A Fear of Dark Water

by Craig Russell

  ‘Mass murder-suicide, more like. Let’s face it, it’s the staple of all of these cults. Jonestown, Order of the Solar Temple, Heaven’s Gate, Branch Davidians … And despite the hi-tech dress-up that the Pharos Project has given it, it’s the same old promise of transition to a higher plane. All you need to do is die.’

  They were interrupted by the phone ringing. Fabel was surprised to hear that it was Astrid Bremer from the forensics squad; Holger Brauner’s deputy.

  ‘You’re working late,’ said Fabel.

  ‘Yeah, third week solid backshift,’ said Astrid. ‘My social life is to die for. You want some good news?’

  ‘Oh yes, please,’ said Fabel.

  ‘I thought I would let you know that we have done a full fingerprint and trace analysis on the sculpture used to kill Müller-Voigt. Like you guessed, yours and Müller-Voigt’s are the only fingerprints on it and there’s no trace of any third-party DNA.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ sighed Fabel. ‘You’ve got an odd sense of good news.’

  ‘Well, actually it is. There are no other fingerprints because whoever hit Müller-Voigt with it wore gloves. There is evidence of smudging and smearing, including of your prints. It proves that you weren’t the last person to handle the sculpture. Of course, it doesn’t mean that you didn’t pull on gloves afterwards, but you know what I mean.’

  ‘Thanks, Astrid. It’s something, anyway.’

  ‘There’s one more thing …’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘We found some extraneous fibres at the scene. Grey fabric. My guess is from a man’s suit jacket. Were you wearing a grey jacket?’

  ‘No. Nor was Müller-Voigt.’

  ‘We know that. We couldn’t find anything in his wardrobe that would match.’

  ‘You can tell already?’

  ‘Yes …’ said Astrid. ‘This fibre is highly unusual insofar as it seems to have an incredibly high polyester content. What isn’t polyester is some other kind of synthetic fibre. It’s the weirdest thing I’ve seen. I mean, I know in the seventies people went mad for synthetic materials, but nowadays … Anyway, I’m going to send it off to a specialist lab to get a better breakdown of its composition.’

  ‘Thanks, Astrid,’ Fabel said, and put the phone down, trying to work out why he felt what Astrid had told him was significant.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The next morning, before making his first call, Fabel dropped by the Jensen Buchhandlung, down in the Arkaden by the Alster. Otto Jensen was Fabel’s closest friend, closer even than Werner. It was a friendship unsullied by professional interests. Fabel had been at university with Otto and they had remained close, even if Otto had not, to start with, approved of Fabel’s becoming a police officer. ‘A waste of a fine mind,’ he had said. Repeatedly. Fabel had known since he had been a boy that he was smart; that he had a good brain. But when he had met Otto Jensen at university, he had recognised a mind that worked on a completely different level. Otto was the person to whom Fabel would go to discuss anything he found confusing or arcane. Whatever it was, Otto would know something about it. But Fabel also knew that Otto was completely, spectacularly devoid of the kind of common sense needed to conduct a normal day-to-day life. The success of his bookshop was entirely due to Otto’s wife, Else.

  Fabel waited while Otto served a customer. From a distance, Fabel suddenly saw a middle-aged balding man with tired eyes. It saddened Fabel, who every time he thought of his friend had the image of a tall, gangly, clumsy youth with long, lank blond hair. It was, Fabel realised, exactly the same mental mechanism that had temporarily wiped out the fact of Dirk Stellamanns’s death: you kept a concept of a person in your head that never seemed to age; that was fixed at the time you first really got to know them.

  ‘What’s this?’ asked Otto when Fabel came up to the counter. ‘A raid?’

  ‘Don’t sweat,’ said Fabel. ‘There isn’t a law against being a smart-arse. Yet. As soon as there is, I’ll put you at the top of the most-wanted list. Actually, I wondered if you had time for a coffee? I wanted to pick your brains.’

  Otto asked one of his staff to take over and led Fabel to an area set out with sofas. There was a coffee machine in the corner and, surrounded by books, the two old friends sat down and engaged in the obligatory introductory small talk. Then Fabel ran through all he knew about the Pharos Project and their ideas of Consolidation, simulated realities and the removal of mankind from the biosphere.

  ‘I just don’t get it,’ said Fabel when he had finished. ‘The Pharos Project is supposed to be an environmental group, yet they are obsessed with the idea of simulated reality. Other than this bizarre claim that simulated reality allows mankind to take itself out of the environment and therefore save it … which, by the way, I don’t get: why save something that you want to escape from? Anyway, apart from that, I just don’t understand the connection.’

  ‘Well, you’re wrong, Jan. The two ideas have always sort of gone together. Way back at the end of the nineteenth century, some of the world’s leading geologists – Eduard Suess, Nikolai Fyodorov, Vladimir Vernadsky and a host of others – came up with both ideas and saw them as inextricably linked. A couple of them actually posited that the biosphere was itself nothing but a simulation.’

  ‘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 psyc
hology – 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’être. See you, copper.’

  Fabel drove across town and parked over the street from the Schanzenviertel café. Before visiting Otto, he had spent the day going through all the evidence to date on the Föttinger 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 Müller-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 café’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 café’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 flambéed 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 Föttinger?’

  ‘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?’

&
nbsp; ‘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.