The Carnival Master jf-4

by Craig Russell

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Fabel reached out his hand, slowly. ‘Give me the rifle, Georg. You can explain it to me. We can talk about it. We can sort things out.’

  ‘Sort things out?’ Aichinger smiled a sad smile. It struck Fabel that there was a genuine but sorrowful gratitude in that smile. Aichinger’s posture seemed to relax. The thumb on the trigger stopped quivering. ‘I’m glad it was you, Herr Fabel. I know that when you think about what I’ve said, you’ll understand it. At least you do something. At least there’s some sense, some meaning, to each day that you wake up to. You save people. Protect them. I’m glad it was you who I could explain to. Tell everyone… tell them that I couldn’t live with being someone else. Tell them I’m sorry.’

  The sound of the shot was muffled by the flesh pressed hard against the barrel under Aichinger’s jaw. There was a plume of blood, bone fragments and brain matter from the crown of Aichinger’s head and his legs folded beneath him.

  Fabel leapt across the body and ran into the living room. Towards the tiny feet in the doorway.

  2.

  Ansgar’s meal was ready.

  Ansgar Hoeffer’s home in Cologne’s Nippes district was modest and scrupulously clean and tidy. It was also unshared, unvisited. Over the years he had gradually withdrawn to specific places: home, work, the journey in between. He often felt that his life was like a large country house in which only a few rooms were used and kept in perfect order, the rest closed and shuttered and dust-sheeted in the dark. Rooms, Ansgar knew, it was best not to visit.

  The kitchen of Ansgar’s home was, given his occupation, surprisingly small but unsurprisingly well equipped; pristine and filled with light from the large window that looked out onto his house’s slim fringe of garden and the blank side wall of his neighbour’s house.

  The oven chimed. The meat was ready.

  The strange thing was that, when at home, Ansgar preferred to cook simpler meals. Uncomplicated dishes in which the true texture and flavour of the meat were allowed honest expression. As always, Ansgar had timed everything to perfection. The asparagus simmering on the hob would be cooked to the perfect consistency. He took the small dish of apple sauce from the fridge: it would reach the perfect temperature – cool but not chill – by the time he served the meat and asparagus. He poured half a bottle of Gaffel beer into a glass, the balance of body and foamy head exactly right. He removed the metal tray from the oven and unwrapped the single fillet of meat from its foil cocoon. Leaning forward, he sniffed the delicate scent of the tender flesh wrapped in thyme, his glasses steaming opaque for a second. He placed the meat on the plate, dressed it with a fresh sprig of thyme and some of the apple sauce. He drained the asparagus and laid it neatly beside the meat.

  Ansgar took a sip of the Gaffel and contemplated his meal. The first mouthful of meat melted on his tongue. As it did so, he started to think again about that girl at work. The Ukrainian girl who worked with him in the restaurant kitchen, Ekatherina. He frowned and tried to eject her from his thoughts. Another mouthful of meat. As his teeth sank into the yielding flesh she returned again to his mind. Her pale young skin pulled taut over her voluptuous curves. Even in winter the temperature in the kitchen would soar with the humid heat from the ovens and hobs. Ekatherina’s pale skin would become flushed and moist with sweat, as if she were being slowly cooked herself. He tried to banish her and focus on his meal. But with each mouthful he thought of her buttocks. Her breasts. Her nipples. Her mouth. Most of all, her mouth. He continued eating. He frowned when he felt the tingle between his legs; the pressure against the material of his trousers. He sipped his beer and tried to compose himself. He ate some asparagus. He straightened the cruet set on the table. Another mouthful of meat. He hardened more. He felt sweaty moisture on his top lip. He thought of her pale flesh against the black T-shirts she wore. Again the swell of her breasts. Again, her mouth.

  Ansgar’s face was now sheathed in a film of sweat. He fought and fought to banish the images that surged into his mind. Those twisted, delicious images in which the chaos he had regulated from his life reigned. Those sweet, sick, perverted ideas that he had forbidden himself. And she was part of them. She was there, always, in those scenarios of tender, succulent flesh and biting teeth. He chewed the meat, unable to swallow. Ansgar Hoeffer thought of the sensual feel of the food in his mouth and again of the girl at work. He shuddered as he ejaculated into his trousers.

  3.

  It took Fabel four hours to go through the bureaucracy of death: all the form-filling and debriefings that gave Aichinger’s senseless actions some kind of official shape. As he had so many times in his career, Fabel had stood at the heart of a human tragedy, burned by its raw emotional heat, only to go on to play his part in turning it into a cold, sterile statistic. But he would never forget Aichinger’s final expression of sad gratitude. And he doubted if he would ever understand it.

  Fabel sat on the edge of the table in the Murder Commission squad room on the third floor of the Police Presidium, Hamburg’s police headquarters, drinking vending-machine coffee. Werner Meyer, Anna Wolff and Henk Hermann were all there: the team that, after fifteen years of leading, he would soon be leaving. Only Maria Klee was conspicuous by her absence. She had been on extended sick leave for the last month and a half: Fabel was by no means the only one who had been marked by the last three major investigations.

  He sighed wearily and looked at his watch. He had been forced to hang around because his boss, Criminal Director Horst van Heiden, had asked to see him once he was through with the form-filling and the internal review questions.

  ‘Well, Chef…’ Senior Criminal Commissar Werner Meyer, a thickset man in his fifties with a grizzly bristle-cut, raised his coffee cup as if it were a glass of champagne. ‘I have to admit, you like to go out in style.’

  Fabel said nothing. The images of what had waited for him in Aichinger’s living room still buzzed around his head. The emotions, too. The dread and the hope that had flashed through his mind and had tightened his chest as he had sprinted along the short apartment hall.

  ‘You did well, Chef,’ said Anna Wolff. Fabel smiled at her. Anna still looked nothing like a Criminal Commissar in the Murder Commission. She was small and pretty and more youthful-looking than her twenty-nine years; her dark hair was cut short and spiky and her full lips were deep red.

  ‘Did I?’ Fabel asked joylessly. ‘I failed to disarm a mentally fragile man before he blew his brains out.’

  ‘You lost one,’ said Werner. ‘One that was lost before you even arrived… but you saved four.’

  ‘How is Aichinger’s family?’ asked Anna.

  ‘They’re fine. Physically, at any rate. But they’re in deep shock. The shots the neighbours heard had been fired into the ceiling… and thank God that there wasn’t anyone in the apartment above at the time.’ Fabel had found Aichinger’s wife, his seven-year-old daughter, his two boys, nine and eleven. Aichinger had tied them up and gagged them with parcel tape. Fabel would never know if Aichinger had done so to keep them safe, or for execution later. ‘It’s the little girl who’s taking it the worst. Kids see the world so simply. When she woke up this morning, everything in her life was the way it should be. Tonight her world has been turned on its head.’ Fabel paused as he realised he had just echoed Aichinger’s own words. ‘How do you explain what happened to a child of that age? How is she going to live with that memory?’

  ‘The main thing is that she is going to live with it.’ Werner sipped his coffee. ‘They all are. If you hadn’t kept Aichinger talking, they might all have ended up dead.’

  Fabel shrugged. ‘I don’t know…’

  The phone ringing interrupted Fabel. Werner answered it. ‘You’re summoned to the fifth floor…’ he said with a grin as he hung up. The fifth floor of the Polizei Hamburg Police Presidium was where all the top-brass offices were, including the Presidial Department. Fabel grimaced.

  ‘I better answer the call, then…’

  4.
r />   Taras Buslenko already knew where the meet would take place, if Sasha’s intelligence was correct. But, of course, they didn’t know that: they would run him all over Kiev before revealing his final destination and he would have to jump through all their hoops.

  When the call came on his cellphone, Buslenko had been told at first to head for the Hotel Mir in Goloseevsky Prospekt and to wait in the car park. He’d been there ten minutes when a second call told him to head back to the city centre, park in the Kyivsky Passage and start walking down Khreschatyk Street.

  It was a Saturday evening: Khreschatyk Street was closed to traffic every weekend, allowing shoppers and tourists by day and clubbers by night the freedom to wander along it and appreciate its grandeur. Buslenko himself, as he made his way down the vast boulevard, couldn’t help but think how beautiful it looked still laced with glittering Christmas lights. There had been a fresh but light fall of snow and the wide thoroughfare and the trees that lined it looked sugar-dusted in the crisp winter night. As he had been clearly instructed, Buslenko walked in the opposite direction from Independence Square. He had been there in November and December 2003. He had thrilled then at the sight of the orange banners, the air electric with the promise of change. He had felt part of something huge. Unstoppable. However, Buslenko had not been there to lend support: he had been in charge of a detachment of security troops ordered to the square, supposedly to prevent bloodshed between the ‘Blue’ supporters of Yanukovych and the ‘Orange’ revolutionaries supporting Yuschenko. The truth was more likely that they had been sent as a show of regime strength, but the police and intelligence chiefs had recognised a true turning of the tide and many within the security services, like Buslenko, were sympathetic to the Revolution. Buslenko’s detachment had been stood down.

  Buslenko made sure he walked past the Celestia nightclub without a glance. Maybe Sasha really had got it wrong. Or maybe the people he was supposed to be meeting were just being over-cautious.

  He had almost reached the Central Universal Mall when his phone rang again. This time he was instructed to wait at the bar of the Celestia nightclub. Buslenko felt relieved. He had started to worry that he might be redirected to some more remote part of Kiev. The Celestia was good. Right in the heart of the city. More public. More difficult if you wanted to kill someone and dispose of a body.

  The Celestia was one of the glittering symbols of the new Ukraine’s aspirations: a glitzy place in Kiev city centre at the Independence Square end of Khreschatyk Street. Buslenko, despite his background, remained a solid supporter of Ukraine’s new path: he had always been a patriot and now he saw the potential for the future that his country deserved. His heart had been with the Orange Revolution but places like the Celestia made him feel uncomfortable: they sought to reflect Western affluence and glamour, but something about them struck Buslenko as sham and borrowed, like seeing a ruddy-cheeked peasant girl in an over-glittery cocktail dress and inexpertly applied make-up.

  There were two black-suited doormen outside the club. One was bull-necked and mutely massive; the second was smaller, leaner and friendlier, smiling at Buslenko as he held the door open. As he had been trained to do in every situation, Buslenko automatically assessed the risk the doormen presented. In a time too brief to be measured, he identified the smaller man as the main danger: he moved quickly and easily and hid whatever he was thinking behind a smiling mask. Buslenko recognised that the smaller man, unlike the cumbersome bodybuilder, would be capable of fast and lethal violence. A killer. Probably with a Spetsnaz background.

  It was like looking in a mirror.

  Buslenko made his way to the bar and ordered an Obolon beer. He was told by the unsmiling barman that the Celestia didn’t have Obolon, or any other Ukrainian beer. Buslenko ordered an overpriced German Pils. The Celestia was busy but not crowded; populated with young, affluent customers who glistened under a sheen of Gucci and Armani. The bar was a long, sweeping arc of glittering black granite above rich walnut. The walls were illuminated by uplighters that projected sinuous, mildly erotic shapes onto their velvety deep red surfaces. To Buslenko, the Celestia looked like some contemporary designer’s concept for Hell.

  The best possible place, he thought, to encounter the Devil.

  Buslenko became aware of someone at his side. He turned to see a young woman. She was tall and slender, with short blonde hair; her face was wide with high Slavic cheekbones, a broad pale brow and eyes that were a bright, glittering blue. It was a face that was truly beautiful and could not have come from anywhere except Ukraine.

  ‘Hello, sir,’ said the Ukrainian Beauty, with a perfect porcelain smile. ‘You are expected. I wonder if you would follow me. Your party has reserved a private room.’ She placed Buslenko’s beer on a tray and turned from the bar with a glance over her shoulder to ensure that he followed her. Before he did, Buslenko scanned the bar around him as if to satisfy himself that he was not being watched.

  The Ukrainian Beauty led him through a double doorway into a dark tunnel of a hallway, walled with black glass and illuminated by strips of tiny, bright spotlights that repeated themselves infinitely on the reflective obsidian. She knocked at a door before holding it wide for Buslenko to enter the large, plush private entertaining room. Four men were seated around the low table on an expensive L-shaped sofa. There were vodka glasses and a bottle on the table, along with a blue-covered file. The men stood up as Buslenko entered. Like the doorman, they had special forces written all over them and they all looked to be in their forties, which meant that they probably had real combat experience. Buslenko registered the dark glass wall behind them, which obviously divided this from the next entertainment suite. The room beyond was in darkness and the connecting door was closed, but some vague, deep instinct told Buslenko that it was not empty.

  The man who had been sitting at the centre had prematurely white hair that had been trimmed to a coarse stubble on his scalp. A scar reached down out of the bristle, across his broad brow and down to the outside corner of his right eyebrow. Buslenko had done his usual split-second survey of the room and had already guessed the seniority of the scarred man from the body language of the others. But it wasn’t Buslenko’s instinct or training that told him that he was looking at a mean, dangerous son of a bitch. He had recognised the Russian as soon as he had entered the room and his chest had tightened. Kotkin. What was Dmitry Kotkin doing here? He was too senior in the organisation to be a recruiting sergeant. Buslenko also didn’t need to turn around to know that there was now a fifth man behind him, at the door. But he sensed there was someone else. Someone who lay beyond the reach of Buslenko’s skills; someone who waited, silent and unseen, behind the dark glass wall in the room beyond.

  The Ukrainian Beauty put Buslenko’s beer down on the table and left the room. He did not turn as he heard the door click shut behind him. The presence of the fifth man was academic: Buslenko was good and was perfectly capable of taking on four or five men in the right situation. But this was not the right situation and these were not the right men: they all had a similar background to Buslenko and, he guessed, had all killed before, more than once. At best Buslenko could take one or two with him. But he knew that if death were to come, it would come from behind and the man at the door.

  ‘You’re Rudenko?’ Kotkin spoke in Russian. Buslenko nodded.

  ‘Sit down,’ Kotkin said and sat down himself. The other three stayed on their feet. The scarred Russian opened the file. ‘You have a very impressive record. Exactly what we are looking for. Or so it would seem. But what I want to know is why you came looking for us?’

  ‘I didn’t. You contacted me.’ Buslenko answered in Russian. He thought about taking a nonchalant slug from his beer bottle, but was afraid that his hand would shake. Not fear. Adrenalin.

  Kotkin raised his eyebrows and wrinkled the scar unpleasantly. ‘You went around asking questions. More than that, you knew the right questions to ask in the right places. That means only one of two things: you were adv
ertising yourself or…’

  Buslenko laughed and shook his head. ‘I’m not a cop, if that’s what you were going to say. Listen, it’s as simple as this. Money. I want to make money. A lot of it. And I want to work abroad. You do want people to work abroad, don’t you?’

  ‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.’ The scar-headed Russian nodded to the others, two of whom approached Buslenko and gestured for him to stand up and raise his arms. One frisked him manually while the other scanned him for a wire with a hand-held electronic wand. Buslenko smiled. When they had satisfied themselves that Buslenko was clean, they sat down again.