They had first come across each other at a dinner party organised by an English bookseller in Friedrichshain who specialised in detective and Cold War thrillers as well as novels, plays, poetry and even old football books from the former DDR. Bob Carew, the shop owner, had been a sergeant in the 14th Intelligence with Peters at the time of the Turn and, like his company commander, decided to return to Berlin after reunification in search of a fortune amid Helmut Kohl’s promised blooming landscapes.
Before taking up taxi work to escape the evening rantings and railings of her husband at yet another example of western corruption on television, Miriam had worked as an assistant in Carew’ ‘Ostbooks’. Lucky then for Peters, unlucky maybe for Miriam, that Carew had organised the party on the weekend of her husband’s annual trip to see his family back in Anatolia.
As Miriam was slipping her tracksuit bottoms back on, sniffing all over the top that Peters had ripped off when he overpowered her, he lay back on one of his sofas, still completely naked and looked her over.
‘If you think this is too risky...’
She quickly crossed the room, leant over his face and put one finger on his lips to shut him up.
‘Please Martin. No acting up. Stop playing the self-sacrificing martyr. If you can’t bring yourself to end it then don’t ask me to do it for you.’
Miriam released her finger and he sank to the floor and clung to her legs burying his head in between her knees. Afterwards when she had left the apartment and Peters could hear the engine of her Mercedes revving up in the still early Spring night he realised he was kneeling naked on the floor frozen in the same state of suspended, miserable submission. He hated to admit it. The idea of being alone through the night and the nagging fear that his spectral companion would arise from the Berlin underground to haunt him in the place he called home sent a chill through his body.
Thirteen
Two headless corpses the Berlin Polizei found in Lake Havel are Russians and may be linked to new post-Soviet mafia feuding in the city.
Welt am Sonntag has discovered that the bodies last weekend were washed ashore near Wansee according to sources close to the investigation.
Officially, the Polizei are refusing to comment on the discovery of the cadavers but sources say they are certain the victims were Russian.
Wams has also established that both males had mysterious tattoos on their bodies.
‘They were two words “Kursk” and “Kharkov” - references to battles of the Second World War in the Soviet Union,’ said one source in the Polizei.
‘This would indicate that a message was being transmitted, a message that whoever did this was serious........’
Numann has run out of road, thought Angi. Good. She was searching around for words to pad out the meagre morsels of information her boss had given the journalist. But Peters would still be furious with that reference to ‘one source in the Polizei’. She was sure of it. Stannheim, and worse again his underlings in Kottbusser Strasse, wouldn’t take long to work out who the ‘one source’ happened to be. They had all seen Peters with Numann before. Then the whispering games would begin.
Angi wished she could wipe the copy from the computer screen and persuade Numann’s editor to kill the story. But she was only there inside the top floor of the Springer Building to watch and wait for another call to Numann from Christopher.
Her editor Christian Littbarski had reluctantly agreed to allow Angi to shadow Numann. He was not or ever would be prepared to let a police officer dictate the content of his paper let alone potentially a front page splash.
The journalist returned from the bathroom, resentment still etched over her face about Angi’s order that she leave her mobile at all times on her workstation.
‘Look I’m unarmed! Satisfied?’ Heike Numann asked when she reached her Apple Mac. ‘Nothing to call me on. Has the new man in my life rang me yet?’
‘I’m sorry but Peters insisted. Mobile and phone stays in one spot where we can track it.’
‘But course - you are only obeying orders,’ Heike shot back.
‘And Herr Litbarski has agreed to our request Heike.’
‘Look it’s Friday evening and do you know what that means? While you and Martin Peters and everyone else in the murder squad are normally taking your weekly dose of Soma in “Anna’s” I’m about to enter the busiest time of MY week. I need to get this piece finished before the evening conference, so I can convince my boss that this is more important than Angi Merkel making some inane remarks about Afghanistan or EU expansion.’
‘And so?’
‘So please give me some space to get this finished before five,’ Heike pleaded.
‘Sure thing but I’m taking your handy with me. If it rings I’ll just be over by the window overlooking Zimmer Strasse. I promise to be quick; I used to be a sprinter when I was a kid.’
Numann had folded her arms: ‘Bully for you. I’m sure the local party hacks in Prenz’l Berg were proud of you.’
The policewoman didn’t respond. She was immune now to the toxic back references to her past, to those years she couldn’t erase, to that upbringing as one of the chosen pampered few in the republic of near empty.
Angi’s phone did eventually ring, it was Peters sounding nervous, like he was in the centre of a tumultuous threesome, diplomatically slinking off the sheets and out of the bedroom.
‘Hi. Any sign of our man?’
‘No sir. Not a word.’
‘And how’s Heike? She ok?’
‘Look it’s hard to talk here. She’s written that report about our headless horsemen. Mentioned the tattoos in her piece and you.’
There was a pause down the line.
‘What! She named me. No way.’
‘No sir, not named. Hinted at maybe. Source in the Polizei.’
She spotted Numann advancing towards her from her desk.
‘Sir I have to go. Hard to talk as I say....’
Numann snatched her mobile from the policewoman. I would slap that bitch if this was elsewhere.
‘Hello. Hello. Is this Martin? Yes I suppose it is hard to talk. It’s hard to think or write or breathe either in these conditions.’
Peters tried to be diplomatic, ‘Heike, listen. You know why we are doing this. We have to take precautions because this man is extremely dangerous, more dangerous than we first thought.’
‘Martin you are such a tease. This story is a guaranteed front page splash.’
‘You are getting full chapter and verse on this once we get an inroad into Christopher. First up. And you have the Russians meantime. You’re away ahead of everyone else, so don’t complain.’ The line went dead. Peters had lost his temper.
Heike Numann turned her glare from the tiny screen up to Angi’s face.
‘How can you work with such a shit?’
‘That’s easy. He’s about the best in a bad barrel of them.’
‘Really? And how do you know him then?’
At that moment Angi realised that her boss had once slept with Numann.
She gave the journalist the once over, scanning her small, tight body without an ounce of flab or any physical disproportion. Heike had thick upper and lower lips, a button nose and translucent sky blue eyes that sparkled and twinkled even after 12 hours under the hum and glare of the strip lighted ceiling on the top tier of the Springer builder. Only her skin, the colour of dish water, betrayed any sign that inside she was an exhausted, raging, conflicted mess. Angi thought better of even hinting that Heike and Peters had been lovers. Instead she dared to offer some journalistic advice.
‘You forgot to mention there was an official statement. On the Russians. There were a couple of quotes to use.’
‘What are you the press office?’ Heike snapped. ‘If I’m looking for some insight into forensics I shall call you since Martin tells me you are such an expert. Otherwise leave the writing to me, darling.’
‘No. Not the press office. Just someone obeying orders,’ Angi bit back
shuddering at the thought that they had to spend the whole night together.
Further out east, inside the ear splitting atmosphere of ‘Taceles’ on Oranienburger Strasse, Peters could barely hear himself think let alone anyone speak or listen to anyone else. A band, the ‘Vomitorium,’ from out in the sticks, the Saarland, were screaming and screeching about ‘Pigs’ and ‘Nazis’ in front of a juddering mass of sweat and steam. Somewhere in the middle of the torn up bike jackets and ripped shirts and bondage trousers was Karen Stock, clutching a bottle of Becks, swaying and bending to the quivering, hypnotic trance of the band’s bass guitar. With her bobbed hair, Med looks and short flower patterned dress she looked even more out of place in ‘Taceles’ than Peters did. He wore his favourite T-shirt, the one given to him from the boys in the regiment at his leaving-do, the one of the Clash standing dazed and puzzled outside the Henry Taggart Army Base in west Belfast. It had been a private joke shared between comrades in the 14th Int. Peters had served inside there on his first tour of duty when he was charged with shadowing some of Ireland’s finest. If only Joe Strummer had lived longer and Peters had had the chance to meet the Clash singer, just to tell him that one of his biggest fans had once worked for imperialism inside the ‘Taggart.’
Before the Wall had come down Peters had used that same T-shirt as a ‘passport’ to gain entry into the world of the those disgruntled, alienated, constantly harassed youths who in their tartan trousers and graffitied and spiked biker jackets Peters decided to make contact with in the centre of East Berlin. The Ossie punks had been impressed by Peters’ original Clash T-Shirt, a super-imposed black and white photograph of Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, Paul Simonen and Topper Headen posting outside an army base back in Belfast around ‘77, in the the same station where he had probably fired off some rounds in the cramped shooting range, taken tea with the ordinary Squaddies holed up in the base.
In Berlin his first hand reports of building resentment from the bottom up and the regime’s complete loss of its youth such as the Punks were mostly ignored in favour of Oxbridge educated Soviet bloc ‘experts’ in intelligence who could see no end to the party’s monopoly of power or any real challenge to it. When he was sent to Belfast in THAT year and THAT operation Peters often wondered if his temporary transfer back to Northern Ireland was some kind of punishment for what he had been filing back then from inside East Berlin in the months before the Wall came down; for what they didn’t want to hear. And he had fretted, too, that his masters might never let him return to Germany again. Inside the same base he recalled rifling through a forest of photographs taken from the fortified Sangars of IRA suspects from the estates directly across the Springfield Road.
As the three chord blunders in Taceles came to the climax of yet another three-minute rant, Peters thought about Angi and barely suppressed a guilty laugh. He imagined her settling down for the night on Heike’s sofa bed amid the chaos of the journalist’s apartment and her hostess’ acidic hospitality.
‘What’s so funny babe?’ Karen said stumbling back into her chair at the back of the bar.
‘Oh nothing. I was just thinking about a friend of mine. No, just two friends of mine actually whom fate has thrown together.’
Karen swigged on her bottle: ‘I hope they fall in love.’
‘A cessation of hostilities for the night would be enough.’
‘Are you talking about them or us, Martin?’
Before ‘Taceles,’ inside the Irish pub around the corner in Friedrichstrasse she had been pestering him to move in with her. The author of a PHD on ‘Misogyny and Media in the Springer Empire’ insisted that he ‘show some commitment eventually.’ How thoroughly old fashioned of her, Peters mused.
‘I don’t even know where you live.’ Karen cried in protest above the din.
‘Somewhere way out west Karen. Over the Wall and far away.’
‘You never talk about your work either, Martin.’
‘What’s there to say. People do bad things; you try to catch them. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t. The details don’t interest me once I go out the door and then breathe again.’
‘You are so passive aggressive sometimes,’ Karen chided. ‘You should seek a shrink. I can recommend a few.’
At the mention of Karen’s counselling tips, Peters judged he would rather seem ridiculous than be mentally microwaved. He leapt out of his chair and dived onto the dance floor to join the throbbing mass pogoing on the floor.
Thank God for ‘Vomitorium’ and a terrible rendition of ‘White Riot,’ Peters thought.
Fourteen
In the cloudless glassy dawn, there were two jet-trails, scar tissues torn across the sky, far above the Grunewald where Peters was working off his hangover.
His early jog towards his favourite rendezvous point with Blucher, the sound of Japan’s ‘Suburban Berlin’ booming in his ears from his iPod, the curt polite silent nods of fellow runners, the latticed patterns of light filtering through trees and vegetation, the crackling sensation of twigs breaking beneath pounding feet, the best time of the day, that time of retreat back into the comfort blanket of the forest.
He was sweating out his other Berlin, leaving it behind temporarily, at least that was until he came across the bulging, wobbling frame of his closest source, a reminder of that other side of the city and all its toxic temptations.
When he reached ‘their’ bench Blucher was already sitting down beating his two hands together in an attempt to ward off the cold which Peters had stopped feeling about twenty minutes earlier.
‘A clear blue day. It’s probably going to freeze over later. Wouldn’t it be nicer to be up there in one of them heading somewhere warmer?’ Peters said pointing to the fading back-wisps of smoke escaping from the planes arcing north far above.
‘I hate flying!’ Blucher snorted. ‘Always did. It’s a necessary evil....’
Peters interrupted: ‘Another necessary evil you get to add to your case, Lothar.’
‘Don’t be facetious, Englishman. We are here to do business.’
‘Perish the thought,’ Peters said stretching out his body against the tree where the magpies normally foraged.
‘You wanted more on our Russian friend for starters. Well there isn’t much more I can give you.’
‘Go on Lothar, you might surprise me. You normally do.’
‘Last night I was with my Russian pal in the Marriot. Anika was out clubbing, not my scene, so my old mate and I played chess in the bar. He is a good player, like many Russians. A shrewd tactician who knows all the moves, the smart ones and the stupid ones.’
Blucher continued to warm his hands and slapped the top of his arms.
‘It was when I asked about Yanaev that he started talking about chess. He told me what the smart move was.’
‘Which was what?’
‘To stay well clear of that particular dark knight. My friend said that anyone crossing Yanaev would be knocked out of the game. Permanently.’
‘So your source has dried up Lothar? That isn’t very impressive. My boss back in Kottbusser Strasser will be wondering if it’s worth picking up your tab anymore.’
‘I didn’t say he had gone completely silent,’ Blucher barked back. ‘He just sent a friendly warning. Yanaev is dangerous.’
‘Now you don’t say. Two headless corpses you think are connected to Yanaev and a chess game metaphor is what makes him dangerous. You’re making me regret my morning run. I could have been still in bed down in Friedricshain with a student nearly half my age.’
Blucher’s mood lightened: ‘So we have more in common than you think. Not just our fathers from the lost lands, eh? A taste for youthful flesh.’ Blucher smiled wide at Peters’ wince.
‘But I have more for you, not about the Russian, rather about our friends on film.’
‘Go on then.’
‘I remember now that the two of them came into the shop regularly. In fact, they were part of a little group that used to huddle around in front
of the snaps of the younger boys. All legal of course, barely but still legal. There were three or four of them. I remember thinking they were a close little band.’
‘Three or four of them? Then the others will be back, is that the usual MO with your pervier clientele?’
‘If you put it like that, yes. There’s a pattern to their behaviour, all of them. You can set your watch to some of them, to the exact time they sneak through the door for their weekly fix. It’s good to know that. It’s re-assuring for a businessman like me operating on the smallest of margins.’
Peters’ thoughts turned to Riedel, reluctantly serving undercover in ‘Boyz R Us’. He recalled what Riedel had told him, the conversation among some of Blucher’s clients, their concern over absentees from the shop and he realised Kottbusser Strasse’s Iago might have stumbled across an entry point.
‘As always my heart bleeds for you Lothar especially when you don’t even know you are being useful to the Berlin Polizei.’
Blucher seemed pleased with the back compliment: ‘Lothar Blucher has never, ever let you down in all these years we have worked together.’
He always wanted to be thought of as someone important, a player in the big game, Peters remembered.
The Swinging Detective Page 8