The archaeologist asked Fabel to take a seat. As he did so, Fabel was surprised that there was something about Severts’s dress, his office, the accoutrements of his trade that stimulated a small, sad envy in him. For a moment Fabel considered how he had so very nearly followed a similar path; how his passion had been European history and how as a student he had already rolled out the map of his future and plotted out the route of his career. Then there had been a single, senseless act of intense violence, the shock of the death of someone close to him at the hands of a stranger, and all the expected landmarks had been erased from his landscape.
Instead of becoming an investigator of the past, he became an investigator of death.
On the wall behind Severts’s desk a large map of Germany detailed all the major archaeological sites in the Federal Republic, the Netherlands and Denmark. Next to it was a huge poster. The image was striking: it was of a dead woman, lying on her back. She was wearing a hooded woollen cloak bound tight around her long, slim body. The hood was capped with a tall feather and the woman’s long red-brown hair was centre-parted. The skin of her face and that of her legs, which could be seen between the fringe of her cloak and her fur moccasins, had the same papery look as the HafenCity corpse, but had stained darker.
‘Ah…’ Severts noticed that the poster had caught Fabel’s attention. ‘I see you are captivated by her too… The love of my life. She possesses a unique ability to capture men’s hearts. And to bewilder us – she has done more than her fair share of setting everything we believed about Europe on its head. Herr Fabel, allow me to introduce a true woman of mystery… the Beauty of Loulan.’
‘The Beauty of Loulan,’ repeated Fabel. ‘Loulan… where is that, exactly?’
‘That is the thing!’ Severts said animatedly. ‘Tell me, where do you think she is from? Her ethnicity, I mean?’
Fabel shrugged. ‘I’m assuming that she’s European, from her hair colour and features. Although I suppose the feather gives her a native North American look.’
‘And how old do you think my girlfriend is?’
Fabel looked closer. The woman had clearly been mummified, but she was much better preserved than any of the bog bodies he had seen. ‘I don’t know… a thousand years… fifteen hundred at most.’
Severts shook his head slowly, his beaming smile still in place. ‘I told you she was a woman of mystery. This mummified body, Herr Fabel, is over four thousand years old. She is nearly two metres tall, her hair colour in life was either red or blonde. And as for where she was discovered… there’s the mystery and the intrigue.’ He walked over to a filing cabinet and pulled out a thick box file.
‘My family scrapbook,’ explained Severts. ‘Mummies are a passion of mine.’ He sat down at his desk and flicked through the file’s contents, all of which seemed to be large photographs with yellow notes attached to each with a paper clip. Then he handed Fabel a large glossy print. ‘This gentleman is from the same part of the world. He is known as Cherchen Man. I was going to show you him anyway, because he is rather pertinent to the case of the mummified body down by the Elbe in HafenCity. Take a look. This man has been dead for three thousand years.’
Fabel looked at the photograph. It was astonishing. For a moment the policeman became once more the student of history and he felt the old butterflies-in-the-stomach excitement that he experienced when a window into the past opened. The man in the picture was perfectly preserved. The similarity with the HafenCity corpse was astounding, except that the man in the picture, dead for three millennia, had even preserved his skin tone. He was fair-skinned and his hair was a dark blond. He had a neatly trimmed beard and his full lips were slightly parted, twisted up in one corner to expose perfect teeth.
‘Cherchen Man was preserved because he lay undisturbed for three thousand years in an anaerobic environment. The process of mummification is exactly the same as the body in the HafenCity. Both represent a moment in time seized and kept perfect for us to look into.’
‘It is amazing…’ said Fabel. He studied the man again. It was a face he could have encountered that same day, in modern Hamburg.
‘We talk about the distant past.’ Severts seemed to have read Fabel’s thoughts. ‘But although he lived three thousand years ago, that only represents one hundred-odd generations. Think about it: such a small number of people, father and son, mother and daughter, separate this man from you and me. Herr Brauner told me that you studied history, so you’ll understand what I mean when I say that we are not as separated from our histories, from our pasts, as we like to think. But there’s more to this gentleman. Like the Beauty of Loulan, Cherchen Man was tall, over two metres in height. He would have been about fifty-five when he died. As you can see, he was fair-haired and fair-skinned.’
Severts leaned forward. ‘You see, Herr Fabel, none of us are who we think we are. Both the Beauty of Loulan and Cherchen Man are among a number of incredibly well-preserved bodies found in the same area with the same cultural indicators. They wore multicoloured plaid, similar to Scottish tartans, they were all tall and fair. And they all lived, between four thousand and three thousand years ago, in the same part of the world. You see, Herr Fabel, Cherchen and Loulan are both in modern China. These bodies are known as the mummies of Urumchi. They’re from the Tamir Basin in the Uyghur Autonomous Region of Western China. It is an arid area and these bodies were buried in extremely dry, extremely fine sand. It is said that the Chinese archaeologist who uncovered the Loulan woman wept when he looked upon her beauty. Their discovery caused quite a stir, and the Chinese authorities and archaeological establishment are very much opposed to the premise that Europeans migrated to and occupied the region four millennia ago. Uyghur lies where the Turkic and Chinese ethnicities collide and Turkic nationalists have claimed the Beauty of Loulan as a symbol of their hereditary right to occupy the region. However, these mummies are no more Turkic than they are Chinese. These people were culturally Celts. Perhaps even Proto-Celts. DNA tests on the mummies carried out in 1995 proved once and for all that they were Europeans. They had genetic markers that linked them to modern-day Finns and Swedes, as well as some to people living in Corsica, Sardinia and Tuscany.’
‘Of course,’ said Fabel. ‘I recall reading something about the discoveries. If I remember correctly, the Chinese government did all they could to play down the finds. It challenged their sense of ethnic singularity as a nation.’
‘And we all know the dangers of that kind of mentality,’ said Severts. ‘As I said, none of us are who we think we are.’ He swivelled his chair around and again looked up at the picture of the mummified woman. ‘Whatever the debate that surrounds them, the Beauty of Loulan and Cherchen Man are part of our world now. Our time. And they are here to talk to us about their previous lives. Just as your mummy in the HafenCity has something to say about his much nearer time.’ Severts pointed to the photograph in Fabel’s hands of the three-thousand-year-old man. ‘Despite the vast difference between the times they lived in, there is very little difference in the state of preservation of your mummy and Cherchen Man. If we hadn’t uncovered him, “HafenCity Man” could also have lain undisturbed for three thousand years. And he would have emerged unchanged from his rest. He would have looked exactly the same… obviously we can use dating technology to establish rough timescales but, generally speaking, we often depend more on the artefacts and the immediate excavated environment to establish the exact time to which a body belongs. Which brings me back to our twentieth-century mummy.’ Severts reached into his desk drawer and took out a sealed plastic bag. It contained a small black wallet and a pocket-sized piece of what looked like dark brown card.
Fabel took the bag and opened it. The card was folded into a small booklet form. On the front was the eagle and swastika emblem of the Nazi regime.