Brother Grimm Read online

  Fabel grinned sarcastically.

  ‘And, by the way, Herr Kriminalhauptkommissar, could you have a word with Frau Wolff? I don’t think she’s quite grasped the concept of protecting the integrity of a forensic exhibit.’

  ‘Sorry about the motorcycle, Holger. Did you get a match?’

  ‘Sure did. The print we took at the scene came from a 120/70-ZR17 motorcycle tyre. They’re the standard front tyre on the BMW R1000 S motorcycle. The wear patterns on Olsen’s bike match the impression we took exactly. So he’s your guy. Or, at least, it was his motorcycle in the Naturpark. All we need is to find the boots he was wearing. I’ll have a look around here.’

  ‘He’s probably wearing them,’ said Fabel, trying to remember Olsen’s footwear from earlier in the day.

  Maria had been searching the bathroom. She came through, carrying some pharmaceutical-looking bottles. ‘Herr Brauner, do you have any idea what these are for?’

  Brauner examined the bottles. ‘Isotretinon and benzoyl peroxide … Does your guy have bad skin, by any chance?’

  ‘Yes, he does,’ said Fabel.

  ‘These are acne treatments …’ Brauner’s voice trailed off, and he stared at the bottles as if a thought was struggling to come to the surface and he had to concentrate to help it rise. ‘Those bootprints were huge. Size fifty. Was your guy really tall? And heavily muscled?’

  Maria and Fabel exchanged a look. ‘Yes. Really big.’

  ‘This may seem a strange question, but was there anything else, well, odd about his appearance? Was he pigeon-chested, or did he have a cast in one eye?’

  ‘Are you being funny? Or do you think you know him?’ Fabel laughed.

  Brauner was still looking at the acne treatment and shook his head in annoyance. ‘Did you notice anything like that?’

  ‘No,’ said Fabel. ‘He didn’t have a cast in his eye or a pigeon chest. Nor was he a hunchback with two heads.’

  ‘No …’ Fabel’s sarcasm didn’t reach Brauner, who spoke more to himself than to Fabel. ‘It doesn’t necessarily follow.’

  ‘Holger?’ Fabel said impatiently. Brauner looked up from the medication.

  ‘Sorry. I think your guy might be one in a thousand. Literally. His record is for violence exclusively, isn’t it? Cases of him losing his temper rather than premeditated criminal acts?’

  ‘From what I can see, yes,’ said Fabel. ‘Other than one conviction for selling on stolen goods. What have you got, Holger?’

  ‘Maybe nothing, but Olsen has an explosive temper, is unusually tall and powerfully built and suffers from acne at an age when most of us have long put it behind us. I suspect we could be dealing with Karotype XYY.’

  ‘Supermale Syndrome?’ Fabel thought for a moment. ‘Yes. Yes, it would fit. Now that you mention it, it really would fit. I didn’t know about the acne thing, though.’ Fabel had come across an ‘XYY’ male before.

  Karotype XYY Syndrome is caused when, instead of the normal male chromosome type ‘46XY’, a male is born with an extra male chromosome and the chromosome type ‘47XYY’. These ‘supermales’ are characterised by excessive height, heavier male features, slower emotional and social maturity, and a system surging with testosterone. This often led to hair-trigger, violent tempers. Medical opinion was divided on exactly what effect XYY had, if any, on violent behaviour or criminal tendencies, but the XYY male Fabel had encountered had, like Olsen, been huge and unpredictably violent. Controversial research had revealed a disproportionate ratio of XYY males in the prison population; many XYYs, however, led productive and highly successful lives, channelling their aggression into dynamic careers. Fabel looked again at the CD.

  ‘I don’t know, Holger. It would fit with the aggressive rock, but his behaviour at his workshop was very cool – the way he lured Werner back into the workshop, for instance. He had his escape strategy all worked out.’

  ‘He was probably boiling under the surface, but had worked out that he needed to keep a lid on it until he had a chance to get away. It would fit with the excessive force. He didn’t need to hit Kriminaloberkommissar Meyer so hard. Classic lack of control when his temper explodes.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be on his record?’ asked Maria.

  ‘Perhaps,’ answered Brauner. ‘If he submitted to Karotype testing at the time of his arrest. And if, indeed, he is Karotype XYY at all. He might just be a big bad-tempered bugger.’

  They split up and set about their independent searches of Olsen’s home, like visitors to a gallery or museum exhibit, scanning the whole, then stopping to examine closer where some detail took their interest. There was nothing here to suggest the super-charged psychotic ego of a serial killer; but Fabel’s senses continually jarred against the contradiction in Olsen’s personality. Everything was neat and ordered. Fabel went through to one of the two bedrooms. This was obviously Olsen’s. The posters on the wall would have been more at home in the bedroom of an adolescent than in the apartment of a man pushing thirty. Some personal items – a chunky but cheap watch, a comb and brush, some toiletries and a couple of bottles of aftershave – sat, ordered, on his dresser. Fabel swung open the heavy doors of a stout wall cupboard. The clothes and footwear inside were huge, and Fabel felt as if he were skulking around the chamber of some sleeping giant. As well as being outsize, Olsen’s wardrobe was functional and efficient: one formal suit with one pair of dress shoes; a half-dozen T-shirts, emblazoned with hate-rock band names and logos, yet folded and stored as if his mother had been round that very morning; two pairs of jeans, one black, one blue denim; two pairs of trainers; two pairs of boots. Boots.

  ‘Holger …’ Fabel called over his shoulder to the other room, snapping on a pair of latex forensic gloves. He picked up one pair of boots and examined the soles. The tread pattern was shallow. The second pair was much more robust-looking. Each boot had ten pairs of lace eyes and two heavy strap-and-buckle fasteners. They were clearly motorcycle boots. He was turning the boots over to look at the soles when Brauner came in. The forensics chief held out a glossy print-out copy of the bootprint found in the Naturpark. Even Fabel could tell at first glance that they were a match.

  Brauner held open a clear plastic evidence bag as Fabel lifted each boot in turn between his latex-sheathed forefinger and thumb and dropped it in.

  ‘All we’ve got to do now,’ said Fabel, ‘is find our Cinderella …’

  27.

  9.00 p.m., Friday, 26 March: Pöseldorf, Hamburg

  It was yet another relationship ritual: where the friends of the individual became the friends of the couple. This meal together had been Fabel’s idea, and when he saw Otto, his oldest friend, sitting chatting with Susanne, the newest element in Fabel’s life, he felt surprisingly content. The usual initial awkwardness of greetings and introductions had evaporated almost instantly under Susanne’s natural Southern warmth and it was clear from the start that Otto and Else liked her. Approved of her. He wasn’t sure why, but that approval was very important to Fabel. Perhaps it was because Otto and Else had been there throughout Fabel’s marriage to Renate and they had sat around a restaurant table, just like this, so many times before.

  He looked across at Susanne and smiled. Her raven hair was tied up, revealing her neck and shoulders. Susanne’s beauty was striking and natural and the subtlest application of make-up highlighted her stunning eyes under the high-arched eyebrows. She smiled back, knowingly. Fabel had reserved a table in an Italian restaurant down on Milchstrasse, only two minutes’ walk from his apartment. The disadvantage about his flat was that it didn’t lend itself to hosting dinner parties and Fabel had become a regular in this restaurant whenever he had guests. They were chatting idly about this and that, when Otto brought up the subject of the books that Fabel had bought.

  ‘How are you getting on with Weiss’s novel?’ he asked.

  ‘Fine … well, okay. I see what you mean about his overblown style. But it’s amazing how you get sucked into the world he describes. And how you start to associate Ja
cob Grimm with the fictional character rather than the historical personage. Which is what Weiss’s theory is all about, I suppose.’ Fabel paused for a moment. ‘I’ve been going through the works of the Brothers Grimm, too. I knew that they had collected a lot of folk tales, but I had no idea just how many. As well as all those myths and legends.’

  Otto nodded his huge domed head. ‘They were very dedicated and talented individuals. And a powerful team. Their work on the German language, on linguistics generally, was, as you know, ground-breaking. And it is still influential. They defined the mechanics of language, of how languages evolved and how they borrow from one another. The irony is that they are remembered as the authors of tales they didn’t actually write. Well, actually, they did do a bit of editing and rewriting on the later versions – to make them more palatable.’

  ‘Mmm, I know …’ Susanne took a sip of wine, then put her glass down. ‘As a psychologist, I find fairy tales fascinating. There’s so much deep stuff in them. Sexual, a lot of it.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Otto beamed at Susanne. ‘The Grimm brothers weren’t writers, they were recorders – linguists and philologists who travelled remote parts of Hessen and elsewhere in northern and central Germany, collecting old folk tales and fables. To start with they didn’t rewrite or embellish the traditional tales they compiled. But most of the stories they collected were not as cosy as they appeared in later editions – or as nauseatingly saccharine as their retelling by Disney and others. When their collections turned out to be best-sellers, particularly when they compiled children’s tales, they found themselves removing or sanitising some of the darker and sexual elements.’

  ‘That’s why we all remain that little bit afraid of fairy tales,’ said Susanne. ‘We’re told them as bedtime stories when we’re children but they’re really warnings and instructions on how to avoid all types of danger and evil. But they’re also about the dangers within the known and trusted. The home. The threat from the known and familiar is as much part of these fables as the fear of the unknown. And it’s funny how one of the most common motifs in these tales is the wicked stepmother.’

  ‘Weiss claims that these folk tales are the fundamental truths behind our fears and prejudices. Like Susanne said, our psychology.’ Fabel paused to take a forkful of tagliatelle. ‘He claims that, whenever we sit down to read a novel or watch a movie, especially if they’re about things that threaten us, then it’s really just a retelling of these tales.’

  Otto nodded vigorously and pointed to Fabel with his fork. ‘Yes, well … he really does have a point. What is it they say, there are only four basic stories you can tell – or is it six?’ He shrugged.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Fabel. ‘This is, in an odd sort of way, all related to a case I’m working on. And that means it’s shop talk, which is strictly forbidden.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Otto with a mischievous grin, ‘but my last word is that I can understand why Jan has an interest in fairy tales …’

  Susanne raised a questioning eyebrow.

  ‘Beauty …’ Otto raised his glass to Susanne, then to Fabel ‘… and the Beast.’

  28.

  11.20 p.m., Sunday, 28 March: Blankenese, Hamburg

  The pool room was dark and silent, the still water mute in the night.

  Laura stripped in the changing cabana and stood naked before the glass. Her skin was still flawless, her hair retained its lustrous gold and the lines of her body remained sleek and smooth. She had sacrificed so much to maintain this body, this face. She gazed at this ideal of feminine perfection that so many photographers and designers had paid so much for. She laid her palm upon her belly. It was flat. Tight. It had never been required to bulge and stretch. She looked down at her own perfection and was filled with disgust and self-loathing.

  Laura walked naked into the pool room. She left the main lights off and let the darkness and quiet cloak her. Laura breathed in deeply and looked out across the glossy obsidian of the pool to the vast window that framed the nightscape of a heavy sky. She could swim into that sky, her mind free and clear. She turned on only the underwater lights. A pale blue luminescence bloomed along the edges of the pool. Laura stepped into the shallow end, letting the cool, almost cold water make her skin go tingle-tight, raising goosebumps and pinching her nipples to hard points. She started to walk towards the deeper part of the pool, the water rippling a pale electric blue around her.

  It was then that she saw it.

  A shape. More like a large, dark shadow in the pale blue gloom of the pool. There was something lying at the bottom. There was something lying at the bottom of the pool and it just didn’t make sense. Laura moved forward towards it, frowning. She tried to think of what on earth could have found its way there and who could have left it. She drew closer and still could not make out what the motionless object was. She was about two metres from it when the shape unfolded and thrust up and out of the water in a single motion. It loomed massive in the dim blue light, surging up and towering above her and closing the gap between it and her in a second. Time slowed. Her brain tried to make sense of what was happening. A man shape? No. Surely too big. Too fast. His body was dark. Dark with words. He – it – was covered in words. Thousands of words in the old Germanic lettering. Spanning the vast chest; spiralling and coiling around the arms. It didn’t make sense. A story in the shape of a giant man was surging towards her. It was upon her now. A hand gripped her throat while the other pushed her head down and into the blue-lit water. Yes. A man. A man – but a huge, dark hulk of a man, covered in words in old-fashioned writing. His grip was unshakeable but not crushing, as if he knew how to apply just enough pressure to control without damaging. The hands were vast and immeasurably powerful. Her head was under water. Now the fear came. She tried to scream and her nose and mouth filled with the faintly chlorinated water and the fear became the blinding panic of her survival instinct. She thrashed wildly, clawing at the arms and body of her attacker, but it was as if he were made of stone. She gasped and with each gasp her slim frame became even more inundated. As the water filled her lungs the contortions, and the fear, faded. Her limbs ceased to flail. The serenity and the beauty of her face was restored.

  The most profound joy filled Laura von Klosterstadt’s dying mind. This was right. This was what had to be. Punishment and forgiveness. Her mother had always been right: Laura was bad. Worthless. Unfit to be a mother. Unfit to be a bride. But now she was absolved. Laura’s joy in death came from her awareness of two facts. Now she would never age. Now she would be with her child.

  29.

  8.40 a.m., Monday, 29 March: Stadtpark, Winterhude, Hamburg

  Fabel gazed up at the building which thrust upwards from the trees that flanked it and loomed over the vast open area of grass that lay before it. The impossibly high arches of the red-bricked frontage seemed stretched, as if the whole structure was being pulled skywards by some unseen hand. The clouds scudded past the huge domed roof. Fabel had always been fascinated by this building: if you didn’t know what it had been originally built as, and if it didn’t have its current function emblazoned across it, above the high arches, in metre-high letters, then you could spend hours guessing its primary purpose. Fabel always felt it looked like a high temple of some ancient lost religion: part Egyptian, part Greek, part alien.

  The Planetarium had, originally, been constructed as nothing more than a water tower. But, at the time when it had been built, there had been the surging confidence of a recently united Germany and the dawn of a new century, combined with the then near-religious zeal of civic engineering. Now, a century on, the building remained, having watched over the failure of the last century and having seen Germany disunite and reunite. The monumental water tower was now the Planetarium and Winterhude’s most famous landmark.

  Fabel surveyed the vast area of park that lay in front of the Planetarium. Two hundred metres away, a temporary fence of metal poles linked with police tape fanned out: on one side a line of policemen, on the other a growing
crowd.

  ‘It looks like the word’s already got out who our victim is.’ Maria Klee joined Fabel on the steps. ‘There’s no doubt we’ll have press and TV here before long.’

  Fabel moved down to the grassed area. A large white forensic tent had been assembled to protect the locus, and Fabel and Maria slipped on the protective overshoes the SpuSi forensic technician handed them before opening the flap and stepping inside. Holger Brauner was bent over the body and stood up as they entered. A young woman lay naked on the grass, her legs together and her hands folded over her breast. Her hair was a striking gold and had been brushed out and fanned around her head like a sunburst. Fabel noticed that a small section of the radiating hair had been deliberately cut away, leaving a gap. Even in death, the beauty of the woman’s face and perfectly formed body was extraordinary. Her eyes were closed, a red rose lay between her folded hands and her breast and she looked for all the world as if she were asleep. Fabel looked down at her, at the perfect structure of bone and flesh: an architecture that would soon collapse and crumble into dust. But, for now, the pallor of death on her face seemed only to give her skin a porcelain flawlessness.

  ‘I take it you need no introduction,’ said Holger Brauner, squatting down again by the body.

  Fabel gave a small, bitter laugh. He had struggled to establish the identity of the first victim; there would be no such struggle with this one. Almost anyone in Hamburg could recognise her. As soon as he had seen her face, Fabel knew that he was looking at Laura von Klosterstadt, the ‘supermodel’ who could be seen on billboards and magazines all over Germany. As the ‘von’ suggested, Fabel knew that Laura came from an aristocratic family. But the prominence of the von Klosterstadts did not come from the family’s tired nobility but from its very contemporary commercial and political clout. This, Fabel knew, was going to get messy. Already there was a media storm brewing outside this scene-of-crime tent and Fabel’s radar could even now sense top brass heading full speed towards him.