The priestess slipped the gown from her body and stepped naked into the pool. She held the sacrificial knife tight in her fist, which in turn she held pressed to her breast. The blade glittered in the bright day. Such a small knife: he had been a warrior and could not equate this ornament with the ending of his life. The priestess stood before him, the water around the tight circle of her waist; dark against her pale skin. She reached up and laid the palm of her hand on his forehead, incanting the words of the ritual. He succumbed, as he knew he must, to the gentle pressure of her hand and he lay back into the water. His head sank slowly and the water pulled a murky, peat-coloured curtain across the light of the day.
The two attendants still held his upper arms firm, and he now felt other hands on his body, on his legs. His eyes were open. All around him the bog swirled dark and thick, as if undecided as to which element it truly belonged: earth or water. His golden hair billowed and writhed around his head, its lustre dimmed by the peaty water.
He held his breath. He knew he should not do so, but instinct told him to hold onto the air in his lungs, the life in his body. His lungs started to scream for more air and, for the first time, he pushed against the priestess’s hand. She pushed back only slightly, but the grips on his arms and legs tightened and he felt himself pushed deeper, until the sunken bracken and stones at the bottom of the pool scraped at his back.
The panic that he had sensed hurtling towards him now caught up with him and screamed that there would be no rebirth, no new beginning. Only death. It was his turn to scream, and his cry exploded into a huge cluster of bubbles that frothed through the murk and up to the day that he would never again see. The cold brackish water flooded his mouth and throat. It tasted of soil and worms, of roots and decaying vegetation. Of death. It surged into the protesting lungs. He convulsed and writhed but now more hands were upon him, pressing down on him and binding him to his death.
It was then that he felt the kiss of the priestess’s blade on his throat and the swirl of water around him clouded even darker. Redder.
But he had been wrong: there would, after all, be rebirth. However, before he would again come out into the light of day, more than sixteen centuries would pass, and his golden hair would become changed to a burning red.
Only then would he be reborn. As Red Franz.
3.
October 1985: Twenty Years Before the First Murder.
Nordenham Railway Station, Nordenham, 145 Kilometres West of Hamburg
Nordenham’s main railway station stood elevated on a dyke above the river Weser. It was an October afternoon and a family stood waiting for a train. The large station building, the platform and the latticed ironwork were sharply etched by a late-autumn sun that was bright but lacked any warmth.
They stood – the father, the mother and the child – at the far end of the platform. The father was tall and lean, in his mid-thirties. His longish, thick, almost too-dark hair was brushed severely back from a broad pale brow but rebelled in a fringe of curls that frothed on his coat collar. The black frame of long sideburns, moustache and goatee beard emphasised the paleness of his complexion and the vermilion of his mouth. The mother, too, was talclass="underline" only a few centimetres shorter than the man, with grey-blue eyes and long bone-coloured blonde hair that hung straight from under a knitted woollen hat. She wore a tan ankle-length coat and a vast colourful macrame bag hung on long straps from her shoulder. The boy was about ten, but tall for his age, obviously having inherited his parents’ height. Like his father, he had a pale, sad face under a mop of curling, discordantly black hair.
‘Wait here with the boy,’ the father said firmly but kindly. He pushed back a stray strand of ash-blonde hair that had fallen across the mother’s brow. ‘I’ll approach Piet alone when he arrives. If there’s any sign of trouble, take the boy and get clear of the station.’
The woman nodded determinedly, but a cold bright fear sparkled in her eyes. The man smiled at her and gave her arm a squeeze before moving away from her and the boy. He took up his place in the middle of the platform. A Deutsche Bahn railway worker came out of the maintenance office, dropped down onto the track from the platform, and sauntered diagonally and with complacent arrogance across the rails. A woman in early middle-age, dressed with the expensive tastelessness of the West German bourgeoisie, exited the ticket office and stood about ten metres to the man’s right. The tall, pale man seemed to pay no attention to any of this activity; in reality his eyes followed every move of every individual in the provincial station.
Another figure stepped out of the ticket office and onto the platform. He, too, was a tall, lean man, this time with long blond hair scraped back into a ponytail. His thin, angular face was pock-marked with the ancient scars of a childhood illness. Again, his movements and expression were intended to be casual and disinterested; but, unlike the dark-haired man, there was an intensity, a nervousness, in his eyes and an electric tension in every step he took.
They were now only a metre apart. A broad smile dissolved the dark-haired man’s severe expression like sunshine through clouds.
‘Piet!’ he said enthusiastically but quietly. The blond man did not smile.
‘I told you this was inadvisable,’ said the blond man. His German was tainted with a sibilant Dutch accent. ‘I told you not to come. This was not a good idea at all.’
The dark-haired man did not let the smile fade and shrugged, philosophically. ‘Our whole way of life is inadvisable, Piet, my friend, but it is absolutely necessary. And so is this meeting. God, Piet… it’s great to see you again. Did you bring the money?’
‘There’s been a problem,’ said the Dutchman. The dark-haired man glanced down the platform to the woman and the boy. When he turned back to the Dutchman, the smile had gone.
‘What kind of problem? We need that money to travel. To find and set up a new safe house.’
‘It’s over, Franz,’ said the Dutchman. ‘It’s been over for a long time and we should have accepted that. The others… they feel the same.’
‘The others?’ The dark-haired man snorted. ‘I expect nothing from them. They’re just a bunch of middle-class wankers pretending to be activists. Half-involved and half-afraid. The weak playing at being strong. But you, Piet… I expect more of you.’ He allowed a smile again. ‘Come on, Piet. You can’t give up now. I… we need you.’
‘It’s over. Can’t you see that, Franz? It’s time to put that life behind us. I just can’t do this any more, Franz. I’ve lost my faith.’ The Dutchman took a few steps back. ‘We’ve lost, Franz. We’ve lost.’ He took another few steps back, opening up the space between them. The Dutchman looked anxiously from right to left and the dark-haired man mirrored his glances, but could see nothing. Nonetheless, he felt a tightening in his chest. His hand closed around the Makarov nine-millimetre automatic in his coat pocket. The Dutchman spoke again. His eyes were now wild.
‘I’m sorry, Franz… I’m so sorry…’ He turned and began to run.
It all happened within a matter of seconds, yet time itself seemed impossibly stretched.
The Dutchman was shouting something to someone unseen as he ran. The railwayman leaped towards the mother and son, a glittering black automatic in his outstretched hands. The bourgeois housewife dropped down onto one knee with astonishing agility and produced a handgun from inside her coat. She aimed at the tall dark-haired man and screamed at him to place his hands on his head.