To avoid suspicion Peters and the two other men who had tracked the duo while posing as a group of painter and decorators in a white van, drove their vehicle into a side street close to where the Shankill merges into the northern end of the city centre, discarded their overalls and jumped into a Ford Escort, he in the front passenger seat, elected by command back at Army headquarters to terminate the ‘Angel’s’ career.
By the time they had switched vehicles and taken a parallel route up the Crumlin Road past the Victorian jail then bulging with republicans and loyalists, the ‘Angel’ was already at her work, emptying a full magazine load into the betting shop, sending punters to the floor, splattering blood onto the walls, filing the air with the acrid stench of cordite and hurling a series of shrill insults at the men she was mowing down.
Peters’ car met the motorbike half-way down the Crumlin Road, the killers almost back in home territory. The driver, an SAS trained NCO veered the Ford violently to the left to block the bike’s path, the machine skidding to a halt and throwing the passenger on the back up into the air.
After hitting the ground, she seemed frozen, paralytic, perhaps already dead. The bike rider was now being surrounded by Peters’ two armed colleagues, his pleas that they ‘don’t shoot’ already audible when he moved over towards the woman. The first thing he noticed about her was her slender frame. The leather jacket she had on tapered inwards towards her narrow, child-like waist. She had a small compact, perfectly formed body. Then he spotted her hand twitching, gliding slowly across tarmac and an pool of oozing engine oil, her heightened breathing an indication of some menacing intent, as she reached towards the Uzi lying on the road beside her. He fired three times: once in the throat, twice in her upper body until the twitching and the breathing finally stopped.
He hadn’t spoke or thought about that bright autumn Saturday morning in Belfast nearly twenty years before for a very long time. At least not since the Gulf War. Certainly not since he re-settled back in Berlin after the ‘Turn.’ True, he had received some counselling in the weeks and months after that fatal encounter with Apollonia Winston, the Greek-Cypriot wife of a former police constable blown to smithereens in the first decade of the Troubles by an IRA remote control bomb. But instead of being the subject of media outcry and internal inquiry Peters found himself promoted from lieutenant to Captain and transferred to Berlin for other duties; his one and only ‘wet job’ had been a pig-in-the-middle propaganda coup, proof the army desk spooks later whispered to compliant journalists that the British Military didn’t differentiate between either republican or loyalist terrorists. Until now on his way to whatever horror ‘Christopher’ had pre-prepared Peters realised he had entirely forgotten her name even though he could never escape from the unalterable fact that he had killed a woman.
Thirty Five
The stench penetrated plastic face masks, hanker-chiefs, hands over faces, clamped tight lips and attacked the vulnerable membranes of nostrils and throats. It set off instant retching and nauseous groans throughout the raiding party that broke down the door of the flat in St. Moritzer Platz. Several of the uniforms who had got there first into the apartment were doubled-over trying in vain to spit out the foul odour that had invaded their mouths. Even hours later back at the station and for some while after at home, its toxic trace remained clinging in the bodies and the clothing of everyone who had come in contact with the festering smell of the corpse rotting inside the flat.
Above the gangrenous cadaver there was a carousel of Blue Bottles which swarmed in wave-like patterns all around the settee where the dead body had been put to rest. Out of eye sockets and broken bruised craters of decaying skin crawled fat maggots engorging themselves on the flesh of ‘Christopher’s “parting gift.” On his forehead there was a raised black and blue bump while around his neck there was a garrotte of video tape tightly bound over the windpipe. Just like Beer this man’s fattened, extended tongue stuck out.
In the air there was the audible menacing drone of more colonies of flies swirling around the living room as well as the sizzling fizz of the tuned out television, still on, directly in front of where the body was sitting. ‘Christopher’ had ensured there would be an arrangement to all this sickening, squalid dissonance, a centre point for his latest message.
Leaning on a Polizei squad car, trying and failing to throw up, Peters listened to the preliminary prognosis of the Kottbusser murder team’s chief forensic officer, Dr Maria Scholl who appeared to be the only one unaffected by the stink and the sights of inside.
‘The bang on the head – I don’t think that’s what killed him,’ she shouted trying to compete with the loud, staccatoed convulsions emitting from Peters’ throwing up on the pavement.
‘What then?’ he asked while catching his breath noticing that just across the platz huddled underneath a clump of bare trees was Heike Numann.
‘It’s early days but I think judging by the wounds over his neck he was strangled to death, probably by the video tape wrapped around him,’ Dr Scholl replied in her flat, cool professional tone.
‘As you can probably guess and smell he’s been dead for quite some time.’
‘How long doctor?’ Peters had tears in his eyes and water streamed from his nose.
‘Really hard to say. A week, maybe more Martin. Funny though that no one in the apartment complex noticed the reek from the flat? Wonder why?’
‘Because no one cared, that’s why,’ Peters added, having restored himself into an upright posture, no longer in need of the car for support.
Heike had crossed the street and was about to enter the hallway to the apartment block where she was met by Angi Domath head to toe in a white zipped up suit.
‘I wouldn’t go up there if I was you Fraulein...unless of course you want to bring up your breakfast,’ Angi said smiling at the journalist.
Peters’ mind drifted away from whatever details Dr Scholl was furnishing him with and on to the ongoing duel between the two women. He saw Heike ignoring Angi’s advice and bounding through the entrance. Forty seconds later he watched her flee from the building and throw up on the road outside. Angi made no attempt to go to her aid.
Dr Scholl broke through: ‘One more thing Martin you ought to know...’
‘What’s that Doctor?’
‘There were two wine glasses and an unfinished bottle of Riesling on the table beside our stiff. The last thing he enjoyed was an excellent tipple from the Rheingau, oh, and he wasn’t alone.’
Peters immediately thought about Heike and her ‘parting gift.’ The moment he said it out loud Peters regretted it.
‘He wants to be caught. He’s already started the countdown.’
Surprisingly Dr Scholl did not react. She looked at Peters coldly and added:
‘Is there anything else we need to focus on apart from our chum and the DNA on those glasses? Anything you’re specifically interested in?’
‘Yes. The video tape around our friend. Can you get it taken away to see what’s on it? Can the tcchies do that kind of thing?’
She looked taken back by. Judging from her face it had been a really stupid question.
‘But of course Martin. That will not be a problem.’
The doctor put her mask back on and re-joined her team inside, the cue for a green-tinted Heike to cross over and face Peters.
‘You should have heeded Angi’s warning,’ Peters said with unconcealed cruelty.
She ignored his attempts to rile her and focussed instead on the job at hand.
‘Apart from the overpowering pong what else did you find in there Martin?’
She had kept her side of the deal, alerted no one else in the media or Fest from the BND. He had been allowed to get to the latest target before anyone else from Kottbusser Strasse and far ahead of Stannheim. He owed her one.
‘He was probably strangled to death....with videotape. Don’t ask me his name because I don’t know it yet, but the good doctor there is certain he was garrotted. Who sai
d variety is the spice of life. Death certainly is for our boy.’
‘Will this get out?’ she asked.
‘Let’s keep our pact going. Unless he posts this on the ‘Net we can manage to hold that bit until Sunday.’
Peters wasn’t completely frank with her. He would keep the discovery of the two glasses to himself and the team.
‘You were there first Heike. You saw it. That should be more than enough,’ he added just as the first of the satellite trucks and TV crew vans were pulling up across the road from 22b St. Mortizer Platz.
She pulled up the hood of the windcheater she had on until Peters could only see her eyes.
‘I’m taking the U-Bahn before some of my dear colleagues over there spot me and ask for an interview. See you later Martin, thanks for all the help.’
He watched her figure merge into the grey gloom of this early spring morning, posing as just another commuter making their way to work bounding towards the U-Bahn station, ghosting past cameraman setting up tripods and groups of TV reporters from rival stations gathered together in an insincere huddle, jousting and probing to see who exactly knew what. To the side of the media standing alone at the opened door of a sleek black BMW was Fest holding a steel cup of something steaming hot in one hand and a mobile in the other pressed to his ear. He appeared to have missed Heike as she passed by but he did spot Peters and nodded towards the English detective with a cocky smile.
Before Fest could approach Peters peeled off back towards the flats in search of some of the residents still living in the run down graffiti covered block. Several were out in their night gowns and pyjamas, a few of the elderly ones choking and spluttering at the putrid smells from above them on floor two.
Peters stopped a woman of pension age, a small dog under one arm and a copy of the morning paper under the other. He guessed she might have been in her early 70s and judging by the way she spoke down to her neighbours especially the Turkish ones she must have lived in this complex for a long time.
‘Your name madam?’ Peters inquired in his softest voice.
The way she pursed her lips and breathed suggested she was in no mood for either interrogation or co-operation.
‘My name? Why is it so important to have “my” name? Don’t you want to know whose name that is upstairs,’ she said throwing her shrivelled up little head back towards the staircase.
‘Alright madam. Then I shall ask you – what is the name of the man we’ve found up in number 22b?’
Her body gave a sudden, short jerk as if to signify her contempt.
‘Elmar Fuller, or so that’s what he said he called himself,’ she almost spat as she spoke.
‘At least we know what he really was,’ she went on with a glint of satisfaction on her face.
‘Was madam?’ Peters asked feigning innocence that failed to impress the sharp faced pensioner shaking with the cold.
‘A paedophile!’ she said the word slowly as if it was an explosive device she had to take apart bit by bit.
‘Did you know that before we found that man or just there now?’
She folded her arms to make herself appear even more bellicose, pursed her lips harder and sharpened her glare on Peters.
‘What does it matter? That’s another one gone thanks to “Christopher”. Good riddance to bad rubbish.’ There was a small circle now surrounding this self-appointed block-warden and they started clapping in solidarity.
‘If you people did your job right there’d be no need for someone like “Christopher”.’ a younger man holding an infant in his arms interjected.
‘We didn’t even know a monster like that lived amongst us. Who cared about us or our children, no one told us!’ he protested pointing to the exposed egg shaped dome of the child he was holding.
Only then did Peters notice that a number of the women who had been forced out of their beds and onto the street from the complex were wearing St. Christopher medals around their necks.
‘Why are you wasting your time on scum like that?’
‘Do us a favour copper and leave our “Christopher” alone?’
‘Hope he died slow and painfully.’
The group-think among them was turning nasty, Peters half expected the mob to go back inside, rush upstairs, drag Fuller’s corpse down in St. Moritzer Platz and burnt it in front of the rush hour traffic. They were closing in on him, pointing and prodding, he was ‘their’ Christopher now.
When Peters turned away from them he almost knocked over Fest, later he almost wished he had.
‘You’re losing them Captain Peters. Not just you but the entire Berlin Polizei. They’re all on our friends’ side now and that’s what so disturbing,’ Fest said these last words with fake relish.
‘Herr Fest. How unpleasant to see you,’ Peters muttered.
Fest fired back a cruel smile at the Englishman.
‘So much for the English gentlemen.’
Peters thought immediately of Blucher and that strange similar sense of nostalgic let down.
‘As I said to an old friend recently Herr Fest he died shortly after 1945 when we became the masters.’
‘We?’ Fest looked genuinely puzzled.
‘The people. The genuine British people.’
‘I thought you had transferred your loyalty to Germany Captain Peters. But at heart it seems you are still a good old English patriot.’
‘My loyalty is to the case I’m working on, the one you seem to be treading all over.’
The spy moved closer until Peters could breathe in traces of an expensive after shave that had wafted across the metallic chill of the early morning air. Whatever Fest was splashed with was helping to temporarily counter the odour of putrefaction that had followed him from 2B St. Moritzer Platz.
‘I’m just here to remind you that this is still a matter of national security...not that you are, any longer, the senior investigating officer on this case.’
‘Me?’ Peters pointed to his chest. ‘I was just passing and heard the commotion Herr Fest.’
The BND officer retreated slightly to create enough space between himself and Peters as if he was anticipating a punch or a head butt. Or so Peters imagined. Or contemplated.
‘Just remember we are keeping a very close eye on our “Christopher’s” progress. If you happen to hear from him or if he sends another billet doux to Fraulein Numann please let us know,’ Fest said dropping a white business card into the left pocket of Peters’ duffel coat. After Fest got back into his car and sped off, Peters fumbled for it and on finding the card noticed that it only had a mobile telephone number scrawled in the middle. There was no name, no address, no email. He wondered if Fest was as near-blank as the card he had just handed over.
Thirty Six
The tape spluttered and whirred, light and images jerking into focus. From darkness into a brittle sunshine that was refracted through trees and evergreen foliage. There was a distended voice of a child somewhere, squealing, panting, running.
Then she came into view, into this place where the camera was fixed, a clearing in woodland. A small girl in a brown puffed up anorak, short skirt and white school socks. She was being pursued and at every corner, towards pathways out of this small patch of open ground, the child recoiled and ran back to the centre. The tiny vulnerable human quarry with Asiatic eyes, high cheek bones, panto-dame rouge cheeks, was scurrying about for an escape route.
The film went blank for a few seconds although the soundtrack had changed to a murmur of voices speaking Russian. Male and malevolent. Then the same child holding her hand up over her eyes to escape the crushing, disorientating glare of a camera light trained on her.
Sobbing became more audible the closer the two men came to her. Their faces cut off by the camera, only the torso’s on display. One of them stretched a hand out to her and exposed on his skin, between the thumb and forefinger was a burst of tattooed stars. It was he who picked up and violently flailed her against the brick wall behind her, the light still shining,
the sobbing subsiding. The star man placed both hands on her skirt while she lay wriggling on an orange coloured fluffed up carpet. By now the other one had joined him standing over the girl’s face, the child still holding her face over her eyes. His glands were exposed, the film tightening on the penis dangling half-drooped over their captive.
‘This was a mistake. This was a horrible fucking mistake,’ Peters kept repeating into himself.
All around him stood the Kottbusser murder squad, arranged behind him in a D-formation, arms folded, plastic cups crushed in fingers. Tears in Angi’s eyes. Smouldering anger on the faces of Riedel and Bauer. Peters noticed that Stannheim simply had his eyes closed.
Just as the star man startled to paw his way over the girl Peters pressed the Off button on the VCR.
‘I think we have seen quite enough,’ he croaked barely unable to speak to the gathering of detectives around him.
He waited for it and knew instinctively that it would come from Bauer judging by the way he was clenching his fists again until the knuckles went white. He had done that once before in the presence of the late Oskar Beer.
The Swinging Detective Page 23