by Lena Bourne
We round a bend, and the dark green waters of the river become visible behind the tall, yellowed grass lining it. Here too, the grass was shielded from the worst of the snowfall by tall, spindly trees growing everywhere with no seeming order. Along a narrow strip leading down to the bank, the grass has been trampled to provide access to the body, no doubt.
The only sound here is the slight hiss of the water. It’s different in spring and summer, when there’s no shortage of people walking and running here, but this is the dead of winter, quiet and peaceful. Anyone can do anything unobserved here in the winter.
I look around the way I wasn’t able to when I first examined this scene, and everything was dark, except the princess and the scene around her which was illuminated by bright floodlight as the crime techs worked.
A narrowly steepled roof covered with white shingles is clearly visible amid the trees behind us, shining bright in the greyness of the leafless forest surrounding us.
“What’s that place?” I ask. If I’m right, its tall windows have an unobstructed view of this riverbank.
I make my way toward it, cutting directly across the forest, without waiting for a reply.
“That’s a teashop, but it’s closed for the winter,” Schmitt informs me. “There’s no one there. No one was there since early November and there are no cameras. We checked.”
But that’s unmistakably a very human and very pale face watching me from one of the windows facing the river. Did The Fairytale Killer finally make a mistake and leave a witness? Is it possible?
The pale face in the window startled as soon as he, or she, saw me making for the teashop. The face disappeared to the left, the wide, large windows empty, reflecting just the trees and snow once again until I was sure I’d either seen a ghost or, more likely, no one at all.
“I work with the police!” I call out anyway once I’m within hailing distance of the house. “I just want to talk to you!”
No response. No movement. The tea house is a white wooden cabin with a narrow porch on the side facing the river. An area covered with slabs of concrete sprinkled with some sort of colorful scraps and shavings of a different type of material is probably where they put out the tables in the spring and summer, but right now it just looks like an unfinished porch that someone stopped constructing midway through.
Schmitt is breathing hard behind me, but even that is robotic and full of purpose—he needs more oxygen to reach his blood and he will do what must be done to achieve it, no more, no less. If this man was any more cool, calm, and collected, I’d be sure he was an android of some kind. It’s why I investigated him as a suspect for the killings—because he fits the profile of a methodical, detail-oriented type.
I traverse the slabbed area and step on the low porch without using the steps. No lights are on inside, but the light spilling in through the large windows and double doors of the porch are enough to show me the whole space clearly. It’s filled with round tables and chairs, all of which are made of wrought iron. The tables arranged in neat rows, the chairs stacked on the tabletops seats down, stretching from the porch door to the simple wooden counter that takes up the entire right-hand side of the space. Directly opposite the porch door, there’s another one, leading into another part of the cabin. Through the window, I see yet another door further back open and close and someone streak through.
“Wait!” I yell and take off running around the cabin.
My quarry is a slight youth, with shoulder-length straight cut blond hair, wearing blue jeans and a large, checkered jacket that’s at least two sizes too big for him. Or her. I can’t tell. The person is also carrying a bulging black backpack on their back and a huge light grey duffel bag over his shoulders, as they try to run away from me, stumbling more than anything.
I have no trouble catching up with them. Only as I stop in front, blocking their path, do I realize it’s a young man, looking about fourteen, though the pronounced whiskers on his cheeks put him at older. He looks at me with such angry defeat in his eyes, I’d say he was at least forty, if that’s all I saw of him. He tried to run, but he failed. What he should’ve done is leave everything behind and made his escape. But I have a hunch that whatever is in those bags is all he has left in this world.
“I just want to talk,” I tell him gently.
“About what?” he snaps in accented German. Polish? Russian? I can’t tell.
“About what you saw down at the river,” I say.
“I saw a bunch of cops working there all morning,” he says. “You must know that. They’re your friends, aren’t they?”
“Colleagues, yes,” I say, I have sympathy for this skinny kid with few choices, but his snarkiness is grating on my already very frayed nerves. That’s definitely some type of Slavic accent, but the more he speaks the less pronounced it becomes.
“What about the night before, did you see anything then?”
“I only got there this morning, thought I could sleep in the teashop, get out of the cold. But I only went in after the cops left.”
Schmitt caught up with us and is looking at the kid with his sharp black eyes as he works at regaining his wind.
“He’s lying,” he wheezes. “Either that, or someone else has made quite a nest in the back of that cabin.”
The long sentence sends him back to square one in trying to regain control of his breathing.
I look at the kid sideways from beneath my eyebrows, saying nothing, waiting for him to start defending himself. They usually do, and they usually reveal a lot when they do.
His eyes aren’t so angry anymore, or defeated, now they’re mostly scared. I didn’t think he was some hardened street kid when I first saw him, and this frightened look on his face confirms it.
“Fine, look,” he says, looking down at his shoes. “I’m here as a student, but then my money ran out, and I lost my job and then I lost my apartment. I have a summer job at this teashop so I knew about the back room and I came to live here when I had nowhere else to go. It’s been a cold winter.”
I nod. “It has. And how long have you been squatting here?”
He looks at me sharply and I can just see his brain trying to come up with the best lie to tell me.
“I don’t care about any of that,” I tell him. “And I won’t arrest you for trespassing or anything like that. I just need you to tell me the truth.”
He glances at Schmitt and back to me, then swallows hard.
“I’ve only been here for one night,” he says, not meeting my eyes. “I swear.”
I turn to Schmitt. “I suggest you take him in for breaking and entering.” Then I start walking away.
“Wait, no,” the kid yelps amid rustling. “You said…you said you don’t care about that…”
I stop and turn back to him. “I don’t care about it as long as you tell me the truth. But you’re lying.”
It was just a hunch, but his wide-eyed, open mouth glassy stare tells me I was right on the money.
“Fine, all right,” he says in a quiet voice. “I’ve been here since just after New Year’s.” He looks down at his scuffed boots again. “And I suppose you want to know about the dead woman by the river…” He pauses and looks at me questioningly. I nod. “…and who I think left her there.”
13
Eva
I’m seriously regretting that I didn’t take my bike. The weather’s holding, growing hotter, not colder, and I doubt the snow will come today at all. Consequently, I’m also regretting wearing my long down jacket. My cheeks are hot, I’m starting to sweat and I’m not even halfway to my destination, which is a series of narrow streets and alleys at the end of this long, wide, and practically deserted avenue. Only a handful of cars have passed me since I started my trek, some slowing to ride beside me for a while. Probably some trick looking for a good time. I kept my eyes on the dark grey, pitted sidewalk beneath my feet and kept trudging on.
Berlin might have been built in the middle of total flatlands, but they still angl
ed the streets to aid rainwater and snowmelt flow and these slight elevations are seriously making my thighs ache. I’ll be achy all over tomorrow. I just hope it’ll be worth it.
I’ve been searching the areas around where Selima lived and worked for hours. It’s past two and it’ll start getting dark soon. And dark is not a good time to be walking around these parts. Not that actual dusk will look much different from how this whole day has been with those dark, thick grey clouds hanging ominously low over the city all day.
And after four bodies in one day, I’m thinking even The Fairytale Killer needs a day off. Fear has been a constant presence all around me and especially in the knot in my stomach all day.
The area I’m making my way towards is my final destination and I’ll splurge on a taxi to get back home. If I find Selima’s friends here, it’ll be money well spent. If not, I’ll kick myself for being an idiot.
I’m not sure if the tall, communist-era buildings lining this main avenue are even occupied or not, though the few lighted windows and grimy signs here and there suggest that someone is still struggling to do business here. I pass a kebab shop, with a bored-looking man in a large white apron and white cloth cap, staring out the windows at me. The slab of meat is rotating on its spike behind him, and I wouldn’t eat there if someone offered me a million euros. Well, maybe for a million. The man doesn’t even see me, I don’t think, he’s just staring right through me as I pass his shop’s windows and it sends an eerie, foreboding kind of feeling through me, doubling the sense of dread I came here with and which no amount of sarcasm can lift.
I finally reach the warren of alleys I’m heading towards. The car—a blue Renault hatchback—which slowed to check me out on my trek here is parked next to a trash dumpster in a narrow lot between two dark brown brick buildings. I can just make out two people sitting in it. The trick and one of the girls. As always, sadness drenches me. How low they’ve fallen, reduced to having sex with strangers next to the trash. So many view them as being no better than trash, like with like, I’m sure most are thinking, but no one says it because everyone and everything is so politically correct nowadays.
Selima would say it. She always called it how she saw it and never tried to hide from the reality of her situation. It’s one of the things I liked most about her.
The warren of alleys and narrow streets forms a tiny sort of square here, and light from a small coffee shop in one corner is spilling out onto it.
I can hear talking from the inside before I even reach the front door. But as soon as open it and a bell chimes over my head, all conversation stops dead, every head turned towards me. Well, the heads of the four young women sitting in the far corner, crammed around a small round table, wearing so little I shiver despite being so overdressed. It’s not exactly cold in this place, but it isn’t warm either.
An older, very fat man is behind the counter, his light eyes tiny inside the folds of his face. He wipes his hands on his apron, which is stretched taut over his oversized belly. That apron is dirty, stained brown, black, yellow, red, green, and other colors I don’t even have names for.
“Are you lost or something?” he asks mockingly, leeringly.
“I’m looking for a woman named Selima,” I say. No sense telling them she was found dead this morning. Even I’m not ready to fully accept that yet, and asking for her like this makes hope flare in my chest. Even though it’s a lie.
“Selima is not here,” a black-haired woman wearing much too much gold sparkly eye shadow says curtly and turns away from me. I know her vaguely. I also recognize two others around the table. Only one of them is a complete stranger.
I walk over to them and stop where they can all see me. “You must remember me. I’m Eva—”
“Yes, Eva the reporter,” the black-haired one snaps. Her long hair is a tower atop her head, and she’s wearing a tight, faux leather dress, fishnet stockings, and black stilettos. She could pass for a rock fan dressed up for a night of clubbing, or a model, with those long legs and pretty face. “Selima never wants to see you again. Now run along before something happens to you here.”
The threat isn’t an idle one, but it’s meant more as a warning that this is the bad part of town and not that she, the three women with her and the fat man will harm me physically.
“Please, Ana,” I say, finally remembering her name. She’s Hungarian, and she did come here to be a model. “I need to see Selima, it’s urgent.”
I’m on the verge of telling them Selima’s dead and I’m looking for information on who her killer might have been. These women spent so much time together, they knew of each other’s every movement. It’s how they kept each other safe working the streets with no protection from the state or even pimps. One of her friends saw her leave with the man who killed her. And when Mark comes to question me about her later, I mean to have more than just her description and the names of her friends to give him. It’s why I’m here, even though I have a ton of articles to write. To help him catch this psycho.
“I am not talking to you. None of us are,” Ana snaps, and shoots to her feet, looking down at me from her stiletto heel augmented height. I look back into her eyes, into the abyss of rage and aggression. “You and your stupid article is the reason only the nastiest Johns come looking for us here. And not even every day.”
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe she would hurt me physically. Her blazing eyes sure are saying she’d like to.
But she’s the first to break our eye contact. “Come on, girls,” she says to the others. “There’s work to do.”
She jostles past me, knocking me into the chair behind my back.
I look after her, my mouth open to speak, but I can’t very well yell out that Selima’s dead and they might know who the killer is. The man behind the counter isn’t the only other person in here. A greasy-haired, skinny guy in a flannel shirt and jeans so washed out they’re nearly white slumped over a table by the door, and a couple of wiry, short men with greasy black hair talking quietly two tables down. Or they were talking, now they’re staring at me too.
The door closes behind Ana and my chance is gone. I could follow, I could find her outside and tell her why I’m really here, but that wild rage in her eyes makes me seriously doubt it would be a good idea.
“I want to know where Selima is too,” a thin voice says behind me in very poor German. I look to find the fourth girl, the one I don’t know from before still standing by the table. “Meet me at the kebab place. We’ll talk then. I have to follow Ana now.”
She leaves, swaying precariously in her bright red stiletto pumps, which look to be at least two sizes too big for her. She’s wearing a tight dress, made from a vinyl type material, that barely covers her butt, and a short fake fur jacket which comes down to her cinched waist.
I give her a head start, but as soon as the women are gone all the men in the place are glaring just at me, so I leave too. Ana and the rest of them are nowhere to be seen and I practically jog back out onto the avenue and to the kebab place to wait. For what I hope is the first step on the road to catching Selima’s killer.
14
Mark
The air isn’t moving, and there’s a slight humming in the air, as though coming from the low-hanging clouds, the snow in them roiling and boiling, ready to get out. I feel that tingling on the back of my neck like we’re being watched. And we might be. The spindly trees around us are so dense and growing so haphazardly anyone or anything could be hiding in the shadows they cast.
“Let’s go back to the teashop. Talk inside where it’s warm,” I tell the kid and bend over to pick up his duffel back. He snatches it away before I can though, the effort sending him stumbling backward and almost falling on his ass.
I shrug and let him precede me towards the teashop. Laden as he is with his body weight in belongings there’s less of a chance he’ll try to run again.
The back of the teashop is a larger space than I would’ve expected, separated into two rooms leading from the nar
row hallway. The door to one of them is firmly shut, but not to the other. Inside it, I can see a rumpled up sleeping bag, several empty bags of chips, plastic sandwich wrappers, and empty coffee cups. The remains of at least two dozen candles are also strewn all over the place. I lead the way in there.
There're no shutters on the windows here and behind the door, there’s a sturdy but plain wooden desk, an old office chair, and several metal filing cabinets lining the wall behind it. He’s also brought a couple of the wrought-iron chairs back here, and a pair of light blue jeans are hanging off one of them, while the black rag under another is probably one of his hoodies which he forgot in his haste to get away.
“Sit,” I tell him, pointing at one of the chairs.
“So what’s your name?” Schmitt asks him curtly.
The kid’s eyes flitter to him then settle back on mine. “Jakob.”
“Jakob what?” I ask, not unkindly. He’s scared and I see no reason to make it worse. But my heart’s pounding so hard I feel it hammering in my chest. This could be the break we’ve been waiting for, so I need this kid to start talking fast.
“Jakob Dabrowski,” he adds, swallowing hard.
“So what did you see?” It’s an effort to keep my voice friendly and light. But I know witnesses and even suspects respond better to calm friendliness, and I’ll need this kid to tell me every tiny little detail he can remember.
Instead of speaking, he’s just looking at me dumbly, his eyes wide, his mouth slightly open. I nod to encourage him.
“OK, so, yeah,” he says, wiping his palms on his jeans. “I was only just falling asleep when I hear footsteps outside. It was after midnight and very dark. It was unusual. Hardly anyone comes here during the day in the winter and no one comes during the night. The man was huffing and grunting and talking. I was afraid they were coming to the teashop, that maybe it was a couple of gays looking for a place to…you know…” his pale cheeks turn a peach color as he flashes me a glance.