Brother Grimm Read online

  ‘He probably doesn’t feel he has to be too “literal” …’ It was Petra Maas, the Kommissarin whom Fabel had drafted into the team, who answered. She was a tall, thin woman in her late thirties with mid-brown hair that framed an intelligent face. ‘For example, this latest victim fitted with Sleeping Beauty or Briar Rose because of her famed beauty, but she was twice the age of the character in the fairy tale. There’s flexibility in most psychotic agendas. We see the same kind of thing in the Sexual Crime SoKo. Serial rapists and serial killers have similar psychoses. If Olsen is your “Fairy Tale” killer, then he probably sees his victims’ suitability in general, rather than specific, terms.’

  ‘Or maybe he sees something specific in the two Naturpark victims that we don’t,’ Susanne proposed.

  Fabel paused, staring down at the table’s surface but seeing again the Schillers’ opulent villa, their functional office, Vera Schiller’s coldness. ‘Okay, so Hanna Grünn was an employee in Markus Schiller’s business. Or, more correctly, in the business run by Markus Schiller for his wife, Vera. She was the real power behind the concern, having inherited it from her father. Is there anything we’re missing here?’

  ‘Maybe the killer cast Vera Schiller, allegorically, as the wicked stepmother, with Hanna and Markus as the Babes in the Wood?’ suggested Hans Rödger, the other officer from the Sexual Crimes SoKo.

  ‘It’s not very convincing,’ said Henk Hermann, the SchuPo Kommissar. ‘But, if it is true, then the killer knew at least something about the victims’ backgrounds. Which brings us back to Olsen.’

  ‘The question is, what knowledge did the killer have of the other victims?’ said Fabel. ‘What was his connection with them?’

  Susanne swivelled her chair to face Fabel fully. ‘That he has knowledge of their backgrounds doesn’t mean that he had any kind of significant contact with them. If we take Olsen out of the picture for a moment, the killer may have just been waiting for a courting couple – any courting couple – to use that spot for a tryst and then kill them, much as Son of Sam did in the US.’

  Fabel stared out of the window towards Winterhuder Stadtpark and the city beyond. ‘The main thing that concerns me is that he is getting bolder.’

  ‘But that means he might also be getting sloppier.’ The voice came from the doorway. A young, pretty woman, with short black hair and too-red lipstick and wearing a rather battered-looking leather jacket, made her way over to the table. She moved with an exaggerated ease, but Fabel noticed her wince slightly as she sat down.

  ‘You should be recuperating,’ he said.

  ‘I’m fine, Chef …’ said Anna Wolff, and, in response to Fabel’s raised eyebrow, ‘… and fit enough to return to duty.’

  Fabel called Anna and Maria into his office after the meeting was over. Fabel was less than convinced Anna was fit for anything other than the lightest duties, but he had to admit to himself that he was glad to see her back. The team he had built was greater than the sum of its parts: each officer had his or her own special abilities and individual strengths that were amplified in combination. When one member was down, it weakened the team generally, not just numerically. Fabel knew that, like Anna, Werner would probably be back on duty before it was medically advisable; but Werner’s injury was more serious and any return would still be some time away.

  He looked across at the two very different female members of his team. Anna sat stiffly in the chair, still trying to hide the discomfort that her severely grazed thigh was causing her. Next to Anna, Maria sat, as ever, in calm, colour-coordinated composure. Yet, less than a year before, an injury sustained in the course of an investigation had thrown Maria’s life into the balance. One recovered officer, one recovering and one in hospital. Fabel didn’t like it. At all. The investigative process seemed to be becoming an ever more dangerous enterprise. He knew he needed to strengthen his team.

  ‘Anna, I need you to be partnered up with someone again. You too, Maria, at least until Werner gets out of hospital. As you can see, I’ve seconded Petra Maas and Hans Rödger from the Sexual Crimes SoKo. They’re good people. I’m inclined to ask for their secondment to be extended at least until the end of this inquiry. But we need a new permanent member of the team. I’ve been putting this off because, well, I think we all needed time to come to terms with Paul’s death, but it’s mainly been that I haven’t found anyone whom I think has what it takes to fit in with the team. Until now.’

  ‘Klatt?’ asked Anna.

  Fabel didn’t answer but stood up and made his way over to the office door, opened it and called across to the main section of the Mordkommission.

  ‘Could you come in now, please?’

  A tall, uniformed officer stepped into the office. Maria stood up and smiled. Anna remained seated, her expression one of sullen resignation.

  ‘Herr Kommissar Hermann …’ said Fabel. ‘You’ve already met Kriminaloberkommissarin Klee. And this is Kriminalkommissarin Wolff, with whom you’ll be working …’

  31.

  9.40 a.m., Tuesday, 30 March: Blankenese, Hamburg

  Fabel had arranged to meet Maria at Laura von Klosterstadt’s villa in Blankenese. It was, predictably, an enormous property. Its construction was later than that of its neighbours and its design was definitely Jugendstil-influenced. In many ways, it reminded Fabel of these opulent Art Deco Californian mansions that seemed to dominate Hollywood films noirs of the 1930s and 1940s. Fabel felt as though he should be pulling up in an Oldsmobile and tugging up the collar of a trench coat as he parked in the drive outside.

  The interior of the house was full of open spaces and clean lines. Fabel and Maria entered a vast reception hall. It was double height and facing them was a tall, elegant, arched, feature window that stretched the hall’s full elevation. The window was filled with stained glass in a Modernist design and provided the only colour in the otherwise ice-white hall. ‘The only thing about minimalism is that you can have too much of it …’ Fabel gave a small laugh which died under Maria’s uncomprehending stare.

  Fabel was surprised to see Hugo Ganz, the Innensenator, waiting for them in the hall. His complexion was even more florid than usual. Next to him was a lean young man who could only have been twenty-seven or twenty-eight, but who wore an overly conservative suit, as if to lend himself the authority that his age denied him. He had the same fine features and pale blond hair as the dead woman, but they did not look quite right on a man.

  ‘Herr Kriminalhauptkommissar Fabel, this is Hubert von Klosterstadt.’ Ganz made the introduction. ‘Laura’s brother.’

  ‘I’m very sorry for your loss, Herr von Klosterstadt,’ said Fabel, shaking hands with him. Von Klosterstadt’s hand was cool and his grip perfunctory. He nodded a curt acknowledgement of Fabel’s condolences. The pale blue eyes were clear and frank. Either he had bound up his grief in a glacial coolness, or there were genuine limits to how much his sister’s death was affecting him.

  ‘Are you any further forward in your investigation, Herr Kriminalhauptkommissar?’

  Ganz spoke before Fabel had a chance to answer. ‘The prime suspect has taken flight, Hubert. A psychotic called Olsen. But it is only a matter of time before Kriminalhauptkommissar Fabel and his team track him down and arrest him.’

  Fabel was silent for a moment. It was clear that Kriminaldirektor van Heiden was keeping Ganz fully informed of every detail of the investigation and, in turn, the Innensenator was passing on the information as he saw fit, to whomever he saw fit. Fabel decided there and then to limit his reporting of progress to van Heiden.

  ‘We’re keeping a number of lines of inquiry open.’ Fabel gave Ganz a meaningful look. ‘Do you live here, Herr von Klosterstadt?’

  ‘No. God no. The “Ice Palace”? This was Laura’s place for solitude. I have an apartment on the Alster. I’m just here to help in any way I can.’

  ‘What about your parents – have they been informed?’

  ‘They’re on their way back from New York,’ said Hubert. ‘T
hey were there for a charity event … for German victims of September the eleventh.’

  ‘We got the New York police to notify them,’ explained Maria.

  Fabel nodded. ‘If you don’t mind, I’d like to have a look around.’

  Hubert smiled a chilly, polite smile and indicated one of the rooms off the hall. ‘I will be in the office with Herr Ganz. I have some of Laura’s papers to sort out.’

  ‘If you don’t mind, Herr von Klosterstadt,’ Maria said, ‘we’d like you not to disturb anything for the moment. We need to check everything first.’

  ‘Of course.’ The temperature of Hubert’s smile dropped a few degrees further. Ganz rested an avuncular hand on Hubert’s elbow.

  ‘We’ll wait at my house, Hubert.’

  Fabel and Maria made their way through the villa, moving from room to room like a couple of prospective homebuyers. Laura von Klosterstadt clearly had excellent taste in furniture and furnishings. A restrained taste. Too restrained. It was as if she had deliberately sought to combine opulence with Spartanism. One room in particular bothered Fabel: a large, airy room that was flooded with light from a south-facing window. It was the type of room most people would make into a main living space; but the only furniture was a sideboard cabinet on which sat a CD system along one wall and a single high-back armchair that sat, throne-like, in the centre of the room facing the window. Despite its emptiness, Fabel could tell that this was a room that was used. There was a sense of desolation, of loneliness, about the room and Fabel knew that Laura von Klosterstadt had been a very troubled person. He made his way over to the cabinet and slid open a door. There was a handful of CDs inside, all contemporary classical music. Fabel was surprised to discover that Laura von Klosterstadt’s musical taste and his own coincided to a certain extent. The CDs were by modern Scandinavian or Baltic composers: there were pieces by Arvo Pärt and Georg Pelecis, as well as Peteris Vasks’s Musica Dolorosa. Fabel checked the CD-player. There was a disc inside: the Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara’s Cantus Arcticus, Opus 61.

  Fabel pressed the play button and sat in the single chair. A flute imitated the rise and fall of a bird. Then the Cantus began, not with human voices but those of Arctic sea birds. The birdsong swelled, the dissonant cries of terns and gulls combining, and the flute and brass gave way to broad, slow orchestral sweeps and ripples of a harp. Fabel had heard this piece before, in fact he had the same CD, and, as always, he was transported to a vast white Arctic icescape: an imagined vista that was as barren as it was beautiful. The Ice Palace. Fabel remembered the phrase that Hubert, Laura’s brother, had used to describe this house; to describe his sister’s frigid isolation here.

  He listened to the music for a moment before switching the CD off. He and Maria then continued to make their way through the house: a quiet yet remorseless invasion of the most private spaces in another person’s life. They rifled through Laura’s books, through her bedside cabinets and, in the dressing room that fed off the bedroom, through her cosmetics in the huge 1930s dressing table with its illuminated mirror.

  Fabel and Maria worked through to the back of the house. Double panel doors opened up on a long pool room. The pool ran close to the wall on one side and on the other there was a changing cabana and a sauna. The windows at the far end of the pool filled the wall. All Fabel could see was sky. It was like looking at a moving painting of clouds.

  ‘Wow …’ Fabel heard Maria say at his side. ‘This must have cost a fortune.’

  Fabel imagined himself swimming in the pool, towards the sky. Like the sparsely decorated room downstairs, Laura von Klosterstadt had left something of herself in here. This was another place for solitary contemplation. For some reason, the idea of a pool party in this space seemed ludicrous. He walked the length of the pool to the window end. Standing at the window, Fabel could see the terraces of Blankenese bank steeply away below him until the land flattened out on to the Elbe’s shore and beyond to the flat, green patchwork of the Altes Land. Laura had placed herself above everyone else. Out of reach.

  The urgent ring of Fabel’s cell phone, amplified and echoing in the tiled pool room, gave both police officers a start.

  ‘Hello, Chef. Are you still at the von Klosterstadt house?’ Anna asked.

  ‘Yes. Maria and I are both here. Why?’

  ‘Is there, by any chance, a swimming pool there?’

  Fabel looked around himself, confused, as if to confirm that he was where he thought he was. ‘As a matter of fact we’re standing by the pool at the moment.’

  ‘I’d preserve the locus, if I were you, Chef. I’ll get Herr Brauner and his team over right away.’

  Fabel looked into the silky water. He knew the answer before he asked the question. ‘What have you found out, Anna?’

  ‘Herr Doktor Möller has just confirmed Laura von Klosterstadt’s cause of death. Drowning. The water in her lungs and airway was chlorinated.’

  32.

  2.40 p.m., Tuesday, 30 March: Bergedorf, Hamburg

  Fabel misjudged the house numbers and parked too far down Ernst-Mantius-Strasse. During the course of his short walk, he passed three imposing villas, each presenting its own subtly different expression of wealth. Here he was in Bergedorf, at the other side of the city from Blankenese, yet he was again being presented with substantial reminders that Hamburg is Germany’s richest city – and of the limits of his own salary.

  Although part of Hamburg, Bergedorf had its own identity and was known as the ‘city within a city’. And this was the Bergedorfer Villenviertel – the villa quarter – where each of the properties that Fabel strolled past was worth several million Euros. Fabel checked the number of each villa he passed until he had the one he sought. Like its neighbours, it was three storeys high. The walls were limewashed with a discreet blue-grey against which the white decorative plasterwork stood out clean and fresh. One of the lower-level rooms jutted out into the garden, and its roof formed a balcony for the room above. Blue and white canopies optimistically shaded the windows from a sun that had yet to make its presence sufficiently felt.

  When Fabel rang the doorbell, it was answered by a massive man with coal-black eyes. His thick dark hair was heavily flecked with white and swept back from a broad forehead that loomed above heavy brow ridges. The wide, heavy jaw jutted a little too much underneath the fleshy mouth. If it hadn’t been for the fire of a dark intelligence that burned in the eyes, the look would have been almost Neanderthal.

  ‘Kriminalhauptkommissar Fabel?’ The man in the doorway smiled.

  Fabel smiled back. ‘Thanks for seeing me, Herr Weiss …’

  Gerhard Weiss stepped back, pulling the door wider and indicating that Fabel should enter. Fabel had seen Weiss’s photograph on the cover of Die Märchenstrasse: it had been a good likeness, but it had not indicated the author’s great height. His stature was easily the equal of Olsen’s: Fabel estimated that Weiss was at least two metres five. Fabel was relieved to be out of Weiss’s shadow when the author led him to a study off the entrance hall and, having asked Fabel to sit, took his own place behind his desk.

  The study was vast; Fabel guessed it was the main room at floor level and it was clearly the one which supported the balcony above. Everything was rich, dark wood of varying tones: the enormous desk looked as if it had consumed half a rainforest of mahogany and all but one of the walls were lined, floor to ceiling, with fully stocked walnut bookshelves. Only the floor was of a lighter wood, probably red oak, Fabel guessed. The ceiling downlighters were switched on, as was Weiss’s desk light, casting pools of brightness on the various wooden surfaces. This extra illumination was needed, even now in the afternoon: it was as if the dark, polished wood in the study sucked up the daylight from the French windows that opened out on to the garden and the street beyond. The surface of Weiss’s desk was uncluttered. An early edition of the Grimm’s Fairy Tales sat to one side and Weiss’s laptop sat in the centre. The desk was dominated, however, by a striking sculpture. Again it was made ou
t of wood, but a black, black wood, like ebony. Weiss caught Fabel’s glance.

  ‘Extraordinary, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes … yes, it is.’ Fabel stared at the sculpture. It was a stylised wolf: the body was stretched and slightly twisted and the heavy head snapped round, the jaws snarling. It looked as if the wolf, having heard something behind it, had suddenly turned and was caught here in the taut, sinuous, transitional moment between surprise and attack. It was a magnificently executed piece and Fabel could not decide whether it was beautiful or hideous.

  ‘A very talented, very remarkable man created this for me,’ explained Weiss. ‘A uniquely talented artist. And a lycanthrope.’

  Fabel laughed. ‘A werewolf? There’s no such thing.’

  ‘Indeed there is, Herr Kriminalhauptkommissar. Lycanthropy exists – not as a supernatural occurrence of transformation from man to beast, but as a recognised psychiatric condition. People who believe they turn into wolves.’ Weiss tilted his huge head and contemplated the sculpture. ‘The sculptor was a close friend of mine. He was otherwise perfectly sane, except when there was a full moon. Then he would have a seizure – a fit – in which he would twist and thrash, tearing at his clothes, then fall asleep. That was all that happened. It was observed by others, including myself. Nothing more than a fit caused by the subtle changes of pressure in brain fluid caused by a full moon. But what we saw was not what he experienced. So I asked him to capture the moment, as it were.’ Weiss’s eyes cast a dark searchlight over the sculpture. ‘And this is what he crafted.’

  ‘I see.’ Fabel examined the artwork again. He had decided: it was hideous. ‘What happened to him? Was he successfully treated?’

  ‘Unfortunately not. He spent more and more time in institutions. Ultimately he could take no more of it and hanged himself.’