A Fear of Dark Water

by Craig Russell

  ‘Maybe we should make your unofficial snooping into Meliha Yazar an official investigation. If you think she might be the wash-up. We could get familial DNA …’

  Fabel shook his head. ‘It’s not as straightforward as that … Anyway, I still think it might be a wild-goose chase.’ He looked at his watch and saw it was eleven-thirty. ‘It’s late. I’m heading home. We’ll pick this up in the morning.’

  Fabel tried ringing Susanne’s cellphone again as he came out of the elevator and crossed the Presidium’s basement garage. He cursed when he once more got her answering service: he left a message, telling her that this was his temporary cell number and asking her to check in with him.

  Fabel hadn’t eaten since lunchtime and he didn’t feel like cooking for himself so he decided to eat somewhere on the way home. Driving through the night-time city, his mind wandered and ranged over everything that had happened over the last forty-eight hours. Two bodies in the water. Two different MOs. He guessed that the press would be all over the second body by the morning and van Heiden would be on the phone to him again to state the obvious. But the strange thing was that his conversation of the night before with Müller-Voigt, and everything he had found out since about the Pharos Project, were what really haunted his thoughts.

  It was only after Fabel stopped his BMW that he realised what he had done. It had been as if he had been on autopilot. He had driven down to the harbour. He knew why he had done it and he felt a leaden sadness coalesce in his chest. He had been working late and had wanted to eat something on the way home so, as he had so many times before, he had driven down to the harbour to buy a beer and something hot to eat from Stellamanns’ Schnell-Imbiss snack bar.

  Dirk Stellamanns had run the harbourside snack stand since his retirement from the Polizei Hamburg. Like Fabel, Dirk was a Frisian by birth and, as the experienced officer, he had shown Fabel the ropes when he had first entered the service. He had taken him under his wing, and the two had only ever talked to each other in Frisian Low Saxon. Throughout the years, and despite Fabel’s rise through the ranks, the two men had remained close. Then, after his retirement, Dirk had set up his immaculately kept snack stand – a caravan with a serving window and canopy and surrounded by parasol-topped waist-high tables – smack bang in the middle of what had been his old beat, in the shadow of the dockside cranes that loomed above it.

  Fabel visited regularly to grab a beer and something to eat, particularly when something was troubling him. Seeing Dirk, and hearing his accent that was as broad and flat as the landscape they had both grown up in, had always cheered Fabel up. Stellamanns had been that kind of man: no matter what life had thrown at him, he always seemed to remain cheerily philosophical about it.

  Fabel stepped out of his car, stood in an illuminated pool of cobbled road, and looked over to a vacant patch of scrubland next to the dock road.

  The summer before, on a particularly hot day, Dirk had been doing his best business of the season. He had built up a huge clientele of lorry drivers who would stop on their way into or out of the docks. He had been working over the stove when it happened: a massive heart attack that had killed him before he hit the caravan floor.

  For those few minutes while his mind had been preoccupied with other things Dirk had still been alive in Fabel’s subconscious, his snack stand still open for business as usual.

  The world was changing around Fabel. And, like everyone else, he sometimes lost track of the changes. People he had thought of as constants, as always being there, suddenly were no longer there. It depressed and annoyed him that, for a moment, he had forgotten that Dirk had died. He had often done the same thing when he had thought of his childhood home in Norddeich; that his long-dead father was in fact still alive and sitting in his study, bent over some old map of the coast, his glasses perched precariously on the tip of his nose. It was what you did: you had an entire universe in your head, the one you grew up with, and it stayed there, unchanged.

  ‘It’s not here any more.’

  Fabel turned, startled. The young woman had stepped out from nowhere and into the pool of light. He looked up and down the roadway but could see no sign of another parked car.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘It’s not here any more,’ the young woman repeated. ‘The snack stand.’

  ‘Oh … yes. Yes, I know.’

  ‘I was looking for it myself,’ she said. For a moment Fabel wondered if she was a prostitute, even though this was not one of the regulated areas. But she was smartly dressed in a dark grey jacket-and-skirt business suit and court shoes, as if she worked in a bank or insurance company. She had neat, shortish blonde hair and regular features: attractive but not particularly memorable.

  ‘It’s not been here for a while,’ said Fabel.

  ‘Nor have I,’ she said.

  ‘Where are you parked?’ asked Fabel. ‘I didn’t see …’

  ‘Oh, over there …’ She made a vague gesture with her hand, indicating further down the road towards the docks. ‘Are you a policeman?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘It’s just that “Where are you parked?” is a very policeman kind of thing to ask. And the guy who ran the stand was an ex-policeman. He used to get a lot of his former colleagues as customers. And you don’t look like a trucker.’

  ‘I guess not. What brings you down here?’

  ‘Like I said, I was looking for the Schnell-Imbiss myself. I was peckish.’

  ‘It’s a bit out of the way.’

  ‘Nowhere is really out of the way. Did you know him well? The guy with the stall, I mean?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘He was a nice man,’ she said. ‘He was very …’ she struggled for the right word ‘… avuncular.’

  Fabel realised he was feeling increasingly uneasy. There was something about the girl that disturbed him. It was almost as if she was flirting with him, but the lack of expression in her face made him think of Reisch, the man with the wheelchair and a terrifyingly clear view of his immediate future.

  ‘I still don’t really understand what you are doing here,’ he said. He took out his police ID and flipped it open. ‘If you don’t mind, I’d like to see your card.’

  ‘And if I do mind?’

  ‘I’d still like to see it.’

  ‘I don’t understand why you’re so concerned about me being here. I’m not the one who’s living in the past, forgetting that their friend is dead.’

  Fabel stiffened a little. ‘Okay, let me see your ID card.’

  ‘Certainly, officer.’ She smiled, but it was an artifice, something done because it was expected. She reached into her shoulder bag and handed him her Personal Identification Card. It told Fabel that she was Julia Helling, from Eppendorf. ‘I was just making conversation. Have I done something wrong?’

  ‘No, Frau Helling. It’s just that you should be more careful. This is a lonely spot at night and you shouldn’t be here on your own.’

  ‘I’m not on my own, am I? I have police protection. Or are you worried that I’ve made a date on the internet with the Network Killer?’

  ‘Now that’s a very odd thing to say.’

  ‘Is it? It’s just with your concern for my safety … he’s very much in the news at the moment.’ She sighed. ‘Anyway, I won’t disturb you any longer. Good night, Chief Commissar.’

  ‘How do you know my rank?’

  She shrugged. ‘Your ID. It was on it. Good night. I hope you find somewhere to eat.’

  Fabel watched as she walked off into the dark. Getting back into his BMW, he phoned the Police Presidium and gave the name and address in Eppendorf that the girl had given him. The control room told him the name and address checked out and she had no known record. Waiting for a moment before starting up, Fabel headed down towards the docks, in the direction she had taken, driving slowly to make sure she had got back to her car. It took him only three or four minutes to reach a dead end of closed dock gates.

  No sign of her. And no
car had passed him in the opposite direction.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Fabel woke up with a start. He had been dreaming again and something in his dream had frightened him, but it ran away from his recall as soon as he awoke. He had the vague idea that the woman from the night before had figured in it.

  It wasn’t fully light and he switched on the bedside lamp; checking his watch, he saw it was just before six a.m. He reached over to the bedside cabinet, picked up the replacement cellphone and frowned. No call from Susanne. Not even a text to tell him which flight she would be coming back on.

  He got up and showered, but still felt tired. Sluggish. He left the apartment early and called into a café for breakfast. It was somewhere he visited often enough to be recognised but not so frequently as to be considered a regular. It saved him the effort of making conversation at this time in the morning. It was quiet in the café; the only other customers were a couple who sat at a table at the back, away from the window. Both the man and woman were dressed in grey business suits and stared blankly at Fabel as he came in, before returning to the joyless consumption of their coffees.

  For some reason he didn’t quite understand, the café offered a choice of breakfasts, each named, in English for some reason, after a port city: The Hamburg Breakfast, The Liverpool Breakfast, The Rotterdam Breakfast. Fabel ordered the Rotterdam and was served with a Dutch style Uitsmijter: poached egg on a bed of ham, cheese and toast; served with a cup of industrial-strength coffee. He sat and pushed the food about on his plate for ten minutes, watching through the window as the faint drizzle fell without conviction on the Elbe. His cellphone rang.

  ‘What the hell’s been going on?’ Susanne said impatiently and without preliminaries.

  ‘It’s nice to talk to you, too,’ said Fabel. ‘I’ve been trying to reach you for days. Didn’t you get my texts?’

  ‘What texts? The only text I got from you was the one I picked up this morning, from your new phone. What’s going on, Jan? What happened to your other phone?’

  ‘It’s been playing up. You know, the usual problems: signal failure, poor battery life, predicting by itself the location of the next victim of the Network Killer.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The text I asked you about. Remember … Poppenbütteler Schleuse … I get the text and within a few hours a body is found floating in the Poppenbütteler Schleuse.’

  ‘You’re kidding …’ Susanne said. ‘Did you find out who really sent it?’

  ‘This is where it gets good – the text has disappeared. Deleted itself somehow. That’s why I’ve got this new phone. They’re working on my old one to try to recover the message. You heading for Frankfurt airport?’

  ‘Yeah … but my flight isn’t till this afternoon. I’m going to do some shopping first. Can you pick me up?’

  ‘Sure. When do you get in?’

  She gave him the flight’s scheduled arrival time. ‘Listen, Jan,’ she said, concern woven through her tone. ‘You say you sent me some texts from that phone?’

  ‘Yes. And a voicemail message.’

  ‘I never got them. And, from what you are saying, you didn’t get my messages either.’

  ‘You left messages for me? No, I didn’t get any.’

  ‘But that doesn’t make any sense. Voicemail messages aren’t stored on your phone, they’re stored on the network provider’s service. Try retrieving them with your PIN from that phone. I don’t like this, Jan. It’s like someone’s hijacked your phone. Cloned it or something.’

  ‘I don’t know, Susanne. That sounds pretty far-fetched. I’ve maybe deleted the messages myself by accident. Anyway, Technical Section will let me know soon enough.’ He paused. ‘I’ve missed you.’

  ‘I’ve missed you, too,’ said Susanne. There was still a thread of concern in her voice. ‘See you at the airport.’

  Leaving most of his Rotterdam Breakfast uneaten, Fabel paid and got back into his car. He felt jumpy after the too-strong coffee and, as he drove across town to the Presidium, he switched on his mp3 player to mellow his agitated mood. Lars Danielsson this time. Maybe, thought Fabel, he should have been born a Swede.

  The music had the effect it usually had on him and by the time Fabel parked in the Presidium car park, despite the odd caffeine flutter, he felt able to face anything the day had to throw at him.

  He could not have been more mistaken.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  As soon as he stepped out of the elevator, Fabel knew something was wrong.

  He passed Anna walking in the opposite direction. She hesitated for a moment and her mouth moved to say something but she was cut off by van Heiden, who leaned out into the corridor behind her and called Fabel into the Murder Commission. Anna walked on, but not before firing Fabel a look so laden with warning that he felt a sudden sinking in his gut.

  They were waiting for him in the Murder Commission’s main office: van Heiden, the BfV man Fabian Menke, and Werner, who smiled at Fabel with something between sympathy, frustration and desperation. Whatever it was that had sunk in Fabel’s gut when he had passed Anna sunk some more.

  Over the years Fabel had become used to Criminal Director van Heiden’s lugubrious greetings. He often felt that his superior was a man of very limited emotion. It seemed to Fabel that van Heiden had only two expressions: gloomily serious, and even more gloomily serious. His moroseness was usually prompted by unwelcome press or political intrusion into an investigation that was still in progress, or by some newspaper headline critical of the Polizei Hamburg. But this, Fabel knew, was something different. Whatever it was that now played across the Criminal Director’s face, Fabel hadn’t seen it before.

  ‘Why do I have the feeling I’ve just arrived at a funeral, only to find out it’s mine?’ Fabel smiled at van Heiden and was reminded by his unresponsiveness that the Criminal Director’s sense of humour was as limited as his emotional range. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘You had better come with us,’ said van Heiden. ‘You too, Senior Commissar Meyer.’

  ‘Okay …’ sighed Fabel as they made their way in the lift up to the fifth floor. ‘Do I get some kind of clue?’

  ‘It’s Müller-Voigt—’ started Werner, only to be silenced by a sharp look from van Heiden.

  Fabel let his boss and the BfV man lead the way. The fifth floor of the Hamburg Police Presidium was somewhere, if you were of Fabel’s rank or below, you were led. This was the management level of the Presidium and when Fabel realised they were headed for the Presidial Offices, his feeling of foreboding ratcheted up a notch or two. When they reached the reception area they were admitted immediately into the Police President’s office.

  Hugo Steinbach stepped around from behind a huge desk to meet Fabel and the others. Just as van Heiden could not be anything other than a policeman, Steinbach looked as though he should be anything but a policeman. Fabel had always felt the avuncular, habitually smiling Steinbach looked more like a provincial family doctor, or even a jovially hospitable rural hotel proprietor. But he was a policeman, through and through. Steinbach had entered the police as an ordinary beat patrolman and had worked his way up through every rank and every department. He prided himself on the fact that whenever he talked to one of his officers he knew exactly what it was like to do their job, to face whatever they had to face. That was even true of Fabel: Steinbach had been a lead detective in the Polizei Berlin’s Murder Commission.

  ‘Is this about my expense account?’ Fabel said with a small, uncertain laugh.

  ‘Sit down, please, Fabel,’ said Steinbach with a gentleness that unnerved Fabel even more. He sat down, his unease now beginning to give way to anger.

  Steinbach sat casually on the corner of his desk and picked up a file, which he examined briefly.

  ‘Last night you rang into the Presidium for an ID check on a woman. Someone called Julia Helling.’

  ‘Oh, yes … yes, I did. What about her?’

  ‘And you confirmed to the officer on duty th
at she lived in Eppendorf. Why did you check out that particular name and address?’

  ‘It was after I left the Presidium last night. I was going to pick up something to eat and I forgot …’ Fabel checked himself. It sounded insensitive to say the least that he had forgotten that his friend of twenty-odd years was dead. And, as he sat there feeling as if he was under interrogation, the fact itself seemed odd. ‘… I forgot that the place had closed. Then this woman sort of appeared out of nowhere. Her behaviour was, well, odd. I don’t know why, but I got the feeling that she knew who I was.’

  ‘What made you think that?’ asked Steinbach.

  ‘I don’t know, exactly,’ said Fabel honestly. ‘There was just something about the things she said. She knew all about the guy who used to own the snack stand. And it was as if she knew that he had been a friend of mine.’

  ‘Dirk Stellamanns?’ asked Werner, frowning. Exactly the reaction Fabel had been concerned about. It did sound odd. Fabel nodded.

  ‘So you asked this woman for her ID?’ asked van Heiden.

  ‘Yes. Will someone tell me what this is all about?’

  ‘All in good time, Fabel.’ Steinbach took the edge off it with a smile. ‘I know this is all very unusual, but this is a very serious matter and we have to establish some of the facts and chronology of events. Could you describe this woman?’

  Fabel outlined a description of the unremarkable, business-suited woman he had encountered down by the docks. As he did so, a thought struck him: the couple he had seen in the café that morning had been dressed in a very similar manner. He dismissed the thought. They all did look the same: corporate clones.

  ‘You say she was blonde?’ asked van Heiden. ‘Not a brunette?’

  ‘She was blonde. Like I said.’

  ‘And you have had no previous contact with her, or with anyone else with the same name?’ asked Steinbach.

  ‘No, I haven’t. Why do I feel like a suspect all of a sudden? What is the significance of this woman?’