kinds — experienced all kinds — of horrors. Sylvie handed the tramp a fifty-euro note.
‘Thanks…’ The tramp looked delighted with her bounty. Suddenly eager. ‘Listen, you come by tomorrow. I’ll ask some of the others if they’ve seen something.’
‘That would be good.’ Sylvie smiled. ‘You do that.’
Sylvie drove back into the Reeperbahn and parked near the taxi rank at Spielbudenplatz. Unlike the female down-and-out, the drivers waiting for fares or taking a break at the snack stand knew exactly who Sylvie was. They were keen to help, especially when she hinted that if she got anything worthwhile she’d return with a camera crew to get their statements on tape. The fact was, however, that they had nothing much to offer, although one or two had been very open about what the police had said to them.
From the scraps she had gathered, Sylvie was able to piece together that the guy who had been murdered had been picked up by an ivory-beige Mercedes E-class, but the police thought that it had probably been a fake taxi. That kind of planning, she thought to herself, was bordering on the professional. The drivers told her that they were all now looking out for the phoney cab and driver.
While she was at Spielbudenplatz, Sylvie thought it was worthwhile calling into Davidwache. When she asked the uniformed female officer behind the counter if she could speak to Herr Kaminski, she was told he was unavailable. All day. Sylvie tried to wheedle some information from the desk officer but got nowhere.
When she got back to her car, her cellphone rang. It was Ivonne, her assistant, calling to tell her that the police had released an identity for the latest victim: Armin Lensch, twenty-nine, had worked for the NeuHansa Group.
‘God — that’s a bit close to home,’ said Sylvie. The NeuHansa Group was the company owned by Gina Bronsted, the Hamburg senator who was running for First Mayor. Through NeuHansa, Gina Bronsted had a finger in every pie in Hamburg worth having your finger in. One of those pies was HanSat TV, Sylvie’s employer. The rumour was that Bronsted had financed Andreas Knabbe’s start-up of HanSat.
‘Yep,’ said Ivonne. ‘Apparently Lensch worked for a subsidiary, Norivon. It’s NeuHansa’s environmental technologies division.’
‘Now that’s interesting…’ Sylvie sat in the car staring out through the windscreen but seeing nothing; instead her mind raced through a dozen possible connections. As well as being a successful politician, Gina Bronsted was a millionairess several times over. She was running for the office of Hamburg’s Principal Mayor, basically on the platform that she could run the city like a business. Having an employee of one of her companies linked to these murders, even as a victim, was not the kind of publicity she would want. ‘Ivonne, get me everything you can on the NeuHansa Group and Gina Bronsted. Get me a few names inside the company and find out if the dead guy was of any importance in the group. Have whatever you can lay your hands on emailed to my personal address or couriered over to my flat tonight. I’ll be back home from about eight.’
‘I’m on it. By the way, Herr Knabbe has been looking for you.’
Sylvie smiled to herself: Ivonne was a great assistant. More importantly, she hated their mutual boss as much as Sylvie did. Ivonne’s little rebellion was to reject his Americanised informality and never address or refer to him as Andreas.
‘What did you tell him?’ she asked.
‘That you were following up a hot lead. I also told him that the battery on your cellphone was low and you’d temporarily switched it off and I couldn’t reach you.’
‘Ivonne, you’re a star.’
‘So they tell me. Oh, there was another call for you. Some guy phoned saying he had to talk to you urgently but he wouldn’t leave a name. He said he would call back. He sounded a bit creepy, if you ask me.’
Sylvie told Ivonne to let Knabbe know she’d be back in the office first thing tomorrow morning and not to worry about the anonymous caller. Probably some crank. She hung up, pulled out into the traffic on the Reeperbahn and headed back into the city.
6
Fabel got a phone call from Renate just as he was about to go up with Anna and Werner to the Presidium’s fifth floor to meet with van Heiden.
‘Have you spoken to Gabi yet?’ Renate asked without preliminaries.
‘Not yet. You know I haven’t. Why are you phoning me at work to ask me something you already know the answer to? I’m seeing Gabi on Thursday. I’ll talk to her then.’
‘You could have phoned her.’
‘This isn’t something I want to discuss with her over the phone. I choose the right time and place. You should try it, Renate. Anyway, Gabi’s choice of career is hardly pressing: she hasn’t even sat her Abitur yet.’
‘Trouble?’ asked Werner when Fabel came off the phone. Anna and Werner had been standing awkwardly during the exchange.
‘The worst kind. Renate. Gabi is thinking about a career in the police. I’m a bad influence, according to Renate.’
‘I wouldn’t have wanted one of my daughters doing this job,’ said Werner.
‘Oh yeah? So what if you had a son?’ asked Anna.
‘You know I don’t have a son, so I don’t know. It’s got nothing to do with gender politics, Anna.’
Fabel took a deep breath. ‘Ready? Then let’s go and walk amongst the exalted…’
They stood waiting outside van Heiden’s office for five minutes. But they weren’t invited in; instead van Heiden emerged from his office, putting on his suit jacket as he did so.
‘Follow me.’ As he spoke, van Heiden cast a disapproving eye over Anna’s jeans and T-shirt.
Hamburg’s Police Presidium had been built in the form of a giant Police Star, the symbol of police forces throughout Germany. The entire Presidium was built around a central circular atrium open to the sky: all office suites, including the Murder Commission, radiated out as the arms of the star from its circular hallways. Fabel, Werner and Anna followed van Heiden along the sweep of the fifth-floor corridor until they came to doors of the Presidial Department. This was where Hugo Steinbach — Hamburg’s Police President — and his deputies had their offices.
‘Police President Steinbach has asked to be involved in this meeting,’ explained van Heiden. He paused for a moment and turned to Fabel. ‘Listen, Jan, I don’t like being caught on the back foot. What have you told Herr Steinbach?’
‘Nothing,’ said Fabel. ‘I thought you-’
Van Heiden shook his head. ‘Looks like we’re both on the back foot. I suppose we’d better find out.’
When they arrived at the Presidial Department, they weren’t directed to Steinbach’s office but were told to go straight into the conference room. When they entered, Fabel was surprised to see Karin Vestergaard sitting at the conference table next to Hugo Steinbach. The Police President stood up and shook hands with van Heiden and then with Fabel. Steinbach was the opposite of van Heiden in many ways. Van Heiden could be nothing other than a policeman and somehow managed to wear his smartly tailored Hugo Boss suits as if they were uniforms. In complete contrast, Hugo Steinbach was softly spoken and had an avuncular, easygoing appearance. To look at Hamburg’s Police President, one would have taken him for a schoolteacher or some rural family doctor. The truth was Steinbach was highly unusual for an officer of his rank in Germany. He had not entered the police at senior level but had started out as a uniformed beat Polizeimeister and had worked his way up through every rank. Fabel knew that part of that journey had involved being head of the Polizei Berlin’s murder squad. Fabel respected Steinbach as an officer, but he also liked him as a person.
‘I know you wanted to talk to Criminal Director van Heiden about what Frau Vestergaard discussed with you yesterday, but I thought we should all have a chat about it. If you don’t mind, Jan.’
‘Hello, Frau Vestergaard,’ said Fabel in English. ‘I thought we were meeting later to discuss this. I had hoped to brief Herr van Heiden, as Herr Steinbach has suggested.’
‘I’m afraid events have moved on a little from then,’ said Vestergaard without a hint of apology. ‘New information has come to light and I felt it would be appropriate to discuss it with Mr Steinbach.’
‘Why don’t we all sit down?’ said Steinbach in a clear attempt to ease the tension between Fabel and
