Hotel Cartagena

by Simone Buchholz

Lunch on the beach was over, but Conny was still in the toilet shack.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said one of the men who were here at his expense, ‘good old Conny, he must just be doing a couple more lines.’

  And then they raved a bit more about old times. The coke parties that Conny had hosted in the early nineties, in his grandparents’ house in Blankenese. When they’d bathed their faces in powder and whores.

  ‘Hey ho,’ said another, ‘shame that couldn’t go on for ever.’

  ‘Hey ho,’ sighed the third.

  ‘Turned out all right again though,’ the first one was speaking again, ‘just imagine: if Conny hadn’t grassed them all up back then, a guy like him would’ve become the dropping-the-soap-specialist in jail.’

  ‘A guy like Conny would’ve kicked the bucket, he’d never have got out of there, and we wouldn’t be here now, guys. Doesn’t bear thinking about…’

  But by then Henk had stopped listening.

  By then he’d long realised who Conny Hoogsmart was: namely the guy who’d caused all the shit.

  The man who was responsible for Henning Garbarek’s misfortune.

  Yet since the time he turned grass so spectacularly, when he’d let everyone who’d done business with Knut, Heinz and Norbert get busted, he’d been permanently walking on the sunny side.

  Konrad ‘Conny’ Hoogsmart was the original arsehole.

  Henk felt everything inside him turn to stone. The poisonous snake had come back and it had crawled inside him, bringing such power that he could have sworn he was a dragon.

  He didn’t yet know exactly what he had in mind, he only knew that he had something in mind, and he started doing press-ups, first twenty a day, then thirty a day, then forty, he added more and more. When he’d got to two hundred press-ups, he sold the diving station on condition that the new owners contract his favourite couple to run the place, and took a container ship to Hamburg.

  COLUMBOISHNESS

  ‘All right, I’ve just been told I should pop in here and say hello, because apparently we’re both on the same team, but we’ve never met, so who the hell are you?’

  The guy’s pushed the tent flap aside and is standing on the street, which has just this minute become a threshold. He’s got thick, black hair, shot through with a few silver strands and parted on the side, he’s wearing a screaming-blue roll-neck jumper under an unironed, beige trench coat, and he was probably in his early twenties the last time he was slim. His eyebrows are dark and sharply defined, his mouth is just a single mocking twist, he’s very carefully, if not exactly freshly, shaved. His pale trousers are a touch too long and too baggy and are held up by a wide black belt, his shoes look as though you could walk to Stralsund and back in them, and do that right now.

  He looks at Stepanovic as if he doesn’t see him as a colleague, but more as a dog that’s strayed into the situation, which, strictly speaking, he is.

  ‘Ivo Stepanovic, SCO44,’ says Stepanovic, ‘and yes, if you happen to be one of the negotiators, we’re now colleagues.’

  He stands up as he says that.

  So. Six foot four.

  Just deploying body height too.

  ‘But looking at you like that, I’d bet more on Inspector Columbo.’

  He’d felt the thing with the dog and returned it in a split second. At once the two of them find themselves in some kind of thing.

  ‘Rönnau,’ says the Columbo guy, lifting his chin up, ‘Dr Ulrich Kai Rönnau, psychologist from SCO2, mission support.’ He clears his throat. ‘But feel free to call me Doc Uli, I usually respond pretty well to that.’

  ‘OK, Doc Uli,’ says Stepanovic, raising his eyebrows, ‘I’m Ivo.’

  He holds the tension in his body.

  ‘Is just Uli OK?’

  The two men don’t shake hands because all their hands are shoved as brutally as possible into trouser pockets just now, and hey, why bother changing a situation that also keeps their hands warm and dry, and safer all round, of course?

  ‘It’s OK,’ says Rönnau, looking Stepanovic in the eye, his chin still slightly pushed out. A little Morricone would be good now, but all you can hear is the foghorn on a container ship.

  ‘Are you on your own?’ asks Stepanovic.

  ‘Not anymore,’ says Rönnau, he’s lowered his voice the precise notch that might or might not be necessary, depending how you look at it.

  Stepanovic thinks about sitting back down again because he suddenly gets the feeling of being part of a very big heap of bullshit. But OK, he’ll play along a moment longer.

  ‘Don’t negotiators usually come in pairs?’

  ‘Usually, yes,’ says Rönnau drawing out the word yes. ‘But our colleague from Bergedorf was in a car crash on the way here.’

  ‘No,’ says Stepanovic and now he really is a bit startled. A car crash is always a damn sight too close to home for someone who loves to drive as much as Ivo Stepanovic does.

  ‘Yep,’ says Rönnau. ‘But no drama, probably just a little whiplash.’

  He shifts his weight onto the tips of his toes and back again.

  ‘Should we step outside for a bit first and have a smoke?’

  He glances over his right shoulder into the street, as if he needs to check something.

  ‘And then you can tell me at your leisure what you’ve got.’

  Mr Morricone, please, paging Mr Morricone. On the megaphones, on the speakers, on the turntables, whatever: you’re up.

  Stepanovic fires off a sigh and says: ‘A smoke is fine, but as far as I’m concerned, let’s just give the rest of it a rest.’

  Rönnau fumbles a somewhat crooked cigarette out of his coat pocket, gives Stepanovic one last look, as if he’d like to operate on his brain, sticks the cigarette in his mouth, lights it and says: ‘OK.’

  Then, in all his Columboishness, he strides out into the night and relinquishes the threshold between the tent and the street.

  Stepanovic follows him, shaking his head.

  Outside then, smoking the proffered peace pipe, looking at the hotel bar while this typical Hamburg drizzle, that is potentially such a cliché, comes down and strokes both men on their middle-aged faces, Rönnau says, without looking at Stepanovic, obviously: ‘DCI Himmelmann has informed me that we have four serving colleagues, two non-serving colleagues and a public prosecutor up there.’

  ‘Correct,’ says Stepanovic, ‘although have might not necessarily be the operative word.’

  Rönnau professionally ignores the little jibe; it immediately dissolves into the air.

  ‘Anything else I ought to know?’

  He holds his cigarette like other people hold a key. It virtually hangs from his right hand.

  ‘Any kind of special personal relationships between you and our colleagues in there? Or even between the colleagues?’

  ‘That,’ says Stepanovic, ‘has fuck all to do with you, Uli,’ thus on one hand straightening the situation up another fraction, while, on the other, laying the foundations for the rest of the night.

  Rönnau shrugs his shoulders, juts out his lower lip and says: ‘Hm.’

  It’s just short of half past nine.

  It’s about time for a beer and a corn schnapps.

  St Pauli, summer 2018

  First he recruited a go-between, late one evening in a shabby pub, then, little by little, the rest of the team. A total of twelve colleagues: eleven for the hostage situation up in the bar, one for the exit strategy.

  For each of them, it wasn’t just the money they could earn from the campaign that counted. What counted was the possibility of destroying Conny Hoogsmart, with whom they all, without exception, had a score to settle. Henk had sought them out for precisely that reason.

  They had to be prepared to take a risk.

  A big risk.

  For that you need more than the prospect of a million euros apiece.

  Once Henk had the keys to the empty warehouse on the Oberhafen in hand, they started to implement the plan that he had forged on Cura
çao in the fires of his rage.

  They found the one employee in Hamburg’s biggest architecture firm who was ready and willing to be bribed into getting the hotel plans for them.

  They stayed at the River Palace as often as possible, in various configurations and disguises and under various names, so as to learn the procedures in the place by heart.

  They got hold of guns and explosives: the former-Yugoslavian ex-soldier who had the junk shop on Talstrasse also had an extra room with an inexhaustible supply of everything that kills with a bang.

  They bought well-fitting suits and whatever else they needed by way of costume.

  They got their hands on the equipment for their exit.

  They took care of the technology.

  They organised the tunnel borer.

  The man in charge of the tunnel started boring right away, taking his time, centimetre by centimetre.

  Once they were ready to get hold of the keycards for the sprinkler system room, they knew that the time for preparation was over.

  THE WURST IS YET TO COME

  They’ve rigged something up: a chair, a table and a stand with a mount for a smartphone. On the table are several paper bags. Just now, they pulled the bags out of assorted briefcases they’d clearly brought with them and stowed under their tables when they arrived here a few hours ago, as ordinary customers in suits.

  Number One pulls a phone from his trouser pocket and, judging by the way he handles it, it isn’t his. It must be one of the ones that were gathered up earlier.

  He looks at the phone like it’s a shoe with shit stuck to it.

  Then, with the gun in his other hand, he goes over to the two blokes in the expensive suits and stops in front of one of them, in front of the one who’s still sucking his belly in so awkwardly.

  ‘So, this must be yours,’ he says, holding it under his nose.

  Wait: he’s holding it up to his face.

  Got you.

  The display lights up.

  The back of the telephone has a matt-gold sheen.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Number One with a smile, ‘I remembered right, it’s definitely yours.’

  The sentence lands in the faces of the other hostages like a mighty clap of thunder. Until just now, a distinct veneer of politeness had added a friendly air to the strange situation. Now someone’s been singled out and the veneer is gone.

  Things are getting moving but not in a good way, and the tone seems to be turning rather shriller, at least when it comes to the guy who owns the phone.

  Number One holds the gun to his temple.

  ‘Stand up and come with me.’

  The guy stands up and walks, flanked by Number One and another captor with an Uzi, to the chair with the table and the bags. He’s quite clearly given to understand that he’s to sit down.

  Number One puts his gun away, the Uzi’s at the guy’s head now, which should be more than enough.

  Then Number One fiddles about on the phone, sticks the thing on the stand and pushes one of the bags closer to the guy.

  ‘Open it and start eating.’

  The guy hesitates briefly.

  The Uzi is pressed rather more firmly against his temple.

  With trembling fingers, he rips the bag open and pulls out a large, fatty sausage.

  He’s sitting facing us, with his back to the floor-to-ceiling windows by the entrance. Behind him is the glittering harbour panorama. He looks a little as though what is happening here is no massive surprise.

  As if he’d known all along that this was about him.

  He was tenser than the rest of us put together, I’d seen that from the off, with a sense of foreboding, and now he seems almost relieved that things are finally happening. But the relief in his face has nothing to do with an absence of fear, it’s more as though the hours of waiting before root canal treatment are over.

  Which, of course, doesn’t make the procedure as a whole even a fraction better, because this here’s a place where they work without anaesthetic. It would be going too far to say that I have any hopes for the bloke, but I wouldn’t begrudge it to him if he’d actually had a couple of drinks before his cue just now.

  Number One carries on fiddling about on the phone and taps at it a few times. Meanwhile, the guy in the chair takes the first bite into the sausage that he’s to eat, if you please, although, no: nobody said please.

  It’s a pretty revolting sausage. It cracks as he bites into it and it’s easy to imagine the way the fat and the meat are spreading over his teeth.

  Number One appears satisfied, positions himself beside the stand and looks at the sausage man. He’s now standing with his back to us.

  ‘Camera’s rolling,’ he says. ‘We can start.’

  OK, understood.

  He’s filming.

  The sausage man chews and swallows, they’re dreadful, the sounds coming from his mouth.

  ‘So,’ says Number One, ‘go ahead.’

  ‘But I’m already eating,’ says the sausage man and he looks at his legs, which are trembling. ‘What else?’

  ‘Tell everyone in here and out there who you are and what you are.’

  The sausage man swallows and lifts his head.

  ‘And keep eating, the bags are full, you’ve still got a lot to do tonight.’

  He bites off more of the sausage, then he says, with his mouth full and only just loud enough to be heard: ‘My name is Konrad Hoogsmart and I own this hotel.’

  ‘That’s right,’ says Number One, repeating it a little more loudly: ‘Your name is Konrad Hoogsmart and you own this hotel.’

  He turns back round to us for a moment after saying that, and there’s such an expression of triumph on his face that you’d actually like to congratulate him.

  He returns his attention to the man on the chair.

  ‘But I want you to start right at the beginning. When were you born and where? Who are your parents and your grandparents? The people out there, your friends and business partners, lots of whom have hopefully latched on to this already, are sure to want to know all about you. They’ll want to finally understand who they’re dealing with, won’t they?’

  OK.

  A film isn’t just being made here.

  It’s being streamed on the net.

  ‘What do you want from me?’

  The sausage man’s voice – sorry, what was his name again? – Konrad Hoogsmart’s voice trembles a bit.

  ‘I just told you. Are you deaf?’

  Number One points at the sausage in Hoogsmart’s hand.

  ‘Bite.’

  Hoogsmart bites, chews, swallows.

  ‘Speak nicely and tell them everything, don’t leave anything out.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘Well, just start with your birth.’

  ‘I was born in Hamburg in 1965,’ says Hoogsmart, biting off a piece of the sausage.

  ‘Parents?’ asks Number One.

  ‘Friedrich and Eva-Katherine Hoogsmart.’

  ‘Grandparents?’

  ‘Heinrich and Klara Hoogsmart.’

  ‘Don’t stop eating, Conny,’ says Number One.

  Hoogsmart eats but he’s finding it hard. It’s a large, fat sausage. This sausage has nothing to do with oh, go on then, why not.

  ‘And now tell us please: where’s your parents’ house?’

  If I were Hoogsmart, I’d ask a few questions in return, but I have neither an Uzi at my head nor a face full of revolting meat products, so it’s easy for me to shoot my mouth off.

  ‘Blankenese,’ he says.

  It’s very quiet the way he says that, it’s hard to make out his words again.

  ‘Once again please, and a little louder this time.’

  He’s keeping him over the barrel, he’s not prepared to accept imperfections, however minimal.

  ‘BLANKENESE.’

  Hoogsmart spits the word out and swallows it down all at once and I hear him choke for the first time but there’s not just revulsion in his v
oice. There’s fury.

  He seems to know what’s going on here and that he’s not going to be allowed to get up and go at the end.

  I sit as though I’ve been riveted to my chair, the others look like they’re just the same. All riveted. Moving seems impossible to me, and I don’t even want to, anyway. Nobody moves, it’s as though the whole room has been put under a gruesome curse. The situation is completely different from how it was even thirty minutes ago.

  And the cut in my thumb, which I’m still only perceiving in fits and starts, is burning its way, millimetre by millimetre, towards my bone.

  Number One withdraws behind the tripod and starts to walk up and down, then he stops and lobs a glance at me.

  He seems to be thinking about something, Stockholm syndrome maybe and whether anyone could make something of it, or whether maybe not. But maybe he just needs a brief distraction from the horror he’s busy creating here. I can understand that.

  I look at him, as stubbornly as I can.

  Hold on tight to his gaze.

  We snag on each other briefly, I try to stick with it, but he breaks it and looks out of the window, he takes the couple of grams of humanity that just jumped him for a moment there, the quiet doubt, the feeling that something isn’t working, isn’t OK and is totally going to go wrong, he takes all that, trusses it up and hurls it against the windowpane.

  Then he turns back to Konrad Hoogsmart.

  I stay with him with my eyes and think that it really wasn’t as bad as all that, and that we ought to try it again later.

  ALEX MEIER FOOTBALL GOD

  Policing-wise, the police are sorted.

  Stepanovic can hardly bear the process.

  He’s not great at bearing police process at the best of times, because he doesn’t believe in process and considers it just people’s ridiculous attempt to distract themselves from the fact that everyone’s got to die one day. But now here, with all this, and with Riley as a prisoner in a tower, there’s chaos running riot inside him, nothing even comes close to adding up anymore.

  And on top of that, there’s this hideous, shitting process.