The Ghosts of Altona by Craig Russell

Author:Craig Russell [Russell, Craig]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781780874944
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2015-06-03T17:00:00+00:00

37

Fabel had found fifteen other paintings stored at the back of Traxinger’s storeroom, all featuring Monika Krone as the central figure. It became clear that if there really was such a thing as a muse, then Monika Krone had been Detlev Traxinger’s. But, as canvas after canvas was pulled out, Fabel realized he wasn’t looking at an artist’s inspiration: he was looking at an obsession. These paintings had not been created for display or appreciation; their motivation was something much darker, more compelling and personal. Secretive.

Many of the paintings had simply been slightly different versions of the graveyard scene. These alternative versions had been no better nor worse executed than the one Traxinger had stowed at the very back of his collection, and the variations were barely noticeable – as if the artist had been trying to capture something very particular and had not been entirely satisfied that he had succeeded. Fabel could see that while Monika remained constant, with only the minutest alteration in the tilt of her head, the angle of a pale thigh or the brightness of the moonlight, there were slight changes in the background details.

In contrast, the non-graveyard paintings were all wildly different: Monika in period costumes, one strangely disquieting one of Monika against a background of writhing vegetation, like a moving jungle, with a whip in her gloved hands. Fabel had decided he would come back later and examine the paintings in greater detail. In the meantime he took a picture of the graveyard nude with his cell phone before calling the Presidium to get a forensic photographer to document them all.

*

At eleven the following morning, Fabel assembled the whole team in the Murder Commission’s briefing room. He had first emailed a report to each of them on what he had discovered at the gallery, including a photograph of the graveyard painting featuring the nude with Monika Krone’s face, asking for each of them to start following a specific line of inquiry. But the significance of two major homicide investigations converging – added to a possible connection to the child-murderer Jost Schalthoff – was of such magnitude that the whole team had to be briefed together.

Fabel had instructed that both inquiry boards – the Traxinger and the Krone cases – be wheeled into the briefing room and set side by side. When he entered the room, Fabel was taken aback to see the print that had hung in Schalthoff’s apartment, sitting propped up against the metal support of the incident board.

‘I didn’t think we’d ever be able to locate that,’ he said, turning to Anna. ‘I imagined it would have been disposed of along with the rest of Schalthoff’s furniture. However did you manage to track it down?’

‘It was in the evidence store,’ said Anna.

‘Evidence? But why would a picture be kept as evidence?’

Anna held Fabel’s gaze, trying but failing to hide her awkwardness. ‘Blood spatter,’ she said flatly.

‘Oh,’ said Fabel. He looked again at the print but could see no hint of his two-year-old blood on it.

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