‘Thank you, Fabel. I appreciate it. Can I ask you one more thing? Can we keep this between ourselves… for the meantime at least.’
‘Okay, Herr Senator,’ said Fabel. It wasn’t an official investigation after all. Yet.
‘You have to admit, though,’ said Fabel, ‘that you haven’t really given me much to go on. Is there anything you can tell me about Meliha that might help me?’
Muller-Voigt’s small laugh was both bitter and sad. ‘After Meliha disappeared, I thought about how little I really knew her. Every time I thought about talking to you — or someone like you — about her disappearance I realised how little I really had to tell you about her. But I did know her. I knew her as well as if we’d spent our whole lives together. If you like, I knew the essence of her.’ He thought for a moment. ‘She was a Kemalist. You know, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the father of modern Turkey. Ataturk is a massive figure for a lot of Turks because he created something so totally, radically different to everything that went before. He simply rethought the concept of Turkey and shaped a secular, progressive republic. He convinced an entire nation to put the past behind them and embrace a future that they had never considered. I can understand why he is so inspirational to Turks. As I said, Meliha was also deeply passionate about the environment. And that was her big thing: she believed that the world needed an “environmental Ataturk”. Someone who was capable of rethinking our entire way of life. She used to accuse me and others like me of being “pop-environmentalists”. Dilettantes.’
‘I don’t see how…’
‘“ Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned ”,’ said Muller-Voigt in English. ‘Do you know your Shakespeare, Herr Fabel?’
‘Congreve,’ said Fabel. ‘“ Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned ” is from a play by William Congreve, not Shakespeare.’
Muller-Voigt grinned. ‘Of course, I was forgetting you’re a very learned policeman, aren’t you, Herr Fabel? Anyway, I think Meliha felt a little of that fury. Not that she had been scorned romantically, more philosophically. She was a great admirer of Dominik Korn, of his environmental views. At least when he set out his original vision for the Pharos Project. I think she saw him as the great hope for the future of the environment.’
‘Her “Ataturk of the Environment”?’
‘Exactly. But Korn had some kind of accident — a diving accident, I believe — after which he became increasingly reclusive. The Pharos Project, which had started off as a genuinely innovative environmental research organisation, became a weird cult driven by Korn’s increasingly bizarre philosophies. Meliha really had a bee in her bonnet about it. She felt it was more than a lost opportunity. It was a betrayal.’
‘So you think she was on some kind of mission to expose Korn and Pharos?’
‘I think that is entirely possible. If you’re asking me where to look for Meliha, then I suggest you start with the Pharos Project.’
‘By the way, the picture you’ve got in the digital frame — can you give me a hard copy of that?’
‘I can email it to you. I have a new laptop and a private email that are not connected to the State’s system so they haven’t been exposed to this bloody Klabautermann Virus.’
‘If you don’t mind, Herr Senator, I’d rather have a hard copy.’
For a moment Muller-Voigt looked surprised. ‘Okay… I think I’ve got a print in my office. I’ll have it couriered over to the Presidium tomorrow morning. If not I can print it out again when I get my old computer back. They’re de-virusing it or whatever the hell they do to get the data back.’
As Fabel drove away from the politician’s house all kinds of nagging thoughts worried away at the edges of his mind. The simplest explanation of the woman’s disappearance, and of the fact that there was no trace of her identity, seemed obvious to Fabeclass="underline" that, for whatever reason, she had given Muller-Voigt a false name. That would explain the thing with the conference: she probably did have an official delegate’s badge, but it had been under a different name and, once she had introduced herself as Meliha Yazar, Muller-Voigt wouldn’t have thought to check her name tag. Maybe she was an investigative journalist or maybe she was a member of one of those extreme environmental groups Menke had mentioned, and she had simply been trying to get close to an influential member of the Hamburg government.
Yes… that was what made most sense. That she had used a false name. But for some reason, as he drove back through the dark alongside the canal, its high bank topped with the type of Knick that Muller-Voigt had talked about, Fabel couldn’t quite believe it.
Maybe it was possible that someone, somehow, had been able to erase all traces of the woman who had been Meliha Yazar.
Chapter Fifteen
The next morning, Fabel felt tired and irritable when he arrived at the Presidium. He had been right about the coffee: it had kept him awake half the night. Or, more correctly, the coffee, the absence of Susanne in bed beside him, and the ceaseless flashing picture show running through his head — featuring the woman in the photograph Muller-Voigt had shown him — had kept him awake half the night.
‘Well, you look like crap…’ was Werner’s greeting as Fabel came out of the elevator. ‘Hangover?’
‘I wish,’ said Fabel. ‘Sleepless night. How’s everything going with the Network Killer case? Have we got warrants yet?’
‘Anna says we’ve got four addresses to hit this afternoon. She suggests we muster at three p.m. and hit them simultaneously. It would be good if we could have a few uniforms at each address.’
‘I’ll arrange it.’
Anna Wolff came out of the office she shared with Henk Hermann and greeted Fabel.
‘You look terrible…’
‘We’ve done that,’ said Werner. ‘He claims it was the burden of his intellect that kept him awake last night, but my money’s on a bottle of malt.’
‘When you’re quite finished…’ said Fabel. ‘Did you send me a text yesterday?’
‘Me?’ Werner frowned. ‘No… not me.’
‘You, Anna?’ asked Fabel.
‘Not me either, Chef. Is it important?’
‘Don’t know. No… probably not. All it said was “Poppenbutteler Schleuse”.’
‘Sounds like it was sent to you by mistake,’ said Anna. ‘Do you know anyone who lives in Poppenbuttel?’
‘Can’t say I do. Can I have a word with you both?’
Werner and Anna followed Fabel into his office.
‘I know we’re pushed at the moment but I need to check out a couple of things this morning,’ said Fabel. ‘You can reach me on my cellphone if you need me. Before I leave I’ll arrange the uniform cover for the raids this afternoon. If I get bodies in at two-thirty can you brief them, Anna?’
‘No problem. Here are the four addresses. I’m afraid they’re spread out all across the city. By the way, Criminal Director van Heiden was trying to get hold of you. He phoned down about fifteen minutes ago.’
‘Okay,’ said Fabel, although the thought what now? flashed through his brain. ‘There’s something I’d like you both to check out for me. I have to say this could be unconnected to anything, but I need information on an organisation called the Pharos Project. Like I say, at the moment this is not entirely official, but there’s a chance there may be a link to the wash-up from yesterday. I have a new best friend in the BfV, so I’m going to ask him if he can give me some info on Pharos. Either of you heard of it?’
Werner, who was still writing in his notebook, shook his head. ‘Is that Faros with an F or with a Ph…?’
‘Ph… the Greek way,’ said Fabel. ‘And it’s headed up by some guy called Dominik Korn.’
‘I’ve heard of them,’ said Anna. ‘I thought they were just some kind of environmental group like Greenpeace.’
Fabel laughed. ‘Nothing like. I’m a member of Greenpeace but you wouldn’t get me within a mile of the Pharos Project. It started out legitimately enough but it looks like it may well now be a manipulative cult.’