Brother Grimm Page 7

  The academic responded by ignoring the author’s point and repeating his condemnation of how the novel impugned Jacob Grimm’s reputation and the debate was curtailed by the expiry of the programme’s airtime. Fabel switched the radio off. He found himself thinking about what the writer had said. That there had always been the same evil amongst men; that there had always been the kind of random, cruel violence and death. The sick monster who had strangled the girl and dumped her body on the beach was just the latest in a long lineage of psychotic minds. Of course, Fabel had always known this to be true. He had once read about Gilles de Rais, the fifteenth-century French nobleman whose absolute power over his fiefdom meant that he had been able to abduct, rape and murder young boys with impunity for years; the estimated body count was in the hundreds, and could even have been in the thousands. But Fabel had also tried to convince himself that the serial killer was a modern phenomenon: the product of a disintegrating social order, of sick minds forged by abuse and fed by the availability of violent porn in the street or on the Internet. In that belief, somehow, there lay a faint hope: that if our modern society created these monsters, then we could somehow fix the problem. To accept that it was a fundamental constant in the human condition seemed almost to give up hope.

  Fabel slipped a CD into the player. As Herbert Groenemeyer’s voice filled the car, and as the kilometres slipped by, Fabel tried to turn his thoughts from a perennial evil lurking in the woods.

  The first thing Fabel did when he got back to his office was to phone his mother. She assured him she was still fine and that Lex was fussing over her and preparing the most beautiful meals. Her voice on the phone seemed to re-establish the balance in Fabel’s universe. At a telephone line’s distance, her distinctive accent and the timbre of her voice belonged to a younger mother. A mother whose presence he had always taken as an immutable, unshakeable constant in his life. After he hung up, he called Susanne and told her he was back and they agreed that she would come over to his flat after work.

  Anna Wolff knocked on his door and entered. Her face looked even paler under the mop of black hair and against the dark eyeliner. The too-red lipstick seemed to flame angrily against the tired pallor of her skin. Fabel beckoned for her to take a seat.

  ‘You don’t look like you’ve been getting much sleep,’ he said.

  ‘Nor do you, Chef. How’s your mother?’

  Fabel smiled. ‘Improving, thanks. My brother’s staying with her for a couple of days. I understand you’ve been having an uphill struggle with the girl’s identity.’

  Anna nodded. ‘I gather from the autopsy report that she suffered neglect and probably abuse when she was younger. She may be a long-term runaway from somewhere else in Germany, or even abroad. But I’m still on it.’ She paused for a moment, as if unsure of how Fabel would take what she was about to say next. ‘I hope you don’t mind, Chef, but I’ve been looking at the Paula Ehlers case pretty closely as well. It’s just that I have this strong instinct that we’re looking for the same guy for both these girls.’

  ‘Based on the false identity he left in the dead girl’s hand?’

  ‘That and the fact that, as you pointed out, the two girls were so alike in appearance that it would suggest he saw Paula Ehlers in life, rather than just a press photograph. I mean, when we had to get DNA tests to rule out for certain that the dead girl wasn’t Paula Ehlers.’

  ‘I take your point. So what have you been looking at?’ asked Fabel.

  ‘I’ve been going over the case notes with Robert Klatt.’

  Fabel gave a small curse. ‘Damn, I forgot all about Kommissar Klatt. How’s he settling in?’

  Anna shrugged. ‘Fine. He’s a good guy, I suppose. And he seems to be excited about working in the Mordkommission.’ She flipped open the file and continued. ‘Anyway, I went over this with him. We went back over the Fendrich thing. You remember? Heinrich Fendrich, Paula’s German teacher?’

  Fabel gave a brief nod. He remembered Anna briefing him on Fendrich in the service-station café on their way to the Ehlerses.

  ‘Well, as you know, Klatt had his suspicions. He admits that his grounds for suspecting Fendrich were slight … more of a combination of a gut feeling, prejudice and a total absence of other leads.’

  Fabel frowned. ‘Prejudice?’

  ‘Fendrich is a bit of a loner. He’s in his mid-thirties … well, late thirties now, I suppose, still single and living with his elderly mother. Although, apparently, he did have a kind of on-off girlfriend at the time. But I believe that broke up about the time of Paula’s disappearance.’

  ‘So Kommissar Klatt was desperate for suspects and he found a Norman Bates-type figure,’ said Fabel. Anna looked puzzled. ‘The character in the American film, Psycho.’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course. Well, yes, I suppose he did to a certain extent. But who could blame him? There was a girl missing, presumably dead by now, and there was this teacher with whom she seemed to have had a rapport and who, let’s face it, didn’t seem to have formed normal relationships. Added to that were claims by Paula’s schoolfriends that Fendrich devoted a disproportionate amount of time to Paula in the classroom. To be honest, we would have pushed Fendrich a little ourselves.’

  ‘I suppose so, but Paula’s abductor and probable killer is just as likely to be a family man with a typical background. Anyway, how does Klatt feel about Fendrich now?’

  ‘Well …’ Anna stretched the word to emphasise her uncertainty. ‘I get the feeling he now thinks he was barking up the wrong tree. After all, Fendrich does seem to have a solid alibi for when Paula Ehlers disappeared.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But Klatt still maintains he has a “feeling” about Fendrich. That there was maybe something less than appropriate in his relationship with Paula. He suggested that Fendrich is maybe worth another look – although he recommends that he doesn’t go along. Apparently Fendrich all but threatened Klatt with a restraining order and a harassment suit.’

  ‘So where do we find him? Is he still at the school?’

  ‘No,’ said Anna. ‘He has moved to another school. This time in Hamburg.’ Anna consulted the file. ‘In Rahlstedt. But apparently he still lives in the same house as he did three years ago. That’s in Rahlstedt, too.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Fabel, checking his watch and rising from his seat. ‘Herr Fendrich should be long home from school. I’d like to see if he has an alibi for when the girl on the beach was killed. Let’s pay him a visit.’

  Fendrich’s house in Rahlstedt was a largish robust pre-war villa, set back from the street in a row of five similar houses. They had, at one time, aspired to a fraction of the prestige of the grander homes of Rotherbaum and Eppendorf, but now, having survived British wartime bombers and nineteen-fifties planners, they looked simply discordant, set amidst the post-war social housing of the area: Rahlstedt had been hastily planned and developed to accommodate the population of central Hamburg who had been bombed into homelessness.

  Fabel parked across the street. As he and Anna approached the row of villas, Fabel realised that where the others had been converted into two or more apartments each, the Fendrich home had remained a single dwelling. There was a melancholy drabness to the building and the small garden at the front was unkempt and had attracted the unwanted detritus of passers-by.

  Fabel rested his hand on Anna’s arm as she started up the half-dozen stone steps to the front door. He indicated where the wall of the house met the overgrown garden: there were two small, shallow windows of grimy glass. Fabel could see the vague silhouette of three bars behind each window.

  ‘A basement …’ said Anna. ‘Somewhere you could keep someone “underground” …’

  They climbed the steps and Fabel pressed an old china bell push. There was the sound of ringing somewhere deep in the house. ‘You take the lead, Anna. I’ll ask if there’s anything additional I feel I need to know.’

  The door opened. To Fabel, Fendrich looked more in his late forties than late thirt
ies. He was tall and thin, with a grey complexion. His dull blond hair was thin and lank and the scalp of his high-domed head gleamed through it under the pendant light of the high entrance hallway. He looked from Anna to Fabel and back again with an expression of indifferent curiosity. Anna held out her oval Kriminalpolizei shield.

  ‘Hamburg KriPo, Herr Fendrich. Could we have a word?’

  Fendrich’s expression hardened. ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘We’re from the Mordkommission, Herr Fendrich. A body of a young girl was found on the beach at Blankenese the day before yesterday –’

  ‘Paula?’ Fendrich cut Anna off. ‘Was it Paula?’ His expression changed again: this time it was more difficult to read, but Fabel recognised something akin to dread mixed in with it.

  ‘If we could maybe talk inside, Herr Fendrich …’ suggested Fabel in a quiet, reassuring tone. Fendrich looked confused for a moment, then resignedly stood to one side to let them in. After he closed the door, he indicated the first room off the hall, to the left.

  ‘Come into my study.’

  The room was large and untidy and lay stark under the bleak illumination of a too-bright strip light that hung incongruously from an ornate ceiling rose. There were bookshelves on every wall except for the one with the window facing out on to the street. A large desk was positioned almost dead centre in the room; its top was scattered with more books and papers and a cascade of cables and wires tumbled from the computer and printer that sat upon it. There were piles of magazines and papers bound with string stacked, like sandbags, under the window. It looked like total chaos, but, taking in the whole room, Fabel sensed an organised disorder; as if Fendrich would probably be able to locate anything he wanted instantly and with greater ease than if everything was carefully indexed and filed. There was something about the room that suggested concentration; as if much of Fendrich’s living – a bleakly functional living – was done in this room. It filled Fabel with the urge to search through the rest of this large house, to see what lay beyond this small focus.

  ‘Sit down,’ said Fendrich, liberating two chairs of their burden of books and papers. Before they were seated he asked again, ‘This girl you found – was she Paula?’

  ‘No, Herr Fendrich, she wasn’t,’ said Anna. The tension in Fendrich’s expression eased, but Fabel wouldn’t have described it as relief. Anna continued, ‘But we have reason to believe that this girl’s death and Paula’s disappearance are linked.’

  Fendrich smiled sourly. ‘So you’ve come to harass me again. I had enough of that with your Norderstedt colleagues.’ He sat down behind the desk. ‘I wish you people would believe me: I had nothing to do with Paula’s disappearance. I wish you would just leave me the hell alone.’

  Anna raised her hand in a placatory gesture and smiled disarmingly. ‘Listen, Herr Fendrich. I know you had, well, issues with the Norderstedt police investigation three years ago, but we’re Polizei Hamburg, and we’re murder-commission detectives. We’re not investigating the Paula Ehlers case other than to find out if there is any connection with the dead girl. Our interest in talking to you is as background to a totally different investigation. You might hold some piece of information that could be relevant to this new case.’

  ‘So you’re telling me I am in no way a suspect in either of these cases?’

  ‘You know we can’t make an absolute statement like that, Herr Fendrich,’ said Fabel. ‘We don’t know who we’re looking for yet. But our interest in you at the moment is as a witness, not a suspect.’

  Fendrich shrugged and slumped back in his chair. ‘What do you want to know?’

  Anna ran through the basic facts about Fendrich. When she asked him if his mother was still living with him, Fendrich looked as if he had been stung.

  ‘My mother died,’ he said, for the first time breaking eye contact with Anna. ‘She died six months ago.’

  ‘I am sorry.’ Fabel looked at Fendrich and felt a true empathy with him, thinking about the scare he’d just had with his own mother.

  ‘She had been ill for a very long time.’ Fendrich sighed. ‘I live alone now.’

  ‘You changed schools after Paula’s disappearance,’ said Anna, as if to ensure the momentum didn’t go out of the interview. ‘Why did you feel the need to move on?’

  Another bitter laugh. ‘After your colleague – Klatt was his name – after Klatt had made it very clear that I was a suspect, the suspicion stuck. Parents, students, even my colleagues … I could see it in their eyes. That dark doubt. I even got a couple of threatening phone calls. So I left.’

  ‘Didn’t you think that would add to the suspicion?’ Anna asked, but with a sympathetic smile.

  ‘Didn’t give a damn. I’d had enough of it. No one ever thought for a moment that I was deeply upset too. I was very fond of Paula. I thought she had enormous potential. No one seemed to take that into account. Except your colleague Klatt, who somehow managed to make it sound …’ Fendrich struggled for the word ‘… corrupt.’

  ‘You taught Paula German language and literature, is that right?’ asked Anna.

  Fendrich nodded.

  ‘You say she showed particular academic promise … that that was the focus for your interest in her.’

  Fendrich tilted his head back defiantly. ‘She did. Yes.’

  ‘Yet none of her other teachers seemed to be aware of it. And her school records show only average performance in almost all of her classes.’

  ‘I’ve been through all this God knows how many times before. I saw the potential in her. She had a natural talent for the German language. It’s like music. You can have an ear for it. Paula had a good ear. She could also express herself wonderfully when she put her mind to it.’ He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the cluttered desktop and fixing Anna with an earnest gaze. ‘Paula was a classic underachiever. She had the potential to become a real somebody and was in danger of becoming a nobody, of becoming lost in the system. I admit other teachers in the school missed it. And her parents were incapable of seeing it. That’s why I devoted so much time to helping her. I saw a real opportunity for her to escape from the confines of her family’s limited expectations.’

  Fendrich leaned back in his chair and made an open-palmed gesture with his hands, as if he’d finished his address to a court. Then he let his hands fall heavily on to the desktop, as if the last of his energy had been expended. Fabel watched him but remained silent. There had been something about the earnestness – almost the passion – with which Fendrich had spoken of Paula that disturbed him.

  Anna let the subject drop and moved on to the details of Fendrich’s alibi for the time of Paula’s disappearance. His answers were exactly as he had given three years ago and were in the file. But, during Anna’s questioning, Fendrich became increasingly impatient.

  ‘I thought this was about a new case,’ he said when Anna had finished. ‘All you’ve done so far is go over the same old stuff. I thought this was about another girl. About a murder.’

  Fabel gestured for Anna to hand him the file. He took out a large glossy photograph taken at the scene where the dead girl had been discovered. He placed it squarely before Fendrich, keeping his eyes on the teacher’s face to gauge his reaction. It was a significant reaction. Fendrich muttered, ‘Oh Christ …’ and placed a hand over his mouth. Then he froze, his gaze locked on the image. He leaned forward and ranged his eyes over the photograph as if examining every pixel. Then his face relaxed in relief. He looked up at Fabel.

  ‘I thought …’

  ‘You thought it was Paula?’

  Fendrich nodded. ‘I’m sorry. I got a shock.’ He stared at the picture again. ‘My God, she’s so like Paula. Older, obviously, but so very like her. Is that why you think there’s a connection?’

  ‘It’s more than that,’ explained Anna. ‘The killer left something to mislead us about the dead girl’s identity. To make us believe this was Paula.’

  ‘Can you give us an account of your movements from Monda
y afternoon to Tuesday morning, Herr Fendrich?’

  Fendrich pursed his lips and blew air through them as he considered Fabel’s question. ‘Not much to tell. I went to work as usual, both days. Monday evening I came straight home, did some marking, read. Tuesday … did some shopping at the Mini-Markt on my way home on Tuesday. Got home about five, five-thirty … Then I was here all evening.’

  ‘Can anyone else confirm this?’

  A sliver of flint entered Fendrich’s eyes. ‘I see … You couldn’t get me for Paula’s disappearance, so now you’re trying to tie me into this.’

  ‘It’s not like that, Herr Fendrich.’ Again Anna sought to placate him. ‘We need to check all the facts otherwise we’d be seen not to be doing our job properly.’

  The tension in Fendrich’s angular shoulders eased and the defiance dulled in his eyes, but he still looked unconvinced. He looked again at the photograph of the dead girl. He looked at it for a long, silent time.

  ‘It’s the same man,’ he said at last. Anna and Fabel exchanged looks.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Anna.

  ‘What I mean is that you’re right … There is a connection. My God, this girl could be her sister, they’re so alike. Whoever killed this girl must have known Paula. Known her pretty well.’ Pain had returned to Fendrich’s dull eyes. ‘Paula’s dead. Isn’t she?’

  ‘We don’t know that, Herr Fendrich …’

  ‘Yes.’ Fabel cut across Anna’s answer. ‘Yes, I’m rather afraid that she is.’