Eternal jf-3

by Craig Russel

  ‘When you say lack of forensic evidence, I take it you’re referring to the first killing – where Kristina Dreyer destroyed anything evidential?’

  ‘Well, that’s the thing, Jan,’ said Brauner. ‘It’s true of both crime scenes. The killer seems to know how to eliminate his forensic presence… except for what he wants us to find.’

  ‘Which is?’

  Brauner placed the two evidence collection bags on the conference table. ‘As you say, Kristina Dreyer destroyed any traces at the first scene, except for this single red hair.’ He pushed one bag forward across the table. ‘But I suspect that there was nothing for her to destroy. We have been able to recover nothing from the second scene either, and we know that was fresh and untouched. It is practically impossible for someone to occupy a space without leaving retrievable forensic evidence. Unless, that is, he or she goes to considerable lengths to conceal their presence. Even then, they would have to know what they were doing.’

  ‘And our guy does?’

  ‘It would appear so. We only found one piece of trace evidence that we cannot allocate to the scene or the victim.’ Brauner pushed the second bag across the table. ‘And it is this… a second hair.’

  ‘But that’s good,’ said Maria. ‘If these hairs match, then surely that means that we have evidence to link the two murders. And a DNA fingerprint. Obviously the killer has slipped up.’

  ‘Oh, the two hairs match, all right,’ Brauner said. ‘The thing is, Maria, that this hair is exactly the same length as the first hair. And there is no follicle at the end of either. Not only are they from the same head, they were cut from it at exactly the same time.’

  ‘Great…’ said Fabel. ‘We’ve got a signature…’

  ‘There’s more…’ said Frank Grueber, Brauner’s deputy. ‘The two hairs were indeed cut from the same head at the same time – but that time was somewhere between twenty and forty years ago.’

  5.

  Four Days After the First Murder: Monday, 22 August 2005.

  11.15 a.m.: Marienthal, Hamburg

  Fabel stood alone in the garden at the rear of the late Dr Griebel’s villa, screwing up his pale blue eyes against the bright sun. The house was white-walled and laid out over three storeys under a vast red-tiled roof that swept down on either side to ground-floor level. It was flanked by neighbours that differed only nominally in design. Another row of equally impressive villas stood behind Fabel, presenting their backs and gardens to him.

  Griebel’s garden was laid out to lawn with some heavy shrubs and a cluster of trees offering a partial screen. But it was overlooked. The killer had not come in this way. But there was even less opportunity to break in from the front or the sides, unless the killer was as skilled at burglary as he was at forensic-free murder. And Brauner and his team had yet to find any evidence of a forced entry here or at Hans-Joachim Hauser’s apartment.

  ‘They let you in,’ Fabel said to the empty garden; to the phantom of a killer long gone from the scene. He walked purposefully around to the front of the house and stopped at the main door, which was banded by strips of red-and-white police tape and bore a police notice forbidding entry. ‘No one saw you here. That means Griebel admitted you quickly. Was he expecting you? Had you arranged to meet him here?’

  Fabel took out his cellphone, hit the pre-set button for the Murder Commission and got Anna Wolff.

  ‘I need Griebel’s phone records for the last month. Everything we can get. Home, office, cellphone. I need names and addresses of anyone he spoke to. Start with the last week. And I want Henk to do the same thing with Hauser’s phone records.’

  ‘Okay, Chef, we’ll get onto it,’ said Anna. ‘Are you coming back to the Presidium?’

  ‘No. I’ve arranged to meet with Griebel’s colleagues this afternoon. How are Maria and Werner getting on with the Hauser follow-up?’

  ‘Haven’t heard, Chef. They’re still out in the Schanzenviertel. The reason I was asking if you’re coming back in is we’ve had a Dr Severts phoning for you.’

  ‘Severts?’ Fabel puzzled for a moment, then remembered the tall young archaeologist whose skin, hair and clothing all seemed toned in with the earth in which he worked. It had been only three days ago that Fabel had stood looking at the mummified body of a man frozen in a moment that had passed more than sixty years ago. And it had been only four days since Fabel had sat in his brother’s restaurant on Sylt, chatting carelessly with Susanne about the most inconsequential things.

  ‘He’s asked if you could arrange to meet him at the university.’ Anna gave Fabel a cellphone number for Severts.

  ‘Okay, I’ll give him a ring. In the meantime get onto those phone records.’

  ‘By the way,’ said Anna, ‘have you seen the papers this morning?’

  Fabel felt his heart sink in dull anticipation. ‘No – why?’

  ‘They seem to have a lot of information about the scenes of crime. They know all about the hair dye as well as that the victims were scalped.’ Anna paused, then added reluctantly: ‘And they’ve given our scalp-taker a name. Der Hamburger Haarschneider.’

  ‘Brilliant. Absolutely bloody brilliant…’ said Fabel and hung up.

  ‘The Hamburg Hairdresser’ – the perfect name with which to terrify the entire population of Hamburg.

  1.45 p.m.: Blankenese, Hamburg

  Scheibe replaced the receiver. The committee member who had been charged with breaking the good news to him had clearly been surprised at Scheibe’s response. Or lack of it. Scheibe had been polite, restrained; modest, almost. Anyone who knew the egotistical Paul Scheibe to any degree would have been amazed at his muted reaction to the news that his concept for KulturZentrumEins had won the architectural competition for the Uberseequartier site.

  But for Paul Scheibe this triumph, which only a few days ago would have seemed the crowning glory to his career, was absorbed as a vague, dull impact somewhere deep in his gut. A bitter victory: almost a taunt, given his current situation. Scheibe was too consumed with a more immediate, more elemental emotion – fear – to even feign enthusiasm.

  He had been driving back to his Blankenese villa when he heard the news on NDR radio. Gunter. Gunter was dead. Scheibe had braked so hard when he pulled his Mercedes over to the kerb that the cars behind had had to swerve to avoid him, the drivers blasting their horns and gesticulating wildly. But Scheibe had been oblivious to all that went on around him. Instead, his universe was filled by one sentence that consumed everything else like an exploding sun: Dr Gunter Griebel, a geneticist working in Hamburg, had been found murdered in his Marienthal home. The rest of the report washed over Scheibe: police sources refused to confirm that Griebel had been murdered in a manner similar to Hans-Joachim Hauser, the environmental campaigner, whose body had been found on the previous Friday.

  They had been six. Now they were four.

  Paul Scheibe stood in the kitchen of his home, his hand still resting on the wall-mounted phone, gazing blankly out of the window towards his garden and seeing nothing. He watched as a light breeze teased and the sun danced on the branches and blood-red leaves of the acer that he had so carefully cultivated and tended. But he could see nothing other than his own impending death. Then, as if a high-voltage jolt had passed through him, he snatched up the telephone and stabbed in a number. A woman answered and he gave the name of the person he wanted to be put through to. A man’s voice started to say something but Scheibe cut him off.

  ‘Gunter’s dead. First Hans, now Gunter… this is no coincidence…’ Scheibe’s voice shook with emotion. ‘This cannot be a coincidence – someone is after us. They are killing us one by one-’

  ‘Shut up!’ The voice on the other end hissed. ‘You bloody fool – keep your mouth shut. I’ll contact you later this afternoon. Or tonight. Stay where you are… and don’t do anything, don’t speak to anyone. Now get off this line.’

  The dialling tone burred loud and harsh in Scheibe’s ear. He slowly replaced the receiver. He stared at his hand
as it hovered, trembling violently, above the phone. Scheibe leaned forward against the marble kitchen worktop and his head slumped forward. For the first time in twenty years, Paul Scheibe wept.

  2.30 p.m.: University Clinical Complex, Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg

  Fabel had no difficulty in finding the genetics facility in which Griebel had worked. It lay within the same complex of buildings that housed both the Institute for Legal Medicine and the Psychiatry and Psychotherapy Clinic where Susanne was based. The University Clinical Complex was the centre for all major clinical and biomedical research in Hamburg as well as many of the city’s main medical functions. Fabel’s main involvement had been through its world-leading forensics facility. It had grown over the years and now stretched back on the north side of Martinistrasse like a small town in its own right.

  Professor von Halen, who headed up the facility, was waiting for Fabel in reception. Von Halen was much younger than Fabel had expected and did not fit with Fabel’s idea of a scientist. Perhaps because of the stereotype imprinted in Fabel’s mind, and perhaps because of the photograph for which Griebel had so unwillingly posed, Fabel had expected von Halen to be wearing a white scientific dust coat. Instead he was dressed in an expensive-looking dark business suit and a slightly too-bright tie. As Fabel was guided through the reception doors, he half expected von Halen to lead him into a showroom filled with top-of-the-range Mercedes cars for sale. Instead his preconceptions were restored as he was led through a laboratory and a suite of offices, all the occupants of which were suitably attired in white coats. Fabel also noticed that most of them stopped what they were doing and watched as he passed by. Word had obviously already spread about Griebel’s death, or von Halen must have made some kind of official announcement.

  ‘It’s been a massive shock to us all.’ Von Halen seemed to read Fabel’s thoughts. ‘Herr Dr Griebel was a very quiet man who largely kept his own counsel, but he was well liked by the staff who worked directly with him.’

  Fabel scanned the laboratory as they passed. There were fewer test tubes than he would have imagined in a science lab, and many more computers. ‘Was there ever any gossip about Dr Griebel?’ asked Fabel. ‘Sometimes we gain more leads through Kaffeeklatsch than through known facts about a victim.’

  Von Halen shook his head. ‘Gunter Griebel was not someone you would associate with gossip of any kind – either as source or subject. Like I said, he kept his personal life very distinct from his working life. I don’t know of anyone here who socialised with him or who knew any of his friends or acquaintances outside work. No one had any personal knowledge of him to gossip about.’

  They passed through some double doors and out of the laboratory. At the end of a wide corridor, von Halen showed Fabel into an office. It was large and bright and expensively furnished in a contemporary style. Von Halen sat down behind a vast expanse of beech and indicated that Fabel should take a seat. Again, Fabel was struck by how ‘corporate’ von Halen’s office was. Fabel put this together with von Halen’s sharp-suitedness and decided that the facility chief was very much in the business of science.

  ‘Are there any commercial aspects to the work you do here?’ Fabel asked.

  ‘In today’s world, Herr Fabel, all research activity with any potential biotechnical or medical applications has a commercial aspect to it. Our genetics unit here straddles the academic and the business worlds… we are part of the university but we are also a registered company. A business.’

  ‘Did Dr Griebel work in a commercial area of research?’

  ‘As I said, all research ultimately has a commercial application. And a price. But to give you a simple answer: no. Dr Griebel was working in a field that will ultimately offer enormous advantages in the field of diagnosing and preventing a vast range of diseases and conditions. The fruits of Dr Griebel’s research will be of great commercial value. But we are talking about years into the future. Dr Griebel was a pure scientist. He was in it for the challenge and the potential breakthrough – the leap forward in human science and all of the benefits that come from such advances.’ Von Halen leaned back in his executive leather chair. ‘And, to be honest, I indulged Gunter more than a little. He would occasionally go “off brief”, as our English friends would say. He had a few windmills to tilt at along the way, but I knew that he never lost sight of the aims of his research.’

  ‘So you would say there’s no possible link between Dr Griebel’s work and his murder?’

  Von Halen gave a mirthless half-laugh. ‘No, Herr Chief Commissar – I can see no motives there. Nor anywhere else. Gunter Griebel was an inoffensive, hard-working, dedicated scientist and why anyone would do

  … well, what was done to him… is totally beyond my understanding. Is it true? What the papers said?’

  Fabel ignored the question. ‘What, exactly, was Dr Griebel’s field of research?’

  ‘Epigenetics. It studies how genes are switched on and off, and how this prevents or promotes the development of certain diseases and conditions. It is a field still very much in its infancy, but it will become one of the most important life sciences.’

  ‘Whom did he work with?’

  ‘He was the head of a team of three. The other two were Alois Kahlberg and Elisabeth Marksen. I can introduce you if you wish.’

  ‘I would like to talk to them, but perhaps another day. I can ring to make an appointment.’ Fabel rose. ‘Thank you for your time, Herr Professor.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  As Fabel rose to leave, he examined a picture on the wall next to the door. It was a group shot of the entire research team: the same staff he had passed through on his way to von Halen’s office.

  ‘Is this a recent photograph?’ he asked the sharp-suited scientist.

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘It’s just that Herr Dr Griebel seems to be absent from it.’

  ‘No – he’s there, all right.’ Von Halen indicated a tall figure at the back. The person in the picture had moved partly behind another colleague and his head was slightly lowered, depriving the camera of a clear image of his face. ‘That’s Gunter… messing up the photograph as usual.’ Von Halen sighed. ‘Not a problem we’ll have any more, I suppose…’

  4.10 p.m.: Police Presidium, Hamburg

  As soon as Fabel returned to the Presidium he phoned Severts, the archaeologist, and arranged to meet him the following morning at his office at the Universitat Hamburg. Severts told Fabel that they had uncovered some personal items at the HafenCity site that clearly belonged to the mummified man.

  But Fabel had the more freshly dead at the front of his mind and as soon as he hung up he called Anna Wolff and Henk Hermann into his office.

  ‘We’ve got most of the phone records for both victims,’ said Anna in response to Fabel’s asking. ‘We’re trying to match numbers to names or institutions now. I have to say that Griebel was not the most social of animals – there’s not much to go through in his phone accounts. Hauser, on the other hand, seemed to be permanently attached to a phone. We’re starting with the numbers that Hauser called or was called from most.’

  ‘That makes sense, of course,’ said Fabel. ‘But the number I am looking for may not have connected often. Perhaps only once. It may even have been a payphone.’

  ‘What is it that you’re looking for, Chef?’ asked Henk.

  ‘It looks like both victims admitted their murderer to their homes,’ said Fabel. ‘That would suggest either that Hauser and Griebel knew their killer or killers, or that the killer had pre-arranged a meeting with them.’

  ‘But we are dealing with someone who is clearly most careful to avoid leaving forensic traces,’ said Anna. ‘Isn’t it a bit much to hope that they would leave their phone numbers on record?’

  ‘It is…’ Fabel sighed at the futility of the exercise. ‘But my thinking is that contact had to be established somehow. Like I say, I would expect it to be a payphone or a disposable cellphone number – something we cannot trace to anyone
in particular. There is always the chance that the contact was made some other way. Maybe even approaching the victims on the street with some plausible story. But the telephone is a more likely form of initial contact. I just want to know if my theory is justified before we go off looking in the wrong direction.’

  ‘And anyway,’ said Henk, ‘there’s always the outside chance that our guy got sloppy – maybe thinking that we wouldn’t look for a phone contact.’

  Fabel smiled grimly. ‘I wish I could believe that… but “sloppy” does not seem to fit with this killer.’

  ‘There is one thing that’s interesting…’ Henk laid out some pages from a file side by side on Fabel’s desk. They consisted of press cuttings and photographs of Hans-Joachim Hauser. The most recent was a still from an NDR news report. ‘Do you see the common denominator?’

  Fabel shrugged.

  Henk pointed to each image in turn. ‘Hans-Joachim Hauser was always keen to be seen to practise what he preached. He didn’t have a car and never travelled in other people’s cars.’

  Fabel looked at the photographs again. In a couple of them Hauser was pictured cycling through Hamburg’s crowded streets. In the others, Fabel could see the bike either deliberately positioned in the background, or accidentally caught half in shot.

  ‘It’s missing…’ Henk said.

  ‘The bike?’

  Henk nodded. ‘We’ve checked everywhere and it’s nowhere to be seen. It was very distinctive, covered in hundreds of small stickers with environmental messages on them. He never went anywhere without it. I asked Sebastian Lang, Hauser’s friend, about it…’ Henk emphasised the word ‘friend’. ‘He said that Hauser always kept his bike chained up in the small courtyard behind his apartment. Obviously forensics did a fingertip search in the yard and checked the windows at the back. They found nothing. According to Lang, Hauser had had the same bike since he was a student. It was his pride and joy, apparently.’