‘Jespersen seems to have been a little like Maria Klee,’ Fabel explained to Susanne.
‘Maria Klee?’ Vestergaard raised her eyebrows.
‘The officer I told you about,’ said Fabel. ‘The one who had a complete breakdown after going off on a personal crusade.’
There was a silence for a moment, only broken when the waiter arrived with their orders.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Vestergaard. ‘I’ve killed the mood somewhat.’ She raised her glass and forced a smile. ‘No more shop talk. Agreed?’
‘Agreed,’ said Susanne.
The conversation slowly found its way back to shallower waters and the inconsequentialities that people who don’t know each other that well tend to discuss. But, as they chatted, Fabel watched Karin Vestergaard. He thought back to the anger she had shown when she saw Jespersen’s body at the mortuary. Anger directed at her dead colleague. Her dead ex-lover. He was beginning to understand the Danish detective a little better. So why did it give him a bad feeling?
9
There were things Fabel enjoyed about his job. And there were things he hated.
Leading a Murder Commission was a management task, bureaucratic and demanding a certain meticulousness: Fabel was not a natural bureaucrat nor naturally meticulous, or at least not when it came to paperwork. He had started the day off by getting Werner into his office. Werner’s heavy build and tough-looking appearance seemed at odds with what Fabel often thought of as a watchmaker’s mind within. Over the years, Fabel had learned to rely on Werner’s attention to detail and whenever he was thinking about allocating tasks to the team he called on his deputy’s counsel. Fabel had asked for, and got, extra resources to investigate the St Pauli killings while running an inquiry into Jespersen’s death. Technically, Fabel was supposed to manage the inquiries in paralleclass="underline" assigning a team to run each while he directed them remotely. Oversight or overview or whatever the hell they liked to call it. Fabel didn’t like working that way. He believed a senior investigating officer should do just that: investigate. But the Polizei Hamburg, as Sylvie Achtenhagen was wont to point out any time someone aimed a TV camera at her, had screwed up the original Angel investigation. It was his job to make sure that there was a cross on every ‘t’; a dot above every ‘i’.
‘Put me and Anna on the St Pauli case,’ said Werner, taking clumsy care not to use the word ‘Angel’ and spark his boss off. Fabel was famous for despising the cartoon-character tags that the media liked to attach to multiple killers. ‘And team up Dirk Hechtner and Henk Hermann on this Danish thing. At least we’ve got enough other bodies drafted in. For once we seem covered.’
‘It’s amazing what the wrong kind of publicity can do for you,’ added Fabel grimly.
‘Cynicism doesn’t suit you, Chef,’ said Werner. ‘We’ve all come to love you for your shining wit and cheery disposition.’
‘Speaking of your overwhelming respect for me, do I have a nickname around here?’ asked Fabel.
Werner shrugged.
‘Do you know,’ said Fabel, ‘that some people have apparently been calling me “Lord Gentleman”? Making a big joke about me being half-British?’
‘Probably more to do with your wardrobe,’ said Werner, who moved on quickly. ‘News to me.’
By the time Werner had left they had worked out a comprehensive investigative plan for both inquiries. The St Pauli inquiry was already well under way, but the Jespersen case was still amorphous: ideas and conjecture rather than any kind of evidence. Another blank page in Fabel’s sketchbook.
On the St Pauli killings, Fabel had decided he would look into Jake Westland. The file told Fabel that Westland was British, born 1953, presumably illegitimately because he had been put up for adoption immediately after his birth, and had been brought up by middle-class adoptive parents in Hampshire. Studied music in London; first band formed 1972, second ’78, went solo 1981. Two gold discs, one platinum. Married three times. Four children by two of those marriages.
Fabel knew he needed to get beyond the naked facts. But the last thing he needed right now was to have to make a trip to England to talk to Westland’s family and friends. Hopefully, if she was not too distressed, he would get a chance to talk to the pop singer’s wife in a few days when she came over to claim the body.
In addition to the formally acquired information in the file, Fabel did an Internet search for Westland on his office computer. Putting together the pieces, Fabel started to build a picture of a man he did not like. Westland was, by all accounts, arrogant, opinionated and egocentric. No surprises there: to be a successful performer you needed an ego that could fill a stadium. But the truth was that Westland was no longer filling stadiums. His promoters had scaled down the size of the venues he played in. A strategy which ensured that he could still claim the odd ticket sell-out. With the information Fabel found, he could mentally plot a bell curve of fame for the British singer, reaching its peak in the mid 1980s. After that, his popularity, if not his wealth, had gone into rapid decline. Jake Westland was, clearly, fast becoming yesterday’s man. Until he left the stage permanently and spectacularly in a Kiez back alley, Westland had been struggling to make any headlines. There had been an abortive attempt at acting, but the press had been derisive. The only time he returned to public attention was when his sordid sex life excited the British tabloids. His decreasing publicity clout did not, however, prevent him from pontificating on a range of social issues to anyone who would listen.
Fabel scanned through the background material that Anna had gathered on the event at the Sporthalle. The charity benefiting from the concert was called the Sabine Charity: Declaring War on War Rape. Looking through Anna’s report, Fabel saw that the charity was devoted to assisting the victims of military or genocidal rape from Bosnia to Rwanda. The concert organiser was a woman called Petra Meissner. The name rang a bell with Fabel. He flicked back through his Internet search history and found a photograph of Westland with Petra Meissner which had appeared in one of the British tabloids. Meissner was an attractive woman in her mid forties, with dark hair cut short. The photograph was innocent enough — Westland and Meissner were together to attend an event in aid of Meissner’s charity in Berlin — but the English headline demanded Who’s the HUN-ney, Jake? And, of course, the text went on to make much of the fact that Westland’s escort was a German woman; lots of tasteless jokes about the war. The usual brainless stuff. Fabel loved all things British: except their press. And the fact that, as a nation, the British seemed permanently stuck in the past.
There was little else of note about Westland that Fabel could see, other than the Englishman’s obvious business acumen. He might have been a mediocre singer and an even worse actor, but he had been an astute investor. Westland’s back catalogue of music and his more recent CDs assured him a reasonable income from his established fan base, but the real income had come from his portfolio of investments. And, from what Fabel read, it appeared that it wasn’t his accountants or advisers who had guided this success but Westland himself, who seemed to have an eye for the up-and-coming business concept or the unusual opportunity that other investors would be wary of.
It had been snowing again and, although the roads were clear, the pavements around the city were white-blanketed. Fabel drove through the city and through the Elbe tunnel into Hamburg-Harburg.
The Sabine Charity had its offices in an older building on the corner of two busy Harburg streets. There was a certain art-deco grandness about the building but this had been diminished by copious graffiti on the walls. The charity’s offices comprised a handful of rooms on the ground floor. Fabel had phoned ahead to make an appointment, but when he walked into the offices he could find no defined reception area. For some reason he had expected this informality. There were four women and two men working at various desks, most of whom were engaged in phone conversations when Fabel entered. A tall, handsome woman with short dark hair, whom he recognised from her photographs as Petra Meissner, stood up and came over to him.