did: you had an entire universe in your head, the one you grew up with, and it stayed there, unchanged.
‘It’s not here any more.’
Fabel turned, startled. The young woman had stepped out from nowhere and into the pool of light. He looked up and down the roadway but could see no sign of another parked car.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘It’s not here any more,’ the young woman repeated. ‘The snack stand.’
‘Oh… yes. Yes, I know.’
‘I was looking for it myself,’ she said. For a moment Fabel wondered if she was a prostitute, even though this was not one of the regulated areas. But she was smartly dressed in a dark grey jacket-and-skirt business suit and court shoes, as if she worked in a bank or insurance company. She had neat, shortish blonde hair and regular features: attractive but not particularly memorable.
‘It’s not been here for a while,’ said Fabel.
‘Nor have I,’ she said.
‘Where are you parked?’ asked Fabel. ‘I didn’t see…’
‘Oh, over there…’ She made a vague gesture with her hand, indicating further down the road towards the docks. ‘Are you a policeman?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘It’s just that “ Where are you parked? ” is a very policeman kind of thing to ask. And the guy who ran the stand was an ex-policeman. He used to get a lot of his former colleagues as customers. And you don’t look like a trucker.’
‘I guess not. What brings you down here?’
‘Like I said, I was looking for the Schnell-Imbiss myself. I was peckish.’
‘It’s a bit out of the way.’
‘Nowhere is really out of the way. Did you know him well? The guy with the stall, I mean?’
‘Very.’
‘He was a nice man,’ she said. ‘He was very…’ she struggled for the right word ‘… avuncular.’
Fabel realised he was feeling increasingly uneasy. There was something about the girl that disturbed him. It was almost as if she was flirting with him, but the lack of expression in her face made him think of Reisch, the man with the wheelchair and a terrifyingly clear view of his immediate future.
‘I still don’t really understand what you are doing here,’ he said. He took out his police ID and flipped it open. ‘If you don’t mind, I’d like to see your card.’
‘And if I do mind?’
‘I’d still like to see it.’
‘I don’t understand why you’re so concerned about me being here. I’m not the one who’s living in the past, forgetting that their friend is dead.’
Fabel stiffened a little. ‘Okay, let me see your ID card.’
‘Certainly, officer.’ She smiled, but it was an artifice, something done because it was expected. She reached into her shoulder bag and handed him her Personal Identification Card. It told Fabel that she was Julia Helling, from Eppendorf. ‘I was just making conversation. Have I done something wrong?’
‘No, Frau Helling. It’s just that you should be more careful. This is a lonely spot at night and you shouldn’t be here on your own.’
‘I’m not on my own, am I? I have police protection. Or are you worried that I’ve made a date on the internet with the Network Killer?’
‘Now that’s a very odd thing to say.’
‘Is it? It’s just with your concern for my safety… he’s very much in the news at the moment.’ She sighed. ‘Anyway, I won’t disturb you any longer. Good night, Chief Commissar.’
‘How do you know my rank?’
She shrugged. ‘Your ID. It was on it. Good night. I hope you find somewhere to eat.’
Fabel watched as she walked off into the dark. Getting back into his BMW, he phoned the Police Presidium and gave the name and address in Eppendorf that the girl had given him. The control room told him the name and address checked out and she had no known record. Waiting for a moment before starting up, Fabel headed down towards the docks, in the direction she had taken, driving slowly to make sure she had got back to her car. It took him only three or four minutes to reach a dead end of closed dock gates.
No sign of her. And no car had passed him in the opposite direction.
Chapter Twenty-One
Fabel woke up with a start. He had been dreaming again and something in his dream had frightened him, but it ran away from his recall as soon as he awoke. He had the vague idea that the woman from the night before had figured in it.
It wasn’t fully light and he switched on the bedside lamp; checking his watch, he saw it was just before six a.m. He reached over to the bedside cabinet, picked up the replacement cellphone and frowned. No call from Susanne. Not even a text to tell him which flight she would be coming back on.
He got up and showered, but still felt tired. Sluggish. He left the apartment early and called into a cafe for breakfast. It was somewhere he visited often enough to be recognised but not so frequently as to be considered a regular. It saved him the effort of making conversation at this time in the morning. It was quiet in the cafe; the only other customers were a couple who sat at a table at the back, away from the window. Both the man and woman were dressed in grey business suits and stared blankly at Fabel as he came in, before returning to the joyless consumption of their coffees.
For some reason he didn’t quite understand, the cafe offered a choice of breakfasts, each named, in English for some reason, after a port city: The Hamburg Breakfast, The Liverpool Breakfast, The Rotterdam Breakfast. Fabel ordered the Rotterdam and was served with a Dutch style Uitsmijter: poached egg on a bed of ham, cheese and toast; served with a cup of industrial-strength coffee. He sat and pushed the food about on his plate for ten minutes, watching through the window as the faint drizzle fell without conviction on the Elbe. His cellphone rang.
‘What the hell’s been going on?’ Susanne said impatiently and without preliminaries.
‘It’s nice to talk to you, too,’ said Fabel. ‘I’ve been trying to reach you for days. Didn’t you get my texts?’
‘What texts? The only text I got from you was the one I picked up this morning, from your new phone. What’s going on, Jan? What happened to your other phone?’
‘It’s been playing up. You know, the usual problems: signal failure, poor battery life, predicting by itself the location of the next victim of the Network Killer.’
‘What?’
‘The text I asked you about. Remember… Poppenbutteler Schleuse… I get the text and within a few hours a body is found floating in the Poppenbutteler Schleuse.’
‘You’re kidding…’ Susanne said. ‘Did you find out who really sent it?’
‘This is where it gets good — the text has disappeared. Deleted itself somehow. That’s why I’ve got this new phone. They’re working on my old one to try to recover the message. You heading for Frankfurt airport?’
‘Yeah… but my flight isn’t till this afternoon. I’m going to do some shopping first. Can you pick me up?’
‘Sure. When do you get in?’
She gave him the flight’s scheduled arrival time. ‘Listen, Jan,’ she said, concern woven through her tone. ‘You say you sent me some texts from that phone?’
‘Yes. And a voicemail message.’
‘I never got them. And, from what you are saying, you didn’t get my messages either.’
‘You left messages for me? No, I didn’t get any.’
‘But that doesn’t make any sense. Voicemail messages aren’t stored on your phone, they’re stored on the network provider’s service. Try retrieving them with your PIN from that phone. I don’t like this, Jan. It’s like someone’s hijacked your phone. Cloned it or something.’
