Alex couldn’t help thinking of Benny, and the memory pained her. She saw his laughing face, then the grimace of the cop who killed him, his boots stamping on Benny’s fingers as if he were treading out a cigarette, and her rage rose once more.
She was surprised that Kalli had forgotten to lock up. True, he was prone to getting drunk, and sometimes slept on the sofa in the back, which was why she had brought the knife. She wasn’t scared of him, having dealt with far worse in the past. If need be she would extract the money by force.
The thought of a snoring Kalli in the backroom made her proceed as quietly as possible. Not daring to switch on the light, she groped her way forwards until she found the counter, following its contours with her fingertips to the cash register. She didn’t know how much he left in the till overnight, but her plan was to take whatever money she could lay her hands on. There had been quite a sum in the drawer when she visited at lunchtime.
Thinking of how to unlock it without making too much noise, she hesitated. It was already wide open, the big cash drawer pulled out as far as it would go. And it was empty.
A strange feeling took root in her stomach. Even if he had been drinking, which seemed more than likely, a schlockmeister like Eberhard Kallweit would hardly forget to close the cash drawer. Or had he already taken the money out and locked it in the cash box, which he took with him every morning to the bank? She knew where he hid the box: on the bookshelf in the backroom. She had seen him once heading out back to fetch his cash, not realising that the display cases in his shop, dirty as they were, made for perfect mirrors.
Alex opened the door slowly and carefully, straining as she listened. No sound, not a snore, not a breath, just the ticking of the wall clock. Inside, she closed the door behind her. It was darker here than in the shop, pitch black in fact, without a window in sight. She searched for the light switch but, after a while, gave up, getting down on her knees and groping her way forward on all fours.
Here was the edge of the carpet, so that must be the table, and behind it the sofa. The bookshelf hung above the sofa. Alex continued crawling across the carpet, which hadn’t been beaten in a long time and had crumbs and dirt everywhere, until she felt something sticky, instinctively pulling her hand away. What a pigsty! At first she thought Kalli, the messy bastard, had knocked over a bottle of spirits and failed to clean up, but then she recognised the faintly metallic smell.
She had waded into a pool of blood!
God damnit! She needed light to see what had happened.
She crawled back and edged open the door. In the meantime her eyes had grown so used to the darkness that the little light entering from the shop was enough to get her bearings. There was something big on the floor under the table: a body, a human body. Stay calm, she told herself. Finally she located the light switch on the other side of the door. Suddenly she felt curiosity and fear in equal measure. Her right hand gripped the handle of the knife, as her bandaged left hand stood poised over the switch, but there was no one else there.
Eberhard Kallweit lay in his own blood, which by now was seeping into the carpet. His body was in a horrific state, worse than Alex had ever seen, the face a crusty, bloody mess. She had to look twice to recognise him at all, but the grey overalls left her in no doubt. Her knees grew weak as she threw up the little she had eaten that evening against the wall.
13
Rudolf Höller trudged through the Brandenburg March sand. He was in good spirits, even if early morning wasn’t his best time. He could have remained in the car, but wanted to see what had become of the dump. He stepped on a branch by the entrance and a flight of crows fluttered into the early morning mist. Apart from the beating of their wings, their cawing, and the rustle of the wind in the pines, there wasn’t a sound. At this hour the garbage trucks were still out and about; they wouldn’t roll up with their load for a while yet, but, when they did, there would be a continuous stream of rubbish flowing into the former clay quarry until late evening.
The wood on the other side of the hollow was part of Greater Berlin, but the dump lay beyond the four-million-strong city. Berliners didn’t like to bury their rubbish within the city walls, and Schöneiche was an excellent place to dispose of things that had outlived their purpose. No one knew that better than Rudi Höller.
The fact that they had designated the dump, of all places, as the meeting point, seemed like a sign. He knew his way around here. It was, so to speak, his home patch. A few years ago, Rudi had worked as a garbage man and discharged his load here every day. Increasingly, however, he had used his rounds to nose out properties for a break-in, and ultimately to deliver packages of drugs. At some point he had ended up with the Nordpiraten, eventually elbowing his way to the top of the organisation, and not just in a figurative sense. Now he had reasserted his leadership claim after spending two years in the can at Tegel with Hermann.
The Pirates were crying out for strong leadership. Since the catastrophe at Reichskanzlerplatz, where half the Ringverein had fallen into the hands of the police, the organisation was fighting for survival. In the meantime, those bastards at Berolina had grown stronger.
It was time to put a stop to it. Soon the Pirates would no longer be limiting themselves to regaining lost ground. Today’s meeting could change everything. He had managed to get to someone who, though still loyal to Red Hugo, had long been a thorn in Johann Marlow’s side. And, make no mistake, Berolina were headed by Marlow, not Hugo Lenz. Without Dr M., Berolina would crumble like a dry leaf.
Yes, this was his chance to finally get even with Dr M., to show that arrogant upstart who was in charge of this city. Rudi Höller knew who he had to thank for his prison years. They had been shopped. The pigs had been waiting for them in the vault when he and Lapke and a few others broke into the bank on Reichskanzlerplatz. When Berolina worked in conjunction with the police, you could be sure Johann Marlow had a hand in it. He had half of police headquarters in his pocket, although they wouldn’t be much use when he was in the ground.
Rudi the Rat had no qualms when it came to bumping people off. That was how he had earned his nickname, but with a nod to his former profession. There were thousands of rats at the dump, many more than there were crows. Only, you couldn’t see the rats. They didn’t caw like the birds, but kept themselves hidden, striking mercilessly, quick as a flash – when the situation demanded.
Surveying the dump’s expansion as if it were his own work, Rudi turned around. When he returned to his car, he saw a black sedan parked on the edge of the wood. Behind the windscreen were two men. He ran his hands over the old war pistol in his waistband as the first garbage truck rumbled slowly towards the entrance. The truck was early, he thought. On the one hand it was disrupting their meeting, but on the other it made him feel safer. He turned his face towards the wood in case the driver recognised him.
They hadn’t mentioned there would be two of them. The caller had explicitly said it would be a private meeting.
The garbage truck had now passed, and was rolling slowly onwards. The doors of the black sedan opened and two well-dressed men got out. Rudi moved towards them. He’d give them a piece of his mind! He didn’t like it when people broke arrangements.