Sometimes she felt like screaming in the faces of her clients that it was all a sham, a fraud; that there was nothing to uncover other than their own inadequacies and failure to come to terms with the fact that this world, here and now, was all there was to life. It always amused Beate that, in uncovering their past lives, most of her clientele displayed the same lack of chronological and technical accuracy as the average historical-romance novelist. Many clients were middle-aged women who fulfilled some fantasy by remembering a past life as a beautiful courtesan, a voluptuous village maid or a fairy-tale princess. Few ‘past lives’ involved the plagues, diseases, famines and extreme poverty that had been commonplace throughout history.
But this young man was different. He had approached the whole process with earnestness. From the very beginning he had spoken with conviction about his need to visit a previous life. It was as if he were seeking some form of truth. A real past. A real life.
The one thing that Beate could not deliver.
‘Can you see anything yet?’ she asked.
The young man furrowed his broad, pale brow in concentration. Beate had noticed how attractive he was from their first meeting. And she had had the strangest feeling that she had known him from somewhere. At one time, she could have had him. At one time, she could have had any man. Any thing. The world had rolled itself out before her, wide and fresh and clean, waiting for Beate’s footfall. Then it had all turned to dust.
‘I see something,’ he said hesitantly. ‘Yes, I see something. A place. I am standing in front of a large building and I am waiting for something or someone.’
‘Is this in this lifetime, or a time before?’
‘Before. It was before.’
‘Describe the building.’
‘It is large. Three storeys high. It has a wide front with several doors. I am standing outside it.’ The young man kept his eyes closed, but suddenly there was a great urgency in his voice. ‘I see it. I see it all so clearly.’
‘What do you see?’ Beate glanced again at the wall clock. If he had seen into a previous life, then it had better be a short one or he would be paying for an extra hour.
‘Two lives. Three lives, counting this one. It is all so clear to me and I see each one as if I were remembering yesterday.’
‘Three lives, you say?’
‘Three lives, but one life. A continuum. Death was not the end: it was merely a brief interruption. A pause.’
That, thought Beate, I have got to remember. ‘A continuum with death as a brief interruption.’ Brilliant. I can use that. ‘Go on,’ she urged her young client. ‘Tell me about your first life. Is that when you stood outside this large building?’
‘No… no, that was the second time. That was the time before.’
‘Tell me about your first life. Where are you? Who are you?’ Beate struggled to keep the impatience from her voice.
‘It’s not important. My first life was simply preparation… I was being readied.’
‘When was this?’
‘A millennium ago. Longer. I was sacrificed and laid in the bog. Under the muddy water. Then they laid hazel and birch branches over me and weighted them with stones. It was so cold. So dark. Ten hundred years in the dark and cold. Then I was reborn.’
‘As whom were you reborn?’
‘Someone…’ The client’s frown deepened. ‘Someone… you knew.’
‘ I knew you?’ Beate looked down on her client and studied the face. His eyes remained closed. For some reason his claim had disturbed her. It was all nonsense, of course, but she thought back again to their first session. To begin with she had thought she recognised him, that she knew him from somewhere. But then she realised that he merely reminded her of someone else, someone whom, at that time, she could not quite identify.
‘I am there now. The building. I can see it clearly…’ The young man ignored her question. He opened his eyes and looked up towards the ceiling, but his gaze was fixed on somewhere, sometime else. ‘It’s a railway station. I can see that now. I am standing at a railway station. It is a small station but the building behind me is large and old. In front of me, beyond the opposite platform, the land is empty and flat. There is a wide river…’
He fell silent for a moment and an expression of intense concentration spread across his features. Then he shook his head.
‘Sorry…’ He looked at her directly for the first time since the session began. He smiled apologetically. ‘It’s gone.’
‘You said you knew me in this previous life.’
Her client spun his legs around and sat up on the edge of the therapy bench. ‘I dunno… it was just a feeling I got. I can’t explain it or anything.’
Beate considered his words for a moment. Then she looked at her watch. The hour was up.
‘Well, maybe we can pick up where we left off with our next session.’ She checked her diary and confirmed the date and time. Her client rose and put on his jacket. ‘I think the session has done you good this week,’ she said. ‘You look more relaxed than you have since you first started to come here.’
‘I am more relaxed.’ He smiled as he walked to the door. ‘I feel as if I’m approaching a very special, very peaceful state of mind. The Japanese have a name for it…’
‘Oh?’ Beate held open the door for him. Her noon appointment would be there at any moment.
‘Yes,’ he said as he left. ‘They call it zanshin.’
12.40 p.m.: Winterhuder Fahrhaus, Hamburg
The cafe at the Winterhude ferry point was reasonably close to the Police Presidium. Fabel often used it as somewhere he could gather his team to discuss a case less formally: a change of scene, away from the Murder Commission. When Markus Ullrich had called Fabel that morning, Fabel had suggested that they should meet at the Fahrhaus cafe.
Fabel arrived early and ordered a coffee from the waiter who knew him as a regular customer but had no idea that he was a murder detective. Fabel liked the fact that most people would never think of him as a policeman, and he never volunteered the information freely. It was as if he had two identities. Two separate lives occupying two separate Hamburgs: the city he lived in and loved, and the city he policed. He often wondered if, even after all this time, he belonged in the profession. He was good at his job, he knew that, but each new case, each new cruelty inflicted on one human being by another, chipped away at him. Not for the first time, Fabel was lost in thought about what might have been, who he might have been, had he not taken the decision to join the Polizei Hamburg. And all the time he was aware of Roland Bartz’s business card in his wallet: a ticket back to a normal life.
He snapped out of his reverie when he spotted the squat form of Ullrich coming down the steps to the cafe. The BKA man was dressed in a dark business suit with a dark shirt and tie and carried a small executive attache case. He could have been coming to sell Fabel insurance. Fabel thought back to his meeting with Professor van Halen, the business-suited geneticist: it seemed as though the whole world was becoming ‘corporate’.
‘Thanks for doing this,’ he said as he shook Ullrich’s hand. ‘I just thought there was an off chance that you might have something on file about either or both of the murder victims, given their backgrounds.’
The two men sat down and further conversation was suspended while the waiter came over and took their orders.
‘I’ve some interesting stuff for you, Herr Fabel.’ Ullrich held the attache case across his lap and patted it, as if hinting at treasures hidden within. Then, very deliberately, he set the case down on the floor beside him in a clear ‘for later’ gesture. ‘We have quite a bit to discuss, but before we do I just wanted to clear the air about the situation with Maria Klee… I hope you didn’t think that I was being too hard on her. But she did compromise a major operation.’
‘I would have much preferred it if you had discussed the matter with me first, instead of going directly to Criminal Director van Heiden.’