‘The more people lose their inner self,’ he says, ‘the more vulnerable they are to drugs. At the moment, it seems to me that our society is pretty fragile. Believe me, if we don’t watch out, we’ll be overrun by it.’
‘More than all the other shit?’ I ask.
‘You can earn so much more money with synthetic drugs than with all the other shit,’ he says. ‘The Vietnamese clans now have semi-industrial kitchens ready to go; just one kitchen can produce twenty kilos of meth a day. The base material is ephedrine, which they get for free from chemists because it’s available cheaply without a prescription in the Czech Republic, and because the people in the chemist’s get a cut. The Vietnamese then sell a gram of meth for twenty euros. In Dresden it costs fifty; in Leipzig it’s sixty; it’s eighty in Berlin; and by the time you get to Hamburg, it’s a hundred. Now you do the maths.’
‘Can’t. Too much beer.’
‘If you sell the produce of a single kitchen in the Czech Republic, you’ll make four hundred thousand euros a day. If you sell it in Hamburg, you make two million. A day.’
‘It makes sense to get the stuff to Hamburg.’
‘Put it this way: five hours clenching your arse equals five hundred per cent profit.’
He looks at me. The light flickers on his face.
War paint.
‘How many of these kitchens are over there?’ I ask.
‘We don’t know exactly,’ he says. ‘Doesn’t matter. Dig one out and three new ones grow. It’s a Hydra. There are eighteen Vietnamese markets and each market probably has two or three kitchens. Shall we do more sums?’
I shake my head; I just don’t want to know, but Wieczorkowski blasts my ears with it.
‘That makes, at a rough estimate, seventy-two million euros a day. So now you know why the Czech mayors in the godforsaken border areas don’t shut the markets down, and why everyone else closes both their eyes to it.’
I keep shaking my head and drink more beer.
What else can I do?
‘And because you’ve got to sell all that stuff somewhere, and Germany’s too small, you need to open up a bigger market. Western Europe, for example.’
‘No,’ I say, maybe thinking that might stop what’s coming next.
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘And with the Port of Hamburg as the trading centre.’
‘Joe hinted at something like that, but I didn’t take it seriously. I didn’t know who he was, after all…’ I say, noticing that my voice is tailing off. ‘Where would a crystal-meth business like that be managed from? From the Czech side? By the Vietnamese?’
Wieczorkowski shakes his head. ‘The Vietnamese mafia doesn’t generally operate across national borders. It’ll probably be built up from Hamburg.’
‘Who could do a job like that?’ I ask, and I’m really thinking aloud, because I know the answer a second before Wieczorkowski gives it.
‘Does the name Gjergj Malaj mean anything to you?’
He orders two vodkas. Just beating me to it.
‘One of Malaj’s nephews runs several hotels and a large casino in Prague,’ he says. ‘So there are plenty of contacts, infrastructure and money-laundering facilities already available.’
The vodka comes; we knock it back.
‘Of course it could all be coincidence,’ says Wieczorkowski. ‘Or I could be going mad. But do you know what, Riley?’
‘What?’
‘It’s just the perfect dose of fuck-up for this world.’
I look at him; his face and the scenery blur before my eyes, and I’m not sure if that’s just the vodka.
‘And krok?’ I ask.
‘Krok kills quickly,’ he says. ‘It doesn’t quite fit the business model.’
Lovely little hotel. My room is in a kind of summerhouse in the rear courtyard. The cobblestones mingle with the ivy, and the ivy with the cobblestones.
I lie on the bed; I stare at the ceiling; God knows how long that lasts, but at some point it gets light.
The next morning.
ZIMMERMANN, SUNNY
I was behind the old station a moment ago. Now I’m here where everything looks so white.
They picked us up.
I didn’t hear a blue light. Not worth it for us. But they still pick us up now and then. I guess someone keeps calling them.
There’s a tube in me. Wonder where they got it in. It’s really hard for me to get anything in these days.
Really hard.
Ah. Here. On the neck. There’s the tube.
Don’t pull, says someone, taking my hand away.
A guy, I think. Can’t see him. Only the voice. Only the white light everywhere.
I’ll close the curtains for you, says the guy.
And if it hurts too bad, tell me and you can have some more, OK?
OK, I think.
Jakob, I say.
Your friend’s in the ICU, he says, but it’ll be all right.
It’ll be all right. Sure. Yeah. Right back at you.
First it’s the worst fucking shit you can imagine. Then it’s only half as shit. Then it’s a grotesque. A monster.
It hurts like hell.
And you end up just rotting away.
I want to die, I say.
You want morphine, says the guy.
DROSTE, PAUL
All right. We’re not getting our own hands dirty, are we?
Ronny picks it up.
ADELMANN, NICO
Drob repackages it.
NIEHUS, ROBERT
Adlo passes it to his colleagues.
The first payday should be the end of next week.
MALAJ, GJERGJ
Rang them in Italy last night. Nice weather they’re having.
JOE
When you’re tempted to despair…
FALLER, GEORG
…A little light comes on somewhere.
BOLTS OF RED LIGHTNING AT MY BACK
The Eurocity from Prague takes me back to Hamburg
I feel like the train is mocking me. Because I’m sure the drugs are on board too – the drugs that took me to Leipzig yesterday when I didn’t have a clue what our colleagues there are up against. There might not be huge stashes of the stuff hidden between the seats, but I bet the carriages aren’t clean either. After everything Wieczorkowski told me yesterday, I feel like a silly little country mouse who’s been shown where things are heading.
I slump deep into the blue velvet and decide not to leave my compartment during the journey.
As we pass Leipzig, I call Faller.
He’s on the move.
‘Where are you, Faller?’
‘Almost at the hospital,’ he says. ‘You asked me to keep an eye on Joe. So that’s what I’m doing.’
‘You can go home again,’ I say. ‘The guy’s a hitman.’
‘I know.’
‘You know? How?’
‘He told me.’
‘Uh-huh. I see.’
‘Now don’t be offended, Chas.’
‘What else has he told you?’
‘A few anecdotes from his colourful life.’
‘And did you tell him about your life too?’
‘Oh. There’s not much to tell there…’
‘Faller?’
‘Yes?’
‘Kindly sod off.’
Outside the window, fields, trees and meadows flash past, and I can’t handle it any more. Something’s just gone spectacularly wrong.
The head of our drugs team is called Brux. He’s the kind of ageing hooligan who has a bald head, five o’clock shadow and a black hoodie. His eyes glint with anger, detachment, decisiveness and something dark that always puts me in mind of Batman.
Sitting next to Brux is Tschauner; I worked with him once a few years ago. I remember that there was something puppyish about him then, and that I felt the need to protect him. And now he’s sitting here amid all the real tough guys – because the drugs guys simply are the real tough ones – and the puppy’s gone from his face
. I wonder what happened to chase it away.
His hair is no longer so curly and freshly washed, his nose is more prominent, his eyes are deeper set.
Next to Tschauner are Messrs Kringe and Bartels. Two more old acquaintances, and better still, they’re in the same boat as me – the one I’m in because of the man who lost his balls. And because it’s a boat where it’s good to huddle together, we’re practically best friends.
I feel happier now that my first chat about this business is with people I’ve worked with before.
Calabretta plays football with Brux so he fits in well with the four of them.
‘OK. Drob, Adlo and Ronny,’ says Brux with a nod that’s somewhere between meaningful and resigned. ‘Paul Droste, Nico Adelmann and Robert Niehus. We certainly know them.’
‘Total arses,’ says Kringe, and Bartels says: ‘Absolute total arses.’
Brux looks at them one at a time, and then at Tschauner, who hasn’t said a thing yet.
‘I’d describe them more as little arses who’ve been trying to make it as massive arses for years, but keep falling over their own feet. To be honest, I think they’re mostly talk. Anything they touch goes to shit.’
‘I can’t imagine them having their fingers in a huge meth deal either,’ says Tschauner.
‘Even if they’ve only got their fingertips in it,’ says Brux inspecting his nails, ‘it tells us nothing more than that there is a deal.’
The other three rumble.
‘This informant of yours and Wieczorkowski’s,’ says Tschauner; ‘can we talk to him?’
‘Tricky,’ I say, thinking: I need to speak to him myself first. And to Faller. And then we’ll see. The good thing about the drugs boys is that they don’t kick up a fuss if you have shady, murky informers that you’d prefer not to bring too far into the light. ’Cos they all have them. Their squad probably wouldn’t even exist without shadowy figures like that.
‘OK,’ says Brux. ‘Then we’ll stick closer to Drob, Adlo and Ronny.’
Of course we could always send a rapid-reaction force round to see the three gentlemen and do a DNA match on Joe’s clothes and send the little arses, or big arses or whatever you want to call them, down for GBH or even attempted murder. Or we could wait and hope that Drob, Adlo and Ronny will lead us to something much bigger.
‘Knobheads,’ says Bartels, leaning back.
Kringe looks at him and then the rest of us. ‘Massive arseholes,’ he says. ‘I’m telling you guys.’
Brux stands up and says to me: ‘We’ll keep in touch by phone, Ms Riley.’ He says it in a very engaging way. He says it like he takes me seriously. His eyes are completely open and clear.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘We’ll talk.’
‘I’ll show you out,’ says Tschauner.
We stand up and leave.
We walk together down the corridor to the lift.
On the wall outside an open-plan office is a postcard from Istanbul. I stare at it a fraction too long.
‘From Inceman,’ says Tschauner. ‘He sent it at the beginning of last week. He was here for a long time before he went to homicide. You worked with him once, didn’t you? Do you remember?’
Oh yes, I remember. Although I’d be the last person he’d send a postcard to.
‘How is he?’ I ask.
‘Hang on a moment.’ Tschauner pulls the card from the wall. ‘Hmm: “Dear Former Colleagues, Yesterday there was a big drugs bust in the restaurant round the corner, which reminded me of you. I’m doing fairly OK, sometimes I even forget that I’ve only got one arm. Put it this way – the wound is healing. I might open a hotel with an old friend soon, then you can all come and visit. Best wishes from the Bosporus, Bülent.” So even now you don’t know exactly how he is, do you? Weren’t you there when he lost his arm?’
I goggle at Tschauner as if I’d just been sent a gruesome message from the other side.
And it is a bit like that.
There’s nothing colder than dead love.
I say ‘Hmm’ and ‘See you’ and stride away, and don’t look round as the little scrap of card in Tschauner’s hand shoots bolts of red lightning at my back.
At home, I chuck my bag onto the bed, have a second shower and a fourth coffee and then sit down at the window. Ponder. Try to sort things out. There’s the Austrian in hospital. Faller appears next to him.
There are the drugs in the east. The Albanian appears next to them.
And there’s that Faller again.
There’s Calabretta, who suddenly seems like a stranger to me.
There’s Klatsche, who presses me up against cellar walls at night, and I like it. And his ex-colleagues smashed the Austrian’s bones to smithereens.
And then from right offstage, Inceman grabs me round the heart.
I should be drinking beer not coffee, but I had enough of that yesterday.
Something’s ringing.
My phone.
Carla.
At least that’s unambiguous – friendship.
‘Hey,’ I say. ‘What’s up?’
‘That’s what I was about to ask you,’ she says.
‘Why?’
‘Klatsche,’ she says. ‘Has he got something going on? Kiez-wise, I mean?’
‘Apart from his bar, you mean?’
‘Apart from his bar,’ she says.
‘Not that I know of,’ I say.
As if I could be the one who ought to know if he had anything like that on. I ought to lock him up right away if he’s got anything on. Strictly speaking.
‘Why do you ask?’
A foghorn, and Carla breathing out. She’s standing outside her café door, smoking.
‘Oh, I don’t know myself,’ she says. ‘He just came round and went straight in to Rocco in the kitchen and asked him something. I wasn’t listening, wasn’t interested. But there was suddenly something in the air between them. And then I did listen.’
‘And?’
‘Rocco was more or less shouting at Klatsche that he wanted nothing to do with that shit. That he wanted “abso-bloody-lutely nothing to do with that shit”. End quote.’
‘Do you have any idea what shit it could be?’ I ask.
‘No-oo,’ she says. ‘Rocco didn’t want to talk about it. He said it wasn’t important. But he doesn’t shout if it isn’t important, you know?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘You could have a word with Klatsche if you get a chance. Stop him getting into trouble.’
Seems like a few of the men around me have a good chance of getting themselves into trouble.
‘I’ll see if he’ll talk to me,’ I say. ‘Thanks for the tip-off.’
‘Hey, no worries,’ she says. I can hear her smoking again.
‘Shall we go for a beer?’ I ask.
‘What’s the time?’
‘Half past four,’ I say.
‘That’s beer o’clock, isn’t it?’
‘That’s definitely beer o’clock,’ I say. ‘Shall I come to you?’
‘Don’t worry,’ she says. ‘I’ll come to you. See you in half an hour outside the snack bar on your road. The kitchen’s closed here anyway; the lunchtime crowd ate everything. And Rocco can manage drinks and stuff on his own. I’ll just pull my apron off and head over.’
Click.
OK.
It’s cold but that doesn’t matter.
The wooden bench in front of the kiosk.
Coat buttoned up, collar turned up, beer bottles open.
Like summer, only colder.
‘Hair of the dog,’ I say, and we clink bottles.
‘A few beers yesterday, huh?’
I nod. ‘I had to go east. For work.’
‘And you drank so much you need the hair of the dog today? Must have been a great job.’
‘Let’s not talk about it, OK?’
‘That’s the second time I’ve heard that today.’
‘Sorry. But it’s so complicated.’
She nods.
; It’s OK.
As we drink, we watch the street doing its thing.
Cars.
Bikes.
Bicycle courier.
People holding coffee cups.
People holding beer bottles.
People holding children.
Then I fetch another two beers.
Then we drink.
Then Carla fetches another two beers.
Then I tell her about Inceman.
About his postcard.
Which wasn’t even for me, but which got to me anyway.
She says she understands.
That it’s getting me down, that is.
She says perhaps I should fly out to Istanbul and talk to him.
I tell her that’s not an option.
Firstly, there’s nothing to talk about.
Secondly, he doesn’t want to talk to me.
If I had a new arm for him, then yeah.
But I haven’t.
And thirdly, because of Klatsche.
I couldn’t do a thing like that.
We’ve got to the point where I can’t just fly off to another man even though I’d rather end up in bed with him than be anywhere else.
Can I?
I fetch another two beers.
Once all the beer’s all gone, it’s half past seven.
‘I think I’ll get some sleep,’ I say.
Carla nods.
‘You do that, love.’
We stand up and hug, a long second longer than grown women normally do.
We always do that.
It’s been a lovely evening.
I wake up because he creeps up on me from behind, takes me in his arms, kisses the back of my neck. Note to self: he wants something. He can have it. I keep my eyes shut, and it’s all hands, hands, hands, and all skin, skin, skin, and his stubble everywhere, and his hair, and he smells so amazing, smells of pub, and eau-de-pub always makes me forgetful.
Later on, the sky is full of clouds; there’s no moon and no light, because the only streetlamp outside our building has been broken for ages; we lie side by side and we’re just the gleam of two glowing cigarettes.
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