‘Of course,’ said Fabel. But, he thought, this isn’t the conclusion of the Paula Ehlers case: this is just the beginning.
5.
10.10 p.m., Wednesday, 17 March: Institut für Rechtsmedizin, University Hospital Eppendorf, Hamburg
The Universitätsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf, housing the main medical functions and facilities of Hamburg university, stretches back from Martinistrasse like a small town. The sprawl mixes high-rise and low-rise buildings of all ages and is woven through with a web of roadways. The largest of the meagre parking spaces lies right at the heart of the complex, but, because of the lateness of the hour, Fabel knew that he would be able to park close to the Institut für Rechtsmedizin – the Institute of Legal Medicine. Fabel knew the Institut well. It had become the focus for every form of science that had a legal application: serology and DNA testing, forensic medicine and a dedicated forensic-psychiatric experts service. It was not just through work that Fabel had contact with the Institut: for the last year he had been in a relationship with a criminal psychologist, Susanne Eckhardt. Susanne, who was officially based at the thirteen-storey-high Psychiatry and Psychotherapy Clinic, spent most of her time working out of the nearby Institut.
Fabel did not take the turn into the main entrance; instead he continued along Martinistrasse and turned up Lokstedter Steindamm and on to Butenfeld. As he had suspected, there were a number of free spaces in the car park outside the Institut’s wide, two-storey pavilion. The Institut had a global reputation and the building had been radically extended recently to accommodate courses run for budding forensic pathologists and chemists from around the world. Three thousand bodies were forensically examined and one thousand autopsies were carried out here each year. It was here that the dead girl’s body lay, in the dark, in a chilled steel cabinet, waiting to be identified.
Fabel noticed that one of the other parked cars was Susanne’s Porsche: for once he and Susanne seemed to be working roughly the same hours which, hopefully, would mean that they might manage to see a little more of each other.
Fabel and Anna were admitted to the Institut by an older security officer whom Fabel recognised as a former Obermeister in the uniformed division. When they entered the main reception, they found a uniformed Hamburg police officer waiting with Klatt and Herr and Frau Ehlers. Fabel greeted them and asked Klatt if they’d been waiting long, to which he replied that they’d only arrived ten minutes before Fabel. An orderly arrived and led the small party to the identification room. The mortuary trolley on which the body lay had been dressed in a deep blue covering and a clean white sheet lay over the face. Fabel let Klatt lead the Ehlerses across to the body. Anna stepped forward and placed an arm around Frau Ehlers and spoke soothingly to her before signalling to the orderly who drew back the sheet. Frau Ehlers gave a sharp gasp and swayed a little in Anna’s grasp. Fabel saw Herr Ehlers tauten, as if a small electric current had caused all of his muscles to lock simultaneously.
It was the smallest of silences. Not even a second. But in that tiny, crystal quiet Fabel knew that the girl on the trolley was not Paula Ehlers. And when Frau Ehlers shattered the silence with a long, low, pain-filled cry, it was not a cry of mourning or loss, but of a desperation renewed.
Afterwards, they all sat in the reception area, drinking coffee from a dispensing machine. Frau Ehlers sat with her gaze not focused on anyone or anything in the here and now, but as if locked on to some far-distant moment in time. In total contrast, there was a wild, confused and angry expression on her husband’s face.
‘Why, Herr Fabel?’ Ehlers’s eyes searched Fabel’s. ‘Why do this to us? She looked so like Paula … so like her. Why would someone be so cruel?’
‘You’re positive it isn’t your daughter?’
‘It’s been a long time. And like I say, she’s so much like Paula, but …’
‘That girl is not my daughter.’ Frau Ehlers cut across her husband’s answer. Her eyes were still glazed and dreamy, but her voice was edged with a hard, uncompromising determination. It was more than an opinion: it was an incontrovertible, indisputable certainty. Fabel felt the steel of her will penetrate him and leave something of itself embedded. He felt a fury and hatred rise in him like a bitter bile. Someone had not only taken a young life, he had twisted a long-buried knife viciously in the heart of another family. And that was just the beginning: there was now every reason to suppose that the killer of the girl on the beach had, indeed, abducted and murdered Paula Ehlers three years before. Why else would he – or she – have involved the Ehlers family in his sick game? One body, two murder cases. He turned back to the refreshed, raw hurt of Paula Ehlers’s parents: a family returned to the renewed torture of uncertainty and unreasonable, unfounded hope.
‘We are obviously dealing with a very disturbed and evil personality here.’ Fabel’s voice held a paler reflection of Ehlers’s frustration and fury. ‘Whoever killed this girl wanted us to be sitting here as we are now, angry and hurting and asking why. This is as much a scene of his crime as the beach where he left the girl’s body.’
Herr Ehlers simply stared uncomprehendingly at Fabel, as if he had just addressed him in Japanese. His wife fixed Fabel with a searchlight gaze. ‘I want you to get him.’ She switched the beam of her gaze from Fabel to Klatt and back again, as if distributing the burden of her words equally on both men. ‘What I really want is for you to find him and kill him. I know I can’t ask that of you … but I can demand that you catch him and punish him. I can expect at least that.’
‘I promise you that I will do everything I can to find this monster,’ said Fabel, and he meant it.
Fabel and Anna accompanied Klatt and the Ehlers out into the car park. The Ehlers climbed into the back of Klatt’s Audi. Klatt turned to Fabel; the sadness that Fabel had noticed in Klatt’s expression had returned, but this time it was keener, honed to a sharper edge by anger.
‘This dead girl is your case, Herr Kriminalhauptkommissar. But there is clearly some kind of correlation between her death and the Paula Ehlers case. I would be obliged if you could keep me up to date on all developments that may have a bearing on the Ehlers case.’ There was an almost defiant tone in Klatt’s voice: he had a stake in this and he clearly wasn’t going to let Fabel forget it. Fabel looked at the younger man: a junior officer in another police service; not too tall and a little too overweight. Yet there was a quiet determination and a sharp intelligence in the unassuming, forgettable face. Standing there in the car park of the Institut für Rechtsmedizin, Fabel made a decision.
‘Kommissar Klatt, it could well be that the killer of this girl simply picked Paula Ehlers’s identity because he knew about the case. Maybe he read about it at the time. The only connection between the cases may well be that we have a psychotic who reads the newspapers.’
Klatt seemed to weigh up Fabel’s words. ‘I doubt it. But what about the amazing similarity between the two girls? At the very least he must have made a very detailed study of the Ehlers case. But I’m pretty convinced that whoever picked this girl as a victim and branded her with Paula’s identity must have seen Paula in life. I don’t have your experience or specific expertise in murder inquiries, Herr Hauptkommissar, but I do know the Ehlers case. I’ve lived with it for three years. I just know the connection is more than a selection of a dead girl’s identity.’
‘So you expect us to give you every detail of our inquiry?’ asked Fabel.
‘No … just anything that you may feel is germane to the Ehlers case.’ Klatt maintained a calm and relaxed manner.
Fabel allowed himself a small smile. Klatt wasn’t easily rattled, nor was he intimidated by another officer’s seniority. ‘As a matter of fact, Kommissar Klatt, I think you’re right. My gut instinct is that you and I are looking for the same person. That’s why I’d like you to consider a temporary secondment to my team for the duration of this investigation.’
Klatt’s broad face registered surprise for a moment, then broke into a grin. ‘I don’t know wha
t to say, Herr Fabel. I mean, I’d be delighted … but I’m not sure how it would work …’
‘I’ll sort out the paperwork. I’d like you to continue your inquiries into the Ehlers case and to act as a liaison between us and the Norderstedt force. But I want you to be directly involved in this case too. There may be something that comes up in relation to the girl we found on the beach that we would miss but which may have a resonance with you because of your detailed knowledge of the Ehlers case. That means I’d prefer it if you moved into the Hamburg Mordkommission for the time being. I’ll arrange a desk for you. But I have to stress that this is an ad-hoc arrangement, exclusively for the duration of the inquiry.’
‘Of course, Herr Kriminalhauptkommissar. I’ll have to speak to my boss, Hauptkommissar Pohlmann, about getting a couple of current cases reassigned …’
‘I’ll speak to your boss to clear the way for you and take any flak.’
‘There won’t be any,’ said Klatt. ‘Herr Pohlmann will be delighted that I’m being given the opportunity to see this case all the way through.’
The two men shook hands. Klatt indicated the couple sitting silently in his Audi with a nod of his head. ‘May I inform Herr and Frau Ehlers that we’ll be working together? I think that they’ll find it …’ He struggled for the right word. ‘… Reassuring.’
Fabel and Anna did not speak until Klatt’s Audi had turned out on to Butenfeld.
‘So we’ve got a new member of the team …’ said Anna in a flat tone positioned somewhere between a question and a statement.
‘Just for the duration of this inquiry, Anna. He’s not a replacement for Paul.’ Paul Lindemann, the member of Fabel’s team who had been shot and killed the previous year, had been Anna’s partner. The wound that still lay deep and sore within Fabel’s team was at its rawest with Anna.
‘I know that.’ Anna bristled slightly. ‘You rate him?’
‘Yep. I do,’ said Fabel. ‘I think he has all the right instincts about this case and he does have a head start on us. I think he’ll be useful. But, for the moment, that’s as far as it goes.’ He handed Anna the keys to his BMW. ‘Would you mind waiting in the car for me? I need to go back into the Institut for a moment.’
Anna gave a knowing smile. ‘Okay, Chef.’
Fabel found Susanne at her desk in her office, gazing bleakly at a report on the screen of her computer. Her raven-black hair was tied back from her face and she was wearing her glasses, behind which her eyes were shadowed with tiredness. On seeing Fabel her smile was weary but warm. She stood up, crossed her office and kissed him on the lips.
‘You look as tired as I feel,’ she said, in her Munich accent. ‘I’m just about to wrap up here. What about you? You coming over later?’
Fabel made an apologetic face. ‘I’ll try. It might be late. Don’t wait up for me.’ He walked over and slumped into the chair opposite Susanne’s. She took the hint and sat back down at her desk again.
‘Okay … let’s have it.’
Fabel ran through the events of the day. He spoke of a girl long lost, a girl found, a family reunited in death only to be torn apart again. When he finished, Susanne sat in silence for a moment.
‘So you want to know if I think the person who killed the girl you found this morning killed this other girl who went missing three years ago?’
‘Just an opinion. I won’t hold you to it.’
Susanne let out a long slow breath. ‘It’s certainly possible. If the intervening period was not so long, I would say it was probable. But three years leaves us with a long gap. As you know, the first escalation in offender behaviour is the biggest step … the leap from fantasy to commission.’
‘Committing their first murder.’
‘Exactly. Then it just gets easier. And the offending escalates quickly. But, there again, that’s not always the case. Sometimes the first murder is committed in childhood or very early adulthood and there can be decades before a second murder is committed. Three years is an odd gap.’ Susanne frowned. ‘That would tend to make me believe that we are dealing with separate killers, but the close resemblance of the two girls and the identity of the first being given by the killer to the second really bothers me.’
‘Okay,’ said Fabel, ‘let’s assume for the moment that we are dealing with the same killer. What does the three-year gap tell us?’
‘If it is the same perpetrator, then I think, given the premeditated cruelty of confusing the identities of the two girls, that it is highly unlikely that the delay has been self-imposed. I don’t believe that this hiatus is the result of guilt or any inner turmoil or repulsion at what he or she has done. I think it’s more likely to be an external pressure … some restraint or obstacle that has put a check on the escalation of his psychosis.’
‘Such as?’
‘Well … it could be a physical, geographical or personal restraint. By physical, I mean he may have been confined – in prison or by illness in a hospital. The geographical obstacle may be that he has been working and living outside the area for the last three years and has only recently returned. If that were to be the case, and if the opportunity were to have presented itself, I would have expected the subject to have committed similar offences elsewhere. And what I meant by personal restraint is that there may have been a personality in the subject’s background who has been able to prevent recommission of homicidal behaviour. Someone dominant who has been able to contain the subject’s homicidal psychosis … perhaps without even knowing about the first killing.’
‘And now that person is out of the picture?’
‘Perhaps. It could be a domineering parent or spouse who has died … or perhaps a marriage that has failed. Or it could simply be that our killer’s psychosis has developed to such an extent as to be beyond any external control. If that is the case, then God help the person who was holding him in check.’ Susanne slipped off her glasses. Her dark eyes were heavy-lidded and her voice drawled with fatigue, her southern accent more pronounced, swallowing the ends of her words. ‘There is one other explanation, of course …’
Fabel was there before her. ‘And that explanation is that our killer has not been inactive for the last three years … that we just haven’t found his victims or made a connection between them.’
6.
8.30 a.m., Thursday, 18 March: Polizeipräsidium, Hamburg
Fabel had woken early but had lain awake, staring at the ceiling while the pallid light of morning had slowly and reluctantly bloomed across it. Susanne had been asleep when he had come back from the Präsidium. Their relationship had reached that awkward stage where they had keys for each other’s apartments, and Fabel had therefore been able to let himself into Susanne’s Övelgönne flat and slip silently into her bed while she slept. The exchange of keys had been a symbol of the exclusivity of their relationship and the permissiveness they allowed each other in accessing the most personal of territory – but they had not yet made the decision to live together. In fact, they had not even discussed the option. They were both intensely private individuals who had, for different reasons, dug invisible moats around themselves and their lives. Neither was yet ready fully to lower the drawbridge.
When Susanne awoke the following morning, she smiled sleepily and welcomingly at Fabel and they made love. For Fabel and Susanne, there was a golden time in the mornings when they did not discuss work but chatted and joked and shared breakfast as if they each worked in some innocuous, undemanding career that made no intrusion into their personal lives. They had not planned it. They had not made a rule about where and when they should talk about their work in parallel fields. But, somehow, they had fallen into the habit of greeting and beginning each new day afresh. Then they would each descend, down their separate but parallel paths, into the world of derangement, violence and death that was the stuff of their professional everyday.
Fabel had left the apartment shortly before Susanne. He had arrived at the Präsidium just after eight and reviewed the case files and
his notes from the previous day. For half an hour he added detail to the sketch he already had in his mind. Fabel tried to objectivise his view, but no matter how hard he tried, the stunned and weary face of Frau Ehlers crept its way back to the front of his mind. And as it did so, Fabel’s anger grew anew: the embers of the fury of the previous evening rekindled and burned even more intensely in the cold, bright air of a new day. What kind of beast derived gratification from inflicting such psychological torture on a family? Especially a family whose daughter, Fabel believed, he had already murdered. And Fabel knew he must prolong their agony: he could not rely on the failed identification of a victim who had been missing for three years. There was still a remote chance that time, and whatever traumas and abuses she had suffered in the intervening period, had wrought subtle changes to her appearance.
Fabel waited until nine a.m. before he picked up his phone and pressed the dial button pre-set to the Institut für Rechtsmedizin. He asked to be put through to Herr Doktor Möller. Möller was the forensic pathologist with whom Fabel had dealt on the majority of his cases. Möller’s arrogant, abrasive manner had earned him the dislike of almost every murder detective in Hamburg, but Fabel had a great deal of respect for his expertise.
‘Möller …’ The voice on the other end of the phone sounded distracted, as if answering the phone was an unwelcome interruption to some infinitely more important task.
‘Good morning, Herr Doktor Möller. Kriminalhauptkommissar Fabel here.’
‘What is it, Fabel?’
‘You’re about to do an autopsy on the girl we found on Blankenese beach. There’s some confusion over her identity.’ Fabel went on to explain the background, including the scene at what should have been a routine identification at the Institut the night before. ‘I am concerned that there is still a chance that this dead girl is Paula Ehlers, albeit a very remote chance. I don’t want to distress the family any further, but I need to establish the dead girl’s identity.’
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