The Swinging Detective

by Henry McDonald

  ‘For Jesus sake Martin hold it together will you,’ Heike said in a semi-whisper.

  ‘Open your ears and your eyes!’ Peters blurted, his outburst turning several heads from tables on either side of them.

  ‘Does he boss you about too Heike? Does he bark out orders and make you jump?’ he slugged at the remains of his wine and gestured to one of the Italian waiters for more.

  ‘Wouldn’t you be better off with some mineral water Martin? To keep a clear head. What if he calls again and you’re comatose?’

  ‘Balls to him Heike. Balls to him. He’s played with us and now it’s my turn.’

  They paused as the waiter nimbly dropped down another carafe between then and swiftly swept away the starters, one plate, Peters’, virtually untouched.

  ‘So that’s my news. I get a call from a serial killer. It’s not every day you can say that...oh by the way that’s off the record for now,’ he knew he was being obnoxious, perhaps deliberately so.

  ‘So what’s your news then?’

  Heike ran her forefinger along Martin’s hands; her touch electrifying his skin, the sensation seemed to rejuvenate him.

  ‘A real weird guy from the BND came to see me in Littbarksi’s office. Told me you’d soon be off the “Christopher” case. Wants me to tell him everything including anything about you.’

  Her news seem to stiffen Peters. ‘Did he have beautifully coiffured hair, not a fleck of grey and designer clothes, and a very weak handshake?’

  ‘Dunno about the handshake. I was probably too beneath him for that but yeah the description fits,’ she lit a cigarette and returned to stroking Peters’ hands.

  ‘His name is Fest and he came to see me in the hospital.’

  She burst out laughing and shook her head.

  ‘Is this supposed to be funny or are you just taking pity on me?’

  ‘No. It’s just his name Martin. I have been offered a Festian pact.’

  He slurped more wine and then winked at his former lover, all the while he caressed her hands the way she used to when they first got together.

  ‘I would strongly advise against such temptation Heike.’

  ‘Which means not a word about our man making contact with you?’ she said lifting her glass of sparkling water to toast their new alliance.

  ‘Please! Don’t ignore Dr Fest. Give him shit information. Tell him I’m taking leave from the case. And let’s hope “Christopher” used a brand new handy when he called me and that they haven’t traced the call,’ there was a newly regained lucidity in Peters’ voice.

  ‘Keep all the stuff about the BND’s interference in the case out of WAMS for now. You’ve enough to go on with the latest killing on film. You’re going to get a book out of this Heike and get rich, then I’ll marry you and we can buy a little villa in Majorca.’

  She kicked his shins under the table, playfully, gently, stubbed out her cigarette and took Peters’ wine glass out of his hand and drained it.

  ‘I’ll drink to that kind of success...except of course that bit about moving to Majorca with you. For your information mister I’ve already had three publishers on the phone wanting the exclusive on me and “Christopher”.’

  ‘Oh that’s nothing darling. Just this morning an American movie producer called me in Heer Strasse wanting to talk.’

  He refilled his glass, lifted it up in salute of her and said:

  ‘I told the Yank to fuck off!’

  Heike’s mood then seemed to switch instantly, her tone harsher, less than playful than before, her line of questioning tinged bitter and regretful.

  ‘That’s you all over Martin, isn’t it? Always running away from new opportunities, always afraid of taking a risk, at least in your personal life.’

  He had a sudden flash in his brain of him drenching her with his wine glass but resisted the urge. Instead he sipped at the house red, leaned back and folded his arms.

  ‘And who are you to talk about anybody, much less me?,’ his volume was rising. ‘I suppose this is about commitment....or the lack of it. You’d know all about that Heike.’

  She shot him back a smile, which did more than surprise him, before mouthing silently: ‘Fuck you too.’

  Peters replied with an upright middle finger and then continued berating her.

  ‘The only commitment you have in your life is to Welt am Sonntag.’

  ‘And the only commitment you have is to Mannfred Stannheim. Tell me – why are so attached to him? What’s so great about someone who would knife you in the back?’

  He held his hand up to accede the point before going on.

  ‘Stannheim actually happens to be a first class detective but unfortunately is also a lousy human being.’

  ‘Oh come on Martin, he will do what the BND and the high command tell what do even if that means kicking you off the case. So what’s so special that he’s done that you can forgive him anything?’ Heike asked.

  ‘First met him after a few squaddies, a year before the Wall came down, got into serious trouble. Busted bringing in heroin from West Germany on one of the military trains. They were caught down in the west end flogging the gear to Stannheim’s undercover team in a strip club. He handed the men over to my unit, I passed them on to the Military Police and they were quietly shipped back over the border and finally across the North Sea pronto. Kept it out of the papers as well. I couldn’t thank him enough nor could the British brass up in Spandau. So we kept in touch too. Became a very useful contact, let’s just say.’

  Heike sniggered: ‘That’s what you seem to spend your life doing! Keeping things out of the paper.’

  ‘He was more than that to me Heike,’ Peters said tipping the dregs of the carafe into her glass.

  ‘He ran a network of informers all over Berlin, petty crooks, pimps, prossies, people smugglers, the lot. Some of his secret little army had connections on the other side of the Wall which he knew would be useful for someone with a job like mine. He wasn’t just a top detective with a superb strike rate. He had more reach across the frontier than most of our agents, military Int. or 6 put together. We came to rely on him quite a lot when things started to fall apart over there.’

  Heike was giggling now, shaking slightly at the thought of these two old Cold Warriors now re-united in a Berlin murder squad.

  ‘It wasn’t funny at the time Heike. You really had to be there. Stannheim’s network didn’t just smuggle a few Ossies over to the West. They saved lives. He saved lives,’ Peters retorted defensively.

  ‘Relax babe. Now, are you going to tell me how you and Manny Stannheim played your part in the downfall of communism.’

  He leaned over the table and delivered the slightest of his kisses on her lips. Heike, embarrassed, turned away, hoping that the gathering throng of lawyers, journalists and their mistresses had not seen their clinch.

  ‘That my darling remains classified.’

  She scowled back him while Peters lifted his glass and emptied it in one go.

  ‘Seriously, you should cut back on your boozing, Martin,’ she barbed.

  Peters slammed his glass down in protest.

  ‘One woman in my life tells me I should go and seek therapy now another wants me to tread the 12 steps to sobriety. What is this – analyse Martin Peters week?’

  ‘It would take more than one week to de-construct you Martin. Who by the way is the “one woman in my life”? Anyone I know?’ Heike asked.

  He waved his hand across his face trying in vain to avoid questions, any questions, about his love life. Heike shifted in her seat like a cat tensing up into attack mode.

  ‘That’s your answer to everything. Wave your personal life away, then bury it deep with all the rest of your secrets. Do you know that when I used to ask you in the middle of our all night sessions if you loved me you always said the same thing? You’d shrug your shoulders like a little boy lost and say “I don’t know” or “I’m conflicted.” You thought you’d fob me off with your indecision thinking I would fo
rget about it all in the morning but I remembered every brush off, babe, every petty cowardly evasion.’

  She took out a cigarette and, unlit, used it as a prop to point her pent up frustrations in his direction.

  ‘I’ll bet you have a specific day and night picked out for your analyst-girlfriend. Isn’t that the way you used to “structure” me? I never spent a full weekend with you Martin, one night the usual, two if you were lucky but God forbid if you allowed me to encroach any further into your free time. No doubt you had some other babe on the go in another part of the city to attend to next day.’

  Her close to the bone candour made Peters uneasy, so much so that he tried to convince her he was more drunk than he actually was, by swaying gently in his seat, forcing his eyelids to droop, yawning and feigning wind. Ignoring his play acting she kicked him lightly on the shins underneath the table.

  ‘Your trouble, Captain Peters, is that you don’t want to be alone yet you won’t share your life with anybody either. Me and the rest of your girls, we’re the like the agents you used to run, you get what you want from us, we’re so dependent on you but you can drop us like a hot snot at any time and steal back into yet other compartment of your boxed out life.’

  Heike must have thought he was mocking her when Peters stood up from chair, placed his palms on the table and leaned over to kiss her on the forehead.

  When she wriggled away from him, leaning back wearily against the restaurant’s wall and said, this time out loud, ‘And once again, go fuck yourself.’

  Peters woke up prostrate and face down on a tough leather massage table. When he lifted his chin up he was met with the sight on screen of a diminutive Japanese woman being penetrated by a huge African-American in a khaki uniform. He twisted his body around until he was lying on his back and raised himself up. Facing him was Marion, the co-owner of ‘Der Zug’ and behind her, at the bar area, her husband noisily shoving and re-stocking shelves of beer and mixers, grunting in protest over the presence of their last customer. Marion lifted a glass of brandy from the bar top and handed it to Peters.

  ‘Good morning Martin,’ she said gesturing with a flick of her eyes towards the clock behind him above the video screen. It was 4.15 am. He had blacked out while receiving a rub down from the club’s in-house masseuse, a thick-set shot-put built woman who learned her trade in the DDR and now earned a living loosening up the muscles of ‘Der Zug’s’ clientele.

  ‘You’ve been out for hours! Drink up.’

  He gulped down the double helping of ‘Hennessy’ in one go and shook the glass for a top up – a deliberate and instinctive provocation. Marion’s husband banged down the bottle before re-filling Peters’ glass.

  ‘I’m really sorry Marion,’ Peters apologised, ‘I had too much to drink in the afternoon. It’s been a shit week.’

  She responded with one of her incredulous ‘now-you-naughty-boy-looks’.

  ‘We weren’t going to let you in. Friday night is couples’ night but you were very persuasive.....well you are one of our best customers.’

  ‘Again I can only apologise. Hope I wasn’t too obnoxious,’ he said polishing off the second brandy.

  Marion’s husband left the bar and gently pushed her aside. He was naked but for a forest of grey pubic-thick hairs all over his torso and a leather thong with three pointed shiny studs.

  ‘We can’t make up our minds whether your presence here was, is, a good thing for our business or not.’

  For the first time since he regained consciousness Peters realised he was completely naked. He crossed his legs and sat perched on the side of the massage chair.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Peters confessed.

  ‘What I’m talking about is that half of my clients think you’re a celebrity and the other half are freaked out that a cop is in their club. You were signing your name with Marion’s lipstick on the first half’s tits and cocks; the other half were complaining that you were Polonium,’ Marion’s partner lit up a cigarette, lifted up the video controls and switched off the ‘GI John does Japan’ movie on the flat screen above the entrance to the sauna.

  ‘You’re our first celebrity Martin,’ Marion giggled, ‘The cop chasing “Christopher”. We don’t know whether or not to advertise that on our website.’

  Peters dropped down from the table and propped himself on one of the bar stools.

  ‘Listen you two if you want I’ll give this place a wide berth for a while.’

  The husband appeared unimpressed by Peters’ offer of ‘sacrifice.’

  ‘Oh that’s really noble of you. In you come gate crashing couples-only night, pissed, pissing off and spooking half my Friday night regulars so what do you want, another medal like the ones they gave you in the British Army?’ Mr ‘Der Zug’ had never been this hostile before; in fact in all the times Peters had known him he was quite the opposite, encouraging him regularly to go downstairs with his wife in the look-but-don’t-join-in basement part of the club where he liked to watch.

  For a moment hostilities were suspended as the owner scanned his eyes over the black and bruises peppered across Peters’ torso.

  ‘What happened to you? Did you get beaten up by the St.Christopher fan club?’

  Peters almost told the truth about Yanaev’s thugs but that would only have heightened the couple’s paranoia. The last thing they wanted to hear was that their most infamous client had incurred the Russian mafia’s ire.

  ‘Let’s just say it was a very complicated arrest operation that turned nasty,’ Peters lied.

  ‘Some of our punters were muttering at the bar about reporters tonight. No that there have been any in here. But what if some journalists start to take an interest in your private life and follow you to our door! Those rags will feast on us. And there are plenty of customers who are very publicity shy. You do understand that.’

  Marion tried to sound more emollient than her husband who was nervous and twitchy, a sure sign that he wanted to shut up shop.

  ‘Yes of course I understand that. Up until very recently I would have counted myself as being in the publicity shy corner. The thrill of the chance of being caught never appealed to me.’

  She poured him out a third and final brandy which Peters knocked back again in one go.

  ‘Ok. I’ll not darken your door for a while, at least until this business is brought to a close.’

  ‘How long is that going to take?’ Marion asked excitedly, ‘Are you close to getting him?’

  Peters winked at her, put down the empty glass and made for the mixed sex showers.

  ‘Closer than we’ve been yet Marion. I’ll call when I’m ready to come back,’ he shouted back in her direction.

  Usually Marion rang a trusted and discrete cab firm to take Peters and the other regulars home but instead he opted to walk along Korner Strasse and around Steglitz, searching for a late-night-early-morning pub or an Imbiss stand, until 6 when the first U-Bahn trains were running. He dragged himself along the street which ran parallel to an S-Bahn track all the way to the local station. The lack of any sound outside, no birdsong, no rumble from the rail lines to his left, no rattle from any car engine, cast a sinister cloak of stillness over this corner of Berlin. As he moved ever closer to the light of what had to be an open all hours corner pub, Peters used anger to distract himself from the fear that threatened to paralyse him. He cursed out loud in protest over the death of his privacy, the decision that he had instantly regretted to stand by Stannheim at the press conference, his out loud ‘fuck you Manny’ filling the vacuous silence of a city trapped in the dark throat of late winter.

  Twenty Nine

  ‘My name is Albert Briegel and I am a paedophile. I was convicted of sexually abusing two young children, a brother and sister, in my apartment in Essen 15 years ago. I was sentenced to six years serving three in prison and the remainder on a rehabilitation programme for offenders in the Ruhr. When it ended in 2003 I moved to Berlin. I still have a taste for little boys an
d girls and have travelled many times to have sex with them in Asia, first Thailand, latterly Sri Lanka.’

  The clanging sound of what seemed to be two pots or pans being knocked together punctuated the message on screen. This time ‘Christopher’ had turned on the volume, allowed his captive to speak, sparing him - for now at least - the ordeal the others endured had during filming.

  Briegel, a gaunt, emaciated spectre of a man with a pasty pockmarked face, was dressed in an orange jump-suit and sat in medium close up in front of the camera. The clanging signalled he was allowed to speak again. It was obvious Briegel was reading from prompt cards directly in front of him.

  ‘I appeal to you the German public to save my life. You have the power to determine if I live or die. I once placed images of myself with my two young victims on the Internet. Now it’s my turn. If you decide I must die, then it will posted be all over the ‘net.’

  He dropped his head and started breathing heavily as if he was on the verge of hyperventilating. The out-of-vision cameraman angrily battered the kitchen utensils together once more. Briegel raised himself back up until he was in line of sight of the lens. It all reminded Peters of those photo-booths where you have to keep adjusting the swivelling chair until your face is captured in a square perfect frame.

  ‘Your reaction through the media will seal whatever is my fate. Please. I beg you. I have served my debt to society. I want to live. Don’t let me die,’ croaked Briegel. The film faded to black for several seconds and then cut back to the graphic of Christopher and Christ as a child on his shoulder before dissolving into black.