‘What’s not to be good with?’ Scholz nodded to the corpse. ‘That’s not a person any more. It’s nothing but meat. Whoever Slavko Dmytruk was, whatever made him who he was, has got nothing to do with what’s left here. You’ve got to get past that. If you don’t, you’ll walk into a murder scene and find some little kiddie dead and you’ll go to pieces. It’ll be your last day on the job.’
Kris was looking at the partially dismembered corpse and did not look at all convinced.
‘Have you had anything to eat?’ asked Scholz. ‘It’s always worse if you’ve got an empty stomach.’ He turned and dipped a ladle into the still-warm soup. He held it out to the young detective. ‘Try some of this… it’s really good. Split pea…’
Kris turned suddenly and bolted out into the restaurant, in the direction of the toilets. Tansu Bakrac scowled disapprovingly at her boss. When Scholz turned back to Simone Schilling, she was staring at him in disbelief.
‘What?’ he said defensively, the ladle still extended. ‘I was trying to help him feel better…’
‘Not everyone is as insensitive to human suffering as you, Herr Scholz.’
‘Call me Benni.’
‘Okay. You can call me Frau Doctor Schilling.’ She nodded in the direction of the departed detective. ‘Shouldn’t you check that he’s okay?’
‘He’ll be fine. If not, he’s in the wrong job. Anyway, I’m not insensitive to human suffering. I feel for the victim. Horrible death. But I don’t lose my lunch every time I look at a stiff. Like I said, they’re not people any more. Just meat. No one knows that better than you.’
‘You’re right,’ said Simone Schilling. ‘A corpse isn’t a person to me. It’s a store of evidence. But it took years to become accustomed to it. Now I look at them professionally, not emotionally. But you… you’re just an insensitive pig.’
Scholz smiled. He liked it when she insulted him. ‘I’m not insensitive. Just practical.’
The young detective reappeared.
‘You okay, Kris?’ asked Scholz. He turned to Simone Schilling. ‘See? Sensitive.’
‘I’m fine,’ said Kris. But he still looked pale.
‘Right, then tell me about what happened here. Were you able to get any more out of the Somalian or the restaurant owners?’
‘Not a lot,’ said Tansu. ‘The Somalian was being very helpful but then he suddenly dried up. I reckon the two Ukrainians told him who they thought the hatchet men were. Probably Ukrainian Mafia. Anyway, the three of them have been taken into custody by Immigration. The restaurant owners aren’t too chatty either. Immigration is all over them as well.’
‘So the answer’s nothing?’ Scholz asked impatiently.
‘Not completely,’ Kris said. ‘Before the Somalian shut up, he said that there had been a woman around talking to Dmytruk. Tall, thin, expensively dressed. He got the impression she was Immigration. Or police.’
9.
Maria woke at six a.m. and listened to the sounds of the city sluggishly stirring in the dark winter Tuesday morning. She hadn’t eaten since her binge on Sunday evening and her gut ached from having been force-fed and then forcibly emptied. She still felt chilled. But something had changed.
She placed herself in another place and another time. Maria never fully understood why she did this. So much of her recent past had been devoted to trying to put what had happened behind her. But she did this regularly: lay in the dark and imagined herself back in the field that night near Cuxhaven.
Until that night they felt they had been pursuing a ghost. The team had succeeded in cornering Vitrenko and a couple of his key henchmen. Vitrenko had escaped by throwing himself through a window and into the night. Maria had been in the field with two local Cuxhaven officers. Spread out. Vitrenko had probably not even broken step as he had sliced open the first officer’s throat. Maria remembered Fabel screaming warnings to her down his radio. She had seen nothing. Heard nothing. But Vasyl Vitrenko had been brought up since boyhood to be a soldier of stealth. There had been a sound behind her and she had spun around but still had seen nothing. Then Vitrenko had suddenly loomed up from the long grass less than a metre away from her. She had swung her gun round but he had caught her hand with insolent ease and held her wrist in a crushing grip. It had been then that she felt him punch her in the solar plexus. But when she looked down she realised that he hadn’t punched her. The handle of a broad-bladed ritual knife had jutted from her body, just below her ribcage. She had looked into Vitrenko’s face. Into his cold, glittering, too-bright green eyes. He had smiled. Then he was gone.
The night had been cloudless and she had lain gazing at the stars. The pain had subsided, although she was aware of the knife as an alien object in her body. She had found she could only breathe in rapid, shallow gasps and had felt that terrible, gradual chill fill her being. It had seemed an eternity before she heard Fabel’s voice calling her name. It could only have been a couple of minutes, but to Maria it had seemed so long that she had actually begun to wonder if she was dead: if this was what death was like, your final moment stretched out infinitely. But then Fabel had been there, bending over her, touching her, talking to her. He had been her link to the living. Fabel her boss. Fabel the father of his team.
But Fabel was not here now, in Cologne. And anyway, he was giving up his career as a policeman. Maria knew that she would never go back to duty. She would resign too. Or she would die here. It was not a thought that troubled her too much. Maria knew that Vitrenko had really already killed her, three years ago in that field. All he would be doing now would be to exorcise Maria’s tortured ghost from the world. Maybe it would have been better if Fabel hadn’t found her. Death would have been better than the hell she’d endured.
And then there had been Frank. Maria knew it was as close to love as she could have come. He had helped her through the worst times. He had been gentle, loving, kind. He had been a killer.
A car passing along the street outside the hotel sounded its horn and temporarily brought her back to the present and Cologne. Maria thought of Frank and wept. Not just for him, but for herself. He had been her last chance for salvation.
Maria felt empty and aching and old. But there was something else. The idea. The idea had been there, fully formed in her mind as soon as she woke up. And with it came a strength and sense of purpose she thought she had lost for ever.
Maria showered, changed and tore the page she needed from the telephone directory. She was about to go straight out, again skipping breakfast, but she checked herself. She went into the dining room and forced herself to eat some muesli and fruit. The breakfast and the coffee she drunk seemed to fuel her instantly. And this time there would be no trip to the toilets to void her gut. She headed purposefully out of the hotel. There had been a light fall of snow during the night that had turned into a mucky grey slush. She left the car and walked into the city centre. She found the hairdresser’s first. Maria’s hair was never particularly long and she usually spent a small fortune on expensive Hamburg stylists. This salon was the standard sort of place with a limited range of styles and an even more limited range of skills. A girl who looked as if she should have still been at school shampooed Maria’s hair and asked her what she wanted done. Maria took a photograph from her handbag.
‘That,’ she said. ‘I want to look like that.’
‘You sure?’ asked the hairdresser. ‘Your hair has a lovely natural colour. Most of my customers would kill for hair your shade of blonde. They keep asking me but I never manage it, of course.’
‘Can you manage that?’ asked Maria.
The hairdresser shrugged and handed back the photograph of Maria and her friend and colleague Anna Wolff. ‘Easy. If you’re sure that’s what you want…’
An hour and a half later, Maria was out on the street again. Despite the cold she didn’t put her hat back on. The chill air nipped at her newly exposed ears and every now and then she would stop and look at her reflection in a shop window. Her hair was now a very dark brown, not quite as dark as Anna’s and not quite as spiky-short, but it changed her appearance considerably.