The Valkyrie Song jf-5

by Craig Russell

  Jan Fabel sat leaning forward on the leather armchair. On the edge. He still wore his raincoat and held his gloves in one hand. Everything about his posture spoke of imminent departure, even though he had only just arrived.

  At one time, a long time ago, this suburban house in Hamburg-Borgfelde had been Fabel’s home. He had been familiar with every room, every floorboard, every angle. It had been the focus in his life. His home. Of course, everything had changed since then: the furniture, the decor, the TV in the corner.

  ‘You’ve got to talk to her.’ Renate sat opposite Fabel, her legs crossed and her arms folded across her body in the same defensive pose that he remembered. Her hair was not the same shade of rich auburn it had been when he had first met her, when they had been married, and he suspected that she now coloured it. She was still a handsome woman, but the creases around her mouth had deepened and given her face a faint appearance of parsimony. God knows, thought Fabel, she’s got nothing to feel bitter about.

  ‘I’ll talk to her,’ he said. ‘But I can’t promise anything. Gabi is an intelligent girl. Her own person. She is more than capable of making up her own mind about her future.’

  ‘Are you saying you approve of this? Support it?’

  ‘I’ll support anything Gabi chooses to do. But no, personally I’d rather she rethought her career. In the end, if it’s what she wants to do…’ Fabel shrugged resignedly. ‘But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. She has a long time to think it over. And you know what Gabi’s like: if she thinks we’re pushing her she’ll dig her heels in.’

  ‘It’s your fault,’ said Renate. ‘If you weren’t a policeman then it would never have occurred to her to join. Gabi hero-worships you. It’s easy to be the hero when you’re a part-time parent.’

  ‘And whose choice was that?’ Fabel fought back the anger surging up within him. ‘It sure as hell wasn’t mine. I was pushed out of her life. And as I remember you did the pushing.’

  ‘And I was pushed out of your life by that bloody job of yours.’

  ‘Right into Ludiger Behrens’s bed, as I recall,’ said Fabel and regretted it immediately. Renate was a petty woman; it had only been in the last stages of their marriage that he had seen just how petty. And she had always had the knack of reducing him to her level. ‘Look, this isn’t getting us anywhere. I think you’re making too big a deal of the whole thing: Gabi has only started to talk about this. Let’s just wait until she gets her Abitur results and take it from there. Like I said, it’s a long time before she has to make up her mind about it. I’ll talk to her and make sure she knows what she would be getting into. But I have to tell you, Renate, that if she is determined to become a police officer, then I will support her all the way.’

  Renate’s already dark expression darkened further. ‘It’s not right,’ she said. ‘It’s no job for a woman.’

  Fabel stared slack-jawed at Renate. ‘I can’t believe you said that. You of all people, Renate. What the hell do you mean, police work is no job for a woman? Just goes to show, all the time we were married I never had you down as a “Children, Kitchen, Church” type. Mind you, given your father’s history…’

  Fabel knew he was about to get burned by the fire that suddenly caught light in Renate’s green eyes, and he was relieved to hear his cellphone ring just as she was about to launch something at him.

  ‘Hi, Chef, it’s Anna. You used to be into British pop in the seventies and eighties, right?’

  ‘I take it that’s rhetorical,’ said Fabel, his voice laden with warning. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Well, Jake Westland — you know, the lead singer from that group in the seventies? — the thing is he’s on tour in Germany at the moment and he’s supposed to be doing an in-depth interview with NDR radio tomorrow.’

  Fabel sighed into the phone. ‘Anna… point?’

  ‘Just that he won’t be turning up for the interview. He’s already spilled his guts — in the Reeperbahn. And Chef, he said it was a woman who cut him and then she told him to let us know who she was. She told him to say it was the Angel.’

  ‘Shit.’ Fabel used the English word and looked across at his ex-wife. The fire had been extinguished and she now wore the expression of hostile resignation that she had always had when work had called him away. ‘I’ll be right there.’

  They had taken Westland across town to the emergency room at the hospital in St Georg. There was no point in Fabel going there: from what he had heard, Westland was in no condition for an interview. Instead he took the Ost-West Strasse into the Reeperbahn, Hamburg’s Sinful Mile. Where ropers had once woven hawsers for sailing ships, giving the Reeperbahn its name, now strip clubs and sex shops, bars and theatres neon-sparkled in the icy night. By the time Fabel arrived at Davidwache he was already in a bad mood. The meeting with Renate had gone as ill-temperedly as expected and he had lost his MP3 player: whenever he felt stressed, he plugged it into his BMW’s stereo system. No music, more stress.

  The press had already gathered en masse outside the Davidwache station and three uniformed officers were holding them at bay. In addition to the media circus outside the station, there was some other separate commotion being created in Davidstrasse, to the side of the station. Young riot squad officers in their gear were struggling to load groups of resisting women into the large green police wagons. Some of the media had leached around into Davidstrasse to take pictures of the sideshow, but a fusillade of camera flashes saluted Fabel as he made his way from the car to Davidwache’s double doors. A television news camera crew had jostled its way to the front; Fabel recognised the reporter as Sylvie Achtenhagen, who worked for one of the satellite channels. Great, he thought, as if the media limelight wasn’t bad enough, he had that bitch on his case.

  ‘Principal Detective Chief Commissar Fabel’ — Achtenhagen emphasised his full rank for the camera — ‘can you confirm that the victim of this attack was Jake Westland, the British singer?’

  Fabel ignored her and walked on.

  ‘And is it true that this is the work of the so-called Angel of St Pauli? The serial killer the Polizei Hamburg failed to catch in the nineteen-nineties?’ Then, when he still did not respond: ‘Are we to take it that your involvement, as head of this proposed so-called “Super Murder Commission”, is significant? Are you being called in to clean up the mess the Polizei Hamburg made of the original investigation?’

  Fabel pulled a mask of patience over his irritation and turned to the reporter. ‘The Police Presidium’s press and information department will make a full statement in due course. You should know the drill by now, Frau Achtenhagen.’

  He turned his back on her and walked through the double doors and up the steps into Davidwache police station. The small reception area was crammed with personnel. He could hear shouting from through the back and to the left, from the custody area. Fabel was greeted by a bristle-scalped heavy-set man in his fifties and a pretty dark-haired woman wearing jeans and a biker jacket that was at least one size too big for her. Fabel smiled grimly at Senior Criminal Commissar Werner Meyer and Criminal Commissar Anna Wolff.

  ‘How in God’s name did Achtenhagen find out about the Angel claim?’ asked Fabel.

  ‘Money talks,’ said Anna Wolff. ‘That bitch isn’t above bribing ambulance crew or hospital staff to get a scoop.’

  ‘You’re probably right. She’s all we need. She practically built her career on the Angel case.’ Fabel nodded in the direction of the commotion outside in Davidstrasse. ‘What the hell is going on?’

  ‘A case of perfect timing,’ said Werner. ‘A feminist group decided to pick tonight of all nights to stage a protest. They invaded Herbertstrasse. They object to a Hamburg street being closed off to women. They claim it’s against their human rights or something.’

  ‘They’ve got a point, to be honest,’ said Fabel. He sighed. ‘Okay

  … what have we got?’

  ‘The victim is Jake Westland, fifty-three years old, British national,’ Werner read from
his notebook. ‘And yes, he is that Jake Westland. From what we can gather he was having a little impromptu jaunt around the Reeperbahn — and not to recapture the spirit of the Beatles, if you catch my drift. Funny, though… I would have thought it would have been the gay bars he would have been interested in — him being English, that is…’

  Fabel responded to Werner’s joke with an impatient face.

  ‘I don’t know why they do it,’ continued Werner. ‘These celebrities, I mean. Anyway, Westland deliberately gave his bodyguards the slip and disappeared into Herbertstrasse. Next thing a working girl on her way into the Kiez finds him with his insides turned into his outsides. He tells her that his attacker told him that she was the Angel, then he passes out.’

  ‘What’s his condition?’

  ‘He was still alive when they put him in the ambulance. Apparently the girl who found him knew a bit about first aid. But my guess is that his producers are already planning a memorial greatest-hits CD.’

  ‘We’ve got the girl who found him through the back,’ said Anna Wolff. She exchanged a look with Werner and her red-lipsticked mouth broke into a grin. ‘And the bodyguards. I thought you’d like to interview them personally.’

  ‘Okay, Anna,’ Fabel said, with a sigh, ‘what’s the deal?’

  ‘Westland was being looked after by Schilmann Security and Close Personal Protection.’

  ‘Martina Schilmann?’

  ‘You and she used to be close, I believe?’

  ‘Martina Schilmann was an excellent police officer,’ said Fabel.

  ‘Then she must have been a better cop than she is a bodyguard,’ said Werner.

  A uniformed superintendent joined them. He was shorter than Fabel and had thick, dark, unruly hair.

  ‘What I really want to know is,’ he said sternly as he shook hands with Fabel, ‘did anyone get his autograph?’

  ‘Hello, Carstens,’ said Fabel, with a grin. ‘Still cracking tasteless jokes?’

  ‘Comes with the territory.’ Carstens Kaminski was in charge of the Davidwache team. Davidwache — Polizei Hamburg’s Police Commissariat 15 — was the station that controlled the Kiez, Hamburg’s 0.7 square kilometres of red-light district centred on the Reeperbahn. Every weekend the normal population of ten thousand residents would swell as over two hundred thousand visitors would pass through the Kiez, some of whom would be drunk, some of whom would be relieved of their wallets or valuables. And for some, their walk on the wild side would end in real disaster.

  The uniformed officers who worked out of Davidwache had to have a particular skill: they had to be able to talk. The Kiez was an area populated by pimps, hookers, petty crooks and not so petty crooks; visited by young men from the suburbs who often drank too much, too quickly. Most of the situations that the Davidwache officers were faced with demanded sympathy and humour and more than one reveller had been talked into going home peacefully and out of a night in the cells. Carstens Kaminski had been born and grew up in St Pauli and no one was as in tune with the rhythm and changing mood of the Kiez. He also had the typically down-to-earth St Pauli sense of humour.

  ‘What’s the deal with the protest?’ asked Fabel.

  ‘It’s a group called Muliebritas. Or more correctly it was organised by a feminist magazine called Muliebritas,’ explained Kaminski. ‘They stormed into Herbertstrasse and there was everything but all-out war with the hookers. God knows it would have been bad enough at the best of times, but with this Westland thing going on as well… We asked them to disperse, explaining that they were interfering with a crime scene and investigation, but the concept of consensual policing seems to have been lost on them.’ There was another burst of shouting from the custody area, as if to underline his statement. ‘Anyway, you’re not here for them. By the way, did you know Martina’s here?’ Kaminski grinned.

  ‘Yes,’ said Fabel. ‘Anna told me.’

  ‘Didn’t you and she…’

  ‘Yes, Carstens,’ said Fabel, with a sigh. ‘We’ve already been through that. Do we have a description of the woman who attacked Westland?’

  ‘All he said was she told him she was the Angel. And even that we’ve only got second-hand from the hooker who found him.’

  ‘How do we know she’s not the “Angel” herself?’

  ‘From what we can gather she did her best to keep Westland alive until the ambulance arrived. And if this really is the work of the Angel, then the girl who found him would be too young for the original murders. Anyway, despite her trying to hide it behind a tough front she clearly was in shock. We suggested the quack should give her a mild sedative but she told him to stick it.’

  ‘I want to talk to her anyway.’

  ‘And Martina?’ Kaminski grinned and cast a look across at Werner and Anna Wolff.

  ‘And Martina. What about the new CCTV system we’ve installed in the Kiez? Will we have got anything on that?’

  ‘No,’ said Kaminski. ‘Westland’s attacker was either lucky or very clever — there are no cameras on that street or anywhere near the courtyard. As you know, the compromise we had to make on having cameras in the Kiez was that we had to be selective where we put them — none in a position that could reveal the honourable citizens of our fine city nipping into a peep-show or a sex shop. It means we’ve got a hell of a lot of black holes. But I’ve put a call into the ops room at the Presidium for the recordings from an hour before until an hour after the murder to be collected and analysed. We might get something from the surrounding streets… the attacker making their way to or from the scene. In the meantime, I’m flooding the streets with uniforms…’ Kaminski nodded towards the assembled officers in the lobby. ‘We’ll question every hooker, pimp and club owner in the area. Business isn’t exactly good in the Kiez these days and Westland was hardly an anonymous victim… Something like this is bad for business. Maybe we’ll get lucky.’

  ‘Thanks, Carstens.’

  ‘Well, if you don’t mind, Jan, I’ll get back to briefing this lot.’ Kaminski nodded towards the uniforms he had gathered. ‘Unless you want to talk them through what we should be looking for?’

  ‘No, Carstens, this is your patch,’ said Fabel. He knew that no one knew the Kiez better than Kaminski.

  Fabel hung his raincoat up in the station cloakroom, first of all patting his pockets.

  ‘Lost something?’ asked Anna.

  ‘Bloody MP3 player…’

  Fabel made his way with Werner and Anna through to the rear of the station. Until 2005 Davidwache had been an exclusively uniform-branch station: to keep pace with changing times a new extension had been built onto the rear of the protected architecture of the original station. It was in this newer part of the building that the detective branch was now based. Kaminski had put the conference room at their disposal for carrying out witness interviews. Fabel looked out of the window over Davidstrasse and part of Friedrichstrasse. He could see the green riot-police vans being driven down to the traffic lights, transporting back to the Police Presidium those protesters whom Davidwache’s tiny cell block could not accommodate.

  ‘Anna, I think you should lead the questioning of this witness,’ he said. ‘The girl who found Westland, I mean. It sounds like she might be in a pretty bad way.’

  ‘Why me, Chef?’ asked Anna. ‘Because I’m a woman?’

  ‘I just think she might respond better to you.’ Anna had been on Fabel’s team for five years, but he still found her difficult to handle. To understand. Anna Wolff was much younger-looking than her thirty-one years; she had shortish black hair, was no bigger than one-sixty-two centimetres, and strove for a punky look with her dark mascara, firetruck-red lipstick and oversized biker’s jacket. And, despite Fabel doing his best not to notice, she was very attractive. But, most of all, Anna Wolff was by far the toughest, most aggressive member of his team. As well as the most insubordinate.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Anna with an expression of mock enlightenment. ‘Obviously I’m going to be more understanding. Being female, t
hat is. I’m sorry — I forgot that having a dick presents an insuperable obstacle to sympathy.’

  ‘I’m not being sexist, Anna. I’m being practical, that’s all.’ Fabel sounded annoyed despite himself. ‘Forget it. I’ll talk to her myself.’

  ‘I was just saying…’

  ‘Yes, Anna. You’re always “just saying”. I’ll conduct this interview.’ He looked at his watch. It was two-thirty a.m. ‘Werner, you sit in. Anna, you can go off duty.’

  ‘Oh, come on… all I said…’

  ‘I’ll have a team briefing at two p.m. tomorrow. I want to see you in my office first, Anna. Be there at one,’ said Fabel. Anna grabbed her leather jacket from the back of the chair and stormed out.

  ‘You were a bit rough on her, Jan,’ said Werner when she was gone.

  ‘She goes too far, Werner. You know that. I’m fed up with every order being challenged or commented on. And I’m sick of complaints coming in about Anna.’

  ‘We used to call it robust policing, Jan.’

  ‘Those days are gone, Werner. Long gone. This is the twenty-first century.’

  ‘You know she has a point, Jan.’ Werner looked unsure of himself. ‘I mean, about the male-female thing. You do tend to get Anna to do the female interviews.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘Just that, well, don’t take this the wrong way, but you do tend to treat women like they’re a different species.’

  ‘How can you say that, Werner? My team has always been balanced. Well, maybe not now. Not since…’

  Both men became quiet. The name Maria Klee hung unsaid in the air.

  ‘Forget it, Jan,’ said Werner a second too late. ‘I just think you should go easy on Anna.’

  Fabel’s reply was cut off by a uniformed officer conducting a girl in dark jeans and a navy-blue quilted ski jacket into the room. She clutched a woollen hat and scarf in her hands. Fabel guessed that she was not a street girl: the hookers who worked the streets around Herbertstrasse dressed in bright colours and would stand in groups, holding pastel-coloured umbrellas above their heads whether it was raining or not as a sign to potential customers that they were available for business. Their contrived cheerfulness was so that their customers felt less sordid about the trade they plied.