don’t forget your promise.’
‘I won’t forget. We is good neighbours now. You are my fqinj. We look after each other.’
The Albanian helped Roman up the rest of the stairs to his front door.
‘I’ll be fine now. Thanks for your help, Jetmir.’ Roman unlocked his door, smiled and waited until he heard the Albanian shut his own door one floor down. Only then did Roman step into his apartment.
Roman looked around. It really was a nice place, if only he had kept it tidier. He regretted that now. There was a lot he regretted now. He stood leaning against the door, still struggling with his breathing.
There were three of them in the flat. None of them spoke. They all wore identical grey suits and had Bluetooth earpieces jammed into their ears as if fused there. One was sitting at Roman’s computers, another held Meliha’s cellphone in his hand. The third stood directly in front of Roman, staring at him with nothing in his face.
Roman had known they would be there. Before he had left to carry out his chores he had reassembled Meliha’s phone, including the tracer, and had left it switched on. A beacon. A digital lighthouse. They were big on that kind of metaphor, he thought.
He started to laugh at the absurdity of it all just as the Consolidator closest to him stepped forward, slipped the large plastic bag he had in his gloved hands over Roman’s head and pulled the drawstring tight.
Chapter Thirty-One
Fabel knew that it would be panic that would kill him. He forced the thought to the front of his mind. He had been winded by the first impact and his lungs were still depleted of oxygen; a primal instinct screamed within him to open his mouth and breathe: to suck in the filthy river water; to fill his lungs with something, anything.
The natural buoyancy of his body was pushing him up against the fabric roof of the car as it sank and he knew he was being dragged deeper into the Elbe. The wharf had originally been intended as a shipping berth, meaning the water was deep enough to accommodate a large ship’s draught. Deep and dark.
Now Fabel could see nothing. This was the car he had owned for ten years but suddenly its interior was totally alien to him. A strange and toxic environment. One window, he knew, was open and offered a quick exit. The other was intact. A simple choice: one direction or the other. He pushed himself toward what he thought was the right side of the car. No steering wheel. He found the edge of the passenger window and pushed himself through. He was out of the car. And rising. His lungs screamed and a searing pain he had never felt before sliced through his chest. He could now see the surface above him but it did not seem to get any nearer. The light above started to dim, the water around him growing darker again. He felt renewed panic when he realised he was going to black out. He was going to lose consciousness and he would never regain it. His arms and legs became leaden and he knew he was sinking again.
All fear left him and he let his held breath go in an explosion of bubbles.
Something closed over his mouth and pinched his nose shut. A hand. There was someone in the water with him. Another arm looped under his armpit and around his chest. Fabel instinctively fought against the hand bruisingly clamped over his nose and mouth: the logic that it was preventing him breathing in the filthy dock water lost in primal panic.
He knew they must be rising, but the water became even darker. Black. He no longer felt his limbs, the chill of the water, the hammering in his chest.
Fabel found himself sitting again in his father’s study in Norddeich. It was dark and the study was illuminated by only one desk light. Somewhere outside the window, on the other side of the dyke, there was the sound of a storm. As Fabel listened to the wind and the rain he noticed that Paul Lindemann was sitting opposite him, the bullet wound in the centre of his forehead crusted with a circle of long-dried black-red blood.
‘Does it hurt?’ Fabel asked.
‘Not any more.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. It happened. It was my time.’
‘It’s my time now. Is this real?’
‘It’s not your time,’ said Paul and smiled. ‘I don’t know if this is real. Do you remember that case you investigated, the one where the murderer thought he was made up, that everything, including himself, was all part of a fairy tale?’
‘I remember him.’
‘Maybe he was right after all. Maybe there is no such thing as reality.’ Paul paused. ‘Did you see the books?’
‘What books?’
‘The books she kept beside her bed.’
‘Yes, I saw them.’
‘Are they with you now? Do you have them in the water?’
‘I’m not in the water. I’m here.’
‘You’re in the water, Jan. Do you have the books with you?’
‘No. Anna took them. In a bag.’
‘Remember the books.’ Paul frowned, creasing the punctured skin around the bullet wound. ‘Don’t forget about the books.’
Fabel wanted to answer Paul but found himself becoming sleepy. The room went dark and the sound of the storm faded.
Something seared through him; penetrated every millimetre of his being. There was a great roar, like the crashing of waves but too fast, one after the other. The pain surged with each roar and Fabel realised it was his own breathing. There was something still clamped over his nose and mouth and he grabbed at it. A hand caught him by the wrist.
‘Take it easy.’ A female voice mixed authority and reassurance. ‘It’s just an oxygen mask.’
He tried to get up but more hands gently restrained him.
‘It’s Anna, Chef. You’re going to be okay. You’re in an ambulance. We’re taking you to the hospital.’
Fabel’s vision cleared and he saw Anna and a female paramedic leaning over him. Full consciousness returned like an electric shock.
‘Did you get them?’ He tried to sit upright but again was restrained. Pain throbbed nauseatingly in his head. ‘They pushed me into the water. They tried to kill me.’ He saw there was someone else in the ambulance. A figure sitting on the bench seat next to Anna; hair wet-black and plastered to his brow, a blanket wrapped around hunched shoulders.
‘This is Herr Flemming, Jan,’ said Anna. ‘It was Herr Flemming who pulled you out of the water. He saw your car go in and he jumped in to save you.’
Fabel remembered the hand over his nose and mouth, the arm looped around him, pulling him upwards.
‘You saved my life?’
Flemming shrugged underneath the blanket. ‘Right place, right time.’
‘It was more than that. You risked your life to come in for me.’
‘Jan…’ Fabel thought he sensed something tentative in Anna’s tone. ‘Herr Flemming works for Seamark International.’
‘But I thought…’
‘You were right, Herr Fabel,’ said Flemming. ‘We were following you. But we’re on the same side, so to speak. But rest now. They’re taking me to the hospital, too. We can talk later.’
‘Was it you who phoned me last night? Are you Klabautermann?’
Flemming laughed. ‘Maybe I was the Klabautermann today, but no, I didn’t phone you.’
Fabel lay back on the gurney. The oxygen eased his breathing. He closed his eyes and tried to fight back the nausea that washed over him in great, welling waves. The ambulance started to move, jolting over some obstacle as it got under way. Fabel tore off the oxygen mask and twisted sideways, vomiting over the edge of the gurney. The paramedic held him while he finished retching, before asking him if he felt better and easing him back into a
