JF02 - Brother Grimm (35 page)

‘It was clear that there was something wrong with Bernd,’ Ingrid explained. ‘He became a different person. There were other strange things about him. Sometimes he would come home and complain that the house smelled dirty. It never did, but I would have to clean the house from top to bottom, even if I’d already done it that day, just to keep him happy. Then I would get my “reward”, as he put it. I thought he was having some kind of breakdown, so I suggested that we went to see our family doctor, but Bernd wouldn’t have any of it.’

‘So you never got any kind of professional opinion on his behaviour?’

‘Yes. Yes, I did. I went to see Herr Doktor Gärten myself. I told him what was happening. He said that there is a condition called “satyriasis” – it’s the male
form of nymphomania. He said that he was very concerned about Bernd and wanted him to come in to see him, but when I told Bernd that I’d been to see the doctor without him, behind his back, as he put it … well, things started to get even more
unpleasant
.’

The two women sat in silence for a moment. Then Maria started to explain the kind of help that was available to Ingrid, and went through the procedures that would be followed over the coming days and weeks. Then Maria got up to go. She was almost at the door when she turned to say goodbye to Ingrid Ungerer, and repeated her condolences.

‘May I ask you one last question, Frau Ungerer?’

Ingrid nodded lifelessly.

‘You said his colleagues and customers had a nickname for him. What was it?’

Ingrid Ungerer’s eyes welled with tears. ‘Bluebeard. That’s what they called my husband … Bluebeard.’

The nurses were delighted. Such a lovely thought – to have brought in a huge box of the most delicious pastries for them to have with their coffee. It was a small ‘thank you’, he had explained, to the Oberschwester and all of her staff for the wonderful care they had taken of his mother. So nice. So considerate.

He had been in with the Chefarzt, Herr Doktor Schell, for almost half an hour. Doktor Schell was going over, once more, the essentials of his mother’s care once she was home with him. Schell had the report that the social services had provided on the apartment the son had prepared to share with his sick mother. According to the report it had been equipped to the highest standard and the chief doctor complimented him on his commitment to providing his mother with the best possible care.

When he came out of the Doktor’s office, the big man beamed a smile at the nurse’s station. He was so obviously delighted to be taking his mother home. Again the chief nurse found herself doubting that any of her ungrateful brood would make a quarter as much effort for her in her old age.

He sat again by the old woman’s bed, pulling his chair in tight, drawing in to their confined, exclusive, poisonous universe.

‘Do you know what,
Mutti
? At the end of this week we will be together. Alone. Isn’t that wonderful? All I’ll have to worry about is the odd visit we’ll be getting from a District Nurse, to see how we’re getting on. But I can work around that. No, it won’t be a problem at all when the Gemeindeschwester comes to call. You see, I’ve got this wonderful little apartment all fitted out with stuff that we’ll never use – because we’ll hardly ever be there, will we,
Mutti
? I know that you’d much rather be in our old house, wouldn’t you?’

The old woman lay, as ever, motionless, helpless.

‘Do you know what I found the other day, mother? Your old costume from the Speeldeel. Remember how important that was for you? German traditions of dance and song? I do believe I might find a use for it.’ He paused. ‘Do you want me to read to you,
Mutti
? Do you want me to read the Grimm stories to you? I will when we get home. All the time. Like before. Do you remember how the only books you would allow in the house were the Bible and the Brothers Grimm fairy tales? God and Germany. That’s all we needed in our household …’ He paused. Then his voice fell to a low, conspiratorial whisper. ‘You hurt me so much,
Mutti
. You hurt me so much that sometimes I thought I was going to die. You beat me so hard and you told me all the time that I was worthless. A nobody. You never stopped. When I was a teenager and then a grown man, you told me I was useless. Unworthy of anyone else’s love. You said that was why I could never form a lasting relationship.’ The whisper became a
hiss. ‘Well, you were wrong, you old bitch. You thought we were always alone when you beat the crap out of me. Well, we weren’t. He was always there. My Märchenbruder. Invisible. He didn’t speak for such a long, long time. Then I heard him. I heard him; you couldn’t. He saved me from your beatings. He gave me the words for the stories. He opened up a new world. A wonderful, shining world. A truthful world. And then I found my true art, with his help. Three years ago, remember? The girl. The girl you had to help me bury because you were terrified of the scandal, the disgrace of having a son go to prison. You thought you could control me. But he was stronger …
is
stronger than you can ever imagine.’

He leaned back in his chair and scanned her body, from head to toe. When he spoke, his voice was no longer a whisper, but flat, cold, menacing.

‘You will be my masterpiece, mother. My masterwork. It will be for you, more than anything else I have done, that I will be remembered.’

The dressing on the side of Werner’s head was small and the side of his face was no longer swollen, but there was still a smudge of bruising around the area of the wound. Fabel had only agreed to let him back if he stayed in the Mordkommission and helped with the processing and collation of the evidence that the active team gathered. And then only if he restricted his hours. Werner’s methodical approach was ideally suited for sifting through the oddball correspondence and e-mails that Weiss’s theories had attracted. So far, wading through this junk had tied up Hans Rödger and Petra Maas. And, because of its very nature, it had turned up a pile of crackpots who needed to be checked out, and there was a mounting backlog of interviews to be done.

The truth was, Fabel was as glad to see Werner return to the team as he had been to see Anna back. He did, however, feel irresponsible at having allowed two injured officers to return to duty prematurely. Fabel decided to make it up to them by negotiating some extra paid leave for Werner and Anna after this case was over.

He took Werner through the inquiry board.
Running through the progress, or lack of it, of the case so far was a frustrating experience. Fabel had been forced to turn the media spotlight generated by Laura von Klosterstadt’s murder to his own advantage: Olsen’s picture now appeared on news bulletins and in papers as the person to whom the Polizei Hamburg wanted to speak in connection with the murders. He had put Anna and Henk Hermann on to interviewing Leo Kranz, the photographer who had been involved ten years ago with Laura von Klosterstadt: but Kranz was on assignment, covering the Anglo-American occupation of Iraq. His office had been able to confirm that he had been in the Middle East throughout the time when the murders had been committed. Fabel went through his meeting with Weiss, which Werner had prompted, and explained that Fendrich remained on the edge of the investigation.

‘The thing that bothers me most about Fendrich,’ said Fabel, ‘is that his mother died six months ago. In her psycho-profile of the killer, Susanne reckoned that the gap between the first and the second killings could indicate that some kind of restraint was exerted on the killer by a dominant figure, a wife or a mother, who may have since died.’

‘I don’t know, Jan.’ Werner turned a chair from a nearby desk to face the inquiry board, then eased himself into it. His face looked grey, tired. For the first time, Fabel became aware that Werner was getting older. ‘Fendrich has been put through the mill at least twice. He just doesn’t fit. I don’t like the sound of this guy Weiss, though. You reckon we’ve got another high priest and acolyte? Weiss pulling the strings and Olsen doing the killing? We’ve been there before, after all.’

‘Could be.’ Fabel gazed at the inquiry board, with all the pictures and time-lines laid out on it. ‘But does Olsen strike you as someone who would be inspired by fairy tales, or Weiss’s half-assed literary theories?’

Werner laughed. ‘Maybe we’re trying too hard. Maybe we should just be looking for someone who lives in a gingerbread house.’

Fabel smiled grimly, but something snagged in his brain. A gingerbread house. He shrugged. ‘You could be right. About trying too hard, I mean. Maybe Olsen is our guy. Let’s just hope we close in on him soon.’

It was about three p.m. when Fabel’s wish was answered. A SchuPo unit reported that someone matching Olsen’s description had been seen entering a squat in a disused block overlooking the harbour. The uniformed officers had had the good sense to hold back and call up a plain-clothes Mobiles Einsatz Kommando to keep the building under surveillance. The report hit the Mordkommission like a missile. Fabel had to calm everyone down before giving them their orders.

‘Listen, people. This is our capture. I’ve already told the MEK commander that
we
’re making the arrest.
We
take him. No one else.’ He looked across to Maria; as usual, her expression was hard to read, but she gave a decisive nod. ‘When we get there we’ll work out a game plan. I want Olsen alive and in a condition to talk. Is that clear? Okay, let’s go.’

Fabel had to stop Werner in his tracks as he donned his black leather jacket and made his way out with the rest of the team.

‘Just an observer?’ Werner smiled meekly. ‘Please, Jan, the bastard split my head open. I just want to see him get taken.’

‘Okay, but you stay back where I put you. Maria’s my number two on this.’

It had, at one time, been a working community. A place where the workers in the Hafen came home to; where families lived; where their children played. But now it lay empty, awaiting the inexorable forces of development and gentrification that seemed to be taking hold of all the former working-class districts of Hamburg. Even Fabel’s beloved Pöseldorf, the home of Hamburg’s trendy, wealthy
Schickeria
, had been known as the Arme Leute Gegend – the poor people’s area – until the 1960s, when it had been transformed into the trendiest part of Hamburg to be seen in.

But this area down by the harbour had yet to acquire any such desirability. Architecturally, the area seemed frozen in time, with its cobbled streets and huge tenements. The only incursions of the twenty-first century were found in the ugly graffiti that defaced the buildings and the silent, hulking form of a container vessel that could be seen sliding by through the gaps between the tenements. All the officers were tense.

The building where Olsen had been spotted sat on the fringes of the Hafenstrasse Genossenschaft, the area of Hamburg that, since December 1995, had been owned and administered by a tenants’ commune ‘Alternativen am Elbufer’. Politically and socially, this part of the city had been a battleground. Literally.

In the autumn of 1981, the apartment blocks along Hafenstrasse and in Bernhardt-Nocht-Strasse had become systematically occupied by squatters. Alfons Pawelczyk, who was Innensenator at the time, had
ordered the police in to clear them out. The result had been total anarchy and mayhem. A decade-long war between the squatters and the Polizei Hamburg had followed, and German TV screens had been filled with scenes of burning barricades, vicious hand-to-hand street battles and hundreds of injured police officers and squatters. Ultimately it had cost the then Erster Bürgermeister, Klaus von Dohnanyi, his job. It had only been with the compromise deal struck in 1995 that the unrest had ended. Nevertheless, the area around Hafenstrasse had continued to simmer, and it was not a place the police could enter and operate in without care.

The MEK team had therefore positioned itself a block back all round the building, which sat on a corner, where Olsen had been sighted. The MEK commander was glad to see Fabel. In an area like this, it would have been impossible to keep their presence a secret much longer. He informed Fabel that Olsen was believed to be in the squat, which sat one floor up in the tenement. It was certainly his motorbike that was parked outside, and one of the MEK team had sneaked in to disable it, in case Olsen tried to make a run for it. Because it had been so badly vandalised, the ground floor was unoccupied. It made things easy. Basically, there was one way in, one way out.

Fabel divided the team in two. Maria was in charge of Anna and Henk Hermann. They would secure the outside of the building. Fabel, Hans Rödger and Petra Maas would go in for Olsen, taking two MEK officers with them in case any of the other occupants of the squat gave them trouble. He asked the MEK commander to use the rest of his team to support Maria in sealing off any possible escape route.

They split up into the MEK van, Fabel’s BMW and Maria’s car. They pulled up simultaneously outside the building, vehicle noses inwards. Maria and her team were out and deployed in seconds. Fabel and his group took the front door. The two MEK men slammed a door-ram into the centre of the double doors which splintered and flew open. Fable drew his pistol and led the team in. The hallway stank of urine and some other unclean odour that Fabel could not place. There was the sound of a commotion upstairs and Fabel moved swiftly and silently up the stairwell, flattening himself against the flaking pale green paint and keeping the bead of his pistol lined up on the uppermost point he could see. The door of the squat was open, and Fabel waited until the others could give him cover before going in.