The Carnival Master

6.

Stefan pulled up outside the all-night convenience store attached to the petrol station. He’d been at work until an hour ago. Now he felt good: freshly shaved and showered; wearing a brand-new shirt and his best cologne. He had phoned Lisa and she had agreed he could come and stay the night. This was the only store he knew that stayed open this late and it always had a good range of wines.

He had been seeing Lisa for a couple of months now. She was a great girl. A good laugh. Smart, and pretty with it. They had been drifting along in a casual manner and he genuinely had fun in her company, but Stefan was beginning to think that Lisa had ideas of it becoming a more serious relationship. He didn’t want that. Or at least he thought he didn’t want it. Things were fine as they were and he wasn’t ready to get serious with anyone. Although sometimes the idea didn’t seem so bad. But the fact was that, at the moment, the only thing Stefan had time to be serious about was his career. He had tried to explain to Lisa how important being a policeman was to him. He was up for his Commissar’s exams in a couple of months and he had to get his head down to do some serious study. Not tonight. Tonight was going to be fun. But first he had to pick up the wine.

Stefan knew there was something wrong the instant he walked through the door.

The door chime drew the attention of the two men who were the only others in the store. A thin man with long, lank hair and dirty-looking clothes stood in front of the counter; the middle-aged Turk who ran the store was behind it. The two men were still. Too still, too tense. The young man turned suddenly to face Stefan. Stefan could see the fear in his eyes, the jerky motion as he swung his arm around to point his gun at him. Stefan held his hands away from his body.

‘Easy…’ he said. Stefan’s training kicked in and he did a threat analysis. He took in as much as he could in as short a time as he could. The gun was an early Walther P8. Practically an antique. No, the barrel was too short for a P8: it was a P4, the type used by the Hamburg police after the war. Still, it was old and it didn’t look cared for. Stefan wasn’t entirely sure that it would be in working order, but it was impossible to tell for certain. ‘Just keep calm,’ he said, realising that the young man with the wild eyes and unwashed hair was the most frightened person in the room. Stefan thought back to the way Principal Chief Commissar Fabel had handled the situation in Jenfeld. ‘Just take it easy.’ Stefan saw the shake in the gunman’s arm. The red rims to the wild eyes. A junkie. Desperate. Frightened. And Stefan’s training told him a scared man with a gun is infinitely more dangerous than an angry man with a gun. Stefan did a mental calculation of the chances of the gun jamming and, if it did go off, of the junkie missing his target.

‘Stay where you are!’ the junkie shouted at Stefan.

‘I’m not moving,’ said Stefan calmly.

‘You…’ the junkie called over to the Turkish shopkeeper. ‘Fill a carrier bag with the money from the till.’

The Turk exchanged a look with Stefan. He had served Stefan many times before and knew that he was a policeman. The Turk took what money there was in the till and put it in the bag. The junkie reached over with his free hand without taking his aim off Stefan.

‘Okay. Get out of the way. I’m leaving.’ The junkie tried to inject as much authority as possible into the statement.

‘I can’t let you do that…’ Stefan said quietly.

‘What the fuck do you mean? Get the fuck out of my way.’

‘I can’t do that,’ repeated Stefan. ‘I’m a police officer. I don’t care about the money. I don’t even care about you getting away. But I can’t let you leave with that gun. I can’t let you be a danger to the public.’

‘You’re a Bulle?’ The junkie looked even more agitated. His shake grew worse. ‘A fucking cop?’ He snapped his aim from Stefan to the Turkish shop owner. ‘What about this member of the public? What if I fucking kill him right now because you won’t get out of my way?’

Stefan looked at the Turk. He had raised his hands but Stefan could tell that he was more in control of his fear than the gunman was of his.

‘Then you would prove to me that I can’t let you leave. And I’d have to take you down.’

‘With what? You’re not armed.’

‘Trust me,’ Stefan kept his tone even. ‘You pull that trigger and it’s the last thing you do. I’m a specialist firearms officer. I know about guns. I know about the gun you’re holding. When and where it was made. I can tell from the way you’re holding it that you don’t know what you’re doing. And I know that you won’t get us both before I reach you and snap your neck. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Put the gun down. There’s a way out of this.’

‘Is there?’ The gunman smiled bitterly. ‘I suppose by restoring the monopoly on physical force?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Get out of my way!’ He brought the gun back to bear on Stefan. ‘Why do you have to do this? Why can’t you just walk away? Just this once.’

‘Because it’s what I do. Just give me the gun.’ Stefan took a step forward. ‘Let’s end this.’

‘Okay…’ The gunman’s expression seemed to empty.

Stefan gave a small laugh. He had been wrong. The gun was old. It hadn’t been maintained. But it didn’t jam. And the junkie had been either a better shot than Stefan had thought or had just been lucky. The sound of the shot still rang in the confinement of the store as Stefan looked down at his brand-new shirt. At the hole punched through it. At the bloom that spread as his blood soaked into the fabric. A central mass hit. Almost a perfect shot. Stefan’s legs gave way under him. He sank to his knees.

‘Why couldn’t you just have got out of my way?’ The junkie’s voice was filled with panic and hate in equal measure.

Stefan looked up at the junkie and opened his mouth to say something but found he hadn’t the breath to spare.

‘Why?’ the junkie repeated plaintively and fired again. Then again. And again.