The Valkyrie Song

11

Emily would be here soon. Then everything in his life would start to make sense again. Peter Claasens had never understood women. He had never really tried, simply because it seemed like too much work.

He had been married for fifteen years and had three children, two of them daughters, but the female world remained a dark continent for Claasens. His wife, in particular, was still a mystery to him. She had turned from the pretty, quiet, unassuming girl he had unintentionally got pregnant to a shrew who nagged him about every evening he spent away from the family home, whether it was business or otherwise. Claasens had to admit, if grudgingly, that his wife had some grounds for her behaviour. Throughout his fifteen years of marriage he had been consistently unfaithful. He had taken great pride, however, in being discreet. Tactful. If his wife had suspicions, then that was what they had remained. He had never been careless enough to furnish her with substantiating evidence. But, there again, his looks were grounds enough for suspicion.

The concept of looks had always puzzled Claasens: why were some people more appealing to look at than others? More desirable? Claasens was a bright man. A very bright man. He had a sharp intellect and was a natural businessman. A commercial predator. Yet people found it difficult to see past his appearance. In the workplace men either resented him or wanted to be seen with him, female colleagues were either awkward around him or flirtatious. And when he didn’t respond to the flirting, they became resentful too. But he had responded. Often.

It was true, of course, that his appearance had been helpful: he had supplemented his income while an accountancy student by working as a photographic model. He had been offered every job he’d ever been interviewed for. And, of course, even if he hadn’t made a lot of money he had become involved with a trendy set from Blankenese. And Blankenese girls usually had money to burn. Peter Claasens had learned that fortune truly favours the fair.

But his looks had also insulated him from real emotion. Isolated him.

And now he stood on the top floor of the nearly complete ScanMedia building and contemplated a career of seduction and adultery. He looked out over Hamburg’s darkening skyline and thought about all of the women he had been with when he should have been with his wife. And, at that moment, he felt genuinely, completely remorseful. The reason he stood and contemplated all of the women he had known and felt sympathy for his wife was that all of that was now behind him. Something unexpected had happened to Peter Claasens: he had, at forty-two, fallen in love. From the start it had not been like his other affairs: Emily had not responded to his usual set of manoeuvres and tricks; she had not fallen into bed with him. She had talked to him. She had listened to him. It was as if Emily was blind to how he looked and this gift allowed her to truly see him. And now Claasens found the periods in between seeing her were like being forced to hold your breath until your lungs screamed for air.

Emily was English, with fire-red hair and green eyes. She spoke German fluently but with the sweetest accent and she had clearly never recognised the importance of gender or grammatical case in the language. Emily was also delightfully uncoordinated and clumsy: he had literally bumped into her outside his offices. She had fallen badly and he had helped her to her feet, insisting that she come into his office for a seat. Emily had smiled sweetly and said it was her fault and she was fine, had gathered up her stuff and hurried on. Claasens had just been about to go back into his office when an impulse had prompted him to run after her. He had insisted that the least he could do was buy her a coffee. She had accepted. It had begun.

That had been two months ago. In that short time, this dizzy English redhead had turned his world upside down. She had resisted becoming involved with a married man but he had insisted his marriage had been in terminal decline for some years. When she had announced that she was going back to England, Claasens had told her he couldn’t live without her, that he would leave his wife and they could set up home together here in Hamburg. Yet Emily had insisted that no one should be hurt more than necessary: he should tell his wife that he had to leave, that their marriage had run its course, but not mention that he was involved with anyone else. It would be better for his wife, for the kids. It would be better for Emily and Claasens. She had even asked to see the letter he intended to send his wife and had made changes, just so that no one was hurt more than they had to be. Emily was a good person. She was much, much better than he was and when she was around him he became someone better. Someone he could like.

Now he stood at the top of one of the biggest building projects in Hamburg outside the HafenCity and contemplated the past he was putting behind him.

‘Hello, Peter.’

He turned to see her there. The dark woollen overcoat and the beret she wore emphasised the red in her hair and the green in her eyes.

‘Hello, Emily.’ He smiled and leaned forward to kiss her but she put her gloved fingertips to his mouth.

‘Have you brought it?’ she asked.

‘Yes, I’ve brought it. And I changed it just as you asked. It’s so like you to worry about other people. I’ve made no mention that I’m involved with anybody. I made the other changes you suggested too. I still think it would have been better if I told her face to face. A letter… I just don’t know…’

‘May I see?’

He handed her the letter and she read through it. As Emily had suggested, Claasens told his wife that he could not go on with the way things were, that work had added to the stress, that he was so sorry for the hurt he knew his actions would cause her and the children.

‘Perfect,’ said Emily, folding the letter with her gloved fingers. She leaned against the metal railing that had temporarily been put up for safety reasons while the top floor of the building was completed. Claasens grabbed her elbow and pulled her back.

‘You have to be careful, Emily,’ he said paternally.

‘This really is a beautiful building,’ she said, looking down ten floors into the central atrium.

‘It’s meant to be a modern interpretation of an old Hamburg Kontorhaus — you know, the red-brick jobs with a huge atrium or courtyard in the middle.’

‘Such a strange name,’ she said in her accented German. ‘What does it mean — Kontorhaus?’

‘It goes back to the days of the Hanseatic League. There would be a Kontorhaus in almost every Hanseatic city in Europe: Hamburg, Bremen, Rostock, Danzig, St Petersburg. There was even a Kontor in London. Bremen and Hamburg are the only cities that are still officially Hanseatic cities.’

‘And this building is meant to be like those old Hanseatic Kontor buildings?’ Emily leaned and looked over the railing again.

‘Yes,’ said Claasens, distracted. ‘Emily, stand back from the railing. This safety railing is just temporary…’ He smiled at her, pushing back a strand of red hair and tucking it behind her ear. ‘And you know you can be a little accident-prone. We’re not even supposed to be here.’

‘How high are we?’ she asked, leaning further over the railing. Claasens eased her back gently.

‘I don’t know — four hundred metres, I’d say.’

‘That’s a lot of forensic distance,’ she said absently.

‘What did you say, Emily?’

She stood up and turned to him. ‘I said it’s a lot of forensic distance. It was one of the first things I learned: to place as much forensic distance between myself and the point and moment of death.’

Claasens frowned in confusion. He didn’t understand what Emily was saying. And he couldn’t understand why her German grammar and accent were now perfect. Her gloved hand sliced up like a blade and smashed into the side of his neck, just below his jawline and behind his ear. The blow somehow made the world dimmer and he felt his legs weaken beneath him. Claasens could not work out what was happening but moved to grab her. She dodged him, moving with a speed and precision he thought her incapable of. The edge of her hand hit him again, on exactly the same spot, and this time his legs folded. Emily stepped to one side and expertly used Claasens’s own momentum to propel him over the safety railing.

He didn’t even scream on the way down.

She leaned over the railing and looked into the vast well of the atrium. Claasens lay broken on the flagstones nine storeys below, a crimson halo around his head. It looked to Emily as if he had landed on his handsome face.

Emily took the letter he had handed her — the letter she had guided him to write — and threw it over the edge, allowing it to flutter down onto the atrium floor.