“What does your obscure wish look like, then?” she asked at some point. “Or would you prefer to tell me tête-à-tête?”
I could see an unambiguous YES starting to materialize in Martin’s brain, so I yelled, “Stop!”
“What?” he asked me gruffly.
“If you say yes now, it’ll be very, very expensive,” I said.
“Hmm,” Martin mumbled.
“And think of Birgit,” I hastened to add.
“Birgit…”
I realized that Martin wasn’t actually thinking of having sex with this vision of a woman at all; he just wanted to keep staring into her eyes and talking with her.
“Dude, that little charmer sitting on the stool in front of you is a whore,” I said. “She wants to blow you off or…whatever else.”
Martin swallowed and suddenly found his feet back on the ground, briefly wondered how expensive the champagne he’d ordered was, and then he said his line: “I’m looking for a friend.”
He nonchalantly held the drawing out to the angel so she could see it.
“Semira!” She almost yelled it, but she quickly put her hand over her mouth, opened her blue eyes wide, and stared at Martin, taken aback. “What’s happened to her? She and I had plans to go out, but she stood me up, and that’s not like her at all.”
Martin’s heart, which had only just started easing its pace, started pounding harder again.
“Did she work here?” he asked.
The blonde shook her head. “You’re—not a customer of hers?”
Now Martin shook his head, but of course not half as gracefully.
“Is it OK if we keep talking here?” he asked carefully, looking around. Several sinister-looking guys were watching the two of them.
“Oh,” the angel said, sliding down from her stool. “For us it’s OK, but it’s bad for business. Come with me.”
So Martin slid down off his stool, too, and the bartender subtly reminded him it was fine for him to leave—but his sixty euros for the beer and two glasses of champagne should stay behind. Martin paid and followed the blonde outside.
“So, where do you know Semira from?” she asked. “And what do you want from her?”
“I don’t want anything from her,” Martin said. “She’s dead.”
“No!” she gasped, tears filling her enormous eyes. “How?”
“Anaphylactic shock,” Martin said. “That means…”
“I know what it is,” the blonde hissed. Uh-oh, the kitty cat was extending her claws. “And who are you?” she asked.
“Martin Gänsewein. Coroner.”
He offered his hand, and she reflexively shook it and whispered, “Yvonne Kleinewefers.”
Honestly, I couldn’t make head or tail of what was happening here. I was slowly starting to wonder how the blonde fit into this story. She wasn’t your typical lady of the night at a Russian tochka. If she were, she wouldn’t have been allowed to leave the establishment with a customer during working hours. Martin was having similar thoughts, plus he was starting to get cold, so he suggested the nearest place.
“There’s a café over there. Why don’t we get something warm to drink?”
She nodded and followed him.
Martin ordered a chamomile tea, which they didn’t have, a peppermint tea, which they also didn’t have, and before he could further display his in-depth knowledge of other monastery-grown teas and tisanes, Ms. Kleinewefers ordered two coffees. Basta.
She also took over the conversation, like a celestial being that had metamorphosed from a tinsel angel to an avenging angel.
“What has happened that would send a coroner through the brothels at night asking questions about Semira?” she asked.
“Didn’t you see Semira’s picture in the newspaper?” Martin asked as a counter-maneuver.
“No, after my nighttime fieldwork and daytime course-work I don’t have terribly much time left over to practice bourgeois self-edification by reading newspapers,” she hissed.
“Fieldwork?” Martin asked, irritated.
“I’m doing my master’s thesis on the expectations of men who go to brothels. What they’re really looking for there, their genuine needs, which don’t necessarily always have to do with sex but which they would like fulfilled,” she rattled out. “My adviser is not really all that sold on it, which is why I’ve been gathering material for some time so that he will approve the topic.”
“You’re doing a master’s in psychology?” Martin asked.
“No, economics.”
Martin took a sip of his coffee, which had just arrived at the table. “Are you trying to put one over on me?” he asked between two coughing fits.
“Ever since Germany legalized prostitution, it’s become a more and more important source of revenue the government can now legally line its pockets with. Even beautiful Cologne with its world-famous cathedral has been levying a ‘pleasure tax’ since 2004, which brings in just under a million euros a year.”
“A sex tax?” Martin stammered. “What, from the…” Evidently his well-cultivated vocabulary was failing him here.
“From the whores, pimps, and bordellos. The tax administration doesn’t care who pays, but a portion of each euro earned in this service industry ends up in the treasury.”
Martin shook his head, speechless.
“Since prostitution is legal now, the Federal Employment Agency can also theoretically find a job placement for an unemployed woman at a brothel now. No one has actually made a placement like that yet, however.”
“Not yet,” Martin mumbled.
“Well, within that context, the question arises how to optimize supply within this very lucrative service industry. As I’m sure you know, expanding services is the future.”
“And you got to know Semira through this, uh, fieldwork?” Martin asked.
She shook her head. “The other way around. I got to know Semira at the university.”
“She was a student?” Martin was getting more and more confused. “But she wasn’t even legally in this country…”
“But she was damned smart. She wasn’t registered, so she couldn’t attend small seminars. But she could attend the large lectures where there are hundreds of students. At a giant university with umpteen thousand students no one notices if the lecture hall is missing a student or has one extra.”
Yvonne had been stirring her coffee the whole time and only now realized she hadn’t even added any sugar to it yet. She remedied this quickly, then took a big gulp.
“Although she was very cautious and didn’t actually want to make friends with anyone at all, not even other students, we sat next to each other a couple of times and got to talking. She told me that she worked as a call girl. That’s how I picked the topic for my thesis.”
“Did she work for an agency, or freelance?” Martin asked.
“For an agency. Or rather, for an agent. I’d have liked to interview him, but she never told me who he is.”
“Then do you know how she originally met this agent?” Martin asked.
“Only that it was more or less a coincidence, because his main line of business is actually something else. ‘High-end luxury,’ I remember how she worded it exactly. Semira was proud that the guy described her as a luxury product, too. Personally I don’t think being classified as a ‘product’ is a compliment.”
“Too bad,” Martin said. “Without the agent we’re pretty much groping in the dark.”
“You still haven’t explained to me what you’re doing here,” Yvonne said.
“Yes, well, that’s also a bit complicated,” Martin said.
That wasn’t cutting it with Yvonne, which she made more than clear by raising an eyebrow.
“Semira did die from anaphylactic shock, but this apparently happened in the course of her professional practice,” Martin began.
Nicely worded. And he stated it totally seriously—with scientific precision, really.
“I suspect the client she was with when
she died put her into the trunk of his car in order to secretly spirit the body away. Unfortunately it was an especially valuable car, and unfortunately the car was then stolen. With Semira’s body in the trunk.”
“No!” Yvonne blurted out. “It’s like in a movie!”
“Yes,” Martin agreed. “It seems that two other recent murders have also been committed in connection with this regrettable death, a car thief and Semira’s brother.”
“Oh my God, it just gets worse and worse!” she gasped.
“Which is why I need to find out who the owner of the stolen car is,” Martin said.
Yvonne furrowed her brow and contemplated him for a moment, shaking her head. “But why are you sitting around here in the middle of the night trying to find out who the owner is in such a complicated way? The police must surely be able to do that with the press of a button.”
“That would require knowing the license plate number,” Martin said.
“If the car was so extraordinarily valuable as you say, then it’s not like there will be thousands and thousands of them. Surely it must be possible to get a list of the owners.”
Boy oh boy, this one was really sharp as a tack. Even though she was blonde.
Martin hemmed and hawed. “The police have not yet made…certain connections,” he finally said.
A short pause as our little goldfinch did some serious brooding.
“So you’re out here on your own, then?” Yvonne asked.
Martin nodded.
“Good for you,” she mumbled. “And because you can’t get hold of the list of people who own this model of car from the police, you have to track down Semira’s clients and find the one she was with last?”
Martin nodded, relieved that someone was finally thinking along the same lines as him and didn’t think he was batshit crazy. However, she didn’t know even half of the whole story. About me, for instance.
“Let me see what I can do to help you further,” she said pensively. “The agent’s name would be great, but I don’t know it. I don’t know Semira’s clients’ names, either, of course, since she was very discreet. But she definitely made a few comments that might help us.”
She thought some more and noisily slurped on her coffee.
“Did she have, uh, I mean, well…in what circumstances did she die?” Yvonne asked.
“She was naked when she died, and she had recently had sexual intercourse,” Martin explained very objectively. As far as his reports go, Martin was master of his domain. “She had eaten a hazelnut cookie before or after the sexual intercourse, which triggered her allergic reaction.”
“Protected or unprotected sex?” Yvonne asked.
“Unprotected. But with lubricant, which is why I assumed it was with a client.”
“That stupid girl,” Yvonne mumbled. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. But she knew exactly how dangerous sex without a condom is, but she still had clients she didn’t use one with. I always told her…” Yvonne wiped her eyes.
“She was, uh, healthy,” Martin said. “No sexually transmitted diseases, no HIV. She apparently knew which clients she did and didn’t need a condom with.”
“Evidence of handcuff use?” Yvonne asked.
“None,” Martin said. “No use of force, no fetish-related practices, no drugs.”
She summed the main points up again: “So we’re looking for someone who has an unusual car, hires a call girl, has unprotected sex with her, isn’t into any kinky games, and who gave her hazelnut cookies that she died from.”
“Correct.”
We let her have some time to mull that over; Martin drank his coffee and ordered two more.
“I can remember comments about two clients that might be worth considering,” Yvonne said with the fresh cup of coffee in front of her.
Martin leaned forward eagerly.
“The one guy she used to call ‘Dr. Strangelove’…”
“She gave her clients nicknames?” Martin asked, amazed.
I snickered. What nickname would Martin have gotten?
“Well, sure,” Yvonne said. “I wanted to know as much as possible about what her clients wanted, but she didn’t want to name names. So we had to find a way to easily but discreetly talk about the men.”
Martin nodded.
“So, to continue, Dr. Strangelove is an entrepreneur, something to do with steel, I think. He has at least four fancy cars, including a Porsche and a Jaguar. He’s a widower, and harbors an abysmally deep mistrust of women—he thinks they are all only interested in his money.”
“That’s probably true, too,” I interjected, but Martin didn’t acknowledge me.
“He has two grown daughters who keep trying to set him up with women, but for them he plays the monk. He satisfies his urges with call girls, and over the last two years exclusively with Semira.” She thought for a moment. “At least he said he was exclusive with her.”
“Yes,” Martin said thoughtfully. “That might well be something to take with a grain of salt. Does he live in Cologne?”
“I think so, yes.”
Meanwhile Martin had taken out a pen and a piece of paper from the pocket of his jacket, jotting down the most important information.
“The other guy she used to call ‘Il Papa.’”
Martin wrote down “Il Papa.”
“He’s married, but he told Semira his wife is frigid and unapproachable. He doesn’t actually live in Cologne, but he comes to town a lot on business, so he rents a small apartment here.”
“What does he do?” Martin asked.
Yvonne shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“What did he want from Semira?” Martin asked.
Stupid question, I thought. Sex, of course.
“Warmth?” Yvonne said.
Female mumbo jumbo, I thought.
“Sex of course, too,” she said.
All right!
“But he only wanted a little sex, and otherwise just lots of cuddling. Warmth that he wasn’t getting from his wife anymore.”
Why would the man tell Semira such bullshit, I wondered. Normal men have to tell women baloney like that so they’ll jump into bed with them. But a call girl will jump anyway, so why all the claptrap?
“How did she come up with the nicknames?” Martin asked. “Why was one called Dr. Strangelove and the other Il Papa?”
Yvonne shrugged. “No idea. I asked her that too, but she said only that the nicknames suited them. She didn’t want to give any explanation for them so no one could guess the men’s identities.”
“Too bad,” I said. “After all, that’s exactly what we want.”
Meanwhile the supply of coffee had gone dry again, and Yvonne gave such a big yawn that she almost fell out of her chair. They exchanged phone numbers, Martin paid, Yvonne decided to take a taxi home, and we cruised homeward in the sardine can. Martin crashed into bed and slept nine and half hours straight. I watched TV until I couldn’t stand what was on anymore, and then I moved to the kitchen—after all, I didn’t have any eyelids that I might mercifully have closed, and I couldn’t turn off the tube, either. A few days ago I was desperate because I couldn’t switch the thing on, and now it was the opposite. Life sure is strange, especially when you’re dead.
After a proper tea, a little bowl of sugar-free muesli, and a shower, the next morning Martin was feeling fit enough to continue the investigation. I felt beat and was grumpy because I had no idea how to proceed. Dr. Strangelove and Il Papa were phantoms (actually I had wanted to say they were as hard to detect as cum stains on a shower curtain, but I’ve been making serious strides toward improving my language here) who turned up in stories, or who killed people but left no evidence you could trace back to them, but Martin was of an entirely different view.
“We have one clue as to where we have to go to search for the two of them,” Martin said.
“Where?” I replied in a huff.
“Where you stole the car,” he said with satisfaction.
<
br /> “Great,” I said. “Then let’s stroll down to the Cologne Congress Centre that thousands of people go in and out of every day and ask whether Dr. Strangelove or Il Papa may have heard one of the numerous presentations or attended any seminars on that illustrious day.”
Martin could not be dissuaded by my bad mood.
“We’re going to find out what events were being held that day, and then we’ll decide what direction to go next.”
“And what direction would that be?” I asked.
“If there was a presentation for entrepreneurs, say, that might give us a clue about Dr. Strangelove,” Martin said. “We might even be able to find an employee who remembers an attendee with that unusual car.”
The idea wasn’t totally stupid, I had to admit. And the likelihood was not exactly remote that a pimply trainee banquet server would have found out about a rocket ship like our SLR being parked out in the lot. People always go and take a look at nice rides, and some pompous guy who works there will always know who it belongs to…Hmm, maybe we really were going to be able to find out the owner’s identity this way. The owner who presumably murdered me! I got hot and cold at the idea.
We ran back through all the details of the information we had about the two men in question: Dr. Strangelove had to be strange in some way, although we didn’t know if his name referred to how he looked or something else. He was an entrepreneur involved somehow in steel. He had several cars. He lived in Cologne, was a widower, and had two grown daughters, so he had to be at least forty, maybe even fifty or older.
Il Papa was married, stayed in Cologne only in a second apartment because he had business here. Maybe his nickname had to do with getting on in years. Maybe Semira christened him that just because he called her “my child” or something; we just didn’t know. Maybe he was Italian and an old fart and he called her “my child.” No idea. We’d have to keep our eyes and ears open. Vámonos.
On the way we were still thinking about what reason to give for asking about the events that had been held on the illustrious day, but after batting around a few ideas and not being able to agree on anything remotely believable, Martin ended the conversation with a wave of his hand.
Morgue Drawer Four Page 18