JF02 - Brother Grimm (9 page)

‘It is an allegory,’ explained the author, Gerhard Weiss, ‘a literary device. There is not, nor has there ever been, any evidence or even suggestion that Jacob Grimm was a paedophile or any sort of murderer. My book
Die Märchenstrasse
is a story, an imagined tale. I chose Jacob Grimm because he and his brother were involved in the collection and study of the German folk tale, as well as analysing the mechanics of the German language. If anyone understood the power of myth and folklore then it was the Brothers Grimm. Today we are afraid to let our children play out of sight. We see menace and danger in every aspect of modern life. We go to the cinema to terrify ourselves with modern myths that we
convince ourselves hold a mirror up to our life and society today. The fact is, the danger has always been there. The child-killer, the rapist, the insane murderer have all been constants in the human experience. All that is different is that, where we used to frighten ourselves with the spoken tale of the big, bad wolf, of the wicked witch, of the evil that lies waiting in the dark of the woods, we now scare ourselves with cinematic myths of the super-intelligent serial killer, the malevolent stalker, the alien, the monster created by science … All we’ve done is reinvent the big, bad wolf. We just have modern allegories for perennial terrors …’

‘And that gives you the justification to malign the reputation of a great German?’ asked the academic. His tone was stretched between anger and incredulity.

Again, the voice of the author remained calm. Disturbingly so, thought Fabel. Almost emotionless. ‘I am aware that I have infuriated much of the German literary establishment as well as the descendants of Jacob Grimm, but I am merely fulfilling my duty as a writer of modern fables. As such, it is my responsibility to continue the tradition of scaring the reader with the danger without and the darkness within.’

It was the show’s host who asked the next question. ‘But what has particularly infuriated the descendants of Jacob Grimm is the way that, although you have made it clear that your portrayal of Jacob Grimm as a murderer is totally fictional, you have used this novel to promote your theory of “fiction as truth”. What does that mean? Is it fictional or not?’

‘As you say,’ answered Weiss in the same, level,
emotionless tone, ‘my novel has no foundation in fact. But, as with so many works of fiction, I have no doubt that future generations will probably believe that there was some truth in it. A less educated, lazier future will remember the fiction and accept it as fact. It is a process that has been at work for centuries. Take William Shakespeare’s portrayal of the Scottish king Macbeth. In reality, Macbeth was a well-loved, respected and successful king. But because of Shakespeare’s desire to please the then British monarch, Macbeth was demonised in a work of fiction. Today, Macbeth is a monumental figure, an icon for ruthless ambition, avarice, violence and bloodlust. But these are the characteristics of the Shakespearean character, not the historical reality, of Macbeth. We do not simply progress from history to legend to myth – we invent, we elaborate, we fabricate. The myth and the fable become the enduring truth.’

The academic responded by ignoring the author’s point and repeating his condemnation of how the novel impugned Jacob Grimm’s reputation and the debate was curtailed by the expiry of the programme’s airtime. Fabel switched the radio off. He found himself thinking about what the writer had said. That there had always been the same evil amongst men; that there had always been the kind of random, cruel violence and death. The sick monster who had strangled the girl and dumped her body on the beach was just the latest in a long lineage of psychotic minds. Of course, Fabel had always known this to be true. He had once read about Gilles de Rais, the fifteenth-century French nobleman whose absolute power over his fiefdom meant that he had been able to abduct, rape and
murder young boys with impunity for years; the estimated body count was in the hundreds, and could even have been in the thousands. But Fabel had also tried to convince himself that the serial killer was a modern phenomenon: the product of a disintegrating social order, of sick minds forged by abuse and fed by the availability of violent porn in the street or on the Internet. In that belief, somehow, there lay a faint hope: that if our modern society created these monsters, then we could somehow fix the problem. To accept that it was a fundamental constant in the human condition seemed almost to give up hope.

Fabel slipped a CD into the player. As Herbert Groenemeyer’s voice filled the car, and as the kilometres slipped by, Fabel tried to turn his thoughts from a perennial evil lurking in the woods.

The first thing Fabel did when he got back to his office was to phone his mother. She assured him she was still fine and that Lex was fussing over her and preparing the most beautiful meals. Her voice on the phone seemed to re-establish the balance in Fabel’s universe. At a telephone line’s distance, her distinctive accent and the timbre of her voice belonged to a younger mother. A mother whose presence he had always taken as an immutable, unshakeable constant in his life. After he hung up, he called Susanne and told her he was back and they agreed that she would come over to his flat after work.

Anna Wolff knocked on his door and entered. Her face looked even paler under the mop of black hair and against the dark eyeliner. The too-red lipstick seemed to flame angrily against the tired pallor of her skin. Fabel beckoned for her to take a seat.

‘You don’t look like you’ve been getting much sleep,’ he said.

‘Nor do you,
Chef
. How’s your mother?’

Fabel smiled. ‘Improving, thanks. My brother’s staying with her for a couple of days. I understand you’ve been having an uphill struggle with the girl’s identity.’

Anna nodded. ‘I gather from the autopsy report that she suffered neglect and probably abuse when she was younger. She may be a long-term runaway from somewhere else in Germany, or even abroad. But I’m still on it.’ She paused for a moment, as if unsure of how Fabel would take what she was about to say next. ‘I hope you don’t mind,
Chef
, but I’ve been looking at the Paula Ehlers case pretty closely as well. It’s just that I have this strong instinct that we’re looking for the same guy for both these girls.’

‘Based on the false identity he left in the dead girl’s hand?’

‘That and the fact that, as you pointed out, the two girls were so alike in appearance that it would suggest he saw Paula Ehlers in life, rather than just a press photograph. I mean, when we had to get DNA tests to rule out for certain that the dead girl wasn’t Paula Ehlers.’

‘I take your point. So what have you been looking at?’ asked Fabel.

‘I’ve been going over the case notes with Robert Klatt.’

Fabel gave a small curse. ‘Damn, I forgot all about Kommissar Klatt. How’s he settling in?’

Anna shrugged. ‘Fine. He’s a good guy, I suppose. And he seems to be excited about working in the Mordkommission.’ She flipped open the file and continued. ‘Anyway, I went over this with him. We
went back over the Fendrich thing. You remember? Heinrich Fendrich, Paula’s German teacher?’

Fabel gave a brief nod. He remembered Anna briefing him on Fendrich in the service-station café on their way to the Ehlerses.

‘Well, as you know, Klatt had his suspicions. He admits that his grounds for suspecting Fendrich were slight … more of a combination of a gut feeling, prejudice and a total absence of other leads.’

Fabel frowned. ‘Prejudice?’

‘Fendrich is a bit of a loner. He’s in his mid-thirties … well, late thirties now, I suppose, still single and living with his elderly mother. Although, apparently, he did have a kind of on-off girlfriend at the time. But I believe that broke up about the time of Paula’s disappearance.’

‘So Kommissar Klatt was desperate for suspects and he found a Norman Bates-type figure,’ said Fabel. Anna looked puzzled. ‘The character in the American film,
Psycho
.’

‘Oh, yes, of course. Well, yes, I suppose he did to a certain extent. But who could blame him? There was a girl missing, presumably dead by now, and there was this teacher with whom she seemed to have had a rapport and who, let’s face it, didn’t seem to have formed normal relationships. Added to that were claims by Paula’s schoolfriends that Fendrich devoted a disproportionate amount of time to Paula in the classroom. To be honest, we would have pushed Fendrich a little ourselves.’

‘I suppose so, but Paula’s abductor and probable killer is just as likely to be a family man with a typical background. Anyway, how does Klatt feel about Fendrich now?’

‘Well …’ Anna stretched the word to emphasise
her uncertainty. ‘I get the feeling he now thinks he was barking up the wrong tree. After all, Fendrich does seem to have a solid alibi for when Paula Ehlers disappeared.’

‘But?’

‘But Klatt still maintains he has a “feeling” about Fendrich. That there was maybe something less than appropriate in his relationship with Paula. He suggested that Fendrich is maybe worth another look – although he recommends that he doesn’t go along. Apparently Fendrich all but threatened Klatt with a restraining order and a harassment suit.’

‘So where do we find him? Is he still at the school?’

‘No,’ said Anna. ‘He has moved to another school. This time in Hamburg.’ Anna consulted the file. ‘In Rahlstedt. But apparently he still lives in the same house as he did three years ago. That’s in Rahlstedt, too.’

‘Okay,’ said Fabel, checking his watch and rising from his seat. ‘Herr Fendrich should be long home from school. I’d like to see if he has an alibi for when the girl on the beach was killed. Let’s pay him a visit.’

Fendrich’s house in Rahlstedt was a largish robust pre-war villa, set back from the street in a row of five similar houses. They had, at one time, aspired to a fraction of the prestige of the grander homes of Rotherbaum and Eppendorf, but now, having survived British wartime bombers and nineteen-fifties planners, they looked simply discordant, set amidst the post-war social housing of the area: Rahlstedt had been hastily planned and developed to accommodate the population of central Hamburg who had been bombed into homelessness.

Fabel parked across the street. As he and Anna approached the row of villas, Fabel realised that where the others had been converted into two or more apartments each, the Fendrich home had remained a single dwelling. There was a melancholy drabness to the building and the small garden at the front was unkempt and had attracted the unwanted detritus of passers-by.

Fabel rested his hand on Anna’s arm as she started up the half-dozen stone steps to the front door. He indicated where the wall of the house met the overgrown garden: there were two small, shallow windows of grimy glass. Fabel could see the vague silhouette of three bars behind each window.

‘A basement …’ said Anna. ‘Somewhere you could keep someone “underground” …’

They climbed the steps and Fabel pressed an old china bell push. There was the sound of ringing somewhere deep in the house. ‘You take the lead, Anna. I’ll ask if there’s anything additional I feel I need to know.’

The door opened. To Fabel, Fendrich looked more in his late forties than late thirties. He was tall and thin, with a grey complexion. His dull blond hair was thin and lank and the scalp of his high-domed head gleamed through it under the pendant light of the high entrance hallway. He looked from Anna to Fabel and back again with an expression of indifferent curiosity. Anna held out her oval Kriminalpolizei shield.

‘Hamburg KriPo, Herr Fendrich. Could we have a word?’

Fendrich’s expression hardened. ‘What’s this about?’

‘We’re from the Mordkommission, Herr Fendrich. A body of a young girl was found on the beach at Blankenese the day before yesterday –’

‘Paula?’ Fendrich cut Anna off. ‘Was it Paula?’ His expression changed again: this time it was more difficult to read, but Fabel recognised something akin to dread mixed in with it.

‘If we could maybe talk inside, Herr Fendrich …’ suggested Fabel in a quiet, reassuring tone. Fendrich looked confused for a moment, then resignedly stood to one side to let them in. After he closed the door, he indicated the first room off the hall, to the left.

‘Come into my study.’

The room was large and untidy and lay stark under the bleak illumination of a too-bright strip light that hung incongruously from an ornate ceiling rose. There were bookshelves on every wall except for the one with the window facing out on to the street. A large desk was positioned almost dead centre in the room; its top was scattered with more books and papers and a cascade of cables and wires tumbled from the computer and printer that sat upon it. There were piles of magazines and papers bound with string stacked, like sandbags, under the window. It looked like total chaos, but, taking in the whole room, Fabel sensed an organised disorder; as if Fendrich would probably be able to locate anything he wanted instantly and with greater ease than if everything was carefully indexed and filed. There was something about the room that suggested concentration; as if much of Fendrich’s living – a bleakly functional living – was done in this room. It filled Fabel with the urge to search through the rest of this large house, to see what lay beyond this small focus.

‘Sit down,’ said Fendrich, liberating two chairs of their burden of books and papers. Before they were seated he asked again, ‘This girl you found – was she Paula?’

‘No, Herr Fendrich, she wasn’t,’ said Anna. The tension in Fendrich’s expression eased, but Fabel wouldn’t have described it as relief. Anna continued, ‘But we have reason to believe that this girl’s death and Paula’s disappearance are linked.’