The dark-haired man took a couple of steps back and examined his victim, bound tightly to his chair. He adjusted the black plastic sheeting, smoothing it flat. Then he scanned the walls of the room, seeming to assess them. He moved across to one wall and ripped down a poster of an American rock group, revealing the stain that Leonard, in an uncharacteristically house-proud moment, had sought to conceal. Again the killer stepped back and surveyed the wall.
‘This will do nicely.’ He turned back to Leonard and smiled broadly, revealing his perfect white teeth. ‘Do you know, Leonard, that scalping was part of the European cultural tradition since its very beginnings?’
Leonard screamed, but his cries were reduced to frantic high-pitched mumbling behind the gag of insulation tape.
‘All of those who have contributed their blood to our lineage did it: the Celts, the Franks, the Saxons, the Goths and, of course, the ancient Scythians on the lonely, empty Steppes that were the cradle of Europe. To take the scalps of those who had succumbed to us in battle, or simply to take the scalp of a personal enemy whom we had killed in single combat to settle a disagreement or grudge, is at the very heart of our cultural identity. We were scalp-takers and we did so with pride. Have you heard of an ancient Greek historian called Herodotus?’
There was no answer from Leonard other than the desperate, body-racking sobs of a man facing a terrible death protesting against his bonds and gag. The killer took no notice and continued to talk in his relaxed, chatty manner, as if he were at a dinner party. It was his calm, his nonchalance, that Leonard feared most: it would have been easier to understand, to deal with, if the man who was about to take his life had been enraged, or afraid, or in any form of heightened emotion.
‘Herodotus is considered the father of history. He travelled the then-known civilised world and wrote about the peoples he encountered. But Herodotus also wandered into the unknown lands, the wild lands, beyond the cultured world. He visited the Ukraine, which was the heart of the Scythian kingdom, and documented the lives of those he found there.’
The killer examined the wall again where he had torn down the poster. He paused for a moment to remove the tacks and fragments of poster left there, brushing the stained surface with his latex-gloved hand. ‘According to Herodotus, Scythian warriors would scrape away all the flesh from the inside of the scalps they had taken and would then continuously rub them between their hands until they became soft and supple. Once they had done this, they would use the scalps at feasts as napkins, hanging them on the bridles of their horses between uses. The more scalp-napkins a warrior had, the greater his status among the others. According to Herodotus, many of the most successful warriors would even sew their collected scalps together to make cloaks.’
Something like awe fleeted across the killer’s otherwise empty face. ‘And we are not talking about some remote land and distant people. This was our culture. This was where we all have roots.’ He paused and seemed to be deep in thought for a moment. ‘Think of this… think of a hall filled with ninety, maybe a hundred people. It is not a lot. And each person in this room is as closely related as it is possible to be: father and son, mother and daughter. Imagine that, Leonard, but imagine that they are all the same age, ninety generations brought together at the same time of life. Across this room you can see the family similarities. Maybe six, seven, eight generations back you see a face just like yours. That is all that separates you and me from those Scythian warriors, Leonard. Ninety closely related individuals. And the truth is, the truth that I have come to learn, is that it is not just our features, our gestures, our aptitude for certain skills or the propensity for particular talents that are repeated across the generations. We repeat ourselves, Leonard. We are eternal. We come back, time and again. Sometimes our lifetimes even overlap. As mine have. I have been my own father, Leonard. I have seen the same time from two perspectives. And I can remember them both…’
The dark-haired man took the dark blue velvet roll-pouch and unrolled it on the black plastic sheeting. He stood back for a moment, examining his preparations. Leonard looked down at the laid-flat roll-pouch. On it lay a large knife, its handle and blade forged from a continuous piece of glittering stainless steel. Leonard’s sobbing grew in intensity. He started to struggle wildly but impotently against his bonds. The killer laid his hand gently on Leonard’s shoulder, as if to comfort him.
‘Settle yourself, Leonard. You chose this. Remember you wondered about trying to wrestle the gun from me? Oh yes, Leonard, I could read you like a book. But you decided not to. You chose to hang on to every last second of life, no matter how terrible. Do you want a laugh, Leonard?’ He picked up the gun and held it out towards his captive. ‘It’s not even real. It’s a replica. You consigned yourself to me, to this death, based on the idea of a gun. On a lump of functionless metal.’
Behind his gag Leonard wailed. His face was streaked wet with tears.
‘Now, Leonard,’ said the killer without malice. ‘I know that you are not very happy with this life. So now I am going to send you on to your next. But first, do you see the space I cleared on the wall over there? That’s where I’m going to pin up your scalp.’ He paused, ignoring the desperate muffled screaming of his victim, as if he was thinking something through. Then a smile broke across his face: a cold, callous smile of a terrible intensity that did not belong on the hitherto expressionless mask. ‘No… not there… now that I think about it, I have a much, much better place for it…’
10.00 p.m.: Poseldorf, Hamburg
Fabel had been awake for twenty-four hours.
All hell had broken loose with the media and with anyone who had a say in anything in Hamburg. Fabel found himself, once again, having to plan out the course of the investigation while navigating around the twin whirlpools of media attention and political pressure. It was another feature of his work that wore him down: there must have been a time when policing had been much easier, when the only pressure on an investigator had been to detect and apprehend the perpetrator.
Having spent almost all day at the scene, Fabel had come back to the Presidium for a major strategy meeting. All of a sudden, resources ceased to be an issue and Fabel found himself with detectives from across Hamburg allocated to him. He set up a major incident room in the main conference hall, having the incident boards and files moved there from the Murder Commission. A weary Fabel had found himself addressing a fifty-strong audience of detectives, uniform branch commanders and top brass. He had also noticed that Markus Ullrich and a couple of his BKA buddies had come along for the show: Fabel could not now deny that there was a political dimension, and possibly some kind of terrorist element, to the case.
Susanne had driven them home in Fabel’s car. She said that he was too tired to drive and that he needed some sleep. Fabel said that what he needed was a drink. Anna, Henk and Werner had all said they would come along too. It was clear that they needed to take time out and catch their breaths after the events of the last twenty-four hours. Maria, too, agreed to meet at Fabel’s usual pub in Poseldorf, but she was going to wait for Frank Grueber and they would both take a taxi.
It was nearly ten p.m. by the time they arrived. Bruno, the head barman, greeted Fabel enthusiastically. Fabel shook his hand and smiled a weary ‘it’s been a tough day’ smile. Fabel, Susanne and the team sat at the bar and ordered their drinks. A CD was playing the football song ‘ Hamburg, meine Perle ’ and a group of young people at the far end of the bar were singing along to Hamburg’s unofficial anthem with immense gusto. Their passion seemed to intensify as they delivered the verse that informed Berliners that ‘we shit on you and your song’. It was loud, it was raucous, it was cheerful. Fabel soaked it up. It was the vulgar, ebullient sound of life, of vigour; it was a million miles away from the death realm where he and his officers had spent the last thirty-odd hours. It was what he needed to hear.