The Carnival Master

3.

It took Fabel four hours to go through the bureaucracy of death: all the form-filling and debriefings that gave Aichinger’s senseless actions some kind of official shape. As he had so many times in his career, Fabel had stood at the heart of a human tragedy, burned by its raw emotional heat, only to go on to play his part in turning it into a cold, sterile statistic. But he would never forget Aichinger’s final expression of sad gratitude. And he doubted if he would ever understand it.

Fabel sat on the edge of the table in the Murder Commission squad room on the third floor of the Police Presidium, Hamburg’s police headquarters, drinking vending-machine coffee. Werner Meyer, Anna Wolff and Henk Hermann were all there: the team that, after fifteen years of leading, he would soon be leaving. Only Maria Klee was conspicuous by her absence. She had been on extended sick leave for the last month and a half: Fabel was by no means the only one who had been marked by the last three major investigations.

He sighed wearily and looked at his watch. He had been forced to hang around because his boss, Criminal Director Horst van Heiden, had asked to see him once he was through with the form-filling and the internal review questions.

‘Well, Chef…’ Senior Criminal Commissar Werner Meyer, a thickset man in his fifties with a grizzly bristle-cut, raised his coffee cup as if it were a glass of champagne. ‘I have to admit, you like to go out in style.’

Fabel said nothing. The images of what had waited for him in Aichinger’s living room still buzzed around his head. The emotions, too. The dread and the hope that had flashed through his mind and had tightened his chest as he had sprinted along the short apartment hall.

‘You did well, Chef,’ said Anna Wolff. Fabel smiled at her. Anna still looked nothing like a Criminal Commissar in the Murder Commission. She was small and pretty and more youthful-looking than her twenty-nine years; her dark hair was cut short and spiky and her full lips were deep red.

‘Did I?’ Fabel asked joylessly. ‘I failed to disarm a mentally fragile man before he blew his brains out.’

‘You lost one,’ said Werner. ‘One that was lost before you even arrived… but you saved four.’

‘How is Aichinger’s family?’ asked Anna.

‘They’re fine. Physically, at any rate. But they’re in deep shock. The shots the neighbours heard had been fired into the ceiling… and thank God that there wasn’t anyone in the apartment above at the time.’ Fabel had found Aichinger’s wife, his seven-year-old daughter, his two boys, nine and eleven. Aichinger had tied them up and gagged them with parcel tape. Fabel would never know if Aichinger had done so to keep them safe, or for execution later. ‘It’s the little girl who’s taking it the worst. Kids see the world so simply. When she woke up this morning, everything in her life was the way it should be. Tonight her world has been turned on its head.’ Fabel paused as he realised he had just echoed Aichinger’s own words. ‘How do you explain what happened to a child of that age? How is she going to live with that memory?’

‘The main thing is that she is going to live with it.’ Werner sipped his coffee. ‘They all are. If you hadn’t kept Aichinger talking, they might all have ended up dead.’

Fabel shrugged. ‘I don’t know…’

The phone ringing interrupted Fabel. Werner answered it. ‘You’re summoned to the fifth floor…’ he said with a grin as he hung up. The fifth floor of the Polizei Hamburg Police Presidium was where all the top-brass offices were, including the Presidial Department. Fabel grimaced.

‘I better answer the call, then…’