‘Thanks for taking so much time to talk to me,’ said Fabel. He shook hands with Fischmann. ‘It really has been most useful.’
‘I’m glad. I will send you that information when I can find it. It might be a day or two,’ she said, smiling. ‘Wait a minute and I’ll come down with you. I have to get into town.’
‘Can I give you a lift?’
‘No, thanks,’ she said. ‘I have a few stops to make on the way.’ She perched a pair of glasses on the tip of her nose and searched through her large shoulder bag, eventually pulling out a small black notebook. ‘Sorry… I have this new security alarm. I have to put the code in when I leave and I’m damned if I can ever remember it.’
They paused at the door while Fischmann slowly typed the code into the alarm control panel, checking each number in the black notebook.
Out on the street, Fabel said goodbye to Ingrid Fischmann and watched her receding back as she headed down the street. A young German woman who spent her life investigating the generation before her. A seeker after Truth. Fabel remembered young Frank Grueber’s reason for becoming a forensic specialist: Truth is the debt we owe to the dead.
It could, thought Fabel, almost be Germany’s national motto.
7.30 p.m.: Speicherstadt, Hamburg
Fabel had got back to the Presidium before five. He had hastily called together a meeting in the Murder Commission and had briefed his team on what he had found out over the course of the day. It was beginning to look like these killings were not random serial murders but that the motive lay in the political histories of the victims.
Anna and Henk had gone over what they had found out, or not found out, at The Firehouse. It looked less and less likely that the killings were linked to Hauser’s sexuality, and Anna had the feeling that the older guy whom Hauser had met at The Firehouse perhaps had more to do with his political past than with his sexual preferences.
‘Maybe it was Paul Scheibe,’ Werner suggested.
‘Then we’ll find out tonight,’ Fabel said. ‘I want you – Anna, Henk, Werner and Maria – to come with me to this launch event. I want us to have a good look around the guests, and I need to have a long chat with Scheibe.’
Fabel had gone home and had eaten, showered and changed before meeting up with the team down at the Speicherstadt. Anna and Henk had arrived first and had spoken to Scheibe’s team.
‘The shit’s hitting the fan,’ Anna told Fabel. ‘It looks like we’ve got a no-show. No one has seen Scheibe. And this is his big night. His staff are getting very agitated because Scheibe has been very insistent that he should be the only one to reveal the concept model. Apparently he has been finishing it off himself and although the Senate have seen the concept, this is the big unveiling for everyone else… he’s supposed to have added a few touches that no one knows about until tonight.’
‘So what are Scheibe’s team going to do?’
‘At the moment they’re going up the wall. They’ve got all Hamburg’s great and good assembled in there, and no star to launch the show.’
‘Has he done this kind of thing before?’
‘Not with something as important as this… But Paulsen has been increasingly worried about him recently. It’s like Scheibe’s been stressed out about something, which apparently is rare for him. Drinking, yes, arrogance and inflated self-belief, yes… but Scheibe is definitely not someone who is prone to stress.’
‘Which would suggest that something new has been added to the mix recently,’ said Werner.
‘Or something old…’ said Fabel. ‘Okay – let’s go mingle.’
Fabel led his team into the hall, showing their oval Kriminalpolizei shields to the disgruntled door staff. The hall was filled with well-heeled, well-groomed people who gathered in small scattered groups, chatting and laughing while uniformed waiting staff kept their Pinot Grigio topped up.
Fabel, Maria and Werner headed over to the far side of the hall; Fabel told Anna and Henk to stay by the door and keep an eye out for any sign of Scheibe arriving. As he made his way through the crowd, Fabel noticed Muller-Voigt holding court with a particularly large cluster. Fabel caught the Environment Senator’s eye and nodded, but Muller-Voigt merely frowned as if confused by Fabel’s presence.
The house lights dimmed, and Fabel watched as there was a flurry of activity over by the illuminated platform, where a white canopy concealed Paul Scheibe’s vision of the future from the expectant and increasingly agitated audience. Paulsen, Scheibe’s deputy, was in animated discussion with two other members of the architect’s team.
After a pause, Paulsen awkwardly took centre stage at the podium in front of the display. For a moment he looked apprehensively at the microphone.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for your patience. Unfortunately, Herr Scheibe has been unexpectedly and unavoidably detained by a family emergency. Obviously, he is doing his best to get here as soon as he possibly can. However, the power and innovation of Paul Scheibe’s work speaks for itself. Herr Scheibe’s vision for the future of HafenCity and for the state of Hamburg itself is a bold and striking concept that reflects the ambition of our great city.’
Paulsen paused. He looked across to the side of the hall, where a woman whom Fabel took to be another member of the Scheibe team had just entered. The woman gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head and Paulsen turned back to the audience with a weak and resigned smile.
‘Okay… I think that… em… it would be best if we were simply to proceed with the presentation… Ladies and gentlemen, it is my great pleasure, on behalf of the Architekturburo Scheibe, to unveil Herr Scheibe’s creatively unique and daring new aesthetic for the HafenCity’s Uberseequartier. I give you KulturZentrumEins…’
Paulsen stood to one side and the pristine white canvas canopy began to rise. The audience began to applaud, but with muted enthusiasm, as the vast architectural model was revealed.
The applause died.
As the canvas covering disappeared up and out of the spotlight, a silence fell across the hall. A silence that seemed to freeze the moment. Fabel knew what he was seeing, yet his brain refused to process the information. The rest of the audience were similarly trapped in that fossilised moment as they too sought to grasp the impossibility of what they were looking at.
The spotlights, one red, one blue and the main white light, had been carefully sited to pick out every edge, every angle of the vast white architectural modeclass="underline" to dramatise, to emphasise. But the creativity they illuminated with such stark drama and emphasis was not Paul Scheibe’s.
The screaming began.
It spread from person to person like a white-hot flame. Shrill and penetrating. Through it, Fabel could hear Anna Wolff cursing. Several people, particularly those nearest the display, vomited.
The landscape in miniature lay under the lights. But the centrepiece, KulturZentrumEins, was itself not visible. Paul Scheibe’s naked body had crushed it beneath its weight. It was as if some vast, hideous god had been cast out from the heavens and had smashed into the Earth in the HafenCity. Scheibe sat, semi-recumbent, among the shattered elements of his vision. His naked flesh gleamed blue-white in the spotlights and his blood glistened bright red on the model. Whoever had placed the corpse here had used part of the display to prop it up, and Scheibe gazed out at his audience.
His scalp had been removed. It lay at his feet, spread out and dyed, like those of the other victims, unnaturally red. The gore-streaked dome of his skull glistened under the lights. His throat had been slashed.