by R. J. Dillon
‘Jack tells me you’ve been working for him from the moment I arrived.’
‘Nick I need my regular clients okay, you come through once every now and again and I work with you. It’s a question of supply and demand, of me earning enough for a decent crust.’
‘That include selling me out?’
‘What you mean?’ Harry demanded, deeply affronted.
‘They seemed to be expecting me at the casino,’ Nick said, steering Harry on a new course. ‘Who got to hear about it? Care to tell me that, Harry?’
Angry, close to revolt, Harry cut in front of Nick ready to stop him by force. But Nick drew up by himself without a trace of familiarity on his face.
‘Nick, what is it with you?’ Bransk pleaded. ‘You had a tough reception, that it? Okay, I appreciate the casino was not going to be a piece of cake. But I swear on everything I love, okay, everything that I own, I swear on all of it, that I don’t tell a soul.’
‘Was Oskar making arrangements for my officer?’
A school party advanced on them streaming through from one idiosyncratic block of contemporary art as a finale to their tour, a couple of children mocking a set of black plastic shapes until a reproach from their teacher cracked louder than a whip.
‘Sure,’ agreed Harry as though he’d just had personal confirmation.
‘Oskar’s dead, so is his girlfriend. An escort from the casino told me they knew I was coming, I had to be dealt with. She’s dead too.’
Harry’s face was set like stone, nodding once that he’d received and understood. Though how far Nick had been involved in the deaths, Harry for reasons of personal safety was not prepared to follow up. ‘Someone else tipped them off, obvious,’ said Harry with an awkward smile.
‘That’s good Harry, I like that.’
Moving without routine or by a route suggested in the catalogue, they took cursory interest in the art strung up about them on the walls; passing quietly from one century to another sublimely unmoved as one ‘ism’ replaced its detractor.
‘It’s bad for business, Nick, I get you killed, my reputation takes a dive, huh?’
‘You trying to sell some material onto another interested party?’
They stopped in front of Makart’s The Entering of Emperor Karl V. in Antwerp and whether Harry shook his head at the attack on his probity or sheer scale of the painting, Nick couldn’t quite tell.
‘Nick, I swear, I have no other deals running. I made all the arrangements as requested. You got to Otto and you’ve got a place for the team in the port. That not good enough, huh?’
‘One last chance, Harry,’ offered Nick.
‘Sure,’ said Harry. ‘One chance is all anyone needs. You paid for a gold standard service and Harry is nothing if not totally focused on client satisfaction. So what Nick wants Nick receives, gratis, no extra fee, on the house.’
‘So how about earning what I’m already paying you. I want an up to date location for a photographer called Tolz.’
‘He’s mad,’ offered Harry.
‘I don’t want a psychological assessment, I want a location.’
‘Sure, I was just adding background.’
‘I’ll need a car and a 9mm, both clean, both untraceable.’
‘No one will know they were ever made,’ Harry promised, his hand providing a magician’s flourish.
‘Remember Ernst?’ Nick asked.
‘Sure, he’s totally committed, I worked with him before.’
‘Well, you’re going to work with him again,’ said Nick, handing Harry a train ticket for Zurich. ‘You leave this afternoon and Ernst is going to make sure you behave yourself.’
‘No problems Nick. Me and Ernst, sure, we make a good team.’
‘You don’t want to let me down, Harry.’
‘Okay, sure, Nick, relax, I’m now officially on the team. I don’t want you to start getting jumpy.’
‘Harry, I don’t get jumpy, I just get mad.’
‘Sure, I remember,’ said Harry with a grimace. ‘Count on me Nick, Harry can be relied on to deliver. Five star treatment okay, I’m totally devoted to our partnership for sure. You worked with Harry before, remember. You think there is some other way, just let me know. Sure, we got to look out for each other, we a pretty talented pair for one thing. Basic rules okay, but they work just fine.’
‘Basic rules, Harry.’ And far from convinced Harry would keep any of his pledges, Nick walked away.
• • •
After a restless night wondering how much Jack had shared with Harney, Nick slipped out of his hotel with extreme caution. The early morning snow thick in his face, the time not yet quarter to eight. As Nick reached an underground car park close to the Reeperbahn a group of pimps were already trading their girls; an auction that he barged right through. His mood dark and festering, inviting one of them to throw a comment, a punch, but they never did, content to let him pass unmolested. The lower deck was empty as he dragged his feet through the slush melted in heaps at the bottom of concrete stanchions. In front of him, the Passat was waiting for him as Harry promised. Nick switched from one bay to another, weaving low in the shadows; running out of the artificial night to the car, its bay deliberately darkened the bulb smashed, its filament hanging in a question mark. Crouched by the bonnet splinters of glass cracked under his feet. He found the keys double taped inside the front bumper, the documents and licence tucked up behind the sun visor. When he tried to push back the driver’s seat, it jammed on a paper bundle that tore as he tugged it free. Wrapped in pages from the Frankfurter Allgemeine, a 9mm Heckler & Koch lovingly oiled. He pushed it in the glove compartment. The engine started first time.
Left and right, glancing in his mirror, Nick set out driving northwards already decided against the autobahn, the window down, the cold smarting his face. On the horizon a barrage of cloud running in the opposite direction; in his mirror Hamburg disappearing fast, its green turrets, tiles and modern glass towers twinkling and sinking without a trace. A December mist hung over the fields on a morning still incompletely formed, a cautious sun pushing for its first showing. Through the villages he kept the speed down, his anger burning like a slow fuse, the cold fierce, unrelenting.
In Kiel Nick bought a carton of Camel cigarettes, two large mineral waters and a bottle of the strongest vodka he could find from a convenience store. From a twenty-four hour pharmacy, Nick selected a box of glucose and condoms, the counter assistant never engaging his eyes. He paid in a hurry and drove northeast, across a featureless land rolled out as flat as it would go.
Going north, a couple of weeks shy of Christmas and no bright star showing him the way, only the lights of houses in protective clusters huddled behind sea walls shone brightly. Holding the car against the sandy wind he headed on, folk songs on the radio, a festival filled by childish fluted voices. Laboe came and went, its U-boat welded to crutches and its brick conning tower of a marine memorial craned eagerly for the sea. Curling out inland the road whisked him on and on, an outcast searching for somewhere to call home. And by some geographical trick, the Baltic waited for him again at the end of an exposed finger pointing accusingly at Denmark.
Tapering away the road ran round the back of a hill, a high point above the desolate beaches. Nick left the car by a wavy ridge of sand craters and dunes forming the ragged edge of a tree line, a small plantation spreading sleepily up and over an outcrop. A freak of nature, a bump not flattened and stripped clean. The isolation made him feel totally at home and Nick worked quickly, pouring out three-quarters of the vodka and added mineral water. Carefully, he filled one condom with glucose powder and tied it securely at the neck.
He walked on the sea wall as out in the channel steerage buoys flashed at him, one big eye then another as incoming ships brighter than palaces headed in from the open sea. A girl in her twenties lugged two rubbish sacks up the pontoon from a motor cruiser. He watched the awkward sway on her hips, the strain tell on her arms as she tossed the sacks into a battere
d skip below the wall. She had a mass of pale blonde hair and freckles waiting for the sun. She glanced curiously up at Nick.
‘You lost?’
‘Admiring the view,’ Nick shouted in return.
‘Why not, it’s free,’ she laughed and was gone.
Alone again, the cold wrapped itself round Nick’s fingers as he checked the magazine clip. Satisfied, he tucked the H&K into the waistband of his black cords, barrel down in the small of his back. A ghostly silhouette of a ketch motored through the channel; its engine light and soft, overcome by a scudding swelling tide racing over a sandbar. The coast was a dark thin line of stillness and peace, the only light came from the hill, a pale glow. Tolz was at home. He climbed up the headland avoiding offering himself as a premature target, his ascent left and right never straight. Crouching between fallen branches ripped off in a storm, Nick saw Tolz’s motorhome in an uneven clearing levelled by spars, wooden staging boards making a temporary walkway over the sandy earth. Parked next to it an expensive jeep facing down the track, ready it seemed for a rapid escape.
Thirty, forty paces down the boards and Nick had made enough noise to know he could only go on. A motion sensor spotlight fused him to the top of aluminium steps, the muscles in his arms tightening. Nick hammered on the door and its skin buckled under his fist; a sprinkling of twigs and stems from a startled owl or bird in overhanging branches clattered on the motorhome’s roof.
‘Tolz, Tolz, you hear me?’ Nick shouted, not sure where to direct his message. ‘I need to talk. Tolz?’ He beat on the door again, holding up his offering.
The latch turned and the door opened wide enough for him to squeeze in, right into the twin tubes of a shotgun locked onto his chest.
‘Close it, my man,’ Tolz stepped back giving his visitor all the room he needed. ‘Show me,’ Tolz swung Nick’s carrier bag with the shotgun barrel. ‘Empty it,’ said Tolz, indicating a spot on the table for Nick to place the cigarettes and vodka.
‘It’s a show of good faith,’ said Nick emptying his carrier.
‘Now let’s see if you’re clean.’ He waved the shotgun to show how Nick should raise his arms and spread his legs. Tolz patted Nick’s sides and pockets without any skill, missing the H&K in the small of his back. ‘What’s your handle?’ he demanded, prodding him into the centre of the van. ‘Your birthday tag? Many happy returns who?’
‘Greiz.’
The interior looked as though it had been searched and never put right, dirty cups and plates were stacked in uneven piles on a stained carpet. This is how it always is Nick thought, Tolz is too high to notice. Twenty-six? Seven? And he’s hooked with a bad craving, needing the heater full on, circulating the smell of grease from meals cooked for speed. He went where the shotgun sent him, to a bench-divan. Tolz swayed by the cooker, the shotgun balanced across his forearm as his free hand unscrewed the cap of the vodka bottle.
‘You’re the investigator, Greiz, that right, that your gig?’ He talked as though a hand were applying pressure to his larynx, strangling him slowly. He gulped at the vodka and some ran wide of his mouth, a dribble cascading down his unshaven chin, dropping onto his faded white T-shirt dedicated to saving whales.
‘I hear you’re a friend of Sabine’s?’
‘Trouble, first-rate bitch.’ He shook his head and a coil of greasy hair skidded and smeared his round wire glasses. A pastiche of a 1960s student refusing to reform, his hair ran to his shoulders, a thick Left Bank moustache worn as a token of intent; symbols of a lubricious life lived in hustling for the next plunge of the needle. ‘Greiz…well, well. Blümhof said you might make a visit.’
‘He was right.’
‘Sure he is, Blümhof’s cool. Now my man, it’s time for a smoke before I leave, I’m already late,’ said Tolz.
With one hand Nick tore the cellophane on the carton and lifted a pack of Camel cigarettes out, laying them carefully on the edge of table. Tolz pounced, the puncture marks down the inside of his arm as livid as insect stings.
‘How was Sabine trouble?’ Nick asked as Tolz continually sniffed.
‘Shut it! No more,’ he raged and pushed the shotgun forward. ‘I’m a peace loving guy, Greiz,’ he said breathing fast, sounding ready to short circuit. ‘But you’ve screwed that all up.’ He pushed a holdall part full out of his way with a cowboy boot that had a scuffed toe. ‘Blümhof is not pleased, he’s not a guy to cross.’
‘Did Sabine cross him?’
‘That bitch crossed everyone.’ Tolz had smoked the cigarette half through with long nervous draws. He flicked the ash in the tiny sink where it stuck to a pan coated in fat. ‘Maybe I’ll get a reward for taking you out, my man.’ Tolz brought up the shotgun. Stretching his neck to the window he listened, an ear close to the glass that transmitted nothing but the groaning of branches over the van. ‘You’re a threat, big bad threat. Yeah, number one wanted man. Gold star, Greiz, gold star for me if I take care of you.’ The cigarette, burnt out between his lips, flew into the sink after the ash. ‘A main man is having to come and put Blümhof and Sergei’s operation back together again. They not happy, they want you to suffer Greiz, suffer real bad.’
‘Who is coming?’
Tolz stared at Nick as though he were a hallucination. ‘You’re not listening, man. Sergei’s main man, the one who gives the orders.’
‘When?’
Drinking from the bottle, Tolz’s mind tried to organise and recoup his plans that Greiz had shattered. Hissing on a bunk built up over the driver’s seat the gas lamp was getting into his senses, leaking into the nerves, blocking his thoughts. Any second and he’d blow it out for good. ‘Look Greiz, this isn’t personal. Only I’ve got to consider my future.’ He drank harder, trying for a quick hit from the booze.
‘Where is Sergei’s boss going to meet them?’ Nick asked again, and held his breath, worried he would never have chance to reach the H&K digging into his back.
Going for more vodka Tolz changed his mind. A swing of mood and his eyes took on a distant stare. ‘You think I’m dumb? You’re more crazy than me. What you got to offer? You got something good as a starter for our deal?’ he asked, high pitched notes along with a thin grim line on his lips composing a goodbye smile.
‘Something to let you forget that I called. Relaxation, while I walk away,’ Nick proposed, and in slow motion brought out a bloated condom. ‘Free, a favour from me, Christmas come early.’
In disbelief Tolz waved the shotgun and Nick held up his hands. Sweat streaked Tolz’s face, plummeting in steady droplets to soak the whale on his chest. Balancing the shotgun in one hand, waving it determinedly at Nick’s head, he laughed and grinned, now more than ever totally unpredictable. He stuck out his left arm for the condom. Nick came off the bench seat fast. His head down, the heat off Tolz and his stinking odour right in his face. Tolz squeezed the trigger and the pans in the sink took the full force of the cartridges, bouncing, flying through the van. One blow put Tolz on his back and Nick landed on him, his knee in Tolz’s throat. He slammed the H&K into Tolz’s beating temple; Tolz screaming he was blind, screamed and yelled until Nick jammed a scraggy piece of towel into his hand.
‘You never got round to the important details. Where is the meeting going to be held?’ Nick yelled, retrieving the shotgun and tossing it up on the bunk. He poured vodka onto Tolz’s scalp turning the blood pale. ‘I still want to hear?’
‘Bad, I’m hurting bad,’ Tolz groaned, bending the crook of his glasses over his ear one handed, the other clamped the towel to his wound. ‘A couple of snorts, medicine, make me complete again,’ he pleaded.
‘Try it,’ said Nick and threw the condom down to Tolz who bit open the knot, licked his finger and dipped it into the powder.
‘Wise man, a bad trick you’ve pulled,’ he said, the glucose running through his fingers onto the filthy carpet. ‘Bad man, Greiz.’
‘Where?’
‘Place owned by Blümhof.’ Weary, unable to stop his nose running, he tipped his he
ad back and closed his eyes.
The vodka finally caught up with him and the cold sweat thinned out. Emptying all the vodka over Tolz’s head Nick watched as the torrent ran down his face, hanging in the thick moustache that Tolz licked with real desperation. Nick smashed the bottle into the table. ‘Where?’ He lifted a pan out of the sink full with dregs of food and oily water. ‘Tell me?’ He emptied it slowly over Tolz’s bowed head.
Spitting it out, sitting straight up, Tolz shook it off in a fine spray. ‘Blümhof has a boatyard in Blankenese, uses it to import and export things, bad things, good things. The main man is due to call soon, in a day, a couple of days. I don’t know, he didn’t share the details with me.’
‘Great, now move, get up, move.’
‘You mad? You crazy? Where?’ Tolz stared up at Nick, one scary monster too many. One of those weird creatures he’d had dealings with before; shapeless forms that came looking for him from a planet with an inky cold moon. He blinked but this one wouldn’t disappear and the more he looked, the more real it became.
‘Move it.’ Nick stood clear as Tolz grappled with his legs, useless funny pieces of skin, bone and muscle that he didn’t quite know what to do with.
A prolonged burst of automatic rounds came from the tree line, rupturing the motorhome’s panels. Nick threw himself forward towards the driving compartment as the photographer’s body twitched and jerked. Rapid fire spraying the cabin; glass, metal, fabric and wood flew around in swirls of dust. The noise piercing, as though Nick were inside a metal drum some demented half-wit was determined to beat flat.
Hugged down on the musty carpet Nick clambered over the front seats, pushing himself flat into the footwell. Reaching up Nick opened the passenger door then bundled himself out, rolling, clinging to his drawn H&K. Hunkering down by the wheel arch Nick waited.
A full minute passed before Nick heard feet crunching over the debris inside the motorhome, pause at Tolz and move towards the driving compartment. Raising his H&K, Nick’s aim traversed with the footfalls. Bracing himself Nick fired in rapid succession, aiming high then low, sweeping along the panels. There was no cry of pain just a dull heavy thud. Nick reloaded and slowly straightened up, his H&K in a double-handed grip.
