Grave Intent

by Alexander Hartung

  The psychologist’s face lit up at the sight of Jan. She waved back and then disappeared into an office. As soon as Kerima left his sight, Jan’s head sank down again, his eyes nearly closed. He yawned again.

  “Oh, man,” Bergman muttered to himself. He really did not need the headache of those two getting together at a time like this.

  Patrick stood up on the table and clapped his hands. The conversations silenced, all heads turning to him.

  “Good morning,” he greeted all present in a loud voice. “We have two critical things to get done today. We’re going to split up into two teams. One team needs to track down a name for every telephone number in Robin’s notebook. The prosecutor’s office has promised us full support, meaning we can requisition phone providers’ databases. Only abbreviations or first names were written down—I want to see a list with full names attached to each number. These can then be compared to our database so that we can see who’s carrying any offenses. Get Max Kornecker on board for the computer search.

  “The second team will deal with the six players at Robin’s poker game. One of them might be the murderer. Thanks to an informant, we’ve been able to identify one player as coming from the red-light district. For all others, at present we only have the restaurant owner’s descriptions and our initial sketches. They’ll have to be matched against any relevant criminal records. It’s likely all the poker players are in Robin’s notebook, but we can’t count on that.” Patrick looked at his watch. “It’s a little after eight. We’ll regroup every two hours and compare notes, beginning at ten. I’m inviting Detective Tommen, so that he can know the latest.”

  He clapped his hands again. “Get cracking.”

  It had been one hard Sunday. Jan felt swamped by Patrick’s reams of information, but that was an improvement over groping around in the dark like before. His once-despised colleague’s teams were fast and precise. They were inching closer to the murderer by the hour. The only thing missing to round out such a perfect day was a good meal—and Chandu would see to that. He took his role as host quite seriously.

  Seductive aromas wafted through his friend’s apartment, and even Zoe’s thick cigarette smoke couldn’t dispel them. Jan waved at her as he headed for Chandu in the kitchen. He gave the big guy a heartfelt slap on the shoulder and dared to peek in the oven.

  “Alsatian tart again?” Jan grabbed a beer. “Don’t get me wrong. I like it, but normally that chef’s pride of yours doesn’t let you serve the same thing twice.”

  Chandu moved so close to Jan that their heads were almost touching. “Zoe called me this afternoon,” he whispered. “She asked me to make the tart again. Because she liked it so much.”

  “Wait. You mean Zoe gave you a compliment?”

  “Kind of creepy, isn’t it?”

  “Makes you worry. Are you sure you weren’t dreaming it?”

  “I wouldn’t rule that out.”

  “We should tread carefully here.”

  “I was going to get my gun. Just to be safe.”

  The beep of a timer interrupted their talk.

  “Food’s ready,” Chandu shouted out into the room. “Sit yourselves down. I’ll slice it up and bring it out in a sec.”

  No one said a word over the next ten minutes as they turned their attention to the food. Jan didn’t want to disturb the meal with the investigation’s latest findings. They had the whole evening for that. Only when Chandu was pulling the first espresso from his machine did Max turn on the projector. A list of names appeared.

  “These are our suspects,” Jan began. “Thanks to Robin Cordes’s notebook, we not only have the names of the poker players but also found phone numbers and e-mail addresses.”

  Jan wiped his fingers on a napkin. “Let’s go through them. Number one is Hermann Wierend.”

  Max projected the pub owner’s picture on the wall.

  “Owner of the Ochsen, where the illegal poker games took place. We checked his alibi for the murder and found no connection to the previous victims, Bernhard Valburg and Moritz Quast. He had no reason to murder Robin, since the poker games were a lucrative source of income for him. In short: we crossed him off the list of suspects.”

  “Hartmut Beck, goes by Becks,” Chandu said as he brought two espressos from the kitchen.

  Max switched photos to the underworld big hitter.

  “Upscale pimp, wine drinker, and avid poker player. Killing like this isn’t his style,” Chandu continued. “He’s too clever for this, puts too high a value on discretion.”

  “Plus, we checked him out and reached the same conclusion as with the pub owner,” Jan added. “His alibi for the first two murders is airtight, there’s no connection to the first two victims, and we don’t have any motive for why he would want to murder Robin Cordes.”

  Max pressed a key on the laptop, and a new picture appeared. The man in it had short dark hair, a dark complexion, and gapped teeth that could have been the result of either bad oral hygiene or barroom brawls.

  “Joe Greber, goes by Alki Joe,” Chandu said as he sat down on the couch. “Deals in smuggled booze. He only offers the real deal, nothing watered down. Depending on the amount, you can get a bottle of real champagne starting at ten euros. A guy like Becks sells them in his bordello for twenty times that. The underworld big hitters love Alki Joe and he’s been doing big business for years. There’s no reason why he’d suddenly mutate into a serial killer.”

  “Our colleagues in CID Four, organized crime and gang crimes, they’ve been after him for a long time,” Jan added, “but they haven’t been able to nail him because he’s moved his camp to Brandenburg. They still watch his car and phone, though. So we can rule him out in the homicides of Bernhard Valburg and Moritz Quast. Not to mention he lacks a connection to them.”

  Jan nodded at Max. A new picture appeared. This man was not much older than the hacker. He wore his thin hair tied back in a ponytail and sunglasses that looked too big on his narrow face.

  “Bernd Serad,” Jan told them. “A tender twenty-one years old. Known in online poker circles as ‘The Bernie.’ Lives at home with his mommy, yet earns enough money in Internet poker games to own a Porsche Boxster.”

  “Not bad,” Chandu remarked.

  “Just about shit his pants when officers showed up at his door. After his mother slapped him around good and loud and threatened further smackings, he told all, starting from birth. Officers actually had to put the brakes on him. Like the others, we can rule him out as a murderer.”

  The next picture showed a couple. The man was suntanned and winking suggestively into the camera. His wife had bright bleach-blonde hair and flashy catlike eyes in a color that could not have been natural.

  “Herr and Frau Nina and Paul Hauren on their last vacation. Childless and bored. He, a successful middle-class guy who puts his money into big poker games. Since his wife has nothing better to do, she goes along. Threatened us with lawyers and a wave of lawsuits of unimaginable proportions when we searched their place, which ended up proving a dead end. No motive, two more-or-less-certain alibis for murder one, two watertight ones for murder two.”

  “Not much left to go on,” Zoe said.

  “The big winner? We’ve saved him for last.”

  A police sketch depicted a man with thinning gray hair. His wide-framed glasses and thick mustache were reminiscent of the ’80s.

  “Maik Müller. Supposedly a lawyer and our final player in the card game.”

  “You don’t have a proper photo?” Zoe asked.

  “We would have if there really were a lawyer by the name of Maik Müller. The name is as fake as his job title.”

  “So how did he get in the card game?” Chandu asked. “I thought you only got in on Robin Cordes’s invitation.”

  “This is where it gets good. Maik had Robin’s number through Nina and Paul Hauren, who met him two weeks ago at a kind of charity tournament. The players had to pay in five hundred euros to start, all of which was to benefit a children�
�s home. The winner got a fancy trophy. Now, according to the Haurens, Maik was looking for a high-jackpot game. They eventually gave him Robin Cordes’s number, and our supposed lawyer called him.”

  “Could you trace the call?” Zoe asked.

  “Better than that,” Max replied. “Robin’s cell phone has indeed disappeared, but using the Haurens’ number and a few tricks, I’ve gotten full access to this phone via the provider.”

  “Are these tricks legal?” Jan asked.

  “I won’t answer that for safety’s sake.” Max turned back to the photo. “Maik called Robin a day before the card game at the Ochsen, using—get this—a second phone of Moritz Quast’s. He hadn’t used it for so long we’d overlooked it.”

  “Fuck,” Zoe commented.

  “I could not agree more,” Jan said.

  “It gets even better.” Max opened a program. “Robin had the phone off at the time, so his voice mail recorded what Maik said.”

  The man’s voice was gloomy and scratchy, almost a whisper. “Herr Cordes, Maik Müller here. You don’t know me, but I heard from a friend we have in common that you’re holding no-limit poker games. I’ll pay you two thousand euros for an invitation. Cash. You have my number.”

  Jan leaned back on the couch, grinning. “Whoever this murderer is—that was his voice.”

  “We traced the phone,” Max continued. “But the murderer only used it once, and that was to call Robin Cordes.”

  “Where from?”

  “Somewhere in Friedrichshain Public Park. Too many tourists and too few cameras.”

  “Patrick’s team is going through all the databases with our sketch. If our murderer has any criminal record, we’ll find him.”

  “But you don’t think you’ll get any hits?” Chandu said.

  “The killer must have reckoned on us finding the poker game and the other players being able to describe him. He’s not going to make things that easy.”

  “So what next?”

  “We have to find that one connection between all three victims.”

  “We already tried that with Dr. Valburg, with Moritz Quast,” Zoe countered. “Without any result.”

  “Let’s try it another way this time. In what areas, in what walks of life, do they have nothing in common?”

  “We can rule out childhoods, school, higher ed, and training,” Max began. “Moritz Quast wasn’t born in Berlin, and Robin Cordes is from East Germany. Dr. Valburg went to university. Moritz and Robin didn’t even finish high school.”

  “Hobbies, clubs, and all that kind of stuff too,” Chandu said. “There’s no overlap there.”

  “Neighborhoods and friends don’t work either,” Jan said. “We ran all of them through the computer without a hit. Business connections as well. At least on a legal level.”

  “The illegal stuff’s all that’s left,” Zoe said. “It’s definitely possible, given that Moritz Quast has a criminal record and Robin Cordes was in jail.”

  “And our supposed Herr Clean Dr. Valburg had his jones for cocaine.” Chandu shrugged. “Could match up.”

  “Let’s forget all we know up to now and just speculate—shots in the dark,” Jan said. “What might a connection look like?”

  “That’s easy,” Zoe said, releasing a swirl of smoke toward the ceiling. “Valburg procures a medication, he gives it to Quast, and Cordes sells it.”

  “So why would the murderer bump the men off?” Chandu asked.

  “The meds were crap. There were side effects and someone died.”

  “But how did the murderer know about the supply chain?” Jan asked. “If he got the meds from Cordes, how did he know that Valburg and Quast were involved in it?”

  “He was shaking them down?” Max said.

  “Not likely,” Chandu said. “Quast and Cordes would’ve told us if they were being blackmailed.”

  “So the murderer was in deeper. He knew the whole supply chain.”

  “We shouldn’t forget the dismembering,” Zoe said. “It’s too specific not to mean anything.”

  “For Bernhard Valburg, we have gouged-out eyes,” Jan began. “Then a tongue cut out for Moritz Quast and fingers cut off for Robin Cordes.”

  “The cause of death was identical. The only difference was the assault coming from the front versus the back. Otherwise, hit with a hammer, and out go the lights.”

  “Let’s start with Dr. Valburg’s eyes,” Chandu said.

  “Fine. What could the murderer—” Jan’s ringing phone interrupted him.

  “Bergman,” Jan said, looking at the screen. “This is either really good or really bad.”

  Jan took the call and turned on the speaker.

  “Get your ass out to Zehlendorf!”

  “Why, what’s there?”

  “A posh wooded cemetery. And another grave.”

  Chapter Ten

  Jan felt his hand holding the phone begin to tremble. There were three dead so far, and he had little to show for it. Now the grave murderer had a new target.

  Jan was putting everything he had into this. The files were piling up on his desk in the office. Work on the case never let up. Without Patrick and his people, he would have broken down long ago. Jan used to be able to cope with it all, but the nightmares were still robbing him of sleep and wringing the last of his strength out of him.

  “I can’t do it anymore,” he said into the phone. “It’s too much for me. Let me go, give Patrick the case or find another cop for it. It’s best for all concerned.”

  “I’ve had it with all this bullshit!” Bergman screamed.

  Jan almost dropped the phone in shock. He could hear Chandu, Zoe, and Max cracking jokes in the living room.

  “I’ve tried everything. Given you time to recover, lightened your workload at first, even handed you over to that psych nurse. And the first real case you get, you want to just throw in the towel?”

  “I don’t think I can apprehend the grave murderer, and I don’t want him to get away, so it would probably be better if someone else—”

  “Bullshit,” Bergman cut him off. “Let me phrase this another way. In your other cases, did you ever catch the killer after just a few days?”

  Jan didn’t answer at first. He wasn’t sure where Bergman was going with this. “Hardly ever.”

  “Have you ever hit a dead end in an investigation?”

  “Lots of times.”

  “Did you still nab the bad guy in the end?”

  “Almost always.”

  “So what’s your problem? This case is no different from any of the others, and this dead end, it’s no different from any other dead ends.”

  “In my previous case, I failed to notice that my girlfriend was a murderer and playing games with me. I suspected half of Berlin, just not her. I was only hot on her trail once she was threatening to blow my head off with a shotgun.”

  “It happens. Sometimes things don’t go so well. Stein wouldn’t have solved the case without you. Then Betty would’ve ended up abroad and gotten away with it.”

  “Maybe that would’ve been better,” Jan muttered.

  Bergman sighed into the phone. “When are you going to face the fact that your girlfriend was a cruel and sadistic killer who got off on making her victims suffer? Devious enough to fool you with love, and only so she could offer you up as the fall guy.”

  Bergman’s words hit Jan hard. “I think maybe you’re overstating it—”

  “No more excuses! Betty was a murderer! Should I spell it out for you?” Bergman actually spat out the letters: “M-u-r-d-e-r-e-r. You’re not at fault. You didn’t make her do it. Start accepting the fact that you were doing everything right and that Betty’s death was necessary—or go on deluding yourself, keep treasuring her memory and ignoring that you were just a toy of hers.” Bergman exhaled. “Time to decide. I’ll see you in thirty minutes at the cemetery or you can hand over your badge.”

  Then he hung up.

  Bergman had a sick feeling as he headed over to the c
emetery. Hopefully he hadn’t crossed the line.

  He had shown Jan a good deal of respect and tried to give him time to get over the trauma, but the grave murderer was not going to wait until Jan got his act together. This case was assuming startling proportions. Three victims to worry about already, and the Berlin Police were not looking good, to say the least. The press was indulging in critical mockery, and the politicians were demanding results he could not deliver.

  He needed an experienced investigator. Before he shot his girlfriend, Jan had been his best man for the job, but Bergman was taking a huge risk giving him the lead now. If it got out that the chief of detectives had put a mentally unstable detective in charge of finding the grave murderer, he was ruined. An early retirement was the best they would be able to offer him.

  When he saw Jan standing at the grave, he felt some of his stress fade. Jan’s head was a little slumped and his eyes showed sleepless nights, but judging from his expression, Jan was actually trying to restrain himself from smacking his boss right in the face. A good sign. Bergman’s harsh words were having their effect.

  But Jan still did not know who the new victim was. And he was not going to like it.

  The grave lay in a remote area of the wooded cemetery. The grave sites next to it were overgrown with weeds, the gravestones filthy and neglected. The glaring spotlights hardly penetrated the pelting rain.

  The grave was covered with a white tent so that the rain wouldn’t wash away any evidence. Two men wearing protective suits pulled the cross out of the ground. On the wood it read: Here Lies Yuri Petrov. Born March 14, 1971. Died July 2, 2013.

  The day of his death was the day after tomorrow.

  Bergman stood at the grave holding an umbrella.

  Jan turned to Bergman. “Do we know who this Yuri Petrov is?”

  “Yuri Petrov is a staffer at the Ukrainian Embassy. Has diplomatic status. He’s currently in his home country and doesn’t know about his fate yet, but he’ll be landing in Berlin in a few hours.”

  Jan groaned. A foreign diplomat, of all things. It would only complicate matters further. Now other authorities would start interfering, ones they’d so far been able to keep at bay. He didn’t even want to think about the political repercussions of failure. “As soon as he sets foot on German soil, we can’t let him out of our sight. A four-vehicle convoy. Let’s add a tank to it if need be.”