A Slow Death (Max Drescher Book 1)

by James Craig

  Closing his eyes, Michael reached over and retrieved the empty coffee cup in the pocket on the driver’s door. ‘Here you go.’

  ‘Urgh. No thanks. I’ll piss all over myself. Better that I go outside. I can get some air at the same time and stretch my legs a bit.’

  ‘Suit yourself. Don’t blame me if one of the local residents calls the cops on you for pissing in the street.’ Opening his eyes, he let out a low chuckle. ‘Imagine getting done for gross indecency the week before you retire.’

  ‘It’s not a week,’ Max grunted. ‘It’s longer than that.’

  ‘Let’s just hope you don’t end up spending it in a cell, then.’

  ‘It’s better than wetting myself.’ Pulling open the door, Max struggled out of the passenger seat and staggered on to the sidewalk.

  ‘And don’t piss on my car,’ Michael shouted after him.

  It could do with a clean. Max stumbled a couple of metres down the street while keeping an eagle eye out for curtain twitchers.

  This will do. After a quick glance in either direction, to confirm that the street was deserted, he stepped into the gutter and unzipped his fly, taking advantage of a convenient drain to relieve his aching bladder. Ahh.

  Job done, Max tidied himself away before retrieving his cigarettes. Lighting up an HB, he took a deep drag, pulling the smoke down into his lungs and holding it there for a few seconds before sending a long stream of smoke into the night sky. Setting off on a gentle stroll, he came to a Kurfürstendamm street sign that had been almost completely obliterated by graffiti. An idea came into his head and he checked out the street numbers on the buildings nearby and he savoured the last of his smoke. Once the cigarette was finished, he flicked the stub into the gutter before slowly making his way back to the Opel.

  ‘Rudi Dutschke was shot on this street back in ‘68.’ Max slipped back into his seat and closed the door. ‘Number 141, I think.’ He gestured over his shoulder with his thumb. ‘It’s back down there.’

  Michael flicked through a football magazine that he’d recovered from somewhere. ‘Who?’

  ‘What do you mean ‘who’?’ Max retorted, genuinely indignant. ‘How can you not know who Rudi Dutschke was?’

  With a sigh, Michael tossed the magazine onto the back seat. ‘Because I’m not an old hippie bastard like you.’

  ‘Ha. Good point.’

  ‘So who was he then?’

  ‘Rudi Dutschke was a well-known student leader.’

  ‘Like Danny Cohn-Bendit?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Max smiled. ‘Same type of thing.’ For some reason he felt pleased that his younger colleague could name at least one political leader from the Sixties. ‘Dutschke was shot in the head by some right wing nutter. Dutschke survived the shooting but he never fully recovered. A decade or so later, he had an epileptic fit and drowned in the bath.’

  ‘Poor bugger.’

  ‘Not a great way to go.’ Max shook his head. ‘Those were crazy times.’

  ‘Unlike now, you mean?’ Michael waved a hand in front of the windscreen. ‘Things are always crazy in this city.’

  Max murmured his assent.

  ‘It’s a never ending circus.’

  ‘Yeah, and we’re the clowns.’

  ‘Speak for yourself.’

  ‘I was speaking for both of us. How else would you explain us sitting here, waiting for this bastard to finish shagging his girlfriend?’

  ‘Or watching the telly.’

  Max folded his arms. ‘On further reflection, I doubt very much that they are sitting on the sofa in front of the TV. First, there’s nothing good on tonight. And second, more importantly, I would imagine that Eichel is the type of guy who only shows up when he wants to get laid and doesn’t hang around much afterwards.’

  ‘Speak of the devil.’ Sitting up in his seat, Michael instinctively reached for the keys in the ignition. ‘There he is.’

  Even at this distance, Max imagined he could make out a self-satisfied smirk on Eichel’s face as he stopped to light a cigarette under the sickly glow of a street light. ‘It looks like the Kriminalkommissar is finally on the move.’ He placed his hand on Michael’s arm before the sergeant could start the Opel’s engine. ‘Don’t jump the gun. Let him get in his car; see which way he goes.’ The two men watched as Eichel pulled a key from his jacket pocket, unlocked the driver’s door and slipped in behind the wheel. A few moments later came the throaty roar of the Porsche’s engine.

  ‘Noisy bastard,’ Max muttered as he watched Eichel head away from them, his brake lights flaring as he came to a halt at the junction at the end of the road.

  By comparison, the Opel, when Michael finally started it up, sounded like a child’s toy. ‘Alright,’ the sergeant said wearily, steering his car into the middle of the road, ‘let’s go for a ride.’

  47

  It started to rain as they turned into Schönhauser Allee, a heavy downpour that had arrived almost unheralded out of the night sky. Cursing, Michael flicked on the windscreen wipers. Hunching over the steering wheel, he peered at the taillights of the car in front while trying to keep one eye on Eichel’s Porsche, which was stuck in the same line of traffic, five cars up ahead. ‘This damn weather is a pain in the ass. It’s only going to snarl things up even further.’

  ‘We could do with a bit of rain,’ Max said philosophically. ‘It helps clean the place up a bit and keep the scumbags off the street at the same time.’

  ‘You’re not the one doing the driving,’ Michael groused.

  ‘It’s not a race. We’re not in any hurry.’ Leaning his head against the window, Max stared at the stream of traffic coming towards them. Since the fall of the Wall, this road had quickly become one of the worst bottlenecks in the city; two lanes of cars pushed towards the middle line by the cars parked nose to tail along the kerbside on both sides. Up ahead, the Porsche rolled to halt at a red light. Hunched over the steering wheel, Michael glanced in his wing mirror as the Opel slowed to a crawl before coming to a stop. ‘He’s not in any hurry, is he?’

  ‘At least we know that he’s not going home,’ Max said evenly.

  ‘Unless he’s taking the scenic route.’

  ‘He’s got a meeting with Kappel, I know it.’

  ‘So he’s going to hand over the three million dollars he took from the evidence room, how does that work?’ The scepticism in Michael’s voice was clear. ‘How would he explain that away?’

  ‘I have no fucking idea,’ Max admitted. ‘But one thing at a time. We just need to be patient and make sure that he doesn’t spot us.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing.’

  ‘I know, I know.’

  ‘We’re more than far enough back.’ Waiting for the lights to change, Michael drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. Max stared at the car immediately in front of them, a battered black BMW. On the back seat, two young kids, a boy and a girl, maybe eight or nine, were happily beating lumps out of each other, much to the dismay of their parents. Upping the ante, the girl began smacking her brother around the head with a Spiderman doll. The boy retaliated with a sneaker.

  Thank God I’m not a parent, Max smiled.

  ‘This is a pain in the ass.’ Michael lifted a hand from the steering wheel and waved it at the windscreen. ‘There’s nothing round here. Where’s he going?’

  Irritated by his colleague’s extended bad mood, Max shook his head. ‘How should I know? That’s what we’re going to find out.’

  ‘And when we get there? What happens then?’

  ‘We have to wait and see. Jesus. If you can’t handle a couple of hours’ surveillance, how could you hope to make it as an undercover cop?’

  ‘A couple of hours?’ Michael spluttered. ‘I’ve been doing this all day. Sitting on my backside waiting.’

  ‘Being undercover is usually about doing nothing all day for months on end,’ Max pointed out. ‘It is ninety-nine per cent being bored out of your skull and one per cent shitting yourself. The bad guys move
slowly.’

  ‘What happens when Eichel stops?’ Michael repeated, not interested in another lecture from his boss. ‘How do you want to play it?’

  ‘When we get there, leave it to me.’ Max watched a man dart between the stationary cars, skirting past a large puddle that had collected in a pothole. The smooth surface of the water shimmered in the streetlight.

  It’s stopped raining already. What a shame.

  Finally, the lights changed. The cars in front of them started to move off. As the BMW edged forward, Max noticed that the warring kids seemed to have declared a truce. ‘By the way, thank you.’

  Still scowling, Michael kept his eyes on the road. ‘For what?’

  ‘For shooting Floris Kooy, I should have said it earlier. Sorry. It was very handy you turned up when you did. The guy was going to drop me. A minute later and I could have been lying there, next to Terium.’

  Michael kept his eyes firmly on the road. ‘It was nothing. What else was I going to do? Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘No,’ Max protested. ‘It’s a big deal. The guy would have killed me in the blink of an eye. You saved my life.’

  ‘It was just an instinctive thing; anyway, it’s too late to change my mind now,’ Michael said drily. ‘So I guess I’ll just have to wait a bit longer for that insurance policy to pay out.’

  ‘Looks like it,’ Max chuckled.

  Reaching the heady speed of eight kmph, they slid past the traffic lights, catching a glimpse of the floodlit Wall as they crossed the junction. ‘This was the first place people were able to cross,’ Max pointed out. ‘I remember coming up here on the first night, to see what was going on. The atmosphere was amazing. People were so excited.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s gotta be the most important night of our lives.’

  ‘Speak for yourself.’

  ‘You’ve got to admit that it was memorable.’

  ‘So everyone had a party. And the hangover’s lasting a long time. Look at this place. What’s changed? It doesn’t look like the neighbourhood has improved much. It’s gonna need a lot of work to get this place looking half-decent.’

  ‘I dunno,’ Max sniffed, ‘a lick of paint and a couple of decent cafes will go a long way to making it trendy. It is the middle of Berlin, after all. In the next couple of years, the yuppies will move in. They’ll start calling it the new Kreuzberg and the likes of us will start being forced out to Helersdorft. Gentrification will take its course.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Michael sounded unconvinced.

  ‘Hey.’ Max pointed towards the windscreen as Eichel’s Porsche slipped through a break in the oncoming traffic. Edging across the road, the 911 pulled into an empty lot between two tenement buildings. ‘Looks like we’re here. Find a place to park and we’ll go and take a look.’

  ‘Park where?’ Michael helplessly scanned the parked cars on both sides of the street. ‘There isn’t a space anywhere.’

  ‘Christ.’ Max quickly checked his gun.

  Glancing over, Michael frowned. ‘What’s that? Where’s your Beretta?’

  Max stuck the Makarov back into the waistband of his jeans. ‘At home.’ Not wishing to explain how Eichel had relieved him of his service weapon in an alley behind a McDonalds, he released his seatbelt. ‘Let me out here.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Just stop the damn car.’

  Michael stepped on the brake and the Opel jerked to a halt, bringing an immediate rebuke from the driver behind, a bleary-eyed, middle-aged man in a rust-eaten Fiat 500. With an angry screech, the Fiat managed to stop a centimetre from the Opel’s back bumper. From behind the wheel of his tiny machine, the man mimed extreme frustration, offering up a selection of demonstrative hand gestures interspersed between a series of sharp blasts on his horn.

  Struggling out of his seat, Max glared at the Fiat driver. If only I had the time to arrest you, he thought grimly, you’d be looking at a night in the cells, with your car sent to a pound half way to Munich.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Michael asked, leaning across the passenger seat.

  ‘I’m going after him. You can catch me up.’

  Opening the compartment under the dashboard on the passenger’s side, Michael pulled out a walkie-talkie the size of a brick and offered it to Max. ‘Here.’

  ‘No radios,’ the kriminalinspektor growled, ‘put it away.’

  ‘But – ‘

  ‘Put it away,’ Max repeated. ‘You know how much I hate those things. You never know who’s listening in.’

  ‘Okay, Jesus.’ Michael tossed the radio back into the compartment, slamming the door shut. When it bounced open, Michael tried again, to no better effect. ‘Fucking car.’ He glared at Max, as if it was his fault. ‘Do you want me to call in for back-up?’

  ‘Not yet. Let’s see how this thing pans out first.’

  ‘But what if it all goes wrong?’

  ‘Then,’ Max grinned, ‘we can always bring my retirement forward a few days.’

  ‘That wasn’t what I meant,’ Michael said sullenly.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take full responsibility for anything that happens tonight.’ Max stood up straight, carefully closing the car door before there could be any further conversation.

  Keeping his eyes focused on the lot into which Eichel had disappeared, the Kriminalinspektor waited for the Opel to move forward. Slipping in front of the Fiat, he was just about to give the driver some hand signals of his own when he saw Eichel emerging from the shadows. In his hand was the black Adidas bag that he had taken from the evidence locker in Stresemannstraße.

  ‘Got you,’ Max smiled.

  Not looking up, Eichel took a left and headed back along the street, in the direction from which he’d come.

  Jumping back onto the sidewalk Max darted behind a flower shop delivery van. With a final flourish of his horn, the Fiat driver moved off. Fuck you, too, Max thought. Peering past two lanes of traffic, he struggled locate the retreating figure of Eichel, finally spotting the Kriminalkommissar’s bobbing head as he danced past a woman pushing a pram. Calculating that his quarry had a lead of about twenty-five metres, Max tried to match his pace as he set off in pursuit.

  Head down, hands thrust into his pockets, Eichel was walking at a fast clip, almost skipping, as he headed south, towards Kollowitzplatz. Eventually he took a sharp right, heading directly towards the hulking presence of the Wasserturm, the nineteenth century water tower which dominated the neighbourhood. Looking over his shoulder, Max checked for any sign of Michael, but the sergeant was nowhere to be seen. ‘Still trying to park that fucking Opel, no doubt,’ Max grunted. In truth, however, it was a relief that his sergeant wasn’t around. This was something that he would have to do on his own.

  With Eichel still in his line of sight, the Kriminalinspektor slipped between a couple of parked cars and scampered across the road. In the middle-distance, the Fernsehturm rose like a giant needle above the city, its red hazard lights blinking against the night sky. The temperature had dropped sharply and Max shivered as he upped his pace still further. ‘Just don’t turn around, you bastard,’ he muttered to himself, edging closer until Eichel was barely ten metres in front. Head bowed, the Kriminalkommissar showed no inclination of being worried about a tail as he continued at a steady pace.

  The tower, a circular, seven-storey brick structure, looked like a rocket ship poised for take-off. Built by the English in the 19th century, it stood on the edge of a small area of grassy scrubland that could only generously be called a park. The lower floors, under the actual water tank, were originally used as apartments for the machinery operators. In the 1930s, the complex was used by the Nazis as a concentration camp for communists, socialists, Jews and other undesirables, most of whom found themselves interned without trial and then murdered. Finally closed down in 1952, its hulking mass cast a baleful mood over the neighbouring street.

  From somewhere in the distance came the sound of a passing siren, rising to a modest crescendo before quickly falling away. App
roaching the tower, Max finally let his pace slow, letting Eichel extend his lead as he reached a short flight of steps. Ducking into a dingy alley, he watched the Kriminalkommissar jog up the steps, cross a small courtyard and disappear through a door at the base of the tower. Stepping back onto the sidewalk, Max reached for the Makarov. Looking up, he saw a young couple, arm in arm, strolling towards him. The woman was chatting away animatedly but the man’s eyes were fixed on Max. Leaving the gun where it was, the Kriminalinspektor slipped past and bolted up the steps.

  48

  Max approached the doorway that was cut into the base of the water tower with a kind of sideways half-skip. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a group of youths ambling along in the distance. One of them was waving a bottle in the air while screeching out the chorus of “Another Day in Paradise” at the top of his voice, egged on by his mates. Absorbed in their musical soiree, none of the drunken revellers paid the policeman any heed.

  At the door, he reached for the rusting handle. Gripping his fingers around the cool metal, he turned it slowly, listening intently for any noises coming from the other side.

  Nothing.

  Conscious only of the jackhammering of his heart, Max scanned the metal sign that had been bolted into the brickwork by the side of the door by the Works Department of the city council. Even with half its letters faded or missing, the message was clear: DANGER. KEEP OUT. DANGER OF ACCIDENT OR DEATH. TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED.

  Max gave the handle the gentlest of tugs, applying just enough pressure to confirm that it was still unlocked. Inching closer, he felt his right toes kick something metallic across the paving stones. Looking down, he noted a flimsy-looking metal padlock, alongside the broken links of a chain that had been sliced open by a pair of shears. Stepping back from the door, Max kicked the lock and chain fully into the shadow created where the curve of the water tower’s exterior wall drifted away from the streetlights. Trying to regulate his breathing, he reached for the Makarov, checked the clip and flicked off the safety before slipping inside.