A fear of dark water jf-6

by Craig Russell

  ‘So we thought, if she didn’t have a computer, maybe she had a web-enabled cell phone.’

  ‘Let me guess,’ said Fabel. ‘No cellphone, either.’

  ‘Julia Henning must have been the only twenty-seven-year-old in Hamburg without a computer or cellphone. So we pulled out of the apartment and sent in a forensics team. It’s pretty obvious that someone has been in there and taken her stuff, possibly our killer.’

  ‘The neighbours see anything?’

  Thomas Glasmacher, the larger and quieter of the two answered. ‘No

  … no one saw anything unusual or anyone they didn’t know come in or out. We found a shoebox full of receipts and warranties and we’ve been going through that. Also, we’ve asked her bank for full details of her outgoings. I’ll bet we’ll find a direct debit to a phone-service provider. But proving she had a computer and a cellphone doesn’t bring us any closer to actually finding them.’

  Fabel grunted; they seemed to be perpetually scrabbling around in a fog.

  ‘There’s something about this one,’ he said, rubbing his chin. ‘It all smacks of someone trying to cover tracks and confuse times. As Werner said, why now? Why did he feel the need to make these changes with this one?’

  They moved on to the Muller-Voigt inquiry. Werner ran through the progress to date. He confirmed what Astrid Bremer had already told Fabel about the fingerprints and the stray sample of grey fibre found at the scene. Fabel felt the tension in the room when Werner read from the report that only Fabel’s and the dead man’s fingerprints had been found on the weapon. Other than that, the investigation into the politician’s death also seemed to be stalling, despite it being obvious that Werner was pulling out all the stops to remove any suspicion, no matter how slight, that his boss might have been involved in the murder.

  Anna Wolff then picked up the thread.

  ‘Muller-Voigt’s mystery woman is less of a mystery,’ she said. ‘But not much less.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Fabel, his interest pricked.

  ‘Muller-Voigt had a broad range of restaurants he would take women to. It would have made things easier if he had been more a creature of habit, but I have checked them all out. No one saw him with a woman fitting Meliha’s description. Then I thought that maybe she called the shots and decided where they should eat. And with her being Turkish, I thought I’d check out some of the Turkish restaurants in town. Believe me, there are a lot of Turkish restaurants in Hamburg. I took the liberty of pulling in a favour from uniform and circulated a picture of Muller-Voigt and a description of Meliha Yazar. We struck gold in Eimsbuttel — not something you get to say every day. There’s a restaurant on Schulterblatt in the Schanzenviertel and the owner swears Muller-Voigt and Meliha were regulars. He recognised Muller-Voigt’s picture but didn’t have any idea he was a politician, and he remembers Meliha because she spoke Turkish to him. He said she told him she was from Silviri, on the coast. She had been in a couple of times on her own, but there’s no credit card transaction recorded because either Muller-Voigt paid or she paid by cash. But I’m afraid that’s it — he couldn’t tell me any more. Although he did say their regular waiter is on holiday at the moment. But he’ll be back this week. The owner said he got the idea that the woman didn’t like being asked questions. Other than that, she was very friendly and he got the impression that they were a very close couple.’

  Another amateur psychologist waiting table, thought Fabel. ‘Well, it’s something. It’s more than something — well done, Anna. At least now we can demonstrate that Meliha Yazar did exist.’

  He resumed the formal procedure of the caseload recap, hoping that something would leap out at them. Usually the job of the Murder Commission was to find a commonality between cases, to establish links. The problem at the moment, thought Fabel, was that they kept tripping over commonalities and links where there should be none: the Network Killer case was unlikely to be related to the female torso washed up at the Fischmarkt; Muller-Voigt’s murder could be linked to the torso, but logically Daniel Fottinger’s death — his possible unintentional death — should have been separate from everything else.

  But there were links. There was a commonality. Or at least there was a mass of coincidences that stretched the laws of probability beyond the credible.

  Muller-Voigt’s missing girlfriend had been investigating the Pharos Project and the body on the Fischmarkt had been in the water for almost the same period that she had been missing. Muller-Voigt was a non-executive director of Fottinger Environmental Technologies, and both Daniel and Kirstin Fottinger were members of the Project. Even the Network Killer case had an unexpected, if coincidental, link to Pharos through the company that had developed Virtual Dimension. Then, of course, there was the fact that someone had done their best to implicate Fabel in both the Network Killer case and Muller-Voigt’s murder; and whoever had done that had enormous technological skills and resources at their disposal. Like the Pharos Project.

  ‘But what possible link could there be between the Pharos Project and women who have been targeted in a classic serial sex-offender way, raped and strangled?’ asked Nicola Bruggemann. ‘Ritual murders, I could believe. Elimination of ex-members would be probable, but we know that none of these women had any connection to the Project at all.’

  ‘Other than Virtual Dimension being owned by a Korn-Pharos company,’ said Werner.

  ‘True, but that’s not such a big coincidence. Between all the companies in the group, Korn-Pharos generates a hell of a lot of internet content.’

  ‘What about this guy Reisch, Jan?’ asked Werner. ‘His death could be seen as another coincidence. He was involved with Virtual Dimension too, and we know he had contact with the dead women. Maybe his suicide was guilt over their deaths.’

  ‘But he was physically incapable of committing the crimes,’ said Fabel.

  ‘I think Werner has a point, though,’ said Bruggemann in her deep contralto. ‘Because he was incapable of commission, it doesn’t mean that he wasn’t involved in some way. Maybe he was part of a killing team, with some kind of folie a deux or folie a trois crap going on. Maybe he got some kind of vicarious cyber hard-on by having an accomplice commit the act for him.’

  ‘No. It doesn’t fit, Nicola. But we’ll explore it, anyway. Cybercrime Unit is doing a forensic search of his hard drive. Maybe we’ll find something there. But I think Reisch was just a poor schmuck who had been dealt the worst hand you can imagine. He just decided to throw that hand in. Or that’s my take on it, at least.’

  ‘What about the State Prosecutor’s Office? Are they closer to budging on warrants?’ asked Henk Hermann.

  ‘We simply don’t have enough on the Pharos Project. To be honest, the State Prosecutor’s Office is reluctant to take on the legal might of the Korn-Pharos Corporation without being totally sure of their ground.’ Fabel sighed. ‘I don’t blame them. We are talking about something with the resources of a small country behind it. We have to get more on Pharos. And something evidentially solid; not more coincidences.’

  ‘It’s odd,’ said Henk. ‘Usually we have an individual, a single person, at the top of our suspects list. But now, with all this, we’ve got a group of people, a pretty amorphous and anonymous group of people at that. It’s more like corporate crime.’

  Fabel stared at Henk. So long that the junior officer started to look uncomfortable and eventually laughed nervously and said. ‘What?’

  ‘You’re right, Henk,’ said Fabel, animated. He stood up and grabbed the file that Menke had given him. ‘Crimes aren’t committed by corporate bodies. I read somewhere in here…’ He flicked determinedly through the pages of the BfV report. ‘Here it is… one of the cult’s philosophies stresses the importance of the egregore, the groupmind.’

  Fabel started to read from the file: ‘“… the egregore has been a concept in occultism and mystical thinking for more than a century, but the Pharos Project has adopted it in the more contemporary sense from current business and commercial
law usage, where corporate bodies are seen to have a single mind or corporate culture, at least in terms of corporate responsibility and liability. Like all destructive cults, the Pharos Project seeks to diminish the sense of the individual and increase the concept of a singular groupmind. To achieve this, members of the Project are subjected to psychological programming over protracted periods as well as having to follow a highly disciplined, hierarchical and structured daily routine. Part of the creation of a sense of corporateness is the exclusive use of English as the principal language of communication, something the Pharos Project has borrowed from large German corporations who conduct all senior management meetings in English, even if all present are native German speakers. Another element of the Pharos Project’s corporation-like culture is the wearing of uniforms by all its adherents. Because of federal restrictions on the use of uniforms by political or quasi-political groups, the Pharos Project has employed the simple device of forcing all members to wear identical business suits: pale grey for the rank and file, dark grey for Consolidators, and black for senior figures in the organisation. This avoids any difficulty with federal regulation and allows an element of anonymity, as the outfits supplied differ in no significant manner from normal business apparel.

  …”’

  Fabel snapped shut the file. ‘Werner, can you get onto Astrid Bremer and ask her if she can give us a detailed background of the grey fibre she found at Muller-Voigt’s place? She told me that it was particularly unusual because it was entirely synthetic. I’ll bet that the Pharos Project buys its uniforms in bulk from some corporate-wear wholesaler. Anna, I need you to sweet-talk your contact in the State Prosecutor’s office and tell him we need a limited search-and-seizure warrant for a couple of jackets from the Pharos Project for a comparison.’ Fabel checked himself and looked across to Nicola Bruggemann.

  ‘Go ahead,’ she said without a hint of antagonism. ‘It’s your department.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Fabel, then frowned, like someone trying to remember where they had left their car keys. ‘That woman down by the docks — she was wearing a dark grey business suit.’

  ‘God, Jan,’ said Bruggemann, ‘that’s a bit of a stretch. A business suit is a business suit.’

  ‘Maybe so. But I’m pretty convinced that she was a Consolidator. It’s all beginning to come together. The Network Killer murders are linked to the Pharos Project. But I can’t for the life of me work out why.’ Fabel picked up his jacket from the back of the chair.

  ‘Nicola, I’ll leave you to it. I need to go out.’

  ‘Where are you off to?’

  ‘I’m going to take a North Sea lighthouse tour.’

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Susanne was still at the Institute for Legal Medicine when Fabel phoned her from his car as he headed out, once more, towards the Altes Land and Stade. This time he avoided the town and headed out along a ribbon of road that ran parallel to the coast but was shielded from it by the ripple of dyke that ran along close to the water’s edge to Fabel’s right. To his left the land was divided up into long narrow fields, pale green, dark green or muted gold; each contained by the type of Knick turf wall Muller-Voigt had talked about. It really did have the look of a patchwork quilt, but one that had been ironed impeccably flat except for the ripple of the waterside dyke at its hem.

  It took Fabel another hour or so to reach the Pharos. He actually pulled over to the side of the road and got out to admire it from a distance. The light was beginning to fade and the cloud cover dulled things even more, but even with that Fabel could see that Muller-Voigt had been right: the Pharos was a truly remarkable piece of architecture. There was a lighthouse, about four or five storeys high, against the flank of the new building. The lighthouse was the traditional North Sea German type: not slender but solid, squat and square-edged with a large lantern gallery criss-crossed with iron. It had clearly undergone a major renovation and looked bright, almost as if it had just been built rather than having stood there, resolutely planted in its landscape, for more than a century and a half.

  But it was the main building attached to the original lighthouse that really impressed Fabel. It was made up of three sections; modules, almost. The section against whose side the lighthouse was set was a long two-storey block. Clearly the intention had been not to obscure the view of the original lighthouse from either direction. This section extended fifty metres or so towards the water’s edge; then a five-storey block, with the profile of a massive parallelogram — a rhombohedron, Fabel suddenly remembered from school mathematics — took the Pharos to the water and jutted out over it. This section was outlined by a heavy reinforced-concrete beamed frame, but the flanks of the building were all glass. The third section was really an extension of the top floor of the building and projected out over the Elbe, supported by two rows of piles driven into the river bed. From the roof of the suspended level a pale blue needle of laser light, now visible in the twilight, pierced the clouds above. The light of the Pharos.

  This, thought Fabel, was more than a building. It was a statement; a dramatic statement of power and wealth. For a supposedly environmental group, it seemed to Fabel to be an aggressive statement of human dominance over Nature. And a statement not without a tone of menace.

  He drove further along the narrow coastal road until he reached the end of the drive that led up to the Pharos. It was even more breathtaking close up. The lower-level module was clad in natural materials: pale wood, glass and large blocks of stone. He turned off the road and up the drive. After a short distance, Fabel came to a closed gate. There was a small blockhouse on the other side of the fence and Fabel had to give his horn a blast before anyone came out. It did not surprise Fabel to see that the young man with short cropped blond hair who emerged from the blockhouse was wearing a grey suit, white shirt and dark grey tie. He stood behind the heavy-gauge wire, regarding Fabel impassively but without making any move to open the gate.

  Fabel got out of his car. He estimated that the fence that extended on either side was three metres high and heavy-duty enough to keep out any but the most determined intruder.

  ‘I would like to talk to Herr Wiegand.’ Fabel held up his police ID. The man at the gate remained silent and impassive. ‘Now…’ said Fabel with more emphasis.

  ‘No one is admitted without an appointment.’ The gatekeeper’s voice was as flat and dull as Fabel had expected. ‘We do not allow anyone access to the Pharos unless it has been arranged in advance.’

  ‘I don’t need an appointment. I’m the police.’ Fabel noticed that the gateman had a Bluetooth earpiece lodged in his ear.

  ‘Then you either need an appointment or a warrant.’

  ‘I don’t think you understand,’ said Fabel wearily. ‘I am here by personal invitation of Herr Wiegand. Your Director General.’

  The gatekeeper continued to stare at Fabel; whatever was going through his mind certainly was not breaking the surface.

  After what seemed an age, the young man broke his silence. ‘Wait here.’

  He walked a few metres away and stood with his back to Fabel, who guessed the guard was communicating with the main building. After a while he came back out and opened the gate.

  ‘Leave your car here,’ he said. ‘We don’t allow vehicular traffic beyond this point.’

  Fabel shrugged, used his remote to lock his car and stepped into the compound. The gateman led the way up to the main entrance to the Pharos where another unsmiling escort was waiting, again wearing an earpiece. Fabel examined the building from up close. It loomed. It was no accident that the Pharos Project used the symbolism and vocabulary of the world of international corporate commerce: this building was all about out-scaling everything human. Just like any multinational business’s headquarters, the Pharos had been built to embody and glorify the corporate and diminish the individual. It was the same trick that medieval cathedral architects had used, where the scale was supposed to represent God, but really was all about the power of the Church, the
great multinational corporation of the Middle Ages.

  Fabel was taken into a large atrium in which the lighting had been kept low. The reason, Fabel guessed, was the atrium’s centrepiece. A circle of beams, changing hue, shone upwards, illuminating what Fabel perceived as some kind of giant jellyfish, diaphanous and beautiful, with a deep red core and a skirt of transparent tentacles, suspended in mid-air. It was very well done: a holographic projection that rendered the jellyfish in three dimensions and made it pulse and change colour. But Fabel was surprised at his own reaction to the projection: for a split second it had looked so impossibly real, but Fabel had instantly, instinctively known it was an artifice.

  It was as remarkable a building from the inside. As he was led through halls and corridors, and taken up to the top floor in an elevator, Fabel never lost sight of the landscape around him. No matter where he was, there was always a view through glass, even in the lift. He noticed that everyone wore the same kind of grey suit, although a minority, his escort included, were dressed in a slightly darker shade. They made their way past a host of glass-walled rooms that looked to Fabel like any other offices. Despite his escort deliberately keeping the pace up, Fabel took in as much as he could. Every room had dozens of desks with computer consoles, but of a design that Fabel had never seen before: monitors that were impossibly thin; people typing on keyboards that must have had such a low profile that Fabel could not see them. Then, as he passed a smaller office with a workstation closer to the glass wall, he realised why. The fingers of the grey-suited woman sitting at it ranged over a virtual keyboard: light projected onto the tabletop.

  Fabel remembered reading about how toxic the heavy metals used in electronic hardware was to the environment. For an environmental pressure group, thought Fabel, the Pharos Project loved their gadgets. The other thing that struck him as he walked through the Pharos was how much it looked like a working office, and how the men and women he saw circulating through it did not look like cult members or mystical acolytes but more like the employees of some international bank.