The Black Madonna (6 page)

Lieutenant Karl Weinert of the Bavarian Kriminalpolizei paced up and down in the corridor outside the forensic laboratory of the Landeskriminalamt in Munich’s Maillinger Strasse. He had been there for twenty minutes already and he was not a man accustomed to being kept waiting, especially when he had been told the results were ready.

It was not as if he was expecting much. The odds on getting any sort of identification were slim, but under the circumstances they had not much else to go on. In all his years in the force he had seen more than his share of gruesome sights: girls imported by people traffickers and kept as prostitutes in conditions that would have had animal rights campaigners up in arms, horrific facial scars and physical mutilations inflicted on victims in Turkish gang wars, and more recently the cynically brutal, almost wanton slayings that were the mark of encroachment by Russian Mafiosi. But he had never seen anything quite as grotesque as this.

The bumpkin provincial officers in the little town of Altötting, used to little more than crowd control and the occasional outbreak of pickpocketing during pilgrimages to the local shrine, had been
overwhelmed
. The town police chief had breathed a visible sigh of relief at being able to hand over to the big boys from the state criminal police.

Weinert and Richard Hulpe, his regular collaborator, however, had not been 100 per cent sure they weren’t the victims of some sort of practical joke, until they had got there and seen the evidence themselves. He was still straining even to imagine what sort of warped and seriously sick mentality could conceive of having such a vile parcel delivered – by an apparently anonymous courier service (they were working on that) – to a nun in the chapel of one of the holiest shrines in the country. Unsurprisingly, the good sister was still in a state of shock.

They had found it difficult even to start an investigation on the spot; there seemed little point in conducting interviews at random amongst an extensive religious community or even the local lay people employed, but it would have to be done. Under the
circumstances
he found it more than incredible that the perpetrator could be local, but it was the first rule of police procedure that the
murderer
usually knew his (or her) victim.

The trouble in this case was establishing the identity of the victim. There were no reports of any missing persons in the Altötting area, and certainly not among the tightly knit religious community. He had hoped to keep the more salacious details out of the public domain. When searching for a killer, particularly a sadist which this one undoubtedly was, it was always better to keep something back. He had said as much to Sister Galina, but the nun, who was still in the order infirmary, had made it abundantly clear – with no more than a hand gesture – that she had not the slightest intention of revealing any more than the absolute minimum. And under the circumstances, Weinert had had no problem believing her.

But inevitably the word had got out. He did not know who had leaked it and there was next to no point in trying to find out. The tabloid press had a way of finding out the goriest details of murder cases, and in one like this there had never been any prospect of imposing a gagging order ‘for the sake of the investigation’. It had been for his own sake too, he admitted privately. As it had turned out, however, the circumstances – the religious setting and the sense of deliberate desecration – had kept the worst elements of the force’s inimitable black humour at bay. So far.

He had no doubts that when the investigation ran into the sand, as he had a horrible feeling this one was going to, he would still end up being labelled ‘Inspector Dickhead’. At least they had kept the worst of it out of the press. Releasing the details about the heart was gruesome enough to feed the interest that might – just might – produce a lead; keeping back the more grotesque details about the genitalia would at least give a means to weed out any phoney
confessions
. God knows, releasing that sort of detail might have prompted a deluge of them. There had been that guy who volunteered to be eaten alive, penis first, by Germany’s home-grown cannibal, and had his wish come true.

Weinert had little optimism about anything useful coming out of
the forensics. Apart from Sister Galina, none of the other members of the religious community had touched the bag, unsurprisingly enough. The local police, who had been summoned immediately, had been so horrified at the thought of leaving evidence of murder within the confines of a sacred chapel – particularly evidence of this nature – that they had immediately removed it to the mortuary of the local hospital. Admittedly they had preferred to use tweezers to hold even the bag, but Weinert thought the chances of retrieving identifiable fingerprints slim. Identification of the victim was the first step and it did not look like being easy.

The lab boys back in Munich had not held out much hope. The chances of the victim’s DNA being on a database were negligible. It was at times like these that policemen were tempted to wish that governments would introduce compulsory DNA registration for the entire population. In Wienert’s opinion this was going to be a case that stayed open for years, or rather opened and shut in everything but name. Because the sister had failed to get even the probably phoney details of the supposed courier company, there was no way of being sure the package had been sent from within Germany.

Weinert was therefore irritated at having to wait outside the labs until some boffin in a white coat came out to tell him, as he was certain they would, that the case stopped here. It was at that moment that the lab door opened and Dr Heidi Wenger emerged and held out her hand with a grim but satisfied look on her face.

‘Nasty business. Very nasty.’

Weinert nodded. He had no time for platitudes.

‘Sorry to have kept you waiting. I don’t know whether or not you’ll thank me.’

Weinert smiled tightly. He knew: he wouldn’t.

‘Right, well as you can imagine, the most immediate conclusion was that the deceased was an adult male.’

Weiner grunted a suppressed laugh. That much had hardly taken a forensic scientist to deduce.

‘That, however, hardly narrows down the field. Then we took a DNA sample.’

Yes, yes, that had been the whole point of the exercise.

‘But unfortunately it didn’t match anything on any of the
Bavarian
databases.’

God, these people could draw out statements of the bloody
obvious. Time to go back to his own office, fill in the paperwork, then do a few perfunctory interviews in Altötting before consigning the case to the ‘dormant’ files.

‘We drew a blank on the national database too.’ Yes, yes, surprise, surprise. ‘However,’ Wenger emphasised the word looking down her nose at him as if his scepticism was a bad attitude in a sulky
schoolboy
about to be given detention, ‘as we already had to get in touch with the boys from the federal Kripo up at Wiesbaden, we asked them to run it through their international records too.’

Weinert frowned: he had never had direct dealings with Interpol himself, but he was well aware that international cooperation, even between the EU countries, was seldom as straightforward as might be hoped. There were always human rights hurdles to jump to get access to other forces’ national DNA records.

‘Oh, I know what you’re thinking,’ said Wenger. ‘That sort of thing can take days if not weeks. Not in this case, however.’

‘You’re not going to tell me we’ve got an identity match? That we know who the victim is.’ Weinert had noticed a suppressed smirk of satisfaction on the forensic scientist’s lips. Now it broadened into almost a smile:

‘Oh yes. In fact we’ve been able to ascertain more than you might have expected. A lot more.’

Weinert grunted. If he was about to be impressed by this
long-winded
self-important woman in a white coat, he was damned if he was going to let it show.

‘To be precise, in theory we know exactly where and when he died.’

‘You do?’ Weinert could scarcely restrain a look of extreme
scepticism
. Even presented with an intact corpse, pathologists in his experience were seldom eager to volunteer a time of death to within less than a period of several hours. Forensics could usually be relied on to give some clues as to where a murder had been committed if the body were not found
in situ
: there were things like fibre samples, pollen, stuff like that. But self-confidence on this scale was
something
new to him. There again, he wondered what that ‘in theory’ bit meant.

‘You look surprised,’ Heidi Wenger said. ‘You should be.
Apparently
he died at 00:18 hours yesterday.’

Weinert physically felt his jaw drop. It was not the unusual
– almost unheard of – precision of the timing that astonished him. It was the date. ‘But … but … the … the “thing” was delivered
twenty-four
hours earlier.’

‘Quite. Do you want to know where we believe he died?’

Weinert nodded: talk about a question of the fucking obvious. But there was no stopping her relishing her moment of glory.

‘Would you believe a place called Erez?’

Weinert shrugged. He could believe almost anything. ‘Never heard of it.’

‘I’m not wholly surprised. It’s an Israeli checkpoint at the
northern
end of the Gaza Strip.’

The man behind the wheel of the black Mercedes cursed under his breath. It was not in his nature to blame others but he was sorely tempted. If anything went wrong he would take the retribution alone. He was in charge and failure was not suffered gladly.

When his older colleague had pleaded the need to relieve himself, it didn’t seem like much of a risk. He would only be a minute or two and would go into the seedy-looking hotel itself and make discreet enquiries at the same time: find out which room they were staying in. The girl and her big friend, whoever he was, had only just arrived. They would not be leaving immediately. They were probably rolling together in carnal lust already, the old man had spat, although the note in his voice was more of envy than disapproval. The girl was a looker all right, and obviously a hussy.

But barely seconds after the old man had gone into the hotel, the girl herself had emerged, looked briskly up and down the street and climbed into a taxi. He had had no choice but to set off
immediately
in pursuit; the risk of losing them in the London traffic was too great. He had taken the cab’s number automatically, but the streets were full of them and if it gave him the slip, finding the same cab again would be not so much like hunting a needle in a haystack as searching for a particular straw.

At least the traffic was moving slowly. He tried his colleague’s mobile and got a ringing tone but no answer. He wondered if the old fool even knew how to work it. The taxi edged forward and through the traffic lights ahead of him. Damn! If it turned right into the one-way system around Russell Square Gardens, he would have to guess which exit it might take. Where on earth could the woman be going?

She appeared to be carrying the same baggage – a ridiculous rucksack – that she had arrived with. Perhaps they had a lovers’ tiff and she had walked out on him. He wished he knew who the man was, but he had no idea, had been given no warning that she would
be met at the airport. He had filed away a mental description: tall, well-built, Anglo-Saxon in appearance, English probably or just possibly American although he seemed neither smartly nor sloppily enough dressed for that. Fair to mid-brown hair, and he walked with just the hint of a limp in his left leg. Not that he mattered now. The orders were to follow the girl.

For the moment the taxi was still visible in the traffic ahead. Then it turned the corner. The lights changed. He pressed the
accelerator
and took off after it. His mobile burst into life as he turned the corner; the old fool had obviously emerged from the Gents and found out how to work his phone. He ignored it.

The taxi was still ahead but turned left at the edge of the square, then took a left into Montague Street, the long road that ran down one side of the great neoclassical bulk of the British Museum. Of course, why hadn’t he thought of it. She was an archaeologist. Where else would she be headed but the home of one of the greatest
collections
on earth? On impulse he grabbed his still ringing mobile from the seat next to him, hit answer and told his perplexed partner to grab a cab, cut around the back of the museum and get out at the main entrance. That way there would be two of them again, enough to tail the woman properly without both having obviously emerged from the same vehicle. Sometimes God indeed moved in mysterious ways.

Sure enough, he watched with satisfaction as the cab’s
indicator
signalled right at the end of Montague Street. He slowed at the corner and turned right into Great Russell Street. The museum’s monumental portico and colonnade ran the length of the block, the steps behind the railings crowded with summer tourists, but there was no sign of a taxi in front of him. It wasn’t possible. There hadn’t been time for her to stop and settle up. Unless she had cut and run. But why? And there would have been an outraged cab driver in the middle of the road.

Nor could they have shot on ahead of him: a little further on the road became one-way in the opposite direction. He edged forward and glanced down the narrow road on his left to see a black cab turning right at the end of it. The same one? He couldn’t make out the number, but it had to be. He had been wrong about her
destination
. He accelerated to the end of the street and saw it again stopped in traffic edging towards the lights at the end of Bloomsbury Way.

It made no sense. In a moment they would be back at
Southampton
Row, which was where they would have ended up if they had not turned at Russell Square. Perhaps she had changed her mind. Could she have realised she was being followed? It was not impossible; he had been as discreet as he could under the circumstances but then the circumstances had been far from perfect.

The lights changed, the cab turned right again, down Kingsway, a big broad, split-carriageway road which was one of the few in London where traffic could really move. To make matters worse, there was a bus lane; the cab pulled into it and accelerated away. It was illegal for the Mercedes to follow suit, not that its driver gave a damn about the law or the possibility of a fine, but the last thing he wanted was to be pulled over by the police and in any case to have done so would have made certain she knew she was being followed. To catch up he would have to rely on the city’s most dependable attributes: congestion and badly phased traffic lights.

They did not let him down. The lights at Aldwych turned red before the cab reached them, then green just in time to let him follow it to the left around the great one-way semi-circle. There were two options at the end of its curve: left along Fleet Street towards St Paul’s and the financial district of the City, or sharp right towards Trafalgar Square and the West End. They turned right, but when the Mercedes did likewise, it was facing a wall of identical black cabs spread across the road.

Almost too late he spotted the one with the girl in it, pulled right over beyond the traffic islands into a left-hand lane that led not ahead but over the bridge. He braked too slowly to avoid being sucked along with the traffic flow down the Strand, and watched the cab turn the corner as the lights changed. Almost immediately the cab was out of sight; he revved the Mercedes hard and threw it at the line of raised kerbing marking the central lane division. There was an agonising scrape of metal on stone as the big car bumped over, and a flurry of blaring horns as he ploughed across the next lane and shot the red lights. He had no idea what damage he might have done to the undercarriage, or whether there would be a police car on his tail any minute. To his right as he shot out onto Waterloo Bridge the great Ferris wheel of the London Eye rotated majestically, transporting its pods of tourists ogling the Palace of Westminster beneath them and distant St Paul’s, but he had eyes for one thing
only: the black cab approaching the roundabout at the other end of the bridge.

Waterloo, he suddenly realised. Was she heading for Waterloo. A train out of town? Or to somewhere in the southern suburbs? The centre of the roundabout was taken up with the great cylinder of an Imax cinema, blocking the view and as he rounded it once again his field of vision filled with black taxis, but most of them were
emerging
onto the roundabout from the station pick-up area. The obvious thing was for her cab to have merged in with them on the station approach. It was off-limits to ordinary cars, but he would have to take the risk. And then at the last minute, glancing left to take account of oncoming traffic, he spotted the number plate he had memorised stopped on the right-hand side of the road just beyond the bus stop down Waterloo Road. Facing towards him. The driver had done a typical London cabbie’s U-turn in the middle of the road. Someone was getting in! A pre-arranged meeting? And then there she was, on the pavement, her brightly coloured rucksack
standing
out from the crowd. For a moment he breathed a sigh of relief, before a wave of angry frustration overcame him as she disappeared into the Underground.

There was nothing to be done. Even if there had been two of them, it would have been a problem. There were four lines passing through Waterloo. She could have taken any of them. He muttered a few words into his headset in response to the babble of his panicking colleague, and then turned it off. He swung the Mercedes out into the traffic and back onto the roundabout, heading north and east, to Finsbury Park.

He would have to make his report. But first he would have to say his prayers. Oh yes, he would definitely have to say his prayers.