Eternal jf-3

by Craig Russel

  The killer examined the wall again where he had torn down the poster. He paused for a moment to remove the tacks and fragments of poster left there, brushing the stained surface with his latex-gloved hand. ‘According to Herodotus, Scythian warriors would scrape away all the flesh from the inside of the scalps they had taken and would then continuously rub them between their hands until they became soft and supple. Once they had done this, they would use the scalps at feasts as napkins, hanging them on the bridles of their horses between uses. The more scalp-napkins a warrior had, the greater his status among the others. According to Herodotus, many of the most successful warriors would even sew their collected scalps together to make cloaks.’

  Something like awe fleeted across the killer’s otherwise empty face. ‘And we are not talking about some remote land and distant people. This was our culture. This was where we all have roots.’ He paused and seemed to be deep in thought for a moment. ‘Think of this… think of a hall filled with ninety, maybe a hundred people. It is not a lot. And each person in this room is as closely related as it is possible to be: father and son, mother and daughter. Imagine that, Leonard, but imagine that they are all the same age, ninety generations brought together at the same time of life. Across this room you can see the family similarities. Maybe six, seven, eight generations back you see a face just like yours. That is all that separates you and me from those Scythian warriors, Leonard. Ninety closely related individuals. And the truth is, the truth that I have come to learn, is that it is not just our features, our gestures, our aptitude for certain skills or the propensity for particular talents that are repeated across the generations. We repeat ourselves, Leonard. We are eternal. We come back, time and again. Sometimes our lifetimes even overlap. As mine have. I have been my own father, Leonard. I have seen the same time from two perspectives. And I can remember them both…’

  The dark-haired man took the dark blue velvet roll-pouch and unrolled it on the black plastic sheeting. He stood back for a moment, examining his preparations. Leonard looked down at the laid-flat roll-pouch. On it lay a large knife, its handle and blade forged from a continuous piece of glittering stainless steel. Leonard’s sobbing grew in intensity. He started to struggle wildly but impotently against his bonds. The killer laid his hand gently on Leonard’s shoulder, as if to comfort him.

  ‘Settle yourself, Leonard. You chose this. Remember you wondered about trying to wrestle the gun from me? Oh yes, Leonard, I could read you like a book. But you decided not to. You chose to hang on to every last second of life, no matter how terrible. Do you want a laugh, Leonard?’ He picked up the gun and held it out towards his captive. ‘It’s not even real. It’s a replica. You consigned yourself to me, to this death, based on the idea of a gun. On a lump of functionless metal.’

  Behind his gag Leonard wailed. His face was streaked wet with tears.

  ‘Now, Leonard,’ said the killer without malice. ‘I know that you are not very happy with this life. So now I am going to send you on to your next. But first, do you see the space I cleared on the wall over there? That’s where I’m going to pin up your scalp.’ He paused, ignoring the desperate muffled screaming of his victim, as if he was thinking something through. Then a smile broke across his face: a cold, callous smile of a terrible intensity that did not belong on the hitherto expressionless mask. ‘No… not there… now that I think about it, I have a much, much better place for it…’

  10.00 p.m.: Poseldorf, Hamburg

  Fabel had been awake for twenty-four hours.

  All hell had broken loose with the media and with anyone who had a say in anything in Hamburg. Fabel found himself, once again, having to plan out the course of the investigation while navigating around the twin whirlpools of media attention and political pressure. It was another feature of his work that wore him down: there must have been a time when policing had been much easier, when the only pressure on an investigator had been to detect and apprehend the perpetrator.

  Having spent almost all day at the scene, Fabel had come back to the Presidium for a major strategy meeting. All of a sudden, resources ceased to be an issue and Fabel found himself with detectives from across Hamburg allocated to him. He set up a major incident room in the main conference hall, having the incident boards and files moved there from the Murder Commission. A weary Fabel had found himself addressing a fifty-strong audience of detectives, uniform branch commanders and top brass. He had also noticed that Markus Ullrich and a couple of his BKA buddies had come along for the show: Fabel could not now deny that there was a political dimension, and possibly some kind of terrorist element, to the case.

  Susanne had driven them home in Fabel’s car. She said that he was too tired to drive and that he needed some sleep. Fabel said that what he needed was a drink. Anna, Henk and Werner had all said they would come along too. It was clear that they needed to take time out and catch their breaths after the events of the last twenty-four hours. Maria, too, agreed to meet at Fabel’s usual pub in Poseldorf, but she was going to wait for Frank Grueber and they would both take a taxi.

  It was nearly ten p.m. by the time they arrived. Bruno, the head barman, greeted Fabel enthusiastically. Fabel shook his hand and smiled a weary ‘it’s been a tough day’ smile. Fabel, Susanne and the team sat at the bar and ordered their drinks. A CD was playing the football song ‘ Hamburg, meine Perle ’ and a group of young people at the far end of the bar were singing along to Hamburg’s unofficial anthem with immense gusto. Their passion seemed to intensify as they delivered the verse that informed Berliners that ‘we shit on you and your song’. It was loud, it was raucous, it was cheerful. Fabel soaked it up. It was the vulgar, ebullient sound of life, of vigour; it was a million miles away from the death realm where he and his officers had spent the last thirty-odd hours. It was what he needed to hear.

  Fabel wanted to get drunk. After his sixth beer, he could feel its effects; he was aware of the leaden deliberateness in his speech and movements that always came with having drunk that little bit too much. He always came to this point. And never beyond it. Tonight, he thought, tonight just get drunk. The truth was that Fabel never felt comfortable when he had had too much alcohol. He had never in his life got really, seriously drunk, even when he had been a student. There had always been a point when he was drinking that his fear of losing control would kick in. When he would become afraid of making a fool of himself.

  Maria and Grueber joined them and they all moved away from the bar and its raucous choir and found a table together at the back of the pub. For some reason, Fabel got onto the subject of Gunter Griebel’s field of work and what Dirk had said to him about his experience.

  ‘Maybe we all come back,’ said Anna – her gloomy expression did not suggest that she relished the concept. ‘Maybe we are all just variations on the same theme and we experience each consciousness as if it were unique.’

  ‘There’s this wonderful, tragic Italian short story called “The Other Son” by Luigi Pirandello,’ said Susanne. ‘It is all about this Sicilian mother who gives letters to everyone she hears is emigrating to America, so that they can pass them on to her two sons who emigrated years before but from whom she has never heard. The pain of separation that she feels is enormous. But these sons really had not given her a second thought, while she has a third son who has stayed with her and is as loving and devoted as a son can be. Yet she cannot bear to set eyes on him, far less show him any form of affection or love. It emerges that, years before, while the mother was a young woman, a notorious bandit had raided the village with his gang. While there, he had brutally raped her and, as a result, she had become pregnant. As the child grew, despite being a sensitive and caring boy, he developed a massive build and had become the image of his natural father, the bandit. And every time the mother looked at her devoted, loving son, she felt loathing and contempt. He was not his father. But all she saw was the reincarnation of the bandit who had raped her. It is a tragic and beautifully written story. But it is also one that
resonates with us, because it’s something we all do. We see continuity in people.’

  ‘But that story is about appearance. About a physical similarity between father and son. The son’s personality was totally different,’ said Fabel.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Susanne. ‘But the mother suspected that beneath the surface similarity the person was somehow the same. A variation on a theme.’

  ‘I remember,’ said Henk Hermann, looking thoughtful, ‘when I was a child, I used to get so fed up with my mother and my grandmother always going on about how like my grandfather I was. Looks, mannerisms, personality – the whole package. I used to get so fed up with hearing, “Oh, that’s just his grandad…” or, “Isn’t he the spit of his grandad…” To me he was someone buried, literally, in history. He had died in the war, you see. There were photographs of him around the place and I couldn’t see what they were on about. Then, when my grandmother died and I was an adult, I found all those photographs of him again. And it was me. There was even one of him in his Wehrmacht uniform. I tell you, that was a spooky experience, seeing my face in that uniform. It really makes you think. I mean, someone just like me living through those times…’

  They moved on to a new topic. But Fabel had noticed that Henk seemed more subdued than normal for the rest of the evening and found himself regretting having brought up the subject.

  The pub was just around the corner from Fabel’s flat and he and Susanne walked home. When they arrived, Fabel opened the door to the apartment and made an exaggeratedly gentlemanly sweep of his arm to indicate that Susanne should precede him into the flat.

  ‘Are you okay?’ asked Susanne. ‘You must be exhausted.’

  ‘I’ll survive…’ he said and kissed her. ‘Thanks for caring.’ He switched on the light.

  They both saw it at the same time.

  Fabel heard Susanne’s shrill scream and was surprised to feel any hint of drunkenness swept suddenly from him by the tidal wave of horror that washed over them both.

  Fabel ran across the room. He unholstered his service automatic and snapped the carriage back to put a round in the chamber. He turned to Susanne. She stood frozen, both hands clamped to her mouth and her eyes wide with shock. Fabel held up his hand, indicating that she was to stay where she was. He moved over to the bedroom, threw the door wide and stepped inside, sweeping the room with the gun. Nothing. He switched on the bedroom light to check again and then moved on to the bathroom.

  The apartment was clear.

  Fabel moved back towards Susanne, putting his gun down on the coffee table as he crossed the room. He put his arm around her and steered her towards the bedroom, placing his body between her and the apartment’s picture window.

  ‘Stay in there, Susanne. I’ll phone for help.’

  ‘Christ, Jan – in your home…’ Her face was drained of colour and her tear-streaked make-up stood out harshly against the pallor.

  He closed the bedroom door behind her and crossed the living room again, deliberately not looking at the picture window that had given him so much pleasure, with its ever-changing vista across the Alster. He snapped up the phone and hit the pre-set dial button for the Presidium. He spoke to the duty Commissar in the Murder Commission and told him that Anna Wolff, Henk Hermann, Maria Klee and Werner Meyer would be on their way to their respective homes and that he was to call them on their cellphones and tell them to make their way to his apartment.

  ‘But first of all,’ he said, hearing his own voice dull and dead in the quiet of his apartment, ‘send a full forensic team. I have a secondary murder locus here.’

  He hung up, resting his hand on the phone for a moment and deliberately keeping his back to the window. Then he turned.

  In the centre of the window, pressed flat against it and adhering to the glass by means of its own stickiness and strips of insulating tape, was a human scalp. Viscous rivulets of blood and red dye streaked the pane. Fabel felt sick and turned his face from it, but found that he could not banish the image from his brain. He made his way over to the bedroom and to the sound of Susanne sobbing. In the distance, he heard the growing clamour of police sirens as they made their way towards him along Mittelweg.

  1.45 a.m.: Poseldorf, Hamburg

  Fabel had arranged for a female officer to take Susanne home to her own flat and stay with her there. Susanne had recovered significantly from the shock and had sought to apply her professional detachment as a practising forensic psychologist. But the truth was that this killer had reached out and touched their personal lives. Something that no one had done before. Fabel tried to contain the fury that raged within him. His home. The bastard had been here, in his private space. And that meant that he knew more about Fabel than Fabel knew about him. It also meant that Susanne had to be watched. Protected.

  The whole team turned up. The shock and anger they felt was apparent on all their faces, even on Maria Klee’s. It was her boyfriend, Frank Grueber, who led the forensic team on site, but, realising that his own boss had a close professional and personal relationship with Fabel, Grueber had phoned Holger Brauner at home. Brauner had turned up within minutes of the others and, although he allowed Grueber to process the scene, he scrutinised every sample, every area personally.

  Fabel felt nauseated. The shock and horror of what he and Susanne had been faced with, the drink he had consumed earlier, the cumulative exhaustion of not having slept for two days and the violation of his personal space all combined in a sickening churning in his gut. His apartment was too small to hold everyone and the team stood outside on the landing. Fabel had already had to deal with his neighbours, who were displaying that excited, alarmed curiosity that Fabel had seen at countless crime scenes before. But these were his neighbours. This crime scene was his home.

  Fabel was aware that the team had been engaged in some kind of debate out on the landing. Then Maria broke off and came across to him, collecting Grueber on her way.

  ‘Listen, Chef,’ said Maria. ‘I’ve been talking with the others. You can’t stay here and I think Dr Eckhardt needs some time to recover from all this. You’ll have to stay with one of us for a couple of nights at least. It’s going to take hours to process the scene and afterwards… well, you’re not going to want to stay here. Werner said you can stay with him and his wife, but it would be a bit of a squeeze. Then I talked to Frank about it.’

  ‘I have a big place over in Osdorf,’ said Grueber. ‘Tons of room. Why don’t you pack a few things? Then you can crash there for as long as you need.’

  ‘Thanks. Thanks a lot. But I’ll check into a hotel…’

  ‘I think you should take up Herr Grueber’s offer.’ The voice came from behind Fabel. Criminal Director Horst van Heiden stood at the top of the stairs. Fabel looked startled for a moment. He was pleased that his boss had taken the time to come down in person, and in the middle of the night. Then the significance of it hit him.

  ‘Are you worried about my expense account?’ Fabel smiled weakly at his own joke.

  ‘I just think that Herr Grueber’s apartment would be more secure than a hotel. Until we get this maniac, you are under personal protection, Fabel. We’ll put a couple of officers outside Herr Grueber’s place.’ Van Heiden glanced across at Grueber, seeking the formality of his approval. Grueber nodded his assent.

  ‘Okay,’ said Fabel. ‘Thanks. I’ll get some stuff together later.’

  ‘That’s decided, then,’ said van Heiden. Grueber took Fabel’s car keys and said that Maria would take him over to his place and he would drive Fabel’s car over once he had finished processing the scene.

  ‘Thanks, Frank,’ said Fabel. ‘But I’ll have to go into the Presidium first. We need to get a handle on what this all means.’

  Van Heiden took Fabel’s elbow and guided him into a corner. Despite the fog of tiredness that seemed to cloud his every thought, Fabel could not help wondering how van Heiden managed to look so well pressed at two in the morning. ‘This is bad, Fabel. I don’t like the way this man is
targeting you. Do we know how he got in?’

  ‘So far forensics have been unable to find any hint of a forced entry. And, as usual with this guy, he’s left practically no trace evidence of his presence at the scene.’ Fabel felt another churn in his gut as he referred to his own home as ‘the scene’.

  ‘So we don’t know how he got in,’ said van Heiden. ‘And God only knows how he found out where you live.’

  ‘We’ve got a much more pressing question than that to answer…’ Fabel nodded over to where the bright red dyed hair and skin was still plastered to the glass of the window. ‘And that question is: to whom does that scalp belong?’

  2.00 a.m.: Police Presidium, Hamburg

  The entire Murder Commission team had turned out. It unnerved Fabel that van Heiden had felt his continued presence was somehow necessary. Everyone wore the unnatural expressions of people who should be exhausted, yet are agitated with an electric nervousness. Fabel himself found it difficult to focus, but was aware that it was up to him to pull the team, and himself, together.

  ‘Forensics are still processing the scene,’ he said. ‘But we all know that we’re only going to get whatever this guy decides he wants us to get. This scene differs from the others in two respects. Firstly, we have a scalp but no body. And there has to be a body somewhere. Secondly, we now know for sure that this killer is using these scalps to send a message. In this case directed at me. Some kind of warning or threat. So, if we follow the logic, the scalps displayed at the other scenes were intended to send out a message. But to whom?’

  ‘To us?’ Anna Wolff sat slumped in a chair. Her face was naked of its usual lipstick and make-up and looked pale and tired under her shock of black hair. ‘Maybe he feels he’s taunting the police with them. After all, we’ve been in similar territory before. And the fact that he’s used one of our homes as a showplace would seem to support that.’