JF02 - Brother Grimm Read Online Free PDF Page A

…’ Anna turned the file partly back towards her and flicked through the pages of the report that the Norderstedt police had faxed to the Präsidium. ‘Yes … a Herr Fendrich. Klatt has admitted he had nothing on Fendrich, other than an uneasy gut feeling he had about the relationship between Fendrich and Paula.’ Fabel stared at the freckled face in the photograph. ‘But she was only thirteen …’
    Anna made a ‘you should know better’ face. Fabel sighed: it was a naive, even stupid comment to have made. After more than a decade leading a murder squad, there was little about what people were capable of that should surprise him, least of all the possibility of a paedophile teacher becoming fixated on one of his charges.
    ‘But Klatt couldn’t find anything concrete on which to base his suspicions?’ asked Fabel. Anna had taken another mouthful and shook her head.
    ‘He questioned him more than once.’ Anna spoke through her food, again shielding her lips with her fingertips. ‘But Fendrich started to make noises about harassment. Klatt had to back right off. To be fair to Fendrich, in the absence of any other investigative route to follow, I get the impression there was a fair amount of clutching at straws.’
    Fabel looked out of the window at the double image of the illuminated car park and his own darkly reflected face. A Mercedes pulled up and a couple in their thirties got out. The man opened the back door and a girl of about ten stepped out and automatically took her father’s hand. It was an instinctive and habitual gesture: the innate expectation that children have to be protected. Fabel turned back to Anna.
    ‘I’m not convinced it’s the same girl.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘I’m not saying it isn’t. It’s just that I’m not sure. There are differences. Especially the eyes.’
    Anna leaned back in her seat and pursed her lips. ‘Then it’s one hell of a coincidence,
Chef
. If it’s not Paula Ehlers then it’s someone who looks hell of a lot like her. And someone who had her name and address in her hand. Like I say, a hell of a coincidence … andif there’s one thing I’ve learned not to believe in, it’s a coincidence.’
    ‘I know. Like I said, it’s just that something doesn’t gel.’
    The B433 runs straight through Norderstedt on its way north into Schleswig-Holstein and into Denmark. Harksheide lies to the north of the town centre and Buschberger Weg is to the right of the B433. As they approached the turn-off for Buschberger Weg, Fabel noted that the school Paula attended lay further up the main road, ahead and to the left. Paula would have crossed this busy thoroughfare to get home, and might have walked along its length for a while. This was where she had been taken. On one side or the other: more than likely on the Hamburg-bound carriageway.
    It was as Fabel had expected. There was a dark electricity in the Ehlerses’ household: something between anticipation and dread. The house itself was the most ordinary of dwellings: a single-storey bungalow with a steep red-tiled roof: the type of home you see from the Netherlands to the Baltic coast, from Hamburg to the northern tip of Danish Jutland. An immaculate, well-stocked but unimaginative garden framed the house.
    Frau Ehlers was in her early forties. Her hair had clearly been as blonde as her daughter’s, but the decades had muted its lustre by a tone. She had the pale Nordic look of a Schleswig-Holsteiner, the people of Germany’s slender northern neck: light blue eyes and skin that had been prematurely aged by the sun. Her husband was an earnest-looking man whom Fabel placed at around fifty. He was tall and a touch too lean:
schlaksig
, as they say inNorthern Germany. He too was fair, but a further tone duller than his wife’s colouring. His eyes were a darker blue and shadowed against the pale skin. In the moment of introduction, Fabel processed the images before him with the images in his memory: the Ehlers, the girl in