Brother Grimm by Craig Russell

Author:Craig Russell [Russell, Craig]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781446473962
Google: qTJjE7v1YAYC
Amazon: B004WOE64G
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2006-01-01T13:00:00+00:00

32.

2.40 p.m., Tuesday, 30 March: Bergedorf, Hamburg

Fabel misjudged the house numbers and parked too far down Ernst-Mantius-Strasse. During the course of his short walk, he passed three imposing villas, each presenting its own subtly different expression of wealth. Here he was in Bergedorf, at the other side of the city from Blankenese, yet he was again being presented with substantial reminders that Hamburg is Germany’s richest city – and of the limits of his own salary.

Although part of Hamburg, Bergedorf had its own identity and was known as the ‘city within a city’. And this was the Bergedorfer Villenviertel – the villa quarter – where each of the properties that Fabel strolled past was worth several million Euros. Fabel checked the number of each villa he passed until he had the one he sought. Like its neighbours, it was three storeys high. The walls were limewashed with a discreet blue-grey against which the white decorative plasterwork stood out clean and fresh. One of the lower-level rooms jutted out into the garden, and its roof formed a balcony for the room above. Blue and white canopies optimistically shaded the windows from a sun that had yet to make its presence sufficiently felt.

When Fabel rang the doorbell, it was answered by a massive man with coal-black eyes. His thick dark hair was heavily flecked with white and swept back from a broad forehead that loomed above heavy brow ridges. The wide, heavy jaw jutted a little too much underneath the fleshy mouth. If it hadn’t been for the fire of a dark intelligence that burned in the eyes, the look would have been almost Neanderthal.

‘Kriminalhauptkommissar Fabel?’ The man in the doorway smiled.

Fabel smiled back. ‘Thanks for seeing me, Herr Weiss …’

Gerhard Weiss stepped back, pulling the door wider and indicating that Fabel should enter. Fabel had seen Weiss’s photograph on the cover of Die Märchenstrasse: it had been a good likeness, but it had not indicated the author’s great height. His stature was easily the equal of Olsen’s: Fabel estimated that Weiss was at least two metres five. Fabel was relieved to be out of Weiss’s shadow when the author led him to a study off the entrance hall and, having asked Fabel to sit, took his own place behind his desk.

The study was vast; Fabel guessed it was the main room at floor level and it was clearly the one which supported the balcony above. Everything was rich, dark wood of varying tones: the enormous desk looked as if it had consumed half a rainforest of mahogany and all but one of the walls were lined, floor to ceiling, with fully stocked walnut bookshelves. Only the floor was of a lighter wood, probably red oak, Fabel guessed. The ceiling downlighters were switched on, as was Weiss’s desk light, casting pools of brightness on the various wooden surfaces. This extra illumination was needed, even now in the afternoon: it was as if the dark, polished wood in the study sucked up the daylight from the French windows that opened out on to the garden and the street beyond.

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