The Last Temptation (19 page)

But Heinrich Holtz’s story had made him realize there was

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no point in blaming his mother or his grandfather. Might as well blame the bullet or the gun for killing. The finger that had pulled the trigger on his own particular fate hadn’t been the old man. It had been the psychologists who thought that people were a legitimate resource for their experiments.

Everybody acted as if all that had ended with the Nazi era. He knew better. He’d done his research. He’d learned from his experience at the hands of his grandfather that there was no point in rushing to vengeance. It was necessary to know the enemy, to study their strengths as well as their weaknesses. After the funeral, he’d made it his business to read everything he could find about the theory and practice of psychology. At first, it had been like reading a foreign language. He’d had to read and reread till the words blurred and his head ached, but he’d struggled on. Now, he could use their own weapons against them. Now, he knew their truths almost as well as he knew his own. He could wrap up his ideas in their secret jargon. Which of them would have believed that a mere boatman could infiltrate their world?

He knew they were still using people as their guinea pigs. They were still fucking with the heads of their victims, still hiding behind the guise of professional scientific curiosity to wreak damage. Even when they were supposed to be helping, they just made things worse. While they were still out there, his would not be a unique fate. Other poor sods would be as crippled as he had been. His task was clear. He had to send out a message that could not be ignored.

There was no point in making an example of one or two. He had to cut a swathe through their ranks. He’d chosen his victims meticulously, plodding through reams of published papers in the journals of experimental psychology. He was only interested in those who might be regarded as the legitimate professional descendants of his persecutors - the

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Germans, of course, and their treacherous collaborators, the French, the Belgians, the Austrians and the Dutch. He’d ignored anyone who experimented on animals, looking instead for those evil bastards who not q^ly used humans as the stepping stones for their own advancement, but who boasted of it in print. It was sickening, the way they detailed how they manipulated their subjects, twisting their minds and their behaviour. He’d been surprised that there weren’t more of them, but he supposed that not all of them were stupid enough to expose their own cruelties. It took a while, but finally he had a list of twenty names. He’d chosen to start with the ones who were based nearest the waterways, but if the need arose he could travel further afield later in his campaign.

Now, he had to be very, very careful. He had to plan every move with the precision of a military operation. And, so far, it had paid off handsomely.

He looked out of the porthole at the brown water surging past. Bremen would be next. The jar was ready and waiting.

Petra Becker was as cross as a cat whose mouse has been taken from it by a squeamish human. She’d had another frustrating day trying to prove a negative. They’d tracked down the man that Marlene Krebs was sleeping with, but he’d given them nothing useful. Marlene was a free agent, he’d shrugged. Yes, he’d heard she’d been seeing Danni, but he didn’t care so long as she practised safe sex, which she always did with him. You didn’t want to take chances with junkies, he’d added self righteously.

Danni’s girlfriend had denied any knowledge of his supposed affair with Marlene, but they hadn’t lived together and she couldn’t say for sure where he’d been on the nights he hadn’t been with her.

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Between them, Petra and the Shark had found three people who claimed to have known about the affair. The KriPo detectives were satisfied with that, but Petra wasn’t. One of the three had convictions for minor dealing, another worked in one of Radecki’s video stores. And the third owed so much to the local loan sharks that he’d have admitted to sleeping with the Chancellor if the price had been right. She didn’t believe any of them. But that was a long way from being able to disprove the story that Marlene still stuck so doggedly to.

She’d come back to the office determined to get the next phase of her strategy off the ground. None of her usual sources had been able to give her any leads on Marlene’s I daughter’s whereabouts. All she’d been able to establish was I that Tanja had been picked up from school on the day of the shooting in a big black Mercedes. Nobody had noticed who was driving the car, or anything useful like the number plate. She could be anywhere by now. Given Radecki’s network, she might not even be in Germany.

But they had to try. So she’d marched into Hanna Plesch’s office and laid out her idea. Plesch had heard her out, frowning. Then she’d shaken her auburn head. ‘It’s too risky,’ she said.

‘It’s the only way. If we run it big as a missing child, we’re bound to get a response. Wherever she’s being held, someone must have seen her. Or, at the very least, noticed something a bit suspicious. We need to find the girl so we can make it safe for Marlene to tell us what she knows.’

‘And what if they decide to cut their losses and kill the m^ kid? What do we say to the media then? Do you really think Krebs will give you the time of day if she thinks you’re the one who got her daughter killed?’ Plesch stared her down. She was clearly as determined as Petra was.

‘We don’t have any other choice,’ Petra said obstinately.

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‘Petra, we’re getting nowhere with this. We might have to accept it’s another dead end. We’ll keep working the case, but I won’t put a child’s life at risk.’

‘The child’s already at risk.’

‘Krebs knows that. And she knows what she has to do to keep her child alive. You’re not going to change that. Petra, you might have to let this one go. There’ll be other chances.’

Petra glared at her boss. ‘Not from what I hear.’

‘Meaning?’

‘The word is that there’s going to be a big operation mounted against Radecki. And it’s not going to be ours. Boss, I’ve worked my arse off for years trying to build a case against that bastard, and if this is going to be our last chance to put him away, I don’t want to leave any stone unturned.’

Plesch looked away. ‘This job is not personal, Petra. You don’t have some sort of divine right to be the one who finally cracks Radecki’s organization. It doesn’t matter who closes him down, as long as somebody does.’

‘You’re confirming there is something going down? Something that takes it away from us?’ Now her blood was up and she didn’t care that she was overstepping the mark. Her eyes were narrowed and there were patches of colour on her cheeks and neck.

‘Don’t push me,’ Plesch said, getting to her feet. ‘Just go out there and do your job. We need to talk about this some more, but not now. Listen to me, Petra. We’ve worked together long enough for you to understand that there are times when you have to trust me. This is not a good time for you to rock the boat. Don’t go down the high-risk road. It’s not necessary and it’s not desirable.’ She forced a smile. “That’s an order, by the way. You don’t expose the child.’

Petra had walked out fuming, her hands clenched into fists at her side. Only later, when her initial anger had subsided,

“s

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had she analysed what Plesch had said to her. She had verified, albeit indirectly, that something major was going to change in the Radecki investigation. But she seemed to be suggesting that there would be a role for Petra if she kept her nose clean. It was a long way from a promise, but it made her feel slightly less raw about Plesch’s dismissal of her plan.

She slouched in her chair and logged on to her internal e-mail. She wasn’t expecting anything interesting, but it was
better than staring at the wall. She scanned the short list of ™ new mail. The only thing that piqued her attention was a reply to her request for information from the police in Heidelberg. Given the way things had been panning out for her over the past couple of days, she refused to allow herself to feel eager, but she opened the e-mail anyway. Her eyes flicked down the screen, taking in the key details: Walter Neumann, 47. Lecturer in psychology at the Ruperto Carola University of Heidelberg.

Petra felt a blip on her mental radar. Another academic, another psychologist. This was promising. She scrolled on down. Three weeks previously, he’d been found by a student in his apartment near the Altstadt campus. His computer had been smashed to the floor and he’d been spread-eagled on his back across his desk. The details were identical to the information Marijke had given her about de Groot’s murder in Leiden, right down to the cause of death - drowning - i and the cutting away of the pubic hair and the skin attaching 1 it to the body. ^

‘Bingo,’ she said softly. OK, the rules said it took three to ; make a series when it came to murder, but two killings with such an off-the-wall MO couldn’t be coincidence. What puzzled her was why this had ever crossed the desk of the organized crime unit. She carried on reading, and found the tenuous explanation at the very end of the document.

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Initial investigations have produced no personal motive for this murder. However, according to our intelligence, Neumann was involved in the drugs scene. He had allegedly been a long-time user ofcannabis and amphetamines, and the narcotics squad responsible for dealing with the university had heard rumours that Neumann dealt drugs to his students. Although we have no firm evidence of his involvement in drug dealing, it seems possible that so bizarre a murder may have come about as a result of his involvement with the organized crime that exists in the drug culture. In short, that this may be an execution designed to send a message we cannot read to others who might be tempted to transgress the unwritten codes of such people.

‘Pompous bullshit,’ Petra muttered as she read the final paragraph. ‘Translation: we can’t make head nor tail of this, I so let’s offload it to someone else.’ Nevertheless, she was for once glad of the buck-passing of her colleagues in the provinces. Without their laziness and incompetence, she’d never have been able to make the connection between this murder and Marijke’s case in Leiden.

The question was, what should she do now? There was no effective operational cooperation between the police forces of separate countries in the European Union. Interpol had no role to play here. Europol was for intelligence-sharing and the development of policing strategies, not cross-border operations. If she made this official, it would get bogged down in bureaucratic red tape and departmental politics.

But if she and Marijke worked the two cases together, sharing information and pooling leads… Since the Radecki investigation looked set to be snatched from under her, she needed to find another path to glory. This might just be it.

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Petra hit the reply button. Please send full pathology and forensic reports re Walter Neumann. We would prefer hard copies if possible. This matter is both urgent and highly confidential. J

She sent the message then sat back in her chair, a small smile of satisfaction on her face. If Plesch was right and there was a place for her in whatever was planned against Radecki all well and good. But if she was only humouring her, this’ would be her insurance policy.

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Three days really wasn’t enough. Carol stared into her wardrobe, frowning. Some of her clothes would work, but most of them wouldn’t. Morgan had given her a budget for new outfits that had made her eyebrows climb, but shopping to spend it was going to take her the best part of the day. Then she’d have to pack for her new identity, making sure she didn’t include anything that would give a hint of her reality.

Her brother Michael had already agreed to take care of Nelson; he planned to drive down that evening from his home in Bradfield and take the cat back to the stylish loft apartment they’d once shared there. At least Michael hadn’t asked awkward questions, like why he was being asked to cat-sit indefinitely while his sister went off to some unspecified destination; as soon as she’d said she couldn’t explain for operational reasons, he’d dropped the subject.

The one thing she wished was that she’d had the chance to confide in Tony. She knew his insights would be helpful, and, more than that, his support would give her confidence. But an assignment this sensitive wasn’t something she could trust either to the phone lines or to electronic communication. She had called him after her briefing session with Morgan, and had hated having to hold out on him. She’d made it clear that her reluctance was based purely on her

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misgivings about the security of their means of communication and, like Michael, he hadn’t pressed her.

Carol flicked through the hangers, selecting possible garments and throwing them on the bed behind her. She was grateful that she would have to abandon most of what she had chosen to reflect her own personality. The thought that Carol Jordan might have much in common with this new creation, Caroline Jackson, even on the most superficial level, was not something she felt comfortable with. It bothered her slightly that the names were so similar, even though Morgan had explained the operational reasons for it. ‘We like to keep the first name as close to your own as possible, so you don’t get those horrible moments where someone says your name and you don’t connect at all. And we’ve found it helps if the initials are the same too. Those who know about these things say it makes it all psychologically easier and less likely that you’ll trip yourself up.’

Carol reached the end of the possible choices from her wardrobe and closed the double doors. She walked around her bedroom, stroking the familiar objects on her dressing table and bookshelves as if the action of her fingers would imprint them on her memory, accessible whenever she needed to touch base with who she really was. She paused in front of three photograph frames that faced her bed. Michael, his arm around the woman he’d been living with for the past two years, his expression open and delighted. Her parents at their silver wedding party, her mother’s head on her father’s shoulder, a look of indulgent affection on her face; her father, looking directly into the camera, his familiar quirky smile lifting the corners of his eyes. And finally, a snatched snapshot of her with Tony and John Brandon, her former boss, taken at the police party that had celebrated the resolution of the first case they’d worked together. They all had the slightly bleary look