Never Trust a Callboy

by Birgit Kluger

  It is almost noon when I finish my work with the satisfied feeling of having achieved a lot. I've earned a break. Fortunately, the Mar y Sol is not far from here, and so I take this opportunity to go.

  A plate of tapas lies before me as I sit and watch the huge ferry docking just under the palm trees. A short time later the passengers get off the boat, and I watch as they go ashore. Without meaning to, I keep an eye out for a familiar face. Idiot, I berate myself, as I notice who I’m waiting for; Christian. I’m secretly hoping that he follows me, grovels in front of me, and asks for forgiveness. How can I be so stupid?

  Shaking my head I concentrate on my paper again, or at least try to, because my thoughts revolve around other issues. I need to call my mother, I haven’t been in touch with her for several days. The mere thought of it makes me groan. I have no desire to listen to a long lecture about life after Ron. Over the last few days she has bombed me at regular intervals with proposals on how I can meet new men, especially wealthy men, who will not only want me for my money.

  No. Phone calls with my mother are already exhausting enough when they’re just about the color of the curtains.

  It's a pity that Anna is not here. I was hoping to meet her, but she is in Barcelona for a week. She has to visit a few boutiques and negotiate new terms for her jewelry collection.

  So I'm alone. Instead of going to the beach, I decided to treat myself to some luxury. I'm going to buy a holiday apartment. In an hour, I have an appointment with an agent who wants to show me a two-room apartment at the Cala Gracio. It’s not far from Anna's House. Allegedly, the apartment has a beautiful view of the sea.

  For the first time in a long time I feel something like anticipation as I look up to the small apartment building. The building is built on a cliff, from here you have a wonderful view over the small bay. Even before I set foot in the rooms, a feeling creeps over me: this is it! Exactly what I was looking for!

  I'm right. I take just a few steps into the living room, and the Mediterranean in all its glittering, azure glory spreads in front of me and off to the horizon.

  "I’ll take it," I say. Spreading my arms I turn around in the room and soak up the atmosphere. I would like to have Christian here, just to express my joy. My smile dies down at the thought of him.

  I miss him.

  It's too early in the evening for the Spanish as I descend from my hotel to the promenade. The night life has not yet begun, and there’s not too much going on in the cafés either. The midday heat has maintained a balmy breeze, which gently caresses me. The city, which was sunk in a sleepy siesta, is slowly coming to life.

  I sit in one of the port's bars and order a bottle of red wine. Once I’ve drunken it the men around me will probably seem more attractive. I have already had three glasses by the time it becomes livelier. The colorful characters which will later liven up the promenade are not yet out, but lots of tourists flock into the old city.

  My waiter is a young lad. He doesn’t look too bad, and I give him a big smile. He is unmoved and simply puts the plate of food in front of me. Okay then, just don't...

  "Is this seat free?" a male voice interrupts my thoughts, a familiar male voice. Christian is standing before me, grinning at me. My heart is thumping, but my joy quickly evaporates as I remember that I am angry with him. I'm sick of men who lie to me.

  “No. It’s taken," I respond with a frozen smile and look away. Suddenly, the three English men at the next table are the most fascinating men I've ever seen.

  "Good." Christian pulls up a chair and sits down.

  "Can’t you hear?"

  “I'm here to talk to you."

  "Forget it." Annoyed, I get up and throw a few bills on the table. I have to get out of here, before I turn into a screaming avenging angel.

  "Stop."

  "No."

  "Tamara. Wait!" Christian grabs me by the arm. Angrily I turn around to look at him.

  "You don’t have anything to say to me. Let go of me, or I’ll scream for help."

  Instead of an answer, he pushes me back against the wall of a house, holding my wrists in an iron grip, and leans over me, as if he wanted to kiss me.

  “Do it,” he whispers. I am trying to extricate myself from his grip, but I don't have a chance. So I’ll scream, that’s what he wanted, but he is faster than me, and puts a hand over my mouth.

  "Listen to me," he hisses in my ear. "I'm letting you go now and you're going to behave." Christian sounds as if he is serious about it. He takes his hand away gently.

  "And what will you do if I don’t behave myself?" I can’t help but ask.

  "I’ll hold on to you tight until you accept reason."

  I stare at him angrily and cross my arms in front of my chest. He takes a deep breath, and then he takes my hand.

  "Come on. I’ll get you a glass of wine and tell you what happened."

  "I don't need your lies."

  "No lies," says Christian and looks me in the eye. I reciprocate the look, I try to compel him to look away first, to admit his guilt, but he does not do me the favor. Instead he bends over me again. His face comes nearer and a smile plays around the corners of his mouth. Quickly I turn away.

  "You promised me wine," I remind him.

  "How did you find me?" is my first question as we sit down at a small table in a bar in the old town. There’s not so much going on here as at the harbor. Only a few tables are available on the narrow sidewalk, where the pedestrian pass laboriously by.

  Without saying anything, Christian takes my bag and starts to dig.

  "Don't tell me that I fell for that trick again."

  "Yep. Looks like it." Triumphantly, he lifts a small GPS transmitter into the light.

  I shake my head. "I don't believe it."

  "The trouble is your unhealthy penchant for expensive cosmetics. It took forever before a signal finally came through." The man still has no idea that he's talking about a collection of the most expensive make-up ever produced.

  "It was only for your safety. Really," he adds, as he notices my skeptical expression. "But it was very practical, especially after you disappeared from the scene."

  “If I were not so peaceful, I would kill you right now.” I sigh. "How can I be so stupid and fall for the same trick twice? Tell me what’s happened before I get completely frustrated."

  Christian sits back comfortably in his chair and stretches out his legs.

  "Your stepbrother Reinhard hired us. He wanted to check Ron out before they take him on the Board. A routine thing, nothing big, we get briefed by your father's bank. Particularly high-ranking employees are checked by us first before being given a position."

  "Isn't that against data protection or privacy or something?"

  Christian shrugs. "Nowadays, it’s normal procedure, people must sign a consent form beforehand. Apparently even Ron signed the declaration."

  "Not very wise of him. He had to know that you might find evidence."

  "I guess he felt safe. After all, he was very smart, without your help, I would never have found his accounts. Before that, I had no more than guesses. It was easy at first, in the first few days one of our informers gave us a tip. The problem was finding the evidence for Ron's criminal machinations, and then Barelli disappeared at the same time; an employee at Ron's Bank. Unfortunately I learned of it only after you had buried the body in the garden."

  "I didn’t bury any body," I object, but Christian dismisses me with a grin.

  "If you say so. No one can prove it at any rate. But still..." Christian shakes his head. "If someone had told me, I wouldn't have believed it. The daughter of a banker burying a corpse in the garden."

  "You're just an unimaginative bore," I snarl, but Christian only smiles and continues with his narrative.

  "I was pretty sure that Ron was up to something from the get go, so I started digging into his past, but I didn’t find much evidence there either. In my desperation I began to watch him, but only after he had already murdered Barell
i, which I didn’t know at the time. I didn’t find out much, and it was frustrating. If our informant hadn’t always been reliable in the past, I would have canceled the investigation, but instead I kept at it and I noticed how Ron's behavior gradually changed. He became nervous and he had no idea where you were. At the time I didn't know that you were related to Reinhard. You have the unfortunate tendency to different last names in your family. Because Ron was panicking by this point I decided to track you, in the hopes of getting more information. So I started to look for you. We have contacts in every major hotel in Frankfurt, it wasn’t too difficult to track you down in the Mainhatten. When my contact called to tell me about your stay there, he also mentioned that you'd ordered a callboy." Christian smiles - again.

  I kick him violently in the shin. I should've done that before. He pulls a face and carefully examines his leg where I hit him. I smile at him satisfied.

  "If you want to know what happened to Ron, you should stop that."

  "Ron can go to hell for all I care."

  "Tss, tss... It’s about to get exciting."

  "Oh, do you think so?"

  "Yes, or do you not want to know what happened on the first night we spent together?"

  It's a pity that I already kicked him, because I would like to do it again. As if he'd read my mind, he moves his legs to safety.

  "I'm sorry about the sleeping pills, honestly, but what else could I do?"

  Sleeping pills. That's why I couldn’t remember anything. "Isn’t that illegal? Drugging someone with a sedative, just to find out more about her boyfriend? And how did you get them so quickly?"

  "Well, let's just say this. If this comes out, I'm out of a job, however it would be my word against yours. As for how I got them: I paid a short visit to my parents. If my mother ever finds out that I was in her medicine cabinet, she’ll kill me."

  A smile crosses my face. "I'd like to meet your mother!"

  "Not a problem. If you don’t tell on me, I won't tell anyone what you did with the dead body."

  I don’t need long to think about that: especially because I know that he's right.

  “Okay, but only because I feel sorry for you, not because I have anything to hide."

  "Yes, of course. Should I continue?"

  "Why else do you think I'm wasting my time with you?" I lean back, fold my arms across my chest and tilt my chair backwards just like he always does. "Why the masquerade? Why didn't you just ask me, rather than playing callboy?"

  "I wasn’t sure what role you played in the whole thing. It was easier to let you sleep and to look at the files on your computer. I know it sounds bad when I say it like that, but time was of the essence and ..."

  Christian runs his hands through his hair and sighs.

  "It was a stupid idea. I acted spontaneously, because I knew, thanks to my research, about your sleeping pill consumption. Ron had mentioned it in a telephone conversation that I overheard, and I thought it wouldn’t be so bad, one more pill wouldn’t make much difference to you." Christian shakes his head. "I was an idiot, and I'm sorry."

  Silence stretches between us. I don't know what to say. What Christian did seems cold-blooded and somehow disrespectful, as if human beings are not worth much in his eyes, they’re people you can just administer a drug to, because they already ... my train of thought is interrupted. Instead I see myself through Christian's eyes; the fiancée of a banker, who is involved in evil machinations, who suddenly disappears, only to then again emerge in the suite of an expensive hotel, orders a callboy to her room and regularly takes sleeping pills.

  Maybe I would have acted the same way in his place, because suddenly it seems to me I wouldn’t put a lot of value on my life either.

  What kind of person takes sleeping pills, just to get through the preparations for their own wedding? And then the thing with the escort. I'm red faced with shame as I think about how I spoke to the doorman, how I opened the door to Christian ready to pay for an adventure.

  "Is everything all right?" Christian looks at me worried. I have no idea how long I have been sitting at the table without saying anything.

  “No. Nothing is all right," I answer. "But that’s not so important. For me, only one question remains: who killed Barelli? Was it Ron?" Fear resonates in this question. It's bad enough to have been engaged to a criminal, but to a killer? Inwardly I pray that someone else killed Barelli, even though it’s too late for that. One look at Christian forces me to silence my prayers. I know the answer.

  "I'm sorry. But it was Ron."

  I close my eyes trying to control the feelings which overwhelm me. I do not succeed. I have sacrificed five years of my life for a liar, cheat and murderer and I never noticed anything. I never thought Ron capable of such acts. How could I be so stupid?

  Christian's hand on my arm interrupts my thoughts. "It's not your fault." When I don’t answer, he holds my face with both hands and forces me to look him in the eyes. "Tamara, you can’t do anything about the fact that Ron is the man he is.”

  "But I should have been able to tell what a monster he is. How could I be with him all these years, without realizing how evil he is? How could I love him?"

  "Tamara," Christian looks at me intently. As if he were trying to penetrate my soul with his gaze. "Ron is a psychopath. People like him have no feelings of guilt. He feels right about everything he does. You can’t do anything about that. Believe me."

  Although I hear what he’s saying, I can't believe it. The conviction that I should have known something sits deep inside me. Again, I close my eyes for a moment, trying to conquer the inner chaos.

  "What haven’t you told me?" I ask when it becomes clear this attempt is useless. "Why did Ron kill Barelli?"

  "Barelli was just about to discover Ron's scheming. That’s why he had to die."

  "And I was hoping it was jealousy," I say in the pathetic attempt to seem cynical.

  "No, it wasn’t jealousy. Ron's affair with Madeleine was cool, calculated. He was trying to get information out of her. He needed her, in order to find out what knew Barelli. Through her, he gained access to Barelli’s house and used the opportunity to snoop through his records. She also served as an alibi on the night on which he murdered Barelli. Ron used your sleeping pills to sedate her."

  "Why does that not surprise me?" I bury my head in my hands and stare at the table top.

  "Do you want to go back to your hotel?" Christian sounds worried. But I can't stop now. I need to get answers to the questions in my head. First I need to know everything. Then I can find peace... or not.

  "The blood on my sweater. That was Ron, am I right?"

  "Yes, he..."

  "He wanted to frame me for murder," I finish the sentence for Christian.

  "That was his intention, but you haven’t made it easy for him."

  "At least that’s something," I mumble.

  "You‘ve cost Ron ten years of his life. At least." Christian grins at me. His eyes ask me to find my courage. He draws a crooked smile out of me. A conviction begins to stir in me. I made a mistake, when I fell in love with Ron. But I had no way of knowing what kind of person he was, I won't let him get me down. I won’t spend the rest of my life with self-doubt and accusations, because I don't deserve it.

  "Ron made the anonymous call to the police. He knew you would wake up late because of the sleeping pills. The police would find the body, discover the bloody sweater, and of course the murder weapon, because he had to be sure that your fingerprints would be on it, but nothing went the way he planned. By noon, Ron was already in a panic. He couldn’t call you and ask what had happened to the body, but thanks to your text he knew where you were. He sent his man to the garage. He was supposed to run you over, because Ron had decided to make a scapegoat of Madeleine instead of you. Everyone was supposed to think that you had an affair with Barelli and out of jealousy Madeleine killed her husband and you. A poorly thought-out plan, but Ron was panicking. He didn’t know what you had done with Barelli. He fea
red, that with the help of the police you would be able to move against him."

  "Son of a bitch. The fucking, lying, rotten asshole. I could kill him," it bursts forth from me. The anger feels good. Better than the despair that still has a grip on me.

  “Yes. I wouldn’t mind doing that myself. Ever since I learned of his schemes."

  "But, why didn’t he take his chance, when Blondie and Rambo found me at the hotel?"

  "Oh, that? That's the part of the story I like best." Christian laughs and tips his chair backwards. "Ron couldn't just kill you. First, he had to find out what you did with his money. I bet he went mad with rage when he saw his accounts."

  For the first time since Christian began his revelations an honest grin spreads across my face. "Then I did at least one good thing in our relationship."

  For some reason, I feel better. I was in love with a psycho, but in the end I did make it as hard as possible for him to get away with his crimes.

  "Why didn't you tell me that you're a detective? You should have told me that Reinhard hired you," I finally ask him the question that has been burning in my soul.

  "I..." Christian rocks on his chair, dangerously poised on two legs. "Well, the truth is..."

  "Christian, could you get to the point please?"

  "I wanted to have you with me," he finally admits.

  "You wanted... Oh!" I look at my wine glass thoughtfully. This twist is unexpected. I had already resigned myself to the idea that I had fallen for another son of a bitch. I had banished my feelings for Christian into the farthest corners of my subconscious.

  "Will you come back to Frankfurt with me?"

  With a jerk I'm uprooted from my dream world. Of course, he wants to complete his mission.

  “No. I'm going to stay here a while, but you can close the file and submit your invoice," I say and stand up.

  "Wait." Christian holds on to my wrist. "Tamara, please. That didn’t come out how I meant it to."