Fabel paused for a moment, leaning back in his chair, as if creating a punctuation mark in the interview.
‘I have to say, I am most impressed with your organisational abilities. Planning, arranging the apartment below Drescher’s. Very impressive. But there’s no way — absolutely no way — you could have organised that yourself in the time available since your escape from Mecklenburg. Who is helping you, Margarethe?’
Another hollow stare and silence.
‘Okay,’ sighed Fabel. ‘Jens Jespersen. Politiinspektor Jens Jespersen of the Danish National Police. Someone picked him up in a restaurant in the Hanseviertel and persuaded him to meet with her later. Then, when they were in bed together, she killed him with an injection of suxamethonium chloride. Exactly the means you used to immobilise Georg Drescher. You’ve just described to us the way Major Drescher and his Stasi colleagues trained you in concealment, disguise and seduction techniques. Those sound to me exactly the kind of skills used to get Drescher into a vulnerable position and kill him. I suppose you are going to tell me that you don’t know anything about that?’
‘I don’t.’
‘I don’t believe you.’ Fabel fixed Margarethe with a penetrating stare that failed to penetrate.
‘I don’t care whether you believe me or not.’
‘I have a colleague of Jespersen’s in the other room, watching this interview. His superior officer. She is here because Politiinspektor Jespersen was here to try to find Georg Drescher. He was also following up rumours that a female contract killer, going by the name the Valkyrie, was operating out of Hamburg. That is a hell of a lot of coincidences, Margarethe.’
No comment, no shrug, no expression.
‘He was here to find the man you were hunting. In turn he was hunting a killer called the Valkyrie, and he was killed with the same drug you used on Drescher. You killed Jens Jespersen, didn’t you? He got in the way of your mission. A secondary target. Or what would you call it: an unplanned meeting?’
Margarethe ignored Fabel and turned to Susanne. ‘You are a criminal psychologist?’
‘I’ve already told you that.’
‘And you have spoken with Dr Kopke?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you think I am a psychopath.’
‘I believe you have dissocial personality disorder, yes. But I think you have something else going on as well. You’re not just psychopathic, you’re psychotic. Delusional.’
‘Really?’ said Margarethe. ‘Then you know that I will be kept in an institution, probably for the rest of my life.’
‘I don’t think you can ever be reintegrated into society, no. Or cured of your problems. Maybe the psychosis, with drug therapy. But no, you will be confined for the rest of your life.’
‘Although I disagree with your diagnosis, Frau Doctor Eckhardt, I agree with your vision of my future. I will never be at liberty. And if I am a psychopath, then I have absolutely no sense of accountability or responsibility. And punishment is meaningless to me. So could you explain to Herr Fabel that there is absolutely no point in me lying to him about which murders I did or did not commit?’
‘There are other reasons for lying,’ said Fabel. ‘To protect others. Maybe you weren’t working alone. Perhaps you decided to have a class reunion with your fellow ex-Valkyries. That would explain all the money and resources you have at your disposal. Maybe it was one of your sisters who killed Jespersen.’
‘Maybe it was,’ said Margarethe. ‘But I know nothing about it. And even if I did, I owe them no loyalty. They left me behind. Only my sister stayed by me. Promised to make it right.’
There, thought Fabel. There I saw something. For the first time in the interview he saw an opening. Hardly a crack, but something that could be worked at. Pried open.
‘Yes, Margarethe,’ he said sympathetically. ‘They did leave you behind. Betrayed you. They went on to become true Valkyries while you were thrown aside and rejected. After all that horror, all that pain, all those horrible, horrible things they put into your head. Is that the real reason you tortured and killed Drescher? To achieve some kind of fulfilment? Do you have any idea of the kind of money they will have made out of their meetings? Oh yes, when the Wall came down, Drescher and his girls embraced capitalism with real enthusiasm. They have been killing for private enterprise as a private enterprise.’
‘She…’ said Margarethe.
‘What?’
‘She. Not they. Georg Drescher had a favourite. He works with only one woman. The other Valkyrie has no part of it. She has another life.’
There was a short, electric pause. Fabel felt his pulse pick up a beat. He was aware that Anna and Susanne were staying very still and quiet.
‘Names, Margarethe,’ he said. ‘What are their names? The woman Drescher worked with, the professional killer. What is she called?’
‘We were friends,’ said Margarethe. Now there was emotion. Not much, just a hint of wistfulness. ‘As much as we could be friends. All three of us were loners — part of what they needed from us. But, in our own way, we were friends.’
‘They left you behind, Margarethe. You owe them nothing.’
‘You don’t have to tell me that. You don’t need to manage me. I will tell you what I want to tell you. Not what you think you can make me tell you.’ She paused. ‘It was a rule that we didn’t know each other’s names. They were very strict about that. We knew each other as One, Two and Three. I was Two.’
Fabel felt the hope slip from him. He sighed.
‘We got on well,’ said Margarethe. ‘We were supervised most of the time. Watched and monitored. Our sleeping quarters were kept separate. But we were trained together for most things.’
‘Did the other girls tell you anything that gave a clue to their true identities?’ asked Fabel.
‘They thought they could control us completely. Make us like machines. But they couldn’t.’ Margarethe smiled. Not a fake smile. Not something she had been trained to use at appropriate moments. Her smile. And it terrified Fabel. ‘Liane Kayser. Anke Wollner. It was our rebellion. Our way of keeping a little of ourselves outside their control. We told each other our real names.’
Fabel kept his gaze on Margarethe, but to his left he heard Anna Wolff scribbling the names into her notebook before rushing out of the interview room.
‘There was something else. We knew that we would be sent to different places. That we maybe wouldn’t see each other again. So we worked out a plan. A place we would meet.’
‘Where?’ Fabel tried to keep his tone dispassionate.
‘You have to remember, we were all living in the East. We didn’t know then that the Wall would come down. We didn’t know that one or more of us might be sent into the West, into deep cover. So we picked somewhere we all knew. Halberstadt.’
‘In Saxony-Anhalt?’
Margarethe nodded. ‘One of the girls, Liane, came from Halberstadt. She said that if we needed each other we would meet at the cathedral in Halberstadt.’