A fear of dark water

Chapter Twenty-One

Fabel woke up with a start. He had been dreaming again and something in his dream had frightened him, but it ran away from his recall as soon as he awoke. He had the vague idea that the woman from the night before had figured in it.

It wasn’t fully light and he switched on the bedside lamp; checking his watch, he saw it was just before six a.m. He reached over to the bedside cabinet, picked up the replacement cellphone and frowned. No call from Susanne. Not even a text to tell him which flight she would be coming back on.

He got up and showered, but still felt tired. Sluggish. He left the apartment early and called into a cafe for breakfast. It was somewhere he visited often enough to be recognised but not so frequently as to be considered a regular. It saved him the effort of making conversation at this time in the morning. It was quiet in the cafe; the only other customers were a couple who sat at a table at the back, away from the window. Both the man and woman were dressed in grey business suits and stared blankly at Fabel as he came in, before returning to the joyless consumption of their coffees.

For some reason he didn’t quite understand, the cafe offered a choice of breakfasts, each named, in English for some reason, after a port city: The Hamburg Breakfast, The Liverpool Breakfast, The Rotterdam Breakfast. Fabel ordered the Rotterdam and was served with a Dutch style Uitsmijter: poached egg on a bed of ham, cheese and toast; served with a cup of industrial-strength coffee. He sat and pushed the food about on his plate for ten minutes, watching through the window as the faint drizzle fell without conviction on the Elbe. His cellphone rang.

‘What the hell’s been going on?’ Susanne said impatiently and without preliminaries.

‘It’s nice to talk to you, too,’ said Fabel. ‘I’ve been trying to reach you for days. Didn’t you get my texts?’

‘What texts? The only text I got from you was the one I picked up this morning, from your new phone. What’s going on, Jan? What happened to your other phone?’

‘It’s been playing up. You know, the usual problems: signal failure, poor battery life, predicting by itself the location of the next victim of the Network Killer.’

‘What?’

‘The text I asked you about. Remember… Poppenbutteler Schleuse… I get the text and within a few hours a body is found floating in the Poppenbutteler Schleuse.’

‘You’re kidding…’ Susanne said. ‘Did you find out who really sent it?’

‘This is where it gets good — the text has disappeared. Deleted itself somehow. That’s why I’ve got this new phone. They’re working on my old one to try to recover the message. You heading for Frankfurt airport?’

‘Yeah… but my flight isn’t till this afternoon. I’m going to do some shopping first. Can you pick me up?’

‘Sure. When do you get in?’

She gave him the flight’s scheduled arrival time. ‘Listen, Jan,’ she said, concern woven through her tone. ‘You say you sent me some texts from that phone?’

‘Yes. And a voicemail message.’

‘I never got them. And, from what you are saying, you didn’t get my messages either.’

‘You left messages for me? No, I didn’t get any.’

‘But that doesn’t make any sense. Voicemail messages aren’t stored on your phone, they’re stored on the network provider’s service. Try retrieving them with your PIN from that phone. I don’t like this, Jan. It’s like someone’s hijacked your phone. Cloned it or something.’

‘I don’t know, Susanne. That sounds pretty far-fetched. I’ve maybe deleted the messages myself by accident. Anyway, Technical Section will let me know soon enough.’ He paused. ‘I’ve missed you.’

‘I’ve missed you, too,’ said Susanne. There was still a thread of concern in her voice. ‘See you at the airport.’

Leaving most of his Rotterdam Breakfast uneaten, Fabel paid and got back into his car. He felt jumpy after the too-strong coffee and, as he drove across town to the Presidium, he switched on his mp3 player to mellow his agitated mood. Lars Danielsson this time. Maybe, thought Fabel, he should have been born a Swede.

The music had the effect it usually had on him and by the time Fabel parked in the Presidium car park, despite the odd caffeine flutter, he felt able to face anything the day had to throw at him.

He could not have been more mistaken.