The Valkyrie Song

2

Jan Fabel sat leaning forward on the leather armchair. On the edge. He still wore his raincoat and held his gloves in one hand. Everything about his posture spoke of imminent departure, even though he had only just arrived.

At one time, a long time ago, this suburban house in Hamburg-Borgfelde had been Fabel’s home. He had been familiar with every room, every floorboard, every angle. It had been the focus in his life. His home. Of course, everything had changed since then: the furniture, the decor, the TV in the corner.

‘You’ve got to talk to her.’ Renate sat opposite Fabel, her legs crossed and her arms folded across her body in the same defensive pose that he remembered. Her hair was not the same shade of rich auburn it had been when he had first met her, when they had been married, and he suspected that she now coloured it. She was still a handsome woman, but the creases around her mouth had deepened and given her face a faint appearance of parsimony. God knows, thought Fabel, she’s got nothing to feel bitter about.

‘I’ll talk to her,’ he said. ‘But I can’t promise anything. Gabi is an intelligent girl. Her own person. She is more than capable of making up her own mind about her future.’

‘Are you saying you approve of this? Support it?’

‘I’ll support anything Gabi chooses to do. But no, personally I’d rather she rethought her career. In the end, if it’s what she wants to do…’ Fabel shrugged resignedly. ‘But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. She has a long time to think it over. And you know what Gabi’s like: if she thinks we’re pushing her she’ll dig her heels in.’

‘It’s your fault,’ said Renate. ‘If you weren’t a policeman then it would never have occurred to her to join. Gabi hero-worships you. It’s easy to be the hero when you’re a part-time parent.’

‘And whose choice was that?’ Fabel fought back the anger surging up within him. ‘It sure as hell wasn’t mine. I was pushed out of her life. And as I remember you did the pushing.’

‘And I was pushed out of your life by that bloody job of yours.’

‘Right into Ludiger Behrens’s bed, as I recall,’ said Fabel and regretted it immediately. Renate was a petty woman; it had only been in the last stages of their marriage that he had seen just how petty. And she had always had the knack of reducing him to her level. ‘Look, this isn’t getting us anywhere. I think you’re making too big a deal of the whole thing: Gabi has only started to talk about this. Let’s just wait until she gets her Abitur results and take it from there. Like I said, it’s a long time before she has to make up her mind about it. I’ll talk to her and make sure she knows what she would be getting into. But I have to tell you, Renate, that if she is determined to become a police officer, then I will support her all the way.’

Renate’s already dark expression darkened further. ‘It’s not right,’ she said. ‘It’s no job for a woman.’

Fabel stared slack-jawed at Renate. ‘I can’t believe you said that. You of all people, Renate. What the hell do you mean, police work is no job for a woman? Just goes to show, all the time we were married I never had you down as a “Children, Kitchen, Church” type. Mind you, given your father’s history…’

Fabel knew he was about to get burned by the fire that suddenly caught light in Renate’s green eyes, and he was relieved to hear his cellphone ring just as she was about to launch something at him.

‘Hi, Chef, it’s Anna. You used to be into British pop in the seventies and eighties, right?’

‘I take it that’s rhetorical,’ said Fabel, his voice laden with warning. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Well, Jake Westland — you know, the lead singer from that group in the seventies? — the thing is he’s on tour in Germany at the moment and he’s supposed to be doing an in-depth interview with NDR radio tomorrow.’

Fabel sighed into the phone. ‘Anna… point?’

‘Just that he won’t be turning up for the interview. He’s already spilled his guts — in the Reeperbahn. And Chef, he said it was a woman who cut him and then she told him to let us know who she was. She told him to say it was the Angel.’

‘Shit.’ Fabel used the English word and looked across at his ex-wife. The fire had been extinguished and she now wore the expression of hostile resignation that she had always had when work had called him away. ‘I’ll be right there.’

They had taken Westland across town to the emergency room at the hospital in St Georg. There was no point in Fabel going there: from what he had heard, Westland was in no condition for an interview. Instead he took the Ost-West Strasse into the Reeperbahn, Hamburg’s Sinful Mile. Where ropers had once woven hawsers for sailing ships, giving the Reeperbahn its name, now strip clubs and sex shops, bars and theatres neon-sparkled in the icy night. By the time Fabel arrived at Davidwache he was already in a bad mood. The meeting with Renate had gone as ill-temperedly as expected and he had lost his MP3 player: whenever he felt stressed, he plugged it into his BMW’s stereo system. No music, more stress.

The press had already gathered en masse outside the Davidwache station and three uniformed officers were holding them at bay. In addition to the media circus outside the station, there was some other separate commotion being created in Davidstrasse, to the side of the station. Young riot squad officers in their gear were struggling to load groups of resisting women into the large green police wagons. Some of the media had leached around into Davidstrasse to take pictures of the sideshow, but a fusillade of camera flashes saluted Fabel as he made his way from the car to Davidwache’s double doors. A television news camera crew had jostled its way to the front; Fabel recognised the reporter as Sylvie Achtenhagen, who worked for one of the satellite channels. Great, he thought, as if the media limelight wasn’t bad enough, he had that bitch on his case.

‘Principal Detective Chief Commissar Fabel’ — Achtenhagen emphasised his full rank for the camera — ‘can you confirm that the victim of this attack was Jake Westland, the British singer?’

Fabel ignored her and walked on.

‘And is it true that this is the work of the so-called Angel of St Pauli? The serial killer the Polizei Hamburg failed to catch in the nineteen-nineties?’ Then, when he still did not respond: ‘Are we to take it that your involvement, as head of this proposed so-called “Super Murder Commission”, is significant? Are you being called in to clean up the mess the Polizei Hamburg made of the original investigation?’

Fabel pulled a mask of patience over his irritation and turned to the reporter. ‘The Police Presidium’s press and information department will make a full statement in due course. You should know the drill by now, Frau Achtenhagen.’

He turned his back on her and walked through the double doors and up the steps into Davidwache police station. The small reception area was crammed with personnel. He could hear shouting from through the back and to the left, from the custody area. Fabel was greeted by a bristle-scalped heavy-set man in his fifties and a pretty dark-haired woman wearing jeans and a biker jacket that was at least one size too big for her. Fabel smiled grimly at Senior Criminal Commissar Werner Meyer and Criminal Commissar Anna Wolff.

‘How in God’s name did Achtenhagen find out about the Angel claim?’ asked Fabel.

‘Money talks,’ said Anna Wolff. ‘That bitch isn’t above bribing ambulance crew or hospital staff to get a scoop.’

‘You’re probably right. She’s all we need. She practically built her career on the Angel case.’ Fabel nodded in the direction of the commotion outside in Davidstrasse. ‘What the hell is going on?’

‘A case of perfect timing,’ said Werner. ‘A feminist group decided to pick tonight of all nights to stage a protest. They invaded Herbertstrasse. They object to a Hamburg street being closed off to women. They claim it’s against their human rights or something.’

‘They’ve got a point, to be honest,’ said Fabel. He sighed. ‘Okay

… what have we got?’

‘The victim is Jake Westland, fifty-three years old, British national,’ Werner read from his notebook. ‘And yes, he is that Jake Westland. From what we can gather he was having a little impromptu jaunt around the Reeperbahn — and not to recapture the spirit of the Beatles, if you catch my drift. Funny, though… I would have thought it would have been the gay bars he would have been interested in — him being English, that is…’

Fabel responded to Werner’s joke with an impatient face.

‘I don’t know why they do it,’ continued Werner. ‘These celebrities, I mean. Anyway, Westland deliberately gave his bodyguards the slip and disappeared into Herbertstrasse. Next thing a working girl on her way into the Kiez finds him with his insides turned into his outsides. He tells her that his attacker told him that she was the Angel, then he passes out.’

‘What’s his condition?’

‘He was still alive when they put him in the ambulance. Apparently the girl who found him knew a bit about first aid. But my guess is that his producers are already planning a memorial greatest-hits CD.’

‘We’ve got the girl who found him through the back,’ said Anna Wolff. She exchanged a look with Werner and her red-lipsticked mouth broke into a grin. ‘And the bodyguards. I thought you’d like to interview them personally.’

‘Okay, Anna,’ Fabel said, with a sigh, ‘what’s the deal?’

‘Westland was being looked after by Schilmann Security and Close Personal Protection.’

‘Martina Schilmann?’

‘You and she used to be close, I believe?’

‘Martina Schilmann was an excellent police officer,’ said Fabel.

‘Then she must have been a better cop than she is a bodyguard,’ said Werner.

A uniformed superintendent joined them. He was shorter than Fabel and had thick, dark, unruly hair.

‘What I really want to know is,’ he said sternly as he shook hands with Fabel, ‘did anyone get his autograph?’

‘Hello, Carstens,’ said Fabel, with a grin. ‘Still cracking tasteless jokes?’

‘Comes with the territory.’ Carstens Kaminski was in charge of the Davidwache team. Davidwache — Polizei Hamburg’s Police Commissariat 15 — was the station that controlled the Kiez, Hamburg’s 0.7 square kilometres of red-light district centred on the Reeperbahn. Every weekend the normal population of ten thousand residents would swell as over two hundred thousand visitors would pass through the Kiez, some of whom would be drunk, some of whom would be relieved of their wallets or valuables. And for some, their walk on the wild side would end in real disaster.

The uniformed officers who worked out of Davidwache had to have a particular skill: they had to be able to talk. The Kiez was an area populated by pimps, hookers, petty crooks and not so petty crooks; visited by young men from the suburbs who often drank too much, too quickly. Most of the situations that the Davidwache officers were faced with demanded sympathy and humour and more than one reveller had been talked into going home peacefully and out of a night in the cells. Carstens Kaminski had been born and grew up in St Pauli and no one was as in tune with the rhythm and changing mood of the Kiez. He also had the typically down-to-earth St Pauli sense of humour.

‘What’s the deal with the protest?’ asked Fabel.

‘It’s a group called Muliebritas. Or more correctly it was organised by a feminist magazine called Muliebritas,’ explained Kaminski. ‘They stormed into Herbertstrasse and there was everything but all-out war with the hookers. God knows it would have been bad enough at the best of times, but with this Westland thing going on as well… We asked them to disperse, explaining that they were interfering with a crime scene and investigation, but the concept of consensual policing seems to have been lost on them.’ There was another burst of shouting from the custody area, as if to underline his statement. ‘Anyway, you’re not here for them. By the way, did you know Martina’s here?’ Kaminski grinned.

‘Yes,’ said Fabel. ‘Anna told me.’

‘Didn’t you and she…’

‘Yes, Carstens,’ said Fabel, with a sigh. ‘We’ve already been through that. Do we have a description of the woman who attacked Westland?’

‘All he said was she told him she was the Angel. And even that we’ve only got second-hand from the hooker who found him.’

‘How do we know she’s not the “Angel” herself?’

‘From what we can gather she did her best to keep Westland alive until the ambulance arrived. And if this really is the work of the Angel, then the girl who found him would be too young for the original murders. Anyway, despite her trying to hide it behind a tough front she clearly was in shock. We suggested the quack should give her a mild sedative but she told him to stick it.’

‘I want to talk to her anyway.’

‘And Martina?’ Kaminski grinned and cast a look across at Werner and Anna Wolff.

‘And Martina. What about the new CCTV system we’ve installed in the Kiez? Will we have got anything on that?’

‘No,’ said Kaminski. ‘Westland’s attacker was either lucky or very clever — there are no cameras on that street or anywhere near the courtyard. As you know, the compromise we had to make on having cameras in the Kiez was that we had to be selective where we put them — none in a position that could reveal the honourable citizens of our fine city nipping into a peep-show or a sex shop. It means we’ve got a hell of a lot of black holes. But I’ve put a call into the ops room at the Presidium for the recordings from an hour before until an hour after the murder to be collected and analysed. We might get something from the surrounding streets… the attacker making their way to or from the scene. In the meantime, I’m flooding the streets with uniforms…’ Kaminski nodded towards the assembled officers in the lobby. ‘We’ll question every hooker, pimp and club owner in the area. Business isn’t exactly good in the Kiez these days and Westland was hardly an anonymous victim… Something like this is bad for business. Maybe we’ll get lucky.’

‘Thanks, Carstens.’

‘Well, if you don’t mind, Jan, I’ll get back to briefing this lot.’ Kaminski nodded towards the uniforms he had gathered. ‘Unless you want to talk them through what we should be looking for?’

‘No, Carstens, this is your patch,’ said Fabel. He knew that no one knew the Kiez better than Kaminski.

Fabel hung his raincoat up in the station cloakroom, first of all patting his pockets.

‘Lost something?’ asked Anna.

‘Bloody MP3 player…’

Fabel made his way with Werner and Anna through to the rear of the station. Until 2005 Davidwache had been an exclusively uniform-branch station: to keep pace with changing times a new extension had been built onto the rear of the protected architecture of the original station. It was in this newer part of the building that the detective branch was now based. Kaminski had put the conference room at their disposal for carrying out witness interviews. Fabel looked out of the window over Davidstrasse and part of Friedrichstrasse. He could see the green riot-police vans being driven down to the traffic lights, transporting back to the Police Presidium those protesters whom Davidwache’s tiny cell block could not accommodate.

‘Anna, I think you should lead the questioning of this witness,’ he said. ‘The girl who found Westland, I mean. It sounds like she might be in a pretty bad way.’

‘Why me, Chef?’ asked Anna. ‘Because I’m a woman?’

‘I just think she might respond better to you.’ Anna had been on Fabel’s team for five years, but he still found her difficult to handle. To understand. Anna Wolff was much younger-looking than her thirty-one years; she had shortish black hair, was no bigger than one-sixty-two centimetres, and strove for a punky look with her dark mascara, firetruck-red lipstick and oversized biker’s jacket. And, despite Fabel doing his best not to notice, she was very attractive. But, most of all, Anna Wolff was by far the toughest, most aggressive member of his team. As well as the most insubordinate.

‘Oh, I see,’ said Anna with an expression of mock enlightenment. ‘Obviously I’m going to be more understanding. Being female, that is. I’m sorry — I forgot that having a dick presents an insuperable obstacle to sympathy.’

‘I’m not being sexist, Anna. I’m being practical, that’s all.’ Fabel sounded annoyed despite himself. ‘Forget it. I’ll talk to her myself.’

‘I was just saying…’

‘Yes, Anna. You’re always “just saying”. I’ll conduct this interview.’ He looked at his watch. It was two-thirty a.m. ‘Werner, you sit in. Anna, you can go off duty.’

‘Oh, come on… all I said…’

‘I’ll have a team briefing at two p.m. tomorrow. I want to see you in my office first, Anna. Be there at one,’ said Fabel. Anna grabbed her leather jacket from the back of the chair and stormed out.

‘You were a bit rough on her, Jan,’ said Werner when she was gone.

‘She goes too far, Werner. You know that. I’m fed up with every order being challenged or commented on. And I’m sick of complaints coming in about Anna.’

‘We used to call it robust policing, Jan.’

‘Those days are gone, Werner. Long gone. This is the twenty-first century.’

‘You know she has a point, Jan.’ Werner looked unsure of himself. ‘I mean, about the male-female thing. You do tend to get Anna to do the female interviews.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘Just that, well, don’t take this the wrong way, but you do tend to treat women like they’re a different species.’

‘How can you say that, Werner? My team has always been balanced. Well, maybe not now. Not since…’

Both men became quiet. The name Maria Klee hung unsaid in the air.

‘Forget it, Jan,’ said Werner a second too late. ‘I just think you should go easy on Anna.’

Fabel’s reply was cut off by a uniformed officer conducting a girl in dark jeans and a navy-blue quilted ski jacket into the room. She clutched a woollen hat and scarf in her hands. Fabel guessed that she was not a street girl: the hookers who worked the streets around Herbertstrasse dressed in bright colours and would stand in groups, holding pastel-coloured umbrellas above their heads whether it was raining or not as a sign to potential customers that they were available for business. Their contrived cheerfulness was so that their customers felt less sordid about the trade they plied.

Fabel kept his smile in place but noticed how young the girl was: she looked to Fabel not much older than his own daughter, Gabi. He asked her to sit and tried to do what he could to put her at ease. Christa Eisel was pretty — very pretty — with shoulder-length fair hair. From the plainness of her outfit and her obvious attractiveness, Fabel worked out that she must have been a Herbertstrasse window girl who would have changed into a provocative outfit once she was at work. As they talked, Christa kneaded the hat and scarf on her lap, but there was something approaching defiance in her eyes.

‘We’ll need to take that, I’m afraid,’ Fabel said, smiling. Christa looked down at the bloodstained jacket.

‘It’s no good to me now. I’ve left my gloves downstairs. They’re finished too.’ She slipped the jacket off and handed it to Fabel. Werner placed it into a large plastic forensics bag.

‘How long have you been working the area, Christa?’ asked Fabel.

‘Six months. Just weekends. And not every weekend. I have a slot in one of the windows and I do some escort work occasionally.’

‘Are you supporting a habit, Christa? Sorry, but I have to ask.’

The girl looked genuinely taken aback. ‘No… no, of course not.’

‘What do you do? I mean when you’re not working here.’

‘I’m a student. Uni Hamburg.’

‘Oh really? That’s where I went. I studied history. You?’

‘Medicine.’

Fabel stared at Christa for a moment. ‘Medicine? Then why…?’

‘Money. I want to earn extra money.’

‘But this way?’

‘Why not?’ Again defiance glinted in Christa’s eyes. ‘A lot of students do it for extra cash.’

‘You’re clearly a bright, pretty girl with a lifetime of opportunity ahead of you, Christa. I just don’t understand why you would choose to do what you’re doing. Is this what you think it means to be a woman?’

‘Are you disappointed that I’m not some exploited junkie? You’re right, I choose to do this. It’s my body and I can do what I want with it. And anyway, it’s relatively easy money. A few hours each weekend and I make more than most people do in a month. Trust me, it makes medical school a whole lot easier.’

‘That’s not the point, Christa. God knows in this job I know what the dark side of human nature is like. I just don’t understand why someone like you would seek it out and immerse themselves in it. Believe me, maybe you think you can do this for a year or two and then get on with your life. You can’t. It will stay with you for the rest of your life. Every relationship you have will be coloured by it. You’ll find it impossible to see the good in people.’

‘What’s it to you, Herr Chief Commissar? You trying to save my soul?’

‘This isn’t about your moral well-being, Christa. It’s about placing yourself in danger. You study medicine. Surely you know the risks. To your health, I mean.’

‘And because I study medicine I know how to look after myself. Listen, Herr Fabel, I don’t have to justify myself to you. Women have been exploited by men for centuries. I’m doing a little exploiting back.’ Despite the defiance, Fabel could see that Christa had been badly shaken by what she’d gone through in the last hour or so. He didn’t even know why he was getting into this with her. As she had said, it wasn’t his business. He decided to drop it.

‘It’s your life, Christa…’ Fabel sighed. He looked at the notes before him. ‘Listen, I know this is very hard for you, but I need you to try to remember if there was anything else you saw or heard that you maybe haven’t mentioned in your statement. You saw no one come out of the courtyard? I mean, as you made your way in?’

‘No. No one. It’s not that I’ve forgotten or didn’t notice. I’m sure there was no one there. I use that alley if I’m in a hurry. It cuts across from Erichstrasse through the courtyard. You’ve always got to be on your toes for creeps, so I was paying attention. There was no one.’

‘But that doesn’t make sense. You must have got there moments after the attack.’

‘I was, if the rate of his blood loss was anything to go by. But that doesn’t change the fact that I saw no one come into or go out of the alley.’

‘I heard that you carried out first aid. I take it your medical training kicked in?’

‘For what it was worth, which wasn’t much. He’ll be dead by now. Whoever did that to him was very skilled. A single cut that eviscerated him. It was like the Japanese suicide cut — you know, the seppuku. Straight and very deep. From the amount of bleeding I reckon the abdominal aorta had been nicked. They won’t be able to repair it before he bleeds out.’ Fabel watched Christa’s guileless youthful face as she spoke about a man’s death: her description was clinical, but her voice shook as she spoke and her hands kneaded the woollen hat on her lap more vigorously.

‘What did he say to you?’

‘I’ve already told them. Before.’

‘I’d like to hear it again, if you don’t mind, Christa.’

‘He was nearly unconscious when I got to him. Shivering. All he said was: “It was a woman. She said she was the Angel.” He was speaking in English. It’s funny, I didn’t recognise him. I didn’t know he was who he was until they told me. All I saw was… I suppose all I saw was a man dying.’ She looked at Fabel earnestly. ‘I’ve never seen anyone die before. I guess I’ll have to get used to it.’

‘You never do.’

When Fabel had no more questions and long after Christa had no more answers, he told her he would arrange for a police car to take her home. She asked if she could be taken to her parents’ house in Barmbek.

‘Can they drop me at the end of the street?’ she asked. ‘My parents… they don’t know anything about what I do…’

After Christa left, Martina Schilmann came into the conference room. She was wearing an expensive-looking dark blue business suit and her blonde hair was gathered up behind her head in a French plait. Looking at her now, for the first time in three years, Fabel remembered why he had found her so attractive. Martina was carrying two mugs of coffee. She placed one in front of Fabel.

‘At least I remember where the canteen is,’ she said, and smiled. ‘Hello, Jan, how are you?’

‘I’m fine.’ He returned her smile weakly. ‘And you?’

‘You sure you’re okay?’

‘Yeah… sorry. Just thinking about doomed youth.’

‘Oh God, I know… the “Happy Hooker”. Did she try to convince you that she was content in her work too? Kidding herself. She is tough, though. I was the first on the scene after her. She was doing a pretty good job of not going to pieces. But it is depressing. She’s just a kid. God knows I saw lots just like her when I was working this beat. Anyway, it’s good to see you again. How have you been?’

‘Fine. You look prosperous.’

‘Business has been good.’ Martina’s expression darkened. ‘Until now. I just can’t believe that we’ve lost one. This could be the end for me. I mean, that’s the whole point of the bloody exercise: to guard someone’s body. Who’s going to want to hire us now?’

‘From what I’ve heard, Martina, you’ve built Schilmann Security into one of Europe’s biggest personal-protection businesses. I would think this is a storm you could weather. Actually, I was surprised when I heard you were personally involved with Westland’s protection. I would have thought you’d be on an ethereal executive level now, guiding lesser mortals from the clouds.’

‘I’m a control freak. Hands-on. Too much hands-on, if I’m honest. We were short-staffed this weekend as well. I’ve got a big Russian tycoon coming in next month and I had to send half my team to liaise with his regular security people. God, I hope I’ve got a big Russian tycoon coming next month. When he gets wind of this he’ll probably tell me to stick it. Anyway, never mind that: are you still involved with the beautiful Dr Eckhardt?’

‘Yep,’ said Fabel. ‘Still involved.’

‘Pity,’ said Martina mischievously.

‘What was the story with Westland?’ asked Fabel. ‘How come he gave you the slip?’

‘What can I tell you? The usual rock-star megalomania. They pay us thousands of euros a day to keep them safe, then think it’s all a game. Sometimes I think we’re there for the cameras more than anything. Status symbols or shit like that. Westland was an arsehole. No big surprise there… He spent half the tour drunk and the other half chasing nineteen-year-old girls. The guy’s in his fifties, for Christ’s sake. To be honest, we saw him as a relatively low risk. Fending off drunks, persistent autograph hunters, paparazzi, that kind of thing. Anyway, we did a double-up on him, me and Lorenz. Lorenz is all bulk and no brains but he’s good for visible presence, if you know what I mean, even if he is getting on a bit. And, like I said, not one of nature’s great thinkers. He’s a Saxon from Gorlitz, bless him. Ex-Volkspolizei. Still calls a hamburger a Grilletta and probably jerks off to pictures of Katja Witt wearing a Free German Youth blouse.’

Fabel laughed. ‘You’re pretty scathing for someone from the East yourself.’

‘I’m from Mecklenburg — a totally different proposition from the Valley of the Clueless,’ said Martina with a smug grin, referring to the parts of the former East Germany which had not been able to pick up West German TV before the Wall came down. It was an affectionate jibe: it was exactly in the ‘Valley of the Clueless’ that the Monday Demonstrations had begun the peaceful mass protest movement that ultimately brought down the Communist regime.

‘Anyway,’ continued Martina, ‘we were taking Westland back to the Hotel Vierjahrzeiten from a concert at the Sporthalle arena when he pipes up that he’d like to see the Reeperbahn, never been there, heard all about it, the Beatles, all that crap. I tell him it’s not what it’s cracked up to be and anyway it’s not on the route to the hotel but he makes a fuss and we end up taking him on a brief guided tour.’

‘I would have thought he would have been too tired after a concert,’ said Fabel.

‘Yeah, well… he seemed pretty lively. He was doing a lot of sniffing in the back of the car and I don’t think he had a cold, if you catch my drift. No doubt it’ll all come out in the autopsy. The funny thing was he had pissed off a few people by refusing to attend the post-concert party — tells them he’s too tired and then badgers us to take him to the Reeperbahn. Anyway, we do the tour thing but all Westland is interested in is seeing Herbertstrasse and he starts giggling like a schoolgirl. So we take him. Of course, because it’s Herbertstrasse and because I’m a woman, I can’t go in so I drop him and Lorenz at one end and go and wait at the other. The Davidwache end. Naturally, Westland finds it easy to bewilder Lorenz and all the time I think he’s with Westland he’s actually just standing around like an idiot waiting for him at the far end. Next thing I know Westland’s trying to repack his intestines and my business is down the tubes.’

‘You say he was pretty insistent about going to Herbertstrasse. Specifically Herbertstrasse and not Grosse Freiheit. Do you think there’s any chance it was prearranged? That maybe he had agreed to meet someone after losing you by cutting through Herbertstrasse?’

Martina furrowed her brow in thought for a moment. ‘I doubt it. Could be, I suppose, but it all seemed pretty spontaneous to me.’

‘It’s just that it seems odd. If Westland was looking for a little bit of cheap excitement, then why go to the bother of giving you the slip where he did? I find it strange that he didn’t just go with one of the window girls. You say he told you he had never been to Herbertstrasse before?’

‘That’s right.’

‘So either he tore along Herbertstrasse and out the other end before you got there, or he cut through the side alley at number seven and out past the erotic-art museum. That looks pretty planned to me — like he knew where he was going.’

‘He probably didn’t. Like I say, I still think it was all spur-of-the-moment stuff.’

Martina went through the evening in detail: exact times, whom Westland had talked to, what he had talked about, how the concert had gone. Martina became, once more, the police officer and without prompting gave Fabel all the information he needed. Westland had made two calls before the concert: one to his wife, the second to his accountant regarding an investment or deal he was involved in.

‘He spent some time alone in his dressing room before going on stage,’ explained Martina. ‘It’s possible he took or made calls then, on his cellphone. There was no contact that I’m aware of after the performance, other than a brief call to the woman who was organising the concert. She was the one who wanted him to attend the post-concert party with Hamburg’s good and great. I got the impression she — I mean the organiser — wasn’t too chuffed when he cried off. After all, it was the whole point of the exercise: to raise awareness of the charity and after all that effort he couldn’t be bothered doing a simple meet-and-greet afterwards. He was more interested in getting to the Reeperbahn.’

‘We’ll check his cellphone,’ said Fabel.

‘Oh, didn’t you know? His mobile’s been swiped. Wallet, too. And he had a diary — like a mini-organiser — that he always had with him. Whoever killed him nicked that as well.’

‘So it could be a robbery?’

Martina gave a bitter laugh. ‘No. But it could be the killer trying to disguise it as a robbery. The theft was amateur. The killing’s the work of art.’

They talked for a while longer. Professional though her report was, there was nothing in what Martina had to say that offered any substantial leads.

‘Not much help, is it?’ Martina read his mind.

‘Not much. But there again, this whole thing could simply be what it seems — a random senseless attack.’

‘By the Angel?’ Martina asked. ‘You don’t really think she’s come back after ten years?’

‘Who knows? According to the girl who found Westland, the wound inflicted on him was very professional. Single cut. One stroke.’

‘Since when are hookers experts on knife wounds?’

‘Since they started studying medicine at Hamburg Uni,’ said Fabel flatly. ‘If you remember, the Angel was a dab hand with a blade.’

‘I’m not likely to forget,’ said Martina. ‘I was stationed here when the second last murder took place. I won’t forget that crime scene in a hurry. We found him dead in his car in Seilerstrasse. Minus genitalia. The last one was dumped in a corner of Heligen-Geist-Feld. Also minus working parts. That’s why I don’t think this is the Angel. No castration, the fatal knife wound was in the belly, not the throat

… and there’s a gap of nearly ten years. The other thing is that the Angel never stole from her victims. Other than their love tackle, that is. And anyway, like I said, I’ve seen the Angel’s work. If that girl hadn’t told me what Westland had said, I wouldn’t have made the connection.’

‘Maybe she misheard him. He was speaking in English.’

They were interrupted by Carstens Kaminski, the Davidwache commander, who stuck his head around the conference-room door.

‘Okay, Jan, whether the attacker was the Angel or not, this one is now officially all yours. I just got the call from St Georg. Westland’s dead.’

It was a dry night but bitterly cold, the kind of cold you felt in your lungs when you breathed in the night air. Fabel took Werner with him. They left through the rear exit to Davidwache and walked to the murder scene. They headed up Davidstrasse and passed the end of Herbertstrasse with its red-painted metal baffles.

As they approached, Fabel saw a tall grey-haired man wearing a long dark blue overcoat slip through the baffle screens. Everything about the man spoke of him being well-off, respectable. Fabel imagined the life of this stranger: an unsuspecting wife at home, children. Grandchildren probably. He was maybe even a respected figure. Someone whom others looked up to. There was something about the man’s furtive sidestep into sleaze that thoroughly depressed Fabel.

They walked along Erichstrasse, passing the occasional illuminated window and ignoring the tapping on the glass and beckoning gestures of the prostitutes.

‘Ah…’ Werner sighed sarcastically. ‘The siren call of a two-minute knee-trembler… I mean, would you ever consider…?’ He jerked a thumb in the direction of the last window they had passed.

‘You’re joking, right?’ said Fabel.

‘Some men — a lot of men — go in for it. Complication-free sex, I suppose.’

‘Unless you consider picking up a disease a complication. I hate the way the Reeperbahn is painted as “naughty but nice”. A tourist attraction. The truth is it’s cheap and nasty and sordid.’

‘Granted. But it’s here. And here to stay.’

‘Everybody keeps telling me that,’ said Fabel. ‘But I’m not so sure, Werner.’

When they reached the crime scene they found that there were still two uniforms on duty and a single forensic technician in a white bunny suit was still working the site. Fabel held up his Polizei Hamburg ID and one of the uniforms lifted the tape.

‘Is there anywhere you don’t want us to walk?’ Fabel called over to the technician.

The technician stood up and Fabel saw it was Astrid Bremer. Astrid had replaced Frank Grueber to become Holger Brauner’s deputy two years ago. She had the hood of her forensic suit pulled up over her hair and its elasticated edge turned the oval of her face into a pretty, almost childlike mask.

‘Nope…’ she said. ‘You’re okay. We finished processing the scene an hour ago.’

‘So why are you still here?’ asked Werner.

Astrid shrugged. ‘My mother always said I was a stubborn child. I just thought we were missing something. It was winding me up.’

‘And were you missing something?’ asked Fabel.

‘The killer knew what she was doing,’ said Astrid, ‘but it’s difficult for any human being not to leave some trace somewhere of their presence. I reckon she stepped back into the shadows over there by the tree. We didn’t quite get a footprint, but the heel of her boot sank into the earth at the bottom of the tree. From that we might be able to get a rough indication of her weight. That started me thinking about her height. There’s only one hundred and forty-two centimetres of clearance between the bottom of the tree and the first branches. Unless she was a midget, she would have had to duck in to keep concealed without getting tangled in the branches.’ Astrid grinned and held out a plastic evidence bag.

The bag looked empty to Fabel until he stepped out into the street and held it up against the street light.

‘A single strand,’ said Astrid. ‘It’s maybe not connected to the killing, but given where I found it I think that’s very unlikely. I would say your killer is a blonde. And we have her DNA.’