JF01 - Blood Eagle (14 page)

‘I’ll ask around some more,’ said Werner.

‘I also want you to try to find out if any of the neighbours saw a policeman in the area prior to the killing. But for God’s sake be careful … I don’t want anyone to think we suspect one of our own.’

‘Of course,’ said Maria, ‘it could be that he isn’t in uniform. Maybe he’s simply got hold of a Kriminalpolizei ID or shield.’

‘I know … as you say, that’s even if he is impersonating a policeman at all. But a uniform would get him unquestioned entry, probably. It’s worth a try.’

* * *

After Werner and Maria left his office, Fabel tried to get Mahmoot on his cell phone. A full-scale gang war was about to erupt and Fabel had sent Mahmoot out unarmed into the front line. The phone rang out until, eventually, Mahmoot’s answering service cut in.

‘It’s me. Phone me. And forget all about that favour I asked.’ Fabel hung up.

Thursday 5 June, 10.00 a.m. Stadtkrankenhaus Cuxhaven.

Max Sülberg’s uniform didn’t fit him very well. In fact, in his twenty-five-year service with the Polizei Niedersachsen, most of which had been spent at the Polizeiinspektion Cuxhaven, no uniform had ever fitted him that well. He had, in that time, slowly metamorphosed from skinny and scruffy to paunchy and scruffy. Now, his mustard-yellow short-sleeved service shirt was stretched taut around the belt line and wrinkled across the chest and back, and his uniform trousers looked as if they had had only a passing and none too recent acquaintance with an iron. He was the kind of scruffy policeman that would normally be hauled up before the boss – were it not for the two gold pips on his green and white shoulder flashes, that showed that Max was, in fact, the boss.

He was a short, balding man with an amiable face that was well lived-in and almost always on the verge of a smile. It was a familiar and trusted face among those who lived on the low, flat lands contained by the sandy arc of the Cuxhaven coastline that swept from Berensch-Arensch to Altenbruch.

Now, Max’s ready smile was absent, bleached from his face by the mortuary’s stark lighting. Next to him stood Dr Franz Stern, a lean, handsome physician with a thick mane of black hair who towered immaculately above the crumpled SchuPo officer. Before them, on the cold steel of a mortuary trolley, lay the smashed body of Petra Heyne, a nineteen-year-old student from Hemmoor. Max Sülberg had been a policeman for a long time and that meant, even in Cuxhaven, he had seen his fair share of death and violence. But, as he looked down at the lifeless face of a girl barely a year older than his own daughter, he felt an overpowering instinct to find a pillow, something, anything, to put beneath her head. And to say something to her. To comfort her. But she was beyond comfort. He shook his head heavily.

‘What a waste.’

Stern sighed. ‘What on earth was she doing wandering about on the road, miles from anywhere?’

‘I can only guess. We’ll have to wait for the autopsy, but my guess is she was on some kind of drugs. The driver of the truck said she seemed totally out of it when she stepped out in front of him. There was clearly nothing he could do to avoid hitting her, but he’s having a hard time accepting that. Poor swine.’

‘Have the parents been notified?’ asked Stern.

‘They’re on their way in. She had no bag or her ID card on her, but she was wearing a medimergency bracelet.’

Without thinking, Stern glanced at the girl’s wrist. Silly, of course, the bracelet had been taken away and stored by the police; but something caught his eye and he frowned, his black eyebrows forming a straight ridge and hooding his eyes. He leaned forward.

‘What is it?’ asked Sülberg.

Stern didn’t answer but turned the girl’s forearm, scrutinising the wrist. He turned his attention to her right ankle, then her left ankle before finally examining the left wrist with as much intensity.

Sülberg gave an impatient sigh. ‘What
is
it, Herr Doktor Stern?’

Stern held the girl’s wrist up.

Sülberg shrugged. ‘What am I supposed to be looking at. I don’t see …’

‘Look closer.’

Sülberg slipped his reading glasses from his uniform shirt pocket and put them on. As he leaned in to examine the girl’s wrist, his stomach lurched from the smell of the freshly dead. Then his attention was caught. There were scrapes on the skin and a very faint redness across the plain of the wrist.

‘It’s the same on the ankles …’ said Stern.

‘Shit …’ Sülberg removed his glasses. ‘She’s been tied up.’

‘She’s been tied up all right,’ said Stern, ‘but she hasn’t struggled much against her bonds. My guess is that she has been semi- or unconscious whilst bound. That would explain her being out of it and walking right into the path of that truck.’

Somehow the muscles in Sülberg’s face tautened and gave it a harder look. ‘I don’t want to wait for the full autopsy, Dr Stern. I want you to draw some blood now for analysis.’

Thursday 5 June, 12.00 p.m. Polizeipräsidium, Hamburg.

Fabel knew from the fire in Werner’s eyes that it was something important.

Werner had a methodical and painstaking approach to policework that contrasted with Fabel’s own, more intuitive style. Werner was all detail: Fabel was all big picture. It was this contrast that made them such a good team. The only thing that frustrated Fabel was Werner’s reluctance to open up to Maria Klee’s complementary analytical skills. And now Werner had that look that told Fabel he had been sniffing around in some small corner of the investigation and had found a scent to follow.

‘What’ve you got, Werner?’

Werner sat down opposite Fabel and gave a small laugh at being so easy to read. ‘Two things. First, difficult though it is to believe, our pal Klugmann has been less than straight with us.’

‘You do surprise me.’

Werner showed Fabel a print-out that looked like a phone bill without the costs, just numbers dialled and durations. ‘I got the details of Klugmann’s cell phone account …’ Werner read Fabel’s raised eyebrows. ‘It wasn’t easy.’ He tapped the beefy tip of his forefinger on an entry. ‘Look at this … he phoned this number at two-thirty-five a.m… . it’s the number for the local police. Just like he said and just like the station logged.’ Werner slid his finger down the page. ‘Now look at this. Two-twenty-two a.m… .’

Fabel looked up from the entry and held Werner’s eyes. ‘The bastard.’

‘Exactly. He was on the phone for twelve minutes to that number. He must have hung up and then dialled the local police. Now who the hell do you phone before the police when you’ve just found a so-called friend sliced up like butcher-meat? Pizza delivery?’

‘So who is it? Whose number is it?’

Werner leaned his broad back against the chair and tilted it slightly. ‘That’s the other thing. I have checked and double-checked through every relevant federal department, Deutsche Telekom, the cell phone operators … this number –’ he let his chair slam forward again and stabbed his finger at the entry – ‘does not exist.’

‘It has to exist.’

‘It clearly does, because Klugmann was talking to it for twelve minutes, but it is not recorded anywhere. We’re left with only one thing to do.’

‘You haven’t already tried?’

‘I thought I’d leave the honours to you,
Chef
.’

Fabel picked up his cell phone and dialled. It was answered after the second ring, but no one spoke.

Fabel waited a moment before speaking. ‘Hello?’

Silence.

‘Hello?’ Fabel thought he heard the sound of a breath at the other end. He was pretty sure he was connected to a cell phone. After a couple of seconds he spoke again. ‘Hello … it’s me …’ The line went dead. Fabel redialled the number. He let it ring for several minutes before hanging up. He turned to Werner. ‘Okay … do Anna and Paul still have Klugmann under surveillance?’

Werner nodded.

‘Let’s bring him in.’

It was more of an alley than a street. Because it was so narrow and ran east–west, and because the red sandstone buildings that lined it were never less than three storeys high, it was also gloomy. Parking was permitted only on one side of the street and Anna Wolff and Paul Lindemann’s BMW was parked halfway along. There were no other spaces available, so Fabel, with Werner in the passenger seat, had to pull in around the corner.

Sonja Brun appeared around the corner, carrying two Aldi carrier bags, heavy with groceries. She was tall, slim, with long, bronzed legs. Her hair was dark and long, pushed back from her face by the improvised hairband of her sunglasses, which were shoved up onto the top of her head. She looked lithe and fit. Fabel thought of the comments Möller, the pathologist, had made about the second victim’s levels of fitness. Sonja was a pole-dancer at the Paradies-Tanzbar, among other things. Maybe ‘Monique’ had been a whore, after all.

Sonja passed Fabel’s parked car, on the other side of the narrow street, and Fabel got a better look at her. She was dressed cheaply in a cropped white T-shirt that strained against her breasts and exposed her tanned midriff, a faded denim miniskirt and canvas sandals with straps that wrapped around her shapely calves. Fabel saw her face only in profile, but he could tell that she was pretty. Given different clothes she would have had a touch of class about her. She crossed the street two car lengths in front of Fabel’s car and turned into the alley. Fabel used his radio to let Anna and Paul know she was on her way.

‘We’ll follow her up. I’ve got clearance from the Staatsanwaltschaft prosecutor’s office to enter and arrest. When she opens the door, we go.’ He slipped his Walther from its holster and slid back the carriage to put a round in the firing chamber. He checked the red, raised safety button before reholstering. He turned to Werner. ‘Best to be careful with this one. I’m sure Klugmann won’t give us any trouble, but if he does, he’ll know how to give it.’

Werner checked his own sidearm. ‘He won’t get the fucking chance.’

They got out of the car and followed Sonja on foot. As they passed the parked BMW, Anna and Paul got out and fell in behind them. Sonja, still lugging her grocery bags, swung round and pushed her back against the heavy street door. As she did so, she glanced in the direction of the advancing party without seeming to notice them. They followed her into the cobbled Hof, and Fabel could hear her sandals clicking rapidly as she trotted up the stone steps towards her apartment. As quietly as they could, they followed on. Sonja was at the door, her grocery bags at her feet, fumbling with her keys. It was then she saw them.

‘Hans!’ Her scream rang around the courtyard.

Fabel was shocked to see the terror on Sonja’s face. He realised that she thought they were someone else. He held up his hand in a gesture that would have been more placatory were it not for the clumpy black Walther sub-compact automatic he held in his other hand.

‘Sonja … keep calm. We’re police and we only want to talk to Hans …’

Her terror was now mingled with uncertainty. Fabel and the others ran up the stairs and petite Anna Wolff pushed Sonja backwards so severely that she nearly lost her footing. Anna pinned Sonja against the wall, out of the potential line of fire. Fabel and Paul flattened themselves against the wall on either side of the door. Fabel called out:

‘Polizei Hamburg!’ and nodded to Werner who kicked the door just below the lock.

Fabel, Werner and Paul swept through the apartment, taking turns of two providing cover while the third scanned a room, swinging outstretched arms from side to side as if their guns were flashlights. A kitchen, a living room, a bathroom and two bedrooms all fed off a short hall. The apartment was clean, bright and tidy but cheaply furnished. It was also empty. Fabel slipped his automatic back into the holster under his arm and nodded to Anna Wolff, who smiled at Sonja and led her gently into the apartment. Fabel told Paul to pick up her grocery bags and put them in the kitchen. Solicitously, Anna led Sonja into the living room and sat her down on the couch. Sonja was shaking and looked close to tears. Fabel crouched down before her.

‘Sonja, where’s Hans?’

Sonja shrugged and tears welled up in her nut-brown eyes. ‘I don’t know. He was here when I left this morning. He didn’t say he was going anywhere. He hasn’t been out since that girl got killed. He’s very upset about it.’ The eyes went hard behind the tears. ‘Is that why you’re here?’

‘We’re not accusing him of anything. We just need to ask him some questions.’

The nut-brown eyes still glittered with a mixture of fear and anger.

‘Sonja, could you excuse us for a moment.’ Fabel turned to his officers. ‘Anna, Paul … a word. Outside.’

Once they were out on the landing, Anna Wolff’s and Paul Lindemann’s expressions showed they knew what this was about. Anna Wolff decided to pre-empt Fabel and held up her hands.

‘I’m sorry,
Chef
… there’s no way he could have got past us. We were on him tight.’

‘Not tight enough apparently.’ Fabel was struggling to keep a lid on his frustration. ‘Klugmann is the only lead we’ve got, and you’ve let him get away.’ He jabbed a finger at them. ‘You lost him. You find him.’

‘Yes
Chef
,’ they said in unison.

‘And start by seeing if any of the neighbours are in.’