Craig Russell - The Valkyrie Song

‘Of course,’ she said and smiled in a way so cool that it reminded him of Margarethe Paulus. ‘It would be my pleasure.’

After Fabel had set the team about their various tasks, Astrid Bremer came over to him. She looked young and girlish and, for a moment, Fabel found it difficult to imagine her being an expert on death.

‘I think I have something,’ she said.

‘From Sparwald’s house?’ asked Fabel hopefully.

‘No, from the Drescher apartment. We have a fingerprint specialist who can extrapolate prints from very faint or old traces. I found a packet of Rondo Melange, the popular East German coffee. I just thought it was odd that a man trying so hard to conceal his Stasi past and living with a phoney West German history would have something like that in his cupboard. Well, I’ve just heard back from my fingerprint guy. We’ve got a print that doesn’t belong.’

‘The coffee was a gift?’

‘That’s what I thought,’ said Astrid. ‘And a gift from someone who knew of Drescher’s GDR background. And that could only be one person …’

Fabel had just walked into his office to fetch his coat when his phone rang.

‘Hello, Principal Chief Commissar Fabel? This is Dr Luttig — Thomas Luttig at SkK Biotech. I heard about Ralf… one of your people came round. A young woman.’

‘Commissar Wolff, yes. I’m sorry about Dr Sparwald, I know you valued him as a colleague.’

‘He was my friend as well, Chief Commissar. Anyway, you asked me to tell you if anything out of the ordinary came up. Well, after I heard about Ralf I spent the afternoon going through all his stuff. There is something… It would appear Ralf was doing some work for which there’s no company authorisation. Some kind of private project.’

‘Oh?’ Fabel reached into his drawer and took a notebook out. ‘What kind of private project?’

‘From what I can see, he has been having blood samples tested. Not many — it looks like just three samples, each from a different donor. I found the samples and some paperwork. It seems very strange indeed.’

‘How so?’

‘The tests were very specific. Ralf seems to have been looking for PBDEs. Also, he was doing the tests himself and wasn’t keeping proper records. But I did find a note relating to each of the samples. The first said: female, twenty-two, Hunan Province.’

‘China…’ Fabel spoke as much to himself as to Luttig.

‘Yes. But the second one isn’t. It says: female, twenty-two, Bitola.’

‘Bitola?’

‘I checked it out on the Internet. It’s a city in Macedonia. Very industrial.’

‘What are these PBDEs?’ asked Fabel.

‘Polybrominated diphenyl ethers. They’re used a lot in flame-retardants. And in a thousand other things. There’s a great deal of concern about their toxicity.’

‘You said there was a third sample. What was that labelled?’

‘Well, yes… it’s this third sample that’s causing me the most concern. It was labelled Hunan Province, same as the first blood sample. But it’s human tissue. And, from the tests Ralf was doing, I’m guessing it’s a sample of human thyroid. Which means it has been taken post-mortem. And there’s something else.’

‘What?’

‘From what I can see of his results, the level of PBDEs in these samples is astronomical.’

‘What does that mean?’ asked Fabel. ‘Could it be fatal?’

‘Potentially, yes. Like I said, they’re incredibly toxic and you need a special licence to dispose of them. The jury is still out on what damage they actually do, but they are suspected of causing problems with the thyroid gland, the endocrine system generally and even neurological damage.’

‘Thanks — that could be useful, Dr Luttig.’ Fabel paused. ‘By the way, does the name “Olaf” mean anything to you? Someone whom Ralf Sparwald may have known?’

‘No, I can’t think of anyone. Is it important?’

‘Probably not,’ said Fabel.

He didn’t like business types.

It didn’t matter how exalted or lowly they were in their arcane corporate hierarchies, they all, to Fabel, seemed to have had some kind of personality-ectomy. He had recently flown to Frankfurt for a meeting with the city’s Murder Commission. On the flight, Fabel had sat in his British tailored sports jacket surrounded by Boss-suited clones and feeling like an extra in the film Gattaca. He had promised himself he would blow his brains out with his SIG-Sauer before owning a BlackBerry.

Fabel even found it difficult at times to hide his disdain for the type of police officers who seemed to be in ‘the business of policing’ and who dressed in the same corporate-clone style as their commercial counterparts.

But it was the business leaders at the top of the tree who wound Fabel up most of all. Sometimes, it was as if they thought themselves medieval barons. In a way, Fabel supposed, they had a point: Hamburg was a city, and a state, that had built its history and independence on a foundation of trade. Instead of having total control over the lives of serfs and bondsmen, the Hanseatic city’s tycoons and magnates held employees, subsidiaries, suppliers and not a few of Hamburg’s politicians in their thrall. And most of Hamburg’s politicians were businessmen themselves.

It had been Fabel’s experience that Hamburg’s business leaders often felt themselves above and beyond the reach of common mortals like policemen.

So it didn’t surprise Fabel that it took his personal intervention to arrange an appointment with Gina Bronsted. He had asked one of the Presidium’s administrative assistants to set up a meeting but she had got nowhere, constantly being fobbed off by someone comparatively low down in the NeuHansa food chain.

‘That’s not a problem,’ Fabel had said when Bronsted’s secretary’s secretary’s assistant had said it was ‘quite impossible’ for an appointment to be made within the next week or so. ‘I quite understand that Frau Bronsted is very busy. I’ll send a marked police car to her home tonight and bring her into the Presidium. And don’t worry, I’ll be sure to tell her that you were so protective of her office time.’

Fabel was informed that Gina Bronsted would see him later that afternoon. As soon as the appointment was confirmed he phoned Hans Gessler of the corporate crime division and asked him if he would mind coming along at such short notice.

‘Will you be bringing along the Little Mermaid?’ asked Gessler.

‘What are you talking about?’ Fabel was genuinely confused.

‘That little Danish beauty I’ve heard you’ve grown attached to.’

‘If you mean Politidirektor Karin Vestergaard, then yes, as a matter of fact she will be there. Gina Bronsted is a Flensburg Dane and I thought it might be useful. And anyway, Politidirektor Vestergaard has a direct interest in this case.’

‘Count me in,’ said Gessler.

Given the trouble that he had had in securing an appointment with Gina Bronsted, Fabel was surprised when, as he was leaving the Presidium, he was handed a note at reception telling him that Gennady Frolov’s office had been looking for him, asking if it would be possible for Fabel to talk with the Russian. Frolov was on Fabel’s to do list and he made a mental note to follow up the call when he got back.

The NeuHansa Group had its offices in a brand-new building in the HafenCity. Fabel had picked up Gessler and Vestergaard and drove through the city from the Presidium down to the shores of the Elbe. They crossed over the short cantilevered bridge into the Speicherstadt.

‘This is amazing,’ said Vestergaard as they entered the maze of narrow cobbled streets, cathedral-sized red-brick warehouses and interconnecting canals.

‘The Speicherstadt was a toll-free zone right up until a few years ago,’ said Gessler eagerly, leaning over from the back seat. ‘I think it was two thousand and four… up until then the Speicherstadt was an independent free port and the world’s biggest bonded area.’