Craig Russell - A fear of dark water

‘Where is Meliha Yazar?’ Fabel’s voice was determined. ‘What happened to her?’

‘You already know that. It’s why it happened that you should worry about. I’ve got something they’re looking for. Something that Meliha left for me to find and I’ll die because I found it. Now they will find me, Fabel. They’ll find me and kill me. They’ll kill you too and anyone else they think knows.’

‘Knows? Knows what? Listen, if you really believe your life is in danger, then tell me where you are. We will protect you.’

There was a snort at the other end of the connection. ‘Don’t make promises you can’t keep.’ He paused. ‘I’ll be in touch later. I have to find a way of contacting you without them intercepting it. Do you understand?’

Fabel frowned, then, after a moment said: ‘Yes. I understand.’

The phone went dead.

Fabel knew he was not going to get a warm welcome. He had phoned to arrange a meeting with Tanja Ulmen, the first of Fottinger’s alleged victims, and she had asked if they could do it on the telephone. She was happily married with children and living in Bad Bramstedt, a small town between Hamburg and Kiel. Her family knew nothing of the incident when she had been a student with Daniel Fottinger. This was part of a murder enquiry, Fabel had explained, so a telephone interview was not an option. The truth was that Fabel disliked anything getting between him and the reactions of the people he questioned. Tanja Ulmen reluctantly agreed to meet with him after she finished work. She was a teacher at the local high school, she explained. He had been slightly taken aback when Ulmen had insisted that he bring a female colleague.

It took forty minutes for Fabel and Anna to get to Bad Bramstedt and another ten to find the rest area off the 207 route to the west of the town. During the journey Anna had noticed Fabel checking his rear-view mirror more than usual.

‘Is it there again?’ she asked. ‘The four-by-four?’

‘No. I thought maybe it was… but no. Maybe I’m becoming paranoid in my old age.’

‘If you really think you are being tailed, especially with all of the crap that’s been going on with emails and texts going missing, then I think we should visit this Seamark International and get a few answers.’

‘It’s maybe nothing,’ said Fabel. ‘It could be coincidence or maybe I’ve mistaken two or three different cars as the same one. I want to be sure before we show our hand. Anyway, it’s not there now.’ He paused for a moment, then said uncertainly: ‘There’s something else, Anna. I mean, as well as the texts and stuff. I got a call last night. An anonymous call from someone who claims to know all about what happened to Meliha Yazar and Muller-Voigt.’

‘And you believe them?’ Anna sounded incredulous. ‘I mean, after everything else that’s been going on, don’t you think it’s likely to be the same lot playing games?’

‘I thought that, too. But, I don’t know, there was something about this call. He said they would find him and kill him and I believe he meant it. Maybe he is an ex-member or has some other kind of connection to them.’

‘So you are convinced it’s the Pharos Project behind this?’

‘More than that, Anna, I’m beginning to get an idea about what’s really happened. Look, there she is…’

It was the only car in the rest area: an elderly Citroen. The rest area was screened from the road by a thick curtain of trees and there was an even deeper wedge of forest to the other side. Frau Ulmen had insisted that they meet there: it was far enough out of town but close enough for her to get back home without causing too much suspicion.

‘I’ve told my children I’ve got shopping to do but I’ll be back in an hour,’ she said bluntly in greeting as she got into the back of Fabel’s car. ‘You said you wanted to talk to me about Daniel Fottinger?’ Fabel knew from the report that Tanja Ulmen was in her mid-thirties, but she had a weary look that would otherwise have made it difficult to guess her age on first sight. She had untidy blonde hair heaped on her head and held in place by a large wooden hair clasp patterned with a Celtic bow. Her clothes were baggy and vaguely bohemian. She looked every bit the eccentric art teacher, but Fabel knew that the subject she actually taught was information technology.

‘Yes, Frau Ulmen,’ said Fabel. ‘We’d like to talk to you about Daniel Fottinger. You know that he’s dead?’

‘Yes. I read about it in the papers.’

‘So you know how he died?’

‘Yes. Painfully. And I was glad. I hope it took him a long, long time to die.’

‘It did, I’m afraid to say,’ said Fabel. ‘I can’t imagine a worse way to go.’

‘So you’re here to accuse me of having something to do with it?’ Ulmen’s face was set hard. Defiant. Fabel guessed that she wished she really could feel good about Fottinger’s death, but could not.

‘No, Frau Ulmen. Why I asked to talk to you was because I’m trying to build up a picture of Fottinger. I wanted to ask you about what happened between you and him.’

‘Nothing happened between us. The bastard raped me.’

‘So why didn’t you pursue the case?’ asked Anna. ‘You do know that he went on to commit at least one more alleged rape?’

‘His father paid me “compensation”, as he put it. But before you think I was simply bought off, Old Man Fottinger made sure he employed a stick as well as a carrot. The Fottingers were filthy rich and very well connected. He made it very clear to me that things would go badly for me, very badly. They were peas in a pod, father and son.’

‘What do you mean, exactly?’ asked Anna.

‘They both thought that they could get anything they wanted, whenever they wanted. People didn’t matter to either of them.’

‘Please, Frau Ulmen,’ said Fabel. ‘It would be very helpful to me if you could tell me what happened with Fottinger.’

‘Daniel asked me out when we were both students in Hamburg. He was studying philosophy…’

‘Philosophy?’ Fabel was genuinely surprised. ‘I would have thought he would have studied some science or technological subject.’

‘Maybe he did later, but back then he was doing philosophy. And he was really into it. Anyway, Daniel asked me out. He was very charming and handsome, but there was something about him really gave me the creeps. So I said no. He couldn’t understand it. He simply could not wrap his mind around the fact that someone was denying him something he wanted. It was like it didn’t compute. That’s what I mean about him and his father being the same: neither of them could understand that the entire universe didn’t revolve around them.’

‘So he didn’t take no for an answer?’ asked Anna as gently as she could.

‘I was sharing a flat with some friends and he called around when they were out. He tried his lethal charm again, still not able to believe that someone could resist it. When that didn’t work he tried a more direct approach. A knife held to my throat.’

‘I know this is very difficult for you…’ began Anna.

‘No, it’s not. It was a long time ago and somehow I’ve managed to make it seem that it happened to someone else… make it a story, not part of reality. It was my way of coping and it worked. They say that every cell in your body is replaced every seven years or something like that. So I tell myself that what happened did not happen to this body, to the person I am now. But I never stopped hating him. Despising him for his arrogance.’

‘What I wanted to ask was how he behaved.’ Anna frowned at her own clumsiness. ‘I mean, the things an attacker says or does, the extra things, they can tell us a great deal about their state of mind.’