The Carnival Master

5.

After they had made love, Fabel and Susanne sat in the living room of his flat and looked out over the dark water of the Alster and the glittering reflections that played on it. Susanne leaned her head on Fabel’s shoulder and he did his best to disguise the fact that for some reason he didn’t want her there. The feeling surprised him. He felt restless and irritable and had, for a moment, an almost irresistible urge to get into his car and drive out of the city, out of Hamburg, out of Germany. He’d had the feeling before, but he had always put it down to his work; an urge to put the horror and stress of it all as far from him as he could. But wasn’t that exactly what he had achieved? He had only a few weeks left to go and his escape would be complete. So why did he feel so panicky? And why was it, when he was supposed to be relishing a life free of murder, that he could not shake the call of the file he had half-hidden under the copy of the Morgenpost?

‘How was dinner with Roland?’ asked Susanne.

‘Wordy. Bartz likes to chat. I don’t know if he’s that keen on listening but, boy, can he talk.’

‘I thought you liked him.’ There was an edge to Susanne’s voice. Fabel had learned to be careful when talking about his new career with her: recently, any lack of conviction in his tone had been enough to start an argument.

‘I do. I mean, I did when he was a kid. But people change. Roland Bartz is a very different person now. But he’s okay. Just a bit full of himself.’

‘He’s an entrepreneur. It goes with the territory,’ said Susanne. ‘His company wouldn’t be so successful – and he couldn’t offer you the salary he’s offering – if he was riddled with self-doubt. Anyway, you don’t have to love the guy to work with him.’

‘There’s not a problem,’ said Fabel. ‘Honestly. And don’t worry, I’m not having second thoughts about leaving the Polizei Hamburg. I’ve had a bellyful.’ He took a long sip of Pinot Grigio, leaned back against the sofa and closed his eyes. The picture of sad, desperate, insane Georg Aichinger filled his mind. The same image that had haunted him throughout his dinner with Bartz.

‘What’s wrong?’ asked Susanne in response to his sigh.

‘I can’t stop thinking about Aichinger. All that crap he talked before he shot himself. About waking up and realising that he wasn’t real. What the hell was all that about?’

‘Depersonalisation. We all get it to a degree at some point. Mainly through stress or overtiredness. In Aichinger’s case, it could be that he was going through something more profound. Maybe even a full-blown dissociative fugue.’

‘I thought that was when people lose their memory. Wake up in a new town with a new identity or lack or identity.’

‘It can be, sometimes. People who suffer a great trauma can go into a dissociative fugue. To forget the bad stuff they dump their entire memory. Without a memory you can’t remember who you are. You adopt a new identity without the biography of your real one.’

‘But Aichinger hadn’t lost his memory.’

‘No. But if he hadn’t killed himself he might have walked out of that door and disappeared. Not just from the world but from himself.’

‘God knows there have been times when I’ve wished I could have disappeared from myself. Standing in front of Aichinger while he blew his brains out was one.’ Fabel smiled bitterly.

‘Well, you are, in a way. As soon as you walk out of the Presidium for the last time and put police work behind you.’

‘Yeah…’ Fabel took another sip of wine. ‘And leave it all to the likes of Breidenbach.’

‘Who?’

‘The new breed.’ Fabel sipped his wine.