. It was a raucous, smoky place, buzzing with crude exuberance and over-loud rock music. It was exactly the kind of place he needed to be.

  It was one in the morning when he left. He did not stagger as he walked, but he was aware that the normally unconscious act of taking a step now required a degree of concentration. It had been a good night, and a lot of steam had been let off: a bit too much for Willi, the landlord. But as he walked home, Schuler was aware of a hollow feeling inside. This was his life. This was all he had amounted to. He had not come from the best background, true, but others from similar circumstances had done more, made more of themselves. He was honest enough to blame himself for the failures in his life, although, in darker moments, he allowed himself to share some of the responsibility with his mother. Schuler’s mother was still a young woman, in her forties, having given birth to Leonard when she was eighteen. Leonard had never known his father, and doubted if his mother even knew for sure who he was. It was a subject his mother had always avoided, claiming that Leonard’s father had been a boyfriend who had died from an undisclosed disease before they could marry. But, by putting together the tiny and disparate scraps that he had been able to garner about his mother’s past life, and by a lot of reading between the lines, Leonard had come to suspect that she had worked as a prostitute at one time in her life, and he often speculated that his anonymous male parent might have been a client.

  But all that had been before Leonard’s first memories of the world. His mother, as a single parent, had brought him up on her own and had displayed an anachronistic sense of shame about it. At some time in Leonard’s infancy, his mother had become a ‘born-again’ Christian. She was now the model of prissy probity and abstemiousness, and his childhood had been overshadowed by the omnipresence of religion. He had hated his mother’s righteousness for as long as he could remember. It had embarrassed him. Irritated him. He would have been less ashamed of his mother if she had still sold blow jobs to strangers. Leonard often thought that that was why he had become a thief: to witness his mother’s shame.

  ‘Thou shalt not steal…’ she had repeated over and over, shaking her head when the police had brought him home the first time. ‘Thou shalt not steal… Do you know what will become of you, Leonard?’ she had said. ‘The devil will come for you. The devil will come for you and take you straight to hell.’

  It had been those words that had echoed in Leonard’s head when the senior detective had talked to him; when he had described what that psycho would do to him if he knew about him. If he found him.

  Schuler knew that he was not stupid. He had no illusions about the act that had conceived him. A quick, grubby fuck for a few Deutschmarks. But he always imagined that his biological father would perhaps have been a wealthy, successful businessman or professional of some kind who, probably drunk at the time, had been a one-off customer of his mother’s. Someone with a bit going on up top. A better class of person. How else could Leonard explain his own intelligence? He had gone to a comprehensive Gesamtschule school and there was no doubt that, with just a little effort on his part, he could have passed his Abitur leaving exam, which would have guaranteed him a place at university. But Schuler had not made that effort. He had worked out that there were two ways to get the things you wanted in life: you could earn them, or you could steal them. And earning them required too much effort.

  And this was how he had ended up. Jobless, twenty-six years old, a thief. Was it too late to change things? To start afresh? To build a new life?

  He swung open the main door of his apartment building. Each step up the stairwell seemed to take a monumental effort. He unlocked the door of his apartment and threw the keys onto the second-hand dresser by the door. Leaning against the door frame for a moment, he stood on the threshold between the stark light of the stairwell and the dark of his flat. There was a click as the hall light, on an economy timer, went out, plunging Schuler into total darkness. He breathed it in for a moment, the hoppy taste of beer thick in his mouth and his head suddenly light without a visual anchor.

  The light in his living room snapped on. Schuler stood blinking, trying to work out how he had accidentally hit the light switch, when he saw him sitting in the chair by the television. The same man. The same face that had gazed out at him through the window of Hauser’s flat. The killer.

  The devil had come to take him to hell.

  11.

  Fourteen Days After the First Murder: Thursday, 1 September 2005.

  12.02 a.m.: Grindelviertel, Hamburg

  Leonard knew, the instant he saw the man with the gun sitting in the corner by the television, that he was going to die. One way or another.

  The first thing that struck Leonard was how dark the young man’s hair was – too dark against his pale complexion.
He was holding a black automatic and Leonard noticed that he was wearing white surgical gloves. The man with the gun stood up. He was tall and slim. Leonard reckoned that he could have taken him on, easily, if it had not been for the gun in his hand. Rush him, thought Leonard. Even if he squeezes off a round, at least you will die quickly. He might even miss. Leonard thought of the two pictures the police had shown him; of what this tall, dark young man with a pale, impassive face had done. Leonard thought hard, so hard that his head hurt. Why don’t you just rush him? What have you got to lose? A bullet is better than what he’ll do to you if you let him.

  ‘Relax, Leonard.’ It was as if the dark-haired man had read his thoughts. ‘Take it easy and there’s no reason for you to get hurt. I just want to talk to you. That’s all.’

  Leonard knew he was lying. Just rush him. But he wanted to believe the lie.

  ‘Please, Leonard… please sit down so we can talk.’ The man indicated the chair that he had just vacated.

  Do it now… grab the gun. Leonard sat down. The other man watched him impassively. The same lack of emotion, of expression.

  ‘I didn’t tell them. I didn’t tell them anything,’ Leonard said earnestly.

  ‘Now, Leonard,’ the dark-haired man said, as if reproaching a child, ‘we both know that’s not true. You didn’t tell them everything . But you did tell them enough. And it would be most inconvenient if you were to tell them anything more than you have.’

  ‘Listen, I don’t want any part of this. You must know that. You can see that I’m not going to tell them any more than I already have. I’ll go away… I promise… I’ll never come back to Hamburg.’

  ‘Take it easy, Leonard. I’m not going to hurt you. Unless you try anything silly. I just want to discuss our… situation with you.’ The dark-haired man leaned against the wall and placed the gun on the table next to Leonard’s keys. Do it! Do it now! Leonard’s instincts were screaming at him, yet he sat as if his body had fused with the chair. The dark-haired man reached into his jacket pocket and took out a pair of handcuffs. He tossed them to Leonard before picking up the gun again. ‘Now don’t panic, Leonard. This is merely for my protection, you understand. Please… put them on.’

  Now. Do it now. If you put these on, he will have total control of you. He will be able to do anything he wants. Do it! Leonard snapped the handcuffs on one wrist, then the other.

  ‘Okay,’ the dark-haired man said. ‘Now we can relax.’ But as he spoke he walked into Leonard’s bedroom and returned with a large black leather holdall. ‘Now don’t be alarmed, Leonard. I just need to secure you.’ He produced a roll of thick black insulating tape from the holdall and started to wrap it across Leonard’s chest and upper arms and around the chair back. Tight. Then he took a strip and stretched it across Leonard’s mouth. Leonard’s protests were reduced to loud muffles. The combination of the gag and the over-tight tape made it difficult for him to breathe, and the hammering of his heart was exaggerated in his confined chest. Satisfied that Leonard no longer represented a threat, the other man again laid the gun on the table. He pulled over the only other chair in the apartment and drew it opposite and close to Leonard’s. He leaned forward, elbows on knees, and rested his chin on a cradle of interlaced fingers. He seemed to study Leonard for a long time. Then he spoke.

  ‘Do you believe in reincarnation, Leonard?’ The bound man stared uncomprehendingly at the killer.

  ‘Do you believe in reincarnation? It’s not a complicated question.’

  Leonard shook his head vigorously. His eyes were wide, wild. Scared. They searched the face of his assailant for any sign of sympathy or compassion, for anything approaching a human emotion.

  ‘You don’t? Well, you’re in the minority, Leonard. The vast majority of the population of this world include reincarnation in their belief systems. Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism… many cultures find it natural and logical to have a belief in some kind of return of the soul. In villages in Nigeria you’ll often come across an ogbanje… a child who is the reincarnation of someone who died in childhood themselves. Sorry… you don’t mind if I talk while I’m getting everything ready, do you?’ The dark-haired man stood up and removed a large square sheet of black polyurethane from the holdall; he then took out a black plastic bag. Behind his gag, Leonard made an incomprehensible noise that the killer seemed to take as assent and he continued with his lecture.

  ‘Anyway, even Plato believed that we existed as higher beings and were reincarnated in this life as a punishment for falling from grace – something that was part of early Christian belief, actually, until it was excised and branded as heresy. If you think about it, reincarnation is easy to accept because we have all had experiences that cannot be explained any other way.’ The killer spread out the square plastic sheet on the floor and stepped onto it. He removed his jacket and his shirt, folded them carefully and put them into the black bag. ‘It happens to us all… we meet someone that we have never met before in our lifetime, yet we experience that strange sense of recognition or we feel that we have known them for years and years.’ He took off his shoes. ‘Or we will go somewhere new, somewhere we have never been before, yet we feel an unaccountable familiarity with the place.’ He unbuckled his belt, then removed his trousers, which he placed with his shoes in the bag. He now stood on the black square in only his socks and underwear. His body was pale, thin and angular. Almost boyish. Fragile. From the holdall he took out a white one-piece coverall suit, like those used by forensic experts at the scene of a crime, except this one seemed to be coated with a plastic sheen. Leonard suddenly felt sick as he realised that it was the kind of protective clothing used by abattoir workers. ‘You see, Leonard, we’ve all been here before. In one form or another. And sometimes we come back, or are sent back, to resolve some outstanding issue or another from a previous life. I have been sent back.’

  The man took a hairnet from the holdall, tucked his thick dark hair in it and then pulled the hood of his coverall up and over it, pulling the drawstring closed until it formed a circle tight around his face. He covered his feet with blue plastic overshoes before starting to clear a space in the centre of the room, moving furniture and Leonard’s few personal belongings into the corners with great care, as if afraid of breaking anything. ‘Don’t worry, Leonard, I’ll put everything back the way it was…’ He smiled a cold, empty smile. ‘When we’re finished.’

  He paused, looking around the room as if inspecting its readiness for whatever he had planned next. He carefully refolded the square of black plastic and replaced it in the holdall.

  Leonard felt the sting of tears in his eyes. He thought of his mother. About how disappointed she had been in him. About how he had stolen to hurt her.

  The killer unfolded a second heavy-duty sheet of black plastic, much larger than the first, and laid it on the space he had cleared. He then came around behind Leonard, grabbed the back of his chair, tilted it backwards and started to ‘walk’ it across the floor on its two rear legs onto the black plastic. Leonard could now feel and hear his own pulse, the blood rushing in his ears, his lips throbbing against the insulating tape gag.

  ‘Anyway,’ continued the killer. ‘It’s not simply that I believe in reincarnation. I know it to be a fact. A law of nature, as sound and incontrovertible as gravity.’ He took a velvet roll-pouch from his holdall and placed it on the black plastic next to the chair. ‘You see, Leonard, I have been given a gift. The gift of memory – memory beyond birth, beyond death. Memory of my past lives. I have a mission to fulfil. And that mission is to avenge an act of betrayal in my last life. That was why I was there that night when you saw me, when you were skulking around behind Hauser’s apartment. That was the very beginning of my quest. Then, the next night, I killed Griebel. But there is more that I have to do, Leonard. Much more. I can’t let you interfere with that.’

  The dark-haired man took a couple of steps back and examined his victim, bound tightly to his chair. He adjusted the black plastic sheeting, smoothing it
flat. Then he scanned the walls of the room, seeming to assess them. He moved across to one wall and ripped down a poster of an American rock group, revealing the stain that Leonard, in an uncharacteristically house-proud moment, had sought to conceal. Again the killer stepped back and surveyed the wall.

  ‘This will do nicely.’ He turned back to Leonard and smiled broadly, revealing his perfect white teeth. ‘Do you know, Leonard, that scalping was part of the European cultural tradition since its very beginnings?’

  Leonard screamed, but his cries were reduced to frantic high-pitched mumbling behind the gag of insulation tape.

  ‘All of those who have contributed their blood to our lineage did it: the Celts, the Franks, the Saxons, the Goths and, of course, the ancient Scythians on the lonely, empty Steppes that were the cradle of Europe. To take the scalps of those who had succumbed to us in battle, or simply to take the scalp of a personal enemy whom we had killed in single combat to settle a disagreement or grudge, is at the very heart of our cultural identity. We were scalp-takers and we did so with pride. Have you heard of an ancient Greek historian called Herodotus?’

  There was no answer from Leonard other than the desperate, body-racking sobs of a man facing a terrible death protesting against his bonds and gag. The killer took no notice and continued to talk in his relaxed, chatty manner, as if he were at a dinner party. It was his calm, his nonchalance, that Leonard feared most: it would have been easier to understand, to deal with, if the man who was about to take his life had been enraged, or afraid, or in any form of heightened emotion.

  ‘Herodotus is considered the father of history. He travelled the then-known civilised world and wrote about the peoples he encountered. But Herodotus also wandered into the unknown lands, the wild lands, beyond the cultured world. He visited the Ukraine, which was the heart of the Scythian kingdom, and documented the lives of those he found there.’