When the latch closed behind him and they’d heard the car rev away, Nolan pulled the photograph of Alex from his jacket pocket. McCarthy gave it a cursory glance, then spread open a road atlas of Europe.
Frankfurt
8.30 a.m.
Kommissar Linz looked as if he’d slept little, his top shirt button undone and his bow tie crooked. Lorna wanted to straighten it, but restrained herself. He’d taken them to an interview room on the ground floor of the police headquarters.
‘At nine o’clock, Fräulein Pocklewicz will walk out of here,’ he explained edgily. ‘I will come to the door with her. Then it is up to you. We have given her a train ticket to Berlin. She may go direct to the station, so you have not much time.’
‘And she’s still admitting nothing?’ Alex queried.
‘She has not said one word since yesterday afternoon.’
‘Then I doubt she’ll speak to us.’
Linz opened a folder, preoccupied. ‘Does this picture help?’ he asked. He produced a computer print of two identical faces, one wearing spectacles, the other not.
‘That’s him!’ Alex exclaimed. ‘Without the glasses.’ The cold, hard eyes left him in no doubt. ‘He’s the man who shot Vildana. This is Pravic? Where did the picture come from?’
‘The United Nations, so they tell me.’ Linz looked sceptical. ‘Our computer experts removed his spectacles for him.’
‘But where was it taken?’
‘They will not say. But . . . but I can tell you that since last night the interest in Herr Pravic has grown,’ he added enigmatically.
‘Really? Why?’
‘New information. From the intelligence agencies. They think he will try to attack Muslims in Germany . . . maybe with some chemical weapon,’ he explained vaguely.
‘What? Bloody hell!’
‘Ja. It is not easy to believe. But this morning I must go to München.’
‘He’s been seen there or what?’
‘No. But tomorrow one thousand Muslim Fundamentalists meet in that city. It could be the perfect target for him. Now I must show Fräulein Pocklewicz to the door. I give you my mobile number to call if she tells you something.’
He handed Alex a card.
Rain was pelting down outside on the broad pavement. Alex wore his Barbour and tweed cap, Lorna the anorak she’d used in Bosnia. They looked like hill-walkers who’d wandered into the city by mistake.
‘This is crazy,’ Lorna complained, as the rain soaked her sneakers. ‘She’ll tell us to get lost.’
Linz appeared at the door of the monolithic police station. Alex recognized the woman from the identity parade. Linz reached out his hand, but she turned her back on him.
‘What are you going to say to her?’ Lorna hissed.
‘Whatever I can find the words for, in German . . .’ Alex muttered.
As Gisela tottered away on her high heels, shoulders hunched against the rain, Alex fell in beside her, Lorna at his shoulder.
‘Fräulein Pocklewicz?’ he began, touching her on the elbow. ‘Ein Moment, bitte! Darf Ich mit Ihnen sprechen?’
She stopped, startled.
‘Now what?’ She looked them up and down. ‘The Kommissar’s let me go.’
‘Ah, but we’re not the police,’ Alex explained in German. ‘You know Vildana? The girl who was shot? We are the people who got her out of Bosnia. We thought we were bringing her to safety, then this happened. The thing is, we’re scared that Milan, your friend, will try again to kill her.’
‘I don’t know anyone called Milan,’ she replied doggedly. She pulled her arm free. ‘Piss off.’
She stomped away, terror growing. Too many people after her. Pravic, the police – and worst of all, Dunkel. She’d heard that a man of his description had hung around her house most of Sunday. And now these two weirdos, clinging like leeches.
‘Look I know you were there . . . I saw you,’ Alex snapped. ‘You were sitting in the car, down the road from the house. Before the shooting.’ He spat out the words in chunks ignoring the complexities of grammar. ‘You had those earrings on.’
It was a guess, but he seemed to recollect the Indianlooking bangles. With luck she wouldn’t remember anyway.
She faltered, putting a hand to her ear, then marched on again.
‘Don’t know what you’re on about,’ she muttered, looking round for a taxi.
‘You want the girl to be killed?’ Alex shouted.
Gisela ignored him.
‘That’s what’ll happen unless Milan is stopped.’ He got her by the arm again. ‘You may be the only person who can save her life, do you know that?’
‘Fuck off! I can’t even save my own life, let alone anybody else’s.’
She looked petrified, vulnerable.
‘Is that it? You’re scared he’ll kill you if you talk?’
She didn’t answer.
‘Don’t you see? If you help us get him locked up, you’ll be safe.’
‘Look, do something useful, will you?’ she answered eventually. ‘Tell me where the sodding station is.’ They’d reached a crossroads, that was devoid of signposts.
‘We’ll take you there. In a taxi,’ Alex answered.
Lorna had understood nothing except that the woman wasn’t co-operating.
‘We need a cab, quick,’ Alex muttered to her out of the side of his mouth.
‘Look, I’ve told you . . .’
Lorna hailed a cream Mercedes and it pulled into the kerb.
Alex put his arm round Gisela’s shoulders. He could see her resolve was weakening.
‘Come on. You’re soaked.’
The rain had turned her hair into a mop of black string. Grudgingly she let herself be nudged into the car.
‘Zum Hauptbahnhof, bitte!’
They slid onto the back seat, the hooker wedged in the middle.
‘Who are you?’ she demanded.
‘As I said, we were in Bosnia,’ he whispered, suspecting the driver might be Yugoslav. ‘I met Milan’s brother there. He is a priest, did you know that?’
‘He never talked about his family . . .’
Progress. At least she was admitting she knew him.
‘You remember the Tulici massacre?’
Oh yes, she remembered. And how Pravic had used Tulici as an excuse for shooting the girl. She nodded.
‘Milan did it. Killed all those women and kids. That’s what his brother thinks. The UN wants to put him on trial. You know that? We work for the UN . . .’ Alex added quickly. ‘Not for the police, you understand. Whatever you tell us, we won’t pass it on to the police, I promise.’
He saw her suck her lower lip to stop it trembling.
‘But I don’t know where he is . . .’ she said plaintively.
‘Okay, but we’ll talk, yes? At the station. A cup of coffee?’
‘Na, wenn Sie wollen,’ she shrugged.
Alex nodded to Lorna. They were getting somewhere.
Three minutes later the taxi pulled up by the main entrance. They’d been almost within walking distance.
They sat on high stools, their coffee cups perched on a little shelf. Gisela’s hands shook. Normally she carried speed in her bag, but she’d dumped the tablets down the toilet when the police came for her yesterday morning.
‘Where did you last see him?’ Alex asked.
She held the cup of sour liquid in both hands and sipped. Her head was like spaghetti. Couldn’t think straight any more.
‘Frankfurt Airport,’ she replied. ‘He could be anywhere by now. Maybe back in Bosnia even.’
‘Did he say anything about wanting to . . . to kill more Muslims?’ he probed.
‘He’s at war with them. That’s what he said. Even here in Germany.’
Alex translated this to Lorna.
‘So Kommissar Linz may be right about Munich!’ she exclaimed in dismay.
Alex wasn’t so sure. There was something about the effort Pravic had made to find Vildana . . . The man must be obsessed
with the need to kill her. A fixation that would still be there, once he realized the girl wasn’t dead.
He turned back to Gisela. ‘By now, Milan must know that Vildana’s still alive,’ he suggested in German. ‘What do you think he’ll do about it?’
In her mind, Gisela heard the shots again, felt the back-blast, remembered the certainty that he would kill her too if his survival depended on it.
‘He won’t forget her. He’ll be back for the girl, wherever she is,’ she said chillingly.
‘So we’ve got to stop him, right?’ Alex implored. ‘You must help us.’
‘But what can I do?’ she snivelled. ‘I tell you I don’t know where he is!’
‘No, Okay. I understand.’ Then he remembered what Linz had said. ‘Tell me, does Milan just have the gun, or . . . or something else perhaps? Some chemical, poison maybe?’
Poison? The word shot through her like a glass-sliver. Her pencilled eyebrows bunched in consternation.
Last night in the isolation of the detention cell, kept awake by the wailings of drunks, dark, disjointed thoughts had marshalled in her mind, linked by some invisible thread. The thoughts were to do with Dunkel, with the Stasi, with Leipzig, with Zagreb and with what she’d read in the papers about the scientist Kemmer who’d killed himself.
‘What d’you mean, poison?’ she queried.
‘I don’t know. Something that could kill hundreds of people at once.’
The spectre in Gisela’s mind took on flesh.
‘Why? Why do you ask about that?’ she asked querulously.
Alex hesitated. Had Linz told him about it in confidence? Too late now.
‘The police think Milan has some biological weapon and he’ll use it in Munich. There’s a big meeting of Muslims there tomorrow. Fundamentalists.’ He said the last word in English, not knowing the German.
Gisela stared at the wall. The thread in her head tugged itself from the tangle and formed into a word.
‘Milzbrand!’
‘What?’ Alex gaped.
‘What’s she saying for God’s sake?’ Lorna nudged. ‘Can’t you translate?’
‘Anthrax! She’s talking about anthrax,’ he whispered. ‘You remember the story in the paper yesterday?’
He turned to Gisela again, incredulous. ‘Pravic? He has something to do with that anthrax business?’
Gisela nodded dumbly, then corrected herself by shaking her head.
‘I don’t know. But I think it’s possible.’
‘How? What’s the link between him and the Leipzig man?’
She turned her head to face him.
‘Herr Dunkel – he’s the link. Don’t know his real name, but he came to see me two weeks ago. I’ve known him many years. Used to be Stasi. Used to pay me to find people who would steal things, people who would kill, if the money was right. This time he asked me to find Milan. Needed him for some job in Zagreb; wouldn’t tell me what. When he came again a few days later, he’d driven up to Berlin from Leipzig.’ Gisela covered her mouth with a hand. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this.’
‘Go on. I won’t tell the police – unless you want me to.’
‘The papers say the man in Leipzig was forced to make anthrax for some old Stasi people . . . Dunkel was Stasi. Last week he met Milan in Zagreb. Now the papers say there’s a girl dying from anthrax there.’
Gisela shivered with fear. Dunkel had fouled up, that was clear. Now he wanted to silence anyone who could give him away. That’s why he’d been looking for her on Sunday.
‘What’s she saying for Christ’s sake?’ Lorna demanded.
Alex translated.
‘But anthrax is lethal!’ she exclaimed. ‘It’s the stuff they thought Saddam Hussein would use in the Gulf War!’
‘And it’s what Linz must have been talking about.’ He turned back to the hooker. ‘Milan never said anything about anthrax?’
Gisela snorted.
‘He told me nothing. When he got to Berlin, he was crazy. Not like when I knew him before. Just wanting to kill.’
‘But my God! With anthrax he could kill a thousand people at once! A thousand Muslims. Gisela, you’ve got to tell this to the police.’
She shuddered.
‘You don’t understand. Look, these people have long memories and long arms. I’ll never be safe if I grass.’
Alex rubbed his eyes.
‘So, let’s just go back over this.’ Had to get his mind straight. ‘If you’re right about the anthrax, then that Muslim rally in Munich is the sort of target Pravic would go for, yes?’
‘How should I know?’ she shrugged. ‘Maybe if it was to do with Tulici . . .’
‘Why do you say that?’ he growled.
‘Tulici’s what matters to Milan. He seems possessed by what he did there, don’t know why. It’s almost as if he was relieved by all the killings he’d done.’
‘And . . .?’ Alex sensed some fog beginning to clear.
‘I’m saying the idea of killing the girl made him crazy. Like as if her death was the final bit of something. Something he can’t be free of until she’s dead.’
Agitated, Alex grabbed Lorna’s arm. ‘Vildana . . . She thinks he’ll go for Vildana again.’
‘But surely she’ll be safe in the hospital with the police there . .’
He nodded. Then a cold hand gripped him. Safe? What were they saying? A gunman might be stopped by police barriers, but bacteria wouldn’t!
‘Lorna . . .’
‘I know. I just thought of it too.’
Alex touched Gisela’s still damp shoulder. ‘We must go to the hospital. You’ll come with us?’
‘What hospital?’ She stared at him wide-eyed.
‘The Universitatsklinik at Sembach on the south side of Frankfurt.’
She gasped.
‘It’s a new hospital, yes? Maybe three years old?’
‘Could be. Why?’
The blood drained from her face.
‘That was his last job. Before he went back to Bosnia to fight. Milan helped install the ventilation in that place!’ Alex pounded through the entrance lobby and hammered on the ‘up’ button of the elevator, Lorna a few seconds behind. No police in sight, and only one of their vans parked outside. Had the lawmen stopped worrying about the hospital because of Munich?
Gisela had refused to come. If Pravic was here, and he saw her, she’d be dead.
‘Come on, come on!’ Alex thundered at the slowness of the lift.
‘Let’s take the stairs,’ Lorna suggested.
‘Maybe . . . hang on though. Here it is.’
The doors closed behind them.
‘There must be a thousand people in this hospital,’ Alex panted. ‘Patients, staff, visitors. My God, it’s terrifying. He could be pumping the stuff in this very minute.’ He glanced up nervously at the ventilation grill on the roof of the lift.
‘Shouldn’t we call Linz? You’ve got his mobile number,’ she said.
‘Better to talk to the police here first.’
On the fourth floor they pelted down the corridor towards ward F. As they approached Vildana’s room, a green-uniformed officer got up from a chair, unbuttoning the flap of his pistol holster.
Alex slowed to a walk. A different face from yesterday, young, suspicious, hostile.
He explained first who they were, then mentioned Kommissar Linz, Pravic and anthrax in a jumble of semi-comprehensible German.
A second officer emerged from the room. These men were sentries, unversed in the complexities of the case. They stared at Alex as if he’d landed from Mars.
‘Who did you say you are?’ one of them asked.
‘The name’s Crawford. We rescued her from Bosnia, the girl in there. Colonel Roche . . . is his wife here? She’ll tell you who we are.’
He made to push open the door, but his way was barred.
‘Your I.D. please . . .’
‘Look, for heavens’ sake, this is terribly urgent. You must search the hospital!’
‘Kommissar Linz knows me. He knows what I’m talking about,’ Alex insisted. ‘Can you call him on that radio?’
‘Linz? Linz?’ They shook their heads.
‘From Wiesbaden. The Bundeskriminalamt.’
‘Ah. We are from Hessen. We have no connection.’
‘The card!’ Lorna whispered. ‘In your pocket.’
Alex pulled it out. ‘This is the number of his mobile. He’s on the way to Munich.’
‘Yes, but for a telephone you must go downstairs. In the main entrance.’
Alex grabbed Lorna’s arm and hustled her back to the lift.
‘I don’t believe this,’ he hissed. ‘Whatever happened to ruthless German efficiency?’
‘Come on, they’re only rookies,’ Lorna soothed. ‘Call Linz, then we’ll talk to the administrator.’
Downstairs they discovered the phones took cards, not cash. Lorna scuttled to the newspaper stand to buy one.
After a minute she came running back.
‘We can only buy cards at a post office!’ she howled.
‘Come on!’ He led her towards the reception desk.
Just then two more policemen marched through the revolving doors. He guessed the officers on the fourth floor had become suspicious and called them in to see what he was up to.
Alex stopped in his tracks.
‘Time to split up,’ he breathed. ‘Get hold of the administrator. Tell him what’s happening. Use the phone to call Linz. Get the official wheels moving.’
‘And you?’ Lorna asked.
‘I’m going to look for Pravic!’
‘For God’s sake be careful!’
He turned her towards the rapidly approaching policemen, then slipped through a doorway to the emergency stairs.
‘Excuse me,’ Lorna shouted, blocking the path of the officers, ‘do either of you gentlemen speak English?’
Alex ran up two floors, then entered a wide corridor identical to the level where Vildana lay. A strong smell of disinfectant. He walked briskly to the far end. More stairs. He was aiming for the roof. No clear plan, but that’s where the air-conditioning must be.
Crazy to be searching for Pravic on his own. What would he do if he found him?
Scorpion Trail Page 32
