‘Roland, I just don’t know…’
‘Listen, Jan, what you could earn with me would make your police pay look like peanuts. And the hours would be a hell of a lot better. And much less stress. Susanne said tonight that you’re looking for a new place together. Trust me, this job would make the world of difference to what you could afford. I always liked you, Jannick. I know we’re different people now. Grown up. But I don’t know if we really change that much inside. All I’m asking is that you think about it.’
‘I will, Roland.’ Fabel shook his old school friend’s hand warmly. ‘I promise.’
‘Give me a call and the job is yours. But don’t wait too long. I need to get fixed up with someone soon.’
After they had gone, Susanne linked her arm through Fabel’s.
‘What was that all about?’
‘Nothing.’ Fabel turned to her and kissed her. ‘Nice couple, weren’t they?’ he said, and slipped Bartz’s business card into his pocket.
8.
Eleven Days After the First Murder: Monday, 29 August 2005.
9.30 a.m.: Neustadt, Hamburg
Cornelius Tamm sat and considered just what the generational gap between him and the youth opposite him would be: he was certainly young enough to have been his son; without too much of a stretch of imagination or chronology even his grandson. Cornelius’s seniority in age, however, had not seemed sufficient to deter the young man, who had introduced himself as ‘Ronni’, and who had gelled hair, ugly ears and a ridiculous little goatee beard, from using the informal du form of address when he spoke to Cornelius. He obviously felt that they were colleagues; or that his position as head of production entitled him to be informal.
‘Cornelius Tamm… Cornelius Tamm…’ Ronni had spent the last ten minutes talking about Cornelius’s career, and his use of the past tense had been conspicuous. Now he sat repeating Cornelius’s name and looking at him across the vast desk as if he were regarding some item of memorabilia that aroused nostalgia while not having the value of a true antique. ‘Tell me, Cornelius…’ The boy with the big ideas and bigger ears stretched his lips above the goatee in an insincere grin. ‘If you don’t mind me asking, if you want to do a “greatest hits” CD, why aren’t you doing it with your existing label? It would be much simpler with the rights, et cetera.’
‘I wouldn’t call them my existing label. I haven’t recorded with them for years. Most of my work nowadays is doing live concerts. It’s much better… I get a real kick out of interacting with-’
‘I notice you sell CDs on your website.’ The young man cut Cornelius off. ‘How are sales? Do you actually shift any stuff?’
‘I do all right…’ Cornelius had started off by disliking the look of the young man. As well as the irritating goatee beard, Ronni was short and, oddly enough, one of his prominent ears, the right one, projected at a much more dramatic angle from his head than the other. In a remarkably short time, Ronni had succeeded in cultivating Cornelius’s initial vague dislike into a blossoming, fire-red hatred.
‘I guess it’s mostly oldies who buy your stuff… not that there’s anything wrong in that. My dad was a big fan of yours. All that nineteen sixties protest stuff.’ Cornelius had spent hours working on his presentation document, setting out why he felt that a CD of his greatest hits would sell not only to his traditional fan base but to a new generation of disaffected youth. The document lay on the desk in front of Ronni. Unopened.
‘There’s a lot of your generation of singer-songwriters out there. I’m afraid that they just don’t sell any more. Those who do make a mark are the ones that have tried to come up with new material that’s relevant today – like Reinhard Mey. But, to be honest, people don’t want politics in their music these days.’ Ronni shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’m sorry, Cornelius, I just don’t think that we belong together… I mean our label and your style.’
Cornelius watched Ronni smile and felt his hate bloom even more. It was not just that Ronni’s smile was perfunctory and insincere, it was that he had meant Cornelius to notice that it was perfunctory and insincere. He picked up his proposal document and smiled back.
‘Well, Ronni, I’m disappointed.’ He walked to the door without shaking hands. ‘After all, it’s clear you have a good ear for music. The right one, that is…’
10.30 a.m.: University Clinical Complex, Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg
It was clear that Professor von Halen considered he should be present throughout the interview, like a responsible adult being present while two children were questioned by police. It was only after Fabel asked if he could talk alone to Alois Kahlberg and Elisabeth Marksen, the two scientists who had worked with Gunter Griebel, that he reluctantly surrendered his office to Fabel.
Both scientists were younger than Griebel had been and it became evident during Fabel’s questioning that they held their deceased colleague in great esteem. Awe, almost. Alois Kahlberg was in his mid-forties: a small birdlike man who habitually tilted his head back to adjust the angle of his vision, rather than pushing his unfashionably large and thick-lensed spectacles back up to the bridge of his nose. Elisabeth Marksen was a good ten years younger and was an unattractive, exceptionally tall woman with a perpetually flushed complexion.
Fabel questioned them about their dead colleague’s habits, his personality, his personal life: all that was revealed was Griebel’s two-dimensionality. No matter how much light was focused on him, no shadows formed, no sense of depth or texture emerged. Griebel simply had never had a conversation with Marksen or Kahlberg that was not either work-related or the smallest of small talk.
‘What about his wife?’ Fabel asked.
‘She died about six years ago. Cancer,’ answered Elisabeth Marksen. ‘She was a teacher, I think. He never talked about her. I met her once, about a year before she died, at a function. She was quiet, like him… didn’t seem very comfortable in a social context. It was one of these company functions that we are all more or less compelled to attend, and Griebel and his wife spent most of the time in a corner talking to each other.’
‘Did her death have a big impact on him? Was there anything about his behaviour that changed significantly? Or was he particularly depressed?’
‘It was always difficult to tell with Dr Griebel. Nothing showed much on the surface. I do know that he visited her grave every week. She’s buried somewhere over near Lurup, where her family came from. Either in the Altonaer Volkspark Hauptfriedhof or in Flottbeker Friedhof.’
‘There were no kids?’
‘None that he ever mentioned.’
Fabel looked around von Halen’s expensive office. In one of the glass-fronted cabinets he could see a pile of glossy brochures, which he guessed were used to sell the facility to investors and commercial partners.
‘What exactly was the type of research Dr Griebel was engaged in?’ he asked. ‘Professor von Halen mentioned it but I didn’t really understand.’
‘Epigenetics.’ Kahlberg answered from behind his thick lenses. ‘It is a new and highly specialised field of genetics. It deals with how genes turn themselves on and off, and how that affects health and longevity.’
‘Someone said something about genetic memory. What is that?’
‘Ah…’ Kahlberg became what Fabel guessed was the closest he could ever get to being animated. ‘That is the very newest area of epigenetic research. It’s quite simple, really. There is increasing evidence that we can fall victim to diseases and conditions that we shouldn’t… that really belong to our ancestors.’
‘I’m afraid it doesn’t sound quite simple to me.’
‘Okay, let me put it this way… There are basically two causes of illness: there are those conditions we are genetically predisposed to – that we have a congenital tendency towards. Then there are environmental causes of illness: smoking, pollution, diet, et cetera… These were always seen as quite different, but recent research has proved that we can actually inherit environmentally caused conditions.’