‘No…’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose it is.’
12.30 p.m.: Hamburger Hafen, Hamburg
Dirk Stellamanns had been a uniformed officer when Fabel had first joined the Polizei Hamburg. Dirk was a large, amiable bear of a man with a ready smile. It had been from Dirk that Fabel had learned all the things about being a policeman that you did not learn in the State Police Schooclass="underline" the subtleties and the nuances, the way to walk into a room and read the situation and assess the dangers with your first scan.
Dirk Stellamanns had been on the beat in St Pauli, based in the famous Davidwache station. With two hundred thousand people passing every weekend through the two square kilometres of bars, theatres, dance clubs, strip joints and, of course, the notorious Reeperbahn, it was a beat where the policeman’s most effective weapon was his ability to talk to people. Dirk had shown Fabel how you could defuse an explosive situation with a few well-placed words; how someone who seemed destined for arrest could be sent on their way with a smile on their face. It all depended on how you dealt with things. Fabel had been in awe and more than a little envious of Dirk’s verbal skills. He was well aware of his own strengths as a policeman, but also of his weaknesses: sometimes Fabel knew that he could have got more out of a suspect or a witness if he had only handled them a bit better.
Dirk had been there when Fabel and his partner had been shot. A botched robbery by members of a terrorist group had left Fabel seriously wounded. Fabel’s partner had not survived. Franz Webern, twenty-five years old, married for less than three years, father of an eighteen-month-old son, had lain in the street outside the Commerzbank and had shuddered with cold as the warmth of his blood slipped from him and bloomed dark on the pale asphalt.
It had been the darkest day of Fabel’s career. It had ended with him standing wounded on a pier down by the Elbe, facing a seventeen-year-old girl armed with political cliches and an automatic handgun which she refused to lower.
She refused to lower the gun… Fabel had repeated the phrase like a mantra over the years in an attempt to somehow ease the intolerable burden of the knowledge that he had taken her life; that he had shot her in the face and head and she had tumbled like a broken doll into the dark, cold water. Dirk had been there for Fabel. Every day, whenever he had been off duty. As soon as Fabel regained even the vaguest, most tenuous grasp of consciousness, he had been aware of Dirk’s quiet, solid bulk sitting by his hospital bed.
There were some bonds, Fabel had learned, that, once forged, cannot be broken.
Now Dirk was retired from the police. He had been running this snack cabin down by the harbour for three years. And Fabel came here at least once a fortnight; not because he particularly appreciated Dirk’s variation on the Currywurst but because both men felt the need for the aimless, meaningless, trivial banter that rippled on the surface of their friendship.
But sometimes Fabel needed to go deeper. Whenever there was a case that got under his skin, a murder with the power to shock him even after all his years of dealing with death – it was not to Otto Jensen, his best friend with whom he had much more in common, that Fabel would go. It would be to Dirk Stellamanns.
Dirk’s snack stall was an extension of the man’s already huge personality. It was bright and scrupulously clean and surrounded by a scattering of chest-high tables capped with white parasols. Dirk, his large frame protesting at the tight wrapping of his immaculately white chef’s tunic and apron, beamed a smile when he saw Fabel approach.
‘Well, well… I see you have had your fill of the overpriced eateries of Poseldorf…’ Dirk spoke to Fabel in Frysk. Both men were East Frisian and had always communicated with each other in the distinctive language of the region: an ancient mix of German, Dutch and Old English. ‘Can I get you some real food?’
‘A Jever and a cheese roll will do fine,’ said Fabel, smiling desolately. He always ordered the same thing when he came down here at lunchtimes. Again he found himself irritated by his own predictability. He took a sip of the crisp, herby East Frisian beer.
‘You look your usual cheery self.’ Dirk leaned forward, his elbows on the counter. ‘What’s up?’
‘Did you read about the Hans-Joachim Hauser killing?’
‘The Hamburg Hairdresser thing?’ Dirk pursed his lips. ‘Hauser and some scientist fellah. You on that?’
Fabel nodded and took another sip of beer. ‘It’s a doozy. God knows how the press got the details, but they’re pretty much accurate. This guy really has been taking scalps.’
‘Is it true he dyes them red?’
Fabel nodded again.
‘What’s all that about?’ Dirk made an incredulous face. ‘God knows I’ve seen a lot of things in my time, but there’s always some sicko who’ll come up with something new to surprise you. This guy must be a complete psycho.’
‘So it would appear.’ Fabel examined his beer glass before taking another sip. ‘Thing is, he doesn’t take his trophies away with him. He pins them up for everyone to find.’
‘A message?’
‘That’s what I’ve begun to wonder.’ Fabel shrugged. Despite the sunshine, he felt a chill deep inside. Maybe it was the beer. Or maybe it was the unthawed splinter of unease that had remained with him ever since he’d seen the photograph of Neu Versen Man: Red Franz, whose hair had been dyed vivid red by a thousand years of sleep in a cold, dark moor.
‘But why does he do it?’ Fabel posed the question more to himself than to Dirk. ‘What is the significance of the colour red?’
‘Red? It’s the colour of warning, isn’t it? Or political. Red is the colour of revolution, the old East Germany, communism, that kind of crap.’ Dirk paused to serve a female customer. He waited until she was out of earshot before continuing. ‘Wasn’t Hauser on the fringes of all of that stuff back in the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies? Maybe your killer has something against Reds.’
‘Could be…’ Fabel sighed. ‘Who knows what goes on in a mind like that? I was talking to someone this morning who suggested that I should be looking at Hauser’s past. Specifically his political past. Maybe even more than I would normally with a case like this. But I don’t remember any suggestion that Hauser was involved in anything approaching “direct action”.’
‘You never know, Jan. There’s a lot of people in top political jobs now who have skeletons in their cupboards.’
Fabel sipped his beer. ‘I’ll look into it, anyway… God knows I need a straw to clutch at.’
9.30 p.m.: Osdorf, Hamburg
Maria sat on the sofa and held her empty wine glass above her head, waggling it as if ringing a bell. Frank Grueber came through from the kitchen and took it from her.
‘Another refill?’
‘Another refill.’ Maria’s voice was flat and joyless.
‘Are you okay?’ Grueber had been in the kitchen, placing the dishes from the meal he had cooked into the dishwasher. Despite being thirty-two, Grueber retained the look of a schoolboy. He had his shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbows, exposing his slender forearms, and his thick dark hair flopped over his brow, which was furrowed in a concerned frown. ‘You’ve had quite a bit already…’
‘Tough day.’ Maria looked up at him and smiled. ‘I’ve been looking into the background of that young Russian girl who was murdered three months ago.’ She corrected herself. ‘Ukrainian girl.’
‘But I thought you got someone for that?’ Grueber called through from the kitchen. He re-emerged with a glass of red wine, which he placed on the table in front of Maria before sitting down on the sofa next to her.
‘I did… we did. It’s just that she hasn’t got a name. Her own name, I mean. I want to give it back to her. All she wanted was a new life. To be somewhere and someone else. God knows, at times I can sympathise with that.’ Maria took a long draw on her Barolo. Grueber rested his arm on the back of the sofa and gently stroked Maria’s blonde hair. She gave a weak smile.