by Tanja Pleva
It was only the chambermaid.
28.
Munich Sam examined his mail, which had filled his box within the last two weeks while Juri was lying on the couch and zapping through the channels.
Sam threw the ads right into the trashcan, opened the bills and piled them up. He would take care of them on Monday he thought, looking suspiciously at the sender of the letter in his hand. He put it aside again, went into the kitchen and made a coffee. Back in the sitting room, he picked up the letter again, turning it over and over in his hands and finally he tore it open.
Juri was watching CSI Miami and picking pistachios from their shells. He frowned at Sam who unbelievingly stared at the letter in his hand. 'Anything wrong? Something happen?'
Sam scratched his neck. 'It seems that I inherited … from my mother.' His voice was doubtful.
'So what? Is that so unusual?'
'Well for years we didn't have any contact. Then last year, she unexpectedly appeared in my office and gave me a few childhood albums, then died two months later from cancer.'
'Oh, I am sorry.'
Sam said nothing else. Even in those two months he had been unable to develop a proper relationship with his mother. His heart was cold, although he had really tried not to perceive her anymore as the unfeeling person from his childhood. She had disowned both children because men had been more important to her. And he doubted very much that people could change. At the end she had been alone, and he was the only person who still had visited her. And now she had left something to him.
'What did you inherit then?'
'It doesn't say here. I will have to go to a lawyer in Malaga to find out about it.'
Just when might he do that? Was there an expiration date? He was not familiar with the inheritance business. He looked at the date. The letter had been written about three weeks ago.
His mobile phone hummed on the table.
'O'Connor?' The voice was quiet and hesitant, but Sam knew immediately who it was.
'Yes, Ms. Beauchamp?'
'Greetings from Mr. Brenner. He bravely drags his body into the office still although he can hardly sit. I arranged for Security to take him home.'
'Swearing and cursing like a trooper, I suppose.' Sam laughed when he imagined that and Estelle Beauchamp joined in.
'So what can I do for you?'
Juri had stopped chewing and curiously looked at Sam who had assumed a winning voice and a smile.'
'Matter of fact, we are dealing with a Miltonia.'
'I beg your pardon? What are you talking about?'
'Oh, I'm sorry. I was referring to an orchid, genus Miltonia.' She cleared her throat uncomfortably. 'On all the slips of paper there were traces of it found.'
'Very well. So he's a flower-buff.'
'And Mr. Brenner asked me to ask you …'
'… how far I am and if there's anything to report that he doesn't know yet.'
Now Estelle Beauchamp heartily laughed. 'You know your boss quite well.'
'Oh yes I do, believe me. I got a few more names for you. Our next victim could be among them.'
'Tell them to me for the record.'
Sam passed the seven remaining names on to Miss Beauchamp and hung up. Tensely examined by Juri's eye, he sat down beside him on the sofa.
'And now? You aren't saying anything at all. I assume then that she's very sexy and you're feeling bad about finding her attractive.'
'For your record: She's about seventy, grey short hair, a hooked nose with a wart and colorful horn-rimmed glasses … and very wide hips. Not at all my type.'
'People at seventy are retired in this job, Sam.'
Lorenzo Spiga, orchid aficionado, was living close to Munich and always glad to boast his expert knowledge.
Sam had imagined a thin man, dressed in a white smock, who would affectionately watch every blossom of his homegrown orchids through a big magnifying glass. Instead, he was welcomed by a self-confident and well-trained young man with black curly hair and cheerful grey eyes. A nature lover and a mountain climber as some photos in the hallway showed.
Lorenzo Spiga led Sam and Juri through a sparsely furnished house. Evidently it did not mean as much to him as the large tropical greenhouse in the garden did. Although it was cold outside, it was pleasantly warm inside, so Sam and Juri took off their jackets.
Hummingbirds and butterflies, but also real flies and other insects were flowing over the exquisite plethora of flowers that opened up to them. Sam felt like he had been beamed into a jungle.
'I am trying to breed very rare tropical orchids, therefore I built this greenhouse to recreate all the ambient conditions required. New creations may originate from wind or insect pollination of every kind, you have to understand. New ones, that is, those that are not yet present anywhere in the world. That is the appeal of this business.'
Lorenzo lovingly stroked the blossoms of an orchid that was labeled as a Dendodrium. 'You called me because of the Miltonia. Admittedly, it is not one of the rarer breeds. It was, by the way, the favorite flower of Princess Diana.'
He went to the rear part of the house. Sam and Juri followed him in single file on the artificially beaten path.
'There it is.' He pointed at a small pink flower with a beautiful texture and a yellow core. 'Actually, it is a Miltoniops, but flower-sellers also refer to it as Miltonia, though that is botanically incorrect, and some people call it a pansy orchid, not only because of its appearance, but also because it blossoms modestly and in secrecy. It is one of three thousand five hundred orchid species that are native to Colombia.'
Lorenzo was in his element. Now he went from one orchid to another, telling the tale of each of them with regard to their country of origin and where they were exactly to be found, until Juri interrupted, 'However, you can buy this kind of orchid, this Maltonia …'
'Miltoniops, or Miltonia for you.'
'… Miltonia … you can buy it everywhere, or am I mistaken? You don't need to go to Colombia for this Hispanic lady?'
Sam smirked at Juri's remark. Typical of him, comparing an orchid to a woman. Juri was just a playboy at heart, although he constrained himself when Sam was present. He probably was being respectfully, and as soon as they parted, he dashed off like a vampire in need of blood.
'Not at all, you are not mistaken. One of the most significant goods of Colombia's export trade is flowers. You will find orchids in every German home and garden center.'
Sam was now even more convinced that the orchid dust was a further hint to their murderer. But why had he left traces of the Miltonia or Miltoniops with the lines? An indication that he had grown up in modesty and secrecy? An allusion to his childhood?
They turned towards the exit, as Sam stopped at an orchid labeled Galeandra baurii. Origin: tropical America, approx. 20 species. The blossoms were shaped like trumpets and reminded him of Lina's sketch. Now what was this? Had she known something about his next case? Was he bound to be in danger by an orchid? Sam shook his head, silently criticizing himself and caught up with Juri.
1956
Mato Grosso They all had had to leave town when fingers were pointed at them and the public had begun to investigate into the Order more thoroughly after a young woman had disappeared.
Somebody must have witnessed how she had gone into the house. She had offered herself as a housekeeper. Pregnant and alone, she had said, like all the others were. A perfect subject. Unfortunately she had been lying and this had been their doom. It had turned out later that she was the daughter of a leading industrialist, impregnated by the family's driver and beaten up for this by her father. Then she had run away from home and tried to get a job in the Aristocrats' Quarter.
All around the former monastery followers of the Order had built their homes, adding a Southern German ambient to the popular quarter. The small community enjoyed an excellent reputation and it was said that only handsome men were living there, blond, tall and blue-eyed. And they were looking for women who were blond as wel
l, to start families with them.
Many locals had then bleached and dyed their hair hoping to become one of the Chosen. But outward appearance was not everything to those men. What was really behind it was a mystery to outsiders.
As a precaution they had, at first, remained separated for a while, because blond and tall people with blue eyes would simply attract attention among the swarthy South American Indians of Pampa. Everybody was told to take care of themselves until the excitement had settled and then they would re-establish their residence somewhere else. A new country, a new city, a new beginning.
Heinrich had fled straight through the Brazilian jungle, offering his help as a German doctor in the villages and earning some money. Then he had found that another German doctor had left traces here and there. Going by the description, it seemed to have been one of the most wanted doctors from Auschwitz. Unlike Heinrich, that fellow it seemed had continued to conduct his experiments on women, and apparently with success. Twins had been born to five families whose women he had treated with strange drugs and had taken blood samples. All that was serving only one purpose: to artificially increase the birth rate of the Master race.
Fra Chlodio and he had taken the same route to the north and met by chance in a remote village. Both merely wanted to supply themselves with provisions and move on in the evening. Thus they decided, contrary to the agreement, to continue on their way together.
The first part led them past huge high growing sugar cane fields. The path was soaked and muddy from heavy rainfall from the days before, so that every footstep made a smacking sound.
Fra Chlodio hummed an old German song while Heinrich listened to the rustle of the yard-high sugar cane swaying in the wind. Somewhere in the distance there was an engine noise and suddenly both men stood in a garish floodlight.
Heinrich dashed left into the field, Fra Chlodio to the right. The sugar cane leaves whipped Heinrich's face as he ran blindly into the darkness. He tripped a few times, fell flat on the ground, picked himself up again and ran on. Running for his life he left a wide track of crushed plants in the field. Then he stopped, gasping for breath and trying to identify his pursuer.
There! A rustle, silence, then a light from a lamp flickered through the stalks, a gun was reloaded. Then three shots resounded through the sugar cane field.
29.
Munich Estelle Beauchamp had the names Sam had given her checked. As it turned out, this was a quite difficult task because, with the exception of three names, none of the others were to be found.
There was one Johann Kremer who had been working for the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, deceased fifteen years before. No registered descendants.
Dr. Hans Münch had died in a car-crash in 1965, on the Munich-Salzburg Autobahn, one of the most dangerous and most frequently used motorways. Also unmarried.
And Dr. Rosemarie Klein, a private doctor in Heidelberg until she had fallen ill. Died the year before in a home for the elderly. Her daughter Sybille, married to a Greek, had ten years ago taken an overdose of heroin, and her daughter again – now this was the interesting part - was the very prostitute, Anna Galanis, who had been killed by a heart injection in Vienna four years ago.
'Well that means that none of the gang is left to be killed', said Juri dryly.
'Let's hope that you're right.'
Suddenly the name Thiel occurred to Sam again. He had forgotten to mention it on the phone. He asked Juri to send a text message from his own mobile, for he himself committed too many typos on the tiny keys, and besides, Juri was twice as quick as he was.
'When will you finally get a Blackberry? It's like a tiny computer, you can even download e-mails with it.'
'Yeah, and the keyboard is even tinier. Forget it. I've just made friends with this one.'
Juri cast an incredulous look at Sam. 'This one is at least four to five years old.'
'Now you see how long it takes me to get acquainted with anything.' Sam grinned roguishly and retrieved the photo from the folder that showed the ten doctors.
'You're hopeless, Sam.' Juri had rapidly written the text message and sent it off.
'Brenner must have overlooked something. I'm sure that there was another murder between Anna Galanis and Ms. Rewe. Five of the men in this photo are untraceable? I can hardly believe that. Our culprit is a young lad. I think between twenty-five and thirty.'
'What makes you so sure?'
'Otherwise he would have taken revenge on those chaps before. He was still too young then. I think that at a certain age he found out something which hit him so severely that he set out on the trail of the descendants.'
'Who would not even know about daddy's evil deeds.'
'But now they will know. Provided that we catch him and he tells us about his motivation.'
'I'm glad that you think so positively', Juri remarked.
Sam could imagine that the research of these doctors might have caused the murderer to lose someone who was dear to him. Maybe even one or both parents, so that he grew up in modesty and secrecy, like a pansy orchid.
'Well what if one or two of them had changed their names, so that Brenner could not detect them?'
'Then they would most probably still be alive. And then we would never find them. Nor would the culprit.'
The question was how the murderer had found out when the doctors Steiner and Rewe would be traveling and where they were staying. There were several possibilities: the clinic, the practice, the wives … or maybe he got in touch with them directly? Is that what Steiner had remembered?
First they called Ms. Steiner. This time she was friendly and obliging from the very beginning, but she had received no suspicious phone calls lately.
Neither could the secretary, who was responsible for bookkeeping and appointments, tell them anything. There had been three receptionists in Dr. Steiner's practice. For the sake of scheduling, all three of them had informed patients that Dr. Steiner would attend a conference in the relevant period. And now it turned out that Dr. Steiner had provided for a break after the conference that had been included in same period. Two of the staff had mentioned to patients that Dr. Steiner would travel to an ophthalmologic conference in Paris and that it was very probably that he would stay at the George V Hotel, as he always did. They could not say to whom they had told this information to anymore. But word had spread. So, with regard to this, the murderer could have got the information from the practice.
In the gynecological clinic led by Dr. Rewe, the staff was changing in shifts. Who, when and what had been said could not be reproduced anymore.
As it turned out, both doctors were creatures of habit. They went every year, at about the same time, to attend to the same conferences and would stay at the same hotels. Usually they went alone. Would they have been the victims themselves if they had been without company?
Sam pondered the photo again without perceiving it clearly, faces blurring into a greyish mass. Which of them were still alive? Did it make sense at all if they focused all attention on Berlin, just because one of the largest medical conferences would take place there? What if Steiner had been the last of the pawns to fall?
'Go to bed, Sam', he heard Juri saying who had comfortably arranged himself on Sam's couch and watched TV only with one half-open eye.
Sam rose slowly and shuffled into his bedroom. He undressed and lay down in the bed. Through the cracks of the windows he heard the wind blowing and the branches of the trees were moving behind the closed blinds like shapes in a Chinese shadow theatre. For a while he watched the show, then he sought a more comfortable sleeping position.
He tossed to and fro. But the relieving sleep did not come. He closed his eyes and suddenly saw Lina's mother in his mind.
Consuela had the same eyes as Lina. But he had noticed this only at their last meeting.
'Death’ and his name had been written on the slip of paper. I will probably not die a natural death he thought. Unless a sudden heart attack or advanced cancer, of which
he knew nothing, killed him overnight. But he did not believe in that. Did it have something to do with the present case?
They had to track down a rather shrewd criminal. He pursued some strategy, and Sam felt that everything so far had been only a little foreplay. The king stood in his place and was still in the game.
30.
Colombia Lea had driven to the home for a medical consultation. There was a new patient whom she wanted to inspect.
Moreover, she felt obliged to make sure now and again that everything was in order while her brother was still traveling through Europe. While she was there she wanted to ask about a few patients who had died the year before, especially about the boy, Alfonso Villegas.
She slipped into her white smock, hung the stethoscope at her neck and took the topmost medical chart from the table. Lea frowned as she quickly read the lines.
In the corridor she heard strange noises coming from one of the patient's rooms. And the closer she drew, the clearer it was. Yet Lea was still in doubt whether she could rely upon her hearing.
Bawkabawkbawk … bawkbaaaawk … bawkbaaaaawk. It sounded as if somebody was chasing chickens inside the room. She listened for a while at the door before at last she entered.
Two nurses were just busy washing a woman with huge sagging breasts and a completely misshapen body on which a by far too small head was balanced. Her small, light-blue eyes went quickly to and fro while she made noises like an excited hen.
Lea made a face as if slapped. The irritated look of Nurse Rosa, who tried to wash the patient under her fluttering arms, fetched her back from her bafflement at last. Never before in her time as a doctor she had seen a similar case.
A priest had found this woman - called Ella - in a henhouse when he had answered a house call. Ever since her birth forty five years before, her parents had kept Ella hidden there. Because the henhouse was only three feet nine inches high, the child had had to assume a stooped position, which was the reason for her deformed spine.