Tansu stood up and composed herself. ‘I asked you, where is Andrea?’
‘That is Andrea…’ Tansu turned to see Fabel and Scholz in the hall. She looked down at the Clown. The male physique. The hard-set jaw.
‘I don’t believe it…’
‘It’s true,’ said Scholz. ‘That’s why we didn’t find any semen at the murder scenes.’
‘She killed all those women?’
‘All of them. But the first woman she killed was herself. Vera Reinartz.’
They stood back as the uniformed officers hauled Andrea to her feet. She stared at them with empty eyes, the only expression her painted smile. The officers led her out of the flat.
‘That was the connection between the rape and the murders. Like I said to Benni: cause and effect. Ludeke raped Andrea and subjected her to his perversion, biting her repeatedly. She hated herself, or rather herself as Vera, and she mimicked Ludeke’s attack on her. Except she took it further. She took flesh from each victim and ate it. A little extra twist she picked up after her encounter with Ansgar Hoeffer.’
‘It was Jan who figured it out,’ said Scholz. ‘We came rushing to your rescue, but from what I hear you didn’t need rescuing.’
‘It was a close call,’ said Tansu, rubbing her throat.
‘You need to see a doctor?’ asked Fabel.
‘No – I need to see a barman. But I suppose we’ll have to get some paperwork sorted out first.’
6.
The bar was small, bustling and noisy. It was exactly what Fabel needed. It was three in the morning and the party was still in full swing. Scholz, Fabel and Tansu had to lean forward and shout to be heard above the noise.
Andrea had been processed and was in the cells. Scholz had arranged for a psychiatric assessment to be done as soon as possible. Which wasn’t going to be the following day. Even psychiatrists took time off to go insane during Karneval, apparently. Fabel and Scholz explained to Tansu about the wound to Ansgar’s buttock and his sexual compulsion to be eaten; how A la Carte, with its reputation for catering for clients’ more unusual needs had recruited Andrea and how Ansgar had become a client for one disfiguring night.
Now Andrea sat in her cell silent, answering no questions, responding to nothing. Fabel thought it was possible that maybe she didn’t even know what she had done. They had found a diary in her apartment: the usual egomaniacal ravings, but they suggested that the Clown saw himself as male, and as totally distinct from Andrea’s personality. Just as Andrea had forced her third-person, past-tense existence as Vera Reinartz from her identity.
‘What, multiple personality?’ asked Tansu. ‘I thought that was all fake.’
‘Dissociative Identity Disorder is the proper name for it,’ said Fabel. ‘And the Americans are great believers in it. But you’re right, it’s not accepted to the same extent by psychiatrists outside the US. My guess is, though, that Andrea is going to try to use it as a defence to avoid prison. Maybe the dumb act in the cells is exactly that, an act.’
They sat at a corner of the bar and Fabel found his Stange glass filled regularly with Kolsch beer without being asked. He grinned at the raucous songs in a dialect he didn’t understand and he realised, joyfully, that he was very probably drunk. Tansu was next to him at the bar and every time she leaned into him to make herself heard he could feel the warmth of her body.
‘Benni said you had Andrea sussed,’ said Tansu. ‘How?’
‘A combination of things. Like what you said about the Kolsch Virgin being a man,’ said Fabel. ‘Karneval is all about becoming someone else, about letting out what you’ve locked up inside. There was something about Andrea that bothered me from the start. I was in the cathedral and a tourist asked me why there was a rhinoceros in one of the stained-glass windows. Amongst all those metaphors of resurrection, a symbol of strength and righteous wrath. That’s what Andrea built herself to be. Andrea murdered those women because they reminded her of herself, as Vera. She killed Vera as an identity legally, then proceeded to kill her over and over again in the flesh. Oh, and the last clue was the very large slice of backside that Ansgar Hoeffer was missing. You didn’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to work it out from there.’
They stopped discussing the case and Fabel felt himself slide further into a pleasant state of drunkenness. It was difficult to hear over the noise in the pub and their conversation became limited. Another group from the Police Presidium joined them and the consensus was that they should all move on somewhere else. Fabel spotted Scholz disappearing through the pub door with a pretty young woman dressed as a nun.
‘Simone Schilling,’ explained Tansu. ‘Our forensics chief…’
Fabel allowed himself to be carried out of the pub and into the street by the current of bodies. The streets were thronging with partygoers and Fabel suddenly realised he had become separated from the police group and was cast adrift in an ocean of revellers. The night air made him feel even more drunk and he felt some of his old anxiety about losing control.
‘I thought we’d lost you…’ He turned to see Tansu beside him. ‘I think we’d better find somewhere quieter. But first, there is a Women’s Karneval Night custom that I insist on – I demand a kiss…’
‘Well,’ said Fabel grinning, ‘if it’s the law…’ He leaned forward to give Tansu a chaste kiss on the cheek, but she held his face between her hands and pulled him towards her. He felt her tongue in his mouth.
CHAPTER TWELVE
24-28 February
1.
The light was on and Maria woke up cold and sore. The chills and aches in her body combined like a string section playing a continuous glissando, but then the still not fully-healed wound on her head from The Nose’s pistol-whipping took centre stage. For a moment she thought that they had switched the refrigeration back on, then she realised it was just her body’s reaction to the abuse it had suffered. For Maria the cold no longer meant death; it meant she could still feel. It meant life.
But they’ve broken my mind, she thought to herself calmly. She knew there was something different about the way she thought; the way she felt. She lay and thought of Maria Klee as if she were someone she knew rather than someone she was. Maybe Maria Klee was dead, but whoever or whatever was left was determined to survive. She knew, lying bruised and broken in an empty cold store, that her only strategy for survival was to separate herself from her own flesh: to focus her mind and use whatever internal resources she had left on thinking her way out of this situation.
Maria dragged herself to her feet, wrapping the blanket around her body and moving across to the cold store heavy door. She pressed the side of her head against the cold steel, but it was too thick to conduct any sounds from the room beyond. She made a circuit of the meat locker, seeking out anything that might be useful as a weapon. There was nothing. And even if she had found something, she doubted that an improvised weapon would have given her any kind of chance against The Nose and his handgun. She returned to the mattress and sat contemplating her situation. They were feeding her. That meant that, for some reason, Vitrenko was keeping her alive, but perhaps only for a matter of days. She gingerly touched the raised ridge on her head to remind herself that there seemed to be little other consideration for her welfare. She was in a hostage situation. She could not have been kept in more appropriate surroundings: she was just a lump of meat being preserved until she could be put to some profitable use.
The next meal was brought in by Olga Sarapenko. The one after that by The Nose. Perhaps they spelled each other, taking shifts. If she was going to make an attempt to escape, it would be that bitch Sarapenko she would go for. Maria knew that she could never succeed against the Nose. And even fully fit she didn’t know if she would have been a match for Olga Sarapenko. But one thing that her years in the Murder Commission had taught her was that anyone could kill anyone else. It wasn’t about strength. It was about murderous intent. About knowing no boundaries.