The Carnival Master

5.

Tansu was waiting for them when they got back to the Presidium.

‘Productive day?’ she asked Fabel. He ran through what they had found out while Scholz went into his office to check his messages and e-mail.

‘He’s going to be in a really bad mood for the rest of the day,’ said Tansu. ‘The police Karneval committee is going ape because the float is so behind schedule.’ Fabel looked through the glass into Scholz’s office and grinned. The Cologne detective was standing talking on the phone, his free hand intermittently running through his hair or gesturing to the empty room.

‘Listen, Tansu,’ said Fabel. ‘While we have the chance, I wondered if I could ask you a favour…’

‘Certainly, Herr Chief Commissar,’ she said, and smiled wickedly.

‘This is it,’ said Tansu. They had been to the home address Tansu had got for Vera Reinartz and there had been no one home. ‘This is her business.’

Fabel looked across at the cafe. It looked bright and warm in the dull winter street. ‘What’s the name she uses now?’ he asked Tansu.

‘Sandow… Andrea Sandow.’

As they entered the Amazonia Cafe, Fabel smiled to himself at the sight of one of the waitresses. She could certainly be described as an Amazon. At first, Fabel wondered if the waitress was in fact a man in drag. She was massively built, with muscles bulging on her exposed arms and straining at the material of her T-shirt, yet her make-up was heavily applied and the platinum blonde of her hair was as synthetic as the bronze of her midwinter tan. He found himself wondering where she would fit in with the theories of female beauty that Lessing, the anthropologist-cum-art historian, had expounded.

‘Excuse me,’ Fabel asked the waitress, ‘I’m looking for Andrea Sandow… I believe she owns this cafe?’

‘I am she.’ The Amazon pulled herself to her full height and regarded Fabel coldly with her brilliant blue eyes. ‘What can I do for you?’

Fabel found himself speechless. He thought of Vera Reinartz, the pretty if mousy girl in the photographs; of the bright medical student always reluctant to have her photograph taken.

‘Frau Sandow,’ Tansu intervened. ‘Can you confirm that you were originally known as Vera Reinartz?’

The mascaraed eyes narrowed in the masculine face. ‘What’s this all about?’

Fabel took in the cafe. There were about a dozen customers scattered around the tables. ‘Listen, we’re police officers… is there somewhere private we could talk?’

‘Could you cover for me for a minute or two, Britta?’ Andrea turned back to the three detectives. ‘We can talk in the kitchen.’

‘If you don’t mind me saying, Frau Sandow, you’ve undergone a considerable change,’ said Fabel. He eased sideways to allow Tansu and Scholz to follow him into the kitchen. Andrea Sandow, as Vera Reinartz was now called, was a good head shorter than Fabel, shorter even than Tansu, yet her physical presence seemed to dominate the cramped kitchen. ‘I wouldn’t have recognised you from your photographs.’

Andrea smirked. ‘That wasn’t a considerable change. It was a metamorphosis. Complete and irreversible. Now, what is it you want?’

‘We want to talk to you again about the man who attacked you,’ said Tansu. ‘I know it was a long time ago, but we think he’s attacked other women.’

‘Of course he has.’ Another contemptuous grin. Andrea’s jaw tightened with it, wide and strong, her cheeks creasing with deep dimples. ‘I know why you want to talk to me. I’ve been expecting you. It’s about those killings, isn’t it? The last two Women’s Karneval Nights?’

‘You think it’s the same man?’ asked Tansu.

‘I know it is the same man. So do you. That’s why you’re here.’

‘Why didn’t you come forward, then,’ said Fabel, ‘if you were convinced it was the same man?’

‘What would be the point? You won’t catch him. Ever.’

‘Why did you change your name?’ he asked.

Andrea stared hard at Fabel. A man’s stare. ‘What’s that got to do with you?’

‘I just wondered if it was a reaction to the attack. And if it was, why didn’t you move away from Cologne? You’re not from here originally, are you? Your parents live in Frankfurt, don’t they?’

‘You haven’t told them where I live?’ The sudden foreshadow of anger clouded Andrea’s expression.

‘No, no…’ said Tansu reassuringly. ‘We wouldn’t – couldn’t – give out information like that without your consent.’ Tansu cast a look in Fabel’s direction. He knew why. For some reason there was an atmosphere of hostility between him and Andrea. Mutual hostility. He could understand why she resented the intrusion of the police into the new life she’d built for herself. What he couldn’t understand was why he felt hostile towards her.

‘When did you get into bodybuilding?’ he asked.

‘It started after the attack. I had to have a lot of physiotherapy. I needed to build my strength up and the physio involved some weight work. It was then that I got the idea. To rebuild myself. To create someone new.’

‘But there was nothing wrong with the old you,’ said Tansu. ‘You were a victim. Do you blame yourself for what happened?’

‘No,’ said Andrea defiantly. ‘I know it was that bastard who’s to blame. But pretty little Vera Reinartz was too soft and weak, too pliant. She was too afraid. Maybe that’s why he picked her. Because she had victim written all over her.’

‘But your medical career…’ said Tansu. ‘According to what I’ve read you showed enormous promise. You could have excelled as a doctor.’

‘There are other ways to excel,’ said Andrea. ‘That was all part of the past. Of Vera Reinartz. Now I excel at something else. I started bodybuilding in 2000. I mean seriously. I am an expert on it, you know. Not just the sport or the techniques – the history, too. The philosophy of it. Do you know that the father of modern bodybuilding was a German? Eugen Sandow. He started out as a circus strongman and ended up setting the standards for all bodybuilding. He organised and judged the world’s first bodybuilding competition. His fellow judge was Arthur Conan Doyle, the British author who invented Sherlock Holmes.’

‘Sandow…’ said Fabel. ‘That’s the name you took… Why?’

‘I needed to be someone else. That’s why I became a bodybuilder, Herr Fabel. Like I said, a total metamorphosis. I needed a new name for a new body.’

Andrea leaned back and braced herself against the kitchen counter. As she did so, the veins in her upper arms protested hard and blue against the brown skin. Fabel saw the spasmodic twitch of a bicep, as if it had a life independent of its host body. Andrea caught him looking.

‘Do you find me repulsive?’ she asked. ‘Do you find the shape of my body a real turn-off? Most men do. But others… oh, you would not believe what other men are like. They come to the competitions, a lot of them. They come to watch me and the other girls. Do you know that perfect muscle tone disappears within an hour of each workout session? We pump up before each contest, then run through our routines. Not rehearsal – it’s to maintain that perfect tone till we go on stage.’ She leaned forward even more and lowered her voice conspiratorially. ‘Do you know that some of our male fans come backstage before or after the contest. Little men who ask if they can touch us. Our bellies. Our thighs. Our arms. Just so they can feel the muscle at perfect tone. They do it out of admiration of the sport. Reverence, almost. But that doesn’t stop them having a little stiffy in their pants. You see, Herr Fabel, one man’s meat is another man’s poison… What, exactly, would your meat be?’

‘You said you knew the Women’s Karneval Night killer was the same man who attacked you,’ said Fabel, holding Andrea’s gaze. ‘Why? Is there anything about the night you were attacked that you’ve remembered over the years that maybe isn’t in your original statement?’

Andrea laughed bitterly. ‘Do you know, Herr Fabel, that even after all this time he still comes back to haunt me? The clown?’

‘I’m sure,’ said Tansu. ‘You can’t go through an experience like that without post-traumatic stress.’

‘No… I’m not talking about that. I dealt with that. All of this

…’ She stood up straight and flexed her physique. ‘I created this to put that behind me. It wasn’t just the rape. That bastard beat me so badly I thought I was going to die. Well, I did, in a way. Vera died and I survived. He left a broken body behind and I fixed it. I don’t have nightmares about the Clown who attacked me. No post-trauma panic attacks. I’d love to meet him again… then I’d break every bone in his body. That’s not what I meant when I said he still comes back to haunt me. The sick bastard writes to me.’

‘What?’ Fabel exchanged looks with the others. ‘How? E-mail?’

‘No. Letters. They arrive every few months.’

‘Wait a minute,’ said Scholz. ‘Do you mean he puts pen to paper and sends it through the mail?’

‘That’s usually how letters arrive,’ said Andrea.

‘But that’s physical evidence. That’s a chance for us to track him down.’ Fabel couldn’t contain his frustration. ‘Why on earth didn’t you get in touch with the police?’

Andrea shrugged. ‘When the first one arrived, not long after the attack, I was terrified. But I was still her then. Soft, timid, pliant. Too scared to do anything. Then I decided to change my name and the rest all fell into place. Then the other letters arrived. Even after I’d changed my name and moved apartments. They don’t come often. But they did come.’

‘Have you kept them?’ asked Scholz.

Andrea shook her head. ‘I burn them now without reading them. But the ones I did read were all the same. Mad ravings. How much he wanted to do it again, how he was biding his time.’

‘And this doesn’t bother you?’ asked Tansu incredulously.

‘No. He’s lost his power to frighten me. Maybe we will meet again, but he’s the one who should be afraid.’

‘I need you to think hard about what was in those letters, Andrea,’ said Fabel firmly. ‘I need you to take the time to write down everything you can remember. Do it tonight and we’ll send someone to pick it up from the cafe tomorrow. Like I said, anything that might give us a handle on his identity.’

‘What about his name?’

It took a moment for Fabel to realise that Andrea was being serious. ‘He signs them?’

‘Every one. The name he uses is Peter Stumpf.’

Fabel heard Scholz groan. ‘Does the name Peter Stumpf mean anything to you?’ Fabel asked Andrea.

‘Nothing.’

‘It obviously does to you,’ he said to Scholz.

‘It sure does. But we’ll talk about that later.’

As they walked back towards Scholz’s car, someone on the other side of the street caught Scholz’s attention.

‘Hi, Ansgar!’ Scholz called over. Fabel and Tansu followed him across the street.

‘Remember the restaurant I took you to – the Speisekammer?’ Scholz said to Fabel. ‘This is Ansgar Hoeffer, the chef. The best in Cologne if you ask me and that’s saying something. How are you, Ansgar?’

‘I’m fine… you?’ Ansgar answered. He was a tallish man with a high-domed head. His sparse hair had been trimmed bristle-short. His eyes seemed large and doleful behind his glasses. But what struck Fabel most about him was that he looked decidedly uncomfortable.

‘The best,’ said Scholz. ‘What are you doing in this part of town?’

Ansgar again looked flustered for a moment. ‘Oh, I had a few things to do. How was your meal the other night?’ Ansgar addressed his question to Fabel.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, I meant to introduce you…’ said Scholz. ‘Ansgar, this is Principal Chief Commissar Fabel of the Hamburg Police. He’s down here… on a course.’

Fabel and Ansgar shook hands. ‘It was excellent,’ said Fabel. ‘We both had the lamb ragout. Delicious.’

After a brief exchange of more small talk they went their separate ways, Ansgar walking off towards the city centre with a purposeful stride.

‘Great cook,’ said Scholz as they reached his car.

‘Mmm…’ said Fabel, but he looked back in Ansgar’s direction and noticed that Tansu was doing the same.

In the car Scholz didn’t start the ignition.

‘Well, that was on the bizarre side of weird,’ he said. ‘She looks like some kind of bad drag act. What the hell is all that about?’

‘What she went through would be enough to knock anyone off kilter,’ said Tansu. ‘My guess is she’s rejecting her own femininity. No matter what she says, I think she blames herself for what happened to her.’

‘No,’ said Fabel. ‘She blames Vera Reinartz for what happened. As though Vera was a different person. Did you notice how often she referred to her past self in the third person?’

‘It’s the name these letters were signed with that interests me,’ said Scholz. ‘Peter Stumpf. I’m now convinced that whoever attacked Andrea is our killer. You were right all along, Jan.’

‘Actually, it was Tansu who came up with it first.’

‘This is a nice lyrical touch,’ said Scholz, ignoring Fabel’s correction. ‘A local reference. Out to the west of Cologne there’s a town called Bedburg. Peter Stumpf was Bedburg’s most famous resident. Or infamous. He lived there in the sixteenth century. The Beast of Bedburg – one of the first serial killers recorded in Germany. He also had the most horrific execution ever recorded.’

‘So Andrea’s rapist and tormentor is referencing this Peter Stumpf. Why does that make you believe he’s our Karneval Cannibal?’

‘Because that’s exactly what Peter Stumpf was. A cannibal. He was supposed to have eaten dozens of victims. He also claimed he was a shape-shifter who had sold his soul to Satan for the ability to turn into a wolf. Stumpf said he preferred to remain in human form to rape his victims before turning into a wolf to eat them. Maybe our killer believes he has transformed a rapist to a cannibal.’

‘I think that’s stretching it, but I agree – he may be trying to say he undergoes some kind of transformation. Maybe it’s the clown disguise. What’s more important is that it means we have his DNA from the attack on Vera… or Andrea. You said Stumpf had the worst execution on record. Is that significant?’

There was something grim in Scholz’s wry smile. ‘Our priest told us about it in Sunday School. A little horror story to lighten the catechism lessons. Peter Stumpf was a rich farmer who confessed freely and without torture to having been a necromancer and black wizard since childhood. He claimed to have been visited several times by the Devil who gave him a magical belt that would give him superhuman strength in exchange for his soul. The price of this superhuman strength, however, was more than Stumpf’s soul – the belt turned him into a wolf. He admitted to tearing apart and eating scores of victims: men, women, children. He had a particular taste for pregnant women, apparently. Two meals in one. After the trial they strapped him to a wheel and broke his arms, legs and ribs with the blunt side of an axe. You see, they believed that, as a werewolf, there was a danger of him returning from the grave, so breaking his limbs would prevent him doing that. Then they ripped chunks of flesh from his body while he was still alive, using red-hot pincers. As a finale, they beheaded and burned him. True mortification of the flesh.’

‘But it didn’t work,’ said Fabel grimly. ‘It would appear that Peter Stumpf has come back to life.’