JF05 - The Valkyrie Song (55 page)

‘Delivery,’ said Anke.

The door lock was buzzed open. Anke pushed open the door and shoved the toe of her boot in to stop it closing completely. She pressed the old woman’s buzzer again.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Wrong address. I thought this was Pöseldorfer Weg.’ After listening to the old woman’s
complaints, Anke let herself in and eased the door quietly shut behind her. She stood for a moment and caught her breath, listening out for the sounds of a suspicious old woman on the stairwell. When she was convinced she was alone, she climbed the stairs to the first floor. She found the flat she was looking for and picked the lock.

Once inside, she checked every room to make sure that the flat was really empty. She looked down at the wooden floor. She had left bloody footprints all along the hall. That meant there was a trail all the way up the stairs and probably from the car. Even if it wasn’t visible, it would be very easy for a police sniffer dog to follow. She would have to be quick. Going through to the bedroom, she checked out the woman’s wardrobe. She was a size bigger than Anke, but that didn’t matter: a size smaller would have been useless. Anke laid out a range of trousers, jumpers and jackets on the bed and made a quick selection from them. She also found a shoulder bag to replace her own: smaller, but it would do.

The bathroom was small, and Anke had to lean against the wall as she eased out of her shoes, trousers and tights, leaving a pool of blood on the tiled floor. She turned her calf to examine the wound: the bullet had not lodged in her leg but had carved its passage by gouging out a chunk of flesh. There was no bath, but Anke was able to take down the shower head and run hot water over the wound before wrapping a towel tight around her calf. She found the bathroom cabinet and tipped everything out into the basin. She took a second towel and doused it with antiseptic. There was a bandage still in its wrapper but no other dressings. She went into the bedroom again and went through the drawers until she found a packet of sanitary pads which she took back through to the bathroom.

Anke removed the towel from her leg and pushed the antiseptic-soaked pad into the wound. The pain exploded
hot and sharp and she suppressed a scream into an inhuman sound caged behind her tightly clenched teeth. Applying two sanitary pads to the wound, she bound them in place with the bandage. When she was finished, she washed her hands and the sweat from her face. There was a photograph on the dresser, presumably of the couple who lived in the flat. The woman was tall and slim like Anke and didn’t look a full size bigger, but she had dark hair and an olive tone to her skin. Anke reckoned her make-up would be heavier and darker than that which Anke normally used, and she spent five minutes in front of the mirror completely changing her face with a few strokes of the woman’s make-up brush. She then changed into the clothes she’d laid out, putting on a pair of knee-length boots under her trousers. It was a struggle to get the left boot zipped up over the wound, but Anke reckoned the boot would help keep the dressing tight and in place.

Once she had put on the change of clothes, including an ankle-length coat and a beret-style hat, Anke looked at herself in the mirror. A different woman with a different style, a different history, a different life.

Before leaving the flat, Anke tried to work out what to do with her discarded clothes. Her DNA would be all over them. But there again, she thought, her DNA was now all over half of Hamburg. There was no forensic distance this time.

It was over. She knew that. Uncle Georg was dead. Or captured. She had to get out of Hamburg. She had identities she could use, she had enough money to live on for the rest of her life. Maybe this could be a new beginning. The next twenty-four hours would tell.

She put the Beretta, the magazines, her polycarbide knife and the box of sanitary pads into her shoulder bag. She went over to the window and checked out the street below. It seemed
quiet, but she could hear the sound of sirens in the streets all around. She was going to have to walk through it all and out of Pöseldorf.

And then she would be free.

Fabel had watched it all. He had stood and watched as Anna had been gunned down. He had seen the flashes, then Anna crumple to the ground. He should have stayed where he was, but, without thinking, he found himself running down the stairs and out onto the street, screaming into the radio for an ambulance.

By the time he got to Anna there were already two MEK officers tending to her, applying first-aid-kit pressure pads to the wounds in her legs. Werner was there too, brushing the hair away from her face. Fabel felt sick as he saw the crimson bloom on the white gauze of the pressure pads.

‘Anna …’ He dropped to his knees beside her. ‘Anna … I’m so sorry.’

Her face was pale, almost grey. Her breathing was shallow and short, but she shook her head and smiled weakly. ‘Not your fault. Mine. I’m ready for that anger-management course now …’

The ambulance arrived and the paramedics set to work on her, ordering Werner and Fabel to stand back. Dietz, the MEK commander, approached them.

‘What the hell were you doing?’ Fabel screamed in his face. ‘How the fuck did you allow this to happen? I brought you into this because this is
exactly
what I didn’t want to happen.’ He pointed in the direction of the paramedics working on Anna.

‘Before you start shooting your mouth off, Fabel, I’d remind you that two of my men are dead, two more critical from burns. This isn’t my fuck-up – it’s yours. Why the hell didn’t
you give us the say-so to take her down before she got to the road? She knew that we would have to choose our shots if she got between us and occupied buildings. There …’ He jabbed a gloved finger in the direction of the park. ‘That’s where our chances were best.’

Werner, now without his wig, placed his considerable bulk between them. ‘Pack it in, for God’s sake. This isn’t helping. Jan, we’ve got three more down – the hostage is critical, shot in the gut. We’ve got a dead uniform and another wounded civilian. It’s a mess, all right.’

‘Have we found the car yet?’

‘No. It can’t be that hard – the windscreen’s shot out.’

‘This bitch isn’t going to be scared into a panicked flight,’ said Fabel. ‘My guess is she’s dumped the car very close and stolen another. I want the control room at the Presidium to alert us to any stolen cars in a five-kilometre radius. Or a damaged Polo being abandoned. In the meantime, get every mobile unit to check alleyways, side streets, disused sites – anywhere she might have dumped it. But I’m pretty sure we’ll find it close by. And have every woman walking alone stopped and questioned. Minimum two officers. And extreme caution.’

‘There’s something else,’ said Dietz. ‘I’m pretty sure I hit her. There’s some blood on the road further up where she ran. I think I got her in the leg.’

‘She’ll have tried to find somewhere to get fixed up. She’s still here, Werner. We’ve got to find her.’

Pöseldorf was one of Hamburg’s trendiest addresses. The property was expensive and the shops and restaurants exclusive. But Pöseldorf had started off as Hamburg’s poor quarter and the layout was a tangle of cobbled streets.

Anke used as many alleys and access lanes as possible,
even clambering over walls to avoid using the main streets. She found herself on Hallerstrasse, near the TV studio and the Rotherbaum tennis stadium. The street was lined with cars, but most were expensive newer models with complicated immobiliser and alarm systems. She walked on. She would have to walk back to where she had left her own car. She needed to get it out of the area before it was treated as an abandoned vehicle, giving the police a positive ID and address for her. But she had parked far enough away from the Alsterpark to feel relatively secure. It was a decision that she regretted now with every step she took. Her calf throbbed and her entire leg began to ache, a result of the sudden and severe muscular contraction after the bullet had hit. It would not have been too long a walk if she had been able to continue straight along Mittelweg, but she knew that the police would, by now, be stopping almost every woman walking alone, so she was forced to take the most circuitous route, more than tripling the distance she had to cover.

Anke felt an enormous relief when she turned the corner and saw her Lexus saloon parked where she had left it. She sank into the leather seat and stretched her injured leg out straight, allowing herself a moment to rest. She eased her hand up the back of her boot and felt the wet leather. When she got back to the apartment she was going to have to stitch the wound, which, given its position, would not be easy.

Leaning her head back against the seat, Anke closed her eyes for a moment. She turned suddenly when she heard someone knocking on the side window.

Anke smiled and slid the window open. She assessed the situation: young policewoman – very young – alone, foot patrol, inexperienced. Every one else hunting the killer from the Alsterpark.

‘Is this your vehicle?’

‘Yes, it is. Is there a problem?’

‘You’ve been parked here too long. I’ll have to give you a ticket. What’s your name, please?’

You’re checking my name against the database, thought Anke. You’ve already radioed in the index number. It’ll be flagged up later. Her identity, her address, all compromised.

‘Jana Eigen.’ She gave the name she’d been living under for the last ten years. A name that had become as real to her as Anke Wollner. Now it was lost.

‘May I see your ID card and driver’s licence?’ The young policewoman was trying hard to project authority. Anke estimated she was no older than twenty-three; pretty, with dark hair under the police cap. Her blue police jacket was a size too big for her, giving her an almost childlike appearance.

‘Sure,’ said Anke, reaching into the shoulder bag sitting next to her on the passenger seat. ‘Here it is.’

Anke’s first shot hit the policewoman in the throat. She dropped beside the car. Anke swung the door open but it jammed against the policewoman’s body and she had to squeeze out, hurting her leg as she did so. The young policewoman was face down, the oversized blue waterproof jacket bunched up like a turtle’s carapace with the word POLIZEI emblazoned on it in white. A sickeningly wet gurgling sound issued from her and she was trying to crawl away. Anke fired a second round into the back of the policewoman’s head and she lay still. There were screams from onlookers and Anke knew that she’d have to move fast. The policewoman’s body obstructed the car so Anke had to drag it out into the road. Then she jumped back in the car and sped off.

She would have to dump the car. She would have to find a safe place.

It was pretty much what Fabel had expected. Van Heiden had not been angry, nor had he lectured Fabel, but he had communicated, more by silences than words, that things could not be worse and, if the axe fell, then it would fall squarely on Fabel’s neck.

What hadn’t helped had been the media attention. Accounts of the shootings on Harvestehuder Weg were repeated on every news bulletin, on every channel, and not just in Hamburg. The Presidium was like a medieval castle under siege, with satellite-dish-topped vans parked outside and TV crews pointing their cameras at the building. Fabel even got a message that Sylvie Achtenhagen had been trying to get in touch with him.

‘She said it’s very urgent,’ the cop at reception had told him.

‘I bet she did,’ said Fabel, scrunching up the note, leaning over the reception desk and dropping it into the wastebasket.

After leaving van Heiden, Fabel phoned Werner at the hospital.

‘How’s Anna?’

‘Still in theatre,’ said Werner. ‘I’ll phone as soon as she comes out and I hear anything. Try not to worry, Jan. She’s tougher than either of us.’

After Fabel hung up, there was a knock on the door and Dirk Hechtner came in.

‘You okay,
Chef?
I mean—’

‘I know what you mean. I’m okay. Thanks for asking. What have you got?’

‘The gun recovered from Margarethe Paulus’s apartment – we’ve traced it. It used to be owned by a Zlatko Ljubi
i
ć
, a Croatian. And listen to this: Ljubi
i
ć
was arrested during the same sting as Goran Vuja
i
ć
. He was Vuja
i
ć
’s bodyguard.’