‘Sorry about that,’ she said. There were a few regulars amongst the customers and one of them said: ‘Well done – that’s the way to deal with trash like that.’
Andrea kept her smile in place. ‘Could you spell me for a while, Britta?’ she asked the other waitress and strode into the kitchen. Andrea swiftly exited through the back door onto the alley. She sprinted along the narrow lane to where a side street ran at right angles to Eintrachtstrasse, then up to the junction with Cordulastrasse. They were there. The girl still had her head bowed while the little shit berated her loudly about something. Their body language, his aggressive, hers submissive, expressed to the world the whole dynamic of their relationship; and Andrea could see that violence played a part in it. There were hardly any other pedestrians and only a few cars passed along the slushy-wet road, with the sound of waves on a shore. Andrea ducked back around the corner. The cold air turned the skin of her salon-tanned naked arms into gooseflesh. But inside the rage still burned.
The man was too busy shouting abuse at the girl to notice Andrea blocking his way. He looked startled as she grabbed the front of his coat and dragged him into the side street.
‘What did you call me?’ Her face hardened into sinew under the make-up. He didn’t answer and she slammed him hard against the brickwork. ‘I said: what the fuck did you call me?’
‘I… I…’ The little shit’s expression betrayed his fear and confusion.
Andrea looked at his pasty, acne-covered face. Deep inside her, someone opened the door of the blast furnace of her hate. It surged up in her, white-hot. Her forehead slammed into his face and she felt his nose break. She let him go and he stared at her wildly, his face covered in blood. Andrea took advantage of his shock and slammed a boot hard into his groin. Gasping and retching, he sunk to his knees, clutching his crushed testicles. Andrea turned to the girl. She was staring, horrified, at her boyfriend as he keeled over and lay on his side on the pavement. Mouth open, a strangled scream in her throat, her eyes filled with tears.
‘You’re worse than him,’ Andrea spoke to the girl in a disgusted tone. ‘You’re worse for playing the victim. For putting up with it. I despise you. I despise all women like you. Why do you let him treat you like that… in public? Have you no self-respect?’
The girl was still staring at her boyfriend. Shock and fear on her face. Andrea snorted, turned on her heel and strode back towards the cafe. As she did so, the girl’s shrill screaming rang in her ears: ‘You freak! You sick fucking FREAK!’
4.
Maria sat on the edge of the hotel bed and assessed her plan: she knew that the only way to conquer chaos was to have a plan.
The idea had come to her when Liese had phoned her just after all the trouble with Frank. Liese was an old school friend from Hanover with whom Maria had kept in touch. She knew all about Maria’s problems and had always been supportive. Liese had offered Maria a chance to get away from it alclass="underline" to come and spend a few days with her in Cologne. Maria had thanked her but had said no. She would need more than a short break in Cologne for what she had planned. Then it had all come together: Liese had phoned Maria and told her that work meant that she had to go to Japan for three months. The opportunity had come up unexpectedly and had caught Liese somewhat on the hop and she was worried about her flat lying empty. Maria would be doing her a favour if she stayed in the flat. Liese knew that Maria needed a change of scene, so the arrangement seemed ideal. But Liese had found it a little strange when Maria asked her to tell only her immediate neighbours about the arrangement, and even then only to give them Maria’s first name.
‘I need to be anonymous for a while,’ Maria had explained. The flat was in the Belgian Quarter near one of the gates that were remnants of Cologne’s old city wall. Liese had told Maria that the Dresslers, the only neighbours on the same floor, were a young professional couple without kids who were out at work all day and were also often out in the evening. There were a couple of families on the floor below and on the ground floor there was a younger man whom Liese never really ran into, as well as another young professional couple. It was perfect. But it would not be enough on its own: she would need more than one safe house. In any case, Liese would not be leaving until the end of the week. Maria had decided to check into the budget hotel for a few days. She might even keep the hotel room for a while after she moved into the flat.
She took her laptop from her briefcase.
Sitting on the bed, Maria opened up the files she had accessed from the BKA database before she took her sick leave. There had been a limit to what her clearance as a Hamburg Murder Commission detective had allowed her to access and the information was general, but there were enough pieces of the picture to give her a starting point. She had even endured a lunch appointment with a woman she had been at the Landespolizeischule academy with and who was now a hotshot with the BKA Federal Crime Bureau. Maria had noticed the look of alarm on her table companion’s face when she saw how changed Maria was. Maria had been able to establish the existence of a much more detailed dossier on Vitrenko, but then the BKA woman had become reluctant to discuss it further. Maria suspected that she had become concerned about Maria’s state of mind.
Maria knew she was not well. It had only been after several sessions with Dr Minks that she had come to recognise that her behaviour had become odd; that she had slipped into a world of bizarre rituals and obsessions, one laid over the other and obscuring her view of what was normal in life. Since the stabbing she had struggled most with aphenphosmphobia, a morbid fear of physical contact with other human beings. Since the affair with Frank she had suffered a severe depression and had developed an eating disorder. Now, Maria could barely look at herself in a mirror without a sense of revulsion. But she did look in a mirror often: she would strip naked and stand before a full-length glass for an hour, her self-loathing intense and vast. She would look at herself and despise the flesh of which she was composed. And, most of all, she would stare at her image and wish she could be someone else. Anyone else. It was all part of the mental chaos through which she had to stumble just to get through each day. But enough of the old Maria, the organised, meticulous, efficient Maria had still been there for her to assemble her own detailed dossier before she took her sick leave.
It had been the day she had heard that the Ukrainian investigator Turchenko had been killed in a road crash that she had decided to gather all the information she could on Vitrenko and his organisation. Turchenko, a quiet, polite, highly intelligent lawyer turned investigator, had passed though Hamburg while on the trail of Vasyl Vitrenko. Turchenko had asked Maria to describe in detail the events that had led up to Vitrenko stabbing her. She had tried to explain to the Ukrainian detective, as she had tried to explain to the counsellors and psychologists after the event, that what had really destroyed any feeling of self-worth that she might have had was the way Vitrenko had not intended to kill her. Instead, he had used his expertise to place the knife where it would leave her hanging onto life by a thread. All Maria had represented to Vitrenko was a delaying tactic. Vitrenko had known that by leaving Maria alive but critically wounded Fabel would have to give up his pursuit. She had been used. Her body had been defiled by Vitrenko just as if she had been raped by him.
And now Maria couldn’t stand the sight of her own flesh, or the touch of others. The therapy hadn’t helped. Talk. Maria wasn’t someone who believed you could solve things by talking them to death.
Maria knew that, comprehensive as it was, the information she had compiled was not complete. She felt frustrated at the idea that, right now, there was a secret investigation going on that involved a number of Federal and local law-enforcement agencies. It had been brought to her attention when she had been reprimanded by the BKA in the presence of Fabel and Criminal Director van Heiden. Maria had been photographed by their surveillance operation talking to key figures. She had, they said, seriously compromised the operation. Maria had gained the partial trust of a young Russian prostitute working the rougher end of the Hamburg trade. Nadja had given Maria information and had disappeared immediately afterwards. The BKA had made a point of highlighting that Maria’s clumsiness had probably cost Nadja her life.