JF01 - Blood Eagle (10 page)

The fight against organised crime in Hamburg had become a secretive and violent game. Immigrant Mafias – specifically Turkish, Russian, Ukrainian and Lithuanian – were involved in a constant struggle with indigenous German gangs for control of the two most lucrative criminal markets: sex and drugs. There was even a special department LKA7.1 devoted to the fight against Hamburg’s Hell’s Angels, who had carved out a piece of the organised-crime market for themselves.

LKA7 had, as a consequence, developed a reputation for secrecy itself. It was a war, and the mentality of the division’s officers had almost become more that of soldiers than policemen.

Fabel approached the screen door and pressed the buzzer. At the command of a speaker above the door he identified himself and held his police ID up to the camera. A harsh electrical buzz and loud click confirmed his permission to enter. An older uniformed officer of massive build and with a shaven head awaited Fabel at the security desk.

‘Someone will be along shortly, sir.’ The desk man smiled. He was clearly out of practice. ‘They will take you along to see Hauptkommissar Buchholz.’

Fabel had just sat down at the small reception area when another huge man approached. His blond hair was cropped almost to the scalp and muscles bulged under the stretched fabric of his black polo-necked shirt. The broad shoulders were braced with a tan leather shoulder holster which held a massive and non-regulation Magnum automatic. As he approached, the muscleman smiled, exposing a row of perfect white teeth. The question ‘Does it bite?’ flashed through Fabel’s mind.

‘Good day, Herr Kriminalhauptkommissar. I’m Kriminalkommissar Lothar Kolski, I work with Hauptkommissar Buchholz.’

Fabel stood up and found himself still looking up at Kolski as they shook hands.

‘Please follow me, Herr Fabel, I’ll take you along.’

Kolski made small talk as they walked along the corridor. Fabel found the experience surreal: walking along beside a heavily armed hulk who chatted about the weather and how he was looking forward to taking some late leave. Gran Canaria, probably.

Buchholz’s office was one of a uniform row that lined the corridor. Whereas the other offices in the row had two work-station desks facing each other, obviously shared by teams of two officers, Buchholz had an office to himself. Kolski held the door open for Fabel to enter, and Fabel felt like an insignificant satellite orbiting a vast planet as he slipped past Kolski’s bulk into the room. Behind a large desk with a computer terminal was a man in his mid-fifties. He was balding, and what was left of his dark hair was trimmed to bristle that, in turn, extended into stubble which darkened the lower half of a tough face. His nose looked as if it had been broken more than once. Fabel had heard that Buchholz had been a boxer in his younger days and he noticed framed photographs on the wall behind him: the same face but more youthful; a slimmer but still-powerful build. Each photograph showed the youthful Buchholz at a different stage of his amateur boxing career and his nose at a different stage of destruction. One photograph showed a teenage Buchholz, in boxing kit, holding aloft a trophy. It was captioned ‘Hamburg-Harburg Junior Light-Heavyweight Champion, 1964’.

‘Come in and sit down, Herr Fabel.’ Buchholz half rose from his seat and indicated one of the two chairs opposite him. Fabel sat down and was surprised to see Kolski pull up the other chair. ‘Kriminalkommissar Kolski leads the Ulugbay team,’ Buchholz explained, ‘he can probably tell you more than I can.’

‘There may be nothing to this,’ Fabel began, ‘but as part of this murder inquiry I would ideally like to set up a liaison with the LKA7 – that would obviously be yourself, Herr Kolski. The victim was, we believe, a prostitute, and possibly working for Ulugbay – through a man called Klugmann … an ex-Polizei Hamburg officer.’

Buchholz and Kolski exchanged knowing looks.

‘Ah yes,’ said Kolski, ‘we know Herr Klugmann rather well. Is he a suspect in your inquiry?’

‘No. Not at the moment. Should he be?’

‘This is a serial killer, you reckon. A psycho?’ Buchholz asked.

‘Yes …’ Fabel flipped open the file and handed a scene-of-crime photograph to Buchholz. Buchholz studied the picture in silence before passing it to Kolski, who gave a long, low whistle as he took in the image. ‘That’s our guy’s handiwork,’ continued Fabel. ‘Is there any reason at all why we should be looking more closely at Klugmann?’

Buchholz shook his head and looked across to Kolski, who gave a dismissive shrug of his vast shoulders. ‘No, I know Klugmann of old. He’s a cop that went crooked … and Ulugbay does use his muscle sometimes, but I don’t see Klugmann doing anything like this. He’s a thug, not a psycho.’

‘I understand Klugmann worked for LKA7, in the Mobiles Einsatz Kommando attached to your drugs unit, before he was dismissed …’

‘That is correct … unfortunately …’ answered Buchholz. ‘We had a few ops go wrong. It was as if the targets had inside information, but we never for a moment considered that one of our own was the source. Then, of course, it came out that Klugmann was exchanging information for drugs. If we hadn’t sprung him when we did, who knows what damage he could have done …’

‘How did you catch him out?’

‘We searched his locker,’ answered Kolski. He folded his arms and the thick cables of muscle strained against the fabric of his shirt. ‘We found an unregistered automatic, a pile of cash and some cocaine …’

‘What, here in the Präsidium?’

‘Yes.’

‘Didn’t that strike you as a bit … well, odd? Convenient, even?’

‘Yes, it did, as a matter of fact,’ said Buchholz. ‘The other thing was that we had been tipped off by an anonymous call, otherwise we never would have caught him. But Klugmann confessed almost immediately that he was using drugs and claimed he had thought the Präsidium was the safest possible hiding place. After all, who would think of searching for illegal drugs here?’

‘But we’re talking about a tiny amount of drugs, aren’t we?’

‘Yes, a few grams. But enough.’ Buchholz leaned forward. ‘As you say, it was all a bit too easy, but we have a theory about that.’

‘Oh?’

‘Ulugbay has quite a pull on Klugmann. We were never able to prove that Klugmann had been supplying information about our operations to the Turks. If we had, then Klugmann would still be behind bars. As it happens all we could get him on was possession of a tiny amount of drugs and the illegal firearm. He even got to keep the cash: we couldn’t prove that it was dirty. It was all enough to get him kicked off the force but not enough to have him put away.’

Kolski picked up the thread. ‘But Ulugbay could, at any time, hand us the evidence we need – and Klugmann’s head on a plate.’

Fabel nodded. ‘So Klugmann had no choice but to work for Ulugbay …’

‘Exactly,’ said Buchholz.

‘Do you think that Ulugbay was behind the anonymous tip-off?’

‘Possible, but highly unlikely. Klugmann is very valuable to Ulugbay now – as a source of information and a highly trained heavy – but he was a hell of a lot more valuable when he was a serving police officer in a special-operations unit.’

‘So who ratted on Klugmann? Any ideas?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ Buchholz said. ‘It was highly valuable information – something we would have paid an informant well for. It was very strange that we were handed it free of charge and anonymously.’

‘Maybe someone in the Ulugbay organisation had his own agenda?’

‘Again possible – and again highly unlikely. These bloody Turks are tight. Informing isn’t just against the code, it’s punishable by death – a very unpleasant death – and having your face carved off.’

‘And, even if you aren’t afraid of what will happen to you,’ picked up Kolski, ‘there’s always the possibility of retribution against your family … either here in Germany or back home in Turkey.’

Fabel nodded thoughtfully for a moment, then tapped the scene-of-crime photograph. ‘Could this fall into that category? Could it be some kind of punishment? Some kind of ritualised warning – you know, a gang thing …’

Buchholz smiled, a little patronisingly thought Fabel, and glanced at Kolski. ‘No, Herr Fabel, this isn’t a “gang thing”. I think you’re safer sticking to your serial theory. Having said that, I don’t like the idea of any link with Ulugbay …’ Buchholz turned to Kolski. ‘Check it out, would you, Lothar?’

‘Sure,
Chef
.’

Buchholz turned back to Fabel. ‘If Ulugbay had wanted this girl killed then she would have simply disappeared. We would maybe never have got involved. If, on the other hand, Ulugbay had wanted to make an example of her – if she’d cheated him or informed – she would have been found with a bullet through the head. Or at worst, if he really wanted to make a statement, she would have been garrotted. Anyway, Ulugbay is trying to keep a low profile at the moment …’

‘Oh?’

‘Ulugbay has a cousin, Mehmet Yilmaz,’ Kolski explained. ‘Most of Ulugbay’s success has been through Yilmaz’s efforts. Yilmaz has been legitimising large parts of the Ulugbay operation and is reckoned to be the brains behind the more profitable elements of the criminal activity. Yilmaz is boss in all but name. Ulugbay can be a real
Arschloch
. He’s temperamental, unpredictable and incredibly violent. The times we have come close to nailing the bastard are when he has gone berserk over some insult or threat to his organisation. He doesn’t think – just steams in and starts littering the place with bodies. Yilmaz, on the other hand, is our real target. He keeps a lid on Ulugbay, and makes it difficult for us to get decent evidence. And, although he has been trying to legitimise the business, he is a hard son of a bitch. When Yilmaz kills, it’s planned like a military operation … it’s cold, effective and without evidential traces. His security is unbreakable. Anyway, Yilmaz has been trying to keep a lid on things and keep the organisation’s profile low, so as not to compromise his legitimisation programme.’

‘So you don’t think that they would be involved in anything like this?’

‘Certainly not,’ answered Buchholz. ‘This is not their style at any time but especially not now. Anyway, this guy has killed before, hasn’t he?’

‘Yes. Once that we know about.’

‘And the previous victims had no association with the Ulugbay organisation?’

‘No. Not that we know of.’

Buchholz shrugged and held his palms upwards. After a moment he pointed vaguely at the file in Fabel’s hand. ‘Do you have a copy of the file for us?’

Fabel handed the copy he had brought to Buchholz. ‘This is for you, Herr Hauptkommissar.’

Buchholz pointedly handed it on to Kolski. ‘We’ll keep in touch, Herr Fabel. And, naturally, we would appreciate being notified before you carry out any enquiries directly with anyone in the Ulugbay organisation.’

‘That’s why I’m here, Herr Hauptkommissar.’

‘And I appreciate it,’ said Buchholz. ‘Naturally we can’t ask to be directly involved with your inquiry, but we can avoid stepping on each other’s toes.’

‘I would hope that we could be of help to each other, Herr Buchholz.’

Wednesday 4 June, 4.30 p.m. Pöseldorf, Hamburg.

It was mid-afternoon before Fabel turned the key of the door to his apartment. He picked up his mail and sifted through it, using his elbow to slam the door behind him. Fabel tossed the mail and the files he had brought home with him down onto the coffee table and walked through to the kitchen area, a bright alcove of steel and marble off the main living space. He filled the coffee machine and switched it on, then went into the bathroom and stripped, stuffing his shirt and underwear into the washing machine that sat in a recess next to the bathroom. Fabel shaved before stepping into the shower. He stood motionless, simply tilting his head back to allow the high-pressure spray to dig into the flesh of his face and letting the water run in rivulets down his body. The water was slightly too hot, but he didn’t adjust it, letting it sting away the pollution of the night.

Fabel thought over the last eleven hours. He tried to focus on the facts, on the picture he was piecing together in his mind, but he couldn’t erase the image that seared through his brain every few seconds: the image of the girl’s body. Christ, he had ripped out her lungs … what kind of monster would do that? If it was a sexual thing, what unspeakable mutation of human sexuality could derive gratification from such an act? Fabel thought about Klugmann, about how someone so corrupted by greed, drugs and violence had distanced himself with such clarity and ease from such an unspeakable deed. Fabel and Klugmann each represented everything the other was not. They were two extremes of humanity who had become united in the face of a barbarity that denied humanity in any form.

Standing naked in the shower, enveloped in a sheath of too-hot water, Fabel still felt a chill deep in his being: a permafrost that bound his guts in an icy grasp. It was a chill that radiated out from a single fact he had locked deep inside: as sure as the sun would rise tomorrow, this killer would strike again.

After his shower Fabel pulled on a black cashmere roll-neck, clipped his automatic to the black leather belt he had looped through his pale chinos, and slipped into his Jaeger sports jacket. He poured himself a black coffee and carried it over to the picture windows. Fabel’s apartment was in Pöseldorf, in the Rotherbaum district of the city. It was on the attic floor of a substantial turn-of-the-century building that sat in assured but austere confidence, as did its neighbours, one block from the Milchstrasse. The conversion of the building into apartments had included, in Fabel’s flat, the installation of almost floor-to-ceiling picture windows that looked over the roofs of Magdalenenstrasse and out onto the park-fringed Aussenalster. From his windows Fabel could watch the red and white ferries zigzag their way across the Alster, picking up passengers – tourists, commuters, lovers – from one shore and dropping them on the other; picking up, dropping, picking up, dropping, with a cheerful regularity that gave a rhythm to the city’s life. When the sun was at a certain angle, he could see the faint turquoise glitter of the Iranian mosque on the Schöne Aussicht across on the distant shore of the Alster. Every time Fabel devoured the view he blessed the unknown architect who had specified these windows.