Vitrenko had entered their lives as a shadowy suspect in a murder inquiry and had made a very tangible mark on every member of the team. Vitrenko, a Ukrainian, had been a former Spetsnaz officer and was as skilled with the instruments of death as a surgeon was with those of life. He had used Maria as a delaying tactic while he made his escape: callously leaving her life hanging in the balance and forcing Fabel to give up his pursuit.
‘What do you think, Maria?’ he said eventually. ‘About Dreyer, I mean… Do you think she did it?’
‘It’s entirely possible that she took that step into madness again. Maybe she doesn’t remember killing Hauser. Maybe cleaning up the murder scene has wiped the memory of the murder from her mind. Or maybe she is telling the truth.’ Maria paused. ‘Fear can make us all behave in a strange way.’
8.00 p.m.: Marienthal, Hamburg
It was, after all, what Dr Gunter Griebel had devoted much of his life to. As soon as he had seen the pale, dark-haired young man, there had been that instant of recognition; the instinctive knowledge that he was looking at a face that was familiar to him. Someone he knew.
But the young man was not someone whom Griebel knew. As they talked, it became clear that they had not met before. Yet the sense of familiarity remained, and with it the unshakeable, tantalising feeling that complete recognition was only a moment away; that if only he could place the face in a context then all would fall into place. And the gaze of the young man was disconcerting: a laser beam fixed on the older man.
They moved into the study and Griebel offered his guest a drink, which he declined. There was something strange about the way the young man moved around the house, as if each movement was measured, calculated. After a moment’s awkwardness Griebel indicated that his guest should sit.
‘Thanks for agreeing to meet with me,’ said the younger man. ‘I apologise for the unorthodox manner in which I introduced myself to you. I had no intention of disturbing you while you paid your respects to your late wife, but it was pure chance that we were at the same place at the same time, just when I was going to phone you to try to arrange a meeting.’
‘You said you are a scientist yourself?’ Griebel asked, more to prevent an awkward silence than out of genuine interest. ‘What’s your field?’
‘It’s not unrelated to yours, Dr Griebel. I am fascinated by your research, particularly how a trauma suffered in one generation may have consequences for the generations that follow. Or that we pile one memory on another, generation after generation.’ The younger man stretched his hands out on the leather of the armchair. He looked at his hands, at the leather, as if contemplating them. ‘In my own way I am a seeker after the truth. The truth I seek perhaps isn’t as universal as yours, but the answer lies in the same area.’ He brought his laser-beam gaze back to bear on Griebel. ‘But the reason I am here is not professional. It’s personal.’
‘In what way personal?’ Griebel again sought to remember if and where they had met before, or of whom it was that the young man reminded him.
‘As I explained to you when we met in the graveyard, I am looking for answers for some of the mysteries in my own life. All my life I have been haunted by memories that are not mine… by a life that is not mine. And that is why you, your research, interests me so much.’
‘With the greatest respect.’ Griebel’s voice was edged with irritation. ‘I’ve heard all this kind of thing before. I’m not a philosopher. I’m not a psychologist and I’m certainly not some kind of quasi-New Age guru. I am a scientist investigating scientific realities. I didn’t agree to meet you to explore the enigmas of your existence. I only agreed to meet you because of what you said about… well, about the past… the names you mentioned. Where did you get those names? What made you think the people you mentioned have anything to do with me?’
The young man smiled a broad, cold, joyless smile. ‘It seems so very long ago, doesn’t it, Gunter? A lifetime ago. You, me and the others? You’ve tried to move on… make a new life. If you can call the bourgeois banality you’ve been hiding behind a life. And all the time trying to pretend that the past didn’t happen.’
Griebel’s brow creased into a frown. He concentrated hard. Even the voice was familiar: tones he had heard – somewhere, sometime – before. ‘Who are you?’ he asked at last. ‘What do you want?’
‘It’s been so very long, Gunter. You all felt safe in your new lives, didn’t you? You all thought that you had put everything behind you. Put me behind you. But you all built your new lives on treachery.’ The younger man indicated Griebel’s study, the equipment, the books, with a dismissive sweep of his hand. ‘You have devoted so much time, so much of your life, to your studies. Your search for answers. You told me that you are a scientist looking for scientific realities; but I know you, Gunter. You are desperately seeking the same truths as I am. You want to see into the past, into what makes us what we are. And for all of your work, you are no further forward. But I am, Gunter. I have seen the answers you seek. I am the answer you seek.’
‘Who the hell are you?’ Griebel asked again.
‘But Gunter… you know already who I am…’ The younger man’s bright, frigid smile stayed fixed in place. ‘Don’t tell me you can’t see?’ He stood up, and removed a large velvet roll-pouch from the briefcase that he had set on the floor beside him.
8.50 p.m.: Poseldorf, Hamburg
Fabel felt bone weary. What he had anticipated as an easy first day back had unexpectedly taken a massive, dense form and had lain immovable and unavoidable in his path. He felt as if negotiating round it had sucked all the light from his day and all the energy from his body.
Susanne had arranged to meet a girlfriend in town for dinner and Fabel found himself at a loose end on his first evening back from his vacation. Before leaving the Presidium he phoned his daughter, Gabi, who lived with her mother, to see if she was free to meet up for something to eat, but she had already made plans. Gabi asked how his vacation had been and they chatted for a while before arranging to meet up later in the week. Chatting to his daughter usually brightened Fabel’s mood – she had something of the careless cheerfulness that typified Fabel’s brother Lex – but tonight her unavailability only served to unsettle him further.
Fabel did not feel like cooking for himself. He felt the need to be surrounded by people, so he decided to go back to his apartment to freshen up before going out to eat.
Fabel had lived in the same place for the past seven years. It was a block back from Milchstrasse, in what had become arguably Hamburg’s hippest locations: Poseldorf, in the Rotherbaum district of the city. Fabel’s apartment was an attic conversion in a large turn-of-the-century building. The former grand villa had been ambitiously converted into three separate stylish apartments. Unfortunately, Germany’s economic performance at the time had not been able to match the ambition of the developers and property prices in Hamburg had plummeted. Fabel had seen the opportunity to own rather than rent and had bought the attic studio. He had often thought of the irony of the situation: that he had ended up in this cool, perfectly located apartment because his marriage and the German economy had hit the skids at almost exactly the same time.
Even with the drop in property prices, all Fabel had been able to afford to buy in Poseldorf had been this studio flat. It was small, but Fabel had always felt that the sacrifice of space for location had been worth it. When the developers had converted the building, they had recognised the potential of its view and had installed huge picture windows, almost floor-to-ceiling, along the side of the building that looked over Magdalenen Strasse and the green Alsterpark out onto the park-fringed Aussenalster lake. From his windows, Fabel could watch the red and white ferries crossing the Alster and, on a clear day, he could see all the way across to the stately white villas and the glittering turquoise dome of the Iranian mosque of the Schone Aussicht on the far shore of the Alster.