‘Long night?’ asked Fabel.
‘Every night’s a long night,’ said Lex, pulling up a chair. ‘And we’re only really at the start of the season.’
‘Well, that was a truly beautiful meal, Lex,’ said Susanne. ‘As always.’
Lex leaned over, lifted Susanne’s hand and kissed it. ‘You’re a very intelligent and discerning lady, Susanne. Which is what makes it all the more difficult to understand why you’ve ended up with the wrong brother.’
Susanne smiled broadly and was about to say something when the sound of raised voices drew their attention to the table in the corner. Muller-Voigt’s companion stood up suddenly, scraping her chair back, and threw down her napkin onto her dessert plate. She hissed something they could not make out at the still-sitting Muller-Voigt and marched out of the restaurant. Muller-Voigt simply stared at his plate, as if trying to read from it what he should do next. He beckoned Boris over with his credit card, paid without checking the bill and walked from the restaurant without looking at any of his fellow diners.
‘Maybe it was something to do with his policy on greenhouse gases,’ said Fabel, with a smile.
‘He’s been in here a few times over the last month,’ said Lex. ‘Apparently he has a house on the island. I don’t know who the girl is, but she’s not always with him. And it doesn’t look like she’ll be back.’
Susanne stared at the doorway through which the woman and then Muller-Voigt had left, then shook her head as if trying to shake off the thought that buzzed around it. ‘I’m sure I’ve seen her somewhere before.’ She took a sip of her coffee. ‘I just can’t, for the life of me, think where it was.’
2.
The Night of the First Murder: Thursday, 18 August 2005.
10.15 p.m.: Schanzenviertel, Hamburg
The secret was to remain unnoticed.
He knew how these things worked: how a meaningless glance into the car from a passer-by, seemingly forgotten in an instant, could be resurrected by an investigator in a week’s or a month’s time and pieced together with a dozen other tiny inconsequences that would lead the police straight to him. He had to diminish his presence at the scene of his crime, in the immediate location, in the area.
So he sat, unmoving, in the dark and the silence. Waiting for the moment of convergence.
Hamburg’s Schanzenviertel is an area known for its energy and even this late on a Thursday evening there was a fair amount of activity. But this narrow side street was quiet and lined with cars. It was a risk to use his own car, but a calculated risk: it was a dark VW Polo and anonymous enough to sit inconspicuously among all the other parked cars. No one would notice the car; but the danger was that they might notice him sitting in it. Waiting.
Earlier, he had switched the car radio on low and had let the chatter wash over him. He had been too preoccupied to listen; his mind too full with the raw energy of anticipation for the reports of the campaigns of the various contenders for the Chancellorship to stimulate the contempt that they normally provoked in him. Then, as the time approached and his mouth grew dry and his pulse grew faster, he had switched the radio off.
Now he sat in the dark and silence and fought back the emotions that surged up in great waves from deep within. He had to be in the moment itself. He had to shut everything else out and focus. Be disciplined. The Japanese had a word for it: zanshin. He had to achieve zanshin: that state of peace and relaxation, of total fearlessness while facing danger or challenge, that allowed the mind and body to perform with deadly accuracy and efficiency. Yet there was no denying the feeling of a monumental destiny about to be fulfilled. Not only had his entire life been a preparation for this moment, more than one lifetime had been dedicated to bringing him to this place and to this time. The point of convergence was close. Seconds away.
He carefully laid the velvet roll-pouch on the passenger seat. He cast a glance up and down the street before untying the ribbon fastener and unrolling the pouch flat. The blade gleamed bright and hard, sharp and beautiful in the street light. He imagined its keen edge parting flesh. Paring it from the bone. With this instrument he would still their treacherous voices; he would use its blade to shape a shining silence.
There was a movement.
He flipped the dark blue velvet over to conceal the beautiful blade. He placed his hands on the steering wheel and stared straight ahead as the bicycle passed the car. He watched the rider swing one leg over, the bicycle still in motion, before dismounting. The cyclist removed his chain and padlock from the bike’s pannier and wheeled the bike into the passage at the side of the building.
He laughed quietly as he watched the cyclist’s small ritual of security. There’s no need, he thought. Leave it for someone to steal. You won’t need it again in this lifetime.
The cyclist reappeared from the passage, slipped his keys from his pocket and let himself into the apartment.
In the dark of the car, he sheathed his hands in the latex of a pair of surgical gloves. He reached into the back, picked up the toiletry bag from the back seat and placed it next to the velvet roll-pouch.
Convergence.
He felt a great calm descend on him. Zanshin. Now justice would be fulfilled. Now the killing would begin.
3.
The Day After the First Murder: Friday, 19 August 2005.
8.57 a.m.: Schanzenviertel, Hamburg
She stood for a moment and looked up at the sky, screwing up her eyes against the morning sun that shone so optimistically on the Schanzenviertel. It was her first appointment of the day. She checked her watch and allowed herself a small, tight smile of satisfaction. 8.57 a.m. Three minutes early.
Above all else, Kristina Dreyer prided herself on never being late. In fact, as she was about many things in her life, Kristina was obsessive about her punctuality. It was part of her reinvention of herself: of how she defined the person she had become. Kristina Dreyer was someone who had known Chaos: she had known it in a way that most people could never begin to imagine. It had engulfed her. It had stripped her of her dignity, of her youth and, most of all, it had ripped away from her any sense of control over her life.
But now Kristina was back in charge. Where her life had previously been anarchy and tumult beyond her understanding, far less her control, it was now characterised by her absolute regulation of every day. Kristina Dreyer led her life with an uncompromising exactitude. Everything about her life was simple, clean and neat: her clothes, including her working clothes, her small, pristine apartment, her VW Golf, with the lettering Dreyer Cleaning on the door panels; and her life, which, like her apartment, she had chosen to share with no one.
Kristina’s uncompromising exactitude really came into its own in her work. She was supremely good at her job. She had built up a client list across Eimsbuttel that meant her week was full, and each customer trusted her for her thoroughness and honesty. And most of all, they trusted her for her total reliability.
Kristina cleaned well. She cleaned apartments, she cleaned villas. She cleaned homes large and small, for young and old, for German and foreigner. Every home, every task, was approached with the same scrupulously methodical approach. No detail was missed. No corner cut.