by Val McDermid
‘At least she’s safely out of the way. Now, why don’t you go and talk to your Chinese friends and see when they want to send us another shipment? We should be set up to deal with it by the end of the month.’
‘You’re going to do business with her?’
‘I think so. She wants to see something of the way we do things before she commits herself. So make sure everything is running smoothly, OK?’
Krasic tried to hide the dismay he felt. ‘You’re going to let an outsider into our business?’
‘She’s not going to be an outsider, is she? She’s going to be on the inside. We’ve been checking her out, haven’t we? Well, now she wants to check us out. And at least she’s doing it up front, not being underhand like us.’
Krasic shook his head dubiously. ‘I don’t know, we’ve always kept things tight, and it’s worked for us.’
Tadeusz put a hand on his arm. ‘Look, Darko, I know you’re uneasy about her. But I’ve spent a lot of time with her in the past couple of days. And my instincts say she’s one of us. She can be trusted. So now you have to trust me. OK?’
Krasic pretended to accept the olive branch. ‘If you say so, boss. I better be on my way. I’ve got things to see to.’
Tadeusz watched him leave, a speculative look on his face. Having Darko so mistrustful around Caroline was no bad thing, he thought. He was well aware that she had crawled under his defences. Who knew what might be going on in his blind spot? Just as well Darko was there to keep an eye on things. Because, if Tadeusz was wrong, someone would have to clear up the mess.
Carol lay back on the sauna bench and felt the sweat trickle down her temples and tickle the skin above her ears. This has got to be the best meeting venue ever,’ she groaned.
Petra grinned. Her eyes were on a level with Carol’s breasts. ‘It has its good points, I have to admit.’
Carol arched her spine, feeling the satisfying crunch of vertebrae realigning themselves. ‘Oh God, I am so out of condition,’ she complained. ‘By the way, I think Radecki’s got someone on my tail. I noticed a young guy outside the apartment this morning, and I thought I spotted him yesterday. So, on my way here, I did a double-take as I passed a shop window. You know the kind of thing? Walk past, then turn back as if you’ve just realized what caught your eye?’
‘Sure. The kind of thing us empty-headed girls do all the time.’
‘Exactly. Anyway, I caught him out of the corner of my peripheral vision. Dodging behind a car, trying to look as if he was crossing the road. Fairly professional, but not good enough to fool anyone who’s looking for a tail.’
‘Are you worried about it?’
‘Not really. They’d be sloppy if they weren’t keeping an eye on me. It’s not as if I’m doing anything to make them worry. At least I know now what my tail looks like if the occasion arises when I do need to shake him.’
Petra nodded approvingly. ‘Good thinking. By the way, I read your overnight report. I have to say, you handled Radecki well on the boat. You seem to be making real progress.’
‘I’m cautiously pleased myself. But yesterday afternoon was a real warning to me not to get over-confident.’
Petra stood up and dripped some citrus oil on the coals. The sharp intensity of the fumes seemed to shift her brain up a gear. ‘It’s working because you look like Katerina. However much his conscious mind wants to distrust you, his emotions are dragging him in the opposite direction. I’m surprised he hasn’t made a move on you yet.’
‘Are you? I’m not. He had Katerina on a pedestal. She was his angel, his goddess. He’s not going to jump on someone who reminds him that strongly of her. He’s going to court me,’ she said. ‘Tony and I talked about this beforehand, and he reckoned that was what would happen. And, speaking of Tony, he told me about the murder in Köln.’
Petra groaned. ‘It’s terrible. I get so angry because it feels like the whole investigation is snarled up in bureaucratic nonsense. Apparently, Heidelberg have got on their high horse. They’re insisting on being the lead investigators because theirs was the first case. This is the same bunch of fuckwits who tried to hand it off to my unit because they couldn’t solve it.’
‘I thought everything was going through Europol?’
‘They’re exchanging information, but there’s a mountain of case notes and nobody really to take an overview except Tony. It’s very frustrating. But I thought his profile came up with some interesting leads. At least the lead detective in Köln seems to have half a brain. He cottoned on right away to the idea of having a computer expert look at the victim’s hard drive, just like Marijke’s doing. But that could take days, weeks even, to produce results. Marijke has also asked the German teams to check out your idea about a campaign of academic criticism.’
Carol shook her head. ‘It’s not my finest idea. I hope they don’t waste too much time on it.’
‘It might just be the lead they need,’ Petra said. ‘God, I hate not being able to be involved in the investigation.’ She stood up. ‘Time for a shower. Then I better get back to the office.’
Carol groaned. ‘And I have to tour Radecki’s video shops and try to look interested.’
‘Rather you than me,’ Petra said as she walked out of the sauna cabin. ‘You take care, Carol.’
Yeah, right. Like that’s an option, Carol thought wryly. If taking care was her first priority, she’d never have accepted this assignment. Taking risks was the name of the game. That and survival. And she was determined to survive.
28
Mostly, Darko Krasic enjoyed his work. He had a taste for power and a profound disregard for suffering. He understood his limitations and had no ambitions to take over Tadeusz Radecki’s empire for himself. Why should he? He was already making more money than he could spend, and he wasn’t so vain as to think he was smarter than his boss.
But even Krasic occasionally found elements of his work distasteful. Take this, for example. Pawing through a woman’s underwear was no job for a man like him. A pervert might get off on it, but Krasic was no pervert. If he ever reached the point where the only way he could get off was by fumbling with lingerie, he thought he would simply pick up one of his handguns and blow his brains out.
Still, it had to be done. Tadzio was carrying his brains in his boxer shorts right now, and somebody had to take care of business. When he’d left the apartment, Krasic had called Rado, his second cousin and the young man he’d assigned to keep an eye on Caroline Jackson. ‘Where is she?’ he’d asked.
‘She’s just gone into that fancy women’s health club on Giesebrechtstrasse,’ Rado told him. ‘She was carrying a gym bag.’
If Caroline Jackson could afford temporary membership there, Krasic thought, she was clearly not short of cash, nor was she afraid to spend it. She’d be at least an hour, he reckoned. ‘Call me when she leaves,’ he told Rado.
He’d stopped off at a florist and bought a bouquet of flowers. Getting in to the block then had been a piece of cake. He’d simply rung bells until he got a reply, then said he had a delivery for that apartment number. In the lift, he’d scribbled something illegible on the card and handed them over to a slightly bemused Dutch businessman. He knew Caroline Jackson’s apartment number, because the car had picked her up there for dinner the previous evening. The lock was pathetic, in his opinion. It took him less than five minutes to pick it, and then he was inside.
Krasic made a quick sortie before he began his search. Bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, living room. No serious hiding places. Not even a safe for valuables.
He began with the living room. There was a laptop on a small escritoire by the window. He switched it on and left it to boot up while he looked around. A handful of paperbacks sat on a shelf beside a blue rubber radio. He flicked through the books. Nothing. A stack of English newspapers on the coffee table revealed nothing more than that Jackson liked to do the crosswords and was good at them. The notepad by the phone contained nothing except a note of her arrangement to meet Tadzio
at the boat. A briefcase held surprisingly little; estate agent’s details of a couple of properties in Ipswich with some scribbled notes in the margins relating to their suitability; a printer’s proof copy of a catalogue of hand-made wooden toys with a post office box in Norwich as the ordering address; a sheet of paper with what looked like a series of financial calculations; and a statement for a current account at a bank in Bury St Edmunds. Krasic copied down the details of the account then replaced everything as he had found it.
He turned his attention to the laptop. She didn’t even have it password protected, he noted contemptuously. He opened up her comms program, his heart sinking as he saw a couple of hundred e-mails in the in-box. He opened a few at random and found nothing of any significance. They seemed mostly to be from friends or business contacts, generally concerning arrangements for meetings or the exchange of gossip. Ideally, he could use a few hours alone with it to go through everything in more detail, but that wasn’t going to happen.
Next, Krasic opened her word processing software. There was a folder of letters, many of which seemed to be concerned with the lease of a former US airbase in East Anglia and applications for its change of use to light industrial units and residential accommodation for the workforce. Other letters dealt with property sales and purchases, none of which meant anything to him. He opened another folder called ‘project EA’. His heart leapt when he saw among the file list one labelled ‘Radecki’. Eagerly, he opened it.
Tadeusz Radecki. 38. Polish background, based in Berlin. Supplied migrant workers to Colin Osborne. According to J, Radecki has extensive business interests with Charlie and Horse. Key player in central Germany, with substantial export element. Also deals in live product. Apparently started out dealing in hardware in the Balkans. Owns a chain of video stores. Said to be scrupulous in delivery but takes no shit. Second in command, according to CO, ‘ruthless mad bastard Serb’ Darko Krasic, muscle who lets TR keep his hands clean. TR lives in expensive apartment in Charlottenburg. Is driven around in a big black Merc. Likes to travel, mostly to European cities. Interests: opera, hunting, eating out, making money, photography. Has a box at the Staatsoper, goes there alone. Best chance to make initial contact away from possible interference from the Serb?
She’d done her homework, though she hadn’t left many clues as to where her information came from. He didn’t like it that an outsider could know even this much about them. And now she wanted to probe further into their business. He didn’t like it one little bit. Not from someone this smart.
He closed the word processing software and tried to open the accounts program. This time, he came up against the brick wall of a demand for a password. He didn’t blame her; he’d have done the same in her shoes. It showed she understood what was really dangerous and what wasn’t.
Krasic glanced at his watch. He’d been inside for thirty-five minutes. He’d better close down the laptop now. He wasn’t going to learn anything more from it, and it wouldn’t do for Jackson to come back and find it still warm from use.
He turned his attention to the bedroom. Clothes hung in the wardrobe; an Armani business suit; a couple of evening dresses with designer names he’d never heard of; a couple of pairs of Armani jeans; a pair of Paul Costello trousers; half a dozen tops with more designer labels. Three pairs of shoes were sprawled on the floor – Bally, Fly and Manolo Blahnik, he noticed. They all looked fairly new; he could still easily read the manufacturers’ names inside them. Another Imelda Marcos, he thought negligently.
Finally, the drawers. Her underwear was nothing special. She obviously preferred to spend on what could be seen and stick to the chain stores for what went unnoticed. It was an interesting insight into the way her mind worked, but it didn’t take him any further in his attempts to find out if she really was who she claimed to be. Irritated by the fruitlessness of his search, he slammed the drawer shut and headed for the bathroom. He had just opened the cabinet above the washbasin when his mobile rang.
‘Hello?’
‘It’s me, Rado. She’s leaving now. Looks like she’s heading back to the apartment.’
‘Thanks. I’ll talk to you soon.’ Krasic stuffed his phone back into his pocket and closed the cabinet. Time to get out.
Luckily, he didn’t have to fiddle about with his picks, for the door locked automatically when it was closed. He didn’t want to risk the lift, so he headed for the fire stairs at the end of the corridor. Within two minutes he was back outside, ducking into a bar on the other side of the street. He was halfway down a glass of pilsner when he saw her walk into the apartment building. Rado was a comfortable thirty yards or so behind her. Krasic glared through the window at Caroline Jackson’s retreating back. Even though he hadn’t found any reason not to, he still didn’t trust her.
Emil Wolf looked as if he spent most of his life in dusty archives, Tony thought as he sat opposite him in the small café in Prenzlauer Berg. Thin as a whip, his untidy steel grey hair hung over a forehead the colour of parchment. His brown eyes behind oblong glasses were pink-rimmed, his cheeks pale. His mouth was a grim little line, his lips almost invisible until he opened his mouth to speak.
‘I appreciate you giving me some of your time,’ Tony said.
Wolf’s mouth turned down at one corner. ‘Petra can be very persuasive. Did she tell you I used to be married to her sister?’
Tony shook his head. ‘No.’
Wolf shrugged. ‘Petra thinks this still means we’re family. So I have to jump to her orders. So, how can I help you, Dr Hill?’
‘I don’t know how much Petra has told you?’
‘I understand it is a confidential matter relating to a serious crime. And that you think it possible that the perpetrator or someone in his family has suffered abuse at the hands of the psychiatric profession?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I’m presuming because you are talking to me and this is my area of expertise that you think this may have happened at the hands of the Stasi?’
‘It crossed my mind, yes.’
Wolf lit a cigarette and frowned. ‘In the West, people tend to lump the Stasi in with the Soviet Union when it comes to the abuse of psychiatry for political purposes. But really, the dynamic was very different in Germany. The Stasi had huge resources at their disposal, and they used them to build an unparalleled network of informers. It’s been estimated that one in fifty of the population was directly connected to the Stasi in this way.
‘They relied on what they called the “decomposition” of people. Decomposition meant making people feel they had no power to act. They were paralysed as citizens because they were convinced that everything was controlled. One of my colleagues has called this “the relentless application of a quiet coercion leading to compliance.”
‘Stasi oppression was subtle; people were persuaded that a throwaway remark in a bar could ruin any chances of career advancement. Children were taught that any adolescent rebellion could deny them a university place. Co-operation, on the other hand, was the route to a better life. So you had the twin methods of bribery and blackmail.
‘The Stasi controllers targeted people they thought had a predisposition to collaborate then motivated them into believing they were doing something worthwhile. When you live in a culture where you have been conditioned to believe you have no power, it’s very seductive to be offered the chance to do something active. And, of course, because they believed they were doing the right thing, it’s very difficult to confront or punish them afterwards. The aftermath of the fall of communism has poisoned many people’s lives, because the opening up of their files has forced them to acknowledge how much they were betrayed by wives, husbands, children, parents, friends and teachers.
‘So you see, there was seldom any need for the state to abuse psychiatry. The population was cowed into submission already.’
Tony looked sceptical. ‘But there was still dissidence. People were imprisoned and tortured. I’ve read that some activists were incarcerated i
n psychiatric units for short periods of time to prevent them taking part in planned actions against the state. It’s disingenuous to say that there was no abuse of the medical system, surely?’
Wolf nodded. ‘Oh, you’re right. There were cases, but they were relatively rare. And most of them have been documented since. Some thirty psychiatrists have been discredited because they allowed themselves to be used for this purpose, but they were a small minority. And their names are known. If your criminal had an axe to grind from the Stasi years, he wouldn’t have to look too hard to find people to blame. Really, in the great scheme of things, their crimes were insignificant. You see, the Stasi had a unique way of dealing with dissidents. They sold them to the West.’
‘What?’
‘That’s right. Every year, the Federal Republic bought the freedom of East German citizens who were imprisoned for expressing views or taking action against the state. I’m not just talking about high-profile people like writers and artists. I’m talking about people from all levels of life. So there was no real need to exploit the possibilities of subverting the psychiatric profession.’
This wasn’t what Tony had expected to hear from a West German historian. ‘You’re certainly undermining my prejudices here,’ he said wryly.
‘You don’t have to take my word for it. There have been studies done both by academics and government institutes. They all say the same thing. A few isolated incidences of people having their spirit broken by psychological torture, but very little abuse of the process. If you want details of documented cases, I have a colleague who could probably supply them. Also, you should bear in mind that the medical profession in general was resistant to the controlling efforts of the Stasi. They had a very low percentage of internal informers, they did all they could to maintain the right of patient confidentiality, and the state really didn’t trust them to be reliable administrators of government policy.’
