The Valkyrie Song

7

Carstens Kaminski called Fabel at his office in the Presidium first thing.

‘We’ve got someone you should talk to,’ he explained. ‘It’s probably nothing, but I think you should hear what he has to say.’

‘In custody?’

‘No. A witness. Of sorts.’

‘I’ll come over,’ said Fabel.

‘No, it’s okay. I’ll send him over to the Presidium. He’ll be there in twenty minutes.’

Even after all of these years, after all of the things he had seen, Fabel still found it difficult to understand why some people got involved in the things they did. Despite his experience, Fabel still sometimes found himself fooled by people’s appearances. Jurgen Mann, who now sat opposite Fabel in the interview room, did not look like someone who should have inside information on hookers. Mann was thirty-five years old, tall and slim, dressed trendily but tastefully in a grey jacket and trousers and a black sweater. He had a wide, strong jaw forested with the kind of designer stubble that actually took a lot of maintenance to look so casual. Like the grey-haired man Fabel had seen ducking into Herbertstrasse, the fact that someone so outwardly normal, so unexpected, could be a regular user of street prostitutes depressed him.

Because of the ‘sensitivity’ of the interview, Fabel conducted it alone.

‘What is it you do?’ asked Fabel. ‘For a living, I mean?’

‘I’m a designer. Packaging, signage, that kind of thing.’

That would explain the stubble, thought Fabel. ‘Are you married?’

‘Yes. I don’t see-’

‘Children?’ Fabel cut Mann off.

‘One. An eight-year-old. Girl.’

‘And you visit the Reeperbahn regularly?’

‘Now and again. Listen, do you want to hear what I’ve got to say or not?’ Mann asked defiantly.

‘I need to know how you came by such information. I need to know about you. How often is “now and again”?’

‘Once every couple of weeks or so, I’d say. Sometimes more, sometimes less.’

‘And is it always street prostitutes you use?’

‘Yes.’

Fabel regarded the young man. He thought of his wife and eight-year-old daughter. ‘And this prostitute you told Herr Kaminski about: do you use her frequently?’

‘No. It was just the once. And I didn’t get to… well, there was no contact.’

‘Have you seen her before?’

‘No. That was the first time. And she approached me. Just sort of came out of the shadows and asked if I wanted to go with her. She told me how much and it was cheaper than usual, so I said yes.’

‘Then what happened?’

‘Like I told them at Davidwache, she led me into this courtyard. It looked like she planned that we do it there but I said I wanted to go to her room. It was then that she pulled the knife. She had me cornered and said that if I didn’t hand over my wallet she would cut me up the same way as she had sliced up that English singer.’

‘You believed her?’

‘If you had seen her eyes… I knew if I didn’t do what she said — and maybe even if I did — she would have a go at me with the knife.’

‘What kind of knife was it?’

‘I don’t know. A bloody big one. Maybe a filleting knife or something. Like a butcher knife but thinner.’

‘And you gave her your wallet?’

‘Yes. I threw it to her and when she caught it, I shoved her as hard as I could and ran for it.’

‘And this happened last night?’

‘Yes. I knew what she was talking about because I saw this thing on the news about the Angel being back.’

‘Yet you still went to the Kiez and wandered into an empty courtyard with a prostitute.’

‘I suppose I did. Anyway, it cost me my wallet.’

‘So why did you wait until this morning to go to Davidwache and tell them about the robbery?’

‘I was going to leave it… notify my credit card companies that I’d lost my wallet and have the cards stopped and forget all about it. But then I thought about the fact that she said she was the Angel. I thought I ought to let you know.’

‘Very public-spirited of you.’

‘Listen, I didn’t have to-’

‘What did this prostitute look like?’

‘She was older than the usual girls. Thirties. Maybe older. She had blonde hair… looked dyed. She was quite tall, about one-seventy-five. Slim. She was attractive, but looked — I don’t know — hardened, I suppose you could say. She was wearing a dark coat and black leather boots.’

‘Okay, I’ll need you to go and talk to one of our police artists here. We need to get a good picture of her. Then I’d like you to go through some mugshots for us, on the off chance that you might recognise someone we already know about.’

‘I need to get back to work.’

‘Fine,’ said Fabel. ‘I’ll send someone over to your home this evening to go through them with you. I take it your wife knows about all of this?’

‘Okay…’ said Mann. ‘I’ll do it here.’

Fabel got up to leave the room.

‘There’s one other thing,’ said Mann.

‘What?’

‘Her eyes. If you had seen her eyes. They were so full of hate and anger. That’s why I ran. I knew that if I hadn’t, she would have killed me for sure. She was the Angel. I know she was the Angel.’

Carstens Kaminski was in the Murder Commission when Fabel returned. Kaminski was half-sitting on the edge of Anna Wolff’s desk, smiling and chatting. He was small and dark and had something about him that was relaxed and confident. A charmer. Fabel heard that he had been quite the ladies’ man at one time. If the smile on Anna’s face was anything to go by, he probably still was.

‘Come on through,’ Fabel said to Kaminski and led him into his office.

‘Pretty girl,’ said Kaminski, with a lazy grin. ‘I heard she’s looking for a transfer. I’d sure like to accommodate her.’

Fabel stared at Kaminski incredulously. ‘My God, it doesn’t take long for word to get around, does it?’

‘What did you think of Mann’s story?’ asked Kaminski. ‘Nice office you’ve got, by the way.’ He craned his neck. ‘Can you see the Winterhude Planetarium from here?’

‘Mann’s a creep,’ said Fabel. ‘But I have no doubt that he believes he’s had a real brush with death. Or that he truly believes it was the Angel who mugged him.’

‘But you don’t think it was. Me neither,’ said Kaminski. ‘But the way she approached him suggests to me that she was keeping out of sight of the other girls. That and the way she was dressed makes me think she wasn’t a regular working girl. And she lured him into an isolated courtyard… she may not be the original Angel, but she certainly fits with the killer the other night.’

‘That’s what I thought. Hopefully Mann will be able to give us a good enough artist’s impression or pick her out from the mugs. Having said that, like you say I don’t think she’s a regular in the Kiez. Your guys pick anything else up?’

‘We talked to all the window girls in Herbertstrasse that night. Two of them remember seeing a man they thought was Jake Westland. He came in the Gerhardtstrasse end and made his way straight along the street without looking right or left and out onto Davidstrasse.’

‘That sounds planned,’ said Fabel.

‘I don’t know, Jan,’ said Kaminski, fiddling with the desk calendar on Fabel’s desk. ‘It could simply be that he was trying to give Martina Schilmann and her guy the slip. Just acting on an impulse. If Mann’s hooker is our killer, she certainly didn’t arrange to meet him.’

‘No… but maybe he had arranged to meet someone else and simply ran into the killer. It’s just that it seems so… purposeful, I suppose. The way he rushed along Herbertstrasse and out the other end, knowing he had only minutes before Martina would start looking for him coming out onto Davidstrasse. But whatever Westland’s intentions, I reckon we’ve got an Angel copycat on our hands. I also reckon Jurgen Mann is probably very lucky that he wasn’t her second victim. Brace yourself, Carstens,’ said Fabel. ‘My thinking is that we’re just at the start of a whole new series of killings.’