by Reevik, Carl
All except Bresson laughed light-heartedly. Clarke chuckled, too.
11
Becker said goodbye to Anneli Villefranche and saw her boss Stavros Theodorakis stand outside the door to his own office. ‘Come in,’ Becker said to him as she left. ‘Please. Thank you for letting your team member go first.’
Theodorakis closed the door behind him and sat down in the visitor’s chair.
Becker asked, ‘Could you perhaps tell me what exactly your unit does, just so that I understand Monsieur Zayek’s work environment.’
‘Of course,’ Theodorakis replied. He was no longer irritated by being basically dispossessed and evicted from his workplace in favour of one of his subordinates. He was trying to help, it seemed. ‘The Commission monitors the use of nuclear material in the member countries, and our unit provides administrative support for the reporting process.’
Becker raised his eyebrows. ‘You mean atomic bombs?’ He knew it probably wasn’t atomic bombs.
‘No no,’ Theodorakis said delightedly. ‘We monitor nuclear material that is used for peaceful purposes. U-235 and the isotopes from the fission, for example.’
Becker considered it likely that Theodorakis didn’t know what exactly he was talking about either. Someone who truly understood something would be able to explain it better to a layman. But Becker stayed on the subject. ‘There must be a lot of material to monitor. If I think of all the hospitals, they also use radioactivity, no?’
Theodorakis nodded. ‘There is a lot, yes, and the Commission does on-the-spot inspections, too. We have almost two hundred nuclear inspectors. That’s not our unit, though.’
That addition had sounded a bit sad.
‘And you go and check all the hospitals in Europe?’ Again, Becker knew that this could not possibly be true.
Theodorakis showed Becker a sad, wise smile. ‘It’s a drop in the ocean, Inspector. What you sometimes see in the news are train transports with spent nuclear fuel, with protesters chaining themselves to the rails, and riot police carrying them away or beating them up. What you don’t see are the normal transports that go on every day, on ships, on lorries. Yellowcake uranium that goes to conversion, UF-6 drums that go to enrichment, fission targets that go to reactors, each shipping container with enough material for several months of production, and cylinders with medical isotopes, and depleted uranium. Transport by plane is more problematic of course, but you need it to quickly get Mo-99 to hospitals. And think of all the centrifuges and accelerators and reactors that run every day, day and night, all across Europe. No-one can ever hope to monitor every single gramme of nuclear material. It wouldn’t even be smart.’
Very impressive, I’m sure.
‘Why would that not be smart?’
‘It’s like with police work,’ Theodorakis said. ‘You should spend resources on fighting one type of crime, until that becomes too expensive considering all the other crimes that also need policing.’
Becker took out his e-cigarette.
Theodorakis added, ‘I’m sorry Inspector, I didn’t mean to qualify or comment on your work in particular. It’s just an economic theory of fighting crime in general.’
Becker understood that perfectly well, he just didn’t feel like nodding. He felt like puffing.
‘Please, Monsieur Theodorakis,’ he finally said, putting away the device. ‘Do you maybe have a picture of Boris Zayek? We only have the little photo from his badge, and that’s bagged as evidence now.’
Theodorakis nodded and said, ‘If you let me use my computer I will print one out for you.’
Becker got up and let his host have his chair back. They switched places. The visitor’s chair where Theodorakis had sat felt warm. Surely his own chair was now even warmer. But the man didn’t say anything. Swapping chairs always created an unpleasant kind of intimacy that Theodorakis, like most people, pretended not to notice.
The printer next to the screen started buzzing and whirring, and a colour picture emerged from it. Theodorakis handed it to Becker, who recognised the face from the badge the white-clad crime scene person had shown him at the hotel.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Now can you tell me what exactly happened here today.’
‘I am sorry, Inspector,’ Theodorakis said. ‘The only thing I know is that you came in and told me that Boris Zayek had died in the hotel across the street.’
Becker nodded slowly.
He asked, ‘Do you know why he died?’
Theodorakis stared at him. ‘No, Inspector, I do not. I have no idea.’
‘Did maybe two men come to your office, or your building, before this happened?’
Theodorakis recovered from the slight shock of being asked whether he had any theories of his own. He shook his head. ‘There have been no visitors, at least not for me. We don’t get that many visitors here.’
‘Madame Villefranche saw someone come in to talk to Zayek.’
‘That’s very well possible, their offices are downstairs, I’m up here.’ Theodorakis looked up, somewhere in the direction of the ceiling above his door, as if trying to catch an idea with his gaze. ‘If there were visitors they should be logged.’
‘What if they were Commission staff, too?’
‘Well, then they are not. But they would still be on camera, there’s a security camera in the entrance hall.’
Becker appreciated the idea that Theodorakis had successfully picked up from his ceiling. ‘Can you please call your security people and let them print out a still of the two men in question?’
Theodorakis looked up a number, made a call, discussed a little, allowed himself to be put through to someone else, then discussed some more and finally received an e-mail with an attached image that he printed out for Becker, too.
The picture was grey-and-white, showing two men, one young one old, talking to the guard of whom only the back was visible. Behind the two visitors was the entrance door and the array of flags Becker had seen on his way in. The young man was Hans Tamberg, whom he had talked to at the hotel. The older one had to be his boss, Mister Tienhoven with the heart attack from which he so quickly recovered. As Becker had expected, the third one, the outsider Hans Tamberg had mentioned, was not on the picture.
Becker asked, ‘Please tell me, did Boris Zayek have family?’
‘No,’ Theodorakis replied. ‘He wasn’t married, and he lived alone I believe.’
‘Where was he from?’
‘He has, he had a Bulgarian passport, because of his father, but he was German.’
Becker nodded.
‘Where did he live?’
‘In Wincheringen, on the German side of the river. I’ll send you the exact address.’
Becker considered this. All these cross-border aspects complicated his case. First Belgium because of Brussels, and now this. But it wasn’t as bad as it sounded. The truth was that they had very good working relations with the German authorities, especially the local police of Rhineland-Palatinate, one of the two German states bordering Luxembourg. They understood each other in a way foreign ministries did not.
Becker returned to the subject of Zayek himself.
‘What was he like?’, he asked.
Theodorakis hesitated. It was clear that he was going to start his description with the same apologetic qualification Anneli Villefranche had used. ‘Out of respect for my team member and his, er, untimely passing away.’ He stopped his phrase in mid-sentence. Then he started a new one. ‘I will be honest with you.’ Perhaps his having reclaimed his own chair was making him feel more secure now. ‘We weren’t friends, but we’re not here to socialise. We’re here to do our work. And Boris Zayek was a decent worker. His English wasn’t very good at first, but it improved. He was always on time, he was diligent, he was never sick, he never complained. He wasn’t very creative or witty, but his job profile didn’t require any of that. And it’s not easy to find motivated staff here, because most people want to work in Brussels. I’m happy that I could recruit the team
that I have now. That I had, I mean.’
Theodorakis seemed lost in thoughts for a few moments. Maybe he was considering the management implications of Zayek’s death.
Becker asked, ‘How many team members do you have?’
‘Four, I had four. Anneli you already saw, and there is still Pedro and Ilona.’
And now his unit had been cut by a quarter. Becker remembered when two of his own colleagues had left the unit because they couldn’t stand their boss and had had enough at some point. The boss had been running around sweating and building up blood pressure for weeks, desperate to make sure he could fill his vacancies. He’d been given his posts in the end, but under the condition that he leave his inspectors alone to prevent any future exodus from happening. This had suited Becker well. He hadn’t liked his boss either, and now he was almost completely autonomous in his work. Free as a bird, but armed with the claws of law enforcement. Yes, it had all worked out very well for him.
***
Pavel saw it from the street corner. There were still too many policemen in and around the hotel, but here, a hundred metres up the street in the direction of the motorway, there were none. He kept his breath steady as he watched. His lips were forcibly relaxed.
They tightened again when he saw the young man from the lobby leave the hotel. A red Volkswagen with a yellow Luxembourgish license plate had just arrived and stopped across the street from the hotel entrance. A man at the wheel, alone.
The young man from the lobby looked around and crossed the street. He was holding a little black object in his hand. He walked around to the passenger’s side and got in. The car drove off in the direction of the motorway. The two men drove right past Pavel’s position. The driver had black hair and wore round glasses.
It was too late for Pavel to get to his car and chase it. Within a minute they would be on the cloverleaf, turning either to Belgium or Germany or France, or heading to any Luxembourgish town on this side of the border.
Pavel took out his phone and dialled a number.
‘I’m a friend of Bruno. I have a license plate. No, Luxembourg. Name and address. Yes, please.’
***
Becker let a red car pass, crossed the street, and reached the entrance of the hotel. Over at the Commission they all had in the end said more or less the same thing about Zayek: Anneli Villefranche, Stavros Theodorakis, as well as the other team members, Ilona Velikova and Pedro Maluenda. They had all said it differently, so probably they hadn’t pre-agreed what to say. Not that they’d said very much. The bottom line was that nobody knew anything about what had or could have had happened. At least Anneli Villefranche had heard Zayek talk to someone and leave, and the guard at the reception had told him that two men, the young one and the old one from the camera still, had come to look for Zayek and that the three of them had left the building shortly afterwards. But that wasn’t a big breakthrough, because Becker had known already that the Commission people had come for Zayek to talk to him at the hotel. At least these were mutually supporting statements.
Becker entered the hotel lobby. There were still a few policemen hanging around the reception area but the crime scene people were gone. All the armchairs were empty. There were people from a private cleaning company walking in and out of the hallway in the far left corner of the lobby. Next to the hallway Becker saw the new receptionist standing behind the counter.
‘Moïen,’ Becker said to her. ‘Is the manager still here?’
She pointed with her thumb behind her back. The restaurant, or somewhere behind it. Becker nodded and squeezed past the cleaning crew into the hallway, heading for the restaurant door. He opened it and saw the manager talk to the waitress he’d talked to earlier. They were standing in the middle of the room and were going through some papers. Maybe new prices, or lists of ingredients for the kitchen that they’d had to cancel. As before, the tables were set but vacant. Since it was getting dark outside, the lights had been turned on.
‘Sorry to interrupt,’ Becker said. ‘Can I please talk to you again for a moment.’
The expression on the manager’s face was rather a no.
‘Look, there’s no need for this,’ Becker said. ‘You don’t want to talk to me, so I can’t do my job. I take you to police headquarters and keep you there all night, so you can’t do your job. Why are we doing this to each other? Please, let’s sit down, okay?’
Becker followed his own friendly suggestion and sat down heavily at one of the tables. It was the same table he’d sat at when talking to the first receptionist; in fact he had reclaimed his old spot. The manager whispered something to the waitress and sat down at the same table, in the spot where the receptionist had sat earlier. The waitress disappeared into the kitchen. Becker noticed that they had replaced the glass from which the receptionist had drunk his sparkling water. All wine glasses were fresh.
‘All right,’ Becker said. ‘It’s about the security cameras.’
‘Yes, another source of headaches.’
‘What happened to them?’
‘I don’t know,’ the manager said. His face was considerably less red than it had been earlier that day. But its colour wasn’t completely natural yet.
‘Who manages the cameras?’, Becker asked.
‘It’s an outside contractor. They come here once a month for maintenance. For the rest we never see them. Only their invoices.’
‘Where are the recordings stored?’
The manager grinned. ‘Nowhere. There are no tapes or anything. It’s a stream of digital pictures that’s fed directly into the server of the contractor. And they probably save money by storing it all in the cloud. If we need pictures for a particular day we ask for them.’
‘You have to ask in order to get your own pictures?’
‘Not just ask,’ the manager laughed. This was a subject he was visibly enjoying. ‘We have to pay for them, too!’
Becker frowned, a fact that made the manager change his facial expression from amused to triumphant.
‘You see,’ the manager said. ‘This is how division of labour in a modern economy works. I need security cameras, but I don’t want to hire my own technical guy, or pay for the tapes. Because then I’ll have to raise my hotel room rates, so fewer people will stay at my hotel. And I go out of business, and have to fire not just the technical guy but also the cleaning ladies, and I stop paying the caterers, and I stop paying taxes. Clearly that’s not what we want.’ He relaxed in his chair as he continued sharing his wisdom. ‘So I pay somebody else to do all that. What I pay him is less than what I’d have to pay if I hired my own guy. But the contractor is thinking the same thing I was thinking. He can keep all that stuff stored, and pay for it. But that would mean his prices would go up, and so I, the client, will take my business somewhere else. So the contractor differentiates. Pay a premium price to have full access to your recordings anytime, or pay a basic price for access on demand, and pay for each demand. And how often is there a demand?’ The manager promptly answered his own question. ‘We can plan ahead, say ten times a month to check on what the staff are doing. If every access costs let’s say ten euros, it’ll cost a hundred euros a month. If that’s less than the premium access would cost, I take the basic package because I don’t need any more than that.’
‘Now you do,’ Becker said. ‘Someone died, we need the footage.’
‘Yes, but that practically never happens,’ the manager said. ‘Even if robberies or murders or I don’t know what other crimes happened in my hotel on average once a month, which they don’t, it would still only add another ten euros to my monthly bill. In reality it adds a fraction of a cent to my yearly bill, Inspector. Because the likelihood is so low.’
Becker had enough of this. ‘Where are the recordings for today?’
‘Like I said, I don’t know. The contractor says there’s been a malfunction. Earlier I told that your colleagues, too.’
‘And now?’
‘And now it’s a contractual non-performance
,’ the manager said, caressing his tie. ‘They promised access on demand, we demand, they don’t deliver. We don’t pay, and they pay us a penalty.’ He grinned. ‘I’m sure their estimate of the penalties they’ll have to pay out per year is lower than the cost of making their system more secure. And why is it lower? Because the likelihood of a malfunction is low, and the likelihood that it happens exactly on a day for which there is an access demand is even lower.’
Becker got up. ‘What’s the name of the contractor?’
The manager also got up and told him. Becker wrote it down in his notepad and shook hands with the manager. Now they had a working relation, which was a good thing. The benefit of his helpful cooperation was higher than the cost of having to listen to all this.
The manager went into the kitchen in the back. Becker stayed in the restaurant. He sat back down in his chair, took out his phone and searched for the website of the contractor. Business hours were over, he tried anyway but only got a voicebox and hung up. Tomorrow morning he’d go. Then he dialled a contact number.
‘Yes, hello Felten, it’s Becker. Yes, I heard about the hospital. Yes. No, still at the hotel. Did any of the consultants from across the street come forward yet? Hm, okay. Yes, I know, who wants to talk to the police during business hours. Or during any hours. Did you put up a notice or talk to some managers there? Thanks. Yes, I know. Now listen, please. The victim lived in Wincheringen, I’ll send you the address as soon as I have it. Please contact the German side, notify them that possibly one of their residents is dead, if it’s him. No, we’re not, there’ve been lots of suspicious people going in and out of that toilet, I want to be sure it’s him. Yes. Well, we can’t show them that, can we, but he still has fingers. So to be sure we need to compare fingerprints and get a tissue sample from his apartment to match it to the body. The Germans open the door, we match everything here at our own lab. And when you go there, chat to the neighbours, okay? And send crime scene to the victim’s office to take some fingerprints off his desk and keyboard, just in case the Germans are reluctant to let us take prints at his home. Well, tissue you can just bag anywhere, but they feel that taking prints inside a person’s home is more intrusive. It takes more paperwork. Yes, today, tonight. Of course. Yes. Thanks. Bye.’