Brother Kemal

Chapter 3

The sun was shining on the terrace of the Café Klaudia, where people were sitting eating lunch or a late breakfast. Talk, laughter and the clink of crockery mingled to make an inviting cloud of sound. I padlocked my bike to a traffic sign and went to the front door of the building, which was next to the terrace. There was a smell of raw onions, and full glasses of cider shone golden and enticing on the tables. ‘The locals’ favourite drink is a laxative, Edgar would say.’ That had even annoyed me a little when Valerie de Chavannes shared it. What was the damn Dutchman thinking of?

The front door of the building was not locked. I found Abakay’s name on the list beside the doorbells, went into the hall and climbed the stairs to the third floor as quietly as I could. But it was an old building, and the wooden steps creaked. When I reached the second floor, I thought I heard another creak from above me.

I didn’t exactly know what I was planning to do. Listen at the door, ring the bell? ‘Good morning, Kayankaya here, city gasworks, you must have an old pipe in there somewhere that’s been supplied with gas by accident, may I take a quick look through the rooms?’ Or, ‘Hey, Abakay, old boy! Remember that night at the club the other day? You gave me your address, and here I am. It’s me, Ali!’ Or simply, ‘Hand over the girl or I’ll smash your face in!’ And suppose no one came to the door? Did I wait on the stairs or in Café Klaudia? Or stroll around and keep my eyes open for the pair of them?

I didn’t have to know for certain. I didn’t have to know at all. On the third floor the door to Abakay’s apartment was open. On the floor on the other side of it, a fat, half-naked white man was lying on his back. He wore jeans and white sports socks, and his paunch bulged over the waistband of his jeans like a large flatbread dough. His head had fallen to one side, his face was turned to me, saliva was running out of his mouth and his eyes had a blind, staring look.

I took my pistol out of my jacket pocket and got close enough to him to see what was wrong: a small stab wound to the heart with blood seeping from it. Next moment I heard a door close, and someone in the apartment called, ‘Okay, I’ve got the stuff, we’ll be ready soon.’ And after a short pause: ‘Herr Rönnthaler?’

Another pause, and then footsteps approached. I got behind the doorframe, took the safety catch off my pistol, and peered into the front hall of the apartment. Abakay — shoulder-length hair, black, gleaming ringlets, little moustache as narrow as a pencil stroke, a white shirt unbuttoned to the waist, black waistcoat from a suit, thick gold rings on his fingers — bent over the body.

‘Rönnthaler …?!’

I had no time to think about it. When Abakay raised his head and looked around I walked into the apartment, pistol pointed at him.

‘Damn it, what the …?’

‘Where’s the girl?’

‘What?’

‘Tell me where she is or you’re next.’

He put his hands up in a placatory gesture. ‘Hey, man, I’ve no idea what’s going on here!’

‘The girl!’ I was fingering the trigger.

‘Yes, yes, it’s all good! She’s in the room over there! Everything’s okay! Please don’t …’

I hit him hard over the head with the pistol, his knees gave way, and he sank to the floor beside the other man’s body. I spent a moment listening for sounds in the stairwell. I’d thought I heard a step creaking again, but all was quiet. I took Abakay by the arm, dragged him over to a radiator and handcuffed him to the pipe. After that I quietly closed the door and quickly walked through the apartment.

A long corridor, a lavatory, the living room where the TV set was on but muted, an open bottle of Aperol, an empty bottle of prosecco and three half-full glasses. Opposite the living room was a very tidy, spotlessly clean kitchen with a second door into the apartment between the china cupboard and the dishwasher. It was not shut, and it led to the back stairs. On the kitchen table lay a plastic bag containing five little balls of silver foil. I opened one of them and touched the white powder inside it with the tip of my tongue. I wrapped up the ball of silver foil again and hid the bag of heroin in a drawer under a stack of frying pans.

The next room was furnished as an office: a desk with a computer and printer, a bookshelf full of coffee table books and several cameras, on the wall a large, framed black-and-white photo of a good-looking young couple drinking coffee in Paris, with the Eiffel Tower in the background. Abakay, the good old underground photographer!

Next was a bathroom, with marble tiles, also spotlessly clean, and the corridor with more framed black-and-white photos to the right and left — trees, girls, cats, cloud formations — and finally a door with the key in the lock. I bent down to the keyhole and tried to see past the key and listen for sounds. It was an old door with a hefty lock, and there was a gap a millimetre wide round the key. All I could see through it was a white wall, and I couldn’t hear anything. On the other hand I could smell something. Something disgusting. All of a sudden I was panic-stricken. I imagined Marieke lying on the floor after an overdose, choked by her own vomit. I turned the key and pushed the door open.

At first I was dazzled by the sun shining in through the window. Then I saw Marieke. She was sitting naked on a king-size bed covered with gleaming white satin sheets, leaning against the pillows with her arms round her knees and holding her legs close to her body, and covered from head to toe with vomit. Grated carrots, bits of tomato, half pieces of pasta. Because the window was closed, the sour smell rising from the bed was overpowering.

Although she was obviously shaking with fright, she gave me a nasty, challenging, sick grin.

‘Another one?! I don’t believe it! Well, come on then! I’ve tidied myself up a bit for you. I hope the vomit doesn’t bother you. Want to lick it off me? Does that turn you on?’

Her stomach was rising and falling fast, like a dog’s. The harsh, faraway look in her eyes said: I’ll kill you if there’s any way I can do it.

‘Listen, I’m not — ’

‘Here, have some pasta!’

‘I don’t want to do anything to you. I’ve come to get you out of here.’

‘Oh yes? And drag me off where, you bastard?’

I shook my head. ‘I’m from the police. Paolo Magelli, special plainclothes unit. We’ve been after Abakay for some time. I’m sorry we came on the scene so late. Do you have any injuries?’

Her glance was still hard, and she didn’t take her eyes off me for a second, but gradually the madness disappeared from them, making way for distrust. Her folded arms dropped, barely perceptibly, and the tension left her body.

‘Show me your ID.’

‘I’m sorry, we had to move fast and I left my jacket in the car. I’ll show you my ID when we’re down there.’

‘We’re going down to the street?’

‘Of course. I’ll take you home to your parents or wherever you live.’

‘Where’s Erden?’

‘Lying in the front hall. Unconscious. We had to knock him out.’

‘And that fat bastard?’

‘Beside him.’

Marieke stared at me for some time, then unfolded her arms and began massaging her hands, which were probably numb with tension, and looked down at herself.

‘I’d like a glass of water. My throat is sore after all that throwing up.’

‘Did they give you drugs of any kind, or …’

‘No, no, I stuck my finger down my throat. I thought that might turn him off.’

‘Wait a minute.’

I went into the kitchen and ran a glass of tap water. I listened for a moment, in case Marieke was taking her chance to run for it. But when I went back she was still sitting on the bed, now with the bedspread wrapped round her body. Only then did I notice that her lips were swollen.

She drank the whole glass, and said, ‘Thank you.’

‘Would you like to shower before we leave?’

Once again distrust flickered briefly in her eyes. Was this just a trick? Did I simply want her clean and smelling nice before I attacked her?

‘We can go like this if you’d rather. I just thought … well, so that maybe you can forget a bit of what happened here.’

‘I won’t forget it.’

‘Of course not …’ I hesitated. ‘May I ask you a few quick questions?’

She looked at me expressionlessly and then looked away at the window. ‘Okay, and then, yes, I would like to shower after all.’

‘That’s fine.’ I went to the window to open it and let in some fresh air. When I reached for the catch, Marieke said, ‘Forget it.’

The window was specially made: soundproof armoured glass, mirror glass on the outside, with a safety lock. I shook the catch in vain.

‘Why do you think they could leave me alone here?’

I tried to ignore the stench.

‘First, could you tell me your name?’

‘Marieke de Chavannes.’

‘How long were you shut up here, Frau de Chavannes?’

‘Since just now when that fat bastard attacked me.’

‘Judging by your swollen lips you defended yourself.’

‘I did.’

‘And then?’

‘Then Erden was suddenly totally normal again, and he said he’d get something to relax us. After that they locked me in.’

‘When did you realise what they were planning to do to you?’

She looked away and pulled the bedspread more tightly around her shoulders. After a while she said, ‘When that fat bastard leered at me in such a funny way. I tried to run for it. I still thought he was just trying it on, do you see? Between old buddies. That was how Erden introduced him: “Meet my old friend Volker, he wants to get to know you.” So I thought I could just get away quickly, I even went to get my bag.’ She shook her head. ‘And then the fat bastard was after me — incredible!’

‘Was there anyone in this apartment but you, Erden and the fat man?’

‘No. Why?’

‘Just a routine question.’

‘What’s happened to the fat man?’

‘Something’s the matter with his heart. My colleagues are just ringing for an ambulance.’

‘Hopefully he croaks!’

‘Hmm. And Erden?’

‘What do you mean, “and Erden”?’

‘Do you hope he croaks, too?’

She hesitated, opened her mouth and looked inquiringly at me, until her thoughts seemed to go elsewhere, and her eyes still lingered on me as if by chance.

‘I don’t know. He’s so …’ She stopped, and cautiously felt her lips with her fingertips. ‘Until just now we were still friends.’ For a moment she looked as if she might burst into tears, but then she just sighed sadly. ‘We had fun, I don’t know how else to put it.’

‘Hmm-hmm.’

Her glance was sharp again. ‘Not the way you think. You see, Erden’s a photographer. That was what mattered most to both of us. Art. He takes wonderful photos, photos with a political message. One series is called: Frankfurt in the Shadow of the Bank Towers. Portraits of desperate, sad faces, but so beautiful. And there were other pictures of Frankfurt …’ She hesitated, and then added, with a precocious air: ‘The city of little men in suits and roast beef sandwiches.’

‘Did Erden say that?’

‘No, my father.’

‘What else did you talk about?’

‘Oh, how should I know? All sorts of things: music, hip-hop, our origins, what our parents do, what films we like. For instance — and now that I think of it I can’t make it out — we went to see The English Patient together, and he said it was one of his favourite films. Do you know it?’

I knew about ten minutes of the film, and after that I’d gone to sleep on the sofa beside Deborah. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘It’s such a romantic love story! Imagine — and then this!’

‘You said you were friends until now.’

She hesitated, suspicion in her eyes.

‘Yes?’

‘Were you a couple?’

There was a pause. She looked at the sheet in front of her. After a while she said, ‘I’d like to shower now.’

‘Okay, then I’ll leave you alone. You know where everything is. Meanwhile I’ll go and see how my colleagues are getting on with the fat man and Abakay.’

She looked up. ‘I don’t want to see him now.’

‘Of course not. Don’t worry, my colleagues have probably taken him away.’ I nodded to her. ‘Call me when you’re finished.’

She watched me head to the door.

‘Tell me …’

I turned. ‘Yes?’

‘Will my parents hear about this?’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t think you’ll be needed as a witness. Nothing really happened to you — forgive me for putting it like that, but I have to say so from the legal point of view — and there’ll be plenty of other women to give evidence.’

‘You mean there were other girls before me?’ she asked, and I had the disagreeable impression that she’d have liked to be the only one.

‘Frau de Chavannes, in case this isn’t clear to you yet: Abakay is a pimp. And if girls didn’t want to go along with him he pumped them full of heroin. You can forget about art and romantic films. You happened to be lucky.’

And with that little lecture I left her alone. Abakay, Abakay, I thought on my way along the corridor, you really have a knack for it: a little social kitsch, cheap drinks, terrible films, and great big gold rings on your fingers, and the girls come running! I wondered whether Valerie de Chavannes herself had landed in those white satin sheets after a couple of glasses of Aperol.

When I reached the front hall of the apartment Abakay’s mouth was open, he was groaning, and he was clearly about to come back to his senses. I hit him on the head again with the pistol, and then I searched his pockets. In his trouser pocket I found one thousand two hundred euros in hundred and two-hundred-euro notes, along with some fives and tens. Presumably there had been exactly one thousand five hundred there an hour ago. Maybe Abakay had made out that Marieke was a virgin; that would have explained the high price. Then Marieke had been difficult, and to calm her down Abakay had gone to buy heroin with some of the money he had obtained in advance from fat Volker. One thousand two hundred and a few squashed notes were left.

I took the bigger bills and stuffed them into the pocket of fat Volker’s jeans.

Then I went into the kitchen and searched the drawers for a sharp knife. The shower was running in the background. I hoped Marieke would never tell her mother that she had slept with Abakay.

I returned to the entrance hall of the apartment with a butcher’s knife about thirty centimetres long, knelt down beside Abakay, and cut and stabbed him lightly in the chest and the stomach. Not deep wounds; I just wanted it to look as if there had been a fight, and I wanted Abakay’s blood on the blade. Abakay groaned again and twitched, but he didn’t come round. I crawled over to fat Volker, wiped the handle of the knife on my T-shirt, and closed his cold hand round it. The small wound, level with his heart, had stopped bleeding.

I took a roll of parcel tape from the office, a teacloth from the kitchen, gagged Abakay and bound his legs together.

After that I went back into the office, turned on the computer, and typed ‘Marieke’ into the window of the search engine. The name appeared on a list of various girls’ names with pseudonyms after them. The pseudonym Laetitia, in brackets, followed Marieke’s name, and then it came up in a kind of catalogue. The file was entitled ‘Autumn Flowers 2011’. The photographs were simple snapshots of fully clothed teenagers in the street or cafés, usually laughing. Laetitia was described as: Clever, demanding upper-class girl, political interests, likes conversations, will go to great lengths in her search for adventure if the tone is right, ready for almost anything, exotic, milk-coffee colour, very well developed, still fourteen for several months.

Fourteen; that accounted for the price.

Another girl with the pseudonym of Melanie was described as: Happy, natural suburban girl, loves horses, likes to have fun — laughter above all. More for the conventional ride than delicate games, blonde, fresh, youthful type. Sixteen.

Probably eighteen.

And then there was Lilly: Super special! Sweet little mouse in knee-length socks, still plays with dolls, virgin, to highest bidder.

I deleted all the data about Marieke, typed de Chavannes into the search engine, brought up Valerie de Chavannes’s address and a few photos of her taken secretly in the café. I deleted those as well. In the bookshelf I found a carton of photographs labelled Frankfurt in the Shadow of the Bank Towers. With the carton under my arm I went into the front hall and kicked Abakay as hard as I could between the legs. In spite of the gag he grunted out loud, fluid ran from his nose, and he doubled up before falling on his side unconscious again.

‘That’s from Lilly.’

As I waited in the kitchen for Marieke, I leafed through the photographs. Most of them were black-and-white photographs of devastated, wrinkled, old or prematurely aged faces against the background of the high-rise bank buildings of Frankfurt. An old Roma woman with a toothless grin and a cigarette end in the corner of her mouth, a dark-skinned youth with an Elvis quiff, a child’s guitar and only one eye, a junkie whore with an entirely vacant expression and an I Love Frankfurt button on her blouse, and so on. Not so bad, but not so new either. I felt as if I’d seen these photos many times before.

I put the carton aside and wondered what weapon, or what tool, could make such a narrow but deadly wound.