‘Vasyl Vitrenko is obsessive about security.’ Olga Sarapenko took over. ‘He is driven mad by the idea that he can’t get at the dossier. He suspects that the informer is on Molokov’s side of the operation, maybe even Molokov himself. But he can’t prove it. We want you to try to get us a copy of the Vitrenko Dossier. The full one. If we can identify the informer, we can pressure him into setting Vitrenko up. It gives us someone on the inside whose survival would depend on us taking Vitrenko out of the picture.’
‘But I don’t have access to the Vitrenko Dossier. In fact I’m probably the last person they’d allow to see it.’
‘But you have access codes and passwords for the BKA computer system,’ said Buslenko. ‘That would be a starting point. It’s not practical to think that we can carry out a complex mission like this in just a few days. It could be that the best thing for you to do is to go back to Hamburg in a few weeks and ideally resume your duties with the Murder Commission. The information you can obtain for us is of much more value to us than your presence here,’ Buslenko explained.
‘I’m here to see this through. To see Vitrenko get what he deserves,’ Maria said defiantly. She was willing to do almost anything to bring down Vitrenko, but Buslenko was asking her to access government files on behalf of a foreign military unit operating illegally in the Federal Republic. It would be a betrayal of her office. It would probably be espionage.
‘I understand your hunger for revenge,’ Buslenko explained. ‘But this is not a Hollywood western. Your value to us is to pass on to us everything that the German authorities know about Vitrenko’s operation. I’m sure you’ll find a way,’ Buslenko said, not unkindly. ‘In the meantime, you may stay here with us and help us set up our surveillance of Molokov.’
Maria took her shifts watching the monitors, logging the activities: who visited the Molokov villa, when they arrived, when they left, the licence numbers of the cars that came and went. Always waiting for the arrival of anyone who could have been Vitrenko. Although she refused to supply the Ukrainians with the access codes they needed, she did share what intelligence she had been able to gather. She felt that this, in some way, could be regarded as the legitimate exchange of information between law-enforcement agencies.
Their situation, Buslenko explained, was like two hunters in the forest at the same time. It was up to Buslenko, Sarapenko and Maria to make sure they got to the game before the BKA Federal Crime Bureau, and without detection. All he wanted the access codes for was to pinpoint where the other hunter lay hidden in the forest. Maria knew it was only a matter of time before Buslenko became more insistent.
It was on the third day of sitting at the monitors that Maria noticed a huge black Lexus pull up at the villa’s gates. It was admitted immediately. Buslenko’s surveillance camera was set up so far from the house that it was difficult to see clearly the men who got out of the vehicle. But the final figure sent a chill through Maria.
‘Olga!’
Sarapenko ran over. ‘What is it?’
‘Him…’ Maria felt her throat tighten, as if the name would choke her if she said it out loud. ‘It’s him.’
‘How can you tell? It’s just a shape from this distance.’
‘That’s him, I know it. The last time I saw him he was just a shape in the distance, like now, only then he was running across a field. Where’s Buslenko?’
‘He’s collecting some stuff. Our contact here… it’s best if you don’t know.’
‘Get hold of him on his cellphone. Tell him we’ve found our target and he is in Molokov’s place right now.’ Maria watched the figure on the monitor. At last. At last she had him in her sights. It gave her an enormous sense of power to know that she was watching him and he was unaware of her observation. The dark, indistinct figure whose identity Maria knew with absolute certainty turned to speak to one of his heavies, then disappeared into the villa.
Maria watched with a cold, hard expression of violent hatred as Vasyl Vitrenko disappeared from view.
‘Now,’ she said in a voice not much louder than a whisper. ‘Now I’ve got you.’
3.
The television flickered mutely in the corner of the hotel room. A row of Funkenmariechen dancing girls in red-and-white microskirted versions of eighteenth-century Prussian military uniforms, complete with tri-cornered hats, performed a clumpily synchronised chorus-line high kick to unheard music. In the background the Elferrat, the Karneval Council of Eleven, presided with forced jollity over the proceedings. Karneval was beginning to build up to its Rose Monday climax. Fabel lay on his hotel bed, gazed blankly at the screen and reflected on the fact that the Karneval Cannibal too was probably building up for showtime on Women’s Karneval Night. Fabel had just finished talking to Susanne on the phone; it hadn’t gone well. After he had been unable to give her a clear idea about when he’d be back in Hamburg, they had fallen into a silence. Susanne had ended it by saying she would talk to him whenever he got back and had then hung up.
He stared at the silent TV, not taking in the grinning dancing girls who sidestepped their way in unison off the stage and were replaced by a man dressed in a barrel who delivered a comic monologue.
Fabel switched on his bedside lamp and picked up the file on Vera Reinartz, the girl who had been beaten and raped on Women’s Karneval Night in 1999. There was a photograph of Vera, taken with a couple of fellow medical students. She was a smallish, mousy-haired girl but pretty. She stood uncertainly at the edge of the group, clearly uncomfortable at having her photograph taken. The second photograph had been taken on a sunny day in a park or garden. Her light-coloured summer dress revealed her figure: slim but slightly pear-shaped with a fleshiness around the hips. Just like the Karneval Cannibal’s victims. Again, she had the look of someone who didn’t like to be the focus of attention.
Fabel went through Vera’s statement, doctors’ reports and the stark hospital photographs, the vividness of her bruises and the rawness of the abrasions and cuts on her face and neck emphasised by the severe lighting. Fabel couldn’t recognise the swollen mass of bruised flesh as the girl in the earlier photographs. There were images of the wounds on her body. Including bite marks. Bite marks were by no mean unusual in rape cases, but Fabel felt that Scholz had been far too dismissive of a potential link with the murders. Tansu Bakrac clearly struggled to assert herself in the shadow of Scholz’s seemingly relaxed but highly personal leadership.
Again Fabel reflected on the unknown city outside his hotel window, with its strange customs, its Karneval, its dancing girls and costumed clowns. Its killer stalking women on the one night of the year when they were supposed to be free of male tyranny. And Maria, putting herself in mortal danger by stumbling around in the dark. And that made him think about his appointment. The one he had made for the next day. The one Scholz mustn’t know about.
Tansu had added a lot of background information on Vera Reinartz. She had been bright; brighter than her peers and destined for a significant career in medicine. She had the kind of intellect that tended to be steered into specialism or research. She had had boyfriends but the medical examination had confirmed her own statement that she had been a virgin. Where are you now, Vera? Fabel thought to himself as he read. How could you just disappear?
Fabel breakfasted well. He had muesli with fruit and yoghurt, a couple of bread rolls with Leberwurst and a soft-boiled egg with fruit juice and coffee. He left the hotel early but did not head for the Police Presidium. It was the first opportunity Fabel had had since he had arrived in Cologne: Scholz had to go to a Karneval police committee meeting that would go on all morning. To start with, Fabel had assumed it was a strategy meeting to discuss the massive but delicate task of policing Cologne’s Karneval.