The Ghosts of Altona

by Craig Russell

  The sound of a key in the lock of his cell door. One clunk. Second clunk. Two sliding bars to go. He still had the syringe in his hand.

  He forced himself to focus, shaking his huge head in an attempt to clear it, then leaned over and dropped the disposable syringe behind the pillow on his bed.

  Everything decelerated. The world beneath his feet turned more slowly, the air around him became thick and viscous. He grabbed his upper left arm with his right hand, but couldn’t remember why it was he was to do that.

  The door opened and from a million miles away, a voice said good morning.

  ‘Help . . .’ Hübner gasped his rehearsed lines. ‘Help. I can’t breathe. My chest . . . I think it’s my heart.’ It would be on Frankenstein’s record, his guardian had told him, that his acromegaly condition predisposed him to heart problems.

  He could no longer talk. No longer think. But he was still standing.

  There were now uniformed shadows at the door; dark blue ghosts shouting something at him. He wanted to ask them who they were, where he was, who he was, but his tongue and lips were too massive and heavy to move.

  As the world faded to black, one thought, one instruction, remained burned into his mind: when he awoke, he had to do so the way he had practised. Totally and immediately.

  He couldn’t remember why, but he knew his life depended on it.

  24

  ‘Well,’ said Nicola Brüggemann in contralto tones as she leaned into Fabel’s office. ‘We can’t say this isn’t a varied job. Nothing like something unusual to get the day started.’

  ‘What have you got?’ Fabel smiled and beckoned for her to come in and sit down. Brüggemann was Fabel’s deputy, despite holding the same rank as him. She had given up the directorship of the Sexual Crimes Commission to join his team and he had been very glad of her expertise. The Kiel-born detective also had a dry Waterkant humour that Fabel appreciated.

  ‘The Alte Mühle Seniors’ Home in Bahrenfeld,’ she explained, ‘has had a murder. The victim is a few days short of a hundred and the suspected perpetrator is ninety-six.’

  ‘You are kidding me . . .’ said Fabel.

  ‘I kid you not. We’ve got uniforms and forensics on their way. I would have thought murder would have seemed a little redundant at that age, but who knows? Maybe the motive was sexual jealousy. Who do you want assigned?’

  Fabel keyed up the duty roster on his computer. ‘I’ll take it with Anna.’

  ‘Okay.’ Brüggemann laid the call sheet on Fabel’s desk. ‘But you better hurry, in case the suspect makes a run for it . . .’

  *

  The Alte Mühle Seniors’ Home looked like no other old people’s home Fabel had ever seen. It was in Bahrenfeld, still officially within the Altona city borough, but set off the main road and facing into the dense forest of Altona Stadtpark. The only other building Fabel and Anna had passed was the old forester’s house, which now looked unoccupied and forlorn, the woodland around it threatening to reclaim it.

  If there had indeed, as the name suggested, once been an old mill on the site, it was long gone and the building that had replaced it could not have been more than a few years old. The thing about the Alte Mühle that struck Fabel most was the way it presented a curving, blank, windowless wall to the road, as if turning its back on the city. The lack of windows gave it a solid presence and its self-conscious architecture made it look more like a massive sculpture set against the curtain of forest.

  Following the drive, Fabel came round to the front of the home and saw that, where the rear wall had been all brick, the park-facing side was all windows and balconies. The semicircle of the building was made complete by a curving fence, about a metre and a half high, which in turn would be concealed from the home by a dense evergreen hedge.

  ‘Shit . . .’ said Anna as they approached the gate house. ‘I’ve never seen a high security old people’s home before.’

  Once Fabel’s police ID had been checked, they were admitted to the courtyard of the home. There was a black mortuary van and two marked police cars parked in the centre.

  To Fabel, it was surreal. The main building extended to five storeys and looked like a residential apartment block. Each flat had its own balcony and the only thing that looked slightly strange was that the balcony railings were higher than normal. The ground floor of the building was given over to what looked like normal shops: a convenience store, a hairdresser, a newsagent, a small sit-in restaurant with a takeaway counter next to it. There were three small, single storey buildings set in the courtyard, which itself had been laid out as a park. One, closest to the main building, was set up as a café-bar, the second sold fruit and flowers, the third was a tobacco kiosk. Most bizarrely of all, a bus stop and shelter sat next to the kiosk.

  ‘It’s a Dementiaville . . .’ said Anna. ‘I didn’t know there was one in Hamburg.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A Dementiaville . . . that’s what people call them. Not the official name, obviously. It’s the latest thing in caring for dementia patients. The idea is they can lead as normal lives as possible. Feel less institutionalized, I guess.’ She nodded towards the bus stop. ‘They set up these for the wanderers. The first place a confused patient will go is a bus stop or an S-Bahn station, usually to go home to a house or apartment they haven’t lived in for decades. They set up these dummy bus stops so they can collect them and guide them back.’

  Fabel scanned his surroundings. ‘How do you know so much about it?’

  ‘I do read, you know. The Cheeseheads came up with the idea.’

  ‘The Dutch?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Anna. ‘And the Swiss are into it. Cheeseheads however you look at it. I would have thought if they’d wanted to make elderly Dutchies feel at home then they should have built them like budget campsites. Or just driven them in caravans up and down the outside lane of the autobahn at fifty kilometres an hour.’

  ‘Now, now, Frau Commissar Wolff.’ Fabel nodded in the direction of the main building. ‘Shall we?’

  As they neared the main entry, a young uniformed policeman with the shoulder flashes of a police chief master approached them.

  ‘I’ll take you up,’ he said.

  ‘Who’s in charge of the scene?’ asked Fabel as they walked in.

  ‘Frau Doctor Koppel.’

  Fabel nodded; Marta Koppel had joined the forensics team six months before as Holger Brauner’s deputy.

  The uniformed cop led them through the main hall, where they were met by a balding man around forty. He introduced himself as Christof Pohl, the Director of the seniors’ home. Pohl was casually dressed and wore no name badge to identify him.

  ‘This is a terrible thing,’ said Pohl. ‘I can’t imagine how this has come to happen.’

  ‘Was there any trouble previously between these two residents?’ Fabel asked.

  ‘Quite the contrary – Herr Schmidt and Herr Wohlmann were companions. Friends. And neither had been in any way aggressive towards other residents or staff.’

  Fabel could see from Pohl’s expression that he was sincere.

  ‘Would you like me to take you up?’ asked the home’s Director.

  ‘We’re good,’ said Fabel. ‘The officer can take us from here, but I’d like a word with you before we leave, if that’s all right.’

  ‘Of course . . .’ Pohl pointed to a reception desk that looked like it could be an information point in a mall or an airport. ‘If you ask for me there they’ll show you to my office.’

  *

  As they made their way through the building, Fabel became aware of both the deliberately uninstitutional appearance of the seniors’ home, apart from the obligatory fire doors and statutory notices on the walls, and how chronologically vague its decor was: everything was neutral, cream and beige tones, furniture that made no absolute statement of period. He felt as if he could have been in any decade from the 1960s until the 2010s, and guessed that that had been the intention. No shock of the new; nothing jarri
ng for the wandering consciousness to bump into.

  ‘Fuck me . . .’ he heard Anna mutter. ‘Hell is eternity in a mall.’

  A flustered-looking woman in her sixties – too young, he thought, to be a resident – came bustling up to them.

  ‘Are you here about the deliveries?’ she asked, frowning.

  Fabel smiled. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, casting an eye up and down the uniformed policeman. ‘I thought you were here about the deliveries.’

  A younger woman came up and, smiling reassuringly, took the confused woman gently by the shoulders and guided her away. The younger woman’s professional demeanour marked her as a member of staff, but Fabel noticed that, like Director Pohl, she wore no uniform or name badge to identify her.

  They took the lift to the third floor and the young policeman showed them to a suite of rooms guarded by another uniform.

  When they entered, Fabel and Anna slipped on the plastic overshoes and latex gloves handed them by one of the three forensic technicians working the scene.

  The room looked remarkably normal. Only the discordant presence of the white-coveralled forensics team marked it as a murder scene. The decor was the same shade of bland as the rest of the home and the pieces of personal furniture, pictures on the wall, books and items on the shelves did little to personalize it. In the centre of the room an old man sat, chin resting on his chest, in an armchair in front of a games table on which lay a chequers board. There was no hint of violence, no signs of any kind of struggle. Instead, the old man looked for all the world like he had dozed off mid-game. One hand hung at his side and this was Fabel’s first immediate clue that the old man was dead, not sleeping: it had already begun to take on the purple-blue hue of post-mortem lividity, the fingers swelling as blood, no longer moved by an active heart, let gravity pull it to the lowest points in the body.

  A young woman in white forensics coveralls was kneeling beside the body, carefully examining the dead man with fingers sheathed in blue latex. She stood up and pulled the mask from her face when she saw Fabel.

  ‘Good morning, Herr Principal Chief Commissar,’ she said, her very formal German slightly tinged with an Estonian accent.

  ‘Good morning, Frau Doctor Koppel. Cause of death?’

  Marta Koppel smiled and stepped towards the body and, cradling the crown of the old man’s head in one surgical-gloved hand, his jaw in the other, eased his chin up from his chest. With the victim’s head tilted back, Fabel could see a cut in the old man’s throat, roughly nine centimetres wide and slightly diagonal. It gaped dark and, sickeningly, mouthlike, with the movement of the old man’s head. There was little blood around the wound and what there was was pink and frothed.

  ‘Old people don’t have as much blood, I suppose,’ said Fabel.

  ‘Their blood volume is decreased, sure,’ said Marta Koppel. ‘But that’s not why there’s so little blood. From what I can see the carotids, internal jugular veins and oesophagus were all just missed and no more. Complete but slightly transverse transecting of the intertracheal membrane between the first and second tracheal rings. The old guy didn’t bleed to death, he suffocated because his windpipe had been cut.’

  ‘I see . . .’ Fabel again imagined the process of someone else’s death and wondered if the old man had shared the same experience, had had the same dreams Fabel had known two years ago. Hypoxia, he knew from years of dealing with the dead and causes of death, was a peaceful way to die, once the initial panic had passed.

  ‘The suspect?’ Fabel asked the uniformed cop who had led them up.

  ‘He’s been moved to another room, until his own has been processed. We’ve got someone with him.’

  ‘No one’s processed him?’

  ‘He’s been through forensics,’ said the young policeman, ‘but we don’t know what to do with him, Herr Chief Commissar. You really have to see the state he’s in to understand.’

  ‘There’s no doubt that he was the killer?’

  ‘He was found with the body and with the knife in his hand. He was just sitting opposite the victim when they found them both.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Fabel. ‘Lead the way.’

  *

  The unoccupied suite of rooms where Georg Schmidt was being held was further along the same corridor from the murder victim’s apartment. Again it was decorated in a uniformly inoffensively era-indistinct way and Fabel began to feel vaguely claustrophobic. A small, bird-like old man sat on the sofa, dressed in the same type of white coveralls as the forensics team, his feet in white rubber boots. His hands were in constant movement, resting on his lap for a moment but finding no peace and fluttering from lap to armrest, up to touch his face and back to his lap. Behind their rheumy glaze, his eyes too had a fearful intensity and when Fabel entered the room with Anna, he saw the old man give a start. It was clear he was very afraid.

  A uniformed officer was sitting in a club chair, at the other side of the room from the old man, and stood up when Fabel and Anna entered. Fabel nodded and the uniform left them alone with Schmidt.

  Fabel sat down next to the old man, Anna pulling the chair vacated by the uniform across the room and sitting opposite them.

  ‘You know that we are from the Polizei Hamburg, don’t you, Herr Schmidt?’ asked Fabel. He kept his voice calm and quiet, and not just because of the man’s advanced age: Fabel had comforted many murderers immediately after the act of killing. Post-homicide shock, fear, confusion and disbelief were more common amongst killers than the public thought. Very often murder was as desperate and ill-conceived an act as suicide.

  The old man didn’t answer but instead searched the white coveralls for pockets that didn’t exist.

  ‘I have them here, sir,’ he said, his voice light, high, tremulous. ‘I beg your pardon, I’ll have them in a minute.’

  ‘Have what in a minute, Herr Schmidt?’ asked Anna.

  ‘My papers . . .’ explained Schmidt and frowned at her, as if confused as to why a woman would be there, asking him for his papers. ‘I have them somewhere.’

  Resting his hand on Schmidt’s arm, Fabel stopped the old man’s searching. He had seen this before too, on the few occasions he’d had to deal with this generation. A generation for whom the police was something to be feared, to be obeyed.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘We don’t need to see your personal ID. Herr Schmidt, do you remember what happened?’

  Schmidt seemed suddenly to become aware of his lack of pockets; he looked down at the white coveralls.

  ‘My clothes. They took my clothes. Why did they take my clothes? And my key . . .’ His right hand moved to his neck, as if checking for something.

  ‘Don’t worry about that just now, Herr Schmidt. What I really need you to tell me is what happened with Herr Wohlmann, and why you did what you did. But before you say anything, I have to tell you that under Article 136 of the Federal Criminal Procedure Regulations, you have the right to remain silent. Do you understand?’

  It was as if he hadn’t heard Fabel, but a light came on in his eyes as some other thought fell into his mind. ‘The march . . . I remember the march. I had to do something because of the march.’

  ‘Which march?’

  ‘The one through Altona. The trouble. There was a riot.’ He paused and frowned, then grabbed at the frayed end of the thought. ‘I don’t want any trouble.’

  ‘The riot?’ asked Fabel. ‘Did you see the riot on television?”

  Schmidt’s frown deepened, as if trying to make sense of what Fabel had asked him. ‘Yes,’ he said eventually. ‘That’s why I had to do it. Because of the riot. Because of what happened. The shootings . . .’

  ‘There were no shootings,’ said Anna.

  ‘. . . all those people dead.’

  ‘But nobody—’

  Fabel stopped Anna with a gesture of his hand.

  ‘You mean Altona Bloody Sunday, Herr Schmidt?’ he said. ‘Nineteen thirty-two? Has that got something to do
with Herr Wohlmann?’

  ‘It began it all. It all started then. It wasn’t right. It just wasn’t right. I had to put things right, before it was too late . . .’

  Fabel saw the focus fade, thoughts evaporating in the air. He made several attempts to get Schmidt back to the here-and-now, or at least the here-and-now he had occupied a moment ago and which offered some hope of an explanation of an inexplicable event. But it was useless. Schmidt sank deeper into a confusion about where he was and what he was doing there.

  After a while, Fabel gave up.

  ‘We need to get a full psych assessment,’ he said to Anna. He turned back to Schmidt. ‘We’ll leave you in peace just now,’ he said. ‘Then we’ll have someone take you to the hospital to have you checked out.’

  Schmidt nodded, but Fabel could see he didn’t understand.

  ‘Goodbye, Herr Schmidt,’ he said as he got up to leave.

  ‘Can I have my clothes back now, please?’ Schmidt looked up at Fabel with earnest, watery eyes. ‘It’s time for me to play chequers with Helmut . . .’

  *

  On the way out, Fabel and Anna called in to see Christof Pohl, the home’s director. Pohl could offer no ideas as to why mild-mannered, gentle Herr Schmidt had slit his friend’s throat with an old fishing clasp knife.

  ‘As I said before,’ he explained. ‘They were friends. They spent a lot of time together and seemed to have a lot in common.’

  ‘Did they know each other before?’ asked Anna. ‘I mean, before moving into the home?’

  ‘I really don’t know for sure, but I certainly got that impression. They were both Altona born and bred. Maybe in the war . . .’ Pohl suddenly looked sad. ‘What will happen to Herr Schmidt now? Will you lock him up?’

  ‘Normally we would take him to the Presidium for questioning. But given his advanced age and his confused state of mind, we’ll transfer him to the secure psychiatric wing at Ochsenzoll instead. He’ll be clinically assessed there as to whether he’s mentally capable to be charged under the Penal Code, which, frankly, I doubt. I have to say it is a very strange and very sad case. Is there anything about your set-up here that could have been some kind of, well, trigger?’