‘No… not a fear. I was brought up in Norddeich. I have a healthy respect for it.’
‘The only water I fear,’ said Wiegand, suddenly less affable and more serious, ‘is dark water. Do you know what the albedo effect is? Albedo is the reflectivity of a surface to the sun’s rays. Polar ice reflects the sun’s rays and prevents sea warming. The more ice, the cooler the sea, the more stable the climate. The higher the ratio of dark water to white ice, the faster the planet heats up. Every year there is less and less ice at the poles and more and more dark water. I want you to understand, Herr Fabel, that whatever you think of me or the Pharos Project I am genuinely afraid of the cataclysm that awaits us and genuinely committed to doing all I can, using every weapon at my disposal, to prevent it happening. We are not playing a game here. This is a battle to survive.’
Fabel nodded thoughtfully. He was actually thinking about how far Wiegand would go, and what weapons he was prepared to use. But Fabel had also read that Wiegand’s personal wealth could be counted in billions, rather than millions; there was a profit to be made out of any apocalypse.
‘Maybe I will pay you a visit, Herr Wiegand,’ he said. He looked at the card Wiegand had handed him. It had the same stylised eye motif as the poster he had passed on the way to the airport. ‘Sometime soon.’
Once he was in his car, Fabel switched his cellphone back on. It rang almost immediately. It was Anna Wolff.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘This is interesting. I ran a check on those names and I’ve got the details on that plate you ran… if that car really is following you, then it’s not one of ours and it’s nothing to do with the BfV. It’s registered to Seamark International, which, I am told, is a private maritime security company.’
‘What? Why the hell is a private security company following me?’
‘Do you want me to send someone to their offices to get some answers?’
‘No, not yet. I don’t want them alerted to the fact that I’m onto them. If I see the same car on my tail again I’m going to have them pulled over. One thing you could do for me is to check out this Seamark International. I’d put a month’s wages on it turning out to be some kind of subsidiary of the Korn-Pharos Corporation. What about the names I gave you to check?’
‘Victoria Kempfert is as clean as a whistle. No convictions or arrests, no contact of any significance with the police. But it’s Daniel Fottinger who makes things much more interesting. He would appear to have been someone who didn’t take “no” for an answer. An accusation of sexual harassment last year lodged by a female employee, and two accusations of rape. One when he was still a student and the second in 1999. All three accusations were dropped as soon as the police investigated. It would appear that Fottinger’s daddy had the kind of wealth to make unpleasantness disappear… and, of course, so did Fottinger junior, later.’
‘Now that is interesting.’
‘There’s more. Fottinger’s parents put him in a fancy hospital in Bavaria after the student-days incident. A psychiatric hospital. I’ve asked for a court order to get his records. I thought you’d want them. I don’t know how relevant any of this is, but I thought there might be a chance that someone was exacting revenge.’
‘Well done, Anna.’ Fabel thought about what she had told him. ‘Get me the names and addresses of the victims, would you? I’d like to talk to them. Or at least one of them.’
‘Sure, Chef, but you’ll have to give me some time. I’m in the Commission but I’ll be mobile in ten. I’m going out to see the disabled guy you talked to, Johann Reisch. Two officers are going to check out his computer, one from Tech Section, the other from Cybercrime. By the way, they’re none too pleased with you. They say that the delay in examining his computer means he could have erased a lot of evidence.’
‘Reisch isn’t our man, Anna. And that’s good old-fashioned police instinct, not technology.’
‘Well, the problem is that they’re out at Reisch’s right now and can’t get an answer. And Reisch was expecting them. They arranged a time with him on the phone.’
‘That doesn’t sound good, Anna. Reisch is pretty much housebound. Get a uniformed unit to go out with you. If you get no answer, force the door. I’m on my way now. In fact, hold fire until I get there. And see if you can get a number for his carer. Shit, I’ve forgotten her name…’
‘Rossing… I’m already on it. See you there.’
Chapter Twenty-Six
As it turned out, they did not need to force entry into Reisch’s house. Frau Rossing, the disabled man’s carer, turned up with a key just as Fabel arrived. Fabel noticed that Reisch’s carer wore an expression of genuine concern.
‘He was fine this morning when I left,’ she said as she fumbled through her bunch of keys.
‘Wait here,’ Anna told her after she had unlocked the door. ‘We need to go in first.’
Fabel and Anna found Reisch exactly where he had been the last time Fabel had spoken to him; sitting at the table, staring at the computer screen of his laptop. Except that today Reisch was staring at the screen through the clear polythene of the plastic bag that was pulled over his head and sealed at the neck by a drawstring. The bag was large and ballooned out as if pumped full of air; it gave Fabel the impression of an oversized space helmet, or the hood of one of those suits you saw worn by people who handled radioactive material. Reisch still sat upright, the neck brace of his wheelchair preventing him from slumping, his blank stare aimed at the laptop screen.
Fabel pushed two fingers into the flesh at the side of Reisch’s neck, just beneath where the drawstring had been pulled tight. He turned to Anna and shook his head.
‘Shit…’ Anna stared at the still-upright dead man. ‘Do you think someone’s killed him because of his connection to Virtual Dimension?’
Fabel did not answer. Instead, he flipped open his cellphone and called it in to the Presidium. He asked who was on forensics duty.
‘Keep the carer out of here, Anna,’ he said quietly after he hung up from his call. ‘But tell her that Reisch has passed away. Holger Brauner’s on his way with a team.’
After Anna and the uniformed officer left the room, Fabel took a closer look around Reisch’s desk. There was a postal packet that had been untidily torn open. Next to it lay what looked to Fabel like a small oxygen canister with a length of tubing attached. Fabel took a latex glove from his jacket pocket and, without slipping it on, used it as a shield while he rolled the canister around. It had the symbol He on it. Not oxygen, helium.
Fabel checked the laptop’s screen. When Reisch had died, he had been locked into Virtual Dimension. Now his avatar walked aimlessly through a surrealistically realistic world rendered by computer graphics. It had been what he had watched as he died. The last thing his dying brain would have registered. Even now, Reisch gave the impression of watching his cybernetic alter ego.
Once Brauner and his team had arrived, Fabel joined Anna and the uniformed officer outside. Brauner had only been in the house for fifteen minutes when he called Fabel back in.
‘You can forget this one, if you ask me, Jan,’ said Brauner. ‘Of course you’ll have to wait for the autopsy, but this is no murder. Well, it’s self-murder, but that doesn’t interest you.’
‘But someone tied that bag around his neck. If he did it himself, then as soon as he started to suffocate, the survival instinct would have kicked in.’
‘No it wouldn’t, Jan. That’s a so-called “ Exit Bag ”. A suicide kit. The fastening is a drawstring you pull tight yourself. And the “survival instinct” you talk about is called the hypercapnic alarm response. It’s the panic you feel when the level of carbon dioxide in your blood becomes dangerously high and your brain tells you that you’ve got to start breathing fast. He won’t have experienced that. That’s what the canister was for: you fill the bag or your lungs or both with an inert gas like nitrogen or helium. It confuses your brain and it overrides the hypercapnic alarm response. You just feel you’re breathing normally, no pain, no panic, then you pass out and never wake up. Believe it or not, you can buy Exit Bags on the internet, or download instructions on how to make one yourself. We’ve bagged up the postal packet it came in: you might be able to find out whom he ordered it from. And I guess you’ll find something about it on that…’ Brauner nodded towards the laptop on the table.