When Fabel walked into the Murder Commission briefing room it was packed with uniforms and detectives and Anna had started to match teams with addresses.
‘I thought you could do with an extra couple of bodies,’ Fabel said to Anna. ‘Your show, though.’ He turned to address the rest of the room. ‘Just to let you all know that the ante’s been upped. We have just found another body. This one really does look like it’s the Network Killer’s work.’
A collective groan.
‘Okay, okay…’ said Anna over the voices. ‘Listen up. If we’ve got another vic then it means we’re going to be under even more pressure to get this guy. We’re working on four addresses specifically. These aren’t the ones we had originally planned to hit…’
‘Oh?’ interrupted Fabel.
‘Chief Commissar Kroeger’s been back in touch,’ explained Anna. ‘His team are still working on the victims’ computers and cellphones, but they’ve been able to recover some partial exchanges with four males common to them all. And all on one website. Well, more than a website…’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know, these weird sites where people have a kind of alternative existence. A virtual life, really. Run a farm without the smell, build a business empire in a fictional world, that kind of crap.’
‘I know of them, yes,’ said Fabel. He knew of them but couldn’t understand them; why people would want to waste so much of their time living in a fiction.
‘Well, this one is called Virtual Dimension. It’s part social networking site and part real-time virtual-life site. It claims to “consolidate realities”.’
‘What the hell does that mean? Why can’t these people speak plain German?’
Anna gave a don’t-shoot-the-messenger shrug. ‘According to the Virtual Dimension site, it deliberately merges this wacky virtual world with the real world. How it does that, I don’t know. It all sounds pretty flaky to me. Anyway, at least two of the women have interacted with a number of men, if they are men in real life, on Virtual Dimension. And of these men, four have had chatroom conversations elsewhere with one of the other victims.’
‘Mmm…’ Fabel nodded thoughtfully. ‘It sounds promising.’
‘Oh.’ Something had clearly just occurred to Anna. ‘Talking about virtual realities, that river cop we met down at the wash-up scene was looking for you.’
‘Kreysig?’
‘No, the other one, his deputy. Tramberger. He’s been in touch asking if we still want him to run the data through his “virtual Elbe” computer model.’
‘It can’t do any harm. Could you check with Holger Brauner and get the weight of the body plus a ballpark on how long it was in the water? Send that off to Tramberger and see if he can do anything with it.’
‘That’ll keep him happy. He’s very proud of his toy. Funny, he doesn’t strike me as the computer type.’
‘Who isn’t, these days? Anything else?’
‘Yeah. I made a few enquiries about the Pharos Project and I’ve got people coming back to me. But I’ve had my hands full with organising these raids. You say you’re happy to take one?’
‘Sure. What have you got?’
Anna handed Fabel a file and a warrant from the State Prosecutor’s Office. ‘It’s an address out Billstedt way. Between Horn and Schiffbek. The IP address belongs to a Johann Reisch.’
‘Because he pays the bills, it doesn’t mean he’s the only person using the computer.’
Anna shook her head. ‘According to the census, Johann Reisch, forty-five, is the sole occupier at this address. And this…’ she handed Fabel a printout of a web page, ‘… is Herr Reisch’s online persona.’ Fabel looked at the picture. A young man two decades away from his forty-fifth birthday, wearing sunglasses and with his muscled torso summer-shirtless, smiled at the camera under a foreign sun. The information on the page gave the name Thorsten66. ‘You happy to take this one?’
‘Okay,’ Fabel took the paperwork from her. ‘This is your show… Chefin.’
Schiffbek lay to the east of the city centre. The address Anna had given Fabel and Werner was in an immaculate street of terraced houses near the cemetery.
Fabel parked at the end of the street, having ordered the marked police car to pull in behind him: there was no point in giving advance warning of their presence. The two uniforms followed Fabel and Werner up the street towards the house. As they approached, Fabel noticed that the tiny garden at the front was neat but had the minimum of plantings in it, as if to keep it as easy to maintain as possible. He also noticed that a ramp ran up the side of the steps.
Werner rang the doorbell. A short woman with spiky blonde hair and glasses answered. She had a name badge pinned to the protective tabard apron over her clothes; it was a Hamburg State ID that told Fabel that she was an accredited care worker. She looked from Fabel to Werner and then to the uniformed officers behind them with a distinct lack of interest.
‘Yes?’
‘Polizei Hamburg,’ said Fabel. ‘We have a warrant to enter these premises and interview Herr Johann Reisch.’
‘Herr Reisch?’ She frowned. ‘What on earth can you want with Herr Reisch?’
‘I take it you’re not Frau Reisch?’ Fabel said, looking at the ID badge.
The woman laughed. ‘There is no Frau Reisch. There hasn’t been for years. Cleared off. I think you better come in.’
She led them into the house and along a short, bright hallway and into a living room with French windows that opened up onto a small patio at the rear of the house. A man sat behind a table that had a laptop computer sitting on it. He looked up slowly, his head moving stiffly. Fabel noticed that there was no expression of surprise or shock. No expression of any kind.
‘Herr Reisch?’ said Fabel. ‘I am Principal Chief Commissar Fabel of the Hamburg Murder Commission. I have a warrant here to seize any computer equipment.’
‘You can’t take his computer,’ the woman in the tabard protested. ‘It’s all he’s got.’
‘This warrant says I can.’ Fabel held up the paperwork. ‘Please stay out of this, or you could…’ The sentence died on Fabel’s lips. He noticed that Reisch was sitting in a motorised wheelchair, and that his head was held up by a neck brace. He returned Fabel’s gaze with watery eyes and the same lack of expression.
‘It’s all he has…’ The care worker continued to protest. ‘It’s his entire world.’
‘Can he speak?’ asked Fabel.
‘Yes, I can speak,’ said Reisch. His voice was thin and he seemed to gasp for breath between words. ‘For now, anyway. But that will go soon, too. But I can speak and I am here. So you don’t need to refer to me in the third person.’
‘I’m sorry, Herr Reisch. Is this your only computer?’
‘Yes. Why do you have to take it away? Frau Rossing’s right, I’d be quite lost without it. There must be some kind of mistake…’
‘No mistake, Herr Reisch. It’s just that you’re one of many people who have…’ Fabel paused and turned to Werner, who nodded and steered Frau Rossing and the two uniformed officers out of the room. ‘You have been in a chatroom and have interacted with two women who were subsequently murdered.’
‘This Network Killer thing?’ Reisch’s speech remained punctuated by gasps, which robbed his question of any intonation of surprise or shock.
Fabel showed him the printout of Thorsten66. ‘Is this the…’ Fabel struggled for the right word. ‘… the persona you use on the internet?’
‘On that particular website, and a couple of others, yes.’ Reisch paused. ‘You must think me pathetic.’
‘I don’t make judgements like that, Herr Reisch. I can’t begin to understand what it must be like to be in your situation. May I ask what has caused your condition?’
‘Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.’ Again, small gasps between words. ‘It’s a form of motor neurone disease.’
‘Is it treatable?’
‘There are so few things doctors can tell you with any certainty, Herr Fabel, but I’m in the fortunate position to have been given some absolutes about my condition. It is one hundred per cent untreatable and one hundred per cent fatal. My neural system is shutting down, bit by bit, function by function. Within the next year I will be unable to speak any more. Six months after that I will no longer be able to swallow my own spit or breathe unaided. I will suffocate to death. And do you know the laugh? The sweet irony of it all? I will still be fully mentally alert. A healthy mind trapped in a decaying body.’