Eternal jf-3

by Craig Russel

  Reinhard squeezed into the passenger seat of the silver and blue Mercedes patrol car and handed Schreiner one of the coffees. As he did so, he smoothed down his blue tie and shirt front, making sure he had not spilled anything on them.

  ‘These new uniforms are cool, aren’t they?’ he said.

  ‘’Spose so.’ It was not an issue that had occupied Schreiner much. The Polizei Hamburg uniforms had changed over the previous year from the traditional green and mustard to a dark blue.

  ‘They remind me of American uniforms…’ Reinhard paused. ‘N – Y – P – D…’ He pronounced the initials the English way. ‘The old ones were crap – they made you look like you were a forestry warden.’

  ‘Mmmm…’ Schreiner was only half listening. He sipped his coffee and watched a cyclist approach down the narrow street. Schreiner suddenly thought how much better it would be to patrol the quarter on a bike. It was done in other parts of the city. He would ask about it. The cyclist drew closer. The other advantage would be that there would not be room for Reinhard on a bike.

  ‘I just think that these are more like police uniforms…’ Reinhard seemed content to carry on the discussion with himself. ‘I mean, blue is the international colour for police…’

  The bicycle passed the patrol car and Schreiner nodded to the cyclist, who ignored him. It was not uncommon in the Schanzenviertel for locals to be wary of the police, even hostile towards them. There was still a hangover from more radical days when the police were seen as fascists by the average Viertel dweller.

  ‘Shit!’ Suddenly Schreiner was galvanised into action. He thrust his coffee towards Reinhard to hold, splashing some on his junior officer’s precious blue uniform shirt. Schreiner threw open the car door and stepped out.

  ‘Just a minute! Stop!’ he called after the cyclist, who looked over his shoulder at the policeman and responded by peddling hard away from him. Schreiner jumped back into the patrol car, slammed the door and gunned the engine. He took off from his standing start so violently that more coffee slopped over Reinhard’s shirt.

  7.40 p.m.: Poseldorf, Hamburg

  ‘What I don’t get,’ said Fabel as he placed a plate of pasta in front of Susanne, ‘is why did the BKA reinvestigate Griebel recently? Surely there is no significant national interest to be protected in Griebel’s research?’

  ‘You said he was an epigeneticist?’ Susanne took a mouthful of too-hot pasta and made a fanning movement in front of her mouth with her hand before continuing. ‘What kind of work was he involved in?’

  Fabel gave her a breakdown of all he knew, and the little that he understood, about Griebel’s work. ‘Some of the other stuff he was involved in – you know, all this inherited-memory stuff – sounds a bit, well, unscientific to me.’

  ‘Not really,’ said Susanne. ‘An amazing amount of the DNA that is passed from one generation to the next has no known use: while the human genome was being mapped it revealed that more than ninety-eight per cent of our DNA is so-called “junk DNA”… or, to give it its proper name, “non-coding”.’

  ‘What do you think this DNA is for?’

  ‘God knows. Some scientists believe that it’s the accumulated defences against retroviruses. You know, all the bugs that we’ve fought off throughout our history as a species. Others believe that some of it has specific functions that we simply don’t understand. One theory is that we inherit instinctive behaviours through it, even that it contains genetic memories. That actual experiences from an ancestor can be passed on to his or her descendants.’

  ‘It all sounds a bit unlikely to me.’

  ‘It’s not really my field, of course.’ Susanne shrugged. ‘But I have come across it. There’s a theory that some irrational fears or phobias owe their origins to genetic memory stored in this so-called junk DNA. A fear of height, for example, becoming encoded because some ancestor was traumatised by either falling or witnessing the death of someone else falling. Just as we can develop a fear of fire, claustrophobia, et cetera, because of some trauma in our own direct experience, it could be that those phobias that seem to have no direct source may have been inherited.’

  Fabel thought of Maria and her fear of being touched because of the trauma she had experienced. It chilled him to think that such fears could be passed on from one generation to the next.

  ‘But surely this is all speculation?’ he said.

  ‘There are a lot of things that cannot be explained by normal chromosomal inheritance. Lactose tolerance, for example. We shouldn’t be able to drink the milk of other species. Yet in all those cultures in which the herding and farming of cattle, goats, yaks and the like was common, we developed a tolerance for drinking the milk of livestock. But each generation did not need to redevelop that tolerance – it simply passed on once it was gained. And that cannot be explained by natural selection or the passing on of congenital DNA. There must be some other mechanism for genetic transference.’

  Fabel’s expression was one of a man contemplating things he did not fully understand. ‘What about memories? Do you think it’s possible for them to pass down from one generation to the next?’

  ‘Honestly… I don’t know. For me, the main problem is the totally different and separate processes at work. Memories are neurological phenomena. They’re all to do with synapses, brain cells, the nervous system. DNA inheritance is a genetic process. I don’t understand what biomolecular mechanism could be at work to imprint one on the other.’

  ‘But…?’

  ‘But instinctive behaviour is a difficult thing to explain, particularly the more abstract forms of instinct that have nothing to do with our origins as a species. Of course, psychology has been through the whole thing with Jungian psychology, which simply took these theories far too far, but there are simple common experiences that I find intriguing.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘When we were on Sylt you told me how the first time you visited the island you felt you’d known it all your life. It is a relatively common psychological… experience, I suppose you would call it. For example, a farmer who has never been out of Bavaria, far less Germany, finally takes a foreign holiday – in Spain, say. But when our reluctant virgin-tourist who has never expressed any interest in Spain arrives in some remote mountain town, he experiences an unaccountable feeling of familiarity. He instinctively knows where to go to find a castle, the old part of town, a river, et cetera. And once he is home in Oberbayern, he suffers from this strange form of homesickness.’

  ‘This is common?

  ‘Reasonably. There are several studies under way at the moment into the phenomenon. We’re not talking about some kind of extended deja vu, mind you. These people have specific knowledge of a place they have never visited before in their life.’

  ‘So what does it mean? Some kind of evidence of reincarnation?’

  ‘A lot of people have taken it as such. Which is, of course, nonsense, but you can understand the logic… or lack of it, if you know what I mean. But some serious psychologists and geneticists believe that it may be evidence of some kind of inherited or genetic memory. But, like I said, I cannot see how the neurological or psychological phenomenon of memory can become transferred and imprinted on the physical biomolecular structure of DNA. I tend to think that these experiences come from information that has perhaps been picked up in pieces over a lifetime of reading, watching television documentaries, and so on. All scattered throughout the subconscious but brought together by some single point of recognition. For example, our Bavarian farmer sees the church steeple when he dismounts from the bus. He has this weird deja vu-type feeling of familiarity because his subconscious is putting that image together with a scattered jigsaw of bits of information.’

  ‘But some other scientists, like Gunter Griebel, believe it’s something to do with this DNA soup that we all carry around with us.’

  ‘Yep. For example, maybe our Bavarian farmer had a distant forefather who lived in that area of Spain and he has inherited ancestral me
mories of it. And, of course, there is another phenomenon that we all experience. That feeling that you’ve met someone somewhere before even though you’re meeting them for the first time. It’s not just their appearance that seems familiar, but their personality too. Or the way we take an instant like or dislike to someone, with absolutely no basis for our prejudice. It’s a favourite notion cited by reincarnationists, that a group of individuals are bound together through all their incarnations. And that we recognise them as soon as we meet them again in a new life.’

  Fabel went to the fridge and took out another bottle of Jever. ‘And what’s the scientific theory behind this phenomenon?’

  ‘God, Jan… that depends on your perspective. As a psychologist I could point to dozens of psychological factors that stimulate a false sense of recognition, but I know that there are some wild theories about it. The fact is that every person on this planet is related: no matter how far-flung we are, we all share a common genetic ancestor. The world today has a population of about six and a half billion. But if we go back only three thousand years, to roughly the time of those mummies in western China that you told me about, there would only be, what… less than two hundred million people worldwide. We are all just variations on the same themes, over and over again. So it is more than conceivable that the same configuration of features is repeated with the same personality type. We all tend to associate certain features with certain personalities and prejudge people by their looks. We say someone looks intelligent, or friendly or arrogant, based on their features and on our experience of people with a similar appearance. And sometimes when we meet people for the first time we feel we’ve met them before because we’re putting together a composite picture of a number of people who looked similar and who had similar personalities.’ Susanne took a sip of her wine and shrugged. ‘It’s not reincarnation. It’s coincidence.’

  7.42 p.m.: Schanzenviertel, Hamburg

  It should have been an unequal contest: a Mercedes patrol car against an ageing bicycle. But the Schanzenviertel was a warren of narrow streets, lined by parked cars, and Stefan Schreiner was forced to accelerate and brake in short, ineffective bursts. As he negotiated the obstacles and the corners in pursuit of the cyclist, his partner Peter Reinhard struggled to replace the plastic lids on the coffee containers and put them into the car’s cup-holders.

  ‘Would you mind telling me what the hell is going on?’ Reinhard had found a paper towel and was dabbing at his coffee-soaked shirt front.

  ‘That bike…’ Schreiner stayed focused on his quarry. ‘It’s stolen.’

  They were now in a one-way street, again lined with parked cars, allowing no opportunity to turn. The cyclist clearly realised that he had the police at a disadvantage and stopped suddenly, forcing Schreiner to brake hard. But before the policemen had time to get out of the car, the cyclist had squeezed between two parked vehicles, mounted the pavement and was heading back the way they had come. Schreiner slammed the patrol car into reverse and, twisting round in his seat, drove back up the street as fast as its width and congestion would allow.

  ‘What?’ Reinhard said incredulously. ‘I get soaked in coffee for the sake of a stolen bike?’

  ‘Not just any stolen bike.’ Schreiner paused as he swung the Mercedes, tail first, out into Lipmannsstrasse. He took off after the cyclist again with a screech of tyres. ‘The person it was stolen from was Hans-Joachim Hauser. This could be his killer.’

  The cyclist had lost the advantage of parked cars restricting the speed of the police car and again he mounted the pavement. Reinhard leaned forward in his seat, forgetting all about the coffee spilled on his uniform shirt. ‘Then let’s get the bastard.’

  Schreiner could tell that the cyclist knew the Viertel well. He made a sudden left turn, swinging into Eifflerstrasse, heading against the flow of traffic on the one-way street and forcing Schreiner to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting an oncoming Volkswagen. Schreiner leaped from the car and raced along the pavement after the cyclist, Reinhard hard on his heels and the curses of the VW driver in his ears. The cyclist was getting away; he looked back over his shoulder at the policemen, grinning and raising a fist in a gesture of defiance. It was short-lived: oblivious to the chase on the pavement, the driver of a parked car swung open his door and its edge caught the passing bike, sending it crashing into the wall of one of the buildings. By the time the cyclist had rolled over onto his back, clutching his bruised knee, the two policemen had caught up with him and towered over him, their handguns trained on his head.

  ‘Stay on the ground!’ Reinhard shouted at the stunned bicycle thief. ‘Stretch your hands out above your head.’ The cyclist did exactly as he was told.

  ‘Okay… okay…’ he said as he gazed at the firearms pointed at him. ‘I admit it, for Christ’s sake… I stole the fucking bike!’

  9.10 p.m.: Police Presidium, Hamburg

  It was clear to Fabel that the pale-faced, blond-haired young man sitting in the Murder Commission interview room had nothing to do with Hans-Joachim Hauser’s murder. Leonard Schuler had the look of an animal caught in headlights. And from what Fabel had read of Schuler’s record as a petty criminal, he simply did not fit as Hauser’s killer.

  Fabel hung back, leaning against the wall by the door. He let Anna and Henk lead the interview.

  ‘I don’t know anything about any murder,’ Schuler declared, his stare darting from one police officer to the other as if seeking confirmation that they believed him. ‘I mean, I heard about that guy Hauser getting killed, but until I was arrested I didn’t even know it was his place that I took the bike from.’

  ‘Well.’ Anna smiled. ‘The bad news for you is that you’re all we’ve got at the moment. Herr Hauser chained his bike up when he got home about ten p.m., then his cleaner finds him missing his hair at nine a.m. the following morning. There’s only one person we can place anywhere near him between those times. You.’

  ‘But I wasn’t anywhere near him,’ protested Schuler. ‘I didn’t set foot inside the apartment. I just saw his bike and I stole it.’

  ‘When was this?’ asked Henk.

  ‘I reckon about eleven. Eleven-thirty. I’d been drinking with friends and I suppose I’d had a bit too much. I was walking along the street and I saw the bike. And I thought, well, why walk when you can ride? It was just a prank. A joke. It was chained up, but I was able to prise the lock open.’

  ‘With what? From what we can gather, Herr Hauser was pretty fond of that bike and I would guess he had a reasonably sturdy security chain on it.’

  ‘I had a screwdriver with me…’ Schuler paused. ‘And a pair of pliers.’

  ‘Do you normally go out for a drink with your pockets full of tools?’ Henk threw a plastic evidence bag onto the table with a clatter. ‘This is what was found on you when you were arrested tonight

  … Screwdriver, pliers, hacksaw blade and – this is really interesting – a couple of pairs of disposable latex medical gloves. I can’t work out whether you’re a twenty-four-hour joiner or a moonlighting surgeon.’

  Schuler once more looked from Henk to Anna and back, as if hoping that they would give him an idea what to say.

  ‘Listen, Leonard,’ Henk continued. ‘You have three convictions for breaking into private dwellings and one for car theft. That’s why you did a runner when the patrol car tried to stop you. Not because you were worried about being caught on a stolen bike – you could have claimed that you’d found it dumped. You were out looking for an apartment to do over. Just the same as you were the night you stole the bike. I find it difficult to believe that you didn’t think it worthwhile to have a little look-see to find out if there was anything else worth nicking.’

  ‘I keep telling you… I didn’t go anywhere near Hauser’s apartment. I was a bit pissed so I nicked the bike. For Christ’s sake, do you think I would have held on to it if I had topped the owner?’

  ‘Good point…’ Fabel moved over from the door. He pulled up a chair next to Schuler and
leaned his face close in to the young man. When he spoke it was with a quiet, deliberate menace. ‘I want you to listen to me, Leonard. I want you to understand something very clearly. I hunt people. In this case I am hunting a very particular man… like me, he is a hunter of other men. The difference is that he stalks them, he finds them, and then he does this to them…’ Fabel looked across to Anna and snapped his fingers impatiently. She handed him the file with the scenes-of-crime photographs. Fabel took one from the file and held it so close to Schuler’s face that the young thief had to pull back from it. When Schuler focused on the image, his expression contorted with disgust. Fabel snapped the photograph away and replaced it with another. ‘Do you see what my guy does? This is the person who interests me, Leonard. This is who I am after. You, on the other hand, are a worthless piece of shit that I am only taking the time to wipe off my shoe.’ Fabel leaned back in the chair. ‘I believe that it is important to establish a sense of perspective in these things. I just want you to understand that. You do understand that, don’t you, Leonard?’

  Schuler nodded his head silently. There was a heartbeat’s pause.

  ‘I also want you to understand this.’ Fabel laid the photographs of both victims face up on the table’s surface. As with all scenes-of-crime photographs the colours were camera-flash stark and vivid. The dead-stare eyes of Hans-Joachim Hauser and Gunter Griebel gazed out towards the ceiling from beneath their ravaged heads. ‘If you do not convince me, within the next two minutes, that you are telling me the absolute truth… do you know what I’m going to do?’