Hotel Cartagena

by Simone Buchholz

  She looks down on him from a distance.

  ‘Sandrine was my mother, you scumbag.’

  ‘Our mother,’ says the technician with all his calm and serenity, but the deep pain that now creeps into his face makes the lamps fall from the ceiling.

  One by one, they drift to the floor, but without shattering. The lamps just lie around there.

  Feel exactly like one of those lamps.

  The barwoman leans against one of the hostage-takers, the guy with the red hair.

  She leans into him in that special way.

  Ah.

  Now that’s interesting.

  She isn’t just standing close to him.

  She is close to him.

  And the technician’s her brother.

  They were the anchor in the hotel.

  ‘Our mother jumped off the Köhlbrand Bridge ten years ago,’ says the barwoman, ‘the depression finished her off.’

  she was just sixteen, she says,

  you all were

  a friend of yours

  had the place to himself

  a cool party

  heaps of stuff

  went under the wheels

  and, well

  so did she

  she was

  in the other class from you

  she was

  the prettiest girl in the school

  you all wanted to have a go

  at all costs

  you too of course

  but she wouldn’t

  let anyone near

  and she didn’t

  drink alcohol

  never

  because she probably knew

  she had to protect herself

  from guys like you

  from guys like all of you

  you all wanted to change that

  all waited for her

  as she came out of the toilet

  pushed her into the bathroom

  luxury bathroom

  shut the doors

  poured wine inside her

  two held her fast

  one opened her mouth

  then you put things

  between her legs

  and not just things

  for over an hour

  you stayed with her

  in the bathroom

  tipped down more wine

  and rapes

  one after another

  then started again

  afterwards

  you just laid her in the bathtub

  and partied on

  The barwoman turns away. She turns towards the window. As if she can’t stand to look at Hoogsmart anymore.

  Her shoulders are shaking.

  She’s crying.

  I don’t want to see her crying.

  Not a woman like her.

  Actually, I never want to see a woman crying ever again.

  Number One goes to her, lays his hand on the back of her neck, whispers something in her ear. Then he turns back to Hoogsmart and continues on her behalf.

  ‘Sandrine pressed charges the same night,’ he says, ‘but her blood alcohol level was 0.21 per cent. And all the boys who were at the party, including you, Conny, testified unanimously that the girl had been off her face. Then she’d been unlucky enough to fall onto the radiator, with spread legs. That’s what you told the police, you and your arsehole friends. And they actually believed it, back then in the eighties people still believed that stuff. And unfortunately, the doctor that Sandrine went to failed to find any traces of sperm, which was really very strange. Sure, you used condoms. You’re so clever, aren’t you. You thought of that. But the prosecutor in charge of the case was a friend of your father’s at the very least. And the doctor, well, you’ve got three guesses, folks.’

  I press the two tablets out of the blisters into my hand and stick them in my mouth, slosh water after them, swallow the stuff down.

  Then I shut my eyes.

  A RAIN OF ASH

  Of course Stepanovic knows it’s nonsense, that it’s just not possible; after all, there’s neither a volcano, nor a burning house, nor an Easter bonfire nearby, what a crazy idea, an Easter fire in the middle of November, not even Hamburg people would pull that stunt, but he could swear it’s raining ash.

  OK, only very gently.

  But still.

  SOME JUST SLIP TO THE FLOOR

  There’s still a bit of the chairoplane, but not much more.

  It’s blurring.

  It’s fading.

  Number One lifts his voice.

  ‘And now to the two of us, Conny.’

  Darn, I’d just about got used to it.

  To riding the chairoplane.

  ‘Back then, on that night when the cops raided your house in Blankenese, you didn’t just grass up Knut, Heinz and Norbert, you grassed up half the Kiez. That’s just not on, Conny. If life was even remotely fair, you’d never have set foot in this city again.’

  He’s standing between the dissolving chairoplane, the prisoners’ chorus, the captors’ chorus and Hoogsmart’s spot by the window. Before, everyone could hear him; now, everyone can see him too, even the internet.

  ‘But for you, weird as it sounds, the exact opposite happened. The more you trampled on people, the better things turned out for you. But that might only have worked because things were turning out worse and worse for the people you walked all over. I’ve heard so many stories about you, Conny.’

  He scratches his head with his .45, then he lets the gun sink and his arms hang down. He leaves everything hanging, he hangs for all eternity.

  ‘And here’s mine: you cost me a whole life. First, I lost my place in Cartagena, my home, if you like. A really lovely bar. And then I lost my wife and my son, the loveliest living beings you can imagine. Although. No. Don’t imagine them. I don’t want you to even think about them.’

  The carousel is barely moving now.

  It’ll stop soon.

  It’ll be gone soon.

  ‘And now,’ says Number One, ‘let’s settle the score.’

  The transparent remains of the chairoplane spit out first me, and then the others, and now it’s already vanished. We all sit ourselves down somewhere, some of us just slip to the floor by a wall or a window.

  Maybe it’ll be dawn soon.

  I think my temperature’s going down.

  The tablets are kicking in.

  ‘What time is it?’ I ask, into the hush.

  ‘Nearly half-four,’ says someone, I guess it was one of the hostage-takers.

  Hoogsmart starts to tremble, which I would too, in his shoes. When you think that we’re only now coming to the settling-of-scores. That that was very far from all. That there’s something still to come, to wit the main trial.

  THE MESSAGE

  Calabretta to Stepanovic, from the loo, with the spare phone from his ankle boot:

  wherever you are

  i’m sure you know what’s up here

  she absolutely has to get out of here soon

  she’s not well

  CUT THE CAMERA

  Number One walks towards Konrad Hoogsmart, reaches for the telephone on the stand, switches it off and drops it.

  Wow.

  So we’re carrying on without the camera.

  Whatever that means.

  BUT YOU JUST CAN’T ENDURE LOVE ALONE

  When the stream breaks off and a subtly different unease develops in the streets around the hotel, Stepanovic feels it very distinctly. Something within him breaks too, it breaks open, breaks fresh ground, it’s like a storm, or it’s more of a fire, he feels that something’s happened up there on the twentieth floor, that something’s burning, and suddenly it’s back again: the night.

  That one night that smashed everything up.

  He was a teenager – in his late teens, he was almost a man. It was a fragile time, when it’s easy for things to get smashed up anyway, when the future course of a life is set. Whether you’ll come out of there as an adult or as a lost soul.


  It was most likely a cable that started the fire. There were cables dangling all over the place, criss-crossing the stairwell in the old, unrenovated building in Sachsenhausen, Frankfurt. The racing fire ate its way to the fifth floor, where he lived with his parents and his sister, who was three years younger. He was her big brother, her protector in the school playground and in the streets. Any time anyone came too close to Ana, or insulted her, or even threatened her from a distance, he’d be there. In fact, he was always with her, and he’d still managed that even after he’d finished primary school. Nobody dared mess with Ana, because of Ivo, you know. Her big brother.

  He lived in the profound belief that nothing could happen to Ana so long as he was near her, and Ana probably believed that too.

  But the fire was faster and stronger than Ivo.

  Ana often locked her door at night, and she’d done so then; she liked to be alone, she hated being disturbed. The fire brigade said later that she’d quite likely already been unconscious when Ivo and his parents were hammering on her door.

  Common in a case like this.

  Smoke inhalation.

  She’d no longer even have noticed their father trying to break down the door with the only tool he had to hand, a poker for the old stove. But the doors in the old building were sturdy and warped, and most of them stuck so fast that you could hardly get them open even if they weren’t locked.

  The poker business was futile, and then along came the firemen with their masks over their faces and the damp blankets that they threw over them, and they brought them out of the house, in complete darkness and under those blankets.

  Ivo felt as though he were being torn apart: the firemen were pulling one way, Ana was tugging on him from the other, from behind her locked door.

  Ana would have been forty-six today; next spring she’d have turned forty-seven.

  She’d probably have been as tall as Ivo: their mother was tall, their father too. She might have had a few threads or strands of grey in her chestnut hair by now, like their mother. She’d have an austere yet beautiful face, a sculpted face, a feminine Clint Eastwood. She’d always looked like that, even as a little girl.

  If Ana were still alive, she’d sure as hell look like that half-American up there, who also prefers to keep her doors locked.

  Every woman he spends the night with is a drug Stepanovic uses to numb the pain inside him that’s been smashing everything up every hour, every second, since he couldn’t save Ana, since he lost her to the darkness and the heat.

  By day, and if it’s cool and fresh, if he can smell the water and the port, he can get by: that’s how far he’s made it.

  That’s how far he’s patched it up.

  But he can’t handle darkness and heat alone, let alone love. For that he needs company, even if all the doors stay locked.

  He lets a groan out into the night, he just can’t help it, his upper body folds forwards, he braces himself with his hands on his knees, he groans again, it’s almost a scream, then, all folded up as he is, he leans on the nearest pillar and tries just to breathe.

  ‘Ivo?’

  Rönnau is beside him and has laid a hand on his back.

  ‘Ivo.’

  Stepanovic breathes.

  ‘Breathe,’ says Rönnau, ‘yes, breathing’s good.’

  His hand is still lying on Stepanovic’s back.

  It creates something strange between the two men.

  It creates a closeness.

  When Stepanovic first straightens up again, he doesn’t even try to hide the pain in his face, and Rönnau says: ‘Here. Cigarettes.’

  Stepanovic looks at Rönnau’s hand, there’s an open packet of Lucky Strikes lying there, he takes it and pulls out a smoke, but for a brief moment he also takes Rönnau’s hand.

  ‘Thanks, mate,’ he says.

  Rönnau shakes his head.

  ‘Whatever that was, Ivo, it was too big for one person alone.’

  They stand side by side, and they look at each other, and they light their cigarettes, while business carries on around them. The police business of perpetual cool paired with sudden minute-bursts of hectic activity, the busyness made up of special forces standing around and buses and hatchbacks and a helicopter that occasionally, very cautiously, circles over the River Palace Hotel, and the situation is shot through with the quiet hope that it might actually, please, soon all be over.

  Stepanovic scans the sky; he doesn’t know what he’s looking for but there could be something there, he thinks, he believes, he feels, something that’ll help him.

  And where the hell did the ash come from?

  The helicopter turns away and flies back to its landing place on the Heiligengeistfeld.

  Stepanovic looks up to the twentieth floor.

  ‘I’ve got to get in there, man,’ he says. ‘Something’s happened in the last hour. Something’s very wrong up there.’

  He pulls his phone from his coat pocket and shows his colleague the message from Calabretta.

  ‘She’s not well, you see?’

  Rönnau raises his eyebrows.

  ‘We’ve got to tell Himmelmann that.’

  ‘But it won’t change anything,’ says Stepanovic, ‘they won’t go and change their strategy just because the prosecution isn’t well.’

  He stows his phone away again.

  ‘I’ve got to get in there.’

  Rönnau studies the glowing end of his cigarette.

  ‘Yeah, I know that. But it’s not like I can just shoot a way in there for you.’

  ‘Well,’ says Stepanovic pulling out his gun, which he should not even have on him because he was meant to be off duty, but hey, it’s here now, isn’t it, ‘you can’t, maybe.’

  HIS INTERNAL MURDER BUTTON

  In a peculiar, subliminal way, things are calmer up here, everyone’s on the ropes, OK, it is nearly five, after all. People are scattered throughout the room, on chairs, on tables, on the floor, as if they’d just slumped in the exact spot where the moment spat them out.

  My temperature’s dropped but, all things considered, I feel astoundingly crap.

  My left arm hurts, and my thumb’s pumping, it doesn’t quite know what to do with itself. By now everyone understands that I’ve got a massive problem and I’m not hiding it anymore either. I’m sitting on a barstool and I’ve dumped my upper body on the bar, along with my head, along with my fucked-up arm.

  Klatsche’s standing to the right of me, Inceman’s standing to the left of me, as if that meant they could change or protect anything or make anything better. To me they seem like perplexed and slightly ramshackle archangels.

  Calabretta, Faller and the others are sitting at the table directly behind me, eyeing me cautiously and safeguarding everything as unobtrusively as possible. Assuming that there’s anything left here to keep safe, that is.

  Carla’s rested her head in Rocco’s lap; I think she’s asleep.

  Hoogsmart is down from his hot seat and away from the sausage counter. He’s cowering at the window, his hands and feet firmly anchored with cable ties. His trousers are now no longer just wet, certain parts have gone an unpleasant brownish colour too; his shirt is a disaster, and the sweat is running down his face in a permanent stream. Number One is standing in front of him and staring at him, and this has been going on for quite a while now. As if he didn’t know quite what to do next in the game he’s started.

  Interesting that everyone else knows.

  Every person in this room realises that Hoogsmart’s got to die shortly. Only the guy who’ll take care of the matter has not yet found the relevant button inside himself.

  Then, suddenly, Faller turns up next to Number One. Yikes, what’s he doing now, I mean, he was sitting right behind me only a moment ago. The screws in my head seem to be rattling about a bit. Everything’s wobbling, including my vision. Maybe just topple over off the stool, why the hell not, hey, there’s not much more to break around here.

  Faller’s beer migh
t still be untouched or it might be a new one. It’s nuts how much the old man can manage today. It’s also nuts how close he’s standing to Number One. Although that should’ve been my role.

  Hey ho. Sometimes you just can’t deliver the goods.

  Number One is staring at the Hoogsmart heap.

  Faller is staring at Number One.

  Then he says it.

  ‘I’ve heard your story before somewhere.’

  Number One turns to stone.

  Faller slants his head slightly.

  ‘You’re Henning Garbarek, aren’t you?’

  GOD, HOW DUMB ARE YOU?

  ‘Ivo, put that thing away before someone sees what you’ve got there.’

  Rönnau has arranged himself, in all his corpulence, in front of Stepanovic and is trying to use his belly to hide the latter’s drawn weapon.

  ‘I’ve got to get in there, Uli.’

  ‘Yes, but not like that. They’ll take you out of circulation right away. Have a look around, please. Take a look at what’s kicking around.’

  Stepanovic draws cold air through his nostrils and into his brain.

  ‘The ninja turtles can kiss my arse.’

  ‘Ivo. Stop it now.’

  The two men look at each other.

  Rönnau lowers his voice.

  ‘Do you remember the hotel blueprint, the one Meier and Himmelmann spread out earlier?’

  Stepanovic nods.

  ‘How well did you memorise it, Ivo?’

  ‘You mean the service shaft.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I mean.’

  ‘Yeah, and?’ says Stepanovic. ‘How am I meant to break in there and get up that ladder if I put my gun away? They won’t let me in just like that.’

  ‘They won’t let you in if you start waving a pistol about either. God, mate, how dumb are you?’

  ‘Batshit insane,’ says Stepanovic, ‘but you weren’t to know that, of course.’

  He shifts his weight from one foot to the other, moves like a retired boxer who’s decided to get back into the ring for one last fight, to lay out one last opponent.