The Ghosts of Altona

by Craig Russell

  ‘Do we know where to find him?’ asked Fabel.

  ‘Oh yeah . . . and this is where it gets really good. He studied sociology, all right – then he worked for Hamburg state as a social worker but had some kind of breakdown which was attributed to post-traumatic stress. I checked out what the trauma had been and was told that Mensing had been stabbed, near fatally, in a street attack. I dug out the records. Guess when he was stabbed? Fifteen years ago, on Saturday, eighteenth of March. The exact same night that Monika Krone went missing.’

  Fabel stared at Anna for a moment. ‘Shit . . . that was quite a punchline, Anna.’

  ‘That’s still not the punchline. There was a mystery as to how he had ended up dumped outside the main entrance to the Asklepios Klinik Altona – especially because it looked like someone with at least some medical expertise had tried to patch him up long enough to get to the hospital without bleeding out. But after the attack Mensing was in a coma and in no condition to talk for weeks. Then his statements about the attack were so garbled and contradictory that no one knew where to start looking – they put his confused state to him having been in a coma. Anyway, there were never any arrests and Mensing made a recovery, at least physically. He went back to work for a while, but there were continued problems and he had a complete nervous breakdown. Started to believe he wasn’t really alive – that he had died during the attack and was a walking corpse—’

  ‘Cotard’s Delusion?’

  Anna looked surprised. ‘Yes, as a matter of fact that’s exactly what was diagnosed. Anyway, he made a recovery, went back to work and he retrained in a speciality within social work. And this is where we hit the jackpot. He became a social therapist for serious and sexual offenders. He has a two-day-a-week placement at Fuhlsbüttel prison. And I think you can guess who one of his clients there was . . .’

  ‘Shit . . .’ Fabel unfolded his arms and straightened up from where he’d been leaning against the wall. ‘Jochen Hübner?’

  ‘In one.’

  ‘All the pieces are finally beginning to fall into place,’ said Fabel. ‘But the picture they’re making still doesn’t make any sense.’ He looked at his watch, it was eleven thirty a.m. ‘Get on to Santa Fu, Anna – tell them that Mensing is not to leave the prison until we get there.’

  ‘I’m way ahead of you – today isn’t one of his consulting days. He’s not due in until Thursday and has been off sick for the last week. That’s not an unusual event, apparently. He still has health issues – both physical and mental – mainly as a result of his stabbing. But despite that, the JVA investigators don’t like his absence this time – they were already getting twitchy about him after Frankenstein’s escape. When I phoned they were already trying to find him to interview him. Mensing seemed to be the only person in the whole system, staff or prisoner, who Frankenstein seemed to get on with. But I’ve got an address for him.’

  ‘Let’s get the team briefed . . .’

  61

  All the vehicles pulled up out of sight of the apartment’s windows. Fabel had three Murder Commission teams with him, but had also arranged for an MEK mobile support unit to deploy with them. It wasn’t that they expected much resistance from Mensing, who had been described as physically very frail, although there was always the possibility he would be armed. But the real threat – and the real prize – would be Jochen Hübner. And Frankenstein would take a lot of bringing down.

  They moved in single file, pressed against the wall of the building as if magnetized by it, the MEK team in their heavy black body-armour leading the way. An old woman walking along the pavement froze at the sight of the officers and their weapons and the MEK commander gestured with a gauntleted hand for her to move on. Henk Hermann broke rank and dodged over to the woman, taking her by the shoulders and reassuring her quietly as he guided her past the officers.

  The apartment, they knew, was on the third floor and the tactical officers moved swiftly and quietly up the stairwell, two men flanking each side of the door while the commander assessed its strength. He pointed to two spots on the door and a sixth MEK officer swung a small black ram where the commander had indicated. The locks shattered and the door burst inwards.

  Fabel and his team followed up the stairwell but were stopped from entering the apartment by the MEK commander.

  ‘Wait until we give the all-clear.’

  There was shouting. The tactical team barked orders, yelling at someone inside the flat. Fabel rested his hand on the handle of his gun. Shouts of ‘Clear!’ from different parts of the apartment, then one of the team re-emerging from the doorway.

  ‘It’s all clear,’ he said.

  ‘No one home?’ asked Fabel.

  The MEK man laughed. ‘You could say that . . . but yes, we have your suspect in custody. I just don’t think he knows it yet.’

  ‘No Hübner?’

  ‘No Hübner.’

  Fabel and Nicola Brüggemann went into the apartment. It looked as if it was unoccupied, with hardly any furniture, no pictures, no decoration of any kind, except that the walls had been amateurishly gone over in black paint, which had dried in streaks and patches.

  The MEK officers were in the living room, again darkened by the patchily blackened walls. The only colour was a blood-red ‘DT’ that had been daubed in metre-high letters over the black paint.

  ‘I just love what he’s done with the place,’ Brüggemann muttered beside Fabel, and grinned. ‘Must get him round to do mine . . .’

  The only furniture in the room was a single chair and a small coffee table. The body-armoured MEK men were gathered in a circle around a figure kneeling on the naked tiled floor. Martin Mensing’s appearance shocked Fabel: he was wearing only underpants that looked oversized on his frame, which was emaciated to the point of being skeletal. Mensing had large, blue eyes that seemed sunk into their sockets and his cheeks were hollow and drawn. He had a shock of thick black hair that somehow accentuated the skull-like appearance of his face. To Fabel, Mensing looked like someone in the end stages of a terminal disease, or recalled grainy black-and-white images of concentration camp victims.

  And there it was, on the corrugated chest of rib and skin: the same tattoo that Traxinger and Hensler had had. DT.

  The MEK officers had handcuffed his hands behind his back, but Fabel could see that Mensing was probably unaware of the fact. He was singing quietly – not songs or recognizable melodies, but tones, sometimes with long gaps, as if he was singing along to some radio station no one else could hear. As he sang, he swayed, his eyes following objects and movements in the room that only he could see. There was a hypodermic syringe sitting in a saucer on the floor next to him.

  ‘We need a doctor here right away,’ Fabel said to Brüggemann.

  ‘I’ll get on it. What is it? Heroin?’

  ‘No . . .’ Fabel watched Mensing as he swayed. A smile would break out occasionally, white and toothy in the skull face, suddenly to be replaced with a look of surprise or awe. ‘Something else – and we need to find out what. We’re not going to get any sense out of him until it wears off.’

  While Brüggemann called for the police surgeon to attend, Fabel walked through to the kitchen. It was as empty as the rest of the apartment, with the barest minimum to sustain a life in the way of utensils and food. He snapped on latex gloves and opened the cupboards. Most were empty, but in one he found two rubber-capped fifty-millilitre pharmaceutical bottles. He read the label: Xylazine Hydrochloride 100mg/ml. For veterinary use only.

  ‘The doctor’s on his way.’ Nicola Brüggemann came into the kitchen. Fabel nodded towards the bottles. ‘Is that what he’s on?’ she asked.

  ‘No. This is what was used to sedate the victims. And from what I’ve heard, what Hübner used to fake heart failure.’

  He opened another couple of cupboards. One contained a small amount of canned food, the second was again empty except for a plastic bag containing a white crystalline substance that looked almost like salt.

  ‘
Bingo,’ said Fabel. ‘We’ll get that analysed. Whatever it is, that’s Mensing’s ticket to the moon.’

  ‘I’ll check the bedroom . . .’ Brüggemann left Fabel and he went back through to where Mensing knelt, still rapt in a universe visible only to him.

  ‘Can we get him up into the chair?’ asked Fabel, and two MEK officers eased the jumble of bones up and into the room’s sole chair. Seeing him there, Fabel thought back to Monika Krone’s remains lying abandoned in red clay and how hard he had found to link them with anything human. Martin Mensing, through his own devices, was well on his way to the same place.

  ‘Jan!’

  Fabel turned and as soon as he saw Nicola Brüggemann’s face he knew something was wrong.

  He followed her into the bedroom. Again there was practically nothing in the room save a single bed dressed in only a mattress with a single sheet over it. And like the rest of the apartment, there were no decorations. Except for one, slightly blurry enlarged photograph that had been taped to the otherwise naked, black-painted wall.

  ‘Oh no . . .’ Before he turned and charged back out into the stairwell to start barking orders at his team, Fabel stood for a moment and stared at the photograph.

  ‘Susanne . . .’

  62

  Susanne sat alone in her office. She knew Fabel was going to be working late so she decided to do the same and use the time to catch up on some of the case reports that had been building up.

  It was late, she was tired, and every time she fixed her attention on the report she was writing, her focus seemed to dissolve and with it her professional objectivity. She was working up a background on an eighteen-year-old male who had sexually assaulted at least four girls between the ages of six and ten. Despite there being a very clear dynamic at work in the youth’s background and specific deficits showing up in the psychometrics, Susanne was tempted to fill the conclusions section with: he’s a sick fuck and always will be.

  But it wasn’t just that it had been a long day that caused her mind to keep drifting from the task at hand: Fabel’s proposal kept creeping into her thoughts. If you could call it a proposal – it had been more a declaration of intent, which was a typically Jan Fabel thing to do. He was a good man. In fact, if she were to be asked if there was a single phrase that summed Fabel up, it would be that: a good man. Her quiet hero.

  And she loved him. She had known that for years but hadn’t known just how much she had loved him until the day he had been shot. Sitting in that hospital corridor, waiting for one of two possible futures to open up, she became aware of the chasm his absence would leave in her life if he died. He had been so good for her and, if she were honest with herself, she had been good for him. But marriage . . . She knew it was just a piece of paper, a change in legal status, but it was also so much more.

  She remembered how he had nearly packed it all in. A year or two before the shooting, she and Fabel had been out for dinner when they had met Roland Bartz, with whom Fabel had gone to school in Norden. Bartz, who had remembered Fabel as the brightest in the school, could not believe that his classmate had ended up a murder detective – the least likely of all possible futures. Bartz himself had become a highly successful owner of a multinational business and had, after a few discussions, offered Fabel a job. It would have meant more money, better hours and less worry – for both Fabel and Susanne. It had taken him a long while to come to a decision – so long it had tested Bartz’s patience. But, like everything else in his life, Fabel had had to think it through from every angle. Eventually, however, he had said no.

  Fabel didn’t know it, had no idea, but Susanne had never forgiven him for his decision.

  But then there had been the shooting and everything changed. Fabel changed: fewer nightmares, less seriousness, more ease in how he handled life.

  He said she didn’t need to rush to give him an answer, or even give him an answer at all; but she knew that she would have to.

  She shook the thoughts out of her head. If she couldn’t concentrate, she was as well going home. She looked at her watch: it was nearly eight.

  Her office door sat open and she heard a sound from down the hall – someone else was obviously working late. She heard heavy footsteps coming along the corridor towards her office.

  Her cell phone rang and the caller ID told her it was Fabel.

  ‘Hi . . .’ she said. ‘I’m just about to head home. How much longer—’

  ‘Susanne, where are you?’ Fabel’s voice was strained, anxious. Susanne could hear a siren loud in the background.

  ‘I’m at the institute, in my office,’ she said. ‘I was just about to leave.’

  ‘Is there anyone else there with you?’

  ‘No, I’m alone . . . Well there’s obviously someone else here working late because I can hear them.’

  ‘Susanne, I want you to go right now and lock your office door.’ Fabel spoke with a deliberate clarity that alarmed her.

  ‘Why? What’s going on, Jan?’

  ‘Do as I say! Right now. I’ll stay on the line.’

  As she ran across to the door, she heard the footsteps in the hall louder, nearer. She slammed the door shut and turned the snib lock.

  ‘Jan, what is this all about?’

  ‘Have you locked the door?’

  ‘Yes . . .’

  ‘I want you to get the heaviest thing you can move and put it against the door. I’ll be there in five minutes, but I need you to secure that door.’

  Susanne was about to protest again, but she knew that she was in a serious situation. She scanned the room. The cabinets were filled with files and too heavy to move. Her best bet was the desk itself. She grabbed it by the edge and pulled. It too was heavy and moved only a little.

  She heard the lever handle angle down as someone tried to open the door. When it didn’t, the person on the other side started to rattle the handle, the lever jumping.

  ‘Is he there?’ asked Fabel, his tone low.

  ‘There’s someone trying to get in,’ she said, her voice shaking.

  ‘Stay where you are. Block the door. I’m nearly there.’

  The handle stopped moving. Susanne went back to the desk and this time managed to drag it in grudging spurts across the floor. As she did so, the cables that connected her phone and computer were pulled taut and tugged them from the desk. She heard the computer screen crack as it toppled off and hit the floor.

  The door lever started to jump again, this time more agitatedly. Panting and grunting, and finding a strength she didn’t know she had, Susanne got to the other side of the desk and shoved it against the door. Another couple of heaves and she had the desk as tight to the door as she could manage. The lever of the door handle now bounced off the desk’s edge whenever it was tried, meaning the action could now no longer be fully turned.

  The handle stopped moving. She could hear nothing from the other side of the door and glanced nervously around. The window. If he went outside and round the building he could maybe get in through the window.

  She leaned over the desk and held her head close to the door, listening. She jumped back with a cry when the person on the other side banged on the door with their fist.

  ‘They’re outside the door . . .’ she whispered into the phone. ‘They’re trying to get in.’

  ‘Stay calm, Susanne . . . I’m nearly there.’

  More thumping on the door.

  ‘Frau Doctor Eckhardt?’ A deep male voice from behind the door. ‘Frau Doctor Eckhardt, are you all right?’

  ‘Who is it?’ she shouted, trying to mask the quivering in her voice and sound authoritative.

  ‘Are you all right, Frau Doctor? Let me in . . .’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Security . . .’ the voice boomed deep and resonant. ‘I’m Lars, from security.’

  ‘The police are on their way. They’ll be here any minute.’

  ‘The police? What’s the matter? Please open the door.’

  Susanne heard the appro
ach of police sirens. More than one car. The door shuddered as a massive shoulder slammed into it and she jumped. The desk started to move.

  ‘Please hurry, Jan . . .’ she breathed into the phone.

  ‘I’m right outside . . . I need to hang up now, but I’ll be right there.’ The phone went dead and Susanne suddenly felt completely alone. The desk budged again and the door opened a crack. Huge, thick fingers curled around the door edge and began pushing.

  Voices. Commands barked out. The fingers disappeared and there was a shouted exchange between the deep voice outside and others. Then quieter talk.

  A knock on the door.

  ‘Susanne, it’s Jan. Open the door.’

  She dragged the desk only partly clear of the door, the strength suddenly gone from her arms. Fabel edged his way into the room, looked at the desk; at the shattered computer on the floor.

  ‘Are you okay?’ He put his arms around her.

  ‘I’m okay.’

  He guided her out through the narrow crack in the door and into the hall. Anna Wolff was there with some of Fabel’s team and a couple of uniformed officers. A large man with a shaven head stood in the hall, looking a little stunned. He was wearing the white shirt, black jumper and trousers of a security uniform.

  ‘This is Lars,’ said Fabel. ‘He’s from security.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Frau Doctor Eckhardt, I didn’t mean to scare you. I thought there was something seriously wrong.’ He looked around at the others. ‘It’s my first day . . .’

  On the way out to the waiting police cars, Susanne asked Fabel, ‘What the hell was that all about?’

  ‘I think that might have been a diversion. I have an awful feeling we’ve been had.’

  63

  Henk Hermann told Fabel that his daughter Gabi had been located, picked up from her student digs by a patrol car and driven across town to Fabel’s apartment. Two uniforms would stay there with her and Susanne until such time as Jochen Hübner was safely back in custody.

  Between them, the police surgeon and forensics had identified the drug that had taken Martin Mensing temporarily off the planet: dimethyltryptamine had been found in his system at much higher than naturally occurring levels. Fabel recognized it as the same compound that Dr Lorentz had described as being involved in the creation of near-death and out-of-body experiences. As he sat in his office, waiting to get the all-clear from the doctor to interview Mensing, Fabel wondered if the DMT really had just taken him to the same place Fabel had been, two years before.