Before It Breaks

by Dave Warner

  ‘Of course I got the photo, a beauty. Everybody is rapt. Listen, we need to meet.’

  The first thing Gruen thought was that Wallen had blown the operation.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Tell you when I see you.’

  ‘Everything is still go?’

  ‘Yes, it’s all fine. Don’t worry. There are just a couple of operational things to go over.’

  ‘Usual place?’

  ‘Yes. See you there in an hour.’

  Gruen hung up. Thank God for Dieter. He missed the camaraderie of the guys, Heinrich especially. It would be so good to be back with them having a drink, telling them about the last crappy year. He zipped his jacket and walked towards the train station.

  Dieter Schaffer felt hollow inside, worse than hollow, like it was no longer him at all. Yet what choice did he have now? Once he’d made contact with Donen via the chauffeur, his life as he’d known it was effectively over. Naively perhaps, he’d imagined it was enough to suggest faking the photograph. You can leave, he’d told the Emperor, and nobody will know it’s you. He remembered well what the man sitting opposite him now had said.

  ‘You’ll know, and so will whoever you have inside my operation.’

  That’s when he understood what the price was going to be. And still he had not backed away. So here he was now. The room was small and musty. It crowded in on him.

  The Emperor was flanked by two of his bodyguards waiting.

  Schaffer hung up the phone and said, ‘It’s done.’

  The Emperor stood. Dieter felt a flash of panic.

  ‘What about the money I owe?’

  His home was on the line. How could he have lost? He still couldn’t fathom it. Hamburg were champions and yet they’d lost at Dortmund, and again when he’d doubled up, at Schalke. Surely they would beat Munich at home? But they had lost yet again and so his team would be champions yet he would be without a home to celebrate in and no doubt a wife.

  ‘You don’t owe anything now. The bookmaker understands. Of course, if you displease me …’ He let it hang.

  Schaffer’s legs felt rubbery as he got to his feet. He left, knowing his soul had been abandoned forever in that cramped room reeking of damp, knowing the ghost of Pieter Gruen would haunt him, and one day, somewhere, rain a terrible justice upon him.

  41

  The news crew camped outside Osterlund’s filmed Clement as he entered, on the phone to Earle who was just arriving in Derby. The crew looked tired already, unshaven and untidy and like angry scammers caught on a current affairs show; the wind buffeted their cameras. One seemed to be a woman but the sexes of news crews tended to merge, only the anchors retained an individual identity. Daryl Hagan and Beck Lalor patrolled the gate and acknowledged him as he passed. Clement parked where he had the first day and walked to the door carrying the Donen file. Jo di Rivi saw who it was. Her eyes couldn’t help asking the obvious question: had Osterlund been found?

  ‘Not yet. How is she?’

  ‘She’s barely slept. She won’t take anything.’

  The air was crushingly humid now. Before he entered, reflexively, Clement looked up at the sky but it had nothing to offer him.

  Astuthi Osterlund was sitting by the kitchen bench. She looked at him with a mix of intense fear and frail hope. The question was the same as di Rivi’s.

  ‘Have you found him?’

  And he knew she feared the answer was yes.

  ‘Not yet.’

  Her body lost some tension. The vast glass window reverberated in the powerful wind. It was unsettling, ominous. Lucky the cyclone has been downgraded, thought Clement, a four and the glass would have to be covered though he supposed Osterlund had special protective shutters if needed. Clement sat on the stool beside Astuthi Osterlund and placed the file beside him. The techs had all long gone and the place felt lonely, like a coastal guest house out of season.

  ‘Your husband’s real name is Kurt Donen. He was involved in pornography and drugs in Hamburg in the nineteen seventies and he is a suspect in the murder of at least six people including an undercover policeman. The policeman’s controller was Dieter Schaffer. It seems likely Schaffer protected your husband.’

  She did not throw her hands to her face, nor call him a liar, nor protest her own innocence. Some part of her seemed already resigned to such news. Outside the ocean rippled like a fat man’s belly.

  ‘I want him back.’

  ‘You don’t seem surprised?’

  ‘I don’t know who he was before. He is, Gerd Osterlund, my husband.’

  But something was tormenting her, he could see it. Her hands twisted. ‘Is he married to somebody else?’

  ‘Not that we know.’

  She seemed to weigh that.

  ‘He told me he was never married and had no children. He didn’t lie to me.’ She said this as if it exonerated him from murder.

  Clement said. ‘His whole life was a lie.’

  ‘You could say that about many people.’

  ‘But they’re not all covering up murders.’

  ‘It’s not my job to convict my husband.’

  She did not add, ‘And it’s not yours either.’ She would have been right. His job right now was to find him, alive if possible. Sand was whipping off the beach below. He chose his words carefully.

  ‘We have to assume that somebody found out about this, somebody who is out for revenge.’

  ‘They want to kill him?’

  ‘That would seem likely. Gerd is not some intermediary. Your husband may be the end of the line, the one they are after.’

  ‘Maybe they want money?’ It was a feeble hope and she couldn’t sell it any better with her eyes than her voice.

  ‘They haven’t called. This person is very thorough. They prepare. At some point they may have trailed you or your husband, or called at the house on some pretext. Have you seen any strange vehicles?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Think hard.’ He found an image of a white SUV on his phone and showed it. ‘Any car like this?’

  She continued to shake her head.

  ‘Like I said before, I don’t remember. One of my friends has a silver car like that but she is away in Sydney.’

  ‘Your husband never gave any indication he was previously acquainted with Schaffer?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘The first time he met him here in Broome, were you present?’

  She thought back.

  ‘No. I can’t have been. The first time Gerd introduced me to Dieter Schaffer it was at a restaurant in town. He said this man is a German from Hamburg.’

  Clement wondered how Schaffer had found Donen. Had they been in touch over the years, part of the same operation, or had they ceased to have contact after Gruen’s murder?

  For the next ten minutes Clement canvassed the same ground with slightly different questions but Mrs Osterlund could give him nothing that pointed to who they might be looking for. The Germans they had met up here were a mere handful, nearly all passing through. Clement took whatever names and details she could remember. Feeling there was nothing more he could achieve here, he announced he had to get back to the station.

  ‘Are you going to keep looking for Gerd?’ she asked, demanding the truth.

  It was a pertinent question. Was he going to spend every ounce of his energy trying to save the life of a multiple murderer and drug lord? He was not proud of the answer.

  ‘Of course.’

  42

  After the blotting of light came the heavy thud of earth being shovelled on top. Was this the plan, to bury him alive? Osterlund fought his panic back down. Levering with his elbows, ignoring the pain in his knee, he dragged himself up from the earthen floor. With hands bound he had to use his head to push up into the tin above him, standing on his toes for leverage. He mustered all his fading strength but he could not budge it. In pitch darkness, he slumped back down. He could not call for help, he could not dig without threatening collaps
e.

  Anger burst inside him like a grenade. Fucking Dieter Schaffer. This was his doing. He should have killed him. And Wallen, he remembered him, that skinny junkie. He was one of the ones who had got away. It was always the weak ones who brought down the strong. Somebody once said no good deed goes unpunished and they were right.

  It had been happenstance, Schaffer bumping into him on a rare trip to Hamburg, six or seven years ago. He usually avoided the city precisely for that reason but he was buying out an online competitor and they said the deal had to be done there in person. Schaffer had walked right up to him in the street while he was waiting for a taxi. He felt sorry for Schaffer, an emotion he’d never been able to afford up until a few years before when he began living in Bali. Schaffer was clearly dead-ended in life. He should have just walked away from him but he figured he owed him. Schaffer had tipped him off about the undercover cop and he’d saved Schaffer his home in return, quid pro quo. But it was Schaffer who thought of planting the fake photo. That was inspired and without it he’d have had none of this life. He was set up now. If he’d lost his drug money he never would have been able to buy back into the porn industry, get into online porn in its very early days, make a killing and get out. For the last seventeen years he’d been a legitimate businessman. Schaffer, though, might have saved his home but not his marriage. When they’d reconnected Schaffer was working the docks and living in a rented apartment. Foolishly Osterlund had wired him ten thousand euros. Schaffer hadn’t even asked for it. But what did he care? Ten thousand was a drop in the bucket. And then one day here in Broome somebody taps him on the shoulder and he turns around to see fucking Dieter Schaffer. He’d tracked him from the money he’d been sent.

  ‘I’ve come to join you in the wilderness,’ Schaffer had joked. And then Schaffer had seen the fury in his face and begged off with promises he’d never tell anybody, proof of which was his silence all these years. He’d contemplated then and there giving Schaffer a permanent silence but he did not want to soil himself with any more blood and, truth be told, Schaffer’s presence was a door into a time when he had been the dark prince of Hamburg, making money hand over fist, a time he enjoyed remembering. Sure, with his publishing he made more than enough but he missed the edge-of-the-seat adrenalin of those days, the keenness of his senses; and he liked sometimes to recall the cold chill of the wind off the river right through his herringbone flares, the smell of tobacco and pils in the basement pubs, the luxury of a car cassette player, the feel of a clutch under his cheap leather soles. He did not want to go back, he was not nostalgic in that sense, but he liked to remember his time on the rise so he would never take what he had now for granted. He decided to let Schaffer be and Schaffer had played his part, never letting on even to Tuthi that they had known each other before. He’d remembered Schaffer’s computer and removed it before the police, just in case there had been something incriminating on it. But it was too late by then.

  He should have connected Schaffer’s death to that of Klaus but when the biker was murdered the same way he had dismissed his concerns. He should have understood Schaffer was a door to the past not just for him but others. Schaffer was the portal, the passageway that had led his persecutor here to bind and tie him and bury him alive in a black cesspit.

  He tried to think of other things: Tuthi naked in the morning, the old days in the Reeperbahn when he got his start selling girls to drunk sailors. He was successful because he was fair to the girls, giving them twice what the competition paid, in smack instead of cash but still that’s what they would spend it on anyway.

  It was all business, nothing more.

  Their faces were out of focus now. It had been too long ago. A few OD’d; most just faded away. The early days had been hard. He’d been bashed by chains, cut by switchblades. Somebody hits, you hit back twice as hard. You got smart, employed mercenaries back from Africa and out of work but that only got you so far. The polaroid opened up everything. He could offer pictures to the sailors of the girls they’d paid to fuck. Throw a little extra to the girls for their trouble. There was just as much money in the photos as the sex. He remembered the first magazine issue, his pride. He tried to see the cover in his mind but the thought snapped and he was back in the dark, utterly alone, his hands and feet numb. He would die down here. His tormentor may never revisit. There was air for now but no water. After a tough start, his life had been comfortable, luxurious even. But as death calls you, who is content with what they used to have?

  The pain in his knee tore at him. Osterlund bellowed again into the gag, a wail of self-pity.

  ‘A biblical judgment.’

  The words came in a voice from long ago, his stepfather’s, that mean Lutheran bastard sitting at the table in his braces and rolled sleeves, massive hairy forearms. He sensed him in here now. There, his face glowing, a phosphorescent Shroud of Turin.

  ‘Free me,’ he tried to say, but his words were muffled and his stepfather was without ears.

  43

  The recent impetus had waned. Clement watched his team grinding their way through their various assignments. While he had uncovered more elements of the mystery, time was running out to find Osterlund. The pieces were there, enough of them anyway, but he must look in the right place. That was what he had always been good at.

  Before his tooth had driven him to the dentist he had been on the verge of sussing out something. What?

  Mal Gross loomed. ‘I’ve covered the road to Derby, Cape Leveque road to the north and a couple of the major tracks east. Traffic’s light with this storm coming so if the SUV is out there we should spot him.’

  ‘Okay, good.’

  ‘You think we need to look at station wagons too?’

  ‘The kid seemed confident.’

  Mal Gross nodded and went back to his desk. If Tyson had it wrong it was most likely too late anyway. Knowing the interruptions would continue out here, Clement retreated to his office and switched off his phone. He recalled earlier he had been contemplating the connection between Lee and his killer. Now he tried retracing his mental steps. Schaffer’s killer knew where Lee was hanging out. Maybe he followed him from town out to Blue Haze?

  But Lee was a biker, used to violence, suspicious, on his guard because the Dingos had told him the police were looking for him. If the killer didn’t know Lee, how did he manage to surprise him and kill him? Did he just lie in wait in the shadows on the off-chance, or knock on the door and run off and hope Lee would emerge to investigate?

  No. He had to know him. Didn’t he?

  Clement had the sensation of looking across a vast empty desert. He sighed, despairing. His eyes travelled to Phoebe’s drawing. He should call her. As he picked up the receiver, the answer he had been chasing fell on him. He gently replaced the receiver.

  The flashing watch.

  When he had seen it in the dark room the other night his response had been curiosity, ‘What on earth is that?’ And now he was thinking Lee had thought the same. Lee had been lured to the exact position the killer wanted by that watch.

  Clement was certain of it.

  Clement found Manners gobbling a sandwich and felt bad for interrupting much needed nourishment. Manners had begun to resemble a hologram of himself.

  ‘That liquor shop footage of the carpark … did we dump the whole hard drive on our computers?’

  Manners tried to speak through bread. ‘Yeah, got it all.’ He slapped his computer to show that was where it resided.

  ‘I want you to go through that footage again, this time I want you looking for white SUVs. Make a note of the rego of any white SUVs or people driving them.’

  ‘It’s black and white footage. Yellow, light blue, it might be hard to tell.’

  ‘Do your best. Start on the day of the argument then work out one day each way, then two days each way.’

  ‘Got it.’

  ‘Did you find Schaffer’s Pajero in any other footage?’

  ‘At the shopping centre carpark, just t
hat one day. But HQ clocked it once, remember?’

  That was right. They had a shot of the Pajero on the street from when they’d been looking at Lee to see if he’d been hanging about. Clement started to call Perth.

  ‘I’ll get a copy sent to us.’

  ‘I’ve got one, thought we should have that too.’

  ‘Fantastic.’

  Manners puffed a little at the compliment.

  Clement instructed, ‘Look for a white SUV. You never know, if he was tracking Schaffer, he could be on there.’

  He left Manners to it and thought of trying Klendtwort again but decided he’d leave it for now. Instead he called Marilyn’s. Geraldine answered.

  ‘Hello, Geraldine. Is Phoebe there?’

  ‘What do you think you’re doing, Daniel?’

  Trying to converse with his daughter? Evenly, he said, ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean hanging around here, dragging us all into murder and your sordid world.’

  ‘The watch was a coincidence.’

  ‘It might not have been.’

  ‘Geraldine, I don’t have the time for this right now. Could I speak to my daughter?’

  ‘Have you caught him yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Didn’t think so.’ The phone clunked on a sideboard. A moment later came echoing footsteps.

  ‘Hello, Daddy. I got my watch back.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Mummy said you helped look for it.’

  Another tick for Marilyn.

  ‘That’s true. We need to get together, make up for that lost weekend. I was thinking about the Derby house.’

  ‘Can we take the boat out?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Can I drive it?’

  ‘Yes, you can be skipper.’

  That seemed to swing the vote. ‘Okay.’

  ‘I’m not sure when this will all be finished but as soon as it is.’

  ‘Alright. And remember …’