JF05 - The Valkyrie Song (57 page)

‘What? Oh … Blankenese.’

‘Do you have the address?’

‘I think it’s somewhere just behind Strandweg. Hold on …’ After a few moments, Gessler came back with the address.

‘She’s here to kill Svend Langstrup,’ said Fabel once he’d hung up. ‘And then, if I’m right, she’ll go after Gina Brønsted.’

Langstrup brought the wine through to the lounge. Anke sat on the rug in front of the fire and watched the flames. The fire’s glow accentuated the perfect sweep of her cheek and jawline, and added gold to her pale blonde hair.

‘Warmer?’

‘Mmm, I am now,’ she murmured contentedly, despite the persistent nagging of her leg wound. Anke looked around the room. She took a full mouthful of wine. Her eyes fell on a silver-framed photograph on a side table. In it Langstrup and an attractive woman with strawberry-blonde hair stood together in a garden. They both faced the camera and Langstrup embraced her, his arms wrapped around her shoulders. They both wore smiles: his one of complete contentment. Joy. The woman’s was different. As if she wasn’t really there behind the smile. It was something that Anke recognised.

‘Your wife?’

He nodded, but did not look at the photograph. ‘Yes. That’s Silke.’

‘She’s very pretty.’

‘Yes.’

‘Where is she tonight? I don’t think she’d approve of you bringing strange women in from the beach and plying them with drink …’

‘Silke had problems. Mental-health issues.’ He stared into his wine glass. ‘Depression. She committed suicide.’

‘Oh God – I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have asked …’

‘You weren’t to know. It was a natural enough question,’ Langstrup said and took a long sip of white wine. ‘It was two years ago. The police said it was unclear whether it was accidental death or suicide. She didn’t leave a note, you see.’

‘Is that why you were down by the water?’

‘I don’t know. Yes, maybe.’

Anke looked at the photograph again; at the mask of a smile pulled over a void.

‘I really am so sorry,’ said Anke and she stood up. ‘I know what it’s like to lose someone like that.’

‘Do you? I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘My uncle.’ She took another sip of wine and gazed at the fire. ‘I know it doesn’t sound much, but he was more than my uncle. More like a father. My parents … well, my parents
weren’t around and he brought me up. Taught me everything I know. All that I am I owe to him.’

‘He died recently?’

‘Yes.’ She placed the wine glass down on the coffee table and turned to face him square on. Langstrup looked up at her quizzically. ‘Is everything all right?’

The doorbell rang.

‘Excuse me,’ he said. He stood up and shrugged apologetically. ‘I don’t get many visitors, but tonight …’

The ringing of the doorbell became insistent. Then banging on the door. Langstrup frowned and made towards the hall.

As soon as Langstrup turned his back to her, Anke leapt forward. The black polycarbide knife arced round and caught him in the side of the neck. She locked his head with the other arm and used her weight to drag him down onto the floor, but he was strong and skilled. His elbow slammed into her ribs and they crashed into the coffee table. The knife was still in his neck but she had misjudged it and obviously had missed the carotid. She could hear the front door being kicked in. She let go of Langstrup and leapt to her feet, slightly off balance because of the wound in her calf.

The front door flew open and banged against the hall wall. She snapped the Beretta from the waistband of her skirt. Langstrup rolled over, clutching the hilt of the knife rammed into his neck, his small, hard eyes now wild and full of terror. The way she had wanted it.

The three police officers burst into the living room and aimed their weapons at her. Screaming at her to drop the gun. She recognised one of them as Jan Fabel, who had headed the operation in the Alsterpark. She knew the woman was Karin Vestergaard, the boss and former lover of Jens Jespersen, whom Anke had killed in his hotel room. Anke had a choice, she knew that: take them on or finish Langstrup. She looked at the two men and a woman at the door. Their faces were tight and anxious. She smiled at them. It’s not so
bad, she wanted to tell them. Don’t be scared, killing really isn’t so bad.

The adrenalin in her system slowed everything down. She felt, for a moment, outside time. She thought about Liane and Margarethe. She thought again about Uncle Georg. She thought about all the meetings she had had, all the last moments she had shared.

Anke Wollner made her decision. She fired four shots into Langstrup, all of them into his head, before the police opened fire.

Outside, afterwards, Fabel, Vestergaard and van Heiden sat together in the back of a police bus with blacked-out windows. It was an oasis of quiet while outside a maelstrom of police, forensics and press swirled around them.

‘Are you okay?’ Fabel asked them both, but his question was aimed more at van Heiden who sat grim-faced, his elbows resting on his knees and his gaze fixed at some spot on the floor of the bus.

‘Why do I get the feeling that we’ve just participated in an assisted suicide?’ asked van Heiden.

‘We did what we had to do,’ said Vestergaard. ‘We would have been next.’

‘I guess that ties up the Valkyrie case,’ said van Heiden to Fabel.

‘Yes, I suppose it does,’ said Fabel. ‘Other than nailing the person who instigated and paid for all of this mayhem. Gina Brønsted.’

‘But … ?’ Vestergaard read the doubt in Fabel’s face.

‘Anke Wollner killed Halvorsen in Norway, probably Vuja
i
ć
in Copenhagen, Westland, Lensch, Claasens and Sparwald here in Hamburg. I know why and for whom she killed.’ Fabel frowned. ‘But we still don’t know who the original Angel of
St Pauli was. It doesn’t make sense that it was Wollner. And, as I know only too well from the house call she made on me, there’s a third Valkyrie out there. Liane Kayser.’

‘Who is clearly leading a normal life and has nothing to do with all this,’ said van Heiden.

‘Maybe so … but she made it very clear to me that she is more than willing to kill to protect that life.’ Fabel shrugged and stood up. ‘Anyway, I have a hospital visit to make.’

‘Anna Wolff?’ asked van Heiden.

‘Anna Wolff,’ said Fabel. ‘I need to talk to her about her future.’

It stung. It stung like hell, but Fabel knew that he had to let it go. But one day, he swore, he would get enough on her to put her away for good. He glared at the television monitor in the Murder Commission’s main office. He glared at two faces he knew.

‘Isn’t this an embarrassment for the NeuHansa Group?’ asked Sylvie Achtenhagen. ‘And an indictment of you personally that you employed and trusted a man who turned out to be a criminal? Someone who ordered and paid for the murders of so many people?’

‘The first thing I want to make clear is this,’ said Gina Brønsted, with a smile that suggested she was talking to children. ‘The corporate crime division of the Polizei Hamburg has placed me and all of my business dealings under the very closest scrutiny and there is absolutely
no
evidence to suggest that I knew anything about Svend Langstrup’s criminal activities. He was obviously running his own covert empire within the NeuHansa Group. It is true that he got away with this for some time, but there was no way …’

Werner switched off the TV with the remote.

‘Don’t eat yourself up over that bitch, Jan,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to let it go. She’ll be caught out sooner or later. I believe the guys at corporate crime are as determined to nail her as you are.’

‘And OLAF,’ said Fabel grimly. ‘And Økokrim in Norway. And the Danish National Police. Gina Brønsted is going to have to tread very carefully from now on.’

‘What about this first-Monday-of-the-month deal? You know, the message in
Muliebritas?
That’s Monday coming: are we going to stake it out?’

‘No point,’ said Fabel. ‘Three Valkyries: one dead, one back in a mental institution, and the third will do anything other than attract attention to herself.’

‘True …’ Werner chuckled maliciously. ‘Anyway, she comes round to yours if she wants a chat.’

Fabel shot him a look and Werner gathered up some papers from his desk and left the office. Once Werner was gone, Fabel picked up the phone and punched in a number.

‘Hello, Frau Meissner? Jan Fabel here. I got your invitation to talk to the Sabine Charity about the Polizei Hamburg’s initiative on violence against women. I’d be delighted to …’

The last meeting of the day had gone on late. They had arranged for caterers to bring food in and, eventually, they had been able to crack open a bottle of champagne to seal the deal. After all the negative publicity, Gina Brønsted had had to do some tough negotiating and make some firm assurances. But things were back on track.

Because the meeting had gone on so late, Brønsted had decided to stay over in her penthouse above the offices. Truth was, she loved it here, with the huge windows looking over the harbour and out towards where they were building the new opera house. She poured herself a glass and drank in the view and the champagne at the same time. She was going to own this city one day. And Copenhagen.

Something caught her eye, reflected in the window glass. She spun around.

‘What are you doing here?’ Brønsted’s tone was more puzzled than angry. ‘How did you get in?’

‘Do you know who I am?’ asked the blonde woman standing in the middle of Brønsted’s living room.

‘What the hell do you mean?’ Real anger now. ‘Of course I know who you are. Now will you tell me what the hell you are doing here? I have nothing more to say to you.’

‘Do you know my name?’ asked the woman.

‘Of course I know your name. Have you lost …’ Bronsted’s voice trailed off. Her focus was now fixed on the gun that the woman had lifted out from the folds of her black coat.

‘My name isn’t what you think it is. My name – my
real
name – is Liane Kayser. I am a Valkyrie. You know all about the Valkyries, don’t you, Gina?’

‘I …’ Brønsted’s expression turned from realisation to fear. ‘Listen, I can give you work …’

‘You mean you can use me. The way you used Margarethe and Anke? Do you know, the funny thing is that I didn’t know I cared. I thought I was incapable of feeling anything for anybody. But I do care. They were the closest thing I had to family. But I
am
going to do something for you, Gina. I know you like making the news. I’m going to make you news. Tomorrow you will be big news. I promise you.’

‘I can make this right for you …’ Brønsted’s eyes darted around the room. The panic button. The phone. Both a universe away.

‘You know Gina, you’re right. You can make it right for me.’ Liane Kayser pulled the trigger twice, the shots muffled by the suppressor attached to the Makarov PM automatic. Brønsted fell to the ground. She was breathing in short, rapid gasps. The blonde woman took a few steps closer.

‘Do you know what the word Valkyrie actually means? It comes from the Old Norse
Valkyrja
. It means
chooser of the slain
.’ She pulled the trigger twice more. Head shots. ‘Goodbye, Gina.’

It had changed so much since she had last been here.

Halberstadt was somewhere Sylvie Achtenhagen had visited as a young girl. That had been back then, of course; before the Wall came down. The city hadn’t made much of an impact on the young Sylvie: it had looked pretty much like every other GDR town or small city she had visited. Halberstadt had been bombed flat at the very end of the Second World War, four weeks before the German surrender had been signed. Many suspected that the bombing had been a final vindictive act of vengeance.

Whatever the motive, the British had, with full moral vigour and righteous zeal, all but wiped the pretty little city off the face of the earth and had completely destroyed the medieval heart of Halberstadt. Then, with equally full moral vigour and righteous zeal, the communist government of the GDR had rebuilt it as a workers’ city. Ugly Plattenbau concrete housing blocks had crowded around the city’s cathedral and all that was old or traditional had been replaced with the modern and functional. And then the Wall had come down and Halberstadt had been reclaimed by its people.