Craig Russell - A fear of dark water

‘Do you know what her job is?’ asked Anna.

‘Couldn’t really say.’

‘And there’s been no one around the apartment for a month?’

‘I didn’t say that. She’s not been there for a month, but she was having some work done on the apartment. About three weeks ago there was a team of workmen in, after she had gone. It was okay, though, because she slipped a note under my door a couple of days before, just to warn me.’

‘I see,’ said Fabel. ‘Did Frau Ya- I mean Frau Kebir… did she leave you a key, by any chance?’

‘Oh no.’ The young mother bounced the restive toddler in her arms. ‘She was very quiet. Very private.’

Fabel thanked her and the young mother went back into her flat.

‘You know something, Anna?’ said Fabel as they stood outside the door of the apartment. ‘They’re not as good as their PR makes out.’

‘Who?’

‘The Pharos Project,’ said Fabel. ‘All this time I thought they had wiped out all trace of Meliha Yazar. But it wasn’t them all along. The phoney address she gave Muller-Voigt, her fake surname — nice move, that, I have to say: keep your first name in case someone you know from your past bumps into you in public — all that was her herself. She didn’t want any trace of Meliha Yazar.’

‘Some kind of scam? Is that what you’re saying she was into?’

Fabel shook his head. ‘No. Far from it. More like an undercover investigation.’

Anna stared at the solid-looking front door for a moment. ‘Do you want me to get an emergency warrant to enter?’ asked Anna.

In answer, Fabel swung a kick at the door. It took a second kick before the wood around the lock splintered and the door yielded.

‘We have reason to believe that the occupant of this dwelling is in danger,’ he said. ‘We don’t need a warrant.’

The front door opened onto a long hall. It was bright and immaculately clean and at its far end there was a large framed poster from which a handsome middle-aged man gazed back at Fabel with piercingly light eyes. The man wore an old-fashioned suit and had his thumbs rammed into the pockets of his waistcoat. There was an incredible sense of determination in the pale eyes, one of which was slightly out of alignment because, Fabel already knew, of a First World War shrapnel wound.

‘This is her apartment, all right,’ said Fabel, nodding towards the poster.

‘Who’s that?’ asked Anna.

‘Her icon. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The father of modern Turkey. Meliha Yazar — or Kebir or whatever her real name was — was seeking a new Ataturk. An “Ataturk for the Environment”, Muller-Voigt said. Come on. Let’s check this out.’

They moved from room to room. The flat was filled with books in Turkish, German and English. Literary classics, environmental tracts, geological and ecological textbooks. Fabel walked into the bedroom. The bed was made, everything was in perfect order as it had been throughout the apartment. Absolutely perfect order.

‘She was tidy, I’ll give her that,’ said Anna somewhere behind Fabel.

‘Too tidy,’ he said, picking up the three paperbacks that sat on her bedside table. ‘They’ve been through everything. Every corner. Every nook and cranny. My bet is that they photographed everything first and then put it all back when they’d gone through it. It’s nice work, I’ll give them that.’

‘The workmen her neighbour talked about?’

Fabel did not answer; instead he sifted through the paperbacks as if he were slowly shuffling cards. An English edition of Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. A German edition of Der Richter und sein Henker by Friederich Durrenmatt. A copy of Silent Spring by Rachael Carson, again in English. He looked through them again. There was something significant about the mix of books, but he could not think what it was. He stepped out of the bedroom, the books still in his hands. By the time they had finished, the forensics team had arrived.

‘You been handling anything else I should know about?’ asked Holger Brauner, with a nod towards the books in Fabel’s hand.

‘You won’t get anything here, Holger,’ said Fabel. ‘Have a look around. What’s wrong with this picture?’

Brauner scanned the room, then turned back to Fabel and shrugged. ‘You got me… other than it’s a hell of a tidy place.’

‘Someone’s beaten us to it,’ said Fabel. ‘Real professionals. They’ve cleaned up behind themselves.’

‘I wish they’d turn over my apartment,’ said Anna. ‘It could really do with a spring clean.’

‘But that’s not all that’s wrong with this picture. You too, Anna. Notice something odd?’

They both looked around the room again. Anna frowned for a moment, then a look of enlightenment swept across her face.

‘Same as the last Network Killer victim?’

‘Exactly,’ said Fabel. Brauner made a confused face.

‘No computer…’ said Fabel. ‘No computer, no cellphone, no chargers, no memory sticks, not even an electronic calculator.’

‘So what are you saying?’ asked Brauner. ‘That the Network Killer has been here too?’

‘I can guarantee you it wasn’t the Network Killer, Holger. That’s one thing I’m certain about. It was someone else who turned this place over and took Julia Henning’s computer and cellphone. Someone who didn’t want us to know who the Network Killer was and what had happened to him.’

‘Now you’ve lost even me,’ said Anna.

‘All in due time,’ said Fabel. ‘In the meantime can you do the follow-up here? I want to get back to the Presidium. I need to talk to Fabian Menke about-’

He was interrupted by his cellphone ringing.

‘Hi, Jan, it’s Werner. You’re not going to believe this… we’ve got another body in the water. The Harbour Police have just notified us that they’ve fished a body out of the river near the mouth of the Peutehafen. They’re transferring it to Butenfeld.’ Werner used the police shorthand for the mortuary at the Institute for Legal Medicine, where the bodies of all sudden and suspicious deaths were taken.

‘I’ll be right there,’ said Fabel.

Fabel, Nicola Bruggemann and Werner Meyer stood without speaking and looked down at the body that had been wheeled out into the main morgue hall by the attendant. Outwardly, it looked like some token of respect: a moment’s silence. The truth was that they were doing what they had learned to do as police officers. You took a moment to look, to examine, to assess. To bring your fresh perspective to someone’s death.

The body on the mortuary trolley was thin and pale, the ribs showing through the pallid skin and the upper arms skinny. Despite the evidence of stubble on his chin, the dead male looked more boy than man. There were four holes, now bloodless, in his skull, two above the hairline and two below, puncturing the skin of his broad forehead. Fabel noticed dark mottling on the pale skin of his brow: powder burns from a close-quarter shot. He was on his knees, thought Fabel. Probably begging for his life.

A larger, uglier wound gaped beneath his jaw, where one of the rounds had exited. There was a dark green tattoo on his left breast, like a small inverted loop.

‘These, apparently, are the mortal remains of one Harald Jaburg,’ said Werner, with an expression that suggested he had just tasted something sour. ‘We found his ID in his jeans pocket. Unemployed. Twenty-eight years old.’

‘I thought he would be younger,’ said Fabel absently. He turned to Bruggemann. ‘Our workload seems to be growing exponentially. I think I’ll take you up on your offer.’ He ignored Werner’s quizzical look.

‘He has a tattoo on his chest,’ said Bruggemann. ‘Right above his heart. Some kind of symbol.’