But she recognizes Ulf Pavlik. Not by his voice, by his gait. When he was in his early forties, he had a motorbike accident and lost the calf of his left leg. He went on taking his carbon prosthesis to the limit. Does he still have the Agusta?
He makes it easier for her and punches her on the arm. ‘Looking good.’
She grins. ‘You too.’
Two voices that ring a bell. Fricke and Wolter?
‘Hey Aaron, put on weight?’
‘Around the eyes.’
Her laughter, which follows the moment of shock, lets Aaron know that Niko hasn’t told them exactly what happened. They never got to read the report from Internal Affairs. For these men, Aaron was a machine and Barcelona was just bad luck, kismet.
But she knows.
The sixth virtue: Meiyo. Honour.
Lost.
Fricke taps her shoulder. ‘Got to go, see you tonight?’
‘I’ve got a lot of work on.’
‘It’s Pavlik’s birthday.’
Damn it, I forgot.
‘He’s turning fifty. We’ve clubbed together and we’re giving him a Zimmer frame.’
‘Idiots,’ Pavlik replies. ‘I don’t need a walking aid, I need a wheelchair.’
She holds out a hand to him. ‘Come here, old man.’
Aaron hugs him; his latissimus dorsi stiff as a trampoline, his upper arms and shoulders tough as iron; you have to be like that as a precision sniper, to absorb the recoil. Not a single gram of fat, peak training. At that moment she knows that he’s been thinking about her a lot as well, and whispers: ‘Love you to bits.’
‘Afterwards. Roof terrace,’ he whispers back.
Pavlik goes with the others, and only now does she notice that Niko has gone too. That’s one of the things she hates most: that people disappear from one second to the next, as if they’d never been there.
She stands there uncertainly, not knowing what to do, having lost her bearings when she hugged Pavlik, and wonders whether the lift is to her left or her right. She feels for the wall. Runs her hand along it. Touches smooth stone.
The memorial plaque for the men who were killed.
Aaron’s fingers slide over the engraved letters, read the names. Seventeen comrades. For a few heartbeats she lingers over four of them. Three have been added, strangers.
As if from nowhere Niko is back. ‘Jenny – my boss – Inan Demirci.’
‘Hello, Miss Aaron.’ The voice is relatively low in her throat, almost free of tension and at the same time very controlled.
Aaron holds out her hand. Demirci’s fingers are long, slender, firm. ‘Nice to meet you.’
‘I suggest we go to my office.’
Niko takes Aaron by the arm, but Demirci says: ‘Thank you, Mr Kvist, your presence will not be required.’
6
The room is cool.
She also likes to reflect.
Aaron is very familiar with the office that her former boss furnished so functionally that all judgements were received quite calmly and matter-of-factly.
Your decision was correct – self-defence – Internal Affairs exonerates you – your temporary suspension is lifted.
She knows that Demirci has been in charge of the Department for just a month. She is only forty-seven, very young for such a high-profile position. Previously she was in charge of the Homicide Unit in Dortmund. The first Turkish woman, the first woman full stop, to have made it so far.
Hence the slight tension in her voice. You have to be better and tougher than everyone else. Particularly here.
The conference table is in its old spot. But in Aaron’s mind it is no longer surrounded by chairs. Now they are in front of the table, because she has developed the habit of mentally arranging objects in sequence of contact.
‘Would you like a coffee?’
‘That would be great, thank you. Black, no sugar. But with a spoon, please.’
If Demirci is surprised she doesn’t show it. She pours coffee for Aaron and herself. A very good perfume, Aigner No. 2. I assume she doesn’t wear any make-up, or hardly any. Aaron stirs her coffee and taps the spoon against the cup. A clear ringing sound, everything’s just like before. Almost. She taps again, her mind apparently elsewhere, and receives a second, darker echo from the opposite wall.
Suddenly she thinks: there’s someone standing there.
‘You will be aware that Fourth Homicide called us in because of you. Do you mind if I record the conversation for my colleagues?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Sixth of January. Killing of Melanie Breuer, psychologist in Tegel Correctional Facility. The accused, Reinhold Boenisch, was questioned by DSI Jenny Aaaron. Miss Aaron, did Boenisch tell you anything?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did he confess to the crime?’
‘Yes.’
‘What motive did he give?’
‘It doesn’t matter. It wasn’t him.’
A truck drives past down below. The high-frequency hum of the window panes is the only sound for five seconds.
‘What brings you to that conclusion?’
‘Boenisch’s capacity for repression. He isn’t capable of murder. He can only do that in his imagination.’
‘He’s serving a life sentence for four homicides.’
‘I’m sure of it. You read my statement at the trial.’
That’s so much junk as far as you’re concerned.
‘Miss Aaron, that must have been an incredibly dramatic situation for you, traumatic, even, but I assumed that at a distance of so many years—’
‘Can I present you with the facts?’
An irritable sigh. ‘Please do.’
‘First: Boenisch had himself beaten up by a fellow prisoner three days ago, to win my sympathy at the interview.’
‘Did Boenisch admit that to you?’
‘No. But the prisoner he paid to carry out the attack did.’
‘I’d have said the same thing in his position.’
‘Second: Boenisch has a film in his possession. It’s about a serial killer who never gets caught. In his imagination Boenisch assumes the identity of a minor character. He projects qualities of the murderer on to that character, qualities that he doesn’t have in the film.’
‘Do I know this film?’
‘Mr Brooks.’
Demirci taps something down on a tablet.
Ten-finger system, sixty words a minute, probably by touch. Perfectionist.
‘Third: he wouldn’t tell me who gave him the film.’
‘What does that prove?’
‘Fourth: Boenisch could hardly wait to talk to me about Mr Brooks. He clearly got a lot of pleasure from the idea that I thought he was the perpetrator.’
‘A lot of murderers enjoy confessing.’
‘Fifth: he invited the victim into his cell. According to his attested personality profile he would have done that with the intention of killing. If that was the case, it means he had been in the excitation phase for twenty-four hours and exploded when Melanie came through the door. Except that Boenisch first drank tea with her.’
‘“Melanie”. You lack detachment.’
‘Are you of the view that we are dealing with cases and not with people?’
‘Are you trying to lecture me?’
‘Are you?’
A rustle of stiff paper. ‘He didn’t necessarily issue the invitation with a view to committing a homicide. It may be that the situation was too much for him. I have the report from Forensics. My impression is that they’ve worked very carefully.’
The people from the Homicide Unit didn’t even ask about Melly. They haven’t even been here.
‘Sixth: the plastic bag he’s supposed to have suffocated the woman with doesn’t accord with his criminal profile.’
‘He improvised.’
‘Seventh: he hates improvising. Eighth: he suffers from Klinefelter Syndrome, a thyroid condition that led to unusual growth levels during puberty. He’s two metres tall and
unusually physically strong. Melanie put up strong resistance. But Boenisch immediately saw to it that she couldn’t move a millimetre.’
‘I have a feeling you’re working towards a punchline.’
‘Whoever got hold of Mr Brooks for him is the actual perpetrator. Boenisch was able to choose the victim and witness the killing. A win-win situation.’
Aaron takes a sip of coffee.
Is nauseated.
Has another sip.
Did he look at a photograph of Melanie Breuer? No, she’d come to that.
Demirci clears her throat. ‘Of course I’ve heard of you. You were recruited by the Department at the age of twenty-five. No one before or after you has been as young as that. And you were the first woman. Now you’re the only blind criminal profiler and specialist interrogator in Germany. At the request of the BKA president an official exception has been created for you. You have my respect.’
‘Ninth: Boenisch lost control when I shattered his self-image.’
‘Loss of control in an impulsive criminal. It’s hardly an argument.’
‘Tenth: he already knew I was blind. How?’
Demirci chooses her words carefully. ‘Kvist told me you carried out the interrogation all by yourself. However capable you might be – do you really think you can grasp every aspect of a personality?’
I was waiting for that one. And how elegantly you dodged the word ‘blind’.
At the BKA they only gave her a chance because of her name. No one could imagine that she would pass the tests. In fact she failed when she was given the minutes of the interrogation in Braille and told to identify the moments when the suspect gave himself away.
She asked to be able to hear the interrogations. She stood three times behind the two-way mirror. This time she got a high score and identified the crucial evidence.
Feel your way between the words.
Guess what has gone unsaid.
Listen to the sound of lies.
Now, when they get stuck on a case they say: wait till Aaron has seen him.
She gets to her feet. ‘I’ll stay for as long as necessary. Kvist will find me the material for the rest of the investigation.’
Demirci turns off the tape machine. ‘You’ve turned your phone off, so the BKA can’t find you. They expect you in Wiesbaden as soon as possible.’
Did she make that up? No, it’s true. We’re under pressure.
Aaron juts her chin towards the spot on the wall from which she received the dark echo.
‘What’s that?’
Demirci is speechless for a moment. ‘A suit of Ottoman armour from the fifteenth century. A present.’
‘It’s good to have armour.’
‘A metaphor?
‘Personal experience.’
*
Aaron gets into the lift and presses the button for the twentieth floor. The smell of roulades and over-boiled potatoes hangs in the cabin. The door opens, the wind tugs at her coat. Careful footsteps until she reaches the parapet at the edge of the roof terrace.
She knows she’s looking westwards, into the sun, she feels greedy for light, even just the idea of it. Aaron imagines the world until it seems completely real to her, a fata morgana, hyper-real as a daydream.
She sees Zoo station, its grey steel merging with a low-hanging cloud that drifts in front of the sun. A bat drops from the roof, sweeps round the mosaic of the Neue Gedächtniskirche, which sparkles gaudily for a moment in a beam that pierces the cloud, darts like an arrow to avoid the light, seeks the cloud, finds it again above the Bikinihaus, dives to the baboon rock in the zoo and makes its way automatically to the cave where it has to wait because it’s too early for hunting. The baboons ignore their familiar guest and raise their bright red rumps at a school class taking selfies. Aaron is absolutely sure they are the children who boarded the coach at the airport that morning. Even though it’s only half-past three, the chains of Christmas lights that will hang over Tauentzien and Kurfürstendamm until early February are already coming on, glow worms in the frost, noticed by no one but a little girl with black curls, who has never been in such a big city before, pressing a bag of hot chestnuts to her, knows that her father is holding her other hand and is happy.
The evening is like a window blind slamming shut. The Christmas lights harshly stab the blackness that engulfs the girl and the city, become fainter, fainter, until they are just tiny smouldering dots on a radar screen. Then it’s pitch black. Headaches eat their way into Aaron’s eyes. Somewhere a stuttering starter motor, a flooded engine, a car-horn concerto, a plane.
At home she has a picture by the painter Eşref Armağan. Although he is blind from birth, he paints landscapes in wonderfully beautiful colours. Endless bridges over lonely bays where sailing boats dance. Lighthouses on cliffs, circled by albatrosses. Magical still lifes, bowls of fruit with pears, raspberries, honeydew melons so juicy you want to sink your teeth into them. Armağan was thought to be a charlatan until he was given tests at Harvard Medical School. He sat in a lightless bunker, observed by cameras, painted and silenced all the doubters.
When his visual brain activities were measured, they turned out to be those of a sighted person.
Aaron loves Armağan’s painting, always has done. After her father died she bought one. It cost thirty thousand Euros, and she paid for it out of her inheritance. The dealer was surprised that a blind woman was buying a painting by a blind artist, and offered at least to describe to her what the picture showed. But she didn’t want that. She touched the canvas, felt the rough relief of the colours under her fingers, because Eşref Armağan had painted this picture with his, and knew: it’s mine.
It hangs in her bedroom. Aaron often looks at it and sees a woman standing on a dizzyingly high tightrope between the towers of Notre Dame, fearless because nothing can touch her, not even death.
A year after Barcelona the flat of a hoarder in Dresden needed to be cleared. A fire was burning between piles of rubbish and all that remained of The Dream Dancers was a charred scrap of sky. It wasn’t the only painting he had stolen, but it was the last one he destroyed.
He said: ‘If I can’t see it any more, no one can.’
*
Footsteps. Pavlik. Aaron turns around. ‘Have you got a cigarette? I’m out.’
Something strikes her right hand, falls in the snow.
‘Shit,’ growls Pavlik. ‘I bet Büker fifty Euros you’d be able to do it.’ He picks up the pack of unfiltered cigarettes, puts one in her hand, lights it for her and smokes as well.
‘How’s the Agusta?’ she asks.
‘I ride a Hayabusa now. Bright green, your colour.’
‘What cc?’
‘Just 200.’
‘Cool.’
Her headache is getting worse. Aaron senses that Pavlik is weighing words and discarding them. What he says to her must be significant, because he’s the man who’s good at being succinct. In Barcelona he just asked when she was starting again.
She flicks her cigarette butt away. ‘OK, what is it?’
Pavlik looks past her, breathes shallowly. ‘Sascha Holm was transferred to Tegel a month ago.’
She has heard two really bad sentences in her life.
It’s me, Butz. And: There’s no point in operating.
This is the third.
Sascha Holm is Token-Eyes, the brother of the man in Barcelona who called himself Egger. Later, when her father thought he could talk to her about it, Aaron found out that one of the three Catalans, fatally injured, had managed to make an emergency call. Ruben. While she was disappearing endlessly into the tunnel under Plaça de les Drassanes, the MEK – the Mobile Task Force – arrived at the warehouse. They did what Aaron had neglected to do. Niko was resuscitated by a doctor and saved.
Token-Eyes pulled through as well. His DNA was linked to four unsolved murders: a passer-by in a bank robbery in Augsburg, two traffic cops at a road block on the Côte d’Azur and a Portuguese woman whose sole crime was that she wa
nted to leave Token-Eyes after they’d been going out for a year.
He was sentenced to forty-eight years in prison in Barcelona, and ended up in the notorious La Modelo jail.
Nothing could be pinned on his brother. They only know his name: Ludger Holm. He can’t be charged with a series of other crimes if they can’t name a single one. They don’t even have his prints on anything. But a man who offers an undercover dealer a stolen painting that he never owned, who knows that he is going to run into five elite police officers with an MEK in their wake in Barcelona, must be pretty cold-blooded.
She thinks of the moment when she felt eyes on her back in Tegel. Was it Token-Eyes? Did he like the look of her? Was he waiting for her?
Aaron pulls herself together. ‘Why?’
‘A woman in Berlin started writing to him a year ago. She went to Barcelona twice. Sascha requested a transfer and Tegel agreed.’
‘Who is this woman?’
‘A florist. She has a shop in Rudow.’
‘I want to talk to her.’
‘I know.’
*
City freeway, half an hour south-east. Pavlik isn’t a great talker. He likes to set out his terms so that he can consider them in peace; he doesn’t form his sentences as he utters them, he’s already thought them through a long time ago. Now, in the car, he doesn’t say a word. He’s waiting for the question that scares her. It contains its own answer. But she can’t save him from it, or from herself either.
‘Does Niko know?’
Pavlik says nothing.
‘So that’s a yes.’
‘He didn’t want to worry you.’
‘I’m a grown-up.’
‘Yes. Except that you were with Boenisch. You should hear the guys. They all think you’ve got the biggest balls they’ve ever seen.’
‘Thanks for that too.’
He just drove with me to Tegel and didn’t say a word.
Her hand brushes the artificial leather of the seat, and immediately joins its fellow in her lap.
*
Ten things that Aaron doesn’t like touching:
sweaty hands
coffee beans
In the Dark Page 8
