‘He’s not fresh,’ said the forensics chief. ‘More than a day. Maybe two.’
Fabel tensed.
‘What did you say?’ asked van Heiden over Fabel’s shoulder.
Brauner gave a small laugh and looked at Fabel quizzically before turning to van Heiden. ‘I said the victim’s been dead for more than a day. What’s the problem?’
‘I met with the victim the night before last,’ explained Fabel in a dull voice. ‘Here.’
‘Ah…’ Brauner said and frowned.
‘Wait a minute.’ Fabel turned to where Menke was standing. ‘Didn’t you say Muller-Voigt missed a meeting yesterday but got in touch to make his apologies?’
‘Yes… that…’ Menke said ponderously. ‘The thing is, we don’t have the email any more. Or, for the moment, any of our other emails. I’m afraid your concerns about email security were right, after all. You see, the message sent from Muller-Voigt’s computer had corrupted our entire system. It would appear to have been infected with the Klabautermann Virus. And, of course, an email doesn’t mean he was still alive. His killer could have sent it from his account.’
‘Muller-Voigt told me that his computer had been infected,’ said Fabel. ‘But he had sent it off for cleaning and repair. He told me that the computer he had was new and clean. And that he was using a new account to send emails. So I’d say your infected emails didn’t come from him.’
‘Herr Meyer…’ van Heiden called over to Werner. ‘I’d like you to take sole charge of this investigation.’ He turned back to Fabel, ‘I think you can understand, given the position we’re in.’
‘As far as I can see,’ said Fabel, ‘I’m the only one in a position.’
‘You said you saw a picture of this mysterious missing woman when you were last here,’ said van Heiden. ‘Where is it?’
Fabel pointed to the digital picture frame. ‘It’s on that.’
Leaning over the sofa, Brauner reached and picked up the remote control, handing it to Fabel. Van Heiden took it instead, frowning at the images.
‘These are all scenic photographs, as far as I can see,’ said the Criminal Director.
‘It’s a digital picture frame,’ said Fabel. ‘It stores hundreds of photographs. May I?’
A new image appeared every time Fabel pressed the frame’s button. Seascapes, lots of seascapes, some images of the countryside around the Altes Land, several littoral scenes, many with lighthouses. Nothing with Muller-Voigt in it. None of the other photographs he had seen when the politician had flicked through them. Before they had viewed half of the photographs, Fabel already knew that he would not find any photograph of Meliha Yazar.
‘And you say that you definitely saw the woman Muller-Voigt said had gone missing on this thing?’ asked van Heiden after they had gone through all the images.
‘Without a doubt. Someone has deleted it. And a lot of other images.’
‘Just like the text message you say you got about the location of the victim the other day.’
‘Just like…’ Fabel handed the digital frame back to Brauner. ‘You’d better bag that up. Whoever did Muller- Voigt has been playing with his toys.’
Brauner nodded. ‘By the way,’ he said, reaching down and picking up a large plastic evidence bag from the floor, ‘this would appear to be our murder weapon. Bloody ugly thing, if you ask me. Anyway, it has blood, hair and skin on the base and its weight and form seem consistent with the damage to his skull. We’ll take it back for a full fingerprint check. What’s up, Jan?’
Fabel stared at the evidence bag and its heavy, soiled contents in Brauner’s hand. In that moment he felt his career, his life unravelling.
‘It’s a bronze sculpture of Rahab. A Hebrew sea devil.’ Fabel’s voice was dull. Distant. He struggled for a moment to remember Muller-Voigt’s exact words. ‘ Rahab was the creator of storms and the father of chaos. And I think I’d better tell you now that you will get a good set of prints from it. Mine.’
Part Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
When he was eight years old Roman Kraxner’s parents had taken him to see the family doctor, who had shaken his head and frowned a lot and referred them on to a child psychiatrist who had not shaken his head or frowned at all. In fact, Roman had not noticed much of any kind of expression at all on the specialist’s face. Instead of frowning and head-shaking, the psychiatrist had discussed Roman with his parents in a disjointed, almost incoherent way. Roman recalled that about him; that and the heavy, black-rimmed spectacles he had worn. To hide his eyes, Roman had thought; to hide them so he didn’t have to look anyone else in the eye. And with this realisation, all Roman’s anxieties had gone. And so had those of his parents: the psychiatrist had reassured Roman’s parents that their son did not have any profound learning difficulty or mental instability.
‘Your son has a schizotypal personality,’ the doctor had said, fiddling with his black framed glasses and not engaging in eye contact. ‘But he… it’s not that… he doesn’t suffer from schizotypal personality disorder, or schizophrenia… no… we have also ruled out Asperger’s. But… he does… he’s got… he displays blunted affect and excessive introspection.’
‘What does that mean?’ Roman’s father had asked.
‘Roman… well, he lacks a developed ability to function… to, erm
… he will struggle to get on well socially. He doesn’t really understand others. But all this is typical of a schizotypal personality and it does not mean that he cannot enjoy a full and successful life. There are compensations: he is clearly highly intelligent and a schizotypal personality can manifest itself in an extremely imaginative and creative mind. A great many composers, artists, writers, mathematicians, physicists… in many walks of life it is an advantage.’
Roman had sat there and wondered why the incoherent physician, hiding behind the heavy glasses, had not added psychiatrist to the list.
His parents had never fully understood the implications of what the psychiatrist had said. After a period of reassurance, the old doubts had begun to creep back into their heads: the psychiatrist had said schizotypal, hadn’t he? And that sounded a lot like schizophrenic. In the meantime, Roman had blossomed from a strange child with no friends into an even stranger adolescent with no friends. It was not so much that others avoided him — although that certainly was the case — it was more that he avoided others. At school, there had been only one person with whom he had anything approaching a friendship: Niels Freese. But Niels had been even stranger than Roman and had been taken out of the school for long periods of therapy. Still, when they had spent time together, they had recognised that each, in his own way, saw the world completely differently from their peers.
After Niels had been permanently transferred to a special school, Roman had shunned any kind of intimacy or contact. Not that he had to do a lot of shunning: his classmates either ignored or avoided him. Those who did not tormented him.
When puberty had come along, Roman became aware that his rejection of intimacy was even more profound than he had guessed himself. The concomitant storm of hormones had failed to stir much in the way of sexual desire, for either gender. The idea of physical intimacy with another was not so much abhorrent as superfluous. He genuinely could not see much point in it.
Roman realised that he was not entirely asexual, however. He found that any tingles of arousal he felt were connected to girls and women who were totally beyond the already corpulent Roman; for the only thing that stirred anything like desire in him was true beauty. Perfect symmetry, perfect skin, perfect figure. But, even then, the level of his arousal was muted. He had often wondered if it had been their very unattainability that had drawn him to these women: the knowledge that such desires were unfulfillable and could never result in actual physical contact.
Roman had sunk deeper and deeper into a world of self-involvement. He rarely left his room and spent most of his time reading, listening to music and, most of all, daydreaming. Daydreaming played a major role in his life: fantasies in which a slimmer, happier, better-looking alter-ego Roman was popular and rich and physically
