The Valkyrie Song

II

Hamburg

January 2008

She was waiting for him.

She had tracked him from the moment he first came into view on Erichstrasse, opposite the erotic museum. He was coming towards her but could not yet see her. She backed into the darkness of the small cobbled square. This was where it would be. The square had no light other than that which leached in from the streets at either end, and was shadowed further by the two naked-branched trees that erupted from the unpaved disc of earth at its centre.

She was waiting for him.

As he approached she recognised his face. She had never met him, never seen him in the flesh, but she recognised him. His was a face from beyond the real world. A face she knew from the television, from the press, from posters in shop windows. A familiar face, but familiar from a parallel universe.

She hesitated for a moment. Because of who he was, there would be others. Attendants. Bodyguards. She stepped back into the shadows. But as he drew closer she saw that he was truly alone. He hadn’t seen her until he was almost upon her and she stepped out of the shadow.

‘Hello,’ she said in English. ‘I know you.’

He stopped, startled for a moment. Unsure. Then he said: ‘Sure you know me. Everybody knows me. You came here for me?’

She held open her coat and exposed her nakedness beneath and his face broke into a grin. She looped her arm around him and drew him into the shadows. He placed his hands on her, inside the coat, her skin hot and soft in the cold winter night. Her breath too was hot as she put her mouth to his ear.

‘I came here for you…’ she said.

‘I didn’t come here for this,’ he said, breathless, but he allowed himself to be pulled into the darkness.

‘And I didn’t come for your autograph…’ Her hand slid down his belly and found him.

‘How much?’ he asked, his voice quiet but tight with excitement.

‘How much?’ She drew back, looked into his eyes and smiled. ‘Why, honey, this is for free. This will stay with you for ever and you get it for nothing.’

She held his gaze but her hands moved fast and expertly. He felt his belt being loosened, his shirt being eased up; the cold night on naked skin.

He fell to the ground.

The cobbles were wet and cold beneath him and he gave a small startled laugh at his own clumsiness. He was slumped against the brick wall behind him, his legs splayed wide. Why had he fallen down? His legs felt as if they didn’t belong to him and he stared at them, wondering why they had simply given way under him. Then he gazed up at her: she stood astride him and the fire in her eyes terrified him. He vomited without warning, without first feeling sick. A sudden, bone-penetrating chill spread through his body. He looked at the vomit that covered his chest and the cobbles around him. It glistened black-red in the dim light.

He looked up at her again, as if she could explain why he had fallen; why there was so much blood. Then he saw it: the sliver of steel that glinted in her gloved hand. He felt something warm and wet inside his clothes. His trembling fingers found his shirt front and he tore at it, buttons flying into the dark and bouncing off the cobbles. His belly was split and something bulged from the wound, grey and glistening and wet, red-streaked in the half-light. Steam fumed from his rent belly and into the winter night. Blood surged rhythmically from the wound, keeping time with the pounding of his pulse in his ears. He felt cold. And sleepy.

The woman leaned down and used the shoulder of his expensive coat to wipe his blood from the blade. Then, with the same expert speed and precision with which she had stabbed him, she went through his pockets. After she took his diary, wallet and cellphone, she leaned towards him again, and he once more felt the heat of her breath in his ear.

‘Tell them who did this to you,’ she whispered, still in English. Still seductively. ‘Tell them it was the Angel who ripped you…’ She stood up, slipping the knife into her coat pocket. ‘Make sure to tell them that before you die…’