JF03 - Eternal (23 page)

Fabel smiled. He liked the small Ukrainian: he was a man who clearly believed in all that he had said. Who had an enthusiasm for what he did for a career. Fabel found himself envying him.

‘I wish you luck,’ he said.

‘How did it go?’ Julia frowned as she spoke. Cornelius Tamm resented the fact that her frown created so few creases on her brow, as if her youth refused to yield to her concern. It seemed to Cornelius that he was surrounded by youth. It mocked him wherever he went.

‘It didn’t.’ Cornelius threw his keys onto the table and took off his jacket.

Julia was thirty-two; Cornelius exactly thirty years her senior. He had left his wife for Julia three years before, on the eve of his fifty-ninth birthday. His marriage had been almost as old as the woman he had ended it for and Julia was nearer to his children’s age than to his own. At the time, Cornelius had felt that he was regaining a sense of youth, of vigour. Now he just felt tired all the time: tired and old. He sat down at the table.

‘What did he say?’ Julia poured him a cup of coffee and sat down opposite him.

‘He said my time is past. Basically.’ Cornelius gazed at Julia as if trying to work out what she was doing in his kitchen, his apartment. His life. ‘And he’s right, you know. The world has moved on. And somewhere along the way it left me behind.’ He pushed the coffee aside. He took out a tumbler and a bottle of Scotch from a kitchen cabinet and poured himself a large glass.

‘That doesn’t help, you know,’ said Julia.

‘It may not cure the disease.’ He took a substantial sip and screwed up his face. ‘But it sure as hell helps the symptoms. It anaesthetises.’

‘Don’t worry.’ Julia’s comforting smile only irritated Cornelius further. ‘You’ll get a deal soon. You’ll see. By the way, someone phoned for you while you were out. About fifteen minutes ago.’

‘Who?’

‘They wouldn’t leave a name at first. Then he said to tell you that it was Paul and that he would phone you later.’

‘Paul?’ Cornelius frowned as he tried to think which Paul it could be, then dismissed it with a
shrug. ‘I’m going to my study. And I’m taking my anaesthetic with me.’

It was another name that caught his attention. As he stood up, he noticed the copy of the
Hamburger Morgenpost
on the table. Cornelius put his drink down and picked up the paper. He stared at it long and hard.

‘What is it?’ asked Julia. ‘What’s wrong?’

Cornelius didn’t answer her and stayed focused on the article. It named someone who had died. Been murdered. But the name was one that had already been dead to Cornelius for twenty years. It was the report of the death of a ghost.

‘Nothing,’ he said and put the paper down. ‘Nothing at all.’

It was then that he worked out who Paul was.

It was a beautiful evening. The embers of the sun hung low in the sky behind Nordenham and the Weser sparkled quietly as it made its way towards the North Sea. Paul Scheibe had never set foot in Nordenham before, which was an irony when he considered how this small provincial town had cast a giant shadow over his life.

For a moment, Scheibe became again purely the architect as he gazed at Nordenham railway station. Architecturally, it was not really his kind of thing: but it was, nevertheless, a striking building, albeit in the solid, sometimes austere, traditional North German style. He remembered reading that it was over one hundred years old and was now an officially protected building.

Here.

It had happened here. On this platform. This was the stage on which the most important drama in his life had been played out and he had not even been here. Nor had the others. Six people, a hundred and fifty kilometres away, had made a decision to sacrifice a human being on this platform. One life brought to an end, six lives free to begin again. But it had not just been one life that had been lost in this place. Piet had also died here. As had Michaela and a policeman. But Paul Scheibe had never found he could feel guilty about those lost lives – everything else had been eclipsed by the intense feeling of relief, of liberation, that had come from knowing it was all over. But it was not over. Something – some
one
– had returned from that dark time.

Work it out, he kept telling himself. Work it out. Who was killing the members of the group? It had to have something to do with this place and what had happened here. But who was behind it? Could it be one of the remaining four members of the group? Scheibe found that almost impossible to imagine: there was simply nothing to gain, and there were no grudges, no old scores to be settled. Just a desire to have nothing to do with each other.

Scheibe felt something chill grip him: what if Franz had not died here? They had loved Franz, they had followed him; but more than anything, they had feared him. What if his death had been a sham, a conspiracy, some kind of deal with the authorities? What if, somehow, he had survived?

It didn’t make sense, but these killings
had
to have something to do with what had happened here, on this provincial railway platform, twenty years before. Scheibe already regretted having left that message for
Cornelius. He was not going to make it easier for the killer, and he was not going to risk his career by renewing associations that were best forgotten. He had worked too hard for all that he had achieved since the last time they had met; he was not going to give any of it up.

Scheibe looked at his watch: it was nearly eight. He felt tired and unclean. He hadn’t eaten since the lunch in the Rathaus and he felt empty inside. Scheibe sat on a bench on the platform and gazed blankly out across the tracks, across the flat landscape beyond, across the Weser towards the Luneplatte on the far side.

He could think this through. That was what they had always relied on him for back then: his ability to plan a strategy in the same way he could plan a building. More than a structure, but every detail integrated. He had been the architect of what had happened here: he had freed himself and the others. Now he needed to do it again. Scheibe reached into the pocket of his crumpled black linen jacket and pulled out his cellphone. No, his number could be traced: he had, after all, only recently been lectured about the insecurity of using a mobile telephone. Scheibe knew he had to play this carefully. He would phone the police. Anonymously. He would do a deal that kept him out of it. Like the last time.

A payphone. He needed to find a payphone. Paul turned and scanned the landscape around him.

It was then that the young man with the dark hair stepped out onto the platform. There was no vague sense of recognition. Paul did not struggle with where or when or how he had seen the face before. Maybe because he was seeing it in this context.

The young man strode across to Paul purposefully.

‘I know who you are,’ said Paul. ‘I know exactly who you are.’

The young man smiled and took his hand briefly out of his jacket pocket to reveal the Makarov automatic.

‘Let’s go somewhere more private to talk. My car is parked outside,’ he said, indicating the platform’s exit with a nod of his head.

‘Just let me know if I’m cramping your style.’ Anna Wolff grinned at Henk Hermann as they approached the bar.

The Firehouse was a large, square-set building in the St Pauli Kiez. Externally it was one of those unremarkable 1950s brick-built buildings that had erupted across Hamburg like weeds on the gap sites created by Second World War bombs. Internally, it was just as unremarkable, but in a totally different way. The decor was the kind of variation on the same theme of generic designer cool that could be found in bars and clubs around the world: an unsurprising, uninspiring, vaguely retro sophistication. Even the music in the background was the predictable chill-out soundtrack. The Firehouse left Anna, who preferred clubs and bars that had more of an edge, totally cold. But there again, it was not aimed at Anna. Or anyone of her gender.

‘Very funny.’ Henk muttered and nodded towards the shaven-headed black barman who came over to their end of the bar.

‘What can I get you?’ The black barman spoke
German that was spun through with something between an African and an English accent.

In reply, Henk held up his oval Criminal Police shield. ‘We’d like to ask you about one of your customers.’

‘Oh?’

‘It’s in connection with a murder inquiry,’ said Anna. ‘We believe the victim was a regular here.’ She laid a photograph of Hauser on the bar. ‘Know him?’

The barman looked briefly at the photograph and nodded.

‘That is Herr Hauser. Yes, I know him. Or knew him. I read about his death in the newspapers. Terrible. Yes, he was a regular here.’

‘With anyone in particular?’

‘No one special that I know of. Lots of guys in general …’

The other two barkeepers were occupied and a customer called over to the black barman from the other side of the bar.

‘Excuse me a moment …’ While he went over to serve the customer, Anna surveyed the club. Considering it was so early in the evening, and so early in the working week, there was a substantial number of customers. As she expected, it was populated by an exclusively male clientele, but other than that there was nothing to distinguish it from any other bar or club. Some of the men had the business-suited look of having come straight from their offices. Anna found it difficult to imagine Hauser in the club: it all seemed too ‘corporate’, too mainstream. The black barman came back and apologised for the interruption.

‘Herr Hauser came in here a lot, but he tended
to hang around with younger guys.
Much
younger guys. I just asked the other barmen about him. Martin says he used to come in a lot with a guy with dark hair.’

‘Sebastian Lang?’ Anna placed a photograph of Lang on the counter next to the one of Hauser.

‘I wouldn’t know him … Martin?’ The barman called over to his colleague who came over and examined the photograph.

‘That’s him,’ the second barman confirmed. ‘They came in here together for a while, but then the younger guy stopped coming. But before him, Herr Hauser used to drink with a man more his own age. I don’t think they were an item, or anything. I just think they were friends.’

‘Do you have a name for this friend?’

‘Sorry.’

‘Does he still come in here?’

The barman shook his head. ‘I couldn’t say when he might turn up. I think he only came in to meet Herr Hauser.’

‘Thanks,’ said Henk and handed the barman his Polizei Hamburg contact card. ‘If you do see him again, you can contact me on this number.’

The barman took the card. ‘Sure.’ He frowned. ‘You don’t think this guy had anything to do with Herr Hauser’s murder, do you?’

‘At the moment we’re just trying to build a picture of the victim’s last days,’ said Anna. ‘And the kind of people he used to hang out with. That’s all.’

But, as she and Henk left The Firehouse, Anna could not help thinking that they had built no picture at all.

Fabel phoned Markus Ullrich, the BKA officer, from his office in the Murder Commission. Ullrich sounded surprised to hear from Fabel, but there was no sense of the BKA man being guarded in his response.

‘What can I do for you, Chief Commissar? Is this about Frau Klee?’

‘No, Herr Ullrich, it isn’t.’ The truth was that Fabel did want to pursue the issue with Ullrich, but now was not the time. Fabel was looking for a favour. ‘You will remember that Criminal Director van Heiden asked about the case I’m working on? The so-called “Hamburg Hairdresser”?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Someone has suggested that I should be looking more closely into the history of the victims. Specifically that there may be some skeletons in the closet dating back to their days as student activists – or later, during the years of unrest. Both were politically active to varying degrees. And I thought that if there were any suspicions about them …’

‘… That we at the BKA would have them on file – is that it?’

‘It’s just a thought …’ Fabel went on to outline what they knew to date about both victims.

‘Okay,’ said Ullrich. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

After Fabel hung up he went through to the main Murder Commission office and spoke to Anna Wolff. He gave her the details from the Second World War identity card of the HafenCity mummy.

‘Could you get on to the state archives and see if we can dig anything up? I’d like to find out if there is any surviving next of kin we should notify.’

Anna looked at the information Fabel handed her and shrugged. ‘Okay,
Chef
.’

Fabel did the rounds of his officers to get updates on progress. The two scalping murders had eclipsed everything else and Fabel was glad that the Kiez brawl killing was the only other continuing case, because it was a comparatively easy one to tie up. Fabel often caught himself thinking like that: grateful that the violent ending of another human’s life was conveniently straightforward and therefore less demanding on his team’s resources. He hated the forced callousness of being an investigator of the deaths of others.

‘Still nothing on the phone accounts of either victim,’ Henk Hermann anticipated Fabel’s question. ‘We’ve found no numbers that cannot be accounted for.’

Fabel thanked Henk and made his way back to his office. It still nagged at Fabel. He had a gut instinct that the victims had known their killer.

The room was filled with the rich, sweet smell of incense. The blinds were drawn and the room was
illuminated by the soft, dancing light of two dozen candles.

Beate Brandt sat with her eyes closed, one hand resting on the forehead and the other on the chest of her client. Her hair was long, cascading over her shoulders, just as it had when she was eighteen. But the glossy, sensual lustre with which it had once ensnared men’s hearts had faded over a decade ago. Now it was more grey than black and its sheen had been replaced by a dry coarseness. Similarly, Beate’s dark beauty, which she had inherited from her Italian mother, had faded. The strong bone structure and the fineness of her features remained, but the skin in which they were wreathed had become creased and wrinkled, as if someone had stored a fine painting carelessly.