He took the lift down to the Police Presidium’s canteen and placed a filled roll and a coffee on his tray. The canteen was all but empty and he headed over towards the window to take a seat. It was then that he noticed Maria sitting with Turchenko. The Ukrainian detective was leaning back in his chair, looking down at the coffee that sat on the table in front of him, and seemed to be in the middle of a detailed explanation of something. Maria was concentrating on the Ukrainian’s words. There was something about the set-up that Fabel did not like.
‘Do you mind if I join you?’ he asked.
Turchenko looked up and smiled broadly. ‘Not at all, Herr Chief Commissar. Be my guest.’
Maria also smiled, but her expression suggested that she was irritated by the interruption.
‘You speak excellent German, Herr Turchenko,’ said Fabel.
‘I studied it at university. Along with law. I spent some time in the former East Germany as a student. I have always had a fascination for Germany. Which made me the obvious choice to send here to try to track down Vitrenko.’
‘Do you have a special-forces background too?’ asked Fabel.
Turchenko laughed. ‘God, no… in fact, I have not been a police officer that long. I was a criminal and civil lawyer in Lviv. After the Orange Revolution, in which I had been active, I became a criminal prosecutor and was then approached by the new government. They asked me if I would oversee the setting up of a new organised-crime unit to deal with people-smuggling and forced prostitution. Basically, my job is to stop what has become the new slave trade. I was chosen because I am free from the taint of the old regime.’
‘Things are changing in Ukraine, I believe.’
Turchenko smiled. ‘Ukraine is a beautiful country, Herr Fabel. One of the most beautiful in Europe. People here have no idea. It is also a country laden with almost every type of natural bounty – an incredibly fertile land that was the bread basket of the former USSR. It is also rich in every kind of mineral and it has enormous potential for tourism. I love my country and I have a great belief in what it can become. And what I believe it will become is one of the richest and most successful nations in Europe. It will take more than a generation to achieve, of course, but it will happen. And the first steps have been taken – democracy and liberalisation. But there are problems. Ukraine is divided. In western Ukraine, we look to the West for our future. But in eastern Ukraine, there are still those who believe we belong in some kind of unity with Russia.’ Turchenko paused. ‘You Germans should be able to understand this. Your country has been reborn many times, and sometimes the incarnation has not been a good one. This is our rebirth in Ukraine. Our country is beginning a new life. A life that we took to the streets to create. And people like Vasyl Vitrenko have no part in it.’
‘Vitrenko is extremely dangerous game to hunt,’ said Fabel. ‘You will have to take a lot of care.’
‘I am a naturally cautious man. And I have your police here to protect me.’ Turchenko made an open-armed gesture, as if embracing the entire Presidium. ‘I have a GSG9 bodyguard with me all the time.’ He gave a small laugh and tapped his temple with his forefinger. ‘I am no man of action. I am a man of thought. I believe that the way to find and capture this monster is to out-think him.’
Fabel smiled. He liked the small Ukrainian: he was a man who clearly believed in all that he had said. Who had an enthusiasm for what he did for a career. Fabel found himself envying him.
‘I wish you luck,’ he said.
3.40 p.m.: Hohenfelde, Hamburg
‘How did it go?’ Julia frowned as she spoke. Cornelius Tamm resented the fact that her frown created so few creases on her brow, as if her youth refused to yield to her concern. It seemed to Cornelius that he was surrounded by youth. It mocked him wherever he went.
‘It didn’t.’ Cornelius threw his keys onto the table and took off his jacket.
Julia was thirty-two; Cornelius exactly thirty years her senior. He had left his wife for Julia three years before, on the eve of his fifty-ninth birthday. His marriage had been almost as old as the woman he had ended it for and Julia was nearer to his children’s age than to his own. At the time, Cornelius had felt that he was regaining a sense of youth, of vigour. Now he just felt tired all the time: tired and old. He sat down at the table.
‘What did he say?’ Julia poured him a cup of coffee and sat down opposite him.
‘He said my time is past. Basically.’ Cornelius gazed at Julia as if trying to work out what she was doing in his kitchen, his apartment. His life. ‘And he’s right, you know. The world has moved on. And somewhere along the way it left me behind.’ He pushed the coffee aside. He took out a tumbler and a bottle of Scotch from a kitchen cabinet and poured himself a large glass.
‘That doesn’t help, you know,’ said Julia.
‘It may not cure the disease.’ He took a substantial sip and screwed up his face. ‘But it sure as hell helps the symptoms. It anaesthetises.’
‘Don’t worry.’ Julia’s comforting smile only irritated Cornelius further. ‘You’ll get a deal soon. You’ll see. By the way, someone phoned for you while you were out. About fifteen minutes ago.’
‘Who?’
‘They wouldn’t leave a name at first. Then he said to tell you that it was Paul and that he would phone you later.’
‘Paul?’ Cornelius frowned as he tried to think which Paul it could be, then dismissed it with a shrug. ‘I’m going to my study. And I’m taking my anaesthetic with me.’
It was another name that caught his attention. As he stood up, he noticed the copy of the Hamburger Morgenpost on the table. Cornelius put his drink down and picked up the paper. He stared at it long and hard.
‘What is it?’ asked Julia. ‘What’s wrong?’
Cornelius didn’t answer her and stayed focused on the article. It named someone who had died. Been murdered. But the name was one that had already been dead to Cornelius for twenty years. It was the report of the death of a ghost.
‘Nothing,’ he said and put the paper down. ‘Nothing at all.’
It was then that he worked out who Paul was.
7.40 p.m.: Nordenham Railway Station, 145 Kilometres West of Hamburg
It was a beautiful evening. The embers of the sun hung low in the sky behind Nordenham and the Weser sparkled quietly as it made its way towards the North Sea. Paul Scheibe had never set foot in Nordenham before, which was an irony when he considered how this small provincial town had cast a giant shadow over his life.
For a moment, Scheibe became again purely the architect as he gazed at Nordenham railway station. Architecturally, it was not really his kind of thing: but it was, nevertheless, a striking building, albeit in the solid, sometimes austere, traditional North German style. He remembered reading that it was over one hundred years old and was now an officially protected building.
Here.
It had happened here. On this platform. This was the stage on which the most important drama in his life had been played out and he had not even been here. Nor had the others. Six people, a hundred and fifty kilometres away, had made a decision to sacrifice a human being on this platform. One life brought to an end, six lives free to begin again. But it had not just been one life that had been lost in this place. Piet had also died here. As had Michaela and a policeman. But Paul Scheibe had never found he could feel guilty about those lost lives – everything else had been eclipsed by the intense feeling of relief, of liberation, that had come from knowing it was all over. But it was not over. Something – some one – had returned from that dark time.
Work it out, he kept telling himself. Work it out. Who was killing the members of the group? It had to have something to do with this place and what had happened here. But who was behind it? Could it be one of the remaining four members of the group? Scheibe found that almost impossible to imagine: there was simply nothing to gain, and there were no grudges, no old scores to be settled. Just a desire to have nothing to do with each other.