Tretjak

by Max Landorff

‘The same to you, Mr Tretjak. I don’t know what to say. I guess, first of all: thank you. I’ve received your package with the papers and have checked everything, if that was possible in such a short time. It seems indeed to be a fact that our two directors were involved in a conspiracy. That is an extremely unsavoury business as it not only would have cost Mr Schwarz his job but it would have cost us a lot of money.’

  ‘According to my information,’ Tretjak said, ‘things don’t look too bleak for your firm. I guess Mr Schwarz can still get the agreement with Union Carry going.’

  ‘I love your optimism, Mr Tretjak. We’ll see. I have followed your suggestion and told Meinhardt and Busse to expect a call from you this morning. I have also allowed myself to give them a piece of my mind. Let’s say: they broke into a bit of a sweat.’

  The conversation between Tretjak and Joachim Fritzen, the head of the supervisory board of the company producing cooling aggregates, was uncomplicated, as the two already knew each other. They had cooperated on a previous occasion, four years ago. Whenever Tretjak accepted a new assignment, he looked for connections in his network which might be used as a leverage point. A former and, more importantly, a satisfied customer was a good starting point.

  Back then Fritzen himself had given him the assignment. And everything had run smoothly, just the way Tretjak liked it: at the end there had only been winners.

  Joachim Fritzen had been the head of the executive board of another company at the time. The economic situation of that company had been so perilous that its survival depended on securing a large contract from Turkey. But there had been a competitor, who seemed to have the edge. Tretjak was engaged – and Fritzen’s company got the contract. Sure, Tretjak had applied pressure, maybe even used a few tricks, but he had also arranged for the other company to get a comparable deal from Azerbaijan.

  That was his philosophy: sometimes things could only get fixed if somebody on the periphery assumed control.

  ‘Oh, another question, Mr Fritzen: does your daughter still want to become a journalist?’

  ‘Yes, I am afraid so. I can’t talk her out of it.’

  ‘Who knows,’ said Tretjak, ‘maybe it’s not such a bad choice. I just wanted to say: I have found out that the Augsburger Allgemeine runs a first-class journalist training scheme. And they are looking for applicants. She could start straight away, if she’d like.’

  ‘Mr Tretjak, you make me blush. I have to say thank you again.’

  ‘Not at all. As you know, it’s all part of the service.’

  The second call was much shorter. Tretjak notified Mr Meinhardt that, one: his scheming had been exposed; two: he was going to leave the company; three: he had a meeting at Munich Airport, 8:30am, terminal 1, in the Käfer-Bistro; duration of the meeting: 15 minutes max. Tretjak was going to present him with a document he would be obliged to sign – an admission of guilt plus an agreement to transfer 50,000 euros into the private account of the injured party, Peter Schwarz.

  ‘And what happens if I don’t come to the airport?’ Meinhardt finally wanted to know.

  ‘Then we pass everything to the public prosecutor. Mr Fritzen and I are of the opinion that your dealings during the last few weeks constitute a serious case of embezzlement and criminal damage. It is up to you to save yourself and the company from this becoming public knowledge.’

  ‘I will come,’ Meinhardt had replied.

  The other one, this Busse fellow, had been much more self-confident and aggressive on the phone. Tretjak did not want to waste too much time and decided after a few minutes to play his trump card, which he had held back just in case. The evidence a private detective had produced was conclusive: the man had a lover and had paid for an apartment for her – and in addition there were compromising pictures taken in a so-called sauna. Tretjak described them on the telephone and at the same time observed two boys playing badminton in the park. The wind, which had just risen, was making it easy for them. When he finally hung up, it was clear that Busse would have to make his way to the airport tomorrow morning.

  The fourth call was of a more private nature. Tretjak was already walking towards the exit from the park when he dialled the number of his cleaning lady, who had not shown up yesterday. She normally came every Monday and was very reliable. He wanted to find out whether anything was wrong, but even more importantly wanted to ask whether she was going to come today instead. Tomorrow was his next appointment with the lady from the Inland Revenue and everything should be clean when the tax inspector showed up.

  The daughter of the cleaning lady picked up the phone. That was good as the cleaner spoke very little German. She was Argentinian and had arrived in Germany many years ago. Her strength had been sufficient to build a new life, but not to learn a new language. For the past five years Rosa Lanner had cleaned his apartment. They could not have a conversation, but Tretjak did not mind that, quite the contrary. He had to do a lot of talking anyhow. And the woman had something he liked. Was it a certain decency? Conscientiousness? Or was it the way she shook his hand, how she caringly grasped his in both of her hands?

  ‘But Mr Tretjak, I don’t understand. My mother is with you. She said that she was going with you to your house in the country. She was going to stay there for several days, as there was so much to do.’

  ‘House in the country? I don’t have a house in the country. And I didn’t make any arrangements with your mother. You or your mother must be mistaken.’

  ‘Mr Tretjak, my mother hasn’t been home for two days. And she spoke of you, I am sure of that. For heaven’s sake, what could have happened to her?’ The voice on the other side of the line was breaking. She was going to call everybody and as soon as she knew anything, she would get in touch.

  *

  It was early afternoon when Carolina Lanner called back. Her voice glowed with excitement. Tretjak first thought she was crying.

  ‘My mother has been in touch. Thank you, thank you so much, Mr Tretjak. My mother is overjoyed. Thank you, Mr Tretjak, we all don’t know what to say.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Tretjak replied, and for a brief moment started to get annoyed, ‘what are you thanking me for?’

  ‘What for? My mother told me everything. How a driver picked her up and took her to the airport and put her on a plane, first class. And how she flew to Buenos Aires. My mother. For the first time, back to Argentina. For the first time, back to see the family. My mother was crying with joy. And all that you made possible – and paid for it as well, Mr Tretjak. You are such a good man, such a good man!’

  It was dawning on Tretjak that it was useless to try to clear up this misunderstanding. Because it had to be a misunderstanding. What else could it be? Who would come up with the idea of sending his cleaning lady half-way around the world, and in first class? Gabriel Tretjak was experiencing a wave of anxiety rising up his spine. He asked the daughter when she expected his mother to return and when she would come back to work.

  ‘Next week, Mr Tretjak, but you know that better than anybody. Next Monday she will be with you, like always.’

  Munich, Institute of Forensic Medicine/CSI (Criminal Investigation Services), 12 noon

  The pathologist was a friendly, stocky lady with the distinctive accent of the Swabian region of south-western Germany. Inspector Maler had known her for a long time, and every time he saw her he was struck by the contrast: on the one hand this MD with her pleasant femininity, and on the other hand the brutal reality of the bodies which she investigated.

  In the case of the murder of Harry Kerkhoff the forensic scientist had not found any traces that would have offered up any clues about the identity of the killer. Cause of death: stabbing of the liver. There were two more knife wounds: one had hit the kidney, the other the right lung. The knife had been thrust with precision, and only a little blood had seeped out. Somebody had known what they were doing. A professional hit. The murder weapon had been a pointed, thin, extremely sharp blade, like a dagger. That was it for the moment �
� more details later.

  Time of death: about six to ten hours before the body was discovered in the horsebox. Harry Kerkhoff had being drinking, his blood alcohol level had been 1.2 millilitres. ‘That’s about three glasses of wine where I come from,’ the doctor added helpfully.

  What made this murder particularly gruesome was the fact that the perpetrator had removed both of the eyes of the victim with a round instrument, something like a spoon. It could also have been a sort of scoop similar to the ones used in ice cream parlours to scrape the ice cream from the tubs, the pathologist explained. One could assume that the scooping had not damaged the eyes, leading to the conclusion that the murderer had taken them along as a souvenir. As the removal had been done with great precision one could further assume that this was not the first time the perpetrator had done this. Maler looked for a reaction in the face of the doctor, but could find none. Madame Doctor had herself totally under control.

  An ice cream scoop. When Maler heard this word, he knew that it had started. Again. Whenever he worked on brutal murders he was plagued by day-mares, as he called them. Suddenly, in the middle of the day, these images would appear in his mind’s eye. Always following the same pattern: he would see the scene he was just living but arranged as a catastrophe. The waitress in the coffee shop, for example, was suddenly covered in blood and her right arm was missing. Or he was driving along a street and saw a horrific accident with many fatalities. It always only lasted for a split second. Then the image was gone. As if a picture editor had inserted a brief clip into a scene.

  Maler had always imagined that these day-mares functioned as a transformer of his over-worked police brain. All those horrible experiences which he had to live through in his line of duty were spat out as little bits so he could get rid of them. He had come up with this theory to calm himself down, so he could live with it. He had not told it to anyone. Amongst policemen there was a silent agreement: one kept quiet about one’s own sensitivities, if they existed. He had not even mentioned them to Rainer Gritz, his long-time assistant. Not because he was ashamed of them. Gritz, the long, dangly Gritz, was the best policeman he knew, the most methodical and persistent. There was no one else he trusted more. But Maler was convinced that if he told Gritz about his day-mares, Gritz would have dug up everything and anything there was to know about such phenomena. Gritz would have drowned him with that knowledge. And that was precisely what Maler didn’t want. He didn’t want information. He wanted to forget the images. As soon as possible and whenever possible.

  But then, after his heart problems several years ago, Inspector Maler had found himself sitting opposite an elderly lady, the head psychologist of the clinic on Lake Lusterbach where he was convalescing. She was well over 80, but nobody would have dreamt of talking about a possible retirement age since she owned the clinic.

  Dreams were her speciality. Her first question for Maler was always, ‘what did you dream about last night?’ And it was her that he first told about the day-mares. The woman had white hair and a pleasant, calm voice. And it was in the same calm and pleasant way that she reacted to his account. She told him about her own dreams that she had at night and about the fact that for decades she had experienced fantasies of murder. ‘And I tell you, Inspector: I was feeling great while dreaming. It was only in the mornings that I was sometimes shocked by my own feelings.’ They talked extensively about the nature of evil and how nobody was safe from it. Maler remembered from these conversations that he had to recognise these visionary attacks as a kind of thermometer. The more these images flashed up in front of his eyes the more urgently his soul was signalling to him that he was expecting too much of himself.

  This time only three hours passed between his leaving the Forensic Science building and the start of the day-mares. The first one came to Maler when he was stopping at a red light: the driver of the taxi waiting next to him was suddenly headless. The second image flashed up at the newsagent and was even shorter than usual – the whole stand was doused in blood.

  Maler took a walk. He left police headquarters, located right behind the cathedral, went to the Odeonsplatz and through the Hofgarten, strolling in the direction of St-Anna-Platz, his usual route if he needed a bit of peace and quiet. He hoped that this Tretjak fellow was not leaving his flat just at this very minute and that he wouldn’t bump into him. That morning Tretjak had called him. He had apologised for not telling Maler the truth the other day: he had known this Kerkhoff, in fact he had known him very well.

  Maler still had the Swabian voice of the pathologist in his ear. She had said that Kerkhoff’s eyes had been removed post-mortem. The victim had not been tortured. One had to assume that the perpetrator was sending out a sort of message.

  Fourth Day

  14 May

  Munich, St-Anna-Platz, 2pm

  She came by bicycle. Tretjak had expected her to ascend the escalators from the underground. So he was surprised to hear her voice behind him.

  ‘Somehow it doesn’t look very tiring,’ she said, ‘your job I mean of course, Mr Tretjak.’

  It was early afternoon, the sun was shining, and Tretjak was sitting at a table outside the café on St-Anna-Platz with an espresso in front of him. Fiona Neustadt pushed her bicycle next to the table, raised it on its stand and sat down opposite him. The clock of the big church struck two. And then the little one followed suit: two o’clock. The tax inspector was dead on time. She was wearing a Sixties-style knee-length white dress with black polka-dots and a denim jacket. Her feet were clad in navy blue canvas shoes and her hair was tied back in a ponytail.

  ‘Summer must have arrived at the Inland Revenue,’ he quipped. She laughed. ‘And it hasn’t for the management consultant? Or I beg your pardon...’ she raised one eyebrow mockingly, ‘for the “personal management and economic consultant”. You can buy me a cup of coffee. Cappuccino, please.’ She carried with her one of those ugly shoulder bags made from durable plastic and took from it one of Tretjak’s ledgers which she had taken with her after the first meeting. She had been a little surprised that he was using such an old-fashioned way of keeping his books. Tretjak’s cashbooks were all black A4 notebooks and followed a simple principle: on the left-hand side all the monies coming in were noted down by hand, on the right were all the expenses, and at the bottom of each page the figures in both columns were added up. These sums were carried over to the next page as the opening balances. Each entry carried the name of the client and key words such as ticket Rome or fee part payment. The receipts for each of the entries were filed in separate folders, which Tretjak, in preparation for the meeting, had lined up on the table in the kitchen.

  The ledger Fiona Neustadt now opened was peppered with yellow post-it notes. Tretjak saw that each had something written on it; most of the sentences ending with a question mark. Fiona Neustadt had angular, almost male handwriting – at least that was his impression.

  ‘You see,’ she said, ‘a lot of work lies ahead of us. But don’t worry too much: it looks worse than it is. Most of the questions are quite harmless, sometimes I think I know the answers already and just need confirmation.’

  That was how the afternoon they spent together started, with a coffee in the sun. That morning, while driving to his appointment at the airport, Tretjak had caught himself thinking that he was actually looking forward to his meeting with the tax inspector. In contrast to other people he was not worried in the least about the inspection of his books. This much had always been clear: his business was shady, legally shady, morally shady; it thrived on discretion, on action behind the scenes, hidden from view – so he couldn’t afford a less than completely transparent accounting system on top of that. In his job he encountered many enemies, always new ones, always different ones. It was important to identify and to know them. Unnecessary ones should be avoided. With the Inland Revenue it was very simple: you had to pay on time. And that’s what he did. Therefore he could just enjoy the company of this interesting woman. Fiona Neustadt was intelligent and
good-looking – and simpatico. He could let her take his mind off the disturbing thoughts which kept preying on his mind. Did Kerkhoff’s murder have anything to do with him? What was going on with his cleaning lady? What, and more importantly who, was behind all this? Why on earth had he given the wrong answer to the inspector? When he called Maler that morning to correct himself, he immediately realised that the guy had already found out about his connection to the brain expert. He seemed alert and suspicious, and would start sifting through Tretjak’s business. And the police were nothing like the Inland Revenue.

  When Tretjak opened the door to his apartment and let Ms Neustadt enter in front of him, he noticed her perfume. The scent of grapefruit, he thought. Or was it lime? Later, when they were sitting at the kitchen table working, he noticed that she was not only wearing a fine old IWC Swiss watch, the classic Ingenieur model, on her left wrist, but also one of those colourful, cheap fabric bands connected with a wish which one wore until it fell off by itself and the wish came true. That was new, and Tretjak asked himself what Fiona Neustadt might have wished.

  Following the chime of the church clock striking every quarter of an hour, they worked through the yellow notes. Some questions dealt with expenses which were not associated with one particular client. Tretjak thought of the member of parliament and explained to Fiona Neustadt that only about one fifth of all the people who contacted him actually become clients. There were also yellow post-it notes next to entries in the account book where Tretjak had written received in cash. Fee EURO 75,000 received in cash. Fee, first down payment, EURO 50,000 received in cash. And another time even EURO 500,000 received in cash.

  Tretjak presented Ms Neustadt with a copy of a receipt made out by him for each of these entries, the corresponding pay-in slip from the bank, and the correct listing of the amount in his income tax returns. What was not evident in these cases were the names of the clients – on the receipt copies the names were obscured. It was about this point Tretjak had expected more of an argument with the tax inspector. For this he would have had a well-rehearsed legal disposition ready and waiting, which protected his clients’ anonymity. But Fiona Neustadt only casually remarked: ‘Well, I guess we can see it as some kind of medical confidentiality.’ She only compared the figures, and checked whether the entries tallied with the written receipts. For this she had donned a pair of black-rimmed spectacles over whose rims she occasionally shot him a glance. There were periods when they sat there without uttering a word, with only her pen moving systematically from column to column. Once Tretjak brewed them a fresh pot of tea, twice he got up to fetch them a fresh bottle of water from the fridge. The two pieces of American cheesecake, which he had bought at the café before they went up, stood untouched on the kitchen counter.