The Ghosts of Altona Read Free

and another shot. There was no pain. All there was was the strangest sensation that something heavy and immovable had been dropped onto his chest, stopping his lungs from filling with air. And he was afraid. So afraid. He was afraid because he could not breathe; he was afraid because he could not feel any pain; he was afraid of the pain that was to come.
    He’s shot me dead . The thought, and the anger with which it burned, penetrated his fear. I’ve let everyone down because I let the bastard shoot me dead .
    There was no more yelling. Even the bass beat from the apartment above stopped abruptly. They must have heard the shots .
    From where he lay, Fabel could see the print on the wall beside and above him. In the midst of his fear and anger a realization dawned on him: Charon isn’t the artist’s name, it’s who the figure is .
    Anna was above him, looking down on him, blocking out his universe of wall and plaster ceiling. Her face was filled with fear, panic, and that made Fabel sad. He remembered when she had first joined the Murder Commission, how she had been so edgy and defiant and difficult to manage. So young. He remembered how she had dealt with Paul Lindemann’s death on duty, so many years before, and it filled Fabel with a deep sorrow and anger at his own clumsiness realizing that she would now have to deal with his own death. She was talking loudly and urgently to Fabel, tearing at his shirt, pressing down on his chest and adding to the stifling weight.
    She was crying. Fabel had never seen Anna Wolff cry.
    He thought of Gabi, his daughter. And Susanne. He should have married Susanne. He should have asked her.
    He tried to speak. He tried to say Little Timo is in the bedroom. Don’t forget little Timo . But he had no words. No breath.
    Then it came: the pain Fabel had feared. It consumed him, travelled through every nerve in his body like an electric current: white-hot, jangling. He looked pleadingly at Anna, unable to speak, unable to move anything but his eyes. She was using her free hand to make a call on her cell phone, speaking urgently, desperately; choking on her grief and panic. But Fabel couldn’t hear what she was saying because the pain now rang in his ears, seared through his head, burned every millimetre of his body, impossibly increasing in intensity. And anyway, it was too late.
    Jan Fabel had already begun to die.

2
    As Jan Fabel lay dying from his wounds, two things, and two things alone, filled his universe. Pain and fear. His pain reassured him he was still alive. His fear screamed at him that death was imminent.
    Then the pain began to fade. There was a moment of intense cold, as if every window and door had been thrown open and winter had claimed the whole apartment. Then nothing.
    Fabel knew that the damage to his body was still there, that every nerve would be jangle-hot, but the connection had been switched off: not yet severed, just switched off. The fear persisted, but only for a moment; then even that, too, was gone. He was removed from the machineries of fear and pain, which he now realized were in his body, not his mind. Fabel knew that with each moment his connection to his body was becoming fainter, more tenuous, less important. He was no longer defined by his physical presence.
    I am dying , he thought without fear or sadness, rancour or concern. And at that moment he became aware of the slow, dark turning of the Earth beneath him.
    He was leaving now.
    He saw Anna’s sad, frightened face start to fade; the picture and the plaster ceiling beyond it fall into shadow. Everything went dark, but not a dark like any he had ever known, not a dark without colour. The full spectrum danced across his vision in gentle glows and vivid flashes.
    The world was gone. The world, he now realized, had never truly been there, had never been truly real. This was real, whatever this was. Everything he had ever experienced in life had been dulled, muted, out of focus. Now he was experiencing