‘Specific? No. There’s nothing specific I can point to… but I can indicate the direction. My advice to you is that I think you should engage in a little archaeology, Herr Chief Commissar. Do some digging in the past. I’m not sure what you’ll find… but I’m sure you’ll find something.’
Fabel regarded the small man in the armchair, with his wrinkled suit and wrinkled face. No matter how hard he tried, Fabel could not imagine Minks as a revolutionary. He thought about pushing the psychologist further, but it would be a useless effort. Minks had given as much away as he ever would. Cryptic though he was, Minks had clearly been doing his best to give Fabel a lead.
‘Did you also know Dr Gunter Griebel?’ asked Fabel. ‘He was murdered in the same way as Hauser.’
‘No… I can’t say I did. I read about his death in the papers, but I didn’t know him.’
‘So you know of no connection between Hauser and Griebel?’
Minks shook his head. ‘I believe Griebel and Hauser were contemporaries. Maybe your archaeology will reveal that they shared a past. Anyway, Herr Chief Commissar, you have my opinion about Kristina. She is quite incapable of the kind of murder that you’re investigating.’
Fabel rose and waited for Minks to stand up. They shook hands and Fabel thanked the psychologist for his help.
‘Oh, by the way,’ said Fabel as he reached the door, ‘I believe you know one of my officers. Maria Klee.’
Minks gave a laugh and shook his head. ‘Now, Herr Fabel, I may have allowed you some latitude because I had Kristina Dreyer’s permission, but I’m not going to compromise patient confidentiality by confirming or denying knowledge of your colleague.’
‘I didn’t say she was a patient,’ said Fabel as he stepped through the door. ‘Just that I believed that you knew her. Goodbye, Herr Doctor.’
11.10 a.m.: Altona Nord, Hamburg
As the footsteps grew louder Maria drew back into the corner where a young woman had been beaten and strangled to death. Despite most of the disused factory’s windows being broken, the air in the corner hung still and warm and heavy around Maria. A woman appeared at the doorway and looked around anxiously before entering. Maria stepped out of the shadows and the woman spotted her, then, reassured, made her way across the factory with renewed confidence.
‘Is not possible for me to stay long…’ she said in greeting as she approached Maria. Her voice was thick with an Eastern European accent and she spoke with the grammar of someone who has learned German on the street. Maria guessed she was no more than twenty-three or twenty-four, but from a distance she had looked older. She was dressed in a cheap, brightly coloured dress that had been taken up so that the hem just covered the tops of her thighs and no more. Her legs were naked and her shoes were high-heeled sandals that fastened around the ankle. The dress was of a thin material that clung to her breasts and clearly outlined her nipples. It was held up by thin straps, and her neck and shoulders were exposed. The whole outfit was intended to convey some kind of brash, available sexiness. Instead its colour compared discordantly with the girl’s pale, bad skin and combined with her bony shoulders and thin arms to make her look sickly and somewhat pathetic.
‘I don’t need you to stay long, Nadja,’ answered Maria. ‘I just need a name.’
Nadja looked past Maria towards the corner of the disused factory. The corner in which she had placed the flowers.
‘I told you before, I don’t know what her real name was.’
‘It’s not her name I’m after, Nadja,’ said Maria in an even tone. ‘I want to know who put her on the street.’
‘She didn’t have a pimp. Not a single one, anyway. She was new to the group.’
‘The group?’
‘We all work for the same people. But I’m not going to tell you who. As it is, they would kill me if they knew I was talking to you at all.’
Maria took hold of Nadja’s hand and held it palm up. With her other hand she stuffed some fifty-Euro notes into it and closed Nadja’s fingers around the cash.
‘This is important to me.’ Maria held Nadja’s gaze with her pale blue-grey eyes. ‘ I ’m paying you for this information. Not the police.’
Nadja opened her fist and looked at the crumpled notes. She pushed them back towards Maria. ‘Save your money. I didn’t agree to meet you to get money from you. Anyway, I can make more than this in a couple of hours tonight.’
‘But you won’t get to keep it, will you?’ Maria made no move to take the money back. ‘How did you come to know Olga?’
Nadja laughed emptily and shook her head. Every movement seemed electrified by fear. She paused to light a cigarette and Maria saw that her hands trembled. She tilted her head back and forced a jet of smoke into the thick, warm air. ‘You think that your money means anything? I used to think that money was answer to all evils. And I thought that Germany was where I could make money. And this is how I ended up. But I take your money. And I take it because I have to prove that every second I out of their sight I earning for them.’
Nadja took three fifty-Euro notes and handed the rest back to Maria. ‘The girl you call Olga. She not Russian, she from Ukraine. She brought here by the same people who brought me.’
Maria felt the thrill of a suspicion being confirmed. ‘People traffickers?’
There was a noise from somewhere outside the building, near the main doors. Both women turned and watched the door for a moment before continuing their conversation.
‘You should know this,’ said Nadja. ‘Things have changed in Hamburg. Before there used to be only two types of whore: the girls that work the Kiez in St Pauli – you even get university students up there making extra cash – and the junkies who do it to get drugs. These girls very bottom of the business. Now you got something new. Us. The other girls, they call us the Farmers’ Market… we brought in from East like cattle and sold off. Most girls from Russia, Belarus or Ukraine. Many also from Albania and a few from Poland and Lithuania.’
‘Who runs the Farmers’ Market?’
‘If I tell you, you go looking for them. Then they work out who tell you about them and they kill me. But they torture me first. Then they kill my family. You no idea what these people like. When they bring girls in they start by raping them. Then they beat them and say that they kill our families back home if we not earn good for them.’
‘And this is what happened to you?’
Nadja didn’t answer, but a tear began to trace the outline of her nose before she swept it away with a brisk movement of her hand.
‘And they did it to the girl you call Olga. She trusted them. They told her they had a good job for her in West. She trusted them because they were Ukrainian like her.’
‘Ukrainians?’ Maria felt a tightness in her chest: as if her body were clenching around her old wound. ‘Did you say the people behind the Farmers’ Market are Ukrainians?’
Nadja looked nervously out towards the factory door. ‘I must go now…’
Maria stared hard at the skinny young prostitute. ‘Does the name Vasyl Vitrenko mean anything to you?’
Nadja shook her head. Maria suddenly scrabbled in her bag. She produced a head-and-shoulders colour photograph of a man wearing a Soviet military uniform.
‘Vasyl Vitrenko. Maybe you’ve heard it in connection with the people who are farming these Eastern European girls? Could this man be the person in charge?’
‘I would not know. I don’t recognise him. I give my money to different man.’
‘Are you sure you’ve never seen him?’ Maria held the photograph closer to Nadja’s face and her voice became infused with urgency. ‘Look at his face. Look at it.’
Nadja examined the picture more closely. ‘No… I’ve never seen him before. It is not a face to forget.’
The tension seemed to evaporate from Maria’s posture. She looked down at the photograph in her hands. Vasyl Vitrenko stared back at her with emerald eyes that were as cruel and cold and bright as the centre of hell.