The Valkyrie Song

by Craig Russell

  ‘God, don’t get him started,’ Susanne said to Vestergaard. ‘Everything turns into a bloody history lesson. I know what you mean, Karin. I’m from the south. Bavaria. When I first came to Hamburg I felt it was very Scandinavian. Although they’re always banging on here about how English they all are. By the way, do you know what Jan’s nickname is?’

  ‘Oh, not that old chestnut,’ said Fabel. ‘Some people call me der Englishe Kommissar, because I’m half-British. Scottish, actually.’

  Susanne laughed. ‘No, not that. I bet you don’t even know this one: Lord Gentleman.’

  ‘Who calls me that?’ Fabel looked accusingly at Susanne.

  ‘See?’ she said to Vestergaard. ‘Now he’s all offended. Do you know he buys all his stuff in the English shops in Hamburg? I used to think Harris Tweed was a romantic novelist until I met this one.’

  Vestergaard laughed. ‘Actually, it’s funny,’ she said to Fabel, ‘when I first met you I thought you looked like a Dane. But so do a lot of people here.’

  ‘Aha.’ Fabel pointed his fork in her direction. ‘You’ve got it all wrong. I get my blond hair from the Scottish side of the family.’

  ‘I thought they were all red-haired with big bushy beards and drunk half the time.’

  ‘That’s only the women,’ said Fabel.

  ‘I’ll tell your mother you said that …’ Susanne smiled.

  ‘How did you two get together?’ asked Vestergaard. ‘If you don’t mind me asking. Was it through work?’

  ‘We worked together on a case about four years ago. He pursued me more relentlessly than he did the killer.’

  ‘As I remember, you didn’t try very hard to escape.’ Fabel grinned and took a sip of his wine.

  ‘Doesn’t work get in the way? I mean, having a personal and a professional relationship?’ asked Vestergaard.

  ‘We try not to let it,’ said Fabel. ‘We used to have this rule that we didn’t talk shop outside work. We still pretty much keep to that. But, of course, there are times when you can’t help it. The other thing is that Susanne is only involved in a small percentage of the cases I investigate. Ones like this killer we’ve got on the loose in St Pauli.’

  ‘I think that’s what went wrong with Jens and me.’ Vestergaard stared blankly at the table as she spoke.

  ‘You and Jespersen?’ Fabel put his wine glass down. ‘You were involved? Oh God, I’m sorry. I had no idea.’

  She smiled weakly. ‘We split up about four years ago. Like I said, Jens found it difficult to accept that my career had overtaken his. Everyone knows that Denmark is a very liberal country. Along with Sweden and Finland we score the highest in the world for gender equality. But statistics don’t take the Danish character into account. Jens was a Jutlander and a very old-fashioned Dane. Sometimes I think it just stung too much that I was a woman promoted over him.’

  ‘Didn’t that make working together awkward?’ asked Susanne. ‘I mean after the split?’

  ‘We were in separate divisions for a while. It was only last year that we started working together again. And yes, it was difficult. But that had more to do with the way Jens went about his job and his general attitude to authority.’

  ‘Jespersen seems to have been a little like Maria Klee,’ Fabel explained to Susanne.

  ‘Maria Klee?’ Vestergaard raised her eyebrows.

  ‘The officer I told you about,’ said Fabel. ‘The one who had a complete breakdown after going off on a personal crusade.’

  There was a silence for a moment, only broken when the waiter arrived with their orders.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Vestergaard. ‘I’ve killed the mood somewhat.’ She raised her glass and forced a smile. ‘No more shop talk. Agreed?’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Susanne.

  The conversation slowly found its way back to shallower waters and the inconsequentialities that people who don’t know each other that well tend to discuss. But, as they chatted, Fabel watched Karin Vestergaard. He thought back to the anger she had shown when she saw Jespersen’s body at the mortuary. Anger directed at her dead colleague. Her dead ex-lover. He was beginning to understand the Danish detective a little better. So why did it give him a bad feeling?

  9.

  There were things Fabel enjoyed about his job. And there were things he hated.

  Leading a Murder Commission was a management task, bureaucratic and demanding a certain meticulousness: Fabel was not a natural bureaucrat nor naturally meticulous, or at least not when it came to paperwork. He had started the day off by getting Werner into his office. Werner’s heavy build and tough-looking appearance seemed at odds with what Fabel often thought of as a watchmaker’s mind within. Over the years, Fabel had learned to rely on Werner’s attention to detail and whenever he was thinking about allocating tasks to the team he called on his deputy’s counsel. Fabel had asked for, and got, extra resources to investigate the St Pauli killings while running an inquiry into Jespersen’s death. Technically, Fabel was supposed to manage the inquiries in parallel: assigning a team to run each while he directed them remotely. Oversight or overview or whatever the hell they liked to call it. Fabel didn’t like working that way. He believed a senior investigating officer should do just that: investigate. But the Polizei Hamburg, as Sylvie Achtenhagen was wont to point out any time someone aimed a TV camera at her, had screwed up the original Angel investigation. It was his job to make sure that there was a cross on every ‘t’; a dot above every ‘i’.

  ‘Put me and Anna on the St Pauli case,’ said Werner, taking clumsy care not to use the word ‘Angel’ and spark his boss off. Fabel was famous for despising the cartoon-character tags that the media liked to attach to multiple killers. ‘And team up Dirk Hechtner and Henk Hermann on this Danish thing. At least we’ve got enough other bodies drafted in. For once we seem covered.’

  ‘It’s amazing what the wrong kind of publicity can do for you,’ added Fabel grimly.

  ‘Cynicism doesn’t suit you, Chef,’ said Werner. ‘We’ve all come to love you for your shining wit and cheery disposition.’

  ‘Speaking of your overwhelming respect for me, do I have a nickname around here?’ asked Fabel.

  Werner shrugged.

  ‘Do you know,’ said Fabel, ‘that some people have apparently been calling me “Lord Gentleman”? Making a big joke about me being half-British?’

  ‘Probably more to do with your wardrobe,’ said Werner, who moved on quickly. ‘News to me.’

  By the time Werner had left they had worked out a comprehensive investigative plan for both inquiries. The St Pauli inquiry was already well under way, but the Jespersen case was still amorphous: ideas and conjecture rather than any kind of evidence. Another blank page in Fabel’s sketchbook.

  On the St Pauli killings, Fabel had decided he would look into Jake Westland. The file told Fabel that Westland was British, born 1953, presumably illegitimately because he had been put up for adoption immediately after his birth, and had been brought up by middle-class adoptive parents in Hampshire. Studied music in London; first band formed 1972, second ’78, went solo 1981. Two gold discs, one platinum. Married three times. Four children by two of those marriages.

  Fabel knew he needed to get beyond the naked facts. But the last thing he needed right now was to have to make a trip to England to talk to Westland’s family and friends. Hopefully, if she was not too distressed, he would get a chance to talk to the pop singer’s wife in a few days when she came over to claim the body.

  In addition to the formally acquired information in the file, Fabel did an Internet search for Westland on his office computer. Putting together the pieces, Fabel started to build a picture of a man he did not like. Westland was, by all accounts, arrogant, opinionated and egocentric. No surprises there: to be a successful performer you needed an ego that could fill a stadium. But the truth was that Westland was no longer filling stadiums. His promoters had scaled down the size of the venues he played in. A strategy which ensured that he could still cla
im the odd ticket sell-out. With the information Fabel found, he could mentally plot a bell curve of fame for the British singer, reaching its peak in the mid 1980s. After that, his popularity, if not his wealth, had gone into rapid decline. Jake Westland was, clearly, fast becoming yesterday’s man. Until he left the stage permanently and spectacularly in a Kiez back alley, Westland had been struggling to make any headlines. There had been an abortive attempt at acting, but the press had been derisive. The only time he returned to public attention was when his sordid sex life excited the British tabloids. His decreasing publicity clout did not, however, prevent him from pontificating on a range of social issues to anyone who would listen.

  Fabel scanned through the background material that Anna had gathered on the event at the Sporthalle. The charity benefiting from the concert was called the Sabine Charity: Declaring War on War Rape. Looking through Anna’s report, Fabel saw that the charity was devoted to assisting the victims of military or genocidal rape from Bosnia to Rwanda. The concert organiser was a woman called Petra Meissner. The name rang a bell with Fabel. He flicked back through his Internet search history and found a photograph of Westland with Petra Meissner which had appeared in one of the British tabloids. Meissner was an attractive woman in her mid forties, with dark hair cut short. The photograph was innocent enough – Westland and Meissner were together to attend an event in aid of Meissner’s charity in Berlin – but the English headline demanded Who’s the HUN-ney, Jake? And, of course, the text went on to make much of the fact that Westland’s escort was a German woman; lots of tasteless jokes about the war. The usual brainless stuff. Fabel loved all things British: except their press. And the fact that, as a nation, the British seemed permanently stuck in the past.

  There was little else of note about Westland that Fabel could see, other than the Englishman’s obvious business acumen. He might have been a mediocre singer and an even worse actor, but he had been an astute investor. Westland’s back catalogue of music and his more recent CDs assured him a reasonable income from his established fan base, but the real income had come from his portfolio of investments. And, from what Fabel read, it appeared that it wasn’t his accountants or advisers who had guided this success but Westland himself, who seemed to have an eye for the up-and-coming business concept or the unusual opportunity that other investors would be wary of.

  It had been snowing again and, although the roads were clear, the pavements around the city were white-blanketed. Fabel drove through the city and through the Elbe tunnel into Hamburg-Harburg.

  The Sabine Charity had its offices in an older building on the corner of two busy Harburg streets. There was a certain art-deco grandness about the building but this had been diminished by copious graffiti on the walls. The charity’s offices comprised a handful of rooms on the ground floor. Fabel had phoned ahead to make an appointment, but when he walked into the offices he could find no defined reception area. For some reason he had expected this informality. There were four women and two men working at various desks, most of whom were engaged in phone conversations when Fabel entered. A tall, handsome woman with short dark hair, whom he recognised from her photographs as Petra Meissner, stood up and came over to him.

  ‘I got your message, Herr Chief Commissar.’ She extended her hand and smiled. Without warmth, thought Fabel. ‘It’s a bit chaotic here. There’s a café around the corner – would you mind?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Fabel, and stood aside to allow her to show him the way.

  * * *

  ‘I take it this is about Jake’s death,’ said Meissner. ‘I’ve been expecting somebody to get in touch. Especially after that awful woman from the television was here.’

  ‘Let me guess. Sylvie Achtenhagen?’

  ‘Your paths have crossed?’

  ‘You could say that. Frau Achtenhagen can be persistent.’

  ‘Well, her persistence did her no good with me.’ The hardening of Meissner’s expression suggested to Fabel that she was not a woman to cross. ‘I sent her packing. The whole thing with the way Jake died … it’s tragic. And sordid. I’m afraid the charity can do without that kind of publicity.’

  ‘I’m sure his wife and children could do without it, too.’

  ‘Of course.’ Meissner stirred her latte macchiato and licked the froth from her spoon.

  ‘How well did you know Herr Westland?’

  Meissner gave a cynical laugh. ‘I didn’t think you really asked questions like that. I thought that was only in the movies. If you are trying to ask me if I was having or ever had an intimate relationship with Jake, then why don’t you just ask me outright?’

  ‘Okay. Did you?’

  ‘No. Despite what the gutter press in Britain alleged. Jake wasn’t interested in me that way. And I can assure you that Jake Westland was definitely not my type. I take it you have found out a bit about him?’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘Then you’ll know that most people thought he was a phoney, arrogant asshole. Well, most people were right. But I’ll tell you this: he was totally committed to the Sabine Charity. There was nothing phoney about that.’

  ‘So why your charity in particular?’

  ‘That I don’t know. And I didn’t ask. The Sabine Charity isn’t like others. We’re not involved in famine relief, or disaster support in the conventional sense. These are issues that people can talk about; feel good about supporting. There’s something about the work we do, the things we talk about, that takes people to a place they don’t want to go. But some people have a good reason to go there. I’m sure there was a very good reason for Jake to be so committed to the Sabine Charity. Maybe it was just genuine outrage, maybe he encountered a victim of war rape. Whatever the reason, it was not something I felt I could question. I was grateful for the support. Jake Westland was as high-profile as we’ve managed so far.’

  ‘Did you see him on the night of the charity concert?’

  ‘Of course. We had a pre-event reception with a few city-state and national political types. The federal government sent the Minister for Women and the Hamburg Senate sent Mieke Brün, the Senator for City Development and Environment. Schleswig-Holstein sent along a couple of representatives too. And Gina Brønsted, who’s running for Principal Mayor – she was there as well. To be honest, she rather monopolised Jake. Must have been a fan.’

  ‘That was it?’

  ‘Unfortunately, yes. We had planned an informal after-concert party, but Jake said he was too tired and not feeling too well. He just wanted to get back to his hotel and sleep. As it turned out, that was clearly a lot of crap. We went ahead with the party anyway. It worked out okay, actually. Without the star to distract them, I was able to collar a few of the politicians. Not Brønsted, though. She left straight after the concert too.’

  ‘Okay …’ Fabel paused for a moment. ‘What is it your charity does?’ asked Fabel. ‘I mean, I know what it’s about, but what specifically does it do?’

  ‘We have three goals. Our first priority is to identify conflicts and regions where rape is currently being used systematically as a weapon of war. We then campaign for international action to protect women in those zones. We lobby politicians here in Germany and throughout the EU. Sometimes beyond. And, where possible, we put people on the ground in the trouble spots.’

  ‘Isn’t that risky?’

  ‘It can be. Very. But we have a team of volunteers, doctors, nurses and psychologists who are very committed to the task. Herr Fabel, when you encounter the victims of war rape, you never forget it. You become very motivated. Anyway, our second objective is to raise awareness of war rape as a crime against humanity generally, and historically. Thirdly, we provide evidence to back up the arrest and prosecution of commanders and individual soldiers involved in rape campaigns. We have to be very careful with this, because, as I said, we often have people on the ground in these zones and we don’t want to put them in added danger. The military and paramilitary groups behind these atrocities wouldn’t think twice
about shooting a potential future witness against them. But we have contributed to successful prosecutions against war rapists in Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda.’

  ‘And you get all your support from here, in Germany?’

  ‘We are an international charity, with registered offices in a number of EU nations, but yes, we are headquartered here and our funds come predominantly from German donations. A disproportionate amount, given its economic woes, comes from the former East Germany. That makes sense, when you think about it.’

  ‘I suppose it does,’ said Fabel. At the end of the Second World War more than a million, maybe as many as two million East German women had been raped by the invading Soviet troops, many of them repeatedly. In some towns and villages, every female between the ages of ten and eighty had been raped, often in front of their families. Since the Wall had come down, it had become well known that the Soviet War Memorial in East Berlin had been known for decades as “The Tomb of the Unknown Rapist”.

  ‘It’s possible to argue that the former East Germany was a child of rape,’ said Meissner. ‘While it existed, the GDR was a nation haunted by the violation of its women. I know what I am talking about: I was born in Dresden. Both my mother and grandmother were victims. My mother was twelve at the time. So there you have it, Herr Fabel – my reason for fighting against war rape.’

  ‘I see.’ There was an awkward silence. Fabel found he didn’t know what to say to Meissner about her violated mother and grandmother, just as he would have struggled to respond to Jespersen if they had met and he had told Fabel first-hand about the fate of his father and grandfather. ‘Have you ever heard of a Bosnian called Vujaić?’ Fabel said eventually and scrabbled in his pocket for his notebook to check the first name.

  ‘Goran Vujaić?’ Meissner beat him to it. ‘Of course I have. He was lucky to slime his way out of prosecution. The dodgiest defence of alibi I’ve ever come across. Vujaić was a particularly sadistic son of a bitch. And son of a bitch is right: he led a paramilitary gang who called themselves Psoglav. It means “Doghead” in Serbian, but it’s got some deep cultural meaning amongst Bosnian Serbs, apparently. In any different context, in a peacetime European city, the crimes he committed would have him condemned as a sex criminal and paedophile. But for some reason, in a war situation, some men behave in a way they maybe wouldn’t otherwise believe themselves capable.’