She rang the bell. When no one opened the door, she knocked and waited some more. Then she inserted a key card into the electronic lock and pushed the door open a handsbreadth. Following the way she’d been taught, she called out, “Maid service.” When there was no answer, she went in.
The suite occupied about three hundred square feet and was decorated in tones of warm brown. The walls were padded with beige cloth, and there was a bright carpet on the parquet floor. The bed was rumpled and a bottle of water stood open on the nightstand. Between the two orange chaises longues was the naked body of a young woman. Consuela saw her breasts, but the head was hidden. Blood had soaked into the woolen fibers along the edge of the carpet, leaving a jagged pattern of red. Consuela held her breath. Her heart racing, she took two cautious steps forward. She had to see the woman’s face. That was when she screamed. In front of her was a mushy mass of bone, hair, and eyes, a portion of the whitish brain matter had sprayed out of the ruptured skull onto the dark parquet, and the heavy iron lamp that Consuela dusted every day was sticking up out of the face, covered in blood.
Abbas was relieved. He had now confessed it all. Stefanie sat next to him in her little apartment and wept.
He was a child of Palestinian refugees and had grown up in the settlement of Shatila in Beirut. His playgrounds lay between barracks with corrugated iron doors, five-story houses pockmarked with bullet holes, and ancient cars from Europe. The children wore tracksuits and T-shirts with Western slogans on them, five-year-old girls covered their heads despite the heat, and there was warm bread wrapped in thin paper. Abbas had been born four years after the great massacre. Back then, the Christian Lebanese militia had mutilated and killed hundreds of people, women had been raped, and even children were shot. No one could arrive at an accurate count afterward, and the fear never went away again. Sometimes Abbas lay down on the clay of his unpaved street and tried to count the hopeless tangle of power lines and phone lines that were slung between the houses and carved up the sky.
His parents had paid the smugglers a great deal of money; he was supposed to have a future in Germany. He was seventeen then. Naturally, he wasn’t granted asylum and the authorities gave him no permission to hold a job. He lived on state benefits; everything else was forbidden him. Abbas couldn’t go to the movies or to McDonald’s; he owned neither a PlayStation nor a cell phone. He learned the language on the street. He was a pretty boy, but he had no girlfriend. And if he’d had one, he couldn’t even have invited her to a meal one time. All Abbas had was himself. He sat around, he spent twelve months throwing stones at pigeons, watching TV in the hostel for asylum seekers, and dawdled along the Kurfürstendamm, looking in shop windows. He was bored to death.
At some point, he began with minor break-ins. He got caught, and after the third caution by the judge in juvenile court, he underwent his first prolonged detention. It was a wonderful time. He met lots of new friends in jail, and by the time he was released, some things had become clear to him. He’d been told that for people like him—and inside there were a lot of people like him—the only way to go was drug dealing.
It was really easy. One of the bigger dealers, who didn’t work the streets anymore himself, took him on. Abbas’s turf was one of the subway stations, and he shared it with two other people. At first, he was only the “bunker,” a human safe-deposit box for narcotics. He kept the bags in his mouth. The other guy conducted the negotiations and the third handled the money. They called it “work.”
The junkies asked for “browns” or “whites”; they paid with ten- and twenty-euro bills that they had stolen or begged or earned from prostitution. Transactions went swiftly. Sometimes women offered themselves to the dealers. If one of them was pretty enough, Abbas would take her along. To begin with, it interested him, because the girls would do anything he asked. But then he began to be disturbed by the craving in their eyes. It wasn’t him they wanted; it was the drugs.
When the police came, he had to run. He learned quickly how to recognize them; even their civilian clothes were a kind of uniform: sneakers, fanny packs, and hip-length jackets. And they all seemed to go to the same barber. While Abbas ran, he swallowed. If he managed to choke down the cellophane packages before they caught up with him, the proof would be hard to come by. Sometimes they administered purgatives. Then they sat next to him and waited till he threw up the little packages into a sieve. From time to time, one of his new friends would die when his stomach acids dissolved the cellophane too quickly.
As a business it was dangerous, fast, and lucrative. Abbas had money now, and he sent substantial amounts home regularly. He wasn’t bored anymore. The girl he was in love with was named Stefanie. He had watched her for a long time dancing in a disco. And when she turned around to him he—the big drug dealer, the king of the street—blushed.
Of course she knew nothing about his drug business. In the mornings, Abbas left love letters for her attached to the refrigerator. He told his friends that when she drank, he could see the water running down inside her throat. She became his homeland; he had nothing else. He missed his mother, his brothers and sisters, and the stars over Beirut. He thought about his father, who had slapped him merely because he had stolen an apple from the fruit stand. He’d been seven years old at the time. “There are no criminals in our family,” his father had said. He had gone with him to the fruit seller and paid for the apple. Abbas would have liked to become an auto mechanic, or a painter, or a carpenter—or anything. But he became a drug dealer. And now he was no longer even that.
A year earlier, Abbas had gone to an arcade for the first time. At the beginning, he only went there with his friends. They pretended and acted out being James Bond and fooled around with the pretty girls who worked there. But then he went there on his own, though everyone had warned him. The slot machines were what drew him. At some point, he had started to talk to them. Each one of them had its own character, and, like gods, they determined his fate. He knew he was a compulsive gambler. He’d been losing every day for four months. He could hear the melody of the slot machines in his sleep, announcing that somebody had won. He couldn’t help himself; he had to play.
His friends no longer took him along when they were dealing; he was nothing but an addict himself now, no different from their customers, the junkies. He would end up stealing money from them, they knew what his future would be, and Abbas knew they were right. But that was nowhere near the worst of it.
The worst of it was Danninger. Abbas had borrowed money from him, five thousand euros, and he had to pay back seven thousand. Danninger was a friendly man; he’d said that anyone could have a problem sometimes. Abbas hadn’t felt alarmed, either. He would certainly win back the money again; the slot machines couldn’t go on making him lose forever. He was wrong. On the day payment was due, Danninger had come and held out his hand. After that, things happened fast. Danninger had pulled a pair of pliers out of his pocket. Abbas saw the handles; they were covered with yellow plastic and glinted in the sun. Then the little finger of Abbas’s right hand was lying on the curb. As he was screaming in pain, Danninger had handed him a handkerchief and told him the quickest way to the hospital. Danninger was still friendly, but he also said that the interest on the debt had now increased. If Abbas failed to repay ten thousand in three months’ time, he’d have to cut off his thumb, then his hand, and so on until he reached his head. Danninger said he was really sorry. He liked Abbas, he was a nice guy, but there were rules, and no one could bend those rules. Abbas didn’t doubt for one moment that Danninger meant it.
Stefanie cried more over the finger than over the lost money. They didn’t know what to do next, but at least they were facing it together. And they would find some solution—they had found solutions for everything in the past two years. Stefanie said that Abbas needed to go into therapy immediately. But that didn’t address the financial problem. Stefanie wanted to go back to work as a waitress. With tips, that would be eighteen hundred euros a month. Abbas didn�
��t like the idea of her working in a beer garden; he was jealous about the customers. But that was the only way they could do anything. He couldn’t go back to drug dealing; they would just beat him up and throw him out.
A month later, it was clear that they wouldn’t be able to pull the money together this way. Stefanie was in despair. She had to find a solution; she was afraid for Abbas. Danninger was a cipher to her, but she had rebandaged Abbas’s hand every day for two weeks.
Stefanie loved Abbas. He was different from the boys she’d known before, more serious, less familiar. Abbas did her good, even if her girlfriends made stupid remarks about him. Now she was going to do something for him: She was going to save him. She even found the idea a tiny bit romantic.
Stefanie had nothing she could sell. But she knew how pretty she was. And like all her girlfriends she had read the personal ads in the newspaper and laughed over them. Now she was going to answer one of them, for Abbas and for their love.
At the first meeting with the man in the luxury hotel, she was so nervous, she shook. She was standoffish to him, but the man was friendly and not at all the way she’d imagined him. He was even nice-looking, and well groomed. Admittedly, she’d felt sick when he took hold of her and she had to service him, but she’d managed somehow. He was no different from men she’d known before Abbas, just older. Afterward, she showered for thirty minutes and brushed her teeth till her gums bled. Now there were five hundred euros in her hiding place in the coffee can.
She lay on the sofa in her apartment, bundled up in her bathrobe. She would only have to do it a few times and she’d have the money she needed. She thought about the man from the hotel, who lived in another world. The man wanted to meet her once or twice a week and pay her five hundred euros per session. She would get through it. And she was confident she would come away from it all unscathed. It was just that Abbas must know nothing about it. She would surprise him and give him the money, telling him she’d gotten it from her aunt.
Percy Boheim was tired. He looked out of the hotel window. Autumn had arrived, the wind was tearing the leaves from the trees, the days with their glowing light were over, and Berlin would soon sink back into its winter gray for at least five months. The student had gone. She was a nice girl, a little shy, but so were they all at the beginning. There was nothing ambiguous about it; it was a business transaction. He paid and got the sex he needed. No love, no phone calls in the night, no other nonsense like that. If she got too close to him, he would end it.
Boheim didn’t like prostitutes. He’d tried it once years ago and it repelled him. He thought of Melanie, his wife. She was widely known as a dressage rider, and like many riders, she lived, finally, for her horses. Melanie was cold; it was a long time since they’d had anything to say to each other, but they were polite in their dealings and had reached a mutual understanding. They didn’t see each other very often. He knew she would never be able to tolerate his girls. And he couldn’t cope with a divorce right now, because of their son Benedict. He would have to wait another few years for the boy to grow up. Benedict loved his mother.
Percy Boheim was one of the leading industrialists in the country; he had inherited the majority shareholding in an auto-parts manufacturing company from his father, sat on the boards of many companies, and was an economic adviser to the government.
He thought about the imminent takeover of a bolt factory in Alsace. His auditors had advised against it, but they were never good judges of anything. He had long had the feeling that lawyers and auditors were good for creating problems, never solving them. Maybe he should just sell everything and go fishing. One day, thought Boheim, one day, when Benedict is old enough. Then he went to sleep.
Abbas was uneasy. Stefanie had been asking odd questions recently: Did he ever think of other women? Did she still please him? Did he still love her? She had never asked things like that before. Until now she had been a little unsure of herself when they were making love, but she behaved as if she had the upper hand in their relationship; now that all seemed to have been overturned. After they’d had sex, she would nestle against him for the longest time, and even when she was asleep, she held tight to him. That was new, too.
When she had dropped off to sleep, he got up and checked her cell phone. It wasn’t the first time he’d done it. Now there was a new entry: “P.B.” He ran through all their acquaintances in his head; not one of them that he could think of had those initials. Then he read her stored messages. “Wednesday 12 noon, Park Hotel. Room 239 as usual.” The text message was from P.B. Abbas went into the kitchen and sat on one of the wooden chairs. He was so enraged, he could hardly breathe. “As usual,” so it hadn’t been the first time. How could she? Now, during the biggest crisis of his life. He loved her; she was everything to him. He had thought they would get through this together. Abbas couldn’t get his mind around it.
The next Wednesday at twelve noon, he was standing in front of the Park Hotel. It was the best hotel in Berlin. And that was his problem. The concierge at the front door hadn’t let him in. Abbas didn’t take it personally; he didn’t exactly look like their regular hotel guests. He knew people’s reactions to someone who looked like an Arab. So he sat down on a bench and waited. He waited for more than two hours. Finally, Stefanie came out of the hotel. He went to meet her and watched her reaction. She was shocked, and turned red.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I was waiting for you.”
“How did you know I was here?” She was asking herself how much he actually knew.
“I followed you.”
“You followed me? Are you nuts? Why did you do that?”
“You have somebody else. I know it.” Abbas had tears in his eyes and was clutching her arm.
“Don’t make yourself ridiculous.” She pulled free and ran across the square, feeling like she was in a movie.
He ran two steps behind her and seized hold of her again.
“Stefanie, what did you do in the hotel?”
She had to pull herself together. Think clearly, she told herself. “I applied for a job; they pay better than the beer garden.” It was the best she could think of.
Abbas, naturally, did not believe her. They had a loud fight on the square. She was embarrassed. Abbas yelled; she pulled him away. At some point, he calmed down. They drove back to the apartment. Abbas sat at the kitchen table, drinking tea, saying nothing.
Boheim had been meeting Stefanie for two months now. She had set aside her shyness. They got on well together, too well perhaps. Stefanie had told him that her boyfriend had followed her two weeks before. Boheim was uneasy; he knew he would have to end the arrangement. That was the dumb thing in such relationships. A jealous boyfriend spelled problems.
He arrived late today; the meeting had gone on forever. He switched on the car phone and dialed her number. It was good to hear her voice. He said he would be there in a moment. She was pleased and told him she was already naked.
He hung up as he drove into the hotel garage. He would tell her it was over. Best that it be right away, today. Boheim was not a man to procrastinate.
· · ·
The file lay open on the desk. For now, there were only two folders in the customary red cardboard binders for criminal files, but this number would increase. The file displeased Assistant District Attorney Schmied. He closed his eyes and leaned back. Only eight months till I retire, he thought. For the last twelve years, Schmied had been the head of the Capital Crimes Section in the district attorney’s office in Berlin. And now he’d had enough. His father came from Breslau; Schmied considered himself to be a Prussian through and through. He didn’t hate the criminals he pursued; it was simply his duty. He didn’t want another big case; he would have preferred a few straightforward murders, dramas that played themselves out within families, cases that resolved themselves speedily. But he prayed there would not be anything requiring a lot of reports he’d have to take to the DA.
Schmied was look
ing at the request for a warrant against Boheim. He still hadn’t signed it. It’ll set off the whole frenzy with the press, he thought. The tabloids were already full of the naked student in the ritziest hotel. He could pretty much imagine what would happen if Percy Boheim, chairman and principal shareholder of Boheim Industries, were arrested. All hell would break loose and the spokesman for the DA’s office would be getting new orders by the day for what he had to say.
Schmied sighed and thought back to the note his new colleague had briefed him with. The new colleague was a good man, still a little overzealous, but that would temper itself with time. The note summarized the files in an orderly fashion.
Stefanie Becker had been found dead at 3:26 p.m. Her head had been beaten in with numerous blows of extreme force. The murder weapon was a cast-iron lamp stand, part of the standard furnishings of the room. “Blunt-force trauma,” in the language of medical examiners.
Percy Boheim had been the last caller to the victim’s cell phone. The day after the body was discovered, two officers of the Homicide Division had visited him in his Berlin office. “Only a couple of routine questions,” they’d said. Boheim had asked a company lawyer to join him at the meeting. The police report indicated that aside from this, he had evinced no reaction. They had shown him a photo of the deceased and he had denied knowing the girl. The phone call he explained by saying he had misdialed, and the location of his cell phone by the fact that he’d driven past the hotel. The policemen wrote up his statement right there in the office; he read it through and signed it.
At this point, it was already clear that the conversation had lasted almost a minute, far too long to be a wrong number. Nonetheless, the police had not pointed this out to Boheim. Not yet. They had also not yet revealed that his number was stored in the deceased’s phone memory. Boheim had made himself suspicious.
The next day, the analysis of the trace evidence came in: Sperm had been found in the hair and on the breasts of the deceased. The DNA had not been on file in the data bank. Boheim had been asked to give a sample of his saliva voluntarily. His DNA was analyzed immediately—it matched the sperm. That, in a nutshell, was the report.
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