‘But … but why would Abakay murder someone?’ There was horror in her face.
‘As I said, I don’t want to explain the circumstances. Try to forget Abakay, be glad you have Marieke back, and above all, never ask anyone again to kill for you. Because from that moment on, if he plays his cards right, well, he has you firmly in his power. And how would it be if it wasn’t Abakay but a slimy little private detective from Gutleutstrasse who wanted his share of your cake?’
She was still looking at me in horror, and then increasingly in confusion and embarrassment. In the end she just looked downcast. She turned her eyes away and looked at the flowering shrubs. After a while she said, ‘I don’t think you’re either little or slimy.’
‘Thanks, but I didn’t mean it literally; it was just making the point.’
‘And I’m sorry. I don’t think I really expected you to go along with my proposition …’
‘That’s all right.’
‘If it was only me, but Marieke and Edgar …’ She went on staring at the shrubs. ‘Have you ever been really afraid? I don’t mean facing a gun, or fear of flying, or anything like that, but permanent, constant, daily fear?’
I thought it over. ‘Once, when it began to dawn on me that I’d made a bad mistake. Perhaps that’s the worst fear — when you’re afraid you’ve messed things up yourself. But if I may say something to you; if anything should happen to Marieke or your husband, it’s not your fault. You meet characters like Abakay in life — at least, if you ever step outside your front door — and we’re none of us fast or experienced enough to get away every time. It’s just bad luck.’
‘I invited him to supper.’
‘Yes, bad luck, and maybe a bit of naïveté, but it has nothing to do with fault. You don’t have to make up for anything, understand?’
‘Oh, Herr Kayankaya …’ She sighed, turned away from the flowering shrubs, and her glance rested heavily on me. ‘Do you know something? Right now I really want to hug you.’
‘Oh.’ I felt slightly dizzy. ‘Hmm … But would your daughter understand that if, for instance, she saw us through the bathroom window?’
Her eyes were still on me, feverish, inviting, her breasts rose and fell in time with her breathing, which came shorter now.
I tried to keep the friendly policeman smile going, and offered her my hand. ‘Let’s leave it at that, Frau de Chavannes. I’ll send you my bill within the next few days, and if Abakay happens to make any more difficulties, which I don’t expect, then call me. Otherwise: best of luck.’
‘Herr Kayankaya …’
She took my hand and pressed it first strongly as if to say goodbye, before she then simply held it in hers, soft and warm, and went on looking at me. The warmth passed into my body and constricted my throat.
At last I withdrew my hand and cleared my throat. ‘You’re good at that, aren’t you?’
She slowly let her arm drop. ‘It’s nothing to do with being good at anything.’ And with a slightly dreamy, fragile smile: ‘It just happens.’
‘I see …’ I pulled myself together. ‘Well, as I said, the best of luck.’ And when she still didn’t move: ‘Look …’ I pointed to the villa. ‘Your daughter.’
Valerie de Chavannes spun round in alarm, saw the empty window and the empty front door, turned to me again and looked first surprised, then indignant.
I shrugged my shoulders. ‘It could have easily happened. Then you wonder whether you really had to let something happen.’ I raised my hand in greeting. ‘Have a nice day.’ Then I quickly turned away, went through the garden gate and down Zeppelinallee. It was so quiet that one or two minutes later, when I had almost reached the next crossing, I heard the heavy front door of the de Chavannes house latch. I was extremely glad that I’d only given Valerie de Chavannes my hand.
Chapter 6
I sat down in the café on the Bockenheimer Warte, ordered a double espresso and called an acquaintance in the Frankfurt Police.
Octavian Tartarescu, despite his name and his Romanian origin, looked like a typical German country boy. Or, rather, exactly as anyone would imagine a German policeman. Tall, strong, short fair hair, a pronounced, angular chin that looked made for the straps of a helmet to be buckled under it, blue eyes with a serious and rather pitiless expression, his mouth a narrow line suitable for barking out orders, and his cheeks white and plump from eating potatoes every day. Instinctively and without meaning it as a compliment, total strangers called him ‘cop’ during any bust-up in the streets, even if he was neither in uniform nor driving a police car. It was simply the first term of abuse to occur to anyone looking at Octavian. Nonetheless, his superior officers liked to send him on undercover missions, on the assumption that no criminal would expect the police to be so stupid as to infiltrate the underworld with someone who looked as if Himmler himself had had him bred to maintain public order. Still less did they think that criminals would believe them clever enough to do that very thing.
It was as an undercover cop that I had first come to know him twelve years ago. At the time Deborah was still a prostitute. I had helped her to get rid of her pimp the year before, found her a place in Mister Happy, and since then, so to speak, I’d been her favourite customer. Octavian was tracking down a ring of sex traffickers who smuggled Belarusian girls into Germany. In the role of a slightly simpleminded punter, he was combing the brothels of Frankfurt, and so one evening he came to the small establishment on the banks of the river Main. Mister Happy was probably the last place in Frankfurt’s red light district that would have illegal, under-aged, forced sex workers. At the time I’d known Tugba, who ran the place, for years. She was a women’s — or more a prostitute’s — rights activist. She’d worked as a prostitute herself, and become famous all over the country because she had drawn a pistol and forced her pimp and a hated customer, whom her pimp had repeatedly forced on her, to fuck each other. To emphasise her point she shot both of them in the legs several times and then called the police. The press was full of the case for weeks. Tugba, who came from a Turkish family from Darmstadt, hired a good lawyer and got off with a suspended sentence on the grounds of self-defence. With the help of an investor and the money she had made from interviews and her own TV documentary show — Horizontal with My Head Held High — she had bought the old boathouse on the Deutschherrnufer not far from Offenbach. She had it well renovated, uncovered the original timber framing of the façade, furnished bright and friendly rooms with views of the river and put in a sauna, several small fountains with mosaic tiling and a comfortable bar on the ground floor with leather chairs and a silver counter. Over the terrace she stretched wires and planted roses to climb them, and to its left and right she placed two old streetlights specially delivered from Hungary. When the weather was warm enough, the girls could lean against them for the delectation of the customers. A picturesque wooden landing stage went out over the river, with fragrant lilacs and willow trees trailing their branches in the water in spring. The background music from the bar was exclusively piano: Keith Jarrett, Ahmad Jamal, Mendelssohn, Mozart. Tugba was very particular about that. She had a passion for the piano, played the instrument herself and probably had not entirely given up her dream of a career as a concert pianist. All things considered, if the Michelin Guide gave stars to brothels, Mister Happy would have had three of them.
That evening, Octavian saw me sitting on a bench on the landing stage reading the newspaper, and said to himself that no punter would spend his time in a brothel that way. He came down from the terrace, said good evening, asked if he could join me and I thought: This guy looks like a cop.
He asked me this and that as one punter to another, what the place was like, the service, the girls — he really did say girls, in English — and I thought: A cop from the countryside — before asking whether I worked in Mister Happy.