The Valkyrie Song

6

They sat in the living room of Drescher’s apartment, each of them wearing the same empty expression of dull frustration.

‘We’ve been here before,’ Karin Vestergaard said to Fabel.

‘There must be something here.’ Fabel sighed.

‘We’re not looking in the right places,’ said Werner. ‘We’re not devious enough. That’s what comes of growing up in a democracy.’

Fabel snapped his fingers. ‘Werner, you’re brilliant. You are absolutely right — we don’t know where to look. Or how to look.’ Taking out his wallet, he retrieved the business card Martina Schilmann had given him. He flipped it over to where she had handwritten her mobile number and keyed it into his cellphone.

‘Martina… It’s Jan Fabel.’

‘Hi, Jan. What can I do for you?’

‘Lorenz, your Saxon chum. You said he was ex-Volkspolizei.’

‘Yes, what of it?’

‘Did he serve after the Wall came down? In one of the new forces?’

‘No.’ Martina sounded suspicious. ‘What is this all about?’

‘Why didn’t he continue his police career?’

‘Jan,’ she said, with a sigh, ‘I can see where you’re going with this. Let me save time. The answer is yes, he was linked with the Stasi. That’s why he couldn’t get into one of the new forces. Why do you want to know?’

‘I have an apartment here that’s refusing to give up its secrets. The occupier was ex-Stasi. I need to know where to look.’

There was a silence at the other end of the connection.

‘Give me the address,’ Martina said at last. ‘I’ll bring him over myself…’

It took Martina Schilmann half an hour to arrive. Fabel had cleared the uniforms from the street, to attract as little attention as possible. In the digital age of cellphones that could take photographs and video, it never took long before someone was on to the television or newspapers. The city was no longer asleep and a heavy police presence in the street would be fully exposed to view.

Fabel had instructed the uniformed cops downstairs to conduct Schilmann and Lorenz Duhring directly up to the penthouse apartment.

Fabel guessed that Martina had been taking a day off: she was dressed in jeans, a heavy sweater and a thigh-length leather coat. Her blonde hair had been tied back in a ponytail and her face was naked of make-up. It made her look younger, more natural, and Fabel couldn’t help remembering why he had been attracted to Martina in the first place. It was as if she had read his thoughts and she smiled shyly.

Lorenz lumbered into the background: tall, thickset and dark.

‘This is Politidirektor Karin Vestergaard of the Danish National Police,’ explained Fabel in English. ‘We are cooperating on this case.’

The two women shook hands. A little coldly, thought Fabel. The dynamics of female relationships remained a mystery to him.

‘I’m afraid Lorenz doesn’t speak English,’ said Martina. ‘Poor chump got stuck with Russian at school.’

Fabel turned to Vestergaard. ‘Lorenz was a policeman in the former GDR. In the Volkspolizei. He wasn’t allowed to become a member of the new, post-change police forces because only members of the Volkspolizei who were free of any connection to the Stasi were allowed to continue as policemen.’

‘He’s ex-Stasi?’

‘He was one of their little helpers, let’s say,’ said Martina. ‘And he received training from them, which is what Jan was counting on. By the way, Jan, for your information, I didn’t know what Lorenz had been involved in. I guessed he’d been a Stasi unofficial, but, let’s face it, it’s a skills set that’s very useful in my line of work. I asked him on the way over here if he had taken part in house searches and he told me he had.’

‘Frau Schilmann told me that an ex-Stasi officer lived here,’ Lorenz piped up in German.

‘That’s right,’ said Fabel. ‘A major in the HVA.’

‘HVA?’ Lorenz rubbed his heavy chin with forefinger and thumb. ‘Those boys knew what they were doing when it came to hiding stuff. You’re sure he has something here? I think it’s more likely that he would keep anything sensitive in a different location.’

‘Could be,’ said Fabel. ‘But my money’s on him operating from here.’

‘He would feel reasonably safe here, I suppose,’ said Lorenz. ‘I mean, it’s not like in the GDR. He probably thought this flat would never be searched.’ He cast his eye across the books on shelves. ‘It makes things quicker if I don’t tidy up behind me. Is that a problem?’

‘Do what you have to do,’ said Fabel.

It took Lorenz less than half an hour.

‘Like I thought,’ he said in his Saxon baritone when he came back through to the living room. ‘He felt secure here. You were right about him using this as an operational base, so I reckoned there was no point in shifting heavy furniture, bookcases, et cetera. He would want to conceal his stuff but have reasonably easy access to it.’

‘You learned that from the Stasi?’ asked Martina.

‘Journalists and writers — we were taught that they had to keep manuscripts, typewriters, that kind of thing handy. Serious dissidents and foreign agents — they were a different kettle of fish. That’s why I thought this guy might be difficult. If he was HVA. But this couldn’t have been more straightforward.’

Lorenz led them through to the study. He lifted up the deco-style bronze bird and gave the wooden base a twist. A compartment was exposed in which sat a small steel tool, almost like a nail twisted into a flattened hook. Lorenz took the hook and leant down beneath the desk. What looked to Fabel like a small chip in a floorboard was actually a perfect fit for the hook. Lorenz inserted the hook, gave it a half-twist and lifted a square of floorboard. The whole operation took less than fifteen seconds.

‘It’s nothing more than having a secret drawer,’ said Lorenz. ‘It was secure enough but easy and quick to get to. I haven’t touched anything in there.’

Fabel snapped on a pair of latex gloves and knelt down to examine the contents.

‘There’s a black laptop computer in here, along with its power supply. Also a bunch of data sticks. Nothing else — no notebooks or files. Just this…’ He eased out a copy of a magazine that had been folded lengthwise.

‘Don’t tell me he hid porn in there,’ snorted Werner.

‘Werner, go down to the flat below and ask Holger Brauner or Astrid Bremer to come up with a few large evidence bags.’ Fabel unfolded the magazine. He showed Vestergaard and Martina Schilmann the title. ‘Now I could be wrong,’ he said, ‘but I don’t really see Drescher as your typical feminist.’

‘ Muliebritas,’ Vestergaard said aloud.

‘It’s a feminist title,’ explained Fabel. ‘The title is Latin. It’s where the English word “muliebrity” comes from. The female equivalent of virility. There’s a subtle difference from femininity. We would translate it as Fraulichkeit in German. I suppose you have a Danish word for it.

‘ Kvindelighed,’ said Vestergaard.

Fabel stared at the magazine. ‘I tell you what else this is: a prime example of synchronicity. The night Jake Westland was murdered, there was a massive feminist protest in Herbertstrasse that contributed to the confusion. And it was organised by Muliebritas.’

Werner reappeared with some evidence bags. Fabel slipped the magazine into one and handed it to Vestergaard. Easing the computer and its power connector out of the recess in the floor, he placed them in a tagged evidence bag, putting the data sticks in a separate one.

He turned to Vestergaard and Martina. ‘We’ll get this stuff down to Tech Division and see if they can get into the computer. I’m guessing it’s encrypted, but the tech guys will be able to get through it. God knows how many paedophiles we’ve nicked because they thought they’d locked up their porn safe and sound.’

‘A paedophile is one thing,’ said Astrid Bremer, who had appeared behind them. ‘A professional spy is another. That is what we’ve got here, isn’t it?’

‘I think so, Astrid,’ said Fabel. ‘But from a pre-digital age. This was maybe one area he wasn’t too hot on. How are you getting on downstairs?’

‘It’ll take a while. Days, maybe. But Holger said he could spare me if you need something special up here.’

‘Anything,’ said Fabel. ‘We’ve got one killer in custody but there’s another one, maybe even two, on the loose. And she’s connected to the victim, Drescher. I need anything that can point us in the right direction.’

‘Do you think she’s been in this apartment?’

‘No. Probably not. But if there’s a trace of anybody other than the vic having been in here I want to know about it. Also, if you come across anything unusual let me know. But can you start with this.’ Fabel handed Astrid the copy of Muliebritas. ‘This doesn’t belong here. It could have been handled by the person we’re looking for. Either that or it’s the mechanism he used to contact her. I need it checked before we start going through it with a cryptologist.’

‘I’ll get right onto it,’ said Astrid, and she smiled broadly at Fabel.

The first thing Fabel did when he got back to the Presidium was to phone Criminal Director van Heiden to approve the overtime for his team and the extra officers he would need to draft in. Van Heiden gave him the authority immediately and without question, which surprised Fabel a little: he had become used to his superior being grudging about any extra expenses on an investigation, as if he personally had to finance them. But, there again, this case had started off as three: Jespersen’s death, the Angel killings in St Pauli and Drescher’s torture and murder. It was all getting too messy, too political and the media were focusing on it. Complication was something van Heiden had difficulty dealing with. Fabel guessed that his superior was under pressure to clear it all up as quickly as possible.

‘Are you convinced all of these crimes are connected?’ asked van Heiden.

‘Pretty convinced,’ said Fabel. He gestured to Karin Vestergaard, who had just come into his office, to sit down. ‘It’s safe to assume that this GDR hit squad called the Valkyries has been operating for profit from here in Hamburg. Drescher ran it and he’s been killed by one of his former trainees.’

‘He didn’t recognise her?’ asked van Heiden.

‘I get the impression she was a reject, probably because of her mental-health problems. And it was a long time ago. She probably just dropped off his radar and out of his memory.’

‘Okay,’ said van Heiden. ‘Keep me informed. So I can keep others informed.’

‘Of course.’ Fabel hung up and turned his attention to Vestergaard. Again he noticed that she had done something with her make-up that had subtly changed her look and once more Fabel was struck by how attractive her face was, yet how forgettable. Maybe it was something that Margarethe Paulus shared with her. Maybe the appearance of the Valkyries had been a criterion: attractive but forgettable. Maybe that was why Drescher had not recognised his killer.

‘You said you’ve been given new information from the Norwegian investigators of Halvorsen’s murder?’ Fabel asked her.

‘The Norwegian National Police have been in touch with me through my office.’ Vestergaard leaned forward and placed a note on Fabel’s desk. ‘This man — Ralf Sparwald — is someone Jorgen Halvorsen seems to have had contact with. It’s believed that Halvorsen visited Hamburg to talk to him.’

‘Who is he?’ Fabel examined the name and address written on the note.

‘He’s a doctor of some kind. His name was flagged up when the Norwegian police got a warrant to access Halvorsen’s email account. They could only get what is still in his in-box, uncollected. There was an out-of-office reply from this guy’s email address. The Norwegians knew I was in Hamburg and that there was a possible connection here, so they sent this on to me.’

Fabel checked his watch. Most of the day had been spent at the Drescher crime scene or in briefings. It was now six-thirty p.m. ‘Okay — so you think I should speak to Sparwald? It’ll have to be tomorrow now.’

‘No, I think we should speak to Sparwald, if that’s okay with you.’

Fabel shrugged. ‘I don’t mind you coming along to observe. But please don’t forget whose inquiry this is.’

‘Somehow I don’t think you’ll let me forget,’ said Vestergaard, and smiled.

The address Vestergaard had given Fabel for Sparwald was to the north of the city, in Poppenbuttel, in the Wandsbeck district. Wandsbeck had once been part of Schleswig-Holstein and had only been incorporated into Hamburg at the same time as Altona and even now, sitting on the shores of the Alster River, Poppenbuttel still felt more like a country village than a suburb.

As soon as Fabel and Vestergaard arrived, it was clear that the address they had been given was Sparwald’s place of work rather than residence. SkK BioTech was located in an unobtrusive, low-level building set in an expanse of well-laid-out garden and fringed with winter-bare trees. Five smallish flags flew from poles set next to each other, UN-style, in the garden: the SkK BioTech logo fluttered in the cold breeze next to the flags of the EU, Germany and, Fabel noticed, the white-on-red Nordic cross of Denmark. There was another flag beside it.

‘They must have known you were coming,’ Fabel said to Vestergaard, with a nod to the Danish flag. He looked at the flag next to it. It was a non-national pennant: a white field with a small flared red cross on it.

The small, dumpy receptionist took a while to come to the desk from an office behind. From her reaction, SkK BioTech was not accustomed to visitors, particularly ones without an appointment. Fabel held up his police identity card.

‘We need to speak to Herr Sparwald, if he’s available.’

‘Herr Doctor Sparwald,’ corrected the receptionist. She looked from Fabel to Vestergaard and back. She had the nervousness and vague expression of groundless guilt of someone unaccustomed to dealing with the police. ‘I’m afraid he’s not here. He’s on leave. Another two weeks.’

‘I see…’ Fabel considered his options for a moment. ‘What is it you do here?’

‘I work in the admin department. Deal with correspondence and answer the phones.’

Fabel laughed. ‘I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant. I meant what does SkK BioTech do, exactly?’

‘Oh…’ The fleshy cheeks of the small receptionist coloured. ‘We work for medical research companies. Herr Doctor Luttig could tell you more. Shall I fetch him?’

‘If that’s not too much trouble,’ said Fabel.

Fabel and Vestergaard exchanged a smile when the receptionist left. She returned with a tall, thin and lugubriously sombre man in his late forties. He was dressed in a white lab coat but, to Fabel’s mind, he had the look of a Lutheran preacher from some remote Frisian island.

‘I’m Thomas Luttig. I believe you are looking for my colleague Ralf Sparwald. Is there a problem?’

Again Fabel held up his ID. ‘I’m Principal Chief Commissar Jan Fabel of the Polizei Hamburg Murder Commission. This is Politidirektor Karin Vestergaard of the Danish National Police.’

‘Murder?’ Luttig’s grave expression became, somehow, graver. ‘What’s this got to do-’

Fabel held up his hand. ‘Please, don’t concern yourself. Nothing at all directly. We’re just helping out our Norwegian colleagues with a few inquiries. I believe Dr Sparwald is on leave?’

‘Yes. He won’t be back for… let me see, he’s been away a week, so he won’t be back for another two and a half weeks,’ said Luttig.

‘That’s a long holiday,’ said Fabel.

‘Yes. It is. I suppose it had to be… China you see. I suppose if you travel that far you’ve got to make it worth your while. Although I really could do with him here… Dr Sparwald is my deputy, you see, as well as being the most senior analyst.’

Fabel began to translate into English for Vestergaard what Luttig had said.

‘I studied at Cambridge, amongst other places,’ Luttig interrupted him. ‘It’s quite in order for me to speak in English if that makes things easier.’

‘Thank you,’ said Vestergaard, and smiled. ‘You couldn’t arrange cover for him? A trip to China takes a lot of arranging — you must have had a fair bit of advance warning.’

‘That’s the thing. I didn’t. Ralf sort of sprung this on me out of the blue. He’s like that — he is a very committed environmentalist. That’s why he works here: the group we do work for is heavily involved in environmental clean-up. But even with warning, it would be practically impossible to find someone to fill in for him. Or at least anyone with a remotely similar set of skills.’

‘Can you explain what it is you do here?’

‘Basically we’re an analysis laboratory,’ said Luttig. ‘We’re a wholly owned subsidiary of an environmental and biotechnical group. We do all of their analytical work. Toxicology. Everything from soil samples to human tissue. We specialise in evaluating environmental impacts and identifying pollution-related health risks.’

‘I see,’ said Fabel. ‘Do you know what part of China Dr Sparwald is visiting?’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t.’

‘Is he travelling alone, do you know?’ asked Vestergaard.

‘Again, I’m not really sure. He said something about a Norwegian friend.’

Fabel and Vestergaard exchanged a look.

‘Didn’t you say you were helping the Norwegian police?’ Luttig frowned. ‘Is Ralf in some danger?’

‘No, no,’ said Fabel. ‘Not at all. It’s just that he may have information that could be useful to us. This Norwegian, do you know his name?’

‘No. Ralf just mentioned he might be travelling with a Norwegian friend. Are you sure Ralf’s not in danger? The Chinese authorities don’t always take kindly to foreign environmentalists.’

‘Do you have Dr Sparwald’s cellphone number?’ asked Vestergaard. ‘We could perhaps reach him on that.’

‘Certainly,’ said Luttig. ‘I’ll get it for you.’

‘You said you are a wholly owned subsidiary of a group,’ said Fabel. ‘Would that be the NeuHansa Group?’

‘That’s right.’

Fabel handed Luttig one of his Polizei Hamburg visiting cards. ‘If you hear from Dr Sparwald, I’d be grateful if you could tell him I would like to speak to him as a matter of urgency. And if you come across anything that you think would be of interest to us, please give me a call.’

‘Of course.’ Luttig turned back to Vestergaard. ‘I’ll get you Ralf’s number and home address.’

‘How did you know that SkK Biotech was owned by the NeuHansa Group?’ Vestergaard asked Fabel as they walked back to the car.

‘That.’ He thrust his chin in the direction of the pennant flying beside the other flags. ‘The small red cross. In German we call that a Tatzenkreuz. You know, the flared cross you see on German military vehicles. Well, the one on that flag is less flared and it’s red on a white background. It’s a Hanseatic cross. I’m guessing it’s some kind of corporate logo. That and the Danish flag made me think of Gina Bronsted, the owner of the NeuHansa Group.’

‘Is it significant?’

‘Not significant. Coincidental. The most recent victim of the St Pauli Angel also worked for a NeuHansa Group company. But that’s not unusual — so do a lot of people.’

‘Funny things, coincidences,’ said Vestergaard. ‘I tend not to believe in them.’ As they were about to get back into his car, she handed Fabel the note Luttig had given her with Sparwald’s home address on it.

‘Nor do I,’ said Fabel.

When they got back from SkK Biotech, Fabel found a thick legal envelope on his desk. He had just picked it up when Werner came in. Karin Vestergaard diplomatically excused herself and left the two men alone.

‘She’s becoming your shadow,’ said Werner. ‘Doesn’t it get on your nerves?’

‘As a matter of fact it doesn’t. I would be every bit as hands-on if you got yourself killed in Copenhagen and I went up to find out what happened.’

‘What can I say?’ Werner grinned. ‘I’m touched.’ He nodded towards the envelope. ‘That arrived half an hour ago and I just left it on your desk. It’s the details of Westland’s investments, correspondence, that sort of thing. Westland’s widow sent them over like you asked.’

‘Thanks. I’ll look at it later. Anything else new?’

‘Yes, there is, as a matter of fact.’ Werner swung open the door and called through to Dirk Hechtner, who came in carrying an evidence bag, which he placed on Fabel’s desk. The bag contained a curved blade attached to a leather device that looked halfway between a wrist-strap and a glove.

‘Things have just got even more interesting,’ said Dirk Hechtner. ‘This is one of the things we found in Margarethe Paulus’s apartment. We did get positive traces of blood from the leather… unfortunately they were too small and too degraded to get a match. However, we did manage to get a sample of dried blood from around the base of the blade. Or at least Astrid Bremer did. But we still weren’t able to get a match.’

‘A match with whom?’ asked Fabel. ‘There’s no sign that this was used in Drescher’s murder.’

‘No, not Drescher. I did some digging… tried to find out what the hell this thing is. I got a name for it. It’s called a srbosjek. I thought this might be the weapon used to kill Goran Vuja i c in Copenhagen. You know, the Serbian gangster.’

‘Vuja i c?’ Fabel frowned. ‘What made you make the connection to Vuja i c?’

Hechtner nodded towards the object in the evidence bag. ‘This is a particularly horrible device with only one purpose: to murder. It was designed for the Usta e, the fascists who ran Croatia during the Second World War. The Usta e believed in an ethnically cleansed Croatia, free of Serbs, Gypsies, Jews… They set up their own concentration camp, Jasenovac, where they murdered a million or more. They were very hands-on about it all: they clubbed, stabbed or hacked their victims to death, all of which was very labour-intensive. So they came up with the srbosjek. It was used to cut throats with maximum speed and minimum effort. That’s why I made the connection with Vuja i c — srbosjek is Croat for “Serb Cutter”. It struck me that maybe someone was being poetic.’

‘More like they’re trying to tell us something.’ Fabel picked up the evidence bag. The srbosjek was an ugly, vicious-looking thing, even if you didn’t know its history. ‘But this definitely wasn’t the weapon used to kill Vuja i c. His throat wasn’t cut: the blade used to kill him was more like a thin stiletto or a needle file, pushed into the heart from under the sternum. But good work, Dirk. You may be on to something.’

Fabel met Susanne in the Presidium canteen for lunch. She had spent an hour on the phone with Kopke, the Mecklenburg State Hospital Chief Psychiatrist. Karin Vestergaard had phoned Fabel and explained that she needed to catch up on a few things with her office. There had been something about her manner on the phone that made him feel that she was not being entirely straightforward with him. But he dismissed the thought: Vestergaard knew that if she withheld anything from Fabel he would shut her out of the investigation into Jespersen’s death.

‘You look tired,’ said Fabel as they picked up their trays and inched along in a queue of blue uniforms. Susanne had a large thick leather-bound notebook tucked under her arm. Fabel could see Post-it notes sprouting like foliage from its edges and he noticed that she had jammed various other folded sheets between its pages.

‘I’ve had a lot to take in,’ she said wearily. ‘You say you’ve spoken with Kopke?’

‘I’ve had that pleasure,’ said Fabel, with a wry smile.

‘I don’t think I’ve been talked at like that since I was a first-year student,’ said Susanne. She broke off to place her order with the canteen assistant. ‘He’s not the most patient of people, is he? In fact, for a psychiatrist, he doesn’t seem much of a people person.’

‘If you mean he’s an arsehole,’ said Fabel, ‘then I would agree with your professional assessment. I thought you southerners were direct and outspoken.’

‘I’m acclimatising. Another year or two up here and I’ll be locking up all that emotion deep inside till it rots away at me, just like the rest of you. Anyway, arsehole or not, I had to take a hell of a lot of notes while I spoke to him. He was well prepared. And he thinks we should be too, before we talk to Margarethe Paulus again.’

‘He has a point,’ said Fabel.

‘How is the head?’ asked Susanne.

‘It’s fine — it really wasn’t too bad. It’s my pride that’s taken the bruising.’

‘What, because you were beaten up by a woman?’ They found a place over by the window and reasonably distant from the majority of occupied tables.

‘Because I mishandled the whole situation. What have you got?’

Susanne dropped her notebook with a thud onto the canteen table. She looped a stray lock of raven hair behind her ear, slipped on her glasses and started to flick through her notes.

‘She’s a psychopath. That’s for sure. But, whatever else has been going on, she’s not a serial killer. Kopke insists that she could not be responsible for any of the other killings.’

‘That’s not right — she had escaped from the hospital before Jake Westland and Armin Lensch were killed. And Jespersen, too. She could well have committed those murders. The only thing she’s in the clear for is the original Angel killings.’

‘No, no — that’s not what Kopke means. Margarethe may well have been available to commit those other murders, but Kopke is certain that she was focused exclusively on killing Drescher. She would have no compunction about killing others, but she saw herself as being on a mission. The only other people she would have murdered would have been anyone who stood in the way of her killing Drescher.’

‘Maybe she found out that Jespersen was on Drescher’s trail,’ said Fabel between mouthfuls.

‘Isn’t that pretty unlikely? Anyway, let me summarise what Kopke told me: Margarethe Paulus is a psychopath, but it’s difficult to decide whether she’s a primary or a secondary psychopath. Primaries tend to be born that way or are genetically predisposed to psychopathy, whereas secondaries are made that way by experience, environment or as the result of drug abuse, et cetera. Margarethe clearly went through a neurological trauma as part of her childhood brain surgery. Maybe her psychopathy is iatrogenic, the adverse side effect of medical intervention. But it’s hard to tell — psychopathy only really begins to manifest itself in adolescence. We’re all egocentric as kids: it goes with the territory. But whereas we mature and get an idea of ourselves as social beings, psychopaths don’t. The scary thing is that there’s a good chance that one in every hundred of the population are psychopaths.’

‘You’re kidding…’

‘No joke. And a lot more are borderline. We’ve all known someone who is totally egomaniacal. The husband who dumps his wife of twenty years along with his kids without a second thought. Or the business boss who sacks loyal workers without a twinge of conscience… A lot of people we consider self-centred arseholes are often psychopathic. They have a piece of their make-up missing. The majority of psychopaths in society manage to fit in and never become involved in criminal or overtly antisocial behaviour.’ Susanne took a sip of her coffee. ‘You know we were talking about Irma Grese, the Bitch of Belsen? Well, maybe that’s a perfect example of someone who could have gone through life and had a perfectly normal existence. That’s the danger, Jan, that when someone like Hitler comes along he can tap into that one per cent of the population. When you have a core of people who are incapable of feeling guilt or remorse, and who possess absolutely no capacity for pity or compassion or empathy for other human beings, you can persuade them to do almost anything.’

‘And Margarethe is one of those people?’

‘Not quite. There’s nothing borderline with Margarethe. Kopke says she’s a true sociopath and, quite unusually, she’s suffering from a dissocial personality disorder, rather than an antisocial personality disorder.’

‘What’s the difference?’ asked Fabel.

‘Mainly that she can function, or seem to function, more normally. Dissocial sociopaths don’t get into trouble to the same degree — delinquency, criminal behaviour, that kind of thing — as the antisocial type. And they’re better at disguising their behaviour. She won’t have sought out opportunities to act antisocially, but she will act without pity to get or do whatever she wants. The main thing is she has absolutely zero empathy for other human beings. She is simply incapable of simulation… imagining that other people have feelings or even the same kind of consciousness as she does.’

‘Ideal for a professional assassin,’ said Fabel.

‘Not really. As you’ve experienced yourself, the typical individual with full dissocial personality disorder has an extremely low violence threshold. So does an antisocial, for that matter. If everything she has claimed about the Stasi training is true — and bear in mind all sociopaths are inventive, compulsive liars — then her trainers would no doubt have identified her instability and dropped her from the programme. Another trait of the disorder, unfortunately for Drescher, is the tendency to pin the blame or responsibility for their failures on others. Combine that with a tendency towards obsession, and you’ve got the ultimate stalker from hell. Kopke believes that in Margarethe’s case there’s co-morbidity with another personality or even a schizoaffective disorder… or maybe it’s to do with the neurological damage done in childhood. Something that makes her even more focused and obsessive. Her belief that her sister exists, and the way she allows the sister to speak and act through her, isn’t psychopathic, it’s psychotic. Delusional. In Margarethe we have something extra going on in the mix: sociopathy with a twist.’

Fabel looked through the window, out across the treetops. The sky was heavy and grey. ‘Do you think the other so-called Valkyries will be similar? Sociopaths, I mean?’

Susanne shrugged. ‘To take human life for money doesn’t show a lot of empathy for others. But sociopaths are egomaniacal, narcissistic and extremely impulsive. I’m guessing that these women who were trained as professional assassins had a high degree of self-discipline and were willing to subordinate their will to that of others. But that doesn’t make them any less dangerous. The opposite, in fact.’

‘I don’t want you sitting in on the interview, Susanne,’ said Fabel. ‘You can watch from the other room through the CCTV.’

‘That’s no good, Jan. I need to be able to observe her closely. And I want to be able to ask her questions. Surely you will have her restrained this time?’

‘Okay… but if she kicks off again, you leave right away. I’ll have extra bodies in there with us.’

Susanne’s perfect porcelain smile had a hint of wickedness about it. ‘I don’t know, Jan… you’re going to have to learn to deal with your fear of women or I’m going to end up a permanent chaperone.’

Fabel, Susanne and Anna Wolff were seated in the interview room before Margarethe Paulus was brought in. Karin Vestergaard, Werner and others from the Murder Commission team were in the connecting room, watching on closed-circuit TV.

When Margarethe was brought in by two uniformed officers, her wrists braceleted in Speedcuffs, her strong, attractive face was as impassive as it had been before.

‘Sit down, Margarethe.’ Fabel indicated the floor-fixed chair. One of the officers unfastened her Speedcuffs, only to use them again to fix her right hand to the metal securing loop on the table. A tall woman of about forty took the seat next to Margarethe. She was Lina Mueller, the state-appointed attorney.

‘This is Frau Doctor Eckhardt,’ said Fabel, gesturing towards Susanne, ‘from the Institute for Judicial Medicine. She is a criminal psychologist and she has spoken to Dr Kopke, who of course you know. Frau Doctor Eckhardt will have some questions for you. You will have already spoken to Frau Mueller, who is here to represent your interests.’

‘I don’t need a lawyer,’ said Margarethe. Again it was a simple statement of fact, made without resentment or anger.

‘We feel you should have one present,’ said Anna. ‘It’s your right.’

Margarethe didn’t respond, in voice or expression.

‘What is your name?’ asked Fabel.

‘I am Margarethe Paulus.’

‘But you told Herr Fabel earlier that you were Ute Paulus,’ said Anna.

‘You are confusing me with my sister,’ said Margarethe. ‘Ute is my sister’s name.’

‘Where is your sister right now?’ asked Susanne.

Margarethe gazed at the small, reinforced-glass window. ‘My sister is resting. She is waiting for me.’

‘Where is she waiting?’ asked Susanne. Margarethe remained silent. Inanimate.

‘Margarethe,’ said Fabel, changing tack. ‘There are a number of killings that have taken place in Hamburg since you escaped from the hospital. I would like to ask you what you know about them. Do you understand?’

‘I have an IQ of one hundred and forty,’ said Margarethe. ‘Dr Kopke has probably already told you that. There is not a question you are capable of asking that I would be incapable of understanding.’

‘Okay, Margarethe. I’m impressed, if it’s important to you that I am impressed. Let’s start with the most recent murder. Robert Gerdes.’

‘You know by now that Robert Gerdes was not his real name. It was Georg Drescher. And it wasn’t murder, it was an execution. I told your colleagues when I phoned that I had executed Drescher.’

‘So it was you who tortured and killed him? It wasn’t your sister?’ asked Susanne.

‘We both did. Ute tracked him down and found him. She kept her promise. She promised me she would make it all right for me, and she did. But when we killed him we acted together. We were one.’

‘Why the torture?’ asked Susanne. ‘All that terrible pain. What did he do to you to have deserved that?’

Margarethe sat mute. Fabel repeated Susanne’s question, but it was as if Margarethe could not hear him. Fabel had years of experience of silences in interviews: he had learned to read them, interpret them. Sometimes a suspect’s refusal to speak said more than their answers. This was different. It wasn’t a silence, it was a complete shutting down of all responses. He knew then with absolute certainty that Margarethe would answer only those questions that suited her. He just hoped that he would get enough from her to start putting what had happened into some kind of understandable context.

‘A week ago,’ Fabel broke the silence. ‘A young man called Armin Lensch was murdered in the Kiez district of Hamburg. His belly was sliced open with a blade. What can you tell me about that?’

‘I can tell you nothing about it. It had nothing to do with me. I didn’t kill him.’ Margarethe’s frighteningly blank expression suggested a complete lack of guile. Of emotion. Of anything.

Fabel placed the srbosjek, still cased in a clear plastic evidence bag, on the table. He kept a firm hold on the bag, just outside her reach.

‘Did you use this on Armin Lensch? Is this what you sliced open his belly with?’

‘I’ve never seen that before,’ Margarethe said, looking at the weapon without interest. ‘And I wouldn’t use that for slicing open a gut. That’s for cutting throats.’

‘If you haven’t seen that before,’ said Fabel, leaning forward, ‘then how do you know how it’s used?’

‘I’ve never seen your car, but if I did I would know how to drive it. And I know that that is called a graviso knife. Or a srbosjek. It was used by Croat Usta e. It’s very simple but highly effective. But it’s not an assassin’s weapon, particularly. This is for killing large numbers of people. Although I have to say that used expertly, it would silence and kill a single meeting efficiently.’

‘Meeting?’ asked Susanne.

‘That’s what we call them,’ said Margarethe. ‘A meeting is when the agent and the target encounter each other and the mission is executed. We call them meetings because there should be no engagement with the target prior to execution, making the meeting the first and final encounter. We also call the target a meeting.’

Fabel placed a second evidence bag on the table. It contained the automatic that Dirk and Henk had found.

‘Is this yours?’ he asked.

‘I’ve never seen it before,’ she said.

‘It was retrieved from your apartment. Again, there is a Croatian connection.’

‘I know. It’s a Croatian PHP MV-9 automatic. It’s about eighteen years old. It was a model developed in a rush for use in the Independence War.’

‘Okay,’ said Fabel. ‘Once again I’m impressed by your encyclopaedic knowledge of weapons and assassination techniques. But your knowledge of this weapon could come simply from the fact that it is yours. That you had it ready to use if your drugging of Drescher didn’t work out as planned.’

Again an empty stare. Margarethe was attractive. Her features perfectly proportioned. But there was still something about the way she looked at him that reminded Fabel of the photographs he had seen of Irma Grese. The same void in the eyes and expression. He had no way of knowing if Margarethe was lying to him. After nearly twenty years as an investigator of murders, of conducting interviews like this, he found himself lost in a strange country, completely without any recognisable landmarks.

‘Who are “we”?’ asked Susanne, filling the silence. ‘You said “We call the target a meeting.”’

‘My sisters and I. The Valkyries.’

‘How many Valkyries were there?’ asked Anna Wolff. Margarethe stared at her for a moment, still expressionless, before answering.

‘Only three of us were selected for final training.’

‘But you didn’t finish your final training,’ said Fabel, ‘did you?’

‘I was selected along with the other two. Out of dozens of girls who in turn were the best of the best. Only three of us were chosen to be Valkyries. It was Drescher who dropped me from the programme.’

‘Is that why you killed him? Is that why you kept him alive to suffer first?’

Margarethe gave a small smile. It was the first time Fabel had seen her smile and it did not reach her cold, empty eyes. She shook her head. ‘I didn’t kill him because he dropped me. I killed him because he chose me… because he selected me for this kind of life in the first place. My head…’ She winced as if some terrible migraine was cutting through her. ‘The things in my head. He put them there. And I can’t get them out.’

‘What things?’ asked Susanne.

‘I’ve already shown you. They were all there for you to see. In the flat. I didn’t think I was being ambiguous.’ There was a flicker of impatience in Margarethe’s expression. On anyone else it would have gone unnoticed, but it flashed across the empty canvas of her face. ‘He taught me how to kill. That more than anything. Him and the others, all the different ways to kill. How to shatter someone’s nose and drive the bone fragments into their brain. Or cut off the blood to the brain with an embrace and kill without the meeting knowing what was happening. How to seduce a man, or a woman, and fuck them in a way that they become completely obsessed with you. How to cut yourself off from your own body so that you can do anything, with anyone. How to follow someone without them knowing, to hunt and trap them and kill them in an instant. They told us we could learn from everything. No matter how bad it was, we could benefit from it. Every war, every crime, had a lesson to be learned.’ She nodded to where Fabel had shown her the forensic-bagged knife. ‘That’s where I learned about the srbosjek. And more. So much more. And the thing was… the totally mad thing was that they tried to teach you that you could switch off from it all and have a normal life in between the meetings.’

Fabel paused for a moment, leaning back in his chair, as if creating a punctuation mark in the interview.

‘I have to say, I am most impressed with your organisational abilities. Planning, arranging the apartment below Drescher’s. Very impressive. But there’s no way — absolutely no way — you could have organised that yourself in the time available since your escape from Mecklenburg. Who is helping you, Margarethe?’

Another hollow stare and silence.

‘Okay,’ sighed Fabel. ‘Jens Jespersen. Politiinspektor Jens Jespersen of the Danish National Police. Someone picked him up in a restaurant in the Hanseviertel and persuaded him to meet with her later. Then, when they were in bed together, she killed him with an injection of suxamethonium chloride. Exactly the means you used to immobilise Georg Drescher. You’ve just described to us the way Major Drescher and his Stasi colleagues trained you in concealment, disguise and seduction techniques. Those sound to me exactly the kind of skills used to get Drescher into a vulnerable position and kill him. I suppose you are going to tell me that you don’t know anything about that?’

‘I don’t.’

‘I don’t believe you.’ Fabel fixed Margarethe with a penetrating stare that failed to penetrate.

‘I don’t care whether you believe me or not.’

‘I have a colleague of Jespersen’s in the other room, watching this interview. His superior officer. She is here because Politiinspektor Jespersen was here to try to find Georg Drescher. He was also following up rumours that a female contract killer, going by the name the Valkyrie, was operating out of Hamburg. That is a hell of a lot of coincidences, Margarethe.’

No comment, no shrug, no expression.

‘He was here to find the man you were hunting. In turn he was hunting a killer called the Valkyrie, and he was killed with the same drug you used on Drescher. You killed Jens Jespersen, didn’t you? He got in the way of your mission. A secondary target. Or what would you call it: an unplanned meeting?’

Margarethe ignored Fabel and turned to Susanne. ‘You are a criminal psychologist?’

‘I’ve already told you that.’

‘And you have spoken with Dr Kopke?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you think I am a psychopath.’

‘I believe you have dissocial personality disorder, yes. But I think you have something else going on as well. You’re not just psychopathic, you’re psychotic. Delusional.’

‘Really?’ said Margarethe. ‘Then you know that I will be kept in an institution, probably for the rest of my life.’

‘I don’t think you can ever be reintegrated into society, no. Or cured of your problems. Maybe the psychosis, with drug therapy. But no, you will be confined for the rest of your life.’

‘Although I disagree with your diagnosis, Frau Doctor Eckhardt, I agree with your vision of my future. I will never be at liberty. And if I am a psychopath, then I have absolutely no sense of accountability or responsibility. And punishment is meaningless to me. So could you explain to Herr Fabel that there is absolutely no point in me lying to him about which murders I did or did not commit?’

‘There are other reasons for lying,’ said Fabel. ‘To protect others. Maybe you weren’t working alone. Perhaps you decided to have a class reunion with your fellow ex-Valkyries. That would explain all the money and resources you have at your disposal. Maybe it was one of your sisters who killed Jespersen.’

‘Maybe it was,’ said Margarethe. ‘But I know nothing about it. And even if I did, I owe them no loyalty. They left me behind. Only my sister stayed by me. Promised to make it right.’

There, thought Fabel. There I saw something. For the first time in the interview he saw an opening. Hardly a crack, but something that could be worked at. Pried open.

‘Yes, Margarethe,’ he said sympathetically. ‘They did leave you behind. Betrayed you. They went on to become true Valkyries while you were thrown aside and rejected. After all that horror, all that pain, all those horrible, horrible things they put into your head. Is that the real reason you tortured and killed Drescher? To achieve some kind of fulfilment? Do you have any idea of the kind of money they will have made out of their meetings? Oh yes, when the Wall came down, Drescher and his girls embraced capitalism with real enthusiasm. They have been killing for private enterprise as a private enterprise.’

‘She…’ said Margarethe.

‘What?’

‘She. Not they. Georg Drescher had a favourite. He works with only one woman. The other Valkyrie has no part of it. She has another life.’

There was a short, electric pause. Fabel felt his pulse pick up a beat. He was aware that Anna and Susanne were staying very still and quiet.

‘Names, Margarethe,’ he said. ‘What are their names? The woman Drescher worked with, the professional killer. What is she called?’

‘We were friends,’ said Margarethe. Now there was emotion. Not much, just a hint of wistfulness. ‘As much as we could be friends. All three of us were loners — part of what they needed from us. But, in our own way, we were friends.’

‘They left you behind, Margarethe. You owe them nothing.’

‘You don’t have to tell me that. You don’t need to manage me. I will tell you what I want to tell you. Not what you think you can make me tell you.’ She paused. ‘It was a rule that we didn’t know each other’s names. They were very strict about that. We knew each other as One, Two and Three. I was Two.’

Fabel felt the hope slip from him. He sighed.

‘We got on well,’ said Margarethe. ‘We were supervised most of the time. Watched and monitored. Our sleeping quarters were kept separate. But we were trained together for most things.’

‘Did the other girls tell you anything that gave a clue to their true identities?’ asked Fabel.

‘They thought they could control us completely. Make us like machines. But they couldn’t.’ Margarethe smiled. Not a fake smile. Not something she had been trained to use at appropriate moments. Her smile. And it terrified Fabel. ‘Liane Kayser. Anke Wollner. It was our rebellion. Our way of keeping a little of ourselves outside their control. We told each other our real names.’

Fabel kept his gaze on Margarethe, but to his left he heard Anna Wolff scribbling the names into her notebook before rushing out of the interview room.

‘There was something else. We knew that we would be sent to different places. That we maybe wouldn’t see each other again. So we worked out a plan. A place we would meet.’

‘Where?’ Fabel tried to keep his tone dispassionate.

‘You have to remember, we were all living in the East. We didn’t know then that the Wall would come down. We didn’t know that one or more of us might be sent into the West, into deep cover. So we picked somewhere we all knew. Halberstadt.’

‘In Saxony-Anhalt?’

Margarethe nodded. ‘One of the girls, Liane, came from Halberstadt. She said that if we needed each other we would meet at the cathedral in Halberstadt.’

‘How would you know to come?’

‘Two newspapers, one in the GDR, one in West Germany. We would run an announcement. It would be a quote from Njal’s Saga: “The heavens are stained with the blood of men, as the Valkyries sing their song.” If we saw the announcement we would know to meet up in Halberstadt at eight a.m. on the first Monday of the month following the announcement.’

Fabel leaned forward. ‘So, if we ran this announcement in the appropriate newspapers, we could bring the other two Valkyries to Halberstadt?’

Margarethe shook her head. ‘It was compromised. They caught us talking about it. We were stupid: we were being trained by the Stasi and didn’t think that they would have bugged us.’

‘So you don’t think the others would respond to the announcement?’ asked Fabel.

‘No. And we didn’t arrange another code. After that we were separated. We didn’t see each other again.’

‘And you’ve had no contact since then? With any of the other Valkyries?’

‘None.’

‘You said Drescher had a favourite. This is the woman you think he’s been operating with. Which one, Margarethe? Who was his favourite — Liane Kayser or Anke Wollner?’

‘Anke Wollner. Liane… well, Liane was different. She didn’t respond as well to discipline. She wanted things her own way. It was Anke who was Drescher’s little protegee.’

Anna Wolff came back into the room and retook her place. She responded to Fabel’s inquiring look with a sharp shake of her head.

‘I’ll ask you again…’ Fabel turned back to Margarethe. ‘If it wasn’t one of the other Valkyries, who set you up with everything you needed to kill Drescher?’

The blank mask fell again.

‘Was it someone else from the Stasi? Maybe someone who worked with Drescher and saw him as a threat.’

Nothing.

‘Does the name Thomas Maas mean anything to you? Ulrich Adebach?’ Fabel ran through the other names he had obtained from the BStU Federal Commissioner’s office. It was clear that they had come to a dead end. It was almost as if Margarethe had realised that she had opened up too much and was now shutting down. No, thought Fabel, she was too much in control for that. Any information she had given had been released in a controlled manner.

Fabel terminated the interview and Margarethe was taken back to her cell under heavy guard. Fabel ordered that she be placed in a video-surveillance cell.

‘So nothing on these names?’ Fabel asked Anna as soon as they were in the corridor.

‘Nothing. But that’s hardly surprising, Chef. If these girls were chosen by the Stasi, especially if they were orphans or from broken homes, then I would guess that the first thing the Stasi would do would be to wipe all trace of their real identities from the public record. An easy thing to do if you’re in charge of that selfsame public record.’

‘I want you to get back on to the BStU Federal Commissioner’s office in Berlin.’ Fabel leaned against the wall. ‘Give them these names and see what comes up. The Stasi thought they were invulnerable — maybe they thought any mention of the girls’ real identities within the context of a Stasi HQ file was relatively safe.’

‘It’s a very, very long shot, Chef,’ said Anna.

‘At the moment it’s the best we’ve got.’

They were joined by Karin Vestergaard and Werner Meyer, who had been watching the interview from the next room.

‘Well?’ Fabel asked Vestergaard.

‘I don’t know,’ she sighed. ‘It’s difficult to read expression and body language over a CCTV link.’

‘There was none to read, believe me. There’s a very big chunk of humanity missing from Margarethe Paulus. But you heard what she said about Jespersen’s death. She claims she had nothing to do with it and she has a point when she says she has nothing to gain by lying about it.’

‘That’s the thing,’ said Vestergaard. ‘I tend to believe her.’

‘So do I,’ said Fabel. ‘So where does that leave us?’

‘Well,’ said Anna, ‘we’ve got a professional assassination in Norway, Jorgen Halvorsen, and the death of Jens Jespersen in Hamburg. It’s pretty safe to assume that they are directly linked.’

‘Then we’ve got the murders in the Kiez — the Brit Westland and Armin Lensch,’ said Werner. ‘The so-called return of the Angel of St Pauli. They must be connected.’

‘And the murder of Georg Drescher,’ said Anna. ‘Whether Margarethe was involved in the Jespersen and Halvorsen killings or not, there is a connection. So effectively we have three sets of murders that have a common link, and that link is this Stasi conspiracy to place Valkyrie assassins in the West.’

‘There’s maybe one more,’ said Fabel. ‘Peter Claasens — the suicide that maybe isn’t a suicide in the Kontorhaus Quarter. Maybe the link lies there.’ He turned to Karin Vestergaard. ‘And I think maybe you and I should take another look at this environmental analyst Sparwald, who has had some kind of contact with Halvorsen.’

‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ said Vestergaard. ‘If they were both supposed to be travelling to China, and Halvorsen didn’t make it, then who’s to say that Sparwald did?’

Fabel straightened up from leaning on the wall. ‘Do you still have the address?’

Karin Vestergaard held out the note that Sparwald’s boss had given her.

‘Let’s go,’ said Fabel.