The Carnival Master

10.

‘I used to go out with this girl who liked to be tied up, you know,’ Scholz leaned back in his chair and raised a bottle of Kolsch beer to his lips. ‘I mean really tied up. Really tight. Every time we did it. She couldn’t, you know, enjoy it properly unless she was trussed up.’

‘Thanks for sharing that…’ Fabel smiled wryly and took another sip of Kolsch himself. He started to feel that little bit light-headed. He felt the usual fear of losing control kicking in and made a decision to slow down with the beer.

‘I mean, it was like she couldn’t get off without it,’ continued Scholz. His frown cleared and he grinned. ‘There is a point to this, other than offering a window on my sordid personal life. What I’m getting at is that I have come across a lot of weird stuff in my professional life and a fair bit in my personal, if you know what I mean, but no matter how I try I cannot imagine how some sicko gets pleasure from eating other human beings.’

Fabel sat on the sofa and picked fussily at the pizza that Scholz had ordered for them on the way to his flat. It had been Scholz’s idea to collect the files, pick up a take-out meal and go over to his apartment. It was, he had said, going to be a long evening and there was no point in being uncomfortable.

‘I can honestly say there’s little I haven’t seen over the years,’ continued Fabel. ‘Professionally, I mean. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to get out of the job.’

Scholz smiled as he watched Fabel continue to pick at the pizza. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘They didn’t do a herring topping…’

Fabel laughed. ‘It’s funny,’ he said. ‘You lot down here make a joke about us in the North eating nothing but fish. Truth is, we tend to eat fish because we’re coastal people and that’s the most immediate source of food. And the way we connect with other cultures plays a part. You know there’s a Hamburg dish called Labskaus?’

‘I believe I’ve heard of it,’ said Scholz with a straight face.

‘Scandinavian sailors brought it to Hamburg. Then we took the recipe across to England. The British don’t have a clue if you ask them about Labskaus, yet they call people from Liverpool scousers because it was so popular there. My point is that our diets are shaped by what’s available and the contacts we have. Obviously nowadays you can go into any supermarket and buy whatever type of food you like, but the old, generations-long traditions tend to stay in place. It’s like we inherit a prejudice for or against certain foods. Which brings me back to our Karneval Cannibal… what I find strange is that we have always had a concept of taboo foods. Take pork. Even here, where you eat so much meat, and further south too, there are many people who have a problem with eating pork.’

‘What?’ Scholz looked dubious. ‘South of the “White Sausage Equator”…?’

‘Even there, amongst dedicated meat-eaters there are those who will not eat any part of a pig. Pork is the most common taboo food on the planet. The Muslims won’t eat it, the Jews are forbidden it, and there was even supposedly an ancient injunction against it amongst Highland Scots. It must have something to do with the similarity between pork and human flesh. I mean, we live in an age of xenotransplantation where genetically modified pig organs are being transplanted into humans. Tribes in Papua New Guinea talk about human flesh as “the long pig”.’

‘So you think it’s because it’s like eating human flesh?’

‘I think we maybe have some deep cultural memory of cannibalism. And our rejection of cannibalism is a part of how we define ourselves as civilised. Nineteenth-century European colonisation was often justified as saving the natives from themselves. And cannibalism was cited as the prime example of savage behaviour.’

Scholz sipped his beer. ‘We’ve deliberately kept the details of both murders away from the press. We told them there were elements that only we and the killer would know. We haven’t even confirmed a definite link. Like you say, there’s something about the whole concept of a cannibal being on the loose that scares the shit out of people. And the press would just love it.’

‘So you really had considered the possibility of the killer being a cannibal before I mentioned it?’

‘Yep,’ said Scholz. ‘But I wasn’t as sure of it as you were. I thought the weight of the flesh was perhaps the significant thing. A pound of flesh.’ Scholz said it in heavily accented English. He paused and contemplated his beer. ‘Do you think there’s any chance that our guy is motivated by something other than sexual cannibalism? Given that there’s no semen found at the scenes.’

‘Lack of semen doesn’t mean he didn’t ejaculate. Just that he’s been careful not to leave forensic traces. Or maybe he masturbates later, away from the scene. But let’s say we’re not dealing with a case of sexual cannibalism. Maybe he just likes the taste. The experience of eating human flesh.’

‘What’s to like?’

‘Well, there is one theory that because of the complex proteins in human flesh some people actually get a high out of eating it. A sort of euphoria. Others believe that they gain life-giving complexes that can’t be obtained from other meat sources. But there’s a natural imperative against cannibalism. In both humans and animals it tends to cause prion diseases… mad-cow disease, kuru, that sort of thing.’

‘Could it just be that the killer is simply experimenting? That he just wanted to find out what it was like to eat human flesh?’

‘I like a nice steak now and again,’ said Fabel. ‘But I don’t think I could go into a field and slaughter a cow to get one. We tend to keep the source of what we eat at a moral arm’s length. An American journalist bribed a mortuary attendant in Paris to get a piece of fresh human flesh and wrote about the experience of cooking and eating it. Tasted like veal, he said. Anyway, it’s a hell of a leap to kill – and kill twice – just to satisfy your epicurean curiosity. I would put my money on him fulfilling some kind of sexual fantasy with these murders.’

Scholz gathered up the pizza boxes. While Scholz was in the kitchen, Fabel took in the Cologne detective’s apartment. It had all the hallmarks of a bachelor’s apartment: a combination of the practical and the slovenly. There was a range of house plants dotted around in various stages of dehydration and death: Fabel had to resist the temptation to ask for a watering can. The bookshelves, however, were packed but orderly and Scholz had a spectacularly wide range of DVDs, arranged in alphabetical order by title. This meticulous organisation shouted out from the chaos of Scholz’s flat. There were a handful of surprisingly tasteful art prints on the walls and a poster for a Cologne production of Macbeth. Fabel recalled the Shakespearean reference in his report. Scholz came back with two more beers and cleared room for the files on the coffee table.

‘You like Shakespeare?’ Fabel asked.

‘Some. Never in English. My English isn’t good enough. But I love the story of Macbeth. I remember seeing the Orson Welles version dubbed into German, when I was a kid. I just loved the character. So totally evil and ruthless. But given the case we’re looking at Titus Andronicus would be a more appropriate text.’

Fabel smiled. Scholz’s impressive knowledge of Shakespeare was at odds with his appearance and demeanour.

‘At one time I thought about becoming an actor,’ Scholz said, almost embarrassedly. ‘The idea of playing at being other people appealed to me more than being myself, I suppose.’

‘It’s a strange leap from acting to police work.’

‘It was never a serious idea,’ said Scholz. ‘My dad was a policeman and a very… well, practical sort of man. He kinda killed the idea and I sort of drifted in to being a cop.’

‘Theatre’s loss…’ Fabel smiled. He tried to conjure up the unlikely image of Scholz playing Macbeth, his ultimate villain. Suddenly another ultimate villain came to mind and Fabel felt something heavy in his gut. ‘How’s your other investigation going?’ He tried to make his tone as conversational as possible.

‘The Biarritz thing? It’s not, really. To be honest, I’m taking a bit of a back seat on that one. Other interests, you see… the BKA and Organised Crime are all over it like a rash.’

‘Oh?’

‘I mean, I’m still involved. Anything they find out that’s germane to the actual murder will be passed on to me, but I get the feeling there’s a much bigger picture. From the involvement of the BKA task force I reckon it’s to do with the Molokov-Vitrenko outfit.’

‘I know it well. Particularly Vasyl Vitrenko. Our paths have crossed.’

‘Really?’ Scholz raised his eyebrows. ‘A dangerous path to cross, from all accounts.’

Fabel smiled grimly. It was difficult to assess how much Scholz knew about his history with Vitrenko and he didn’t want to point him in Maria’s direction. At least, not yet.

‘This woman your victim was seen talking to…’ Again Fabel tried to keep his tone chatty. ‘You know, the one the witness said was talking to the victim a day or two before he was killed. You said she seemed to be official. Police or immigration. Did you ever get to the bottom of that?’

‘That’s the strange thing,’ said Scholz. ‘We still can’t link her to any official body. Maybe she just looked official.’

‘Yeah…’ said Fabel, taking a sip of his beer but watching Scholz’s face as he spread out the files on the coffee table. ‘Probably nothing to do with anything…’

‘Oh, I don’t know… This BKA Vitrenko-Molokov task force seems pretty desperate to find her. Or for me to find her for them.’