In the Dark

by Andreas Pflüger

  ‘And the investigation hasn’t thrown up any results?’

  ‘That’s true – hang on – how do you know that?’

  He eats his soup. It’s delicious.

  ‘Oh goodness,’ Helmchen says.

  ‘Our secret,’ Pavlik replies. ‘Once Demirci knows you better, she can find something out about our little chats.’

  ‘Svoboda. I wouldn’t put it past him.’

  Pavlik checks that there’s no one nearby. ‘Do you remember those two Ukrainian women in Frankfurt an der Oder?’ he murmurs, fishing out a dumpling.

  ‘You mean Pi?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes. I want to know who was involved in the operation. Not just the guys in the squad. The logistics team, everybody.’

  Of course there had been an investigation back then. The sniper knew about the safe house and the Hotel Jupiter. When something like that happens in the Department, they act like the Maasai when a lion has killed a cattle-herd: they hunt it down until they kill it. Otherwise you can never be sure. Nights in the interrogation room, observations, phone-taps, house searches. Suspicion lay in their clothes like a bad smell. Pavlik had to calm down fights a number of times. It was bad. After a few weeks Internal Affairs closed the files without a conclusion. That was worse. For a long time there was no laughter in the building. But Pavlik still has the smell in his nostrils.

  ‘It’s in Internal Affairs’ safe,’ Helmchen says. ‘Not even Demirci can get at that.’

  ‘These dumplings are great,’ he growls, and devours the last one. ‘It’s just that they’re not that easy to find.’

  ‘Give me two hours.’

  Pavlik plants a kiss on her forehead.

  ‘Smarm your way in, why don’t you?’

  ‘Not me.’ He drinks the rest of the soup straight from the bowl and gives it back to Helmchen. ‘When we retire we could set up an old people’s flatshare.’

  ‘And what will we do with Sandra and my husband?’

  ‘We’ll make it look like an accident.’ Pavlik gets into the lift. He thinks about Boenisch again. About Aaron’s enigmatic message. He puts his foot in the door. ‘Helmchen?’

  She turns around, already a few metres away from him.

  ‘You used to live in Spandau, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes. And?’

  ‘Anywhere near Bübingweg?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  The door tries to close, bumps against his foot and bounces back. ‘Boenisch lived there. Do you know that area?’

  ‘No, a completely different bit. Who’d want to live there, right in the Tegel flight path?’

  Door closed. Door open.

  ‘Like living on the runway,’ Helmchen says.

  At that second he hears the plane that drowned out Boenisch’s answer when he was being questioned. He hears him whispering at the end, ‘Like being in a glider.’

  What did Aaron say? ‘Holm knows how to exploit people.’

  It’s like something out of the blue. ‘Ulf?’ Helmchen asks.

  ‘Could be that the third man is a pilot. Have the photograph sent to all airfields in a two hundred and fifty kilometre radius. And to the Federal Aviation Office.’

  *

  The weights room on the fourth floor is the social centre of the Department. It’s where the latest gossip is exchanged. Where people resolve their differences, sweat, laugh, curse and say nothing.

  For them, training is like eating and drinking. Their bodies are statues that they chisel away at every day. But none of them has a muscle too many. It would make them too slow, they’d get in the way when it came to storming buildings and fighting, and be too conspicuous on a lot of undercover operations.

  ‘You need to work off a bit of weight, at least ten kilos.’ Pavlik doesn’t know how often he’s heard those words said to a new recruit.

  If you saw him in the street, you might think: businessman? Taxi driver? Pub landlord? Artist? Doctor? Pavlik has the gift of letting people see him as he wants to be seen.

  When he steps into the room and looks into the silence of twenty-seven men and one woman, he wants them to see their leader, the man whose calm reassurance they can depend on, whose doubts they know nothing about. He has to bear so many things in mind, always, and they must never be aware of it.

  They worked well until a few minutes ago. The dynamic of events allowed him to ignore his thoughts about his dead comrades. His brain just got on with its job, undeterred by his anxiety.

  Pavlik deliberately stopped the machine. He knows only too well that the adrenalin that is keeping it going will run out sooner or later. And it doesn’t happen gradually, it happens all at once. The machine comes to a halt suddenly, and they will plummet into an abyss of grief. Pavlik is the mechanic who tends to the machine, oils it and looks after it and makes sure that it doesn’t overheat. So they all have to pause now, even if it’s only for ten minutes, and remember the dead.

  He takes a non-alcoholic beer from the fridge, and sits down on a weight bench.

  No one says anything.

  There is boundless emptiness on every face, and behind it a door that no one dares open.

  Pavlik takes a sip of his beer, puts his finger into the neck of the bottle and makes it pop. ‘Clausen was one of a kind,’ he mumbles. ‘I once went to his house. There was a wall in the sitting room with a full-sized photograph. The Arctic, complete with igloo and polar bear. It looked pretty crap. I said: “You can’t stand the cold, you even run about in a scarf in August.” He said: “Exactly. I sit here nice and comfy in the warm and watch the polar bear freezing his arse off.”’

  Someone giggles furtively, someone else grins.

  ‘That’s true,’ Fricke says, adding his bit. ‘He told me: “I hope death gets me in the warm.”’

  ‘And it did,’ Pavlik reflects. ‘I bet the car was so overheated that Blaschke was furious. There was nothing he hated more than heat. That’s why I always liked to put him and Clausen on duty together, so they always had something to argue about.’

  Beer bottles circulate. Kemper plays with a barbell. ‘Clausen’s ex had a little dog like a film star would have—’

  ‘A chihuahua,’ Giulia Delmonte giggles. ‘A long-legged rat. She gave it a whore’s rhinestone brooch.’

  Kemper nods. ‘Exactly. It was bigger than the pooch itself. Clausen refused to take it for walkies, he was mortified.’

  ‘Who wouldn’t have been?’ Nowak grins.

  ‘But two years ago his ex was in hospital,’ Kemper says, picking up the thread. ‘Some sort of women’s thing.’

  ‘With her looks, I’d have said it was her prostate!’ Delmonte exclaims.

  Everyone roars with laughter.

  ‘At any rate, Clausen had to go out with that pooch morning and evening,’ Kemper resumed. ‘They lived on Kurfürstenstrasse, you know, where the hookers are. And when he was standing and waiting for the little shitbag to squat, a patrol car stops beside him. They get out and ask to see his papers. They thought he was a pimp. He filed for divorce the next day.’

  The squad whinnies.

  ‘Do you know how come Blaschke got hold of his 1956 Porsche?’ Pavlik asks.

  ‘He never gave me a lift.’ Fricke grins. ‘He put a corpse in it and the stench never left it?’

  ‘It was gorgeous. Beautifully looked after, full service history, not a scratch. It used to belong to an old grandpa in his nineties. He loved driving but he was blind as a bat. One Sunday, on a country road near Kyritz an der Knatter, he ignored Blaschke’s right of way and rammed into him. Blaschke was about to call the police, but the grandpa begged him to go off the record. His grandson wanted to put him in a home, and he thought an accident would leave him vulnerable.’

  Majowski opens a beer bottle with his lighter. ‘Let me guess: he adopted Blaschke.’

  ‘He lent him the Porsche on the condition that Blaschke took him for a drive twice a week. He stuck to it rigidly. He even enjoyed it, they got on very well. The old guy died a year
ago. He’d been an orthopaedic surgeon, left all his money to a foundation. But Blaschke got the Porsche. Every spare cent he had went on repairs, which is why he was always skint. It was worth it as far as he was concerned. He spent more time with the old car than he did with his wife.’ Pavlik sees Grauder coming in. She avoids his eye. He’s sorry that he snapped at her before. His people should respect him, not fear him. ‘Grauder, you had a bet with Clausen recently,’ he says. ‘What was that about?’

  ‘You,’ she says after a moment’s hesitation.

  ‘Look out!’ Krupp mutters. ‘It’s about to get exciting!’

  ‘Let’s have it,’ Pavlik says encouragingly.

  ‘He said you cry at sad films.’

  ‘Is he right?’ Pavlik asks.

  ‘You were at the cinema with him one time. He showed me a video from his phone. You were bawling your eyes out. Cost me ten Euros.’

  Everyone grins.

  ‘Did he ever tell you which film it was?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Bambi!’ Fricke shouts.

  ‘Not far off,’ Pavlik sighs. ‘A Fish Called Wanda. When that guy is forced to eat his goldfish, my floodgates open. Because I can’t help remembering my own goldfish. My father flushed him down the toilet when I was three.’

  He has the laughers on his side. Even Grauder joins in. The door opens. Peschel and Nieser join them.

  ‘I’ll miss the piss-ups with Butz,’ Dobeck says. ‘That bastard just couldn’t get drunk. An enzyme malfunction, he told me, happens to one in every ten thousand. I saw him empty a litre bottle of grappa as if it was water. But it had its useful side: he always drove me home, I saved tons of money on taxi fares.’

  ‘Yes, me too,’ Peschel agrees.

  Nieser scratches his head. ‘And me.’

  ‘I once had to go on a trip to Latvia with him,’ Büker remembers. ‘On the last evening we went to a nightclub, planning to let our hair down. Two women joined us at the table, and well, you know. We had a bit of fun and I was totally pissed. One of them said we could visit another friend of theirs. Hallelujah, Butz is hot for it. Outside four guys turn up. One of them immediately knocks me over. When I come to, the four fuckers are lying in the street, and Butz is straightening his jacket. He looks at me and just says: “Damn it, the chicks have gone.”’

  Krupp winks at Delmonte. ‘I bet he tried to get into your knickers.’

  ‘No, he didn’t, and I was really pissed off about it, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘His funeral will be fun,’ Mertsch says. ‘You’ll get all these women turning up, who were told they were the only one.’

  ‘I guess it must be somewhere between twenty and thirty?’ says Novak.

  ‘Rounded down,’ Fricke grins.

  Pavlik says: ‘I doubt that.’

  ‘Because none of them had his address?’

  ‘No. Because he was gay.’

  Another roar of laughter. But when they see Pavlik’s motionless face, the laughter dies away.

  Fricke is the first one to pull himself together. ‘That’s a joke, right?’

  ‘How would you rather be remembered?’ Pavlik replies. ‘As the joker of the unit or the man you really are?’

  For a minute they all gaze into the distance. Butz is standing in the room, a big lanky creature with black curly hair, shoulders you could lean on, the dimples that he always allowed to have their full nonchalant effect.

  Even though he somehow never was, Pavlik thinks. None of them knew Butz. Even he didn’t know him.

  ‘What does that tell us?’ he asks. ‘That not everyone here in the room was glad to have Butz at his side, because they felt safer with him? That he didn’t save three of your arses?’ He looks at Dobeck, Büker and Wolter. ‘That you couldn’t drag him out of bed in the middle of the night if you were having a rotten time?’ Fricke lowers his eyes. ‘That he didn’t go marching to Lissek when someone had been treated unfairly and was about to jack it all in?’ Majowski blushes. ‘That he wasn’t our comrade?’

  ‘Well fuck me sideways,’ Fricke whispers.

  ‘Squared,’ Krupp agrees.

  ‘Have a think about what it must have cost him to keep it quiet for all those years. And what that says about us.’

  Shamed silence.

  ‘We walk past that marble plaque every day, and we no longer even see it,’ Pavlik says. ‘But perhaps every now and again we should stop and read the names. There aren’t many that have honoured us as much as Butz did.’

  Some nod, some gulp, clutching their beers.

  ‘Has anyone got a soppy toast they’d like to make?’

  Krupp raises his bottle. ‘To Butz, the best of the bastards.’

  ‘To Butz, Blaschke, Clausen,’ they all reply and drink.

  Pavlik wipes his mouth. ‘To business. Demirci is taking responsibility for the surveillance of Aaron and Askamp.’

  The ceilings are thick, but they can hear the phone ringing two floors up.

  ‘If any of you insists on a different version, I’ll have a disciplinary procedure on my back and Demirci will be signing on,’ Pavlik continues. ‘Have we understood each other?’

  They all nod.

  ‘You’ve got questions. Out with them.’

  ‘How did it happen?’ Wolter asks.

  ‘Butz was back by the wall. Holm broke his neck. He must have caught him by surprise, Butz couldn’t even defend himself. Blaschke and Clausen were in the car, they were shot through the windscreen. Right through the forehead.’

  ‘Could have been luck,’ says Dobeck.

  ‘No.’

  ‘What makes you so sure?’

  ‘Believe me: Holm could start working for us straight away.’

  His words leave an impression.

  ‘He injured Aaron in close combat,’ Pavlik adds.

  That’s enough for anyone who knows her. ‘So?’ Büker says, speaking for the others. ‘She’s blind. I know she had what it takes in the past, but that was then.’

  Beside him, Nowak raises a little finger. ‘She had as much as she needed. And if she can only do half of that now, it’s still more than you or I could do.’

  Dobeck nods. ‘You weren’t at the shooting range yesterday because you were on the night shift outside Askamp’s house.’

  ‘She scraped a ten,’ Fricke says.

  Büker and Majowski let that one sink in.

  Nieser says: ‘The way she outsmarted Peschel and me in the Hotel Jupiter was pretty damned smart.’

  ‘My mad gran could outsmart you lot,’ Mertsch said.

  Peschel growls: ‘Fuck you too.’

  ‘So what do they plan to do with her?’ Kemper asks.

  ‘Holm wants to take his revenge on her,’ Pavlik answers.

  ‘In that case she’s a goner,’ Giulia Delmonte says quietly. ‘She was cool. We had a brief chat. She was the first woman here. She gave me a few good tips. For example, that I should just scratch my nuts from time to time.’

  Three of them laugh. But Pavlik snaps at Delmonte: ‘Remember one thing: she isn’t dead until her corpse is in front of me.’

  Delmonte blushes.

  ‘Why did Kvist let her go?’ Wolter asks. ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘Aaron asked him to,’ Pavlik says.

  ‘I once asked a girlfriend to get her breasts enlarged, but she wouldn’t do me the favour.’

  They’ve run out of steam. Pavlik stands up. ‘OK, back to work.’ Everyone leaves the room while he gestures to Peschel and Nieser to stay. He waits until the last one has closed the door behind them. ‘What’s Kvist up to?’

  ‘Yeah, he’s driving around. Stadtring. He turned around in Frohnau and now he’s back again. He doesn’t seem to be headed anywhere in particular.’

  ‘He listens to loud music in the car,’ Nieser says. ‘Always the same song. “Have a Little Faith in Me”. You can’t get the damned thing out of your head.’

  ‘Yes, we heard that one at your party yesterday.’

  ‘It’
s Kleff and Rogge’s turn now. I’m sure they can sing along by now,’ Nieser says.

  Demirci comes in. Peschel immediately changes the subject. ‘Yes, we’ll take care of the witness statements.’

  Pavlik nods. ‘Do that. Tell Büker and Delmonte to take over from Kvist in an hour’s time.’

  They glumly register that Demirci has been informed. ‘What in?’ Nieser asks.

  ‘Two hired cars. Posh end, maybe an S-Class Mercedes, and a mid-range family saloon.’

  Their colleagues leave them alone.

  Pavlik sees that Demirci is exhausted. ‘Had a nice chat?’

  She takes the bottle out of his hand and drains it.

  ‘Non-alcoholic,’ he says apologetically.

  ‘I just needed to get something down my throat.’

  ‘Do you still have your job?’

  ‘Yes. On probation. Any news from Kvist?’

  Pavlik shakes his head. ‘He’s gone off-grid.’

  ‘Maybe he’s noticed he’s being tailed?’

  ‘Hardly.’ He looks at her. ‘Any news your end?’

  ‘You see through me too quickly. I need to work on it.’

  ‘I’d be very sorry about that.’

  ‘An interesting trail has opened up, in fact. Thirteen years ago an Armenian got a life sentence for murder in Cologne. He ended up in Ossendorf Prison. A year later his father died. The Armenian was allowed to attend the funeral at a Cologne cemetery under guard. He was liquidated. The perpetrator was on a roof a thousand metres away, armed with a rifle. He escaped unnoticed, but he made two mistakes. First: he had parked the getaway car in a “no parking” spot and got a ticket. That was why they were able to put out a search for the car and track it down. It had been cleaned with disinfectant inside and out.’

  ‘And the second mistake?’

  ‘A clever officer in Cologne had the bright idea of looking at the cap of the petrol tank.’

  ‘Holm’s fingerprints,’ Pavlik said straight away.

  ‘Yes. The comparison with the thumb that he left on the tourist’s phone gave us the match we needed. Just that, the only time he took his eye off the ball.’