‘Listen to me, you self-important little prick… Your precious project counts for nothing. It is an inconsequence… nothing more than a dull expression of your middlebrow egotism and bourgeois conceit. Do you think anyone will be interested in this crap if everything comes out about you? About us? And remember where your priorities lie. You are still involved. You still take orders from me.’
Scheibe threw the newspaper to the floor and took a long and too-fast draught of his Barolo. He snorted with contempt. ‘You’re not telling me that you still believe in all that crap?’
‘This is not about beliefs any more, Paul. This is about survival. Our survival. We didn’t do much for the “revolution”, did we? But we did enough – enough for it still to destroy all our careers if it were to come out now.’
Scheibe gazed into his glass and swirled what was left of his wine contemplatively. ‘The “revolution”… my God, did we really think that was the way forward? I mean, you saw what the East was like when the wall came down – was that really what we were struggling for?’
‘We were young. We were different people.’
‘We were stupid.’
‘We were idealistic. I don’t know about you, but the rest of us were fighting against fascism. Against bourgeois complacency and the same kind of rampant, unfeeling capitalism that we now see turning the whole of Europe, the whole world, into an American-inspired theme park.’
‘Do you ever listen to yourself? You’re a self-parody – and it strikes me that you’ve embraced capitalism pretty enthusiastically yourself. And I do my bit…’ Scheibe let his gaze range over the model again. ‘In my own way. Anyway, I’m not interested in having a political debate with you. The point is that it’s madness for us to be in touch with each other after all these years.’
‘Until we know what’s behind Hans-Joachim’s death, we all have to be vigilant. Maybe the others have noticed something… unusual recently.’
Scheibe turned round. ‘You really think we could be in danger?’
‘Don’t you see?’ The other man became irritated again. ‘Even if Hans’s death is nothing to do with the past, it’s still a murder. And murder means police sniffing about. Raking around in Hans-Joachim’s history. A history we shared with him. And that places us all at risk.’
Scheibe was silent for a moment. When he spoke, it was hesitantly, as if he was afraid of stirring something from a long sleep. ‘Do you think… Could this have anything to do with what happened all those years ago? The thing with Franz?’
‘Just report to me if you notice anything unusual.’ The man in the shadows left Scheibe’s question unanswered. ‘I’ll be back in touch. In the meantime, enjoy your toy.’
Scheibe heard the door of the conference room slam shut. He drained his glass and again examined the model on the round table top: but instead of a radical vision of the future, all he saw was a clutter of white card and balsa.
10.00 p.m.: Marienthal, Hamburg
Dr Gunter Griebel regarded Fabel without interest over the reading glasses that sat almost on the tip of his long, thin nose. He watched Fabel from his leather armchair, one hand resting on the textbook on his lap, the other on the chair’s armrest. Dr Griebel was a man in his late fifties whose tall frame had retained the angular gangliness of his youth but had lately gained a paunchiness around the middle, as though two incompatible physiques had melded together. He was dressed in a check shirt, grey woollen cardigan and grey casual trousers. All of which, like the chair and the textbook on his lap, were liberally spattered with splashes of blood.
Dr Griebel looked for all the world as if he had been so lost in contemplating the content of the textbook on his lap that he had not noticed when someone had slashed open his throat with a razor-sharp blade. Nor did he seem to have been distracted by his assailant then slicing across his forehead and around his head before ripping the scalp from his skull. Beneath the glistening dome of his exposed cranium, Griebel’s long, thin face was expressionless, the eyes blank. Some blood had splashed onto the right lens of his spectacles, like a sample collected on a microscope slide. Fabel watched as it gathered in one corner of the lens as a thick, viscous globule before dripping onto his already gore-stained cardigan.
‘Widower.’ Werner pronounced the lifetime status of the corpse from where he stood behind Fabel. ‘Lived here alone since the death of his wife six years ago. Some kind of scientist, apparently.’
Fabel took in the room. Apart from Fabel, Werner and the departed Dr Griebel, there was a team of four forensic technicians, led by Holger Brauner. Griebel’s house was one of those substantial but not ostentatious villas found in the Nopps part of Marienthaclass="underline" solid Hamburg prosperity combined with an austere streak of North German Lutheran modesty. This room was more than a study. It had the practical, organised feel of a regular workplace: in addition to the computer on the desk and the books that lined the walls, there were two expensive-looking microscopes, which were clearly for professional use, in the far corner. Next to the microscopes was some other equipment which, although Fabel had no idea of its purpose, again looked like serious scientific kit.
But the centrepiece of the room had been added very recently. There was practically no wall space free of books, so the killer had nailed Griebel’s scalp to the shelves of a bookcase, from where it dripped onto the wooden floor. Griebel had obviously been thinning on top and the scalp was as much skin as hair. It had been stained the same vivid red as Hans-Joachim Hauser’s scalp, but the paucity of hair made it even more nauseating to behold.
‘When was he killed?’ Fabel asked Holger Brauner, still focused on the scalp.
‘Again, you’ll have to get a definitive answer from Moller, but I’d say this one’s very fresh. A matter of a couple of hours, at the most. There’s the beginning of rigor in the eyelids and lower jaw, but his finger joints, which will be the next to go, are still fully mobile. So a couple of hours or less. And the similarities with the Schanzenviertel murder are obvious… I had a quick look at Frank Grueber’s notes.’
‘Who raised the alarm?’ Fabel turned to Werner.
‘A friend. Another widower, apparently. They get together on Friday evenings. Take turns to go to each other’s house. But when he arrived, he found the door ajar.’
‘It sounds like he maybe disturbed our guy. Did he see anyone when he arrived?’
‘Not that he can remember, but he’s in a hell of a state. A fellow in his sixties. A retired civil engineer with a history of heart problems. Finding this’ – Werner indicated Griebel’s mutilated body with a nod of his head – ‘has put him in a state of shock. There’s a doctor giving him the once-over, but it’s my guess that it will be a while before we get much sense out of him.’
For a moment Fabel was distracted by the thought that someone could go through sixty years of life without encountering the kind of horror that was Fabel’s everyday stock-in-trade. The concept filled him with a kind of dull wonder and more than a little envy.
Maria Klee entered the study. The way her eyes were drawn to the scalped body reminded Fabel of how she had seemed almost hypnotised by the disfigurement of Hauser. Maria had always been pretty detached emotionally when examining murder victims, but Fabel had noticed a subtle change in her behaviour at crime scenes, particularly those involving knife wounds. And the change had only been apparent since her return to duty after recovering from her attack. Maria snapped her gaze away from the corpse and turned to Fabel.
‘The uniform units have been doing a door-to-door,’ she said. ‘No one saw anything or anyone unusual today or this evening. But given the size of these properties and the fact that they’re reasonably far apart, it’s not particularly surprising.’