‘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.