by Peter Temple
The man in the ceiling pushed open the inspection hatch, fired a pumpgun, hit Shawn in the side of his belly as he turned around, in the pinstriped shirt distended over the sagging gut, almost cut him in half, fired again. Zeke raised his shotgun and fired at the ceiling without turning, just his head tilted backwards, deafening noise in the corridor. Then Zeke’s head blew apart, a balloon of blood and bone and pink and grey material exploding.
Niemand had the.38 out, was about to fire into the roof behind the inspection hatch, didn’t.
Waited.
Silence.
A noise overhead, a bumping sound.
Waited.
A shortened shotgun dropped into the passage. Then a bare arm and a shoulder in a T-shirt fell through the hatch. A dark hand dangled.
Niemand registered the voice of Mrs Shawn screaming. He paid no attention, reached forward, got Zeke’s shotgun, ran his hand over his friend’s head, smeared his own throat and chest with Zeke’s blood, lay back and looked at the hatch.
Mrs Shawn stopped screaming.
Behind him, the door to the sitting room opened. Niemand closed his eyes.
Mrs Shawn screamed again, slammed the door.
Niemand lay on the mulberry carpet, shotgun at his side, eyes closed, looking through his lashes at the hatch.
Nothing. Just blood running down the bare arm, down the fingers, dripping.
Mrs Shawn was shouting. She was on the telephone. She’d got through to someone. Niemand couldn’t make out the words.
They’d been in the ceiling all the time. They’d come via the empty house next door, probably bridged the gap between the roofs with a ladder.
Niemand waited. His sight was going fuzzy. No sound from above.
Dead or gone, he thought.
He tensed his shoulder muscles, readied himself to get up.
A scraping noise.
The gunman’s body fell through the hatch, landed in front of him, just missed his feet, blood going everywhere.
He’d been pushed.
Niemand didn’t move, didn’t breathe.
The other person in the ceiling didn’t have a firearm, his instinct told him that. And the person was running out of time: the rest of the team would be close now, waiting to have the gates opened for them. If it didn’t happen soon, they would probably desert him.
Seen through his lashes, the hatch was just a black square.
Nothing happened.
Niemand heard the door to the sitting room open.
Mrs Shawn didn’t scream this time, she said, in a small voice, a child’s voice, ‘Oh, Jesus, God, are you all dead?’
Niemand was looking at the hatch through his lashes.
Nothing.
Feet first.
The black man came out of the hole feet first, just stepped into air, dropped from the roof like an acrobat, long butcher’s knife held to his chest.
Mrs Shawn screamed, high-pitched, the scream of steel meeting steel at great speed.
The man landed feet astride his partner’s body, a slightly built man, perfectly balanced, as if he’d jumped from a chair, knife hand down, the blade pointed at Mrs Shawn.
‘Shut up, bitch,’ he said.
He looked at Niemand lying on the floor, didn’t change his grip on the knife, took a step forward, bent at the waist, took his arm back to put the blade into Niemand’s groin, sever the femoral artery.
‘No!’ Mrs Shawn, the abrading metal shriek.
Niemand opened his eyes, raised the shotgun, pulled the trigger, heard the hammer fall.
Nothing. Shell malfunction, one in five thousand chance.
The man lunged.
Niemand brought his right leg up, kicked as hard as he could, his shin just below the knee made contact with the man’s crotch, a shout of pain, he saw the knife hand move away, sat up, braced himself on his left hand, hooked his left knee around the man’s right calf, rolled savagely to the left, right knee pressing in the man’s upper thigh.
He felt the joint give, tendons, cartilage tearing, saw the man hit the wall with his shoulder, head turning sideways, mouth open and twisted in pain and surprise, saw the teeth and the furred tongue, the knife hand coming around, the knife huge, shining. Pain in his shoulder. He grabbed for the man’s wrist with his left hand, clubbed at his head with the shotgun, laid the short barrel across his jaw and his ear, pulled the weapon back…
The shotgun went off, a shocking concussion. Niemand hadn’t realised he’d pulled the trigger.
For a second, they were frozen, two men, one black, one white, legs twisted and locked together, faces close, looking into each other’s eyes.
He’s strong, Niemand thought.
The man got his right hand on the shotgun barrel, had the advantage of pushing. Niemand felt the strength leaving his left arm, he was going to lose this, he wasn’t the quickest this time, he could see the knife blade, see his blood on it.
No. He couldn’t die here, in this bastard’s house, in the service of this English prick.
He let his right arm go slack, caught the black man by surprise, pushed the shotgun barrel at him, pulled the trigger.
It worked. Eyes closed against the muzzle flash, he saw its furnace flame through his lids, felt it burn his face, felt the man go limp, felt hot liquid in his mouth and his eyes and up his nostrils.
After a time, ears ringing, he pushed the body away and raised his shoulders from the darkening mulberry carpet.
‘Mrs Shawn?’
No reply.
He got to his knees.
She was on her back, one leg folded under her, one outstretched. He looked at her and knew she was dead. He didn’t need to feel for a pulse. He did.
She was dead. He’d shot her in the chest. When the man was on him and he’d pulled the trigger he’d shot Mrs Shawn.
She would have been trying to help him. He remembered her shout. She’d shouted and then she would have been trying to help him.
He got up, went into the kitchen, wiped Zeke’s shotgun, went back and put it into his friend’s hands. He had to bend them, rearrange him. He wanted to kiss Zeke goodbye, kiss him on what remained of his face, but he didn’t. Zeke wouldn’t have wanted that.
Then, quickly, he kissed Zeke’s throat. It was still warm.
He rang Christa, had a look around, found the coke stash, opened Brett Shawn’s big briefcase, a small suitcase.
A large yellow envelope holding three stacks of American $100 bills, perhaps $20,000. Three yellow envelopes, papers, two telephone books of papers. A video cassette with a piece of paper taped to it, letters, numbers written in a slanty hand.
Niemand took the envelopes and the cassette and went out to the Mercedes, Colt in his hand. No sign of the intruders’ friends or the Israeli next door. He put the stolen goods in the safe box under the floor. Then he went back inside and did a line of coke while he waited, two lines. He thought it was a weakness to use drugs, could take them or leave them, but he couldn’t bear the idea of wasting coke on the police.
He was flushing the rest down the sink when the telephone rang.
He let it ring, dried his hands, then he couldn’t bear it and picked it up. Long-distance call.
‘Shawn?’
‘Mr Shawn’s had an accident. He’s dead.’
A silence.
‘And you are?’ An accent. German?
Niemand gave it some thought. ‘An employee,’ he said.
‘Shawn had some papers. And a tape. You have them?’
‘Yes.’
‘I assume you’ll be bringing them out?’
More thought. ‘What’s it worth?’ Niemand said.
‘For the London delivery, the agreed sum. Ten thousand pounds. And expenses. Return airfares and so on. Say another five thousand.’
‘Twenty thousand,’ said Niemand. ‘And expenses.’
‘Done. When you get to London, this is what you do…’
He should have asked for more.
2
Tilders rang just before four. Anselm was on the balcony, smoking, looking at the choppy lake, the Aussen-Alster, massaging the lifeless fingers of his left hand, thinking about his brother and money, about how short the summers were becoming, shorter every year. Beate tapped on the glass door, offered the cordless telephone.
Anselm flicked the cigarette, went to the door and took the phone.
‘Got him,’ said Tilders.
‘Yes?’ said Anselm. Tilders was talking about a man called Serrano. ‘Where?’
‘Hauptbahnhof, 7.10. On the Schnellzug from Cologne.’
‘Train? This boy?’
‘Yes. Three of them now.’
‘How’s that?’
‘There’s a woman. Otto says the muscle went out and bought a case and she’s carrying it.’
Serrano’s bodyguard was a Hungarian called Zander, also known as Sanders, Sweetman, Kendall. These were just the names they knew.
‘Call back in five,’ said Anselm. ‘I’ve got to consult the client.’
He went to his desk and rang O’Malley in England. O’Malley wasn’t in, would be contacted and told to ring immediately. Anselm went back to the balcony, lit another Camel, watched the ferry docking. The day was darkening now and rain was in the air. Above the sturdy craft, a mob of gulls hovered, jostling black-eyed predators eyeing the boat as if it contained edible things, which it did. He had a dim memory of being taken on his first ferry ride on the Alster, on the day the schwanenvater brought out the swans from their winter refuge. The man chugged out of a canal in his little boat towing a boom. Behind it were hundreds of swans and, in the open water, pairs began to peel off to seek out their canals. For years, Anselm thought this happened every day, every day a man brought the swans out, the Pied Piper of swans.
He heard the door open behind him.
‘Herr Anselm?’
The pale bookkeeper. Could an approach be more obsequious? What made some people so timid? History, Anselm thought, history. He turned. ‘Herr Brinkman.’
‘May I raise a matter, Herr Anselm?’ Brinkman bit his lower lip. Some colour came into it.
‘Raise it to the skies.’
Brinkman looked around for eavesdroppers, spoke in an even lower voice. ‘I don’t like to bring this up, Herr Anselm, but you are the senior person here. Herr Baader does not seem to grasp the urgency. The landlord is making serious threats about the arrears. And there are other problems.’
‘He’ll be back soon. I’ll impress the urgency of this on him,’ said Anselm.
Baader owned the business. He was in the West Indies on honeymoon. Honeymoon number four, was it five?
‘There is more,’ said Brinkman.
‘Yes?’
Brinkman moved his head from side to side, bit his lower lip.
‘What is it?’
‘Herr Baader wants me to charge certain expenses to the firm which we cannot justify as business expenditure. I could go to jail.’
Anselm wasn’t in the least surprised. ‘Have you mentioned your concerns to him?’
Brinkman nodded. ‘He doesn’t hear me.’
‘I’ll talk to him.’
‘Herr Anselm, Herr Baader interferes in the payments.’
‘How?’
‘He signs some cheques. Others don’t come back to me.’
‘I’ll talk to him. I promise.’
Duty done, fearful, Brinkman nodded. Anselm turned back to the window and thought about Baader and his lusts, his juggling of the accounts.
The tap on the glass. Beate with the cordless, again.
It was O’Malley. He whistled when Anselm told him about Serrano.
‘You’re sure it’s his case she’s carrying, boyo?’
‘Yes,’ said Anselm. Tilders didn’t say yes when he meant, I think so. He had trained Otto and Baader had trained him and Baader had been properly trained at everything except probity in accounting.
‘Not socks and shirts and the dirty underpants?’ said O’Malley.
‘Could be hand-carved dildos and old copies of Vatican News for all we know.’
‘Shit,’ said O’Malley. ‘John, I’m desperate on this bastard. We need a look, just a quick look. Minutes.’
‘Take a look,’ said Anselm. ‘Feel free. You have the time and place. Our work is done.’
‘John, John.’
‘Not our usual line of work,’ said Anselm. ‘You know that.’
‘Nonsense, I know Baader would do it.’
He would too, thought Anselm. ‘I don’t know that. Ring him on his mobile.’
‘Listen, you can find someone to do it, John.’
‘Even if I could, these things come home to you.’
‘Ten grand.’
‘What do you want for ten grand?’
He told Anselm, who sighed. ‘That’s all? Take on a bodyguard for ten grand? The prick may take his job seriously. I am of the absolutely not opinion.’
‘Twelve.’
Anselm thought about it. He knew they shouldn’t get involved in things like this. But there were salaries to be paid, including his. He knew someone who might be able to arrange it for a thousand, fifteen hundred dollars. ‘No,’ he said.
‘Twelve, that’s it.’
‘Fifteen, win or lose.’
O’Malley’s turn to sigh. ‘Jesus, you’re hard.’
Anselm pulled a face. He could have got twenty, more. He disconnected and rang Tilders. ‘There’s something we have to do.’
‘Yes,’ said Tilders. ‘What?’
‘What kind of case did Zander buy?’
‘Aluminium photographer’s case.’
Anselm was silent for so long that Tilders thought the line had died. ‘John?’
‘Tell Otto to buy one. The same. Exactly.’
It took a call to the locksmith and four more calls, twenty minutes on the phone.
3
…HAMBURG…
The SCHNELLZUG slid into the huge vaulted station, punctual to the second by the Hauptbahnhof’s great clock. Zander, the bodyguard, appeared first, blocked the doorway of his sleek carriage and didn’t give a damn, looked around, took his time. He was slight for someone in his line of work, blond and elegant in a dark suit, jacket unbuttoned. When he was satisfied, he moved to his left and Serrano stepped onto the platform. He too was in a dark suit but there was nothing elegant about him. He was short and podgy, a sheen on his face, hair that looked lacquered, and a roll of fat over his collar. A laptop computer case was slung over his shoulder.
Next off was a middle-aged businessman, a man with a pinched and unhappy face who raised his head and sniffed the stale station air. After him came an elderly woman, an embalmed face, every detail of her attire perfect, then a family of four, the parents first. Once Gastarbeiter from Anatolia, Anselm thought, now wealthy. Their teenage boy and girl followed, citizens of nowhere and everywhere. The pair were listening to music on headphones, moving their heads like sufferers from some exotic ailment.
A woman was in the doorway. She was 30, perhaps, in black, pants, sensible heels, dark hair scraped back, charcoal lipstick. Her face was severe, sharp planes, not unattractive.
‘The woman,’ said Tilders. He had a mobile to his face, a long, earnest philosopher’s face, a face made for pondering.
Anselm half turned, sipped some Apfelkorn from the small bottle, swilled it around his mouth, felt the soft burn of the alcohol. He was on his second one. He was scared of a panic attack and drink seemed to help keep them away. He drank too much anyway, didn’t care except in the pre-dawn hours, the badlands of the night. The woman was carrying an aluminium case in her left hand, carrying it easily.
‘From the East,’ said Tilders.
‘Sure it’s just three?’
‘Don’t blame me,’ said Tilders. ‘This is not our kind of work. Is it on?’
Anselm drained the tiny bottle. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Blame’s all mine.’
Tilders spoke into his m
obile. They followed the woman and Serrano and his bodyguard down the platform towards the escalator that led to the concourse. The woman kept a steady distance behind the men, people between them. On the crowded escalator, Zander looked back once, just a casual glance. Serrano had his head down, a man not interested in his surroundings, standing in the lee of his hired shield.
When they reached the concourse, Zander paused, looked around again, then went right, towards the Kirchenallee exit. The woman didn’t hesitate when she reached the concourse, turned right too, walking briskly.
The concourse was crowded, workers and shoppers, travellers, youths on skates, buskers, beggars, petty criminals, pimps, whores, hustlers.
Zander and Serrano were almost at the exit. Zander looked around again. The woman had been blocked by a group of schoolchildren on an excursion. She was ten metres behind them.
‘Getting late,’ said Anselm. This wasn’t going to work, he was sure of it.
‘Scheisse,’ said Tilders.
From nowhere came the gypsy boy, moving through the crowd at a half-run, twisting around people, a wiry child in a drab anorak, tousled black hair, ran straight into the woman, bumped her in the ribcage with his shoulder, hard, bumped her again as she went back. She fell down, hit the ground heavily, but held onto the case.
Without hesitation, the boy stomped on her hand with a heavy Doc Martens boot, thick-soled. She screamed in pain, opened her hand. He grabbed the aluminium case with his left hand but she hooked an arm around his left leg.
The boy kicked her in the neck, stooped and punched her in the mouth, between the breasts, one, two, his right hand, a fist like a small bag of marbles. The woman fell back, no heart for hanging on. He was off, running for the exit.
No one did anything. People didn’t want to get involved in these things. They happened all the time and it was dangerous to tackle the thieves. Even young children sometimes produced knives, slashed wildly. Recently, a man had been stabbed in the groin, twice, died in the ambulance. A father of three.
