A Fear of Dark Water

by Craig Russell

  ‘Whales eat it. That’s about it.’

  ‘There are two types of plankton: phytoplankton and zooplankton. Effectively, phytoplankton is microscopic plant life, zooplankton is microscopic animal life. The principle of iron seeding is that the iron dust seeded into the ocean acts as a fertiliser. It causes an explosion in the population of phytoplankton. And phytoplankton, because it’s plant based, employs the process of photosynthesis: it absorbs carbon dioxide and releases oxygen back into the atmosphere. In fact, even as it stands, a huge percentage of the planet’s “breathing” is done by phytoplankton. The theory is that by increasing the volumes of phytoplankton in the ocean, we can take up the slack created by a reduction in rainforest and other large vegetation on land. In many of the tests, there have indeed been massive increases in the levels of phytoplankton. The process of photosynthesis also creates organic materials, sugars, which cause the phytoplankton to sink out of the light and into the dark levels of the ocean, effectively locking up the carbon in the sea floor. The irony is that this dead plankton would, over geological time, eventually become mineral oil.’

  ‘So why isn’t everyone running out to do this?’ asked Fabel.

  ‘There is a problem. Put crudely, plants make oxygen, animals make carbon dioxide. Zooplankton, which creates CO2, also lives in the sunlit levels of the ocean, and it feeds on phytoplankton. That has meant that in some of the iron-seeding trial areas, the zooplankton has increased in equal proportion to the phytoplankton. It threatens to neutralise the benefit of iron seeding. That is why, with some segments of the eco-protection community, iron seeding remains a controversial topic. Some see it as a danger, not a remedy.’

  ‘Enough to earn Herr Föttinger enemies who are willing to kill?’

  Wiegand shrugged. ‘You’re the policeman, Herr Fabel.’

  ‘If this iron seeding is so controversial, why were you and Föttinger Environmental pursuing it?’ asked Fabel. He became aware that he was not questioning the person he had come to question, but allowed himself to be deliberately diverted for the moment.

  ‘Because if we can iron out the problems, if you’ll pardon the pun, then the benefits are potentially enormous. It could literally save all our lives. The other reason is that Daniel’s researchers are close to developing potential fixes. They are adding elements to the mix that would speed up the process, causing the phytoplankton to sink much faster. Zooplankton cannot survive below three hundred metres, so if we can drop greater amounts of phytoplankton below that level after photosynthesis but before the zooplankton has a chance to feed on it, then we have our solution.’

  ‘I see. Do you have rivals … competitors in this area?’

  Wiegand laughed. ‘No one who would kill to get ahead. The environmental-technology industry does not work that way. The planet always comes before the profit.’

  Fabel turned his attention back to Kirstin Föttinger. He ran through the usual questions, establishing as detailed a chronology of the dead man’s movements as possible. When Fabel was finished, he went through what he had been told.

  ‘Going by what you have told me, Frau Föttinger,’ he said, ‘your husband spent – in fact, both of you regularly spent – upwards of six hours an evening on the internet or otherwise using computers?’

  ‘That’s correct,’ she said blankly, the porcelain face devoid of any hint that such behaviour should be considered odd. ‘It was part of his work and who he was. Who I am, as well. We both liked to remain connected.’

  Fabel nodded and let it go, but made a mental note to discuss with his team the possibility of getting a warrant to examine Föttinger’s computers. No, it would be futile. By the time the Polizei Hamburg’s experts got into the computers, the Pharos Project’s even better experts would have removed anything that might have proved embarrassing for the cult.

  ‘Your husband knew Berthold Müller-Voigt quite well, I believe.’

  ‘Not well. Naturally, they encountered each other frequently.’

  ‘But Herr Müller-Voigt was a director of Föttinger Environmental Technologies …’

  ‘A non-executive director. Berthold’s function was one of adviser.’

  ‘I would have thought that that would create a conflict of interest for him as Environment Senator.’

  ‘He lodged it with the Senate as a declared interest. In any case, our company does not operate in the Hamburg area. There are no contracts to be awarded or the like.’

  ‘But you do understand that I have to examine any connections between your husband and Senator Müller-Voigt?’

  ‘Do you really think there’s a connection?’ asked Wiegand. ‘They died under different circumstances, didn’t they? Poor Daniel’s death may not even have been intended and, from what I’ve read, Berthold was murdered by someone he had let into his home.’

  Fabel turned to Wiegand and held him in his stare for a moment. The agenda behind the last remark was clear: Wiegand knew, somehow, that Fabel had been in Müller-Voigt’s house shortly before he died.

  ‘I don’t know if there is a connection or not,’ said Fabel. ‘Yet. I take it you knew Berthold too.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I did. Obviously our paths crossed because of our mutual involvement in environmental affairs.’

  ‘I see,’ said Fabel. ‘Did you ever meet his partner? Meliha Yazar?’

  ‘I can’t say I did,’ said Wiegand, with nothing to read on his face.

  ‘Frau Föttinger?’

  ‘The name is not familiar,’ she said. ‘I thought that Berthold was not exclusive with anyone. He had a reputation as a ladies’ man, as I’m sure you’re aware.’

  Fabel thanked Kirstin Föttinger, expressed his sympathy for her loss once more, and took his leave of her. He knew he was a character leaving a stage: nothing about the interview had been natural or spontaneous. There was nothing more to find out here. As he had on the way in, Peter Wiegand made sure to act as Fabel’s escort as the detective left.

  ‘Your society intrigues me, Herr Wiegand,’ said Fabel as they reached his car. ‘Tell me, do you really believe in the Consolidation? That you can all be uploaded onto a mainframe?’

  ‘Herr Fabel, every religion, every belief system, has a central tenet that is open to a multitude of interpretations. Whatever the belief system, some adherents will hold that tenet to be literal, some to be figurative. In any case, for all I know all of this …’ He made a sweeping gesture with his arm to indicate the house’s parklike gardens, the trees and everything beyond. ‘Maybe all of this is the Consolidation. Maybe this isn’t true reality and we’re all just self-aware programs in a post-human generated environmental model. But if this is reality, and I firmly believe that it is, then it is coming to a close if we do not do something radical, and do it quickly.’ He paused and looked at Fabel as if assessing him. ‘You are welcome to visit us, Herr Fabel. Have you seen the Pharos, our headquarters here, out on the coast at Hörne? In fact, it’s not very far away from Berthold Müller-Voigt’s house. And I believe you have been there.’

  ‘No, I can’t say I have seen the Pharos,’ said Fabel, refusing to take the bait.

  ‘Then you should come! It really is an exceptional piece of architecture. The Pharos is built as an extension to an existing nineteenth-century lighthouse. The entire building projects out over the water. We even have sections of glass flooring where you can look down at the sea, twenty metres below.’ He handed Fabel a card. ‘Please visit us, Herr Fabel. We are open to all, even to policemen. But I would ask that you ring first so we know when to expect you. The only other thing I would ask you to bring is an open mind.’

  ‘So you can close it?’

  ‘Despite what your colleagues from the BfV may have told you, we are not a cult. We are an environmental-action group.’

  ‘I have to say,’ said Fabel, ‘I don’t fancy the idea of being suspended above the sea.’

  ‘You have a fear of water, Herr Fabel?’

  ‘No … not a fear. I was brought
up in Norddeich. I have a healthy respect for it.’

  ‘The only water I fear,’ said Wiegand, suddenly less affable and more serious, ‘is dark water. Do you know what the albedo effect is? Albedo is the reflectivity of a surface to the sun’s rays. Polar ice reflects the sun’s rays and prevents sea warming. The more ice, the cooler the sea, the more stable the climate. The higher the ratio of dark water to white ice, the faster the planet heats up. Every year there is less and less ice at the poles and more and more dark water. I want you to understand, Herr Fabel, that whatever you think of me or the Pharos Project I am genuinely afraid of the cataclysm that awaits us and genuinely committed to doing all I can, using every weapon at my disposal, to prevent it happening. We are not playing a game here. This is a battle to survive.’

  Fabel nodded thoughtfully. He was actually thinking about how far Wiegand would go, and what weapons he was prepared to use. But Fabel had also read that Wiegand’s personal wealth could be counted in billions, rather than millions; there was a profit to be made out of any apocalypse.

  ‘Maybe I will pay you a visit, Herr Wiegand,’ he said. He looked at the card Wiegand had handed him. It had the same stylised eye motif as the poster he had passed on the way to the airport. ‘Sometime soon.’

  Once he was in his car, Fabel switched his cellphone back on. It rang almost immediately. It was Anna Wolff.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘This is interesting. I ran a check on those names and I’ve got the details on that plate you ran … if that car really is following you, then it’s not one of ours and it’s nothing to do with the BfV. It’s registered to Seamark International, which, I am told, is a private maritime security company.’

  ‘What? Why the hell is a private security company following me?’

  ‘Do you want me to send someone to their offices to get some answers?’

  ‘No, not yet. I don’t want them alerted to the fact that I’m onto them. If I see the same car on my tail again I’m going to have them pulled over. One thing you could do for me is to check out this Seamark International. I’d put a month’s wages on it turning out to be some kind of subsidiary of the Korn-Pharos Corporation. What about the names I gave you to check?’

  ‘Victoria Kempfert is as clean as a whistle. No convictions or arrests, no contact of any significance with the police. But it’s Daniel Föttinger who makes things much more interesting. He would appear to have been someone who didn’t take “no” for an answer. An accusation of sexual harassment last year lodged by a female employee, and two accusations of rape. One when he was still a student and the second in 1999. All three accusations were dropped as soon as the police investigated. It would appear that Föttinger’s daddy had the kind of wealth to make unpleasantness disappear … and, of course, so did Föttinger junior, later.’

  ‘Now that is interesting.’

  ‘There’s more. Föttinger’s parents put him in a fancy hospital in Bavaria after the student-days incident. A psychiatric hospital. I’ve asked for a court order to get his records. I thought you’d want them. I don’t know how relevant any of this is, but I thought there might be a chance that someone was exacting revenge.’

  ‘Well done, Anna.’ Fabel thought about what she had told him. ‘Get me the names and addresses of the victims, would you? I’d like to talk to them. Or at least one of them.’

  ‘Sure, Chef, but you’ll have to give me some time. I’m in the Commission but I’ll be mobile in ten. I’m going out to see the disabled guy you talked to, Johann Reisch. Two officers are going to check out his computer, one from Tech Section, the other from Cybercrime. By the way, they’re none too pleased with you. They say that the delay in examining his computer means he could have erased a lot of evidence.’

  ‘Reisch isn’t our man, Anna. And that’s good old-fashioned police instinct, not technology.’

  ‘Well, the problem is that they’re out at Reisch’s right now and can’t get an answer. And Reisch was expecting them. They arranged a time with him on the phone.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound good, Anna. Reisch is pretty much housebound. Get a uniformed unit to go out with you. If you get no answer, force the door. I’m on my way now. In fact, hold fire until I get there. And see if you can get a number for his carer. Shit, I’ve forgotten her name …’

  ‘Rössing … I’m already on it. See you there.’

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  As it turned out, they did not need to force entry into Reisch’s house. Frau Rössing, the disabled man’s carer, turned up with a key just as Fabel arrived. Fabel noticed that Reisch’s carer wore an expression of genuine concern.

  ‘He was fine this morning when I left,’ she said as she fumbled through her bunch of keys.

  ‘Wait here,’ Anna told her after she had unlocked the door. ‘We need to go in first.’

  Fabel and Anna found Reisch exactly where he had been the last time Fabel had spoken to him; sitting at the table, staring at the computer screen of his laptop. Except that today Reisch was staring at the screen through the clear polythene of the plastic bag that was pulled over his head and sealed at the neck by a drawstring. The bag was large and ballooned out as if pumped full of air; it gave Fabel the impression of an oversized space helmet, or the hood of one of those suits you saw worn by people who handled radioactive material. Reisch still sat upright, the neck brace of his wheelchair preventing him from slumping, his blank stare aimed at the laptop screen.

  Fabel pushed two fingers into the flesh at the side of Reisch’s neck, just beneath where the drawstring had been pulled tight. He turned to Anna and shook his head.

  ‘Shit …’ Anna stared at the still-upright dead man. ‘Do you think someone’s killed him because of his connection to Virtual Dimension?’

  Fabel did not answer. Instead, he flipped open his cellphone and called it in to the Presidium. He asked who was on forensics duty.

  ‘Keep the carer out of here, Anna,’ he said quietly after he hung up from his call. ‘But tell her that Reisch has passed away. Holger Brauner’s on his way with a team.’

  After Anna and the uniformed officer left the room, Fabel took a closer look around Reisch’s desk. There was a postal packet that had been untidily torn open. Next to it lay what looked to Fabel like a small oxygen canister with a length of tubing attached. Fabel took a latex glove from his jacket pocket and, without slipping it on, used it as a shield while he rolled the canister around. It had the symbol He on it. Not oxygen, helium.

  Fabel checked the laptop’s screen. When Reisch had died, he had been locked into Virtual Dimension. Now his avatar walked aimlessly through a surrealistically realistic world rendered by computer graphics. It had been what he had watched as he died. The last thing his dying brain would have registered. Even now, Reisch gave the impression of watching his cybernetic alter ego.

  Once Brauner and his team had arrived, Fabel joined Anna and the uniformed officer outside. Brauner had only been in the house for fifteen minutes when he called Fabel back in.

  ‘You can forget this one, if you ask me, Jan,’ said Brauner. ‘Of course you’ll have to wait for the autopsy, but this is no murder. Well, it’s self-murder, but that doesn’t interest you.’

  ‘But someone tied that bag around his neck. If he did it himself, then as soon as he started to suffocate, the survival instinct would have kicked in.’

  ‘No it wouldn’t, Jan. That’s a so-called “Exit Bag”. A suicide kit. The fastening is a drawstring you pull tight yourself. And the “survival instinct” you talk about is called the hypercapnic alarm response. It’s the panic you feel when the level of carbon dioxide in your blood becomes dangerously high and your brain tells you that you’ve got to start breathing fast. He won’t have experienced that. That’s what the canister was for: you fill the bag or your lungs or both with an inert gas like nitrogen or helium. It confuses your brain and it overrides the hypercapnic alarm response. You just feel you’re breathing normally, no pain, no panic, then you pass out and never wake u
p. Believe it or not, you can buy Exit Bags on the internet, or download instructions on how to make one yourself. We’ve bagged up the postal packet it came in: you might be able to find out whom he ordered it from. And I guess you’ll find something about it on that …’ Brauner nodded towards the laptop on the table.

  ‘So you’re convinced it was suicide?’

  ‘There’s no evidence to suggest it wasn’t. Why was he in the wheelchair?’

  ‘Some kind of motor neurone disease. Poor bastard.’

  ‘Then I don’t blame him. If it were me, I’d do the same before I couldn’t do it for myself. And, truth be told, these Exit Bags are not the worst way to go. You don’t want to be interrupted and saved, though. Pull through from an attempt with one of these and your brain’ll be mush.’

  The officer from Kroeger’s Cybercrime Unit came in. She had been the one who had alerted Anna and had waited while the forensics had done their work. She was an unlikely-looking police officer, petite with auburn hair tied back in a ponytail and wearing jeans and a waist-length casual jacket. She looked as if she could still have been a student on her way to a lecture. Something about her reminded Fabel of his daughter, Gabi, who had the same auburn hair and who had expressed an interest in following her father into the Polizei Hamburg. Fabel noticed that the young policewoman worked at not looking at the dead man in the wheelchair.

  ‘You all right?’ he asked her.

  ‘Yes, Herr Chief Commissar. Sorry.’ She frowned. ‘I wondered if you still wanted us to take the laptop for examination?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Fabel. He looked again at the screen. Thorsten66, Reisch’s virtual-world persona, still wandered the counterfeit world of Virtual Dimension’s New Venice. In one corner of the screen, beneath the photograph of the muscle-torsoed youth who Reisch had chosen because it reminded him of a younger, healthy self, were messages from other users, inviting Thorsten66 to parties by the lagoons, or to take part in the New Venice Olympics. It was no accident that Reisch had had this on-screen, in his line of sight, as he died. Maybe he really had believed that through an effort of will he could project himself, at the moment of death, into that ersatz but infinitely preferable reality.