expression of enlightenment. ‘And she was in the Free German Youth!’
‘Seriously, Chef,’ pressed Anna. ‘We can’t ignore the fact that two women involved with Jake Westland spent their youth in the GDR.’
‘But Martina’s background will have been thoroughly checked out before she was allowed to join the Polizei Hamburg. And I would say that Petra Meissner’s public profile is far too visible for her to operate as a professional killer.’
‘Maybe so,’ said Anna. ‘But if Martina Schilmann is the Valkyrie, then her backstory in the GDR would be as solid as it could be…’
‘Okay, check it out.’ Fabel turned to Hechtner. ‘Dirk, were you able to get any more on who “Olaf” might be — the name in Jespersen’s notebook?’
‘Nope, sorry, Chef. From the little we’ve been able to piece together, there’s nothing to suggest Drescher ever used “Olaf” as a pseudonym. No Olafs that we can see connected to Goran Vuja i c, Jake Westland or Armin Lensch either. We’re still looking into any Olaf that Ralf Sparwald might have known.’
‘It could be incidental,’ said Fabel. ‘Maybe nothing to it all.’
Fabel waited until Vestergaard arrived and the rest of the team had assembled in the Incident Room.
‘Okay. We’ve got a break,’ he said addressing the whole team. ‘Thanks to Anna, we’ve cracked the code behind Drescher’s messages to the Valkyrie. All the messages have been simple time-and-place set-ups for meetings. It’s an example of institutional thinking. They formed their working system in a time before reunification, using the methods of the Cold War. I’m guessing that Drescher was uncomfortable with new technology, otherwise they could have used the Internet or anonymous email accounts. Having said that, there’s no evidence that they didn’t use these means in addition to the magazine announcements.’
‘Why do it at all?’ asked Werner. ‘After all, they could have simply phoned each other. No one knew who Drescher was and she could have had an untraceable cellphone.’
‘Like I said, institutional thinking. Drescher was in the same city as the Valkyrie, but their entire relationship had been created to operate at long distances, with the Valkyrie working on her own most of the time. When they set up in Hamburg, post-Reunification, they kept their old way of working. Inflexibility, I suppose.’
As he spoke, Fabel noticed that Astrid Bremer, the deputy head of the forensics team, had come into the Incident Room and was standing at the back.
‘Anyway,’ continued Fabel, ‘we’ve managed to get the cooperation of Muliebritas magazine. They’re going to hold us a space in the next issue. It’s due out next week, so we’ve had to work fast to get our wording right. There doesn’t seem to be any regular meeting place. The only common element is that it seems to always be in an open space, presumably so she can check it out as she approaches him, but with enough people around for them to be inconspicuous. As far as we can see, all meetings have been in Altona or Hamburg city centre.’
‘What about the Rathausplatz in front of the City Chambers?’ asked Anna. ‘We could put someone on each corner and on the U-Bahn entrance.’
‘I suspect that would be a little too public for the Valkyrie. Drescher always picked quieter venues. People milling about but not crowds. The other thing is we want to limit the risk to the public if things go pear- shaped.’
‘What if we used the Altona Balkon?’ asked Werner.
‘Drescher used it once before, as far as we can see. The last meeting, in fact.’
‘What about the Alsterpark next to where you used to live, Chef?’ said Anna. ‘On the shores of the Outer Alster? It would be reasonably easy to secure but quite difficult for the Valkyrie to spot us.’
Fabel thought for a moment. ‘That sounds good. Anybody have any objections?’
There were none.
‘Okay,’ said Fabel to Werner. ‘Let’s get this encrypted and spread across three announcements, the way Drescher did: “Alsterpark at Fahrdamm. Eleven-thirty, Wednesday”. That gives us a week to get it all set up. In the meantime, I’m going to do a bit of digging into Goran Vuja i c ’s history. It was his untimely demise that brought Jens Jespersen to Hamburg.’ He turned to Vestergaard and spoke in English. ‘I’d like you to come along with me, if that’s okay. I’d also like us both to go and visit Gina Bronsted. The NeuHansa Group keeps cropping up in all of this.’
‘Of course,’ she said and smiled in a way so cool that it reminded him of Margarethe Paulus. ‘It would be my pleasure.’
After Fabel had set the team about their various tasks, Astrid Bremer came over to him. She looked young and girlish and, for a moment, Fabel found it difficult to imagine her being an expert on death.
‘I think I have something,’ she said.
‘From Sparwald’s house?’ asked Fabel hopefully.
‘No, from the Drescher apartment. We have a fingerprint specialist who can extrapolate prints from very faint or old traces. I found a packet of Rondo Melange, the popular East German coffee. I just thought it was odd that a man trying so hard to conceal his Stasi past and living with a phoney West German history would have something like that in his cupboard. Well, I’ve just heard back from my fingerprint guy. We’ve got a print that doesn’t belong.’
‘The coffee was a gift?’
‘That’s what I thought,’ said Astrid. ‘And a gift from someone who knew of Drescher’s GDR background. And that could only be one person …’
Fabel had just walked into his office to fetch his coat when his phone rang.
‘Hello, Principal Chief Commissar Fabel? This is Dr Luttig — Thomas Luttig at SkK Biotech. I heard about Ralf… one of your people came round. A young woman.’
‘Commissar Wolff, yes. I’m sorry about Dr Sparwald, I know you valued him as a colleague.’
‘He was my friend as well, Chief Commissar. Anyway, you asked me to tell you if anything out of the ordinary came up. Well, after I heard about Ralf I spent the afternoon going through all his stuff. There is something… It would appear Ralf was doing some work for which there’s no company authorisation. Some kind of private project.’
‘Oh?’ Fabel reached into his drawer and took a notebook out. ‘What kind of private project?’
‘From what I can see, he has been having blood samples tested. Not many — it looks like just three samples, each from a different donor. I found the samples and some paperwork. It seems very strange indeed.’
‘How so?’
‘The tests were very specific. Ralf seems to have been looking for PBDEs. Also, he was doing the tests himself and wasn’t keeping proper records. But I did find a note relating to each of the samples. The first said: female, twenty-two, Hunan Province.’
‘China…’ Fabel spoke as much to himself as to Luttig.
‘Yes. But the second one isn’t. It says: female, twenty-two, Bitola.’
‘Bitola?’
‘I checked it out on the Internet. It’s a city in Macedonia. Very industrial.’
‘What are these PBDEs?’ asked Fabel.
‘Polybrominated diphenyl ethers. They’re used a lot in flame-retardants. And in a thousand other things. There’s a great deal of concern about their toxicity.’
‘You said there was a third sample. What was that labelled?’
‘Well, yes… it’s this third sample that’s causing me the most concern. It was labelled Hunan Province, same as the first blood sample. But it’s human tissue. And, from the tests Ralf was doing, I’m guessing it’s a sample of human thyroid. Which means it has been taken post-mortem. And there’s something else.’
‘What?’
‘From what I can see of his results, the level of PBDEs in these samples is astronomical.’
‘What does that mean?’ asked Fabel. ‘Could it be fatal?’
‘Potentially, yes. Like I said, they’re incredibly toxic and you need a special licence to dispose of them. The jury is still out on what damage they actually do, but they are suspected of causing problems with the thyroid gland, the endocrine system generally and even neurological damage.’
‘Thanks — that could be useful, Dr Luttig.’ Fabel paused. ‘By the way, does the name “Olaf” mean anything to you? Someone whom Ralf Sparwald may have known?’
‘No, I can’t think of anyone. Is it important?’
