The Swinging Detective

by Henry McDonald

  ‘Where’s Angi? I thought she’d be taking the lead on this one,’ Peters inquired noticing that it was Riedel in his puffed up Porsche jacket and driving gloves conducting the enclosure of a forensic screen around the steps and the entrance to the Soviet war memorial.

  ‘She’s putting the finishing touches to her own latest triumph. Her eagle eyes have once again solved yet another case. She had the guts to rewind that awful tape we found of that little girl being raped and she spotted something every interesting at about 2 am this morning.’

  ‘Which was?

  ‘Another tattoo. Not of battlefields but of a name. “Misha”, to be precise. Angi spotted it on one of the hands that was tearing off the child’s clothes.’

  ‘And what was the significance of that, sir?’

  ‘It was the same name tattooed in exactly the same place on the hand of one of the Russians we picked up who were distributing this shit from a flat in Prenzl’berg. Turns out they weren’t just distributors but the producers and actors too. Dirty bastards.’ Stannheim said.

  Peters jerked a thumb behind one of his shoulders towards the direction of the statue.

  ‘Maybe it would have been better to have let Streich just get on with it and take them all out.’

  ‘That’s what Bauer said and look what happened to him,’ Stannheim said shaking his head.

  ‘So we all succumb to blackmail in one way or another, sir.’

  ‘Try not to see it that way Martin,’ Stannheim attempted in vain to sound re-assuring.

  ‘Don’t worry, sir. I’m changing my plans for the rest of the morning. Heike can wait for another day. Can I borrow your handy? I left mine back in the flat.’ Peters asked with mock effusion.

  Peters put his hands his pockets and stroked Streich’s switched off phone with conspiratorial caresses while Stannheim handed over his own flicked open mobile. On the top left hand corner the digits told Peters that it was only 7.20 am, still time for him to contact Miriam before she ended her night shift when on weekdays she would pick up Ayse for school. He texted her to meet him at the entrance of the Treptower Park S-Bahn station and then, concealed from his boss, instantly erased the sent message.

  ‘Thanks, Mannfred,’ he said handing the mobile back.

  ‘Where are you off to now?’ Stannheim asked.

  ‘To see yet another equally stupid stubborn old man,’ Peters said and turned again on his heels, the sound of the grit and stones grinding underneath his feet. He picked up a pace and ran zig zagging through an approaching arrow of reporters, photographers, camera operators. But the media throng simply ignored him as they appeared to be riding on a hypnotic wave, being drawn towards the statue at the far corner of the park, towards the final end of ‘Christopher’s Wrath.’

  A few curious commuters were standing around the S-Bahn entrance observing in the distance the crowd advancing towards the white tape and the green lines of uniformed officers blocking their progress. Like the newspaper reporters and the network journalists, the workers paid absolutely no attention to Peters.

  He only had to wait for about ten minutes because Miriam normally finished her shift in the south-east corners of the city close enough to Kreuzberg where she lived and Friedrichshain, the headquarters of the cab firm she worked for.

  Sliding in to the front passenger seat beside her, Peters almost leaned over to kiss her but Miriam shifted slightly to her left and he had to do with her forefinger gliding over the palms of his hands instead.

  ‘Where to Martin? I think we need to get out of here.’

  ‘Take me to Pankow, near the Viner Strasse U-Bahn, drop me there and I’ll walk the rest of the way.’

  She looked across to him and narrowed her eyes inquisitively.

  ‘What’s going on over there?’

  ‘We’ve got our serial killer at last. The people of Berlin and the world will be in mourning today. Just drive, love.’

  He signalled that he didn’t want to go on talking about what he had just seen by closing his eyes, throwing his head back against the seat and rubbing his hand up and down the skin tight jeans over Miriam’s thighs.

  As she pulled up underneath the bridge of the overhead S-Bahn line Peters shook himself out of his torpor and twisted in his seat. He squeezed her hand tightly and stared straight into her eyes.

  ‘Miriam. We have to give each other a wide berth for a while. Once they get over the loss of their greatest story they’re going to come after me. They’ll be camped out at Heer Strasse for weeks. I don’t want you getting caught in the crossfire.’

  Then Peters leaned over and planted a lustful, wet kiss onto her lips before backing out of the car.

  ‘Martin, I know why but hopefully not forever,’ she called back to him as Peters made off in the direction of the Domath family home. Her words left him with a faint sense of hope.

  The Colonel looked perplexed when he yanked open the iron, rusting door to his apartment, the entrance to the Socialist sarcophagus from which Angi’s father had locked out the world. Peters followed him up the hallway in the dim orange light deciding this time to keep his shoes on very deliberately against the Colonel’s orders.

  When Domath returned from the kitchen with two bottles of beer he scowled at Peters.

  ‘Where is my daughter?’ he asked as he popped open the bottle tops with his DDR flag opener.

  ‘She’s busy putting some really bad men behind bars. But even if she wasn’t busy I would still have come alone,’ Peters said nursing the beer bottle close to his chest in a defensive position. He spotted that the lower hem of the Colonel’s pyjama top peeked out of the moth eaten lamb’s wool jumper pulled over his torso. His breath was beery and his eyes watery. Peters wondered if Angi’s old man was finally giving up.

  Peters waited until the Colonel sat down and placed his beer on one of his doilies by the table at the side.

  ‘Streich is dead.’ Peters said.

  The Colonel looked up towards Peters but showed no surprise.

  ‘How did he die?’ Domath said without any emotion.

  ‘He was shot during an attempted arrest but that is not why I’m here Colonel. I’m here because you tipped him off that we knew his name that we were closing in. Tell me this – did you make the call after Angi came to see you?’

  The Colonel seemed to be staring at some point on the opposite wall just beneath a framed portrait of Che Guevara.

  ‘Am I under arrest?’ he asked flatly.

  ‘No. We’ll not go down that road Colonel. I just want to know how you got in touch with him and why you never bothered mentioning it to either Angi or myself.’

  ‘It’s not so complicated Captain Peters. Once Angi told me the name of your suspect I realised who this was.’

  ‘And then?’ Peters butted in.

  ‘And then it was a simple case of ringing some old comrades, tapping into the network and coming up with an address. He had a little flat up in Strausberg. I knew the place well, I’ve been up there a few times for conferences, to meet some old friends.’

  ‘So you just took the S-Bahn north and rapped on his door.’

  ‘No. I left a number in his mail box and urged him to call. Which he did.’

  ‘Why did he not smell a trap?’

  ‘Because he knew who I was and what I had been,’ the Colonel said in an angry protesting tone, pointing into his chest.

  ‘He knew that I could be trusted.’ Domath added.

  ‘When did he phone?’ Peters went on.

  ‘About 48 hours ago.’ Peters realised it was about the time just before they raided Streich’s lock-up at Ostkreuz and that he might have been there but for the fact that ‘Christopher’ had rang the Domath’s house.

  ‘And so you told him that the game was up, that we knew who he was. Presumably you mentioned that you knew me, that your daughter worked in my unit. He was always going to take someone like you seriously, wasn’t he?’

  The Colonel put down his bottle and again folded his hand
s together as if in prayer.

  ‘Are you wearing a wire Captain Peters?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous Colonel, we’re not living in the DDR anymore?’

  ‘Mores the pity,’ Angi’s father grumbled. ‘More’s the pity.’

  ‘But let’s not get sidetracked here,’ Peters continued.

  ‘The issue comes back to you wiring off Streich and preventing us from arresting him at the scene of where he acted out his crimes. Thanks indirectly to you Colonel, Streich in the end gets clipped.’

  Peters kept twisting the knife: ‘So I hope you realise what you did. That you ruined our element of surprise and as a result things got messy.’

  Domath shot up from his chair and leaned forward into Peters’ face.

  ‘If you want to arrest me go ahead. I have nothing to fear from the likes of you, never had, never will.’

  ‘There you are being ridiculous again Colonel. Thinking you are fighting the old struggles. Sit down there in that chair before I knock you down or least knock some sense into you,’ Peters snapped back, the force of his bellicosity driving the old soldier towards where he had been sitting.

  ‘I’ll get you another drink Colonel, you just sit there and relax,’ he said parting the long multi coloured strips of tape that marked the boundary between the living room and the poky kitchen.

  When he had retrieved two more bottles, popped open the tops with the East German flag opener and planted one on the table beside Domath, Peters resumed, this time sounding more emollient than before.

  ‘I repeat Colonel, you are not under arrest. Angi is far too important to me.’

  Peters walked over and clinked Domath’s second bottle still standing on the table.

  ‘I just want you to know why I’m not charging you with obstructing justice. I don’t want Angi dragged into any scandal. She’s the best I have. She’ll go far. I’ll make sure she does.’

  The Colonel stood up again this time with his head bowed as if once more about to break into prayer. Or perhaps to click his heels.

  ‘Then I want to thank you Captain. You really do care about her don’t you?’

  ‘As I said she’s the best I have. The most trustworthy. The most reliable.’

  Her father extended one of his bony hands out to shake Peters who instantly declined the offer by shaking his head.

  ‘There’s a final thing I want you to think about Colonel, as well your stupidity in tipping off Streich. Because he wasn’t there when we came calling at his lock up in Ostkreuz a good man died.’

  ‘You mean your sergeant?’ Domath asked diffidently.

  ‘Sergeant Hermann Bauer. At one time too a loyal and faithful servant of the German Democratic Republic. If Streich had been at home at least he would have had the manners to tell us where his booby trap toys where. Think about Bauer too when you can’t sleep at four a.m and you’re pondering over your decision to jump on the S-Bahn up to Strausberg to help out an old comrade.’

  After leaving the Colonel’s home Peters made his way back to Viner Strasse and took the U-Bahn one stop to the Schonhauser Allee and then two more clicks east on the S-Bahn to Greifwalder Strasse, all the time keeping a picture in his mind of a teenage Angi Domath, rigged out in her deep blue uniform, flowers in her arms, in front of the giant sculpture of the DDR’s home grown adopted wartime martyr.

  When he finally arrived at the statue Peters sat down and took out the mobile he had stolen from Streich’s jacket earlier that morning. Peters pressed down the on-switch, waited until the master screen appeared and then searched for the video gallery. The last item recorded showed the previous day’s date, he had found exactly what he had anticipated that Streich might do.

  A frozen frame of Streich standing facing a camera, the red flag and the banner of the DDR pinned up on a bare brick wall, inside what Peters guessed had been his private execution chamber in Ostkreuz, suddenly jerked into motion.

  ‘I am Major Hans Joachim Streich or as you probably know me better as St. Christopher. This film has been made to ensure that my reasons for all that I did during this campaign are explained. In the event of my arrest, or death, this may be my last message to you.’

  Peters nursed the phone with a claw like grip holding it up in front of his eyes, faking texting movements with the digits of his other hand in case anyone was looking even though there wasn’t a single soul around.

  ‘What I did I did as a soldier, in a war. That war was conducted against the worst exploiters, against those who regard even children as products that can be bought and exchanged in this so called free market. In the system that promised freedom and choice and boundless prosperity.

  ‘I merely targeted its rotten core. Its putrid essence. These beings that I executed were selected not only over what they did but for what they represented. The struggle against them was and is the struggle against that entire system.’

  The mini screen froze again capturing Streich’s truculent stare into a lens, his head bowed slightly. Peters worked the screen until he found the emails and opened up a sent page, attaching the last of the video files to it before flicking on the digits until he found Heike Numann’s ‘Wams’ email address. He was about to make his ex-lover the most famous journalist on the planet.

  Once he was sure the message had been sent Peters switched off the power, broke off the battery and dropped it in a bin nearby before walking west to the Prenzlauer Alee S-Bahn. When he made it back to Kreuzberg, at a strategic distance from the Kottbusser Damm and the station, Peters walked to the Landwehr Canal. Hunched over the railing of the waterway close to where the old frontier once stood that cut off Kreuzberg on three fronts from the rest of what was then West Berlin, he poked out the phone’s Sim card and with forefinger and thumb snapped it in two. He flicked one half of the card into the water, and walked along to the end of the canal. Peters kept the remaining half inside his wallet reminding himself to ditch it in one of the bins inside Zoo station on route to the refuge where he had already chosen in his mind to hideaway.

  Forty Seven

  To escape the intrusive persistence of the media camped outside his apartment Peters surrendered into captivity. For the next nine days he hid in Frau Schuster’s’ house down in Dahlem acting out a ‘work routine’ the widow had mapped out for him on the first day of his voluntary refuge.

  She had agreed to run the bar during the day, letting the Polish girl she had recently hired to take charge of the pub in the evenings. So on her return each afternoon the widow would come through the door, drop off her shopping bags filled with organic vegetables, white fish and the flintiest of wines from the Saar and Mosel in the kitchen in order to carry out her daily ‘inspection.’

  She would don a pair of white opera gloves, roll up the sleeves of her shirt or jumper and go sailing around across the living room, her fingers gliding along the surface of sideboards, the piano next to one of the bay windows, the drinks cabinet, the coffee table, the top of the television set, over the brown leather arm chairs, the CD player, even the door handles. Each night she completed her scrutiny and then peered disapprovingly over her thick half moon glasses towards Peters, holding up a finger or two polluted with traces and smears of grey-black dust and dirt. It was all part of the game; he was always doomed to fail her test.

  In this temporary luxuriously stifling sanctuary he submitted to the ritual, to the humiliations and subjugations. Failure was followed by an order to strip naked, to tighten the dog collar that was thrown at him and allow himself to be led on a leash towards her DIY dungeon in one of the spare rooms she had transformed a long time before into a museum commemorating her late husband and hers’ lifelong devotion to their fetish.

  In this purgatorial bolt-hole there was the home-made St. Andrew’s cross her old man had hammered together one Saturday afternoon in winter; there were the padded cuffs he had welded and bolted onto the wooden structure; there was the mini-throne the couple had found to their delight in an antique shop in Schoneberg; there was
the opened suitcase containing a variety of canes, whips, paddles and clamps; there was the teak mirrored wardrobe behind the Saltire deliberately left ajar to reveal a tightly packed rack of rubber, PVC and leather costumes and to the side of it a table laid out like an altar, on either end a thick red candle perpetually burning while upright on a sheet of black lace stood a row of vibrators.

  There were no more questions this time, no more ‘why did you come?’ Until she released him the only other thing audible beyond the thwack of short, sharp corrective strikes, the low hum of her toys and his muffled resistance on entry was the widow’s smoky breathing, sounding trance-like and ethereal in the tenebrous, artificial twilight.

  After each session he was untethered, sent to a hot mineral infused bath, dressed after drying in a furry hooded robe and summoned for dinner an hour later. For eight days the television and radio inside the widow’s lair was switched off. Neither would talk about what had happened to him or what was to greet him when he re-entered the world again. After their meal they would swill thick medals of brandy beside the fire, wrapped around each other, she tenderly stroking his hair and face. Then they would retire early under the fresh coolness of new bed linen and make love only in the missionary position just as he had agreed to when he first signed the contract she had waiting for him on the very day that Peters had asked for temporary asylum.

  Looking back later, Peters admitted to himself that those Dahlem days had been among the happiest, least complicated of his life lately and was so overcome with gratitude that he had actually promised to go on holiday in the Med with her that summer. Frau Schuster seemed startled that he had finally relented and from her position of strength summoned up the courage to ask the questions she had dared not pose since they first met on that dank, wet autumn evening a year and a half earlier.