One Man, One Murder

5

For the second time that afternoon, I entered the brown immigration service building. Ready for trouble, I approached the uniformed guy checking I.D.s at the entrance. Apparently there had been a change of guard; this was not the same fellow who had pursued me into the street. After giving me the usual suspicious up down up-left side right side-deep into eyes-well all right then look, he let me pass without further ado. I ascended past the floors crowded with applicants to the superintendent’s offices. An empty corridor. My footsteps were loud. “Department of Residence Violations-Superintendent Hottges, Inspector Klaase” read the sign next to a door. I knocked.

“Come in.”

Two men surrounded by more of the typical fiberboard furniture. One of them in his mid-thirties: mustache and turtleneck, the other twenty years older: gray hair and necktie. They were sitting behind their desks, facing each other, and my first impression was that they had been sitting there since they were born, waiting for the other to finally stick his fingers into the outlet below the light switch. A pile of daily papers lay on the desk to the right, and the one to the left was graced by a framed photograph of a family at a shooting range.

The younger one nodded to me and said “Hello.”

“Hello. Superintendent Hottges?”

He pointed to his opposite number who, after closing a file folder in a decisive manner, turned his face toward me. It was a bony, thin-lipped face with angular cheeks and a firm jaw.

For a moment he seemed to vacillate between just telling me to get out and listening to my nonsense first.

“What’s up?”

“My name’s Kayankaya. I’m a private investigator. I would like to enquire if you know anything about a gang of passport forgers who target rejected asylum applicants and illegal aliens to offer them their services.”

“They target them?” His cold gray eyes held mine. “How do they do that?”

“Well, for instance, by finding out about current cases from various refugee organizations.”

“And what is your interest in this?”

“I am looking for a woman who accepted such an offer.”

“Her name?”

“Erika Mustermann.”

Out of the corner of my eye I watched Inspector Klaase.

He looked amused. Hottges remained poker-faced. “Very funny.”

“No funnier than your question.”

“There is no gang like that.”

“You mean you have no idea?”

He closed his mouth firmly enough to indicate he wouldn’t open it again until it was time to go home. He contemplated his hands, folded in front of him on the desk. His thumbs were tapping against each other.

“No, that’s not what I meant.”

“All right, then. But perhaps you’ve noticed a recent increase in forged papers-or received information about some place or workshop where non-Germans congregate, regularly and for no obvious reason? The general public is pretty good at noticing such things.”

Hottges did not reply, and for a while the only sound was the tapping of a typewriter next door. Just as I had decided to call it a day, the young Inspector cleared his throat and said, quite cautiously: “There was that thing in Gellersheim-”

Hottges’s stare struck him like a lightning bolt. Still looking at him, Hottges raised his hands, put one on the armrest of his chair and used the other to tweak an ear lobe. I was amazed by the menace with which he charged that simple gesture.

“Don’t you have anything better to do, Klaase?”

“But boss, I-”

“Superintendent, if you please.”

The Inspector’s mouth fell open for a moment. Then he sighed, reached for a file, and sank deeper into his chair.

“As for you, Mr.-”

“Kayankaya.”

“Your visit is over.”

I nodded. “I get it.”

Inspector Klaase empathized with a quick glance across the top of his file. I winked at him, took two business cards out of my pocket and stuck one each on their desk lamps. “Just in case you happen to be in a better mood one day and say to yourself, that nice young man who showed up this morning, we really should-”

“Out!”