Angel From Hell (Anna Fehrbach Series Book 1)

  ANGEL FROM HELL

  Christopher Nicole

  © Christopher Nicole 2006

  Christopher Nicole has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 2006 by Severn House.

  This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Media Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  No table of contents entries found.

  ‘Angels and ministers of grace defend us!

  Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn’d,

  Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,

  Be thy intents wicked or charitable

  Thou comest in such a questionable shape

  That I will speak to thee.’

  Hamlet, William Shakespeare

  Prologue

  I parked the car before the large, wrought-iron gates. The mountain rose in front of me. It had once been terraced to grow vines but these had long been abandoned and it was now a wilderness of overgrown shrubs and pine trees. The drive beyond the gate curved up to the house, only just visible through a screen of weeping willows. From the small stone hut, just within the gates, I could hear the hum of the pool circulating pump, although from below I could not see the water. I pressed the phone button.

  ‘Si?’

  My Spanish is not very good. ‘My name is Christopher Nicole.’ I spoke very slowly and carefully. ‘I have an appointment with the Countess.’

  ‘Ah, yes, si, si. The Countess is expecting you.’

  There was a click and the gates slowly swung open. I got back into the car and drove up to the small parking area behind the house. There I faced the rear of the building, which appeared to be all on one level. I got out and the backdoor opened to reveal a short, dark-haired young woman. ‘Come in, please, Señor Nicole.’

  I entered a spacious kitchen and then a comfortable lounge with a dining area. To my left a corridor led away, presumably to the bedrooms. In front of me, glass doors gave access to an equally comfortable naya, from which there was a magnificent view of the Jalon Valley and river, several hundred feet down. In the foreground, some twenty feet below me, there was a large swimming pool in which the water was bubbling. I also saw at a glance that off this lower terrace there was another living area.

  But this evidence of refined, comfortable living was quite insignificant beside the woman.

  She sat in a cane armchair looking out over the view. She wore pale blue pants with a loose white shirt and sandals, and looked cool; because of the glare she also wore dark glasses. I knew she had to be well into her eighties, and her hair was both thinning and absolutely white; she wore it cut short, in some contrast to the old photographs I had seen of her. But her bone structure remained flawless, her feet were still shapely, and even sitting down there could be no doubt that she was a tall woman.

  I had searched for Anna Fehrbach for several years. This was as much to gratify my curiosity as for my desire to write a book about her. She had, no doubt wisely, elected to disappear after her last great exploit. That was a long time in the past. But there had always been strands in the wind. The search had not, of course, been a full-time occupation; I have a living to earn. But whenever I had a few weeks off, I had hunted through archives, newspapers and even talked to people who claimed to have known her – however truthfully, I could not tell.

  And now there I was, actually standing before her. I could hardly believe that my quest might have ended.

  She smiled at me, took off her sunglasses and the day suddenly felt even brighter; I had heard so much about her eyes. They were a soft blue, welcoming, almost summoning: could they really suddenly turn into shafts of steel? She extended her hand; she wore several valuable rings as well as a diamond-encrusted gold bracelet on her wrist. ‘Forgive me for not getting up,’ she said, her voice low. ‘I get a little stiff nowadays. Do sit down. Encarna, bring some . . .?’ She looked at me. Instinctively I looked at my watch, and she gave a throaty gurgle of amusement.

  ‘Of course, you are English. My first real lover was English,’ she said nostalgically. ‘But it is eleven o’clock. I am sure you could have a glass of champagne.’

  I sat opposite her. ‘That would be very nice, Countess.’ Encarna hurried off.

  ‘It’s very good of you to see me.’

  She shrugged. ‘I felt in the mood. Have you come to kill me?’

  My head jerked. ‘Eh?’

  Another of her gorgeous smiles. ‘It has to happen, eventually. Although they may leave it too late.’

  ‘They? You mean you know them?’

  ‘Oh, I do not know them individually. I only know they are there.’

  ‘But you know who, or where, they are coming from?’

  Encarna placed two glasses of champagne on the table between us.

  ‘I do not even know that,’ Anna Fehrbach said. ‘It could be any of a hundred sources, a hundred people out for revenge. I have made a lot of enemies, as I think you know, Mr Nicole.’ She raised her glass. ‘Your health.’

  ‘And yours, Countess.’ I sipped. ‘But, knowing that there are people out there who wish you dead, you can sit here calmly, in an isolated villa, with a single maidservant?’

  ‘I am not very easy to kill. A lot of people have found that out.’

  ‘And if I had come here to kill you . . .?’

  Her hand moved so quickly it was hardly discernable, and I found myself looking down the barrel of a small automatic pistol. ‘Oh, you would die first.’ She smiled. ‘But I was only joking. I know you are not an assassin.’ She restored the pistol to its original position beside her cushion. ‘When you wrote me asking for this interview, I had you investigated. Besides, I have read some of your novels. Do you intend to write about me?’

  I was still catching my breath. ‘I would like to.’

  ‘Well, then, I think it is about time. You have a tape recorder?’

  I took it from my briefcase and laid it on the table.

  ‘Excellent. You will stay for lunch, and perhaps for dinner, and I will talk to you. But you must let me tell my story in my own way. Do not fear, it will be the whole truth, I promise. But I must not be interrupted by questions.’

  ‘Agreed. But before you start, may I ask three questions?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘Were you truly the most beautiful woman of your time?’

  ‘My contemporaries are all dead. You will have to look at old photographs and form your own judgement.’

  ‘I have some of them here.’

  ‘Well, then?’

  ‘You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.’

  ‘Thank you. What a pity I did not meet you sixty years ago. There were two other questions?’

  ‘Have you really had a hundred lovers?’

  ‘I have never kept a record. You will have to add them up as we go along. And your last question?’

  I drew a deep breath. ‘And have you really killed more than a hundred people?’

  Anna Fehrbach smiled.

  Chapter One – The Angel

  The tramp of booted feet rumbled through the streets of Vienna. It shrouded the Schonbrunn, rose amongst the many other palaces and churches which filled the ancient capital of the Holy Roman Empire. It obliterated thought and memory, left no doubt in the minds of the citizens – not only of Vienna, but of all Austria – that a new era had arrived: the Anschluss!

  Few ordinary Austrians wished to be united with Germany, and certainly not with Nazi Germany, yet such was the immensity of the event, and the fascination with the thousands of uniformed men, marching in perfect go
ose-stepping discipline and unison, steel helmets straight on their heads, their officers with drawn swords, that the streets were packed with spectators. Some were weeping; some merely looked dejected; others thought it prudent to wave swastika flags and cheer. All were well wrapped up against the chill breeze in this early March of 1938, and all were inquisitive as well as apprehensive: it was rumoured that the Fuehrer himself would soon arrive.

  Annaliese Fehrbach could not help but share in the excitement, even if, although she herself was not interested in politics, she knew that her father was against the union. But all those handsome, dedicated young men . . . She stood at the back of the crowd, her five feet ten inches of height enabling her to see over most of them. And now, when she turned away to go home, those around her willingly parted, happy to have the opportunity to look at her.

  Annaliese was quite used to this, and smiled at them all, even those louts who sought to brush up against her or tried a surreptitious squeeze of her hips. As it was a Saturday she was wearing a dress rather than her convent uniform. In the new coat she had been given for Christmas, with its fake-fur collar, she looked older than her seventeen years, her beauty enhanced by her self confidence. She knew she was beautiful. She had been told so often enough, even had she not had the evidence of her own mirror. Her flawlessly carved, slightly aquiline features, her waist-length dark yellow hair, her height indicating her long legs – no less than the fullness of her blouse – suggested the maturity of her body. A look from her huge, soft blue eyes could turn a man’s knees to water. Mama often said that she was the direct descendant of a Valkyrie, although Annaliese hoped that her mission in life would be less dramatic.

  Because, for all her looks, the most striking thing about her was her smile, which lit up her face and turned those eyes into glowing sapphires. That smile she was using now, to ease her passage until she gained a side street and could hurry home, arriving slightly breathless.

  ‘Where have you been?’ demanded Papa, who had also taken the day off work, no doubt to concentrate on another seething editorial in the privacy of his study.

  ‘I went to see the parade,’ Annaliese explained, taking off her coat.

  ‘You went to see the blackest day in Austrian history,’ Papa announced.

  ‘Well, Papa, if it is so, then it is also surely an historic day, and should be remembered.’

  Johann Fehrbach snorted. But he knew it was impossible to argue with his eldest daughter: he understood her intellectual superiority. As for disciplining her, he had not even been able to shout at her, much less strike her, since she had been ten, when he had sought to spank her and had found himself impaled upon those suddenly flint-like blue eyes, the flaring nostrils that were the only signs of anger he had ever seen in her. He put it down to her Irish mother. Many people, most of all her own family and colleagues, had been amazed and concerned when such a distinguished journalist as Jane Haggerty had decided to abandon her career in order to marry an obscure Viennese reporter. But Vienna in 1919 had been a strange, chaotic, tragic place, where people had been dying of starvation in the streets because of the continuing Allied blockade, and great businesses lay empty amidst the financial rubble of the collapsed Habsburg Empire. It had been a cauldron that a famous investigative reporter like Jane Haggerty had been unable to resist. But Jane, possessing all the passion of her ancestors, had been as eager to investigate life itself as the misery of the aftermath of the greatest of wars. Johann did not suppose Vienna itself had had anything to do with this; he had discovered that she was not a virgin on the night they had first shared her bed. That meant nothing to him. To be allowed to lie in the naked arms of the most vibrantly exciting and beautiful woman he had ever met, to be allowed to forget for one night the horror with which he had been surrounded, had been a glimpse of paradise.

  Having been given so much, he had yet been astonished when, a month later, her assignment completed, on the night before she was due to leave for Paris, and he had been bracing himself for a return to misery, she had said, quite casually, ‘You know, Jo-Jo, I’d like to pack it in and stay here. If you’ll have me.’

  ‘Why?’ he had asked in bewilderment. ‘You are everything. I am . . .’

  She had placed her finger on his lips. ‘You are everything that I wish.’

  *

  Obviously there had been more to it than that, even if he well understood that her animal instincts were often uppermost and he had been a handsome and virile man. He had only slowly realized that her principal aim in life was creation. Jane’s dream had been to take a man of her very own and make him into a star. Johann had never objected to that, even if he had always been astounded by her energy, the way she had taken pregnancy and the mothering of her two daughters in her stride without, it seemed, even drawing breath. It had been a roller-coaster ride, as with her always at his elbow he had soared up the ladder of investigative and denunciatory journalism, often running foul of the government of the moment, especially during the Dollfuss dictatorship, when he had more than once narrowly escaped a prison term. But Jane had always assured him that no sane government would ever lock up a prominent newspaper editor, and she had been right, as with the coming of Schussnigg the threat had receded.

  Until now. He looked at his wife, framed in the doorway. ‘You’ll have gathered that they are actually here.’

  ‘I have ears.’ Jane Fehrbach was forty-eight, but remained a strikingly handsome woman, even if there were grey wisps in her yellow hair. ‘And you went out to see them, miss?’

  ‘Well, it’s an event, isn’t it?’ Annaliese was apprehensive. If she had no fears of her father, she had a healthy respect for her mother’s temper.

  ‘What did they look like?’ asked Katerina who, at fourteen, still suffered from puppy fat, but showed some promise of looking like her sister one day.

  ‘Oh, tremendous,’ Annaliese said, without thinking.

  ‘They are our enemies,’ Jane declared. ‘Union? Austria has been invaded and conquered.’

  ‘This copy is ready.’ Johann stood up. ‘I must get down to the office and see that it goes to press. We may be closed down tomorrow.’

  ‘They wouldn’t dare,’ Jane said. ‘They—’

  The doorbell rang. The Fehrbachs looked at each other. Then there came a heavy knock.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ Johann said.

  Another knock, this time thunderous.

  ‘If we don’t let them in,’ Annaliese said, ‘they will break it down.’ She waited a moment for someone to disagree, but as no one did, she went to the door, turned the key . . . and was hurled backwards as it burst inwards. The backs of her knees struck the wing of an armchair and she tumbled over it into the seat, legs scattered into the air in a most un-lady-like fashion, her skirt riding up to her thighs to expose her stockings. But the four uniformed policemen and their plain-clothes commander ignored her to advance on the three remaining members of the family.

  ‘Johann Fehrbach?’ the inspector demanded.

  Johann stepped forward. ‘I am he. What is the meaning of this outrage?’

  ‘You are under arrest.’ The inspector turned to Jane. ‘You are Frau Fehrbach?’

  ‘Is that not obvious?’ Jane inquired.

  ‘You are under arrest.’ He snapped his fingers, and two of his men came forward, taking the handcuffs from their belts.

  ‘On what charge?’ Jane demanded.

  ‘Treason.’

  ‘Treason? Are you crazy?’ Her arms were pulled behind her back and the handcuffs snapped into place. ‘We are loyal citizens of Austria.’

  ‘But not of the Reich,’ the inspector pointed out, and gestured at the desk. ‘Bring all those papers,’ he told his men. ‘Anything you can find. They will prove their subversive activities.’

  Johann’s wrists had also been secured behind his back. ‘My wife has both Irish and British nationality,’ he said.

  ‘As she is married to you, she is also now a citizen of the Third Reich, and as she assis
ts you in producing your anti-Nazi propaganda she is equally guilty of treason. Take them out.’

  Katerina screamed.

  ‘Shut that brat up,’ the inspector snapped.

  A policeman stepped forward and slapped Katerina across the face. She gave another shriek and staggered.

  ‘You bastard!’ Jane shouted.

  ‘Oh, get them out,’ the inspector said.

  ‘And the children, Herr Inspector?’

  ‘Bring them along. A whipping will do them good.’

  A policeman grasped Katerina’s arm to drag her forward. There was a bruise spreading across her cheek and she was weeping. Another man turned his attention to Annaliese, who had been so horror-stricken by what had been happening that she was only just swinging her feet to the floor and straightening her skirt. Now she muttered, ‘Don’t touch me!’

  He stared at her, but it was more in appreciation than apprehension. ‘Herr Inspector,’ he said, ‘do you not think these girls should be searched? They could be carrying concealed weapons.’

  ‘You are a pederast, Rohmer,’ the inspector remarked. ‘Get them out of here. Then I want this house searched from top to bottom.’

  ‘Yes, Herr Inspector,’ the policeman said regretfully. Katerina was already being marched to the door, sobbing loudly. ‘Come on, darling, up you get.’

  He tucked his fingers into the bodice of Annaliese’s dress, pressing the back of his hand against the soft flesh beneath, and she swung her hand, fingers curved. Her nails slashed into his cheek and blood spurted.

  ‘Bitch!’ he snarled, releasing her bodice to swing his own hand, and have his wrist grasped from behind with a force that nearly jerked him off his feet. The inspector had joined them.

  ‘I do not wish her marked.’

  The policeman snorted. ‘She has cut my cheek. I will have a scar.’

  ‘So you can pretend you went to university.’ The inspector stood above Annaliese, who had retreated as far as she could into the chair, drawing up her legs and clutching her skirt around her knees. Now he stared at her for several seconds, while she started to pant. ‘She is not to go with the others. Take her to my office. Handcuff her, but do not injure her in any way.’