Eternal jf-3

by Craig Russel

  Fabel grinned at his daughter. She was only sixteen, yet she sometimes seemed infinitely wiser than Fabel. And, as they sat there among the tourists and the shoppers, watching the swans glide across the surface of the Alsterfleet, Fabel thought about just how right Gabi had been about Susanne.

  Whatever the final decision, Fabel knew that Susanne was becoming irritated by his lack of focus. He decided to book a table at an expensive restaurant in Neumuhlen. It was only a matter of minutes from Susanne’s Ovelgonne apartment, so they met there first before taking a cab to the restaurant. The restaurant had huge picture windows that looked out across the Elbe to a forest of cranes on the far side. The vast hulks of illuminated container freighters slid silently by. It was an industrial landscape, yet one with a strange and hypnotic beauty and Fabel noticed how many of the diners seemed mesmerised by it. Susanne and Fabel arrived at eight-thirty when the soft warm evening light was pressing against the vast sheets of the windows and for the first time in days Fabel felt relaxed. His mood lightened even more when he and Susanne were guided to a table over by the window.

  Tonight, thought Fabel, I am not going to screw things up by talking shop. He smiled at Susanne and admired the perfect sculpting of her head and neck. She was a beautiful, intelligent, generous woman. She was perfect. Just as Gabi had said. They ordered their meals and sat chatting until the first course arrived. Fabel suddenly became aware of someone standing beside them and looked up, expecting to see the waiter. The man by their table was tall and expensively dressed. As soon as Fabel saw him he realised that he knew the well-groomed man from somewhere, but he could not place him.

  ‘ Jannick?’ The tall man used the diminutive form of Fabel’s first name. It was what his parents and his brother used to call him; what he’d been known as at school; but the only person in Hamburg who ever called Fabel Jannick was Fabel’s fellow Frisian, Dirk Stellamanns. ‘Jannick Fabel… is that you?’ The man turned to Susanne and made a half bow. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you… but I am an old school friend of your husband’s.’

  Susanne laughed but did not correct the stranger. ‘That’s quite all right…’ She turned to Fabel and grinned mischievously. ‘Won’t you introduce us… Jannick?’

  ‘Of course.’ Fabel stood up and shook the man’s hand. At that point, everything fell into place and he returned Susanne’s grin superciliously. ‘Susanne, allow me to introduce Roland Bartz. Roland was one of my best friends at school.’

  Susanne shook hands with Bartz, who again apologised for the interruption.

  ‘Listen, Jan,’ said Bartz. ‘I don’t want to disturb you, but we really should catch up. I’m here with my wife…’

  ‘Why don’t you join us?’ suggested Susanne.

  ‘No, really, we don’t want to impose.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Fabel and beckoned for a waiter. ‘It’ll be good to catch up…’

  Bartz returned briefly to his table and came back with an attractive woman who was clearly much younger than him. Fabel had heard – through his mother, probably – that Bartz had divorced his first wife a couple of years previously. The new Frau Bartz, who introduced herself as Helena, shook hands with Susanne and Fabel and sat down at their table.

  Fabel and Bartz quickly became deeply engrossed in a conversation about what had happened to their respective school friends. Names that Fabel had forgotten were resurrected and he often struggled to put a face to a name. When he could, it was normally the face of a teenager whom he could not imagine now in middle age. Even Bartz looked wrong to Fabel. He had been an awkward, gangly youth who had been the first in their class to smoke, which had not helped the acne that had mottled his pale skin. Now he was an elegant middle-aged man with flecks of grey throughout his hair, and skin that was no longer pale and blemished but had been tanned by a sun that did not shine on Hamburg. He had clearly done well for himself and the topic turned to what the two men had done since they’d last met. Bartz was taken aback by the news that Fabel was a murder detective.

  ‘God, Jannick… no offence, but that is so weird. I would never have put you in that profession. I thought you went on to study history…’

  ‘I did,’ said Fabel. ‘I kind of got sidetracked.’

  ‘My goodness… a policeman. And a Principal Chief Commissar, at that. Who would have guessed?’

  ‘Who indeed,’ said Fabel. He was beginning to become annoyed with Bartz’s difficulty in seeing him as a policeman. Bartz seemed to pick up on it.

  ‘Sorry… I don’t mean to offend. It’s just that you were always so clear that you wanted to be a historian. I mean, it’s great what you do… God knows I couldn’t do it.’

  ‘Sometimes I don’t think I can, either. It’s a job that gets to you after a while. What about you?’

  ‘Me? Oh, I’ve been in the computer software business for years. My own company. We specialise in software for research and academic purposes. We employ over four hundred people and export all over the world. There’s hardly a university in the western hemisphere that doesn’t have one of our systems in one department or another.’

  The two couples then fell into general chat. Helena, Bartz’s wife, was a friendly and cheerful woman, but was a less than engaging conversational partner. It was clear to Fabel that Bartz had not married her for her intellect. Fabel found that he enjoyed talking with his old school friend and grew to like again the man whom he had befriended as a boy. Susanne, as usual, won the couple over with her easygoing nature. Now and again, however, Fabel caught Bartz looking at him in a strange way. Almost as if he were appraising him.

  They ate and talked until the restaurant emptied of its other guests. Bartz insisted on picking up the bill and ordered a taxi to take him and his wife back to Blankenese, where they had ‘a nice place’, as Bartz put it.

  The night air was still warm and pleasant when Fabel and Susanne accompanied Roland and Helena Bartz out to their taxi. The sky was clear and the stars sparkled above the twinkling lights of dockyards on the far shore of the Elbe.

  ‘Can we drop you anywhere?’ asked Bartz.

  ‘No, thanks, we’re fine. It was great seeing you again, Roland. We must make an effort to keep in touch.’

  The two women kissed and said goodbye and Helena Bartz climbed into the back of the taxi. But Roland lingered a moment.

  ‘Listen, Jan. I hope you don’t mind me saying, but you didn’t sound very contented when you were talking about your work.’ Bartz handed Fabel a business card. ‘As it happens, I am looking for an overseas sales director. Someone to deal with the Yanks and the Brits. I know that you speak English like a native and you were always the brightest guy in school.’

  Fabel was taken aback. ‘Gosh… thanks, Roland. But I don’t know the first thing about computers…’

  ‘That’s not what’s important. I’ve got four hundred people working for me who know about computers. I need someone who knows about people. God knows, in your line of work you have to know what makes people tick. And what you don’t know about computers I know that you can learn within a couple of months. Like I said, you were always the brightest guy in school.’

  ‘Roland, I just don’t know…’

  ‘Listen, Jan, what you could earn with me would make your police pay look like peanuts. And the hours would be a hell of a lot better. And much less stress. Susanne said tonight that you’re looking for a new place together. Trust me, this job would make the world of difference to what you could afford. I always liked you, Jannick. I know we’re different people now. Grown up. But I don’t know if we really change that much inside. All I’m asking is that you think about it.’

  ‘I will, Roland.’ Fabel shook his old school friend’s hand warmly. ‘I promise.’

  ‘Give me a call and the job is yours. But don’t wait too long. I need to get fixed up with someone soon.’

  After they had gone, Susanne linked her arm through Fabel’s.

  ‘What was that all about?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Fabel
turned to her and kissed her. ‘Nice couple, weren’t they?’ he said, and slipped Bartz’s business card into his pocket.

  8.

  Eleven Days After the First Murder: Monday, 29 August 2005.

  9.30 a.m.: Neustadt, Hamburg

  Cornelius Tamm sat and considered just what the generational gap between him and the youth opposite him would be: he was certainly young enough to have been his son; without too much of a stretch of imagination or chronology even his grandson. Cornelius’s seniority in age, however, had not seemed sufficient to deter the young man, who had introduced himself as ‘Ronni’, and who had gelled hair, ugly ears and a ridiculous little goatee beard, from using the informal du form of address when he spoke to Cornelius. He obviously felt that they were colleagues; or that his position as head of production entitled him to be informal.

  ‘Cornelius Tamm… Cornelius Tamm…’ Ronni had spent the last ten minutes talking about Cornelius’s career, and his use of the past tense had been conspicuous. Now he sat repeating Cornelius’s name and looking at him across the vast desk as if he were regarding some item of memorabilia that aroused nostalgia while not having the value of a true antique. ‘Tell me, Cornelius…’ The boy with the big ideas and bigger ears stretched his lips above the goatee in an insincere grin. ‘If you don’t mind me asking, if you want to do a “greatest hits” CD, why aren’t you doing it with your existing label? It would be much simpler with the rights, et cetera.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call them my existing label. I haven’t recorded with them for years. Most of my work nowadays is doing live concerts. It’s much better… I get a real kick out of interacting with-’

  ‘I notice you sell CDs on your website.’ The young man cut Cornelius off. ‘How are sales? Do you actually shift any stuff?’

  ‘I do all right…’ Cornelius had started off by disliking the look of the young man. As well as the irritating goatee beard, Ronni was short and, oddly enough, one of his prominent ears, the right one, projected at a much more dramatic angle from his head than the other. In a remarkably short time, Ronni had succeeded in cultivating Cornelius’s initial vague dislike into a blossoming, fire-red hatred.

  ‘I guess it’s mostly oldies who buy your stuff… not that there’s anything wrong in that. My dad was a big fan of yours. All that nineteen sixties protest stuff.’ Cornelius had spent hours working on his presentation document, setting out why he felt that a CD of his greatest hits would sell not only to his traditional fan base but to a new generation of disaffected youth. The document lay on the desk in front of Ronni. Unopened.

  ‘There’s a lot of your generation of singer-songwriters out there. I’m afraid that they just don’t sell any more. Those who do make a mark are the ones that have tried to come up with new material that’s relevant today – like Reinhard Mey. But, to be honest, people don’t want politics in their music these days.’ Ronni shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’m sorry, Cornelius, I just don’t think that we belong together… I mean our label and your style.’

  Cornelius watched Ronni smile and felt his hate bloom even more. It was not just that Ronni’s smile was perfunctory and insincere, it was that he had meant Cornelius to notice that it was perfunctory and insincere. He picked up his proposal document and smiled back.

  ‘Well, Ronni, I’m disappointed.’ He walked to the door without shaking hands. ‘After all, it’s clear you have a good ear for music. The right one, that is…’

  10.30 a.m.: University Clinical Complex, Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg

  It was clear that Professor von Halen considered he should be present throughout the interview, like a responsible adult being present while two children were questioned by police. It was only after Fabel asked if he could talk alone to Alois Kahlberg and Elisabeth Marksen, the two scientists who had worked with Gunter Griebel, that he reluctantly surrendered his office to Fabel.

  Both scientists were younger than Griebel had been and it became evident during Fabel’s questioning that they held their deceased colleague in great esteem. Awe, almost. Alois Kahlberg was in his mid-forties: a small birdlike man who habitually tilted his head back to adjust the angle of his vision, rather than pushing his unfashionably large and thick-lensed spectacles back up to the bridge of his nose. Elisabeth Marksen was a good ten years younger and was an unattractive, exceptionally tall woman with a perpetually flushed complexion.

  Fabel questioned them about their dead colleague’s habits, his personality, his personal life: all that was revealed was Griebel’s two-dimensionality. No matter how much light was focused on him, no shadows formed, no sense of depth or texture emerged. Griebel simply had never had a conversation with Marksen or Kahlberg that was not either work-related or the smallest of small talk.

  ‘What about his wife?’ Fabel asked.

  ‘She died about six years ago. Cancer,’ answered Elisabeth Marksen. ‘She was a teacher, I think. He never talked about her. I met her once, about a year before she died, at a function. She was quiet, like him… didn’t seem very comfortable in a social context. It was one of these company functions that we are all more or less compelled to attend, and Griebel and his wife spent most of the time in a corner talking to each other.’

  ‘Did her death have a big impact on him? Was there anything about his behaviour that changed significantly? Or was he particularly depressed?’

  ‘It was always difficult to tell with Dr Griebel. Nothing showed much on the surface. I do know that he visited her grave every week. She’s buried somewhere over near Lurup, where her family came from. Either in the Altonaer Volkspark Hauptfriedhof or in Flottbeker Friedhof.’

  ‘There were no kids?’

  ‘None that he ever mentioned.’

  Fabel looked around von Halen’s expensive office. In one of the glass-fronted cabinets he could see a pile of glossy brochures, which he guessed were used to sell the facility to investors and commercial partners.

  ‘What exactly was the type of research Dr Griebel was engaged in?’ he asked. ‘Professor von Halen mentioned it but I didn’t really understand.’

  ‘Epigenetics.’ Kahlberg answered from behind his thick lenses. ‘It is a new and highly specialised field of genetics. It deals with how genes turn themselves on and off, and how that affects health and longevity.’

  ‘Someone said something about genetic memory. What is that?’

  ‘Ah…’ Kahlberg became what Fabel guessed was the closest he could ever get to being animated. ‘That is the very newest area of epigenetic research. It’s quite simple, really. There is increasing evidence that we can fall victim to diseases and conditions that we shouldn’t… that really belong to our ancestors.’

  ‘I’m afraid it doesn’t sound quite simple to me.’

  ‘Okay, let me put it this way… There are basically two causes of illness: there are those conditions we are genetically predisposed to – that we have a congenital tendency towards. Then there are environmental causes of illness: smoking, pollution, diet, et cetera… These were always seen as quite different, but recent research has proved that we can actually inherit environmentally caused conditions.’

  Fabel still did not look enlightened, so Elisabeth Marksen picked up the thread.

  ‘We all think we are detached from our history, but it has been discovered that we aren’t. There is a small town in northern Sweden called Overkalix. It is a very prosperous community and the quality of life and the standard of living are very high. Yet local doctors noticed that the population tended to develop health problems that were normally only ever associated with malnutrition. There were two other factors that also made Overkalix distinctive. Firstly, it lies north of the Arctic Circle and has been relatively isolated for all of its history, meaning that the population today tends to be descended from the same families that were there one hundred or two hundred years ago. Secondly, Overkalix is unusual in the detail of its church and civic records. They record not just births and deaths, but the causes of death as well as good and bad harvests.
The town became the focus of a major research project and the results showed that a century to a century and a half ago the town, which relied on agriculture, suffered several famines. Many died as a result, but among the survivors an even greater number suffered malnutrition-related medical conditions. By using contemporary medical records and comparing them to the historical ones, it became clear that the descendants of famine victims were exhibiting exactly the same health problems, although they and their parents had never gone hungry in their lives. It was proof that we were wrong to think that we pass on only those chromosomes and genes that we are born with, complete and unaltered, to our children. The fact is that what we experience, the environmental factors that surround us, can have a direct effect on our descendants.’

  ‘Incredible. And this theory is based exclusively on this one Swedish town?’

  ‘Only to start with. The research net was cast wider and a range of other examples have been found. The descendants of Holocaust survivors have proved to be susceptible to stress- and trauma-related conditions. One, two, three generations on, they are suffering the post-trauma stress symptoms of an event they did not themselves experience. To begin with this was dismissed as the result of their parents or grandparents relating details of their experiences, but it was found that the same stress indicators, including elevated cortisol in the saliva, were to be found in descendants who had not been exposed to first-hand accounts from Holocaust survivors.’

  ‘I still don’t understand how it works,’ said Fabel. ‘How is this passed from one generation to the next?’

  ‘It depends on gender. In males the transgenerational response is sperm-mediated, in females it lies in foetal programming.’

  Again, Fabel looked bemused.