The Ears of a Cat

by Roderick Hart

  Kirsch opened the door, annoyed at the interruption. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘We’ve had reports of power surges in the last twenty-four hours. Some of them have damaged sensitive equipment, computers, laptops.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘We’re testing power at the sockets, checking for fluctuations. Shouldn’t take longer than twenty minutes.’

  ‘I don’t live here.’

  ‘Neither do I.’

  ‘I’m not sure I should let you in without the permission of the owner.’

  ‘Very commendable, Frau Kirsch.’

  Her name was on her tabard but Pearson knew it anyway; Ursula Lang had mentioned her and he’d since accessed her file.

  Pearson pretended to check his job card. ‘This is the apartment of Catherine Cooper?’

  ‘That’s correct. You have ID?’

  As she asked this, she was looking at the badge on the lanyard round his neck with the name H Fischer clearly displayed.

  ‘You’re looking at it.’

  ‘Very well, Herr Fischer, but I cannot leave you in this apartment unattended. When I leave, you leave.’

  She stood aside and allowed him in. His toolbox gave him credibility but also contained a range of surveillance devices.

  ‘If you’ll excuse me, I have tasks to perform.’

  One of these was mucking out the litter tray in the kitchen, a task which, like everything else, she took very seriously, removing the soiled litter and bagging it, before taking the usable litter, placing it on a newspaper and cleaning the tray with disinfectant. This worked well but brought with it a powerful smell which, if it troubled her nose, had to be more repellent to a cat’s. To solve this problem, Trudi rinsed out the tray several times and dried it with kitchen roll before funnelling the reusable litter down the crease of the paper back into the tray and topping it up from the reserve beside the pedal bin. All this with rubber gloves. But such admirable thoroughness took time, which Pearson used to install two bugs; one in a lamp, the other under a sofa.

  When Kirsch returned from the kitchen, she found him checking the voltage in one of the sockets. He smiled when he saw her but that didn’t help.

  ‘I shall, of course, include this visit in my daily report to Frau Cooper, who will certainly wish to know that her equipment has been put at risk by your company.’

  If Catherine Cooper were innocent of clandestine activity, this news wouldn’t bother her at all. But if she and her friends were up to something, it would alert them at once.

  ‘I wouldn’t advise that, Frau Kirsch.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We should talk.’

  He indicated the sofa with the throw, correctly assuming it would harbour cat hairs and Kirsch wouldn’t mind sitting on it. He sat on the opposing settee.

  ‘I am on a tight schedule; I have several other visits.’

  ‘You are a hard-working woman, I realise that. Nonetheless.’

  A slight edge in his tone, a hint of menace, encouraged her to sit.

  ‘What’s going on here?’

  ‘I don’t know if you remember, you might prefer to forget, an incident which took place five years ago at Bielefeld.’

  He was referring to a raid by animal rights activists on a mink farm.

  Kirsch looked at him in alarm. ‘You are not an electrician.’

  ‘That may be, but neither do I release predatory animals into the wild to wreak untold havoc on our native wildlife.’

  ‘That was an error of judgment.’

  ‘As a result of which your name is to be found on the Federal Central Criminal Register.’

  The register was open to public inspection so this man could have been anyone, but ordinary members of the public did not masquerade as electricians. In any case, five years had passed and no violence had been involved. It wasn’t worth mentioning.

  ‘The record will be deleted soon.’

  ‘Let us hope so. But I have had sight of certain documents not led in evidence at the time.’

  ‘Which documents are these?’

  ‘It appears that you and your colleagues also had in your sights on no less a place than the Max Planck Institute at Tübingen.’

  ‘We were simply trying to establish what went on there, nothing more.’

  Pearson allowed himself a sardonic smile which he hoped would have its effect.

  ‘With a view to doing nothing about it.’

  ‘As you say, this document was not produced in court: why are you referring to it now?’

  Pearson had arrived at a difficult point in his negotiation with Trudi Kirsch, a woman whose guiding principle appeared to be doing the right thing as she saw it at any given time. In his experience, serious-minded people were difficult to deal with. A displacement activity might be required to lubricate the wheels of social exchange.

  ‘There’s coffee in the kitchen, I take it?’

  ‘Decaffeinated.’

  Pearson groaned inwardly. ‘Then that will have to do.’

  He rose, walked through to the kitchen, filled the kettle and switched it on. Kirsch followed him to ensure that he didn’t overfill it, her policy being never to heat more than the amount required.

  ‘You know,’ he said, as it came to the boil, ‘I haven’t seen hide nor hair of the cat.’

  ‘He’s wary of strangers,’ she seized the opportunity, ‘as am I.’

  ‘Want a cup?’

  ‘Water will do for me.’

  ‘Cool, clear water.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘With added fluoride.’

  ‘Hopefully not.’

  Pearson poured some into a glass and handed it to her.

  ‘I mean you no harm, Frau Kirsch. Really.’

  ‘In that case, you should tell me what you want.’ He was about to head back to the living room with his decaffeinated coffee when Kirsch stopped him. ‘Whatever you have to say, here is fine.’

  There was a possibility that Catherine Cooper was involved in activities which could prove harmful to society at large. He was attempting to establish whether this was, or was not, the case.

  ‘By bugging her apartment.’

  He nodded.

  ‘And you want me to keep quiet about it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You consider it acceptable to ensure my silence by threatening me with a document…’

  ‘In your own hand.’

  ‘…that might prevent my deletion from the Criminal Register.’

  ‘I can ensure it would do exactly that. And there is also your husband to consider.’

  Then her boyfriend, he was also on the criminal register for the same reason she was.

  Kirsch considered this carefully. She didn’t like what she was hearing, but building her business from the ground up hadn’t been easy. Seeing her hesitate, Pearson pressed home his advantage.

  ‘And we have social media to consider. Word might get out.’

  This was another threat, a serious one. Her greatest asset was her reputation.

  ‘You would ensure that it did.’

  ‘Believe me, the last thing I want.’

  She looked at this unpleasant man; balding before his time, what little blond hair he had left kept closely cropped. She thought it through; the decision was difficult.

  ‘I would seek a reassurance, not for myself but for my employer.’

  He turned to the sink and emptied his cup into it. ‘That stuff is awful!’

  Kirsch swallowed some water and took the plunge.

  ‘No device will be installed in her bedroom or her bathroom. Frau Cooper has a right to privacy in certain areas of her life.’

  Since Pearson had not planted a device in either of these places, he could live with that.

  �
��You are clearly a woman of principle, Frau Kirsch.’

  17

  Eric Wanless returned to work on the second of January, worse for wear through excessive consumption of alcohol during the festive period, but also on a high since it now appeared that he had, as the saying goes, got away with murder. One in the chest for the despicable Xavier Grosjean, and one in the eye for that supercilious Swedish bastard, Magnus Hjemdahl, who’d assured him he’d never get away with it. Well, here he was, home free, so up yours, Hjemdahl!

  He liked his warehouse, its numbered rows of shelving stretching back into the distance from the service counters at the entrance. He felt more at home there than he did in the small North London flat he rented with Andris, a care worker from Latvia with whom the only thing he shared was bills. Here he was in control, there he was not. Most of the staff had stopped remarking on his hair dye as it grew out and his natural sandy blond returned. Only Amy in accounts was unwilling to let it go, perhaps because she liked to improve on nature herself, each false nail being a different colour, distracting to some, a source of joy to her. Or perhaps because Wanless was where her fancy lay.

  As always happened after public holidays, several customers returned at the first opportunity reporting problems with their purchases. Counter assistants were used to this and adept at dealing with it. Well, if we turn to page three of the manual, or If I could just take you through the recommended installation procedure. But on this occasion, as Wanless was checking stock in storage area N12, a message came through to his headset from the counter. His presence was urgently required.

  And there he was, a middle-aged man demanding his money back, red in the face with anger, banging his fist on the counter. His fist was fat because he was fat. Layers of adipose tissue spilled out over his belt, completely obscuring it from view. But it had to be there or his 46XL jeans would have fallen round his ankles, and that would not have been a pleasant sight.

  ‘So you’re the head honcho here.’

  He plainly found this hard to believe, as Wanless did himself in occasional moments of justified self-doubt.

  ‘What seems to be the problem, sir?’

  ‘I’ve already explained to these low-life tossers exactly what the problem is!’

  He produced a tablet, held it under Eric’s nose and swiped through a sequence of shots. His grievance was simple; the drone he’d bought before Christmas had failed to respond to commands from the controller.

  ‘As you can see, it flew into a tree.’

  Wanless looked through several pictures of the mangled machine. It had indeed flown into a tree; the question was why.

  ‘Well now, Mr…’

  ‘Cobb’s the name, Cobb!’

  ‘I take it you have your receipt, Mr Cobb.’

  ‘Of course I have my fucking receipt; what do you take me for?’

  This was a question best left unanswered.

  ‘Good, well, the pictures are clear enough, but we really need to look at the drone itself.’

  For the first and last time that morning, Cobb smiled.

  ‘Well, you’re the lucky one, aren’t you? It just so happens I have what’s left of it in the car.’

  Wanless accompanied the customer to the car park, where his rust-ridden Volvo had taken up a recharging bay to which it was not entitled. He watched as Cobb opened a rear door and pointed to the mangled metal inside.

  ‘A complete load of garbage, as you can see.’

  Wanless examined it for a moment or two and straightened up. Of the four rotors, three were buckled, and bits of twig projected from the body.

  ‘Well, if it wasn’t before, it certainly is now.’

  Cobb didn’t like the sound of this, nor the tone. ‘What the hell do you mean by that?’

  ‘When did this flight take place, Mr Cobb?’

  ‘When do you think, you pillock? Christmas Day. It was a present.’

  Eric checked the receipt and, sure enough, he had read it correctly.

  ‘But according to this, you bought it yourself.’

  Cobb rewarded this observation with a slow hand clap.

  ‘Hey, well spotted; the man should have been a detective. No one else was going to give me a present so I gave it to myself.’

  ‘I believe you.’

  Cobb didn’t like the sound of that either.

  ‘Can the sarcasm, son. So now you’ve seen the damage, we go back in there and you give me my money back.’

  This was not how Wanless saw it. ‘I may have a problem with that.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘The manual clearly states that the XJ-7 should not be flown when the wind speed exceeds twelve miles an hour.’

  ‘So now the boy can read. Your point?’

  ‘Storm Barbara. Ring a bell? Wind speeds were high that day, gusts a lot higher. It’s a matter of public record. Sorry, under the circumstances, there’s no way you’re entitled to a refund.’

  Wanless handed the receipt to the astonished Mr Cobb and started back towards the warehouse, assuming that a statement of the blindingly obvious would resolve the matter. He didn’t see Cobb remove a 3-iron from his boot and take a swing at his head. He missed but not by much. The club hit him on the left shoulder; the pain was sharp and intense.

  ‘Don’t turn your fucking back on me, you turd, you poofter, you jumped-up piece of shit!’

  Wanless spun on his heel, grabbed the club from his attacker and hit him hard on the knee, felling him with one blow. He should have left it at that but the red mist had risen. Welling up from the depths, it overwhelmed him with an urge to demolish this fat, rude slug of a man, smash his face in, grind him into the dust. When two members of staff ran from the warehouse and wrestled the club from him, he was well on his way to committing a second murder. Shaking with shock, Amy phoned the police, who arrived five minutes later in a blaze of blue.

  Cobb was still on the ground, semi-conscious, a condition which made him less aggressive and marginally more amenable. Seeing the state he was in, the officers called for an ambulance. While they were waiting, one of them, a woman of Afro-Caribbean antecedents, strolled into the warehouse to take statements. The other had a quiet word with Wanless.

  ‘I understand you’re the manager here, Mr Wanless.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Would it be correct to say that this man here,’ pointing at the beached, seal-like figure lying on the tarmac, ‘was giving you grief?’

  Since he hadn’t witnessed the action, Wanless wondered how the officer could know that.

  ‘Let’s just put it this way, sir, we’ve had dealings with Mr Cobb in the past; a singularly truculent individual. Believe it or not,’ he added, as if it explained everything, which it may well have done, ‘he used to be a professional footballer.’

  They looked at Cobb from a safe distance. He may have been in good shape once but he wasn’t now and his head, which had probably dented many a ball, had never known damage like this. His forehead, nose and jaw boasted a number of vivid red impact marks, and though the other officer had tried to staunch it with a handkerchief, blood was streaming from a wound on his scalp.

  ‘I’d just ask you to come down to the station later today; sometime prior to six o’clock would fit the bill. Bishopsgate. Big Victorian lamps either side of the entrance. Can’t miss it. We’ll need to check you over.’

  ‘I’m not feeling too bad. He just caught me on the shoulder with that bloody club.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s true, sir, but we like to document injuries in cases like these. Wait an hour or two and you’ll have an impressive bruise to back up your version of events. In any case, we have to go through the formalities. I’m sure you know the drill, a statement and so on.’

  Wanless knew the drill all right, but unlike Cooper or Hjemdahl, he failed to consider the implications.

&nbs
p; His partner joined them from the warehouse, shaking her head. She pointed to three CCTV cameras mounted on the building’s metal facade.

  ‘You’re not going to believe this, Mike. They don’t work!’

  Wanless looked embarrassed. ‘Actually, they do; the fault’s elsewhere in the system.’

  ‘Right,’ she said, ‘like having functioning eyes and no brain?’

  While this was technically true, he felt she was slyly describing him at one remove.

  ‘We’ve been having a few technical problems with the system lately.’

  Mike had taken to Wanless at once but his partner had not.

  ‘Call me simple, sir,’ she added, determined to stick it to him, ‘correct me if I’m wrong, but systems like these are your stock-in-trade. You sell them to the public.’

  He couldn’t deny that so he didn’t try.

  ‘So the way I see it, it would help if they actually worked.’

  18

  Catherine Cooper had no idea why Grönefeld wanted to meet again since she refused to tell her till they met. While neither was giving anything away, they were still exchanging emails in the usual way, as Saito discovered when Cooper forwarded two of Grönefeld’s messages.

  She had just unwrapped a new kanzashi to add to the growing collection she kept on the lacquered table in her bedroom: black, and decorated at the head with nine pendant rubies set in silver. Though the rubies were fake, it was an attractive object in its own right. It was also slender. Resting in the hand, it had the feel of an assassin’s blade artfully disguised as a hair pin, which provoked the unbidden thought of sinking it into Cooper to put an end to her carelessness once and for all; an image she banished at once. She checked the effect of the new pin in the mirror. Her complexion pale, her expression earnest, it imparted a touch of class.

  Removing it with reluctance, she laid it down beside a framed portrait of a handsome young man, her boyfriend, Isao. God may have known who he really was but she did not, having taken his image in vain to indicate to her hopeful colleague, Rafael Munoz, that she was not as available as he liked to think, though owing to his hopes in that direction, he’d agreed to look after her tetras when she went home for a week to celebrate her parents’ fortieth anniversary.