A Slow Death (Max Drescher Book 1)

by James Craig

  ‘Oh no. No, not at all.’ For a moment, it looked like the idea would push the young fellow to tears. ‘I mean, the University has a duty of, er, care to yourself, one that means that we could not disclose any –’

  ‘Doctor-patient confidentiality.’

  ‘Yes, exactly.’ The doctor’s face brightened somewhat as they returned to the world of abstract principles.

  ‘I see,’ Max nodded. ‘Thank you for clarifying the situation.’

  Retreating back behind his desk, the doctor collected his remaining papers and placed them neatly in a pile. ‘That's it,’ he said, closing the file, the relief in his voice obvious. ‘Good luck.’ With some reluctance, he forced himself to raise his gaze and look directly at the patient one last time.

  But Max Drescher had already left.

  6

  It was another beautiful day, almost too beautiful. Carolina Barbolini looked up at the clear blue sky and sighed. The sultry weather made her feel tired and irritable. Especially when she knew that she would have to leave her air conditioned office and make her way through the baking Berlin streets. Carolina wished that she was back at her summer villa, a modest two-storey affair set back from the edge of Lake Como, rather than being stuck in this overgrown Gesundbrunnen slum.

  The flashing of the red light on the desk phone caught her attention. She pulled back her chair and sat down before reluctantly pressing the intercom button.

  ‘Yes?’ she growled.

  ‘It’s me.’ The voice of her lead consultant, Dante Fei, was quiet and calm, almost casual. Barbolini had to strain her hearing to catch the merest hint of childish excitement in his voice. ‘We’re ready.’

  ‘Good. Very good.’ Her watch showed three fifteen p.m. That was fortuitous: they would miss the city’s calamitous rush hour. ‘How is Bodo?’

  There was a pause.

  ‘He is still alive?’

  ‘Yes, yes. He is bearing up rather better than might have been expected.’

  ‘Very good. Tell him that I’m on my way.’

  Fei laughed. ‘I’m sure he’ll be extremely happy to hear it.’

  Leaving her office, Barbolini took the elevator to the ground floor. Slipping on a pair of outsized sunglasses, she headed out of the building towards the black Saab waiting at the kerb. Sliding into the front passenger’s seat, she retrieved the safety belt, before turning to the driver. ‘Let’s go,’ she ordered. ‘I’ve got a tight schedule.’

  ‘Okay.’ Flicking a lock of blonde hair out of his eyes, Stefan Hug switched on the ignition and eased the car away from the kerb.

  For once, the traffic was light and they were soon making good time as they headed north. Under his breath, Stefan cursed his luck, for he was in no hurry to reach their destination. He kept his eyes fixed on the road.

  ‘Is this really necessary?’

  ‘You know it is,’ Barbolini replied coolly.

  ‘Maybe.’ Stefan nodded briefly, trying to convince himself.

  ‘You don’t think so? What do you think I should do with him?’ She waved a hand angrily in front of the windscreen. ‘Give him a raise? Boost his pension plan?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Stefan could feel his grip on the steering wheel tighten. ‘After what happened, maybe we should stay a little cool.’

  ‘Cool is overrated.’

  ‘Maybe. But what could he do to hurt us?’

  ‘After what happened,’ Barbolini snapped, ‘we need to show that we’re in control. Doing nothing would hurt us, even if he didn’t. Benevolence is not an option.’

  ‘Sack him. Let him take early retirement. It’s not a big deal.’

  ‘He is taking early retirement.’ Barbolini chuckled.

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘No, Stefan, I don’t know what you mean.’ Barbolini turned in the stick leather seat to look directly at her driver. ‘What are we now? Deutsche Telecom? BMW? Canal-fucking-Plus?’

  ‘No, no, of course not.’ Stefan kept his eyes firmly on the road. ‘But we need to keep things in perspective. We don’t need to do this.’

  ‘Well, don’t give me any of this shit about early retirement. If you wanted to be some little white collar bureaucrat, you got into the wrong profession.’

  ‘Okay,’ Stefan shrugged.

  ‘No, it’s not okay.’ Barbolini was straining against her seatbelt now. ‘You worry me sometimes. You never used to talk like this.’ She checked her new lipstick in the wing mirror and shook her head. It might be called ‘Midnight Blush’, but the shade of red was not dark enough. Sometimes experimentation could be such a waste of time. ‘Before, you could have just gone and done this for me. But now it’s like I find myself having to ask your permission.’

  ‘Hardly.’

  Carolina kept her eyes on the streets as they slipped through Prenzlauer Berg. In a small playground, a drunk sat slumped on a bench while a gaggle of young girls lined up to take turns on a single swing. ‘What is wrong with you?’ she sighed. ‘Is this some kind of early mid-life crisis? You’re only what? Thirty-two?’

  ‘Thirty-four next month.’

  ‘You cut off your ponytail, you have a shave, and you think you’re somehow going to make yourself respectable?’

  ‘I thought you’d like the new look.’ Stefan ran a hand across his smooth cheek and grinned.

  His boss felt a stab of irritation in her chest. Why was it that her employees all thought that they had to come on to her? Not a chance, she thought. I don’t fuck the help.

  ‘Anyway, I feel good.’ It was true. As well as investing in a new haircut, he had shed a few kilos. As a result, he looked about five years younger, almost his real age. More importantly, it had helped him remember who he really was.

  Barbolini rolled her eyes. ‘I don’t care what you look like,’ she snorted. ‘It’s been more than two years now, since we started working together, and you’ve usually been looking like shit during that time.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘What you look like doesn’t matter,’ she snapped, sounding like his mother now, and liking it. ‘It’s what goes on up here that’s important.’ Barbolini tapped her temple with an index finger. ‘I need to be able to depend on you – especially now.’

  Stefan glanced at the empty road behind in the rear-view mirror. ‘You can depend on me,’ he said glumly.

  Barbolini nodded. ‘I know I can, despite all your moodiness. That’s why I’m sending you to keep an eye on Dante. I want you to find out exactly what’s been going on.’

  ‘And also find out what happened to the damn money.’ Stefan grinned, happy to move the conversation on.

  ‘Exactly,’ Barbolini chuckled. ‘What happened to the money is rather important, don’t you think?’

  They passed the harness racing track in Karlshorst, each lost in their own thoughts. After another ten minutes or so, Stefan carefully steered the Saab into an alley between two single-storey factories on a small industrial estate in the shadow of Lichtenberg’s Plattenbau. After a hundred metres, they arrived in a grimy courtyard surrounded by a collection of dilapidated buildings covered in a truly impressive amount graffiti.

  ‘Have kids been in here again?’ Barbolini groaned, gesturing towards a series of crude slogans sprayed on the crumbling brickwork. ‘You wouldn’t have thought they could afford the paint.’

  ‘They steal it,’ Stefan pointed out, ‘just like they steal everything. Law and order has broken down in this city.’

  Barbolini allowed herself a crooked smile. ‘Which is exactly why we’re here.’

  Stefan edged the Saab forward, finally bringing it to a halt next to a gleaming metallic-blue Porsche. ‘At least Dante still knows how to keep a low profile,’ he grumbled, looking around for a sign of his lieutenant. ‘He must be inside.’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  Leaving the keys in the ignition, Stefan sat back in his seat and closed his eyes. ‘I’ll wait for you here,’ he yawned.

  Barbolini eyed him carefully a
s she slowly released her safety belt. ‘That’s fine,’ she said eventually. ‘Attendance is not compulsory.’ Opening the door, she slid out of her seat. ‘I won’t be long.’

  As Barbolini emerged from the car, Dante Fei emerged from a door to the left. He was half hopping, half jumping, while trying to move and inspect his shoes at the same time.

  ‘Good afternoon, Dante,’ Barbolini said stiffly.

  ‘Don’t you just hate all this city?’

  Barbolini said nothing.

  ‘There’s dog shit everywhere.’ Standing on one leg, he gingerly removed the item of footwear for a closer inspection. ‘These shoes cost nine hundred marks and they’re ruined, fucking ruined.’ Fei was a small man, maybe 5’4’’, and suffered from a bad case of ‘Napoleon Syndrome’. This influenced everything he did, from the men he killed to the clothes he wore. Today, he was immaculately dressed in a grey, single-breasted Ralph Lauren Purple Label three-piece suit, with a crisp white cotton shirt, a pale pink satin tie and a matching handkerchief in his breast pocket.

  Barbolini waited patiently while he cleaned his shoe with a paper napkin. ‘Is he in there?’ she asked, gesturing towards the door. Even in the shade of the courtyard it was stiflingly hot. She could feel her silk blouse beginning to stick to her back.

  ‘Yes.’ Grimacing Fei tossed the napkin on the ground before replacing his shoe. ‘Follow me,’ he said as he danced along on his tiptoes, ‘and watch where you put your feet.’

  Inside the building was pleasantly cool and dark – empty, apart from a couple of pieces of rusting machinery of some sort in one corner. In the rear, stairs led up to a metal platform which ran the entire length of the building. About fifteen feet wide and ten feet off the ground, it was bare, apart from a single chair which had been placed maybe half a metre from the platform’s edge.

  On the chair stood a petrified Bodo Grozer. Barbolini’s chief accountant had his hands tied behind his back with copper wire. Round his neck was a noose which hung from a beam in the ceiling.

  Standing a few feet away from the hapless bean counter, Floris Kooy casually spat a spent piece of chewing gum over the edge of the platform. Kooy was bored rigid; he was a man who enjoyed the chase more than the kill. Now, he found himself standing guard over the number cruncher more to ensure that Grozer didn’t lose his footing and strangle himself prematurely, than to stop him actually trying to escape.

  Nevertheless, however mundane the task, Kooy was determined to remain alert and focused. He was on show for his new employers; this was part of the getting-to-know-you process. Most important of all, it was his chance to meet Carolina Barbolini face-to-face. Listening to the voices coming towards him, he pushed back his shoulders and buttoned up his jacket.

  First impressions counted.

  Placing her sunglasses on the top of her head, Barbolini headed for the stairs. Reaching the top, she paused, taking in the scene.

  ‘Who’s this guy?’

  ‘Floris Kooy,’ Fei whispered. ‘He’s from Rotterdam.’

  ‘I don’t like new faces.’ Barbolini took another long, hard look at the man, standing there like a dummy in a shop window. ‘Do we really need him?’

  ‘He comes highly recommended.’ Fei mentioned the names of a couple of business associates in the Low Countries.

  ‘But, still.’

  Fei felt a spasm of annoyance in his guts. It seemed that his judgement was being questioned more and more these days. The woman was driving him crazy, and not in a good way. He waited for the acid in his stomach to calm down before speaking again. ‘I think he may have a future with us,’ he argued, keeping his voice as neutral as possible.

  Barbolini’s eyes narrowed. ‘I thought that you were going to get some local guys to do it?’

  Fei gave a snort of derision. ‘Those Turkish kids you hooked me up with? They’re just hooligans. They’d piss their pants before pulling the trigger. The job wouldn’t get done.’

  ‘They know the city.’

  ‘We didn’t need a tour guide,’ Fei mocked, gesturing towards Kooy. ‘My guy, he’s reliable, he’s professional. And we can always do with new people coming through, especially given some of the problems we’ve encountered recently.’

  Barbolini folded her arms, a clear signal that she wasn’t buying his argument. ‘Was he,’ she asked quietly, ‘the guy responsible for what happened to Carl Beerfeldt and his family?’

  ‘I, myself, take full responsibility for what happened there,’ Fei replied indignantly, ‘I’ve already told you that.’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ said Barbolini, irritated, ‘but did –’

  ‘Kooy.’

  ‘Kooy. Did he pull the trigger on that job?’

  Irritated, Fei tried to hold his ground. ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Of course it matters,’ she swept away his mumbling with an imperious wave of her hand. ‘Was it him?’

  Grasping the rail, Fei took a step back down the stairs in case she decided to give him a slap. ‘Yes, it was him.’

  Barbolini sighed. ‘I want you to get rid of him,’ the words came out slow and measured but, inside, she was seething. ‘The massacre of Beerfeldt’s family was an unnecessary mess. Unbelievably stupid, not to mention unnecessary.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘We have standards,’ she continued, talking straight over him. ‘Killing those children was an outrage.’

  ‘At least he didn’t leave them orphans.’ Fei immediately regretted the quip. For a second, it looked like Barbolini would indeed hit him.

  ‘They were children,’ she repeated. ‘We do not harm children.’

  With a shake of his head, Fei played his final card. ‘Cesare would take a different view.’

  ‘Leave my father out of this,’ she snapped. ‘He would agree with me on this. We are not animals.’ Although sometimes I wonder.

  Head bowed, Fei nodded. ‘Look,’ he said, shifting his ground, trying to sound as genuine and conciliatory as possible, ‘I know that it didn’t look good, but I was expressly told not to leave any loose ends.’ He gestured towards Kooy, lowering his voice. ‘And he only did what I told him to do. You have to remember that. It seemed a reasonable course of action, under the circumstances.’

  ‘And what precisely did it achieve?’ Barbolini demanded. ‘The Berlin police will be all over this, sticking their noses into everything for the next few weeks. Killing a child is the worst thing you can do. You’ve energised them. They will not stop. They will be like men possessed.’

  Fei shrugged. ‘With the riots, the cops have got plenty of other things to worry about. Every moron within a thousand kilometres is coming here to join in the fun.’

  Barbolini shook her head. ‘Even so, we’re not at home now, you know. This isn’t Italy. They won’t just pocket our cash and look the other way.’

  ‘Bloody Germans.’

  ‘They will keep coming. Even if not for these killings, there will be something else. We are on their radar now and it is our own fault. Once all the anarchists and squatters are behind bars they’ll get bored and come after us.’

  ‘Let them come.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Dante, we didn’t come here to pick a fight. We came here to make money – build up our business before anyone even realised we were here. We have always had a limited window of opportunity in this city. Killing those kids has just made it smaller. It was stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.’

  Keeping a straight face, Fei nodded. It was a familiar mantra. Window of opportunity. Where did such phrases come from? His boss thought too much about things. Then again, she was a woman.

  ‘And, in the meantime, you haven’t come up with any of the damn money. Not one single lousy cent.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Three million dollars just can’t go missing like that.’ Her eyebrows knitted together in frustration. ‘If we can’t find it, we will have to make that money good – cover the loss from out of own pockets. Otherwise, someone like your new boy here will be com
ing for us.’ She shot Fei an enquiring look. ‘Have you got a spare three million in your pocket, plus interest?’

  Fei stared at his shoes.

  I bet you don’t even have three marks in your pocket, Barbolini mused. None of these boys could ever hold on to any money. They would happily commit all manner of crimes to acquire it and then it would slip through their fingers like water. Brainless.

  ‘We are still looking.’

  ‘Well, look harder.’

  Fei gestured towards the trembling accountant. ‘Even Bodo doesn’t know where the cash is,’ he protested. At the mention of his name, Grozer let out a strangled whimper. ‘We’re sure of that. We’re still looking for it.’

  ‘You’d better get it back,’ Barbolini snapped, ‘or it will be you on that chair with a noose round your neck.’

  ‘Don’t worry, we’ll find it.’

  ‘Good,’ Barbolini said evenly. ‘Let me help you out, then. I want you to take Stefan for a while.’

  ‘That won’t be necessary,’ Fei replied quickly.

  ‘You take Stefan and you can keep the new boy.’

  ‘I don’t –’

  Barbolini carefully stepped down to the step where Fei was standing, and looked him straight in the eye. He could breathe her perfume, mingled with sweat and felt a tingling in his loins as he breathed it in surreptitiously. ‘I simply don’t have time for this, Dante,’ she hissed. ‘It is a distraction. A waste of time. You are running around in circles, like a little boy playing cops and robbers.’

  Puttana. Vedere ciò che questo bambino potrebbe fare per voi. He inched closer towards her.

  Barbolini stepped back up onto the platform and looked down on her underling. ‘Stefan will work for you – with you – until this is sorted out.’

  Fei shrugged. ‘Okay, boss. Whatever you say.’

  ‘That’s right, whatever I say. That’s how we work. What I say goes.’ Why do I have to spell it out every time? Why is it always a battle? Fuming, Barbolini began walking towards her soon to be ex-accountant. ‘Now, enough of the talking. Let’s address the matter in hand.’

  As he saw Carolina Barbolini step on to the platform in front of him, Bodo Grozer began crying. For a few seconds, he tried to speak, without success.