The October Man

by Ben Aaronovitch

  “Very good,” I said. “Aren’t you clever?”

  “Yes I am,” she said. “And I have a very good memory as well.”

  I just bet she did. It was going to be safest all round to at least ask Vanessa if she wanted to go out to play with Morgane.

  We said goodbye and Morgane ran sure-footedly down the steps, jumped, wrapped her arms around her knees and, with a shriek of laughter, water-bombed the river. The splash was unnaturally large and I had to jump back to avoid getting soaked.

  To be on the safe side, I was going to have to teach Vanessa some basic resistance techniques. Which also meant I was going to have to inform the Director of what I was doing. I wasn’t sure how she’d react.

  And would the intelligence be worth it?

  That’s the thing about intelligence—you never know what it’s worth until you test it.

  I trotted up the steps, crossed the main road and ran back to my hotel on the Medardstraße, which was a nice safe hundred metres from the river.

  Chapter 6:

  Drinking

  Association

  I was leaving the hotel breakfast room the next morning when Ziegler called me to say they’d located one of Jörg Koch’s friends from the tattoo studio.

  “The black one,” she said. “We’ve asked him to come in for an interview this morning. Would you like to speak to him first?”

  “Yes, please,” I said, and told her that I’d be down at the Post Office by eight.

  “How are you finding Vanessa?” asked Ziegler—far too casually.

  “She seems very efficient,” I said cautiously. “Very enthusiastic.”

  “Yes…enthusiastic,” said Ziegler slowly. And then, more normally, “Good, good, glad to hear it.”

  Vanessa was already in her office when I got in and collating the background on Kurt Omdale, who had been born in the Democratic Republic of Congo and had arrived in Hamburg with his parents in 1971. After school he had done an apprenticeship as a garage mechanic and was currently working as a supervisor at a garage on Bonner Straße on the West Bank. Less than a kilometre downriver from Jörg Koch’s flat.

  “How did they find him?” I asked.

  “The hairdresser,” said Vanessa. “Black people need special hair products.” Which was news to me.

  “What kind of hair products?” I asked, but Vanessa didn’t know.

  “It was Ziegler’s idea,” she said. “She’s married to an American pilot, a black guy. They have two daughters and she buys their hair products from that shop opposite the tattoo studio. She says there aren’t that many places to buy such things in the city, so she checked to see if someone had popped in to make a purchase around the time Jörg Koch was getting his tattoo.”

  Kurt Omdale hadn’t bought anything. But he had entered to flirt with the shop assistant, who remembered because Kurt was a regular and he’d discussed tattoos.

  “He said his friend was having a tattoo as a dare,” said Vanessa. “He’s asked to come in early so he can still attend church.”

  Our conscientious Kurt was a large, good-looking black man with a square blunt face and tight curly hair that was greying at the temples. He was dressed in matching lightweight navy jacket and trousers, worn but well-maintained brown leather shoes and a pale blue pinstripe shirt which he wore open at the neck. His handshake, when we introduced ourselves, was firm and he took his seat confidently and without fear. Even after we’d read him his rights, which usually gives even the most upright citizen pause for thought.

  “We’ve asked you here today in relation to the unfortunate death of Jörg Koch, with whom I believe you were acquainted,” said Vanessa.

  You have to be careful with witnesses that you don’t lead them into telling you things you want to hear. This desire to be “helpful” can often be more frustrating than plain obstructionism.

  “I can’t believe Jörg is dead,” he said. “I only saw him the other day.”

  We knew that Ziegler had already informed him of the death and had asked preliminary questions. Vanessa and I both had his answers in our notes in front of us.

  “When and where did you last see him?” asked Vanessa.

  We’d purposely sat far enough apart so that Kurt had to turn his head to talk to us in turn.

  “Last Saturday,” said Kurt. “At our weekly meeting of… Well, we have a sort of club.”

  “What kind of club?” I asked.

  “I suppose you could call it a drinking club,” said Kurt. “We call it the Good Wine Drinking Association.”

  “And presumably you meet up and drink wine?” I said.

  “Good wine,” said Kurt. “It’s an important distinction.”

  “You drink good wine,” I said.

  “That’s how it started,” said Kurt. He hadn’t been there when it started himself but the others had told him how it had been. Jörg Koch and Markus Nerlinger had met in a bar down the road from Jörg’s flat. They’d both been regulars.

  “They didn’t know each other,” said Kurt. “But one evening they just started talking.”

  They found they had much in common. They were both on the wrong side of forty with little to show for it. Both were estranged from their families, Jörg by his divorce and Markus by his wife’s death two years before.

  “How did she die?” asked Vanessa.

  “In hospital,” said Kurt. “Cancer, I believe. So there they were, gloomily drinking beer and comparing disappointments, when one of them quotes this bit of poetry:—Life’s too short to drink bad wine. And the other says, ‘Then what are we drinking in this shithole for?’” I asked whether Kurt knew which of the two had said that, but he didn’t know.

  “Is it important?” he asked.

  I shrugged. With the supernatural, first causes are often important.

  Kurt said that the way it was told to him was that Jörg and Markus came to a decision simultaneously, stood up and, leaving their beers unfinished, left the bar never to return. They walked across the Roman bridge, up Karl-Marx-Straße and through the town centre until they found a bar that struck them as superior.

  Kurt didn’t know which one. The others had probably told him, but he didn’t remember.

  Inside they’d asked the waitress to recommend the best wine they had. This being Trier, the waitress had to ask her colleagues and there was a spirited discussion before a consensus emerged.

  Kurt couldn’t remember the name, only that it was a 2008 Riesling.

  “Did they say whether it was a good wine?” I asked.

  Kurt smiled.

  “They said they had no idea of the absolute quality of the wine. Only that it was better than what they’d been drinking before. While they were refilling their glasses a man came to their table and introduced himself as Uwe Kinsmann. He apologised for interrupting but suggested that if they really wanted to appreciate the wine they needed to drink it slower.”

  The men invited Uwe to join them and in return he bought the next bottle of wine. When they described what they were doing to Uwe, he asked to join their “good wine club”, which came as a surprise to Jörg and Markus because up to that point they hadn’t known it existed.

  “That’s how the Good Wine Drinking Association was born,” said Kurt.

  The three founder members quickly decided the rules. They would meet up every Saturday evening and drink good wine. Since they were in a city famous for its wineries it made sense that they’d pick a new one each week.

  On their first official outing Markus brought Jonas Diekmeier, a younger man who worked in the office at Markus’s factory. Despite being younger and quieter than the other members he fitted in perfectly.

  “No family,” said Kurt. And the only people he was close to were on the internet. “And living in the UK and America.”

  “So how did you join?” asked Vanessa.

  Kurt said he was coming to that.

  Jörg had come in to Kurt’s garage to pick up his car, but the work wasn’t quite finished. Kurt,
who’d been supervising that particular shift, had to apologise and offered coffee. They’d got chatting and by the time his car was ready Jörg had invited Kurt to the next meeting.

  I asked what they’d talked about.

  “The usual,” said Kurt. “The economy, football, wine, women and man’s futile quest for meaning in an uncaring materialistic universe.” We must have looked surprised because Kurt laughed. “I took a course in philosophy at the People’s College,” he said. “But that came later.”

  They met Simon Haas outside the winery and restaurant they’d chosen for their second official outing. He’d been staring at the menu for so long they’d taken pity on him and invited him to join.

  And the drinking association might have stayed just that if on the next Saturday they hadn’t forgotten to make a reservation.

  “When we arrived the place was full,” said Kurt. “It was the first warm evening of the year so we decided to buy some bottles and sandwiches and have a picnic by the river.”

  “Whose idea was that?” I asked, but Kurt didn’t remember.

  “Anyway, before we got down to the old crane this good-looking girl and her friend came over with some leaflets and asked if we wanted to see a play,” said Kurt. “They said they were trying to attract people who normally didn’t go to the theatre, which I suppose was us, and would we like some free tickets.”

  The Good Wine Drinking Association looked at each other and thought—why not?

  They ended up back across the river in the European Academy of Fine Arts.

  “You know,” said Kurt. “That place opposite the big Kaufland supermarket.”

  I looked at Vanessa, who nodded—she knew where he was talking about.

  “What was the play?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure,” said Kurt. “Something by that famous English guy.”

  “Shakespeare?” I asked.

  “Oscar somebody,” said Kurt.

  “Oscar Wilde?”

  “That’s the one,” said Kurt.

  Bits of the play had been hilarious but Kurt admitted that a large part of the group’s enjoyment was because all the parts were played by women.

  “Young women,” said Kurt. “Students.”

  Afterwards they’d taken their wine and snacks and had their picnic in the dark and discussed the play and what to do next. Most of them couldn’t remember the last time they’d been to the theatre.

  “We don’t do shit, do we?” Uwe Kinsmann had said. “We’re like birds that have forgotten how to fly.”

  That’s when they all agreed to expand the remit of the Good Wine Drinking Association beyond its original charter. They decided to come up with a list of new experiences that they could aspire to—the only restriction being that they couldn’t be too expensive or interfere with work.

  “What high cultural activity did you choose to do first?” asked Vanessa.

  “We went to a strip club,” said Kurt. “One of those on Karl-Marx-Straße.”

  “Was it everything you imagined it would be?” she asked. Kurt shrugged.

  “It’s nice to watch young women take their clothes off,” he said. “But I thought it was a bit expensive.”

  Kurt thought that they’d gone to an art exhibition at the university next, or it might have been their re-creation of gladiatorial combat up at the Roman circus. They used foam rubber weapons that Simon borrowed off a LARPer friend of his.

  “LARP?” asked Vanessa.

  “Live action role-playing,” I said. “Like role playing games with dice, only you wear costumes and act out the game.”

  “It was tremendous fun,” said Kurt. “I wouldn’t have minded doing that again.”

  And they’d done this in the Roman amphitheatre carved out of the ridge to the east of the city. If that wasn’t a potential trigger event then I didn’t know what was. I made a note to check the amphitheatre as soon as possible.

  Kurt was hazy as to the order, but he was certain that they’d spent one Saturday collecting rubbish along the right-hand riverbank between the Roman and the Kaiser-Wilhelm bridges. One old man had assumed they were from the city and castigated them for never cleaning the area behind his block of flats. So the next day, a Sunday, they went and did his block of flats as well. Jörg, who was an electrician, fixed the porch light and intercom system while they were there.

  After that, the Good Wine Drinking Association ceased to be just a Saturday thing and got more elaborate and time-consuming. Like the occasion they enrolled in random courses at the People’s College.

  “Uwe cut a list of evening courses into strips and put them in a bag,” said Kurt. “And we each pulled out one at random.”

  We asked who did what courses.

  “I got philosophy for beginners, Markus got pottery, I think, Jörg got life drawing,” said Kurt, which explained the sketches we’d found in Jörg’s flat. “Simon did bakery, Jonas…” Kurt clicked his fingers a couple of times to spark his memory. “Creative sewing. And Uwe did home brewing. That kept us busy until this summer, although we still met up for a drink and social events.”

  “Such as?”

  “My engagement party for one,” he said. “I met my fiancée at the philosophy course and we went on cultural trips—mostly local. We went to Molsberg to see Simon’s uncle.”

  I saw Vanessa frown—Molsberg was where Heinrich Brandt, statue assailant, had got himself committed for a psychiatric evaluation.

  “What did you do there?” asked Vanessa.

  “Did some sightseeing and drank some wine of course,” he said.

  “So what’s to see in Molsberg?” I asked.

  “Some old buildings, a castle with a beautiful garden.” Kurt shrugged. “Simon’s uncle ran one of those action-adventure camps for kids. We stayed over and helped out for sports day.”

  A rueful expression crossed Kurt’s face.

  “Do either of you have children?” asked Kurt.

  We made non-committal noises.

  “I have three by my first marriage who must be grown up by now,” he said.

  “You’ve lost touch?” asked Vanessa.

  “They’re in America with their mother,” he said. “But as the wise man said, life’s too short to drink bad wine. Regret is a terrible vintage.”

  “And you have a fiancée?” said Vanessa.

  Kurt said yes, and we gently prised her details out of him without seeming terribly obvious. After we’d established that, I cross-checked my notes and found we’d missed a question.

  “You said you saw Jörg last Saturday, but you never said where.”

  “A new place on Niederstraße,” said Kurt.

  “Niederstraße in Ehrang?” said Vanessa.

  “That’s right,” said Kurt. “Just past the church.”

  It was a special event and they’d been lucky to get a reservation. A brand new winery, or rather an old one that had recently restarted production. Neither Vanessa nor I really needed to ask the name of the winery but we did anyway. That’s good police work.

  “Strackers,” said Kurt.

  If you have access to land with the right terroir, anyone can plant vines and make wine. If you keep the number of vines below ninety-nine you don’t even need a licence to do it. For those with a yen to make a living from the soil and fill in a van load of forms you needed at least eight hectares under cultivation to break even. Most wineries in the Mosel valley were half that size and stayed profitable by running a restaurant as well.

  “Not only do you get a steady income from the restaurant proper,” said Vanessa, “but you get to sell your wine at restaurant prices while creating goodwill and good publicity.”

  Frau Stracker had twelve hectares under cultivation, but as a winery coming back from obscurity she needed a platform to relaunch her label. To this end she’d purchased a half share in the Restaurant Eifel, brought in an expensive English chef and spent heavily on promotion.

  “She’s looking to get a Michelin star,” said Vanessa.
>
  “Do we know where all this money is coming from?” I asked.

  Vanessa flicked through her papers.

  “She owns a substantial share in a winery in California,” she said. “We’re still waiting on our request to the Federal Centre for Taxation.”

  I’d told Vanessa about my evening talk with Morgane, although I’d left out the bit about her future play date. So it wasn’t a surprise when she suggested that we bring Frau Stracker in for a chat.

  “She may know more than she told us. She may even have been deliberately hiding something.”

  “If so,” I said, “why did she tell us about the wine sacrifice?”

  Vanessa shrugged.

  “She wouldn’t be the first suspect to drop themselves in it,” she said.

  “Let’s check out the restaurant first,” I said. “If the infraction started there then I might be able to pick up a trace.”

  “You can do that?”

  “If it’s a noisy infraction, then yes,” I said. “If it’s subtle—perhaps not.”

  “Still, the more we find out about Frau Stracker the better, I think,” said Vanessa.

  “Can’t argue with that,” I said.

  The Restaurant Eifel took up the ground floor of a three-storey building with white walls and red tiled roof. It was indeed just down from the church, which was an imposing edifice of reddish brown stone that looked like someone had taken a normal parish church and stretched it upwards. I couldn’t hear any singing, so either services were over or the congregation was struck dumb by the height of the ceiling. The rest of the street was just as quiet, and the restaurant’s façade was shuttered. I checked my watch—it was just past ten o’clock.

  “I think we’re a bit early,” I said.

  Vanessa peered in through the glass front doors.

  “Somebody’s in there,” she said. “I can see a bag on a table and some keys.” She knocked a couple of times, but there was no reply.

  While we were waiting I looked both ways down the street—trying to orientate myself.