by Val McDermid
‘Water’s your element, that’s why you drown them. And, somehow, water ties in to what was done to you. Maybe whoever made you their victim also suffered from it. Maybe your father or your grandfather endured the water torture room at Hochenstein. Is this the symbolic connection that establishes your superiority over your victims? A way of asserting that your magic is more powerful than theirs?’ This realization reinforced Tony’s conviction that they were looking for someone with links to the European waterway network. Water was the key, he thought.
Then, because the brain works in ways that nobody comprehends, the thought he had been seeking slipped into the front of his mind. ‘The river,’ he exclaimed. He jumped out of bed, reaching for last night’s crumpled shirt and thrusting his arms into the sleeves. A brief waft of the fragrance of Carol’s hair hit his nostrils and he smiled.
His laptop sat open on the escritoire. He brought it back to life from snooze mode and started to compose an e-mail to Carol, Petra and Marijke.
Good morning, ladies.
Insights for today. The fact he chooses such an unusual method of murder must have some significance for him. I think it must have played a substantial role in whatever childhood experiences shaped his psyche. I now know that similar methods were used in psychological torture by the Nazis, certainly at Hochenstein. That he is using Hochenstein as an alias reinforces this connection. If, as I surmise, he works on a boat, this has tremendous resonance. He is a waterman, water is his world, and by using it to kill them, he’s saying that his power is stronger than theirs. So, I really think we should forget lorry drivers and concentrate on bargees.
Now, when I was in Bremen, the cop who was showing me round told me that, because the Rhine was in spate, it was closed to commercial traffic. If our man is on a barge, then surely that means he’s not been able to get away? He must still be where he was when he killed Dr Calvet. Therefore he’s got to be either in Köln itself or within easy striking distance of it. I realize that’s a big area, but if you can start to narrow down the possible boats that were in the areas of the other crimes, it might just make it easier for you to put your hands on him.
I’m sorry this is coming at you in bits and pieces, but I’m conscious that he’s working to a short-gap timetable and that the media attention is probably putting pressure on the investigation so I’m throwing stuff at you as it comes to me.
I’m going over to Petra’s now to take another look at the case files. But I’ll be checking my e-mail if any of you need to get hold of me.
Tony
Rado was bored. He’d been sitting outside the apartment block since dawn, and neither Caroline Jackson nor the man from 102 had appeared. Caroline’s curtains were still drawn, even though it was past nine o’clock, and nothing was happening. It was all right for his uncle Darko, holed up in a café round the corner. He was warm, coffee’d up and with access to a toilet. Being stuck in a parked car was a long way off comfortable.
He was considering a foray to the corner kiosk for a paper when the door to the apartment block opened and the man from 102 walked out, a laptop case slung over his shoulder. He hit the speed-dial button for his uncle’s mobile. ‘Hi, it’s Rado,’ he gabbled. ‘The man’s on the move. He’s walking down towards the Ku’damm. Looks as if he’s trying to hail a taxi.’
‘Stay with him. If he starts heading back to the apartment, call me right away,’ Krasic said. He ended the call, swallowed the dregs of his coffee and tossed a twenty-mark note on the table to cover what he’d consumed. Heading purposefully out of the café, he made straight for the apartment block, keeping an eye out for Caroline Jackson. The last thing he wanted was to bump into her.
Luck was with him as he headed for the door. A harried-looking middle-aged man was rushing out into the street, briefcase under his arm, a sheaf of papers in his hand. Krasic caught the door before it clicked shut. He was in. He ran up the stairs to the first floor and got through the lock of 102 inside three minutes.
This time, he started with the bedroom. On the floor lay one of those leather travel bags with a dozen different compartments and pockets. Krasic began going through it methodically. In a zipped inside pocket, he found a passport. He pulled out a crumpled receipt from his pocket and scribbled down the details. Dr Anthony Hill, whoever he was. Date and place of birth. Entry and exit stamps from the USA, Canada, Australia and Russia. There was nothing else of interest in the bag.
Krasic quickly checked the clothes in the wardrobe. In the inside pocket of a battered tweed jacket he found a photo ID for the University of St Andrews Staff Club. Again, he jotted down the details. He headed through to the living room, which showed very little sign of occupancy. There was a pad of paper on the escritoire, but the top sheet was blank.
When his phone rang, he almost jumped out of his skin. ‘What is it, Rado?’ he growled.
‘I just thought I’d let you know that he took a cab to an apartment opposite Kreuzberg Park. He let himself in with a key.’
‘OK. Make a note of the address and keep an eye on him. Like I said, phone me when he heads back this way.’ He stuffed the phone into his pocket and carried on searching. The only other thing of interest he found was a battered paperback copy of the poetry of T. S. Eliot. An inscription on the flyleaf read, ‘To Tony, from Carol, La Figlia Che Piange’. Krasic looked up the poem with that title and felt none the wiser after he’d read it. Something about a statue of a weeping girl.
Never mind. He had what he needed. He knew exactly where to go to find out all there was to know about Dr Anthony Hill.
Marijke emerged blinking into the daylight of the police station car park. She’d reached the point where she’d scream if she didn’t get some fresh air. It felt like weeks since she’d breathed anything that hadn’t already been through twenty other pairs of lungs. She shook her hands from the wrists, then rotated her shoulders. Intellectually, she knew they were making progress, but emotionally she felt mired in a bog of paperwork and electronic communications. The sheer volume of the material that was coming in meant she could scarcely stay up to speed, never mind have the time to process it and make considered decisions. Added to that, she’d had to feed into the investigation the suggestions that Tony had made, as if they came from her alone. All morning she’d been firing off actions for the rest of the team to get on with till she’d lost track of what she’d asked for and what was still to be done. And any minute now, Maartens would swan in and demand an update.
She was leaning against the wall feeling sorry for herself when one of the civilian clerks walked out of the police station looking tentative. He peered around him and, when his eyes lit on her, smiled and headed towards her. ‘You’re Brigadier van Hasselt, right?’
Marijke nodded. ‘That’s right.’
‘I’m Daan Claessens? I process the traffic tickets?’ He had the irritating habit of making every statement sound like a question.
‘Pleased to meet you, Daan,’ she said wearily.
‘Only, I was in the canteen this morning? And we were sitting with some of your detectives, and they were talking about the de Groot murder and the other killings? And they said you’d told them to look at all the CCTV film from the traffic cameras on the day of the murder? To try and spot a Golf with German plates?’
‘That’s right. It’s a line of inquiry we’re pursuing.’
‘So, I thought it might be worth looking at traffic tickets?’ He stood waiting for encouragement.
‘Yes?’ She was too weary to manage more than polite interest.
‘So I went back and checked? And I found this –’ With a flourish, he produced a sheet of paper from the folder he was carrying. He handed it over with the pride of a dog delivering a very slobbery stick.
It was a speeding ticket generated by one of the automatic cameras on the outskirts of the town. The date and time corresponded to Pieter de Groot’s murder. The photograph showed a black Volkswagen Golf with German plates. Like the one Margarethe Schilling’s par
tner had seen on her drive. Marijke felt her palms sweating as she read the details. The car was registered to Wilhelm Albert Mann. Twenty-six years old. His address was given as the Wilhelmina Rosen, care of a Hamburg shipping company. ‘Unbelievable,’ she breathed. It looked as if Tony had been right all along.
‘Does this help?’ Daan asked eagerly.
‘Oh yes,’ she said, amazed that she could still sound calm. ‘Yes, this helps a great deal. Thanks, Daan. Oh, and can you keep quiet about this for now? Confidentiality, and all that …’
He nodded. ‘No problem, Brigadier.’ He scuttled off, turning back at the door to give her a little wave.
The question was, what should she do now? Somehow, she had the feeling that the German detectives might be reluctant to see this as a high-priority solid lead. For one thing, it appeared to be nothing more than a combination of hunch and coincidence. There were plenty of innocent reasons why a German barge skipper’s car might have been in Leiden. There wasn’t even any proof that Mann himself had been driving it. More importantly, she understood only too well the politics of policing. No matter how eager the detectives were to clear their cases, there would be a reluctance on the part of their bosses to accept guidance from the Dutch police. They’d want the murders solved, sure, but they’d want the cases cracked by their own people. So while they might be glad of a lead on such a tough case, she didn’t think it would be treated with the urgency she thought it deserved. Besides, this had been her case from the beginning. If it hadn’t been for her and Petra, the German police would be a lot further behind than they were now. If anyone deserved the credit for solving these murders, it was them. She wasn’t ready to give it away yet.
What she needed was for one of her unofficial allies to track down the Wilhelmina Rosen and check out Wilhelm Albert Mann. If Tony was right about the killer’s boat being trapped by the floodwaters, it couldn’t be too hard to search the Köln area for Mann’s barge.
She walked back inside, mentally composing the e-mail.
Krasic looked down at the chubby young man who loomed over his keyboard like a miniature Jabba the Hutt. ‘What do you think? Can you find out about this Dr Anthony Hill for me?’
Hansi the hacker smirked. ‘Piece of piss. The public stuff I can get in minutes, but the private stuff, like address, bank details, that’ll take me a bit longer. Leave it with me, I’ll get you everything that’s out there in a matter of hours.’
‘Good. Oh, and while you’re at it …’ He read out the address Tony had taken a cab to that morning. ‘I want to know who lives there. And what they do. OK?’
‘And I get paid when?’
Krasic patted him on his greasy head. ‘When I see the results.’
‘I’ve never let you down yet,’ the hacker said, his mouse pointer already moving across the screen.
‘Now would not be a good time to start.’ Before Krasic could say more, his phone rang. He stepped to the other side of the high-ceilinged room of the apartment in Prenzlauer Berg, where counter-culture wannabes rubbed shoulders with the real thing like his man in the corner. ‘Hello?’ he grunted.
‘Darko, it’s Arjouni.’ The heavy Turkish accent was unmistakable, Krasic thought, wishing his new middle man would remember not to use names on the phone.
‘What can I do for you?’
‘We’re short. The supplies that were due, they’ve not come in.’
‘I know that. Don’t you have enough to be going on with?’
‘I’m nearly out. There’s no way I can make it through the weekend.’
‘Shit.’ Krasic muttered. ‘OK, leave it with me.’ He ended the call then dialled Tadeusz. ‘Boss? We’ve got a problem with supplies. With the river being closed, there’s a shipment still en route.’
‘Is it far from home?’
‘Köln. I can get there in four, five hours,’ Krasic said.
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘There’s no need. I can manage.’
‘I know you can manage, but I’d like to come along. The last couple of days have given me a taste for seeing what goes on in my business.’
‘I thought you were doing a live TV interview tonight on Business Berlin?’ Krasic objected.
‘That’s not till ten o’clock. We’ll have plenty of time to get there and back, the way you drive.’
‘What about your new business partner? Aren’t you supposed to have a meeting today?’ Krasic said, trying to keep the sneer out of his voice.
‘She could come too. She likes to see how things work.’
‘No way. This is too close to the bone. Telling her is one thing, showing her is another. You come, if you must. But she stays away.’
He heard Tadeusz sigh. ‘Oh, all right. Pick me up in half an hour, OK?’
Krasic replaced the phone in his pocket and headed for the door. ‘Let me know when you have what I need. Call me, OK?’
‘OK, Darko.’ The hacker looked up from his screen. ‘I love working for you. It’s never the same thing twice.’
Tony clicked on his e-mail in-box again. He’d been checking every fifteen minutes or so, trying to fool himself that he was pursuing the investigation. The truth was he wanted to hear from Carol. But still there was nothing from her. He wondered what she was doing. She’d said nothing about her plans for the day, other than that she was waiting to hear from Radecki about the arrangements for their Rotterdam trip. Oh well, at least Marijke had got back to him.
Hi, Tony
I have some very interesting news. No point in copying it to Petra, because she’s on surveillance today, and Carol is of course involved in her undercover. But I wanted to talk to you about this.
We have a speeding ticket issued to Wilhelm Albert Mann on the date of de Groot’s murder, just after nine in the evening. It was a camera that caught him, not a cop, and we have a photo of the car, a black Volkswagen Golf with Hamburg plates. Mann’s address is a boat. The Wilhelmina Rosen. I checked with someone in a shipping registry and this is a big Rhineship, they go all over Europe. What do you think? Is this worth checking out? I am reluctant to call the police in Köln, they will think it’s crazy. If you agree it is worth checking out, I have a list of possible places in and around Köln where a Rhineship could be waiting for the river to subside.
You can call me, I think.
She was right, he should call her, but first he needed to check something. He reached into his bag and pulled out the papers from Schloss Hochenstein. Of course, if Mann was their killer, it was possible that the person who had made him suffer didn’t share his surname. His maternal grandfather, for example, would probably be called something completely different. But if his luck was running, there might be an illuminating correlation in there somewhere.
He hastily looked down the alphabetized lists. It was a fairly common name, and he found eight children whose surname was Mann. Five he dismissed at once. They had been euthanased on the grounds of either mental or physical handicap. A sixth, Klaus, had died of pneumonia within a couple of weeks of being admitted to one of the feeder hospitals in Bavaria. Gretel, the seventh, had been admitted to Hohenschönhausen, but the records said nothing about her. The eighth name was the one that leapt out. Albert Mann, from Bamberg, had been taken to Schloss Hochenstein aged eight, diagnosed with chronic anti-social behaviour. The only comment under his treatment regime was Wasserraum.
Tony grabbed the phone and rang the number Marijke had given him. ‘Marijke?’
‘Ja?’
‘It’s Tony Hill here. I got your e-mail.’
‘You think it is something?’
‘I think it’s a huge something. It ties in very neatly to a discovery I’ve just made in the Schloss Hochenstein records. Can you send me a list of places where I should be looking in Köln? I’m going to see if I can get on a flight and I’ll hire a car at the other end.’
‘OK, I will e-mail you the directions immediately.’
‘Don’t you think you should get your German colleag
ues on to this now?’ he asked.
‘I want to be more certain. And it’s still my case. If it wasn’t for me and Petra – and you, of course – there would be no leads to follow. I think we have the right to chase this ourselves. And I want to thank you for all you are doing for us,’ she said, her English competent but slightly stilted.
There was, Tony thought, little that was more powerful than naked self-interest. But he didn’t have a problem with that. In his experience of nailing serial killers, when it came to the endgame, it was always better to keep the team as tight as possible. ‘Listen, I haven’t felt so alive for ages. It’s me who should be thanking you. I’ll keep you posted.’
Within fifteen minutes, he was running out of the apartment, laptop swinging from his shoulder. He had forty minutes to get to the airport for a flight to Bonn. Luckily, he got a taxi almost immediately.
He was so excited it never occurred to him to check if he was being followed.
Carol couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept so long. She’d crawled into bed just before midnight, emotionally drained but still buzzing with excitement that she thought would keep her awake for hours. In spite of that, she’d crashed out as soon as her head hit the pillow, and when she’d opened her eyes it had been after ten.
As soon as she realized the clock hadn’t stopped the night before, she’d leapt out of bed and raced to the shower. She hadn’t written a single word of her reports from the previous day, and that was going to take hours. At this rate, Morgan and Gandle would be convinced she was either dead or fucking Radecki. She’d better send them a quick holding e-mail to warn them what was coming.
