A fear of dark water jf-6

by Craig Russell

  ‘Yeah…’ Fabel made a sceptical face. ‘Those crazy Russians…’

  ‘No, Jan, you shouldn’t be so dismissive. There were some ideas in there that are now part of mainstream thinking. Way back then, Vernadsky believed that the greatest force in shaping the geology of the Earth was the human intellect. Some geologists today think we should be calling this age the Anthropocene instead of the Holocene, because we have changed the planet so much.’

  ‘And what about this idea of simulated reality that the Pharos Project bangs on about so much?’

  ‘Well, going back a little further, Fyodorov, who had influenced Vernadsky, actually believed that in the distant future mankind would develop a “prosthetic society”. No more ageing or death. He also thought we’d go on to achieve some kind of super-singularity — and bear in mind that he came up with this stuff in the 1890s — where we would be able to replicate absolutely any quantum brain state, meaning everybody who has ever lived would be brought back to life. The quantum Resurrection. All of a sudden atheist science becomes religious prophesy.’

  ‘But it’s mad,’ protested Fabel. ‘How could you simulate an entire world?’

  ‘You’re an old technophobe, Jan. It would scare the pants off you if you saw what games designers can do now. Hyperreal simulated worlds. And anyway, don’t you realise that creating a simulated reality is the easiest thing in the world? We all do it… every time we dream. When we’re dreaming, we think we’re experiencing reality. How often have you had a dream and, after you’ve woken up, you’ve had to work hard at remembering what really happened and what happened in the dream?’

  Fabel thought about how vivid his dreams had been over the years, when the dead would walk again and point accusing fingers at him for not catching their killers; or the nights when he sat in his father’s study talking to Paul Lindemann, the young police officer who had been shot dead while on an operation organised and run by Fabel.

  ‘Do you know that there really are quite a few respected scientists who believe that it is actually unlikely that any of this

  …’ Otto indicated their surroundings with a sweep of his arms ‘… is real? That everything we experience is a highly sophisticated simulation.’

  ‘I’d rather die than live a lie,’ said Fabel.

  ‘Why? What difference does it make? This is all you have ever experienced. This is your reality. It really doesn’t matter if it’s a reality outside or inside a simulation. Maybe that’s who God is… a systems analyst. How’s that for a depressing thought?’

  ‘But this is real, Otto.’

  ‘Reality is just what’s in your head, Jan. You should read Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard. Or get a copy of Fassbinder’s Welt am Draht. Or even Jungian psychology — ask Susanne

  … although I always think of her as Freudian…’ Otto said with an exaggerated leer. ‘We are programmed by our surroundings, by signs and symbols. Someone says the word “cowboy” and we think of John Wayne, even though the real cowboys were small, almost jockey-like because their horses had to carry them twelve hours a day. The truth isn’t out there.’

  ‘You know, Otto, I could give you the Pharos Project’s phone number if you want…’

  ‘Yeah, very funny. I’m quite happy with my reality, thank you.’ Otto suddenly became serious. ‘But I do know something about the Pharos Project, Jan, and none of it’s good. Terrorising the families of ex-members, harassing anyone who criticises them. You watch yourself with these people.’

  Fabel drained his coffee cup. ‘I’m going. You make my head hurt, do you know that, Otto?’

  ‘Maybe that’s my entire raison d’etre. See you, copper.’

  Fabel drove across town and parked over the street from the Schanzenviertel cafe. Before visiting Otto, he had spent the day going through all the evidence to date on the Fottinger case and had decided he was prepared enough to start talking to witnesses. It was something he always did, as a matter of course: Fabel never relied on witness statements. It was not that he did not trust the officers who took the statements to ask the right questions, it was more that reading them in a report removed the human dimension: sometimes it was not what a witness said, but more how they said it; the million little tells and tics that could reveal a doubt, an insecurity, a prejudice.

  He headed into the Schanzenviertel feeling strangely upbeat. Maybe it was the weather. For the first time in weeks, it really did feel like there was a hint of spring in the early evening air. Fabel often thought about the effect the weather had on his moods and the idea reminded him of what Muller-Voigt had said about Man’s connection to his environment, and how we had lost sight of it.

  As he crossed the street, Fabel saw that two of the cafe’s four large plate-glass windows had been filled in with plywood panels; the wood of the frames around the plywood was blackened. He guessed that the intensity of the heat from the blazing car had caused the windows to shatter.

  When he walked in, he noticed that only three out of the cafe’s more than twenty tables were occupied. ‘Quiet in here this evening…’ he said to the waiter as he held up his police identification. The waiter, who had been bent over a table, made a show of being unimpressed and shrugged. The Schanzenviertel was a part of Hamburg where people were generally not impressed by the police. It was not that the quarter was populated by criminals, more that there was an instinctive disregard and distrust of the police in a part of the city famed for its alternative views. It did not bother Fabel. In fact he rather appreciated it: a touch of idiosyncrasy and a healthy disregard for authority was what made Hamburg Hamburg, after all.

  ‘Funny, that,’ said the waiter, returning to the work of tidying and wiping the recently vacated table. ‘We thought that putting flambeed client on the menu would bring them in in their droves.’ He straightened up wearily. Fabel saw that he was older than he had first thought. Tall and thin with a lean, deeply lined face and dressed in a way that would have looked better on him a decade before. ‘I take it that’s why you’re here?’

  ‘Did you know the victim?’ Fabel referred to his notebook. ‘Daniel Fottinger?’

  ‘Like I told the other cops, he was a regular. He came here every Wednesday, same time and met the same woman. They would have lunch, then go off together.’

  ‘What do you mean, go off together?’

  The waiter sighed. ‘They’d arrive in separate cars, but after they’d eaten they’d go off together in her car. I always noticed that the big Merc convertible sat outside for a couple of hours, then would disappear mid or late afternoon. I actually often thought that he was taking a bit of chance, with all these car-burnings around here and all. But I never imagined it would happen in broad daylight right outside our door. Or that the poor bastard would end up torched himself.’

  ‘What do you know about him?’

  ‘What I know about all of my customers: what they order, what they drink, what they leave as a tip. He wasn’t the small-talk type.’

  ‘Yet he came here often?’

  ‘What can I tell you? Some customers are easy to get to know. He wasn’t.’

  ‘But you must at least have had some impression of him… the kind of person he was.’

  The lanky waiter gave a small laugh. ‘How can I put it? He didn’t have a lot of personality going on there, and what there was was all arrogant asshole. Every time he came in and sat down was like it was the first time. You know what I mean: I’d serve him every time he came in, but he’d make out like he didn’t know me from Adam. Some customers can be like that. They treat you as if you don’t really exist or matter as a human being, like you simply exist for their convenience.’

  ‘The woman?’

  ‘She wasn’t as bad. At least she talked to you; acknowledged you as a person. She’s a real looker and I couldn’t quite work out what she was doing with him. I mean, he seemed pretty one-dimensional to me.’

  ‘So you had them pegged as a couple?’

  ‘Yeah. But not married
, though. And not business or colleagues. It was obvious they had some kind of regular thing going. When you’ve served tables as long as I have, you get to tell the nature of the visit, the agenda behind the lunch, if you know what I mean. But there was something about them didn’t gel.’

  Fabel raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know…’ The waiter renewed his efforts on the tabletop and his irritation at being disturbed. ‘They fitted in some ways… him rich, her cute… but it was just that he seemed so… I don’t know… so dull. I tell you, if I had a woman who looked like that across the table from me, I wouldn’t spend so much of my time playing with my electronic toys.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He was always texting or taking calls on his cellphone. There was one time they were in here that he sat half the time working on his laptop. Sometimes I think it wasn’t the excellence of our cuisine that brought him here. More our free WiFi. But I tell you, his girlfriend was getting pretty pissed off with it. I reckon she was on the point of giving him the elbow.’

  ‘And you could tell this just from waiting table?’ Fabel had not intended his question to sound patronising but the lean waiter’s face clouded.

  ‘Maybe if you cops were forced to work as waiters for six months you’d be better at sizing people up. Everybody is becoming more and more detached from each other, from reality. All of this technology shit. Me, I run this place because I get to watch people. Live in the real world.’ He looked at Fabel disdainfully. ‘Take you… you’re a cop but I can tell from the way you dress and the way you talk to people that you like to think you’re different from the rest. That jacket you’re wearing — English-cut, tweed — it’s not the usual anonymous semi-corporate two-hundred-euro suit the Hamburg Kripo always seems to wear. I’d say you’re not all that comfortable with being a cop and you like to think you’ve got a little more going on up here.’ He tapped his forefinger against the side of his head. ‘You’re trying really hard to fit in by not fitting in. But what do I know, huh? I just wait tables.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Fabel. ‘So you’re the Great Observer, the ultimate people watcher. I get it. You told the officers that you noticed one of the arsonists before the attack. I don’t suppose your people-watching skills could extend to giving me a decent description of him?’

  ‘I saw him, all right. He was hanging around across the street, under that tree…’ The waiter tutted when he realised the view of the tree was obscured by the plywood. ‘Anyway,’ he said philosophically, ‘he was over there. To start with I thought he was a junkie. He was kinda hopping from one foot to the other, fidgeting, sort of, and checking and rechecking that big black holdall he was carrying.’

  ‘Would you recognise him again?’

  ‘Doubt it. He was wearing a sort of woolly hat that he pulled down as a mask when he torched the car. I did think I noticed something. I didn’t mention it to the other cops because I only thought of it afterwards…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘A limp. I’m pretty sure the guy had a limp. Or at least there was something stiff about the way he walked.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Fabel.

  The skinny waiter shrugged and went back to cleaning tables.

  Fabel’s next visit was in Harvestehude. An impressive Wilhelmine building faced with white stucco tried to hide behind a screen of manicured shrubs and trees. Fabel found the name he was looking for and rang the bell.

  ‘Polizei Hamburg…’ he said into the entry system in answer to the crackling voice. ‘I’d like to speak to you, Frau Kempfert.’

  ‘Let me see your ID,’ the voice said. ‘There’s a camera above the entryphone.’

  Fabel held his card up to the bulbous electronic eye and there was a harsh buzzing and a click. He pushed open the heavy door and made his way up an ornately tiled stairwell to the apartment building’s third floor. An attractive, dark-haired young woman eyed him suspiciously from her doorway as he approached.

  ‘I told the other officers all I know.’

  ‘You know, Frau Kempfert, everybody always says exactly that same thing. But I like to hear it all for myself. And, you never know, something might always come back to you. Do you mind?’ Fabel nodded towards the apartment behind her.

  ‘No…’ Unsmiling, she moved to one side to admit him. ‘Come in.’

  The young woman led him along the long hall into a corner lounge. It was huge and bright with French windows that opened out onto a small balustraded balcony. Fabel guessed from what he had seen on the way in that the flat probably consisted of this room, one, maybe two bedrooms, a kitchen-diner and a bathroom. The architecture was typical Harvestehude: echoing a more formal and elegant age with high ceilings, huge windows and the odd bit of ostentation in the plasterwork. The flat was not big, thought Fabel, but it would still be pricey. The furnishings and artwork were brightly coloured to contrast with the white walls. It all suggested a sophisticated sense of taste.

  Victoria Kempfert dropped into a huge red armchair and made a perfunctory gesture towards the sofa, indicating that Fabel should sit. I get it, he thought, I’m taking up your time. Fabel had learned to be suspicious of people who overstated how much of an inconvenience it was to have to talk to the police. Generally speaking, if someone had lost their life, witnesses were only too willing to give you their time. They were helping you make sense of an often senseless death; doing that, for most people, was a way of restoring the universe’s natural balance.

  ‘You usually came back here after your lunchtime meetings?’ asked Fabel. ‘You and Herr Fottinger, I mean.’

  ‘Yes. We came back here and fucked.’ She held Fabel in a defiant gaze, her eyebrows arched.

  ‘I see,’ said Fabel matter-of-factly, noting it down in his notebook. ‘And where did you and Herr Fottinger fuck? In the bedroom or here, where I’m sitting?’

  Victoria Kempfert’s expression darkened even more. She was clearly bursting to say something but, for the moment, she could not find the words.

  ‘Listen, Frau Kempfert,’ said Fabel. ‘I know that you have had a terrible experience, and you’ve made your distaste for police officers clear. But I’ve been a murder detective for a long, long time. There is very little that this world has left to throw at me that could shock me, so petulance and adolescent language isn’t going to set me back on my heels. But if you want, we can keep the conversation at that level. How often did you and Herr Fottinger fuck here?’

  She dropped her eyes. She was a beautiful woman. Strong features and a mane of thick, dark hair. Not unlike Susanne. And very much, he realised against his will, his type.

  ‘Daniel and I would come here every week — every Wednesday — after lunch. We’d see each other maybe one other time during the week, depending on our schedules. He was away a lot.’ She paused. ‘I’m sorry if I was being… it’s just that after seeing that, seeing what happened to him…’ She bit her lip and something in her eyes hardened again. It was clear that she was determined not to cry.

  ‘I do understand,’ said Fabel, more gently. ‘Did the police officers you spoke to give you details of victim support?’

  ‘I don’t need counselling, Herr Fabel. I’ll get over it. Eventually.’

  ‘Did you see the attackers?’

  ‘No… yes… I mean I didn’t know they were the attackers then. The bastards just stood and watched Daniel burn. To start with I thought they were just passers-by like everyone else, then I saw they had ski masks or something on. Over their faces. I didn’t even know it had been an arson attack to start with. I didn’t know what had happened.’

  ‘Was there anything you particularly noticed about them?’

  ‘Other than the ski masks? Nothing. I was too busy watching Daniel. And then… Why would someone do that?’

  ‘What I need to establish is if they had intended to do what they did. A lot of expensive cars get torched in the Schanzenviertel. It could be that that was their sole intention.’

  ‘I don’t know�
�’ Kempfert said slowly, her eyes unfocused as if replaying the scene in her head. ‘It was the way they waited. Watched. One in particular.’

  ‘That could be a sign that they were shocked by the consequences of their actions.’

  Kempfert shook her head vigorously. ‘That’s the thing… You asked if there was anything I particularly noticed. Well, just before he jumped on the back of the motorbike and they made off, I could have sworn the guy in the ski mask… I could have sworn he was laughing. You don’t do that if you are shocked by the consequences of your action.’

  ‘No… probably not. But, believe it or not, it can be the result of shock. Or psychological conditions. Paradoxical laughter.’

  ‘There was nothing paradoxical about it. That bastard was laughing at what he had done.’

  Fabel regarded her for a moment.

  ‘How long had you been seeing Herr Fottinger?’

  ‘A couple of months. Maybe three. It was all coming to an end, though.’

  ‘You knew he was married?’

  ‘He made no secret of it. I made no secret of the fact that I didn’t care. We met through business. I design websites and I’d done some work for his company. But that had stopped months before our relationship started. He hired someone else. Then, about ten, twelve weeks ago, I met him at a business event. You know, the usual rubber-chicken dinner with flow charts and Powerpoints for dessert.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t,’ said Fabel. ‘Not my natural environment, as it were. So that’s when you started to see him?’

  ‘About a week or so later he phoned me and asked me to lunch. We started to see each other each week, but it was becoming… tiresome.’

  ‘In what way tiresome?’

  ‘On the face of it, Daniel was charming and interesting. But there was something missing. It was like he was all veneer and nothing beneath. I know this sounds weird, but even when we were intimate it was like he was on his own. In fact, there were times it became unpleasant. It was like I didn’t exist for him in any real way. That’s mad, I know. But that’s why there was no future for us.’