The Carnival Master

by Craig Russell

  But for Fabel, Ukraine had only one significance: that it had been the dark cradle out of which Vasyl Vitrenko had crawled. It was maybe this thought that prompted Fabel to take out his mobile and call Maria Klee. The phone rang a few times, then the tone changed as his call was redirected to her cellphone. Her voice sounded flat and dull as she answered.

  ‘Maria? It’s Jan. I thought I’d give you a ring to see how you are doing. Is this a bad time?’ Fabel had had the idea that Maria hadn’t ventured out from her apartment much during her sick leave. He took her not being at home as a positive sign.

  ‘Oh, I’m fine …’ Maria sounded taken aback. ‘I’m just doing some shopping. How are you?’

  ‘I’m okay. Shopping too, in the Alsterhaus. How’s therapy going?’ Fabel winced at his own clumsiness. There was a short pause at the other end of the phone.

  ‘Fine. Making progress. I’ll be back at work soon. It won’t be the same without you.’

  ‘Is that good or bad?’ Fabel’s laugh sounded fake.

  ‘Bad.’ No laugh. ‘Jan … I think I might give it up too.’

  ‘Maria, you’re an excellent police officer. You still have a great future to look forward to.’ Fabel heard himself repeat what had been said to him so many times by his own superiors. ‘But it’s your decision. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt over the last couple of years, it’s that if you feel you have to do something, don’t wait. Do it.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking. Recently … well, with all of the things that have happened …’ There was something about Maria’s voice – a detachedness, a remoteness – that emphasised for Fabel every centimetre of empty air it traversed on the crest of a microwave. It was the voice of someone lost and Fabel felt panic rise in his chest.

  ‘Maria … why don’t I come over later and see you? I think it would be good to talk …’

  ‘I would like that … but not now, Jan. I’m not ready to see anyone from work. I think … you know, with my therapy and everything … Actually, Dr Minks has said it would be better for me to avoid contact with colleagues for a while.’

  ‘Oh? I understand,’ Fabel said, although he didn’t. ‘Maybe soon.’

  They said goodbye and Fabel hung up. When he looked up he saw that Susanne had arrived and was scanning the Alsterhaus for him.

  CHAPTER THREE

  19–21 January

  1.

  Maria switched off her cellphone before slipping it back into her jacket pocket. She hadn’t actually told Fabel a lie, but what she had done was effectively lying by omission.

  The furnishings were typical budget hotel. She took her clothes from her suitcase and folded them into the cheap laminated chest of drawers, moving, as always, with economical precision. After Maria had unpacked, and with the same economy of movement, she hung up her jacket on a hanger, walked through to the small dimly lit en-suite bathroom, knelt down by the toilet bowl and inserted her long, manicured index finger into her mouth. Her vomiting was almost instantaneous. The first few times she had done this it had taken a long time: eye-watering, unproductive retching before she finally threw up. But now she had refined the action to a hair-trigger mechanism, allowing her to void her stomach with speed and ease. She stood up, rinsed her mouth at the washbasin and returned to the bedroom.

  She went across to the window and swung it open. There was a lot of activity in the street below. Voices that were not German reached up to her: Turkish, Parsi, Russian. Ukrainian. This part of the city merged and mingled cultures rather than stitched them together in a patchwork. The hotel had six storeys and Maria’s room was on the top floor; she looked out over rooftops huddled under the dark and heavy winter sky. Directly across was an apartment with a rooftop terrace. All the lights were on and Maria could see a woman cleaning the apartment. She was youngish with a mass of dark hair and a voluptuous figure. Maria speculated that the woman was Turkish. It looked to Maria as if she was singing as she vacuumed. Maria had no idea if the woman lived in the apartment or was merely a cleaner, but whatever her status or situation she looked to Maria as if she was someone totally comfortable with who, where and what she was. Maria felt a pang of jealousy and looked away.

  It was sunny in faraway Hamburg, she thought as she gazed at the massive dark spires of Cologne Cathedral piercing the sullen sky.

  2.

  It was Susanne’s deliberate cheerfulness that got to Fabel the most. He knew that she was doing her best not to let her anger with him reach boiling point again. Susanne was from Munich and culturally oriented towards the South and the Mediterranean. Fabel often envied her ability to let her emotions boil over and in doing so extinguish the flame beneath them. Fabel, on the other hand, was aware of his doubly northern mixed heritage. He kept a lid on things. Like a pressure cooker.

  ‘What’s that?’ Susanne asked, pointing to the leaflet on the table. Fabel explained briefly about the encounter with the Ukrainian protester on Jungfernstieg outside the Alsterhaus.

  ‘Oh … yes, I saw them. Didn’t know they were Ukrainians, though. You know me, I just barge on through anybody I think is trying to sell me something.’

  ‘It would have to be Ukrainians,’ said Fabel gloomily. ‘Why is it that so many Ukrainians have such striking eyes? You know, very pale, bright blue and green?’

  ‘Genetics, probably. Didn’t you tell me once that Ukrainians have a lot of Viking blood?’

  ‘Mmm …’ Fabel was clearly still struggling to wrap himself around jumbled, random thoughts. ‘It’s just something I’ve noticed. And of course …’ He stopped himself.

  ‘Vitrenko?’ said Susanne with a sigh. ‘Jan, I thought you’d laid that ghost to rest.’

  ‘I have. It’s just that he came to mind. You know, with meeting that Ukrainian outside.’ Sensing the potential for another argument, he dropped the subject and spoke instead of his forthcoming weekend trip to see his mother, and how it was a pity that Susanne, whom his mother had always liked, couldn’t come.

  But all the time he spoke, something about the conversation he’d had with Maria nagged at him. He made a promise to himself to go and see her when he got back from his mother’s. No matter what Dr Minks had said.

  After lunch they headed to Otto Jensen’s bookshop in the Arkaden, just a short walk from the Alsterhaus. Otto had invited them to come along to an afternoon book launch. Otto Jensen had been Fabel’s closest friend since university. He was tall, skinny and one of the clumsiest individuals that Fabel had ever known, yet behind the clumsiness lay a razor-sharp intellect. Otto loved books, and his bookshop was probably the most successful independent in the city. But Fabel had often thought that his friend could have achieved a great deal in some other field.

  Otto greeted them cheerfully but muttered under his breath that the book that was being launched was incredibly dull.

  ‘Couldn’t tell you that before,’ explained Otto, ‘or you wouldn’t have come. Sorry … but I need you to pad out the crowd.’

  ‘What are friends for?’ said Fabel.

  ‘Listen, the wine’s not bad at all this time. You’re half-Scottish, half-Frisian … I thought you’d do anything for a free drink.’

  Otto had arranged a small reception after the event for the author and some of the guests. People stood in clusters, sipping wine and chatting. Susanne and Otto’s wife Else had become close friends and were deep in a conversation about somebody that Fabel didn’t know when Otto took him by the elbow and steered him away.

  ‘There’s someone I’d like you to meet,’ Otto said.

  ‘Not the author, please …’ pleaded Fabel. He had found the event, and the author, as tedious as Otto had promised.

  ‘No. Not at all. This is someone infinitely more interesting.’

  Otto guided Fabel across to a shortish man of about fifty who was dressed in a beige linen suit that looked as if it had been worn every day for a week without making the passing acquaintance of an iron.

  ‘This is Kurt Lessing,’ exp
lained Otto. The man in the crumpled suit extended a hand. He had an intelligent face that hid a certain handsomeness behind too-big spectacles that needed to be wiped clean. ‘I should warn you that Kurt is quite mad. But really interesting to talk to.’

  ‘Thanks for the introduction,’ said Lessing. He smiled at Fabel. But his attention focused immediately on Susanne who had joined them. He gave a half-bow and raised her hand to his lips. ‘It is my pleasure,’ he said and grinned wolfishly at her. Fabel laughed at the deliberately conspicuous display of attraction. ‘You are an extraordinarily beautiful woman, Frau Doctor Eckhardt.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Susanne.

  ‘I have to point out,’ said Otto, ‘that despite seeming to state the obvious, Susanne, it is actually an enormous honour for Kurt to say such a thing. You see, he is one of the world’s experts on female beauty.’

  ‘Really?’ Susanne regarded Lessing sceptically.

  ‘Indeed I am,’ said Lessing, with another small bow. ‘I have written the definitive work on female beauty over the centuries and across cultures. It is my speciality.’

  ‘You’re an author?’ asked Fabel.

  ‘I’m an anthropologist,’ said Lessing, without taking his eyes from Susanne. ‘And, to a lesser extent, an art critic. I have combined the two fields.’ At last he turned to Fabel. ‘I study the anthropology of art and aesthetics. I have written a book about the female form over the centuries. About how our ideal of beauty has transformed so radically over time.’

  ‘Has it changed so much?’ asked Susanne. ‘This is something that interests me. I am a psychologist.’

  ‘Beauty and intelligence. Now that has been universally attractive throughout the human experience. But to answer your question, yes, it really has undergone radical variations. What is particularly interesting is that our ideal of female beauty has changed more rapidly over the last century than at any time in human history. There is no doubt that mass media has played a key part. All you have to do is to compare the screen sirens of the forties and fifties with the stick-thin fashion models of today. What I find particularly amazing is the way that, within a given time, one will find different ideals of beauty running concurrently within the same culture.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Susanne.

  ‘No man finds the stick-thin catwalk model attractive. It is a woman’s definition of female beauty. This imperative to be thin is a strange tyranny exerted on women by women. It is what differentiates us as genders that make us attractive to each other. Men like curves, women like angles.’

  ‘But that contradicts what you said before,’ said Fabel. A joke was a joke, but he was beginning to get fed up with the small man’s preoccupation with Susanne. ‘You said that the “ideal” of feminine beauty has changed throughout the centuries.’

  ‘True, but within set parameters. If you look at the classical ideal of beauty as set out in Greek or Roman sculpture, it is pretty consistent with, say, the nineteen-fifties ideal. Then came a preoccupation with a large bust. However, if you look at Renaissance art, breasts were always small and firm. In those days, the big bust was associated with the wet-nurse: the lower-class woman who nursed babies for wealthier mothers determined to maintain their figures. There have been radical swings in fashion, the most extreme being the near-obese Titian model. But, generally speaking, there have been limits.’

  Fabel thought about the murdered women in Cologne. About how they seemed to have fuller hips and bottoms.

  ‘What about bottoms?’ he asked. ‘Have there been fashions in bums?’

  ‘Obviously in the eighteen-hundreds there was a real fixation with them. The bustle exaggerated the bottom to an extreme and physically impossible degree. But generally the function of the hips and bottom has been to accentuate the narrowness of the waist. And that certainly was the intention with the bustle. It isn’t a single body part that is important: it is its relationship with other parts. All fat women have full bottoms but obesity is unattractive. Men who are attracted to larger bottoms tend to look for the contrast with a narrow waist. It’s part of our most primitive psychology. We assess the figure of another to judge their fitness and suitability as a sexual partner.’

  After they left the event Fabel and Susanne took a taxi back to her apartment.

  ‘I rather think he fancied me,’ she said laughingly.

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Susanne looped her arm through Fabel’s. ‘You jealous? He really wasn’t my type …’

  Fabel smiled. But his mind was still elsewhere, putting together an image of a woman in his mind. He knew exactly the type. The type the Cologne cannibal would target next, unless Scholz was able to get to him first.

  3.

  The couple in the corner kept distracting Andrea from her calculations. Every time she totalled the takings for the previous month a raised male voice would make her lose her place. Last month had not been as good as she had hoped. The café did good but simple food and she had put on a basic Christmas menu of traditional favourites and had decorated the place, but the café was just that little bit too far out from the city centre to attract the masses of tourists that came for Cologne’s Christmas Market. Even the bank of flat-monitored computers that she had installed along the high counter at the back of the café had failed to pay for themselves. She was struggling to break even and it annoyed her that she needed her ‘extra’ income to supplement what she made from the café.

  Andrea gave up on her calculations and checked her cellphone. There was a text message from the agency: two bookings. The one for tomorrow night was annoying because of the ridiculously short notice, but it was the second booking that froze Andrea’s attention. A special date. Weiberfastnacht. Why would someone want to book Women’s Karneval Night? Why did it have to be that date of all dates? She texted back to the agency saying she could make the booking tonight if they sent her details. The other one … The other one she would have to think about.

  The sound of raised voices snapped her attention back to the café.

  The couple had been building up to it. Or rather the man had been building up to it. They had only ordered coffee and the scene had all the hallmarks of them having sought out the café as nothing more than a place for them to sit and carry on the one-sided argument they had clearly been having outside. Andrea studied them: he was a loathsome little toad; she was surprisingly pretty to be with the likes of him. But soft. Andrea had begun by occasionally glancing in their direction; listening to the odd exchange as she had worked the tables. But as their argument became louder, it became impossible to ignore. And it was beginning to disturb the other customers. With a sigh, Andrea closed her accounts and crossed the café.

  ‘Is there a problem?’ Resting her red-fingernailed hands on the table, Andrea leaned in close and spoke in a calm, quiet tone. The couple had been so engrossed in their heated exchange that they had not noticed Andrea approach. The young man turned his acne towards her. His eyes traced the contours of her body. Andrea was wearing a tight black T-shirt with the café’s logo on it. Her biceps bulged beneath the short sleeves, and her breasts were pulled into small, tight buns on her wide, taut pectoral muscles. There was a trace of a smirk on the man’s lips.

  ‘What’s it to you?’ The smirk ripened into a sneer.

  ‘You’re beginning to disturb the other customers.’ Andrea kept her voice calm and low. ‘That’s what it is to me. I think you should leave. Now.’

  ‘What about our coffees?’ asked the man. The girl had her head down, letting her hair fall like a curtain to hide her face from the other customers in the café.

  ‘You’ve drunk most of them,’ said Andrea. ‘Leave the rest. It’s on the house.’

  ‘Just what the fuck are you?’ The young man with the acne now seemed aware he had an audience. He leaned back as if appraising her: the mane of platinum hair tied back in a ponytail, the heavy make-up, the deep red lipstick, the power-lifter shoulders. ‘I mean, we were just trying to wo
rk that out – what you were born as. Male or female. Fuck knows I can’t tell now. You a shemale?’

  Andrea straightened up. ‘Leave. Now.’

  ‘What makes you think you can work here among normal people? I mean, they sell food in here, for fuck’s sake. People eat here. You’re enough to turn anyone’s stomach.’

  Still his female partner sat still and silent behind her curtain of hair.

  ‘You’ve got two seconds to leave,’ said Andrea, her calm tone belying the furnace of hate and anger that burned in her belly. ‘Or I’ll call the cops.’

  The man got up and tugged at the girl’s sleeve. She rose quickly, slid out from behind the table and slipped swiftly out of the café without making eye contact with anyone. The ugly young man eyed Andrea hatefully. He tried to push her out of the way but Andrea’s body wouldn’t yield.

  ‘Fucking freak …’ He laughed derisively as he was forced to squeeze past her sideways. Andrea watched them as they left the café and walked past the window, the man laughing through the glass at her, his companion still trying to be unnoticed. When they were out of sight Andrea took a deep breath and turned to the other customers with a broad smile of red lips and strong white teeth.