by Alex Howard
‘It’s a cryosauna, like a walk-in deep freeze. You go in there and stand around at minus eighty or whatever. It’s supposed to be good for you.’ He snorted. ‘Complete rubbish. I freely admit I haven’t practised medicine for a while but I can’t see that working.’
Enver shuddered. He had had enough experience of walk-in deep freezes in restaurants. He hated being inside them. He hated the cold, he was claustrophobic. He looked at the LED display on a panel. It was currently minus forty. There was a keypad to open the door.
‘Some woman employee at a wellness centre in the USA got locked in one of these a while ago, died in about twenty minutes,’ said Kellner. ‘Please don’t ring reception for the combination. We don’t want you dead as well!’
‘I won’t,’ promised Enver. There was a sofa by the wall, it looked so inviting. ‘I’ll just sleep on that.’
Kellner nodded. ‘See you at half six.’
Enver watched as the fat man padded away up the stairs. There was something innately creepy about him, he thought. At least Schneider wouldn’t need to worry about his right-hand man jockeying for power. Nobody would vote for Kellner.
Enver kicked his shoes off and collapsed on the sofa. He was asleep in about two minutes.
38
‘Hello, Melinda,’ said Marcus Hinds.
The borrowed office was simple: window, blinds, desk, two chairs and a corkboard on the wall next to a scuffed, gun-metal grey filing cabinet that had seen better days.
Hinds looked good, she thought. Less a journalist, more an edgy male model, the kind who is filmed in black and white, a romantic bad boy. He had the looks, he had the cheekbones. Even the stress on his face looked a little like designer stubble, artfully applied. He was like an actor playing ‘man on the run’. It was a look that was fine for a drunken one-night stand, but not for a murder suspect. Huss looked at him coldly.
‘DI Huss.’ Her voice was flat, cold, official.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. This time he sounded like he genuinely meant it.
‘So,’ Huss said, ‘you’ve got some explaining to do.’ She took out her notebook and a pen.
‘On the record?’ asked Hinds.
‘Not really,’ said Huss. ‘This isn’t a statement, but I want to make sure I’ve got your version of events straight.’ She looked him in the eye. Close-up he didn’t look so good, he looked unwell, tired, gaunt, twitchy.
‘You might as well come back with me, you’re going to have to turn yourself in at some stage,’ she went on. ‘It’s absolutely pointless otherwise. How long do you think that you can hide? What are you going to do, relocate to Margate and work in a burger van? Become a rent boy in Mykonos? Get real, Marcus.’
‘I know that.’ His voice was impatient. ‘But I want to make sure that certain people are nicked first, and then at least there’s a chance I’ll be protected in prison so I can testify against them. If, DI Huss, I go into remand, as I will with two murder charges hanging over me—’
‘One murder charge; the CPS aren’t sure about Elsa.’
‘Whatever, I’ll have Al-Akhdaar after me, and the anarchists, not just Eleuthera but any of their affiliates. I must say I am more concerned, though, with the Muslims. So, just for now, I think I’ll give jail a miss.’ He paused. ‘Tempting as your offer is.’
Huss shrugged. ‘Your choice. Begin at the beginning.’
It didn’t take long.
It had all started with an article he had written for a national daily on the dark web, that part of the internet dedicated to illegality. It had been about the Catalan anarchist hacking community in Calafou in Catalonia in Spain. Then a chance remark overheard in a bar in Las Ramblas in Barcelona had put him on the path of Eleuthera.
‘It was exciting stuff, DI Huss. Remember too that these are people who are dedicated to bringing civilization as we know it down. And they have links with some very big tech companies who don’t believe they have any obligation to pay tax. In fact, some of them are actively pursuing the idea of creating floating tax havens. I don’t need to remind you of how much tax Facebook paid in the UK last year, do I? About the same as you.’
He met old hippies, cyber-punks, disaffected left-wingers. A leaflet given to him in a hipster bar in Shoreditch led to a squat collective in Bristol.
Anyway. A whisper, a rumour in a pub about Eleuthera linking up with Class War and other anarchist groups, united by a love of violence and incentivized by the success of IS.
‘They figure if they kill people too, and film it and post it on social media, they’ll be heroes to the young, the idealistic and the dispossessed. The greater the violence, the greater the appeal. It’s working for them on the continent, it’s baby steps here. But all they need are some high attention killings to raise their media profiles; a few thousand people will soon favourite their death porn or like their beheadings.’
Huss nodded, she remembered the sinister Dr Smithfield making the same point.
‘So they’re in bed with Al-Akhdaar. The Muslims think an Islamic state will fill the void. Eleuthera just want to destroy, smash it all up. Actually, now I come to think of it, maybe they’re worse than the Muslims, at least they’re idealistic.’
Hinds shook his head. He went nervously to the window, peered out, and then his eyes flickered up and down, as if their agents might have followed him to the York Hall. He drew the blind.
‘“My enemy’s enemy is my friend.” That’s the reason they’re in bed together. They both hate liberal democracy, they both hate capitalism, they both want to destroy. They would like to turn Britain into Syria, smoking ruins with themselves as warlords. Build mounds of skulls of the heads of their enemies.’
Hinds sighed and pushed his hand through his long black hair.
‘I have evidence, recordings of Eleuthera with figures influential in major political parties, meetings with Al-Akhdaar. They have contacts in the police so I have to be careful. A selection of it was on that memory stick that I left you.’
Evan Collins, thought Huss, mournfully. Was it really unreadable or had Evan Collins rendered it so? It was ironic, given that computers were so omnipresent, how few people, herself included, really knew how they worked.
He carried on, Huss mechanically taking detailed notes. It all sounded very plausible, that was for sure.
Then she thought of Hanlon, her sceptical face. She decided to play devil’s advocate.
‘All of this is just unsubstantiated, though. What you are facing, Marcus, is a bit more concrete than speculation.’
Hinds shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Huss leaned forward over the desk in an intimidating way.
‘You say you were framed. Evidence says your prints on the murder weapon. You say you dropped it in a skip and they must have fished it out and placed it next to the body. Well, if they did, no one saw them do it.’
Did Elsa see them do just that? she wondered. Was that why they killed the old woman rather than simply take Hinds’s hard drive away? She paused and looked hard at Hinds, his eyes downcast, and continued.
‘You say someone tried to kill you. A witness says you attacked them on the stairs. You say that there’s a big anarchist conspiracy. Your girlfriend says you’re violent and paranoid. Oh, and she says that she’s nothing to do with Eleuthera; an anarchist, yes, a terrorist, no.’
She folded her arms intimidatingly on the table and looked hard at Hinds, then she continued, ‘You are one of the last people, maybe the last person, to see a murdered woman whom you had specifically gone to visit. Is there anything else? Oh yes, silly me, running away from a crime scene, Marcus. A man who has evaded the police and refuses to hand himself in.’
‘I’ve explained all that,’ protested Hinds.
Huss shook her head. ‘No, no you haven’t. And,’ she continued, ‘there’s more. You have a family with connections to organized crime. In fact, not only that, you’re being sheltered by organized crime. Maybe one or two of these could be explained as unfortunate coincid
ences, but, Marcus, you’re doing quite a good job of building up a fairly watertight case against yourself.’
‘What do you expect me to do?’ His voice was sulky, a petulant child.
Huss stood up.
‘I don’t expect anything.’ She was tired of being jerked around by people. A wave of anger welled up inside her. ‘What you will do is provide this proof you say you’ve got, then I can have something tangible to show my boss who’s firmly convinced of your guilt, a feeling I can thoroughly understand, and you’ll hand yourself in.’
She stood up and Hinds looked at her miserably.
‘If you don’t,’ she buttoned her coat up, ‘I’ll turn up at Dave Anderson’s properties with warrants for your arrest. All of them. I’m sure Mr Anderson has nothing whatsoever to hide and will be just thrilled to know it’s thanks to you that he’s got the Old Bill wandering around his gaffs, probably taking selfies of themselves. He’s famously tolerant, I believe.’
She walked to the door and turned round.
‘Three days.’
Then she stalked out of the office and childishly slammed the door behind her.
My God, she thought, I’m getting like Hanlon.
39
‘Ladies and gentlemen, we are now starting our descent to Stuttgart airport.’
The BA plane touched down quietly and efficiently in the state capital and Hanlon, carrying only her handbag, was quickly through passport control and immigration. She strode down to the S-Bahn and then she was on her way to a morning meeting that she felt sure would clarify exactly what was happening with Schneider.
Ever since she had taken the phone from the anarchist thug, her view of Eleuthera’s role in things had changed. There had been information held in its memory that simply hadn’t added up to the narrative as she had perceived it up until now.
She had always felt that there was something missing from the bigger picture and now she was tantalizingly close to putting her finger on it.
This had all started in Germany. She felt sure that the key to it all lay in Germany.
In particular it led her to query Marcus Hinds and his claims of what had been happening. She had also checked again with Forensics. Whilst it was true that Jamie Kettering, the anarchist who had died on the stairs, had died because of a loss of blood, the injuries to his head that he had suffered prior to that would probably have killed him anyway.
The idea that Hinds had been some innocent bystander seemed increasingly unlikely. Hinds was a killer whichever way you looked at it.
She got out at the main station in the centre of the city. The view from the street outside was that of a gigantic building site, traffic and a plethora of Mercedes-Benz stars on top of buildings. Stuttgart is Mercedes-Benz’s home and also that of LBBW, the gigantic investment bank, whose logo seemed equally ubiquitous.
Hanlon took a cab to her appointment with Meyer, who had been suggested to her as the best source of information for the Gunther Hart investigation. As the car drove her through the prosperous Stuttgart streets she caught the occasional glimpse of Schneider wearing a sober suit and concerned expression on posters for his Neu S party. The taxi driver spoke good English and she asked him what Was zu viel ist. Ist zu viel – which was the slogan on the poster – meant.
‘Enough is enough,’ he said.
I can go along with that, she thought.
The taxi pulled up outside a formidable-looking building. You could have almost guessed its function. Hanlon walked up to the front desk.
‘Landeskriminalamt Department, Claudia Meyer,’ said Hanlon to the handsome man on reception in the blue uniform as efficient-looking police streamed past.
Five minutes later Hanlon was sitting with Meyer in a pleasant open-plan office, more or less identical to the ones she was used to, except the ambient background noise was in German and she noticed that the keyboards attached to the monitors were subtly differently configured and had symbols such as the double ‘s’, ß, and umlauts, that didn’t feature in English.
Meyer looked at her colleague who she guessed slightly outranked her rank of Kriminalkommissar, not that it mattered. Her eyes took in Hanlon’s strong face, her easy, graceful, athletic build.
She was impressed with what she saw.
‘So how can I help?’ Her English was impeccable.
‘Wolf Schneider,’ said Hanlon. ‘Wolf Schneider. Christiane Hübler, Frank Muller.’
‘Ja, stimmt.’ Meyer had thought that would be the case. Over coffee, she explained Schneider’s rise from poster boy of AfD, the largest right-wing party, to heading his own breakaway movement which was challenging his former right-wing party for supremacy in the polls.
‘AfD’s vote, the anti-Muslim vote, had doubled from four prozent, sorry, per cent, to eight per cent but Schneider’s party is polling at ten to twelve in some places, maybe more. He’s the coming man.’ She clicked on her PC and Hanlon was looking at Wolf Schneider. There was a slogan underneath.
‘Germany needs a real man,’ translated Meyer.
‘What about Hübler? Are they an item?’ Hanlon couldn’t think of a reason why it mattered but still, somehow, she felt it did.
Meyer shrugged. ‘Christiane Hübler had a record for shoplifting. She claims, claimed, it was a Turkish shopkeeper who had framed her, she hates Turks.’ She clicked away at the keyboard, found what she was looking for. ‘Yes, here we are: “Filthy, kebab-munching rapists”, she described them to Bild.’
Unless of course they were good-looking and in her bed.
‘Well,’ said Hanlon, ‘that’s fairly clear.’
‘It was rumoured she was a member of a swingers’ club here in Stuttgart,’ said Meyer.
‘So for her to look for a one-night stand wouldn’t be unusual?’ Hanlon asked.
‘I wouldn’t have thought so,’ said Meyer. ‘How could it be? Not if you’re a member of a sex club.’
‘And how about in a relationship with Schneider?’
Meyer scratched her head; a heavily built officer brought them more coffee. He was bald and tough-looking. ‘Danke schön, Lucas. Oh, Lucas, hier ist DCI Hanlon, Metropolitan Police.’
‘Angenehm!’ said Lucas gruffly and shook a hairy, leathery hand with Hanlon. He smiled at her and she smiled back with genuine warmth. He was like a German version of Enver. Lucas put the coffee down and moved away. That was another Enver trait – he never felt the need to offer his opinion of what was happening or try and add his presence to encroach on what she was up to. The same could not be said of many of her male colleagues.
‘In a relationship with Schneider?’ mused Meyer. ‘I doubt it. Even if he was, he wouldn’t let on. He’s a big female following and he’s a genius at stage-managing things. He’s like a boy band member – girls want them to be single so they can dream that they have a chance.’
‘Would Hübler’s sex life be a problem politically?’ asked Hanlon.
Meyer considered the question. ‘If she were involved with ethnic minorities, refugees, say, then yes, it would surely be a problem. It would be a gift to Schneider’s enemies.’
Hanlon nodded and asked, ‘Muller?’
‘A cheap, violent thug. I’m sure you’ve got lots of them. He’s got a record, violent this, violent that. Pretty much what you’d expect, really.’
‘Good, I thought so. Now, Al-Akhdaar?’
She cut Meyer short after a couple of minutes; it was plain she had little to add on the shadowy Islamic death cult. A German ISIS. As sinister and as mundane as that.
‘Of course,’ said Meyer, ‘they made their name here with the murder of Gunther Hart.’
She showed Hanlon a photo of Hart. She caught her breath; Hart was stunning. He had a mop of curly hair and the same kind of innocent–depraved face as Robert Mapplethorpe. The Fallen Angel look. He was lying half-naked on a chaise longue, wearing a pair of ripped, skinny jeans. The outline of his cock and balls was high definition.
‘I would,’ said Claudia Meyer, catching
Hanlon’s eye, ‘wouldn’t you? Even Lucas said if he was a bit pissed he might.’ She sighed. ‘And he did good works, made lots of money in real estate development. He was incredibly popular round here, one of those businessmen who are actually cool, which is such a rarity. His funeral brought Heidelberg to a standstill. After that killing and the YouTube video, Schneider’s Neu Schicksal shot up in popularity.’
‘He was on the same hit list as Schneider?’
Meyer nodded. ‘Yes, the Rhein-Neckar Enemies of Islam.’
‘That’s a very specific geographical area.’ Not just the Enemies of Islam, but the equivalent of the Thames Valley Enemies of Islam. Very German, Hanlon thought, and it seemed Meyer agreed with her.
‘Al-Akhdaar are a German terrorismus organization. Of course they’d be specific, Germans are. It’s a national trait. This is Stuttgart. Gottlieb Daimler and Robert Bosch weren’t vague.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Hanlon.
‘Any more questions?’ asked Meyer.
‘Just one.’ Hanlon took her tablet out of her bag. It was really for this that she had come all the way here.
They were almost an afterthought in the photographs section of the phone she had taken, but it was a folder that its owner had seen fit to keep locked, although not safe from Albert Slater’s prying fingers.
The fact that they had been so carefully hidden had aroused her attention in the first place.
Three photographs, all colour. The images clear, startling, dreamlike.
The first one a door, darkness, at night, an alley in a city, off a wet street, the black tarmac slick with rain. Puddles reflecting the crimson light. A red and white neon sign over the door. The glare of the neon made all but two of the letters illegible. The last letters were... ub.
Whatever kind of club it was, it certainly wasn’t classy or the kind of place you would take your mother.
The second, the same as above except shot at a slight angle to take in the bonnet and number plate of a black Mercedes E Class containing the letter S, denoting Stuttgart.