Peters ambled south towards “Charlie”, checking his mobile for calls and texts, concealed under the hood of his Duffel, buffeted in the gales that had started to batter Berlin. At Koch Strasse U-Bahn he crossed over to the corner newsagents, his attention captured by the BZ headline. It was a speculative picture led splash with pictures both of ‘Christopher’s’ targets alongside several blank, grey boxes. He counted 12 frames, some full, others empty beneath the headline: ‘The Dirty Dozen – Dead.’
On finding one near Bebel Platz, he rang the Kottbusser Strasse general station number and asked to speak to Angelika Domath. It took several euro coins before she came to answer.
‘Angi, listen to me and say nothing,’ Peters said with firm, cold authority.
‘Convene a meeting of the “kitchen cabinet” for the next hour. You know who I mean by the “kitchen cabinet”?’
She hesitated for a few seconds: ‘Yes, sir as you’ve called them before.’
‘Good. Have them meet me in the Boss’ hideaway and speak to them only in Braille. See you before lunch, ok?’
‘Okay sir, see you in there.’
Peters dropped the receiver down gingerly, left the booth and retraced his steps eastwards to retrieve his mobile from the left luggage in Alexanderplatz.
Thirty Nine
The bouncer doing the day shift on the door of ‘Haus Ivana’ looked like he had been built by Lego. His body was a series of connected blocks, sharp-angled shoulders, flat pack torso and a square head. He didn’t bulge so much as branch out of the CSKA Moscow tracksuit he was wearing and kept slapping one fist into his palm.
As Peters tried to enter the doorman blocked his way almost shoulder-charging the detective onto the ground.
‘You are barred from these premises,’ the security man said with one hand on Peters’ chest.
‘I’m not a customer you dumb fuck, ‘ Peters retorted pulling out his ID card. ‘Get me your manager or preferably your owner.’
‘The manager is not here,’ the goon replied in broken German.
Peters pulled out his mobile and pointed it towards the Russian sentinel.
‘If you don’t call your manager, and I know fine rightly she’s in there, I’m calling in Vice to raid this fucking place which will piss off your boss, your real boss Tavarich. So, your choice chum – let me speak to the manager or I call for assistance.’
Lego-man grunted, moved his head sidewards and stood aside to let Peters through. He was led towards to a ground floor office passing a couple of exhausted looking whores in nightgowns who had just come off shift. Inside was an elegant woman in her early 40s, blonde, wafer thin steel glasses, a pin striped business suit, sitting behind a desk.
She stood up and greeted Peters with a weak handshake and gestured for him to sit down in front of her.
‘How can I help you officer?’
‘That’s a good guess, miss?’
‘Miss Pfeiffer actually. I’m the manager of “Haus Ivana” and I can assure you everything about our business is above board. Apologies for the misunderstanding on the door by the way.’
‘Don’t worry, I’m not here to inspect your books. All I want to know is what’s happened to one of your employees.’
‘Which one? We have lots of girls working here and of course some boys who like to be girls sometimes.’
‘Her name was Irina. An older Russian woman. I spoke to her a couple of days ago in here. It seems she’s disappeared since then. Know anything about that?’ Peters asked, taking a note book out of his jacket and fiddling with a pencil, his actions seemed to unnerve Miss Pfeiffer.
‘I’m sorry we don’t keep tabs on the girls once they walk out on us. We have a big turnover of staff. Girls come and go. They make some money, go home, get a new life, no questions asked.’
That sounded too much like a programmed answer, Peters said into himself. He decided to get straight to the real point of his return to the knocking shop.
‘Miss Pfeiffer I want you to convey a message from me to someone. I want you to tell your boss Avi Yanaev that I’m coming to get him. I want you to tell him I know he’s had Irina killed. And I want you to tell him that a hammering in the Grunewald won’t stop me either.’
She had turned scarlet from the neck up by the time Peters had finished trying to compose herself by clearing her throat.
‘You are mistaken sir. I don’t know anyone called Avi Yanaev. Whoever he is he has absolutely no connection to our business, which is perfectly legal and once again, above board. And speaking of legal can I suggest that the next time you want to speak to me or anyone connected to this business you do so in the presence of our lawyers.’
Peters dropped one of his business cards onto her table before leaving.
‘Make sure you pass that on to your real boss, Miss Pfeiffer. Tell him I’m still coming for him.’
He felt the foul beery breath of the bouncer on his neck, the light darkening around Peters thanks to the Lego-man’s looming presence. Peters turned around to face him.
‘Don’t give me an excuse to arrest you Tavarich!’ Peters said. The doorman had returned to slamming one fist into his other palm.
When he got back outside a relieved Peters noticed that his mobile was ringing, Angi’s number appearing on the LCD.
‘Sir? Where are you?’
‘Down at a whore house in Schoneberg Angi..’
There was a pause on the line as Angi tried to make up her mind if her commanding officer was joking or not. Then she decided to continue.
‘We got a result from the address you gave us, sir.’
‘Go on Angi.’
‘It was a kind of clearing house. We arrested two men and found hundreds of DVDs. There were lots of jiffy bags, books of stamps, address books too. They had a network of clients they connected to all over Europe.’
‘What about these men?’
‘Two Russians. They’ve started coughing up once they were in the station. Protesting that they didn’t know what was on the DVDs. Gave us names of the group producing the films back in Russia. Riedel is already on to Interpol with a list of them. The old man is out celebrating. We might have just cracked a ring of these perverts.’
Peters closed his eyes and for the first time in a very long time he inwardly thanked Lothar Blucher. He was finally paying for his time in the Marriott.
‘Brilliant Angi. Well done to the entire team. Make sure that chancer Schabowski sings your praises in the press over this.’
‘Sir?’
‘What Angi?’
‘There’s one more thing. Bauer wasn’t on the raid in Immanuel Kirche Strasse. He’s been busying himself down in Friedrichshain. He called in and asked to speak to you, only to you. Sounded important.’
‘Tell him to go back to where we were earlier and wait for me. And call in and see the old man. Make sure he’s there too. Now say no more on this line.’
He suddenly recalled those grey blank spaces on the BZ headline, took out the mobile phone and immediately called Angi back.
‘Angi, listen to me. That list of names in the address books, check out the ones living in Berlin. Look them up in case some of them have gone on the missing list too. I’ll see Bauer and the boss in about an hour.’
Peters switched off and pulled out the battery reminding himself to drop off the phone at one of the main stations before returning to Kreuzberg. He was about to walk off in the direction of the closest U-Bahn when he spotted one of the younger hookers from the night he had shared a drink with Irina going back into the same bar. After about a minute staring at the pub’s front door, just as an icy shower began to sheet down Peters crossed the road and followed her inside.
Spread over the bar top, ‘Dorothy’ had transformed herself into ersatz femme fatal, a skin hugging red dress, black stockings, red high heel shoes, dyed black bob, red lips, black nails, she reminded Peters of a piece on a draughts board. ‘She’ flashed elongated false eyelashes at Peters when he entered and orde
red a coffee.
‘What’s she drinking down the back darling?’ he said jerking a thumb towards the emaciated girl sitting on her own.
‘Brandy. They always have brandy darling after their shift. Brings them back to life inside,’ the tranny barmaid replied cattily.
He asked for a double Courvoisier with one cube of ice and carried it down to the bottom of the bar.
‘I’m not working. If you’re looking for a suck and fuck the day shift have just started,’ the girl muttered without raising her eyes off the table where Peters had just slammed down the brandy.
He took a seat facing her and noticed how wasted and washed out she appeared. She also reeked of too much of super-imposed testosterone. From her smell Peters guessed it must have been a busy night.
‘I’m not looking for business love. I’m just trying to find an old friend. Someone I was in here with a couple of days ago.’
She seemed too jaded with exhaustion and whatever she had taken to get through last night’s ‘shift’ left her either able to register or remember.
‘How’s the brandy?’ Peters asked as he watched her gulp the brown liquor.
‘What the fuck do you want?’
‘I’ll get to the point. Do you recall Irina who used to work across the road?’
The girl shrugged her shoulders.
‘Did you know that she’s gone?... Sorry, I didn’t catch your name.’
He took out a fold of twenty euro notes and laid it carefully on the table next her glass. She put one of her hands on the money and stroked the paper as if she was caressing something she loved, something she undoubtedly did love. Above the wrist where her skin was revealed beyond the cuffs of a battered leather jacket Peters observed the tracks of a heroin user.
‘Who are you, Irina’s pimp?’ she asked sulkily.
‘No, just someone she owed money to. A business deal down on the Costa del Sol that she has run away from.’
‘Truth be told she was a big mouth. Liked to boast about how she could still pull in all the good looking clients.’
‘Like Spanish boys for instance?’ Peters enquired.
‘Yeah. She was bragging about those two who came in with those Russian pigs. They were hard to forget, all the girls were ‘round them like flies ‘round shit. But Irina was queen bee on our floor and had to have them both. The rest of us were left with the Russians. Which was as bad as working with the Joes on the streets.’
He fluttered a couple of fingers in the air in the direction of the barmaid for more brandy. When the tranny arrived with another double the girl continued.
‘She was even boasting about you.’
‘Me?’ Peters said taken back.
‘Yes, you, she told us you asked her for a drink over here.’
‘So what? What the hell is there to boast about?’
‘That she was out with someone so famous. You must think I’m completely brain dead but I know you’re the cop who’s hunting “St. Christopher”. We’ve all seen you on the TV. She couldn’t wait to tell us all. So all that shit about her owing you money was just crap. I don’t care who you are as long as you’re paying.’
So he hadn’t been followed by Yanaev’s goons at all, Irina had simply spoken to the wrong person inside ‘Haus Ivana’.
The girl raised her glass and faked a smile: ‘Here’s to Irina. Well done for getting out. She’s probably sunning her fanny down on the Costa del Sol as we speak. Lucky bitch.’
On the U-Bahn north Peters stared down at the discarded copy of BZ on the seat in front of him and those frames, the faces and the grey spaces, looking up from the pages. No one would miss or care for Irina. Not even her co-workers like the young smack addict who had just taken sixty Euros off him simply to confirm what he feared, what in truth he already knew. Irina’s face would never grace the pages of the Berlin papers. She had been swallowed up by the cloying vastness of her homeland, absorbed into its anonymity, and then dissolved from its memory.
When he ascended from the innards of Berlin at Kottbusser Tor station Peters once again hid under his hood, concealed all the way to ‘Anna’s’, protected from the gaze of the Mothers Against Paedophiles encampment and the media vigil. Before reaching the pub door he stopped to search for his handy and the battery and clipped them together. He had meant to drop it off on route at one of the larger stations with a left luggage section. For some reason he couldn’t explain Peters had kept it with him. When he turned the mobile on there was one single text message, sent from an unfamiliar number which Peters at first tried to call back. There was no reply on the other end, no answer message but simply a two-line instruction in capitals: ‘GO HOME.’
Forty
Mannfred Stannheim’s favourite snug had been transformed into a geography classroom. There were several maps sprawled over the two tables on the nook where the old man went to escape from the world. Berlin was laid out in a light brown mosaic of districts interconnected with red, black and blue lines denoting U-Bahn, S-Bahn and tram routes, the harsh colouring broken up by webs of white depicting the wide boulevards and main streets running from east to west. On top of them lay a couple of A4 pages with spidery, unintelligible scribbles and diagrams, arrows shooting off in different directions, a number of addresses underlined in double lines of green ink.
Peters remembered Bauer telling him that in his pre-89 life he used to like collecting ‘Thomas Cook’ European time tables, the bible of the inter-railer from the 1970s onwards. Bauer used to get the annual red covered travelling tome every Christmas from a distant relative in West Berlin. Unable to travel west Bauer said he dreamed of long overnight train journeys across the DDR’s forbidden zone, of hurtling along the rails through the Black Forest at night, of wakening up in the rejuvenating light of Florence or Rome. Now he understood Bauer better than before. He once had a life laid out in neat rectangular patterns which abruptly ended like the last tourist street guide of East Berlin, published in September ‘89, the one that Peters kept as a souvenir, into white nothingness. Behind the Wall, on the map there were the white spaces of West Berlin; in his DDR life Bauer had simply filled in the blanks of this Terra Incognita by emigrating in his head every night.
On one of the maps Bauer had used yellow highlighter to mark out a section of ‘Friedrichshain’ close to the Ostkeuz station. Stannheim was tapping one of his long bony fingers on it.
‘Sergeant Bauer has been extremely busy,’ the old man said looking up towards Peters who was standing over the both of them.
Bauer looked pleased with himself, enough to almost finish his beer in one go, eyes shut, again sweating profusely.
Peters sat down beside them and tried to make sense of the paperwork scattered all around them.
‘Well, Sergeant, please enlighten me,’ he said while at the same time putting one finger in the air to order a Pils from ‘Anna’s’ owner.
The ex-Vopo in the cheap shiny suit licked his lips in triumph and began to explain.
‘First I got on to the Techies. I asked them if there were any patterns to his calls or emails.’
‘His? You mean “Christopher” don’t you?’
‘Yes of course,’ Bauer said taking a breath and then launching straight back into his lecture.
‘They spotted something very interesting. Clusters of calls from certain areas, mainly in the south east of the city, a lot of them from booths close to the Spree. He does move about a bit. There were calls from S-Bahn stations in the west, a few were made from the West End. But mainly, mainly they are from areas he would be more familiar with.’
‘Alright Bauer. So he prefers the east to the west, big deal. That’s still a lot of ground to cover.’
Stannheim interrupted to defend Bauer. ‘Let him continue Martin.’
‘Maybe it’s a big area sir but the patterns suggest he works mainly in the south east and that’s where the footwork kicks in. Yesterday I asked Lt. Domath for permission to pound the pavements. I checked every warehouse and lock u
p within a mile radius of Ostkreuz and eventually, I got lucky.’
Peters’ expression of bewilderment only encouraged Bauer further.
‘I rang up every storage business in the area, in some cases I even went to their doors and asked them if they had rented anywhere from this man,’ Bauer had pulled out a photocopy of the “Christopher” photo fit and placed it above the map with the highlighted segment.’
‘You did what?’ Peters exploded, banging the table with his palm.
‘Martin, give Bauer a chance, listen to him,’ Stannheim said.
‘Thank you Sir. Captain Peters sir, I never made any reference to “Christopher”. I said we were looking for a “fence” who might be using a warehouse or garage to store some stolen computers. I made him more co-operative when I said this guy was probably a foreigner.’
‘Him? Who’s him Bauer?’
‘The warehouse owner. Barely out of his teens the little shit. Makes a fortune out of renting these places out down by the Spree. Mainly for techno-parties, photo shoots, performance art, all that kind of Boho crap.’
The Swinging Detective Page 26