by Dave Warner
When he saw the entrance to the more northerly track he turned down towards the beach, just as the abductor must have done. Halfway down, crime scene tape, straining and rattling in the increasing wind, blocked his path. There were no vehicles in sight.
He switched off the engine and sat, the increasingly awesome wind emphasising his insignificance and by extension that of any one human being. Yet he was not totally despondent. Hopefully if Manners couldn’t crack that plate, Perth would. They were prepared too, roadblocks up, police and emergency vehicles on the alert for white SUVs.
He had been so confident about Manfred Gruen.
He climbed out into the gale, ducked under the chequered tape and walked towards the beach. As if hurled by an angry fist, sand stung his cheeks. He was forced to squint to keep it out of his eyes. Hunching his body he tried to scan the miles of white sand with not a soul on it. The ocean was foaming, angry but not yet psychotic, the sky a grey purple. How had the abductor got close enough to subdue Osterlund? Was he working with an accomplice?
No, Clement felt a single intelligence here. It would be perhaps another trick, more sleight of hand as he had used with the biker. Who are you? You have a beginning like everyone, like me. You were born somewhere, you had aspirations, maybe of being a famous soccer player, maybe that was the thing with the t-shirt, but somewhere along the way they disappeared, didn’t they? The only thing that became important was punishing these men for the wrong they did to Gruen, you, or both. That is what sustains you, emboldens you. Nothing can happen to you because you are righting a wrong. That’s what you believe isn’t it?
His phone rang. He felt it more than heard it in the wind. Automatically he began to retreat to the shelter of the car, the wind blowing him along so his legs had to move to catch up. He pulled the phone from his pocket expecting Manners but it was not a station number. ‘Mathias? Hold on.’
He had to yell above the wind. It was a battle to pull the door open. He flopped into his seat feeling more secure out of the gusts. The usual impish tone had drained from the German.
‘Hello Daniel. Sorry I missed your calls. We got your message, Heinrich and I. We couldn’t believe it. But it had to be Dieter, right? The fingerprints he couldn’t get rid of because they came direct to Heinrich but the photo, they just film some schmuck in Belgrade or Prague with a newspaper and they know poor Pieter will never have a chance to contradict them. I can’t believe none of us saw through it. I guess we didn’t want to.’
Another spray of sand hurled itself at the windscreen.
Clement said. ‘I’m sorry, mate.’
‘You know why Dieter did it?’
‘Just a guess. He got in over his head gambling, it was his way out. I need to speak to Hilda, if you have her number.’
There was a deep, regretful sigh. ‘There’s something Heinrich and I have been debating. I won’t bullshit you, man, this has been very hard for us. Kurt Donen murdered our friend and ruined the lives of Pieter and his boy. He gassed himself, the boy, Manfred, you know that?’
‘Yes, I thought … I thought he might be the one.’
Clement oughtn’t feel guilty but he did.
‘Tragedy,’ was all the German offered before another substantial pause. Clement fought impatience and waited. ‘Heinrich remembered something. You asked me about this Klaus Edershen.’
Clement was suddenly thrown back to the clipping of the crime scene in some German park. ‘That’s right.’
‘I looked up the article. It said the victim was a soldier. And I’m thinking, why did Dieter have the article? There was a rumour passed onto us from Gruen via Dieter, maybe before he went bad, that one of Donen’s bodyguards was an ex-mercenary.’
Clement’s gaze had automatically turned back to the beach. He was still listening but thinking too about that article. An arrow could have stopped Osterlund, no noise, no shell casings.
‘So Heinrich and me work it out, maybe this Klaus Edershen was Donen’s bodyguard. Maybe that was why he was killed. The bodyguard, then the informer; somebody is taking them out, right?’
Still Clement did not interrupt. He sensed something was coming.
‘Over the years Heinrich was writing to Hilda on and off. In one letter she told him the boy was a junior champion, archery.’
‘Manfred was a top archer?’ Clement was trying to calculate ages.
‘Not Manfred, Manfred’s son Peter, named after his grandad. That’s why this is so hard. We think you’re looking for Pieter’s grandson. To be honest we never even thought about him. Last time we saw his father, Manfred, he was just a little kid himself, you forget. Manfred had the boy when he was only nineteen or something—junkie mother shot through. Hilda raised him. This is going to break her heart.’
The woman had lost her husband, son and now maybe her grandson. Clement hated this part of it but could not deny the euphoria building in his veins.
‘Peter Gruen or Bourke?’
‘Bourke. As a junior he represented his country in archery.’
‘England?’
‘No, after Manfred died they moved. To Ireland.’
46
They were in a different café this time, by the river, and spring was stirring. It was two years on from that first time when he’d caught the train up from Munich and Wallen’s health seemed decidedly worse. It was an effort for him to negotiate the chairs. In this café there were no men in vinyl jackets but women with babies in prams and men with silver hair in suede jackets studying cake menus through their glasses.
‘I’m going to kill the men who killed my grandfather.’
Wallen tried to dissuade him. ‘You can’t do that. If you are caught it will finish your oma.’
‘I won’t be caught.’
‘The only way you won’t be caught is if you don’t do it.’
The emphasis was on the word ‘you’. Wallen had looked at him through watery eyes. Peter understood Wallen was offering to do it himself.
Instead of arguing with Wallen he said, ‘I have some money. We could hire a private detective to find Donen.’
‘He’ll be using a different name. He may no longer even be in Germany. We have no photograph.’
‘I thought about that. We could get a sketch artist like the police use to draw him how he looked then and how he might look now.’
Wallen nodded slowly as if this were a credible idea. ‘I have an artist friend who could do it. But save your money. The only way we’ll find him is through one of the old associates.’
‘Good. If they killed my grandfather I want them as well.’
Wallen suggested Peter return to Ireland.
‘No. I’ll stay.’
Wallen accepted this without argument. Wallen’s intelligence was that Donen’s two bodyguards had been present holding Pieter Gruen when he had been sliced to death by their boss. The one known as Tank had died of cancer but the other, Klaus, was living in Dortmund.
‘I’ll find out what he knows and then kill him.’
Klaus Edershen had retired to Applerbeck, a quite pretty area in the south-east of Dortmund, where the retired killer blended in with ex-schoolteachers, factory workers and bankers. He was still a powerfully built man and as Peter and Wallen watched him from the shadows on his ritual evening walk with his small dog, Peter could see the fear in Wallen’s eyes. Wallen may have had ten years on Klaus Edershen but he was a thin ex-junkie with hep C. Klaus Edershen looked like he could still be manning a machine gun in the Congo.
They had followed him from the small apartment block where he lived alone in one of six units.
‘You don’t have to do this,’ he’d said to Wallen.
‘I can handle him. I’ll get him drunk and take him from behind.’
The dog, some sort of cocker spaniel, cocked its leg against a tree.
‘The dog will make a racket. People will come looking. We’ll be stopped before we start. Just find out where Donen is. Find out who the leak was.’
Wallen
agreed to do that. ‘But if I see my chance, I’ll take it.’
‘No.’ Peter was surprised with the clarity with which he now saw everything. ‘You will have to drink with him. They will find your prints. I suppose you are in the system?’
‘Maybe. It was a long time ago. Nineteen seventy-five, a dope bust in Hamburg.’
‘Assume you are in the system. I’ll handle him.’
‘You’re just a boy.’
‘And you’re an ex-junkie with a stuffed liver. I prefer my chances.’
Wallen had eventually given in. They had caught a train from Hamburg to Dortmund and hired a car to drive to Applerbeck. They spent the afternoon and evening watching Klaus Edershen’s movements, which were those of the retired man: a walk with the dog, a trip to the bar, some shopping and back home for a bachelor dinner. It was pleasant weather though a little chilly in the evening. They waited until nine p.m. and then drove back to the city where they bought bratwurst from a street vendor. The plan was already clear in Peter’s mind.
‘From here on we can’t be seen together or call one another. I’ll catch the train tomorrow and kill him.’
‘No, wait on.’ Wallen held up a hand like a traffic cop. ‘Not so fast. He might know who the leak was. It had to be one of the cops worked with your grandfather.’
Peter had already considered that. ‘And whoever he was probably told them you turned up.’
‘No, I was thinking about that. I didn’t go to the police for a month or two. Donen, Klaus, they were all gone by then. When I saw Toro, he clearly had no idea.’
‘Toro wasn’t so high up.’
They argued. Peter said it was too big a risk to take. Wallen refused to budge.
‘You can’t have it both ways. We want the men who murdered your father to pay. You can do the shot, I’m getting the information.’
And that was that. Peter gave in.
‘You catch the train tomorrow evening, visit him and find out what you can. I’ll meet you back here, eleven-thirty.’ Peter felt no qualms about giving orders to a man forty years his senior.
‘You’re like your grandfather,’ said Wallen.
‘And don’t get yourself killed.’
They split up, booking in separate bed and breakfasts a couple of blocks apart.
The next twenty-four hours were the longest of Peter’s life. The bed and breakfast place was clean with pink and white wallpaper and a frilly eiderdown, presumably decorated by a woman, but it was cramped and airless so he abandoned it in favour of investigating the city’s nooks, crannies and back lanes. Dortmund was a blend of new office towers and gothic spires and might normally have been interesting but he could not concentrate.
Too hyped to eat much, he stopped twice for coffee and sweet biscuits. At five p.m. he watched Wallen board the train to Applerbeck. Now it was in the lap of the gods.
He returned to his bed and breakfast and sat on his frilly eiderdown and tried to watch television but it was no use. He was up and down many times to the toilet even though he had no pee left in him. For something to do he checked and re-checked his bow, assembling it, breaking it down, reassembling. Finally it was close to eleven. He walked out again and sauntered aimlessly this way and that until eleven fifteen. Then he returned to the little street a few blocks from the station where he had arranged to meet Wallen.
Peter built up every conceivable scenario, from Wallen failing to make contact to being strangled by Edershen. He became utterly convinced Edershen had known of Wallen’s perfidy. And then as he was imagining poor Wallen sliced apart just like his grandfather had been, he looked up and saw a gangly silhouette weaving towards him out of the mist. He realised Wallen was staggering and Peter immediately assumed injury. It turned out he was simply drunk.
Wallen told his story with slurred words. He had done exactly as they planned, arriving at the station and going to the park at the same time as the day before where Edershen indeed proved a creature of habit walking his dog from seven past six to six twenty-five.
‘How busy was the park then?’
‘Same as yesterday, hardly anybody: a few dog-walkers, older women.’
Wallen had purchased a bottle of vodka and knocked on the door of Edershen’s apartment near eight o’clock. He could smell some sort of cooking.
‘Klaus opened the door. He didn’t recognise me. I said as much as I lifted the vodka up. Then I said, “Hamburg seventy-eight.” But I could see he still needed some help.’
Wallen dropped the name of their mutual contact, Toro, another old drug dealer, and finally the mist lifted from his eyes.
‘Wallen!’
‘Toro told me where you lived. I was in Dortmund for my niece’s wedding, I thought we’d have a drink for old times.’
It was exactly what Peter had scripted Wallen to say and Wallen claimed he had carried it out to the letter. The apartment was comfortable. Two bedrooms, larger than what a single man like Edershen needed. It was neat, sparsely furnished but with good quality furniture. Edershen turned off the TV. He had just finished dinner and washed up, a good omen for what he might do with the drinking glasses after Wallen had gone. They sat and drank, talking about their lives since they’d last seen one another. Edershen had spent a number of years in Asia but was deliberately hazy on exactly what he had done there and Wallen assumed it was drugs or something else illegal. Wallen lied and said he had been dealing drugs in Italy. Eventually Wallen had steered the conversation to the last time they had seen each other.
‘Just before the shit hit the fan. That undercover cop. So many guys got picked up.’
With curiosity bordering on suspicion Edershen said. ‘Not you.’
‘I got lucky, kind of.’
Wallen adapted the true story of Pieter Gruen, claiming that after his last visit to the Emperor to get supplied he was jumped by some skinhead thugs.
‘They beat the crap out of me and took my stuff. I was wondering how to tell the Emperor. You know what he was like.’
Klaus nodded, he did indeed.
‘They never got you either?’
Edershen told him a day or two before it was all meant to go down they got word from a bent cop. Wallen threw out the name of a Reeperbahn street cop he knew was bent just to keep Edershen bubbling.
‘No, much higher than that fuckwit, the undercover guy’s own controller.’
Peter had drilled into Wallen the names of all the cops on his grandfather’s squad. He knew who the controller had been.
‘Schaffer?’
‘That’s him. Sold out his own man to pay off a gambling debt.’ Edershen shook his head in disgust. Wallen had tried to hide his excitement.
‘You still in touch with the Emperor?’
‘Last time I saw him he was about three months after. He was boarding a freighter to Rotterdam, false papers and identity. I never heard from him again. I heard from Tank that he was supposed to be in Thailand back in the pussy trade: bars, clubs; less heat than drugs. You’re not on that shit still are you?’
Wallen explained he had been long off it. They talked another hour or so before Wallen took his leave. He’d held up the vodka bottle to Edershen.
‘You mind if I take the last bit for the train?’
This had been another of Peter’s ideas to make sure Wallen left no prints around. Edershen waved him off. They talked about catching up. Once outside Wallen wiped his fingerprints off the bottle and dumped it in a bin at the train station, then had an uneventful trip back to Dortmund on the train.
A deep sense of release washed through Peter. They knew the name of the traitor: Dieter Schaffer. Finding Donen in Thailand, with his new identity would be very difficult. Not that this would discourage Peter. He would keep looking whatever the chances, but Dieter Schaffer, well he could almost taste his blood.
He said, ‘You need to return to Hamburg tomorrow.’
Wallen shook his head. ‘No. You have your whole life ahead of you. I’ll do it.’
‘Don’t
you want justice for my grandfather and father?’
‘Of course.’
‘The only way the police get me is through you. You want to help me, go back. I can do this. I am meant to do this. I’ll see you in Hamburg in three days.’
He had turned on his heel, giving Wallen no chance to argue.
The next day he hired a car and drove to Applerbeck making sure he stayed away from anywhere there might be CCTV cameras. He wore a generic cap and rain jacket and had the dismantled bow in a rucksack exactly as it would be the next day. He wanted to make sure there were no surprises. He spent most of his time in the park looking for the best location for the shot, settling eventually for a copse of trees that he could access directly from an adjoining road. He assembled his bow, then disassembled it. For nearly two hours he hid. The park was near deserted when Edershen appeared walking his dog, a little later this time, closer to seven. Edershen walked up a small rise directly towards the copse, placing himself in range for a substantial time. Though the light was poor by this time, the distance was less than twenty metres, which more than compensated.
Peter returned to Dortmund, enjoyed an Asian meal from a small café and turned in early. The next morning he bought a pair of grey overalls from a shop in the backwaters of the city for he thought somebody might remember his outfit from the day before. He retrieved the car but because he could not afford to be lurking in the park for any length of time with a weapon on him, he did not leave for Applerbeck until nearly five p.m. The traffic was dense but he arrived in plenty of time and parked in a shopping centre carpark about a kilometre and a half away.
He walked briskly to the park with everything he needed in his backpack, crossed the narrow road and strode directly into the copse. The breeze was stronger this evening, making the shot more difficult, and the park was busier but to his relief it began thinning rapidly. At six twenty he removed his weapon from his backpack and began assembling it. He was ready to fire by six twenty-four. Of course he had no way of knowing if Klaus Edershen was even in the park, maybe this was the day when he went to the movies or played bocce. Fifteen minutes in, the exercise threatened to turn into a disaster. An unleashed dog, a beagle he thought, came charging up the incline, ran directly into the thicket where he was hiding and stood staring at him wagging its tail. The owner, a slim straggly blonde of forty or so followed behind a moment later and cast about for the animal.
