Brother Grimm Read online

  Fabel had phoned his mother several times over the last few days, but he needed to find the time to get back out to Norddeich to see her. Lex had been forced to succumb to the commercial pressures of his business and return to Sylt to run his restaurant. His mother had insisted that she was more than capable of taking care of herself, but Fabel wanted to see her to make sure for himself.

  He got up and sat for a moment on the edge of his bed. It seemed that everywhere he turned there was so much that clamoured for his attention. At least he had filled the gap in his team; but even that was causing problems. Anna was showing Henk Hermann the ropes, but Fabel’s unorthodox recruitment strategies had already ruffled the feathers of the bureaucrats within the Polizei Hamburg. Technically it should have been easy for Fabel to pluck Hermann from the ranks of the uniformed SchuPo branch – as a Polizeikommissar, Hermann had already undergone the required training at the Landespolizeihochschule, next to the Präsidium. But Hamburg’s uniform branch was always short of officers, and Fabel knew he would have a battle to transfer Hermann permanently to the Kriminalpolizei. In the meantime, Fabel had basically ‘seconded’ Hermann to the Mordkommission until this case was over, at which time Hermann could go through the appropriate course. A new team finding its way together was always a tense time and Fabel was also worried about how Anna Wolff would respond to having a new partner. She was very much the loose cannon in the team: it was an impulsiveness so clearly exhibited by her high-speed motorcycle pursuit of Olsen. It was also something that Fabel did not entirely discourage: Anna’s intuitive and impulsive approach to her work often gave her a perspective on a case that the others missed. But she needed a counterbalance and, until his death, Paul Lindemann had provided that. Even in that partnership there had, to begin with, been a friction between them. Fabel hoped that, now Anna was more experienced, more mature, the transition would be easier with Henk Hermann. But, from her sullen response to the news of Hermann’s recruitment, Fabel knew that he was going to have to have a serious talk to her. No one was bigger than the team.

  So much of this case seemed out of Fabel’s control. Olsen seemed to have vanished from the face of the earth: he had evaded arrest for over a week now. The first three killings had sparked the usual media interest, particularly the double murder in the Naturpark. But everything had changed with Laura von Klosterstadt’s murder. As a living person, Laura possessed the elements of high social status, celebrity and beauty. As a murder victim, these elements had combined like fissile material and Laura exploded into the number one Hamburg media story. Then, inevitably, the watertight security that Fabel had attempted to wrap around the case had been compromised. He suspected that his fears about van Heiden passing on so much information to Ganz had been justified. Not that Ganz would have wanted to fan the flames of publicity, but he was proving injudicious in his choice of confidants. The truth was that the leak could have come from any one of a hundred possible sources. Whatever the source, a few days earlier Fabel had switched on the television news to see it announced that the Polizei Hamburg were hunting the ‘Märchenmörder’, the ‘Fairy Tale Murderer’. The next day he had seen Gerhard Weiss being interviewed on NDR’s Hamburger Journal. Sales of Weiss’s book had apparently skyrocketed overnight and now he was announcing to the public that the Polizei Hamburg had already sought his advice on these latest murders.

  Fabel rose and stepped out of the bedroom and into the lounge. The picture windows of his apartment framed the glittering nightscape of the Aussenalster lake and the lights of Uhlenhorst and Hohenfelde beyond. Even at this hour, he could trace the lights of a small boat as it made its way across the Alster. He always drew calm from this view. He thought of Laura von Klosterstadt, swimming towards her view. But where Fabel loved his outlook for the sense of connection it gave him with the city around him, Laura had spent a fortune on an architecture of remoteness, creating a panorama of sky and disconnecting herself from the landscape; detaching herself from people. What was it that made such a beautiful, intelligent young woman sequester herself?

  Fabel could see Laura, swimming towards the sky, the night sky framed in those huge windows. But he could see only her. Alone. Everything about her home suggested isolation; a retreat from a life before cameras and the public eye. A lonely, beautiful woman making quiet, small waves in the silky water as she swam towards infinity. No one else. But there had to have been someone else there, in the water with her. The autopsy had revealed that she had been drowned in that pool, and the immediate pre-mortem bruising on her neck suggested that she had been held down. Möller, the pathologist, had suggested that it was a single hand, that the bruises corresponded to an extended thumb on one side, the grip of the fingers on the other. But, Möller had said, the span of the hand had been huge.

  Big hands. Like Olsen’s. But like Gerhard Weiss’s too.

  Who was it, Laura? Who was in the pool with you? Why would you choose to share the isolation you so carefully built for yourself? Fabel stared out over the view before him and posed questions in his head to a dead woman; her family had been unable to answer them. Fabel had visited Laura’s parents on their vast estate out in the Altes Land. It had been an unsettling experience. Hubert, Laura’s brother, had been there and had introduced Fabel to his parents. Peter von Klosterstadt and his wife Margarethe had been the epitome of aristocratic coolness. Peter, however, looked frayed around the edges, the combination of jet lag and grief showing in his eyes and the dullness of his reactions. Margarethe von Klosterstadt, however, had been chillingly composed. Her lack of emotion had reminded Fabel of his first impressions of Hubert. Laura had clearly inherited her beauty from her mother, but in Margarethe’s case it was a harsh, uncompromising and cruel beauty. She would have been in her early fifties, but her figure and the firmness of her skin would have been the envy of a woman half her age. Fabel had had the feeling that she regarded him and Maria with a practised haughtiness, until he had realised that, even in repose, her features wore the same expression like a mask. Fabel had disliked her from the moment he saw her. He had also been disturbed by how powerfully sexually attractive he found her. The meeting had yielded little of any value, other than to point Fabel in the direction of Heinz Schnauber, Laura’s agent, who had probably been her closest confidant and who was totally distraught by Laura’s death. Predictably, as Margarethe von Klosterstadt had described it.

  Fabel became aware of Susanne’s presence behind him. She slipped her arms around his waist and rested her chin on his shoulder as she shared his view out over the Alster and he felt the warmth of her body against his back.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said in a three a.m. voice. ‘I didn’t mean to wake you.’

  ‘It’s okay. What’s the matter? Another bad dream?’

  He turned his head and kissed her. ‘No. Just things on my mind.’

  ‘What?’

  Fabel turned around, took her in his arms, and kissed her for a long time on the lips. Then he said:

  ‘I’d like you to come to Norddeich with me. I’d like you to meet my mother.’

  35.

  10.30 a.m., Wednesday, 14 April: Norderstedt, Hamburg

  Henk Hermann had made an effort to keep something resembling a conversation going, but, after so many monosyllabic responses, he had given up and watched the urban landscape slide by as Anna drove them up to Norderstedt. When they parked outside the Ehlerses’ family home, Anna turned to Hermann and put together her first full sentence since leaving the Präsidium.

  ‘This is my interview, okay? You’re here to watch and learn, is that clear?’

  Hermann sighed and nodded. ‘Does Herr Klatt know we’re here? The guy from KriPo Norderstedt?’ Anna didn’t answer and was out of the car and halfway up the path to the front door before Hermann had got his seat belt off.

  Anna Wolff had called Frau Ehlers before making the trip up. She didn’t want them to think they’d found Paula’s body or that there had been any other significant development in the case. It was jus
t that Anna wanted to go over a few details with them again. What Anna had not disclosed was that the central puzzle she was trying to solve was why it was Paula’s name that had been placed in the ‘changeling’ victim’s hand. Most of all, she felt an overwhelming impulse to be the one to find Paula. To bring her home to her family, even if it meant bringing home a corpse.

  Anna was surprised to find that Herr Ehlers was also at home. A pale blue boiler suit, dulled by a film of very fine brick-dust or something similar, hung baggily on his tall, lean frame. He brought out a kitchen chair and sat on that, rather than stain the upholstery in the living room. Anna guessed that Frau Ehlers had phoned him at his work and he had come straight over. Again there was an intensity in the postures of both Ehlers which Anna found upsetting and annoying: she had made it very clear that they had no news. Anna introduced Henk Hermann. Before Frau Ehlers sat down, she went into the kitchen and re-emerged carrying a tray with a coffee pot, cups and some biscuits.

  Anna got straight to the point. And the point was Heinrich Fendrich, Paula’s former German teacher.

  ‘We’ve been over this so many times before.’ Frau Ehlers’s face looked tired and drawn, as if from three years of insufficient sleep. ‘We cannot believe that Herr Fendrich had anything whatsoever to do with Paula’s disappearance.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’ Henk Hermann spoke from the corner, where he sat resting a coffee cup on one knee. Anna fired a look in his direction, which he seemed not to have noticed. ‘I mean, is there something in particular that makes you so certain?’

  Herr Ehlers shrugged. ‘Afterwards … I mean, after Paula went missing, he was very helpful and supportive. He was genuinely very, very worried about Paula. In a way that he couldn’t have faked. Even when the police kept questioning him all the time, we knew they were looking in the wrong place.’

  Anna nodded thoughtfully. ‘Listen, I know this is an uncomfortable question to answer, but did you ever suspect that Herr Fendrich’s interest in Paula was, well, inappropriate?’

  Herr and Frau Ehlers exchanged a look that Anna couldn’t read. Then Herr Ehlers shook his ash-blond head. ‘No. No, we didn’t.’

  ‘Herr Fendrich seemed to be the only teacher Paula had time for, unfortunately,’ said Frau Ehlers. ‘He came to see us … it must have been about six months before Paula went missing. I thought it was strange, a teacher coming to the house and all, but he was very … I don’t know what you’d call it … very definite that Paula was very bright, especially in German, and that we should come up to the school for a meeting with the principal. But none of Paula’s other teachers seemed to think she was anything special and we didn’t want her to set her sights too high only to be disappointed later.’

  Anna and Hermann sat in her VW outside the Ehlerses’ house. Anna gripped the steering wheel and sat unmoving, her gaze focused on the wind-screen.

  ‘Do I sense we just hit some kind of dead end?’ Hermann asked.

  Anna gazed at him blankly for a moment before turning the key in the ignition decisively. ‘Not yet. I’ve a detour to make first …’

  Given Fendrich’s sensitivity to further police investigation, Anna again decided to phone ahead, this time from her cell phone as she drove south from Norderstedt. She had rung the school he was now teaching in, but didn’t disclose that she was calling on behalf of the Polizei Hamburg. Fendrich was less than happy when he came to the phone but agreed to meet them at the café in the Rahlstedt Bahnhofsvorplatz.

  They parked in a Parkplatz a block away from the café, and walked through alternating shade and bright sunlight as the patchy clouds intermittently shuttered the sun. Fendrich was already there when they arrived, contemplatively stirring a cappuccino. When they entered Fendrich looked up and eyed Hermann with a disinterested suspicion. Anna introduced her new partner and they sat down at the round table.

  ‘What is it you want from me, Kommissarin Wolff?’ Fendrich’s tone was of weary protest.

  Anna slid her sunglasses on to the top of her head. ‘I want to find Paula, Herr Fendrich. Paula is either alive and has been subjected to God knows what torment for the past three years, or, and we both know this is more likely, she’s lying dead somewhere. Hidden from the world and from her family who just want to grieve for her. I don’t know what the basis of your relationship with her was, but I do believe that, at the bottom of it, you truly cared about Paula. I just need to find her. And what I want from you, Herr Fendrich, is anything you can give me that may point me in the right direction.’

  Fendrich stirred his cappuccino once more, gazing down at the froth. When he looked up, he said: ‘Are you familiar with the playwright George Bernard Shaw?’

  Anna shrugged. ‘That would be more my boss’s thing. Kriminalhauptkommissar Fabel is into all things English.’

  ‘Shaw was Irish, actually. He once said “Those who can, do; those who cannot, teach.” It basically condemned all teachers as failures. But it also denied that one can “do” teaching. I didn’t drift into this profession, Frau Wolff. I was called to it. I love it. Every day I face class after class of young minds. Minds yet to be fully formed and developed.’ He leaned back and gave a bitter laugh. His hand still rested on his spoon and his attention was back on the surface of his coffee. ‘Of course, there is so much – well, pollution, I suppose you’d call it. Cultural pollution … from television, the Internet and all of the throwaway technologies that are heaped on young people today. But every now and again one comes across a fresh, clear mind that is just waiting for its horizons to expand, to explode.’ Fendrich’s eyes were no longer lifeless. ‘Do you have any idea what it is like to be under police investigation for a crime like this? No. No you don’t. Nor can you have any idea what it is like to be in that position when you’re a teacher. Someone whom parents trust with those who are most precious to them. Your colleague, Herr Klatt, nearly destroyed my career. Nearly destroyed me. Pupils would avoid being alone with me. Parents and even my colleagues would regard me with undisguised hostility.’ He paused, as if he been running and then could not work out where it was he was going. He looked at both police officers. ‘I am no paedophile. I have no sexual interest in young girls or young boys. No physical interest. It is their minds that I care about. And Paula’s mind was a diamond. A crystalline clear, fearsomely sharp and penetrating intellect in the rough. It needed refining and polishing, but it was outstanding.’

  ‘If that is so,’ said Anna, ‘then I don’t understand why you seem to be the only one to have seen that. No other teacher saw Paula as anything other than an average, if that, student. Even her parents seemed to think you were barking up the wrong tree.’

  ‘You’re right. No one else saw it. And that was because they weren’t looking. Paula was often seen as lazy and dreamy, rather than slow. Exactly what happens when a gifted child is trapped in an educational environment – or a domestic environment, for that matter – that isn’t intellectually challenging enough. The other thing is that Paula’s giftedness was manifesting itself in my subject – she had a natural ear and talent for the German language. And when she wrote … when she wrote it was like singing. Anyway, as well as those who didn’t see it there were those who didn’t want to see it.’

  ‘Her parents?’ said Henk Hermann.

  ‘Exactly. Paula wrote a story as an assignment for me. It was, well, almost a fairy tale. She danced through our language. There, in that small piece of writing in a childish hand, I saw someone who made me feel like a pedestrian. I took it with me when I met her parents and got them to read it. Nothing. It meant nothing to them. Her father asked me what good were stories when it came to her getting a job.’ Fendrich suddenly looked as if all the energy that had briefly fired within him had ebbed away. ‘But Paula’s dead now. Like you say, you know it, I know it.’

  ‘Why do you know it? What makes you so certain that, if she was as intellectually stifled as you say, she didn’t just run away?’ asked Hermann.

  ‘Because she didn’t
write to me. Or to anyone else. If she had run away from home, I am absolutely certain that she would have left a letter, a note … something written. As I said, it was as if the written word had been created for Paula. She would not have taken such a major step without putting something down on paper to mark it. She would have written to me.’

  The three left the café simultaneously. Hermann and Anna both shook Fendrich’s hand and started back towards the Parkplatz. Fendrich had walked to the café and the school lay in the opposite direction, yet he seemed to hesitate at the café doorway. Anna and Hermann had only gone a few metres when they heard Fendrich call out ‘Kriminalkommissarin Wolff!’

  There was something about Fendrich’s body language, as if he lingered on the threshold of something other than the café, that told Anna she needed to handle this alone. She handed Hermann her car keys.

  ‘Do you mind?’

  Hermann shrugged and headed off towards the car. Fendrich met Anna halfway.

  ‘Kommissarin Wolff. Can I tell you something? Something off the record?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know if I can promise—’

  Fendrich cut her off, as if he didn’t want an excuse for not confiding whatever it was he had to confide. ‘There was something. Something I didn’t tell the police at the time because … well, I suppose because it would have looked bad.’