Brother Grimm Read online

  Out in the hall, the two nurses, neither of whom could have guessed the nature of what had passed between son and mother, turned away from the hospital room and the pathetic tableau within it of a deteriorating life and a constant filial devotion. In that instant, the intrusion through a window on to a sadder life ended and they returned to the practicalities of rotas, charts and the medication-dispensing round.

  3.

  4.30 p.m., Wednesday, 17 March: Polizeipräsidium, Hamburg

  The crisp bright cold of the morning had yielded to a damp sodium-coloured sky that had indolently shouldered its way in from the North Sea. A faint drizzle now freckled the panes of Fabel’s office windows and his view out towards the Winterhuder Stadtpark seemed to have had the life and colour sucked from it.

  Two people sat across the desk from Fabel: Maria and a stocky, hard-looking man in his mid-fifties, whose scalp gleamed through its black and grey bristle covering.

  Kriminaloberkommissar Werner Meyer had worked with Fabel for longer than anyone else in the team. Junior in rank but senior in years, Werner Meyer was not just Fabel’s colleague: he was his friend, and often his mentor. Werner shared the same rank as Maria Klee and together they represented Fabel’s immediate support in the team. Werner, however, was Fabel’s number two. He had much more practical experience as a police officer than Maria, although she had been a high-flyer at university, where she had studied law, and then later at the Polizeifachhochschule and Landespolizeischule police academies. Despite his tough look and considerable bulk, Werner’s approach to police work was typified by a methodical thoroughness and an attention to detail. Werner was ‘by-the-book’ and had often reined in his Chef when Fabel had wandered too far down one of his ‘intuitive’ routes. He had always seen himself as Fabel’s partner and it had taken time, and dramatic events, to accustom him to working with Maria.

  But it had worked. Fabel had teamed them because of their differences: because they represented different generations of police officer, and because they combined and contrasted experience with expertise, theory with practice. But what really made them work as a team was that which they shared: a total and uncompromising commitment to their roles as Mordkommission officers.

  It had been the usual preliminary meeting. Murders took two forms: there was the hot pursuit, where a body was found quickly after death, or there was a strong and clear evidential direction to be pursued; then there was the cold trail, where the killer had already distanced himself or herself in chronology, in geography and in forensic presence from the murder event, leaving the police only scraps to piece together: a process that took time and effort. The murder of the girl on the beach was a cold-trail case: its form was nebulous, amorphous. It would take them a long time and a lot of investigative toil before they made any defined shape of it. The afternoon’s meeting had therefore been typical of initial case meetings: they had reviewed the scant facts that were available and timetabled further meetings to examine the awaited forensic and autopsy reports. The body itself would be the starting point: no longer a person but a store of physical information about time, manner and place of death. And, on a molecular level, the DNA and other data retrieved from it would begin the process of identification. The major part of the meeting had been devoted to allocating resources to the various investigative tasks, the first of which was to get almost everyone on to the job of identifying the dead girl. The dead girl. Fabel was steadfastly committed to uncovering her identity, but it was that moment he dreaded most: when the body became a person and the case number became a name.

  After the meeting Fabel asked Maria to hang around. Werner nodded knowingly at his boss and, in so doing, succeeded in further highlighting the awkwardness of the situation. So now, Maria Klee, dressed in an expensive black blouse and grey trousers, her legs crossed and her long fingers interlocked in a cradle around her knee, sat impassively and somewhat formally, waiting for her superior officer to speak. As always, her posture was one of restraint, confinement, control, and her blue-grey eyes remained impassive under the questioning arch of her eyebrows. Everything about Maria Klee exuded confidence, self-control and authority. But now there was something between Fabel and Maria that was awkward. She had been back at work for a month now, but this was their first major case since her return and Fabel wanted them to say what had been left unsaid.

  Circumstances had forced Fabel and Maria into a unique intimacy. An intimacy closer than if they had slept together. Nine months before, they had spent several minutes alone, under a starry sky in a deserted field in the Altes Land on the southern shore of the Elbe, their breaths mingling, the self-assured Maria Klee transformed into a little girl by her very real and reasonable fear that she was about to die. Fabel had cradled her head and maintained a constant eye contact with her, talking soothingly all the time, not allowing her to drift into a sleep from which she would not wake, never allowing her to take her gaze from his and down to where the hideous haft of a thick-bladed knife jutted from under her ribcage. It had been the worst night of Fabel’s career. They had closed in on the most dangerous psychopath Fabel had ever had to deal with: a monster responsible for a series of particularly vicious, ritualistic murders. The pursuit had left two policemen dead: one of Fabel’s team, a bright young officer called Paul Lindemann, and a uniformed SchuPo from the local Polizeikommissariat. The last officer the fleeing psychotic had encountered had been Maria: instead of killing her, he had left her with a potentially fatal wound, knowing that Fabel would have to make a choice between continuing his pursuit or saving his officer’s life. Fabel had made the only choice that he could.

  Now both Fabel and Maria bore scars of different kinds. Fabel had never before lost an officer in the line of duty, and that night he had lost two, and damned near a third. Maria had lost a vast amount of blood and had come close to death on the operating table. Then there had been two tense weeks in intensive care, in which Maria had inhabited that precarious no man’s land between awareness and unconsciousness; between life and death. Seven months of a slow return to full health and strength had followed. Fabel knew that Maria had spent the final two months of her recovery in the gym, rebuilding not only her physical strength but something of the iron resolve that had characterised her as an efficient, determined police officer. Now she sat before Fabel, the same old Maria with her flinty, unwavering gaze and her fingers locked around her knee. But as Fabel took in her robust body language, he still found himself looking beyond it, to a night when he had held her chilled hand and listened to her small breaths as she begged him, in a small child’s voice, not to let her die. It was something they had to find their way past.

  ‘You know why I want to talk to you, don’t you, Maria?’

  ‘No, Chef … is it about this case?’ But the earnest blue-grey gaze faltered and she made a show of brushing away some invisible speck on her immaculate trousers.

  ‘I think you do, Maria. I need to know that you’re ready for a full case.’

  Maria started to protest but Fabel silenced her with a gesture of his hand.

  ‘Look, Maria, I’m being straight with you. I could very easily say nothing and allocate you duties on the fringes of any investigation that comes up until I’m convinced you’re ready. But that’s not the way I operate. You know that.’ Fabel leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk. ‘I value you too much as an officer to do you that disrespect. But I also value you too much to jeopardise your long-term well-being – and your effectiveness within this team – by pushing you to the forefront of an investigation that you’re not ready for.’

  ‘I’m ready.’ A steel frost crackled in Maria’s voice. ‘I’ve dealt with everything I need to deal with. I wouldn’t have come back to work if I thought I was going to compromise the effectiveness of the team.’

  ‘Dammit, Maria, I’m not challenging you. I’m not questioning your abilities …’ Fabel returned her gaze with equal frankness. ‘I nearly lost you that night, Maria. I lost Paul and I nearly lo
st you. I let you down. I let the team down. It’s my responsibility to make sure you’re all right.’

  The chill in Maria’s glacial expression began to thaw. ‘It wasn’t your fault, Chef. To begin with I thought it was mine. That I didn’t react quickly enough, or react in the right way. But he was something that we’ve never encountered before. He was a unique kind of evil. I know that it’s highly unlikely that I’ll ever encounter someone – something – like him again.’

  ‘What about the fact that he’s still out there on the loose?’ said Fabel, and immediately regretted it. It was a thought that had cost him the sleep of more than one night.

  ‘He’s far away from Hamburg by now,’ said Maria. ‘Probably far out of Germany or even Europe. But if he isn’t, and if we were to pick up his trail again, I’d be ready.’

  Fabel knew she meant what she had said. He didn’t know if he was ready to face the Blood Eagle killer again. Now or ever. He kept that thought to himself.

  ‘There’s no shame in easing back into things, Maria.’

  She smiled a smile that Fabel had not seen before: the first signal that something had, indeed, changed within Maria. ‘I’m fine, Jan. I promise you.’ It was the first time that she had used his first name in the office. The first time she had ever used it was as she lay somewhere between life and death in the long grass of a field in the Altes Land.

  Fabel smiled. ‘It’s good to have you back, Maria.’

  Maria was about to say something when Anna Wolff knocked on the door and entered without waiting to be invited.

  ‘Sorry to bust in,’ said Anna, ‘but I’ve just had forensics on the phone. There’s something we need to look at right away.’

  Holger Brauner didn’t look like a scientist, or even vaguely academic. He was a man of just medium height with sand-blond hair and a rugged, outdoor appearance. Fabel knew that Holger had been some kind of athlete in his youth and had retained a powerful, stocky frame. Fabel had worked with the head of the SpuSi scenes-of-crime unit for a decade and their mutual professional respect had developed into genuine friendship. Brauner was employed by LKA3, the division of the Hamburg Landeskriminalamt responsible for all forms of forensic investigation. He spent much of his time working out of the Institut für Rechtsmedizin, but also had an office by the forensics labs in the Präsidium. When Fabel entered Brauner’s office, Brauner was bent over his desk, examining something through a combined light and magnifying glass that was swung over on an articulated arm. When Brauner looked up he did not greet Fabel with his customary broad grin. Instead he beckoned for Fabel to come over.

  ‘Our killer is communicating with us,’ he said grimly and handed Fabel a pair of surgical gloves. Brauner stepped back to allow Fabel to examine the object on the desk. Set on a small sheet of plastic was a rectangular slip of yellow paper; it was about ten centimetres wide by five long. Brauner had laid a clear perspex sheet over the note to protect it from contamination. The handwriting, in red ink, was tight, regular, neat and very small.

  ‘We found this in the girl’s fist. I am guessing that it was placed in her hand and the fingers closed around it post-mortem but before rigor set in.’

  Although the writing was tiny it was legible to the naked eye. But Fabel examined the note through Brauner’s illuminating magnifier. Through the lens the writing became more than words on paper: each tiny red stroke became a sweeping band across a textured yellow landscape. He pushed the magnifier to one side and read the message.

  Now I am found. My name is Paula Ehlers. I live at Buschberger Weg, Harksheide, Norderstedt. I have been underground and now it is time for me to return home.

  Fabel straightened up. ‘When did you find this?’

  ‘We took the body over to Butenfeld this morning for Herr Doktor Möller to carry out the autopsy.’ Butenfeld was the name of the road in Eppendorf on which the Institut was located and had become police shorthand for the morgue there. ‘We were doing our usual pre-autopsy examination of the body when we found this squeezed into her hand. As you know, we place separate bags around the hands and feet to ensure that no forensic evidence is lost in transit, but this note had remained stuck to the palm of her hand even after rigor had worn off.’

  Fabel read the note again. There was a sluggish, vaguely nauseating sensation in his gut. Paula. She now had a name. The azure eyes that had stared up at him had belonged to Paula. He took a notebook from his pocket and noted down the name and address. Fabel had no doubt that it had been the killer and not the victim who had written this message. If the killer had forced the girl to write it, Fabel could not imagine her being able to compose herself sufficiently to write with such neat precision. He turned back to Brauner.

  ‘“I have been underground …” Does that mean she’s been buried somewhere before being dug up, moved and dumped on the beach at Blankenese?’

  ‘I thought of that when I read that in the note … but no, I can say for sure that this body has not been interred previously. Anyway, from the post-mortem lividity and the easing of rigor, my rough reckoning is that she’s only been dead just over a day. Maybe it’s a reference to her being kept in a cellar or something before death. We’re checking her clothing for any dust or other contaminants that might give us an idea of the environment she’s been kept in for the last twenty-four hours.’

  ‘Could be,’ said Fabel. ‘Did you find anything else?’

  ‘No.’ Brauner picked up a file from his desk and glanced through it. ‘Of course, Herr Doktor Möller will be furnishing full pathological details, but our initial findings were that the beach was not the primary locus – that the victim was killed somewhere else and brought to the beach later to be dumped.’

  ‘No, Holger …’ Fabel replayed the images from the beach in his mind. ‘Not dumped. Posed. It’s been bothering me since this morning. She looked as if she was resting. Or waiting. It was no random abandonment of a corpse. It was a statement of some kind … but I just don’t know what it was supposed to say.’

  Brauner considered Fabel’s words. ‘I suppose so,’ he said eventually. ‘I have to admit that I don’t quite see it the same way. I agree there was some care in the way she was left. But I didn’t see a deliberate pose. Maybe he felt remorseful for what he had done. Or maybe he’s so psychotic that he doesn’t fully appreciate that she’s dead.’

  Fabel smiled. ‘You could be right. Anyway, I’m sorry, you were saying …?’

  Brauner returned to the file. ‘Not much more to say. The girl’s clothes were not of good quality and quite old. What’s more, they weren’t fresh … I’d say she’d been wearing the same clothes, and under-clothes, for at least three or four days prior to death.’

  ‘Was she raped?’

  ‘Well, you know Möller would have my guts for prejudging his findings – and, to be fair, only he can give you a definitive answer on that – but no … I saw no evidence of any sexual trauma on the body. In fact I didn’t see any marks of violence other than the ligature marks around the neck. And there were no traces on her clothes.’

  ‘Thanks, Holger,’ Fabel said. ‘I take it that you’re going to look into the type of paper and ink used on the note?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve already scanned it for a watermark. Nothing. I’ll be able to give you a weight and type match, et cetera, but it will take time to pin it down to a particular make.’ Brauner sucked the air in through his teeth. ‘I have a funny feeling that we’re looking at a mass-market generic paper, which means it will be difficult to trace to a specific outlet.’

  ‘It also means that our friend has thought this through and is covering his tracks,’ Fabel sighed. Then he slapped Brauner on the shoulder. ‘See what you can do, Holger. While you deal with the medium, I’ll deal with the message … Can you arrange for some photocopies to be sent up to the Mordkommission? Ideally blown up to three times the original size?’

  ‘Not a problem, Jan.’

  ‘And I’ll make sure you get a copy of the autopsy report Möller sends me
.’ Fabel knew that Möller’s abrasive manner rankled with Brauner even more than it did with him. ‘Just in case there’s anything in it that leaps out at you as significant …’

  When Fabel got back to the Mordkommission, he stopped off at Anna Wolff’s desk. He handed her the name and address listed on the note that the killer had pressed into the girl’s hand. Anna’s smile faded as she read the note.

  ‘This the dead girl?’

  ‘That’s what I need you to find out,’ said Fabel grimly. ‘The killer hid a note in the victim’s hand. It claimed this is the girl’s identity.’

  ‘I’ll get on to it right away, Chef.’

  Fabel closed the door behind him when he entered his office. He sat down behind his desk and looked out through the glazed partition that separated him from the open-plan main Mordkommission office. He had never fully settled into the new Polizeipräsidium; he had much preferred the old headquarters, down on Beim Strohhause near the Berliner Tor. But much was changing with the Polizei Hamburg. And most of the change did not appeal to Fabel much. They were now in a brand new building that radiated out as a five-storey-high star shape around a central atrium. It hadn’t all gone as smoothly as planned. Originally the atrium had been home to a pond feature, which had become home to clouds of mosquitoes. When the Präsidium had, in turn, become infested with spiders prospering on the pond’s bounty, it was decided to fill the water feature with gravel. There were other changes too: the uniforms of the Hamburg police’s SchuPo branch were being changed away from the mustard and green that was the standard across all of Germany’s police forces to blue and white. But the change that Fabel had most difficulty with was the militarisation of parts of the Hamburg police: the MEKs, the Mobile Einsatz Kommando surveillance and special-weapons response units, were a necessary evil, so Fabel’s superiors assured him. Fabel himself had called on MEK units for back-up, particularly after his experience of losing one of his own team, but he had grave reservations about the attitudes of some MEK officers.