The Ghosts of Altona (36 page)

‘I will.’

‘So what was it you wanted to see me about?’ asked Gebhardt.

Fabel’s expression darkened. ‘Something you’re not going to like. It’s maybe going to make you reconsider your offer . . .’

*

Petra Gebhardt sat silently watching the sky for a moment, her leather chair turned to the window and tilted back slightly. She had maintained the position and the silence while Fabel had gone through all of what he knew about Tobias Albrecht’s potential involvement with the murders, and his actual involvement with Birgit Taubitz. Birgit, Fabel had explained, had been the mystery woman Albrecht had wished to shield, even though she could provide him with an alibi for the night Hensler was killed.

‘Are you absolutely sure about this?’ asked Gebhardt. ‘After all, we just have the word of a lobby boy.’

‘I’m sure. It fits with Albrecht’s reluctance to name her. And we’ve done our own enquiries—’ Fabel held up a hand to halt Gebhardt’s coming protests. ‘We were very discreet, I assure you. Anyway, we have enough to suggest there really was something going on – although it has to be said that Albrecht and Frau Taubitz took great care to cover up their tracks.’

‘Was she the one who was with Albrecht the night he was killed?’ she asked.

‘No, we checked. Frau Taubitz was at an official function with her husband. The woman the surveillance team saw Albrecht with looked like a casual pick-up from the bar. I’m sending a team in tonight to see if any regulars or staff in the bar can shed any light on her identity.’

‘Do you think she was the killer?’

‘I honestly don’t know. We watched the place but missed her leaving. And we have at least two strong leads that would take us in another direction. However, we’re looking for a man whose sister committed suicide because of Albrecht. There’s always a chance that the woman in the apartment was at least an accomplice.’

‘I take it you’re going to interview Birgit Taubitz?’

‘I’m afraid there’s no way around it, Frau Police President.’

‘I trust you to be
delicate
in your handling of the interview.’

‘Naturally. As I would whatever the status or celebrity of the witness.’

Gebhardt smiled, taking Fabel’s point. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Could you keep me regularly up to date on progress? I mean in my role as acting Leading Criminal Director more than Police President.’

‘Of course,’ said Fabel, but he knew very well that her interest in the case was political, rather than investigative. He picked up the file on the proposed Super Murder Commission and stood up.

‘And you will let me know your decision about which promotion you decide upon? Carrying Herr van Heiden’s workload as well as my own has been difficult. I’d like things decided as soon as possible.’

‘Certainly, Frau Police President.’

55

When it came to real estate, the Elbchaussee wasn’t just the most expensive street in Altona, it was the most expensive street in Hamburg. Probably in Germany. You had to count your change in millions to own a property of any size here.

The house was a huge, white, Jugendstil affair, taking up, Fabel reckoned, almost five hundred square metres of a two thousand square metre lot. Like Traxinger’s studio and Albrecht’s apartment, it had views out over the water. The gardens were immaculate, with an in-ground pool flanking the house and a fringe of trees shielding it from its equally imposing neighbours. This was a world Fabel occasionally had to move in, but he did so like an explorer on an alien planet. The people who lived here were those who made Hamburg Germany’s richest city. This was the milieu of the Free and Hanseatic City’s seriously, incomprehensibly wealthy.

Fabel was surprised that it wasn’t a servant who answered the door to him, but Birgit Taubitz herself. Her unexpected appearance made her beauty all the more striking, and he made a real effort not to let its impact on him show. Like Monika Krone, even like Kerstin Krone, the wife of the Principal Mayor of Hamburg wasn’t just beautiful, she was intimidatingly beautiful.
Caligynephobia
– it was a strange word and a strange time for it to fall into his recall. He remembered reading about it once: the fear of beautiful women. At the time he found it hard to believe that any such phobia existed, but Susanne had assured him it did, and was often, like many phobias, the result of some deep trauma. Standing there at the threshold of the huge Taubitz villa, held in the imperious gaze of Birgit Taubitz, Fabel suddenly found it less difficult to believe in caligynephobia.

Frau Taubitz’s hair was exactly the same tone of vibrant auburn-red as Monika Krone’s had been and she shared the same emerald green eyes as both the Krone twins. She was dressed very casually, in jeans and a sweater, but Fabel could see at first glance that the ensemble would have cost more than he made in a week.

Fabel introduced himself and offered his hand.

‘We’re in the front study,’ she said without taking it and turned to lead the way. Fabel followed her, wondering how many studies they had that they had to be described by their position in the house.

The front study was a bright room with white paintwork, art deco French windows out to the garden and some original art hanging on the pale cream walls. Fabel found himself checking that there wasn’t a Traxinger hanging among the other paintings. There wasn’t: this was a much more select artistic crowd. A tall, thin twist of dark metal stood on a plinth in one corner and Fabel recognized it as a Giacometti. Birgit Taubitz indicated Fabel should sit with a wave of her hand.

‘I expect you and your department to handle this situation with the delicacy and discretion it deserves. I have agreed to meet you only on that basis and I will only answer questions I deem relevant. I spoke with the Police President about this this morning.’

‘I see,’ said Fabel smiling. ‘Of course we will be discreet.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’

Fabel leaned forward in the chair, resting his elbows on his knees. The smile dropped. ‘I think I should make myself perfectly clear: it is my job to be discreet in all investigations and in all situations like this, Frau Taubitz, whatever the background of the witness. Your status, such as it is, has no bearing whatsoever. And as for the questions you’ll answer –
I’ll
decide what’s relevant, not you. And you will answer everything. If I am not entirely satisfied that you have, then I will take you into the Presidium and we’ll continue the questioning there – in which case it will be a hell of a lot more difficult to keep your involvement out of the media. You maybe have been speaking to Petra Gebhardt, but I know that she’ll have told you in no uncertain terms that your best policy is to be as open with me as possible. I will do my best to keep your involvement out of the papers, but you may well end up as a witness in court. The secret to discretion in this situation, as you put it, would have been for you to have chosen your fellow adulterer with more caution. Have I made myself perfectly clear, Frau Taubitz?’

Birgit Taubitz sat glaring at Fabel, wrapping a tight-lipped silence around her rage before nodding briskly.

‘Your husband,’ said Fabel. ‘Have you told him that you were involved with Tobias Albrecht?’

‘Of course not.’

‘It’s not my place to advise you on marital matters, but I don’t think his knowledge of your involvement can be avoided.’

‘You’ll tell him?’ The defiance suddenly left her demeanour. ‘Why would you do that?’

‘I have no intention of telling the Principal Mayor at the moment. We are following specific lines of inquiry and hopefully one of these will bear fruit. However, if they don’t, then, at the end of the day, your husband has a pretty strong motive – perhaps one of the most common motives – for committing murder: killing his wife’s lover out of sexual jealousy.’

‘You can’t seriously be suggesting that?’

Fabel held up a hand. ‘Like I said, we have other lines to follow first. And your cooperation in following those lines is key. Do we understand each other?’

Another nod, this time with less rage behind it.

‘How long were you sexually involved with Tobias Albrecht?’

‘A year and a half, roughly. We met at a function.’

‘And the affair was conducted where?’

‘His apartment, mainly.’ She held Fabel’s gaze determinedly, as if trying to prove she wouldn’t allow the indelicacy of the subject to faze her. ‘A hotel room on a couple of occasions, but that was too risky and only when we met away from Hamburg.’

Fabel placed a mortuary photograph of the tattoo on the desk in front of Birgit Taubitz. She stared at it for a moment.

‘Do you recognize this tattoo?’

‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘This can’t be from Tobias’s body – he didn’t have any tattoos.’

‘That’s not what I asked you. This isn’t Albrecht. Do you recognize this tattoo?’

‘No . . . but I recognize the motif.’

‘Oh?’

‘It was used as a monogram at the bottom of that God-awful painting. The one he had hanging in his apartment despite the fact it didn’t go with anything else.
The Silent Goddess
.’

‘Sorry, what did you say?’

‘
The Silent Goddess
. That’s what he called the painting. Or at least he called it that once.’

‘When?’

‘The strange thing about Tobias was that he was moderate in most things, apart from sex. He wasn’t a big drinker, but one night he’d had a little too much. Not drunk, really, but he let his guard down so I asked him about the painting. You know the one I’m talking about – have you seen it?’

Fabel nodded.

‘Anyway, I hated that picture and I asked him what the hell it was meant to be, and he said it was the Silent Goddess. Then it was like he instantly felt he’d said too much and he dropped the whole thing.’

‘Why did it annoy you? This particular painting?’

‘I was jealous of her . . .’ Birgit Taubitz shook her head, as if annoyed with herself. ‘The woman in the painting. I was aware of the similarity with me and I often suspected that she was the
great love
’ – she exaggerated the phrase and crooked her fingers in the air to mime quote marks – ‘of Tobias’s life and that he had chosen me as some pale substitute. She made me feel like second best. That’s not an emotion I’m used to.’

‘But he never told you the identity of the woman in the picture?’

‘He never even admitted that she was a real person, or anything other than an artist’s idealized creation. But every painting has a model, someone real on whom the fantasy is based, and I knew that it was someone Tobias had some kind of connection to.’ She shrugged. ‘Don’t ask me how, I just knew.’

‘The artist who painted the picture – Detlev Traxinger – did you know him?’

‘I bumped into him once or twice at functions, that kind of thing.’ She made a disgusted face. ‘And I mean bumped into him. He was a fat pig and a creep, always pawing at women. And a drunk.’

‘Did he ever try to paw you?’

‘No . . . but he still gave me the creeps. Every time our paths crossed he would stare at me. Not leer, just stare. I wondered even then if it had something to do with my similarity to the woman in the painting.’

‘And you never got a hint from Albrecht who the Silent Goddess was or why she was called that?’

‘No . . .’ Taubitz frowned. ‘What is it? Is it significant?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Fabel, but there was a beat’s pause before he asked his next question. ‘Before his death, Herr Albrecht was a suspect, albeit not a leading one, for the death of Werner Hensler. He claimed he was with you all that evening, but wouldn’t give up your identity. Is it true – was he with you?’

‘Yes, we talked about it afterwards. He seemed genuinely upset. I had no idea that he knew Werner Hensler, but then he told me he had gone to university with him.’

‘Did he say they were close?’

‘No, just that they were contemporaries. But I got the feeling he was understating it. Like I said, Tobias seemed very upset by Hensler’s death.’

‘Were you ever aware of Albrecht having an interest in the Gothic – in Gothic literature or art?’

Birgit Taubitz looked taken aback for a moment. ‘It’s odd that you should say that. As an architect, Tobias was a modernist – which I believe is paradoxically considered old-hat these days. All of his buildings were about clean lines and geometry, some of them almost minimalist. But one day he had some drawings out on his desk – you know, the mini-studio in his apartment. They were beautiful, pencil and ink, as if they’d been done on a drawing board, rather than on a computer. I asked him about them and he said they were stuff he had done when he had been an architecture student. It’s odd, he seemed embarrassed by them, but they really were beautiful, in a dark sort of way. Anyway, they were all Gothic. There were designs for a fountain, a mansion of sorts and then some kind of ornate building that looked like a cross between a mausoleum and a temple.’

‘And these were just studies – not for any planned real building?’

‘That’s what he said, but I noticed that the sketch for the mausoleum-temple thing had a location written at the bottom.’

‘What was the location?’

‘Sorry, I can’t remember. It was in Hamburg though. Maybe the sketches are still in his apartment.’

*

They talked for another hour. Fabel went through times and dates, connections, friends and acquaintances. As the conversation went on, he got the impression that the Principal Mayor’s wife was regaining some of her previous confidence and arrogance. The suggestion that her husband could end up a suspect had been a bluff on Fabel’s part and he suspected she was beginning to see through it.

But he was simply going through the motions now. There was one thing he was going to take away from the interview. Two words slipped between lovers in a moment of tipsy carelessness.

Silent Goddess.

56

The Institute for Judicial Medicine was in Eppendorf, to the north of the city. If you died in Hamburg without an appointment, this is where they brought you. All the autopsies were carried out at ‘Butenfeld’, which was police shorthand for the institute’s morgue and referred to the street it sat on. It was also somewhere you could find an expert on almost any aspect of forensic science. Over recent years the institute had become a world-leading resource and its expertise had been sought by police forces around the world. It was, Fabel reckoned, the kind of model Petra Gebhardt had in mind for the Polizei Hamburg’s Murder Commission. Fabel had driven there straight from the Taubitz villa, stopping off to pick up coffee from a stall down by the fish market, and left his BMW in the car park in front of a double storey block. This was where Susanne worked and he had arranged over breakfast at the flat that he would call in.