Werner pointed to the drysuit with a small movement of his chin. ‘This what he wore, you reckon?’

Fabel peered into the bath. Another two drips drummed echoing beats against the bath. Fabel thought he saw the drips bloom a faint pink against the bright white enamel. He took a pen from his pocket and pushed up the lever to close the plug.

‘If it is, then it’s a bad choice for getting the blood out. A drysuit may have an impermeable body, but the collar, ankle and wrist cuffs are neoprene. No matter how often he’s rinsed it through, there will still be blood trapped in the neoprene. No one touches anything in here until Brauner arrives.’

Fabel decided to re-immerse himself in the claustrophobia of MacSwain’s tiny, windowless box room. There were layers and layers of stuff pinned or taped to the walls. Rather than sift through them methodically – a task he would assign to Werner – Fabel let his gaze run its own route across the landscape of MacSwain’s madness. A psychotic topography that Fabel explored whole, not in part. There were articles on the Soviet-Afghan war and cuttings from magazines and books. One in particular caught Fabel’s attention; what struck him as odd was that it was only a segment of what must have been a much larger piece. It had been carefully cut out, yet began and ended in the middle of a sentence:

ensuing discord. Unable to find among themselves a suitable ruler, the Krivichians, Chud and Slavs agreed to seek out a foreign prince or king to govern and establish the rule of law. They looked amongst those Vikings of France that are known as Normans. They sought amongst the Angles of Jutland and England. And they sought amongst the Svear or Swedes of Sweden. These Swedes are also known by the Moors as the Rus, and from their number three brothers, Rurik, Sineus and Truvor, came forth with their families and established dominion over the peoples of the Dnieper. Rurik, the eldest, became ruler of Novgorod, and the lands and the people of that region became known as Russian. Rurik’s brothers both died soon after and Rurik became sole ruler. It was brought to his attention that there was a city to the south that was in great peril. It had been founded by the Polianian ferryman Kii, his brothers Shchek and Khoriv, and his sister Lybed. This city had taken Kii’s name and was known as Kievetz or Kiev and had been governed wisely and well. However, after the death of Kii and his kin, the city had fallen into great peril and was suffering at the cruel hands of the Khazars. Rurik was moved by the plight of the

Fabel reread the segment. Was this how MacSwain saw himself and Vitrenko: Vitrenko as some latter-day Rurik and MacSwain as his loyal kinsman? He roamed further across the landscape of meticulous psychosis. Another cutting. This one concerned the warlord lieutenant of Prince Igor, a Varangian called Sveneld or Sveinald. A name, distant in time and geography, but from the same root as MacSwain’s own and brought close under the magnifying glass of MacSwain’s insanity. He travelled further. Numerous depictions of one-eyed Odin. A one-page pantheon of the twelve principal gods of the Aesir. Another on the Vanir, headed by Loki. There were fragments of downloaded Internet pages on Asatru. The largest item was a reproduction of a woodcut illustration of a giant ash tree, its branches and roots writhing and stretching like tentacles to loop through representations of a dozen different worlds. A vast eagle sat in its uppermost bough. This, Fabel knew, was Yggdrasil, the tree of the universe and the centrepiece of Norse beliefs. It was Yggdrasil that connected all things: mortal men with gods, the past with the present and the future, heaven with earth with hell, good with evil.