‘I know,’ said Fabel. ‘The dossier you took from me was blank pages, but you knew I wouldn’t hand it over, didn’t you? And you didn’t really need to see it at all.’
‘May I repeat my request of earlier?’ Scholz, his gun still aimed at Vitrenko, frowned angrily. ‘Could someone tell me what the fuck is going on?’
‘The so-called Vitrenko Dossier is all crap. The mole inside the organisation was Vitrenko himself. Misinformation. A few scraps of genuine intelligence and the rest was all bollocks. This whole idea that he was desperate to get his hands on it was to convince the Federal Crime Bureau of its authenticity.’
‘Buslenko died for a lie?’ The question cracked in Maria’s throat. ‘Everything you did to me? It was all a masquerade?’
Vitrenko shrugged. ‘What can I tell you? I became caught up in the spirit of Karneval. But the lie Buslenko died for was that Ukraine was worth dying for. A patriot. A fool. Now, if you don’t mind, if you’ll handcuff me and deliver me to a cell somewhere. Of course there’s a lot of evidence against me. It’s all in the Vitrenko Dossier – oh, wait, that’s all fake, isn’t it? I wonder how long you’ll be able to keep me…’
‘There’s the murder of the policeman in Cuxhaven. The attempted murder of Maria. The container full of human cargo that you let burn to death. I think we’ll find something.’
‘And I think my lawyers and their medical experts will have a lot to say about Frau Klee’s psychological credibility as a witness.’ Vitrenko grinned. ‘You see, Fabel, I’m getting away again. Just like the last time. It’s just that I’m taking a different route.’
‘No…’ said Maria, her voice dull. ‘ Not like the last time.’
Fabel and Scholz didn’t have time to react. Maria fired both guns, squeezing the triggers until the magazines emptied. The shots hit Vitrenko in the chest and gut and he staggered backwards until he hit the wall. His emerald eyes became dull and unfocused and he slid down the stone surface, leaving a smear of blood behind him. Maria let the guns fall. At the same time Fabel saw something empty from her face.
Even in the midst of his shock he knew that what had left her would never return.
8.
It was already dark when Fabel walked slowly up the grassy mound in the Marienfeld park to where the bonfire raged and sparked into the night sky.
‘I didn’t think we’d see you here,’ said Scholz. He handed Fabel a bottle of Kolsch.
‘I wasn’t doing much good at the hospital. I’ve arranged for Maria to be transferred to Hamburg. After you’ve completed your case, that is.’
‘I don’t think it matters where her body is. Truth is, she’s not in it any more. I’m sorry, Jan. I really am.’
‘Thanks, Benni.’
Tansu Bakrac came over to them. Fabel noticed that Scholz moved off discreetly to leave them to talk.
‘You okay?’ Tansu asked. She placed a hand on his arm.
‘No. Not really. I’m going to head back to Hamburg. I’ll be back in a week or two to tie things up with Benni. Listen, Tansu, about what happened…’
She smiled and nodded towards the bonfire. ‘This is the Nubbelverbrennung. All the sins and foolishness of the Crazy Days get burned up. Here. Tonight. Have a good life, Jan.’
‘You too, Tansu.’ Fabel kissed her and then watched as she walked back to her friends, the firelight etching the outline of her body.
Epilogue
Hamburg.
Fabel sat with Maria, by the window. He held her hand and looked into her eyes but she simply looked past him and out of the window. Through the glass lay the shapes of the hospital extension, the outbuildings, the large triangle of grassed grounds and the green froth of bushes that marked the hospital boundaries. Beyond that lay the roadway that rumbled continuously and faintly with traffic. But Fabel knew that although Maria seemed to be looking at this unremarkable view she was not seeing it. He didn’t know what she was seeing. Maybe it was that field near Cuxhaven. Maybe it was a garden or a favourite place from her childhood in Hanover. Wherever it was, it was visible only to Maria; it existed only in the world that she had withdrawn to. But what frightened Fabel was the all too credible thought that Maria might have been seeing nothing at alclass="underline" that she had withdrawn to a void.
Fabel talked to Maria. He talked about getting her better now that she was back in Hamburg. Dr Minks was going to help with her treatment. The Polizei Hamburg had arranged it all. Maria still didn’t answer but continued to look out of the window at the view across to the road, or at nothing at all. Fabel continued to talk about the recovery that he knew would never come, or at least not completely. He talked about the colleagues that he knew she would never work with again. He talked with the same forced calmness with which he had spoken to her so very long ago as she lay close to death in the field by Cuxhaven. Except this time, he knew, he could not save her.
Every now and again Maria would smile, but Fabel knew it was at nothing he had said, rather at something in the deep and distant inner world that she now inhabited.
It rained in Hamburg that day. Fabel met Susanne in the bar around the corner from his apartment in Poseldorf. Neutral territory.
‘Susanne, I wanted to talk,’ he explained. ‘I think we need to straighten things out.’
‘I thought we had,’ she said flatly. ‘At least, I thought you had. I mean when you phoned me before you went off to Cologne.’
Fabel pushed his beer bottle around the table top contemplatively. He thought back to those three calls he had made weeks before: to Wagner at the Federal Crime Bureau, to Roland Bartz, and to Susanne.
‘Listen, Susanne,’ he said gently, ‘when I was down in Cologne things were supposed to be confused. The whole point of Karneval, I suppose. But they weren’t for me. They weren’t for me as soon as I found out Maria had gone off on this personal crusade that’s cost her her sanity. Down there I was surrounded by people who were being someone else… Vera Reinartz who had become Andrea Sandow who claims to become this killer clown whom she has no control over… then there was Vitrenko, stealing one identity after another and manipulating everyone around him. But me… I knew who I was. The funny thing is I didn’t know who I was before. Or I denied it, I don’t know.’
‘So who are you?’
‘I am a policeman. Just like that poor kid Breidenbach who got shot rather than let a gunman walk onto the street… just like Werner or Anna or Benni Scholz in Cologne. It’s who I am. It’s what I am. It’s my job to stand there between the bad guys and the innocent. What I didn’t realise until now is that it’s more than a job. It’s often ugly and it’s invariably unrewarding, but it’s what I was meant to do. I’ve always pretended to myself that I’m a historian or an intellectual who’s stumbled into this job and who doesn’t really fit. But that’s wrong, Susanne. Whether I found the job or the job found me, it was meant to be.’
‘So you’ve accepted this nationwide brief? This Super-Murder-Commission thing?’
‘Not really. I’ve said I’ll help out elsewhere if I’m needed. Lend my “expertise”. But that’s the other thing I’ve learned. I belong here. Hamburg is my city. These are the people I want to protect.’
‘So where does that leave us?’ Susanne’s voice was cold and hard. Fabel reached over the table and took her hands in his.
‘That’s rather what I wanted to ask you…’
Cologne. Six months later
Andrea sat on the edge of the bed. No make-up, no lipstick, platinum hair scraped severely back in a ponytail and dark at the roots.
There was nothing in the cell other than the bed and the combined desk and bench, all of which were bolted to the floor. No free weights to work with. That would be a major problem for as long as they kept her confined in this cell. But Andrea was, she knew, on suicide watch and she would be moved from this empty space eventually. Until then, she could use her own body weight to exercise the main muscle groups. She knew that without free weights she would lose mass, become leaner, but at least she could maintain tone. She stood up and went to the corner of the cell, braced her feet against the wall to maximise the load borne by her arms, and started a set of push-ups. She knew that a nurse was watching her through the spyhole in the door. They wouldn’t deny her access to a gymnasium for her entire confinement. There would be weights or resistance machines in the gym. Then she could start building muscle again. And strength. In the meantime she would do her press-ups: sets of twenty, six sets a day, three days a week. A total of nineteen thousand press-ups a year. Every other day, while her arms and upper body rested, she would run through a similar routine with sit-ups.