Nice try, thought Fabel. He looked over the whole sordid scene. Really nice try. This was a murder masquerading as a drug death that would slip swiftly and quietly into a statistic. It was the kind of anonymous, unsurprising death that passed by with nothing other than a perfunctory official recording by the police: another junkie succeeds in finally poisoning himself to death. Except this junkie had a story to tell and someone had silenced him before he could tell it.
‘You informed the local boys yet?’
Werner shook his head. ‘I wanted you to see it first. Very convenient, isn’t it?’
‘And one hell of a coincidence. I want Holger Brauner’s team to do their thing. Inform the local Polizeidirektion, but tell them we are treating this as a suspected murder, and that means it’s a Mordkommission case.’
Fabel looked back down at Hansi. Again he couldn’t help seeing past the corpse, past the junkie, to someone’s son, to a person who must once have had dreams and hopes and ambitions.
‘You said that Hansi seemed to get suddenly uneasy at the Präsidium?’ he asked Werner. ‘In the canteen?’
‘Yes, he did. I thought it was really odd the way he suddenly seemed uncomfortable and desperate to get away.’
‘And I told you that he was probably just itching for his next fix. But what if that wasn’t it? What if, after we make him trudge through mug shot after mug shot, he sees one or both of the killers right there in the Präsidium?’
‘He was okay to start with … there were a few uniforms in the canteen, some KriPo. The usual mix. He didn’t start to get jumpy until we sat at the table. In fact we were sitting there a while before he started …’ Werner’s face emptied of expression and his eyes moved as if the images from his recall were playing out in front of him. ‘That’s it!’ Then the sudden illumination of his expression faded just as quickly. He looked at Fabel grimly. ‘Oh shit …’
Saturday 21 June, 5.30 p.m. Polizeipräsidium, Hamburg.
Fabel and Werner made their way directly to Van Heiden’s office as soon as they got back from the squalor of Hansi Kraus’s squat. Even as they were shown into Van Heiden’s office, Fabel thought he could still smell a hint of the musty, unclean odour that had lurked heavily in the air, as if it had partially invested itself into the fabric of his jacket. He felt the urge, almost an obsessive compulsion, to get home to shower and change.
Van Heiden was clearly in no mood for chit-chat. ‘Are you sure about this, Fabel?’ The Kriminaldirektor asked the question almost before the office doors had closed behind him and Werner. Volker, who was already seated in front of Van Heiden’s desk, didn’t rise from his chair but nodded in Fabel’s direction when he and Werner entered. Fabel noticed there were two red folders – personnel files – on the desk. ‘This is a very serious allegation …’
‘No, Herr Kriminaldirektor, I’m not sure. All we actually have are a handful of facts of which we can be reasonably certain …’
Fabel and Werner now stood before the broad expanse of Van Heiden’s desk. Van Heiden beckoned for them to take the two vacant chairs next to Volker. They both sat down and Fabel continued.
‘Herr Volker’s intelligence tells us that there is some kind of leak from within the Polizei Hamburg selling information to this new Ukrainian outfit and, for all we know, to other organised-crime outfits. Whoever this leak is, he, she or they have a motive for killing anyone who can identify them. Oberst Volker believes that they identified Klugmann as an undercover federal agent and either exposed him to the Ukrainians or killed him themselves.’
‘And it looks like they did their own dirty work,’ interjected Werner. ‘Hansi Kraus told us that the killers he saw were Germans, not foreigners. And they enjoy their work. According to the forensic pathologist, the bastards tortured Klugmann before they murdered him. And, of course, the Ukrainian-made automatic that Hansi found was left behind to point us in the wrong direction.’
Fabel took up the story again. ‘And when Kraus is brought in here to look at mug shots, Werner takes him down to the canteen where something or someone spooks him so badly he can’t get out of the place quickly enough. The next thing we know, Kraus is found lying dead in his squat from a beautifully staged overdose.’
Van Heiden had sat grim-faced throughout. Fabel had noticed that Volker’s attention had not been focused on the speakers, but on Van Heiden’s reaction to what was being said.
‘Okay … the evidence points to corrupt police officers. But what evidence do we have against these two officers in particular?’ said Van Heiden, picking up the red personnel files and throwing them across the wide expanse of his desk so that they came to rest the right way round in front of Fabel.
‘We have no hard, objective evidence as yet, Herr Kriminaldirektor,’ answered Fabel. ‘But the physical descriptions we got from Hansi match them perfectly. What’s more …’ Fabel flipped open the first file and stabbed a finger at the photograph in the top right-hand corner of the first page – ‘when I was in his office, I noticed several boxing trophies, one of which was for junior light-heavyweight in Hamburg-Harburg. That is where he grew up. Hansi Kraus mentioned that the older of the two hitmen was whining about how the area he grew up in was going to the dogs.’ Fabel flipped open the second file. ‘Kraus also described the second, younger man, the one who pulled the trigger, as looking like some kind of muscleman. I couldn’t think of a better description to match this guy.’
‘It all seems very flimsy and circumstantial,’ said Van Heiden.
‘It is,’ said Fabel, ‘until we get some hard evidence against them. We’re starting with a complete forensic exam of the murder scene. The local guys know that this is being treated as a murder, and I’m sure word has already got back to our chums here. But the most compelling piece of, admittedly subjective, evidence is Kraus’s reaction in the Präsidium canteen.’ Fabel looked over to Werner.
‘I tried to pinpoint the exact moment that Hansi started to get jumpy,’ said Werner. ‘Then I remembered these two,’ he pointed at the files, ‘coming in and sitting down not far from where we were. It was then that Kraus started to act like he had an electric wire up his ass. He even asked me who the big guy with the muscles was. I told him.’
‘You asked me if I’m sure about this. Well, I’m sure these are our guys all right.’ Fabel nodded his head in the direction of the open files, with the two faces staring blankly out from the windows of their photographs at their accusers. ‘They are in exactly the right position to sell extremely valuable intelligence … they’re high-enough ranking and they’re in the right department.’ He fixed Van Heiden with a candid stare. ‘Am I sure we can prove it? No. Whether we can get enough evidence to convict them is an entirely different proposition.’
There was another small silence as they all looked down at the photographs of Kriminalhauptkommissar Manfred Buchholz and Kriminalkommissar Lothar Kolski of LKA7.
Saturday 21 June, 8.00 p.m. Speicherstadt, Hamburg.
Fabel parked, as before, on Deichstrasse before crossing over to the Speicherstadt on foot. Again the vast hulks of the warehouses loomed against the darkening sky, the red brickwork seeming to smoulder like dull embers in the failing light. He retraced his steps to the former Klimenko warehouse and swung the heavy door open. It had been dark enough on his last visit; this time, there were no lights on. The vast belly of the warehouse had swallowed the evening whole, with any hint of light from the distant windows or the open door sucked into oblivion. Fabel cursed himself for not having brought a flashlight. He knew there were neon striplights scattered throughout the warehouse, hanging down like trapeze bars from the high ceiling; he guessed that there must be a switch near the door, but he had no idea where.
‘Major Vitrenko!’ His voice resounded against the walls before being swallowed up by the darkness. He muttered a curse before calling out ‘Vitrenko!’ once more. Despite his irritation, Fabel could not help seeing the irony in calling out that particular name. It was almost an analogy of his i
nvestigation, chasing a monstrous spectre in the dark. There was no reply. Fabel peered into the warehouse, narrowing his eyelids and craning his head forward, as if the action would filter out some of the darkness. He thought he could see a dim oblong glow set deep into the gloom. From memory, Fabel reckoned that the pale light would fit with one of the Portakabin’s narrow windows. He called out once more. Silence. This wasn’t right. He checked the luminous dial of his watch. It was after eight and he knew that a man as habituated to military regulation and precision as the Ukrainian must have been would not be late. Fabel reached under his jacket and slipped his Walther from its holster. He cursed his lack of foresight: he had not considered there would be any danger in meeting the Ukrainian again. No one knew Fabel was here. He was alone. He reached out and slapped and slid the palm of his left hand on the wall next to the door, but his exploring hand refused to find the switch.
A sound. Somewhere in the black chasm something made a noise so small and so indistinct that Fabel could not identify it. He froze and extended the Walther out before him in the vague direction of the sound. He strained his ears. Nothing. He took his fix on the insubstantial glow in the window and edged towards it. By occasionally shifting his position sideways he could identify where the pillars stood and as he reached one he would run his left hand around and up it to check for a light switch.
He heard it again. A moan. Or a voice muffled.
‘Vitrenko?’ He called out again, this time with a tentative tone in his voice, as if unsure which Vitrenko, father or son, might answer him. The answer came in a low, stifled cry, as if from someone gagged. Fabel snapped his head round in the direction of the sound. His ears strained hard, but the silence of the warehouse was already filling with the jack-hammer thudding of his own pulse. He tightened his grip on the Walther, aware that his palms, like his face, were now sleeked with sweat.
He was now close to the office cabin. Fabel guessed that the steps were just a few feet from him. He had reached another pillar and laid his free hand flat against it. He felt the ridge of a cable conduit running vertically down the pillar. He swiftly ran his hand down and found the square switch box. Fabel took a long, slow, silent breath and moved himself back and out from the pillar, stretching his arm out straight with the fingers of his left hand resting on the switch. He again loosened and then tightened his grip on his pistol, and readied to fire at whatever awaited him when he hit the lights.
Fabel pressed the light switch and a bank of about a dozen striplights, spanning the mid-section of the warehouse, flickered reluctantly into life and illuminated a scene from hell.
The girl with the golden hair, the girl who had seemed so full of youth and lithe vigour, was pinned, dead, against the side of the Portakabin. Her naked, butchered body, the lungs ripped from the body cavity, had been nailed in the same manner as the victims in the photographs taken two decades ago in a distant land. Blood and viscera glittered like wet paint splashed across the wall of the elevated office cabin. In losing her life she had lost her humanity: Fabel struggled to see the person she once was, instead irresistibly drawn to the feeling that he was looking at the twisted carcass of some grotesque, human-headed bird. He cursed the thought, for it was exactly what the killer had wanted to create. Fabel fought for his next breath and staggered back, coming to rest against a pillar. He so desperately wanted to look away, but found he could not tear his eyes from the tableau of horror before him.
Again, Fabel heard a low, muffled groan. Like a sleepwalker suddenly awoken he spun, gun poised, in the direction of the sound. The old Ukrainian was standing upright against the pillar that faced the horror on the cabin wall. He was bound tight with wire, a loop of which had been fixed above and behind his head, then drawn down and tight under his jawline. The wire had cut deep into the old man’s flesh and the front of his shirt was soaked black-red with his blood. His mouth had been sealed with a broad swathe of tape. Fabel could see that the Slav was still alive, his eyes wild and staring. The realisation hit Fabel low in the gut: Vitrenko had made his own father watch. He had repeated his own history and made the poor bastard bear witness as he ripped the breathing lungs from the girl’s body. Fabel lunged forward and placed his hands on either side of the old man’s head, and the green eyes locked Fabel’s in a wild, intense gaze. He was trying to say something.
‘Wait … wait …’ said Fabel, hastily examining the lethally tight wire bond, completely at a loss as to where to begin extricating the Slav before he bled to death. ‘I’ll get you out …’
The Ukrainian shook his head violently, causing the wire to slice even deeper into his flesh, and something that should have been a scream struggled behind the tape. Fabel backed away, shocked.
‘For Christ’s sake, keep still …’ Fabel holstered his gun and started to ease the tape from the mouth. Again the Ukrainian reacted violently, jerking his head in a sideways and downwards nod. Fabel followed the direction of the green eyes.
Then he saw it.
Strapped to the pillar, next to the old man’s ankles, was a large, thick metal disc that Fabel recognised as some type of anti-tank charge. Clamped to the mine was a fist-sized, black electrical box with a flickering green light. Fabel’s terror tightened itself around him another notch as he realised that the two thick wires that snaked out from the box were the same wires that bound the Ukrainian to the pillar. His entire body was primed. And the flashing green light on the box suggested there was also some kind of timing device. Once more the bound man started to make urgent gestures with his head and eyes, as if trying to nudge Fabel back in the direction of the warehouse door.
Fabel’s voice cracked as he spoke. ‘I can’t … I can’t leave you here …’
Something approaching calm seemed to settle back into the Ukrainian’s green eyes, and with it a quiet, strong resignation. He closed his eyes and made the slightest nodding movement with his head. It was a gesture of release: he was releasing Fabel from all obligation, from death; he was releasing himself from a troubled life.
‘I’ll get help …’ said Fabel, although both men knew that the Ukranian was as far beyond anyone’s help as it was possible to be. Fabel backed away from him, holding his gaze for as long as he could before turning and quickening his pace into a run, then a flat sprint across the empty expanse of the warehouse. Towards the door. Towards life.
Fabel burst out onto the narrow pavement outside the warehouse with such force that his head-ward plunge into the canal beyond was prevented only by the railing he slammed into. His feet slid and scraped on the cobbles as he scrambled along the wall of the neighbouring warehouse. He sat on the cobbles, his back pressed against the red brickwork, braced for what he knew must come. And it did.
There was a thunderous, reverberating whump from deep within the warehouse, as if some giant fist had slammed into the building, and Fabel felt a shockwave pulse through the wall at his back and the ground beneath him. The heavy door of the warehouse was ripped from its frame and the windows at second-storey level burst into a shower of glittering fragments. Fabel fell onto his side and cradled his head in his hands, drawing his knees up to his chest in a foetal position. A billowing wave of white and red flame bloomed through the shattered doorway and windows and then retreated, like an angry animal returning, growling, to its lair. The air was filled with a choking powder of brick dust, smoke and grime. After the earth-shaking violence of the blast, it seemed as if the world had gone still and silent. Then the alarm of every adjacent warehouse began ringing or whining in pale urgency. Fabel pulled himself back upright and sat motionless for what seemed an age. He squeezed his eyes tight closed, but he could not extinguish the fire in the green eyes of a dead old man that burned in his brain. The same eyes that had locked with Fabel’s as he had had the consciousness squeezed from him in Angelika Blüm’s flat. The same eyes that had released Fabel from any obligation to remain with him. The same, sad father’s eyes that, nearly two decades before, had looked upon the horror of the handiwor
k of his own flesh and blood.
In the distance, he could hear the growing whine of sirens approaching the Speicherstadt. Fabel got to his feet, pressing the palms of his hands against the wall and pushing himself up. Dust had invaded his nose and mouth and he coughed to free his throat of it. He clung to the wall as if moving from it would mean becoming lost in the swirl of dust and darkness, closed his eyes and saw again the horror that Vasyl Vitrenko had painted for him in flesh and blood on the wall in the warehouse; he saw the old man strapped to a pillar and forced to watch the horror and hear the screams of a young woman being dismembered before him. This had been Vitrenko’s masterwork. And Fabel had been intended to see it. With that thought came the realisation that Vitrenko had intended Fabel to live. He had arranged and timed it to perfection: allowing Fabel time to witness his masterpiece, to agonise futilely about how to extricate the old man from the ineluctability of his death and then to escape. That way, Vitrenko had placed two indelible images in Fabel’s mind to haunt him for the rest of his life: the butchered girl; the old man’s resignation to death. And having placed the images safely in Fabel’s mind he blasted them into nothing. Expunged them from reality, leaving them to live only in the gallery of Fabel’s memory.
He slid back down the wall into a sitting position and felt a sob begin to rise in his throat. He forced it back down and rested his head back against the brickwork and waited for help to come.
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