Director. I’m not going to pretend I wouldn’t want your experience and skills on board, but Herr van Heiden is going to want to find a replacement for you.’
‘My deputy is ready to take over, but of course there will have to be a replacement for her.’
‘So apart from pitching your CV, I take it there was something else?’
‘Yes. While you were taking a constitutional dip in the Elbe, I was reading through the autopsy report on Julia Helling, the Network Killer’s most recent victim. I don’t get this thing with the killer keeping her in cold storage. Like you said, it just doesn’t fit. Why would he try to confuse us about time of death?’
‘He wasn’t. It wasn’t the killer who put her in cold storage. Listen, Nicola, I think I’ve got it all straight in my head. But I can’t prove a thing. I’ll get the team together and go through what I think is going on. But first I need to talk to Flemming, the guy who pulled me out of the river.’
Susanne came back into the room and said hello to Nicola. They had known each other for some time, Susanne providing psych assessments on both victims and suspects for the Child Crime Unit. But her greeting was muted by the frown that darkened her expression when she saw that Fabel was dressed. He held up his hands in apology and they argued for a minute or two over the rights and wrongs of him discharging himself. Eventually Susanne gave up.
‘I suppose we’d better take my car,’ she said, her tone still conveying her displeasure.
‘My car…’ Fabel suddenly looked taken aback, as if he had only just realised that his BMW convertible was lying at the bottom of the Elbe.
‘Make sure you drive, Susanne. Unless you stopped off at home to pick up your swimming cozzie…’ When neither Fabel nor Susanne laughed, Bruggemann moved on. ‘They’ve got a crane down there at the moment,’ said Bruggemann. ‘Lars Kreysig has taken personal charge of getting your car out, but it’s going to be a write-off.’
‘I loved that car,’ said Fabel melancholically.
‘Well, you shouldn’t have tried to drive on water,’ said Bruggemann. ‘I know everybody at the Presidium thinks you can walk on it, but…’
Fabel smiled sarcastically at Bruggemann, then turned to Susanne. ‘I think, given what’s happened, we’d better arrange an escort back. I want the apartment checked out, too. I’ll be with you in a minute, Susanne. I just need to talk to the guy who saved my neck.’
Flemming was waiting for Fabel in the reception area. He was dressed in dark blue overalls and sipped coffee from a Styrofoam cup.
‘I begged these from the hospital,’ he explained, plucking at the blue overalls. He grinned. ‘I’ll send you a dry-cleaning bill for my suit.’
‘You can send me the bill for a new one. I thought I was a goner for sure. I don’t know how I can begin to thank you for what you did.’
‘Armani would be a start.’ Flemming’s grin widened. He was a big man with huge shoulders but otherwise slim. Fabel reckoned that he was someone who was more than a hobby-fitness fan. He estimated Flemming’s age to be somewhere in his mid-forties. Beneath the dark, curling hair a scar traced its way to the corner of his eyebrow.
‘What’s your background?’ he asked Flemming. ‘I mean, before Seamark International?’
‘Polizei Kiel Harbour Police for ten years. Before that Kampfschwimmer Kompanie.’
Fabel raised an eyebrow. ‘Then it was my lucky day.’ The Kampfschwimmer Kompanie was the special-forces unit of the German Navy. Commando frogmen. ‘How long?’
‘Twelve years. So taking a dip to pull you out of the water was nothing. To join the Kompanie you have to be able to swim at least thirty metres underwater without scuba and be able to stay underwater for at least sixty seconds without breathing. So today really was no big deal.’
‘Trust me,’ said Fabel. ‘It was a big deal to me. Can I get you another coffee?’
‘I’m fine, thanks.’
Pleasantries over, Fabel’s tone became more businesslike. ‘What exactly have you been doing tailing me for the last couple of weeks?’
‘You spotted me that long ago?’ Flemming gave a small laugh. ‘I must be slipping.’
‘Well?’
‘Mustafa Kebir is more than a client, he’s a friend. He knows about my background, so when his niece went missing he came to me. Obviously the first thing I did was tell him to go to the police, but he said that Meliha would resent that. She’s very anti-establishment.’
‘You do know that impersonating a police officer is a serious offence?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Herr Fabel.’ Flemming’s expression remained open and frank. He was good, thought Fabel.
‘Someone had the brass balls to walk into Butenfeld, flash a Polizei Schleswig-Holstein badge and ask to see the torso that had been washed up at the Fischmarkt after the storm. I put it down to the Pharos Project, but now…’
Flemming shrugged and took a sip of his coffee.
‘Isn’t it a huge coincidence that “Commissar Honer” showed a Kiel division ID? You know, where you served… Listen, Flemming,’ Fabel turned in his chair to face the big man square on. ‘After what you did for me today, I don’t want to make any trouble for you. But I could get someone up here from the morgue to see if they can spot anyone who looks a little like the Schleswig-Holstein detective who turned up to view the torso…’
‘Okay. It was me. I wanted to see if it was Meliha.’
‘And?’
‘You saw that torso. The only way to get a positive ID is to check against familial DNA, which I’ll leave to you, now that you know where to find a family member.’
‘But your instinct?’
‘I don’t have one. When I saw the torso it had been degassed — you know, to stop it exploding — but it was still quite bulked up. It could be Meliha. But it could be anyone. As you can imagine, I’ve seen a lot of floaters over the years and they’re always very difficult to age and size up. Your Fischmarkt torso had certainly been in the water for a long time. And the longer the immersion, the more difficult it is to age them accurately. For all my subterfuge, it really didn’t do me any good.’
‘Okay. I’ll arrange for a DNA comparison with Herr Kebir. In the meantime, you keep your nose clean and out of official police business.’
Flemming sighed and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. ‘Okay. But if there’s anything I can do — and I mean anything — then I want you to let me know.’
‘I appreciate it,’ said Fabel. ‘You can start by going through everything you know about Meliha Kebir…’
The next day, Fabel was in the Presidium early. He had woken up with a start and had known that something bad had happened the day before but, for a few seconds, had forgotten what it was. He had sat upright in bed, a cold sweat on his brow, until it fell into place.
Susanne had always worried about the stress Fabel’s job placed him under. There had been a time when, driven by the bad dreams that he experienced almost nightly, he had himself considered giving up the Polizei Hamburg. But the look on Susanne’s face that morning had been far beyond anything that he had seen before; more like fear than worry. Someone had made a pretty good stab at killing him.
She clung to him as they said goodbye in the morning. She was working out of the Institute for Legal Medicine and, in a reversal of the normal routine, she had dropped him off at the Presidium first. And she had been punctual, which worried Fabel most of all.
When he entered the Murder Commission Fabel was confronted with grim determination. The full team was there, including the officers who were not slated for duty. It was clear that Nicola Bruggemann had called them all in and had given them an informal briefing on what had happened; several of them came up to Fabel, asked if he was okay and expressed their support, each with appropriate gravity. Fabel noticed that there was a Kevlar bulletproof waistcoat sitting upright on the desk behind Nicola Bruggemann.
‘We’ve talked it through, Chef,’ said Bruggemann, her face set hard, using the informal title to identify Fabel as her commanding officer, ‘and we feel you need some extra protection. Werner…?’ She stood to one side to let Fabel have a view of the body armour. Werner grabbed the vest and pulled it to one side, like a stage magician whipping the cover from a cage of freshly disappeared pigeons. The room exploded into laughter: on the desk, until now hidden by the bulletproof vest, was a pair of bright yellow inflatable water wings, each complete with the neck,
