it’s about Lensch’s murder.’
‘They’ll probably work that out for themselves. I don’t know if Frau Bronsted will give you an interview. And I don’t know if I like where you’re going with this. The NeuHansa Group is my main business partner, Sylvie. And whether you like it or not, we’re in the business of television.’
‘Trust me, Andreas. I’m not after a scoop on NeuHansa or Gina Bronsted. I just need some background information. And, trust me, when I break this story for you, it will be big. Very big.’
‘Okay. I’ll see what I can do.’
After Knabbe had left, Sylvie sat and stared out of her office window, not seeing the city that lay dark under a slate sky. The phone ringing interrupted her equally gloomy thoughts. The call was on her direct number and had not come through reception.
‘Hello, Frau Achtenhagen.’ It was a man’s voice and it broke off to cough. ‘Excuse me. I believe you are looking into the killings in St Pauli?’
‘Yes — who is this?’
‘If you don’t mind, I’d rather not give my name. Not at the moment, anyway.’ More coughing.
‘You know something about the killings?’ Sylvie Achtenhagen tried to keep the irritation and the boredom out of her voice. There was always someone confessing to the Angel killings, or who knew someone who knew somebody who had said something suspicious; cranks who were receiving messages through their fillings from the spirit world, or who were convinced their husband-slash-boss-slash-pet was the perpetrator.
‘Yes. I know a lot about the killings. I know a lot about a lot of things. And what I know is something you will be willing to pay for.’
‘Yes, yes — I’ve heard that all before.’
‘No, trust me, Frau Achtenhagen. I have something you have to see. Something really big.’
‘Now I definitely have heard that all before and it always ends in disappointment. Can we cut the crap and you tell me exactly what it is that you’re trying to sell me?’
‘Something that you won’t want me to sell to anyone else, that’s for sure. You see, I have a pretty good idea who is behind those killings in St Pauli.’
‘The Angel?’
‘Now, Frau Achtenhagen, we both know it’s not the Angel — not the original Angel, anyway. I have a pretty good idea who killed those two men last month and it certainly wasn’t the original Angel. But that does bring me to my second point. The most important one and I know you will pay big time to stop me selling it elsewhere. I know the identity of the original Angel. I know her name, where she lives, what she does. I even know why she killed all those men in the nineties.’
‘Really? And how do you know that?’ Sylvie Achtenhagen scrabbled through the shooting schedules and report notes on her desk until she found a pad and pencil.
‘It used to be my job to know things. About people. I worked for the Ministry for State Security in the German Democratic Republic.’
‘You’re ex-Stasi? Why the hell should I pay some ex-Stasi scum for information about murders in Hamburg?’
‘Because I’m a forward-thinking kind of guy. Always have been. I was based in the Ministry’s headquarters, in Berlin-Lichtenberg. I was there right up until the fifteenth of January nineteen ninety. There was a mob outside the gates ready to burst in and everyone was busy shredding files. When the shredders couldn’t cope, they started to rip them up by hand. It was futile. So many files. Too many.’
‘Is there a point to this, Herr…? Listen, what is your name? If you want me to pay you for your story, then I need to know your name.’
‘No, you don’t. I’m not naive. You people pay anonymous sources all the time. And we both know that you won’t be paying me through the usual channels. However, if it makes you feel better about it you can call me Siegfried. It has a nice Wagnerian ring to it, doesn’t it?’ He started to laugh, but his laughter fractured into a crackling, bubbling bout of coughing. That’s more than a cold or flu, thought Sylvie. ‘Just listen to what I have to say,’ he continued breathlessly when his coughing had subsided. ‘Like I said, when everyone else was shredding I was thinking ahead. I took a file. It doesn’t look like much: there’s not a lot of information in it other than a list of names of people on a training programme. A very special training programme. And the file also named the top three students. The ones who made the grade.’
‘Fascinating though this all is,’ said Sylvie, ‘what the hell has any of it got to do with the Angel killings?’
‘Everything. One of these names is the name of the original Angel, and it is my guess that the current St Pauli killer is one of the others. This is a file that I know you must have. And I will sell you the file.’ He paused. ‘For two hundred and fifty thousand euros.’
Sylvie laughed loudly. ‘You have got to be joking. No story is worth that to the station. And certainly not some file on Stasi snoops that I still don’t see having any relevance to these murders. This is old news. No one is interested in the Stasi and the HVA any more.’
There was silence on the other end of the line.
‘Hello?’ said Achtenhagen.
‘If you thought I was joking — or if you thought this was all nonsense — then you would have hung up by now. But you didn’t because you know that it’s the truth. I want two hundred and fifty thousand euros. If I don’t get it I will pass this information on to another broadcaster or the press. And the police. You built your career on the Angel killings, Frau Achtenhagen. Are you really going to let someone else take that all away from you? I will call back in a couple of days. In the meantime I’ll give you something on account. Check your email.’
The phone went dead.
Sylvie Achtenhagen hung up the phone and stared at it as if it would give up some answers. On her desktop computer she opened up her office email. There were several messages for her but all of them were either internal or work-related. None was from an anonymous source. She waited ten minutes and tried again: still nothing. The idea struck her that perhaps he had sent it to her personal email account, but she dismissed the thought almost immediately: only a few friends and colleagues had her private email address. But there was no harm in checking.
It was there. A message from Siegfried.
There were ways of tracing emails, sourcing ISP addresses, but Sylvie knew that if Siegfried was an ex-Stasi operative then he would have covered his tracks. The free account could have been set up anywhere and the email sent from a cyber-cafe or WiFi hotspot. Achtenhagen opened it. There was no message, just a single name: Georg Drescher. She saw there was an attachment and she opened it. Three colour photographs, scanned in side by side. No names. Each photo was a head-and-shoulders shot of a different girl, aged, Achtenhagen guessed, between fifteen and twenty. The photographs were formal shots for a state ID card or passport. The hairstyle of one indicated they were of twenty-odd years’ vintage. Two of the girls were blonde, the third a brunette, although she had striking blue eyes. There was something disturbing about their faces: a frightening void. It went beyond the usual lack of personality projected from an official-pass portrait. The eyes were dead. Emotionless. Particularly the girl in the middle. As Sylvie stared at her image, something twisted at her gut.
‘Siegfried’ had told her that one of these girls was the Angel of St Pauli. And as her eyes passed from one blank face to the next, she knew that he had told her the truth.
11
Emily would be here soon. Then everything in his life would start to make sense again. Peter Claasens had never understood women. He had never really tried, simply because it seemed like too much work.
He had been married for fifteen years and had three children, two of them daughters, but the female world remained a dark continent for Claasens. His wife, in particular, was still a mystery to him. She had turned from the pretty, quiet, unassuming girl he had unintentionally got pregnant to a shrew who nagged him about every evening he spent away from the family home, whether it was business or otherwise. Claasens had to admit, if grudgingly, that his wife had some grounds for her behaviour. Throughout his fifteen years of marriage he had been consistently unfaithful. He had taken great pride, however, in being discreet. Tactful. If his wife had suspicions, then that was
