‘That was the deal …’
‘So what were you doing up there at that time of the night?’
‘I called up to see her. I did that now and again to check everything was okay. We got on …’
‘You were making a social call at two-thirty in the morning?’ Fabel asked.
‘Neither of us worked normal hours.’
‘What, exactly, is your job, Herr Klugmann?’
‘Like I told you, I work in a nightclub … a Tanzbar. I’m an assistant manager.’
Fabel consulted the file again. ‘Ah yes, the Paradies-Tanzbar off the Grosse Freiheit … that the one?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So you work for … ?’
‘You know who I work for …’ Klugmann looked down at the thumbnail he was now excavating with the other.
Fabel pulled a second file out from under the first. He flipped it open and scanned the first page. Klugmann saw his own photograph at the top right-hand corner. His hunched shoulders sagged. ‘Yes …’ Fabel leaned back in his chair and eyed Klugmann contemplatively. ‘Your current employer is Ersin Ulugbay … not exactly Hamburg citizen of the month, is he?’
‘S’pose not.’
‘It’s an odd career move,’ said Werner, ‘from an elite police unit to the Turkish Mafia.’
‘I didn’t have much choice about my retirement from the police.’ Klugmann smiled cynically. ‘As you probably already know. Anyway, I don’t work for any “Mafia”. I know what Ulugbay’s into, but I’m not into it. Ulugbay may own the bar, but my boss is Arno Hoffknecht, the manager. It’s not much, I’m supposed to be an assistant manager but I’m really nothing more than a glorified bouncer. But I keep my nose clean.’
‘Really?’ said Werner. ‘Interesting choice of expression. I don’t know if your nose is really that clean.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘When was your last line?’
The sinews on Klugmann’s thick neck tautened. ‘Fuck you,
Arschloch
.’
Werner’s eyes blazed and his huge frame seemed primed to explode into violence. Fabel took the initiative. ‘I hope you’re not going to prove uncooperative, Herr Klugmann. That could make things look worse for you.’
‘What do you mean “worse for me”? This has fuck-all to do with me. And you’ve got no proof otherwise …’
‘You’re holding something back.’
‘For instance?’
‘For instance, where is Monique’s appointment book?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Or the video camera that you had hidden behind the mirror? What was that about? Blackmail or just making porn?’
For an instant Klugmann seemed taken aback. ‘Look, I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. No fuckin’ idea at all.’
Fabel leaned back. Werner recognised the tag and leaned his bristle-haired bullet head forward, smiling. ‘I don’t like you, Klugmann …’
‘Oh really?’ Klugmann feigned hurt surprise. ‘And I was thinking maybe we had some kind of future together …’
‘I don’t like you because you’re a traitor and a crook. You crapped on this police service when you started selling your mouth to Ulugbay.’ Werner leaned back and twisted his face in contempt. ‘You stink. You smell of the fucking gutter, you live with a whore …’
Klugmann tensed and made a sudden movement forward.
Fabel held up his hand. ‘Easy …’
Werner continued, unfazed. ‘You live with a whore, you rented your home out to another whore so that she could be ripped apart by some fucking maniac, and you work in a cesspit for a Turkish godfather. What’s it like, Klugmann … what’s it like when you look in the mirror in the morning? For Christ’s sake you were a policeman – and, from what we can see of your record, a good one. You must have had ambition once. And now you’re …’ Werner gestured towards Klugmann, extending his arms as if he were holding something noxious at bay – ‘you’re this.’ He pushed his face even closer to Klugmann’s. ‘You are vermin, Klugmann. I don’t for one second think you’re beyond doing what was done to that girl. And I don’t for one second believe any of this line of crap you’re feeding us about not knowing anything about her except her first name.’
Werner came to an abrupt halt. There was silence in the room. A balanced, calculated silence. Klugmann slumped back in his chair, one leg sprawled, the other still doing its little nervous dance. Fabel scanned Klugmann’s face. There was the expected mask of disinterest: a studied boredom worn by countless others who had sat across the interview desk from Fabel over the years: an expression intended to convey a lack of concern, but Fabel could invariably see through it. As he regarded Klugmann, he realised that, in this case, he couldn’t penetrate the mask.
Werner continued. ‘You weren’t a friend, and you weren’t a customer … you weren’t up there for a sly four-hundred-euro fuck, were you? From what we can tell about “Monique”, she was way out of your class – and your price bracket.’
Klugmann didn’t answer and stared at the edge of the table.
‘And I don’t believe that you are simply the unfortunate landlord of an anonymous girl who just happens to be butchered in the property you rent. So where does that leave us?’ Werner persisted: ‘Not a friend. Not a customer. That leaves … well, that leaves either you slicing her up, or that you’re an enforcer for Ulugbay … that you were her pimp. I think you were up there to collect – and I mean more than the rent – and if she got out of line you’d give her a little slap. Isn’t that about the size of it?’
Silence.
‘Maybe you like your work. Maybe you get a hard-on when you knock these girls about a bit. Maybe last night was you having some special fun …’
Klugmann exploded. ‘Don’t be fuckin’ stupid … You saw the state of that room … if it hadda been me I’d be covered in blood …’
‘Maybe you took your clothes off before you had your jollies … Maybe we should have forensics give you a going over …’
‘Do what the fuck you want … Okay, so I work for Ulugbay. That’s got nothing to do with what happened up there tonight. It’s got nothing to do with him and I’m not bringing him into it. You don’t scare me like the fucking Turks scare me. You know the score … if they think I’m talking to you about them I’ll end up in the woods with my face shaved off.’
Fabel knew the custom Klugmann was referring to, a favourite with the Turkish Mafia: someone who crossed them in a drugs deal, or who gave information to the police, would be dumped in the woods to the north of Hamburg. The hands would be missing, the teeth smashed and the face sliced off. It made identification of the victim difficult, sometimes impossible, and delayed investigations to such an extent that often the trail would be too cold to secure a conviction.
‘Okay, okay … just calm down,’ Fabel said. ‘But you’ve got to see that you’re the only person that we can place in her apartment …’
‘Sure – for thirty fuckin’ seconds. As soon as I saw her … like
that
… I came straight out and phoned you.’
‘You didn’t use her phone?’
‘No. I used my cell phone. I couldn’t stay in there. I had to get out.’
‘You arrived about two-thirty?’ Fabel asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘And you didn’t touch anything?’
‘No. I was straight in and out.’
‘How did you get in? You have a key?’
‘No. Well, yes, I do, but I didn’t use it. The door was unlocked and open a bit.’
‘Your call was logged by the Einsatzzentrale at two-thirty-five. Where were you before you called at the apartment?’
‘At the Paradies-Tanzbar, working.’
‘Until when, exactly?’
‘About a quarter to two.’
‘It doesn’t take three quarters of an hour to get from the Grosse Freiheit to her apartment.’
‘Had business to do …’
‘What business?’
Klugmann held his hands out palms upwards and tilted his head to one side. Fabel picked up his pen and rattled it between his teeth.
‘If you can’t or won’t tell us, that gives you the opportunity to kill the girl, get cleaned up and claim that you’ve just arrived and found the body.’
‘Okay, okay … I went down to see a guy I know in the Hafen … bought some stuff …’
‘From whom?’
‘You’ve gotta be fuckin’ kidding …’
Fabel spun a scene-of-crime photograph across the table. The scene had been captured in full colour, so vivid that it looked unreal.
‘This is no joke.’
Klugmann froze, his face white. Memories were obviously flooding back. ‘She was a friend. That’s all.’
Werner sighed. Klugmann ignored him and looked directly at Fabel.
‘And you know I didn’t kill her, Herr Fabel …’ The intensity faded from his eyes and his posture. ‘Anyway, I got a taxi from the club down to the Hafen. The taxi guy waited for me while I had my meet and then took me up to the apartment. He dropped me off there about two-thirty. He can tell you all my movements from leaving the club to arriving at the flat. Check with the taxi firm.’
‘We’re already checking.’
Fabel closed the file and stood up. It seemed clear that Klugmann wasn’t the killer; they had no solid grounds for detaining him, even as a material witness. But the interview had unsettled Fabel. Klugmann seemed everything he was supposed to be, but Fabel had had the feeling throughout that he had been looking at a map upside down: all the recognised landmarks were there, but they disoriented rather than guided. With both files under his arm, Fabel walked towards the door and spoke without looking back at Klugmann. ‘We’ll get forensics to examine you and your clothing anyway.’
Everything about Maria Klee was brisk and sharp, from her clipped Hanover accent to her short, styled blonde hair. When Fabel emerged from the interview room she was standing in the corridor waiting for him. She had a sheet of paper in her hand.
‘How did it go?’ she asked briskly.
Fabel was about to answer when a uniformed SchuPo arrived to escort Klugmann to forensics. Klugmann’s and Maria’s eyes met for a moment; Klugmann’s eyes seemed blank, as if Maria weren’t there, while Maria frowned, as if trying to work something out.
‘You know him?’ asked Fabel when Klugmann and his escort were out of earshot.
‘I don’t know … I thought I recognised him, but I couldn’t say where I’ve seen him before …’
‘Well, it is possible. He is ex-Polizei Hamburg.’
Maria shrugged again, this time as if she were shaking off an irritating inconsequence. ‘How did you get on with him anyway?’
‘He’s obviously not our guy, but he’s dirty. Everything is just wrong about him. There’s something he’s not telling us. In fact, there’s a lot he’s not telling us. How did you get on?’
‘I talked to the manager of the Tanzbar, Arno Hoffknecht. He confirms that Klugmann was there working until after one-thirty.’
‘Could Hoffknecht be covering for him?’
‘Well, you have to see this guy to believe him. He is as sleazy as they come. Made my flesh crawl.’ Maria mimed a shudder. ‘But no, he’s not covering for him. Too many other people saw Klugmann throughout his shift. Davidwache KriPo have also checked out Klugmann’s claim that he went everywhere in the same taxi …’
‘He just told us the same story.’
‘Anyway, the driver confirms that he picked up Klugmann at the club at one-forty-five, took him to a Kneipe in the Hafen – Klugmann told him to wait – then he dropped him at the apartment about half past two.’
‘Okay. Anything else?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid there is,’ said Maria, and handed Fabel the print-out of the e-mail she had been holding in her hand.
Wednesday 4 June, 10.00 a.m. Polizeipräsidium, Hamburg.
Fabel read it out loud again, then put the page back down on the table and walked over to the window. The briefing room was on the third floor of the Polizeipräsidium. The traffic below pulsed with the changing of the traffic lights: the reassuring rhythm of Hamburg life.
‘And the e-mail was addressed to you, personally?’ asked Van Heiden.
‘Yes, the same as the last one,’ Fabel sipped at his tea. He kept his back to the others and looked out through the rain, across Winterhuder Stadtpark to where the city centre jutted into a steel grey sky.
‘Is there no way we can trace it?’ asked Van Heiden.
‘Unfortunately not, Herr Kriminaldirektor.’ It was Maria Klee who answered. ‘Our friend seems to have a pretty sophisticated understanding of information technology. Unless we actually catch him online, there’s no way we can locate him. Even then it would be unlikely.’
‘Have we had Technical Section look at this?’
‘Yes sir,’ said Maria Klee. Fabel still didn’t turn but kept focused on the pulsing traffic below. ‘We’ve also had an independent expert look at the e-mail. There’s just no way we can track it back.’
‘It’s perfect,’ said Fabel. ‘An anonymous letter or note gives us physical evidence; we can look for DNA, carry out handwriting analysis, identify the source of the paper and the ink … but an e-mail only has an electronic presence. Forensically, it is non-existent.’
‘But I thought an anonymous e-mail was impossible,’ said Van Heiden. ‘Surely we have an IP address?’