‘Protect me? What is there to protect?’
Stannheim let go off Peters and made a shape with his right hand like he was holding up an invisible object.
‘They told me they have a file on you that thick. Do you know what they call you?’
‘And I thought the Stasi had been dissolved?’ Peters bit back through gritted teeth.
‘Whoever they are they call you the “swinging detective”. They know about your private life Martin, that club you frequent down in Steglitz, the married woman you knock off when she’s supposed to be driving a taxi, the old dear who likes to tie young men up after the pub. Shall I go on?’
It was Peters turn again to feel the compression, he had been a fool and they had found out. He was about to hold one hand up in submission when the idea occurred to him to storm off towards the inquiry room and create a scene.
When he reached the office Peters was relieved that the majority of the murder squad had been slow to act on his orders to get out and trawl through Berlin. Just as he bounded towards his own desk Peters turned on his feels and pointed at Stannheim.
‘Perhaps you can explain to our colleagues here why I’m being taken off the “Christopher” case. You give them a reason because you haven’t the balls to give me one, a real one anyway.’
He retraced his steps out of the first floor office and back down the stairwell towards the front exit; Stannheim nodded to Angi to follow Peters outside.
Peters forced open the swing doors of the station with a boot and re-entered the freezing wet external world where the dwindling miserable band of journalists stood huddled together. He spotted the one from BZ who had given him, Stannheim and the minister such a rough ride at the first “Christopher” press conference earlier. The tabloid reporter forced his way through a gauntlet of photographers and cameramen towards Peters.
‘Captain Peters. Maybe a few words on the progress of the “Christopher” investigation...or lack of it?’ the hack asked.
‘Why did you come here?’ Peters kept saying into himself, the heat rising in the back of his neck, his internal cooling system, even in the stinging icy rain, failing him.
‘Why did you come here?’
He glared at his tabloid tormentor: ‘No comment, not to you anyway.’
The journalist backed away towards the rest of the pack.
Angi tore through the doors and almost slipped on the steps, those purple stilettos scraping on the slimy surface.
‘Martin!’ she shouted breaking the conventions of rank and order.
Peters stood rooted to the spot where he had been facing the reporter.
‘I may be off the case, Angi but it’s still Captain Peters,’ he reminded her and then felt instantly guilty for saying so.
‘What the hell is going on?’ she asked.
Peters pointed over towards the huddle of reporters.
‘You see that reptile in the middle there Angi?’
‘Sure I do.’
‘I want you to ring up BZ this afternoon and ask to speak to this gentleman.’
Angi stared at her boss as if he had lost his mind, Peters’ sensed her incredulity.
‘Heat flares, Angi, heat flares. Just call him up and let him know I’m off the “Christopher” case. Tell him I’m spending more time on headless horsemen.’
‘Why sir?’
‘Just do it. Trust me.’
He looked up and saw Stannheim poking his head through the swing doors.
‘You better go. If you make the call make sure you do it in a public phone booth, try one of the railway stations. Don’t use your mobile and do let him know I’ve been taken off “Christopher”.’
Her expression meant she was none the wiser about what Peters was up to.
‘Angi, I’m not sure what I’m doing. Heat flares. Heat flares,’ he said peeling away from the pack surrounding the station and into another downpour wholly unprotected from the deluge falling on Berlin.
A couple of flashes lit up the battleship grey sky around Kottbusser Strasse; the photographers had turned their attentions from Peters to the head of the murder squad. Stannheim beckoned Angi back into the station refusing to answer questions to the reporters at the bottom of the steps.
‘Never mind him. There’s been another development. Come in and link up with Bauer. Those boys out there are going to love this one,’Stannheim said pointing towards the decreasing media circus camped outside his station. When he noted Angi’s look of bewilderment, Stannheim adde, ‘Just wait to you see what St.Christopher has got up to next!’
Thirty One
‘There is only one honourable way out for you.
Now is the time to do the right thing.
You have no other choice.
Your secret life will soon be out.
You are not safe.
You will be tracked down and it will be slower and more excruciating than you can ever imagine.’
The machine beeped again.
‘Pick up the phone.
Don’t ignore this message.
Your acquaintances are all dead, you have no friends.
You cannot escape the wrath.
The final hours will crawl along in captivity.
And you will be begging for the end.’
Message three!
‘Listen or you will follow them.
You are being given a chance to cut short the wrath.
You will not have to endure their fate.
Take the only option left for you.
If you don’t you will suffer.’
Message four!
‘Remember you and I have met before.
Don’t forget your face is familiar to me.
I know all about you and your friends.
I know what you are.’
Oskar Beer was dangling from a make-shift noose inside the kitchen of his surprisingly large and tastefully decorated apartment down in Schoenberg, his tongue three times the normal size sticking out of his mouth, his neck broken, the smell of excreta reeking from his trousers. Angi noticed he was still wearing slippers on his feet. His steel rimmed glasses lay on the floor tiles, un-cracked and intact. She looked back towards where Bauer stood pressing his gloved forefinger onto the ‘play’ button of Beer’s answer machine.
‘There are twelve of them in total,’ Bauer said, ‘Each one in the same tone, he never changes, just keep’s going on and on at Beer. I suppose that pervert just cracked in the end. You have to admire his persistence.’
In her mind Angi was shivering at the inevitable tabloid headlines, imagining their reaction to the news that the man who the Kottbusser Strasse murder squad had booted out of their station’s cells and back to his home had killed himself less than 24 hours later. It had been Stannheim’s decision, or least his order handed down by the press office and ultimately the minister. The force couldn’t be seen to be housing a paedophile, not anymore at least... Beer had to go back because sooner or later someone would leak and then Bild and BZ would have a feeding frenzy.
Now they would have one anyway.
She searched around the kitchen and living room seeking out signs of sustenance that might have emboldened Beer to carry out this final act. There was nothing. Beer had simply flipped having been broken by the cold, ruthless, brutal authority of ‘Christopher’s’ voice.
‘This was his first virtual killing,’ Angi said in near admiration, ‘He talked him into this. As Captain Peters keeps saying “He never stops surprising us.” Have you checked the number Bauer?’ in the absence of Peters she was now, unofficially, in charge of the case.
‘No, private number withheld. The techies are trying to trace it but I’m sure if they do it’ll be another mobile that’s probably in the river or the lake by now,’ Bauer replied.
She flicked open her mobile and spooled down to Peters’ number.
‘Sir?’
Peters’ voice crackled on the other side: ‘Anything to report?’
He sounded as if he was in
a bar somewhere.
‘By the way, please don’t talk to me about newspapers, Angi. Not on this line.’
Angi inhaled and exhaled slowly, for Peters’ benefit.
‘It’s something bad, isn’t it?’ he asked.
‘Yep but this time you’re not to blame. I am standing in Oskar Beer’s flat.’
‘Where is Beer?’
‘Hanging behind the kitchen door.’
‘At least it wasn’t in one of our cells,’ Peters was looking on the bright side she thought.
‘The boss made him leave. He had to be literally dragged kicking and squealing out of the cell and bundled into a taxi.’
‘You said ‘hanging’?’
‘Yes, he hung himself. There was no sign of any forced entry. In fact, he had just got new locks fitted that day.’
‘Well who is going to care that some paedo has topped himself?’
‘There’s more sir. Twelve messages on Beer’s answer machine. All of them from “Christopher”. He talked Beer into doing it. I’m certain of that.’
‘Angi, I’m almost glad to be semi-detached from all of this. Don’t forget the other thing I asked.’
‘I’ll call later sir. Anything else?’
‘Yeah. Tell the boss I was asking after him.’
She wanted to say ‘you’re enjoying this’ but resisted allowing Peters to go back to whatever he was doing, whoever he was with.
The uniforms had pulled Beer’s flat apart, the techies had commandeered his computer and boxes of unmarked DVDs, the forensics dabbing the doors and handles. But no sign of breaking and entry; no evidence, after several hours of trawling through his hard drive and his collection of discs, of anything illegal. Beer had hidden his ‘hobby’’ well, Angi ordered the green coats to start tearing up the floor boards.
Sweat was pumping from Bauer’s forehead when he returned to the kitchen after climbing upstairs to interview the Turkish family living above. Angi feared he was about to have a heart attack.
‘No one heard a thing. Except of course for the constant phone calls. The man of the house said they went on for a couple of hours through the night. He kept whingeing about having to get up and go to work.....as if,’ Bauer said with barely veiled contempt. Angi ignored his jibe against the Turks above them.
‘Bauer just get him cut down,’ she said pointing to the corpse.
‘And get him over to the morgue. I’ll see you back in the station.’
‘How is Captain Peters?’ Bauer inquired.
‘I wouldn’t know,’ she would give nothing away to him; ‘He does his own thing.’
She had long straight bottled blonde hair, plump with pendular breasts and a belly that hung over and partially obscured a PVC thong. Her age, confidence and the way she smoked using a black shiny cigarette holder streaked with gold leaf gave her an air of seniority over the diffident younger girls, some still in their teens, who were dotted all around the bar of the first floor of ‘Haus Ivana.’
When Peters first came into the knocking shop on this wet and windy afternoon she had made her way straight to him, warding off the skinny, fresh faced whores all desperate to bring in business at such a quiet time of the day.
At first Peters assumed she was the madam, at least until she told him her name was Irina and that she cost €80 for one hour although he would have to pay for any drinks they might share. He had been expecting to be ejected immediately on entering the seven storey brothel. The gold teethed, scarred bouncers reminded him of the men he had encountered in the Grunewald as well the crombie coated praetorian guard surrounding Avi Yanaev. Instead he paid the €10 entrance fee and took the lift to floor one clutching the club’s glossy guide with descriptions of what was on offer on each storey: floor one was the straight option, suck and fuck with the girl or girls of your choice leading up to tier five and the S&M dungeon all the way to the top and the TS and TV booths which ranged from the cross dressers acting out their fantasies for money to the fully snipped, clipped, re-designed and transformed.
‘Irina’ put her plump bejewelled hands into his and pulled him towards ‘her’ room, entering via a multi-coloured series of vertical strips that revealed a mattress covered by black silk sheets, a couple of red fluffy pillows, a video screen above the opposite wall showing a lesbian orgy and to the right of the entrance a self-enclosed shower. A table beside the window overlooking the quiet suburban street in Dahlem contained an array of lubricants, boxes of condoms, vibrators, butt plugs and an ashtray.
Peters stripped down to his waist and reached into his pockets until he found a wad of fifty euro notes which he held up to ‘Irina’s’ face.
‘You won’t even have to lie on your back to earn all this love,’ he told her.
Her eyes lit up but the expression on her face was one of dread.
‘If it’s pain you are after darling perhaps you need floor five....but that would be a pity.’
He smiled at her: ‘Look no offence I don’t want to fuck you. I just need your help and I’ll make it really worth your while.’
In her broken German she suddenly sounded filled with panic.
‘You’re a cop aren’t you? Trust my fucking luck.’
‘No, no, I’m a private investigator. I’ve been given a job to find a couple of missing persons for their families and I’m willing to pay,’ he lied to re-assure her.
She started to massage Peters’ exposed torso, this ‘Irina’ actually fancied her first client of the day. He leaned back his head while she rubbed his shoulders and kissed her deeply. Then releasing himself from the clinch, he laid out his offer: ‘Look babe you can have two hundred now and two hundred when we see each other outside.’
Whispering in his ear she gave him the name of a nearby bar the girls often went to after their shifts.
‘You sure you don’t want to fuck Irina darling?’ she said licking the edges of his earlobes.
‘I’d love to but not now babe,’ he lied again, ‘I’ll meet you in that place in 20 minutes.’
The pub around the corner from ‘Haus Ivana’ was run by two withered trannies, one of whom was dressed as Dolly Parton, the other with pig tails and red dog tooth patterned dress was making a last gasp stab at Dorothy from Kansas including a real yappy Toto look-a-like dog lapping up a saucer of water on the bar top. On entering Dolly greeted him with a ‘Guten Abend’ while Dorothy raised her glass in salute and smiled. The boozer was virtually empty barring two off-duty teenage hookers, smack heads who mercifully ignored his entrance and maintained their bitching about some fellow sex workers operating in the ‘Haus’ from where they were now barred from working. Peters ordered a Pils and sat down at a table near a window overlooking the street with a view to the door.
Blucher had guided him towards the knocking shop, passing on a hint from his daily chess opponent, that anyone interested in the headless horsemen from the Havel should first talk to ‘Irina.’ She was the veteran of the second Russian invasion of Berlin, the one launched just months after the Wall came down when the Red Army got ready to ride back east and the mafia started to move into the new reunified metropolis, into Europe’s New York. During their brief exchange inside the bar of the Marriot, Blucher had hinted that the de-capitated duo had paid ‘Irina’ and her co-workers a recent visit.
She arrived shivering despite her fur coat, her huge tits still semi-exposed through her see through red chiffon dress, smoking from her black and gold holder, one hand on her hip. Peters ordered her a brandy, stood up and pulled a chair out of the table beckoning for her to sit down on. The ersatz English gentlemen. Blucher would have been appalled! Despite the bo-ho owners the bar’s background music was classic, cheesy German volksmusik, all red roses and romance by the Rhein, hardly the Berlin sound of Romi Haag, Bowie, Iggy and the echoes of the ‘city’s ripped backed sides.’
Peters guessed that ‘Irina’ was the source of all of Blucher’s chess chum’s gossip. Her nervous demeanour, her furtive glances towards the doors and win
dows, confirmed his suspicions.
‘There’s four hundred Euros in this for you,’ Peters said raising his beer glass towards her.
‘Are you sure you’re not a cop?’ Irina inquired lighting up.
‘As I keep saying – I’m working for the families of two men who haven’t been seen since they came to Berlin a couple of months ago.’
‘So what darling?’ she shrugged her shoulders and waved towards ‘Dorothy’ behind the bar who started pouring another large glass of brandy.
‘Alright. Here’s what I know,’ Peters said folding his arms and leaving back in his chair.
‘Two Spanish guys came into your place a couple of week ago. Some of the girls remembered them because they were tall, handsome, a bit off-beat. One of them chose one of the older women on duty. Spent a lot of money and time with her,’ he said repeating what Blucher had told him.
Peters’ words seemed to make her pleased with herself.
‘I might be getting on but I can still pull the good looking ones into my booth,’ Irina said proudly.
As she sucked on brandy soaked ice cubs like a child slurping a Slush Puppy, Peters probed further.
‘I’m sure you pulled the good looking Spanish boy who came to see you.’
She smiled at the mock compliment and then corrected Peters.
‘Good looking Spanish boys darling. I had the two of them,’ she said shuffling in her chair like a peacock.
The Swinging Detective Page 20