The bird man
The Bird Man is a thriller in the Jack Caffery series, written by the British writer Mo Hayder . The original was published in 1999 under the title Birdman and the German edition in 2000 by Goldmann-Verlag.
Blurb
When Detective Inspector Jack Caffery wants to sleep off his intoxication after a night of sleep, the phone rings: the bodies of five women were found on a wasteland near the Thames. The autopsy reveals that Caffery and his colleagues are dealing with a serial killer whom they call the "bird man". Preliminary investigations show that four of the five victims were drug addicts prostitutes who no one missed.
content
On a spring day in late May 2000 , five mutilated women's bodies were found during construction work on a wasteland near Millennium Dome on the Thames bank in North Greenwich, London . In the beginning it's just a dead woman whose face is badly damaged by a bulldozer during the demolition work. The other four are tracked down using a ground sonar. At first, the identity of the corpses is still unclear and they are therefore numbered consecutively. Number one is still a minor based on a bone examination. Number five is in the worst condition, having suffered severe head injuries from the construction vehicle. Number four is characterized by a Bugs Bunny tattoo. All of them are wearing strikingly heavy make-up , the traces of bondage and their breasts have been mutilated or severed. There are traces of cement dust in the hair . In addition, the investigators conclude that only one victim fought for his life. The others don't. Death was believed to be from an overdose of heroin given by injection into the neck of the girls. They were apparently sedated .
The corpses are dissected by the pathologist Harsha Krishnamurthi. Using the insect activity in the rotting corpses, he tries to determine the time of death. Due to the mysterious circumstances of death that a bird was found in the chest of the corpses, the press gave it the name “Vogelmann”. The perpetrator must appear to be a necrophilic and severely mentally ill person who is able to commit such acts. Everything points to the act of a serial sexual offender. Obviously his disorder has already reached a stage that keeps him going forever. The police found out that the perpetrator had sewn a blonde wig on the head of his victims. A wig that bears a resemblance to that used by actor Michael Caine in his role as transsexual psychiatrist Dr. Robert Elliott in the psychological thriller Dressed to Kill . Finally number five can be identified. Her name is Shellene Craw and leads on the trail of a certain Jerry Henry, called "Gemini", a "wannabe yardie" of Caribbean descent who Detective Diamond believes was her pimp and dealer and thus the prime suspect. “Gemini” works for an unknown client and drives prostitutes for certain parties to the elegant address Crooms Hill, which is located in the residential area of Greenwich. Little by little, the police learn, except for one, the names of the other four girls. The victims Kayleigh Hatch, Petra Spacek, Michelle Wilcox and Shellene Craw (number five) are drug addicted strippers or prostitutes who worked together in the shabby pub “Dog and Bell”. Investigations and interrogations in the scene do not lead to the desired success, as nobody wants to have noticed anything suspicious. There is relatively little interest in investigating sex drive killings in drug addicted prostitutes.
But now the press has also been informed about the series of murders. The Sun tabloid delivers the headline, “ How did this happen again? ”And photos of the victims. Parallels to the Fred West case are drawn. Some consider the “Millennium Ripper”, as he is sometimes called, to be a copycat of the infamous “ Jack the Ripper ”. A police special unit of the AMPI ( Area Major Incident Pool ) led by Detective Inspector Jack Caffery and Detective Superintendent Maddox is charged with investigating this series of murders . Caffery follows a lead into the London district of Greenwich , where he meets the prostitute Joni Marsh and the painter Rebecca, who both share an apartment. Rebecca, called Becky, used to work in the milieu as well. The AMPI team's investigations are hampered by internal ranks of competence, which make policing even more difficult. Clues lead to the trail of Toby Harteveld, who turns out to be an urgent suspect. Toby, the only son of Henrick and Lucilla Harteveld, suffered from sexual delusions in his youth, which he can only put into practice as an adult and wealthy “bon vivant” after the death of his dominant and violent mother. Although he grew up well protected in a noble household, he suffered traumatic experiences that dominated his later abnormality. Due to his mother's contemptuous domination, Toby suffers severe developmental disorders. But neither other family members show him any love or security. For example, during a stay on the Philippine island of Luzon , his father forced him to prove his manhood and entry into adult life by visiting a brothel . Even at this point in time, he can only feel pleasure if he is torturing the victim who is subject to him. Toby Harteveld studied medicine and later made a career at the London hospitals UMDI and St. Dunstan. Due to his training and later occupation, he also acquired anatomical skills in the dissection of corpses. After the death of his parents, he can sell the stake in their pharmaceutical company HCC Pl and becomes financially independent with the millions in proceeds. Now he can pursue his urges undisturbed. His goings-on went unnoticed for a long time as he was an honorable member of London society. He's also inconspicuous and very trustworthy. He holds private “drug parties” to get to know his victims and to make them compliant by administering the finest quality opium . Then he gives them a "final shot" in the neck to kill them. The girls, whose free will no longer exists due to years of heroin abuse, willingly do everything the perpetrator asks them to just to get “high”. Only Petra Specek, the only one who was not addicted to drugs, defends herself violently, so that he can only kill her after a fight and subsequent bondage. The corpses are abused by him for days until they are so badly decomposed that he is forced to dispose of them like "garbage". Meanwhile, Jack Cafferty's private life has become a catastrophe.
At a house party hosted by his fiancée Veronica, his neighbor Ivan Penderecki appears and throws a pile of bones at their feet. Shortly before the party there was a real argument with a scene between Jack and Veronica when he revealed to her that he did not love her. In the meantime the half-Nigerian Peace Nbidi Jackson is killed. The police later found her in a neglected house in a toilet that was clogged with hair debris, condoms , toilet paper and excrement. The drain pipes must be examined for technical reasons. Peace is dissected by Krisnhamurthi. Among other things, the pathologist examines the different stages of development of the Sarcophagidae and Diptera fly maggots that can be found in the flesh wounds of women. Toby Harteveld evades further police investigation by committing suicide and jumping off London Bridge . Shortly after the investigation is closed and the special unit triggers, another victim is found who was mistreated in the same way as by the “bird man”. Susan Lister is kidnapped by the perpetrator, held in a room with pornographic photos and severely abused. He doesn't kill her, but throws the woman upside down in a garbage can, where he leaves her to her fate and approves of her death. She is admitted to the intensive care unit because her life is threatened by the loss of blood and blood poisoning . Doctors fear acute lung and kidney failure . These are Harteveld's accomplices, who actually committed the “Vogelmann” murders.
Slowly the picture of the two perpetrators condenses. The late Harteveld was an educated necrophiliac, which typically did not fit into the police profiler image. His perverse tendency must have developed over the years and erupted about seven months ago. Both perpetrators worked together as a team, whereby the necrophilic perpetrator 1 (Harteveld) carried out the killing and perpetrator 2, who had taken over the preliminary planning and had the girls drive through “Gemini” to Crooms Hill, could only live out his sadistic tendencies on the dead victims . Perpetrator 2, the sadistic rapist , performs decorations, wigs and make-up on the victims. He sticks live birds, zebra finches , into their chests to simulate their heartbeat . Now perpetrator 1 is dead and perpetrator 2 takes over the active role. Offender 2 is convinced that he can be angry with women and take revenge on them. It is the extremely unattractive and obese Malcolm Bliss, a guard at the UMDS hospital. Bliss suffers from strong instincts and is addicted to sex . His previous experience had only been with prostitutes. When they meet Harteveld, both discover their soulmates. Bliss was initially a serial rapist who raped a number of hitchhikers in parking lots and in the woods. He also wanted to rape Joni Marsh, but then felt affection for the drunk woman and drove her home. This grew into an obsession with Joni at Bliss.
Harteveld and Bliss decide to work together from now on. Harteveld as “Lord” and Bliss as his devoted assistant. Bliss goes to the "Dog and Bell" and spies out girls in the pub in his unobtrusive way. The choice mostly falls on girls with the weakest attachments, who are heavily addicted to drugs and are therefore no longer wanted by their families. He bought them drinks and listened to their problems under the pretense of sympathy. If they are dizzy enough, he sends them to Harteveld's “private parties” with the prospect of free drug use, where they are then murdered. Then, over time, Bliss developed an aversion to her modus operandi, as Harteveld was always the first to be allowed to sexually abuse the corpses. In order to overcome the disgust for the already existing use, he washes the dead women with curd soap so that he can then serve his needs to them. In his imagination, the corpses should represent the object of his desire, Joni Marsh, whose likeness adorns his entire apartment. The corpses are frozen, thawed again as required, used for sexual activities, their make-up refreshed and given a wig reminiscent of Joni's hair. Bliss feels aroused and masturbates on the dead women who have long since gone through rigor mortis . Large breasts remind him of Joni's breast surgery and still trigger strong aggression in him. During these tantrums he spat at and beats the corpses. Now Harteveld is dead and he can finally take over his role. Bliss wants to celebrate his birthday with Joni and invites the again drunk woman to his apartment at 34A Brazil Street in Lewisham (London) . She agrees, but vehemently defends himself when he tries to get closer. A scuffle ensues in which Joni is overwhelmed, tied up and captured. In an amateurish operation, he removes her silicone breasts . Meanwhile, Jack has rabid sex with Becky in the hallway of her apartment, whose violence scares him himself. The two spend the night together. While he is resuming the investigation of the actual “bird man” the next morning, she goes in search of her missing friend. The trail leads them into the completely neglected apartment of Bliss, where he can overwhelm her too. Bliss, who has always had feelings of hatred towards Rebecca as a rival to his beloved, wants to cut off her clitoris with an electric saw .
Becky was nicknamed “Pinky” as a reference to her clitoris when she was still on the street. He wants to kill both women in Wildacre Cottage, a bungalow east of Dartford / Kent that had belonged to his mother at the time. Caffrey's police team break into Bliss's apartment and discover a myriad of pictures hanging from the ceiling with child pornography and snuff motifs. Also surgical gowns, scalpels, Polaroid photos of Craw, Wilcox, Hatch, Spacek and Lister, blood splatters in the bedroom, and a number of dead zebra finches. At Wildacre Cottage, Bliss perversely prepares for his birthday with garlands and balloons. Meanwhile, Joni has bled to death and the badly abused Becky is preparing for her death inwardly when an air support unit of the police storms the premises. Bliss decides not to part without a fight and flees with his electric saw. During his escape, he could seriously injure several police officers. Jack follows Bliss through the woods and sees him get caught in a wire fence. There he kills his friend Becky's tormentor. He decides to make this look like an accident. Becky survived her ordeal. Jack finds out that his neighbor Ivan Penderecki was involved in the disappearance and death of his brother Ewan.
characters
- Jack Caffrey: Detective Inspector Cafferty is a 30 year old police officer from Liverpool . He has problems with the new generation of his department because he thinks they are younger, fitter and harder. As a highly ambivalent personality, he also has some difficulties in his private life. His youth is overshadowed by the mysterious disappearance of his brother Ewan. He drinks excessively Glenmorangie Scottish whiskey and has relationship problems with his fiancée Veronica, who culminates in an ugly and violent scene.
- Rebecca, called Becky: former prostitute who escaped her bleak youth and is now looking for her destiny in art. Becky is having an affair with Jack.
- Toby Harteveld: the impulsive killer whose insides are deeply torn. Even victim of a loveless and violent childhood, which later break out his disturbed tendencies. Outwardly, Harteveld is a person of great respect valued by everyone.
- Malcolm Bliss: Harteveld's henchman. An inconspicuous person who is ignored by the opposite sex. His joyless shadowiness ends with the suicide of his master. Bliss can now hunt down living victims independently and, when everything seems hopeless, decides to put an end to his life with a bang.
- Ivan Penderecki: the creepy neighbor. Only towards the end of the book does it emerge that he has something to do with the disappearance of Jack's brother Ewan.
linguistic style
“ North Greenwich, late May. It was three hours before sunrise and the river looked deserted. Dark boats tugged upriver at their moorings, and a tidal wave gently lifted small sloops from the mud in which they rested. Fog rose from the water and moved inland, past unlit shops with ship accessories, over the abandoned Millennium Dome, over lonely wasteland and strange lunar landscapes - until it finally settled after half a mile inland between the ghostly wheels of a half-abandoned concrete factory. "
The authorial narrative is written in the imperfect tense and contains some unexpected twists that are misleading. Mo Hayder lets the reader participate, among other things, in the thoughts and actions of the drive killer and thus makes him partially an accomplice.
Reviews
Michael Drewniok writes in his review on the crime thriller couch about an interesting character development, whereby Mo Hayder knows how to turn their private problems into an interesting character image. The idea that the perpetrator lived as a neighbor of Jack's brother for a long time is downright ingenious. The taboo topic “necrophilia” dealt with in the novel, on the other hand, might be on the verge of bad taste for some. In particular, the torture scenes with their unaffected brutality, in which the death throes of women are described meticulously, trigger outrage among various critics. DER SPIEGEL reports on a “ violent story about a series of prostitute murders ”, the explicit portrayal of violence , torture , mutilation and desecration of corpses represents a new dimension in Anglo-Saxon crime literature. The themes of the thriller include human abysses and the ability to commit certain unimaginable atrocities. The tension is always kept high with unexpected twists and turns.
expenditure
- Mo Hayder: The Bird Man - The 1st Case for Jack Caffery . Goldmann-Verlag 2002 (original title: “Birdman”, translated by Angelika Felenda), ISBN 978-3442451739 .
- Mo Hayder: Der Vogelmann , 2000, audio book, BMG Wort Köln, read by Dietmar Bär, abbreviated 4 CDs 273 min., ISBN 978-3898301206 .
Notes and individual references
- ↑ Mo Hayder: The bird man on Random House ( Memento of the original from April 8, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Member of a Jamaican gang, based on the Jamaican Posse
- ↑ a b c Review by Michael Drewniok on the crime thriller couch
- ↑ Sex with dead people? Nicci Gerrart, The Guardian, January 23, 2000
- ↑ Thrillers: Hard shockers from a tender pen by Kronsbein, Joachim, DER SPIEGEL 17/2000 ( Memento of the original from March 12, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ so-called " Lose your Lunch " books ("Get rid of your lunch")
- ↑ book review of Mo Hayder: The bird man in Book Section
