‘Of course: Norbert Schmid, in nineteen seventy-one. He was only thirty-three.’
‘Followed by the May nineteen seventy-two gun battle between the Polizei Hamburg and the Red Army Faction in which Chief Commissar Hans Eckhardt was wounded and later died.’
‘Yes, I know about that, too.’
‘And then, of course, there was the shoot-out between Hamburg police officers and members of the breakaway gang, the Radical Action Group, following a botched bank raid in nineteen eighty-six. One policeman was killed and another very seriously wounded. The wounded officer was lucky to survive. He shot and killed Gisela Frohm, one of the terrorists. As soon as you said your name, I knew who you were, Herr Fabel. Your name came up in my research into Hendrik Svensson and the Radical Action Group. It was you who shot and killed Gisela Frohm, wasn’t it?’
‘Unfortunately it was. I had no choice.’
‘I know that, Herr Fabel. When I heard it was you who was investigating Hauser’s murder, I felt there was a story in it for me, as I have already admitted.’
‘These killings may have nothing to do with your research. It’s just that the two victims, Hauser and Griebel, were contemporaries and formerly involved, to differing degrees, with radical politics. I’ve looked into their backgrounds and can find no direct link between them. But their histories tend to be populated by the same figures. One of those figures is Bertholdt Muller-Voigt, Hamburg’s Environment Senator. I understand you have been researching Muller-Voigt’s history as an activist.’
‘His history as a terrorist.’ There was a bitterness in Fischmann’s voice. ‘Muller-Voigt has political ambitions that extend far beyond the Hamburg Senate. Big ambitions. He has already declared war on the person who was his closest political ally, First Mayor Hans Schreiber, simply because he sees Schreiber as a potential rival further down the road – a road that Muller-Voigt hopes will lead to Berlin. His ambition offends me because I have absolutely no doubt that he was the driver of the vehicle in which the industrialist Thorsten Wiedler was kidnapped and later murdered.’
‘I know of your claims about Senator Muller-Voigt. I also know that Hans Schreiber’s wife has been quoting you. But do you have proof?’
‘As for Frau Schreiber… I find her husband’s political ambitions only slightly less nauseating than Muller-Voigt’s. She is using me for her own ends, but she is generating a level of public awareness that I could not have achieved alone. But to answer your question… No, I have no proof that will stand up in court. But I’m working on it. I’m sure you’ll know how difficult it is to work on an old case where the trail has long been cold.’
‘That I do.’ Fabel smiled bitterly. He thought of the many cold cases he had reopened during his career. He also thought about his neglected quest to find the family of the teenager who had lain in the dry sand of the harbour for sixty years.
‘Everything else I have done in my career up until now, all of those whose political past I have exposed… it’s all been a preparation for destroying Muller-Voigt’s career and hopefully getting him before a court for his crimes. Something we can perhaps work together to achieve, Herr Chief Commissar.’
‘But why Muller-Voigt? Why have you singled him out?’
There was a cold, bitter determination in Ingrid Fischmann’s expression. She opened a desk drawer, took two photographs from it and handed them to Fabel. The first was of a large black Mercedes limousine of a model that dated back to the 1970s. It was parked outside a large office building and a black-uniformed chauffeur was holding the rear door open for a middle-aged man with thick black-rimmed spectacles.
‘Thorsten Wiedler?’ asked Fabel.
Fischmann nodded. ‘And his chauffeur.’
The second photograph was of the same car, but closer up and parked on a gravel drive. Fabel saw the same chauffeur, but this time without his cap or jacket. The Mercedes gleamed in the sunlight and a bucket and cloth sat next to the front wheel arch. Fabel looked at the photograph and understood everything. The chauffeur was taking a break from cleaning the car and had squatted down on his heels next to a small girl of about six or seven. His daughter.
‘And again,’ said Ingrid Fischmann, ‘Herr Wiedler’s chauffeur. Ralf Fischmann.’
‘I see,’ said Fabel. He handed the photographs back. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Thorsten Wiedler’s death made the headlines. My father was left paralysed by the attack and was worth nothing more than a passing mention. He died from his injuries, Herr Fabel, but it took more than five years. It was an experience that also destroyed my mother. I grew up in a home that knew no joy. All because a bunch of middle-class kids with half-baked borrowed ideas felt justified to destroy any life that happened to be on the fringes when they carried out one of their so-called missions.’
‘I understand. And I really am sorry. You are totally convinced that Muller-Voigt was involved?’
‘Yes. The group that carried out the attack was not the Red Army Faction. It was one of the many splinter gangs that cropped up at that time. The one thing that differentiated them from the rest was their more poetic choice of name. Everyone else was obsessed by initials – by the way, did you know that one of the reasons why the Red Army Faction chose that name was because it shared the initials RAF with the Royal Air Force? A sick joke, you see. The Royal Air Force bombed Nazism out of Germany. The new RAF saw it as their role to bomb and murder fascism and capitalism out of the West German state. And of course you had direct contact with the RAG gang set up by Svensson. But this bunch had a much more esoteric turn of mind. They called themselves “The Risen”. Their leader was Franz Muhlhaus, also known as Red Franz.’
Fabel felt a jolt of recognition. The other Red Franz. The object of a very special terror. Red Franz Muhlhaus and his group had been seen as on the extreme fringe of the extreme Left. Fabel thought back to the image he had seen in Severts’s office of the original Red Franz, the mummified bog body that had slept for centuries in the cold, dark peat bog near Neu Versen.
‘Muhlhaus and his group were difficult to classify,’ Ingrid Fischmann continued. ‘They were even viewed with mistrust by the other groups on the extreme anarchistic Left. One could argue that they were in fact not on the Left at all. They were a manifestation of environmental radicalism which very often went hand in hand with leftist groups. But Red Franz and his Risen were not considered to be making a serious contribution to the movement.’
‘Why?’
Ingrid Fischmann pursed her lips. ‘Many reasons. They didn’t have a clearly Marxist agenda. Of course, there were other groups who were not clearly Marxist who were more clearly allied or aligned with Baader-Meinhof, like the West Berlin-based Second of June Movement, which was more anarchist in philosophy. The Risen was not expressly associated with Baader-Meinhof and their focus was environmental. There were, at that time, two areas of common ground for Marxists, anarchists and eco-militants… the anti-nuclear protests of the nineteen sixties onwards. And, of course, Vietnam.’
‘But there still was some doubt about how much common ground was shared with The Risen?’ asked Fabel.
‘Exactly. Like the other groups, they targeted industrialists. But not specifically because they were capitalists – more because of the perceived damage their businesses did to the environment. Same targets, different rationale… in a way, The Risen did not travel the same path as the RAF and other leftist groups, more a coincidentally parallel path. A good example is the kidnap and subsequent murder by Baader-Meinhof-RAF of Hanns-Martin Schleyer in October of nineteen seventy-seven and that of Thorsten Wiedler by The Risen in early November. Both part of the so-called German Autumn of nineteen seventy-seven. The difference is that Schleyer was picked out as a target because first, he had been a former Nazi and an SS Hauptsturmbannfuhrer in Czechoslovakia during the war and second, he was a wealthy industrialist, board member of Daimler-Benz and leader of the West German employers’ federation, with strong political connections with the ruling CDU party. And, of course, the background to Schleyer’s six-week-long kidnap and eventual murder was the whole Mogadishu hijack and the suicides of Raspe, Baader and Ensslin in Stammheim prison.