The Valkyrie Song

5

Fabel and Anna were on their way back from talking to Gennady Frolov on his yacht. Frolov’s need for luxury equalled his desire for security, so Fabel had agreed to allow him to return to the yacht. The compromise was the two blue-and-silver police cars parked on the quay and the Harbour Police launch moored alongside.

Surrounded by so much opulence, Fabel had found it difficult to focus on his questions. They had met Hans Gessler from the corporate crime unit at the yacht; Gessler must have been more accustomed to dealing with the obscenely wealthy, because he plodded through all the questions he had for the Russian and his accountant, a grumpy and surprisingly scruffy Russian called Krilof. Krilof had given Gessler a CD containing all their files on NeuHansa, Gina Bronsted and Goran Vuja i c.

‘We’re trying to go paperless,’ said Krilof without irony or a hint of a smile on his crumpled face. ‘This is basically what we’re handing over to OLAF. It’s enough to bury Gina Bronsted for a long time.’

Fabel was heading back to the Presidium when he got a call from Dirk Hechtner.

‘Where are you, Chef?’

‘I’m just passing through St Georg. I’ve got Anna with me. Why?’

‘We’ve just had a shout, Chef. Henk and I are taking it, but it’s on your way. Well, kind of. A woman’s been strangled in an apartment in Barmbek-Sud. Sounds like a little afternoon delight that’s gone sour.’

‘God — we’re doing good trade these days. Maybe I’ll transfer to New York for a quieter life. I take it this has nothing to do with the Valkyrie case?’

‘Doesn’t sound like it,’ said Hechtner. ‘Just a good old-fashioned straightforward, banal, sordid murder — the way they used to make ’em. We don’t even have to hunt down the killer. A uniformed unit have nabbed him at the scene. You want to call in?’

‘I’ll see you there.’

Hechtner gave Fabel the address in Barmbek.

‘Have you thought any more about my future?’ Anna spoke without turning to Fabel, instead staring straight ahead through the Hamburg drizzle.

‘Anna, now’s not the time.’

‘If you don’t mind,’ she said, ‘I’d like to make it the time. Listen, Chef, I don’t want to beg for my job, but whatever assurances you want from me, I’m ready to make them. I love this job. I don’t want to do anything else.’

‘Okay.’ Fabel drew a deep breath. ‘Will you consider going on an anger-management course?’

‘You’re kidding — right?’

‘Anna, you said anything. It wouldn’t necessarily have to be through the Polizei Hamburg. It doesn’t have to go on your permanent record. But if you want to stay, I insist you do it.’

‘Do I get a time-of-the-month allowance? I do the anger management but get to go menstrual-mental every four weeks?’

‘This isn’t a joke,’ said Fabel.

‘Sorry. I was winding you up. I’ll do it. Thanks.’

It was fitting weather for visiting a murder scene. The sky was steel-grey and the air was clingy-damp with a faint chill drizzle. It turned out not to be an apartment after all, but a cheap hotel with ‘suites’ for rent.

When he pulled up outside, Fabel saw Dirk and Henk come out of the main entrance with a tall man. The man had grey hair and was dressed in a long, expensive-looking blue coat. He was being placed, handcuffed, in a silver and blue police car. As Fabel nodded a greeting to his officers, he realised he had seen the man somewhere before. Somewhere else where his appearance of prosperity and respectability had looked out of place. His eyes met Fabel’s briefly before a uniformed officer pressed his head down gently as he guided him into the car.

‘Someone you know?’ asked Anna.

‘No,’ said Fabel. ‘I’ve seen him before, that’s all. Twice.’

There were two uniformed officers at the scene: an older Obermeister stood at the foot of the bed while a young cop stood outside in the hall, interviewing a hotel cleaner. Holger Brauner, the head of the forensics team, was working with an assistant, both suited up in blue coveralls and surgical gloves.

Fabel knew the older uniformed officer: a man called Hanusch with twenty-five years behind him. It was normal for uniform branch to team up a less experienced officer with a senior man: it eased the passage of the inexperienced into the world of violence and death that was part of everyday police work. Unexpectedly, it was the older policeman whose face had drained of colour. There was a melancholic expression in the eyes that had seen so much over the years. The younger officer in the hall, however, had had the eager electricity about him of someone high on adrenalin.

Fabel followed the older cop’s gaze. A pretty girl of about twenty lay on the bed. Her eyes stared back at the uniformed policeman, bloodshot and glazed. Her mouth gaped slightly, her lips bluish and her tongue protruding. The ruptured capillaries in the skin of her neck had created delicate blue spiderweb threads. Fabel looked at her face and felt something lurch deep inside.

‘Oh Christ…’ he said. He looked back at Hanusch: the older uniformed cop smiled sympathetically. Like Fabel, Hanusch wasn’t looking at the body, at this sordid scene, with the eyes of a professional policeman. He was looking at the broken remains of a young girl with the eyes of a father.

‘I suppose we’d better inform the parents,’ said Hanusch. ‘I’ll get on to locating them. She must have ID somewhere.’

‘It’s okay,’ said Fabel. ‘I’ll do it. I know where they live. Barmbek, a few blocks away.’

Fabel felt the inquisitive gazes of both Anna and Hanusch on him, but all he said was: ‘She was going to be a doctor, you know. Her name was Christa Eisel. She was studying medicine at Hamburg University.’