JF02 - Brother Grimm (34 page)

Margarethe von Klosterstadt arched one of her perfectly shaped eyebrows inquisitively, but Fabel could detect nothing more than patient politeness in the glacial eyes. Fabel paused for a heartbeat before continuing.

‘I have to ask you about your daughter’s pregnancy and subsequent abortion, Frau von Klosterstadt.’

The patient politeness disappeared from the pale blue eyes; an Arctic storm welled up somewhere deep within them but did not, yet, break through.

‘What, might I ask, leads you to ask such an offensive question, Herr Kriminalhauptkommissar?’

‘You don’t deny that Laura had an abortion?’ Fabel asked. She did not answer but held him in her steady gaze. ‘Listen, Frau von Klosterstadt, I am making every effort to deal with these matters as discreetly as possible, and it would be much easier if you were to be direct with me. If you force me to, I will get all kinds of warrants to go stomping about in your family’s affairs until I get to the truth. That would be, well, unpleasant. And it could be more public.’

The Arctic storm now raged and rattled against the panes of Margarethe von Klosterstadt’s eyes, yet still did not break through. Then it was gone. Her expression, her perfect poise, her voice remained unchanged, yet she had surrendered. Something she was clearly not used to. ‘It was just before Laura’s
twenty-first birthday. We sent her to the Hammond Clinic. It’s a private clinic in London.’

‘How long before her birthday?’

‘A week or so before.’

‘So it was almost exactly ten years ago?’ Fabel’s question was more to himself. An anniversary. ‘Who was the father?’

There was an almost imperceptible tensing of her posture. Then a smile flickered across her lips.

‘Is that really necessary, Herr Fabel? Do we really need to go into all of this?’

‘I’m afraid so, Frau von Klosterstadt. You have my word that I will be discreet.’

‘Very well. His name was Kranz. He was a photographer. Or rather he was an assistant to Pietro Moldari, the fashion photographer who launched Laura’s career. He was a nobody then, but I believe he’s done rather well for himself since.’

‘Leo Kranz?’ Fabel recognised the name immediately. But he didn’t associate it with fashion shoots. Kranz was a well-regarded photojournalist who had covered some of the world’s most dangerous war-zones over the last five years. Margarethe von Klosterstadt read the confusion in Fabel’s face.

‘He gave up fashion photography for press work.’

‘Did Laura have anything to do with him? Afterwards, I mean.’

‘No. I don’t think they had been particularly involved. It was an unfortunate … episode … and they both put it behind them.’

Did they? wondered Fabel. He remembered Laura’s austere, lonely villa in Blankenese. He doubted very much if Laura von Klosterstadt had left anything of her sadness behind her.

‘Who knew about the abortion?’ he asked.

Margarethe von Klosterstadt didn’t answer for a moment. She regarded Fabel silently. Somehow she managed to sprinkle just enough disdain into that look to make Fabel feel uncomfortable, but not enough for him to actually confront her. He thought idly of Möller, the pathologist, who always tried to achieve this level of arrogant haughtiness: in comparison, he was a clumsy amateur; Frau von Klosterstadt was world-class at it. Fabel wondered if she practised on the servants.

‘We’re not in the habit of sharing details of our family affairs with the outside world, Herr Fabel. And I am certain that Herr Kranz had absolutely no interest in making his involvement widely known. As I say, it was a family matter and it was kept within the family.’

‘So Hubert knew about it?’

Another frosted silence, then: ‘I didn’t feel that was necessary. Whether Laura told him or not, I don’t know. But I’m afraid they were never close as brother and sister. Laura was always distant. Difficult.’

Fabel kept his expression blank. It was clear who had been the favoured child in this family. He remembered the contempt with which Heinz Schnauber had spoken about Hubert. Two things had become clear to him: first Heinz Schnauber really was the closest thing Laura had known to family, and second, this interview was going to yield nothing. And it was going to yield nothing because, once again, he was asking questions of an acquaintance, not a mother. He looked at Margarethe von Klosterstadt: she was elegant, classically beautiful and one of those women whose age only seemed to intensify their sexiness. In his mind, he overlaid the image of Ulrike
Schmidt, the prematurely aged occasional prostitute and regular drug user, whose skin and hair had dulled. Two women who were so different they could have belonged to different species. But one thing united them: their profound lack of knowledge of their own daughters.

Something dull and heavy dragged at Fabel as he made his way back to his car: a leaden, gloomy sadness. He looked back at the vast, immaculate house and thought of a little girl growing up there. Isolated. Dislocated from any sense of real family. He thought of how she had escaped this gilded prison merely to build one of her own, high on the Blankenese banks of the Elbe.

Fabel had to admit that her killer could not have made a more appropriate choice for his fairy-tale princess. And he felt certain now that her killer, at some point, must have had some kind of contact with her.

Fabel had given Maria the task of interviewing the wife of the latest victim, Bernd Ungerer. And she would still be his wife, not his widow. Maria knew she was about to meet with someone whose grief was as raw as burned flesh; someone who would be struggling to come to terms with a new, absurd, but permanent reality.

Ingrid Ungerer’s eyes were inflamed with the tears that she had shed before Maria had arrived. But there was something more there. A bitterness. She conducted Maria into the sitting room, where they were alone, but Maria could hear subdued voices from an upstairs room.

‘My sister,’ Ingrid explained. ‘She’s helping me with the kids. Please … sit down.’

A pine shelving unit lined one wall. It was filled with the usual careless mix of books, CDs, ornaments and photographs that typify a family home. Maria noticed that most of the photographs were of Ingrid and a man whom Maria took to be her husband, Bernd, although his hair looked lighter, more grey, than it had on the dead man found in the park. And, of course, unlike the body in the park, the man in the picture had eyes with which
to look at the camera. In all the photographs there were two boys, both of whom shared their mother’s dark hair and eyes. As families always do in these photographs, they all looked happy. Ingrid’s smile looked natural and relaxed, but, as Maria looked at the woman before her, she realised that happiness was now a permanently alien concept to Ingrid Ungerer; and Maria had the feeling that it had been so for some time. Bernd Ungerer’s face also beamed a smile at the camera. Again the smile looked genuinely happy. Contented.

‘When will I be able to see the body?’ Ingrid Ungerer’s expression was one of a forced, spiritless composure.

‘Frau Ungerer …’ Maria leaned forward in the chair. ‘I have to warn you that your husband sustained certain … injuries … that could be distressing for you to see. I think it would be best –’

‘What type of injuries?’ Ingrid cut Maria off. ‘How was he killed?’

‘As far as we can tell, your husband was stabbed.’ Maria paused. ‘Listen, Frau Ungerer, the person who killed your husband is clearly a deranged individual. I’m afraid to say that he removed your husband’s eyes. I really am very sorry.’

Ingrid Ungerer’s expression remained composed, but Maria noticed that she trembled as she spoke.

‘Was it someone’s husband? Or a boyfriend?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t understand, Frau Ungerer.’

‘Was my husband caught with another woman? Or was it a jealous husband who caught up with him? Then I could understand the thing with the eyes. He was always staring at other women. Always.’

Maria looked hard at Ingrid Ungerer. She was unremarkably attractive, of medium height and
build, with short chestnut hair. A pleasant face, but not one you would notice; but if you did, you would see that a sadness continually lurked behind her expression. Maria could see that it was an established sadness; a melancholy that had made temporary house-room for Ingrid’s new grief, but whose own tenancy was of a much longer, and now permanent, standing.

‘Your husband saw other women?’ Maria asked.

Ingrid gave a bitter laugh. ‘Do you like sex?’ She asked the question as if she were asking the time. Maria, naturally, looked stunned, but the question bit deeper than Frau Ungerer had intended. Fortunately, she didn’t wait for Maria to answer. ‘I used to. I’m a very physical person. But you know what it’s like, after you’ve been married for a while, the way the passion fades, the way kids exhaust you and kill your sex drive …’

‘Sorry, I don’t. I’m not married.’

‘But you have a boyfriend?’

‘Not at the moment.’ Maria kept her tone even. It was an area of her life that she did not feel like discussing with a stranger, even if it was a bereaved woman.

‘Things cooled down a bit after Bernd and I got married. As they do. A bit too cool for me, if I’m honest, but Bernd had a demanding job and was often dead tired when he got home. But he was a wonderful husband, Frau Klee. Faithful, supportive, caring, and a great father.’ Ingrid stood up, taking a set of keys from her handbag. ‘I’d like to show you something.’ She led Maria out into the hall, through an archway and down some stairs. Once in the basement she switched on the lights. There was
the usual collection of items that found no place in the main dwelling of a family home: bicycles, storage boxes, winter boots. Ingrid stopped in front of a large chest, resting her hand on it but making no effort to open it.

‘It started about six months ago. Bernd became more … attentive, shall we say. I was happy to begin with, but we seemed to go from one extreme to the other. We made love every night. Sometimes twice in one night. It became more and more …
urgent
, I suppose. Then it stopped being like we were making love. He would do it to me and it was like I wasn’t there. And then, one night when I said I wasn’t in the mood …’ Ingrid stopped. She looked down at the set of keys and fumbled through them, as if they were a rosary. ‘It was that night that he made it very clear that he didn’t care whether I was in the mood or not.’

Maria placed her hand on Ingrid’s arm but felt her pull slightly away. ‘It was about then that I started to find out about the other women. He was working for a different company then. He’d been with them for years, and he suddenly had to make a move to the firm he’s with now …’ She shook her head as if annoyed with herself and corrected her statement. ‘I mean, the company he was working for until now. It wasn’t until recently that I found out a couple of the women at his old company had made complaints about him.’

‘I’m sorry, Frau Ungerer. So that’s why you think it might have been a jealous husband? I don’t think that’s the case. We have reason to believe that your husband’s murder was committed by someone who has killed a number of unconnected people before.’

Ingrid Ungerer stared blankly at Maria, then
continued as if she hadn’t heard what she had said. ‘There were half a dozen women that I know about over the last six months. And countless more who rejected him. He had no shame. It didn’t seem to matter to him that he was embarrassing himself … or me and the children, for that matter.’ She laughed her small, bitter laugh once more. ‘And it wasn’t as if he left me alone. All the time he was with other women I still had to perform for him. He became insatiable.’

She took the keys she had taken from her bag and unlocked the chest, swinging the lid up to reveal its contents. It was packed with pornography. Hard-core pornography: magazines, videos, DVDs. ‘He told me never to come down here. Never to open this chest, if I knew what was good for me.’ She looked at Maria beseechingly. ‘Why did he do that? Why did he threaten me? He’d never threatened me before.’ She nodded at the contents of the chest. ‘There’s more on his computer upstairs. Do you understand it? Why would he change like that? Why would a caring, loving man turn into a beast? So suddenly? Everyone knew about it. That’s what made me so sad. Neighbours and friends would smile and chat to me and I could see they either felt sorry for me or were trying to find out more dirty details. Not that we had many friends left. Any couple we knew fell out with us because Bernd was always trying to get into the woman’s pants. Even the people at his work joked about it … had a nickname for him. His customers too, apparently. I’m telling you, Frau Klee, I can’t believe his murder hasn’t got anything to do with the way he’s been behaving recently.’

Ingrid shut and locked the chest and they went
back up to the lounge. Maria tried to concentrate on getting details from Ingrid about her husband’s movements over the previous week. But the more Maria tried to focus on his movements, the more the locked chest in the basement, the secret life bothered her. In any case, it was a difficult and thankless task because, alongside his sudden lasciviousness, it appeared that Ungerer had become increasingly secretive and defensive. He had gone out more in the evenings to ‘see clients socially’, and that was where he’d said he had been going the night he was killed. When he had not returned that night, Ingrid had not been concerned. Upset, but not concerned: it was quite common for Bernd to stay out all night. There had been credit-card slips hidden, which Ingrid had found, but she had put them back where she had found them, without comment. They had all been made out to escort agencies, clubs and saunas in St Pauli.