Craig Russell - A fear of dark water

‘Other than Virtual Dimension being owned by a Korn-Pharos company,’ said Werner.

‘True, but that’s not such a big coincidence. Between all the companies in the group, Korn-Pharos generates a hell of a lot of internet content.’

‘What about this guy Reisch, Jan?’ asked Werner. ‘His death could be seen as another coincidence. He was involved with Virtual Dimension too, and we know he had contact with the dead women. Maybe his suicide was guilt over their deaths.’

‘But he was physically incapable of committing the crimes,’ said Fabel.

‘I think Werner has a point, though,’ said Bruggemann in her deep contralto. ‘Because he was incapable of commission, it doesn’t mean that he wasn’t involved in some way. Maybe he was part of a killing team, with some kind of folie a deux or folie a trois crap going on. Maybe he got some kind of vicarious cyber hard-on by having an accomplice commit the act for him.’

‘No. It doesn’t fit, Nicola. But we’ll explore it, anyway. Cybercrime Unit is doing a forensic search of his hard drive. Maybe we’ll find something there. But I think Reisch was just a poor schmuck who had been dealt the worst hand you can imagine. He just decided to throw that hand in. Or that’s my take on it, at least.’

‘What about the State Prosecutor’s Office? Are they closer to budging on warrants?’ asked Henk Hermann.

‘We simply don’t have enough on the Pharos Project. To be honest, the State Prosecutor’s Office is reluctant to take on the legal might of the Korn-Pharos Corporation without being totally sure of their ground.’ Fabel sighed. ‘I don’t blame them. We are talking about something with the resources of a small country behind it. We have to get more on Pharos. And something evidentially solid; not more coincidences.’

‘It’s odd,’ said Henk. ‘Usually we have an individual, a single person, at the top of our suspects list. But now, with all this, we’ve got a group of people, a pretty amorphous and anonymous group of people at that. It’s more like corporate crime.’

Fabel stared at Henk. So long that the junior officer started to look uncomfortable and eventually laughed nervously and said. ‘What?’

‘You’re right, Henk,’ said Fabel, animated. He stood up and grabbed the file that Menke had given him. ‘Crimes aren’t committed by corporate bodies. I read somewhere in here…’ He flicked determinedly through the pages of the BfV report. ‘Here it is… one of the cult’s philosophies stresses the importance of the egregore, the groupmind.’

Fabel started to read from the file: ‘“… the egregore has been a concept in occultism and mystical thinking for more than a century, but the Pharos Project has adopted it in the more contemporary sense from current business and commercial law usage, where corporate bodies are seen to have a single mind or corporate culture, at least in terms of corporate responsibility and liability. Like all destructive cults, the Pharos Project seeks to diminish the sense of the individual and increase the concept of a singular groupmind. To achieve this, members of the Project are subjected to psychological programming over protracted periods as well as having to follow a highly disciplined, hierarchical and structured daily routine. Part of the creation of a sense of corporateness is the exclusive use of English as the principal language of communication, something the Pharos Project has borrowed from large German corporations who conduct all senior management meetings in English, even if all present are native German speakers. Another element of the Pharos Project’s corporation-like culture is the wearing of uniforms by all its adherents. Because of federal restrictions on the use of uniforms by political or quasi-political groups, the Pharos Project has employed the simple device of forcing all members to wear identical business suits: pale grey for the rank and file, dark grey for Consolidators, and black for senior figures in the organisation. This avoids any difficulty with federal regulation and allows an element of anonymity, as the outfits supplied differ in no significant manner from normal business apparel.

…”’

Fabel snapped shut the file. ‘Werner, can you get onto Astrid Bremer and ask her if she can give us a detailed background of the grey fibre she found at Muller-Voigt’s place? She told me that it was particularly unusual because it was entirely synthetic. I’ll bet that the Pharos Project buys its uniforms in bulk from some corporate-wear wholesaler. Anna, I need you to sweet-talk your contact in the State Prosecutor’s office and tell him we need a limited search-and-seizure warrant for a couple of jackets from the Pharos Project for a comparison.’ Fabel checked himself and looked across to Nicola Bruggemann.

‘Go ahead,’ she said without a hint of antagonism. ‘It’s your department.’

‘Thanks,’ said Fabel, then frowned, like someone trying to remember where they had left their car keys. ‘That woman down by the docks — she was wearing a dark grey business suit.’

‘God, Jan,’ said Bruggemann, ‘that’s a bit of a stretch. A business suit is a business suit.’

‘Maybe so. But I’m pretty convinced that she was a Consolidator. It’s all beginning to come together. The Network Killer murders are linked to the Pharos Project. But I can’t for the life of me work out why.’ Fabel picked up his jacket from the back of the chair.

‘Nicola, I’ll leave you to it. I need to go out.’

‘Where are you off to?’

‘I’m going to take a North Sea lighthouse tour.’

Susanne was still at the Institute for Legal Medicine when Fabel phoned her from his car as he headed out, once more, towards the Altes Land and Stade. This time he avoided the town and headed out along a ribbon of road that ran parallel to the coast but was shielded from it by the ripple of dyke that ran along close to the water’s edge to Fabel’s right. To his left the land was divided up into long narrow fields, pale green, dark green or muted gold; each contained by the type of Knick turf wall Muller-Voigt had talked about. It really did have the look of a patchwork quilt, but one that had been ironed impeccably flat except for the ripple of the waterside dyke at its hem.

It took Fabel another hour or so to reach the Pharos. He actually pulled over to the side of the road and got out to admire it from a distance. The light was beginning to fade and the cloud cover dulled things even more, but even with that Fabel could see that Muller-Voigt had been right: the Pharos was a truly remarkable piece of architecture. There was a lighthouse, about four or five storeys high, against the flank of the new building. The lighthouse was the traditional North Sea German type: not slender but solid, squat and square-edged with a large lantern gallery criss-crossed with iron. It had clearly undergone a major renovation and looked bright, almost as if it had just been built rather than having stood there, resolutely planted in its landscape, for more than a century and a half.

But it was the main building attached to the original lighthouse that really impressed Fabel. It was made up of three sections; modules, almost. The section against whose side the lighthouse was set was a long two-storey block. Clearly the intention had been not to obscure the view of the original lighthouse from either direction. This section extended fifty metres or so towards the water’s edge; then a five-storey block, with the profile of a massive parallelogram — a rhombohedron, Fabel suddenly remembered from school mathematics — took the Pharos to the water and jutted out over it. This section was outlined by a heavy reinforced-concrete beamed frame, but the flanks of the building were all glass. The third section was really an extension of the top floor of the building and projected out over the Elbe, supported by two rows of piles driven into the river bed. From the roof of the suspended level a pale blue needle of laser light, now visible in the twilight, pierced the clouds above. The light of the Pharos.