Cornelius Tamm sat and considered just what the generational gap between him and the youth opposite him would be: he was certainly young enough to have been his son; without too much of a stretch of imagination or chronology even his grandson. Cornelius’s seniority in age, however, had not seemed sufficient to deter the young man, who had introduced himself as ‘Ronni’, and who had gelled hair, ugly ears and a ridiculous little goatee beard, from using the informal du form of address when he spoke to Cornelius. He obviously felt that they were colleagues; or that his position as head of production entitled him to be informal.
‘Cornelius Tamm … Cornelius Tamm …’ Ronni had spent the last ten minutes talking about Cornelius’s career, and his use of the past tense had been conspicuous. Now he sat repeating Cornelius’s name and looking at him across the vast desk as if he were regarding some item of memorabilia that aroused nostalgia while not having the value of a true antique. ‘Tell me, Cornelius …’ The boy with the big ideas and bigger ears stretched his lips above the goatee in an insincere grin. ‘If you don’t mind me asking, if you want to do a “greatest hits” CD, why aren’t you doing it with your existing label? It would be much simpler with the rights, et cetera.’
‘I wouldn’t call them my existing label. I haven’t recorded with them for years. Most of my work nowadays is doing live concerts. It’s much better … I get a real kick out of interacting with—’
‘I notice you sell CDs on your website.’ The young man cut Cornelius off. ‘How are sales? Do you actually shift any stuff?’
‘I do all right …’ Cornelius had started off by disliking the look of the young man. As well as the irritating goatee beard, Ronni was short and, oddly enough, one of his prominent ears, the right one, projected at a much more dramatic angle from his head than the other. In a remarkably short time, Ronni had succeeded in cultivating Cornelius’s initial vague dislike into a blossoming, fire-red hatred.
‘I guess it’s mostly oldies who buy your stuff … not that there’s anything wrong in that. My dad was a big fan of yours. All that nineteen sixties protest stuff.’ Cornelius had spent hours working on his presentation document, setting out why he felt that a CD of his greatest hits would sell not only to his traditional fan base but to a new generation of disaffected youth. The document lay on the desk in front of Ronni. Unopened.
‘There’s a lot of your generation of singer-songwriters out there. I’m afraid that they just don’t sell any more. Those who do make a mark are the ones that have tried to come up with new material that’s relevant today – like Reinhard Mey. But, to be honest, people don’t want politics in their music these days.’ Ronni shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’m sorry, Cornelius, I just don’t think that we belong together … I mean our label and your style.’
Cornelius watched Ronni smile and felt his hate bloom even more. It was not just that Ronni’s smile was perfunctory and insincere, it was that he had meant Cornelius to notice that it was perfunctory and insincere. He picked up his proposal document and smiled back.
‘Well, Ronni, I’m disappointed.’ He walked to the door without shaking hands. ‘After all, it’s clear you have a good ear for music. The right one, that is …’
It was clear that Professor von Halen considered he should be present throughout the interview, like a responsible adult being present while two children were questioned by police. It was only after Fabel asked if he could talk alone to Alois Kahlberg and Elisabeth Marksen, the two scientists who had worked with Gunter Griebel, that he reluctantly surrendered his office to Fabel.
Both scientists were younger than Griebel had been and it became evident during Fabel’s questioning that they held their deceased colleague in great esteem. Awe, almost. Alois Kahlberg was in his mid-forties: a small birdlike man who habitually tilted his head back to adjust the angle of his vision, rather than pushing his unfashionably large and thick-lensed spectacles back up to the bridge of his nose. Elisabeth Marksen was a good ten years younger and was an unattractive, exceptionally tall woman with a perpetually flushed complexion.
Fabel questioned them about their dead colleague’s habits, his personality, his personal life: all that was revealed was Griebel’s two-dimensionality. No matter how much light was focused on him, no shadows formed, no sense of depth or texture emerged. Griebel simply had never had a conversation with Marksen or Kahlberg that was not either work-related or the smallest of small talk.
‘What about his wife?’ Fabel asked.
‘She died about six years ago. Cancer,’ answered Elisabeth Marksen. ‘She was a teacher, I think. He never talked about her. I met her once, about a year before she died, at a function. She was quiet, like him … didn’t seem very comfortable in a social context. It was one of these company functions that we are all more or less compelled to attend, and Griebel and his wife spent most of the time in a corner talking to each other.’
‘Did her death have a big impact on him? Was there anything about his behaviour that changed significantly? Or was he particularly depressed?’
‘It was always difficult to tell with Dr Griebel. Nothing showed much on the surface. I do know that he visited her grave every week. She’s buried somewhere over near Lurup, where her family came from. Either in the Altonaer Volkspark Hauptfriedhof or in Flottbeker Friedhof.’
‘There were no kids?’
‘None that he ever mentioned.’
Fabel looked around von Halen’s expensive office. In one of the glass-fronted cabinets he could see a pile of glossy brochures, which he guessed were used to sell the facility to investors and commercial partners.
‘What exactly was the type of research Dr Griebel was engaged in?’ he asked. ‘Professor von Halen mentioned it but I didn’t really understand.’
‘Epigenetics.’ Kahlberg answered from behind his thick lenses. ‘It is a new and highly specialised field of genetics. It deals with how genes turn themselves on and off, and how that affects health and longevity.’
‘Someone said something about genetic memory. What is that?’
‘Ah …’ Kahlberg became what Fabel guessed was the closest he could ever get to being animated. ‘That is the very newest area of epigenetic research. It’s quite simple, really. There is increasing evidence that we can fall victim to diseases and conditions that we shouldn’t … that really belong to our ancestors.’
‘I’m afraid it doesn’t sound quite simple to me.’
‘Okay, let me put it this way … There are basically two causes of illness: there are those conditions we are genetically predisposed to – that we have a congenital tendency towards. Then there are environmental causes of illness: smoking, pollution, diet, et cetera … These were always seen as quite different, but recent research has proved that we can actually inherit environmentally caused conditions.’
Fabel still did not look enlightened, so Elisabeth Marksen picked up the thread.
‘We all think we are detached from our history, but it has been discovered that we aren’t. There is a small town in northern Sweden called Överkalix. It is a very prosperous community and the quality of life and the standard of living are very high. Yet local doctors noticed that the population tended to develop health problems that were normally only ever associated with malnutrition. There were two other factors that also made Överkalix distinctive. Firstly, it lies north of the Arctic Circle and has been relatively isolated for all of its history, meaning that the population today tends to be descended from the same families that were there one hundred or two hundred years ago. Secondly, Överkalix is unusual in the detail of its church and civic records. They record not just births and deaths, but the causes of death as well as good and bad harvests. The town became the focus of a major research project and the results showed that a century to a century and a half ago the town, which relied on agriculture, suffered several famines. Many died as a result, but among the survivors an even greater number suffered malnutrition-related medical conditions. By using contemporary medical records and comparing them to the historical ones, it became clear that the descendants of famine victims were exhibiting exactly the same health problems, although they and their parents had never gone hungry in their lives. It was proof that we were wrong to think that we pass on only those chromosomes and genes that we are born with, complete and unaltered, to our children. The fact is that what we experience, the environmental factors that surround us, can have a direct effect on our descendants.’
‘Incredible. And this theory is based exclusively on this one Swedish town?’
‘Only to start with. The research net was cast wider and a range of other examples have been found. The descendants of Holocaust survivors have proved to be susceptible to stress- and trauma-related conditions. One, two, three generations on, they are suffering the post-trauma stress symptoms of an event they did not themselves experience. To begin with this was dismissed as the result of their parents or grandparents relating details of their experiences, but it was found that the same stress indicators, including elevated cortisol in the saliva, were to be found in descendants who had not been exposed to first-hand accounts from Holocaust survivors.’
‘I still don’t understand how it works,’ said Fabel. ‘How is this passed from one generation to the next?’
‘It depends on gender. In males the transgenerational response is sperm-mediated, in females it lies in foetal programming.’
Again, Fabel looked bemused.
‘These environmental and experiential factors that pass on are specifically those experienced by prepubescent and pubescent boys and by female foetuses in the womb. Basically the “data”, for want of a better word, is stored in the sperm that is formed in puberty. Girls are born with all their ova, so the crucial time for them is while the female is in the womb. What the expectant mother experiences during pregnancy or before is passed to the foetus which then stores the genetic memory in the forming ova.’
‘Amazing. And this is what Herr Dr Griebel was researching?’ asked Fabel.
‘There are a great many researchers working in this field worldwide. Epigenetics has become a major and growing field of exploration. You probably remember the great hopes that we all had for the Human Genome Project. It was believed that we could track down the gene for every disease and condition, but we were disappointed. An unimaginable amount of money, resources and computer time has been devoted to mapping the human genome only to find that it was not, after all, that complicated. The complexity lies in all the combinations and permutations within the genome. Epigenetics may provide the key we’ve been looking for. Herr Dr Griebel was one of only a handful of scientists worldwide leading the way in understanding the mechanisms of genetic transference.’
Fabel sat for a moment considering what the two scientists had told him. They waited patiently, birdlike Kahlberg behind the thick screens of his spectacles, Marksen with her flushed face empty of expression, as if understanding that it took time for a layman to process the information. Fabel found the information fascinating, but it seemed useless to his inquiry. What motive could Griebel’s killer have found in the man’s work?
‘Professor von Halen said something about Dr Griebel having pet projects that he indulged him with,’ he said eventually.
Kahlberg and Marksen exchanged a knowing look.
‘If the commercial application is not immediately apparent,’ said Kahlberg, ‘then Herr Professor von Halen sees it as a diversion. The truth is that Dr Griebel was looking into the wider field of genetic inheritance. Specifically the possibility of inherited memory. Not just on the chromosomatic level, but actual memory passed from one generation to the next.’
‘Surely that’s not possible?’
‘There is evidence for it in other species. We know that in rats, for example, a danger learned by one generation is avoided by the next … we just don’t understand the mechanism behind that inherited awareness. Dr Griebel used to say that “instinct” was the most unscientific of scientific concepts. He claimed that we do things “instinctively” because we have inherited the memory of a required survival behaviour. Like the way a human baby makes a walking movement within minutes of birth, yet has to relearn the ability to walk nearly a year later – an instinct we learned somewhere in our distant genetic past, when we lived out on the savannah and immobility was potentially fatal. Dr Griebel was fascinated by the subject. Obsessed, almost.’
‘Do you believe in inherited memory yourself?’
Kahlberg nodded. ‘I believe it is perfectly possible. Probable, even. But, as I said, it’s just that we don’t understand the mechanics of it yet. The full science is yet to be done.’
Elisabeth Marksen smiled bleakly. ‘And, without Dr Griebel, it will have to wait longer to be done.’
‘You get anything?’ Werner asked when Fabel phoned him on his cellphone from the car park of the Institute.
‘Nothing. Griebel’s work has no bearing on his death, as far as I can see. Anything there?’
‘As a matter of fact, Anna has something. She’ll explain when you get back. And Kriminaldirektor van Heiden wants you and Maria to report to him this afternoon, at three.’
Fabel frowned. ‘He asked specifically for Maria too?’
‘Very specifically.’
Anna Wolff knocked on Fabel’s office door and entered without being asked. Fabel always made a conscious effort not to notice how attractive Anna was, but her skin shone in the morning light from his office window and the red lipstick emphasised the fullness of her mouth. She looked young and fresh and energetic and Fabel found himself resenting her youth and her insolent sexuality.
‘What have you got?’
‘I reinterviewed Sebastian Lang, Hauser’s friend … the one who found Kristina Dreyer cleaning up the murder scene. It would appear that he and Hauser were far from setting up house together. According to Lang the relationship faltered because of Hauser’s predatory promiscuousness. Apparently he was fond of casual encounters, whether he was in a relationship or not. And he liked them young. Lang really didn’t want to talk about it. I think he was afraid that his jealousy would be seen as a potential motive, but his alibi for the time of Hauser’s death seems tight.’
Fabel processed the information for a moment. ‘So it could be that it does have something to do with Hauser being gay. In which case, we should be looking more closely at Griebel’s sexuality. Where did Hauser pick up his casual encounters?’
‘Where he met Lang, apparently. A gay club in St Pauli … it has an English name …’ Anna frowned and flicked through her notebook. ‘Yes … a place called The Firehouse.’
Fabel nodded. ‘Get onto it. You and Paul get down there and ask around.’
Anna stared at Fabel in blank confusion for a moment. ‘You mean me and Henk?’
For a few seconds Fabel had no idea what to say. Paul Lindemann had been Anna’s partner. Lindemann’s death had hit Anna harder than anyone else in the team: and it had hit the team hard. Why had he said that? Had Fabel picked Henk Hermann to replace Paul simply because he reminded him of his dead junior officer? Confusing two names was an easy thing to do; particularly the names of two people who occupied the same space, as it were. But Fabel never confused names.
‘It’s okay, Chef …’ Anna said. ‘I keep forgetting Paul’s not here any more too. Henk and I will get on to checking out this gay club and anything else we can find on Hauser’s background.’
Fabel followed Anna out of his office and made his way over to Maria’s desk, which was directly opposite Werner’s. Fabel noticed that both desks were perfectly ordered and tidy. He had teamed Maria and Werner together because he had felt they combined very different skills and approaches: a teaming of complementary opposites. The irony was that they were identical in their meticulousness. Again Fabel thought of how he had confused Paul and Henk when he had been talking to Anna. He had always allowed himself the conceit of thinking that he was innovative and creative in his choice of team members. Maybe he was not so innovative after all; maybe, without thinking, he merely picked variations on a theme.
‘It’s time we headed up to Criminal Director van Heiden’s office,’ he said to Maria. ‘You any idea what this is all about?’ Fabel was frequently summoned to his boss’s office, particularly during the course of a high-profile investigation, but it was rare for van Heiden to specify a junior officer to accompany Fabel.
Maria shrugged. ‘No idea, Chef.’
For Fabel, his boss represented the perpetual policeman: there had always been a policeman like Horst van Heiden, in every police force, in every land, for as long as the concept of a policeman had existed. Before then, even – Fabel could imagine someone like van Heiden as a medieval town watchman or village constable.
Criminal Director van Heiden was in his mid-fifties and not a particularly tall man, but his ramrod-back posture and broad shoulders gave him a presence disproportionate to his size. He always dressed well but unimaginatively and today he wore a well-cut blue suit and a crisp white shirt with a plum-red tie. The suit, the shirt and the tie all looked expensive, but van Heiden somehow always managed to make even the most expensive tailoring look like a police uniform.
As well as van Heiden, there were two other men waiting for Fabel and Maria. Fabel recognised a squat, powerfully built man in a business suit as Markus Ullrich, of the BKA. The BKA was the Federal Crime Bureau, which operated across the whole of Germany. Fabel and Ullrich had crossed paths before on a couple of major investigations and the BKA man had struck Fabel as someone who was easy to deal with, if a little protective of his own investigative territory. The other man was the same height as Ullrich but lacked his muscular build. He wore frameless spectacles behind which the small marbles of his pale blue eyes shone with a keen intelligence. His thick blond hair was meticulously brushed back from his wide forehead.
‘You already know Herr Ullrich, of course,’ said van Heiden. ‘But allow me to introduce Herr Viktor Turchenko. Herr Turchenko is a senior investigator with the Ukrainian police.’
Fabel felt a chill somewhere deep inside, as if someone had left a door open to a forgotten winter. He turned to look at Maria: her face revealed nothing.
‘It is my pleasure to meet you both,’ said Turchenko as he extended a hand to each officer in turn. His face broke into a wide and engaging smile, but his heavily accented, stilted German brought back too many memories for Fabel and he felt the chill inside intensify.
‘Herr Turchenko is here as part of an investigation he’s been pursuing in the Ukraine,’ continued van Heiden once everyone was seated. ‘He asked if we could arrange this meeting. Herr Turchenko specifically wanted to speak to you, Frau Klee.’
‘Oh?’ Maria’s tone was laced through with suspicion.
‘Indeed, Frau Klee. I believe that you have been working on a case – two cases, in fact – that are directly related to my investigation.’ Turchenko removed a photograph from his briefcase and handed it to Maria. As he did so, the warm smile was replaced by a sombre expression. ‘I have a name for you – a name you have been looking for, I believe.’
Maria looked at the picture. A teenage girl, somewhere around seventeen years old. The image was slightly grainy and Maria guessed it was a blown-up detail from a larger image. The girl in the photograph smiled as if at someone or something far off-camera. In the distance. Perhaps, thought Maria, she was looking towards the West.
‘What was her name?’ Maria asked in a flat voice. ‘Her real name, I mean.’
Turchenko sighed. ‘Magda Savitska. Eighteen years old. From outside Lviv, in western Ukraine.’
‘Magda Savitska …’ Maria said the name out loud as she passed the photograph to Fabel. ‘Olga X.’
‘She is from the same part of the Ukraine as I am,’ Turchenko went on. ‘Her family are good people. We believe Magda fell victim to a scam that was a front for sex trafficking. She brought home a letter that was given to her promising training at a hairdressing college in Poland, after which she was guaranteed employment in a salon here in Germany. We checked out the address of the hairdressing college in Warsaw. Of course, it doesn’t exist. No college in Poland, no job in Germany.’
‘You’ve come a long way to find this one girl,’ said Fabel, handing the picture back to the Ukrainian. Turchenko took the photograph and looked at it for a while before answering.
‘This one girl is one of many. Thousands of girls are lured or abducted and forced into slavery – every year. Magda Savitska is not special. But she is representative. And she is someone’s daughter, someone’s sister.’ He looked up from the photograph. ‘I believe you have her killer in custody.’
‘That’s correct. The case is closed,’ said Maria and exchanged a look with Fabel. ‘She was working as a prostitute here in Hamburg and one of her clients murdered her. We already have his confession. But thank you for providing us with her true identity.’
‘Herr Turchenko is not here to find her murderer,’ said Ullrich, the BKA man. ‘As he said, his visit is also connected to another case.’
‘I am after the organised criminals who trafficked Magda and coerced her into prostitution,’ said Turchenko. ‘Specifically, I want to cut off the head of the organisation. Which brings me to the other case you were involved with …’ Turchenko took another photograph from his briefcase and handed it to Maria.
‘Damn it,’ said Maria with a sudden vehemence. She merely glanced at the photograph and handed it to Fabel. She did not need to examine the face. After all, it haunted her dreams and her waking hours. It was the same face, a copy of the same photograph, that she carried in her handbag. ‘I knew it! I knew that bastard was involved in the “Farmers’ Market”. Bloody Ukrainians.’
Turchenko gave a small laugh and shrugged. ‘I assure you, Frau Klee, we are not all the same.’
Fabel gazed at the photograph of Vasyl Vitrenko …
‘I know this opens up old wounds—’ said Ullrich.
Fabel cut across him. ‘That is a rather tasteless choice of expression, Herr Ullrich.’
‘I’m sorry … I didn’t mean …’
Maria brushed aside Ullrich’s apology. ‘I knew there were Ukrainians involved in the trafficking of women to Hamburg. I suspected that Vitrenko was somewhere behind it all.’
‘Way behind it,’ continued Ullrich. ‘We did a pretty good job … by “we” I mean the Polizei Hamburg organised-crime division and the BKA … we succeeded in dismantling the Vitrenko operation in Hamburg. And, of course, you and your team were central in flushing Vitrenko out. However, there were a couple of elements that we didn’t get. We believe that Vitrenko is rebuilding his power base in Germany.’
‘Vitrenko is still in Germany?’ Maria’s complexion bleached paler.
‘Not necessarily,’ said Turchenko. ‘As you know, Vitrenko is a master at building complex command structures that separate him from the activity yet which maintain this powerful personal loyalty to him. It is possible that he is running things remotely. He certainly is not in Hamburg and may even be orchestrating things from abroad. Perhaps even from back home in Ukraine. But yes – my money is on him being somewhere in Germany. And I am here to find him.’
‘We’ve also ascertained that his operations are no longer focused on Hamburg or any other single German city,’ said Ullrich. ‘Instead, Vitrenko is using a network of “niche” organised-crime activities to build a power base. Last time he sought to take over all organised crime in Hamburg. Now his aim seems to be to control key lucrative activities across the Federal Republic. Among these is people trafficking, specifically for the sex trade.’
Maria looked perplexed. ‘But we took out most of his key men – the so-called “Top Team”. Who is he using now to build his power base?’
‘Just as before, he is using ex-Spetsnaz troops. The best he can source. And, as before, they are bound to him personally. But he has reinvented himself – and his operation. This latest incarnation of Vasyl Vitrenko is, if anything, even more shadowy than the last.’ Ullrich pointed to the picture in Fabel’s hands. ‘For all we know, he may not even look like that now. It’s perfectly possible that he has a new face. A new face and a new life somewhere completely different.’
‘So how can we help?’ Fabel asked with little enthusiasm. He felt surrounded by ghosts unwillingly summoned up with the mention of Paul Lindemann’s name immediately before the meeting. For someone who had studied history, Fabel was beginning to hate the past and the way it kept returning to haunt him. It was van Heiden, who had so far contributed nothing to the conversation, who answered Fabel’s question.
‘Actually, it is Senior Commissar Klee who can help. Frau Klee, I believe you have been carrying out a … well, I suppose the best way to describe it is as a background investigation into this girl’s death. We need to know everything you have found out so far.’
‘I told you to leave that alone, Maria,’ Fabel said sharply. ‘Why did you go against my orders?’
‘All I did was a little asking around …’ She turned to van Heiden and told him about her meeting with Nadja and what she had been told about the ‘Farmers’ Market’. ‘That’s as much as I’ve been able to find out. It just seemed that no one was doing anything about these people traffickers.’
Markus Ullrich walked over to Maria and laid out a series of large photographs on the desk before her as if he were dealing cards. They showed Maria in the street talking to prostitutes, in clubs talking to barmen and hostesses. Ullrich laid the last photograph on top of all the others as if it were his trump card.
‘You know this girl? Is this “Nadja”?’
Maria stood up. ‘Have you been keeping me under surveillance?’
Ullrich laughed cynically. ‘Trust me, Frau Klee, you’re not important enough to warrant surveillance. But we do have a long-established, very complex and very expensive surveillance operation focused on the activities of this Ukrainian gang. And lately it’s been difficult to carry it out without you barging your way into the picture. Literally. Now, Frau Klee, do you know this girl?’
Maria sat down again. She nodded without looking at Ullrich. ‘Nadja … I don’t know her surname. She is helping me. As much as she can, anyway. She was close to Olga …’ Maria corrected herself. ‘I mean Magda.’
‘As you can see, Frau Klee’ – van Heiden picked up the thread – ‘someone was doing something about these people traffickers. We had the entire operation, with the help of BKA surveillance experts and with the cooperation of our Ukrainian colleagues, under the closest scrutiny. It is a major operation aimed at locating and capturing the very man who injured you so severely. And you have compromised the whole operation.’
‘What is more’ – Ullrich stabbed a finger at the picture of Maria talking to Nadja – ‘you have probably cost her her life. We have no way of knowing what has happened to her. She has disappeared from our radar – immediately after she spoke to you.’
‘I have to point out,’ said Maria, ‘that I handed over all my notes on the so-called Olga X case to the organised-crime division. I also told them of my concerns that there was a major people-trafficking ring involved with the case, if not directly with Olga’s – or should I say Magda’s – death. I would have thought it prudent for you to have advised me at the time that you were actively investigating them. Then—’
‘Senior Commissar Klee,’ van Heiden interrupted her. ‘You were instructed by your commanding officer to hand everything over to LKA Six and to have no further involvement with the case. Your interference may have cost a young woman her life and widened the gap between our investigation and its ultimate aim of locating and capturing Vitrenko.’
Maria’s expression hardened, but she remained silent.
‘With the greatest respect to our colleagues at LKA Six and the BKA,’ said Fabel, ‘I have to point out that the only people who ever came close to capturing Vitrenko were myself and Frau Klee. And Frau Klee nearly paid for it with her life. So, although I admit that it was irregular for her to pursue her investigation solo, I believe she is due a little more respect as a professional police officer than is being shown here.’
Van Heiden frowned but Turchenko spoke before he had a chance to respond.
‘I have read the file on what happened on that night, and I am aware of the great courage displayed by Frau Klee, yourself and the two unfortunate officers who lost their lives. It is my duty to track down Colonel Vitrenko and I am grateful for all that you have already done. I am ashamed that my country produced such a monster and I promise you that I am totally committed to bringing Vasyl Vitrenko to justice. I am, so to speak, passing through Hamburg as I follow his trail. I would be most obliged if I could ask any further questions that come to mind during my stay here.’
Fabel examined the Ukrainian. He had the look of an intellectual rather than a police officer, and his quiet, determined manner and the perfect but stilted and accented German with which he spoke seemed to invite trust.
‘If we can be of help, of course we shall,’ said Fabel.
‘In the meantime’ – Ullrich spoke directly to Maria – ‘I would be obliged if you could supply a full report on your dealings with the missing prostitute and anything else you have discovered.’
Fabel and Maria made to leave.
‘Before you go, Herr Fabel …’ Van Heiden leaned forward in his chair, resting his elbows on the desk. ‘Where are we with these two scalping murders?’
‘We know that the woman found at the first scene is not directly linked to the murder and forensics are trying to find out to whom the hairs left behind as signatures belong. There is a possibility – but at this stage it is only a possibility – that the victims might have been selected because they were gay. We’re currently checking that out. Other than that, we are pretty much without any strong leads.’
Van Heiden’s expression was one of expected disappointment. ‘Keep me informed, Fabel.’
Fabel and Maria did not exchange a word until they exited from the lift.
‘My office,’ said Fabel. ‘Now.’
As instructed by Fabel, Maria closed the door behind her after she entered his office.
‘What the hell is going on, Maria?’ Barely contained anger stretched Fabel’s quiet tone taut. ‘I expect this kind of behaviour from Anna occasionally, but not from you. Why do you insist on keeping things from me?’
‘I’m sorry, Chef. I know you told me not to follow up the Olga X case …’
‘I’m not just talking about that. I’m talking about you keeping things from me generally. Things I ought to know. For example, why the hell didn’t you tell me that you are a patient at Dr Minks’s Fear Clinic?’
There was a beat of silence and Maria stared blankly at Fabel. ‘Because, frankly,’ she said at last, ‘it is a personal issue that I didn’t think was your concern.’
‘For God’s sake, Maria, your psychological state is such that you have to seek treatment in a phobia clinic and you’re telling me that, as your commanding officer, it’s none of my business? And don’t try to tell me this isn’t work-related. I saw your face when Turchenko told us who his target is.’ Fabel sat back in his chair, letting the tension ease from his shoulders. ‘Maria, I thought you trusted me.’
Again Maria did not answer right away. Instead she turned to the window and looked out over the tops of the thick, high swathe of trees in Winterhude Stadtpark. Then she spoke in a quiet, flat voice without looking at Fabel.
‘I suffer from aphenphosmphobia. It’s reasonably mild but it has been getting progressively worse and Dr Minks has been treating me for it. It means that I have a fear of being touched. That’s what Dr Minks is treating me for. I cannot bear the close physical presence of others. And it is a direct result of Vitrenko stabbing me.’
Fabel sighed. ‘I see. Is the treatment working?’
Maria shrugged. ‘Sometimes I feel that it is. But then something sparks it off again.’
‘And this obsession with the Olga X case … I take it that was because you thought Vitrenko was involved?’
‘Not at first. It was just … well, you were there at the murder scene. It just got to me. Poor kid. I just felt it was wrong for her to die that way. Then, yes … I saw that there was possibly a Vitrenko connection.’
‘Maria, the Vitrenko case was just that … a case. We can’t turn it into some kind of personal crusade. Like Turchenko said, we all want to bring Vitrenko to justice.’
‘But that’s just it …’ There was an urgency in Maria’s voice that Fabel had not heard before. ‘I don’t want to bring him to justice. I want to kill him …’
Paul Scheibe stood outside the Rathaus city chambers. The vast plain of Rathausmarkt, Hamburg’s main city square, seemed to writhe with tourists and shoppers under the hot summer sun. Scheibe had worn a lightweight suit in black linen and a white, collarless shirt to the meeting with Hamburg’s First Mayor Hans Schreiber and the city’s Environment Senator Bertholdt Müller-Voigt. Yet despite the lightness of the fabric Scheibe felt clammy trickles of sweat gather on the nape of his neck and in the small of his back. The meeting had been arranged to congratulate him on the selection of his KulturZentrumEins design for the site on the HafenCity’s Überseequartier and Scheibe had done his best to look pleased and interested. Perhaps that was why so many people had asked him if everything was all right: Scheibe’s professional trade mark had always been his arrogance; his aloofness from the crude commercial aspect of architecture. But everyone had been happy and the champagne corks had popped. And there had been lots of champagne; now Scheibe’s mouth tasted coppery and dry and the alcohol had had no effect on him other than to enervate him.
Life must go on, he had thought to himself. And maybe it will. Maybe it was just a coincidence that two members of the cast of his previous life had been murdered. The same way. By the same person. Or maybe it wasn’t.
He watched the sightseers and the shoppers, the office workers and the business people scuttle across the Rathausmarkt. A street musician was playing Rimsky-Korsakov on an accordion somewhere over by the Schleusenbrücke bridge across the Alsterfleet. Paul Scheibe was surrounded by people, by noise; he stood at the very heart of a great city. He had never felt so isolated or exposed. Was this what it was like to be hunted?
He walked. He walked quickly and with a sense of purpose that he did not understand, as if the act of deliberate motion would stimulate some idea about what he should do next. He crossed the Rathausmarkt diagonally and headed up Mönckebergstrasse. The throng of people grew denser as he came into the main pedestrianised part of Mönckebergstrasse, lined with stores. Still he let his feet lead him. He felt hot and dirty, his hair was beginning to cling to his damp scalp and he wished that he could cast off the mantle of warm summer air that seemed to stifle his ability to think. He did not want to die. He did not want to go to prison. He had made a name for himself and he knew that the wrong step taken now would tarnish that name for ever.
He stopped outside an electrical store. A regional NDR news programme played mutely on a large-screen TV behind the glass. It was a pre-recorded interview with Bertholdt Müller-Voigt. Scheibe had found it hard enough to stomach Müller-Voigt’s sneery, patronising presence at the lunch and now he watched as he smiled his politician smile at him through the glass. It was as if he were mocking Scheibe, just like he used to all those years ago.
Müller-Voigt had always possessed, naturally and without effort, the kind of self-confident poise and intellectual credibility that Scheibe worked so hard to project. Müller-Voigt had always been smarter, had always been cooler, had always been at the focus of things. Paul Scheibe found it impossible to forgive Bertholdt Müller-Voigt any of these things. But there was something else that fuelled Scheibe’s loathing for his contemporary, something deeper and more fundamental that burned white-hot at the core of his hatred: Müller-Voigt had taken Beate from him.
Of course, back then they had all forsworn anything so bourgeois as monogamy, and Beate, the raven-haired, half-Italian mathematics student with whom Scheibe had been besotted, would never have allowed any man to think of her as belonging to him. But it was the closest that Paul Scheibe had ever been to love. It wasn’t just that Müller-Voigt had slept with Beate; it was that he had done so with the same thoughtless arrogance with which he had slept with dozens of other women. It had meant nothing to him then and Scheibe was pretty certain that today Müller-Voigt probably wouldn’t even remember it.
And now, two decades later, every time Paul Scheibe met Müller-Voigt – or even heard the politician’s name mentioned – it provoked exactly the same feelings of envy and loathing in Scheibe that it had provoked back then, when they had been students. Afterwards, Scheibe had built a new life for himself, a different and successful life. But Müller-Voigt had somehow managed to build an even more successful new life. Most of all, Müller-Voigt had remained on the fringes of Scheibe’s world: a constant and unwelcome reminder of the old days. But now Müller-Voigt was not the only reminder of that time.
Scheibe pressed his forehead against the electrical store’s window, expecting it to be cool, but it reflected the damp warmth of his brow. A passing shopper bumped shoulders with him and nudged him out of his reverie. What was he doing here? What was he going to do next? He knew he had stridden out of the Rathausmarkt determined to find an answer.
He had to find somewhere to think. Somewhere to make sense of it all.
Scheibe tore his gaze from the TV screen and started to walk purposefully on up Mönckebergstrasse. Towards the Hamburg Hauptbahnhof railway station.
There is a bureaucracy of death: each murder case generates a mountain of forms to be filled and reports to be filed. After the meeting with the Ukrainian policeman and Markus Ullrich, Fabel had found it difficult to focus on the paperwork that had piled up. There were so many things circulating in his head that he lost track of time and he suddenly realised that he had not eaten since breakfast.
He took the lift down to the Police Presidium’s canteen and placed a filled roll and a coffee on his tray. The canteen was all but empty and he headed over towards the window to take a seat. It was then that he noticed Maria sitting with Turchenko. The Ukrainian detective was leaning back in his chair, looking down at the coffee that sat on the table in front of him, and seemed to be in the middle of a detailed explanation of something. Maria was concentrating on the Ukrainian’s words. There was something about the set-up that Fabel did not like.
‘Do you mind if I join you?’ he asked.
Turchenko looked up and smiled broadly. ‘Not at all, Herr Chief Commissar. Be my guest.’
Maria also smiled, but her expression suggested that she was irritated by the interruption.
‘You speak excellent German, Herr Turchenko,’ said Fabel.
‘I studied it at university. Along with law. I spent some time in the former East Germany as a student. I have always had a fascination for Germany. Which made me the obvious choice to send here to try to track down Vitrenko.’
‘Do you have a special-forces background too?’ asked Fabel.
Turchenko laughed. ‘God, no … in fact, I have not been a police officer that long. I was a criminal and civil lawyer in Lviv. After the Orange Revolution, in which I had been active, I became a criminal prosecutor and was then approached by the new government. They asked me if I would oversee the setting up of a new organised-crime unit to deal with people-smuggling and forced prostitution. Basically, my job is to stop what has become the new slave trade. I was chosen because I am free from the taint of the old regime.’
‘Things are changing in Ukraine, I believe.’
Turchenko smiled. ‘Ukraine is a beautiful country, Herr Fabel. One of the most beautiful in Europe. People here have no idea. It is also a country laden with almost every type of natural bounty – an incredibly fertile land that was the bread basket of the former USSR. It is also rich in every kind of mineral and it has enormous potential for tourism. I love my country and I have a great belief in what it can become. And what I believe it will become is one of the richest and most successful nations in Europe. It will take more than a generation to achieve, of course, but it will happen. And the first steps have been taken – democracy and liberalisation. But there are problems. Ukraine is divided. In western Ukraine, we look to the West for our future. But in eastern Ukraine, there are still those who believe we belong in some kind of unity with Russia.’ Turchenko paused. ‘You Germans should be able to understand this. Your country has been reborn many times, and sometimes the incarnation has not been a good one. This is our rebirth in Ukraine. Our country is beginning a new life. A life that we took to the streets to create. And people like Vasyl Vitrenko have no part in it.’
‘Vitrenko is extremely dangerous game to hunt,’ said Fabel. ‘You will have to take a lot of care.’
‘I am a naturally cautious man. And I have your police here to protect me.’ Turchenko made an open-armed gesture, as if embracing the entire Presidium. ‘I have a GSG9 bodyguard with me all the time.’ He gave a small laugh and tapped his temple with his forefinger. ‘I am no man of action. I am a man of thought. I believe that the way to find and capture this monster is to out-think him.’
Fabel smiled. He liked the small Ukrainian: he was a man who clearly believed in all that he had said. Who had an enthusiasm for what he did for a career. Fabel found himself envying him.
‘I wish you luck,’ he said.
‘How did it go?’ Julia frowned as she spoke. Cornelius Tamm resented the fact that her frown created so few creases on her brow, as if her youth refused to yield to her concern. It seemed to Cornelius that he was surrounded by youth. It mocked him wherever he went.
‘It didn’t.’ Cornelius threw his keys onto the table and took off his jacket.
Julia was thirty-two; Cornelius exactly thirty years her senior. He had left his wife for Julia three years before, on the eve of his fifty-ninth birthday. His marriage had been almost as old as the woman he had ended it for and Julia was nearer to his children’s age than to his own. At the time, Cornelius had felt that he was regaining a sense of youth, of vigour. Now he just felt tired all the time: tired and old. He sat down at the table.
‘What did he say?’ Julia poured him a cup of coffee and sat down opposite him.
‘He said my time is past. Basically.’ Cornelius gazed at Julia as if trying to work out what she was doing in his kitchen, his apartment. His life. ‘And he’s right, you know. The world has moved on. And somewhere along the way it left me behind.’ He pushed the coffee aside. He took out a tumbler and a bottle of Scotch from a kitchen cabinet and poured himself a large glass.
‘That doesn’t help, you know,’ said Julia.
‘It may not cure the disease.’ He took a substantial sip and screwed up his face. ‘But it sure as hell helps the symptoms. It anaesthetises.’
‘Don’t worry.’ Julia’s comforting smile only irritated Cornelius further. ‘You’ll get a deal soon. You’ll see. By the way, someone phoned for you while you were out. About fifteen minutes ago.’
‘Who?’
‘They wouldn’t leave a name at first. Then he said to tell you that it was Paul and that he would phone you later.’
‘Paul?’ Cornelius frowned as he tried to think which Paul it could be, then dismissed it with a shrug. ‘I’m going to my study. And I’m taking my anaesthetic with me.’
It was another name that caught his attention. As he stood up, he noticed the copy of the Hamburger Morgenpost on the table. Cornelius put his drink down and picked up the paper. He stared at it long and hard.
‘What is it?’ asked Julia. ‘What’s wrong?’
Cornelius didn’t answer her and stayed focused on the article. It named someone who had died. Been murdered. But the name was one that had already been dead to Cornelius for twenty years. It was the report of the death of a ghost.
‘Nothing,’ he said and put the paper down. ‘Nothing at all.’
It was then that he worked out who Paul was.
It was a beautiful evening. The embers of the sun hung low in the sky behind Nordenham and the Weser sparkled quietly as it made its way towards the North Sea. Paul Scheibe had never set foot in Nordenham before, which was an irony when he considered how this small provincial town had cast a giant shadow over his life.
For a moment, Scheibe became again purely the architect as he gazed at Nordenham railway station. Architecturally, it was not really his kind of thing: but it was, nevertheless, a striking building, albeit in the solid, sometimes austere, traditional North German style. He remembered reading that it was over one hundred years old and was now an officially protected building.
It had happened here. On this platform. This was the stage on which the most important drama in his life had been played out and he had not even been here. Nor had the others. Six people, a hundred and fifty kilometres away, had made a decision to sacrifice a human being on this platform. One life brought to an end, six lives free to begin again. But it had not just been one life that had been lost in this place. Piet had also died here. As had Michaela and a policeman. But Paul Scheibe had never found he could feel guilty about those lost lives – everything else had been eclipsed by the intense feeling of relief, of liberation, that had come from knowing it was all over. But it was not over. Something – someone – had returned from that dark time.
Work it out, he kept telling himself. Work it out. Who was killing the members of the group? It had to have something to do with this place and what had happened here. But who was behind it? Could it be one of the remaining four members of the group? Scheibe found that almost impossible to imagine: there was simply nothing to gain, and there were no grudges, no old scores to be settled. Just a desire to have nothing to do with each other.
Scheibe felt something chill grip him: what if Franz had not died here? They had loved Franz, they had followed him; but more than anything, they had feared him. What if his death had been a sham, a conspiracy, some kind of deal with the authorities? What if, somehow, he had survived?
It didn’t make sense, but these killings had to have something to do with what had happened here, on this provincial railway platform, twenty years before. Scheibe already regretted having left that message for Cornelius. He was not going to make it easier for the killer, and he was not going to risk his career by renewing associations that were best forgotten. He had worked too hard for all that he had achieved since the last time they had met; he was not going to give any of it up.
Scheibe looked at his watch: it was nearly eight. He felt tired and unclean. He hadn’t eaten since the lunch in the Rathaus and he felt empty inside. Scheibe sat on a bench on the platform and gazed blankly out across the tracks, across the flat landscape beyond, across the Weser towards the Luneplatte on the far side.
He could think this through. That was what they had always relied on him for back then: his ability to plan a strategy in the same way he could plan a building. More than a structure, but every detail integrated. He had been the architect of what had happened here: he had freed himself and the others. Now he needed to do it again. Scheibe reached into the pocket of his crumpled black linen jacket and pulled out his cellphone. No, his number could be traced: he had, after all, only recently been lectured about the insecurity of using a mobile telephone. Scheibe knew he had to play this carefully. He would phone the police. Anonymously. He would do a deal that kept him out of it. Like the last time.
A payphone. He needed to find a payphone. Paul turned and scanned the landscape around him.
It was then that the young man with the dark hair stepped out onto the platform. There was no vague sense of recognition. Paul did not struggle with where or when or how he had seen the face before. Maybe because he was seeing it in this context.
The young man strode across to Paul purposefully.
‘I know who you are,’ said Paul. ‘I know exactly who you are.’
The young man smiled and took his hand briefly out of his jacket pocket to reveal the Makarov automatic.
‘Let’s go somewhere more private to talk. My car is parked outside,’ he said, indicating the platform’s exit with a nod of his head.
‘Just let me know if I’m cramping your style.’ Anna Wolff grinned at Henk Hermann as they approached the bar.
The Firehouse was a large, square-set building in the St Pauli Kiez. Externally it was one of those unremarkable 1950s brick-built buildings that had erupted across Hamburg like weeds on the gap sites created by Second World War bombs. Internally, it was just as unremarkable, but in a totally different way. The decor was the kind of variation on the same theme of generic designer cool that could be found in bars and clubs around the world: an unsurprising, uninspiring, vaguely retro sophistication. Even the music in the background was the predictable chill-out soundtrack. The Firehouse left Anna, who preferred clubs and bars that had more of an edge, totally cold. But there again, it was not aimed at Anna. Or anyone of her gender.
‘Very funny.’ Henk muttered and nodded towards the shaven-headed black barman who came over to their end of the bar.
‘What can I get you?’ The black barman spoke German that was spun through with something between an African and an English accent.
In reply, Henk held up his oval Criminal Police shield. ‘We’d like to ask you about one of your customers.’
‘Oh?’
‘It’s in connection with a murder inquiry,’ said Anna. ‘We believe the victim was a regular here.’ She laid a photograph of Hauser on the bar. ‘Know him?’
The barman looked briefly at the photograph and nodded.
‘That is Herr Hauser. Yes, I know him. Or knew him. I read about his death in the newspapers. Terrible. Yes, he was a regular here.’
‘With anyone in particular?’
‘No one special that I know of. Lots of guys in general …’
The other two barkeepers were occupied and a customer called over to the black barman from the other side of the bar.
‘Excuse me a moment …’ While he went over to serve the customer, Anna surveyed the club. Considering it was so early in the evening, and so early in the working week, there was a substantial number of customers. As she expected, it was populated by an exclusively male clientele, but other than that there was nothing to distinguish it from any other bar or club. Some of the men had the business-suited look of having come straight from their offices. Anna found it difficult to imagine Hauser in the club: it all seemed too ‘corporate’, too mainstream. The black barman came back and apologised for the interruption.
‘Herr Hauser came in here a lot, but he tended to hang around with younger guys. Much younger guys. I just asked the other barmen about him. Martin says he used to come in a lot with a guy with dark hair.’
‘Sebastian Lang?’ Anna placed a photograph of Lang on the counter next to the one of Hauser.
‘I wouldn’t know him … Martin?’ The barman called over to his colleague who came over and examined the photograph.
‘That’s him,’ the second barman confirmed. ‘They came in here together for a while, but then the younger guy stopped coming. But before him, Herr Hauser used to drink with a man more his own age. I don’t think they were an item, or anything. I just think they were friends.’
‘Do you have a name for this friend?’
‘Sorry.’
‘Does he still come in here?’
The barman shook his head. ‘I couldn’t say when he might turn up. I think he only came in to meet Herr Hauser.’
‘Thanks,’ said Henk and handed the barman his Polizei Hamburg contact card. ‘If you do see him again, you can contact me on this number.’
The barman took the card. ‘Sure.’ He frowned. ‘You don’t think this guy had anything to do with Herr Hauser’s murder, do you?’
‘At the moment we’re just trying to build a picture of the victim’s last days,’ said Anna. ‘And the kind of people he used to hang out with. That’s all.’
But, as she and Henk left The Firehouse, Anna could not help thinking that they had built no picture at all.