The Valkyrie Song

11

Ute Cranz dragged Drescher further into the kitchen. He saw her hover over him, a scalpel in her hand. He felt sick and suddenly thought what a relief it would be to throw up. He guessed the muscle relaxant had eliminated his gag reflex and he would die choking on his own vomit. Without coughing. Without a struggle. At least it would be better than whatever Ute Cranz had planned for him. She pulled at his clothes and he saw the scalpel slice downwards. But he didn’t feel its contact: she was cutting through his clothes, tugging the remnants clear of his body. He was naked now and felt cold, probably more from fear than from the temperature of her apartment.

She lifted up the plastic sheeting and slid something behind his head and shoulders so that he was in a semi-sitting position. She sat a bed table across his leaden legs and placed a large laptop computer on it, the screen facing him and almost completely filling his field of vision. She hit a key and the screen filled with a photograph: lurid colours. Blood everywhere. A woman’s body lay naked, the head and face hidden from view, jammed between a gore-sodden bed and a blood-streaked wall.

‘This is what men do to women. Look at this. Do you see?’ Ute pressed the key again. Another scene: this time a dead woman lay semi-clothed in some bushes, a ligature around her neck. ‘Do you see?’ Another scene-of-crime photograph. ‘Do you see?’

She clicked on a command and the screen automatically switched from one scene to the next. Sickening images of murder. Rape. Violent pornographic images of women being abused. Female faces twisted in fear.

‘This is what men do to women. What men have always done to women. Men like you.’ Ute let the images run for a few more seconds, then she closed the lid and lifted the computer and tray away. Then she squatted beside Drescher and whispered into his ear. ‘Women are forced to live in fear. All over the world. Every day. Real fear. Real fear like the fear you’re feeling right now. I know you are afraid, Drescher. I know you’re very afraid. But still you’re asking yourself “Why? Why is she doing this?”’ She held a photograph up for him to see. ‘Do you know who that is? It’s my sister. Margarethe. She’s dead. She killed herself. When you had finished with her she went mad and they locked her up. Then she killed herself. The staff at the hospital she was in thought they had taken every precaution to prevent her committing suicide, but when you’ve been trained to kill others, to kill in so many ways, then it’s easy for you to kill yourself. You don’t need much in the way of means or opportunity.’

Drescher stared at the photograph and listened, because there was nothing else he could do except stare and listen. The face in the photograph. He knew it. He remembered it. And what terrified him was that Ute Cranz didn’t seem to realise whose face, without the make-up, without the change of hair colour, it really was. And all the time his heart pounded within the cage of his locked body.

‘I’ve hunted you for fourteen years. Fourteen years of preparing for this moment. I promised my sister, promised Margarethe, that I would make it right. Well, I will. And I will take my time. Enjoy every moment. Do you remember when you taught your girls about blood supply? How you could use it to quicken or delay death? Remember how you told them about execution by saw in the Middle Ages? The victim was hung upside down and sawn in half, from the groin to the neck. Because they were hanging upside down, the brain stayed supplied with blood and the victim was conscious through the whole thing.’ She stood up and kicked away whatever had been supporting his head and neck. His head thudded against the floor and pain stabbed through it. She stood astride his body now and looked down at him. ‘You drove my sister insane. You drove her to her death. I am going to drive you mad. You are going to die, but before you die you will be in so much pain that you will lose your mind.’

He looked up at her and thought how beautiful she was. How terribly beautiful.