Brother Kemal

Chapter 8

Three days later Octavian called and told me that Abakay was denying everything. His friend Volker Rönnthaler had been visiting and he, Abakay, had left the apartment briefly to buy cigarettes. He returned to find Rönnthaler lying dead on the floor, and a man of Mediterranean appearance had attacked him without warning, kicked him and then tied him up and gagged him. He claimed to know nothing about the ‘Autumn Flowers’ file, saying someone must have planted it on him — someone who obviously wanted to destroy his life, probably the man who had attacked him and murdered his friend.

‘Our computer expert can only prove that someone was interfering with the ‘Autumn Flowers’ file on the day of Rönnthaler’s murder, and I assume that was you.’

‘How about the list of girls’ names that had the pseudonyms from ‘Autumn Flowers’ attached to it?’

‘Also saved on the desktop by itself. Was never sent or received. It really does look like someone planted the file and the list on him.’

‘And what about the girls themselves? Have you looked for them and found any of them?’

‘Without surnames? Only one. I sent the photos to child social services, and there was a reply about Lilly. Her father’s under observation: he’s a violent alcoholic, and Lilly has turned up at school with bruises a couple of times. The family lives in Praunheim. I’ve visited them. Lilly says she doesn’t know Abakay, never set eyes on him. However, I’ll go and see her again on her own. The old man was standing there the whole time, and the girl’s obviously afraid of him. Anyway, not a situation in which a fourteen-year-old would admit to meeting older men.’

‘In Praunheim. A Roma family, by any chance?’

‘No idea. Why?’

‘Just wondering. How about the heroin in the kitchen?’

‘Also planted on him, Abakay says.’

‘And who, in his opinion, is furious enough with him to stage such a show — murder, computer manipulation, drugs and the rest of it?’

‘Hmm, well, he has two theories. For a start, he thinks his photos of the wretched state of things in Frankfurt will scare off potential investors in the city and thus infuriate the owners of buildings and land.’

‘Come off it.’

‘Yes, well. For instance, he published a series about the Gutleut district in the Rundschau, and in fact there really were some complaints to the editorial offices. You know the area well enough — run-down and close to the city centre, and building owners there have been waiting for years for the complications to be resolved and for a Starbucks or Häagen-Dazs or some such outfit to buy a place and set the ball rolling.’

‘And kill someone on that account? Because of photos of beggars smoking. Have you recently taken to giving your suspects some grass to smoke while you interrogate them? What’s the second theory?’

‘That it’s to do with his uncle.’

‘The religious guy?’

‘You know him?’

‘I heard that he has an uncle who preaches in a mosque, that’s all.’

‘Hmm-hmm, Sheikh Hakim. Pretends to be crazy with talk of the holy war and so on, but as far as we know that’s just for show and to take in idiots. Or maybe he does believe it, but he certainly believes in making money too. We suspect him of being big in the heroin trade, but we’ve never been able to prove anything. Abakay says he hasn’t had anything to do with his uncle for a long time. But one of the phone calls he made from remand prison was to Sheikh Hakim’s secretary.’

‘What did he want the secretary to do?’

‘Get him a lawyer.’

‘And why would anyone kill Rönnthaler on account of Sheikh Hakim?’

‘Abakay thinks it’s a message: See what we could do to your nephew. This time we just killed the first guy we came across in his apartment and gave your nephew a good kicking in the balls, but next time … well, something along those lines. They couldn’t get at Hakim himself. He always has bodyguards with him, his house is a fortress with garden walls two metres high, barred windows, CCTV cameras and God knows what else.’

‘Where does he live?’

‘In Praunheim.’

‘Praunheim again. Maybe the sheikh is looking for little girls.’

‘One little girl,’ Octavian corrected me, ‘and she lives at the other end of the district.’

‘Great. And who, in Abakay’s opinion, hates Hakim enough to kill someone who has nothing to do with any of it and beat up his nephew, just to get to him?’

‘Abakay says some religious group, but if he knows anything at all about his uncle then he’s really thinking that competitors in the drug trade are behind it.’

‘He doesn’t think so, Octavian. I hope you realise, that’s all nonsense. There was a fight between Rönnthaler and Abakay, Rönnthaler had the knife and Abakay had something thin and pointed that he used to kill him with. Your people just have to find that weapon. He probably threw it out of the window or into the stairwell just before I came into the apartment.’

‘Hmm-hmm.’

‘Meaning what?’

‘We’ve searched every square centimetre of the apartment, the stairwell and the inner courtyard.’ Octavian’s tone was reserved. ‘If there’d been a weapon anywhere there we’d have found it.’

‘Maybe a dog snapped it up as a lolly. There was blood on it, after all.’

‘Yes,’ said Octavian. ‘Or Abakay pushed it up his ass and that’s why he’s always shifting back and forth in his chair so cheerfully. Listen, Kemal, there are really only two possibilities. Either you’re a suspect — and I can tell you that Abakay describes your outward appearance pretty well, and if we can find a clue to the identity of your client and establish a connection with her … I’m sure you’d never do a thing like that, but it’s not out of the question that some colleague of mine might hit on the idea that you agreed to do some dirty work for the girl’s parents.’

‘What?’

‘As you know, I have two daughters, aged twelve and fourteen. If I imagine anyone sending them out on the streets — I’d want to kill him myself. Maybe you came across Rönnthaler first, and then you felt a bit queasy because killing him had been too much for you, so you just beat up Abakay. As I said, I’m sure you’d never do a thing like that, but — ’

He broke off. In my experience, ‘I’m sure you’d never …’ but meant ‘I’m surely not sure that you’d never — and so I won’t lift even a finger to help you.’

Interesting to learn within the space of a few days that no fewer than two people believed me capable of a contract killing.

‘And the second possibility?’

‘You’ll be our witness. But first, I can’t promise to keep your client out of it — if we find her she’ll have a part to play in the trial, and to be honest with you I have some idea of her identity already. There were a photo and a business card among Abakay’s papers: Valerie de Chavannes, Zeppelinallee — a big catch for someone like Abakay.’

‘Never heard the name.’

‘Well, that doesn’t matter for now. Second, I have to warn you, if there’s anything wrong with your story — for instance our doctor says that the cuts to Abakay’s chest can hardly have been the result of a fight, and the knife wasn’t lying in Rönnthaler’s hand the right way for that — well, anyway, I hope that as an official witness you will give evidence that to some extent bears out the facts and the clues. In addition, and between you and me: if Sheikh Hakim has any kind of interest in his nephew, and in getting him out of jail before too long — I’m sure he knows people who can make life difficult for a main witness for the prosecution.’

An uncomfortable idea suddenly occurred to me. ‘Listen, Octavian, you really don’t want me as a witness, am I right?’

‘I don’t want a witness whose story is going to collapse in the course of the investigations or the trial. And then of course there’s the fact’ — he breathed in audibly — ‘that people know we know each other, and that it will not do my career any good if an acquaintance of mine tries to lead the police astray.’

‘But letting Abakay lead you astray is okay for your career?’

‘Abakay is not an acquaintance of mine.’

‘Well, Octavian, I’m sorry if it strikes you that I may have put you in an uncomfortable position, but …’

I was furious, and my sarcastic tone was childish. On the other hand, Octavian sounded very much as if Abakay had a chance of getting away with his version of events. Maybe I’d overdone my stage-setting in Abakay’s apartment — too many inconsistencies, and in the end it would be my fault if they had to let Abakay go free. Whether he got two years or five years didn’t matter so much to me, but I felt it would be scandalous for him to get off scot-free. So I said, without thinking any more of it, ‘I’ll volunteer to be a witness. And with the story you already know. That’s what I saw. I’m not a doctor, how would I know whether Abakay’s cuts came from a fight?’

‘Abakay claims,’ replied Octavian, ‘that the man who attacked him also gave him those cuts.’

‘I didn’t attack him, I took him by surprise as he was bending over a man who had just been murdered, and then — doing the duty of any responsible citizen strong enough for it — I overpowered him and tied him up so that the police would have a chance of clearing up a crime. Because I thought that was what the police were for …’

‘Okay, Kemal.’

‘But if you’d rather believe Abakay! Why, for God’s sake, would I cut his chest to pieces?’

‘Well, for instance if you wanted it to look as if there’s been a fight between Rönnthaler and Abakay.’

‘For what reason?’

‘I told you before: because you wanted to protect a suspect.’

‘That’s nonsense. When I entered the apartment Abakay already had his injuries, and all I did was tie him up and gag him.’

‘And kick him brutally in the balls?’

‘What else? Did I by any chance wreck his childhood too?’

‘I’m only preparing you for what Abakay will accuse you of. So do I tell my colleagues that we have the man who handed Abakay over to us?’

‘You have the witness, Octavian! You have the man who can prove that Abakay is a violent pimp who pumps underage girls full of heroin and sends them out on the streets.’

‘Without giving the name of your client and her daughter?’

‘At least I’ll try to keep them both out of it as long as possible.’

‘In case eventually that isn’t possible, you should tell them about Sheikh Hakim. I know a great many people who prefer to save their own skin over the punishment of a criminal.’

‘A good comment coming from a policeman.’

Octavian sighed. ‘Oh, fuck you, Kemal. I’ll be in touch.’ And he ended the call.

I held the receiver for a while longer, and wondered if I had behaved particularly cleverly just now. In order to be able get myself out of this if the need arose, it was time to find Rönnthaler’s murderer. So far I had no idea of his identity.

Then I searched the Internet for Sheikh Hakim.

I found out nothing new. Crazy character, as Octavian had said. Although I found any degree of religious conviction crazy. Or as Slibulsky, who ran a chain of ice cream parlours and had recently shacked up with a woman twenty years younger than he was, and who was inspired equally by both Jesus and the Kabbala, put it, ‘It’s as if she goes into a shop made of thin air, orders seven scoops of vanilla ice cream, also consisting of thin air — seven because it’s a lucky number — and smiles at the ice cream salesman who explains grimly that she’ll get the scoops of ice cream later, when her pretty body has rotted in the ground. But the five euros she pays for the ice cream and the salesman’s wallet into which they go are not just thin air.’

You couldn’t tell from the Internet sites whether Hakim was really as dangerous as Octavian had claimed. In photos the sheikh looked like an old man who bought his clothes in the secondhand shop on the ground floor of my office building, and spent a lot of time standing around in the street smoking with other old men. As far as I could tell from what I read, his views were nothing unusual for someone from his background. In an interview with the online newspaper Euro Islam he was asked all kinds of questions about everything under the sun, and he shared his thoughts on terrorism, suicide bombings, the Holy War, Islamism and so on with the usual, ‘Terrible, but …’ You had to look at the circumstances, said Sheikh Hakim, the historical background, the decades during which the West supported criminal despots, the sense of humiliation now turning into rage, particularly among the young, and of course Israel. In most studies of the Middle East, Israel was responsible for just about everything.

I had once suggested to Deborah, while we were watching a news item on the subject, that we could create our own Israel of sorts. We had quarrelled that afternoon. It began with the chaotic state of the apartment, or one of her girlfriends who got on my nerves, or Deborah’s passion for work — even at the time I couldn’t remember which — and ended as so often with ‘antisocial Kayankaya’ and ‘ambitious Deborah who always has to show everyone what she can do’ (i.e. that she had made it from Henningbostel and Mister Happy to the West End and Deborah’s Natural Wine Bar, and would go much further yet). Anyway, I said, ‘Now, if we had an Israel, when we felt a quarrel coming on we could always say: Hey, that damn Israel, that’s why I never got around to tidying the place up. Or: It’s only because of the bad influence of Israel that your friend Alexa is such a hysterical know-it-all. And even if we were simply tired, or the milk boiled over — it would be great to always have something to blame, and we’d see only each other’s advantages and good points.’

Deborah looked at me as if I had something wrong with my upper storey.

‘You might as well just say the Jews, only I suppose you don’t dare.’

‘I would dare, because it’s a joke, darling. See what I mean? Not meant seriously. I was poking fun at the non-Jewish middle easterners. Only these days no one says it’s the Jews’ fault anymore. No anti-Semite in the world would say that now. He’d say: It’s Israel’s fault. So considering the technique of good jokes — if you believe, like me, that a joke is spicier the closer it comes to the truth — then in that case …’

‘But I don’t think that’s at all funny.’

‘Well, imagine we’re watching news from the Middle East, and I said: Hey, how about we get ourselves a Jew, then we’ll have someone to blame next time the milk boils over? You’d have thought that much less funny.’

‘I don’t think it’s our day.’

Hmm, I thought, but if only we had an Israel …

‘You know perfectly well that my granny …’

‘Good heavens, what’s she got to do with it?’

Deborah’s granny — the real Deborah — had very probably been Jewish. Her grandfather had found her in 1945, starving, sick and ragged in the woods near Henningbostel, took her home with him, nursed her back to health and finally married her. She had never said anything about her origins or what had happened to her before 1945, but she had dropped a few hints, and there were certain questions that met with either an eloquent silence or a surprisingly harsh retort. When Deborah first told me about her granny ten years ago, I’d still been sceptical. What German girl, I thought, didn’t have a Jewish granny these days? But then, in photographs of her, I saw a pale dark-haired beauty who wasn’t typical of the North German countryside. It was from her that my Deborah had inherited her thick eyebrows, dark ringlets and full lips.

‘Well, for me it does have something to do with it. I like jokes, but not on that subject, however funny they might be — and I said might be, get it? There’s always something about them, you’re supposed to think, Oh, how original, a forbidden subject but all the same, anyway. And they’re not casual and effortless. And I think the more casual a joke, the funnier it is. For me, spiciness belongs in the soup. What’s more — do I know how you really tick, deep down inside? Have we ever talked about that? You always say: Religion, no thanks — but I suppose your parents were Muslims, and you lived with your father until you were four, there must be some of that left …’

Oops! For a moment I must have looked taken aback. Having grown up in Frankfurt, never set foot in a mosque, never belonged to a union or a political party, never believed in anything but my own abilities, private detective, drinker, Mönchengladbach fan, and now, at the age of fifty-three, I hear the woman I’ve been having a relationship with for the last ten years come out with a remark like I suppose your parents were Muslims, all on account of my origins and a joke that she didn’t understand.

My mother died in Turkey when I was born and my father took me with him to Germany, where he was run over by a post van four years later. I was put in a home, and two months later adopted by the Holzheims, a schoolmaster and a nursery school teacher. I have a few memories of my birth father. Mostly of the two of us sitting in a café, where he smoked and I drank apple juice. He treated me like an adult, not a small child. A lot of what he said I didn’t understand, but I did realise that he respected me and wanted to be my best friend. Not my teacher. One thing he told me was: I can only teach you how to eat with a knife and fork, and you can teach me to know again whether the food really tastes good or just looks as if it does. That was the general gist of it anyway. My father spoke Turkish with me, a language that I soon forgot while living with the Holzheims. If my father had any religious feelings then they were about me. There were diary entries he had written that I later had translated, describing me as his ‘great little miracle.’ If Deborah was sensitive about her granny, then I was at least as sensitive about my father. It got on my nerves that she classed him with the Muslims you saw on the TV news who hated all Jews.

‘Well, now that you mention it … I’ve been thinking of asking if you can imagine wearing … well, not a veil all over your face, but up to your nose so that no man can see your wickedly tempting lips …’

And it might keep your mouth shut now and then.

Deborah looked at me, and then she suddenly said, in quite a friendly tone, ‘Oh, come on, let’s have a drink!’ and went to the kitchen to get a bottle of wine. Alcohol standing in for the UN blue helmets. But after that we didn’t quite trust ourselves to broach the subject again.

Sheikh Hakim’s answer in his interview to the question of how, as an imam, he felt about alcohol and drugs was interesting: ‘Well, that isn’t really my field. But of course I know that all parts of the world have developed methods of relaxing after work at the end of the day. In South America they chew coca leaves, in Europe and my native land of Turkey they drink alcohol — but why are the means of relaxation used in other parts of the world criminalised here? First and foremost of course hashish, a relatively harmless herb. But smoking opium is a normal way to relax in many places. As a practising Muslim I do not drink alcohol or take any other drugs, but I am not blind. Alcoholism in Europe — just look at Russia — and the USA is an enormous problem. But have you ever heard of smoking hashish in the countries of North Africa or Asia leading to high mortality, a drop in the birth rate, and the devastation of large sections of the population? Do you know what I think? I think it’s in the interests of the producers of alcohol not to allow any other legal alternative on the market, and as alcohol is mainly produced in the West one must, in my opinion, describe this state of affairs as extremely imperialistic.’

At least, it was interesting if Sheikh Hakim really was in the heroin trade. What a cheeky son of a bitch.

However, maybe Octavian and the police were wrong, and Hakim went to the expense of bodyguards and CCTV cameras just to impress his disciples. Anyway, the Internet didn’t seem to show that he was in any particular danger. On the contrary: Hakim appeared to be a rather conservative preacher, and not a genuinely deranged one. I could hardly imagine that he would protect a nephew gone bad who sent underage girls out on the streets. But then again: virgins, they had something with virgins, right? And unbelieving virgins — what about them? Could they be sent out on the streets maybe, as many of them as you liked? Maybe they even ought to be sent out on the streets? That was often the difficulty with religious people: ninety-nine per cent of the time religious people behaved relatively normally, but madness might lurk in the remaining one per cent. I don’t mean like the pope, for instance, appearing in his pink paedo-slippers before the world, overpopulated as it is, to condemn condoms — the madness in that was out in the open. But take Hakim: decades of Western support for criminal despots, fair enough; feelings of humiliation now turning to rage, okay; legalise hashish, why not? But would he go so far as: maybe unbelieving virgins are the last scum of the earth for a righteous God!

I wondered how much of the news to pass on to Valerie de Chavannes. I had to warn her about Sheikh Hakim. And I had to warn her about the police. In both cases, moreover, I had to do so in my own interest. Unfortunately, Octavian was right: a mother who hires a private detective to free her daughter from the clutches of a dubious character, and then the dubious character accuses the private detective of first killing his friend who happened to be there and then beating him up — well, it didn’t look good.

It’s not out of the question that some colleague of mine might hit on the idea that you agreed to do some dirty work for the girl’s parents.

And Valerie de Chavannes herself, three days earlier: I’m wondering how far you would go …? For payment corresponding to the job, of course.

I couldn’t really count on her to maintain a persistent and convincing lie to the effect that she had never made the offer. Far from it. I was convinced that interrogation of any length by the police, or a nastier interrogation by Hakim’s men, and she would throw them the morsel they wanted to get herself out of it as unscathed as possible. ‘Okay, we did talk about it. Abakay … well, you know him. But of course I didn’t mean it seriously. It was just a kind of fantasy, a game. But maybe Herr Kayankaya … I hardly know him, but he was very committed, and I think he also liked me a lot …’

Yes, I could probably count more on something of that nature.

So I had to convince Valerie de Chavannes to deny any connection whatsoever with me to whoever might ask, and do it without frightening her. I didn’t want her turning in panic to the police. And I wanted to leave her believing that the evidence against Abakay was still rock-solid. No excitement, everything was going just fine, Kayankaya held the reins firmly in hand.

I tapped Valerie de Chavannes’s number into my phone. As it rang, I caught myself thinking of her slender feet in those silver sandals.

‘De Chavannes.’

‘Hello, Kayankaya here. Everything okay with you?’

‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that, but nothing has happened, if that’s what you mean.’

Her tone was cool — as cool as a tone could be without sounding openly hostile. Did she bear me a grudge for giving her the brush-off when she wanted to hire me to commit murder? Or was it simply the usual de Chavannes tone? I remembered that she’d sounded like that at the start, when we first met.

‘Yes, that’s what I meant. How is Marieke?’

‘I don’t know. She seems really upset, as if she were in shock. She won’t talk to me. Sits in her room all day listening to Jack Johnson.’

‘Well, that would upset me as well.’

When Hanna did odd jobs for Deborah in the wine bar she always brought Jack Johnson music with her. She thought it was the sort of music that was also bound to appeal to adults who drink red wine.

‘Very funny.’

‘I’m trying. I had the feeling that Marieke is a strong character, the sort who doesn’t go under so easily.’

‘And she doesn’t. But if she does then she really goes under.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘But that’s not why you called.’

‘No. I wanted to tell you that the police — that is, well, the officer responsible for the Abakay case — has named me as a witness in his records, although I got him to promise to keep my name out of it. Well, he knows me and he doesn’t particularly like me, so he took his opportunity to do me a bad turn.’

‘Why would he do you a bad turn that way?’

‘Because, of course, sooner or later the question of who I was working for will come up. The court will want to know what I was doing in Abakay’s apartment, and Abakay’s lawyers will do their best to make me look like an unreliable witness — they’ll say my client paid me to smear Abakay’s reputation, and so I thought something up. Well, not many clients want to be named in a criminal case — I assume you’re not among the few exceptions — and no private detective likes it to be known that he can’t protect his clients’ names. So I’d like to ask you, if anyone comes to see you in connection with Abakay, to deny having any contact with me. If you’ve made a note of my name anywhere, or my business card is lying about the house, get rid of it.’

‘You mean someone might break into our house?’ Her tone was still cool. Maybe too cool. As if, after all that had happened, a mere burglary held no terrors for her. Perhaps it really didn’t. All the better.

‘No, but a halfway tricky private detective who knows his business could pretend to be someone from the municipality and sniff about your house, or he could invite your housekeeper for a coffee and get her to tell him everything about recent visitors. So it would be a good thing if your housekeeper doesn’t come upon my name when she was clearing your wastepaper baskets.’

‘I see … okay.’

She paused, and suddenly it seemed to me as if I were on a different line. I heard her breathing: a heavy, hasty, slightly tremulous struggle for breath. I had never heard anything like it except in people suffering a panic attack or before a very unpleasant and very important encounter. Like de Chavannes always sounded …

‘Ought I to worry about Marieke?’

‘No more than I suppose you’re worrying anyway, after what happened. Abakay’s lawyers will try to find witnesses to let him off the hook, and if all Marieke and Abakay really talked about was photography and social injustice, then of course she’d be perfect.’

‘If,’ repeated Valerie de Chavannes, pausing again. And once again I heard her breathing. But I didn’t think she was breathing so heavily because of our phone call. I had thought, once before, that underneath the various masks worn by Valerie de Chavannes there was nothing but a constant state of fear. The arrogant upper-class cow, angry and scornful, the little woman in need of help, the yearning, melting tattooed minx de Chavannes, and now the Agent 007 Mama preserving a cool head in difficult times and keeping the show on the road — all of them camouflage and attempts to stay largely unscathed. And that had nothing to do with Abakay; it had always been like that, I thought — or, anyway, for a long time.

‘You still haven’t told me what exactly the crime was that Abakay committed. Did you mean it about murder, or was that just to scare me?’

‘Both. Whether he committed the murder himself isn’t certain, but he’s certainly involved in it. However, that’s nothing to do with Marieke. Abakay is a little street mongrel who will try to pick up a few euros where and when he can. Of course drugs play a part, and probably stolen cars, weapons, forged papers, God knows what. And here we come very close to a capital crime. All the same, he did take those photos on the side, and that’s what linked him to Marieke.’

‘Of course you know that I’d love to believe you.’

‘Of course I do. But tell me a reason I’d lie to you.’

She hesitated. ‘Because you don’t want to hurt me.’ She was trying to keep the cool tone of voice going, but it didn’t entirely work. Or she acted as if she were trying to keep the cool tone of voice going, and let it slip into emotion on purpose.

‘I really would be very reluctant to hurt you, but I wouldn’t tell you fairy tales on that account.’

‘How do you explain Marieke’s behaviour over the last few days?’

‘Well, my bet would be she feels crossed in love. I didn’t say the photos were all of it. And Abakay certainly knows how to impress a sixteen-year-old. Anyway, if I were you I’d make sure Marieke doesn’t go prison visiting in the immediate future.’

‘For God’s sake!’

‘You should be glad she’s spending all day in her room. Maybe you should buy her a different CD.’

For a moment there was silence on the line. Obviously her breathing had calmed down, or she was holding the receiver to one side. Then she sighed, sounding surprisingly amused, and asked, ‘How old are you?’

‘Fifty-three. Why?’

‘Because no one buys CDs these days. They download music to their MP3 players.’

‘I even still have some cassettes.’

‘Simply Red or something like that, I expect.’

‘No, Whitney Houston. But I can’t listen to the cassettes anymore, my recorder’s broken.’

‘Whitney Houston,’ she repeated, and was about to say something making fun of me — it wasn’t difficult to make fun of people who still listened to Whitney Houston — but then something seemed to occur to her and she suddenly fell silent.

So did I. Probably we had both carried on like that because we were glad to get away from the subject of Abakay for a moment. But in no time at all we had landed in front of an open door. For instance, she went on: Whitney Houston — right, now I do believe you’re fifty-three. What else do you like? Foreigner? Münchner Freiheit? And I: You’ve never listened to Whitney Houston properly. At three in the morning, with a few beers or something else inside you, windows of the bar open, mild air, and then ‘The Greatest Love of All’ on the jukebox — you could fall on your knees with happiness. And she again: Well, okay. I have a recorder that still works … Or something like that. Anyway, we both knew that from here to a Whitney Houston evening together with wine and candlelight it was three more sentences at the most.

Finally I said, ‘Apart from which my Whitney Houston days are over.’

She cleared her throat, and her tone became friendly but objective. ‘Well, I hope so, at the age of fifty-three.’

‘You mean fifty-three is too old for Whitney Houston?’

‘Too old for Whitney Houston period, I’d say. A song now and then, why not?’

I noticed that I was baring my teeth. ‘I bet you’ve listened to a Whitney Houston song now and then on your MP3 player.’

She hesitated. ‘Could be. I don’t know. It’s a long time since I listened to any music at all.’

It was on the tip of my tongue to say: Surely a ballad or so with Abakay now and then?

Instead, I said, ‘It’ll come back. These are just phases.’ And then, more briskly, ‘Did you get my bill?’

‘Yes.’ A short pause, then back to the cool tone. ‘Do I destroy that as well?’

‘Don’t transfer the money direct to me anyway. I’ll collect it in cash sometime.’

She didn’t reply.

‘Or maybe I’ll send a friend to collect it.’

‘Yes, let’s do it that way,’ she said.

It annoyed me. I didn’t want her letting me go so quickly. And it annoyed me that it annoyed me.

‘Okay, we’ll do it that way. And please let me know at once if anyone asks you about me.’

‘Can’t I tell your friend? Wouldn’t that be simpler?’

I looked at my big station clock, behind which my pistols, handcuffs, knock-out drops and pepper spray were hidden. ‘No, it wouldn’t be simpler, because my friend has no idea what this is about.’

‘Fine, then, I’ll call you. Anything else we ought to discuss?’

I said no, we said goodbye and hung up. I was furious. With her, with myself. And briefly I wondered how, after Whitney Houston, I had gotten to Foreigner and Münchner Freiheit. Brothel music, all of it.

I was still sitting thoughtfully at my desk when Katja Lipschitz called ten minutes later.

‘Hello, Herr Kayankaya.’

‘Hello, Frau Lipschitz.’

‘I’ve spoken to our publisher. If you’re still prepared to do the job I’d like to hire you as bodyguard for Malik Rashid for three days at the Book Fair.’

‘Yes, I’m ready to do it. Did you tell your publisher my fee? We don’t want problems about it later.’

I didn’t know why, probably it was just a cliché picked up from cheap TV films. But I thought there could be some difficulty in meeting financial obligations in the book trade.

‘It’s all decided. Send me your contract by email.’

‘I’ll do that at once. The advance is a minimum daily fee, a thousand euros plus taxes. As soon as that’s in my account I’ll take a look at Rashid’s hotel. What was its name again?’

‘The Harmonia in Niederrad.’

‘When does Rashid arrive?’

‘At noon on Friday, is that all right for you? Midday Friday until midday on Monday, three days?’

‘That’s okay. Shall I fetch him from the airport or the railway station?’

‘No, my assistant will do that. Rashid, you and I will meet at twelve at the hotel to discuss everything. From then on he’ll be in your care.’

‘Fine. See you at twelve on Friday, then.’

‘I have one request, Herr Kayankaya. It’s possible that journalists will approach you during the Fair. Rashid and his novel will be much discussed, so his bodyguard could be a subject of interest as well. Have you read his book, what you think of it as a Muslim, and so on …’

‘And you’d like me to keep my mouth shut.’

‘Well, what you told me about your attitude towards religion, and your manner in general … don’t misunderstand me, I thought it was very … interesting to talk to you, but … you see, journalists don’t like anything complicated. And a Turkish bodyguard who compares God to hot stones and possibly doesn’t take the man he’s guarding, an internationally famous author who is generally considered to have written a very important and sensational book, well, possibly doesn’t take him entirely seriously — anyway, it wouldn’t be simple to get that across. And then the papers might say: best-selling author mocked by own bodyguard, or something like that.’

‘Don’t worry. I’m not at all interested in getting into the papers.’

‘That’s what I thought. I just wanted to warn you — some journalists can be very pushy.’

‘Thanks.’

‘And something else …’

‘Yes?’

‘In Rashid’s daily schedule you’ll see what events he’s taking part in. One of them is a panel discussion at the House of Literature with Dr. Breitel …’

She paused, giving me time to react, and when I said nothing she went on to explain, ‘One of the editors of the Berliner Nachrichten. The title is “The Ten Plagues …” ’ Another pause for my reaction. ‘It’s out of the Bible, when God sent plagues of heat, locusts, hail and so on into the country … Oh, I don’t remember all of it. Anyway, the discussion will turn on the various threats to Western society: falling birth rates, families breaking up, isolation, excessive technology, the Internet, a few more things, and finally — with Malik Rashid as the guest, of course the real subject behind all this is whether there isn’t an increasingly well-organised Islam behind it all, preparing the threats, that’s to say the plagues, more or less intentionally. For instance, there’ll be the consequences of the falling birth rate among, er …’

‘Us,’ I said, helping her out.

‘Yes, us, and the rising birth rate among …’

‘Immigrant families.’

‘Thanks, it’ll go something like that. Sorry, not a subject I know very well, and I can’t find my notes about it at the moment.’

‘Do you remember what it said about Islam overwhelming us with excessive technology?’

‘Well, it was to do with the internet. I think Dr. Breitel is going to say that the internet is the real engine of destruction in our society because — oh, look, here are my notes and they say “it creates lonely, frustrated, dehumanised creatures who can no longer function in a society unable to defend itself.” And lower down: “Do we know how much Arab and Iranian oil money has gone into the World Wide Web? From a region where the majority of the population doesn’t own computers? Is the internet a drug with which the rulers and religious leaders of the East are swamping the Western world to make us a crowd of couch potatoes stuffed with useless knowledge and satiated with pornography? Is the internet perhaps nothing but an intelligent means of warfare? Just as the British weakened China in the nineteenth century from within with opium, then overthrew it by military means?” And so on … We’re looking forward to a controversial evening. Questions from the audience will be allowed at the end; we’re asking for them to be sent to our home page for security reasons. Driss Mararoufi, head chef at the Tunisian Medina restaurant in Sachsenhausen, will provide refreshments.’ Katja Lipschitz paused for a moment and then proclaimed, in rather too loud a voice, as if to drown out any possible doubts: ‘It will certainly be a very interesting evening.’

‘It certainly will. But what did you really want to tell me?’

‘Oh … yes. Well, as I said, we’re asking for questions in advance for security reasons. In fact, it’s not open to the general public, but we didn’t want to make that obvious. People are more likely to buy books at occasions where they couldn’t get tickets than at those they weren’t expected to attend. The risk of letting in all and sundry was just too great. The mayor of Frankfurt is coming, maybe even the Hessian minister of the interior … well, anyway, in that connection I wanted to ask you to wear … well, suitable clothing.’

‘How do you mean? A turban?’

‘No, of course not.’ She gave a brief, nervous laugh. ‘If you have a suit, or at least a smart jacket … it will be a very exclusive evening, and in your own interest … I assume you wouldn’t like to be the only one in jeans and a corduroy jacket.’

‘Thanks for the helpful hint. Is a blue pin-striped suit okay?’ I thought of Slibulsky, who had once called blue pin-striped suits the monastic garb of all disreputable folk such as Turks. But obviously Katja Lipschitz wasn’t familiar with this association.

‘Wonderful,’ she said, pleased. Then her tone of voice suddenly became slightly troubled. ‘And I’d like to point out one more thing that can — well, can be surprising for people who don’t know him or the book trade. Er … Dr. Breitel likes to wear short trousers, even in the evening and anywhere, I mean …’

‘He does? Even in winter?’

‘With knee-high socks.’

‘Well, what a good thing you persuaded me not to wear my cord jacket. That would have been a real faux pas!’

‘Er, yes.’

‘Would you like me to wear short trousers as well?’

‘For heaven’s sake, no — that’s Dr. Breitel’s privilege, so to speak. His own signature style, if you see what I mean.’

‘I do. May one pay him compliments? On the fabric, the cut of the trousers, maybe on his legs?’

‘No, no, please don’t. Just try not to notice.’

‘Okay.’

‘Dr. Breitel is …’ I liked the way she obviously had to overcome her embarrassment ‘… very important. If you want to sell books, I mean.’

‘I do indeed see what you mean, Frau Lipschitz. Don’t worry, I won’t do anything to attract attention.’

‘Thank you very much, Herr Kayankaya. Sometimes it isn’t entirely easy …’ She was searching for words.

‘Exactly,’ I said.

‘Yes. Well, yes. Anyway, I’ll send you the schedule for those three days with the signed contract, and a pass to the Book Fair.’

‘And the threatening letters.’

‘Oh, yes, the threatening letters. Of course.’

‘I’ll see you on Friday next week, then.’

‘Friday next week, Herr Kayankaya, thanks.’