Craig Russell - A fear of dark water

Fabel stiffened a little. ‘Okay, let me see your ID card.’

‘Certainly, officer.’ She smiled, but it was an artifice, something done because it was expected. She reached into her shoulder bag and handed him her Personal Identification Card. It told Fabel that she was Julia Helling, from Eppendorf. ‘I was just making conversation. Have I done something wrong?’

‘No, Frau Helling. It’s just that you should be more careful. This is a lonely spot at night and you shouldn’t be here on your own.’

‘I’m not on my own, am I? I have police protection. Or are you worried that I’ve made a date on the internet with the Network Killer?’

‘Now that’s a very odd thing to say.’

‘Is it? It’s just with your concern for my safety… he’s very much in the news at the moment.’ She sighed. ‘Anyway, I won’t disturb you any longer. Good night, Chief Commissar.’

‘How do you know my rank?’

She shrugged. ‘Your ID. It was on it. Good night. I hope you find somewhere to eat.’

Fabel watched as she walked off into the dark. Getting back into his BMW, he phoned the Police Presidium and gave the name and address in Eppendorf that the girl had given him. The control room told him the name and address checked out and she had no known record. Waiting for a moment before starting up, Fabel headed down towards the docks, in the direction she had taken, driving slowly to make sure she had got back to her car. It took him only three or four minutes to reach a dead end of closed dock gates.

No sign of her. And no car had passed him in the opposite direction.

Fabel woke up with a start. He had been dreaming again and something in his dream had frightened him, but it ran away from his recall as soon as he awoke. He had the vague idea that the woman from the night before had figured in it.

It wasn’t fully light and he switched on the bedside lamp; checking his watch, he saw it was just before six a.m. He reached over to the bedside cabinet, picked up the replacement cellphone and frowned. No call from Susanne. Not even a text to tell him which flight she would be coming back on.

He got up and showered, but still felt tired. Sluggish. He left the apartment early and called into a cafe for breakfast. It was somewhere he visited often enough to be recognised but not so frequently as to be considered a regular. It saved him the effort of making conversation at this time in the morning. It was quiet in the cafe; the only other customers were a couple who sat at a table at the back, away from the window. Both the man and woman were dressed in grey business suits and stared blankly at Fabel as he came in, before returning to the joyless consumption of their coffees.

For some reason he didn’t quite understand, the cafe offered a choice of breakfasts, each named, in English for some reason, after a port city: The Hamburg Breakfast, The Liverpool Breakfast, The Rotterdam Breakfast. Fabel ordered the Rotterdam and was served with a Dutch style Uitsmijter: poached egg on a bed of ham, cheese and toast; served with a cup of industrial-strength coffee. He sat and pushed the food about on his plate for ten minutes, watching through the window as the faint drizzle fell without conviction on the Elbe. His cellphone rang.

‘What the hell’s been going on?’ Susanne said impatiently and without preliminaries.

‘It’s nice to talk to you, too,’ said Fabel. ‘I’ve been trying to reach you for days. Didn’t you get my texts?’

‘What texts? The only text I got from you was the one I picked up this morning, from your new phone. What’s going on, Jan? What happened to your other phone?’

‘It’s been playing up. You know, the usual problems: signal failure, poor battery life, predicting by itself the location of the next victim of the Network Killer.’

‘What?’

‘The text I asked you about. Remember… Poppenbutteler Schleuse… I get the text and within a few hours a body is found floating in the Poppenbutteler Schleuse.’

‘You’re kidding…’ Susanne said. ‘Did you find out who really sent it?’

‘This is where it gets good — the text has disappeared. Deleted itself somehow. That’s why I’ve got this new phone. They’re working on my old one to try to recover the message. You heading for Frankfurt airport?’

‘Yeah… but my flight isn’t till this afternoon. I’m going to do some shopping first. Can you pick me up?’

‘Sure. When do you get in?’

She gave him the flight’s scheduled arrival time. ‘Listen, Jan,’ she said, concern woven through her tone. ‘You say you sent me some texts from that phone?’

‘Yes. And a voicemail message.’

‘I never got them. And, from what you are saying, you didn’t get my messages either.’

‘You left messages for me? No, I didn’t get any.’

‘But that doesn’t make any sense. Voicemail messages aren’t stored on your phone, they’re stored on the network provider’s service. Try retrieving them with your PIN from that phone. I don’t like this, Jan. It’s like someone’s hijacked your phone. Cloned it or something.’

‘I don’t know, Susanne. That sounds pretty far-fetched. I’ve maybe deleted the messages myself by accident. Anyway, Technical Section will let me know soon enough.’ He paused. ‘I’ve missed you.’

‘I’ve missed you, too,’ said Susanne. There was still a thread of concern in her voice. ‘See you at the airport.’

Leaving most of his Rotterdam Breakfast uneaten, Fabel paid and got back into his car. He felt jumpy after the too-strong coffee and, as he drove across town to the Presidium, he switched on his mp3 player to mellow his agitated mood. Lars Danielsson this time. Maybe, thought Fabel, he should have been born a Swede.

The music had the effect it usually had on him and by the time Fabel parked in the Presidium car park, despite the odd caffeine flutter, he felt able to face anything the day had to throw at him.

He could not have been more mistaken.

As soon as he stepped out of the elevator, Fabel knew something was wrong.

He passed Anna walking in the opposite direction. She hesitated for a moment and her mouth moved to say something but she was cut off by van Heiden, who leaned out into the corridor behind her and called Fabel into the Murder Commission. Anna walked on, but not before firing Fabel a look so laden with warning that he felt a sudden sinking in his gut.

They were waiting for him in the Murder Commission’s main office: van Heiden, the BfV man Fabian Menke, and Werner, who smiled at Fabel with something between sympathy, frustration and desperation. Whatever it was that had sunk in Fabel’s gut when he had passed Anna sunk some more.

Over the years Fabel had become used to Criminal Director van Heiden’s lugubrious greetings. He often felt that his superior was a man of very limited emotion. It seemed to Fabel that van Heiden had only two expressions: gloomily serious, and even more gloomily serious. His moroseness was usually prompted by unwelcome press or political intrusion into an investigation that was still in progress, or by some newspaper headline critical of the Polizei Hamburg. But this, Fabel knew, was something different. Whatever it was that now played across the Criminal Director’s face, Fabel hadn’t seen it before.

‘Why do I have the feeling I’ve just arrived at a funeral, only to find out it’s mine?’ Fabel smiled at van Heiden and was reminded by his unresponsiveness that the Criminal Director’s sense of humour was as limited as his emotional range. ‘What’s happened?’

‘You had better come with us,’ said van Heiden. ‘You too, Senior Commissar Meyer.’