The Ghosts of Altona (39 page)

Fabel stood up. ‘Okay, thank you, Herr Doctor.’

‘I’m free to go?’

‘Not for the moment, I’m afraid. If you want to see your legal representative, we’ll arrange that for you. In the meantime, I think you need a refreshment break and then another officer will take full details of your movements over the last few days. But once they’ve been checked out, and once we’ve finished the forensics process at both scenes, then we’ll take you back to your hotel.’

Fabel was at the door when a thought hit him.

‘There’s one thing . . .’ He turned back to Tempel. ‘Would you mind opening your shirt?’

‘My shirt?’

‘If you don’t mind. I need to check your chest for something.’

Tempel sighed and shook his head. After a moment he stood up abruptly, unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it open. His chest was smooth, tanned, muscular and blemish free. No tattoo.

‘Satisfied?’

‘Thank you, Herr Doctor Tempel.’

*

Out in the hall, a troubled-looking Anna Wolff was waiting for Fabel; she had been watching the interview on the closed circuit screen in the next room.

‘What is it?’ asked Fabel.

‘I think he’s clean,’ she said. ‘I think we’ve screwed up. Or more correctly, I’ve screwed up.’

‘I take it you’re referring to more than your love life. Maybe you can take him out on an apology date. Anyway, it’s too soon to write him off.’

‘You still think he’s maybe had something to do with it?’

‘I honestly don’t know. We’re in the dark so much here. And his distracting you while the woman got Albrecht out of the bar . . . If you and Glasmacher hadn’t been changing shift with Dirk and Sandra, it would have worked. Get people over to Tempel’s hotel and ask if anyone remembers seeing him with anyone else, particularly anyone fitting the description of the woman you saw Albrecht with that night.’

Nicola Brüggemann, carrying a document, came along the hall towards them.

‘You were right,’ she said, handing the printed-out email to Fabel. ‘Forensics have confirmed xylazine in Albrecht’s system. A lot of xylazine. They’re rushing through tests on samples they got from Mortensen, not that there could have been much blood left in his body.’

‘Thanks, Nicola.’

‘There’s more,’ she said, nodding to the stapled pages in Fabel’s hands. ‘Take a look at the photograph over the page . . .’

He flicked through the pages until he found a mortuary photograph, clearly of Albrecht’s chest. The wooden stake had been removed and the hole gaped raw into the chest cavity. Someone had circled an area on the photograph in red marker, close to the chest wound.

‘What’s this?’ asked Fabel.

‘You can’t really see it that clearly on the photograph, and we wouldn’t have seen it when Albrecht showed you his chest – but the pathologist confirmed that there are hypopigmentation spots on the skin. Albrecht’s skin tone was light anyway, so they would be difficult to notice . . .’

Fabel looked meaningfully at Anna. ‘Laser tattoo removal?’

‘That’s what the pathologist reckons.’

‘Shit,’ said Anna. ‘So he
did
have a tattoo.’

‘And in exactly the same place as the others.’

58

Beyond the windows of his office, the sky above the Winterhuder Stadtpark had turned to a shade of pewter, as if the rain that had started falling had washed any colour out from it. Against his will, another day when the sky had been the colour of pewter pushed its way into his recall and a knot tightened in his gut.

He called Nicola Brüggemann in and asked her to round up the whole team and get everyone in the briefing room in ten minutes.

‘Sure, Jan – you think we’re getting close?’

‘We’re close,’ he said. ‘But close to what, I don’t know. There are so many potential routes I’m worried that we’ll head off in the wrong direction again. We’ve got so little forensic evidence from any of the scenes that I’m beginning to think we won’t be able to pin any suspect down. Anyway, I want to discuss something else with the team as well.’

Henk Hermann appeared at the door. ‘I just wanted you to know that I’m free,
Chef
. I’ve finally got all the paperwork done on the Alte Mühle Seniors’ Home thing. I’m guessing you need all hands on deck.’

‘You’re guessing right. We’re having a briefing in ten minutes, and if you and Sven Bruns could be there, it would be good. What was the confusion? You said something about the Alte Mühle case having some kind of mix up?’

‘Oh, nothing that confusing,’ said Henk with a wry smile. ‘Just that the killer was the victim and the victim was the killer.’

‘What do you mean?’

Henk ran through what he had found in Georg Schmidt’s diary, his interview with the old man and the discussion with the psychiatrist, Gosau, that had followed.

‘So Schmidt killed Wohlmann in revenge for sins
he
had committed, not Wohlmann.’

‘So it would appear. Herr Doctor Gosau seemed to think that Schmidt, once his mind and his memory started to fail him, escaped from his own history and slipped into the life he had always coveted.’

Fabel thought for a moment, then turned to Brüggemann. ‘Nicola, do me a favour – get onto custody and tell them to hang on to Marco Tempel. I don’t want him leaving the building until I talk to him again. But I don’t want him to know why he’s being delayed. I need to speak to him after the briefing, but without him getting a lawyer involved.’

‘That sounds like thin ice . . .’

‘Trust me. I’ll see you in the briefing room in ten minutes.’

*

‘Okay, is everyone here?’

‘Anna’s been delayed,’ said Nicola Brüggemann, ‘but she shouldn’t be too long. Something important she needed to check up on, she said.’

‘Fine,’ said Fabel. ‘Obviously I want to go through where we are with the so-called “Gothic” murders. It’s become pretty clear that the murders of Detlev Traxinger, Werner Hensler, Tobias Albrecht and Paul Mortensen are all connected. The last two employed the same form of killing – bleeding the victim to death, probably while they were sedated and immobilized by a large dose of the horse tranquillizer xylazine hydrochloride. That seems to be the one thing common to all the killings. There’s little doubt, as far as I’m concerned, that all four killings are connected to the disappearance and murder, fifteen years ago, of Monika Krone. However, before we go over where we are with the cases, there’s something else I need to discuss with you all . . .’

Fabel paused as Anna Wolff came into the briefing room.

‘Sorry I’m late,
Chef
.’

‘Now that we’re all here . . .’ Fabel addressed the room. ‘I have something to tell you. It will affect you all, so I wanted you to know about it and I want to hear your honest opinions. I have been offered one of two jobs. The first is as Leading Criminal Director in charge of the Hamburg LKA. If I accept, it would take me away from the Murder Commission, but as head of the whole investigative branch I would definitely have a say in my successor here. The second opportunity I’ve been offered is to stay on here, but in the rank of Leading Criminal Director and for the Commission to become a semi-autonomous unit within the LKA.’

There was a buzz of voices and Fabel held up his hand to halt it.

‘This isn’t just a choice for me. All of you here are officers I hand-picked for the Commission. As individuals, I consider each of you to be among the very best officers on this force; collectively you are the best investigative unit in Germany. Any success we have achieved has been more down to you than to me. I wanted you all to know, before I make it official, that I have decided to accept the Police President’s offer and develop the Commission. What that’ll mean for us all is that we’ll be called in more and more to help other forces, if they ask us, with complex cases or when they have a serial offender active in their area. I should point out that if we do go down this route, we’ll be given more resources and more people. And, because we’ll be accepting consultative roles at a federal level, the Polizei Hamburg will get some funding from the federal government to help develop the Commission. But I want you all to be assured that our focus will remain Hamburg, first and foremost. This additional role will involve some of you being called away to other parts of the Republic, sometimes at short notice. I want you all to think this through and if, as a team, you’re unhappy about the new arrangement, I want you to elect a spokesperson and let me know before I formally accept. If any individual officer wants to transfer, I will understand. I won’t stand in your way and you’ll be guaranteed a report that will put you at the top of any department’s wish list.’ Fabel paused, holding his palms up. ‘Any questions?’

‘I don’t know about the others, but personally I think it’s great,’ said Anna Wolff. ‘If there are any cases in Berlin, let me have them. Or Cologne. Oh, yeah . . . and Munich. Anywhere, really. But not Frankfurt . . . anywhere but Frankfurt. Fuck that.’

Everyone laughed.

‘Are we covering only the German-speaking world,’ asked Dirk Hechtner, ‘or will we be taking cases in Baden-Württemberg too?’

More laughter.

‘I’m glad you’re all taking it so seriously,’ said Fabel. ‘Okay, think about it and if any of you wants to discuss it further, my door’s open. In the meantime, let’s get back to the case in hand.’ He turned to the incident boards, now side by side and interconnected with pins and red thread.

‘We’ve got a clear sequence of events,’ he continued, ‘starting with Monika Krone’s remains being accidentally uncovered. Whatever else that event signifies, it seems to have torn the scab off a fifteen-year-old wound. Think about it – a new development needs a rerouted water supply and the trench cuts through the exact corner of a mini-market car park where Monika Krone has lain undisturbed for fifteen years. Her remains could have stayed hidden there for decades longer if it hadn’t been for that single turn of fate . . .’

Fabel went over to the incident board to where Jochen Hübner glowered from a custody mugshot.

‘But by chance or not, once her body was discovered all hell breaks loose: Jochen Hübner – aka Frankenstein and the only solid suspect we had fifteen years ago – escapes from Santa Fu prison and disappears off the face of the Earth. Then, in quick succession, four men – Detlev Traxinger, Werner Hensler, Tobias Albrecht and Paul Mortensen – are all murdered. All four men were involved to one degree or another with Monika Krone, who seems to have left them all deeply marked. I mean, Detlev Traxinger was completely obsessed with her – and probably Tobias Albrecht too, just that he was better at hiding it. And two of the four men had the same tattoo, the significance of which we’ve yet to establish, but I’d bet a month’s pay that it had something to do with being members of this so-called Gothic set, which is looking more and more like a cult or secret society. And it’s pretty safe to assume that the fourth man, Albrecht, had the same tattoo because we’ve just established that he’d had laser surgery to have one removed from exactly the same spot as the others.’ Fabel paused.

‘So who’s killing former members of this secret student society? There are two strong possibilities – there’s actually a third that only came to me today, but I need to think it through. But the first obvious possibility is this: that Jochen Hübner
did
kill Monika Krone fifteen years ago and the discovery of her remains has prompted him to escape from prison and, for some reason, start killing men who were close to her. Incidentally, forensics have told me that the partial thumbprint retrieved from Traxinger’s studio isn’t good enough for significant identification purposes, but it
is
enough to eliminate Jochen Hübner. Significant differences in morphology, apparently. But that doesn’t, by any means, exclude him as a suspect.’

‘But what’s the motive?’ said Nicola Brüggemann. ‘I mean, I get it if he abducted and killed Monika – that would fit with his twisted sexual agenda and hatred of women. But we’ve only just discovered, through hard investigation, that these men were all connected to Monika. How would Hübner know?’

‘He wouldn’t. Jochen Hübner has been on the run for three weeks. He’s not called Frankenstein for no reason – he has got to be the most conspicuous fugitive in the history of Hamburg manhunts. Yet there hasn’t been a single sighting of him. I mean, this guy’s appearance literally stopped traffic when he made his break from the hospital, yet no one has seen him since.’

‘An accomplice . . .’ Brüggemann nodded.

‘An accomplice. Someone who helped him escape for a price. There is a fifth man – my ghost in the files – who was involved with the Gothic set. He was a ghost even back then – someone on the periphery of the group. Maybe he’s the one who knows all the connections and sprung Hübner to do his dirty work. But maybe not. Which brings me to another possibility: that this fifth man is acting alone and killing his former associates.’

‘Motive?’ asked Dirk Hechtner. Fabel paused before answering: a young woman in uniform had knocked on the glass door of the briefing room. She leaned in and gestured towards Anna, who nodded.

‘Excuse me,
Chef
,’ she said. ‘I need to see to this, it’s relevant . . .’ Fabel nodded and Anna went out into the hall and spoke to the uniformed policewoman, who started to guide Anna through a file of papers she had brought. Fabel turned back to Hechtner.

‘Motive? We have two possibilities. One is that our mystery man is Monika’s killer and the other four knew his identity. Maybe they didn’t know for sure that he
had
killed her. The other possibility is that the reverse is true: that Traxinger, Hensler, Albrecht and Mortensen acted together in the murder of Monika Krone, and our fifth man has always suspected but never knew for sure. Then the body is found . . .’

‘And your third possibility?’ asked Nicola Brüggemann. Fabel noticed that Anna had come back in, clutching the file the uniformed officer had brought her. Anna’s face was pale, her expression set hard.

‘That’s a long shot, Nicola . . . In fact it’s so improbable I find it difficult to believe. In any case, I need time to think it through before sharing it.’ He turned to Anna. ‘What is it, Anna?’