In the Evil Day

31

…HAMBURG…

Baader came into Anselm’s office and slumped in a chair. He put a new case cover sheet on the desk.

‘I gave this to Carla,’ he said. ‘You were busy with Tilders.’

Anselm looked at the form. The subject was someone called Con Niemand aka Eric Constantine, South African, occupation security guard, last seen London.

‘Lafarge Partners?’ he said.

Baader was looking down, fingers steepled. ‘Credit check’s okay. Corporate security. How many corporate security consultants does the world need?’

‘Demand and supply. Ever think about what happens to these people after we find them?’

Baader closed his eyes, shook his head. ‘John, please.’

‘Do you?’

‘This is a business.’ He still didn’t look up.

Anselm went ahead, knew how stupid he was being. ‘These people, they can pay. That’s all we care?’

Baader lifted his fox head. ‘Care? Care about what? Lafarge. Probably run by Catholics. If you like, we could ask the Pope to give them a moral clearance. On the other hand, the Pope cleared Hitler.’

He looked away, not at anything. ‘John, either we provide this service for anyone who can pay or we don’t provide it all. You’re unhappy with that, I’ll give you a very good reference. Today if you like.’

Silence, just the sounds from the big room, the hum of the internal fans cooling sixty or seventy electronic devices, the air-conditioning, noise from a dozen monitors, a phone ringing, another one, people laughing.

‘I’m really tired,’ said Baader. ‘I’ve sold the shares, the car, the apartment. I’m moving to this shitty little apartment, two rooms, all night the trains run past, eye level, ten metres away, the noise, people look at you like you’re in Hagenbeck’s fucking zoo.’

He got up. ‘So I’m not receptive to ethical questions right now. Next year perhaps.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Anselm. He was.

‘Yes, well, when you’re in trouble, you too can sell your dwelling. Then you can buy your own island, buy Australia, it should get you enough to buy Australia, world’s biggest island, live happily ever after.’

‘My brother owns the house,’ said Anselm. Baader knew that, he just didn’t want to believe it.

Baader was at the door, he stopped, turned his head, said, ‘War criminals from three wars, Pinochet’s number two executioner, a Russian who leaves five people to die in a meat fridge, a man who swindles widows and orphans out of sixty million dollars, a woman who drowns two children so that she can marry an Italian beachboy. And the fucking rest.’

They looked at each other.

‘Count for something? Yes? Yes?’

‘Yes,’ said Anselm. ‘I’m a prick, Stefan. I’m a self-confessed prick and contrite.’

‘Yes,’ said Baader. ‘Anyway, it’s too late to change. We can’t. You can’t. I can’t. The fucking world can’t.’

Anselm stared out of the window for a long time, just a sliver of lake view, a slice of trees and water and sky, endless sky, the water fractionally darker than the sky. He still had the dreams, dreams about sky, about lying on his back, he was on a hilltop looking at a huge blue heaven, birds passing high above, twittering flocks so large their shadows fell on him like the shadows of clouds, and then the real clouds came, the mountains of cloud, darkening the day, chilling the air.

After a while, his thoughts went to Alex Koenig. It was not a good idea. She wanted something from him. A paper in a learned journal. He was a scalp. No one else had interviewed him. On the other hand…

He started at the knock.

Carla Klinger.

‘Cut your hair, I see,’ said Anselm. ‘I like it.’

She blinked twice, moved her mouth. ‘Two weeks since then but thank you. The new British file, Eric Constantine, Seychelles passport, he hired a car from a Centurion Hire in London.’

‘When?’

‘Yesterday. Seven days hire. Paid cash. To be returned to the place of hire.’

‘Centurion Hire? How big are they?’

‘One site.’

‘And they’re online?’

‘No. I looked at the big hire companies, nothing, so I thought about what all the small car-hire businesses would have to do. One thing is insure, they have to insure the cars, and I asked an insurance person. In the UK, three insurance companies get most of the hire car insurance. They don’t just insure all of a company’s vehicles, blanket cover. Every hire, they want a record of who the hirer is. Inskip and I opened them up and we found the name.’

She licked her lower lip. ‘Not a great problem,’ she said.

Anselm shook his head. ‘Not for you maybe. For people like me, a great problem. Why didn’t anyone think of it before? Can we run all the British currents through it, see what happens?’

‘Inskip’s doing that now. Then we’ll see what we can do in the States. I don’t know the insurance position there.’

‘You should be in charge here.’

‘Then who would do my work?’

She left. Walking with a stick didn’t make her any less attractive from behind. From any angle.

He went back to looking out of the window. He had said it. He wasn’t necessary. Carla could do her job without him and probably do Inskip’s too.

Baader could save a lot of money by showing him the door. It would cross the mind of someone who’d had to sell his shares, his Blankenese apartment, the Porsche, now lie awake in a two-room postwar walk-up listening to the trains’ electric screech vibrate his window.

Baader could have got rid of him a long time ago.

Baader was his friend, that’s why he hadn’t done it.

It was thirty minutes before his meeting with O’Malley. Anselm got up and put on his good overcoat.