a division of MCA, Inc., New York, NY 10019. Copyright renewed. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Warner/Chappell Music, Inc., and Songwriter’s Guild of America as agent for Jay Gorney Music and Glocca Morra Music: An excerpt from the lyrics to “Brother Can You Spare a Dime” by J. Gorney and E. Y. Harburg.
Copyright 1932 by Warner Bros. Inc. Copyright renewed.
All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.: An excerpt from the lyrics to “Love for Sale” by Cole Porter. Copyright © 1957 Warner Bros. Inc. (renewed). An excerpt from the lyrics to “She’s Funny That Way” by Billie Holiday. Copyright 1928 Chappell & Co. An excerpt from the lyrics to “I’ve Got a Crush on You” by George Gershwin—lea Gershwin. Copyright 1930 Warner Bros. Music (renewed) New World Music Corp.
All rights reserved. Used by permission.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
ISBN 0 7493 0555 K
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cox and Wyman Ltd, Reading, Berks
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed
“What is past is prologue.”
William Shakespeare
BOOK ONE
“What other dungeon is so dark
as one’s own heart!
What jailer so inexorable
as one’s self.”
Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851
The creature was a terrifying specter. A bizarre distortion, part human, part animal, this scarred, panting, wild-eyed obscenity seemed proof that all things in nature are not perfect and that even God in his infinite wisdom is sometimes capable of a monstrous blunder.
The face was a network of red, ridged scars, one of which stitched his left eye shut. The nose was a crushed lump, its nostrils flattened against a pale, cadaverous face like the snout of a pig. Thick lips revealed tortured, broken teeth which overlapped as if, in a divine afterthought, had been jammed haphazardly into the gums. His hair was a thick, blond, twisted mane that tumbled down both sides of his face, framing and accentuating its abnormalities.
His body had not escaped the ravages of natural disorder. He was short, barely five feet tall, bent over by a bowed spine, his shoulders jammed against his neck in a perpetual shrug, one foot turned inward and slanted so he walked on its side in a curious limp that lacked rhythm and cadence.
Misery permeated every pore and sinew of this tortured being.
His one good eye hinted at the angry soul encased in this crippled cage of skin and bone; a fearful gray, glittering orb, unable to conceal his unbridled hatred for the normal humans who, on those rare times when he had been seen, were so revolted by his hideous deformities that they turned their own eyes away from him in horror.
Only his arms and hands seemed to have escaped the uncontrolled genes which had molded him into a human disaster. His arms were powerful and muscular, his hands long, expressive, even delicate. And yet as if their beauty reminded him of what might have been he kept them tucked away under his armpits, making his peculiar gait even more ominous.
A night predator, he emerged only after dark to forage for food, to steal what little money he required.
And to kill.
Shrouded by a long, dark green loden coat, its hood concealing his face, he stalked the shadows, dodging the police and the brownshirts, looking for victims. His rage was such that he hunted only the most beautiful and innocent-looking women, and when he found them he killed them, disfiguring their bodies with a ragged butcher knife as if he were getting even with the fates for what they had done to him.
In this, the spring of 1932, he had butchered no less than two dozen women over a period of three years.
The Berlin police were confounded by this monster serial killer who seemed to vanish in the city’s shadows.
