“No.”
I raised the Parabellum above the edge of the table.
“Let’s go next door. Maybe we can find one there.”
“What the hell do you want a newspaper for?”
“I want to know how my team did in the game. Let’s go.”
Reluctantly she walked across the kitchen and led the way through the door and across the hall into the other room. Mr. Moustache was still slumbering.
Hanna Hecht’s office consisted of a bed, two metres by two metres, with a shiny sky-blue counterpane, a wardrobe, and many small chests of drawers. A stack of dog-eared porno novels lay on a white plastic table. I picked one up and looked at it.
“So the johns can use these like catalogues, like, and pick their favourite exercise?”
“The johns can go jack off too.”
I put the book back on the table.
“All right, if you have any newspapers here, hand them to me.”
“I don’t have any”
I opened the wardrobe door and started throwing her things across the room. Hanna Hecht turned white. Her eyes gleamed. She looked like a cat, ready to pounce.
Eventually I pulled out the last stocking, and the wardrobe was empty. The floor looked like a sale table in a department store.
“Nothing there, eh?”
Hanna Hecht didn’t say anything. I started shaking out the drawers of the chests. Lipsticks, hairpins, tampons, letters, sewing kits, all kinds of things spilled out of them. None of any interest to me.
Those cut-up newspapers probably weren’t here. But maybe something else was. Something that would give me a clue. I did not believe that Hanna Hecht knew none of the people Ahmed Hamul dealt with, and I was hoping to find something to prove me right.
The contents of one drawer after another spread out on the claret-coloured carpet. Then I took a look at a bundle of letters, checked the postmarks. None of them were recent, and most had been mailed from Ommersbach, a small town, probably Hanna Hecht’s birthplace. Relics of a time when she had still discussed skin problems with the friends of her youth.
I felt like a desecrator of graves, and put the letters aside.
“Still nothing.”
She opened her mouth and said, very calmly and evenly, “If I ever get a chance to cut your dick off, I swear I’ll do it.” I believed her.
There was some noise in the kitchen. I took the Parabellum and Hanna Hecht and we went back to the waiter. I bonked him on the head again. We returned to the bedroom. She looked as if she didn’t give a damn however many times I knocked her friend out.
I grabbed the sky-blue counterpane and added it to the stuff on the floor. She didn’t crack, just stood there like a silent iron maiden. Since I couldn’t tear the walls down, I proceeded to the wastebasket. Some torn paper stuck out of it. I had noticed that before.
I turned it upside down. Cigarette butts, condoms, an empty Coke can, a magazine with summer fashions, little bunches of hair, and in the middle of it all, a pile of torn newspapers. Most of them showed signs of having been attacked with scissors. I blew the ashes off them and got back to my feet.
“See here, young lady. These must have slipped your mind.”
She had decided to keep her mouth shut for the rest of the day.
I spread the papers on the stripped bed and took out my notepad and a ballpoint pen. It wasn’t easy, holding my shooting iron in one hand, and writing with the other. Many of the letters had been cut out carelessly, and I had to write down several possibilities. It took me almost half an hour to copy all the missing letters onto my pad. The result looked like this:
KOONERERUROTETALONANDUAILM
IMUDYHSOLIREAYOTGLLARFMFSDER
There was no way I could figure that out on the spot, but it was clear that the note addressed to me had not been composed of these particular letters. I folded the papers and stuck them in my coat pocket.
“Sister—I’m sure you do know who Ahmed’s supplier was. And I think you’re planning to cash in on that knowledge. A word to the wise: you might end up the way Ahmed did.”
Her eyelids drooped wearily. “Shut up, you jackoff. I haven’t got the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”
“That’s all right. Do what you want. You don’t have much to lose.”
It was no use. I couldn’t get through her defenses.
“The recipient of your glue job is bound to show up. Here, I’ll leave my number. You might need some help.”
I wrote my phone number on the wallpaper above her bed. That way she wouldn’t immediately tear it up.
“Don’t waste your time.”
“Maybe it is a waste of time. Most likely I’ll be wasting more time when I leave here. What I should do is stay and wait until you’re ready to talk.”
“Do what you want, jackoff. I don’t give a shit.”
“I’ll find out some other way. When you’re dead, at the latest. Blackmailing murderers is too big a deal for a little whore and her pimp, who isn’t Arnold Schwarzenegger, exactly.”
I checked my watch. A few minutes to six. Time to call Löff.
“When it begins to dawn on you that you’re in it way over your head, let me know. And that’s the last thing I’m telling you.”
I pocketed the Parabellum and walked past her to the apartment door. I glanced into the kitchen. The waiter was still out.
“My regards to your friend, when he wakes up. See you later.”
I closed the door slowly. Hanna Hecht had nothing further to say.
6
“Promptness is an indispensable prerequisite for successful work in the field of criminal investigation. I hope you don’t mind my telling you that.”
I felt like hanging up on him.
“Listen, Mr. Löff, I haven’t been wasting my time. I’ll explain later. Please tell me what you found out at headquarters. I need to know.”
“I thought you were coming back here so we could go over it together.”
“I can’t do that now. Let’s do it tomorrow.”
“In this profession, it is important to familiarize oneself thoroughly with all the facts in a case. Careless haste can be damaging, and may lead to rash conclusions.”
“True, true, Mr. Löff. Please, could you tell me now what it says in those files?”
He was silent for a moment. I began to worry that he might insist on my coming to his house.
“Just a minute.”
He took his time. I was sure that those files lay right next to his phone. An excited guy with a small leather suitcase knocked on the door of the phone booth and waved his arm. He seemed to think that I had used up my share of time. Löff had not come back. I heaped silent maledictions on his head.
The guy pushed the door open.
“You think you own that phone?”
“Beat it.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I beg your pardon?”
Quite a chorus, Löff and this guy.
“Mr. Löff? I’m sorry, I’m having a little problem here.”
I put my hand over the receiver.
“Just go find another booth! There’s plenty of them.”
The man slammed the door shut and shook his fist.
“You sure took your time.”
“Mr. Kayankaya, I have other obligations besides doing your work for you.” I didn’t believe that for one minute.
“All right, then. What do the files say?”
“I could only find records of the accidents. The Narcotics Squad does not have your two candidates on its books.”
“Not even their names? Who did you speak to? Was it that guy in specs with a perennial hangover?”
“It was Georg Hosch. If that’s who you have in mind.”
“Probably so. What does it say about the accidents?”
“The first accident occurred on the nineteenth of February, nineteen seventy-nine, at the intersection of Niddastrasse and Ludwigstrasse. The parties involved were Vasif Ergün a
nd a certain Albert Schönbaum.”
“What’s his address?”
“Hold your horses! At that time Albert Schönbaum’s address was Schumannstrasse twenty-three, his telephone number seventy-one fifty-eight forty. The accident re—”
“Hang on a second, I have to write that down.”
I squeezed the receiver between my ear and shoulder and jotted down numbers on my pad. The receiver smelled of sweaty hands.
“All right, onward.”
“The accident report is rather sketchy. It concludes that Albert Schönbaum caused the accident by driving a defective vehicle at excessive speed. The file does not go into any further detail.”
“Oh, so it really says it was the other guy’s fault? That’s outrageous. Who reported the accident?”
Löff paused. I could hear pages being turned.
“Listen carefully. Here goes.”
The old fellow seemed to be dramatizing things.
“Goes what?”
“The officers on the scene were Harry Eiler and Georg Hosch. Georg Hosch wrote the report, and Roland Futt was the officer in charge at the precinct. He signed the thing.”
I squeezed the receiver against my ear.
“Oh … really …”
“Yes, siree … It’s up to you to decide if that’s just coincidence or if you want to make something of it. Personally, I don’t believe that it has any bearing on the murder you’re investigating. I know you don’t like Futt, but you mustn’t jump to rash conclusions. It might not be healthy. In the meantime, Futt has become a respected superintendent.”
At the moment I had no conclusions whatsoever, rash or otherwise.
“Right … right. What is there on the second accident?”
“Let me warn you once more: let’s have no charges of the Light Brigade here. Sometimes you get these wild coincidences.”
Another pause.
“But the plot does thicken. You already know the date of the second accident. It occurred on highway B-14 between Frankfurt and Kronberg, not far from Kronberg, near kilometre marker number thirty-six. According to the report, Vasif Ergün struck a concrete pillar and rolled his car over. The car exploded and ended up in a ditch. Medical assistance arrived too late.”
“You don’t say. Who wrote that report?”
“At the scene were Erwin Schöller and Harry Eiler. Harry Eiler wrote the report.”
“A lot of coincidences, wouldn’t you say?”
“Feel free to think what you want, Mr. Kayankaya. But be careful.”
“Who is Erwin Schöller?”
“I knew you’d want to know that. Until nineteen eighty-one, Erwin Schöller was a patrolman on the beat in Frankfurt. That year he asked for a transfer to Pfungstadt.”
“His address?”
“Pfungstadt, Ladenstrasse three, phone ninety-five ten thirty-three.”
I wrote that down. Thoughts buzzed back and forth in my brain.
Until now, I really hadn’t known how to go on with the case. Now I didn’t know where to begin.
“Do you know if those four—Futt, Eiler, Schöller, and Hosch—had anything to do with each other at an earlier date?”
“In nineteen seventy-five, Futt was Harry Eiler’s and Georg Hosch’s instructor. Futt transferred to the Narcotics Squad, and a little later he secured Hosch an appointment as his permanent assistant.”
“Curiouser and curiouser. Mere coincidence, eh? Those three become inseparable. Our police force isn’t that small—they didn’t have to run into each other all the time. With due respect to the quirks of fate, Mr. Löff—”
“I know what you’re trying to say, Mr. Kayankaya. But let me tell you something, as an experienced policeman: if there had been anything fishy about it, it would have come to light long ago. Not that the police force doesn’t have its rotten eggs, but they don’t last that long. Believe me, I know that outfit better than you do.”
I scanned my notes. Futt’s career had been exemplary.
“For that first accident, Futt is cited as the senior officer in charge at the precinct. But he was a member of the Narcotics Squad. What was he doing at the precinct?”
Löff seemed to be trying to find another synonym for coincidence. He couldn’t come up with one.
“I have no idea. Maybe he was just visiting.”
“Sure. Maybe he was taking a walk around the railroad station and wanted to use the john at the precinct. And after he had taken a leak, everybody wanted him to sign their reports. I’m sorry, Mr. Löff, but I always thought the police were sticklers for order and protocol.”
“Well, by seniority Futt was entitled to sign the report.”
“That’s good to hear.”
I realized that Löff really couldn’t help me any further. I had to make some more phone calls. He made mildly offended noises and seemed reluctant to end our conversation. We made a date for the next day. That pacified him, and I hung up.
7
As I climbed the stairs to my office, I heard the phone ring. I ran the last few steps, unlocked the door in a hurry, and grabbed the phone. “Kayankaya Investigations.”
He or she hung up. I listened to the crackle on the line for a moment.
It was a hot day, and the office was warm and smelly. I pulled up the blind, opened the window, and sat down at my desk with a cold bottle of beer. I took a long pull at it and thought about Susanne Bönisch, who was presently rubbing the crotches of paying gentlemen.
The bottle didn’t last long, and I opened another one. I was just about to tell myself that the day had been successful enough and that I could now treat myself to an evening in front of the television set when the telephone rang again. This time the caller didn’t hang up. It was Ilter Hamul.
She wanted to know if her brother was with me.
“No, he isn’t here. Why do you ask?” “He came home from work at six o’clock, as usual, but as soon as he found out that you had talked with my mother this morning, he left again—without saying a word.”
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Hamul. Maybe he just went out for a beer. In any case, he isn’t here. No reason for him to be here anyway.”
I considered whether I should talk to Ilter Hamul about Ahmed’s drug dealing and about her junkie sister. Could she tell me something I didn’t know already? I didn’t think so. I was also afraid to be the first one to tell her the bad news.
“How are things otherwise? Are you doing all right?”
“Yes, we’re all right … Except that I got this bill, for Ahmed, and I don’t really know what to do with it.”
“What kind of a bill?”
“It’s a reminder … It’s about a house. But it doesn’t seem right. We weren’t buying a house. I can’t figure it out.”
“Who sent you that bill?”
“It’s from Lüneburg. But it isn’t really a bill, it’s more like a letter. The man says he wants to remind Ahmed about the second installment on the house. I can’t understand it.”
“Mrs. Hamul—I’ll see you tomorrow, and we can take a look at that letter together. All right? Until then, just put it away, and don’t worry.”
“I’ll try not to.”
We said goodbye. I drank and smoked, blew rings into the air, let my thoughts roam. The beer made me feel drowsy. I put my feet up on the desk and slid into a comfortable position. I soaked up the rest of the beer like a dry sponge. Then I let the bottle roll onto the floor and closed my eyes. I was half-drunk and tired. The room was pleasantly warm.
Just as darkness was slowly settling over my brain, the doorbell rang.
“Shit.”
I struggled to my feet, shuffled to the door, opened it. At first I just stared at the muzzle with glazed eyes. Then I came awake, fast. In front of me stood two monsters. Both of them were wearing overalls and sturdy paratrooper boots. Their heads were covered with rubber face masks and had gas masks strapped on over those. One of them was aiming a medium sized gas cannon at my forehead, the other had his finger on the
trigger of a smaller pistol. They stood there and did not say anything.
Slowly I raised my arms and took a step back into my office. Sweat burst out of my pores. My knees were knocking. I opened my mouth, but found that I was unable to make a sound.
The two just stood there, motionless.
I noticed that my muscles had begun to cramp and twitch. We stood there for about a minute. Then the one with the gas grenade launcher made a move.
He took three short steps in my direction and waved the black barrel at me, indicating that I should keep going. Cautiously, not risking a single suspicious move, I backed into the farthest corner. While he kept the barrel pointing at me, his companion closed the door and the window and pulled the blind down. Now we stood in semi-darkness.
I felt like shouting, but knew there was no one else left in the building. I considered what I might ask these two, but couldn’t think of anything. They would never tell me who they were, and I’d find out soon enough what it was they wanted. I kept my mouth shut.
If the one with the cannon hadn’t kept his eyes on me every second, I might have tried something foolish. After the door and window had been closed, the other one came and patted me down. I had left the Parabellum in the car. It wouldn’t have been any use anyway.
“We warned you!”
Coming through the gas mask, his voice sounded metallic.
“We told you to stay out of this!”
“Who is ‘we’?” I had recovered my voice.
“Why don’t you think about it?”
He described a circle with the muzzle of the gun, right in front of my face. I couldn’t see his face, but assumed that he was grinning. Then he pointed the barrel into the air and pulled the trigger.
There was a loud report and a shower of sparks flew across the room. The gas grenade burst and spread a dense cloud of smoke. Abrasive fumes penetrated into the farthest corners of the room. I pulled out the hem of my shirt and pressed it against my nose, closed my eyes tight, but it was no use. The concentration of tear gas was too powerful for my tiny office. Nothing short of a gas mask could have protected me.
Fluids poured out of my eyes, mouth, and nose, and that wasn’t the half of it. I threw myself on the floor, beat the linoleum with my fists, tore my shirt and covered my face with it. All to no avail. I tried to get up, fell down again immediately, tried once more, and banged my elbow on the backrest of my chair. That hurt, but not a fraction as much as that damn gas was hurting my head. I banged my head against the side of the desk, but the burning fumes wouldn’t go away. I screamed, roared, waved my arms. I was blinded, my eyes felt as if they had been dipped in acid.
Happy Birthday, Turk! Page 9