Tretjak (5 page)

 

It was just after 10am when Tretjak left his flat to take a stroll in the direction of the Hofgarten. He loved to make his calls in this park, because it was so quiet and peaceful there. His favourite spot was right at the entrance, under the arcades, where you could imagine being in Italy, just without the tourists.

He called up a number in his mobile phone. He wanted to finish the job Melanie Schwarz had assigned him and which he had got underway in Colombo the day before yesterday.

‘Fritzen.'

‘It's Gabriel Tretjak. Good morning to you.'

‘The same to you, Mr Tretjak. I don't know what to say. I guess, first of all: thank you. I've received your package with the papers and have checked everything, if that was possible in such a short time. It seems indeed to be a fact that our two directors were involved in a conspiracy. That is an extremely unsavoury business as it not only would have cost Mr Schwarz his job but it would have cost us a lot of money.'

‘According to my information,' Tretjak said, ‘things don't look too bleak for your firm. I guess Mr Schwarz can still get the agreement with Union Carry going.'

‘I love your optimism, Mr Tretjak. We'll see. I have followed your suggestion and told Meinhardt and Busse to expect a call from you this morning. I have also allowed myself to give them a piece of my mind. Let's say: they broke into a bit of a sweat.'

The conversation between Tretjak and Joachim Fritzen, the head of the supervisory board of the company producing cooling aggregates, was uncomplicated, as the two already knew each other. They had cooperated on a previous occasion, four years ago. Whenever Tretjak accepted a new assignment, he looked for connections in his network which might be used as a leverage point. A former and, more importantly, a satisfied customer was a good starting point.

Back then Fritzen himself had given him the assignment. And everything had run smoothly, just the way Tretjak liked it: at the end there had only been winners.

Joachim Fritzen had been the head of the executive board of another company at the time. The economic situation of that company had been so perilous that its survival depended on securing a large contract from Turkey. But there had been a competitor, who seemed to have the edge. Tretjak was engaged – and Fritzen's company got the contract. Sure, Tretjak had applied pressure, maybe even used a few tricks, but he had also arranged for the other company to get a comparable deal from Azerbaijan.

That was his philosophy: sometimes things could only get fixed if somebody on the periphery assumed control.

‘Oh, another question, Mr Fritzen: does your daughter still want to become a journalist?'

‘Yes, I am afraid so. I can't talk her out of it.'

‘Who knows,' said Tretjak, ‘maybe it's not such a bad choice. I just wanted to say: I have found out that the
Augsburger Allgemeine
runs a first-class journalist training scheme. And they are looking for applicants. She could start straight away, if she'd like.'

‘Mr Tretjak, you make me blush. I have to say thank you again.'

‘Not at all. As you know, it's all part of the service.'

 

The second call was much shorter. Tretjak notified Mr Meinhardt that, one: his scheming had been exposed; two: he was going to leave the company; three: he had a meeting at Munich Airport, 8:30am, terminal 1, in the Käfer-Bistro; duration of the meeting: 15 minutes max. Tretjak was going to present him with a document he would be obliged to sign – an admission of guilt plus an agreement to transfer 50,000 euros into the private account of the injured party, Peter Schwarz.

‘And what happens if I don't come to the airport?' Meinhardt finally wanted to know.

‘Then we pass everything to the public prosecutor. Mr Fritzen and I are of the opinion that your dealings during the last few weeks constitute a serious case of embezzlement and criminal damage. It is up to you to save yourself and the company from this becoming public knowledge.'

‘I will come,' Meinhardt had replied.

The other one, this Busse fellow, had been much more self-confident and aggressive on the phone. Tretjak did not want to waste too much time and decided after a few minutes to play his trump card, which he had held back just in case. The evidence a private detective had produced was conclusive: the man had a lover and had paid for an apartment for her – and in addition there were compromising pictures taken in a so-called sauna. Tretjak described them on the telephone and at the same time observed two boys playing badminton in the park. The wind, which had just risen, was making it easy for them. When he finally hung up, it was clear that Busse would have to make his way to the airport tomorrow morning.

 

The fourth call was of a more private nature. Tretjak was already walking towards the exit from the park when he dialled the number of his cleaning lady, who had not shown up yesterday. She normally came every Monday and was very reliable. He wanted to find out whether anything was wrong, but even more importantly wanted to ask whether she was going to come today instead. Tomorrow was his next appointment with the lady from the Inland Revenue and everything should be clean when the tax inspector showed up.

The daughter of the cleaning lady picked up the phone. That was good as the cleaner spoke very little German. She was Argentinian and had arrived in Germany many years ago. Her strength had been sufficient to build a new life, but not to learn a new language. For the past five years Rosa Lanner had cleaned his apartment. They could not have a conversation, but Tretjak did not mind that, quite the contrary. He had to do a lot of talking anyhow. And the woman had something he liked. Was it a certain decency? Conscientiousness? Or was it the way she shook his hand, how she caringly grasped his in both of her hands?

‘But Mr Tretjak, I don't understand. My mother is with you. She said that she was going with you to your house in the country. She was going to stay there for several days, as there was so much to do.'

‘House in the country? I don't have a house in the country. And I didn't make any arrangements with your mother. You or your mother must be mistaken.'

‘Mr Tretjak, my mother hasn't been home for two days. And she spoke of you, I am sure of that. For heaven's sake, what could have happened to her?' The voice on the other side of the line was breaking. She was going to call everybody and as soon as she knew anything, she would get in touch.

 

*

 

It was early afternoon when Carolina Lanner called back. Her voice glowed with excitement. Tretjak first thought she was crying.

‘My mother has been in touch. Thank you, thank you so much, Mr Tretjak. My mother is overjoyed. Thank you, Mr Tretjak, we all don't know what to say.'

‘I don't understand,' Tretjak replied, and for a brief moment started to get annoyed, ‘what are you thanking me for?'

‘What for? My mother told me everything. How a driver picked her up and took her to the airport and put her on a plane, first class. And how she flew to Buenos Aires. My mother. For the first time, back to Argentina. For the first time, back to see the family. My mother was crying with joy. And all that you made possible – and paid for it as well, Mr Tretjak. You are such a good man, such a good man!'

It was dawning on Tretjak that it was useless to try to clear up this misunderstanding. Because it had to be a misunderstanding. What else could it be? Who would come up with the idea of sending his cleaning lady half-way around the world, and in first class? Gabriel Tretjak was experiencing a wave of anxiety rising up his spine. He asked the daughter when she expected his mother to return and when she would come back to work.

‘Next week, Mr Tretjak, but you know that better than anybody. Next Monday she will be with you, like always.'

 

Munich, Institute of Forensic Medicine/CSI (Criminal Investigation Services), 12 noon

The pathologist was a friendly, stocky lady with the distinctive accent of the Swabian region of south-western Germany. Inspector Maler had known her for a long time, and every time he saw her he was struck by the contrast: on the one hand this MD with her pleasant femininity, and on the other hand the brutal reality of the bodies which she investigated.

In the case of the murder of Harry Kerkhoff the forensic scientist had not found any traces that would have offered up any clues about the identity of the killer. Cause of death: stabbing of the liver. There were two more knife wounds: one had hit the kidney, the other the right lung. The knife had been thrust with precision, and only a little blood had seeped out. Somebody had known what they were doing. A professional hit. The murder weapon had been a pointed, thin, extremely sharp blade, like a dagger. That was it for the moment – more details later.

Time of death: about six to ten hours before the body was discovered in the horsebox. Harry Kerkhoff had being drinking, his blood alcohol level had been 1.2 millilitres. ‘That's about three glasses of wine where I come from,' the doctor added helpfully.

What made this murder particularly gruesome was the fact that the perpetrator had removed both of the eyes of the victim with a round instrument, something like a spoon. It could also have been a sort of scoop similar to the ones used in ice cream parlours to scrape the ice cream from the tubs, the pathologist explained. One could assume that the scooping had not damaged the eyes, leading to the conclusion that the murderer had taken them along as a souvenir. As the removal had been done with great precision one could further assume that this was not the first time the perpetrator had done this. Maler looked for a reaction in the face of the doctor, but could find none. Madame Doctor had herself totally under control.

An ice cream scoop. When Maler heard this word, he knew that it had started. Again. Whenever he worked on brutal murders he was plagued by day-mares, as he called them. Suddenly, in the middle of the day, these images would appear in his mind's eye. Always following the same pattern: he would see the scene he was just living but arranged as a catastrophe. The waitress in the coffee shop, for example, was suddenly covered in blood and her right arm was missing. Or he was driving along a street and saw a horrific accident with many fatalities. It always only lasted for a split second. Then the image was gone. As if a picture editor had inserted a brief clip into a scene.

Maler had always imagined that these day-mares functioned as a transformer of his over-worked police brain. All those horrible experiences which he had to live through in his line of duty were spat out as little bits so he could get rid of them. He had come up with this theory to calm himself down, so he could live with it. He had not told it to anyone. Amongst policemen there was a silent agreement: one kept quiet about one's own sensitivities, if they existed. He had not even mentioned them to Rainer Gritz, his long-time assistant. Not because he was ashamed of them. Gritz, the long, dangly Gritz, was the best policeman he knew, the most methodical and persistent. There was no one else he trusted more. But Maler was convinced that if he told Gritz about his day-mares, Gritz would have dug up everything and anything there was to know about such phenomena. Gritz would have drowned him with that knowledge. And that was precisely what Maler didn't want. He didn't want information. He wanted to forget the images. As soon as possible and whenever possible.

But then, after his heart problems several years ago, Inspector Maler had found himself sitting opposite an elderly lady, the head psychologist of the clinic on Lake Lusterbach where he was convalescing. She was well over 80, but nobody would have dreamt of talking about a possible retirement age since she owned the clinic.

Dreams were her speciality. Her first question for Maler was always, ‘what did you dream about last night?' And it was her that he first told about the day-mares. The woman had white hair and a pleasant, calm voice. And it was in the same calm and pleasant way that she reacted to his account. She told him about her own dreams that she had at night and about the fact that for decades she had experienced fantasies of murder. ‘And I tell you, Inspector: I was feeling great while dreaming. It was only in the mornings that I was sometimes shocked by my own feelings.' They talked extensively about the nature of evil and how nobody was safe from it. Maler remembered from these conversations that he had to recognise these visionary attacks as a kind of thermometer. The more these images flashed up in front of his eyes the more urgently his soul was signalling to him that he was expecting too much of himself.

This time only three hours passed between his leaving the Forensic Science building and the start of the day-mares. The first one came to Maler when he was stopping at a red light: the driver of the taxi waiting next to him was suddenly headless. The second image flashed up at the newsagent and was even shorter than usual – the whole stand was doused in blood.

 

Maler took a walk. He left police headquarters, located right behind the cathedral, went to the Odeonsplatz and through the Hofgarten, strolling in the direction of St-Anna-Platz, his usual route if he needed a bit of peace and quiet. He hoped that this Tretjak fellow was not leaving his flat just at this very minute and that he wouldn't bump into him. That morning Tretjak had called him. He had apologised for not telling Maler the truth the other day: he had known this Kerkhoff, in fact he had known him very well.

Maler still had the Swabian voice of the pathologist in his ear. She had said that Kerkhoff's eyes had been removed post-mortem. The victim had not been tortured. One had to assume that the perpetrator was sending out a sort of message.

14 May

Munich, St-Anna-Platz, 2pm

She came by bicycle. Tretjak had expected her to ascend the escalators from the underground. So he was surprised to hear her voice behind him.

‘Somehow it doesn't look very tiring,' she said, ‘your job I mean of course, Mr Tretjak.'