JF05 - The Valkyrie Song (43 page)

‘So you think he was innocent?’

‘Like hell. Goran Vuja
i
ć
was clever and more than a little lucky. I wasn’t personally involved in his case, but I was able to access the files through OSCE.’ Lange referred to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. ‘Vuja
i
ć
had already assembled a gang around him. The writing was on the wall as soon as NATO got involved in the conflict and I think that Vuja
i
ć
started to look at the bigger picture. But Vuja
i
ć
was there. In the rape camps. In the forests by the mass graves. He was up to his elbows in it all, except that he had half a dozen affidavits swearing he was lying wounded in a hospital bed in Banja Luka.’

‘This unit or gang of his … Petra Meissner of the Sabine Charity told me they called themselves the Dogheads or something.’

‘Yep.
Psoglav
. It’s Serbian for “doghead”, but it’s also a mythical creature that Serbs – Bosnian Serbs in particular – used to believe in. A pagan demon or werewolf-type thing. The
Psoglav
unit was little more than an organised-crime gang and that’s exactly what it became after the conflict. There was talk – little more than a rumour, mind – that Vuja
i
ć
and his
Psoglav
chums got heavily involved in people trafficking after the Bosnian War. All kinds of bad stuff: organ farming, selling women into the sex trade, slave-labour sweatshops, that kind of thing. But you’d have to talk to the Europol organised-crime division about that. As far as I’m aware, Vuja
i
ć
was not directly active in Northern Europe. Sorry, that’s not that helpful, is it?’

‘I appreciate it anyway,’ said Fabel.

‘One thing I would say,’ said Lange, ‘is that Vuja
i
ć
was
one of the most evil sons of bitches to walk the earth. The stories about what he did to Bosniaks, Croats and ethnic Albanians … particularly what he did to women. I tell you, I saw more than my fair share of beasts out there, and Vuja
i
ć
was right up there with the worst of them. Unfortunately it’s not always about who deserves justice most, but about who you can get the evidence on. Vuja
i
ć
was such a cunning little bastard that we never had anything more than rumour on him. It’s not a very policeman-like thing to say, but when he got topped my first reaction was that he got what he deserved. The only pity is that he didn’t suffer the same way the people who fell into his hands did.’

Fabel nodded, watching Lange. There are some things, he thought, even in this job, that it’s better not to see. To know. At that moment he knew he was talking to someone whose dreams were even darker, even more terrifying, than his own.

‘Thanks, Michael,’ said Fabel. ‘If anything else comes to mind, please let me know.’

Fabel and Karin Vestergaard had just stepped through the revolving doors and into the bright double-storey reception atrium of the Police Presidium in Alsterdorf when they were stopped in their tracks by a determined-looking Anna Wolff.

‘Don’t take your coats off,’ she said, with a grin. ‘We’ll take your car,
Chef
. I’ll give you directions. There’s someone I want you to meet …’

The café Anna took them to was in the Sachsentor pedestrian zone in Hamburg-Bergedorf. When they arrived, a young woman with a pretty but rather severe face and long dark hair was waiting for them. Sandra Kraus sat with a huge canvas bag at her side, the strap still over her shoulder, and tapped the café table with the tips of her fingers as Fabel, Vestergaard and Anna approached, almost as if she was announcing their arrival with a drum roll. She didn’t stand
up but smiled at them. Fabel noticed that it was like when Karin Vestergaard smiled: nothing of it seemed to reach the eyes.

‘I’ve known Sandra since we were kids,’ said Anna after she had done the introductions. ‘She was the smartest student in the whole school. And she is an absolutely brilliant cryptologist.’

‘Really?’ said Fabel with genuine interest but looking questioningly at Anna. He was slightly distracted as Kraus drummed her fingers again on the tabletop. He turned to her and found the intensity of her gaze disturbing, as if she was looking at him as an object rather than a person.

‘Yes – really,’ said Anna, with more than a hint of defiance. ‘And trust me, bringing you here to meet Sandra isn’t a waste of time. I gave her a copy of
Muliebritas
. The same issue we found in Drescher’s flat.’

‘Does she know … ?’

Anna shook her head. ‘You told us to keep a lid on the Drescher thing and that’s exactly what I’ve done. Sandra only knows that we may have a coded message in this magazine. To be honest, that’s all she’s interested in.’

‘And did she find anything?’ asked Vestergaard.

‘It took her five minutes to find the message and crack the code. No more.’

‘Are you trying to tell me that an amateur cryptologist can break a code created by one of the world’s most successful secret police and espionage agencies?’ Fabel smiled patronisingly.

Kraus drummed her fingers on the table again, took a sip of her coffee and then spoke briskly. ‘I have advantages that they didn’t have. I have an inbuilt ability to recognise patterns in things. What you see as complexity, I see as structure and ultimately simplicity.’