The Valkyrie Song

by Craig Russell

  He feigned surprise when she stepped out in front of him.

  ‘Hello,’ she said. Werner heard tension, almost nervousness, in her voice. ‘Are you looking for fun?’ The woman was tall, blonde and heavily made up. At first Werner thought she was in her early thirties, but when he took a step closer he could see that the make-up was thick to hide skin that had seen a lot of summers.

  ‘That depends,’ he said. ‘How much?’

  ‘I’m not greedy,’ she said. ‘I’m not supposed to be working here. I’ll make it cheap, but we have to do it in here, behind the tree.’ She began walking backwards into the shadows, crimson lips smiling.

  ‘Okay …’ Werner followed her without looking up or down the street, keeping her eyes held with his, in case she spotted Anna moving in.

  ‘How much?’ he asked again, making it look as if he were reaching for his wallet while using both hands to start easing his automatic from his coat pocket.

  ‘We’ll talk about that later,’ she said and held out her hand. ‘Come on.’

  ‘I thought you girls always like your money up front,’ said Werner. This was it.

  She reached inside her coat.

  Werner drew his automatic and aimed at her face. ‘Polizei Hamburg! Put both hands on your head! Do it. Now!’

  He was aware of Anna moving in behind the prostitute. He didn’t know how, but she had managed to manoeuvre around to the back of the scruffy triangle of waste ground. The hooker stared at Werner, confused. Anna grabbed her by the coat collar.

  ‘On your knees. Now!’

  The woman complied and Anna snapped a set of cuffs onto one wrist, pulled it down behind her back, then the other. Werner radioed in for a custody vehicle.

  Further down Silbersackstrasse a group of young men came out of a bar. They were heading towards Hans-Albers-Platz, but the activity on the waste ground caught the eye of one, who called the others. The knot of men moved up the street, craning their necks to see what was going on.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ said one, with slurred suspicion as they drew near. ‘What the fuck y’doin’ to her?’

  Anna held up her bronze oval Criminal Service disc. ‘Police. Nothing for you to worry yourself about.’

  ‘What the fuck’s going on?’ asked one of his friends. ‘What the fuck’s she done?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said pleadingly, ‘I’ve done nothing. I’m just a working girl and they’ve arrested me.’

  ‘That’s not right,’ said the first drunk, shaking his head sombrely. ‘That’s just not fuckin’ right.’

  ‘Yeah – fucking pigs,’ one of his friends contributed.

  ‘Okay – take it easy,’ said Werner. He moved the handcuffed woman to place himself between her and the group of men, keeping hold of her elbow. He did a quick head count. Five. They were drunk and slurry but their casual clothes looked expensive. Rich boys out slumming it in St Pauli. Nevertheless, Werner wondered how long it would take for the uniformed unit to arrive. ‘This isn’t any of your concern.’

  ‘It’s just not fuckin’ right,’ repeated the other. They moved forward as a group.

  ‘Please don’t cause any trouble.’ Anna took a step towards them, placing herself in their way.

  ‘Or fuckin’ what?’ The first man pushed his sneering face into hers.

  ‘Or this,’ she said calmly. The drunk doubled up like a jackknife and keeled over onto the cobbles, clutching the testicles Anna had rammed her knee into. She snapped her service automatic out at arm’s length and scanned the group of youths with it, but at groin height.

  ‘Next one who gives me trouble gets their dick blown off,’ she said, smiling. ‘And trust me, I’m an expert shot, no matter how fucking small the target.’

  They backed away, leaving their companion to moan and roll around on the slushy cobbles. At that moment, a silver and blue Polizei Hamburg personnel carrier pulled up and three uniformed officers jumped out. They took the handcuffed prostitute and placed her in the back.

  ‘What’s the story here?’ the uniformed commissar asked, pointing to the youth dragging himself to his feet, still clutching his bruised groin.

  ‘Nothing to report,’ said Werner. ‘Can you take her directly to the Presidium?’

  ‘All right. You sure he’s okay?’

  ‘I think his pride’s been hurt,’ said Anna and smiled sweetly at Werner. ‘I’ll get the car.’

  2.

  Sylvie Achtenhagen took a break from the chaos of press cuttings and files that seemed to have exploded across the polished wood floor of her living room. She went to the French window and opened it, stepping out onto the balcony. The night air was ice-knife sharp and she welcomed its bite: she had been bent over the files for an hour and a half and her brain felt fogged and slow. Sylvie’s apartment was on the third floor of a block on Edgar-Ross-Strasse in Hamburg-Eppendorf. It was elegant and spacious, with its own balcony and set in a pastel-coloured apartment building with a fancy Art Deco façade. She had moved into the apartment when her career – and her income – had started to kick off seriously. She had originally had her eye on one of the Jugendstil villas on Nissenstrasse, one street back. But they had been too expensive. And they would stay too expensive if she didn’t deliver the goods for the station soon.

  HanSat TV was jointly owned by the NeuHansa Group and Andreas Knabbe, who ran the station. Knabbe was a thirty-year-old who looked about twelve and had spent so much time in the US that he seemed more American than German; his management style was definitely more American than German. Knabbe had the habit of calling all his staff by their first names and frequently used the informal du form of address, even to the older and more respected members of staff. It was all meant to be shirtsleeves-informal and friendly and family atmosphere and crap like that. Truth was, though, that if Knabbe thought you weren’t worth your salary, or if you didn’t fit with his business model, then you were history. And Knabbe had often talked about Sylvie’s success with the Angel case back in the nineties: increasingly he talked about her career in the past tense.

  Sylvie began to feel at the mercy of events: that she was just being pulled along by the forces around her, just like everybody else. That was the problem. She had become reactive. Lazy. Back then, she hadn’t waited for things to happen: she’d made them happen.

  Sylvie hugged herself against the cold, pulling her thick woollen cardigan tight around her, and went back into her living room, closing the windows against the chill night. She poured herself another glass of red wine and sat cross-legged on the floor, letting her eyes range over the scattered material around her. Somewhere in there was a starting place. Somewhere there was some detail, some forgotten remark or photograph or piece of information that would point her in the direction of this killer. The Angel killings in St Pauli had launched her career: she had put so much into the case and had reaped the rewards. If she wasn’t first to deliver the scoop on these latest killings, they could equally easily end her career.

  She sipped again at her wine. She could be pretty certain that she would get no help from that pompous arse Fabel. The Polizei Hamburg were no great fans of her after her groundbreaking documentary on the case ten years ago. Cops have long memories. And anyway, there was something about Fabel she disliked intensely, and she got the idea that the feeling was mutual.

  Sylvie knew that there was only one way forward for her: she had to find out who murdered Jake Westland before the police did. She didn’t have their resources, but she also didn’t work under the same kind of restrictions they did. And, she knew, she was a whole lot smarter. But her main advantage was that she was pretty sure the cops were looking in the wrong direction. They were probably trying to establish links between the current murders and the Angel killings ten years ago.

  And this wasn’t the Angel. These latest killings were the work of a copycat. Sylvie just knew it.

  3.

  Armin Lensch wasn’t sure what hurt most: his bruised testicles or the laughing and taunti
ng from his mates. He had staggered after them as they had made their way to a pub near Hans-Albers-Platz, they had found a table and Armin had squeezed into the corner, sipping tentatively at his beer, hoping the nausea would subside.

  ‘Police brutality – that’s what it was. Police brutality …’ he said in earnest and was greeted with howls of laughter.

  ‘No, it wasn’t,’ said Karl, leaning in close. ‘That wasn’t police brutality – that was you having your ass kicked by a girl. Did you see the fucking size of her? You got your ass kicked by a little girl.’

  ‘She caught me unawares,’ muttered Armin.

  ‘No, she didn’t, she caught you in the balls!’ More laughter.

  ‘Fuck you,’ said Armin, shoving past them and wincing at the surge of pain in his groin. ‘Fuck the lot of you.’

  He staggered out into the cold night air. The nausea followed him out of the pub and collided with him. He voided his gut onto the pavement. A couple of passers-by cursed at him.

  ‘Fuck the lot of you,’ he said again, under his breath. He would make the bastards pay. Who did they think they were? Armin and his friends all worked in the Neustadt-Nord part of Hamburg. They all worked there but Armin was the star. He was the one who was going to the top. And he would get all the help he needed: now that he had found out what he had found out. He started to walk back in the direction of the Spielbudenplatz and Reeperbahn. He would get a taxi there. He thought about the cop who had kneed him in the groin. He wasn’t going to let her get away with that. Here, now, he was just like everybody else with too much drink in them. But outside the Kiez, in his normal life, he was somebody. He was connected. He would make the bitch pay. But the thought of her made him want to cry: to be beaten up by a fucking woman. For Armin, women were good for only one thing. He had seen them at work. Getting promotions over him. He knew how they managed that, the whores. He had had a lot of girlfriends, but nothing that had lasted too long. Normally they would get out of line and Armin would give them a slap and they’d get all hysterical on him. Fuck them. Fuck them all.

  Armin walked on, his internal rage and the ache from his groin making him blind to all around him. He stopped. Where the fuck was he? He had thought he knew his way around the Kiez well enough, but he must have taken a wrong turning. He took a moment to reorient himself and took the next right. He saw the Reeperbahn ahead of him but he was further up than Spielbudenplatz. Still, it wouldn’t be difficult to find a taxi. At that moment he caught sight of a beige Mercedes and his hand went up. An automatic reaction: in Germany, all taxis were beige; all beige cars were taxis. He eased himself with a moan into the back seat.

  ‘Eppendorf …’ he said between his teeth.

  ‘Are you okay?’ asked the driver. ‘You don’t look well.’

  Fucking great, thought Armin. A female taxi driver.

  ‘Just take me to Eppendorf,’ he said. The woman driver shrugged, started the car and took a left into the Reeperbahn.

  It was only after she took the wrong turning at the end of the Reeperbahn and he realised that they were down by the river that Armin noticed that there was no meter in the front of the taxi; nor was there a certificate on display with the driver’s name, photograph and City of Hamburg licence.

  By which time it was too late.

  4.

  Fabel felt exhausted. It had been a much more gruelling experience than he had expected. Susanne had come along too and he had been grateful for her presence.

  ‘That was very worthwhile,’ said a tall, thin woman of about fifty as she approached Fabel. She had a name badge that informed him she was Hille Deicher, representing Muliebritas. ‘I hope you can take something useful away from our workshop.’

  Fabel smiled. He could never understand why business people, self-help gurus and others insisted on calling conferences ‘workshops’. No one made anything. None of the people who attended these things worked with their hands.

  ‘It was interesting,’ said Fabel. ‘But I hope I made it clear that the Polizei Hamburg needs no prompting to deal with the issue of domestic violence, or violence against women in general. We are very …’ He struggled for the word.

  ‘Proactive,’ interjected Susanne helpfully.

  ‘Quite,’ said Fabel. ‘We’ve been running an anti-violence programme for several years now. We do, I assure you, have a zero-tolerance attitude when it comes to violence against women or children. And we have one of the most successful records in Europe in dealing with the issue. But I have to say that we are committed to protecting all of Hamburg’s citizens, regardless of gender. Or ethnicity.’

  ‘I’m afraid that crime isn’t as gender-blind,’ said Deicher. ‘You said yourself in your presentation that the vast majority of murders are men killing women, and the vast majority of those are within the domestic environment. Add to that the countless assaults on women in their own homes.’

  ‘All that is true.’ Fabel shot a pleading glance at Susanne. ‘And we have, as I said, made it a priority area.’

  ‘Maybe that’s why this woman in St Pauli is committing these murders.’ Deicher smiled without warmth. ‘Maybe she’s motivated to redress the balance of male-on-female violence. After all, I can’t think of a better place for her to go about it. It is a farce that there is a street in Hamburg to which women are forbidden entry.’

  ‘Listen, Frau Deicher,’ Fabel felt himself suddenly angry. ‘It isn’t the police or the state that—’

  ‘What does Muliebritas mean?’ Susanne interrupted Fabel, directing her question, and her smile, at Deicher.

  ‘It is the Latin form of “muliebrity”. You know, the quality of being female. It is the name of the magazine I work for. And the charity we support.’ She looked pointedly back at Fabel. ‘We organise emergency accommodation for women subject to domestic violence.’

  ‘That’s an interesting name,’ said Susanne, still smiling. ‘Is that where the Spanish mujer comes from?’

  Somehow, Susanne managed to steer the conversation into calmer waters and, after a while, Deicher drifted off to mingle with other delegates.

  ‘Thanks for that,’ said Fabel when Deicher was gone. ‘That woman was really beginning to wind me up. I don’t know why they insisted on sending me to this.’

  ‘Because you’re the head of Hamburg’s Murder Commission, and, like it or not, what Frau Deicher was saying is true: we still live in a society where women are victimised by violence. Anyway, I thought you did really well.’ Susanne smiled and straightened his tie, as if she were about to send him off to school. ‘Especially because women get you all flustered.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Fabel indignantly.

  ‘Well, you do. It’s pretty clear you think we’re from a completely different planet. But don’t worry about it, most men are the same.’

  Fabel was about to respond when his cellphone buzzed. He checked the call screener. It was the Murder Commission.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said with a shrug as he lifted the phone to his ear. ‘Probably another murder.’

  ‘If it is,’ said Susanne, ‘even with all of these Angel killings at the moment, I’ll bet the victim is female …’

  5.

  Fabel met Anna and Werner in the hallway outside the interview room. Both officers wore an expression that was less than triumphant.

  ‘Tell me this is our killer …’ said Fabel.

  ‘She looked good for it, Jan,’ said Werner. ‘She looked really good. She lured me onto waste ground and out of sight. She didn’t seem to know the drill for a hooker and when she reached inside her coat we took her down.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘Her name is Viola Dahlke,’ explained Anna. ‘She’s forty-five and has no previous convictions. She’s a housewife from Billstedt.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean she’s not our killer. Did you get a knife?’

  ‘No,’ said Anna. ‘When she reached inside her coat Werner and I both thought that she was going for a knife, but it turned out to be a packet of
condoms.’

  ‘Condoms?’

  ‘Nothing else,’ said Anna. ‘Don’t ask me what a forty-five-year-old housewife from Billstedt was doing in the red-light district offering to ring Werner’s bell.’

  ‘All right,’ said Fabel, ‘I won’t. I’ll go and ask her myself …’

  Arrest is a deprivation of choice. You are removed to a place not of your choosing and your freedom to leave that place is taken from you. Career criminals accept arrest as a natural element of their lives, even the ones who fight and struggle every centimetre to the cells. For everyone else, the experience of arrest is traumatic. At the very least surreal.

  Fabel could tell at first glance that Viola Dahlke had never been in custody before. There was a good chance she’d never even set foot inside a police station before, far less the Police Presidium. Dahlke looked startled, confused. Afraid. Her face was pale behind her overdone make-up and the stark lighting of the interview room seemed to jaundice her pallor and deepen the shadows under her cheekbones. Her hair was the dull putty-blonde that many North German women dyed their hair when it started to lose its natural colour and pulled up into a ponytail. The make-up and the hairstyle looked all wrong on her, like an outfit that didn’t fit right.

  ‘Frau Dahlke, I take it it has been explained to you that under the terms of Article One-Three-Six of the Criminal Procedure Code you have the right to remain silent. You also have the right to a legal representative. Do you understand these rights?’

  Viola Dahlke nodded. She looked as if she was carrying the world on her shoulders and was resigned to the burden. ‘I don’t want a lawyer. I want to go home. I’m sorry. If I’ve broken the law I’ll pay the fine. I didn’t mean any harm. I’m not really … I’m not really one of those women.’

  ‘Frau Dahlke, I don’t think you understand. We’re not interested in whether you are a prostitute, full-time, part-time or not at all. I am Principal Detective Chief Commissar Fabel of the Murder Commission. The officers who arrested you were murder detectives.’