JF01 - Blood Eagle Read Free

should go unnoticed. Her terror had been a lonely terror. Her death – a death he could not imagine, no matter how graphically it was laid out before him – had been desolate, solitary, in a universe filled with only the cold violence of her killer. He looked beyond the devastation of her body to the face. It was spattered with blood; the mouth gaped slightly and the eyes were open. There was no look of terror: no fear nor hate nor even peace. It was an expressionless mask that gave no concept of the personality that had once lived behind it. Möller, the pathologist, masked and bunny-suited in his white forensic kit, was examining the sliced-open abdomen. He gestured impatiently for Fabel to move back.
    Fabel pulled his attention away from the body. The corpse wasn’t just a physical object, it was a temporal entity: a point in time, an event. It represented the moment that the murder had been committed and, in the sealed scene of crime, everything around it belonged either to the time before or to the time after that moment. He scanned the room, trying to imagine it without the swirl of police and forensic technicians. It was small but uncluttered. There was a lack of personality about it, as if it were a functional space rather than a home. A small, faded photograph sat on the dressing table by the door, propped against the lamp; the photograph was conspicuous as the only truly ‘personal’ personal effect in the room. There was a print on the wall, a female nude reclining, eyes half closed in an attitude of erotic ecstasy: not something a woman would usually pick for her own enjoyment. A wide, full-length mirror, fixed to the wall which divided the room from the room beyond, which Fabel surmised would have to be the kitchen, reflected the bed. He noticed a small wicker bowl on the bedside table: it was filled with condoms of various colours. He turned to Anna Wolff.
    ‘Hooker?’
    ‘Looks like it, although she isn’t … wasn’t anyone Davidwache vice knew about.’ Anna’s face was pale beneath the shock of dark hair. Fabel noticed she was making an effort not to look in the direction of the devastated corpse. ‘But we do know the guy who called in.’
    ‘Oh yes?’
    ‘A guy called Klugmann. He’s ex-Polizei Hamburg.’
    ‘An ex-cop?’
    ‘In fact he’s an ex-Mobiles Einsatz Kommando officer. He claims that he was a friend … he has the lease on the flat.’
    ‘“Claims”?’
    ‘The local boys reckon he must have been her pimp.’ It was Paul who answered.
    ‘Whoa, hold on …’ Fabel’s impatient expression implied he held Paul responsible for his confusion. ‘You said this guy is a former Mobiles Einsatz Kommando member and now he’s a pimp?’
    ‘We think he may well be. He worked with the MEK special-operations unit attached to the Organised Crime Division, but he was kicked out.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Apparently he developed a taste for the goods.’ It was Anna Wolff who answered. ‘He was caught with a small amount of cocaine and sacked. He was charged and got off with a suspended sentence. The Staatsanwalt prosecutor was cagey about sending an MEK member to prison and anyway it was only a few grams of coke … personal use, he claimed.’
    ‘You seem to know the story pretty well.’
    Anna laughed. ‘While Paul and I were waiting for you at Davidwache, we got the whole story from one of the guys there. Klugmann was involved in a couple of raids in St Pauli. Typical surprise attacks on Turkish Mafia drugs factories by MEK special units. Both times the premises were as clean as a whistle – they’d obviously been tipped off. Because they were joint operations with Davidwache KriPo, the MEK tried to pin the blame on Davidwache for being loose with security. After Klugmann was busted it all fitted together.’
    ‘He bought his drugs with something other than cash?’
    ‘That’s what they reckon. The MEK tried to prove he’d been passing information on to the Ulugbay organisation but