‘Probably not,’ said Fabel.
He didn’t like business types.
It didn’t matter how exalted or lowly they were in their arcane corporate hierarchies, they all, to Fabel, seemed to have had some kind of personality-ectomy. He had recently flown to Frankfurt for a meeting with the city’s Murder Commission. On the flight, Fabel had sat in his British tailored sports jacket surrounded by Boss-suited clones and feeling like an extra in the film Gattaca. He had promised himself he would blow his brains out with his SIG-Sauer before owning a BlackBerry.
Fabel even found it difficult at times to hide his disdain for the type of police officers who seemed to be in ‘the business of policing’ and who dressed in the same corporate-clone style as their commercial counterparts.
But it was the business leaders at the top of the tree who wound Fabel up most of all. Sometimes, it was as if they thought themselves medieval barons. In a way, Fabel supposed, they had a point: Hamburg was a city, and a state, that had built its history and independence on a foundation of trade. Instead of having total control over the lives of serfs and bondsmen, the Hanseatic city’s tycoons and magnates held employees, subsidiaries, suppliers and not a few of Hamburg’s politicians in their thrall. And most of Hamburg’s politicians were businessmen themselves.
It had been Fabel’s experience that Hamburg’s business leaders often felt themselves above and beyond the reach of common mortals like policemen.
So it didn’t surprise Fabel that it took his personal intervention to arrange an appointment with Gina Bronsted. He had asked one of the Presidium’s administrative assistants to set up a meeting but she had got nowhere, constantly being fobbed off by someone comparatively low down in the NeuHansa food chain.
‘That’s not a problem,’ Fabel had said when Bronsted’s secretary’s secretary’s assistant had said it was ‘quite impossible’ for an appointment to be made within the next week or so. ‘I quite understand that Frau Bronsted is very busy. I’ll send a marked police car to her home tonight and bring her into the Presidium. And don’t worry, I’ll be sure to tell her that you were so protective of her office time.’
Fabel was informed that Gina Bronsted would see him later that afternoon. As soon as the appointment was confirmed he phoned Hans Gessler of the corporate crime division and asked him if he would mind coming along at such short notice.
‘Will you be bringing along the Little Mermaid?’ asked Gessler.
‘What are you talking about?’ Fabel was genuinely confused.
‘That little Danish beauty I’ve heard you’ve grown attached to.’
‘If you mean Politidirektor Karin Vestergaard, then yes, as a matter of fact she will be there. Gina Bronsted is a Flensburg Dane and I thought it might be useful. And anyway, Politidirektor Vestergaard has a direct interest in this case.’
‘Count me in,’ said Gessler.
Given the trouble that he had had in securing an appointment with Gina Bronsted, Fabel was surprised when, as he was leaving the Presidium, he was handed a note at reception telling him that Gennady Frolov’s office had been looking for him, asking if it would be possible for Fabel to talk with the Russian. Frolov was on Fabel’s to do list and he made a mental note to follow up the call when he got back.
The NeuHansa Group had its offices in a brand-new building in the HafenCity. Fabel had picked up Gessler and Vestergaard and drove through the city from the Presidium down to the shores of the Elbe. They crossed over the short cantilevered bridge into the Speicherstadt.
‘This is amazing,’ said Vestergaard as they entered the maze of narrow cobbled streets, cathedral-sized red-brick warehouses and interconnecting canals.
‘The Speicherstadt was a toll-free zone right up until a few years ago,’ said Gessler eagerly, leaning over from the back seat. ‘I think it was two thousand and four… up until then the Speicherstadt was an independent free port and the world’s biggest bonded area.’
Gessler was a shortish but good-looking man in his forties with a reputation for being a bit of a ladykiller. Fabel had noticed when he picked him up at the Presidium that Gessler was wearing a Hugo Boss suit. And tapping something into his BlackBerry.
Fabel had also noticed that Gessler’s eyes had lit up as soon as he had introduced him to Karin Vestergaard. The light had failed to catch in hers.
‘There’s been a lot of new building,’ explained Fabel. ‘The Hanseatic Trade Centre in the Speicherstadt itself as well as the HafenCity, which is all new. Gina Bronsted has headquartered her NeuHansa Group in one of the biggest and newest buildings. Rumour has it she has a thirteen-million-euro penthouse apartment above the shop, as it were.’
They passed through the Speicherstadt and into the HafenCity. Glass and steel were everywhere, but it was obvious an effort had been made to extend something of the spirit of the old Speicherstadt into the architecture of the twenty-first century.
‘Very impressive,’ said Vestergaard.
‘It’s not finished,’ said Gessler. ‘There’s going to be an opera house to compete with Sydney — the Elbphilharmonie Concert Hall.’
‘How do you want to handle this, Jan?’ asked Vestergaard as if she hadn’t heard Gessler.
‘I’ll ask her about Lensch, her employee, and Claasens, the export agent. She also met Westland the night he died. This is all quite… involved. She’s a Flensburg Dane — I think I told you that already — meaning she’s German by nationality but Danish by ethnicity and first language. If I’m struggling, maybe you can jump in. Also, I’ll leave the questioning about Jespersen to you.’ Fabel turned and spoke to Gessler. ‘Hans, I smell a rat here. I’m not saying Bronsted herself is directly involved with any of these killings, but NeuHansa is always there in the background.’
‘I don’t interrogate people, Jan — I interrogate paperwork and computer data. If there’s a link between NeuHansa and these murders, then there will be something on file, somewhere, something that might look innocuous but which will point us in the right direction. I need to get access to their files. When you introduce me, it would be best not to disclose my department, unless she asks specifically.’
‘Okay.’ Fabel swung his door open and got out, followed by Gessler and Vestergaard. He heard Gessler give a low appreciative whistle and when he turned he half expected the corporate cop to be staring at Karin Vestergaard’s legs. Instead Fabel followed his eyes to a massive, sleek luxury motor yacht anchored further down the quay. The yacht had the look of something equally suited for space travel as sailing: a long, elegant white needle with a superstructure of black glass and elongated arches. A helicopter sat on the aft deck.
‘I know what that is,’ said Gessler. ‘That’s the Snow Queen. Ninety metres and it came in at about a million euros a metre.’
‘Gennady Frolov’s yacht?’ asked Fabel, his eyes still following the lines of the mega-yacht. Fabel was not a sailor, and he had no real interest in boats, but it struck him that the Snow Queen was one of the most graceful objects he had ever seen.
‘Yep,’ said Gessler. ‘Take a good look… this is as close as you or I will ever get to that kind of wealth.’
They headed into the NeuHansa Group building. A receptionist who looked as if she’d been recruited from a model agency rather than a business school asked them to wait in the vast pillared atrium. They sat on one of the dozen white leather sofas, each of which looked several times more expensive than the one that Fabel and Susanne had at home. Like the mega-yacht docked half a kilometre along the quay, this was intimidation by wealth.
‘Do you want to get a drink afterwards?’ asked Gessler while they waited. ‘We could deconstruct the interview.’
‘Sorry,’ said Fabel, although he knew the true direction of Gessler’s invitation. ‘I’m meeting a friend in town.’
‘And I have work to do for my office in Copenhagen,’ said Vestergaard without a smile.
After waiting ten minutes, they were conducted up to the eighth floor of the NeuHansa building.
The office suite was populated only by a few workstations and a handful of male and female staff who looked as if they’d come from the same model agency as the downstairs receptionist. Another point in the making: a lavish underuse of some of the most expensive floor space in Hamburg. Fabel, Gessler and Vestergaard were led into an inner office. It was huge and plush and looked more like a trendy hotel suite than a working environment. A tall, slim woman in her early to mid forties stepped out from behind an impossibly huge desk, indicating that they should all take a seat on the sofas arranged around a coffee table. Gina Bronsted was what Fabel would have described as
