‘Can he speak?’ asked Fabel.
‘Yes, I can speak,’ said Reisch. His voice was thin and he seemed to gasp for breath between words. ‘For now, anyway. But that will go soon, too. But I can speak and I am here. So you don’t need to refer to me in the third person.’
‘I’m sorry, Herr Reisch. Is this your only computer?’
‘Yes. Why do you have to take it away? Frau Rössing’s right, I’d be quite lost without it. There must be some kind of mistake …’
‘No mistake, Herr Reisch. It’s just that you’re one of many people who have …’ Fabel paused and turned to Werner, who nodded and steered Frau Rössing and the two uniformed officers out of the room. ‘You have been in a chatroom and have interacted with two women who were subsequently murdered.’
‘This Network Killer thing?’ Reisch’s speech remained punctuated by gasps, which robbed his question of any intonation of surprise or shock.
Fabel showed him the printout of Thorsten66. ‘Is this the …’ Fabel struggled for the right word. ‘… the persona you use on the internet?’
‘On that particular website, and a couple of others, yes.’ Reisch paused. ‘You must think me pathetic.’
‘I don’t make judgements like that, Herr Reisch. I can’t begin to understand what it must be like to be in your situation. May I ask what has caused your condition?’
‘Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.’ Again, small gasps between words. ‘It’s a form of motor neurone disease.’
‘Is it treatable?’
‘There are so few things doctors can tell you with any certainty, Herr Fabel, but I’m in the fortunate position to have been given some absolutes about my condition. It is one hundred per cent untreatable and one hundred per cent fatal. My neural system is shutting down, bit by bit, function by function. Within the next year I will be unable to speak any more. Six months after that I will no longer be able to swallow my own spit or breathe unaided. I will suffocate to death. And do you know the laugh? The sweet irony of it all? I will still be fully mentally alert. A healthy mind trapped in a decaying body.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Fabel.
‘Must you take my computer?’ asked Reisch. ‘I think you can understand that it means more to me than to most people. I spend hours on it each day. It’s my only window on the world and I won’t have it for much longer.’
‘How do you operate it?’ asked Fabel. ‘I mean, given your condition?’
‘I still have some movement in my hands, but not much. My computer is set up for voice recognition. I can control it by giving it spoken commands. Eventually, when I lose my ability to speak articulately, I will lose that too.’
Fabel looked down at the printout. Reisch’s alter ego. Fantasy self.
‘You’re wondering why …’ said Reisch. ‘Why do I pretend to be young and healthy? It’s simple: when I am on these sites, on the web, that’s who I become. I picked that photograph because he looks a little like I did at that age. He has the insolent look to him that I had. Once.’
‘I understand.’
‘No, you don’t. I’m not criticising you, but you can’t even begin to understand. Not until you’ve spent a minute in this body.’
‘You had contact with two of the four women who have been murdered. You even suggested meeting one of them. Why would you do that? How could you do that?’
Reisch made an odd rattling sound that took Fabel aback. Then he realised it was the disabled man’s attempt at a laugh. ‘I did meet with these women. I met with dozens of women. Sometimes partied all night. But not here. Not in the real world. When you read messages where we were arranging to meet, all of the venues are inside Virtual Dimension. It was all part of the fantasy. Of course I know that I could never go out into the physical world and meet the women I talked to on the internet, but for as long as I was there, in that world, I believed anything was possible.’
‘But you never asked any of them to come here? To visit you at home?’
‘Never. Now you’re proving that you don’t understand. I exist in two universes. Distinct and separate. I would never bring them together.’ Reisch paused again. A pause of short, shallow breaths. Listening to it gave Fabel a feeling of tightness in his chest.
‘Do you know,’ continued Reisch, ‘that in the near future people like me will probably be plugged into a virtual world for as long as they wish? An alternate reality where they will be able to live a normal life.’
‘But it wouldn’t be real life,’ said Fabel. ‘I think I’d rather be disabled in the real world than live out some kind of fantasy surrounded by people who don’t exist.’
‘But that’s the thing,’ said Reisch. ‘It wouldn’t be like that. It would be populated by others like myself: all escaping whatever was wrong with them and interacting with each other. Real people in an unreal world. But, of course, that will be too late for me. But that’s why I was signed into Virtual Dimension. It was as close as I could get to that type of alternate reality.’
‘Does anyone else have access to your computer?’ asked Fabel.
‘No one.’
‘What about Frau Rössing?’
‘Never. It is password-protected. And I don’t think Frau Rössing would know how to work one anyway. She’s very old school.’
‘I see,’ said Fabel, and for a moment he did not know what to say next; what to do next. ‘I’m sorry we disturbed you, Herr Reisch. I don’t think it’s necessary to take your computer away. But one of our technical experts may have to come out and have a look at it. There may be messages from these victims that have some relevance to our investigation.’
‘I understand,’ said Reisch, his voice still coming between breaths; still devoid of intonation. ‘I will cooperate in any way. I just want to keep my computer.’
It was going to be a late night. Fabel tried to get Susanne first at her hotel and then on her cellphone but was put through to her answering service. He left a message, telling her she might have to take a taxi from the airport the following day. He frowned, pausing for a moment, then said, without really knowing why: ‘That text message didn’t come from work. Anyway, I think I’ve accidentally deleted it. I’m going to have to hand this phone in to have it checked. I’ll phone you later to give you the number of the replacement.’
Glasmacher and Hechtner were back from the crime scene in Poppenbüttel and Fabel asked them to start writing up the report. He called Müller-Voigt at his home, but the politician was clearly out and again Fabel found himself talking to a machine.
‘Hello, Herr Senator. I’m afraid I haven’t had a lot of time to look into that matter we discussed last night. But she’s definitely not at the address you gave, just like you said. I’ve made some other enquiries and I’ll get back to you as soon as I have anything worth reporting.’
After he hung up, Fabel called Kroeger in the Cybercrime Unit and explained about the missing text on his cellphone; Kroeger said that his people would check it out if he sent it straight down. Fabel went to the canteen, first picking up a replacement cellphone from the technical division. He decided to sit and drink his coffee in the canteen: he was going to be at his desk for half the night and the idea of a few minutes outside his office appealed to him. He had not had any food since lunchtime but decided against taking the time now to eat; he’d grab something on the way home.
‘Do you mind if I join you?’
Fabel looked up and was surprised to see Menke, the BfV officer standing there, holding a styrene cup of coffee and holding Fabel in a steady pale blue gaze from behind the rimless spectacles.
‘No … no, not at all.’ Fabel frowned. ‘It’s late for you to still be here, Herr Menke.’
‘Yes.’ The agent sat down opposite Fabel. ‘I’ve been in meetings all day with the chiefs of the MEK units.’ Menke referred to the special-weapons and rapid-response wing of the Polizei Hamburg. ‘You know, planning for GlobalConcern Hamburg.’
‘I don’t envy you,’ said Fabel. ‘I think
there are more than a few nutters out there who are going to try to make the summit a spectacle to get themselves noticed.’
‘You’re right there,’ said Menke emphatically. ‘Lots of world press there to see it all. There will be mass protests and there will probably be further acts of violence such as the arson attack the other day. That was the thrust of my meetings with the MEK chiefs: to establish a strategy of containment.’
‘Kettling?’ said Fabel with genuine surprise. ‘It wasn’t legal in eighty-six and it’s not legal now. I don’t see Herr Steinbach giving his approval to that.’ He referred to Hugo Steinbach, Hamburg’s Police President.
Menke was silent for a moment, holding Fabel in his insipid blue gaze while he took a sip of his coffee. Expressionless. Fabel thought back to the man in the wheelchair whom he had interviewed earlier in the day. He idly wondered if Menke had the emotional version of Reisch’s ailment.
‘Of course I’m not talking about kettling,’ said Menke eventually. ‘We live in a highly sophisticated time, Herr Fabel. Technologically. That means we have certain advantages that we didn’t have before. Our approach is more precision surgery than blunt-force trauma. When I say our strategy is containment, I mean we intend to isolate and excise those extremists who would hide themselves among genuine protesters. Our intelligence is good and getting better all the time. We don’t intend to contain the fire, we intend to prevent its ignition.’
‘I see,’ said Fabel, swirling the dregs of his coffee and examining them. ‘In other words, you’ve got people on the inside. Infiltrators.’
Menke approximated a smile. ‘Like I said, we have very sophisticated technology at our disposal. But at the end of the day, intelligence is and always has been a matter of human agency.’
Fabel excused himself, explaining that he had to get back to the Commission. Another body had been found, bringing the total to four.
‘What about the dismembered torso that Herr Müller-Voigt seemed so keen to discuss with you at our meeting? Have you definitely ruled that one out?’
‘Not definitely. But it doesn’t feel right,’ Fabel said, standing up and draining his coffee. ‘And murder investigation, like intelligence gathering, is a matter of human agency.’
‘Have you seen the Senator today?’ asked Menke.
‘No. Why should I have?’
‘No reason. It was just that he was supposed to be at our meeting today. In fact, it was exactly the kind of meeting I would have expected him to make a priority … he sees himself very much as the guardian of the people’s right to protest and, to be frank, I don’t think he trusts us that much. I’m very surprised he missed it. He sent us an email to say he couldn’t make it.’
‘Oh, I see,’ said Fabel. He chose not to mention that he had met with Müller-Voigt the night before, nor that he had tried to phone him that afternoon without success. ‘Well, I’ll no doubt see you again soon, Herr Menke.’
Menke remained seated and stretched his lips in a perfunctory smile. ‘No doubt, Herr Fabel.’
Fabel had already turned his back when Menke added: ‘Oh, by the way – I understand that Commissar Wolff is gathering information on the Pharos Project …’
‘Yes, she is.’
‘May I ask why?’
‘Because I asked her to.’
‘And may I ask why you asked her to? Is this connected with these murders?’
Fabel sighed. He had not wanted the BfV man to know of his interest in Pharos until he had found out something more about Müller-Voigt’s mysterious Meliha Yazar. But now that he did, there was no one better than Menke for Fabel to ask about it.
‘I’m looking at a lot of things. It’s just that the Pharos Project came up. I like to check everything out.’
‘You could have come to me.’
‘I intended to. My guess is that given the nature of the Pharos Project – I mean that it’s generally accepted that it is a cult – I guessed that the Bureau has an interest in Pharos, that you have a file on the organisation.’
‘Oh yes, we have an interest in Pharos …’ Menke gave a sardonic laugh. ‘We don’t have a file on them. We have a full-time five-man team …’
Fabel pulled out the chair and sat down again.
Chapter Nineteen
Roman Kraxner had spent two hours in Virtual Dimension. More than two hours.
He was angry with himself for his lack of discipline. But something was not right. He hadn’t seen Veronika 534 for days and she had agreed the exact time they could meet by the Moon Pools at the far side of New Venice lagoons. There again, it was true that that happened all the time: people were suddenly sucked back into real life and sometimes never returned to Virtual Dimension. But Veronika 534 had not seemed the type to skip out like that. There again, she had been spending a lot of time with Thorsten66; maybe they had hooked up in the real world.
The truth was that Roman was paranoid that the others he interacted with on Virtual Dimension would see through the façade: that he would do or say something that would reveal something of his reality. Roman was a conceited man: he was supremely confident in his intellectual abilities and looked down on the entirety of mankind as something inferior. But that was his mind. The part of him that connected with technology. As for the rest of his being, his physical presence, he knew that as far as everyone else was concerned he was just a fat loser. An obese computer geek who sweated and smelled and snorted and wheezed.
And that was what he was afraid of the others in Virtual Dimension seeing. There would never, ever be any real-world hook-up for Roman.
There had been a girl, once. In the real world. The only girl he had ever had a relationship with. Elena had been funny and very clever. Obviously not as clever as Roman, but very, very intelligent. They had met when she had brought her laptop back for repair. While he had worked on it, Roman had pried into every corner of her life, accessing all the personal information, the photographs, the online purchases she had made. It had revealed a person almost as lonely as he was. Somehow, without the mediation of any kind of technology, Roman had somewhere found the courage to ask her out. They had recognised a kinship in each other and they had seen each other for a few weeks.
But the truth, the cruel irony, was that Roman had found her physically repulsive. Because she, too, had been fat.
And if there was anything Roman found unappealing in a woman, it was too much weight.
He had put it from his mind. They clung to each other for companionship, and sex had never been something that either of them seemed to be interested in, so it made it easy for Roman to dispel his abhorrence of her fatness. That was until the night they had gone out to the cinema together. They usually met at the American fast-food bar that was roughly equidistant for their respective apartments, but that night they had arranged to see a film. A group of youths had spotted them and followed them, staying a few metres behind and laughing. Roaring with laughter and mocking them mercilessly, ceaselessly; making vulgar jokes and disgusting remarks about their size. The youths had tired of it eventually, but only after the damage had been done. After the film Roman and Elena had said goodbye and both knew they would never see each other again. It was obvious from the look that neither could keep from their gaze. A look of mutual disgust.
After that, Roman disengaged more and more from the real world. It had been about that time that he had given up the job in the computer store. He had despised the customers for their ignorance and stupidity and his attitude towards them had become increasingly hostile, so hostile there had been complaints; and, in any case, he was earning five times as much illegally in the evenings. If he quit his job, it meant he could spend even more time working on his fraudulent activities. It also removed the imperative to leave his flat every morning.
Roman looked at his profile page on Virtual Dimension. The fiction within a fiction. He had given himself an English name, Rick334, invented a completely false biography for himself, downloaded someone else’s photographs from else
where on the web. Someone slim, handsome, blond. He had extended the fiction by basing his Virtual Dimension avatar on the stolen face and body. The rules were that you only allowed people to view your ‘real’ profile after you had known each other for some time within the virtual world of New Venice, the impossibly beautiful city at the heart of Virtual Dimension’s fantasy universe. He had let Veronika534 see his profile and she had allowed him access to hers. They both lived in Hamburg, bringing the possibility of a real-life meeting close. Dangerously close, as far as Roman was concerned. Roman had worked out that it was no huge co-incidence that they shared the same home town: Virtual Dimension attracted people from around the world, but Roman had guessed that, to live up to its promise of ‘consolidation’ of virtual and physical realities, it must analyse the geographical origins of your IP address, grouping people according to their real-world geography.
Of course, Roman could have circumvented this. He had a dozen ways of connecting with a region-non-specific IP address, and his illegal servers allowed him to hide behind other people’s registered details but, whenever he was on Virtual Dimension, he used the same, non-dynamic and geographically accurate IP address. It was, unbelievably, actually legal and registered to his real home address. He used it for Virtual Dimension and nothing else and, in a way, this allowed him to demonstrate a perfectly legal means of connecting with the internet that was free of any association with his fraudulent activities.
He pushed his heels against the floor and his massive bulk, supported in his custom-designed chair, glided weightlessly and settled in front of another monitor. He logged into his internet account through a telecom company in Buenos Aires, which took him to a secure online banking account in Hong Kong, which transferred euros from an account in London, which in turn were traded for dollars in New York. There were some minor difficulties, but nothing that took more than fifteen minutes to circumvent, by which time he was five thousand dollars richer. The account he had stolen from actually had a balance of more than six and a half million, and he could just as easily have emptied it as taken the humble sum of five thousand, but that was the way Roman operated. Investigators would realise that, if the transaction was fraudulent, then the account could as easily have been emptied. It therefore wouldn’t make any sense to believe that it was fraud. They would spend months sorting through accounts to try to pin down what had happened to the five thousand. In the end they would decide they were spending more on the investigation than had been taken. It would be dropped and they would change the security settings and tighten their monitoring.
A Fear of Dark Water Page 13