‘Excuse me a moment,’ he said and headed across to the male toilets. He splashed water on his face, but still did not feel any cooler or cleaner. The nausea hit him so fast that he only just made it into the cubicle before he vomited. His stomach emptied and he continued to retch, his gut clenching in spasms. The nausea passed and he returned to the basin and rinsed his mouth out with cold water. He splashed his face again; this time it made him feel a little fresher. He was aware of Werner’s massive bulk behind him.
‘You okay, Jan?’
Fabel took some paper towels and dried his face, examining himself in the mirror. He looked tired. Old. A little scared.
‘I’m fine.’ He straightened himself up and threw the towels into the wastebasket. ‘Honestly. It’s been a pretty full day. And night.’
‘We’ll get him, Jan. Don’t worry. He’s not going to get away with-’
The ringing of Fabel’s cellphone cut Werner off.
‘Hello, Chef…’ Fabel could tell from the tone, from the faint tremulousness in Anna Wolff’s voice, what she was about to say. ‘I was right, Chef, it was him. The bastard’s killed Schuler.’
3.00 p.m.: Osdorf, Hamburg
Fabel woke up and felt the panic of the lost.
There was a hint of daylight at the edges of the heavy dark curtains that hung over a window that should not have been where it was. He lay on a bed that was smaller than it should have been and in the wrong position in the wrong room. For a moment that seemed to stretch into infinity he could not work out where he was or why he was there. His disorientation was total and his heart hammered in his chest.
When he remembered, it was in stages. Each part of his recent history colliding with him like a steam train. He remembered the horror in his flat, the nauseating violation of his home; Susanne’s scream; van Heiden’s concerned presence; vomiting in the canteen toilets. The memory of relaxing with Susanne and the team seemed a lifetime away.
He was at Frank Grueber’s. He remembered. They had agreed. He had packed a suitcase and a holdall and Maria Klee had driven him across town to Osdorf. Van Heiden had arranged for there to be a silver and blue patrol car outside.
But immediately before they had come here. Fabel remembered that, too. More horror. This time it had been a sad, pathetic horror: Leonard Schuler, whom Fabel had sought so hard to frighten, sitting strapped to a chair in his squalid little flat, his scalp missing and his throat sliced open, his dead face streaked with blood, with red dye. With tears.
As they had stood gathered around Schuler’s sitting body, they had all thought the same terrible thought that had burned in Fabel’s mind but to which no one had dared give voice: that what Fabel had threatened Schuler with, that terrible fiction he had used to frighten the small-time crook, had really happened to him. Fabel had grasped Frank Grueber, who had led the forensic team at the scene, by the arm and had said pleadingly, ‘Find me something to go on. Anything. Please
…’
Fabel swung his legs around and sat up on the edge of the bed. He rested his elbows on his knees and cradled his head, which still pounded nauseatingly. He felt listless and weary. It was as if a dense damp fog had gathered around him, insinuating itself into his brain, clouding his thought processes and making his limbs heavy and aching. He tried to remember what it was that the sickening feeling that sat in the centre of his chest reminded him of. Then it came to him. It reminded him of bereavement: it was an attenuated form of the grief he had felt when he had lost his father. And when his marriage had died.
Fabel sat on the edge of a strange bed and thought about what it was that he was mourning. Something precious, something special that he had kept separate from his world of work had been violated. Fabel was anything but a superstitious man, but he thought back to how he had broken the unspoken rule of not talking shop with Susanne; of how he had done so in his apartment. It was almost as if he had opened a door and the darkness that he had sought so hard to keep out of his personal world had come rushing in. After nearly twenty years, his two lives had collided.
Fabel found the bedside light and switched it on, blinking in the sudden painful brightness. He checked his watch: it was three p.m. He had only slept for three hours. Fabel had been amazed at the size and comfort of Grueber’s apartment. ‘Parents with money – lots of money…’ Maria had said in a mock-conspiratorial tone, her attempt at unaccustomed humour clumsy and inappropriate. Grueber had shown him to a vast spare bedroom that was about the size of the living room in Fabel’s apartment. Fabel dragged himself up from the bed and made his way into the en-suite bathroom; he shaved before stepping into a cool shower that did little to ease his feeling of pollution. He had seen it so many times before, with victims of or witnesses to a violent act. But he had never felt it. So this was what it was like.
Fabel reckoned that Maria and Grueber were still in bed and he did not want to disturb the rest that they both needed after such a gruelling night. He had watched them together when they came home. Fabel had always liked Grueber and found it sad that, although he was clearly very fond of Maria, they did not jell as a couple. Now, of course, Fabel knew the basis for Maria’s lack of intimacy with Grueber, and he could understand the caution with which Grueber displayed any kind of physical affection. But it made him sad to see two young people who obviously had strong feelings for each other unable to function fully as a couple because of an invisible wall between them.
The apartment was on two levels and, after he had showered and dressed, Fabel went downstairs to the kitchen. After a brief search he found some tea and made himself a cup, sitting down at the large oak kitchen table. He heard the sound of someone coming down the stairs and Grueber entered the room. He looked remarkably fresh and Fabel felt a little resentful of his youthful energy.
‘How are you feeling?’ Grueber asked.
‘Rough. Where’s Maria?’
‘She’s grabbing a couple of hours’ sleep. Do you want me to wake her?’
‘No… no, let her sleep. But I’ve got to get back to the Presidium. This is one trail we can’t let go cold.’
‘I’m afraid it’s cooling as we speak,’ said Grueber apologetically. ‘I did my best, I really did. But we got nothing from either scene that is going to help us identify this madman. He did leave his trade-mark single red hair – this time in your apartment rather than at the primary locus. I called Holger Brauner while you were asleep: he said that the hair matched the other two and is of the same antiquity, about twenty to thirty years old.’
‘Nothing else?’ There was a tone of bleak disbelief in Fabel’s voice. Just one break, that was all he wanted. Just for this killer to slip up once.
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘ Shit.’ Fabel used the English word. ‘I can’t believe that this bastard can walk into my apartment and plaster a human scalp to a window without leaving a trace.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Grueber, a little defensively this time. ‘But he did. Both Herr Brauner and I checked and double-checked both scenes. If there was anything to find we would have found it.’
‘I know – sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that you didn’t process them properly. It’s just…’ Fabel let the sentence die with a gesture of impotent frustration. Fabel’s own team had questioned his neighbours over and over again: no one had seen anyone come in or leave his apartment. It was as if they were dealing with a ghost.
‘Whoever this killer is,’ said Grueber, ‘I get this weird feeling every time… almost as if he deprocesses a scene before he leaves it. As if he knows forensic techniques.’
‘What, by the way he cleans up after himself?’
‘More than that.’ Grueber frowned as if trying to focus on something out of his range. ‘I sense three stages to it. Firstly, he must come heavily prepared and sets up something to protect the scene. Sheeting, maybe, and perhaps even some kind of protective clothing that prevents him leaving traces at the scene. Secondly, he must clean up after each murder. We blamed that woman, the cleaner, for destroying forensic evidence at the first murder. She didn’t. There would be none to destroy. Then he leaves his signature – the single ancient red hair – and he does so in a way that he knows we will find. Again, it’s as if he understands how we process a scene.’