A fear of dark water jf-6 Read online

  Chapter Five

  Jan Fabel awoke. Gradually. He had been dreaming: a dream about sitting in the house he’d grown up in in Norddeich, in his father’s old study, talking with a young man whom Fabel knew was dead and who knew it himself. Fabel wanted to leave the dream behind, where it could be forgotten.

  He surfaced slowly from the depths of his sleep and became aware of the sound of voices. The radio alarm. NDR Radio. A debate. One of the voices vaguely familiar.

  He lay staring at the ceiling for a moment, mustering the sleep-scattered pieces of his consciousness and trying to work out what the voice on the radio was talking about. And who the voice belonged to: Fabel realised that he recognised the male voice from somewhere in his fully awake world but, for now, he was too sleepy to concentrate on locating it. He rolled over onto his side; Susanne had her back to him. He shook her shoulder and she made a sound somewhere between sleepy contentment and irritation.

  ‘It’s time to get up,’ he said.

  Another low, sleepily discontented muttering.

  He swung his legs out and sat on the edge of the bed. Berthold Muller-Voigt. That was whose voice he recognised on the radio. He had been sure he had heard it before somewhere. Muller-Voigt was the Environment Senator in the Hamburg Senate and someone with whom Fabel had had dealings in the past.

  Fabel frowned and pushed his blond hair back from his eyes. He shook Susanne again: another grumpy response. Switching the radio-alarm off, he rose and stretched and made his way through to the shower. Susanne and he had lived together in this flat for more than two years, but he still found that he had to think about its early-morning geography. He shaved and showered. Dressed. Roll-neck sweater, expensive English tweed jacket, chinos, brogues.

  He had just made the coffee when Susanne came into the kitchen, still in her bathrobe. Her thick dark hair a tumbling statement of her unwillingness yet to face the day.

  ‘You’ll be late,’ he said. He meant they would be late. Susanne usually worked from her office in the Institute of Legal Medicine in Eppendorf, but two days a week she worked out of the police Presidium. On those mornings they took one car. And on those mornings Fabel was always rattled by Susanne’s tardiness. This morning, he was even more tense: Susanne was attending a seminar at the Federal Crime Bureau in Wiesbaden and he had agreed to run her to the airport to catch her early-morning flight to Frankfurt.

  ‘I’ll be ready.’ She took the cup of coffee he offered and leaned on the kitchen counter. ‘Did you sleep okay?’ she asked. ‘That bloody storm kept me up half the night.’

  ‘I think it woke me up.’ He lied. It hadn’t been the storm that had woken him in the middle of the night; but they didn’t talk any more about Fabel’s dreams. The bad dreams.

  Susanne switched on the small TV they had in the kitchen. It was one of the compromises Fabel had accepted: he was no great television watcher and never had understood why people needed more than one in their homes. But one day he had come back from work and had found it sitting on the counter. A new and gleaming intrusion into his world. A cohabitational fait accompli; another indication that his space, his life, was now shared.

  ‘Look at this…’ she said. The report on the TV was of serious flooding all along the banks of the Elbe. There was footage of the flood defences down by the harbour and the Fischmarkt being deployed. The reporter did his piece to camera with practised gravity.

  ‘It’s good we’re not travelling along the Elbchaussee this morning,’ she said.

  ‘We may have problems getting to the airport anyway. I would imagine that there’s going to be more traffic, what with the diversions and everything. We’ll have to leave that bit earlier,’ Fabel replied, looking pointedly at his watch. Susanne made a face and went back to a leisurely enjoyment of her coffee.

  ‘I’ll phone the airport just to check the flights are on time…’ Fabel made to lift the phone.

  ‘Why phone in?’ asked Susanne from behind her coffee cup. ‘Just check it online.’

  ‘You never know when these things are updated,’ said Fabel. ‘At least if you talk to a human being…’

  Susanne snorted. ‘A human being? We’re talking about someone who works in an airport. Trust me, use the computer — it’s less robotic. I tell you what, I’ll do it when I’m dressed. I just don’t get why you’re so technophobic.’

  ‘I’m not technophobic,’ muttered Fabel. ‘I’m traditional. Anyway, I fully admit that I’m not too keen on the digital age. Look at this so-called Network Killer we’ve been chasing for the last six months… or at the havoc that reliance on computers causes. We’ve had all kind of memos about this Klabautermann Virus that’s been hacked into the Hamburg State email system.’

  Susanne laughed. ‘You don’t hack a virus. Tell me, how come you survived when the meteor hit?’

  ‘What meteor?’ Fabel asked irritatedly.

  ‘You know, the one that wiped out all the other dinosaurs…’ Susanne emphasised the word and laughed at her own witticism. ‘Anyway, as far as I can gather, the Klabautermann Virus hasn’t breached the Polizei Hamburg’s security. We’ve got it at the Institute for Legal Medicine, though. It’s a pain, I’ll give you that. But we were able to back-up all our emails before it hit.’

  ‘I’ve got a simpler solution. It’s called print on paper.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ Susanne put her cup down and sauntered past him, letting her hips swing as she walked. ‘Then we wouldn’t have to worry about Klabautermann Viruses or system crashes… all we’d have to worry about would be little bookworms like you, wouldn’t we, honey?’ She ruffled his hair as she passed. Fabel frowned.

  It had stopped raining by the time Fabel and Susanne made their way to where Fabel’s BMW convertible was parked, but the sky was glowering and heavy, the colour of ship steel. Fabel sighed as he put Susanne’s suitcase and attache case in the trunk.

  ‘Another shitty day,’ said Susanne gloomily. She closed the car door and cursed when a trail of rainwater from the roof dribbled into her hair. ‘This thing’s leaking — you know that, don’t you?’

  ‘It never used to be a problem,’ said Fabel in an almost-mutter. ‘I had covered parking at my old place.’

  ‘You really should think about trading this in.’ Susanne ignored his comment. ‘It must be ten years old now. You’re always banging on about the environment; this can’t be that fuel-efficient or environmentally friendly compared with what you could get now.’

  ‘It does me fine,’ said Fabel, manoeuvring the car from its parking space. ‘I don’t see how adding another car to the roads could be considered environmentally friendly. And anyway, if you’re so green, why are you flying to Frankfurt? You could have asked to go by train.’

  ‘You’re the tree-hugger, not me.’ She grinned maliciously. ‘It must be because you hardly saw a tree when you were growing up in the good ol’ flatlands of East Frisia. I suppose all that wind blew them down.’

  ‘We had trees. Maybe not as many as you had in darkest Bavaria, but we had trees.’

  ‘We had trees, all right,’ said Susanne. ‘Forests full of them. And mountains. You know what a mountain is, don’t you Frisia Boy? It’s like a really, really, really big dyke.’

  ‘Very funny.’

  ‘I’m surprised you moved here to Hamburg. We must be all of two metres above sea level. Don’t you get nosebleeds?’

  Fabel laughed. ‘If people like you keep taking domestic flights then we’ll be below sea level soon enough.’

  ‘Then I’ll travel by boat. Or U-boat.’ Susanne started to hum the tune of ‘Yellow Submarine’, smiling contentedly.

  Rather than battle through the city, Fabel headed out along Behringstrasse and onto the A7 autobahn. As they approached the ramp, Fabel noticed a huge poster by the side of the road: a picture of a tumultuous sea beneath a stormy sky, a small, distant lighthouse casting a beam of light across the waters. Beneath the image was a logo of sorts: the words THE PHAROS ENVIRONMENTAL PROJECT in English
, next to what looked like some kind of stylised eye. The slogan below stated in German: The Storm is Coming.

  ‘D’you think it’s real?’ Susanne asked abstractly, watching a huge four-by-four Mercedes thunder past them.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Anthropogenic climate change.’ Susanne repeated the question while tilting the rear-view mirror in her direction as she applied lipstick. ‘Do you think it’s real? That we’re responsible for screwing up the climate. Creating storms like last night?’

  ‘Of course it’s real.’ Fabel snapped the mirror back to its correct position, pointedly sighing his irritation. ‘All the evidence points to it being real. You’re a scientist, you’ve seen the data. You saying you don’t believe it?’

  ‘No… I’m not saying that. But maybe it’s not all us. Maybe there’s a natural shift. It’s happened before. And as well as natural shifts, a single volcano can do more damage than we’ve done over our entire history. Just look at the impact of all that Icelandic ash belched out into the atmosphere. If that baby or one of her bigger brothers really blows, then it could be winter for years. Mass starvation. Maybe even total and irreversible climate change. That’s not us. That’s Nature.’

  ‘Maybe there is a natural shift, but we’re definitely adding to it. It makes sense: releasing millions of years’ worth of stored carbon energy in a century and a half.’ Fabel sighed and looked at his watch. The road was even more congested than he had predicted. Luxury congestion: from the number of Range Rovers and battleship-sized Mercs and Lexuses, Fabel guessed that most of the usual commuter traffic from the affluent suburb of Blankenese, a little further upriver and upmarket from his Ottensen flat, had been redirected away from the Elbchaussee, the main route running along the side of the river.

  ‘Maybe I should think of trading up, after all,’ he said dully, watching the slow procession of luxury marques.

  ‘I hope we’re still talking about cars…’ Susanne grinned at him. ‘I’ll phone you tonight from my hotel, after the seminar.’

  ‘I’ll probably still be in the Commission.’

  ‘This Network Killer case?’ asked Susanne.

  ‘Yep. I’ll be chasing electronic ghosts until midnight,’ he said gloomily. He was about to say something else when the buzzing of his car phone interrupted him.

  ‘Hi, Chef, it’s Anna…’

  ‘Hi, Anna. What’s up?’

  ‘You on your way into the Presidium?’

  ‘No… or, at least, not yet. I’m dropping Susanne off at the airport, then heading in. What’s up?’

  ‘You maybe want to make a diversion down to the Fischmarkt. We’ve got a wash-up.’

  ‘Shit…’ Fabel paused for a moment and sighed. Not another one. ‘Does this look like the Network Killer?’

  ‘Actually, no. Not this one. Not unless he has completely changed his modus. This is a partial body. Dismembered.’

  ‘But female?’

  ‘Yes. She doesn’t fit with the other Network Killer victims, but it still looks like it’s one for us.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Fabel. ‘I’ll come straight there from the airport.’

  Chapter Six

  The man behind the desk sat with his back to the view. The wall behind him was completely made of toughened glass strengthened with pale steel: an edgeless window looking out across an edgeless expanse of sodium-grey water beneath a sodium-grey sky. It created the impression that the office was unconnected to anything; just suspended, untouched by gravity and removed from the environment around it.

  In his late forties, with a stocky build and powerful shoulders, the man behind the desk was shaven-headed but his jaw was framed by a dark, trimmed-close goatee beard. He wore rimless glasses and a black suit with a dark grey, Nehru-collared shirt beneath. There was an unnatural neatness to him, to the order of his desk, to the layout of his office. Even his movements seemed unnaturally methodical, as he inserted the memory stick into the laptop computer and clicked his way through the images stored on it.

  ‘There is no doubt about this, then?’ He spoke to the tall, thin, grey-suited man, pale-faced under short but starkly black hair, who stood in front of the desk.

  ‘I’m afraid not, Herr Director.’

  ‘How the hell could we have missed this? How could an outsider uncover all this… this chaos, and our own Consolidation and Compliance Office be totally unaware of what was going on?’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. Obviously, this is beyond anything we could have imagined. I mean, this behaviour is so extreme, particularly from one of our own members. I know it’s no excuse, Herr Director, but we weren’t looking for something like this, whereas the woman infiltrated the Project specifically to find something she could use against us. I’m guessing that even she didn’t expect to uncover something of this magnitude. But I can assure you that the instant this came to light… when I realised who it was in the file, and knowing his position in the organisation, I put my best security and surveillance officers onto tracking his every move, twenty-four hours a day. Ever since then we have been monitoring all his internet, email and cellphone activity, as well as tracking his movements and contacts. Our surveillance confirms what is in the USB stick we found on the woman.’

  ‘And there is no way she could have communicated any of this to someone on the outside?’

  ‘I cannot say with certainty, Herr Director, but I believe not. It’s my opinion that she intended to sell this information to the press, or to expose it on a website. She would not have told anyone who might have compromised her scoop. And she would be aware of our reach, so she would not risk exposing herself until publication.’

  ‘She was a journalist, you think?’

  ‘I can’t say. And she wouldn’t say. She was unresponsive to questioning. However, there is, we believe, a cellphone unaccounted for.’

  ‘What do you mean, “unaccounted for”?’

  ‘Simply that we can’t find her cellphone. A Nokia 5800. But we’ve got a tracker on it. It’ll be found, Herr Director.’

  ‘I sincerely hope so. I don’t need to tell you how much data can be stored on a hand-held.’ The man behind the desk paused meditatively, then nodded towards the image on his laptop screen. ‘What about him?’ Does he know he’s been found out?’

  ‘Absolutely not, Herr Director. I get the feeling that he believes he is immune from detection. His actions suggest a certain arrogance. And my Consolidators are expert at covert surveillance. He doesn’t know he’s being watched, that I’m sure of.’

  ‘Have you heard of the Observer Effect, Badorf?’

  ‘I can’t say I have, Herr Director.’

  ‘It comes from quantum mechanics, from the observation of subatomic particles. The act of observation itself changes the behaviour of the observed particle.’ The Director examined the image on the screen for a long time. ‘It is imperative that he does not know we are onto him. And no one outside your immediate team must know about this. You realise the danger his actions have placed us in, don’t you, Badorf? The danger they have placed the entire Project in?’

  ‘Of course. I have told the Consolidators involved to destroy all records of the surveillance, other than those you now have. But I do believe we got to the woman before she could pass on any of this information. And we could deal with… with our problem… before he does anything else to compromise the Project. What are your instructions?’

  Wiegand stared at the images again, clicking through them. ‘Nothing rash. This takes planning. He has to be stopped, all right, but not in a way that links with us.’

  ‘If I may suggest, Herr Director: perhaps Mister Korn should be advised.’

  ‘You are talking to me, Badorf. It’s the same thing. What I want you to do is to come up with something discreet and effective. Something innovative. Can you manage that?’

  ‘Of course, Herr Director. We have various resources at our disposal that cannot be linked directly to us. I will examine our options and report back to you.’


  After Badorf left the office, the Director swung his chair around to face the glass wall. The sky’s colour had shifted subtly to a more glaucous grey and now hinted at turbulence. Perhaps there was another storm coming.

  Chapter Seven

  A moment’s calm before the storm.

  Sitting quietly in his car, Fabel listened to his music and watched the rain through the windshield as it eased to a drizzle. He knew what was coming.

  This was his business. His job. Looking at death. Trying to understand it. But it didn’t matter how often you saw death — violent death — it still stirred a turmoil in you. Maybe not as big a turmoil as it had ten, fifteen years and countless cases ago, but it was still there: the vague churning in your gut triggered by an irrepressible human instinct. A natural fight-or-flight reaction firing somewhere in the oldest evolved part of your brain. Especially if there was a lot of blood. When there was a lot of blood something instinctive kicked in and overrode your reason. And, later on, long after you had left the scene of crime, the images of the dead would come back to you. Unbidden and at the most inappropriate moments: eating a meal, during sex, relaxing with friends.

  So Jan Fabel took a moment and sat in the car with the wipers switched off, watching the viscous rain burst maliciously against the windshield. The day outside was grey: the sky, the water, the buildings — all tonal shifts of graphite. It was a grey peace, this moment.

  The music seemed to fit his mood — and the weather — perfectly: the Esbjorn Svensson Trio, played through the mp3 player he had plugged into the BMW’s sound system. From Gagarin’s Point of View. A great title. A great piece for a Hamburg morning in graphite tones. Pleasantly melancholic in the way only the Scandinavians seemed able to master.

  Cold, wet knuckles rapped on the passenger window and snapped him out of his grey peace. He opened the window and chilled pinpoints of rain prickled against his cheek.

  ‘Are you going to join us, Chef?’ Anna Wolff leaned over into the window, frowning against the cold and wet. Impatient. Anna had always been youthful-looking and pretty: dark eyes and dark hair cut short. Girlish. But standing there in the rain there was a hint of a future, older Anna: an Anna with the edge of her typical energy blunted. Fabel noticed the subtle change and felt bad. He also noticed her slight limp as she stepped back from the car and felt worse. His team had taken more than its fair share of casualties over the years.