JF03 - Eternal (15 page)

Professor von Halen, who headed up the facility, was waiting for Fabel in reception. Von Halen was much younger than Fabel had expected and did not fit with Fabel’s idea of a scientist. Perhaps because of the stereotype imprinted in Fabel’s mind, and
perhaps because of the photograph for which Griebel had so unwillingly posed, Fabel had expected von Halen to be wearing a white scientific dust coat. Instead he was dressed in an expensive-looking dark business suit and a slightly too-bright tie. As Fabel was guided through the reception doors, he half expected von Halen to lead him into a showroom filled with top-of-the-range Mercedes cars for sale. Instead his preconceptions were restored as he was led through a laboratory and a suite of offices, all the occupants of which were suitably attired in white coats. Fabel also noticed that most of them stopped what they were doing and watched as he passed by. Word had obviously already spread about Griebel’s death, or von Halen must have made some kind of official announcement.

‘It’s been a massive shock to us all.’ Von Halen seemed to read Fabel’s thoughts. ‘Herr Dr Griebel was a very quiet man who largely kept his own counsel, but he was well liked by the staff who worked directly with him.’

Fabel scanned the laboratory as they passed. There were fewer test tubes than he would have imagined in a science lab, and many more computers. ‘Was there ever any gossip about Dr Griebel?’ asked Fabel. ‘Sometimes we gain more leads through
Kaffeeklatsch
than through known facts about a victim.’

Von Halen shook his head. ‘Gunter Griebel was not someone you would associate with gossip of any kind – either as source or subject. Like I said, he kept his personal life very distinct from his working life. I don’t know of anyone here who socialised with him or who knew any of his friends or acquaintances outside work. No one had any personal knowledge of him to gossip about.’

They passed through some double doors and out of the laboratory. At the end of a wide corridor, von Halen showed Fabel into an office. It was large and bright and expensively furnished in a contemporary style. Von Halen sat down behind a vast expanse of beech and indicated that Fabel should take a seat. Again, Fabel was struck by how ‘corporate’ von Halen’s office was. Fabel put this together with von Halen’s sharp-suitedness and decided that the facility chief was very much in the business of science.

‘Are there any commercial aspects to the work you do here?’ Fabel asked.

‘In today’s world, Herr Fabel, all research activity with any potential biotechnical or medical applications has a commercial aspect to it. Our genetics unit here straddles the academic and the business worlds … we are part of the university but we are also a registered company. A business.’

‘Did Dr Griebel work in a commercial area of research?’

‘As I said, all research ultimately has a commercial application. And a price. But to give you a simple answer: no. Dr Griebel was working in a field that will ultimately offer enormous advantages in the field of diagnosing and preventing a vast range of diseases and conditions. The fruits of Dr Griebel’s research will be of great commercial value. But we are talking about years into the future. Dr Griebel was a
pure
scientist. He was in it for the challenge and the potential breakthrough – the leap forward in human science and all of the benefits that come from such advances.’ Von Halen leaned back in his executive leather chair. ‘And, to be honest, I indulged Gunter more than a little. He would occasionally go “off brief”, as our English friends would say. He had a
few windmills to tilt at along the way, but I knew that he never lost sight of the aims of his research.’

‘So you would say there’s no possible link between Dr Griebel’s work and his murder?’

Von Halen gave a mirthless half-laugh. ‘No, Herr Chief Commissar – I can see no motives there. Nor anywhere else. Gunter Griebel was an inoffensive, hard-working, dedicated scientist and why anyone would do … well, what was done to him … is totally beyond my understanding. Is it true? What the papers said?’

Fabel ignored the question. ‘What, exactly, was Dr Griebel’s field of research?’

‘Epigenetics. It studies how genes are switched on and off, and how this prevents or promotes the development of certain diseases and conditions. It is a field still very much in its infancy, but it will become one of the most important life sciences.’

‘Whom did he work with?’

‘He was the head of a team of three. The other two were Alois Kahlberg and Elisabeth Marksen. I can introduce you if you wish.’

‘I would like to talk to them, but perhaps another day. I can ring to make an appointment.’ Fabel rose. ‘Thank you for your time, Herr Professor.’

‘You’re welcome.’

As Fabel rose to leave, he examined a picture on the wall next to the door. It was a group shot of the entire research team: the same staff he had passed through on his way to von Halen’s office.

‘Is this a recent photograph?’ he asked the sharp-suited scientist.

‘Yes. Why?’

‘It’s just that Herr Dr Griebel seems to be absent from it.’

‘No – he’s there, all right.’ Von Halen indicated a tall figure at the back. The person in the picture had moved partly behind another colleague and his head was slightly lowered, depriving the camera of a clear image of his face. ‘That’s Gunter … messing up the photograph as usual.’ Von Halen sighed. ‘Not a problem we’ll have any more, I suppose …’

As soon as Fabel returned to the Presidium he phoned Severts, the archaeologist, and arranged to meet him the following morning at his office at the Universität Hamburg. Severts told Fabel that they had uncovered some personal items at the HafenCity site that clearly belonged to the mummified man.

But Fabel had the more freshly dead at the front of his mind and as soon as he hung up he called Anna Wolff and Henk Hermann into his office.

‘We’ve got most of the phone records for both victims,’ said Anna in response to Fabel’s asking. ‘We’re trying to match numbers to names or institutions now. I have to say that Griebel was not the most social of animals – there’s not much to go through in his phone accounts. Hauser, on the other hand, seemed to be permanently attached to a phone. We’re starting with the numbers that Hauser called or was called from most.’

‘That makes sense, of course,’ said Fabel. ‘But the number I am looking for may not have connected often. Perhaps only once. It may even have been a payphone.’

‘What is it that you’re looking for,
Chef
?’ asked Henk.

‘It looks like both victims admitted their murderer
to their homes,’ said Fabel. ‘That would suggest either that Hauser and Griebel knew their killer or killers, or that the killer had pre-arranged a meeting with them.’

‘But we are dealing with someone who is clearly most careful to avoid leaving forensic traces,’ said Anna. ‘Isn’t it a bit much to hope that they would leave their phone numbers on record?’

‘It is …’ Fabel sighed at the futility of the exercise. ‘But my thinking is that contact had to be established somehow. Like I say, I would expect it to be a payphone or a disposable cellphone number – something we cannot trace to anyone in particular. There is always the chance that the contact was made some other way. Maybe even approaching the victims on the street with some plausible story. But the telephone is a more likely form of initial contact. I just want to know if my theory is justified before we go off looking in the wrong direction.’

‘And anyway,’ said Henk, ‘there’s always the outside chance that our guy got sloppy – maybe thinking that we wouldn’t look for a phone contact.’

Fabel smiled grimly. ‘I wish I could believe that … but “sloppy” does not seem to fit with this killer.’

‘There is one thing that’s interesting …’ Henk laid out some pages from a file side by side on Fabel’s desk. They consisted of press cuttings and photographs of Hans-Joachim Hauser. The most recent was a still from an NDR news report. ‘Do you see the common denominator?’

Fabel shrugged.

Henk pointed to each image in turn. ‘Hans-Joachim Hauser was always keen to be seen to practise what he preached. He didn’t have a car and never travelled in other people’s cars.’

Fabel looked at the photographs again. In a couple of them Hauser was pictured cycling through Hamburg’s crowded streets. In the others, Fabel could see the bike either deliberately positioned in the background, or accidentally caught half in shot.

‘It’s missing …’ Henk said.

‘The bike?’

Henk nodded. ‘We’ve checked everywhere and it’s nowhere to be seen. It was very distinctive, covered in hundreds of small stickers with environmental messages on them. He never went anywhere without it. I asked Sebastian Lang, Hauser’s friend, about it …’ Henk emphasised the word ‘friend’. ‘He said that Hauser always kept his bike chained up in the small courtyard behind his apartment. Obviously forensics did a fingertip search in the yard and checked the windows at the back. They found nothing. According to Lang, Hauser had had the same bike since he was a student. It was his pride and joy, apparently.’

Fabel looked at the photographs again. It was a very ordinary, very old-fashioned bicycle; not a particularly obvious choice for a psychotic killer to take as a trophy. Unless, of course, the killer knew of Hauser’s attachment to it. But why would you leave the scalp and take the bike?

‘Do we know if there is anything else missing from Dr Griebel’s home?’

‘Not that we can ascertain …’ It was Anna who answered. ‘Dr Griebel also had a housekeeper – probably not as thorough as Kristina Dreyer, but she says she can’t see anything obviously missing.’

‘Okay …’ Fabel handed the photographs back to Henk. ‘Get on to uniform branch – I want this to be the most hunted missing bicycle in German police history.’

After Henk and Anna had left his office, Fabel phoned Susanne at the Institute for Legal Medicine. Susanne was doing a fuller assessment of Kristina Dreyer before it was decided if charges should be brought against her for wilfully destroying evidence. Officially, she was still a suspect for the first murder, but the single red hair left at each of the murder scenes, as well as the scalping of the victims in exactly the same manner, indicated that they were dealing with the same killer in each case.

‘I’ll have my report ready tomorrow, Jan,’ Susanne explained. ‘To be honest, I am recommending that she has a clinical assessment by a hospital psychologist and we involve social services. My opinion is that she cannot be held responsible for her actions in cleaning up the murder scene.’

‘I tend to agree with you, just from talking to her and knowing her history. But I’m going to talk to this Dr Minks, the Fear Clinic psychologist, about her.’ Fabel paused. ‘It almost wasn’t worth going away, was it? Being hit by all this crap as soon as we got back.’

‘Never mind …’ Susanne’s voice was warm and sounded almost sleepy. ‘Come over to my place tonight and I’ll cook us something nice. We can go through the property pages in the
Abendblatt
and see what’s available in our price range.’

‘I know two properties that are about to come on the market,’ said Fabel glumly. ‘Their owners have no need for them now.’

By the time the phone rang, Paul Scheibe had managed a good three hours’ drinking. The warmth
of the French grape had not, however, managed to thaw the chill of fear that bound his gut tight. His face was pasty and sleeked with a greasy cold sweat.

‘Find a payphone and call me back on this number. Do not use your cellphone.’ The voice on the other end gave the number and the line went dead. Scheibe reached clumsily for a pencil and paper and scribbled down the number.

The late-afternoon light seemed to dazzle Scheibe as he walked from his villa down towards the Elbe shore. Blankenese was built on a steep bank and is famed for its pathways made up of thousands of steps. Scheibe, his feet heavy after his afternoon’s drinking, shambled his way to the payphone that he knew was down by the beach.

His call was answered after one ring. He thought he could hear the sound of heavy equipment in the background. ‘It’s me,’ said Scheibe. The three bottles of Merlot had made his voice thick and slurred.

‘You prick,’ the voice at the other end of the phone hissed. ‘You never,
ever
use my office or cellphone number for anything other than official calls. After all these years, and particularly with everything that’s going on, I would have thought that you would have had enough sense not to risk exposure.’

‘I’m sorry—’

‘Don’t say my name, you fool …’ The voice at the other end cut him off.

‘I’m sorry,’ Scheibe repeated lamely. Something more than the wine thickened his voice. ‘I panicked. Christ … first Hans-Joachim, now Gunter. This is
no coincidence. Someone is taking us out one by one …’

There was a small silence on the other side of the line. ‘I know. It certainly looks like that.’

‘It
looks
like that?’ Scheibe snorted. ‘For God’s sake, man – did you read what they did to them both? Did you read about the thing with the hair?’

‘I read it.’

‘It’s a message. That’s what it is – a message. Don’t you get it? The killer dyed their hair
red
. Someone is going after every member of the group. I’m getting out. I’m going to drop out of sight. Maybe go abroad or something …’ There was a note of desperation in Scheibe’s voice: the desperation of a man without a plan, pretending he had a strategy for dealing with something there was no dealing with.

‘You’ll stay where you are,’ the voice on the other end of the phone snapped. ‘If you make a run for it, you’ll draw attention to yourself – and to the rest of us. For the moment the police think they’re looking for a random killer.’

‘So I just sit here and wait to be scalped?’

‘You sit there and wait for instructions. I’ll make contact with the others …’

The phone went dead. Scheibe continued to hold the receiver to his ear and stared blankly out over the grass-fringed sand of the Blankenese shore, across the Elbe and watched as a vast container ship slipped silently by. He felt his eyes sting and a great, leaden sadness seemed to coalesce in his chest as he thought of another Paul Scheibe: the Paul Scheibe he had once been, swaggering with the arrogant certainties of youth. A past-tense Paul
Scheibe whose decisions and actions had now come back to haunt him.