‘Why did you do what you did to Robert Gerdes?’
‘His name wasn’t Gerdes.’ There was no anger in her voice. There was nothing in her voice. Or in her eyes as she spoke. ‘His name was Georg Drescher and he was a major in the Stasi.’
‘Why did you do what you did to him?’
‘I thought you said we would only talk about this later,’ she said. She placed her hands on the metal surface. Her fingers were long and slim. He noticed how clean her fingernails were, and then remembered that Brauner’s forensics team would have scraped beneath them for trace evidence. Fabel found it difficult to imagine those fingers committing the horrors he had witnessed in her flat.
‘I want to go back,’ she said.
‘Go back where? To the apartment?’
‘To the hospital.’
‘How can you go back to the hospital if you’re not a patient there?’ asked Fabel. He pointed again to the photograph. ‘This is the patient. Margarethe is the patient. You say you’re not Margarethe.’
‘That’s where I see my sister. Where I talk to her. I visit her. Now I can visit her all the time.’
Fabel sighed and gathered up the papers. ‘I think we really should wait until later.’
‘I want to go back now,’ she repeated, but there was no insistence in her voice. ‘To the hospital.’
‘I’m afraid you won’t be going back for some time. You’re going to have to stay with us for a while.’ Fabel stood up.
‘I want to go back. To the hospital.’ Margarethe stood up too. Fabel held his hand out to stop her. ‘You have to remain sitting, Margarethe. Stay here. The officer will take you back to your cell.’
Margarethe’s hand seized Fabel’s wrist and he was amazed at the strength in the slender fingers. He moved his other hand to free himself but was stunned by the blow she delivered to his forehead with the heel of her free hand. He heard the uniformed officer rush forward. Margarethe grabbed Fabel by the hair and rammed his face into the metal table as she used him for leverage and swung a high kick at the other policeman’s head. Fabel heard the uniformed cop slam into the interview-room wall and gasp for breath. He felt her fingers probe under his arm to find his service SIG-Sauer automatic but the anti-snatch holster resisted her tugging. He thrust his weight against her and she fell onto the floor. Despite the adrenalin surging through his system, he noticed how gracefully she fell, rolled and sprang back to her feet. The other cop was pulling himself to his feet and he launched himself from the wall at her. It was a clumsy move and she dodged him easily, slashing him across the throat with the flat of her hand. Fabel made to draw his weapon and she leaped across the table at him, hitting him at chest height with her knee. His head slammed painfully against the wall and he heard his automatic clatter on the floor. The door next to him suddenly burst open and Werner, Anna and two uniformed officers rushed into the room.
‘Get my gun!’ yelled Fabel.
He pulled himself to his feet in time to see Margarethe slam a fist into Werner’s face. Anna Wolff got behind her and wrapped an arm around her throat in a tight grip. Margarethe slammed her elbow into Anna’s ribs but Anna didn’t let go. Instead, she let herself drop, her weight pulling Margarethe to the floor. Werner and the other officers threw themselves onto her and, after a few seconds of desperate struggling, Margarethe was handcuffed.
‘Yours, I believe…’ Fabel looked up to see Karin Vestergaard staring down on him, his service automatic in her extended hand.
‘Thanks,’ said Fabel and allowed her to help him up. ‘That went well, I thought…’ He felt something trickle down his forehead and when he gingerly reached up to touch it, his fingertips were wet with blood.
Werner, Anna and the others hoisted Margarethe to her feet. She looked directly at Fabel and the look chilled him. There was no rage, no hatred, just the same emptiness in the eyes that he had noticed when he’d first entered the interview room. It was as if the intense violence that had just exploded there had simply never happened.
‘Get her back to her cell,’ said Fabel. ‘And keep her restrained.’ The uniforms ushered Margarethe, who didn’t even seem to be breathing hard, from the room. Anna and Werner stayed behind. There was a trickle of blood from Werner’s nostril.
‘You should get that looked at,’ said Vestergaard, nodding towards Fabel’s head.
‘I think I should…’ said Fabel, taking the folded handkerchief that Vestergaard handed him and holding it to his head. ‘You did well, Anna. She took some taking down.’
‘A woman’s touch. I thought it looked like you and Grandad here needed help.’ Anna grinned knowingly at Werner. ‘What with you having your asses kicked by a girl.’
‘How’s the uniform?’ asked Fabel.
‘He’ll be fine,’ said Werner, dabbing the bleeding nostril with the back of his hand. ‘He’s going to have one hell of a sore throat, that’s for sure.’
‘Get him to the hospital,’ said Fabel. ‘Any blow to the airway can be very dangerous and she knew what she was doing.’ He leaned against the interview-room wall and drew a deep breath. ‘Shit… she knew what she was doing.’
‘I gather that’s what Dr Kopke, the Chief Doctor from the Mecklenburg state hospital, wanted to tell you. He was on the phone again… when you were in there with psycho-girl.’
‘I’ll phone him,’ said Fabel. ‘But first, could someone get me some codeine and a plaster for my head…’
4
‘Where have you got her now?’ The voice on the other end of the connection sounded genuinely anxious.
‘Safely back in her cell, Herr Doctor,’ said Fabel. ‘Where she can do no harm.’
‘I wouldn’t count on it,’ said Kopke. He had a deep voice. A little scratchy. Fabel heard a metallic click and a crackle over the connection. A cigarette being lit. A medical man should know better, thought Fabel. ‘I really did want to warn you before you tried to interview her.’
‘I didn’t get the message-’ Fabel started to say, but Kopke cut him off.
‘She’s killed again?’
‘Yes. A male victim. And she castrated him.’
‘What was his name?’ Kopke’s tone was more demand than question.
‘I can’t-’
‘Was the victim called Georg Drescher? Or did Margarethe claim he was Georg Drescher?’
‘I can’t confirm or deny the identity of the victim, you should know that.’
‘Look, Herr Principal Commissar, you and I can play games and more people can die, or we can be straight with each other and maybe save a few lives. What will it be?’
‘What is it you have to tell me, Dr Kopke?’
‘First of all, you need to make sure that Margarethe is confined with maximum security.’ There was the sound of a blown-out breath and Fabel imagined the cigarette smoke billowing around the unseen psychiatrist. ‘You should have her watched by no fewer than two, ideally three, guards. Secondly, do what you can to make your demands sound like requests. She will respond with maximum hostility to any suggestion that you are commanding her to follow your will. And, trust me, Herr Chief Commissar, that hostility will be very professionally directed.’
‘I’ve already got the picture,’ said Fabel, involuntarily touching the gauze taped to his forehead.
‘Ah…’ Again there was the sound of a cigarette being drawn upon, followed by a hasty exhalation. ‘I thought you might. I also need you to get a court order over to me as soon as possible so that I can legally transfer the records of Margarethe Paulus’s treatment to you. I have tapes and video of my sessions with her and, trust me, you will want to hear all of them.’
‘In the meantime,’ said Fabel, ‘how about a little unofficial summary?’
‘Margarethe Paulus was a child of the GDR,’ said Kopke. ‘Her parents, from what I could gather, were bohemian, freethinker types who fell foul of the authorities. They ended up in prison and both died of cancer before reunification. Margarethe was taken into care by the state. It’s what she says happened to her afterwards that should interest you. Before I go any further, I have to tell you a little about her medical history. When she was still in the care of the state orphanage she started to have severe headaches. She would have been about eight at the time. Margarethe was admitted to hospital and it was suspected that she was suffering from a brain tumour. The operation revealed a growth in her brain which was subsequently declared benign, but the nature of the tumour is in
