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The Swinging Detective
Martin Peters finds himself in Berlin. Once a British spy involved in a controversial loyalist shooting in Belfast, he spent time in Berlin infiltrating the Punk scene just before the Wall came down. Now in his thirties, he is a detective in the local police force.
He is struggling – two naked headless corpses were dredged from the Havel river. There are no clues apart from a single word tattooed in Cyrillic on their left arms and the fact they were found a week apart after Christmas at exactly the same spot.
Visiting his favourite swingers club, the seedy Der Zug, he comes across the bloated Lothar Blucher. Pressing his former Cold-War informer for help, Peters is instead led to a video showing the horrifically violent murder of a man tied to a chair. Not long after, a former girlfriend, Heike, gets in touch. She has received the same video – and rapidly the dead bodies start piling up at the hands of a demonic serial killer.
With crimes darker than The Killing and The Bridge, you will be riveted by this gripping Martin Peters story set in Berlin, Belfast and London.
Henry McDonald is the Guardian and Observer Ireland correspondent based in Belfast. He was previously stationed in Berlin and has a deep knowledge of Marxism and the German Punk scene.
THE
SWINGING
DETECTIVE
by
Henry McDonald
gibson square
To the memory of my mother and father
This edition published by Gibson Square for the first time
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ISBN9781783341177
eISBN9781783341160
The moral right of Henry McDonald to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior consent of the publisher. A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress and the British Library. Copyright © 2017 by Henry McDonald.
Prologue
Belfast
Inside the white workman’s van with the blacked out back windows, sweating due to the summer heat and the lack of ventilation, Martin Peters deliberately shoved the gun into the right trouser leg pocket of his workman’s overalls.
His palms were sweaty. He hoped he wouldn’t have to slip his hand down to pull the pistol out, especially given that his companion sitting across him in the back was nursing a Heckler and Koch machine gun, stroking it as if he was holding a baby in them soothing the infant to sleep. Even after many operations as an undercover agent Peters still loathed the idea of a ‘wet job’.
Peters’ companion hadn’t spoken a word since they had left the briefing room in a downtown police station close to the banks of the River Lagan earlier that morning. He was a surly looking Scot with thinning red hair on top and reddish stubble dressed like a grizzled painter and decorator in the same white working gear that Peters was wearing for the ‘job’. Bullish shaped with a tight scowl around the thick lips and hazel eyes that were focused on something far far in the distance, way beyond the reinforced armour of their undercover surveillance van. Down at his feet was a battered green holdall into which the Scot eventually carefully laid his Heckler Koch into before zipping it up.
There was a crackle of static from the driver’s cabin and then a knuckled rattle on the glass to tell Peters and his silent colleague to get ready. Peters picked up a paint tin with one hand and a brush in the other, and followed his fellow soldier out the back door.
As they walked along the side of the Crumlin Road up past the Victorian Jail that was a temporary home to hundreds of prisoners who would have dearly loved to kill them both, Peters first heard and then saw the motorbike approaching.
The undercover soldiers crossed the junction with Tenant Street and increased their pace until they reached the garage close to another cop shop just as the bike came roaring south, in the direction of the city centre, before turning sharply into a route back towards the Protestant Shankill.
There were two of them, rider and pillion passenger, as they swerved at top speed around into Cambria Street when the ginger Scot dropped his bag, opened it and lifted out the machine gun pointing at the pair to stop. The one on the back raised a right arm and opened fire with an Uzi, the rounds whizzing over Peters’ head, some of the bullets striking the tarmac on the road and clipping the side of a taxi accelerating along the southbound lane towards central Belfast.
Seconds later the motorbike buckled and suddenly collapsed onto its right side flinging the driver and the shooter at the back up into the air. The Scot ran over towards the rider when he hit the road, firing one shot into the ground beside him and speaking for the first time that day, screaming out in the guttural accent of Glasgow, ‘If you move you die.’ The man on the road wasn’t moving at all.
Peters crept towards the pillion rider who was sitting up on their honkers, apparently dazed from the crash, one hand on leather biker trousers, the other fumbling for something lying close by. It was the Uzi which the shooter was drawing slowly, spasmodically towards them, the gloved hand shaking all the time as the Israeli machine pistol was raised up feebly and pointed directly now at Peters.
He reached into the side trouser pocket of his overalls as a reflex, drawing out the Walter PPK and seconds before the injured passenger was about to squeeze the Uzi’s trigger, Peters opened fire instead, directing two shots straight through the visor of the motorbike helmet. The helmet then jerked back twice, its glass cracked almost in half from the bullets’ impact and the body slumped to one side, blood starting to seep out from under the visor and onto the padded black motorbike jacket, red spray sprinkling over an array of pointy studs that crowned each side of the shoulders.
He had always hated ‘wet jobs’ even when those on the receiving end of his army unit that dared-not-speak-its-name were ruthless killers whose idea of being at ‘war’ was to ambush off duty soldiers driving kids on school buses or mow down part-time local coppers coming out of Sunday services with their families. Peters took no part in the barrack’s mess post-ritual pass-the-picture crime scenes snaps of the ‘flip-top terrorists’ whose skulls were blown off when they happened to be surprised by ‘real’ soldiers. He always made himself scarce when the champagne corks popped as undercover troops clinked their glasses in celebration of a successful operation.
Yet this one, here on the squalid oil slicked forecourt of a Belfast filling station, felt wholly different. He observed the hour-glass shaped body of the dead terrorist coiled up on the ground beneath him. He shuddered at the attire the killer was wearing because it reminded him of his younger self.
As an old Punk Peters instantly recognised the way the leather had been decorated with pointy studs. He walked around the body to see if there was anything on the back side of the jacket. There was the faintest of outlines of a familiar stenciled image from the early 80s. He recognised it immediately. It was the trace of a circle with a giant ‘A’ inside it. Anarchy in the UK. It was only a decade and a half that he had stencilled one on his own jacket.
As sirens started to scream for attention in the fresh Saturday morning air Peters was transfixed by the sudden disjunction between the studded, stencilled leather motorcycle jacket, his rebellion and the teenage rampage, and the lifeless figure who had committed sectarian murd
er less than 500 yards up the same road.
One
Lothar Blucher belched and the already-dense air inside the sauna of ‘Der Zug’ swingers club was filled with the sour stench of barely digested garlic sausage and onion.
Blucher was a bloated Buddha of a man with folds of fat tumbling over the white towel that was wrapped tightly around his waist like a giant nappy. The absence of hair anywhere on his huge frame made him look even more like a pumped up baby.
Balanced on his lap, cross-kneed, sat one of Blucher’s purchases from a recent trip to the Far East. An unusually tall woman, or what appeared to be one, with crimped hair, pert exposed breasts, one of which was pierced, thickly veined hands that resembled swollen river deltas, and a bulging thong shifted on Blucher’s knee.
Blucher took off his thick steamed up bi-focals and appealed for help.
‘Someone is trying to kill me, Herr Peters. I am sure of it.’
He was addressing Martin Peters, a detective inspector with the Berlin Police who spent every Saturday evening relaxing, drinking and, if he was lucky, fucking inside ‘Der Zug’.
‘I’m not talking to you until we are alone, Blucher,’ the detective replied coldly.
Immediately, Blucher slapped the thigh of his Thai boy-girl who got up, minced over to Peters and hissed an incomprehensible insult into the policeman’s ear, before wrenching back the door to the sauna, letting in a blast of welcome, fresh cool air.
Blucher had been an informant for nearly twenty years, mostly for Peters, who had a long history of helping him out when he was in trouble with Berlin Vice.
‘OK, go on then, Blucher,’ Peters said reassuringly, once the lady-boy had gone. ‘So who’s trying to kill you now?’
‘Enough of your bloody English understatement. Someone is really trying to kill me and you have to help.’
Peters realised he would have to get to the point before the couples started filing in after their conga-dance around the club: that was where ‘Der Zug’ got its name from; the train, a human locomotion of limbs and protruding pieces of flesh locked together, slowly pacing its way through the premises, stopping to grope and slide into each other in rhythm to Lil Louis’ House-Porn Groove anthem ‘French Kiss.’
‘Who is it, Lothar?’ he asked sharply.
The owner of the ‘Boyz R Us’ gay sex shop leaned forward and the folds of fat wobbled; escarpments of blubber shaking off beads of sweat. He held out his right hand and produced a key.
‘Locker 71 in Friedrichstrasse Station, to section to the left of the information centre. It’s all in there, Herr Peters.’
‘Stop being so cryptic. Some of my friends will be joining us soon and they are way too normal for you Lothar. Anyway why did you choose this place? It’s perfectly straight!’
There was a grunt from Blucher and then a smile: ‘Perfect place to meet you then. No one is going to follow Lothar Blucher to a straight swingers club, are they? Who’d believe I’d be seen anywhere near a place like this?’
‘Here’s another one.... why are you going for a half-way liner this time? I thought you lived strictly by the motto of your shop. Boys only.’
‘I thought a change would be good for me but I am starting to regret that.’
‘So, what about the Russian? I thought that’s why you summoned me here, Lothar.’
‘Never mind the Russian. I’m in danger this time and you have to help.’
The Russian: those two headless corpses washed up from the Havel. They had been found separately within weeks of each other just after Christmas in the exact same spot out at Wansee, both naked, young men in their twenties or perhaps early thirties, no signs of bruising or wounding on their bodies, no DNA trace, nothing to identify them at all except for a single word on each of their left arms, tattooed in Cyrillic script: ‘Kursk’ and ‘Kharkov.’ It was now mid-March and Peters, the Senior Investigating Officer in the case, had no breakthroughs on who they were, let alone who might have killed them.
‘You’ll be ok with me, Lothar. Just don’t forget the Russian. I take it he has nothing to do with your current troubles...whatever they are.’
‘I hope not Herr Peters. I sincerely hope not,’ Blucher added, as if in hope that nothing more could get worse for him.
There was the muffled sound of a fracas just outside the sauna door, close to the changing rooms. Squeals and squawks that Blucher instantly recognised as belonging to him, to his Oriental companion, to his latest indulgence.
‘Anika!’ Blucher bellowed, more in anger than alarm.
Peters opened the sauna door and marched straight over to the melee. ‘Der Zug’s’ diminutive owner Marion was trying in vain to separate an inflamed young couple lashing out at Blucher’s lady boy.
‘Right, shut up. I’m a police officer, which some of you already know. Don’t make me embarrass us all by making the call,’ Peters shouted above them.
Blucher pulled away Anika in a reverse rugby tackle, dragging her into the changing rooms and a quick exit. Marion meanwhile calmed the couple down with promises of free champagne. When the fuss finally died down, Peters touched Marion on the forearm and nodded towards the sauna. This place was turning into his second office, he thought. Marion and he had a few encounters in ‘Der Zug’, normally in the presence of her husband who liked to watch down in the basement room where it was ‘strictly watching-room only’.
There was a new row now, Anika screeching and yelling at Blucher who cried out in Peters’ direction as he left the building.
‘Don’t forget. 71 in Friedrichstrasse Station, next to the Information. I chose the Palace of Tears because it will fuck your head up.’
When Blucher and his companion left Peters apologised to his hostess.
‘I didn’t invite them here. What happened?’
Peters felt re-invigorated on seeing Marion tearing off her black top which already exposed one shoulder. He felt a new surging urge inside to take her to the basement.
Marion, now topless, her compact body exposed, reddening rapidly in the searing heat, explained the commotion.
‘The tranny went down below to watch them in the basement and he got a little carried away.’ She giggled. ‘The two of them got a full spray, which as you know is against the rules down there.’ Peters smiled and put his arm around Marion but she slipped politely out from his grasp.
‘Not tonight, Martin. I’ve got to keep that couple sweet. They’re regulars. I’m just hot from the sauna not that kind of hot. Sorry.’
The detective tried not to look too disappointed. Even before Blucher had appeared in the sauna it had been an evening of knock-backs, jealous first-timer husbands and endless spectating. Peters’ last resort was the train which he had always vowed to avoid. A sapping lassitude, brought on by several trips to the steam room and the stress of Blucher’s astonishing apparition in the club, was engulfing him. It was almost time to go home. There was just one good deed to do before dawn after a night of observing but not actually participating in so much sin.
Peters eventually found the boy in an underground passageway running underneath the concourses of Berlin Zoo station. He was lying on a spread out piece of cardboard, hunched into a puffed up sleeping bag, the sleeves of the green Parka Peters had donated to him pulled up to reveal colonies of track marks on the rake thin lower arms and the claret and blue bobble hat with the West Ham crest in the middle where it covered his forehead; the hat that the boy had asked Peters to bring back for him from one of the English detective’s pilgrimages back to Upton Park. This was before the boy fell into the vortex of bad company and addiction; before the boy was lost to his father preferring to sleep in the innards of a station where for years now adults and children who had succumbed to the needle and later the crack pipe begged, stole or sold themselves.
It was the sight of the Hammers’ colours on the boy’s head that almost moved Peters to tears. The claret and blue hat reminded him of when the boy was still a bundle of pre teen energy and innocent
effervescence who because of Peters closeness to his father had adopted West Ham as his favourite team rather than Herta or worse still, Bayern. What had happened to this boy whose face was now covered in scratchy stubble and whose eyes were underlined with dark rings? What changed in a few years from a boy who improved his English by reading old copies of Peters’ ‘Shoot’ magazine collection to this wretch paralysed by the opiate coursing through his blood stream and central nervous system? Peters could not find find an answer because the boy’s father was a good man, a colleague, a friend. All the Englishman could do was seek out the boy and ensure he could secrete enough money into his clothing each night to keep him out of the hands of men who would abuse him. The detective admitted to himself that he was still funding the boy’s habit but this was the least worst option in Peters’ mind, at least until he started a campaign to lead his secret charge towards rehab.
He told nobody least of all the boy’s father about his nightly quests to seek the lad out and help where he could. Peters ruffled the top of the bobble hat to rouse the boy.
‘Paul, there’s fifty euros in your left breast pocket. Tell nobody it’s there son. I’ll try and find you tomorrow again. Don’t forget the money!’ he whispered in case any of Paul’s so-called friends made an appearance.
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