It had been way too long since I’d been in a cheap dive. Every second brawl in a bar followed the same pattern: the guy who was falling-about drunk almost toppled off his bar stool, someone said, ‘Come on, old boy, you’ve had enough.’ And then suddenly the drunk could do things with that bar stool … hit the nearest man over the head with it, for instance, or fling it into the shelf of bottles behind the bar. And then four or five men would throw themselves at him all at once, only to find that they couldn’t control the drunk in his unbounded rage.
That was exactly what happened to me. I had forgotten that quantities of coke and alcohol didn’t make a man incapable of such an explosion. And Abakay exploded! All of a sudden he came at me with wild, long strides, screaming. He suddenly snatched the pistol from his jacket and fired it into the air, and before I could even move my own gun in his direction the butt of his smashed into the middle of my face. I fell backwards, feeling the blood spurt from my nose. At the same moment Abakay first kicked the pistol out of my hand with his black cowboy boots, and then, with two neat dance steps, took a run-up and kicked me twice in the belly with all his might. I threw up.
‘Hey there, Kayankaya, you fuck-face! Not as fast as you used to be, right? Know what I’m going to do now? Work you over the way you worked me over — that’s fair, right? No more and no less. Know what my chest looks like? Like some shitty geometrical drawing!’
I lay writhing in the gravel, and could look up just far enough to see the knife that he drew out of his boot.
‘No!’ I wanted to scream, but it was only a gurgle.
‘No? What do you mean no, you wanker?’ This time he kicked me lower down, and I simultaneously screamed and pissed myself.
‘Well, well, well, didn’t you know? Always better to go to the toilet before you leave the house. And that’s nothing yet — do you know my balls are still swollen? The hospital doctor fears there’ll be permanent damage … hear that? Permanent damage! And your doctor will say so too — you can piss your pants full again to that!’
‘Abakay … let it …’
‘Well, if you say so. Right, I’ll just go home …’
He laughed. Then he bent down and held his knife in front of my nose. ‘My geometrical pen …’
This time I intended to gurgle and sound as pitiable as I could. ‘No, please … stop it …’
At the same time I was crawling away from Abakay. It was meant to look like an act of pure despair. I hadn’t the faintest chance of getting away. As soon as Abakay liked he could simply plant his boot on my neck, or shoot me in the legs, or anything else. And confident in that sense of absolute power he looked at me, grinning, as I neared the garbage bin on all fours, with vomit dripping from my chin.
‘Very brave! Know what I’m thinking of as I see you screw up like that? Which would leave more permanent damage, a kick in the ass from behind with the toe of my boot drawn up, or from in front with my heel going right into your soft parts …?’
‘Abakay, let it alone … believe me, you don’t have a chance …’
‘What was that?’
I crawled on, on and on.
‘Go home, that’s best …’
‘You’re an odd one, eh? Shall I tell you something? Sure, I’ll go home — just as soon as your balls are kicked to mush. Right, that’s enough talk …’
I was still about half a metre from the garbage bin when he kicked me in the stomach again. Another gush of vomit, and then everything went black before my eyes.
When I came back to my senses, Abakay was sitting astride me, cutting open my shirt and T-shirt.
‘Ah, good morning … Here we go. I thought we’d start with building blocks, go on to circles and end with some nice straight lines — they’re sure to look pretty …’
‘Let it go …’ I whispered. ‘Please …’ And at that moment I was asking as much for my own sake as his. But of course he didn’t understand that.
He mimicked me. ‘Please, please, please! Dear Erden, I treated you like dirt, but please, please don’t hurt me now!’
He was holding my arms down on the ground with his knees, the way children do fighting in the school yard. My right hand was still about half a metre from the garbage bin.
‘Right,’ he cried finally, when my chest lay bare before him and I was breathing heavily, and he swung his knife in the air like a magic wand. ‘Watch out, or it may go into your eye!’
He was still laughing when I reared up strongly and threw him over to one side. He landed in the gravel, knife raised, and went on laughing. ‘A bit of action at last!’ He could still easily have stabbed me. He watched me turn and crawl on.
‘So where do you think you’re going?’ With an amused expression, he propped his elbow in the gravel and leaned his head on his hand. ‘Throwing yourself away in the garbage?’
I managed to grasp the pistol hidden in the shadows. I’d have liked to go on lying there. Every fibre of my body longed to sleep for a moment in the soft, warm, comfortable gravel.
‘And now, asshole?’
‘Now no more geometry,’ I whispered as I turned round and shot him first in the face and then, to make quite sure, in the chest.
It took me about twenty minutes to get to my feet. I put my pistol away, staggered over to the little tower, picked up the second pistol and stood there breathing heavily. For a while I looked at the gloomy scene: Abakay, the drizzling rain, the garbage bin, the Langnese advertising cardboard. I’d had no choice. In his mood just now, Abakay wouldn’t have stopped short at slitting my chest open and kicking me between the legs. One way or another, he’d have crippled me.
Finally I pulled myself together and staggered over to the delivery van.
The key was in the ignition. I could hear Rashid kicking the bodywork of the van from inside. I started the engine, and Rashid howled. They must have promised him his freedom and now he thought something had gone wrong.
Cautiously, I drove down the street and through the West End, then past the old opera house and to the Frankfurter Hof. I parked the delivery van in a nearby side street, wiped my fingerprints off the steering wheel and the knob of the gear lever, got out and opened the door to the boot. In fact, Rashid stank even worse than I did. He was wrapped in sticky tape like a mummy, with only his nostrils free. With the help of my pocketknife I removed the tape from his ears first.
‘Don’t worry. It’s me, Kayankaya. You’re safe now.’
He tried to say something. With a jerk, I tore the tape off his mouth. Bits of skin and stubble came off with it, and blood seeped through his cheeks in several places. He groaned with pain and began shedding tears.
‘Thank you …’
‘I’m sorry, I must leave your eyes taped up for a moment. For your own safety. You don’t need to see the car we came here in. It’s the kidnappers’ vehicle, and the less you know the better.’
The better for me too.
Then I began unwrapping his body. At first he could move his arms and legs only with difficulty. After that I led him down the street to a driveway, where I carefully removed the tape from his eyes.
He blinked. ‘Oh, my God!’ and looked round in confusion. Then a smile spread over his face, suddenly he laughed out loud, flung his arms round me, kissed me on both cheeks and cried, ‘Thank you, many, many thanks! It was hell! Those bastards!’
He hugged me. When he let me go, he was still smiling, but he also looked slightly unsure of himself. ‘Excuse me, but — do you stink like that or is it me?’
‘I think we both need a shower. One of the kidnappers kicked me in the belly a couple of times for fun.’
‘And hit you in the face — it looks all swollen.’
‘Hmm-hmm. How did they treat you?’
‘Oh …’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well, they didn’t mistreat me, at least not physically. Except for hitting me over the head outside your wife’s restaurant. I had enough to eat and drink, a bed, a TV set. However … their faces were covered up, and when they
said anything it was in Turkish, and however often I told them I didn’t understand their bloody lang — oh, sorry!’
‘No problem.’
‘And then the prayers. They kept coming into my room to pray, and made me pray too. Once, when I refused, at pistol point — oh, it was horrible! However … well, I never felt it was really about religion. Do you understand? I mean, about some kind of religious re-education. Of course that was my first thought, because of the novel. But then … in all those five days no one talked to me about my work. Or not in any language I could understand. But I suppose that’s why they kidnapped me …’ He seemed to be thinking, and then he shook his head and said, in a loud and contemptuous voice, ‘Such assholes!’
I clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Well, you made it. I told Frau Lipschitz this morning that if all went well, you’d be free this evening. She’s booked you a room in the Frankfurter Hof, and she’s waiting for us there with your publisher. It’s just round the corner. Shall we go?’
He looked a bit surprised. ‘That’s nice of them.’
On the way I said, ‘And in the hotel we’ll have to discuss the text being released to the press.’
‘What text?’
‘It was the condition for freeing you. The group that kidnapped you wants, first and foremost, for the world to know that they exist. They call themselves the Ten Plagues.’
‘What? Like Breitel?’
‘Yes, well.’
‘Imagine that! And I was sure he’d just made the whole thing up!’ He thought about it. ‘But now I’m free … I mean, why would we go along with what the kidnappers want?’
‘Think about it.’
He did, and we walked on side by side in silence.
Just before the entrance to the Frankfurter Hof, he said, ‘You know what I don’t understand? The girl, the decoy — how does a strictly religious group come by a super-Lolita like that?’
‘Well, they probably hired her.’
‘You mean she was a whore?’
I nodded.
‘A whore! Damn it all … I write about that milieu but, to be honest, I just hate …’
‘Careful,’ I interrupted him. ‘No need to insult my wife.’
‘What? How do you …’
We reached the steps up to the entrance. Two uniformed pageboys inspected us, horrified: two men with filthy trousers, stinking of vomit, one with cheeks torn and bleeding, the other with a swollen nose.
‘Good evening,’ I said. ‘We’re expected. Maier Verlag, Emanuel Thys.’
Chapter 15
I spent the following week waiting. For the police, for Hakim’s people, for anyone who put two and two together and thought: if Abakay found himself in jail because of a false statement made by Kayankaya, then presumably he wanted revenge, and presumably Kayankaya would defend himself — so let’s ask him where he was on Thursday evening. But obviously no one wanted to put two and two together. The police were glad that arresting Abakay did not, in retrospect, seem such an unfounded notion — the newspapers and the local TV soon agreed that he had died in the course of a drug deal. And Hakim was rid of a troublesome accomplice and blackmailer — family or not.
In the end, I suppose too many people profited by Abakay’s death for there to be any serious investigations. And where the police were concerned, that also seemed to close the Rönnthaler case for the time being. By now, at police headquarters, they were probably laying the blame on Abakay after all. If only for a better rate of cases solved.
On Saturday several newspapers printed the press release from Maier Verlag, along with comments and leading articles: Malik Rashid, author of the novel Journey to the End of Days, has been released unharmed after his five-day abduction by a group calling itself the Ten Plagues. The group justified its actions by charging that Rashid’s novel insulted people of the Muslim faith. The Ten Plagues wanted to send out a signal. The author’s abduction ended, without bloodshed, on Thursday evening.
One comment pointed out: However, there is food for thought in the name of the group. Is it just a coincidental prank, or was there a clever mind behind it? Are we dealing with a Muslim combat group whose members read the works of Dr. Breitel? That would explain why the abduction went comparatively smoothly: it involved intellectual young men, devout Muslims, probably students, who wanted to distinguish themselves from the image of the primitive bin Laden disciples who murder indiscriminately. Are we facing a cross between guerrilla warfare for fun and serious discourse?
And so on. The Ten Plagues were initially featured in the news sections of the papers, then the comments, and almost all the papers published interviews with Rashid.
On Monday Slibulsky dropped in and brought me the money from Valerie de Chavannes.
‘Wow, what a lady!’
‘Hmm-hmm.’
‘I’m to tell you that she very much wants to see you.’
‘Is her husband back?’
‘No idea. Kind of a big black man?’
‘Big, I don’t know.’
‘He passed me in the hall, but we weren’t introduced.’
‘Thanks, Slibulsky.’
‘Tell me’, he said, looking at me curiously, ‘is there something going on between you two?’
‘Am I crazy?’
‘I should think she could drive a man crazy.’
On Tuesday Octavian called.
‘You’ve probably heard or read that your friend Abakay was shot shortly after his release from custody.’
‘Saw it on Hessen Nightly.’
‘Ah — I didn’t know it was on Hessen Nightly …’
‘Would you have wanted to see it too?’
He sighed. ‘Listen: there was very probably a fight between Abakay and his killer before the fatal shots were fired. There was vomit all over the dead man, and it wasn’t Abakay’s.’
‘Oh? How interesting.’
‘Well, my colleagues are more or less agreed that Abakay got what was coming to him on account of quarrels of some kind on the drugs scene, and there’s a lot to suggest that they’re right. But out of pure curiosity I asked for a list of the components of the vomit.’
‘Oh yes?’ I began to sweat slightly.
‘And then I called the wine bar and asked what was the dish of the day last Thursday. It was goat ragout with white beans.’
I said nothing. There wasn’t anything to say.
‘Well, I just wanted to advise you not to attract any attention in the city for a while. Best if my colleagues forget you exist.’
There was a pause. It cost me an effort, but I said, ‘Thanks, Octavian.’
When we had hung up, I went into the kitchen and drank a schnapps. On Friday I went to see Edgar Hasselbaink.
Chapter 16
It was just after seven in the evening when I rang the bell at the garden gate. Warm yellow light shone from the windows of the de Chavannes villa and a faint aroma of fried onions wafted through the front garden.
It was a few minutes before the housekeeper, wearing a white apron, opened the front door, took a brief look at me, and then pressed a button that made the garden gate swing open.
‘Good evening,’ I wished her once I was inside.
‘Good evening,’ she replied without a trace of friendliness. ‘Who shall I say it is?’
I smiled at her. ‘Nice to see you again. Kayankaya is the name. I was first here two and a half weeks ago and since then there’s been one question I can’t get out of my head.’
‘I’m busy cooking supper.’
‘As I said, just one question. I’m sure you can remember the day of my visit. It was the Wednesday when Marieke came home.’
She raised her eyebrows disparagingly. ‘How often do you think she comes home?’
‘You mean how often does she go missing?’
‘The supper, Herr …’
‘Kayankaya. This won’t take long. That morning two and a half weeks ago — why were you so surprised that I was still here when you saw me leaving?�
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She stopped, frowned, looked reluctant to reply. ‘Why would I be surprised?’
‘Because you had heard the front door open and close once already. And you thought there was no one in the house but me and Frau de Chavannes …’
‘Well, I’m sorry, but I don’t remember either that morning or you yourself, even if that may seem unlikely to you …’ A slightly malicious smile hovered briefly on her lips. ‘So many people go in and out of this house.’
‘You mean it’s not like the old days, when the de Chavannes parents kept a calm, decent household.’
‘I don’t mean anything.’
‘Fine,’ I concluded. ‘Then would you please tell Herr Hasselbaink that I’d like to see him?’
At the same moment the living room door opened and Valerie de Chavannes came out into the hall. She stopped in surprise, and you couldn’t describe it any other way: her face was radiant with delight. She cast a quick glance back into the living room, where the TV was on, closed the door and came towards us.
‘Herr Kayankaya!’ she said, just loud enough to be heard only in the hall. She was wearing a lightweight, red summer dress that flowed down her firm body, which showed distinctly through the flimsy material. She was barefoot. Without taking her eyes off me she said, ‘That’s all right, Aneta, I’ll look after Herr Kayankaya myself.’
The housekeeper looked briefly from Valerie de Chavannes to me and back again. ‘Supper’s nearly ready,’ she said, and disappeared into the kitchen.
Valerie de Chavannes came close to me, looked into my eyes and said in a low voice, almost a whisper, ‘Hello.’
‘Hello, Frau de Chavannes. I’m really here to see your …’
She laid her fingertips on my mouth and said a quiet, ‘Shh,’ as if soothing a child. Then she took my arm and led me into the front garden.
Brother Kemal kk-5 Page 16
