But ever since, that remark had kept going through my head, and it was the reason I spent a free afternoon watching two under-fifteen girls’ football teams rather clumsily kicking a ball about. I wanted to find out what it was like to stand with other fathers and mothers on the sidelines, a stale beer in my hand, watching kids stumbling over a football.
‘Hi, what are you doing here?’ asked Hanna when she spotted me after the game among the spectators, some fifteen of us in all. She was a tall, thin girl with a pierced tongue and blond hair irregularly cut with a beard-trimmer to a length of more or less a centimetre. She usually wore boy’s clothes, shabby trainers, cargo pants, baggy T-shirts in washed-out colours, and sometimes a scarf twisted thinly round her forehead. When she did that she looked like a jungle guerrilla fighter; I called her Rambo once, and she asked, ‘Who’s that?’ She had a delicate, pale, beautiful face that easily went unnoticed with the look she affected. For a while I thought she might be a lesbian, but of course I didn’t mention that to anyone. I could do without Deborah’s head-shaking and Tine’s indignant, ‘Oh, of course, just because a girl plays football!’
But then Hanna had her first boyfriend, a very popular character at her school, laid back, a skateboarder with a Leonardo DiCaprio look, and I saw that a girl who to me resembled an undernourished aid worker with a hair problem was obviously attractive to her own generation and in her own surroundings.
‘I was passing by, had some free time and wanted to see how you lot played.’ I gave her a thumbs-up. ‘Terrific!’
‘Oh, come on, don’t pretend. Do you have your car here?’
‘I do.’
‘Can you give me a lift?’
‘Sure. Where to?’
‘I’m ravenous – would you invite me to a meal?’
‘Okay, but in Sachsenhausen. I have to pick up my bike there.’
After she had showered and changed, we drove to Café Klaudia. There was a police car outside the door leading to Abakay’s apartment. We sat on the terrace, and Hanna ordered spaghetti with vegetable sauce and an apple-juice spritzer, and I had a cider. Hanna told me about the other girls on the team, their coach, her school, her plans to go on holiday with Leonardo DiCaprio, and I realised that we were attracting looks from the neighbouring tables – ah, Papa with his lively daughter! – that were not unwelcome to me. Genetics would have had to be in an unusually experimental mood to link my features with such a blonde, fair-skinned outcome as Hanna. However, we obviously gave off such a strong father-daughter aura that our very different outward appearance didn’t matter to those around us. Then I tried imagining that Hanna really was my daughter: a few of my genes, a few of my little habits, maybe a similar way of walking or smiling, her hair dyed and not a genuine blonde, and an Asiatic brownish complexion behind her fashionably pale makeup. But it didn’t work. I still saw Deborah’s sister’s daughter sitting there, and although I was fond of her I felt no impulse to take her hand with its bitten fingernails or to invite her to the cinema or anything like that. All the same: for the first time I was curious what such a feeling would be like.
When the waiter brought the bill, I asked if he happened to have noticed a shashlik skewer missing when he was clearing tables sometime shortly before noon.
‘Happens all the time – people are always going off with cutlery or cups or whatever else,’ replied the waiter, a young man with pearl earrings, a mop of frizzy hair and a dragon tattooed on his upper arm, who clearly couldn’t care less about items like missing cutlery.
‘That’s not what I asked.’
‘Are you from the police too?’
‘No,’ I said, but Hanna said, ‘Yes, he is.’ And to the waiter, who was at the most five or six years older than her, and whom she obviously liked, she added, ‘He’s a private detective – honest, he really is!’ And she grinned as if that was a totally crazy notion.
‘So you are from the police. They’ve been questioning us about that character upstairs all day already.’ He also made no secret of the fact that he didn’t like police officers.
I gave Hanna a look intended to tell her to keep her mouth shut. ‘As she said: a private detective, not a policeman. And I don’t know what character upstairs you mean. I’d simply like to know if you and the rest of the staff found there was a shashlik skewer missing at midday.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I found a skewer like that stuck in my car tire just now, I have a racist neighbour who often plays tricks like that on me, and I found out by chance that he was eating here at midday. I don’t want to see him in jail, I’d just finally like to pin something on him to get him to stop.’
‘Racist neighbour?’ repeated the waiter, looking at me more closely.
‘He’s Turkish,’ explained Hanna, and I wondered if a daughter of my own would say that in just the same way.
The waiter said, in a distinctly more friendly voice, ‘Okay, yes, there was a skewer missing at lunchtime, but I can’t imagine it was your racist neighbour who nicked it.’ He grinned a little uncertainly.
‘Why not? Can you tell that just by looking at someone?’
‘No, nonsense.’ He hesitated. ‘He was a nice guy, that’s all. Left a good tip too – if he’d wanted to sabotage your tire he wouldn’t have nicked the cutlery to do it from the restaurant, I’m sure of that.’
‘Can you describe him?’
The waiter looked at me for a moment. He doesn’t like policemen, I remembered.
‘Well, like I said, a nice guy. Age … sort of around fifty, I’m not so good at judging that kind of thing, comfortable clothes – like a professor or a nice teacher.’
‘Are there any?’ asked Hanna cheekily, and the waiter smiled at her. Then he went on, ‘Anyway, man, we have so many customers in the middle of the day I can’t notice everyone in detail, certainly not for a stupid fifty-cent skewer.’
‘May I ask you something?’ I took one of my business cards out of my jacket pocket. ‘If you see him again, will you call me at this number?’
Taking my card, he glanced at it suspiciously. ‘I thought this was about your neighbour? You can meet him any day, right? And like I said, the character I’m talking about wasn’t the sort to stick skewers in car tires.’
‘You could be wrong. We’ve already agreed that you can’t tell that kind of thing just by looking at people. Anyway, I’d like to confront my neighbour here in your café with the shashlik skewer that was sticking in my tyre. Of course he won’t admit anything, but maybe it would give him a bit of a fright, and he’d leave me alone for a while.’
Then I put my hand in my jacket pocket again and paid for our thirteen-euro-eighty bill with a fifty-euro note. ‘The change is for you so that you won’t forget to call me.’
Surprised, he took the note and looked at my business card again. ‘All this shit with your neighbour must really matter to you.’
‘Any idea how much a new car tire costs?’
He nodded. ‘Okay, I’ll call you. But like I said, I don’t think …’
‘Never mind that. Just call me if you see him.’
When we had risen from our table, Hanna said ‘Byeee’ to him with a shamelessly long stare, and the jaw of the waiter roughly six years her senior dropped for a good moment. Shameless, but entirely innocent. I thought of Marieke and Valerie de Chavannes, and suddenly I understood why you would want to have a calculating old bastard killed if he exploited that mixture of shamelessness and innocence in your own daughter.
As we loaded my bike into the car boot, I said, ‘Hey, suppose we ring your mama and ask if I can invite you to the cinema? There’s a new Leo DiCaprio film.’
‘Oh yes, I’d love that. My classes start late tomorrow morning.’
Chapter 8
Three days later Octavian called and told me that Abakay was denying everything. His friend Volker Rönnthaler had been visiting and he, Abakay, had left the apartment briefly to buy cigarettes. He returned to find Rönnthaler lying dead on the flo
or, and a man of Mediterranean appearance had attacked him without warning, kicked him and then tied him up and gagged him. He claimed to know nothing about the ‘Autumn Flowers’ file, saying someone must have planted it on him – someone who obviously wanted to destroy his life, probably the man who had attacked him and murdered his friend.
‘Our computer expert can only prove that someone was interfering with the ‘Autumn Flowers’ file on the day of Rönnthaler’s murder, and I assume that was you.’
‘How about the list of girls’ names that had the pseudonyms from ‘Autumn Flowers’ attached to it?’
‘Also saved on the desktop by itself. Was never sent or received. It really does look like someone planted the file and the list on him.’
‘And what about the girls themselves? Have you looked for them and found any of them?’
‘Without surnames? Only one. I sent the photos to child social services, and there was a reply about Lilly. Her father’s under observation: he’s a violent alcoholic, and Lilly has turned up at school with bruises a couple of times. The family lives in Praunheim. I’ve visited them. Lilly says she doesn’t know Abakay, never set eyes on him. However, I’ll go and see her again on her own. The old man was standing there the whole time, and the girl’s obviously afraid of him. Anyway, not a situation in which a fourteen-year-old would admit to meeting older men.’
‘In Praunheim. A Roma family, by any chance?’
‘No idea. Why?’
‘Just wondering. How about the heroin in the kitchen?’
‘Also planted on him, Abakay says.’
‘And who, in his opinion, is furious enough with him to stage such a show – murder, computer manipulation, drugs and the rest of it?’
‘Hmm, well, he has two theories. For a start, he thinks his photos of the wretched state of things in Frankfurt will scare off potential investors in the city and thus infuriate the owners of buildings and land.’
‘Come off it.’
‘Yes, well. For instance, he published a series about the Gutleut district in the Rundschau, and in fact there really were some complaints to the editorial offices. You know the area well enough – run-down and close to the city centre, and building owners there have been waiting for years for the complications to be resolved and for a Starbucks or Häagen-Dazs or some such outfit to buy a place and set the ball rolling.’
‘And kill someone on that account? Because of photos of beggars smoking. Have you recently taken to giving your suspects some grass to smoke while you interrogate them? What’s the second theory?’
‘That it’s to do with his uncle.’
‘The religious guy?’
‘You know him?’
‘I heard that he has an uncle who preaches in a mosque, that’s all.’
‘Hmm-hmm, Sheikh Hakim. Pretends to be crazy with talk of the holy war and so on, but as far as we know that’s just for show and to take in idiots. Or maybe he does believe it, but he certainly believes in making money too. We suspect him of being big in the heroin trade, but we’ve never been able to prove anything. Abakay says he hasn’t had anything to do with his uncle for a long time. But one of the phone calls he made from remand prison was to Sheikh Hakim’s secretary.’
‘What did he want the secretary to do?’
‘Get him a lawyer.’
‘And why would anyone kill Rönnthaler on account of Sheikh Hakim?’
‘Abakay thinks it’s a message: See what we could do to your nephew. This time we just killed the first guy we came across in his apartment and gave your nephew a good kicking in the balls, but next time … well, something along those lines. They couldn’t get at Hakim himself. He always has bodyguards with him, his house is a fortress with garden walls two metres high, barred windows, CCTV cameras and God knows what else.’
‘Where does he live?’
‘In Praunheim.’
‘Praunheim again. Maybe the sheikh is looking for little girls.’
‘One little girl,’ Octavian corrected me, ‘and she lives at the other end of the district.’
‘Great. And who, in Abakay’s opinion, hates Hakim enough to kill someone who has nothing to do with any of it and beat up his nephew, just to get to him?’
‘Abakay says some religious group, but if he knows anything at all about his uncle then he’s really thinking that competitors in the drug trade are behind it.’
‘He doesn’t think so, Octavian. I hope you realise, that’s all nonsense. There was a fight between Rönnthaler and Abakay, Rönnthaler had the knife and Abakay had something thin and pointed that he used to kill him with. Your people just have to find that weapon. He probably threw it out of the window or into the stairwell just before I came into the apartment.’
‘Hmm-hmm.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘We’ve searched every square centimetre of the apartment, the stairwell and the inner courtyard.’ Octavian’s tone was reserved. ‘If there’d been a weapon anywhere there we’d have found it.’
‘Maybe a dog snapped it up as a lolly. There was blood on it, after all.’
‘Yes,’ said Octavian. ‘Or Abakay pushed it up his ass and that’s why he’s always shifting back and forth in his chair so cheerfully. Listen, Kemal, there are really only two possibilities. Either you’re a suspect – and I can tell you that Abakay describes your outward appearance pretty well, and if we can find a clue to the identity of your client and establish a connection with her … I’m sure you’d never do a thing like that, but it’s not out of the question that some colleague of mine might hit on the idea that you agreed to do some dirty work for the girl’s parents.’
‘What?’
‘As you know, I have two daughters, aged twelve and fourteen. If I imagine anyone sending them out on the streets – I’d want to kill him myself. Maybe you came across Rönnthaler first, and then you felt a bit queasy because killing him had been too much for you, so you just beat up Abakay. As I said, I’m sure you’d never do a thing like that, but –’
He broke off. In my experience, ‘I’m sure you’d never …’ but meant ‘I’m surely not sure that you’d never – and so I won’t lift even a finger to help you.’
Interesting to learn within the space of a few days that no fewer than two people believed me capable of a contract killing.
‘And the second possibility?’
‘You’ll be our witness. But first, I can’t promise to keep your client out of it – if we find her she’ll have a part to play in the trial, and to be honest with you I have some idea of her identity already. There were a photo and a business card among Abakay’s papers: Valerie de Chavannes, Zeppelinallee – a big catch for someone like Abakay.’
‘Never heard the name.’
‘Well, that doesn’t matter for now. Second, I have to warn you, if there’s anything wrong with your story – for instance our doctor says that the cuts to Abakay’s chest can hardly have been the result of a fight, and the knife wasn’t lying in Rönnthaler’s hand the right way for that – well, anyway, I hope that as an official witness you will give evidence that to some extent bears out the facts and the clues. In addition, and between you and me: if Sheikh Hakim has any kind of interest in his nephew, and in getting him out of jail before too long – I’m sure he knows people who can make life difficult for a main witness for the prosecution.’
An uncomfortable idea suddenly occurred to me. ‘Listen, Octavian, you really don’t want me as a witness, am I right?’
‘I don’t want a witness whose story is going to collapse in the course of the investigations or the trial. And then of course there’s the fact’ – he breathed in audibly – ‘that people know we know each other, and that it will not do my career any good if an acquaintance of mine tries to lead the police astray.’
‘But letting Abakay lead you astray is okay for your career?’
‘Abakay is not an acquaintance of mine.’
‘Well, Octavian, I’m sorry if it strikes you that I may have pu
t you in an uncomfortable position, but …’
I was furious, and my sarcastic tone was childish. On the other hand, Octavian sounded very much as if Abakay had a chance of getting away with his version of events. Maybe I’d overdone my stage-setting in Abakay’s apartment – too many inconsistencies, and in the end it would be my fault if they had to let Abakay go free. Whether he got two years or five years didn’t matter so much to me, but I felt it would be scandalous for him to get off scot-free. So I said, without thinking any more of it, ‘I’ll volunteer to be a witness. And with the story you already know. That’s what I saw. I’m not a doctor, how would I know whether Abakay’s cuts came from a fight?’
‘Abakay claims,’ replied Octavian, ‘that the man who attacked him also gave him those cuts.’
‘I didn’t attack him, I took him by surprise as he was bending over a man who had just been murdered, and then – doing the duty of any responsible citizen strong enough for it – I overpowered him and tied him up so that the police would have a chance of clearing up a crime. Because I thought that was what the police were for …’
Brother Kemal Page 8