Hotel Cartagena

by Simone Buchholz

  He could rip up the street in his rage and frustration.

  All the members of Team Process are standing around in their places, maddeningly cool, exuding a maximum of patience. Stepanovic leans on a pillar beside Rönnau and tries to exude anything but the thing crawling through his every fibre: up there in that bar, surrounded by rather a lot of guns, is this woman who also doesn’t give a damn about process, while not giving one about his love, or about danger either. Besides which, and he finds this a rather unattractive thought, but sod it, it’s just the way he feels, he hates the idea that there are two guys with her who are, or were, both regularly allowed to sleep with her. He doesn’t know which is tormenting him more: the fact that something could happen to her, or the fact that the other two arseholes might get to play the role of her knight in shining armour and not him.

  Is that all you care about? he thinks, lighting what feels like his forty-seventh cigarette. Finding the right moment to prance about on that sodding horse for the right woman?

  Embarrassing, Ivo.

  You really should be ashamed of yourself.

  There are loads of other people up there too. If you really want to be a knight, then at least be one for everybody. But hey, everyone’s stepped in shit of their own. Rönnau also sticks yet another cigarette in his mouth.

  Stepanovic looks at him.

  ‘My knightly armour’s a bit stiff today,’ he says, ‘how’s yours?’

  ‘Oh boy,’ says Rönnau, ‘I need a new set every year these days, because I never fit into last season’s one anymore.’

  ‘Oh, come off it, you’re looking fine.’

  ‘Ah, well, just lost three stone.’ Rönnau drags on his cigarette. ‘So, what d’you reckon, anything coming from up there any time soon?’

  ‘That us two can get to work on here?’

  Rönnau nods.

  Stepanovic shakes his head.

  ‘I don’t think so. They seem very calm to me. A bit smug, almost. They’d have got in touch ages ago if they had any specific demands.’

  He looks at his watch.

  ‘It’s half past ten, so this has been going on for two-and-a-half hours now. If you’ve got demands, you get them onto the table sooner than this, don’t you?’

  The police detectives are gathered together on the corner; now a young woman with a smartphone in her hand leaves the huddle, she makes a beeline for Rönnau and Stepanovic, nods a quick greeting and says: ‘The hostage-takers.’

  Rönnau immediately chucks his cigarette away.

  ‘Have they made contact?’

  ‘Yes, but in a very unorthodox kind of way.’

  The woman holds the phone out to the negotiators.

  ‘They’re streaming via Facebook. Bild’s all over it, and so are two private TV channels and a few news sites.’

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ says Stepanovic, as the man on the display chokes his way through a very large sausage. ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Probably Konrad Hoogsmart,’ says the detective, ‘we’re just trying to verify that. If we’re right, he’s the man who owns this palace.’

  ‘Just stay tuned,’ says Rönnau, ‘absolutely stay tuned. That stream is our keyhole in there.’

  ‘Of course,’ says the woman, contracting her eyebrows, ‘what are you thinking?’

  ‘I’m not so sure about that,’ says Stepanovic and points at Himmelmann, who’s on his phone while pacing to and fro like a tiger in an imaginary cage, two metres by two metres, on the asphalt, always up and down, up and down. ‘If that isn’t the situation room on the other end of that line…’

  ‘They can’t shut it down,’ says Rönnau, ‘absolutely no way.’

  The detective is standing right next to him and has practically linked arms with him. Please give a warm welcome to the first member of the We’re-Staying-Tuned Front.

  ‘I’ll head over there,’ says Stepanovic. ‘Perhaps I can take some kind of supportive action, in the right direction, that is.’

  He’s so much a part of the group that’s just forming.

  Himmelmann is talking intensely into his phone: ‘Of course it’s an ethics problem, but that doesn’t usually bother Hamburg police, for God’s sake.’

  Stepanovic positions himself at his side and tries to catch his eye.

  Himmelmann reacts at once.

  The two men nod to each other.

  ‘All of us here are in favour of not cutting the stream.’

  The incident room talks but not loudly enough that you can hear without a phone to your ear.

  ‘And where’s the specialist from Frankfurt got to, anyway?’

  Ah.

  Himmelmann in smart distraction mode.

  ‘On his way then, I see,’ he says, looking at Stepanovic. ‘And incidentally, we mustn’t forget exactly who’s stuck up there. We can’t do without the stream. And then we’ll talk later about why, unfortunately, it wasn’t as simple as that to shut down. Facebook, you know. We’ll point the finger at Silicon Valley.’

  The incident room again.

  ‘Give us at least two or three hours, then we’ll see.’

  Himmelmann’s fighting.

  Silence. There isn’t even a rustle at the other end of the line. A loud silence at most.

  ‘OK. Yes, speak later.’

  Himmelmann pockets his phone.

  ‘We’ll speak again in an hour,’ he says, looking at Stepanovic.

  ‘Who d’you need to deal with in the control room there?’ asks Stepanovic. ‘Who’s calling the shots for the time being?’

  ‘Magath,’ says Himmelmann, ‘hard-ass. Know him?’

  Stepanovic smiles.

  ‘Next time you have an urgent need to go to the toilet or somewhere just hand him over to me. We were on the police football team together. I know how to keep him on the margins.’

  Himmelmann nods, gives as low-key a grin as possible, pulls his phone out again and views the livestream from the bar.

  Konrad Hoogsmart has just spewed a lump of sausage onto his shirt.

  ‘Oh man,’ says Himmelmann, ‘you can hardly watch.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ says Stepanovic. ‘I’ve certainly seen people I feel sorrier for.’

  ‘I didn’t just hear that.’

  Stepanovic shrugs.

  ‘I didn’t say a thing.’

  A black saloon car pulls up right behind them. A man in a red roll-neck jumper, black leather jacket and brown ankle boots takes the stage, his chestnut hair is thick and glossy and casually swept back.

  The guy from Frankfurt’s here.

  He walks over to Himmelmann and Stepanovic and holds out his hand to them.

  ‘Alex Meier,’ he says, ‘I hear I can be of assistance.’

  SPOTLESS DISPLAY OF EMOTION

  It’s not nice, watching someone throw up. And now I am actually glad that nobody’s so much as touched the rice crackers yet. Just the colour, whoa.

  ‘Oh,’ says Number One, leaning over a little towards his premium hostage, ‘aren’t you feeling well?’

  Hoogsmart spits out fatty lumps, I try to switch off my hearing.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Number One, ‘it’s stupid. I know that feeling through and through, when all you want to do is puke or preferably even die because everything hurts so badly. Lots of people who’ve had dealings with you know that feeling.’

  He straightens up again and takes a step back.

  ‘Do you still remember what it was like when you first thought you were worth more than everyone else?’

  Hoogsmart stops spitting things out and looks at Number One but doesn’t say anything. Probably he can’t, or else he would, because everything about his posture, everything in his face looks as though he’d love to yell STOP.

  ‘In the last year I’ve spoken to loads of people about you,’ says Number One.

  He signals to his colleague with the Uzi to go back to pressing the gun into Hoogsmart’s head, a little harder, please.

  A few chunks drop onto the
guy’s shirt.

  ‘And keep on stuffing your face,’ says Number One, pointing at the bags, ‘you don’t normally have any problem with that.’

  Hoogsmart reaches into the bag, takes out the next sausage and looks at it.

  Fear and revulsion in a single breath, if he still even knows how to do that, to breathe. Wonder if people like him actually breathe exactly the same way that I breathe, or if it’s a fund amentally different procedure.

  He doesn’t manage to bite any of the sausage off.

  He gives it a kind of lazy suck.

  It’s the fourth of these massive meatsticks in a row.

  I wouldn’t even manage half of one without hurling it against the first available wall. I look around the bar. By now everyone, without exception, is busy with not looking or, as the case may be, holding their hands to their mouths.

  Even in this dusky light, it’s easy to see that the only woman who’s still here apart from Anne Stanislawski, Carla, the barwoman and me, is looking pretty greenish around the gills. One of the two younger guys has just spat something into his beer glass and I’d rather not know precisely what.

  Meanwhile, Number One is getting ever further into his stride.

  He narrates Hoogsmart’s childhood, perhaps because it’s clear that Hoogsmart can’t or won’t say anything for now, but perhaps also because he has a need to set all this out in minute detail. He’s careful not to get into the picture, but he’s talking louder than before so that the people outside can hear him.

  Yes.

  Perhaps that’s what this is about: the man who’s held up an entire hotel just wants to be heard.

  ‘So, Conny,’ he says, ‘let’s tell everyone here now, very slowly, for the record. You grew up in Othmarschen as the child of a rich – sorry, very rich – family, generations of Hamburg merchants, in that little palace on a large estate on the Elbe. Just as a real property on the Elbe should be, handed down undivided. Your grandparents, who lived in a somewhat more restrained palace in Blankenese, took you for lots of strolls along the Alster, every Sunday they and their grandson drove out in the Bentley from the banks of the Elbe to Pöseldorf. One Sunday, you took it into your head to tease a swan, which started off being astonishingly good-natured for a swan, but then it wasn’t anymore. Do you remember?’

  Hoogsmart slumps on his chair and pushes something away.

  ‘The swan bit you on the hand after you gave it a few slaps. And then you convinced your grandparents that it was the swan’s fault.’

  Number One walks to the bar, mixes another G&T, walks back behind the tripod and takes up his story again.

  ‘Mind you, your grandfather convinced the furious man whose entire job it was to care for the swans to let the matter rest; well, er, maybe convinced isn’t quite the word. He threatened him. Here, he said, smell my power. My influence. It would be very easy to lose a nice job like this, father to Hamburg’s swans, he said, and then what? What would you do then? How’d you make a living? A common animal keeper in the zoo? Or would you rather move straight in under a bridge?’

  He swigs his drink and lights a cigarette.

  ‘The swan was killed, Conny, did you take that in at the time? The bird had apparently got too dangerous. You were five years old. Was that the moment when you realised that you could do what you liked?’

  He signs to the Uzi-colleague, who takes the gun from Hoogsmart’s temple and holds it under his chin. Raises the chin with the gun, so that Hoogsmart has to look at Number One.

  ‘Why aren’t you eating, Conny?’

  The Uzi-colleague presses the gun against Hoogsmart’s lower jaw.

  Hoogsmart holds the sausage to his mouth, then he bites into it and tries to chew and swallow.

  ‘Well,’ says Number One, ‘we’ll let it go for now. Seeing as we’re having such a nice chat.’

  I hear a gagging sound and think about distracting myself by starting to talk to my burning thumb and finally asking it what the hell it’s been wanting from me all this time. My friends are staring at their glasses as if in a trance. As if their plugs have been pulled out.

  ‘And the boy in your class, Conny, what was his name again, the one who got expelled when you were eight? The one who’d tangled with you because he wanted to protect someone else, a gentle, shy boy? Blast, it’s on the tip of my tongue. Hm. Might come to me later. We’ve got time, huh?’

  Hoogsmart looks very, very tired. His head is starting to sway.

  ‘Sheesh, Conny, not in the mood for talking, hm? Have another bite to eat then,’ says Number One. ‘It’s your party. We’re doing all this just for you.’

  ‘Well,’ says Faller, he keeps his head down but his voice fills the room as if it was God talking. No idea how he’s done that, but he’s sitting very straight and emanating something. As if he’s been figuring things out.

  ‘Well,’ he says again, lifting his head. ‘Actually, this was originally my party.’

  He stands up.

  So, my friends, the old man’s weighed in. And how.

  Number One has turned round and is looking at Faller.

  ‘I know,’ he says, ‘and I sincerely apologise for having messed your evening up, sir.’

  Then he pulls his .45 and points it at Faller.

  ‘But kindly sit back down for now and shut up.’

  Faller briefly puts his hands up, then he takes his beer, walks to the bar and sits down on one of the stools.

  Number One is still pointing the gun at him.

  ‘What’s wrong now,’ says Faller, ‘I’m sitting down, aren’t I?’

  Number One and I breathe in and out again, precisely in synch.

  Dude.

  For real?

  Then he turns away.

  Puts the gun away again.

  Let’s get on with it.

  He signals that things are to continue as if nothing had just happened, but Faller’s sitting damn close to them now. The people around me, our gang, my family, have frozen to ice.

  None of us is letting Faller out of our sight now, and Calabretta has taken on a rather catlike air.

  Faller takes a gulp of his beer.

  Konrad Hoogsmart spits onto his shirt.

  Number One says: ‘Don’t puke, Conny, eat.’

  The colleague with the Uzi presses harder.

  ‘The secretary at the posh school on the waterside you went on to,’ says Number One, ‘she remembers you very well, to this day. The old lady almost ends up in tears if you talk to her about you. She cries for all the pupils you tormented. Every year, someone else left the school. And, with the help of your parents and the headteacher, who was a friend of your father’s, you always managed to make it look like you were the whipping boy. The boy whose face you pissed on in the toilets while your so-called bodyguards held him down, was apparently the epitome of brutality, yet he was only defending himself. The boy who called you a sonofabitch, which was obviously totally unacceptable in such classy surroundings, grew up with his dad because his mum, who you kept calling a bitch, had died. And then there was the nice stunt with the pliers. Nipple-twisting you called it. Just a bit odd that it was always the same boys who got their nipples twisted. Never you though.’

  My thumb needs fresh ice and fresh alcohol; it’s just like me in fact.

  I pick up the lukewarm tumbler, stand up, walk over to the drinks cupboard and tip the used vodka away. Ice, vodka and, oh, a fresh gin and tonic. In passing, I hiss at Faller.

  ‘What the fuck?’

  He raises his eyebrows.

  ‘What the fuck, I asked.’

  ‘You’re a fine one to talk,’ he says, and I find it hard to come up with a witty response to that. I take my stuff, sit down and rest my thumb in the cold spirit. I tip a little of the other cold spirit down my throat.

  Calabretta hasn’t relaxed again, but he’s no worse either.

  ‘Or Sandrine,’ Number One says now, ‘does that name mean anything to you, Conny?’

  Hoogsmart looks up
and Number One suddenly has his full attention.

  Sandrine.

  Look at that.

  I bet that means something to him. The way he’s looking.

  ‘Ah,’ says Number One, ‘maybe we’ll come back to that later. Interesting story.’

  Hoogsmart suddenly bites into the sausage in his hand entirely of his own accord, chews and swallows, and bites again. As if the thought of this Sandrine were tidying him up or maybe even repairing him, or worse: turning him on.

  Hoogsmart keeps eating.

  He really gobbles.

  As if he’s developed a kind of craving for the revolting stuff.

  I take a large swig of my gin and tonic.

  Faller drums very softly on the bar with his fingers, but really very softly.

  ‘Sandrine changed schools after her intense encounter with you, even before the summer holidays,’ says Number One. ‘Whereas you: you hadn’t even finished school when you inherited your grandparents’ house in Blankenese because the noble elders preferred to live on Sylt. Perfectly understandable. Probably Hamburg was starting to get a bit dirty for them. And you moved in straight away. That was perfectly all right by your parents, wasn’t it? They’d long realised that it might be better to keep you out of the family business. It was around then that they told you your little sister would take it all over one day. Did that hurt, I wonder?’

  He pulls out his .45, crouches down and fiddles with it.

  ‘Let me guess: you didn’t care.’

  Hoogsmart spits out a lump of meat, but intentionally this time.

  ‘Anyway,’ says Number One. ‘I guess that was when you discovered the red-light district for yourself. A guy like you would have been well looked after in the Kiez, even then. Expensive clothes. Acting like you knew a bit about business. Just cos you had all the chat. When you talked about business, you dropped English words in there, Conny, as if YOU were the business. And it worked. Everything you touched really turned to money. You always surrounded yourself with the right people. If you thought they were the wrong ones, you dropped them. Your incredible talent for pointing the finger at your victim and getting away with it totally paid off: it was almost uncanny. Might’ve been because victims have never gone down well in the Kiez. After all, victims never really do go down well in worlds made up of people like you. Guys who think they’re winners. You’re a winner, Conny, oh yes, that you are.’