‘Her charms are completely wasted on me, then,’ said Fabel. ‘Can’t stand the woman.’
‘On your way where?’ asked Susanne.
‘What?’ Fabel frowned.
‘You said I was on your way.’
‘Oh, I’ve got to pick up this Danish cop from the airport.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Shit, I’d better go. Have a look at that when you get a chance and I’ll talk to you later.’
8
Standing in the arrivals hall of Hamburg-Fuhlsbuttel airport and holding up a clipboard with the name ‘VESTERGAARD’ on it in large block capitals written with a felt-tip marker, Fabel felt faintly ridiculous. He stood alongside others doing exactly the same thing, some with names, others with company logos; all the others, however, were professional drivers sent to pick up business travellers flying into Hamburg.
Fabel could simply have sent a patrol car with a uniformed officer to pick up the Danish cop, but he had thought it more diplomatic to collect him himself. There seemed to be a protocol, an etiquette to these things that Fabel always seemed to get wrong. He had decided it was best for him to make a personal appearance: it appeared that Vestergaard was a high-ranking officer and, after all, one of his men had died while in Hamburg. But, standing there with his clipboard, Fabel felt less like a diplomat, more like a chauffeur and a lot like an idiot.
The arrivals board announced the landing of the Copenhagen flight and after a few minutes a wave of business suits swelled through the arrivals gate. Fabel played the game of scanning the emerging figures, making a bet with himself that he would be able pick out Vestergaard before he made himself known to Fabel. He was momentarily distracted by a very attractive blonde woman wearing an expensive suit and a deep blue coat. She caught his eye for a moment and he looked away, partly in embarrassment at having been caught watching her and partly in annoyance that he had been distracted from his challenge.
Then he saw him: a tall, light-blond man of about fifty whose business suit did nothing to disguise the bulk of his shoulders or take the edge off his tough look. He had cop written all over him and Fabel imagined that Jespersen, in life, had looked a little like that. The man nodded in Fabel’s direction and headed his way. Fabel smiled and was about to offer his hand when the man walked straight past him and handed his bags to the chauffeur who had been standing next to Fabel, holding up a board with the IBM logo on it. To add insult to the injury Fabel’s deductive powers had suffered, the ‘Dane’ proceeded to give instructions to the driver in a broad Bavarian accent.
‘I guess I wasn’t what you were expecting…’ a female voice said in English. Fabel turned in the direction of the voice. The attractive young woman he had noticed earlier was now standing directly in front of him. She arched an eyebrow.
‘ Politidirektor Vestergaard?’ he asked feebly.
‘Yes, I’m Karin Vestergaard. I’m sorry — I know it’s so confusing.’ She sighed and rolled her eyes. ‘I got promoted because I’m so damned good at making coffee and they sent me here because all the men were too busy solving really complicated cases.’
Fabel gave a half-laugh at the joke, then let his smile die when he saw the cold glint in Vestergaard’s ice-blue eyes. Not a good start. ‘My car is parked outside,’ he said weakly.
It wasn’t a cosy journey. After Fabel asked Karin Vestergaard how her flight had been, and what the weather was like in Copenhagen, he struggled to make small-talk as they walked to his parked BMW. Politidirektor Vestergaard was obviously not the small-talk type. They drove in silence down the Alsterkrugchausee towards the city centre.
‘We have an election coming up in a few months,’ he said eventually, with artificial cheer. ‘For Principal Mayor. Effectively that’s Prime Minister for the State of Hamburg. Anyway, one of the candidates is actually a Dane. Well, she’s a German-Dane — you know, from the Danish-speaking minority in Schleswig-Holstein.’
Karin Vestergaard turned to Fabel and gave him a weak smile of uninterested indulgence. There was something about her face that troubled him, but he couldn’t work out what it was. They passed the sign informing them that they were entering the city quarter of Eppendorf.
‘Isn’t this where your Institute for Judicial Medicine is based?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ said Fabel. ‘Indeed it is. You know Hamburg?’
‘No. I checked before I came down. Is that where Jens is?’
‘That’s where the morgue is, yes.’
‘I’d like to see Jens. Now.’
‘You want to go now? I thought I’d take you to your hotel first before going into the Presidium. I know that-’
‘I don’t understand.’ Karin Vestergaard interrupted him, her voice cold and hard. ‘I don’t see the problem if we’re passing through Eppendorf. I want to see Jens’s body. Can we go or not?’
Fabel shrugged and turned off into Geschwister-Scholl-Strasse.
The University Clinic Hamburg-Eppendorf was a huge complex of buildings, almost like a small town in itself, sitting between Geschwister-Scholl-Strasse to the north and Martinistrasse to the south. The University Clinic even had its own park to the south of Martinistrasse and, as Fabel passed along its northern boundary towards Butenfeld, huge cranes towered above the complex.
‘The hospital here is a teaching one,’ explained Fabel. ‘They’re building a new campus. It’s all going to be very high-tech.’
If Vestergaard was impressed, she hid it well; instead she stared grimly ahead, as if her mind was already ahead of them and in the morgue with her dead colleague. Fabel found a parking space outside the Institute for Judicial Medicine and led Vestergaard in through the glass double doors to the waiting area. It took Fabel a couple of minutes to arrange a viewing of Jespersen’s body, during which time Vestergaard sat impassively in the reception area.
‘We can go in now,’ he explained and she followed him into the morgue.
Fabel didn’t know what to expect in the mortuary. Despite having shared the journey from the airport with her, the Danish policewoman remained a complete stranger to him. He didn’t know anything about her professional relationship with Jespersen, or what kind of personal relationship they might have had. Fabel watched her face when the sheet was pulled back from Jespersen’s body. Again he found himself distracted by her appearance. There really was something about the way she looked that perplexed him… Then he realised what it was: her features were perfect. Her face possessed an absolute symmetry and every feature was in classic proportion. The effect was strange: it gave her beauty; true archetypal beauty. But it was also a forgettable beauty.
Fabel watched the bland beauty of Karin Vestergaard’s face as her subordinate’s dead body was revealed to her. There was a flicker of something in the expression and then it was gone in the same instant. But Fabel had recognised it: anger. She was angry with Jespersen for having died.
‘I’m very sorry,’ said Fabel. ‘Had you worked together long?’
‘When is the autopsy scheduled?’
‘Tomorrow,’ said Fabel. ‘Two p.m.’
Vestergaard leaned forward and examined Jespersen’s face more closely. Then she pulled the sheet completely clear of his body.
‘What are you looking for?’ asked Fabel, no longer hiding his irritation with her uncommunicativeness.
‘Who’ll be doing the autopsy?’
‘Herr Doctor Moller. He’s our Chief Pathologist. He’s really-’
‘Tell him to look for puncture wounds. Needle marks. Particularly in hidden areas: under hair, skin folds, around the anus…’
‘Look, said Fabel. ‘I think this has gone on long-’
‘Do you believe this is a natural death?’ Vestergaard turned to him. More cold fire in her eyes.
Fabel sighed. ‘It looks very much like a heart attack.’
‘Do you believe this was a natural death?’ she repeated.