‘How would you know to come?’
‘Two newspapers, one in the GDR, one in West Germany. We would run an announcement. It would be a quote from Njal’s Saga: “The heavens are stained with the blood of men, as the Valkyries sing their song.” If we saw the announcement we would know to meet up in Halberstadt at eight a.m. on the first Monday of the month following the announcement.’
Fabel leaned forward. ‘So, if we ran this announcement in the appropriate newspapers, we could bring the other two Valkyries to Halberstadt?’
Margarethe shook her head. ‘It was compromised. They caught us talking about it. We were stupid: we were being trained by the Stasi and didn’t think that they would have bugged us.’
‘So you don’t think the others would respond to the announcement?’ asked Fabel.
‘No. And we didn’t arrange another code. After that we were separated. We didn’t see each other again.’
‘And you’ve had no contact since then? With any of the other Valkyries?’
‘None.’
‘You said Drescher had a favourite. This is the woman you think he’s been operating with. Which one, Margarethe? Who was his favourite — Liane Kayser or Anke Wollner?’
‘Anke Wollner. Liane… well, Liane was different. She didn’t respond as well to discipline. She wanted things her own way. It was Anke who was Drescher’s little protegee.’
Anna Wolff came back into the room and retook her place. She responded to Fabel’s inquiring look with a sharp shake of her head.
‘I’ll ask you again…’ Fabel turned back to Margarethe. ‘If it wasn’t one of the other Valkyries, who set you up with everything you needed to kill Drescher?’
The blank mask fell again.
‘Was it someone else from the Stasi? Maybe someone who worked with Drescher and saw him as a threat.’
Nothing.
‘Does the name Thomas Maas mean anything to you? Ulrich Adebach?’ Fabel ran through the other names he had obtained from the BStU Federal Commissioner’s office. It was clear that they had come to a dead end. It was almost as if Margarethe had realised that she had opened up too much and was now shutting down. No, thought Fabel, she was too much in control for that. Any information she had given had been released in a controlled manner.
Fabel terminated the interview and Margarethe was taken back to her cell under heavy guard. Fabel ordered that she be placed in a video-surveillance cell.
‘So nothing on these names?’ Fabel asked Anna as soon as they were in the corridor.
‘Nothing. But that’s hardly surprising, Chef. If these girls were chosen by the Stasi, especially if they were orphans or from broken homes, then I would guess that the first thing the Stasi would do would be to wipe all trace of their real identities from the public record. An easy thing to do if you’re in charge of that selfsame public record.’
‘I want you to get back on to the BStU Federal Commissioner’s office in Berlin.’ Fabel leaned against the wall. ‘Give them these names and see what comes up. The Stasi thought they were invulnerable — maybe they thought any mention of the girls’ real identities within the context of a Stasi HQ file was relatively safe.’
‘It’s a very, very long shot, Chef,’ said Anna.
‘At the moment it’s the best we’ve got.’
They were joined by Karin Vestergaard and Werner Meyer, who had been watching the interview from the next room.
‘Well?’ Fabel asked Vestergaard.
‘I don’t know,’ she sighed. ‘It’s difficult to read expression and body language over a CCTV link.’
‘There was none to read, believe me. There’s a very big chunk of humanity missing from Margarethe Paulus. But you heard what she said about Jespersen’s death. She claims she had nothing to do with it and she has a point when she says she has nothing to gain by lying about it.’
‘That’s the thing,’ said Vestergaard. ‘I tend to believe her.’
‘So do I,’ said Fabel. ‘So where does that leave us?’
‘Well,’ said Anna, ‘we’ve got a professional assassination in Norway, Jorgen Halvorsen, and the death of Jens Jespersen in Hamburg. It’s pretty safe to assume that they are directly linked.’
‘Then we’ve got the murders in the Kiez — the Brit Westland and Armin Lensch,’ said Werner. ‘The so-called return of the Angel of St Pauli. They must be connected.’
‘And the murder of Georg Drescher,’ said Anna. ‘Whether Margarethe was involved in the Jespersen and Halvorsen killings or not, there is a connection. So effectively we have three sets of murders that have a common link, and that link is this Stasi conspiracy to place Valkyrie assassins in the West.’
‘There’s maybe one more,’ said Fabel. ‘Peter Claasens — the suicide that maybe isn’t a suicide in the Kontorhaus Quarter. Maybe the link lies there.’ He turned to Karin Vestergaard. ‘And I think maybe you and I should take another look at this environmental analyst Sparwald, who has had some kind of contact with Halvorsen.’
‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ said Vestergaard. ‘If they were both supposed to be travelling to China, and Halvorsen didn’t make it, then who’s to say that Sparwald did?’
Fabel straightened up from leaning on the wall. ‘Do you still have the address?’
Karin Vestergaard held out the note that Sparwald’s boss had given her.
‘Let’s go,’ said Fabel.
7
Fabel rang Sparwald’s cellphone number from his car.
‘Number unavailable,’ he said to Vestergaard as he snapped his phone shut.
‘That’s not surprising, if he’s in a remote part of China.’
‘Like you say, if that’s where he is,’ said Fabel. He looked at the note Luttig, Sparwald’s boss, had given them. ‘But I hope to God he is. If Sparwald really was due to make this trip with a Norwegian travelling companion, and that travelling companion was Halvorsen…’
Sparwald didn’t live far from his work. But if you were someone who appreciated the environment, Poppenbuttel was not a bad choice of place to live. Even in winter, with its branches bare and its tones muted, Nature still made her presence felt here. Sparwald lived in a small house near the banks of the Alster, set tight into a mass of trees. The house was constructed out of wood, but most of the south-facing side of the house was made up of windows, over which shutters had been pulled.
‘It reminds me of a lot of the houses we have in Denmark,’ said Vestergaard. She pointed to a large area of the garden that had been dug up. There were spiralled coils of pipe lying on the muddy exposed undersoil. ‘Look — he’s been installing a geothermal energy converter. It’s not finished. Now that’s a very odd project to leave half-done when you’re about to go off to China for a month or so.’ She nodded up towards the roof. ‘And these solar panels are new. It doesn’t look to me like they’re connected. Sparwald was obviously in the middle of a pretty major home-improvement project.’
Fabel rang the front doorbell and knocked on the door for good measure. As he expected there was no answer. He turned to Vestergaard.
‘I’m going to have a look around the back. See if you can find a window where the blinds haven’t been drawn.’
Fabel made his way around the side of the building. Again there were signs of work in progress: building materials propped against the side of the house; tools left out. Fabel tried the back door. It was locked.
‘Jan!’ He heard Vestergaard call from the other side of the house. He ran around, slipping on the mud churned up by Sparwald’s excavation for the heat pump.
‘Take a look at this,’ said Vestergaard. ‘There’s a space between the blind and the edge of the window.’
He peered through but could see nothing. He took a small torch from his pocket and shone the beam through.
‘You see it?’ said Vestergaard.
‘I see it,’ said Fabel. For a moment he tried to convince himself it was just a shoe. But he knew that what he saw, just visible from behind the sofa, was a foot.
He called the Presidium from his cellphone and told them to send a blue-and-silver from Police Commissariat 35 at Poppenbuttel.