by Lars Schutz
‘The phone?’ stuttered Timotheus, real confusion glinting in his dark eyes. ‘I lost it a few days ago.’
‘How convenient – it seems to have turned up again. Aren’t you pleased? Who else knew about this secret compartment besides you?’
Timotheus merely stared open-mouthed at them.
‘Go through the texts,’ said Rabea breathlessly.
Ichigawa’s fingers rippled across the keys, then she passed Rabea the phone.
I am at the nister. waiting for you. your timo.
‘Who was this to?’ asked Rabea.
‘Michael. As in Dr Michael Ehrberg.’ Ichigawa turned to the monk. ‘Brother Timotheus, I’m arresting you on suspicion of murder.’
She took the handcuffs from her belt and stepped towards him. No trace of his composure remained. He rose from the bed, arms flung wide.
‘I – that – that’s impossible—’
Rabea followed what was happening as though watching television. A passive witness.
It was too simple. This wasn’t right.
They were making a huge mistake.
54
‘Finished?’
Tugba’s tormentor’s eyes flashed in the darkness. His leather gloves cracked as he gripped the boards of her wooden prison.
He’d torn her out of an uneasy doze. The kind of sleep that brings no rest, that takes it. Luckily, she’d been lying with her back to the wall, so he didn’t see she’d already scratched away half the G. She had no idea what he would do. She didn’t want to find out.
He kicked the boards.
‘Are you finished?’ he repeated, this time more sharply.
She nodded vehemently. ‘Yes—’ She could scarcely get a word out through her parched lips. Her tongue felt like a dry sponge stuffed into her mouth.
She moved her cold-stiffened hands, balling and opening them again, then reached underneath the mattress and took out the book. She had marked the exercises, which somebody had completed in a smudged childish hand, as normal. Putting ticks, correcting mistakes, giving marks. What was he planning? Who had filled it out? His child?
When she passed it to him, trembling, he ripped it instantly out of her hand, then jerked it open and leafed impatiently through it. In a flash he seemed to have forgotten all about her.
She was about to withdraw to her mattress when suddenly he raised his hand. ‘The pen!’
Tugba’s throat clamped shut. He hadn’t forgotten after all. Again, she slipped her fingers under the rough material of the mattress.
All her exhaustion fell away. Adrenaline pumped through her veins. The cheap plastic pen was cool and light in her sweaty palm. She ran her thumb over the place where she’d broken off the metal clip.
‘Here.’ She reached out her arm.
Impatiently he grabbed the pen. Looked at it. Paused.
Tugba scrabbled back onto the mattress in panic. No, no, no! She couldn’t breathe. He had noticed. Sensed immediately that something was wrong. How could she have been so stupid?
He put the pen back into his pocket and turned away, his eyes fixed on the book.
Tugba didn’t dare exhale until he’d climbed back through the trapdoor. He must have been so absorbed in the corrections that he didn’t notice the missing clip.
She fiddled around inside the small hole she’d torn in the mattress, stroking the metal clip and the half of the refill that she’d broken off.
She was going to see daylight again. She was going to eat ice cream with her sister. Laugh with her students. Live on. She let the images pass like a mantra through her mind. She still had time. Her letter hadn’t come, not yet.
55
‘Do you know about the Lincoln–Kennedy mystery, Frau Wyler?’
‘I’m not here for a history lesson.’ Rabea got up from her bar stool. ‘I need a second opinion on the arrest.’
Stüter was crouching on his bed, clad only in an undershirt and baggy jogging bottoms. A checked woollen blanket was draped around his shoulders. The word ‘neglected’ had shot through Rabea’s head when she saw him at the front door of Heino’s Den. But that wasn’t quite accurate. He was freshly showered, smelled of aftershave, and wore clean clothes. She just had to get used to seeing a controlled person like Stüter look so casual.
‘I’m not giving you a history lesson, I’m giving you a maths lesson. One of my little foibles.’ He pointed at a pile of books next to his camp bed. Rabea, peering at it, read titles like Mathematical Phenomena, Fundamentals of Statistics and The Mystery of Pi.
‘Sounds a bit better. Why are you so interested?’
He flung out his arms. ‘Look around you! I live in a pub. My daughter is on a gap year in Australia. I only hear from her once in a blue moon. My best friend’s son was murdered on my watch, and his killer’s still out there. The whole world is in chaos, and it’s getting worse. Numbers have always given me something to hold on to. Order. Control. They’re so different from what we deal with at work. Don’t worry – I’m not going to give you some boring lecture. My question is connected to what I think about the arrest of this Cistercian brother.’
Rabea stepped behind the bar. ‘How do you know about that?’
‘The same way I knew about what was found in Tamara Weiss’s hotel room,’ he replied with a humourless chuckle. ‘I have my sources. Why did you come to me and not to Grall, anyway?’
She avoided his gaze. ‘You know why. In any case, he’s unavailable at the moment.’
‘Unavailable? Interesting choice of words.’
‘Lincoln and Kennedy, what about them?’
Obviously Stüter noticed her clumsy change of subject. He raised the corner of his mouth, making it look like a wolf’s maw.
‘The Lincoln–Kennedy mystery is about a series of weird coincidences involving the two presidents. Here’s a couple: Lincoln was shot at the Ford Theatre. Kennedy was assassinated in a Ford Lincoln. Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846, Kennedy in 1946. Abraham Lincoln became president in 1860, Kennedy in 1960.’
‘Sheer chance,’ remarked Rabea. She didn’t understand what Stüter was getting at.
‘Correct, correct. You can find just as many coincidences between Kennedy and any other random president, if you search for long enough. In mathematics we call this a phenomenon – that you can find people with the same characteristics even in a small group – the birthday paradox.’
‘I heard about that during training.’ She ran her finger ruminatively along the stainless-steel tap. ‘If you’re in a room with more than a certain number of people, the chance that two of them will have the same birthday is greater than fifty percent.’
‘Absolutely right. The number is twenty-three, to be precise. At fifty people, the probability rises to seventy-nine percent. Incredible, isn’t it?’
‘Sure. But please tell me what this has to do with the Alphabet Killer.’
Stüter got up and stood on the other side of the bar. ‘You and Jan have been straining to find similarities between the victims. There’s nothing so very wrong with that, initially. But as we both know; such similarities can be deceptive.’
‘But that’s where the killer’s motivation is hidden.’
‘I don’t think it will lead anywhere. We’ll just get lost in a web of apparent connections. The Cistercian isn’t the killer.’
Rabea glanced at her phone. She hadn’t owned a watch for years. ‘I’m due to be at his interrogation. So, what’s your opinion then?’
‘I think we should concentrate on one victim and fully explore every facet of their life. And that victim should be Tugba Ekiz. The literacy course. The fact that there were no signs of a break-in at her apartment. She must have known the killer. We’ve not had the chance to investigate all that thoroughly. Events have moved too quickly.’
Rabea put it on her mental to-do list. The Chief Superintendent might be right.
He closed his cold, rough hand around her forearm. ‘One more thing: be careful. You saw what happened
to Daniel.’
‘Thanks. I’ll watch out.’ She put on the most confident smile she could muster.
Not her most convincing one, she had to admit.
56
Jan’s apartment looked like the aftermath of a massacre.
Shards everywhere, shattered DVDs. They’d not spared his TV, either – the screen was covered in a rose-shaped web of cracks.
His life. One big heap of rubble.
Again, he swept his gaze over the shards of his film collection, worth several thousand euros. But what could be less important now?
‘Thank God, there you are!’ came a voice from underneath a mountain of pillows and blankets on the sofa. It took Jan a second to see Miriam.
Her head poked out. Her jet-black hair was shorn on one side and chin-length on the other, her lip pierced, her neck tattooed with stars, her eyeliner smudged from crying.
In three paces he was beside her, hugging her much-too skinny shoulders. ‘Everything is going to be fine.’
‘People are always lying when they say stuff like that,’ she said, her lips quivering.
He didn’t reply, just drew her a little tighter. When he let go, he looked into her light green eyes. ‘Were the police here?’
She nodded. ‘Yeah. They took a load of notes. I told them I was your niece, so I didn’t get into any trouble.’
‘That’s what you are to me.’
He glanced around, sighing. This place had been his refuge. The centre of his life. It was where he’d gathered strength. Lost himself in old Tarantino films, eating Turkish falafel. He’d not needed anything else. Now even this sanctuary of silence had been desecrated.
‘You look so sad,’ said Miriam. On the street she’d learned a good instinct for body language. ‘I’m really sorry I got you dragged into this.’
‘There’s nothing you can do about it. Just one thing: I want the truth. Why did you borrow money from him?’
‘My sister— ’
‘She’s still living with your father, isn’t she?’ he asked, the word ‘father’ laden with contempt. He didn’t want to know what that man had done to Miriam.
She nodded. ‘She needed money. For the class trip. For food, even. My father doesn’t give a shit. Wastes it all on betting and boozing.’
Jan rested his chin in his hands. ‘Why didn’t you come to me?’
She lowered her eyes. ‘I’d never want to be in your debt. I’m too proud for that.’
‘Pride isn’t much help when every bone in your body is broken.’
He was relieved, however, that she’d borrowed the money for her sister and not for drugs again. Not that he had much moral superiority there. His eyes fell on the drawer of his large walnut desk. There was at least a month’s supply of weed in there.
‘Look.’ Miriam took a picture from the coffee table and handed it to him. ‘They smashed up the chest of drawers and some pictures fell out.’
He examined the photograph. It depicted him and his brother when Jan was still a child and Gero a teenager. Gero, looking fit and muscular with his flashing eyes and dimple, was proudly holding up a fishing rod, while Jan held their catch – a giant trout – with a faint smile on his lips.
‘Who’s that next to you in the picture?’
‘My brother.’ He dropped it back on the table.
She stared at him in astonishment. ‘You never told me you had one.’
‘He died when I was eighteen. Car accident.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to reopen old wounds.’
‘They’re not the kind of wounds you’re imagining.’
She looked at him for a moment in confusion, then said, with a hint of pleading in her voice, ‘I don’t want to stay here alone.’
‘You don’t have to.’
‘What do you have in mind?’ Miriam leapt up from the sofa, cheerful once again. ‘Just one thing: if you call in the welfare people, I’m running away. They don’t care anyway. I guess you have to go back to Westerwald, right?’
‘Right.’ He took a deep breath. ‘But I’m taking you with me.’
He already knew it was a bad idea.
57
7th December, midday
‘Two hours until the press conference! We’re getting everything ready!’ The media liaison officer clapped her hands. ‘Once again, good work, Ichigawa.’
She gave the team leader a thumbs-up. Anita simply gave an exasperated flap of her hand.
The operations centre was in a fever of activity – Rabea had never seen anything like it. It felt like they were all grimly battling their own downfall.
Timotheus wasn’t the killer. All the odds were against it. She could see that even without Jan.
‘Come on!’ Ichigawa marched past her. ‘Where were you? I had to do the first interrogation without you.’
Together they walked towards the interview room.
‘Sorry, I just had to get some facts straight.’ She didn’t mention her brief trip to see Stüter.
‘I’ll have to tell Jan. That sort of thing is unacceptable.’
Rabea rolled her eyes. As if Jan would care!
They stopped outside Interview Room 002.
‘Let me do the talking in there, okay? I’ve just been given some background information on our man of God in there, and I want to play those cards at the right time,’ said Ichigawa. ‘And don’t bother with any psychological magic tricks, okay?’
Rabea merely glared.
They went inside. To call it an interview room was a serious exaggeration. The police station in Hachenburg was so small they’d used a converted office. No observation room behind a two-way mirror, no cold light, no oppressive atmosphere.
Merely a single desk, and the Cistercian slumped at it. So far, he’d refused a lawyer. In the habit of his order, he looked like a man from another age. He wore handcuffs, which Rabea thought was totally unnecessary. He seemed about as aggressive as Gandhi.
He shot them a pained smile. ‘Glad to see you again. I hope you’re here so we can end this farce.’
Ichigawa sat opposite him and switched on the recording device. ‘Oh, I’m afraid this farce has only just begun.’
Her voice was so cutting it even sent a shiver down Rabea’s spine.
‘You know your rights?’ Rabea made sure. ‘You really don’t want a lawyer?’
‘People who’ve done nothing wrong don’t need to defend themselves. My lawyer is up there.’ He gestured towards the sky. Rabea sighed. Why did people always cling to principles that ended up hurting them?
Ichigawa laughed sardonically. ‘We’ll see how well your lawyer up there did on his exams.’
Rabea, glancing back and forth between them, interlaced her fingers.
‘Yesterday after compline, none of your brothers saw you. Where were you?’
‘In my cell. Alone. I was reading. It’s not a weak alibi, it’s just the life of a monk: solitude.’
Ichigawa raised an eyebrow. ‘So why did one of the students see you leaving the abbey at ten o’clock? With a heavy bag?’
Right into the trap, thought Rabea.
Timo rubbed the back of his neck, avoiding their eyes. He bit his bottom lip.
Rabea cocked her head. His body language was that of a liar. Had she been mistaken, perhaps?
‘You don’t want to answer?’ persisted Ichigawa.
Silence.
‘As you wish,’ she sighed. ‘We’ve got all the time in the world. Let’s try something else. You spoke earlier about the life of a monk. Are explicit text messages part of that life too?’
Timotheus’s eyebrows shot up. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I doubt that.’ Ichigawa leafed through the pile of paper in front of her. ‘Here, for example. The fourth of December. Eight minutes past ten. Text to Dr Michael Ehrberg: “I watched you all day again today. Touching myself and thinking of you. Your Timo”.’
Even through the thick beard, it was clear the Cistercian was bri
ght red. ‘I – I would never write something like that.’
‘Then how come that text was sent from your phone under your name? You’ve been messaging back and forth like that for six days. Sending each other filthy rubbish.’
Timotheus flung up his hands. ‘Six days ago, I lost my phone. Going for a walk with a visitor, Tamara Weiss. The woman who was abducted.’
‘I’m supposed to buy that? Really?’ Ichigawa whistled through the gap in her front teeth. ‘And thanks for mentioning the connection with Tamara Weiss – another potential victim – off your own bat. That only makes our job easier.’
Rabea put a hand on her forearm and whispered into her ear, ‘Let’s take it a bit easier.’
‘Take it easier?’ replied Ichigawa at a normal volume, her eyes still fixed on Timotheus. ‘I’ve barely started. Why did Frau Weiss visit you?’
‘She is – was – Dr Ehrberg’s editor. She earned most of her money from translations, but when a subject interested her, she would also do editorial work. They ate together at the brewery then he invited me for a walk. I must have lost my phone then.’
‘And how do you explain text messages being sent from the phone after that point?’
‘Somebody must have found it and used it! Take fingerprints – that will clear everything up.’
‘I certainly will. But I have a feeling the results won’t look good for you.’
Once again Rabea tried to rein her in. ‘Before you give the press conference, at least wait for the results of the fingerprint analysis,’ she whispered. ‘So that we’re one hundred percent sure.’
‘Sometimes you have to press ahead. Didn’t Jan teach you that?’
‘More the opposite, actually.’
‘Typical.’ Ichigawa leant forwards and glared at her interviewee. ‘Now, Brother Timotheus—’
‘May I interrupt a moment? I just want to ask one question.’ Rabea made her voice as steely as possible. Time to assert herself.
Ichigawa gave an exasperated groan, but said, ‘Do what you have to.’
‘Okay.’ Rabea made an expansive gesture. ‘Please answer my question as spontaneously as possible, no matter how peculiar it seems.’
