The Valkyrie Song

4

‘Where have you got her now?’ The voice on the other end of the connection sounded genuinely anxious.

‘Safely back in her cell, Herr Doctor,’ said Fabel. ‘Where she can do no harm.’

‘I wouldn’t count on it,’ said Kopke. He had a deep voice. A little scratchy. Fabel heard a metallic click and a crackle over the connection. A cigarette being lit. A medical man should know better, thought Fabel. ‘I really did want to warn you before you tried to interview her.’

‘I didn’t get the message-’ Fabel started to say, but Kopke cut him off.

‘She’s killed again?’

‘Yes. A male victim. And she castrated him.’

‘What was his name?’ Kopke’s tone was more demand than question.

‘I can’t-’

‘Was the victim called Georg Drescher? Or did Margarethe claim he was Georg Drescher?’

‘I can’t confirm or deny the identity of the victim, you should know that.’

‘Look, Herr Principal Commissar, you and I can play games and more people can die, or we can be straight with each other and maybe save a few lives. What will it be?’

‘What is it you have to tell me, Dr Kopke?’

‘First of all, you need to make sure that Margarethe is confined with maximum security.’ There was the sound of a blown-out breath and Fabel imagined the cigarette smoke billowing around the unseen psychiatrist. ‘You should have her watched by no fewer than two, ideally three, guards. Secondly, do what you can to make your demands sound like requests. She will respond with maximum hostility to any suggestion that you are commanding her to follow your will. And, trust me, Herr Chief Commissar, that hostility will be very professionally directed.’

‘I’ve already got the picture,’ said Fabel, involuntarily touching the gauze taped to his forehead.

‘Ah…’ Again there was the sound of a cigarette being drawn upon, followed by a hasty exhalation. ‘I thought you might. I also need you to get a court order over to me as soon as possible so that I can legally transfer the records of Margarethe Paulus’s treatment to you. I have tapes and video of my sessions with her and, trust me, you will want to hear all of them.’

‘In the meantime,’ said Fabel, ‘how about a little unofficial summary?’

‘Margarethe Paulus was a child of the GDR,’ said Kopke. ‘Her parents, from what I could gather, were bohemian, freethinker types who fell foul of the authorities. They ended up in prison and both died of cancer before reunification. Margarethe was taken into care by the state. It’s what she says happened to her afterwards that should interest you. Before I go any further, I have to tell you a little about her medical history. When she was still in the care of the state orphanage she started to have severe headaches. She would have been about eight at the time. Margarethe was admitted to hospital and it was suspected that she was suffering from a brain tumour. The operation revealed a growth in her brain which was subsequently declared benign, but the nature of the tumour is in some doubt — it was a reasonably large teratoma that could have been interpreted as fetus in fetu.’

‘I’m sorry…’ Fabel sounded more irritated than apologetic. ‘You’re going to have to explain.’

‘A teratoma is a tumour that is composed of all kinds of tissue. There can be hair, teeth, eye tissue in it. Sometimes it can have limbs — a hand or a foot, for example. In rare examples, a child is born with what appears to be a twin inside it. Fetus in fetu. Medical opinion is divided on whether these are actual foetuses that have formed within their twin, instead of alongside it, or if they are simply a more complex form of teratoma. Whatever they are, they are incapable of independent life. What was removed from Margarethe’s brain had the appearance of a rudimentary foetus. Somehow, maybe later after reading up on the subject, she decided that she had had a sister living inside her.’

‘And she still believes that?’

‘We learned to handle Margarethe and — with appropriate medication and management — she was able to live amongst the general hospital population. I’ll come back to why the medication and handling were so important, although I think you’ve experienced the reason first-hand. Anyway, Margarethe would sit over by the window for hours on end, talking to no one except her own reflection.’

‘Her sister,’ Fabel sighed.

‘That’s what we established in therapy, yes. But this is where I get to the most important bit. The tumour that was removed was benign, but it was large. When you take something like that out of someone’s brain things change. The chemistry changes; intracranial pressure alters and parts of the brain that have been constricted are relieved and have room to expand, particularly if the patient is a child. In Margarethe’s case, her personality changed. She had been a normal, emotional child of average ability. After the operation, she became distant, remote. But her academic and sporting ability improved radically. And that brings me back to the claims she has made.’

‘Which were?’

‘You have to remember that here in the East our post-war experience was very different. There are things that went on here that you couldn’t imagine. That we still have problems accepting. But what Margarethe told us was so incredible, so fantastic, that we put it down to schizoid paranoia. But then, as time went on, I began to have doubts. I mean, some patients have the most detailed and elaborate paranoias, but this was just too elaborate. Part of my job is to try to expose the falsehood of a paranoid delusion, to find a crack and use logic to lever it open so that the patient themselves, with the aid of the right medication, can see their fantasy for what it is.’

‘But there were no cracks in Margarethe’s story.’

‘None. I did a little research, too. At the Federal Commission for Stasi files. I discovered that many of the names she had given me were indeed real former Stasi people. But she had first given me this information at a time when the files were still being collated and reassembled.’

‘So if she was telling the truth…’

‘It still didn’t change the fact that she was very seriously disturbed. Or that she had murdered someone. The other thing was that there was this massive rage and hunger for revenge burning deep inside her. And most of it was directed at Georg Drescher. You see, Herr Fabel, Margarethe claims she was one of three young women selected by the Stasi and trained by Major Georg Drescher.’

‘Trained as what?’

‘Assassins. She claimed that she and her friends were trained to use a whole variety of methods to take human life, as well as concealment, espionage techniques — even how to seduce their victims. She said they were given code names. They were called the Valkyries.’

Walking into the Murder Commission incident room, Fabel felt like he was an unprepared act walking into the spotlight, centre stage. There were always times like this during an investigation — a development, a breakthrough, or another murder — when suddenly there was an electric tension in the air and the entire team looked on him expectantly. The truth was his head hurt, he was tired and felt sick, and he was struggling to deal with the enormity of what he had just heard from Margarethe’s psychiatrist.

Anna handed him a coffee and a couple of codeine. ‘You realise the mistake you made,’ she said in a low voice.

‘I’m sure you’re about to tell me.’ Fabel flipped the tablets from his palm into his mouth and washed them down with too-hot coffee.

‘You made a sexist judgement,’ said Anna. ‘And don’t go off on one — I’m not saying you’re a sexist. But what happened in there happened because you treated her differently because she was a female. You saw what she did to that guy in her apartment. If she had been a male suspect she would have been handcuffed to the restraint on the table.’

‘I’ll bear it in mind in the future,’ Fabel said and turned his attention to the rest of the room. ‘You’ve all heard that we have had a breakthrough. Well, I don’t know how much of a breakthrough we’ve had. Another man is dead. Tortured and killed as an act of revenge. It may well be that Margarethe Paulus is also responsible for the murders in the St Pauli district, as well as that of the Danish detective, Jens Jespersen.’ Fabel took another sip of coffee and sat on the corner of the desk nearest the front. ‘We retrieved a single blonde hair from the Westland murder scene, which we had good reason to believe belonged to the killer. I have to tell you before we go any further that we don’t have a DNA match with the woman we have in custody.’

‘That doesn’t mean it wasn’t her,’ said Werner. ‘It could equally prove that the hair didn’t belong to the killer.’

‘Could be,’ said Fabel. He was distracted by the arrival of Dirk Hechtner and Henk Hermann ‘I didn’t expect to see you back so quickly,’ said Fabel. ‘I told you to bag all the suspect’s stuff.’

‘We did,’ said Hechtner. ‘There wasn’t much to bag. She had three changes of clothes, one dressy, one businessy, one casual. We’ve handed what looks like a surgical kit over to forensics. From what we could see she had taken the tools she needed from the kit through to the kitchen.’

‘What else did you find?’ asked Fabel.

‘Four thousand euros in cash,’ said Henk Hermann. ‘A gun-’

‘What kind of gun?’ asked Fabel.

‘Nothing that I’ve seen before,’ said Henk Hermann. ‘It looked a bit like an old PPK, but it was clearly not that old and it had “Made in Croatia” stamped on the side. So we ran it through the computer. Apparently it’s…’ Henk referred to his notebook ‘… a PHP MV-9. It was developed by the Croatians in the early nineties, during the Independence War. Apparently, amongst gun freaks it’s a bit of a collector’s item. A rarity. There was also this really weird glove-knife thing… really odd. It was a leather strap that fastened around your hand and wrist, with a hidden metal plate that fitted in your palm and a short curved blade that stuck out of the bottom. We’re guessing it was some kind of weapon rather than a tool.’

‘Where is it now?’ asked Fabel.

‘We gave it to forensics for testing,’ said Dirk Hechtner. ‘If that blade has been used as a weapon, then I’ll bet a week’s pay we’ll get blood out of the leather bit.’

‘Good,’ said Fabel. ‘Anything else?’

‘A make-up kit,’ said Dirk. ‘It had several shades of hair dye, different types of make-up — not ordinary women’s cosmetics, it was stuff you could use to alter your appearance. Other stuff too… it took us a while to work out what some of it was for. Cheek prosthetics to change the shape of her face, that kind of thing. We also found a folder with paperwork to support her identity as Ute Cranz.’

‘Wait a minute,’ Anna said. ‘Margarethe Paulus was an escaped loony on the run from a mental hospital where she’d spent the last fifteen years. Where the hell did she get all these resources?’

‘Now that,’ said Fabel, ‘is a very good point. It’s pretty obvious that she had outside help. Very professional outside help. Let’s go back to what we’ve found out. The victim is a Robert Gerdes, except he probably isn’t. It looks pretty certain that he was Major Georg Drescher, a former major in the HVA wing of the East German Stasi. What we know so far is that Drescher was the control for three highly trained female agents, specifically trained as assassins. It kind of looks like Drescher embraced the free-market economy with relish and set up his own little Murder Incorporated, right here in the Free and Hanseatic City. It is perfectly safe to assume that Margarethe Paulus, while she may be a former protegee of Drescher, was not one of his active hit women. Mainly because, as Anna pointed out, she was locked up in a Mecklenburg secure hospital.’ He took a deep breath. ‘What we have here is the suggestion that there is a female contract killer — one of the world’s most successful — operating out of Hamburg. And she’s called, supposedly, the Valkyrie. Now we have an ex-Stasi officer killed by one of the three women he was supposed to have trained. And these female political assassins also went by the name Valkyrie. Maybe Drescher was the outside help. For argument’s sake, let’s accept he has one or both of the other Valkyries operating under his command, but let’s say business is too good and he’s turning work away. Maybe he wanted to expand the business and add another of his former protegees to his staff.’

‘Isn’t that unlikely?’ asked Werner. ‘Think about it: what you’re talking about is a highly skilled and disciplined operation. You wouldn’t take on a nutcase.’

‘Maybe he thought she wasn’t a nutcase when she was under his command. That he could control her. That he provided a context for her to function in.’

‘Oh yeah,’ snorted Anna, ‘that’ll be it. Every woman needs a man to complete her, after all.’ Then, before Fabel could respond: ‘I think you’re way off, Chef. He couldn’t have misjudged her that much — look what she did to him.’

‘But look at the resources she had at her disposal within weeks of escaping from the hospital. If Drescher didn’t do it, who set her up with everything she needed?’ asked Fabel. When no one responded he moved on. ‘What else have we got?’

‘I chased up Theo Wangler,’ said Anna, ‘and I’ve got a still from the Reeperbahn CCTV of the fake taxi,’ said Anna. ‘I’m afraid it doesn’t help much. They’ve done everything they could to enhance it, but it’s worth nothing. The Merc had false plates and you can’t see the face of the driver clearly enough for identification. You couldn’t even really say whether it was a man or a woman at the wheel. But we’ve had more luck with the Hanseviertel. You were right — Jens Jespersen had lunch there. There are no cameras in the basement restaurant itself, but we picked up this…’ Anna handed Fabel a print of an image taken from the CCTV. Jespersen was standing next to the glass elevator in the central atrium, near the restaurant. Next to him was a woman with a mass of chaotic blonde hair. Her face was partly turned from the camera and detail in the enlarged image was fuzzy. But it was clear enough to establish that Jespersen and the woman were engaging each other in conversation.

‘You get more than this?’ he asked Anna.

‘Nope. A few shots of her back, that’s all. They went their separate ways: he went out onto Neuer Wall and she headed out onto Poststrasse. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t arrange to meet later. We’ve been able to work out a height for her, though, from the security-camera shots — roughly one seventy-three or — four centimetres tall, give or take heels.’

‘Get someone down to the restaurant to-’

‘Done it,’ interrupted Anna. ‘I’ve got someone to take a photograph of Jespersen and a copy of that.’ She nodded towards the CCTV image. ‘And talk to all of the staff who were on duty at the time. So far, nothing.’

‘Okay,’ said Fabel. ‘We’re going back to Drescher’s apartment. This time we’re going to take it apart. If these Valkyries are real, and we remove Margarethe Paulus from the equation, that leaves two more out there. And one of them, or maybe both, were working for Drescher. Now they are rudderless. It would appear we’ve had as many as two highly trained professional killers under our noses for years. Now they are out there on their own and maybe desperate. It’s not an idea I’m too comfortable with. What is it, Werner?’ Fabel had noticed his deputy’s thoughtful expression.

‘What are we putting out to the press about the murder?’ he asked. ‘There weren’t any outside the place when I left.’

‘What’s your point?’ asked Fabel.

‘If Gerdes is this Major Drescher, then he was a spy by training and by inclination.’

‘So?’

‘So I’m betting that if he was running a contract-killer business, then he would have run his assassins as a spy cell. Strictly need-to-know basis. They will have had a close bond, but I’ll bet that they never came anywhere near his apartment.’

‘I get it,’ said Anna, suddenly animated. ‘So a murder in that apartment block or street won’t really mean anything to the Valkyrie unless the name Gerdes or Drescher is associated with it.’

‘Exactly,’ said Werner. ‘I’ll bet she doesn’t even know the name Gerdes.’ He turned to Fabel. ‘What if we “lose” the story, or disguise it as something else for a while? That means the Valkyrie won’t know he’s dead. Then, if we can work out the mechanism for contacting her — or them, if there are two — we can nail them.’

Fabel rubbed his chin thoughtfully and was reminded by the stubble rasping under his fingertips that he hadn’t had a chance to shave before rushing out to the Drescher murder scene. And that was how he saw it now: the Drescher murder scene.

‘It’s an idea…’ he said. ‘Sylvie Achtenhagen wasn’t outside the flat, so that would suggest that no one is making the connection yet. I’ll talk to the press department, see if they can fudge for a while… Okay, Werner — let’s run with the idea. The first thing we have to do is find out how Drescher contacted the Valkyrie. Let’s take his place apart.’