Craig Russell - A fear of dark water

Anna handed Fabel a file and a warrant from the State Prosecutor’s Office. ‘It’s an address out Billstedt way. Between Horn and Schiffbek. The IP address belongs to a Johann Reisch.’

‘Because he pays the bills, it doesn’t mean he’s the only person using the computer.’

Anna shook her head. ‘According to the census, Johann Reisch, forty-five, is the sole occupier at this address. And this…’ she handed Fabel a printout of a web page, ‘… is Herr Reisch’s online persona.’ Fabel looked at the picture. A young man two decades away from his forty-fifth birthday, wearing sunglasses and with his muscled torso summer-shirtless, smiled at the camera under a foreign sun. The information on the page gave the name Thorsten66. ‘You happy to take this one?’

‘Okay,’ Fabel took the paperwork from her. ‘This is your show… Chefin.’

Schiffbek lay to the east of the city centre. The address Anna had given Fabel and Werner was in an immaculate street of terraced houses near the cemetery.

Fabel parked at the end of the street, having ordered the marked police car to pull in behind him: there was no point in giving advance warning of their presence. The two uniforms followed Fabel and Werner up the street towards the house. As they approached, Fabel noticed that the tiny garden at the front was neat but had the minimum of plantings in it, as if to keep it as easy to maintain as possible. He also noticed that a ramp ran up the side of the steps.

Werner rang the doorbell. A short woman with spiky blonde hair and glasses answered. She had a name badge pinned to the protective tabard apron over her clothes; it was a Hamburg State ID that told Fabel that she was an accredited care worker. She looked from Fabel to Werner and then to the uniformed officers behind them with a distinct lack of interest.

‘Yes?’

‘Polizei Hamburg,’ said Fabel. ‘We have a warrant to enter these premises and interview Herr Johann Reisch.’

‘Herr Reisch?’ She frowned. ‘What on earth can you want with Herr Reisch?’

‘I take it you’re not Frau Reisch?’ Fabel said, looking at the ID badge.

The woman laughed. ‘There is no Frau Reisch. There hasn’t been for years. Cleared off. I think you better come in.’

She led them into the house and along a short, bright hallway and into a living room with French windows that opened up onto a small patio at the rear of the house. A man sat behind a table that had a laptop computer sitting on it. He looked up slowly, his head moving stiffly. Fabel noticed that there was no expression of surprise or shock. No expression of any kind.

‘Herr Reisch?’ said Fabel. ‘I am Principal Chief Commissar Fabel of the Hamburg Murder Commission. I have a warrant here to seize any computer equipment.’

‘You can’t take his computer,’ the woman in the tabard protested. ‘It’s all he’s got.’

‘This warrant says I can.’ Fabel held up the paperwork. ‘Please stay out of this, or you could…’ The sentence died on Fabel’s lips. He noticed that Reisch was sitting in a motorised wheelchair, and that his head was held up by a neck brace. He returned Fabel’s gaze with watery eyes and the same lack of expression.

‘It’s all he has…’ The care worker continued to protest. ‘It’s his entire world.’

‘Can he speak?’ asked Fabel.

‘Yes, I can speak,’ said Reisch. His voice was thin and he seemed to gasp for breath between words. ‘For now, anyway. But that will go soon, too. But I can speak and I am here. So you don’t need to refer to me in the third person.’

‘I’m sorry, Herr Reisch. Is this your only computer?’

‘Yes. Why do you have to take it away? Frau Rossing’s right, I’d be quite lost without it. There must be some kind of mistake…’

‘No mistake, Herr Reisch. It’s just that you’re one of many people who have…’ Fabel paused and turned to Werner, who nodded and steered Frau Rossing and the two uniformed officers out of the room. ‘You have been in a chatroom and have interacted with two women who were subsequently murdered.’

‘This Network Killer thing?’ Reisch’s speech remained punctuated by gasps, which robbed his question of any intonation of surprise or shock.

Fabel showed him the printout of Thorsten66. ‘Is this the…’ Fabel struggled for the right word. ‘… the persona you use on the internet?’

‘On that particular website, and a couple of others, yes.’ Reisch paused. ‘You must think me pathetic.’

‘I don’t make judgements like that, Herr Reisch. I can’t begin to understand what it must be like to be in your situation. May I ask what has caused your condition?’

‘Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.’ Again, small gasps between words. ‘It’s a form of motor neurone disease.’

‘Is it treatable?’

‘There are so few things doctors can tell you with any certainty, Herr Fabel, but I’m in the fortunate position to have been given some absolutes about my condition. It is one hundred per cent untreatable and one hundred per cent fatal. My neural system is shutting down, bit by bit, function by function. Within the next year I will be unable to speak any more. Six months after that I will no longer be able to swallow my own spit or breathe unaided. I will suffocate to death. And do you know the laugh? The sweet irony of it all? I will still be fully mentally alert. A healthy mind trapped in a decaying body.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Fabel.

‘Must you take my computer?’ asked Reisch. ‘I think you can understand that it means more to me than to most people. I spend hours on it each day. It’s my only window on the world and I won’t have it for much longer.’

‘How do you operate it?’ asked Fabel. ‘I mean, given your condition?’

‘I still have some movement in my hands, but not much. My computer is set up for voice recognition. I can control it by giving it spoken commands. Eventually, when I lose my ability to speak articulately, I will lose that too.’

Fabel looked down at the printout. Reisch’s alter ego. Fantasy self.

‘You’re wondering why…’ said Reisch. ‘Why do I pretend to be young and healthy? It’s simple: when I am on these sites, on the web, that’s who I become. I picked that photograph because he looks a little like I did at that age. He has the insolent look to him that I had. Once.’

‘I understand.’

‘No, you don’t. I’m not criticising you, but you can’t even begin to understand. Not until you’ve spent a minute in this body.’

‘You had contact with two of the four women who have been murdered. You even suggested meeting one of them. Why would you do that? How could you do that?’

Reisch made an odd rattling sound that took Fabel aback. Then he realised it was the disabled man’s attempt at a laugh. ‘I did meet with these women. I met with dozens of women. Sometimes partied all night. But not here. Not in the real world. When you read messages where we were arranging to meet, all of the venues are inside Virtual Dimension. It was all part of the fantasy. Of course I know that I could never go out into the physical world and meet the women I talked to on the internet, but for as long as I was there, in that world, I believed anything was possible.’

‘But you never asked any of them to come here? To visit you at home?’

‘Never. Now you’re proving that you don’t understand. I exist in two universes. Distinct and separate. I would never bring them together.’ Reisch paused again. A pause of short, shallow breaths. Listening to it gave Fabel a feeling of tightness in his chest.

‘Do you know,’ continued Reisch, ‘that in the near future people like me will probably be plugged into a virtual world for as long as they wish? An alternate reality where they will be able to live a normal life.’