03.The Last Temptation

by Val McDermid

  Tony couldn’t help feeling disappointed at Wolf’s words. He’d been convinced he’d been right in his supposition. But it looked as if he’d been mistaken. Since the guilty practitioners from the old Communist regime had been publicly identified, if the killer believed his troubles had originated under the Stasi regime, those individuals would have been the obvious targets, not academics from the West.

  ‘You look depressed, Dr Hill. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to tell you what you wanted to hear. But if you’re looking for serious and widespread abuse of psychiatry and psychology in this country, you’re going to have to go back to the Nazi era.’

  ‘That all seems very remote now,’ Tony said.

  Wolf stubbed out his cigarette. ‘Not necessarily. Don’t forget, they destroyed many children’s lives with their eugenics policies. Some of those children survived. They would only be in their seventies now. That’s still well within living memory. It’s certainly possible they will have told their stories to their children and grandchildren. And, of course, the people responsible for what was done to them are long dead, so they’re not available as targets.’

  Tony perked up as the implications of what Wolf was saying sank in. ‘Are there records from that period of admissions to psychiatric units?’

  Wolf nodded. ‘The Nazis were obsessive record keepers. It’s one of the more depressing things about them, I’ve always thought. They had to find a justification for what they were doing that went beyond the service of Hitler’s desire to create a master race, so they convinced themselves that they were carrying out proper scientific research. There are records of admissions, records of deaths, and records of a lot of the experiments they conducted.’

  Tony felt a quickening of his pulse. ‘So where are these records held?’

  ‘There is a castle on the Rhine – Schloss Hochenstein. They called it the Institute of Developmental Psychology. The reality was that it was a euthanasia factory that also conducted radical psychological experiments. After the war, it became the record centre for the euthanasia programme. It has also been turned into a tourist attraction, though they don’t mention that particular element of the castle’s history,’ Wolf said, an ironic twist to his mouth. ‘Our reconciliation with our past only goes so far. We really don’t like to admit that we stood by and let our own children be slaughtered.’

  ‘No, I can see how that might be a bit hard for the national psyche to cope with,’ Tony said. ‘So, is it possible for me to gain access to these records?’

  Wolf smiled, his thin lips spreading over yellowed teeth. ‘Normally, it would take time to obtain the necessary permissions. But I’m sure Petra can cut through all the red tape for you. She’s very good at getting her own way.’

  Tony pulled a face. ‘So I’ve discovered.’ He pushed his half-drunk coffee away from him. ‘You’ve been a great help, Dr Wolf.’

  The other man gave a self-deprecating shrug. ‘Any excuse to get away from campus for an hour.’

  ‘I know the feeling,’ Tony said, realizing as he spoke that he had already mentally left that life far behind him. ‘I’ll tell Petra she owes you a drink.’

  Wolf snorted with laughter. ‘I won’t hold my breath. Good luck at the schloss.’

  Luck was exactly what Tony felt he had on his side. The tide was slowly turning, allowing him to replace vague notions with real possibilities. It wasn’t a moment too soon. Given the escalation into overt sexuality that was evident in the Köln case, they needed to stop this killer before he lost even more of his self-control. Tony could easily imagine him turning into a spree killer, cutting a swathe through a university campus with a machine gun before turning his gun on himself. It was time to put a stop to it. He could feel his blood rising in anticipation. I’m coming for you, Geronimo, he thought as he walked out of the café into the clean spring day.

  Carol tossed her gym bag through the bedroom door and walked on into the living room. Her nostrils twitched. She could swear she was picking up the faintest aroma of cigars. Either the occupant of the apartment below was puffing his way through an entire humidor of Havanas, or someone had been in here. She smiled. She’d expected them to search the place, just as she’d expected the tail she’d spotted this morning on the way to the gym. She’d have been more concerned if nothing like this had happened. That would have meant that while Radecki might be taking her seriously as a woman, he wasn’t taking her seriously as a possible business partner.

  What was interesting, though, was that the search had taken place now, while she was out at the gym. If she’d been responsible for organizing it, she would have chosen a very different time. While she was on the river with Radecki, for example. Then the searchers would have known they were sure of at least three hours in her empty apartment. The timing, coupled with the slight scent on the air, made her wonder if Radecki had been determined to do the search himself. If he had, it was indicative of how far he had succumbed to her charms. A man who was really smitten wouldn’t have wanted one of his minions nosing into her knicker drawer.

  Carol crossed to the bookshelf and took the radio down. She slid the panel open and smiled with satisfaction as the hard drive dropped into her hand. They’d never have left that behind if they’d found it. Better double-check, however. She plugged it into the laptop and turned it on. She opened the special security program that recorded all user sessions and noted happily that nobody had used the drive since she had last logged off. Then she launched the encryption program and sent e-mails to Morgan and Gandle, alerting them to the fact that she was being followed and telling them about the search. She read an e-mail from Morgan, congratulating her on her success so far and warning her that Krasic had been making inquiries into her background. He assured her that her cover was holding up well under the spotlight. Like you’d know if it wasn’t, she thought cynically.

  She wondered how Tony was faring. She knew that, whatever he was doing, it would take its toll. The one thing that had always moved Tony was the victims of violent criminals. The killers fascinated him, it was true. But profiling had never been an arid academic exercise with him. He cared about the dead; like her, he believed that the investigators were the living representatives of the murdered and mutilated. Their role was not to seek an Old Testament vengeance, but rather to give some kind of closure to those left behind. That, and to save the lives of the potential victims.

  Part of her wished she was out there in the field with him, but her own operation was sufficiently demanding and exciting to make that no more than a mild nag. For now, she was happy to leave him to his own devices, secure in the knowledge that when the decks were cleared, the world would be a different place for both of them.

  Marijke had escaped from the mountain of paperwork in the office and headed over to Pieter de Groot’s canalside house. She was responding to a call from Hartmut Karpf in Köln, whose search team had found something curious when they’d combed Marie-Thérèse Calvet’s filing cabinet. It didn’t actually take the investigation much further forward, but she had a feeling Tony would be very, very interested.

  It also had the advantage of getting her away from the glowering scowls of her team, whom she’d set the task of trying to establish every inland shipping vessel that had been within a fifty-kilometre radius of Leiden on the day of de Groot’s murder. She hoped her German colleagues were being as assiduous, so they could compare results. Otherwise, the exercise would be a complete waste of time. If they found any correlations, then the Germans could see if any of the bargees also owned a dark-coloured Golf. With a lot of luck and persistence, they might just come up with enough suspects for Tony’s profile to be genuinely useful.

  She’d also sent one of her detectives off to the university library to see if he could find any letters or articles critical of the work of Pieter de Groot and the other victims. She had even less confidence that this wild idea of Carol’s would produce a worthwhile result, but she was determined to leave no avenue unexplored, no theory unexami
ned.

  Marijke had to admit she felt disappointed with what they’d achieved so far. Sure, she knew profilers weren’t miracle workers, but she’d hoped for something more concrete than Tony had been able to give them. Maybe they’d been hoping for too much. It looked as if the only way these cases were ever going to be solved was by traditional, plodding police work. It wasn’t glamorous, but it sometimes got results.

  It felt strange to be back in Pieter de Groot’s study. There were few traces of what had happened there. Just a watermark on the polished surface of the desk and a few traces of fingerprint powder where the technicians hadn’t cleared up properly after themselves. Maartens wouldn’t like that, she thought irrelevantly. He hated it when the SOCOs left a crime scene in a worse mess than they’d found it.

  Now a thin layer of dust lay on the room’s surfaces. She couldn’t imagine that the cleaner would be back any time soon. And, so far, there were no signs that the ex-wife had turned up to claim her children’s inheritance. She probably had little appetite for returning to the former family home in these circumstances.

  Marijke turned to the filing cabinet. She might as well try the obvious and look under de Groot first. She snapped on a pair of latex gloves and pulled open the relevant drawer, ticking through the files with her long fingers.

  And miraculously, there it was. Exactly as Karpf had predicted it would be. A standard suspension file, distinguishable from the others only because it was a paler shade of manila. There was no identifying tab on the top of the file, but an ordinary white adhesive label on the front was printed with ‘Pieter de Groot. Case notes’.

  Marijke gingerly lifted the file out of the drawer. She took it over to the window, the better to read the contents. First, she studied the outside of the file, noticing with a small surge of excitement that there was a faint smear of something dark that gleamed like oil along the bottom corner on the back. She sniffed, but caught nothing from it. Then she opened it. There was a single sheet of paper inside.

  Case Notes

  Name: Pieter de Groot

  Session Number: 1

  Comments: The patient’s lack of affect is notable. He is unwilling to engage and shows a disturbing level of passivity. Nevertheless, he has a high opinion of his own capabilities. The only subject on which he seems willing to discourse is his own intellectual superiority. His self-image is grandiose in the extreme.

  His demeanour is not justified by his achievement, which seems best described as mediocre. However, his view of his capacities has been bolstered by a nexus of colleagues who, for unspecified reasons, have demonstrated a lack of willingness to question his own valuation of himself.

  Marijke read on with a growing sense of disbelief. It was a bizarre and distorted view of de Groot’s personality, if any credence was to be given to the evidence of his friends and colleagues. But the language was clearly an approximation of that used by therapists, justifying Tony’s conclusion that the killer had read and assimilated at least the basics of psychobabble.

  She couldn’t wait to let forensics loose on this. From the look of it, it had originated from a computer printer, but beyond that anonymity, there might be traces that could provide a positive lead. The smear on the jacket, for example. For the first time in days, Marijke felt she had a concrete piece of evidence in her hands.

  As she hurried down to the car, Marijke quietly cursed herself. She should have had the files searched before now. She’d had someone go through his personal papers, but because de Groot hadn’t been a practising therapist, it hadn’t occurred to her that his professional files would contain anything relevant to his murder. If this oversight proved anything, it was the value of sharing information.

  She couldn’t help wishing she’d made the discovery herself. But at least she’d finally found something that might give Tony a unique insight into the killer’s mind. It was, she supposed, better than nothing.

  Darko Krasic sat in the driver’s seat of his Mercedes, working his way steadily through a large bucket of salted and buttered popcorn and staring out through the rain at a small lake on the outskirts of Potsdam. The passenger door opened and a tall man folded himself into the seat, taking off a cloth cap and shaking the raindrops from it. He was neatly dressed in chinos and a windbreaker with the logo of a designer sportswear brand over the left breast. He had the lugubrious face of a man who is convinced the world holds only the prospect of disappointment. ‘Fucking awful weather,’ he said.

  ‘It’s always fucking awful weather in Potsdam,’ Krasic said. ‘The sun can be shining in Berlin, and down here, it’s grey and miserable. So, what have you got for me, Karl?’

  KriPo detective Karl Hauser gave a sardonic smile. ‘So much for small talk, eh, Darko?’

  ‘Karl, we’re not friends. We’re never going to be friends. You’re on the payroll, that’s all. So what’s the point in pretending?’ Krasic lowered the window and tipped the remains of the popcorn on the ground. Even through the rain, the waterfowl spotted the bonanza and headed for the car.

  ‘Since you mention money, I think what I have for your boss is worth a bonus payment.’

  ‘You do, huh?’ Greedy bastard, Krasic thought. ‘Let me be the judge of that.’

  ‘That BMW bike? I’ve been doing some digging.’

  ‘That’s what us taxpayers pay you for.’

  Karl scowled. ‘Listen, Darko, what I’ve been doing for you goes way beyond the call of duty. Katerina Basler’s death was written off as an unfortunate accident. We’ve got more important stuff than that to deal with.’

  ‘OK, OK, Karl, we appreciate what you’re doing. And you know you’ve always been well rewarded in the past. So, you’ve been doing some digging …?’

  ‘That’s right. It occurred to me that the bike might have taken a bit of damage itself. A couple of the witnesses said they thought it might have caught the wing of the car. And it occurred to me that, if the biker wasn’t supposed to be tooling around Berlin on his machine, he might have got it repaired here. So I’ve been checking all the little back-street garages that specialize in motorbikes. And a balls-acher of a job it’s been too.’ He paused, like a child waiting for praise.

  ‘You got a result?’ Krasic demanded, unwilling to indulge him further. Useful though Karl Hauser was, at the end of the day he was a dirty cop, and Krasic had no time for people who couldn’t manage loyalty.

  ‘Eventually. I found a couple of mechanics out at Lichtenberg who replaced the front forks on a bike answering this description. They remembered it for two reasons. It took them a week to get the spare part from BMW for one, and for another, the driver was a Brit. They reckoned the bike had fake plates, but they made a note of the engine number, just to be on the safe side.’

  ‘Why didn’t they come forward at the time?’ Krasic asked suspiciously.

  ‘They say they didn’t know about the accident. They don’t read the papers and they never watch the local TV news.’

  ‘Arseholes,’ Krasic muttered. ‘I don’t suppose this biker paid for the repairs with a credit card?’

  ‘Nothing so convenient,’ Hauser admitted. ‘Cash on the nail.’

  ‘We’re no further forward, then.’ Krasic lowered the window again and lit a cigar without offering one to Hauser.

  Hauser smirked. ‘That’s where you’re wrong, Darko. With the engine number, I was able to find out from BMW who the bike was sold to. And this is where it gets very strange.’ He paused expectantly.

  ‘Strange how?’

  ‘The bike was sold to the National Crime Squad in the UK. And, according to the British licensing authorities, that’s who owns it still.’ Hauser shifted in his seat to gauge the impact of his words on Krasic.

  The Serb’s expression didn’t change. He put the cigar in his mouth, inhaled, then turned his head to let the smoke trickle out of the gap between the window and the frame. He didn’t want Hauser to have any idea how disturbing he found this information. There was altogether too much British sh
it flying around right now. Krasic didn’t believe in coincidences. Katerina’s death caused by a British bike; the British business going pear-shaped after another nasty and mysterious death; and now a British stranger charming the socks off his boss. It made him very, very uneasy. ‘That’s strange, right enough,’ he finally acknowledged. ‘Any way of finding out who was riding it?’

  Hauser smacked the palms of his hands on his knees. ‘It’s never enough with you, is it? I sweated blood to get this much, and you want more.’

  Krasic slid a hand inside his jacket and produced his wallet. ‘I’m not the only one, am I?’ He peeled off some notes. ‘Here’s your bonus. There’ll be a lot more if you come up with a name.’

  Hauser took the money between finger and thumb, as if he’d suddenly remembered this should feel dirty and distasteful. ‘I’m taking a big risk here,’ he complained.

  ‘You want to try living on a cop’s pay cheque, it’s up to you,’ Krasic said, not bothering to hide his contempt. ‘Is there anything else we should know?’

  Hauser replaced his cap on his greying hair. ‘I heard a whisper that one of the Arjouni brothers is trying to move in on some of Kamal’s street dealers. You’re going to have to plug that gap or you’ll lose your distribution.’

  ‘Thanks for the advice, Karl,’ Krasic said sarcastically. ‘Arjouni’s working for me. So you can leave him alone.’

  ‘Like Marlene Krebs, eh?’ he sneered. ‘You tied that one up tight, Darko. I hear the daughter’s gone missing too. Very neat piece of work.’

  ‘It’s called sending a message, Karl. One you should pay attention to.’

  Hauser opened the car door. ‘There’s no need to be like that. I’ll be in touch.’

  Krasic was gunning the engine before the door was even closed. As he swept the car round in a broad arc and headed for the exit, he muttered under his breath, ‘I can hardly fucking wait.’