‘I’d rather die than live a lie,’ said Fabel.
‘Why? What difference does it make? This is all you have ever experienced. This is your reality. It really doesn’t matter if it’s a reality outside or inside a simulation. Maybe that’s who God is… a systems analyst. How’s that for a depressing thought?’
‘But this is real, Otto.’
‘Reality is just what’s in your head, Jan. You should read Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard. Or get a copy of Fassbinder’s Welt am Draht. Or even Jungian psychology — ask Susanne
… although I always think of her as Freudian…’ Otto said with an exaggerated leer. ‘We are programmed by our surroundings, by signs and symbols. Someone says the word “cowboy” and we think of John Wayne, even though the real cowboys were small, almost jockey-like because their horses had to carry them twelve hours a day. The truth isn’t out there.’
‘You know, Otto, I could give you the Pharos Project’s phone number if you want…’
‘Yeah, very funny. I’m quite happy with my reality, thank you.’ Otto suddenly became serious. ‘But I do know something about the Pharos Project, Jan, and none of it’s good. Terrorising the families of ex-members, harassing anyone who criticises them. You watch yourself with these people.’
Fabel drained his coffee cup. ‘I’m going. You make my head hurt, do you know that, Otto?’
‘Maybe that’s my entire raison d’etre. See you, copper.’
Fabel drove across town and parked over the street from the Schanzenviertel cafe. Before visiting Otto, he had spent the day going through all the evidence to date on the Fottinger case and had decided he was prepared enough to start talking to witnesses. It was something he always did, as a matter of course: Fabel never relied on witness statements. It was not that he did not trust the officers who took the statements to ask the right questions, it was more that reading them in a report removed the human dimension: sometimes it was not what a witness said, but more how they said it; the million little tells and tics that could reveal a doubt, an insecurity, a prejudice.
He headed into the Schanzenviertel feeling strangely upbeat. Maybe it was the weather. For the first time in weeks, it really did feel like there was a hint of spring in the early evening air. Fabel often thought about the effect the weather had on his moods and the idea reminded him of what Muller-Voigt had said about Man’s connection to his environment, and how we had lost sight of it.
As he crossed the street, Fabel saw that two of the cafe’s four large plate-glass windows had been filled in with plywood panels; the wood of the frames around the plywood was blackened. He guessed that the intensity of the heat from the blazing car had caused the windows to shatter.
When he walked in, he noticed that only three out of the cafe’s more than twenty tables were occupied. ‘Quiet in here this evening…’ he said to the waiter as he held up his police identification. The waiter, who had been bent over a table, made a show of being unimpressed and shrugged. The Schanzenviertel was a part of Hamburg where people were generally not impressed by the police. It was not that the quarter was populated by criminals, more that there was an instinctive disregard and distrust of the police in a part of the city famed for its alternative views. It did not bother Fabel. In fact he rather appreciated it: a touch of idiosyncrasy and a healthy disregard for authority was what made Hamburg Hamburg, after all.
‘Funny, that,’ said the waiter, returning to the work of tidying and wiping the recently vacated table. ‘We thought that putting flambeed client on the menu would bring them in in their droves.’ He straightened up wearily. Fabel saw that he was older than he had first thought. Tall and thin with a lean, deeply lined face and dressed in a way that would have looked better on him a decade before. ‘I take it that’s why you’re here?’
‘Did you know the victim?’ Fabel referred to his notebook. ‘Daniel Fottinger?’
‘Like I told the other cops, he was a regular. He came here every Wednesday, same time and met the same woman. They would have lunch, then go off together.’
‘What do you mean, go off together?’
The waiter sighed. ‘They’d arrive in separate cars, but after they’d eaten they’d go off together in her car. I always noticed that the big Merc convertible sat outside for a couple of hours, then would disappear mid or late afternoon. I actually often thought that he was taking a bit of chance, with all these car-burnings around here and all. But I never imagined it would happen in broad daylight right outside our door. Or that the poor bastard would end up torched himself.’
‘What do you know about him?’
‘What I know about all of my customers: what they order, what they drink, what they leave as a tip. He wasn’t the small-talk type.’
‘Yet he came here often?’
‘What can I tell you? Some customers are easy to get to know. He wasn’t.’
‘But you must at least have had some impression of him… the kind of person he was.’
The lanky waiter gave a small laugh. ‘How can I put it? He didn’t have a lot of personality going on there, and what there was was all arrogant asshole. Every time he came in and sat down was like it was the first time. You know what I mean: I’d serve him every time he came in, but he’d make out like he didn’t know me from Adam. Some customers can be like that. They treat you as if you don’t really exist or matter as a human being, like you simply exist for their convenience.’
‘The woman?’
‘She wasn’t as bad. At least she talked to you; acknowledged you as a person. She’s a real looker and I couldn’t quite work out what she was doing with him. I mean, he seemed pretty one-dimensional to me.’
‘So you had them pegged as a couple?’
‘Yeah. But not married, though. And not business or colleagues. It was obvious they had some kind of regular thing going. When you’ve served tables as long as I have, you get to tell the nature of the visit, the agenda behind the lunch, if you know what I mean. But there was something about them didn’t gel.’
Fabel raised an eyebrow.
‘Oh, I don’t know…’ The waiter renewed his efforts on the tabletop and his irritation at being disturbed. ‘They fitted in some ways… him rich, her cute… but it was just that he seemed so… I don’t know… so dull. I tell you, if I had a woman who looked like that across the table from me, I wouldn’t spend so much of my time playing with my electronic toys.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He was always texting or taking calls on his cellphone. There was one time they were in here that he sat half the time working on his laptop. Sometimes I think it wasn’t the excellence of our cuisine that brought him here. More our free WiFi. But I tell you, his girlfriend was getting pretty pissed off with it. I reckon she was on the point of giving him the elbow.’
‘And you could tell this just from waiting table?’ Fabel had not intended his question to sound patronising but the lean waiter’s face clouded.
‘Maybe if you cops were forced to work as waiters for six months you’d be better at sizing people up. Everybody is becoming more and more detached from each other, from reality. All of this technology shit. Me, I run this place because I get to watch people. Live in the real world.’ He looked at Fabel disdainfully. ‘Take you… you’re a cop but I can tell from the way you dress and the way you talk to people that you like to think you’re different from the rest. That jacket you’re wearing — English-cut, tweed — it’s not the usual anonymous semi-corporate two-hundred-euro suit the Hamburg Kripo always seems to wear. I’d say you’re not all that comfortable with being a cop and you like to think you’ve got a little more going on up here.’ He tapped his forefinger against the side of his head. ‘You’re trying really hard to fit in by not fitting in. But what do I know, huh? I just wait tables.’
‘Okay,’ said Fabel. ‘So you’re the Great Observer, the ultimate people watcher. I get it. You told the officers that you noticed one of the arsonists before the attack. I don’t suppose your people-watching skills could extend to giving me a decent description of him?’
‘I saw him, all right. He was hanging around across the street, under that tree…’ The waiter tutted when he realised the view of the tree was obscured by the plywood. ‘Anyway,’ he said philosophically, ‘he was over there. To start with I thought he was a junkie. He was kinda hopping from one foot to the other, fidgeting, sort of, and checking and rechecking that big black holdall he was carrying.’
‘Would you recognise him again?’
‘Doubt it. He was wearing a sort of woolly hat that he pulled down as a mask when he torched the car. I did think I noticed something. I didn’t mention it to the other cops because I only thought of it afterwards…’
