insistent bleeping of reversing fire trucks and the relentless churning of the water pumps: man-made thunder competing against Nature’s tempest of wind and rain. Everything was glossed wet and sparkled under the arc lamps and the red, blue and orange flashing lights of the firetrucks, emergency vehicles and heavy caterpillar-tracked bulldozers. The worst of the storm had passed, and the ebb had begun, but a contemptuous Nature still wind- tugged at Kreysig’s yellow protective suit and angrily drummed pellets of rain on his hard hat.
Like the neck of some improbable nocturnal dinosaur, the massive arm of a Liebherr LTM 1130-5.2 lattice- boom truck swung overhead, heavy cable and chains swinging and clashing. A team of firemen fastened the chains around a tangle of wood and metal that had been swept up onto the wide expanse of flooded ground beside the Fischmarkt. The lattice boom hoisted the debris up and clear of the flood area, lowering it onto the back of a flatbed. A second, smaller crane lowered a section of armoured evacuation pipe into place and the same fire team rushed forward and snapped shut the camlock couplings to connect it to the rest of the pipe. As soon as the connection was made, Kreysig shouted into his radio and another two pumps came on line.
And still Kreysig felt the thrill of battle. This was Man against Nature. And he was the man.
Kreysig had known well in advance that the storm had been coming. It had wrought devastation across France and England; the North German Climate Bureau and the German Weather Service had tracked its progress. They had also tracked another cluster forming in the North Sea, one hundred and eighty kilometres south-west of Jutland. It was like two armies gathering before attacking at once, combining their strengths before the onslaught on the Netherlands, Denmark and Northern Germany. Kreysig had seen Hamburg devastated by flood before. The 1953 flood had been before he was born, and he had been a baby when the ’62 storm had hit and killed more than three hundred and left sixty thousand homeless in the city; but he remembered ’76 and had been a senior fire and rescue officer in 2007. Each time the water had hit higher, but each time Hamburg had been that little bit readier, that little bit more protected.
And this time, before the flood hit, millions of euros’ worth of flood barriers had paid for themselves in a single deployment: blocking and channelling the storm surge. But some flooding was inevitable, and they had known where to be ready, where the battle lines would be drawn, including here, at the Fischmarkt, where St Pauli met the city centre.
Tramberger, Kreysig’s deputy, came across to him and leaned his weather-beaten face in close, shouting to be heard above the combined clamour of storm and machine.
‘That’s all the electric submersibles and all the diesels on line. We’ve got an ebb and the water level is dropping. We’re down to plus three metres.’
Kreysig grinned and slapped his deputy on the shoulder. They were winning. He looked around at the teams he had deployed; all were still working full tilt: hard, muscle-tearing work against a far stronger opponent, but no one showed any sign of the fatigue that must, by now, be adding lead to every movement. It was a good team. A bloody good team. He had put it together himself, picking the best from the Hamburg Fire Service, from the Hamburg Harbour Police, from the Hamburg City and State Engineering Department.
He checked in with his other crews, further to the west on Klopstockstrasse and Konigstrasse. Same news. He checked his watch: it was nearly five a.m. They had been fighting the flood for twelve hours. Looking up at the still-dark sky, Kreysig saw the heavy clouds scud malevolently over the city. It was like watching a fleet of bombers pass overhead, laden with potential destruction. But these clouds, he knew, would wreak havoc elsewhere. Hamburg’s turn was over. For now.
It was then that he noticed one of the teams had stopped working. The firemen stood in a circle looking down at something on the newly exposed tarmac of Elbestrasse. The team leader looked across to Kreysig and Tramberger and beckoned, urgently, for them to come over.
Something, Kreysig could tell, was wrong.
Part One
Chapter Five
Jan Fabel awoke. Gradually. He had been dreaming: a dream about sitting in the house he’d grown up in in Norddeich, in his father’s old study, talking with a young man whom Fabel knew was dead and who knew it himself. Fabel wanted to leave the dream behind, where it could be forgotten.
He surfaced slowly from the depths of his sleep and became aware of the sound of voices. The radio alarm. NDR Radio. A debate. One of the voices vaguely familiar.
He lay staring at the ceiling for a moment, mustering the sleep-scattered pieces of his consciousness and trying to work out what the voice on the radio was talking about. And who the voice belonged to: Fabel realised that he recognised the male voice from somewhere in his fully awake world but, for now, he was too sleepy to concentrate on locating it. He rolled over onto his side; Susanne had her back to him. He shook her shoulder and she made a sound somewhere between sleepy contentment and irritation.
‘It’s time to get up,’ he said.
Another low, sleepily discontented muttering.
He swung his legs out and sat on the edge of the bed. Berthold Muller-Voigt. That was whose voice he recognised on the radio. He had been sure he had heard it before somewhere. Muller-Voigt was the Environment Senator in the Hamburg Senate and someone with whom Fabel had had dealings in the past.
Fabel frowned and pushed his blond hair back from his eyes. He shook Susanne again: another grumpy response. Switching the radio-alarm off, he rose and stretched and made his way through to the shower. Susanne and he had lived together in this flat for more than two years, but he still found that he had to think about its early-morning geography. He shaved and showered. Dressed. Roll-neck sweater, expensive English tweed jacket, chinos, brogues.
He had just made the coffee when Susanne came into the kitchen, still in her bathrobe. Her thick dark hair a tumbling statement of her unwillingness yet to face the day.
‘You’ll be late,’ he said. He meant they would be late. Susanne usually worked from her office in the Institute of Legal Medicine in Eppendorf, but two days a week she worked out of the police Presidium. On those mornings they took one car. And on those mornings Fabel was always rattled by Susanne’s tardiness. This morning, he was even more tense: Susanne was attending a seminar at the Federal Crime Bureau in Wiesbaden and he had agreed to run her to the airport to catch her early-morning flight to Frankfurt.
‘I’ll be ready.’ She took the cup of coffee he offered and leaned on the kitchen counter. ‘Did you sleep okay?’ she asked. ‘That bloody storm kept me up half the night.’
‘I think it woke me up.’ He lied. It hadn’t been the storm that had woken him in the middle of the night; but they didn’t talk any more about Fabel’s dreams. The bad dreams.
Susanne switched on the small TV they had in the kitchen. It was one of the compromises Fabel had accepted: he was no great television watcher and never had understood why people needed more than one in their homes. But one day he had come back from work and had found it sitting on the counter. A new and gleaming intrusion into his world. A cohabitational fait accompli; another indication that his space, his life, was now shared.
‘Look at this…’ she said. The report on the TV was of serious flooding all along the banks of the Elbe. There was footage of the flood defences down by the harbour and the Fischmarkt being deployed. The reporter did his piece to camera with practised gravity.
‘It’s good we’re not travelling along the Elbchaussee this morning,’ she said.
‘We may have problems getting to the airport anyway. I would imagine that there’s going to be more traffic, what with the diversions and everything. We’ll have to leave that bit earlier,’ Fabel replied, looking pointedly at his watch. Susanne made a face and went back to a leisurely enjoyment of her coffee.
‘I’ll phone the airport just to check the flights are on time…’ Fabel made to lift the phone.
‘Why phone in?’ asked Susanne from behind her coffee cup. ‘Just check it online.’
‘You never know when these things are updated,’ said Fabel. ‘At least if you talk to a human being…’
Susanne snorted. ‘A human being? We’re talking about someone who works in an airport. Trust me, use the computer — it’s less robotic. I tell you what, I’ll do it when I’m dressed. I just don’t get why you’re so
