The Carnival Master

by Craig Russell

  The uniformed officers had already grabbed two of the masked men and pulled their masks from their faces. Fabel, Scholz and half a dozen uniformed officers pushed on through the crowd which thinned out the further they moved away from the procession.

  ‘There!’ shouted one of the uniforms and pointed to where a dark figure had cleared the crowd and ran off in the direction of the Rhine.

  ‘No … wait,’ shouted Scholz. ‘There’s another one.’ He pointed to a second figure, heading off towards the railway station. ‘And another …’ A third gold mask flashed in the winter sunlight as it turned in their direction before running towards the back of the cathedral.

  ‘We’ll have to split up and go after them all,’ shouted Fabel. ‘But a minimum of three men on each. These are dangerous bastards. Benni, we’ll take the cathedral guy. You armed?’

  Benni reached deep into his oversized outfit and produced his SIG-Sauer automatic. He ordered one of the uniforms to come with him and Fabel and they sprinted off in the direction taken by the third masked man. They came round to the south side of the cathedral and suddenly they were alone. The cheering of the crowd was still loud but seemed to Fabel to belong to another universe. They stopped and caught their breath.

  ‘He can’t have got round the rear,’ said the uniformed cop. ‘He didn’t have time.’

  Fabel strained his neck to look up at the immense looming mass of the cathedral. They were on the south side and a row of massive flying buttresses, each tipped with a spire, flanked the cathedral’s nave like a rank of soldiers. His eyes fell to street level and caught sight of a side door.

  ‘Is the cathedral open today?’ he asked.

  ‘Not to the public,’ said Scholz. ‘But there’s a special Fastenpredigt pre-Lent Mass later. They’re probably preparing for that.’

  ‘He’s gone inside,’ said Fabel. ‘The cathedral is like a crossroads itself. He’s trying to lose us and come out on another side. Come on!’

  The heavy door yielded, then slammed echoingly behind them. There was a man lying on the flagstones immediately inside the door. His white hair was dishevelled and was stained red with blood on one temple.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Scholz bent over the elderly security man.

  ‘I … I tried to stop him. Told him the cathedral was closed. He hit me …’

  ‘You – stay with him,’ Scholz ordered the uniform. ‘Radio in. I want men at each portal of the cathedral. Jan, you stick with me. Chances are this is one of Vitrenko’s decoys, but it’s better to be safe.’

  Fabel unholstered the automatic that Scholz had issued him with before the meet with Vitrenko. They walked down the centre of the aisle, past the window where Fabel had discussed rhinoceroses with a Mexican writer.

  ‘This place is the size of a football stadium,’ he said to Scholz. ‘The bastard could be anywhere.’

  ‘You check along the pews on the left, I’ll take the right.’

  They worked their way up the aisle, the sounds of Karneval outside now even more remote. They reached the crossing of the transept and Fabel found himself looking through the retrochoir to where the Shrine of the Three Kings, a huge golden reliquary, gleamed behind its glass. There was a sound to his left.

  ‘Over there, behind that screen …’ he hissed to Scholz and swung his gun around. Scholz put a restraining hand on Fabel’s arm.

  ‘For Christ’s sake don’t shoot. That screen, as you call it, is the Klaren Altar. It’s priceless.’

  ‘So’s my life.’ Fabel nodded past the triptych screen. ‘You go that way.’

  Fabel kept his aim locked on the screen and moved towards it, taking slow steps and ready to fire. He checked that Scholz was in position. Fabel swung around the edge of the screen. Something slammed hard into him and he toppled sideways. He heard his gun clatter across the flagstones and felt cold steel pressed against his cheek. He looked up at a gold mask.

  ‘Now why don’t you stand the fuck up and drop that gun,’ Fabel heard Scholz say calmly but firmly. ‘Or I’m going to have to pop one in your head.’

  ‘Let me go or I’ll kill him,’ said the masked man. ‘I’ll do it.’

  ‘And then you’ll die,’ said Scholz. ‘And nobody comes out of this on top, Vitrenko.’

  The man took his automatic away from Fabel’s face and laid it on the flagstones. He stood up and pulled his mask from his face. He was dark-haired and younger, thought Fabel, than Vitrenko would have been.

  ‘It’s not him,’ said Fabel. ‘I don’t think it’s him.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked Scholz. Fabel scrambled to his feet and recovered his automatic. He stood beside Scholz and also locked his aim on the figure.

  ‘You’re right, Fabel. I’m not Vitrenko. He’ll be long gone by now. He told you that he wouldn’t walk into a trap.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Pylyp Gnatenko. As far as you’re concerned, a nobody.’

  ‘A nobody prepared to die or go to prison to buy your boss a few minutes to escape?’ asked Fabel.

  ‘If that’s what it takes. You still know nothing about our code, Fabel.’

  ‘Step out of the shadows. I want to see your face properly.’

  There was a sound from behind them and Fabel spun around.

  ‘Maria?’ Fabel stared uncomprehendingly at the figure before him. Maria was dressed in cheap black clothes and looked painfully thin, her face pale and pinched. Almost grey. There was an ugly swollen welt across her forehead. Her blonde hair had been cropped and dyed black, just as the hotel clerk had told Fabel. She was aiming two automatics directly at the Ukrainian. Scholz swung his aim round onto her.

  ‘It’s okay! It’s okay!’ shouted Fabel. ‘It’s Maria. The officer I told you about.’

  ‘If it’s not too much trouble,’ said Scholz, ‘could you tell me what the fuck is going on?’

  ‘That’s him,’ said Maria. ‘The devil is here.’

  ‘We don’t know if it’s Vitrenko,’ said Scholz. ‘He says he’s just one of his stooges. I think you’d better give me those guns, Frau Klee.’

  ‘His eyes, Jan. Look at his eyes. He couldn’t change his eyes.’

  ‘Step out of the shadow. Now!’ Fabel kept his gun trained on the figure.

  He smiled as he stepped into the light. He was too young, too dark to be Vitrenko. But Fabel knew, as soon as the emerald eyes glinted in the light cast from the high windows, that that was exactly who it was. ‘I thought my new face might fool you, but unfortunately Frau Klee has already seen it.’

  ‘He told me he was a Ukrainian called Taras Buslenko.’

  ‘The policeman they sent after him?’

  Maria nodded.

  Vitrenko placed his hands on his head. ‘I am your prisoner,’ he said. ‘No tricks.’

  ‘You’ll give in that easily?’ said Fabel. ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘There are many ways to escape,’ said Vitrenko. ‘As Frau Klee has already discovered. We found the remains of the guards, Maria. Poor Olga. It would appear your bite is worse than your bark. Anyway, like I said, there are many, many ways to escape. And I know that your Federal Crime Office will want to negotiate over what information I can give them. After all, I’ve given them a lot already.’

  ‘I know,’ said Fabel. ‘The dossier you took from me was blank pages, but you knew I wouldn’t hand it over, didn’t you? And you didn’t really need to see it at all.’

  ‘May I repeat my request of earlier?’ Scholz, his gun still aimed at Vitrenko, frowned angrily. ‘Could someone tell me what the fuck is going on?’

  ‘The so-called Vitrenko Dossier is all crap. The mole inside the organisation was Vitrenko himself. Misinformation. A few scraps of genuine intelligence and the rest was all bollocks. This whole idea that he was desperate to get his hands on it was to convince the Federal Crime Bureau of its authenticity.’

  ‘Buslenko died for a lie?’ The question cracked in Maria’s throat. ‘Everything you did to me? It was all a masquerade?’


  Vitrenko shrugged. ‘What can I tell you? I became caught up in the spirit of Karneval. But the lie Buslenko died for was that Ukraine was worth dying for. A patriot. A fool. Now, if you don’t mind, if you’ll handcuff me and deliver me to a cell somewhere. Of course there’s a lot of evidence against me. It’s all in the Vitrenko Dossier – oh, wait, that’s all fake, isn’t it? I wonder how long you’ll be able to keep me …’

  ‘There’s the murder of the policeman in Cuxhaven. The attempted murder of Maria. The container full of human cargo that you let burn to death. I think we’ll find something.’

  ‘And I think my lawyers and their medical experts will have a lot to say about Frau Klee’s psychological credibility as a witness.’ Vitrenko grinned. ‘You see, Fabel, I’m getting away again. Just like the last time. It’s just that I’m taking a different route.’

  ‘No …’ said Maria, her voice dull. ‘Not like the last time.’

  Fabel and Scholz didn’t have time to react. Maria fired both guns, squeezing the triggers until the magazines emptied. The shots hit Vitrenko in the chest and gut and he staggered backwards until he hit the wall. His emerald eyes became dull and unfocused and he slid down the stone surface, leaving a smear of blood behind him. Maria let the guns fall. At the same time Fabel saw something empty from her face.

  Even in the midst of his shock he knew that what had left her would never return.

  8.

  It was already dark when Fabel walked slowly up the grassy mound in the Marienfeld park to where the bonfire raged and sparked into the night sky.

  ‘I didn’t think we’d see you here,’ said Scholz. He handed Fabel a bottle of Kölsch.

  ‘I wasn’t doing much good at the hospital. I’ve arranged for Maria to be transferred to Hamburg. After you’ve completed your case, that is.’

  ‘I don’t think it matters where her body is. Truth is, she’s not in it any more. I’m sorry, Jan. I really am.’

  ‘Thanks, Benni.’

  Tansu Bakrac came over to them. Fabel noticed that Scholz moved off discreetly to leave them to talk.

  ‘You okay?’ Tansu asked. She placed a hand on his arm.

  ‘No. Not really. I’m going to head back to Hamburg. I’ll be back in a week or two to tie things up with Benni. Listen, Tansu, about what happened …’

  She smiled and nodded towards the bonfire. ‘This is the Nubbelverbrennung. All the sins and foolishness of the Crazy Days get burned up. Here. Tonight. Have a good life, Jan.’

  ‘You too, Tansu.’ Fabel kissed her and then watched as she walked back to her friends, the firelight etching the outline of her body.

  Epilogue

  Hamburg.

  Fabel sat with Maria, by the window. He held her hand and looked into her eyes but she simply looked past him and out of the window. Through the glass lay the shapes of the hospital extension, the outbuildings, the large triangle of grassed grounds and the green froth of bushes that marked the hospital boundaries. Beyond that lay the roadway that rumbled continuously and faintly with traffic. But Fabel knew that although Maria seemed to be looking at this unremarkable view she was not seeing it. He didn’t know what she was seeing. Maybe it was that field near Cuxhaven. Maybe it was a garden or a favourite place from her childhood in Hanover. Wherever it was, it was visible only to Maria; it existed only in the world that she had withdrawn to. But what frightened Fabel was the all too credible thought that Maria might have been seeing nothing at all: that she had withdrawn to a void.

  Fabel talked to Maria. He talked about getting her better now that she was back in Hamburg. Dr Minks was going to help with her treatment. The Polizei Hamburg had arranged it all. Maria still didn’t answer but continued to look out of the window at the view across to the road, or at nothing at all. Fabel continued to talk about the recovery that he knew would never come, or at least not completely. He talked about the colleagues that he knew she would never work with again. He talked with the same forced calmness with which he had spoken to her so very long ago as she lay close to death in the field by Cuxhaven. Except this time, he knew, he could not save her.

  Every now and again Maria would smile, but Fabel knew it was at nothing he had said, rather at something in the deep and distant inner world that she now inhabited.

  It rained in Hamburg that day. Fabel met Susanne in the bar around the corner from his apartment in Pöseldorf. Neutral territory.

  ‘Susanne, I wanted to talk,’ he explained. ‘I think we need to straighten things out.’

  ‘I thought we had,’ she said flatly. ‘At least, I thought you had. I mean when you phoned me before you went off to Cologne.’

  Fabel pushed his beer bottle around the table top contemplatively. He thought back to those three calls he had made weeks before: to Wagner at the Federal Crime Bureau, to Roland Bartz, and to Susanne.

  ‘Listen, Susanne,’ he said gently, ‘when I was down in Cologne things were supposed to be confused. The whole point of Karneval, I suppose. But they weren’t for me. They weren’t for me as soon as I found out Maria had gone off on this personal crusade that’s cost her her sanity. Down there I was surrounded by people who were being someone else … Vera Reinartz who had become Andrea Sandow who claims to become this killer clown whom she has no control over … then there was Vitrenko, stealing one identity after another and manipulating everyone around him. But me … I knew who I was. The funny thing is I didn’t know who I was before. Or I denied it, I don’t know.’

  ‘So who are you?’

  ‘I am a policeman. Just like that poor kid Breidenbach who got shot rather than let a gunman walk onto the street … just like Werner or Anna or Benni Scholz in Cologne. It’s who I am. It’s what I am. It’s my job to stand there between the bad guys and the innocent. What I didn’t realise until now is that it’s more than a job. It’s often ugly and it’s invariably unrewarding, but it’s what I was meant to do. I’ve always pretended to myself that I’m a historian or an intellectual who’s stumbled into this job and who doesn’t really fit. But that’s wrong, Susanne. Whether I found the job or the job found me, it was meant to be.’

  ‘So you’ve accepted this nationwide brief? This Super-Murder-Commission thing?’

  ‘Not really. I’ve said I’ll help out elsewhere if I’m needed. Lend my “expertise”. But that’s the other thing I’ve learned. I belong here. Hamburg is my city. These are the people I want to protect.’

  ‘So where does that leave us?’ Susanne’s voice was cold and hard. Fabel reached over the table and took her hands in his.

  ‘That’s rather what I wanted to ask you …’

  Cologne. Six months later

  Andrea sat on the edge of the bed. No make-up, no lipstick, platinum hair scraped severely back in a ponytail and dark at the roots.

  There was nothing in the cell other than the bed and the combined desk and bench, all of which were bolted to the floor. No free weights to work with. That would be a major problem for as long as they kept her confined in this cell. But Andrea was, she knew, on suicide watch and she would be moved from this empty space eventually. Until then, she could use her own body weight to exercise the main muscle groups. She knew that without free weights she would lose mass, become leaner, but at least she could maintain tone. She stood up and went to the corner of the cell, braced her feet against the wall to maximise the load borne by her arms, and started a set of push-ups. She knew that a nurse was watching her through the spyhole in the door. They wouldn’t deny her access to a gymnasium for her entire confinement. There would be weights or resistance machines in the gym. Then she could start building muscle again. And strength. In the meantime she would do her press-ups: sets of twenty, six sets a day, three days a week. A total of nineteen thousand press-ups a year. Every other day, while her arms and upper body rested, she would run through a similar routine with sit-ups.

  She would time her routine so that it would not conflict with therapy sessions, work details, meal breaks, communal exerci
se. She would be a model patient – or prisoner – whichever it was she was supposed to be in this place. They would let her out one day. Not for a long time, perhaps, but she would convince them she was healed and no longer a danger. That she had, once more, become someone else.

  One thing that Andrea had learned during her earliest days of bodybuilding was that to focus your body you had to focus your mind. Set a goal. Concentrate on it. She clenched her teeth as the final repetitions of her set strained her arms. When she had first started, it had been the face of the Karneval clown who had beaten and raped her, half-strangling her with a necktie. She had burned that image into her mind with each exercise, every day for seven years. It had given her the focus that she had needed.

  But now she had another focus. With each push-up she repeated in her head a new mantra: the words she would say into herself with every exercise, every day of her confinement.

  Jan Fabel.

  When she was released, she would still be strong.

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