5
‘You’re from the telly?’ The old woman smiled as she asked the question and Sylvie Achtenhagen wished that she hadn’t. Her ruined teeth looked as if they needed the attention of an archaeologist, rather than a dentist. ‘Is that what you said? You’re from the telly?’
‘That’s right… HanSat.’ Sylvie smiled sweetly, the way she’d learned to smile when she wanted information from someone. She cast her gaze beyond the broken-fence-edged square of waste ground. They were down by the harbour, on the southern edge of St Pauli. Across the Elbe, vast machines were hoisting containers from an armada of freight ships. The cold air rang with the rhythmic beeping of reversing cranes.
‘Never heard of it. Don’t have a telly.’ The old woman made a sweeping gesture with her arm — as sweeping a gesture as her countless layers of clothing would allow — taking in the broken paving, the smear of scrubby grass, the discarded bottles, a used condom. ‘I find it would ruin the ambience I’ve built up here.’ She chuckled at her own joke. ‘So you doin’ sommat about the Kiez? About them murders? This is where they found the last fella, y’know.’
‘Something like that. And yes, I know the latest victim was found here. That’s why I came to talk to you. Is this your usual spot?’
‘Coppers’ve asked me ’bout it already. They got a bee up their arses ’bout this ’un.’
‘Is this your usual spot?’ Sylvie repeated the question. Be patient. Smile. Offer money. ‘Listen, I can pay for information. Only if it’s good information, though. Is this your usual spot?’
‘This is my abode,’ the old woman announced grandly. ‘How much?’
‘That all depends. Do you sleep in a hostel?’
‘Sometimes. When it’s too cold. Sometimes I sleep here.’
‘There are better places than this, surely. I mean the State Social Office would help find you a place.’
‘Oh, I know…’ Another broken-toothed chuckle. ‘They offered me a villa in Blankenese, but I said it was too down-market for someone of my breeding.’
Sylvie shrugged. ‘Okay, you said the police talked to you. What did they want to know?’
‘They asked me if I saw anything the other night, when that fella was killed. I said I didn’t. It was too cold so I dossed down in the Red Cross hostel. But I was here drinking until about eleven. But didn’t see nothing. Then they asked me if I seen a taxi in the area. Driven by a woman.’
‘A taxi?’
‘Yeah. They said it might not’ve had a sign on it, though.’
‘Did they say why they were looking for a taxi?’
‘Yeah — the police always tell me them kind of things. Discuss cases. I’m like a special consultant.’
‘Listen, you can get smart or you can get money. Not both.’
The down-and-out shrugged her padded shoulders. ‘Just jokin’. No… they didn’t say why.’
‘Anything else?’
‘They showed me this picture. I suppose it was the guy what got killed. I never seen him before and I told them so.’
‘Did they give you a name for the dead man?’
‘No — they did say he was about thirty and not too tall.’
‘Anyone else doss down around here?’
‘No, it’s too far out for them. I sleep here ’cause I’m a woman. It ain’t safe elsewhere.’
Sylvie looked at the woman. She looked eighty but might only have been forty. A couple of years older than her. She wondered how a woman could end up in a situation like that; she imagined that the tramp had seen all kinds — experienced all kinds — of horrors. Sylvie handed the tramp a fifty-euro note.
‘Thanks…’ The tramp looked delighted with her bounty. Suddenly eager. ‘Listen, you come by tomorrow. I’ll ask some of the others if they’ve seen something.’
‘That would be good.’ Sylvie smiled. ‘You do that.’
Sylvie drove back into the Reeperbahn and parked near the taxi rank at Spielbudenplatz. Unlike the female down-and-out, the drivers waiting for fares or taking a break at the snack stand knew exactly who Sylvie was. They were keen to help, especially when she hinted that if she got anything worthwhile she’d return with a camera crew to get their statements on tape. The fact was, however, that they had nothing much to offer, although one or two had been very open about what the police had said to them.
From the scraps she had gathered, Sylvie was able to piece together that the guy who had been murdered had been picked up by an ivory-beige Mercedes E-class, but the police thought that it had probably been a fake taxi. That kind of planning, she thought to herself, was bordering on the professional. The drivers told her that they were all now looking out for the phoney cab and driver.
While she was at Spielbudenplatz, Sylvie thought it was worthwhile calling into Davidwache. When she asked the uniformed female officer behind the counter if she could speak to Herr Kaminski, she was told he was unavailable. All day. Sylvie tried to wheedle some information from the desk officer but got nowhere.
When she got back to her car, her cellphone rang. It was Ivonne, her assistant, calling to tell her that the police had released an identity for the latest victim: Armin Lensch, twenty-nine, had worked for the NeuHansa Group.
‘God — that’s a bit close to home,’ said Sylvie. The NeuHansa Group was the company owned by Gina Bronsted, the Hamburg senator who was running for First Mayor. Through NeuHansa, Gina Bronsted had a finger in every pie in Hamburg worth having your finger in. One of those pies was HanSat TV, Sylvie’s employer. The rumour was that Bronsted had financed Andreas Knabbe’s start-up of HanSat.
‘Yep,’ said Ivonne. ‘Apparently Lensch worked for a subsidiary, Norivon. It’s NeuHansa’s environmental technologies division.’
‘Now that’s interesting…’ Sylvie sat in the car staring out through the windscreen but seeing nothing; instead her mind raced through a dozen possible connections. As well as being a successful politician, Gina Bronsted was a millionairess several times over. She was running for the office of Hamburg’s Principal Mayor, basically on the platform that she could run the city like a business. Having an employee of one of her companies linked to these murders, even as a victim, was not the kind of publicity she would want. ‘Ivonne, get me everything you can on the NeuHansa Group and Gina Bronsted. Get me a few names inside the company and find out if the dead guy was of any importance in the group. Have whatever you can lay your hands on emailed to my personal address or couriered over to my flat tonight. I’ll be back home from about eight.’
‘I’m on it. By the way, Herr Knabbe has been looking for you.’
Sylvie smiled to herself: Ivonne was a great assistant. More importantly, she hated their mutual boss as much as Sylvie did. Ivonne’s little rebellion was to reject his Americanised informality and never address or refer to him as Andreas.
‘What did you tell him?’ she asked.
‘That you were following up a hot lead. I also told him that the battery on your cellphone was low and you’d temporarily switched it off and I couldn’t reach you.’
‘Ivonne, you’re a star.’
‘So they tell me. Oh, there was another call for you. Some guy phoned saying he had to talk to you urgently but he wouldn’t leave a name. He said he would call back. He sounded a bit creepy, if you ask me.’
Sylvie told Ivonne to let Knabbe know she’d be back in the office first thing tomorrow morning and not to worry about the anonymous caller. Probably some crank. She hung up, pulled out into the traffic on the Reeperbahn and headed back into the city.
6
Fabel got a phone call from Renate just as he was about to go up with Anna and Werner to the Presidium’s fifth floor to meet with van Heiden.
‘Have you spoken to Gabi yet?’ Renate asked without preliminaries.
‘Not yet. You know I haven’t. Why are you phoning me at work to ask me something you already know the answer to? I’m seeing Gabi on Thursday. I’ll talk to her then.’