JF05 - The Valkyrie Song Read Online Free PDF Page A

ring just as she was about to launch something at him.
    ‘Hi,
Chef
, it’s Anna. You used to be into British pop in the seventies and eighties, right?’
    ‘I take it that’s rhetorical,’ said Fabel, his voice laden with warning. ‘What’s going on?’
    ‘Well, Jake Westland – you know, the lead singer from thatgroup in the seventies? – the thing is he’s on tour in Germany at the moment and he’s supposed to be doing an in-depth interview with NDR radio tomorrow.’
    Fabel sighed into the phone. ‘Anna … point?’
    ‘Just that he won’t be turning up for the interview. He’s already spilled his guts – in the Reeperbahn. And
Chef
, he said it was a woman who cut him and then she told him to let us know who she was. She told him to say it was the Angel.’
    ‘Shit.’ Fabel used the English word and looked across at his ex-wife. The fire had been extinguished and she now wore the expression of hostile resignation that she had always had when work had called him away. ‘I’ll be right there.’
    They had taken Westland across town to the emergency room at the hospital in St Georg. There was no point in Fabel going there: from what he had heard, Westland was in no condition for an interview. Instead he took the Ost-West Strasse into the Reeperbahn, Hamburg’s Sinful Mile. Where ropers had once woven hawsers for sailing ships, giving the Reeperbahn its name, now strip clubs and sex shops, bars and theatres neon-sparkled in the icy night. By the time Fabel arrived at Davidwache he was already in a bad mood. The meeting with Renate had gone as ill-temperedly as expected and he had lost his MP3 player: whenever he felt stressed, he plugged it into his BMW’s stereo system. No music, more stress.
    The press had already gathered en masse outside the Davidwache station and three uniformed officers were holding them at bay. In addition to the media circus outside the station, there was some other separate commotion being created in Davidstrasse, to the side of the station. Young riot squad officers in their gear were struggling to load groups of resisting women into the large green police wagons. Some of the media had leached around into Davidstrasse to take pictures of thesideshow, but a fusillade of camera flashes saluted Fabel as he made his way from the car to Davidwache’s double doors. A television news camera crew had jostled its way to the front; Fabel recognised the reporter as Sylvie Achtenhagen, who worked for one of the satellite channels. Great, he thought, as if the media limelight wasn’t bad enough, he had that bitch on his case.
    ‘Principal Detective Chief Commissar Fabel’ – Achtenhagen emphasised his full rank for the camera – ‘can you confirm that the victim of this attack was Jake Westland, the British singer?’
    Fabel ignored her and walked on.
    ‘And is it true that this is the work of the so-called Angel of St Pauli? The serial killer the Polizei Hamburg failed to catch in the nineteen-nineties?’ Then, when he still did not respond: ‘Are we to take it that your involvement, as head of this proposed so-called “Super Murder Commission”, is significant? Are you being called in to clean up the mess the Polizei Hamburg made of the original investigation?’
    Fabel pulled a mask of patience over his irritation and turned to the reporter. ‘The Police Presidium’s press and information department will make a full statement in due course. You should know the drill by now, Frau Achtenhagen.’
    He turned his back on her and walked through the double doors and up the steps into Davidwache police station. The small reception area was crammed with personnel. He could hear shouting from through the back and to the left, from the custody area. Fabel was greeted by a bristle-scalped heavy-set man in his fifties and a pretty dark-haired woman wearing jeans and a biker jacket that was at least one size too big for her. Fabel smiled grimly at Senior Criminal Commissar Werner Meyer