Before returning any of his calls, Fabel called Mahmoot’s cell phone. Mahmoot had been there with Fabel when he first met Vitrenko’s father in the Speicherstadt. Two out of the four people who had been present were now dead: Fabel had to reassure himself Mahmoot wasn’t the third. He breathed a small sigh of relief when he heard Mahmoot answer. Fabel told Mahmoot what had happened on his return to the warehouse and was surprised to notice that his hands trembled as he related the events to his friend. Mahmoot had been silent for a while.
‘Christ, Jan. I thought I lived in a dark world,’ he said eventually, ‘but yours scares the shit out of me. I can’t believe they’re dead. I can’t believe he did that to his own father.’ Mahmoot paused, as if thinking something through. ‘Listen, Jan, I’m going to drop out of sight for a while. Get out of Hamburg. I don’t know if this über-Viking sees me as a loose end or not, but I don’t want to end up as some kind of Nordic kebab. I’ll get in touch when I get back. But Jan, in the meantime, don’t look for me.’
‘I understand,’ said Fabel.
Mahmoot hung up.
He phoned Gabi. It was the usual short, cheerful exchange that he tended to have with his daughter. There was a shorthand between them that squeezed paragraphs of history and meaning into a few words. Fabel was worried that this case would still be consuming nearly all his time, but he wanted her to come. She told him not to worry if he had to work. Fabel’s time with Gabi was more precious than gold and he treasured every opportunity to be with her. The same economy they managed with words allowed them to condense a lot of value into a little time.
After he came off the phone, Fabel realised he hadn’t eaten. He went into the kitchen and fixed himself a salad and a too-strong black coffee. As he prepared the meal he started to dial Lex’s number but hung up before it connected, realising that Lex would probably still be busy in the kitchen or dining room. He phoned Susanne instead. She was horrified to hear about the events in the Speicherstadt and insisted on coming round right away. Fabel put her off, explaining that he was going to have to return to the Präsidium for a case conference. She was clearly upset and worried, but when Fabel mooted his idea of their taking time out together on Sylt, her voice lightened.
‘I’d love to, Jan. And I think it would be a good idea for both of us. I’m worried about the psychological price you’re going to have to pay for all this horror.’
So am I, thought Fabel.
After talking to Susanne, Fabel ate the salad without enjoyment, poured himself another coffee and made his way through to his living room. He switched on the lights and sat down on the couch, seeing himself reflected in the huge picture window. He took a deep breath and looked at his watch. He needed to ease some of the hawser-tight tension in his neck and shoulders before he went back to the Präsidium.
Fabel reached over to the coffee table and picked up the
Dictionary of English Surnames
that Otto had given him. He let a small laugh slip. Only Otto would know that Fabel could find peace in volumes of German or English etymology. Fabel loved reference books. They were oceans on which you could set sail without a course, first seeking out one piece of knowledge and then becoming diverted to another, totally tangential but equally engrossing track. He began by idly looking up his own name. He knew ‘Fabel’ was found in the Netherlands and Denmark as well as Germany. He was a little disappointed to find no trace of it among the surnames of the British Isles. He racked his brain for unusual British names that he’d encountered recently. There was one that was front of mind because of the case. He flicked through the pages to find a huge section devoted to the Mc and Mac surnames that predominated in Ireland and Scotland.
He found the entry for MacSwain.
Fabel froze. The coffee cup in his hand was suspended between saucer and lips. There was a quiet beyond silence. He felt locked in that moment between heartbeats, his blood still in his veins. Then the spell was broken. He slammed the cup back in its saucer, spilling a swirl of black, viscous liquid. He was on his feet and across the room before realising he was no longer sitting. The book was still in his left hand, open, and his eyes remained locked on the entry. His right hand found the cordless phone and hit the single button to retrieve the Mordkommission’s number.
‘Shit … oh, shit …’ muttered Fabel as the ringing tone seemed to go on endlessly.
It was Maria who answered. Fabel didn’t even announce himself.
‘Anna was right, Maria … Christ, we’ve got this one all wrong. It’s MacSwain. MacSwain is Son of Sven …’
Maria sounded confused and unconvinced, but Fabel washed her incredulity away with a torrent of words. ‘He’s been telling us who he is all along. And we missed it. He’s been flaunting it in every e-mail. Do we still have a surveillance team on MacSwain?’
‘Yes. Or at least one guy just now. He’s outside MacSwain’s apartment.’
‘Get someone else over there right now! Tell them to wait until we get there, unless MacSwain tries to leave, in which case I want him arrested on suspicion of murder. Get everyone together in the incident room. And tell Eitel’s lawyer I’m going to talk to Norbert in ten minutes’ time, whether he’s present or not. I’ll see you and the others in the conference room in fifteen minutes.’
Saturday 21 June, 9.00 p.m. Eimsbüttel, Hamburg
.
Anna had soaked herself in a deep, dark and warm lake of dreamless sleep. When she had returned to her apartment from the Präsidum she had not expected to sleep: she felt overtired and scenes from her evening with MacSwain re-ran themselves out of sequence through her mind, like randomly switching TV channels. A thick-fingered, lead-limbed tiredness had slowed all Anna’s movements as she had carried out the tasks that lay like an obstacle course between her and sleep. She had fed Mausi, her ragged tigerstripe cat, wiped the makeup from her face and stripped for bed.
It was nearly five p.m. before she awoke, Mausi sitting at the foot of the bed, watching her with an arrogant detachment. The lead had melted from her limbs, but a band of pain had tightened itself around her head while she had slept. She rose and took two codeine before immersing herself in a tepid bath. She lay unmoving, a soaked facecloth over her eyes, and allowed the bathwater around her to cool and chill her skin to goosebumps. There was an almost perfect silence in the bathroom, broken only by the echoing sound of the water when she moved and, once, by her calling out ‘Mausi!’ in as stern a voice as she could muster and without removing the cloth from her face, when she heard sounds from the kitchen.
Anna examined her pruned and whitened fingertips and reluctantly rose from her bath. She towelled her hair and body dry and made her way through to the kitchen, where Mausi sat in a corner, looking uncharacteristically sheepish.
‘What have you done,
Spitzbube
?’ Anna cast her eyes around the kitchen to check for evidence of feline felony. She swung open the kitchen window that allowed Mausi access to the apartment’s small balcony and he darted out. Anna shrugged and took some chilled water from the fridge, taking several refreshing gulps. She moved back through to the bedroom and had just finished dressing when she heard a knock at her door. It would have to be one of the neighbours, because visitors to the apartments used the electronic entry system. Anna knew, before she opened the door, that it would be Frau Kreuzer, the old woman who lived immediately above. Frau Kreuzer, aware of the nature of Anna’s occupation, would often come to her door with stories of suspicious characters she had seen at the Mini-Markt supermarket, in the library or hanging around in the street outside the apartment building. Anna always listened patiently, offering the old woman a cup of green tea and allowing her to drift from her supposed motive of good citizenship and towards general gossip and chit-chat. Anna was well aware that her elderly neighbour’s concerns were a ruse to create an oasis of companionship in the lonely desert of her day, but she didn’t mind. Tonight, however, she could do without the distraction. In fact, despite her long sleep, Anna felt decidedly dizzy as she made her way to the door.
‘Good evening, Frau Kreuz …’ Anna started as she opened the door. It seemed as if her heart stopped at the same time as her voice, as she looked into the cold, green fire of John MacSwain’s eyes.
‘Hello, Anna,’ said MacSwain.
Anna looked confused. As if in answer, MacSwain held up his index finger and dangled her door keys from it. Anna spun around. The movement of her head made her senses swirl and fog. She searched for her service SIG-Sauer nine-millimetre, which she had dumped, in its holster, on the hall table next to the door. It was gone. In that second she put it all together: the sounds in the kitchen, the water, Mausi being jumpy. She turned back to MacSwain, her head having to move from side to side momentarily to allow her to focus on his face, and she couldn’t help drawing a comparison between his cold green stare and the frosty disinterest with which Mausi habitually regarded her. That’s it, she registered dully, he’s something other than human. That was what she’d tried to explain to Fabel: that some unseen, conclusive element essential to humanity was missing. She staggered and made to grab for the edge of the kitchen cabinet. Instead MacSwain stepped forward and scooped his hands under her arms.
‘Careful now,’ he said, without a trace of solicitousness. ‘I think you need another drink of water …’
As the drug cocktail that MacSwain had hidden in her drinking water began to close the curtains around Anna’s consciousness, she somehow felt compelled to speak.
‘I … I don’t feel too well …’ she said for only MacSwain to hear, and couldn’t remember why it was she had to say it.
Saturday 21 June, 9.40 p.m. Polizeipräsidium, Hamburg
.
Maria, Werner, Paul and Van Heiden were all there when Fabel arrived. Maria had also called in the two officers from the expanded task team who were still on shift. Fabel, the book gifted to him by Otto tucked under his arm, strode purposefully into the incident room and stood before the inquiry board.
‘Let me get straight to the point,’ said Fabel. ‘We have a new prime suspect. Or at least
another
prime suspect: John MacSwain, twenty-nine, a British national resident in Germany.’
‘What about Vitrenko?’ asked Van Heiden.
‘Vasyl Vitrenko is still very much part of this. I believe what we are dealing with here is a master and his apprentice. Or high priest and acolyte. Vitrenko is a consummate manipulator of people. His men follow him with a slavish devotion that is founded on a half-assed re-spinning of old Norse myths and beliefs. But it’s not just his men he controls: he uses all types of people to achieve his ends. And that includes the psychologically damaged. John MacSwain is an example, just like the guy in the Ukraine who was executed for a series of similar crimes in the mid-nineties.’
Fabel paused. There was a total silence in the room.
‘Vitrenko has had access to material that I have written on a serial-murder case in Hamburg. He has also studied at one of the world’s leading criminology institutes … a Ukrainian institute, and, as we know, the Ukraine has one of the highest incidences of serial murderers in the world. That is why everything we have dealt with so far has seemed like a textbook case. Because it
is
a textbook case. Vitrenko probably met MacSwain through the Eitels, for whom MacSwain works. The Eitels are involved with Vitrenko in a property scam that also involves the Odessa Mafia and Norbert Eitel has been directly involved in the drugging, abduction and rape of young women in some kind of ritual. He has a very distinctive scar on his left hand that matches the description given by one of the victims. I believe that Vitrenko is using these rituals as some kind of binding thing. And I believe we will discover other powerful individuals caught up in all of this.’
Fabel paused again. It felt strange to give voice to it all; like he was externalising what had been, until now, a purely internal process. His audience sat almost motionless and totally quiet. There were no questions, so Fabel continued.
‘As for the murders, Ursula Kastner, as a property lawyer working for the city, must have stumbled on irregularities in property deals relating to the Neuer Horizont partnership. My guess is she uncovered some kind of high-level involvement and decided to go to the press, instead of the authorities. And the press, in this case, was Angelika Blüm. Tina Kramer, the BAO-BND operative, was killed because she was identified as a front-line contact for Klugmann, whose cover had been blown by two officers from this force. Officers who were on the take and who murdered Klugmann in the Schwimmhalle and left a Ukrainian security-services firearm behind to confuse the issue. Three victims; one killer. John MacSwain. The apprentice.’ Fabel gestured to the images of the three murdered women. He then moved across to the photographs taken in Afghanistan.
‘These, on the other hand, are the work of the master. And I have seen his handiwork with my own eyes. The murder earlier today of Vitrenko’s father and his assistant was a signature piece, and Vitrenko is egotistical enough to have wanted me to see that before he destroyed the evidence. This was his own father and the sister of one of the Kiev victims. Vitrenko would not entrust this to MacSwain. This was a masterpiece.’
‘But other than this most recent killing, you claim MacSwain is the murderer?’ Van Heiden asked.
‘Yes. Vitrenko knew how to press all the right buttons with MacSwain. MacSwain is clearly sociopathic. Vitrenko realised that. It takes one to know one, I suppose. Anyway, John MacSwain had a very poor relationship with his own father. My guess is that Vitrenko has stepped into the paternal role, and wrapped the whole thing up in some kind of Viking mumbo-jumbo. MacSwain was probably first enlisted to find women for the rituals Vitrenko organised … which were, in reality, nothing more than disguised gang rapes. Vitrenko must have seen how deep MacSwain’s psychopathy went. It was then that Vitrenko gave MacSwain his sacred missions to carry out. My guess is that MacSwain sent the e-mails but the wording was supplied by Vitrenko.’