Fabel let it go. ‘Did you show the photograph to Schuler?’
‘Yep,’ said Anna. ‘Inconclusive, I would say. Schuler says that it could be the same guy – the colouring is the same and, roughly, so is the build. But he didn’t get a close enough look at Hauser’s guest to make a positive identification. Nevertheless, I think we should pay Herr Lang another visit. I’d like to have another look at that alibi.’
‘This time,’ said Fabel, ‘I think I’ll come along too.’
10.35 p.m.: Eimsbuttel, Hamburg
It was after ten-thirty by the time Fabel, Anna and Henk knocked on the door of Sebastian Lang’s apartment. Lang lived on the second storey of an impressive building in Ottersbekallee, only a few minutes from Hans-Joachim Hauser’s Schanzenviertel apartment. Fabel had never met Lang before: he was a tall man in his early thirties, very slim, with a pale complexion, pale blue eyes and dark hair. His appearance certainly fitted the rough description of the man Schuler had seen in Hauser’s apartment. Lang’s face was perfectly proportioned, yet instead of making him handsome the perfection of his features seemed to feminise him. A ‘pretty’ boy was how Maria had described him. The other thing that was remarkable about Lang’s face was its lack of expression, and when he stood to one side with a sigh to allow the officers to enter there was nothing in the mask of his face to reveal the extent of his annoyance.
He directed Fabel, Anna and Henk into the lounge. Like its occupier, the flat was immaculately presented, with not a thing out of place. It was as if Lang made the minimum possible impact on his living environment. He had clearly been reading when Fabel and the others arrived and he had set the book down, neatly, on the coffee table. Fabel picked it up. It was some kind of political history of post-war Germany, open at a chapter on German domestic terrorism in the 1970s and 1980s.
‘You a student of history, Herr Lang?’ asked Fabel.
Lang took the book from Fabel’s hands and closed it, placing it back into the space it had left in Lang’s tidily arranged bookshelf.
‘It’s late, Herr Chief Commissar, and I don’t really appreciate being pestered at home,’ Lang said. ‘Would you please tell me what this is all about?’
‘Certainly, Herr Lang. And I do apologise for disturbing you in the evening, but I assumed you’d be only too willing to answer any questions that might take us closer to understanding what happened to Herr Hauser.’
Another sigh. ‘You’re trying my patience, Herr Fabel. Of course I want to help catch Hans-Joachim’s killer. But when the police turn up mob-handed at my door after ten in the evening, I assume that there is more to their visit than just checking a few facts.’
‘True…’ said Fabel. ‘A witness has come forward. He saw someone in Herr Hauser’s apartment on the night of his murder. Someone who fits your description.’
‘But that’s impossible.’ Still the protesting tone in Lang’s voice did not translate into any animation of his features. ‘Or, at least, it is possible that someone like me was there. But it was not me.’
‘Well,’ said Anna, ‘that is something we have yet to establish.’
‘For God’s sake, I gave you full details of where I was that night
…’ Lang walked over to a bureau by the door and opened a drawer. He turned back to the officers with something in each hand. ‘Here is my ticket stub for the exhibition I attended. See, it’s dated for that Thursday. And here…’ He gave the stub to Fabel. In his other hand was a pen and notebook. ‘Here are the names and telephone numbers again of the people who can and will confirm that they were with me that night.’
‘You came home about one, one-fifteen in the morning, you say?’ Fabel passed the stub to Anna.
‘Yes.’ Lang folded his arms defiantly, ‘We – I mean my friends and I – went for a meal afterwards. I’ve already given her’ – he nodded in Anna’s direction – ‘the name of the restaurant and the waiter who served us. We left the restaurant about a quarter to one.’
‘And you came home alone?’
‘Yes. Alone, Herr Fabel. So I can’t provide an alibi after that.’
‘That may be immaterial, Herr Lang,’ said Fabel. ‘All the indications are that Herr Hauser died between ten and midnight.’
Fabel thought he detected something disturb Lang’s impassive expression, as if pinning a time to Hauser’s ordeal and death had made it more real.
‘Your relationship with Herr Hauser was not exclusive?’ asked Anna.
‘No. Not on Hans-Joachim’s side, anyway.’
‘Do you know of anyone else he might have been involved with?’
For a moment Lang looked confused. ‘What do you mean involved? Oh
… oh, I see. No. Hans-Joachim had countless flings, but there was no one… well, I was his only companion.’
‘What did you think we meant when we asked you if he was involved with anyone else?’ asked Fabel.
‘Nothing, really. I just wasn’t sure if you meant privately or professionally. Or politically in Hans-Joachim’s case. It’s just that he was very, well, strange about his associations. He got a bit drunk one night and lectured me about not getting involved with the wrong group of people. About making the wrong choices.’
Fabel looked across to where Lang had replaced the book on the shelf. ‘Did Herr Hauser ever discuss the past with you? I mean his days as an activist, that kind of thing?’
‘Endlessly,’ Lang said wearily. ‘He would rant on about how his generation had saved Germany. How their actions back then shaped the society we live in now. He seemed to think that my generation, as he would put it, was screwing the whole thing up.’
‘But did he ever say anything about his activities? Or his associates?’
‘Oddly enough, no. The only person he tended to go on about was Bertholdt Muller-Voigt. You know, the Environment Senator. Hans-Joachim hated him with a vengeance. He used to say that Muller-Voigt believed that he could be Chancellor one day, and that was what all this “Lady Macbeth” crap with First Mayor Schreiber’s wife was all about. Hans-Joachim said that Muller-Voigt and Hans Schreiber were cut from the same cloth. Shameless opportunists. He had known them both at university and had despised them even then – particularly Muller-Voigt.’
‘Did he ever discuss the allegations made against Muller-Voigt in the press by Ingrid Fischmann – all that stuff about the Wiedler kidnapping?’
‘No. Not with me, anyway.’
‘Did Herr Hauser have any contact with Muller-Voigt? Recently, I mean.’
Lang shrugged. ‘Not that I know of. I would have thought that Hans-Joachim would have gone out of his way to avoid him.’
Fabel nodded. He took a moment to process what Lang had told him. It did not add up to much. ‘You are probably aware that another man was killed in the same way, within twenty-four hours of Herr Hauser’s death. The man’s name was Dr Gunter Griebel. Does that name mean anything to you? Did Herr Hauser ever discuss a Dr Griebel?’
Lang shook his delicately sculpted head. ‘No. I can’t say that I ever heard him mention him.’
‘We spoke to the staff at The Firehouse,’ said Anna. ‘They told us that Herr Hauser was sometimes seen drinking and talking with an older man, about the same age as him. Would you have any idea who it might have been?’
‘Sorry. I wouldn’t,’ said Lang. ‘Listen, I’m not being obstructive or awkward or anything. It’s just that Hans-Joachim only included me in his life when it suited him. There’s practically nothing you could tell me about him that would surprise me. He was a very, very secretive man… despite all his publicity-seeking. Sometimes I think that Hans-Joachim was hiding in plain sight – concealing himself behind his public persona. It was like there was something deep down inside that he didn’t want anyone to see.’
Fabel considered Lang’s words. What he had said about Hauser was true of Griebel, but in a different way.
‘We’re all like that,’ said Fabel. ‘To one degree or another.’
In the car on the way back to the Presidium, Fabel discussed Lang with his two junior officers.