The Swinging Detective

by Henry McDonald

  ‘Now, I want you to think. Do you know how they represent me?’

  ‘As in your name?’ Peters replied before being interrupted sharply.

  ‘Don’t mention the name, that is not important. But I shall tell you what is.’

  ‘Please do.’

  ‘Do you know how they represent me? What symbol do they use? Don’t say it just make me happy that you understand me.’

  Peters had formed a mental picture of the symbol that came into view on that first DVD, when the scenes of horror dissolved initially into black and then to the badge representing the bearded man with a child on his shoulders crossing the river.

  ‘Yes, I understand.’

  ‘Good. Now ask yourself this – what is the secular version? And where is it?’

  There was a longer gap this time as Peters searched his mind, his brain physically aching not only from insomnia but being caught in the quick fire of Streich’s blunt interrogative tone.

  ‘You can’t stay in that booth all night Captain. Somebody going to work is going to report something odd to the first cop they see. And, as you can appreciate, I need to be on the move.’

  Peters kept mulling over what Streich had told him again and again in his head. ‘A secular version’. At first he was perplexed but then as he started to keep focussed on the image itself of St. Christopher holding the baby Christ a picture formed in his mind. He was roaming mentally across the city, imagining himself flying in the air above, scanning the cityscape in slow motion, gliding over the familiar sights beneath him. In this mental flight Peters felt increasingly close to his destination the further east he soared, until he saw it at last, then he cleared his throat and answered.

  ‘I can see it. I know where you mean. A child on top of a man’s shoulder. I need to go east.’

  ‘That’s quite enough then. Say nothing more. I don’t care how you get there but make it around dawn. Then we can really talk.’

  ‘I suppose it’s a stupid question but how will I know it’s you?’

  Streich sounded amused by Peter’s question: ‘You are the most famous policeman in Germany, Captain. Let me find you. It shouldn’t be too difficult. Now get moving.’

  He almost responded with a ‘yes Sir’ but Streich butted in once more: ‘One more thing. Definitely come alone and come unarmed. Is that clear?’

  ‘As crystal.’

  ‘Then go.’

  The sound went dead again on the other end of the line and Peters was left feeling completely alone in the booth, a ridiculous sight in his sock-less shoes, a more disturbing one for any early morning passer-by who might have seen him. Peters needed to get back and change and be on the move eastwards as soon as possible.

  He was relieved when he found the keys to his apartment inside one of his cardigan pockets. Back inside the flat he immediately went to the sock drawer in his bedroom, found his Duffel coat, put it on and was ready to leave. As he went around the living room trying to find his wallet Peters stared down to the floor at the mobile, now fully charged. This time he opted to leave it at home rather than take it with him as far as one of the S-Bahn stations and his chosen luggage section. He switched the television on and surfed the channels until he found BBC News 24. Leaving the set on a low volume Peters switched on a lamp beside his bookcase, making sure that anyone peering into the flat would think someone was at home. With his socks on his feet and trainers in his hands Peters opened his front door and tip toed back down the block of stairs to the ground floor. He even avoided slipping on his shoes inside the complex in case they squeaked against the polished marble flooring beneath.

  Hooded and huddled deep into his Duffel Peters darted across an empty Heer Strasse towards the S-Bahn station. He thought that he must have resembled a diffident novice in cloisters rushing to get to matins on time, if there had been anyone outside to see him.

  There was no one behind the ticket counter yet so he fed a couple of euro coins into the machine just ahead of the stairs and bought a Day Card for the whole of the city. Down below on the platform there was no sign of life either until the first train of the morning came into view and Peters could make out the driver of the S-Bahn rumbling in from Spandau.

  He took the train five stops up to the Zoo, alighted at the platform and descended into the bowels of the station. On the newsstands a familiar face had replaced the ‘Christopher’ logo on the front pages – the smiling, podgy, vinous visage of Hermann Bauer. Nervously Peters scanned the papers for any sign of himself delivering his speech the evening before. There were none. They were probably tucked away on pages three or five. Relieved, he made his way through the overnight drunks and junkies being harassed by a patrol of Green Coats near the entrance leading on to the west end. He searched among the human debris being swept out into the morning for any sight of Paul Stannheim but couldn’t find him.

  Peters walked southwards to the Wittenberg Platz U-Bahn station before seeking out a public telephone booth in order to ring Paul Stannheim’s father.

  ‘Sir?’ he asked down the line when Stannheim finally took the call.

  ‘Martin. Why so early?’

  ‘I could ask you the same thing,’ Peters said knowing that the boss rarely slept for more than a few hours a night especially if his son was on the prowl for smack in town and could return any time in search of a bed or, at least anything he could steal from his father’s home.

  ‘Bauer’s the most famous face in Berlin....at least for today,’ he continued.

  ‘But not for long, eh?’ Stannheim replied slyly.

  ‘No. I suppose you’re right sir.’

  ‘So why are you calling me at quarter to six in the morning, from a public telephone?’ the boss asked.

  ‘I’m on my way to meet our man, sir,’ Peters said flatly.

  There was a brief hiatus of awkward silence between the two of them, Stannheim’s breathing audible, Peters hearing his own heart thumping in his chest, instantly regretting that he had opted to call his commanding officer. Peters was surprised by Stannheim’s reply.

  ‘Where are you Martin?’ The question sounded more like a command.

  ‘Not far from the west end, why do you ask?’ Peters replied, suspiciously.

  ‘Where is this meeting?’ Stannheim answered with another question.

  ‘Somewhere in the east, sir.’

  ‘Where’s somewhere?’ Peters detected frustration in Stannheim’s voice.

  Peters didn’t reply which prompted Stannheim to take a different tact.

  ‘What makes you so sure you won’t be next in his firing line? Don’t be so arrogant to assume you would never end up in one of this films as his prize captive. Remember – in his eyes you are still the enemy. The ultimate enemy.’

  ‘I’m well aware of what he’s capable of but I’m certain he wants to bring this to an end,’ Peters tried to sound convincing, even to himself.

  ‘You’re taking a hell of a chance with your instincts and they can never be certain.’ Stannheim interjected; Peters sensed that the old man was deliberately stringing out their conversation and now cursed his decision to ring him in the first place.

  ‘I’m bringing him in sir, just trust me. I’ll be in touch,’ he said putting down the phone before his boss could reply and made his way towards the U-Bahn entrance.

  He had cut the old man off. He didn’t want Stannheim and the team from Kottbusser Strasse to follow him out to Treptower Park, all the way to the Soviet war memorial where ‘Christopher’ had chosen to meet up. And nor did Peters want to admit that deep down he really wasn’t certain what was ahead of him, or what Streich had in store for him. For the first time since he had picked up the mobile earlier that morning and first listened to “Christopher’s” commands down the line Peters felt an entirely new sense of fear and dread. He had seen at firsthand how “Christopher” had been prepared to put others in his firing line to dispatch his main targets; “others” such as the residents of Berliner Strasse and Sergeant Hermann Bauer. W
hy should he be any different? Why would Streich spare him if the killer thought for a moment that a former English spy would get in his way?

  Trying to shake off these gathering doubts, as well as anyone who might have been trailing him Peters went first on the U1 green U-Bahn line westwards only as far Hallesches Tor, ascended to the street and then hailed a cab which he took all the way eastwards to the Planterwald S-Bahn station, just one stop south of Treptower explaining to the Turkish taxi man on route that he was a landscape gardener on his way to a freelance job.

  Then Peters got back onto the S-Bahn line again, boarding a train north this time with a final destination to Karow, making sure there were no familiar faces in the carriages he might have spotted all the way from his serpentine journey via Heer Strasse and the Zoo. Just one stop later he was on the platform of Treptower Park blinking and squinting as his eyes got used again to the neuralgic light of the sharp, cloudless bright morning.

  A few of the early bird suited commuters on their way to work at the gleaming glass high-rise ‘Allianz’ building adjacent to the station gave him furtive, bewildering looks almost expecting this seemingly half-blind and bearded oddity to start yelling at the top of his voice that he was the Son of Man. No one dared take notice of him.

  Forty Five

  Even Arkady Gavrilov had once confessed to Peters, in between their endless toasts of vodka as the two of them bade farewell to the Cold War, that when he set foot in the memorial park parallel to the Spree, in the south-east of the city, a lump would form in his throat and tears would well up in his eyes.

  ‘You are treading on 5,000 of my predecessors,’ Peters remembered Gavrilov mouthing into his ear after their bacchanalian binge to mark the end of the old order, the Russian’s breath reeking of ‘Stoly’, his face flushed, his arm in a vice-like grip around the Englishman’s neck.

  ‘Don’t forget what they did Tavarich! Don’t forget what they did.’

  The women of a certain age in eastern Germany had another name for the Soviet Cenotaph. They called it ‘The Tomb of the Unknown Rapist’ in memory of the Red Army’s mass rape rampage on route to the Reichstag in 1945. Those women never forgot what they did either.

  Peters paced slowly through the main avenue extending from north to south of the gardens, past the 16 monuments with carved reliefs of Soviet soldiers, through the gap between the two dark red granite portals resembling the old USSR flag. Beyond stood two stone sentinels down on bended knee each of whom Peters shot a respectful glance towards and instantly wondered why he did so. Perhaps it was the thought of his friend Arkady and that moment alone in the hotel bar back on that incredible night in November ‘89 when he realised the Russian’s mourning for the soldiers who fell on the spot where he was now walking on was also for a life of service Gavrilov had lived in vain.

  Now ahead of him stood the 12 metre statue of the soldier towering over the park, a sword at rest by his side, a child on his shoulder, a crushed Swastika beneath his feet. The figure was meant to represent Nikolai Masolov, a Battle of Berlin veteran whom Soviet propaganda would have it found a lost girl wandering around the chaos of Potsdamer Platz, rescuing her from danger and taking her to the safety of a nearby orphanage. A caring, sharing poster boy for Proletarian Internationalism, a friend for the new first workers and peasant state on German soil. As Peters walked in a diffident pace towards the monument he imagined Streich in his formative years being taken to pay homage here first in the white shirt and red neck tie uniform of the Young Pioneers and later the dark blue of the FDJ youth movement. For a generation of Streichs born after the war and nurtured by the state this was the closest they would have come to religious ritual.

  Peters changed tempo and started to make as much noise as he could while charging up the steps leading towards the altar beneath the sculpture. He could hear the percussion of his rubber soles striking on the stonework echoing all around him as if beating out a message that he was coming for Streich, camouflaging the inner fear Peters that felt building up, suppressing the tremor of terror now raging within.

  But at the entrance to the inner portal Peters suddenly stopped himself, stood for a few seconds, took in breath and closed his eyes. When he opened them again he was inside it, noticing the morning sunshine bouncing off individual golden squares of the secular Icon in front of him. He could make out eight figures imprinted on the wall, two of whom in military uniforms were crouched down laying a wreath. There was also a real wreath directly in front of him of red and white ribbon, Cyrillic writing in gold on each side of an arrangement of fresh red roses.

  To his right out of the corner of his eye, partially obscured by shadow, leaning away from the laser-shaped shards of light penetrating this inner sanctum, stood a man whom Peters guessed was about six feet two tall, thin but with broad shoulders. In this penumbral refuge, Peters could also make out that he was a wearing a fur lined three quarter length leather coat that was zipped up to his throat, jeans and Doctor Marten shoes. The outline of his hair was short and prickly and cut more severely at the sides.

  ‘Move back. Closer to the entrance,’ it was the same tone of near impatient authority as before. Peters stepped back a bit and could feel an icy blast of cold wind howling up the avenue from outside.

  Streich moved carefully into view until he was as fully illuminated as the men and women painted on the mosaic behind him. Peters silently saluted Oskar Beer’s powers of description. The wing-mirrored cheek bones, the hooded but piercing blue eyes, the chiselled dimple on the chin, the sharp nose and the swarthy skin. And all around his face a bluish hue that suggested he had spent a long time in the early hours in front of the shaving mirror.

  Peters looked down to where Streich was holding a Glock pistol and thought that if he open fires in this instant his guts would explode and he would die in an agonisingly slow, internal fire-storm. In that instant he was no longer sure that ‘Christopher’ had come to surrender.

  ‘You told me to come unarmed, how come you are?’ Peters protested nervously.

  ‘This is just a bit of insurance, to buy some time, to explain oneself,’ Streich answered apologetically.

  ‘You are under no threat from me Captain Peters. I give you my word. I think you already knew that.’

  ‘Hardly as a Prussian gentleman though, Herr Streich. Pointing that at me is hardly boosting my confidence.’

  The killer shook his head and smiled at Peters while continuing to train the pistol at the English detective’s stomach region.

  ‘Only an English Imperialist would say something crass like that. But I have to praise you all the same – you did well to work out where to come. I hope you weren’t as successful at elusive action in your spy craft days.’

  ‘Successful enough to see the system you fought for collapse and die,’ said Peters impatiently. ‘So let’s get down to business Streich. You know and I know all this has to stop.’

  Streich continued to smile: ‘That’s funny coming from a man who has a gun pointed at him. Your bravado is very transparent Captain Peters and you assume far too much.’

  ‘There’s nothing funny about watching one of your colleagues die in front of you. This has gone beyond you kidnapping and killing paedos Streich. Your booby trap toy killed one of my officers, who himself used to be a loyal and faithful servant of the DDR.’ Peter’s truculent reply surprised even himself.

  The news that Bauer had been a Vopo in the East Berlin police seemed to temporarily shake Streich. Peters sensed he had scored a direct hit.

  ‘I want to make it clear to you that I never had any intention of hurting any of your colleagues.’

  Then he added as if standing to attention, as if making a speech from the dock:

  ‘I wish to express my sincere condolences to his family and all of his comrades.’

  Peters kept his finger on the pressure point.

  ‘You took wanton risks. Think of the passers-by you could have killed when you blew up that sex shop near Sauvigny Platz,’ Pe
ters stopped and noticed that Streich was shaking his head vigorously.

  ‘What bombing at what sex shop? You think I blew up that place where those ageing perverts used to congregate. I had nothing to do with that. I will own up to everything but I can assure you I had no hand in that incident.’

  Peters tried to conceal his terror, the realisation that it had probably been Yanaev’s ‘soldiers’ who had destroyed Blucher’s business and not this morbid mass killer in front of him.

  ‘All the same, they were all just collateral damage to you Streich. That’s all Hermann Bauer was to you.’

  ‘How dare you call down ‘Collateral Damage’ to condemn me since you would know all about it? How much ‘Collateral Damage’ did you and your army do when you were bombing bunkers in Baghdad and television stations in Belgrade! You see I’ve read your CV Captain Peters and you took part in Operation Blood for Oil back in ‘91 when you and the Yankees thought you could go around policing the world. So don’t think you can launch any salvoes from the moral high ground especially when you are in a place like this,’ he said the last four words in a whispered reverence.

  To mask his growing terror, brought on again by the way Streich’s tone had instantly darkened, Peters feigned guile.

  ‘So what’s this all about then Streich? Do you see yourself as Nikolai Masolov up there rescuing the kiddies?’

  ‘As I said to your good friend Fraulein Numann, your crude pop psychology won’t work on me, Captain. My motivation was purely political.’

  ‘Political? If it was political why not go out and bomb a bank or shoot a leading industrialist.’